The Devil Next Door

17

There had been a foul wind blowing through Greenlawn all day and it was only a matter of time before it reached the door of Kathleen Soames, settled there in a ghastly miasma of rot. She had been expecting it.

She had felt it inside herself more than once that afternoon, something boiling, something simmering, something making her think things and want to do others.

Alien things, awful things.

Things she was not capable of.

But it had been there, scratching away in her brain, a darkness and a dankness and an awfulness. A shadow that had fallen over the town was trying to fill her head with shades and unthinkable impulses. Sometimes she was sure it was her imagination and at other times she was sure it was not. For sometimes it was as palpable as cold hands ringing her throat or moldy breath in her face, a hot voice whispering in her ear.

She had told Steve about it twice now, but Steve was not interested.

Steve said it was her nerves. That she was just tired. She needed a good rest. Her nerves and the muggy heat of late August were brewing up a storm in her mind. She’d been working too hard again, trying to keep house and do her gardening and taking care of the kids and waiting hand and foot on Mother Soames upstairs. Christ, that crazy old woman was enough in herself to wear you to the bone. What she needed was a drink and nap. He’d take care of supper. When Ryan got home from his paper route, the two of them would make a nice supper while she slept.

And it was nice, really nice of Steve to offer.

During the whole of that long, listless, and somewhat upsetting day, it was the first thing that had made her smile. Maybe Steve was right. She’d been nervous all day… stomach upset, rolling in waves more often than not; hands shaking; face sweating. She kept screwing up the most simple tasks. Dropping things, knocking things off shelves. She’d tripped on the stairs twice that afternoon when she went up to look in on Mother Soames. She’d cut her fingers with a knife making the old lady’s lunch and bumped her head on the same cupboard door three times. Nothing was right. The town, the neighborhood, the house, and, yes, even Kathleen herself. Off kilter. Askew. Something.

Like a door, she was either open too wide or not wide enough.

And when she tried to sort it out, to make sense of it, all she got was confused. She’d tried to settle in with her soaps that afternoon while Ryan was still in school and Mother Soames was napping, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate. Couldn’t sit still. The TV was too loud or too soft and the pictures were too bright, too hard on her eyes. She looked, but none of it made sense. The storylines were as incomprehensible as hieroglyphics.

It was a hot day, but not so hot that even in the cool of the living room she should have sweated, felt dizzy, felt the need to vomit, been on her knees before the toilet some four times in one hour. Not that anything came of it: just wracking dry heaves that left her breathless and frightened, her head spinning and her temples pounding, her throat tight as braided rope and feeling as if it was coated in a fine, scratchy fuzz.

Kathleen had even taken Steve’s advice and stretched out in bed.

But all she did was toss and turn. There was no position that was comfortable. Her pillow felt warm and damp like some breathing, dormant thing that was waiting to wake. And the one time she’d almost drifted off, she thought she’d heard a voice from inside that pillow say, “Now, Kathleen. Do it now.” She’d come out of that sitting up, not remembering doing so. Sitting up with her knees drawn up to her breasts, her arms wrapped around her legs, sweat dripping from her brow, making her eyes sting.

No, she would not sleep.

Despite Steve’s protests she went right back to it, organizing cupboards already fastidiously organized; cleaning out drawers; wiping down shelves; sweeping and dusting and mopping because she dared not sit still, afraid that voice would speak to her again or she’d start thinking bad things. She had to keep busy, she had to keep moving, she had to beat it out of herself, wrench it from her mind and the only way to do that was with hard work. Thing was, she had become some mindless automaton, just repeating the same tasks over and over again until Steve had demanded to know what the hell was going on.

He’d come back from the garage that day complaining about the heat and the three rings jobs he’d had to perform and goddamn automatic transmissions and vacuum lines and his boss who was just pissing him off, pissing him off so much, he’d admitted, that he’d almost picked up a torque wrench and knocked his brains out.

Steve was calm and easy by nature, but not this day.

He was wired and irritable and he drank his beer and tried to watch CNN and all the time, Kathleen couldn’t stop cleaning. She vacuumed right past him, picked lint from under the couch cushions and straightened pictures and washed walls and emptied plastic fruit from the same bowl five times and polished the bowl, chased every speck of dust from every vinyl grape leaf and plum stem. Steve drank and smoked his cigarettes and every time he flicked his ash in the ashtray, she was right there, emptying it and wiping it clean. Finally as she reached over to do it again, he grabbed her arm like he wanted to break it.

“Listen to me, Kathy,” he said, sweat beaded on his upper lip. “If you don’t sit down and fucking relax, I’m going to tie you to a goddamn chair. You’re getting under my skin, you hear me? Knock it off.”

“I… can’t seem to stop,” she admitted. “I feel so wound up. Like I’m one of those toys with a key you turn, you know? Just wound tight.”

Steve pulled off his cigarette. “Okay, sure. Now I’m pulling the key out and throwing it away. So stop it, all right? I’m not up to this. You don’t stop and God help me, but I’ll… I’ll… just stop it. Please, just stop it.”

“I’ll go check on Mom.”

“Piss on her,” Steve said. “Goddamn parasite sucking the life out of us, that’s what she is.”

“Steve… Steve, she’s your mother.”

But he didn’t seem to care.

All he cared about was CNN and the bad news everywhere: murders and beatings, fires and mob violence. Crazy things. Awful things. But he could not stop watching it all; he was transfixed.

There were things going on in his head, Kathleen knew, just as there were things going on in hers. He could pretend as she pretended, but they were there. Things that did not belong and had no reason for being, malefic shadows reaching out and enveloping, making them into people they were not, demanding that they be everything but what they were.

After that little exchange, Kathleen tried working outside, but, dear God, that sun was hot. It burned the skin from her muscles and bleached her eyes white and evaporated the blood from her veins. And she sweated, God, how she sweated, but not the good sweat of hard work but an acidic-smelling poison that was gray and pungent like the run-off from a sewer. That sun… that burning sun.

She prayed for darkness.

Finally, her head aching and her teeth chattering, she went inside and splashed water in her face, but that stink was still on her. She took a shower, trying to get that smell off with body wash and Camay and Steve’s Irish Spring, but the more she scrubbed and deodorized, the more that stink came off her in hot, rancid waves.

God, what was that smell?

She stood under the cool spray, gagging on the stench that reminded her of hospital waste and the juice dripping from infected abscesses. Her skin was rubbed pink, rubbed red, just raw and hurting and she kept thinking that it was inside her, that whatever it was, she had to cut it out, she had to slice it free like a tumor before it spread.

And then there she was, standing in the shower with her razor, slicing the blade down her arms and over her wrists and the blood ran and flowed and the smell of it… Christ, the black and putrescent smell of what was inside her.

With a cry, she tossed aside the razor and stepped out of the shower, seeing herself in the mirror, naked and wet and smeared with blood. But her mind was beyond shock by that point. She had to get back to work. She had to get outside and get some fresh air before her head flew apart.

So she did that.

And on her way to the stairs, she paused by the door to Mother Soames room, standing there and listening to the old woman breathe and thinking what it would be like to stop that breathing. For she hated the sound of it. Some nights she lay awake listening to it, that ragged and wheezing respiration. It came through the walls and got in her head and she waited, waited for the breathing to stop in the dead of night as they said it often did with old people. Yes, she waited, tensing, wanting it to stop. She hated herself for it, but deep down she wanted that old bitch to die in her sleep. That breathing, that perpetual hollow breathing, it was like… yes, it was like that story she’d read in school by Poe where that heart would not stop beating even after the old man was dead.

Kathleen actually reached for the tarnished brass doorknob of Mother Soames’ room… but she stopped herself. Made herself stop, even though that same whispering voice said, “Do it, Kathleen. Do it now.”

She yanked her hand away, eyes filled with tears, knowing that if she opened that door there would be no going back. For when that door was opened, something, whatever was whispering to her, it would take her, it would possess her and she would like it, she would surrender herself completely to the sweet violation of that other. She would smell the hot, sour perspiration of the old woman, the urine-smell, the age-smell, the medicine-smell, and it would sicken her. Then she would hear that rasping breathing and she would really have no choice but to squeeze the life out of that old, repellent slug.

Squeeze until the breathing stopped and those blanched eyes rolled shut and the foul juice ran from her mouth and ears.

Placing hands to her ears, Kathleen ran downstairs, unaware that she was naked or why such a thing would matter. She grabbed up rugs as she went, two and three and four, wrestling them out the door and standing on the porch, naked and bleeding and mad, beating dust out of them that had already been beaten out five or six times.

She stopped and sniffed herself.

She smelled like Camay and body wash. The fresh, clean scent of it made nausea roll in her belly. That was the problem. Chemicals. All those chemicals and preservatives, dyes and fragrances and artificial things they put in everything these days. It was all making her rot from the inside out.

She wanted that other smell back, the dark poison smell of what was inside her.

There was a garbage bag on the porch. Steve hadn’t brought it out to the cans yet.

She could smell the trash in it boiling, stewing.

It made her mouth water.

That’s what you need, Kathy. You need rotten and foul things, dirty things.

Yes, that was it. Going down on her hands and knees, she tore open the bag and scattered trash everywhere. Panting, drooling, sweating profusely… she grabbed up egg shells and banana peels, tuna tins and used tampons, stinking hamburger cartons with raw, graying meat still clinging to them, anything that stank or had gone over, and began rubbing it all over her skin. She scented herself between the legs with banana peels, loving the greasy sensation. She rubbed old meat and smelling juice over her breasts until her nipples stood erect. She greased her hair with fish oil and rubbed tampons under her arms and down her legs.

She was so excited by it all, feeling so free and so vital, that she slid a filthy finger into herself and brought herself to orgasm right there on the porch. Her body blazed with heat and her fingers vented it, let it all come flowing out.

Some kid was watching her.

Some teenage boy from down the street, watching her with his mouth hanging open. Kathleen knew he was there. She liked him watching. She wanted him to sense her heat, to recognize her scent by sniffing all her parts. She gasped and cried out and then it was over.

The silly boy looked terrified.

On her hands and knees, Kathy pulled her lips back from her teeth and hissed at him.

He ran.

Little worthless shit! He should have taken the bait! He should have come up on the porch and rutted with her! Then she would have had him! Then she would have sank her teeth in his throat and tasted what came splashing out, filling herself.

Kathy leaped down into the yard and crawled through the flowerbeds, tearing out azaleas and mums in handfuls. She ripped out hollyhocks and zinnias, decapitated bluebells and buttercups with her teeth. She flattened them all, rolling through the sweet, gagging, flowery wreckage she had created.

But it wasn’t enough.

She yanked flowers out by their roots until she reached the cool, moist black soil beneath and then she rubbed it on herself, digging through it, swimming in it, loving the earthy dank smell of dirt.

A worm had been disturbed and she snatched it up, threw it in her mouth and chewed it to a pulp.

She was feeling better than she had felt in weeks now.

If only that damn sun would go down.

Because when it did, when it did… the night would be like no night this miserable, stagnant, shit-grubbing town had ever seen before.

And Kathy knew it.

“What the hell are you doing?”

It was Steve. Silly man, he’d missed her show on the porch, but now he saw her… dirty and bloody and stinking. He looked afraid. He looked confused. Kathleen ran up the porch steps on all fours and dove through the screen door. Steve fell over and she jumped on him, rubbed herself all over him as he fought against her… hitting her, scratching her, bringing delicious waves of pain. But then she had his head and she banged it off the floor until he went limp beneath her.

Panting and sexually aroused, Kathleen took his hand in her mouth, licking it and swooning with the taste of man-sweat. She bit down as hard as she could on his fingers until the flesh crushed and the bones snapped beneath. She worried and chewed until she got some good meat free to eat.

Then dragged him into the kitchen.

She used the carving knife.

She slit his throat, slashed open the carotid until hot, dark blood splashed over her breasts. She cut his clothes off, chewed at his throat and belly, leaving bloody punctures all the way down until she found what she was looking for between his legs.

God, how good it tasted in her mouth.

How delightful it felt smashing to a pulp between her teeth.

Sometime later, Kathleen took his blood and painted the walls in loops and whorls and scraggly hex signs she remembered from a book long ago. When she was done the kitchen was hers. It smelled of raw meat and blood. This was her place, her warren and she had to keep others out.

Squatting by the kitchen door, she pissed to mark her territory…