Twisted Tales Read online

  It fell to Mark to pay the utilities and maintenance costs. Fortunately, the mortgage was paid off, and Mark’s mother had had the foresight to bequeath the house to him. Mark, technically, had the power to kick Willie out. But sometimes he imagined simply leaving this place for somewhere else rather than showing freeloading Willie the door. He could go to school somewhere faraway, like Oregon, maybe even Hawaii. Anything to get away from this guy.

  “Being a janitor is only a temporary thing for me,” Mark said. “It’s a stepping stone.”

  “The only stepping up you’ll be doing there is cleaning the snot off some vp’s desk,” Willie said.

  “It’s just a part-time job while I go to school. Not my real career.”

  Willie scratched his potbelly. “Oh, yeah, you’re gonna publish them books, right? Make a living sitting in a room dreaming up shit. Almost forgot, there’s a letter on the table for you, James Baldwin.”

  Mark picked up the envelope. A sinking sensation dropped through his stomach. Willie had already opened the letter.

  When he removed the correspondence and saw the salutation that began “Dear Author” he didn’t bother reading any further. It was yet another rejection of his mystery novel, from a literary agent in New York. He crumpled the letter into a ball.

  Willie grinned.

  “Dear Turd-Chasing Author, Your book is BULLshit!”

  Laughing, he stuffed a strip of bacon in his greasy mouth.

  “Don’t open my mail again,” Mark said softly.

  “Why? It ain’t like somebody gonna be sending you a check for that shit. You oughta let me screen the mail for you. I don’t think your fragile ass can handle the rejection.”

  “Just mind your own business,” Mark mumbled, and left the kitchen.

  He tried to avoid looking at the house as he rushed to his bedroom. The place was filthy—clothes, junk, and clutter everywhere. Mom, a neat freak, would be turning over in her grave if she could see it.

  Someone stepped out of the bathroom and into the hallway. Mark almost shouted in surprise.

  It was a girl. Willie’s guest for the night, presumably. She wore a tight red blouse that emphasized her huge breasts, and leather jeans that hugged her thick thighs like plastic wrap.

  She looked as if she was Mark’s age.

  “Hi,” Mark said, and brushed past her.

  “Hi yourself,” she said. She smiled flirtatiously. He could feel her gaze on his back as he walked away.

  Mark wondered, not for the first time, why his mother had ever married Willie. They’d been married for less than a year when his mother died; soon after they wed, Willie was fired from his job, leaving his mother to pay the bills. Now, only a few month’s after her death, Willie already was seeing other women. It was disgusting.

  Mark’s bedroom was the cleanest, quietest area in the house. But tonight, even the sight of his room failed to soothe him.

  The manuscript of his first and only book sat in a pile on his desk, beside his computer. He’d spent fourteen months writing and revising the novel, pouring his soul onto the pages. But the rejection letter he’d received was number sixty-three. No one in the publishing business gave a damn.

  The beginnings of a headache thumped behind his eyes. He flopped onto his bed and stared at the ceiling, hands folded behind his head.

  “I hate this,” he said.

  Leaving Illinois State to return home and go to a community college had been a mistake. But a few months ago, as he struggled to deal with his mom’s death, coming back to the familiar house seemed to be the only decision that would enable him to retain his sanity. He’d craved to be around people, places, and things that he knew, loved.

  He opened the moon-shaped silver locket that he wore on a chain. Inside, there was a photo of him and his mother together, taken when he was only four years old and she was barely twenty-five. They looked so happy and carefree.

  Mom had worn this locket for years. After she died, Mark began to wear it himself. Some days—days when gray clouds of grief hung over him—the locket felt like a lead weight, heavy with cherished memories. But he never slipped it off, no matter how badly he felt. It was his special connection to her, an umbilical cord to her eternal spirit.

  “I wish you were here,” he said, gazing at her youthful face. “I need you right now, Mom ... I just don’t know what to do.”

  At times like this, he wished that communicating with the spirits of the deceased was a real thing, something that he could do. He longed to talk to his mom again, to hear her soft voice and let her wise words guide him.

  He could imagine what she would say to him: Tough it out, honey. Make lemonade out of lemons. Nothing worth having comes easy. Trouble don’t last always. His mom had been a walking encyclopedia of old-fashioned, motivational sayings.

  In the room next door, mattress springs began to squeak, rhythmically. Soft female cries of pleasure pierced the air, punctuated by piglike grunts.

  Mark’s stomach lurched.

  He closed the locket. He reached for the portable CD player on the nightstand, slipped on the headphones, and switched on some music. Stevie Wonder’s soulful voice piped into his ears, singing, “Ribbon in the Sky.”

  Mark fell asleep thinking about the doorway in the supply closet, wondering where it led ... and if it was somewhere better than here.

  The next evening at work, Mark closed the door to the supply closet behind him, and moved the boxes away from the wall to give him an unobstructed view of the portal.

  He was on his break. He’d finished cleaning half of the restrooms for his shift and had left the wheeled cart on the other side of the building. He hadn’t come here to get supplies. He’d come here to explore.

  He’d brought a heavy-duty, twenty-five-foot measuring tape with him, which he’d found in Willie’s toolbox at home. (In Mark’s opinion, Willie’s only redeeming quality was his skill at fixing things.) He’d brought a big yellow flashlight, too.

  Mark approached the wall. Kneeling, he pressed the panel.

  As before, it was ice-cold to the touch. But the soft hiss came, and then the bricks slid away into darkness, revealing the doorway. Frosty air drifted from the entrance.

  Taking care to avoid crossing the threshold, Mark methodically fed the measuring tape inside, listening for the click of the end hitting a solid object. Five feet ... ten ... fifteen ... twenty ... twenty-five ...

  He reached the end of the tape. It still had not tapped against a wall on the other side.

  “Just impossible,” he said.

  He flicked the button on the tape holder, automatically reeling the tape back into its metal housing.

  Still avoiding passing over the threshold, he shone the flashlight within. He couldn’t see any surface at all; the light did not reflect off any objects. He saw only a vast region of unrelieved blackness.

  He switched off the flashlight.

  Now, he thought, it’s time for me to make a decision.

  He could step away from this hole, slide the boxes back into place, and walk out and forget that he had ever seen this phenomenon.

  Or he could go inside.

  Mark was a lifelong lover of horror movies. But one of the things he hated—and he saw it happen so frequently in films that it had become a genre cliché—was when a character did something supremely stupid. Like walking into haunted woods at night armed only with a flashlight. Or investigating strange noises in a cellar that obviously concealed the killer. Such moments made him want to shout at the screen, “You idiot, you deserve to die!”

  He thought he was pretty smart. But he wanted to see what lay beyond the doorway, as stupid and dangerous as it seemed. His curiosity was like an ache in his gut.

  Just stick your hand inside first. There’s no risk in that.

  He chewed his lip.

  Then, he slowly placed his arm inside.

  He didn’t know what he’d been expecting—in his vivid imagination, he half-feared that some toothsome creat
ure on the other side would take a bite out of his hand—but the reaction he received was far outside the realm of his expectations.

  A pleasant coolness enveloped his arm, made his skin tingle.

  And he heard music.

  The music was as clear as if he was wearing headphones. It was melodic harp music; the soothing notes felt like honey on his ears.

  He heard voices, too. Lovely voices sang a song so pure and angelic that his heart raced, swelled with transcendent joy.

  His eyes slid closed as rapture swept through him.

  Happiness beyond anything he had ever experienced cascaded through his spirit, washing away all of his troubles and worries and sorrows. Eternal bliss awaited him if only he stepped deeper inside, climbed all the way in, moved forward, and didn’t look back.... It was a good place over there, a fantastic place, a place where he desired to be ...

  Someone rapped on the closet door.

  Abruptly, as if awakened from a dream, Mark snatched his arm out of the gateway. Dizziness tipped through him.

  “You in there, Markie?” It was Mr. Green.

  “Just a minute,” Mark said in a slurred voice. Fighting to get his balance, he quickly shoved the boxes in front of the secret doorway.

  Mr. Green unlocked the door and banged it open.

  Mark spun around.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” Mr. Green asked.

  “Uh ... I came in here to get some paper towels,” Mark blubbered.

  Mr. Green’s eyes narrowed. “You been whacking off? You’re panting.”

  “No, of course not. I came in here ... on my break. Decided to use my time to get some more supplies. Always on the job, you know?” Mark laughed, but it sounded strained even to him.

  Mr. Green’s frown sharpened. “You’ve been up to something, and it’s not work. I have a sixth sense for these things. That’s why I’m the boss.”

  “Just work, honest,” Mark said.

  Mr. Green smiled derisively. Mark had never been a convincing liar.

  “Your break’s over,” Mr. Green said. “Get back to work. If I catch you in here again tonight, you’re fired.”

  When Mark arrived home, the driveway and the street in front of the house were full of cars. Lights blazed in the windows.

  “I don’t believe this,” Mark said.

  He heard the music long before he reached the front door. It was an Otis Redding song that Willie was always blasting.

  The house was so crowded with people that Mark had to struggle to get inside. Cigarette and reefer smoke clotted the air, blended with a heavy dose of funk.

  Mark coughed, shielded his mouth.

  The rooms were full of folks talking loud, drinking, and dancing. Mark recognized a few of the partygoers as Willie’s friends, but even they were basically strangers to him. People looked at him as if he didn’t belong there, as if he was a kid who had wandered into a grown folks’ party. And it was his house.

  He had to find Willie and put a stop to this. Right now.

  He found Willie in the master bedroom. He was lounging on the bed with two young women, smoking weed and sipping Hennessey.

  “Hey, potna!” Willie sat up. He laughed at nothing in particular, waved the reefer in the air like a magic wand. “Want a hit of this?”

  “I want all of these people out of here,” Mark said. “You didn’t say anything about throwing a party tonight.”

  Willie waved his hand. “Aww, man, stop trippin’. Come on over here and chill with one of these fine young ladies. Moppin’ all that piss off the floor’s stressed you out, man.”

  Right then, if Mark had possessed the nerve, he would have clocked Willie in the jaw.

  Instead, he said only, “I’m going to my room.” He backed away, head tucked down.

  Laughing, Willie shrugged and put his arms around the women; like a prince in a harem.

  Mark hurried to his room, eager to get inside and lock the door against this craziness—and was shocked to see four guys in there. Sprawled on his bed and the floor, they had turned on his PlayStation and were playing Madden Football. They shouted at the screen and at each other, thoroughly engrossed in the game.

  Someone had balanced a can of Colt 45 on top of his book manuscript.

  Mark’s mouth had dropped open.

  “You want next, brotha?” a scruffy-looking guy asked him. “It’s gonna be a while, we got us a tournament goin’.”

  “No, thanks,” Mark said softly. He took his CD player off the nightstand. One of the men looked at him suspiciously. “This is mine,” Mark said, wondering why he felt he had to justify himself to these graceless people who had invaded his private space.

  He retreated to the basement. In a junk-filled corner, near the washer and dryer, he found an old recliner that his granddad used to relax in, years ago. Mark dropped into the chair, tilted his head back.

  Dust sifted through the air. He sneezed.

  Creaks and thuds issued from the ceiling. Upstairs, they had turned the living room into a dance floor.

  Mom never would have tolerated this. She would have kicked all of those people the hell out, granting them some choice cuss words along the way.

  But Mom was gone. The house belonged to him now.

  Although she might as well have given it to Willie.

  The next night, Mark again cleared the boxes away from the secret door in the supply closet.

  It was a quarter after seven. He hadn’t even started cleaning his assigned restrooms.

  But he wasn’t worried about them, or Mr. Green, either. Not anymore.

  He pressed the icy panel. The wall floated away.

  Beyond, the mysterious darkness beckoned.

  He moved to within a foot of the portal, and got on his knees. Cool sweat streamed down his face, turning icy when kissed by the frigid air blowing from the doorway.

  The magic door led to a marvelous place. He was certain of that; the mere memory of the divine music stirred his spirits. Music that sounded so good had to come from somewhere wondrous. It was from somewhere better than here, this cold world, where beloved mothers died in their prime, and sorry, weed-head stepfathers squandered life insurance money on flashy cars and chased women half their age and slept with them in beds that still carried the scent of their dead wives and ridiculed their stepsons who were only trying to make an honest living working as janitors, and mocked them for collecting rejection letters on first novels from faceless literary agents who didn’t care; this hateful world, where nothing was fair and nothing seemed worth living for anymore, and every day was gray and every night like a black void, because the one he most loved in all the world was gone, gone forever, and he couldn’t even tend the home she had left him, couldn’t even preserve her legacy, because he was too damned scared to stand up for himself...

  Weeping, Mark thrust his arm inside the passage. Coolness covered his skin. The heavenly music struck up, pleasure surging through his nerves like a drug-induced high.

  An involuntary gasp of joy escaped his lips.

  He edged closer, put his foot inside.

  The music increased in volume.

  He dipped his head, to squeeze inside ...

  . . . and the silver locket dropped off the chain and clattered against the floor. Striking the floor made it pop open to the photograph of Mark and his mother.

  He paused. Stared at the picture.

  His mother’s wise eyes penetrated him.

  He no longer heard the music, though it continued to play in the back rooms of his mind. But he heard, quite clearly, his mother’s voice. Her words broke into his thoughts as if she was standing beside him.

  Where do you think you’re going, Mark?

  “Mom?” he asked.

  It looks like you’re running away from your responsibilities.

  “I ...” he started, and couldn’t find the words to finish his sentence. Shame sat like a lump in his throat.

  Did I raise you to be a quitter, Mark?

&
nbsp; He swallowed.

  “No,” he whispered. “No, you didn’t.”

  He reached to pick up the locket.

  That was when he heard something in the darkness beyond the doorway, coming toward him with a sound like sharp claws cutting across ice.

  His heart clutched.

  The thing scuttled toward him, viper-fast.

  Frantic, he backpedaled away from the door.

  On the other side, something monstrous howled. It was a roar of anger, of hunger. An utterly alien cry.

  Mark’s blood ran cold.

  He scrambled away to the opposite wall.

  Staring into the blackness, Mark glimpsed a vision out of a nightmare: a rippling mass of green-black scales, a flash of luminous yellow eyes, and a maw of large, jagged bones that only could have been a mouthful of deadly teeth.

  Then the panel slid back into place in the wall, keeping the creature at bay on the other side. A final, furious shriek echoed in Mark’s ears.

  Then, silence claimed the room.

  He was safe.

  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” he chanted. His knees shook so badly that he had to sit on the floor.

  He had been grasping the locket tightly. When he opened his fist, the edges had etched a red circle in his palm.

  Hands trembling, he slipped the locket back onto the chain. How it had fallen off just in time to save him from wandering through the gateway, he had no idea.

  No, that wasn’t true. His heart knew the truth, even as his rational brain labeled it impossible.

  His heart knew a lot of things, including what he had to do next.

  Steady again, he got to his feet. He moved the boxes to conceal the door.