HORROR/HOME INVASION/FICTION/SUSPENSE
What Happens After Midnight
Part five
Part 5
As I slowly grasped what he was doing, his act of utterly unexpected kindness, a pure wave of gratitude overwhelmed me. I’d thought he had approached to kill me, but he gave me a glass of water instead. Gratitude turned into an overwhelming feeling of awe, washing over me like redemption. He could have killed me as the demon had killed Scott. But instead he gave me water. He made sure I could drink it.
Ghost Bride sat on the bed, and although she said nothing, her presence was somehow soothing. The teeth demon held back, but his aspect was no longer threatening. What was happening? I was supposed to be their next victim; but instead of stabbing me to death, they were helping me. I wondered dimly if they felt bad because of Scott’s treachery.
“Thank you,” I whispered, my teeth rattling. I saw them looking at each other above my head, as if coming to a silent agreement between them. This did not alarm me. My gratitude was all-encompassing. It didn’t make any kind of logical sense, but my mind had broken hours — minutes? eons? — ago, when I woke up and saw them surrounding my bed.
“What do you want from me?” I asked them. It still seemed impossible they would let me live. The best to hope for was that they might not do the worst thing in the world. That would be enough.
“What do you want?” Child Bride asked.
What did I want? What once were my thoughts had been blasted into splinters. I wanted to die quickly. I wanted to be shot, not stabbed. If there was anything after death, I wanted my old dog Bramble to come greet me. I wanted to smash my boot on Scott’s dead face for leaving me alone with the intruders, stomp him as he’d once done to me when I refused to turn my music down. I wanted to burn down the world.
And now my mind must have started playing tricks on me, because Ghost Bride asked again, “What do you want,” and for a second I had the illusion of choice, that the question had expanded beyond my preferred death.
And because my mind was cracked open, no filter existed between the silent thought and the spoken word, and I said,
“I want to go with you.”
The demon had returned to the bed, mask in place. A heavy silence settled on the room, accompanied by the metal smell of blood.
“Why?” It was the plague doctor.
Normally I picked over my words before I said them. But this night had stripped me of anything calculated. I was unmade, and re-made.
“Because I don’t have anywhere else to go,” I said.
It was hard to tell behind the masks, but I had the sense that once again they were looking at each other, silently conferring. Sitting in their silence was a weirdly calming experience, even though my shaking hadn’t fully stopped. It was like being in transit, on a road trip or a train. Either the train would stop and leave me off early, and I would die, or they would allow it to continue on its course. It was out of my hands.
“Do you want a new name?” the demon asked.
“We all did,” Child Bride added.
I was still trembling, I felt I would spend the rest of my life trembling, but an unexpected thing happened. Child Bride and Demon Teeth each took one of my hands, and they started to rub them, to bring the warmth back.
“I guess.” I looked over at Child Bride. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Theda.”
I nodded, staring at her with a blank face.
The terror that had flooded me was retreating, leaving me in a state of weird, empty peace. But suddenly I felt a furrow work its way into my forehead.
“With a ‘D’?” I asked.
She nodded.
An idea fell into the stillness that was my mind, like a single stone hitting the bottom of a dark well. “Anagram?”
At that she smiled widely, appearing for a moment strangely innocent. “No one else ever guessed that.”
Plague Doctor turned to look at her. It was hard to tell through the mask, but I thought he looked surprised.
“Death?” he asked at length.
“I like her,” she said, nodding in my direction.
*****
The men disappeared into the living room while I changed into jeans and a new T-shirt. Demon Teeth had raided the cupboard where Scott kept all his liquor, and when I emerged in my fresh clothes he offered me a whiskey flask. I didn’t like whiskey, but at that moment I needed it.
Five minutes later, we were on the road.
As we pulled out of the driveway, I cast a last look at the backyard, at the place where Scott, five years younger, had held my hand, happiness and hope in his eyes. I said goodbye to that vision.
*****
A month later, Theda rang the front doorbell of a house on an isolated road in another state. She ducked immediately out of sight. I was standing beside a tree directly facing the chosen house, set back maybe fifty yards into the woods, with my mask on: a witch caricature complete with ravaged pale face, huge dark sockets instead of eyes, scores of vertical lines along the curve of the cheekbones, a pointed chin.
After that first series of loud knocks, Theda moved back, disappearing into the shrubbery. I was up now. Before I stepped onto the porch, Plague Doctor told me, “You’ve got this.”
“I’m nervous,” I whispered.
“You won’t be, after tonight. You were born to do this “
I nodded, acknowledging the truth of his words. At least that they felt true. I stepped up, quickly climbed four steps to the porch, laid my mask flush against the house, out of sight, and knocked hard, several times.
An older man finally answered. “It’s two in the morning” he said. “What do you want?”
My heart was hammering, but I also felt a strange expanding calmness through my chest. It was true. I was meant for this.
“Can I come in?” I asked. “There’s some strange-looking person who keeps following me.”
He peered out into the dark, then his gaze returned to scrutinize me. “I’ve never seen you before. What are you doing out at this hour? You don’t even live around here.” That last bit came out like an accusation.
I put on a wide, friendly smile. “I just moved here, I live about half a mile up the road.” He stood in the doorway, blocking it. But he was second-guessing himself, I could see.
“What’s your name?”
My smile grew wider. It was hard to control your face when you were excited. The reverse-taped songs I loved were sounding in my mind, songs we’d been playing on our drive from a motel three miles away. No one ever yelled at me for playing my music loud now.
But I was supposed to be afraid of the malefic stranger who was following me, so I tried to squash my smile.
Turn Me On, Dead Man.
I cleared my throat. “Nice to meet you, neighbor,” I said. For the first time, I introduced myself by my new name:
“I‘m Rorret.” I smiled. “Can I come in?”
The End
