HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: DO GO IN THE BASEMENT
HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: DO GO IN THE BASEMENT
BY TIM WAGGONER
When I was child in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970’s, I attended a Quaker church in my small southwestern Ohio town. My parents, as far as I know, never attended a church (at least not as adults). My maternal grandmother and great-grandmother did, however, and for reasons I’m not entirely clear on, my parents let them take me. I mostly went to Sunday school, though. My family thought it was too difficult for kids to sit through a full church service, and they didn’t make me try. I did participate in the Christmas and Easter programs since the children always sang or put on skits for them. (Once, I got to be the Smart Star, one of the stars vying to be THE Christmas star. I lost out to the Humble Star, though.) The church didn’t have a Halloween service, though. No surprise there. But it had something way better.
It had a Halloween party.
The church was pretty cool overall. The Quaker religion didn’t have a lot of rules. People could have a one-on-one relationship with God without needing anyone to intercede on their behalf, and they were supposed to follow the Golden Rule. Everyone was considered an equal in the church, with no one being higher than anyone else. That’s about it, at least as far as I can remember. Back then, evangelism wasn’t a force in American life, and the political right hadn’t realized they could achieve greater power by allying with the religious right. TV preachers were starting to be a thing, but most people thought of them as eccentrics at best and con artists at worst. People, at least where I grew up, were pretty chill about religion. It was, as they say, a Different Time.
I don’t remember how old I was when I first attended one of the church’s Halloween parties. Five or six, maybe? The parties were held in the church’s basement, adults as well as children attended, and everyone came in costume. I don’t recall what I wore that year. Most likely a Ben Cooper costume, the kind with a vacuform mask and a plastic shirt emblazoned with a creepy cartoonish drawing of whatever creature you were dressing up as that year. I might have been Frankenstein’s Monster. I did wear that costume one year, and I loved the thing, so let’s pretend I wore it to the church’s Halloween party, okay?
For the first hour of the party, everyone was to remain masked, their identity secret. I was fascinated by this – and a little weirded out, too. My parents didn’t socialize. My mom was a depressive agoraphobic, and my dad wouldn’t go anywhere without her, so I’d never been to a Halloween party before, and certainly not one with so many adults wearing costumes. I’d only seen that kind of thing in Halloween episodes of sitcoms. I watched the adults mingle and chat, often laughing as they tried (and failed) to guess each other’s identities. They seemed so relaxed and comfortable talking with what were, for the moment at least, strangers. I eventually realized that was part of the fun.
There were a lot of great costumes, and of course my favorites were the scary ones. The best was a person dressed in black, with a long black cape, who wore a devil’s head. And not some dinky mask like I had. This was like something I’d seen in images of Mardis Gras parades, big with grotesquely exaggerated features. It didn’t look too heavy, so I figured it was made of paper mache or something like that. A plastic pitchfork completed the Devil’s ensemble. Seeing the Prince of Darkness in a church basement struck me as amusing but also as at least somewhat sacrilegious. I didn’t have a particularly strong belief in the existence of God, but I was a horror fan, even at that age, and part of me was waiting for a displeased God to strike us all with lightning bolt or (better yet) the real Satan to show up and drag the imposter back to Hell with him. Neither happened, though, and at the appointed hour, one of the adults shouted that it was time for us to unmask. We did, and all eyes were on the Devil, everyone eager to see who was under the grinning red mask of evil.
It was our pastor.
The adults laughed with delight and congratulated him on a fine joke. He laughed, too, and the mood remained light and joyful for the rest of the night. Can you imagine this happening in a church today? It would result in a social media firestorm, and right-wing demagogues would latch onto the story and use it as fuel for their venomous rants for days, if not weeks.
What struck me at the time was the sense of fun all the adults had, the simple pleasure they took in each other’s presence, the sense of true fellowship, the kind that comes from real human connection. Halloween allowed the adults to be kids again, at least for a time, and connect in ways that maybe they weren’t able to in their day-to-day lives. It also allowed them to don the guise of monstrousness and evil, and then shed it in the company of people who would not judge them poorly for what they had appeared to be. It allowed them to symbolically purge their sins and be forgiven, if you will. I’ve written before about how Horror is a way for people to intellectually and emotionally process the darker aspects of existence, and I always say that Halloween is my favorite holiday because it’s the only one dedicated to the imagination. But it didn’t occur to me until I started writing this essay that Halloween is also deeply spiritual in ways I’d never considered before.
By the time I was an adolescent, I stopped going to Sunday school. I figured that as long as people do their best to follow the Golden Rule and try to be a better person today than they were yesterday, the human race didn’t really need formal, organized religion. One day in a college class I was teaching, a student asked me what religion I was. I said, “I’m just me.” Although in the future, I might give a different answer now.
I might say, “I belong to the Church of Halloween.”
BIO
Tim Waggoner has published over sixty novels and eight collections of short stories. He writes original dark fantasy and horror, as well as media tie-ins, and his articles on writing have appeared in numerous publications. He’s a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a one-time winner of the Scribe award, and he’s been a two-time finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and a one-time finalist for the Splatterpunk Award. He’s also a full-time tenured professor who teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio. His papers are collected by the University of Pittsburgh’s Horror Studies Program. You can find him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com
EXCERPT FROM MY RECENT SHORT STORY COLLECTION
OLD MONSTERS NEVER DIE
Winding Road Stories, 2024
(I wasn’t sure how long of an excerpt to send, so I’ve included the entire story.)
PURCHASE LINKS
Winding Road Stories, Print and Digital: https://windingroadstories.com/project/old-monsters-never-die/
Barnes and Noble Paperback: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/old-monsters-never-die-tim-waggoner/1145455344?ean=9781960724205
A TOUCH OF MADNESS
Kristina Lawson sat at a corner table in a small cafe, coffee sitting in front of her, gloved hands tucked beneath her legs. Folk-pop music played over the cafe’s sound system in a vain attempt to give the place a relaxing atmosphere, but it was filled with so many people – ordering at the counter, sitting and talking to one another, working behind the counter and operating various whirring, whooshing, or grinding machines – and the air thrummed with tension.
She glanced around at the other customers. A couple sitting at a table, each involved in whatever was displayed on their phone screens instead of looking at each other. A father sitting with his twin daughters – who were five at the most and dressed in superhero outfits complete with capes, one green, one red – sipping juice boxes while their dad drank his coffee. A pair of middle-aged women in blue medical smocks talking over coffee and pastries after a long hospital shift. And a dozen more, including the staff behind the counter. All of them appeared completely normal. Completely sane. But she knew better than most that appearances didn’t mean shit. Anything could be happening behind their eyes, their thoughts a chaotic maelstrom of wild imperceptions and barely restrained homicidal impulses. Any one of them could be on the verge of succumbing to the lunacy raging inside, and then all hell would break loose. Pam would’ve told her she was being paranoid, and maybe so. But she’d seen it happen before, and if it had happened once, it could happen again.
She wasn’t sure why Pam had asked to have their session in a public place like this instead of her office. No doubt she thought there was a good reason for it, maybe some new type of therapy that she wanted to try, but Kristina wasn’t comfortable around people, especially this many. She looked down on the tabletop to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze. She flexed her hands, felt them move under her legs, was reassured to know they were still protected. She made no move to touch the coffee in front of her. She didn’t want it, didn’t really like coffee much. She’d only bought it so she wouldn’t look any stranger sitting here than she already did.
Pam rushed into the shop then, blond hair a frizzy mess, make-up slightly askew, as if she’d applied it too fast. She looked around, saw Kristina, smiled, and hurried over to her table.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Do you mind if I order something before we get started?”
Kristina did mind. She wanted to get whatever this was over as soon as possible. But she shook her head. Pam smiled again then headed to the counter. There was a line, and Kristina watched her stand there for several moments until it was her time to order. She trusted Pam – as much as she trusted anyone, that is. She’d seen a number of therapists over the years, most of whom had treated her as if she was the crazy one. Pam had been the first to treat her as if she was a person instead of merely a psychologically fascinating puzzle to be solved, a shattered porcelain doll whose pieces needed to be put back together. She’d been seeing Pam for almost two years, and she couldn’t deny they’d made progress together. Two years ago, she never could have come into a place like this by herself, order a drink, sit, and wait for someone. But here she was, and if she wasn’t comfortable, so what? She was here.
Pam returned to the table carrying a large cup that most likely contained a latte with an extra shot of espresso. During one of their earliest sessions, she’d mentioned it was her favorite drink. She sat down opposite Kristina and took a long sip before setting the cup down on the table. Normally, Pam began their sessions with some chit-chat. How have you been since we last talked? Anything new going on with you? But not this time.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked you to meet me here today.”
Kristina smiled. “The thought had crossed my mind.”
“I’d like to try something different today, and I thought this would be a good place for it.”
Called it, Kristina thought. “Were you late on purpose in order to give me a chance to handle being by myself?”
Pam took another sip of her latte.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” she said, and despite herself, Kristina laughed. “So what was it like?” Pam asked.
“Tolerable. Although if you’d been much later, I’d probably have left.”
“Good thing I wasn’t any later then, huh?”
Pam’s expression grew more serious, became what Kristina thought of as her doctor face, and she knew their session was about to start in earnest.
“How are you feeling about the TV show this week?”
Kristina grimaced. “Okay, I guess. The bastards have stopped trying to contact me, so that’s a relief.”
The producers of a lurid true-crime TV show called Unnatural Acts were doing a segment on Kristina’s mom. For a month they’d bugged her nonstop, desperate to get an on-camera interview with her, but she’d ignored them and they’d finally decided to go ahead without her participation. She’d had enough media attention over the last decade to last her a lifetime. News reporters who fought to be the one to interview her first. True-crime authors who wanted to write books about what had happened. One was eventually published – Blood on Campus – and it had become a modest success. She hated the attention, hated how it always brought the memories of that awful day back full force. For the last ten years she’d hoped people would forget and find a new atrocity to be fascinated by. But it hadn’t happened yet, and she was starting to wonder if it ever would.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Pam said, then added. “Kind of.”
“Oh, god. Don’t tell me the producers hired you to be a consultant.”
Pam’s eyes widened in surprise, and then she laughed.
“No, and even if they asked me, I’d turn them down. It would violate doctor-patient confidentiality. Plus, it would be a total dick move.”
Kristina relaxed. The thought of Pam betraying her like that was too awful to think about.
“So what do you want to talk about?” She felt her defenses going up. She didn’t like to remember that day, let alone talk about it. But Pam had done a lot to help her, so she’d go along with whatever she wanted to do. To a point.
Pam took another sip of her latte, a long one, as if fortifying herself for what came next.
“We’ve talked about that day before,” she began. “Several times. And during those conversations, I never questioned the truth of what you told me, never disputed the reality of any of it.”
Kristina nodded cautiously. She didn’t like where this seemed to be going. Her other therapists had questioned, had tried to convince her that it hadn’t happened, or at least that it hadn’t happened the way she remembered. One of the things she liked about Pam is that she’d never done that. But maybe she’d just been waiting for what she thought was the right time to bring up the subject.
“I went to the university yesterday.”
An ice-cold hand gripped Kristina’s heart, and she began trembling. Pam went on, speaking faster as if hoping to get everything out before she freaked.
“I’d never been there. I went to college in Chicago before my husband and I moved to Ohio. It’s a beautiful campus. Lovely old buildings, lots of grass and trees. . . Very different from the downtown campus I attended. The Science Center’s not there anymore. They tore it down years ago and planted trees there. They put up a remembrance plaque, too. I think you might find it healing to see it.”
Kristina trembled harder now, and her mouth and throat felt dry as desert sand. She didn’t want to reply, but if she tried, her words would’ve likely come out in a hoarse croak.
Pam continued.
“I looked for the fountain, but I couldn’t find it at first. I thought maybe it had been torn down, too. But I found it eventually, and it was peaceful and relaxing, just as you described it.” She paused, and then added, “I took some pictures with my phone.”
Sudden nausea erupted in Kristina’s gut, and her vision blurred. She wanted to jump up from her chair and run toward the exit, but she feared that if she tried, she’d pass out before she made it halfway.
“I’d like to show them to you, if that’s okay.”
She wanted to shake her head violently, but she was unable to move. Taking her silence for assent, Pam removed her phone from her purse, brought a picture up on the screen, and then held it out for Kristina to see. She scrolled through a series of images, and although Kristina wanted to look away, wanted it more than she wanted her next breath, she watched the pictures go by, one after the other.
* * * * *
Kristina saw the statue on a hot afternoon in late July when she was thirteen years old. She was supposed to be attending the second morning of a weeklong summer science workshop for middle-school kids run by the university, but after her mom dropped her off in front of the Science Center and drove away in her Lexus, she’d decided to wander the campus instead. She hated science and never got good grades in it – which was the reason her overachieving parents had insisted on signing her up for the workshop. But as much as she hated science, she hated being told what to do even more. Rules, regulations, do this, don’t do that, be a good girl, don’t be a bad girl . . . Why couldn’t everyone just leave her alone to do what she wanted when she wanted? Her parents, teachers . . . all her life people had told her what to do, and she was sick of it. The only rules she was interested in following were her own.
Her parents might’ve enrolled her in the workshop – and paid for it – but they couldn’t make her attend if she didn’t want to. Yesterday had been so boring! All they’d done was make “inventions” out of cardboard, tape, glue, plastic straws, popsicle sticks and other odds and ends. More arts and crafts than science. Kid stuff. Today she planned to skip out and kick around campus for a couple hours until it was time for Mom to pick her up, and then she’d meet her back in front of the Science Center and feed her some bullshit about what the instructors had the kids do today. Her parents were smart – Mom was a lawyer, Dad a pediatrician – but they were so busy they only ever paid partial attention to what she did. Lying to them was almost embarrassingly easy.
This wasn’t her first time at Ash Creek University. Her parents were both alums and had been dragging her to campus concerts, art shows, and theater productions since before she could walk. But in all those visits – dozens of them – she’d never gotten the chance to explore the place. High time she rectified that, she decided. But after a half hour of walking around in the sun and heat, she was not only bored but miserable. She supposed the campus was pretty enough. Red brick buildings, well-landscaped grounds, large trees . . . But there wasn’t anything to do, and because it was summer, there weren’t many people around, which made the place feel empty and lonely. She did like the fact that no one paid any attention to her. The few people she passed – students, professors – didn’t so much as glance at her, as if a thirteen-year-old walking around campus by herself was completely normal. It made her feel very grownup.
But she’d been walking nonstop since her mother left, and she was tired and sweaty. And while the campus was pleasant for the most part, there was a lot of construction going on – parking lots being resurfaced, buildings being remodeled – and that meant noise. Machines running, tools striking metal and concrete, people shouting to each other as they worked. She wanted someplace quiet where she could sit in peace for a bit, preferably in the shade. She was on the verge of saying to hell with it and going back to the Science Center and attending the stupid workshop when she saw the red dumpster. It contained odds and ends from campus construction – chunks of broken concrete, lengths of discarded wood. It was in no way remarkable. She’d seen a dozen like it during her self-guided tour of the campus so far. But what was remarkable was what lay behind it. She almost missed it, so completely did the dumpster block the view. But there was a tiny sliver of space between the side of the dumpster and an old oak tree, and through it she caught a glimpse of what looked like a fountain. Intrigued, she slipped past the dumpster and found herself standing at the entrance to a – well, she wasn’t sure what it was exactly. A place for people to sit, relax, and think, she supposed. A stone fountain sat atop the third level of a dais, a curving half circle of stone wall behind it with an arched open doorway in the middle. Wooden benches rested on either side of the doorway, where people could sit and watch the fountain and listen to the gentle trickle of water. The water bubbled up from the center of a large round stone surface to flow over the edges and into a pool beneath. The water emerged from the edge of the dais in a small waterfall surrounded by large stones placed to look like a natural formation. Trees surrounding the fountain, separating it from the rest of the world, making it seem as if it were a place out of a fairy tale, a secluded, magical setting that only a lucky few ever found.
There was shade here, along with a pleasant breeze, and the sound of the gently rustling tree leaves – combined with the running water – soothed Kristina. She knew where she’d be spending the rest of the time until her mother came to get her.
Then she looked to the left of the fountain and saw the statue. Her parents had both had been raised Catholic, but they weren’t religious. Ash Creek University was a private Catholic institution with a reputation for academic excellence, and that was the only reason her parents had come here for their undergraduate degrees. Kristina sometimes wondered if they still considered themselves Catholic, culturally if not spiritually. They took her to Christmas Eve and Easter mass every year – to “broaden her horizons,” they said – and on the way home they’d give her a speech about how religion was nothing more than a way to instill moral values in its followers by using metaphor and symbolism, and it wasn’t to be taken literally.
Thanks to her “broadened horizons,” she recognized the statue as the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary stood atop a granite pedestal, bare feet sticking out from beneath the hem of her robe. She held her hands out before her, fingers steepled as if praying, her hood-covered head bowed. There was no expression on her face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was little more than a line with only a suggestion of lips. But the detail that stood out the most to Kristina was what looked like a thick reptilian tail protruding from the back of her robe and curling around her left foot. She frowned upon seeing the tail – for that’s what it had to be, couldn’t be anything else. She was no expert on Catholic theology, but she felt confident that Mary wasn’t supposed to have a lizard’s tail.
There was something written on the granite base the statue stood on, and she walked over to read it. It was a single word.
PANDEMONIA.
And beneath that, in smaller letters, a quote: If there is a universal mind, who says it has to be sane? – Charles Fort.
Was this some kind of weird piece of art or maybe a joke of some kind?
And then the tail twitched. Just the tip, and it happened so fast she wasn’t sure she’d really seen it. She looked up at the statue’s face and ice-cold fear hit her when she saw its eyes were now open. They weren’t the same gray-white as the rest of the statue, though. were a glossy obsidian, and while she could read nothing within their empty blackness, she could feel the weight of the statue’s gaze upon her.
You do well to shun the false god of science, child.
The statue’s thin mouth didn’t move. Its voice – cold as midnight and dry as ancient bone – echoed in her mind.
Science pretends there is order to existence, that for every question, there is an answer. This is a lie. Existence is random and meaningless, and that is glorious.
The statue bent toward Kristina and stretched it hands toward her. At first she was so terrified she couldn’t move, could only stand and watch the stone fingers draw closer. But then her survival instincts kicked in, and she threw off her paralysis and turned to run. But before she could take more than a single step, the stone tail lashed out and encircled her waist, stopping her. She pulled and tugged, but she couldn’t break free of the tail’s stone coils.
The statue closed its hard fingers around Kristina’s right wrist and held her hand steady as its lips parted and a pearl of thick dark liquid emerged. It fell onto the back of her hand and sat there for a moment, burning cold on her skin, before flattening against her flesh and slowly disappearing into her body. She felt no different, but a shudder raced through her just the same.
The soothing rhythm of the fountain ceased, and the sudden silence drew Kristina’s attention. She glanced over to see the water had stopped flowing, and an instant later blood welled up from the center of the round stone, crimson and thick. It oozed across the surface, overflowing the stone’s edges, falling in ropey threads into the pool below, before finally emerging as a red waterfall. She looked into the statue’s obsidian eyes, its face only a few inches from her own now.
Go forth and share the gift I have bestowed upon you, my daughter. Free them. Free them all.
* * * * *
Kristina had no memory of the statue releasing her, no memory of beginning to run. One moment she was standing there, trapped in the statue’s embrace, staring into its obsidian eyes, and the next she was running full out, heart pounding, lungs heaving, sweat pouring off her. She had no destination in mind, wasn’t capable of anything approaching rational thought at that moment. Her body operated on autopilot, returning her to the place she’d started from: the Science Center. She was relieved to see her mom’s Lexus parked in front of the building, and she ran straight to it, only partially aware of the tears streaming down her face. She ran to the driver’s side window and began pounding on it to get her mother’s attention. It was several moments before she realized the car was empty.
“There you are!”
Kristina stopped pounding on the window and looked up to see her mother exiting the Science Building, her face a mask of anger. She continued chiding Kristina as she walked toward her.
“I was in a meeting with a client when the workshop director called to ask me why you weren’t present today. I hauled ass down here, grinding my teeth to nubs the whole way. Why can’t you, for once in your life, do what you’re supposed . . .” She trailed off as she reached Kristina, her expression softening. “Are you okay, honey? Why are you crying? Did something happen?”
Before Kristina could respond, her mom took hold of her hands and gave them a reassuring squeeze. The instant their flesh came in contact, her mother stiffened, and her eyes widened in shock. She began shaking her head, as if trying to deny something only she could see. She paled, an expression of absolute horror coming onto her face, but instead of turning away from the unseen whatever-it-was, she continued looking and slowly her features slackened and her expression became placid. She remained like that for several heartbeats, still holding onto Kristina’s hands, and then she spoke in a calm, almost toneless voice.
“Thank you. I understand now.” She looked at Kristina, and in the same flat voice said, “I’m going to go tell the director I found you and you’re safe. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She released Kristina’s hands, turned, and walked back into the building.
Kristina’s tears subsided to a trickle, but she was no longer aware of them. She stared at the glass door that was the entrance to the Science Building, unable to escape the feeling that something was terribly wrong. For a moment she forgot about the statue, or rather she forced herself not to think of it. When Mom got mad – really mad – she stayed that way for a while, sometimes hours. Kristina had never seen her calm down so quickly and completely. It was like a switch had been thrown inside her, shutting off all her emotions. It was beyond weird.
And that’s when the screaming began. It was muffled, but the sound was unmistakable. It came from somewhere inside the building, and when she looked toward the second floor – where the science workshop was taking place – she saw a smallish, child-sized hand slap the window from the inside. The hand was covered with blood and left a red smear on the glass as it slid away.
Her own paralysis was broken by the sight, and she ran into the building and went up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time. The screams grew louder and fewer the closer she got to the second floor, and they were punctuated by moans of pain. She slowed as she approached the classroom where the workshop was held. She didn’t want to go in, didn’t what to see whatever waited for her, but she had to. Her mother was in there.
The door was open, and by the time she reached it, the sounds had stopped. No more screams, no more moans. Just silence. She stepped inside, not far, only a foot or so. The room was set up the same way as it had been yesterday – ten circular tables with chairs around them, materials for students to use in constructing their projects in the middle. It was more like art class than science, which had been one of the reasons she’d found it so boring. But what she saw now wasn’t boring. Far from it.
Bodies were scattered around the classroom, mostly kids her age but there were a couple adults as well. Some lay on the floor in various positions, while others had collapsed into chairs or onto desks. They had sustained numerous cuts and blood was everywhere – on their clothes, on the desks and chairs, on the floor and walls . . . and all the corpses, around twenty in total, appeared to have died the same way, by having their throats cut.
Kristina’s mother stood in the middle of the room, holding a pair of box cutters, her clothes, hands, and face covered in blood. She turned to face Kristina and smiled, her teeth a startling patch of white in her otherwise crimson face.
“Thank you for helping me to see how things really are, sweetie. Thank you for setting me free.”
She raised both box cutters and pressed the tips of the razors to the small hollow at the base of her neck. And then with a pair of vicious outward swipes, she laid open her throat. Blood fountained from the wound to join that which already covered her. If she felt any pain, her face didn’t show it. Her smile widened, and her eyes seemed to almost glow. Kristina didn’t know the word beatific, but if she had, that’s how she would’ve described her mother’s expression.
Her mother stood like that for a time, but eventually the box cutters slipped from her hands and thunked to the floor. A moment later, she joined them, collapsing and staring up at the ceiling with wide, unblinking eyes. Her smile, however, remained in place.
And then it was Kristina’s turn to scream.
* * * * *
Kristina saw the fountain, the stone wall behind it, the rocks in front of it, the trees surrounding it – but there was one thing she didn’t see on the phone’s screen: the statue.
“I checked with the campus groundskeeper’s office,” Pam said, “and they told me that not only isn’t there a statue next to the fountain, there never has been in the university’s one hundred and twenty-two year history.” She closed the phone’s photo app and replaced the device in her purse. “There was no statue, Kristina. In your mind, yes, but not in the physical world. It didn’t infect you with . . .” She frowned, as if unsure how to put it. “With its madness. And you didn’t pass it on to your mother when she grabbed your hands. You aren’t responsible for what she did, and you never were.”
All of Kristina’s therapists had argued that the statue wasn’t real, at least not the way she’d perceived it. But none had gone so far as to visit the campus and take pictures, let alone check to see if the statue had ever existed. A part of her that was still thirteen, and maybe always would be, wanted to shout at Pam, accuse her of lying. But the rest of her, the woman she’d become in the last ten years wanted to believe her. What a comfort it would be to believe that her mother had done what she’d done for some other reason than because she’d touched her daughter’s hand and come in contact with a contagion that Pandemonia had infected her with.
“I know how to prove that you had nothing to do with what happened,” Pam said. “But you’ll have to trust me. Do you trust me, Kristina?”
She hesitated, but then she managed a single nod.
“Good. Put your hands on the table.”
Kristina stared at her, not quite sure she’d heard correctly.
“You told me that you’ve worn gloves every day for the last ten years, that you won’t even take the right one off to bathe. All because you don’t want to risk infecting anyone else.”
“Yes.” She’d been extremely – no, obsessively – careful over the years.
“But if there was no statue, there’s no infection to pass on. And that means you can touch someone without anything bad happening. So you can touch me.”
Pam put her left hand on the table, palm up.
Katrina looked at Pam’s hand, head swimming with vertigo.
“What’s more likely to be true? That some . . . thing chose you to spread some kind of psychological plague, or that your mind made up that incident so you wouldn’t have to believe your mother was responsible for killing all those people?”
Katrina knew which of the choices was the most logical, but that didn’t necessarily make it the correct one. Still, she took a deep breath and slid her hands out from under her legs. She wanted to get better, she truly did, and she recognized that this would be a huge step toward making that possible. She removed her left glove – the one that she didn’t really need to wear – and placed it on the table. And then, after another moment’s hesitation, she removed the right and placed it next to the left. The air felt cold on the exposed skin of her hands, but it felt stimulating, too. Then slowly, fighting every instinct inside her that screamed she shouldn’t be doing this, she lowered her right hand onto Pam’s, and for the first time since that day, she touched another human being. Pam curled her fingers upward to grasp hers, and tears of joy welled in Kristina’s eyes. Pam had been right. The statue hadn’t been real, it hadn’t . . .
Pam’s eyes glazed over and her features went slack. She pulled her hand away from Kristina’s.
“No,” Kristina whispered. “No, no, no, no, no!”
Pam didn’t respond. Instead, she rose from the table and walked toward the counter. But instead of stopping in front of the register, she continued on, stepping behind the counter where the staff were working. They looked at her for a moment, as if uncertain what to say or do. Then one of them, a skinny twenty-something with a goatee and a man bun, stepped forward to block her way.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’re not –”
Pam reached down and from somewhere – Kristina couldn’t see from the table – grabbed hold of a knife. It was long and sharp, with a black plastic handle, one of the implements the staff used when preparing sandwiches or slicing bagels. Man Bun started to raise his hands, as if he thought he could ward off Pam by gesture alone. But before he could complete the gesture, Pam swiped the blade across his throat in a single swift motion. Flesh parted, blood spurted, and Man Bun clapped his hands to his throat in a ridiculously ineffective attempt to stop the bleeding.
People started screaming them, and while some stared at Pam, dumbfounded, the majority bolted for the door. Too many tried to go through it at the same time, but the crowd behind them pushed until the jam was broken and everyone could get through.
Pam turned away from the bleeding man, whose mouth kept opening and closing like a fish as he attempted to speak, but all he managed were wet clicking sounds, and then his eyes rolled white and he slumped to the floor. His coworkers gaped at his prone form for a second, but when Pam came out from around the counter and started back toward Kristina, they saw the opportunity to get the hell out of there, and they lost no time in doing so, fleeing into the street after their departed customers.
By the time Pam returned to the table – still gripping the knife, blade slick with blood – the café was empty except for the two of them.
Kristina wanted to look away from Pam’s gaze, wanted to close her eyes and wait to feel the knife edge’s kiss on her own throat. But she forced herself to meet her therapist’s eyes. She half expected to see they had become a glossy obsidian, but they looked the same as they always had, save for the complete and total lack of anything resembling human emotion within them.
“You were given a gift.” Pam spoke in a toneless voice that reminded Kristina of the way her mother had spoken before going inside the Science Building. “And you’ve wasted it.”
Moving so swiftly that Kristina hardly saw her move, Pam grabbed hold of her right wrist and pressed her hand to the table.
“Time to return what you’ve squandered.”
She pressed the sharp edge of the knife against the tender skin of Kristina’s wrist.
Kristina impressed herself by not feeling afraid. It would be a relief to be rid of Pandemonia’s dark gift. And if she bled to death after Pam performed her impromptu amputation, what of it? At least she would’ve kept her sanity at the end. She gritted her teeth to steel herself for the pain to come and curled her right hand into a fist, the tips of her fingers pressing hard into her palm.
Ten years she had avoided touching herself with her right hand, terrified of what might happen. Now she knew. More, she understood.
Pam kept the blade pressed against her skin for another moment, but then she pulled it away and released her grip on Kristina’s wrist. Face still expressionless, eyes still dead, she handed the knife to Kristina, and then stood there, waiting. Katrina examined the blade, turning it this way and that to see how the light played across the metal. The barista’s blood still clung to the knife, and she brought the blade to her mouth and licked it clean. She cut her own tongue in the process, but she didn’t care. The pain was exquisite, and the blood she swallowed – hers mixed with his – tasted sweeter than any wine.
She looked at Pam.
“Thanks for everything,” she said, and then rammed the blade into the woman’s chest, expertly slipping it between a pair of ribs and into her heart. The non-expression on Pam’s face didn’t change as she slipped free of the blade and collapsed to the floor, dead. Instead of licking the knife this time, Kristina wiped it on her cheeks, smearing them with Pam’s blood.
Many times over the years, she’d tried to imagine what it had been like inside her mother’s mind after she’d experienced the dark touch. The closest she could come to was to imagine Mom’s skull as a hive filled with angry buzzing bees furiously trying to sting one another to death. She was surprised to discover she hadn’t been far off the mark. The sound – one of absolute and total disorder – was magnificent. It was the song of discord and upheaval, of malady and torment, of decay and dissolution, and she couldn’t wait to share it with the world.
She heard Pandemonia’s voice one last time.
That’s my girl.
Kristina tossed the knife onto Pam’s lifeless body and started walking toward the door. She flexed the fingers of her right hand, as if limbering them up. She had work to do – important work – and she couldn’t wait to get started.
Tim, I’m assuming you are omitting the commas for some of these clauses intentionally for the pacing of the sentence. If not, please let me know and I’ll go back in and insert them.
