Girl Desecrated 1984: Vampires, Asylums and Highlanders, page 11
Help me.
“You’ve just had an exciting nigh—.”
My voice cracked. I cleared my throat and tried again.
“It’s just another overreaction.”
I calmed enough to remember my breathing exercises from Dr. Casbus.
Breathe in, two, three, four. Breath out, two, three, four.
“It was just…” I started to say, but a thought cut me off.
It was the valley of darkness.
My stomach growled as if I had not eaten in days.
The valley of darkness, waiting, while she eats at the table of my enemy.
The skin around my bellybutton tightened and then twisted as if someone were grasping it from the inside.
My mouth opened without my permission, and the Southern voice spoke. “It is the shadow of death”.
I reefed the blankets off my head releasing a shower of static electric sparks into the blackness. My hair clung to my face like sticky cobwebs, and I frantically swiped it away from my eyes.
There should have been light coming from the bathroom, but it had gone out. My apartment was as dark as a tomb.
“Who’s there?”
The sound of my voice in the heavy silence spread my fear like a disease. I waited for an evil beer-belly chuckle from Donald, the American, but there was no sound except the pounding of my heart.
Then came a strange off-kilter feeling, an overall shift in the room around me. The air tilted, as if it had solidified into an invisible cube and then tipped itself inside of its boxed walls. All around me, everything felt skewed—on end.
I waited for the floor boards to creak, or the bed to growl, but nothing happened. My nerves stretched thin until I couldn’t take it anymore. A scream built deep in my belly.
Then, I heard it. A strange tapping sound. I turned my head blindly toward the noise. It was coming from my front door. The only door that led outside to the street above.
I almost called out, thinking the landlord was finally coming down to investigate. But at the last second, a new feeling of dread caused me to cover my mouth.
Over my panicked gasping, I heard, Shnk. Shnk.
It was a metallic sound, not quite a tap. More of a… I connected the noise to the cause. It was the outside door knob being turned left and then right, left and right, the turn pushing the little metal latch in and out of the door jam with a shnk, shnk sound.
The landlord wouldn’t need to try the doorknob. He had a key.
My limbs went numb. I whimpered and tugged the blankets up to my breasts.
“Please let it be locked…”
I always locked the door, but I didn’t remember coming home, last night.
Shnk! Shnk!
The noise became more frantic, the door pushing in against the frame.
Shnk! Bang!
The air moved again, and I finally believed whatever was trying to get in my door wasn’t anything earthbound. My heart leapt up into my throat to choke me. It was time to call on God’s name.
Rattle! Rattle! Rattle!
“Please God… please Jehovah, protect me in my hour of need,” I whispered the rusty words.
Bang! Bang!
My eyes filled with hot tears that milked my terror. “I am afraid, Jehovah.”
A heavy body hit the door.
“God. Please help me.”
And again, until I thought the frame wouldn’t hold.
My voice cracked, as I yelled. “You’re not welcome here. I did not ask you here.”
Then, suddenly, the rattling and pounding on the door stopped.
I listened intently to the silence until my ears felt like they were swelling from the inside.
There was no sound of retreating steps outside, no more turning of the doorknob. I waited for another noise, another attempted entry, my skin alive with sensations as I stayed frozen on my knees, on the bed.
CHAPTER 10: RECORDINGS OF THE DEAD
~
THE UNMISTAKABLE RASP OF A zipper cut through the darkness from the direction of the kitchen table, fifteen feet in front of the bed.
The zipper sound clicked slowly, as if it were releasing its metal teeth one tick at a time. Then I heard a plastic rattle and knew what I was listening to. It was the same rattle the cassette tape had made when it had landed in my lap, during the taxi ride. Someone was unzipping my leather jacket pocket and removing the cassette.
The black figure who had run up to the cab came to my mind and my bladder went weak. Maybe he had come back for it. Maybe he was standing, right now, in my apartment staring at me through the inky darkness of the basement.
I peered through the darkness in the direction of the kitchen light switch. To reach it, I would have to get out of bed and cross the room.
Throwing myself to the right side of the mattress, I clawed at the front of the night table yanking the drawer open with such force, the entire thing rocked. Something fell off the top with a crash. My hand rummaged blindly in the drawer until my fingers connected with the metal canister of a flashlight.
Gripping it in both hands, I flicked it on and swung the circle of light past my kitchen counter, over the fridge door, and across the table top. No one was there.
I swept the beam further to the left, terrified to look near the front door, but I had to. The dim beam of light barely reached that far, but it was enough to show me the chain was on and the bolt was turned.
The springs inside my old couch squeaked, and I whimpered with panic, stumbling out of the bed and swinging the light that way.
Nothing.
Frantically, I swung the light into each corner of my basement apartment trying to catch whoever was in there with me. I lit up the couch, then the washroom door, then back across the room to the closet, and then back at the table.
I could see no one, but I was too terrified to stop darting the light, sure that an intruder was keeping one step ahead of the flashlight’s beam. The room felt cold and empty and evil. Snot ran from my nose over my lip, but I couldn’t take my shaking hand from the flashlight to wipe it away.
The rattle noise came again, and I spun like a cornered animal, flashing the light back to the kitchen table. The dim beam landed on a small rectangular shape on the table top. I panted out my fear, and though my eyes burned, I didn’t blink or take them from that dark little square.
I was sure it was the cassette tape. It had been in my coat pocket, but now it was lying flat on the table top. Who had taken it out?
I swiped the room with the flashlight again. Then returned the beam to the table. The cassette tape was no longer on its side, but balanced on its edge.
Someone was in my apartment.
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck in warning.
I kept the beam pointed at the cassette and cautiously climbed back onto my bed to get my feet off the floor. Just as the springs squeaked with my weight, I realized I hadn’t looked under it.
A slithering hiss from the direction of the table set my teeth chattering.
The wheel on one side of the cassette was rattling as it spun, feeding the tape out through the top of the case. A sob escaped my lips as I watched the shiny plastic ribbon-like tape rise up in a loop like an upside-down hangman’s noose. The tape kept pushing the noose wider and wider, feeding out more tape until there was too much weight. Then the shiny ribbon fell forward, spilling onto the table, and the voice started.
“Yous got to bury her deep, Massa.”
The wheel on the cassette tape turned some more, pushing out the words that were garbled and interspersed with static.
“You don’t know what you ask of me, Ebba.”
The man spoke in the same Southern accent as the voice of my alternate personality. But his words were soft with regret.
“Yous got to bind her in the roots of the magnolia so’s she cain’t nevah get out!”
Behind the two men’s voices, background noises cluttered the static. It was the sounds of people talking, the clinking of glasses.
I listened intently, trying to understand what I was hearing, while I watched the ribbon spooling out of the cassette.
A child’s voice stabbed the air, much louder in volume as it called out, “Mama! Mama?”
“Yous got to bind her, Massa,” the voice insistent. “Or she will plant herself in your daughter, and in her daughters, and in your great-grandaughters.”
“We are gathered here, in the eyes of God…”
“Yous got to trust! Trust your ole Ebba. Trust yoself.”
“Mama!”
I strained to hear what was being said, forgetting to be afraid. So many voices were speaking over each other, I couldn’t make out all the words. The background static got louder, threatening to conceal the voices.
Someone shouted, “Jesus” with all the fervour of an evangelical preacher.
The wheel squeaked and rolled and the tape ribbon spooled out, but the only sound left was the thick white noise of static, turning and spinning, and spooling into the silence.
Then, the first voice shouted “The roots of the tree will bind her!” so loudly, I screamed, dropping the flashlight.
It landed in the blankets, its beam shining directly up into my eyes. Blinded, I grabbed it and pointed it back at the cassette. Bright circles of light danced in front of me, and I blinked rapidly to see.
There were no more voices. The cassette was lying on its side on the table, the black mass of ribbon creating a shiny nest around it.
The air tilted, just as before, settling back into its space, releasing me from the eerie, distorted feeling.
The atmosphere drifted into the background where it should be.
My ears popped.
Backing up cautiously on my bed, I reached above the headboard to slide aside the heavy curtain. The window looked out onto the landlord’s laneway. It was still dark outside. The street light cast a white circle above the landlord’s car.
My hand shook as I pushed the curtain all the way along the rod, allowing the streetlight to cast a white glow over my bed.
Turning, I slowly placed one foot down onto the linoleum floor, then I moved off the bed and warily crossed the room to the kitchen light switch. My hand was shaking like I was palsied as I reached for the light switch. The single grey florescent panel flickered its greenish glow into the room. The buzz of the light joined in with the refrigerator’s hum.
I cut my eyes to the cassette lying immobile in its puddle of tape, expecting it to start up again. I was so junked up on adrenaline, I couldn’t stop shaking.
Moving to the kitchen cupboards, I yanked out a large cooking pot. I turned the pot upside down on the table, trapping the cassette under it.
I wiped the sweat from my face and whispered, “That’s better,” just to hear something other than my heart pounding in my ears.
The light made me braver. I opened the closet doors, trying to ignore the classic horror movie squeal of the squeaky hinges. In the washroom, I checked behind the door. Then I checked under the bed and behind the couch.
When I was sure there was no one in the apartment with me, I faced Donald’s jacket. Taking a pair of barbecue tongs from the kitchen drawer, I advanced on the coat and pinched it by the collar. Using two hands to hold the tongs, I lifted the jacket up, carrying it back to the kitchen to check it out under the brighter light.
Turning it one way and then the other, I saw that it wasn’t ripped, and there were no marks on the material—no blood stains.
I was pretty sure it was Donald’s, but just to be positive, I dropped it on the floor, then knelt down and used the tongs to dig in the pockets for identification. A pack of American cigarettes was all I found.
Breaking my rule of not smoking at night, and not smoking in the apartment, and not smoking American cigarettes, I lit one up and sucked as much smoke as I could into my lungs.
I took a few more drags while I contemplated sniffing the coat. I didn’t like how my body reacted to Donald’s scent, but I needed to know for sure if it was his.
Careful not to touch the material with my fingers, I leaned over and gave it a sniff. The inside of my nose tingled as it fed my brain Donald’s greasy charcoal smell of burnt meat. My brain followed the scent one hundred miles to the American border, and then across multiple European genetic strands, bridging the complexity that made Donald.
The jacket was his.
Standing up, I paced the kitchen, flicking ashes onto the white tiled floor. I couldn’t understand how the American’s coat had made it into my apartment. If he wasn’t here, it meant I had brought it home. And if that were true, then where the hell was Donald?
I stopped walking and looked at my leather jacket hanging on the chair. It might hold some clues. Averting my eyes from the cassette on the table, I squeezed the pockets of my coat. The cool material scrunched softly in my hands. My Rambo commando knife was missing.
“Shit!”
Expecting the police to knock at any moment, I walked in panicked circles knowing I had to get rid of the evidence. I had to hide it, but my one-bedroom apartment had no nooks and crannies for stashing proof of whatever crime I may have committed last night.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!”
Then I had a brainstorm. Each ceiling tile was maybe three feet by three feet and hung suspended on a rack frame that was bolted to the ceiling, leaving a space of about a foot between the landlord’s floor and my ceiling. Moving a chair into the centre of the kitchen, I stood on it and carefully reached up to push aside a large, white tile.
This is where I hid my diary, and my mother’s diaries, and my great-great-grandfather’s diary. All the family secrets even I hadn’t read were resting up here in the ceiling beneath the upper floor, sandwiched between the two boundaries of the house.
I gave the metal ceiling frame a tug to see if it would hold the coat’s weight. It was screwed in securely to the floor joists above. Using the tongs at this angle was impossible, but by wrapping my hands in a towel, I was able to hide ‘Donald’ away in my ‘attic’ without leaving my prints all over his coat.
With a feeling of relief, I pulled the tile back in place and climbed down.
That taken care of, I sat on the end of my bed, stared at the overturned pot on the table and chewed my fingernail. Too much was happening too fast, but I was certain of one thing. No way was this an hallucination. The cassette tape proved it. But to admit this night of terror had not been in my head, meant acknowledging my mother had been partially right in her fanatical prophesies.
I was desperate to speak to Dr. Casbus. I still held out a vague hope that he could explain away the supernatural. I had panicked and called on God earlier. My fear of spirits and demons was ingrained by my mother’s fanatical worship of outdated beliefs. She had programmed me to recognize my own ‘heretic thoughts’ and to be terrified enough for my skin to crawl at any denial of the existence of God and Satan. Even to claim, in my mind, that demons didn’t exist, struck fear in my heart. There was always the hovering horror ‘they’ might think I was challenging them to prove me wrong.
I opened my mouth wide, cracking the tension out of my jaw. I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
I had to see Dr. Casbus. Now.
CHAPTER 11: ASYLUM ADVENTURES
~
OUTSIDE THE CAB WINDOW, THE darkened buildings flickered by beneath the streetlights. I used to joke about nights like this, dark, wet nights and journeys at ungodly hours. I used to say, “This is the moment when it all turns into a B movie” and then whoever was with me would join in on a “B movie” scene game where we’d say things like: “Yeah, this is where we see a shadow run from behind the city garbage bin.” “Yeah, and this is where the stupid, blonde, teenage girl walks over to check.”
“Who would be that dumb?”
Now, it seemed my life was the B movie, and I was the dumb blonde trying to stay one step ahead of the plot.
Bored with staring at the back of the cabbie’s head, I tried to make conversation. “Hey man, what time is it?”
“Four.”
He didn’t bother meeting my eyes in the mirror, which was fine by me.
So much had happened that should be shared with the Doc, but I wasn’t sure I should tell him I met Donald at the bar. When dick-head had left, I hadn’t followed, but if his body showed up, Casbus could testify about my connection to the American.
I decided to skip the account and only tell Casbus someone had thrown the cassette at me through the taxi window. I was pretty sure I had left it in my coat pocket and it was important because the tape was the only real evidence of anything that had happened.
Before I’d left the apartment, I’d taken the pot off the tape cassette. I had expected it to be gone, evidence that it had been all in my head. It was still there, silent and unmoving. I had planned to put it in my pocket, take it in to Casbus as “proof” that more was afoot than my insanity. I squeezed the pockets of my coat. Still empty. Somehow, I had forgotten to bring the damn cassette tape. I needed it. The whole episode was becoming fuzzy, slipping off into the places I stuffed bad memories. I had to hold on to this one, because this was the one that countered science. The tape, and maybe Donald’s coat. The coat I could never use. Just in case, Donald was…
I was tempted to deny I was capable of gutting and skinning the American like a Bison, but that would be a lie.
Many years ago, I had been playing in the Elora Park, pulling my ten-year-old body up onto the monkey bars. I was wiry and strong, and took risks with abandon. On that day, I had been taunting the neighbour boy, Timmy. He was a few years older. Mom used to call him a holy terror, because he loved to torment me, but on that day, I had the advantage.
I was on top of the monkey bars, and I had been going at him for almost an hour. I threw another pinecone down at his black brush cut, and that fired him up. He was almost foaming at the mouth as he climbed up the metal rungs to get me.
When Timmy came up one side, I started down the other. Then he climbed down and ran across the grass. I climbed up out of his reach. We repeated this round about game, until he stamped his sandals in the dust. I found his frustration funny, and I laughed and laughed until I got a belly ache and had to go home.
