honest politician. Which meant that the man was now dead and Earl would soon be coming back to the house. If he found Daryl simply standing in the yard because he was too afraid to check the darkened room for the woman… well, that was something he really didn’t want to think about.
Inspired by the threat of his brother’s wrath, Daryl’s mind seized upon an alternative almost immediate. The kitchen. Mama had boxes of candles tucked away in the junk drawer for times when the power went out in the middle of a storm. Even if he somehow still managed to get locked in the dark room, Earl would be back long before the candle ever burnt out. He’d be pissed, no doubt, that his little brother had been so easily trapped… but it still wouldn’t be as bad as if he came home to find him doing absolutely nothing.
Daryl bolted up the front steps and careened around the corner of the hallway. He’d just passed the open cellar door when he skidded to a stop and cocked his head.
He’d thought he heard something. Very low and very soft, but he was sure it hadn’t been his imagination.
“Daryl….”
There it was again. A voice, barely audible. It sounded old and tired and wavered as weakly as if the last vestiges of strength were being used to find the words.
“M… Mama?”
Hope stirred within Daryl’s chest and he remained perfectly still, straining to hear a reply.
“Daryl… help me….”
Yes! That was definitely Mama’s voice. Even though it sounded as if she were in pain and fading fast, he would have recognized it anywhere.
“Daryl….”
The cellar. Mama’s voice was coming from the cellar. And he saw it all as perfectly as if he’d been there: there’d been a struggle at which point the record player had been knocked over and, as they scuffled, they’d kicked ash out from the fireplace and onto the floor. Mama had fought them back, probably trying to drive them out of the house, but when they go to the cellar door something had happened. She’d tripped. Or perhaps been pushed. Either way, she ended up toppling down the stairs. She was down there right now. Probably with a broken hip or leg or arm. Or worse. She could have bashed her head open, could be bleeding to death even as he stood there putting it all together.
“Daryl, please… help.”
Normally, he didn’t like going downstairs and hadn’t set foot down there for nearly two years. But this time, he had no hesitation. He darted through the cellar door so quickly that he almost tripped around the piece of twine that Earl had apparently tied to the doorknob for some reason. His hand grabbed onto the rickety banister and he regained his balance before taking the rest of the steps two at a time.
The cellar floor was made of concrete and it was so cold that he could immediately see his breath in the harsh light of a bare 100 watt bulb. However, that same light also revealed what he took to be proof to his suspicions. For at the very bottom of the staircase was an oblong smear of blood, as if something large had lain there for quite some time.
She must have drug herself away, perhaps to somewhere safer. Or maybe there was a phone down here. Maybe she’d been trying to claw her way to it so she could call for help.
“Daryl….”
Her voice was louder now, but only because he was closer to the source. It still sounded raspy and pained, as if each breath might be her last.
“I’m here, Mama! I’m comin’ for ya.”
The cellar was cluttered with bloated cardboard boxes that smelled of mildew, appliances that Earl had hauled down over the years, and a lifetime’s worth of castoffs. His Daddy’s old tools, dress forms that almost looked like dismembered torsos floating atop a sea of junk. So much stuff that it’d take forever for him to find her on his own.
“Keep talkin,’ Mama. Guide me in. I’m comin’”
“Daryl, hurry… it hurts so bad.”
The old woman sounded as if she were nearly in tears and her son tore through the collected debris in a frenzy. Old newspapers fluttered in the air while boxes of books toppled their contents onto trunks that grated across the hard, bumpy floor.
“It hurts….”
“Hang on, Mama!”
He rounded what almost appeared to be a miniature Stonehenge of bookshelves and end tables and saw her feet poking out from behind an old chest freezer. Scrambling through the junk, he cried out in relief: “I see you! I see you, Mama! Hold on, I’m almost there!”
As he came to the freezer he fell to his knees, so intent on helping his wounded mother that the jolt of pain may have as well been half a world away. He grabbed her shoulder as tears trickled from his eyes.
“Mama, I….”
But something was wrong. Her skin was as cold as the floor he knelt on. She shouldn’t be that cold, should she? Even with blood loss, she….
His confusion was cut short as her head lolled to the side. Where her eyes should have been were what looked like two squished slugs and the tip of her tongue poked out from between lips as dark and blistered as a singed hot dog. The he noticed, for the first time, that her dress was ripped and tattered. The yellow fabric was covered with inkblot-like stains and the waxen flesh below was marred with ragged gashes. One of the pockets she’d sewn almost seemed to be peeling away and he saw something that looked like a thin wedge of metal lodged into her belly like the head of a large staple. However, the piece that still stuck from the skin looked jagged, as if it had actually been the part of something large and had broken off.
Another scene replaced the one he’d imagined earlier. In this retake, Mama still toppled down the stairs, but only after she’d been brutalized by that bitch and bastard. Maybe she was already dead when they tossed her down like a bag of garbage. Or perhaps that first tumble snapped her neck. But at some point, as she rolled down into the darkness, the handle had snapped off… it all made sense.
Daryl then noticed the semi-circular gash in her lower abdomen and the something glistening and pink that seemed to be trying to force its way through the cut. Lots of blood there. So much that it was impossible to tell that the dress had ever been yellow to begin within. And that was probably what killed her.
He shook his head vigorously as the weight of these thoughts finally sank in. When he’d first started noticing these things, his body had turned numb and that anesthetic-like feeling had quickly spread to his mind. He was actually able to think more clearly than he normally could… but, at the same time, he felt detached from the process. Almost as if it were a movie he were listening to as he faded off to sleep.
But now that feeling was beginning to fade.
Mama couldn’t be dead. She just couldn’t. If she were dead, then how did she call to him for help? How did she let him know that her body was even down here to begin with?
As Daryl struggled with these questions, Mona yanked on a piece of cord from her hiding place. The cord rounded one of the stair banisters and snaked up to the top of the steps. But when she pulled, the thin rope was drawn taut and the door it was tied to slammed shut.
Daryl sprang to his feet at the same moment Mona threw the switch on the breaker box and plunged the cellar into a darkness so complete that it seemed as if they’d been set adrift in space. She removed the welding goggles that had already adjusted her vision to the gloom and tried not to giggle as Daryl’s screams pierced the darkness. The acrid stench of urine flooded the air as he tripped and fell in the clutter and she suspected that by the time she was through playing, that shit would also add its pungency to this mess in the terrified man’s pants.
This was going to be even more fun than she’d hoped for….
SCENE SIXTEEN
Earl looked down at the dead body before him. No final snorts of air flared the nostrils, nor did the chest rise and fall even marginally. The dark eyes already had a glassy look to them, as if they’d been secretly replaced with
