Red Harvest Page 10

  Aloysius dashed after him a short distance—but the agile mastiff burrowed into the dense brush and disappeared.

  Aloysius caught his breath and bellowed, “Get back here, you bastard!” He hurled the chain at the woods.

  He knew that Bravo would not return, probably not ever. And how could anyone blame him? Aloysius would go and hunt for him later, with a helping of leftover roast as a peace offering. He needed to calm himself.

  With a huff, he picked up the tray. He tromped to Everett’s shed, entering the tiny vestibule he had built onto the structure. He closed the exterior door behind him and knocked on the inner door. “Everett! Lunch!”

  Scratchy notes from Bert Convy’s 1958 hit “Monster Hop” wafted at Aloysius under the door.

  Aloysius became angry. “Everett! I have much to do!”

  The door creaked open—another assault on Aloysius’s patience.

  Everett stood there, a crisp, new, black construction paper eye mask stapled to his face, the heavy Dracula cape draped over his shoulders.

  “Damn it!” Aloysius said. “You’ve stapled yourself again. You’re going to get another infection.” Aloysius reached to tear the mask away, but Everett took a quick step back.

  Aloysius regarded him reproachfully. “You’re in costume a day early, I’m afraid.”

  “So happy!” Everett croaked.

  Aloysius would not break eye contact—though he wanted to. “You haven’t packed at all!”

  “So happy!” answered Everett.

  Aloysius grunted. “Come and take the food, boy.”

  Everett took a step forward, but did not take the tray.

  “Don’t try me today, Everett.”

  Everett took the tray—then dropped it, his smile never wavering as it clattered and splattered food, startling Aloysius backward.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” bellowed the big patriarch. “Clumsy fool! Pick it up!”

  Everett crouched, as if to obey. Aloysius did not see him draw from his waistband, hidden under the cape, a knife-shaped sliver of hard black vinyl—the once-beloved record of children’s Halloween favorites Everett had broken earlier that day.

  With a huff, Aloysius smacked Everett on the top of the head. “I’m losing my pa—”

  Everett rose to a stand, raising the black knife over his head.

  Aloysius lunged for the doorknob. His hand was on it and turning—just as Everett drove the vinyl shard between his ribs.

  Aloysius pushed the door open as he stumbled out face forward. “Leelee!” he cried. “Run away!”

  Everett sliced through the flesh between the ribs of his father’s back, carving a slit all the way to his spine. He pulled the weapon out and stood over Aloysius, watching with fascination as blood dripped from the tip of the black knife.

  As Aloysius rolled onto his back with an agonized moan, Everett snickered down at him. The demented man-child held up his finger, as if to say, Wait here, please, and went back into his shed.

  Aloysius coughed blood, his punctured lungs failing him when he tried to scream another warning to Mamalee.

  Everett returned, smiling as he showed his father a hand-sized construction paper crescent. Aloysius saw the vertical lines drawn on it and realized it was an oversized cartoon smile. In Everett’s other hand was his stapler.

  Everett knelt and positioned the mask on Aloysius’s face, then mashed the stapler into it repeatedly. Aloysius’s weak efforts to stop him meant nothing to the strong, adrenaline-fueled teenager. Everett seemed to take pleasure in the paper smile, perhaps the only smile he had ever seen on his father’s face. “So happy!”

  Satisfied, Everett stepped over his father, and left his shed.

  Blood streamed from the edges of the mask to mingle with the growing puddle under Aloysius’s head.

  Chapter 10

  In the bedroom Mamalee hummed, taking books from shelves and placing them in a box as she had a year ago, and a year before that. The last book was a large family Bible with cracked corners, its pages crumbling at the edges.

  Furrowing her brow, she smoothed her hand across its tooled leather face, its gothic gold letters, and opened it, knowing she would find the same pictures tucked between its pages as she had ever since Everett was a baby.

  A family portrait against a background of blue sky and clouds, the bright-faced young couple with infant Candace and toddler Everett holding one of his many monster dolls.

  Mamalee stared at the image but did not see it, instead reliving the memory of Aloysius sitting at the kitchen table with his eyes closed, trying not to hear the screams of a little boy echoing throughout that long-gone first house, in counterpoint with the booming baritone chants of a man yelling in Latin.

  Mamalee slammed the Bible shut and dropped it in the box, as if it burned her hand. After a thought, she took it and tossed it in a trash box.

  She heard Aloy come in and putter around in the kitchen. Staring at the big Bible, she wondered if God and Aloy shared her disillusionment, the same sense of failure at having children so inexplicably broken that it rendered their protective love meaningless, reduced their lofty wishes for a beautiful future to mere sketches in the sand at the edge of an ever-erasing ocean. “Aloy? How is Everett?”

  Wait…

  The sounds were faint, yet somehow chaotic, not like the grim sense of order that characterized Aloy’s comings and goings.

  She switched to a higher pitched, more playful tone. “Bravo? What are you doing, bad doggy? Daddy left the door open, didn’t he?”

  Mamalee went down the narrow hall, already missing the pictures she had aligned chronologically on the wall a year previous. “Bravo, you sneaky…”

  Entering the kitchen, Mamalee felt a sensation like walking into a swarm of hornets.

  Though his back was to her, there could be no doubt that the caped, mussy-haired figure standing at the kitchen drawers was Everett.

  He turned. She saw that he had stapled one of his masks on again and was collecting sharp things. The points of mismatched steak knives and meat skewers jutted from both ends of his fist.

  “Oh, God,” Mamalee cried. “Everett.”

  She backed out of the kitchen. “Where is your…”

  Seeing blood on his hands, she erupted into tears. “Oh, baby. What did you do?”

  “Mama can fly!” rasped Everett, as he took a step toward her.

  “No.” She turned to run and heard Everett take off as well, snickering at the new game. Mamalee squealed as she bashed her way past the boxes in her path, bolting for the front door.

  As she lunged for the knob, a steak knife twanged into the wood beside it, sending a jolt of immobilizing terror up her spine.

  She saw Everett raising another knife and cut to her left, protected by the foyer wall, screaming all the way, not only out of terror but to drown out Everett’s ghastly laughter. Mamalee ducked into her bedroom and squeezed her eyes shut as she slammed and locked the door.

  She pressed her back to the door—then stepped away as she imagined a knife piercing it, and her.

  The rocking chair had been a gift from Aloysius when Everett was born. She slid it toward the door and jammed its back under the knob.

  “Everett!” she cried. “This is wrong! And I want you to know, I’m sorry, baby!”

  She watched the doorknob, unnerved by the silence beyond. Then came a soft shuffling—he was walking away to…

  The window opposite the bed was open. “Oh!”

  She went to the window and tried to close it, sinking her hips, hoping the extra girth she had acquired over the years would be enough to budge it. “Come… on!”

  Just the barest movement—but enough to create downward momentum, closing the heavy frame to within less than an inch.

  She scanned out the periphery of the window, from one side to
the other.Her eyes and ears strained for any warning as she went back to the door.

  Then came a muffled thumping. Her senses scrambled to determine its location.

  With the realization came despair. “Attic.”

  The ceiling exploded downward, raining plaster, insulation, and Everett. Giggling madly, he landed in front of her on his face and hands, like an angel ousted from heaven.

  Mamalee screamed, turning to the window she had just struggled to close. The opening was almost too narrow for her fingers to get under, but once she did, the window refused to rise even a centimeter.

  She dared a glance at Everett and saw him shaking off the plaster debris. He pushed the pieces of insulation and thin particle board out of the way. “No time for puzzles.” He collected his knives from the floor, muttering, “Pick up sticks!”

  Mamalee hammered her palms against the bottom edge of the window, whooping like a lottery winner when it slid up three inches. She pushed and pushed again, until the window shuddered along its rails enough for her to crawl through. Terror and adrenaline drove her shifting and wriggling through—and plunging to the ground outside.

  Mamalee struggled to her feet, tears streaming. “Have to stop him…”

  She lunged at the window, fingers forming steely claws to match the window’s rigid fit—but this time it slid shut with unexpected ease. She fell face-first, bumping her chin on the frame. Stars whirled in her vision, pain lit up her jaw—then the window shattered behind her. Fingers hooked into her hair, maddened giggles stabbed her ears.

  Mamalee cried for help, as she clawed at Everett’s hand. With another burst of reckless strength, she yanked herself away, leaving Everett with a handful of curly blond-gray hair as she fell forward. She stumbled up quickly on arms going numb from exhaustion, and she found herself facing the window.

  The black shape of her son burst through it like a giant bat, and he landed on his feet a few feet away. “Evvie can fly too!”

  Mamalee screamed as Everett hurled his handful of knives, most of them landing in her chest, neck, and stomach. “Toys can fly,” he noted.

  Mamalee fell to her knees, staring with horror at her injuries, then at Everett. “Oh… my sweet little…shnoogens…” She fell to her back.

  Everett came and stood over her, wearing a wide grin.

  “Oh baby…” she sputtered. “I know. I know it’s not your fault.” She coughed blood.

  Everett knelt beside her as he took from his pocket a crumpled construction paper mask, a madly distorted red-cheeked angel, and positioned it on her face.

  “Okay, Evvie. That’s fine, that’ll be…”

  He smashed the stapler into the mask, affixing it to her forehead. She tried not to cry out too much, not knowing if it would offend or encourage him. “Just please, baby. Not Candace, all right? Not Candace.”

  Everett took on an expression of wonder. He patted her stomach. “Cann…niss?”

  Mamalee played along. “Oh…oh yes, baby! She’s right there in mommy’s tummy!”

  Everett reached into his pocket and withdrew another crumpled mask to show Mamalee: a green, bug-eyed alien, complete with pipe cleaner antennae.

  Mamalee maintained a bloody smile as Everett placed the mask over her stomach and stapled it there.

  Mamalee kept up the charade. “Yes, good boy! Now Candace has her own Halloween mask!”

  Everett, his madness-soaked eyes burning into her, raised a second alien mask, larger than the first. “Canniss.”

  Mamalee realized her last-ditch ruse had failed. “No! No, Everett! She had nothing…”

  Everett pushed one of the knives into Mamalee, silencing her.

  * * * *

  McGlazer considered the tiny feeling of paranoia and dread flitting in his brain like a black-light firefly. Walking along Main Street en route to the sheriff’s department, he saw the trees in their waist-high brick planters along the sidewalk dance in an onrushing breeze.

  Were there… knives hiding among the leaves, pointing themselves at him?

  McGlazer felt his heart pump in his ears and a familiar domineering thirst on his tongue.

  He said a prayer and went to the little tree—to confront it?

  No knife leaves. Nothing unusual.

  The cool wind carried an artificial scent of pumpkin from the café that recalled the eerie blast of cold he had felt in his office just before the frustrating tease of briefly seeing the specter—and the subsequent near-suffocation by sweet.

  Wouldn’t that be a joke of a headline? town minister dies in confection-related mishap.

  He felt better. Whatever the cause of the brief fugue, it had dissipated. But though the grayish shade in his office and the leaf knives could be dismissed as hallucination, the guided-missile sweetmeat was as real as the gritty sore throat that had him grimacing with each swallow.

  Chapter 11

  Candace had no first memory of her brother, or a family that was like everyone else’s. Everett had always been confined to the basement or the attic or more recently to some fortified shack or barn on the grounds of whatever property they were renting any given year—except for Halloween night, which always signaled a quick move to some other distant locale the very next day.

  She didn’t see him that much, except from a distance and framed in a briefly open door, until a couple of years ago. At that time, her father had agreed to acclimate them to one another via short exposures, in acquiescence to Mamalee’s wishes that they have some knowledge of each other.

  So Aloysius had taken her on feeding trips, allowing her to wave to the boy and say hello from a safe distance. Everett always acknowledged her, seeming curious and aware beyond his madness of some connection between them.

  Then Father had allowed her to accompany Mamalee as well, for afternoon feedings or to sit outside his door and read stories to him in her high and wavering voice. He seemed to love the harmless Halloween books aimed at preschool kids, and after a few readings, Everett’s muffled mutterings indicated he had memorized the book. Mamalee would slide it under the door and Everett, apparently as clever at deduction as he was compulsive at killing, would read them to himself, having discerned by process of elimination and the timing of the turning of the pages which words went where.

  His strange behavior didn’t initially frighten Candace. When they moved to Ember Hollow and the growing boy was locked into a much stronger structure, she sometimes felt safe in sneaking to visit him alone.

  She would sit outside the barred windows and sing along with Everett’s records. Soon, Everett too would raspingly sing. But when she tried to speak with him, he was mostly incoherent. The cause of his madness had also destroyed his ability to communicate—unless he just didn’t want to.

  When Candace went to the mall in neighboring Wilcoxville with Mamalee, she was often granted ten minutes to walk around on her own (and, perhaps, pretend she was a normal girl). She found a quaint music store that sold vinyl records and supported local acts, including The Chalk Outlines. She came across their EP Lullabies to Die By and remembered that a boy in her class, Stuart, was the brother of swoon-worthy front man Kenny Killmore, and was pretty darn cute himself. Though she had caught him staring at her, she always figured he was just thinking how weird she was, like everyone else did.

  She returned from a few of these excursions with records that she secretly slid under Everett’s door, including the Outlines’s EP and some vintage Halloween records. Later, she was pleased to hear him listening to them.

  At one time, her parents might not have approved of Everett listening to “aggressive” music. But these days, Papa was too deep in discontent and denial. Mamalee shared in the latter with him. They hardly paid attention to Everett’s listening habits, or Everett himself so much, now that he was almost—well, pretty much totally—grown up.

  Bravo had come along four years ago,
after Everett showed signs of greater strength and alarming cleverness. Aloysius wanted to keep the dog away from Everett during his developing months, to keep them from bonding, but it wasn’t necessary. As a pup, Bravo cowered and whimpered anytime Everett was near. As he grew, he growled and postured defensively when Father went to feed Everett, especially if Candace was around.

  Father wanted a guard dog for his little girl, and he was perhaps disappointed that Bravo showed fear of the boy, but having the dog professionally trained would leave too much of a trail. He had to try to do it himself.

  The first few times Candace took Everett his food, Father stood near—but he had to force Bravo to stay at his side by choking up on the leash.

  Eventually, Bravo was consigned to a doghouse, less a guard dog and more a neglected pet. Candace was not allowed to walk him, but she did go and sit with him, just as she did Everett. She ruffled his fur and kissed him, told him he was a good boy. Sometimes, he laid his head on her lap and dozed. Sometimes, he just sat, eyes half closed, smiling, content to be in her presence.

  She told him, in low tones, of her despair. They commiserated about their place in a family that centered around endless smoldering horror.

  Father sometimes talked about getting rid of Bravo and buying another dog, a Doberman or German shepherd that was already trained. But Candace and Mamalee both would plead with Aloysius till he relented. Maybe this was a mistake, but for a young girl already traumatized by a crushing reality for which she could never have prepared, every love was a deep one.

  There were times when Candace wished her brother was dead. He was a permanent black rainbow arcing over their home, a factor in every single decision.

  There were times—when Candace was in bed, or walking home thinking about the bullies on the bus, and wanting to see them hurt even worse than they hurt her—she wondered if there wasn’t some murder madness gestating within her soul as well, waiting to bloom. Perhaps, Candace pondered, that was what adulthood would mean for her.