The Devil Next Door

38

In the Shore household on Tessler Avenue, Aunt Una woke from her nap and felt the crushing loneliness of her eighty plus years well up and fall back over her, crushing her flat with its permanence. Its weight was a physical thing like a graveyard slab pressing her flat, holding her down and letting her feel the ages eating her away, withering her to dust.

Oh God, oh God…

She opened her eyes and realized that, yes, she was alone and had been alone for many, many years. Sure, there was her niece Phyllis and her husband Benny, the kids… but that seemed precious scant consolation. Because her life, her own life, had been empty and wanting for years and it was only now, in that thin confused veneer of waking, that she realized the truth of her empty, cast-aside life. She went through the motions and put on a smile and urged a laugh now and again from her bosom, but it was all false.

Synthetic.

What she had now was a yellowed photograph in a scrapbook, something cocooned in dirty silk. Her life was not real, just an insect carapace on a sidewalk, dry and flaking, waiting for a boot to crush it or a good wind to blow it into a gutter.

The reality of it was gone and had been for very long now.

Charles had passed some sixteen years ago now and her own children, Barbara and Lucy, were far away and rarely did they call and Una could not blame them. Why call a mummy at a museum? Why remind it of its slow dissolution in its glass case greasy with the fingerprints of the living things that watched it decay?

No, all of it was gone and she’d been pretending for far too long.

She sat up in bed, the minty odors of liniment and camphor rising up around her. She began to shake and gasp, clinging to the damp sheets beneath her. Oh dear Christ, what have I been doing? Why did I allow this to happen? Oh, you silly, deluded, crazy old hag! Forcing yourself into their lives, making Phyllis take you in when you had nowhere else to go! You’re nothing but a great sucking parasite that bleeds them of their life and vitality… don’t you see that? Oh, you should be out at the town cemetery, right next to Charles, going to earth and feeding the worms and making the grass sprout green under those big, wind-creaky elms! That’s what, that’s what!

At least you’d be accomplishing something!

Una, tears streaming down her face, age threading through her like cracks in the foundation of an ancient house, made herself stand. She did not know why she thought these things, but it was amazing she had never thought them before. The truth was a mirror that did not lie. Not about age or circumstance or exactly what you had become or let yourself become.

She stepped over to the window and saw Greenlawn laid out before her… the rooftops and spreading trees, flagpoles and church spires. Yes, all of it built and compacted into this space. It was designed for living things, not mummified old broomstick-limbed hags like her. She caught a reflection of herself in the glass and it was like a ghost hovering over the town itself. She could feel the creeping dryness of age, the dampness of the grave knitting her bones. And the horror of what she was and would never be again.

She stumbled over to the doorway.

She could smell things cooking downstairs, hear Phyllis humming and the kids chattering and laughing. Real, rich, living sounds. Those were not her sounds. Her sounds were rain on concrete vaults and autumn leaves blown over crypt doors, spiders spinning silent webs in night-black tombs, dead flowers and black soil and nitrous boxes held tight in the rotting belly of the good earth.

Una moved down the hallway to the stairs, standing there, feeling a silence within her that would never be disturbed by noise again. It was all she had, that coveting and enclosing silence, windy and longing and hollow. The sound of graveyards and empty places, listening churchyards.

Down the steps, then, one, two, three, four…

She could smell supper.

She’d always had a good appetite, but now that was gone. Skeletons were never hungry and scarecrows needed no bread. She could feel the aches and pains and stiffness of a life that had long since ceased to be productive.

She made it downstairs and suddenly, the children were quiet and Phyllis stopped humming. They were holding their breath, waiting, playing games on an old woman who had no more sunshine in her heart for games.

Una moved through the living room towards the kitchen. The smells from the kitchen were meaty and thick and spicy.

Still, no sounds.

No sounds at all.

She came into the kitchen, saw them sitting in the dining room beyond.

Phyllis. Stevie. Melody.

They were all naked of all things.

And bald.

They had shaven their heads. All of them were grinning, their chins shiny with grease. A strand of meat hung from Melody’s mouth and she sucked it in. On the table was what they were eating, what Phyliss had been cooking. What she had chopped and sliced, stewed and boiled and baked and the smell of it was sickening. And the sight of it… no, no, no, you old woman, you’ve lost your mind, you can’t be seeing this! You can’t be looking at this!

“Sit down, Auntie,” Phyllis said.

“And eat,” said Melody.

“It’s yummy,” said little Stevie, jabbing something pale on his plate with a fork.

Una shook her head from side to side as a scream loosed itself from her throat. What was left of Benny Shore was spread over the table. The provider of this household who was even now providing. His limbs had been roasted and his viscera stewed, his blood was a soup and his entrails stuffed with jelly. And there on the platter, surrounded by browned potatoes and carrots, garnished with dill, was his head, glazed like a ham, his screaming mouth stuffed with an apple.

“Sit… down,” Phyllis said, drool running from her mouth, her eyes glistening stones, staring with a fixed madness.

Una, screaming and mad, sat down.

Then the children were there, pressing themselves in, stuffing fat and pale meat into her mouth, pushing it down her throat with their greasy hands, filling her with the flesh and blood of their father while Phyllis held her. They emptied tureens and platters and serving dishes, dumping them all over Una, ladling soup over her head and shoving undercooked meat into her mouth until she could not breathe, not swallow, not do anything but fall from her seat, retching and retching, as they stood above her, grinning.

Then they fell on her with knives and teeth…