Bad Games

37



Norman Mitchell had the patience of a saint. He therefore stressed little when Carrie, who had insisted she was capable of eating the large ice cream sundae, projectile-vomited the entire contents of her tiny stomach into the back seat of the Volvo station wagon on the ride back to Crescent Lake.

A rest-stop-cleaning job later and they were back on the road, windows down, Carrie donning a ghostly complexion, and Caleb holding his nose from the smell of curdled cream that still polluted his memory.

“How’re you doing back there, sweetheart?” Norman called to the back seat.

Carrie was too afraid to open her mouth. She could only nod, hoping Norm would catch the quick bob of her head from the rearview mirror.

“We’re almost home, just hang on.”

“It stinks!” Caleb yelled over the rushing wind from the open windows.

Carrie, who would have ordinarily responded with an immediate swipe in Caleb’s direction, remained motionless. Nausea was in town, and gulping air and staying exceptionally motionless was the courtesy. Still, she did manage to cast a sinister glare at her brother. The second she felt better she would bop him a good one for sure.



* * *



When Norman pulled his blue Volvo station wagon into the driveway of cabin ten, his first words were, “What the heck?”

This prompted both Carrie (whose nausea was now all but gone) and Caleb to lean forward in their car seats and simultaneously ask: “What?”

The interior of the Mitchell cabin was dark, yet the front door was wide-open. Norm kept the car idling, his headlights the only source of light on the cabin. He clicked his high beams on hoping to get a better view of the cabin’s interior via the open front door. He also hoped the extra glare from his high beams would be a silent honk of his horn and prompt his wife, or maybe the Lamberts, to appear in that open doorway, hands shielding their eyes, waving him in.

When Carrie asked why they weren’t going up the rest of the driveway, Norman gave the little girl an honest, albeit useless answer. “I don’t know,” he said.

Carrie was eager. “Are we gonna—”

“Kids,” Norm began, “I’m going to leave the car running here, then go inside. I’m going to lock all the car doors and I want you to keep them locked until I come back outside. Okay?”

“Why?” Carrie asked.

“Can you just do that for me? Please?”

Both kids nodded.

“When I come back out, then you can unlock them. Okay? Do you understand? Keep them locked until Mr. Mitchell comes back out.”

They nodded again.

And then it was Caleb who asked, “What’s wrong?”

Norman forced a smile. “Nothing’s wrong, buddy. Silly Mrs. Mitchell just left the front door open. I want to go in first and make sure no animals got inside and started gobblin’ up all our food.” He made a silly face and pretended to nosh on something the way a squirrel might a nut.

Caleb smiled.

Carrie did not. “Where are Mommy and Daddy?” she asked.

“They’re probably next door at your cabin, sweetheart.”

Carrie looked out her car window towards their cabin next door. It was black. “I don’t think they’re home,” she said.

Norman noticed it too. Oh please, God, let them be screwing each other, he thought. Please let the worst of our problems be catching them in the act. And why not? It made sense. It made perfect sense. Time away from the kids. Romantic cabin to themselves. They’ve probably been at it all night.

But his own house? Pitch black with the front door wide open? His stomach swirled with adrenaline. He did not want to waste time making excuses anymore. Norm moved with an urgency that he prayed would not contaminate the children.

“Kids, can you just do as Mr. Mitchell says and wait here in the car please?”

The children didn’t nod this time; they stared back with uncomfortable wonder.

Norm took it as a regrettable yes. “Great. I’ll be right back. Just hold tight okay?”

Norm opened his car door and stepped out. He clicked the tiny black switch on the driver door’s interior and all four locks thumped as they shrunk into their holes. He closed the car door, waved and forced another smile at the kids, then jogged to his open front door, the high beams of his idling Volvo lighting his path.

“Lorraine?” he called the moment he was inside. He took two more steps, each one slow and delicate as though the floor might give under his weight. “Lorraine? You in here, honey?” He heard nothing but the distant idle of the Volvo outside.

Norman began to imagine the worst. He thought of the man who had accosted Amy at the market and then peeked into her bedroom window last night. Had he come back? And if he had, was he dangerous?

Norman felt his pulse thumping all over. He was imagining the worst. But better to imagine the worst and be prepared than to be ignorant and caught off guard, right? He scanned his surroundings, searching for a potential weapon. A sharp metal poker was leaning up against their fireplace to his left. He hurried over and grabbed hold of it. He steadied it in his hand like a fencer about to duel. Am I really going to have to use this?

“Lorraine?” he called again. His voice cracked this time, the adrenaline sapping his saliva.

Norman took cautious steps towards the bedroom, the tip of the black poker leading the way. The bedroom door was open a crack. He placed the tip of the poker against the door and pushed slowly. The door felt heavy on the end of the poker as he pushed it open.

He took in every inch of the dark room, squeezing the handle of the poker for all he was worth. He twisted his left arm and blindly patted the wall to his left, feeling for the light switch. He found the switch and flicked it upward. The room came alive with light, and Norm blinked quickly so his eyes would adjust.

The bed was made. The closet doors were shut tight. The room looked as if he may have been the first to visit that day.

Norm let out a long, slow breath. Yes, the room was empty, and yes, he would still need to search the rest of the cabin, but the morbid thought of finding his wife murdered in their bed (a thought that had refused to leave his mind the second it crawled in there) had not come to fruition; and for that he felt a relief like no other.

Norm took another couple of steps into his bedroom, gave one last grateful look at their empty bed, then turned back towards the door. It was then he realized why the bedroom door had felt so heavy on the end of the poker when he pushed it open. His wife Lorraine was hanging on the back of it. Her head hung to one side, eyes open and lifeless, sagging lips already blue. Below the blue mouth her throat was slashed ear to ear, her entire torso soaked in red.

Norm dropped the poker to his side without realizing it. He didn’t cry and he didn’t scream. He could only stare. If he had found his wife dead in bed as he had feared, he would have rushed to her side and wept. After the weeping he would have righted himself and began cursing and screaming vengeance while thrashing around like a wild man with that poker as his equalizer. But this? This image? How could he have possibly evoked such a thing? The shock was brilliant. It made him certain his vision was a hoax, a ludicrous trick that projected a false image of his dead wife hanging before him like a giant flesh-puppet stored away on its hook.

His shock had made him deaf, too. He didn’t hear the closet door open behind him. Didn’t hear the footsteps approach his back. And he didn’t hear the aluminum bat whistling down onto his skull.



* * *



The Volvo’s headlights continued shining on the open front door of the Mitchell’s cabin. Carrie and Caleb waited anxiously in the back seat for Norman to reappear.

Norman never did reappear; but someone else did. It was a man who looked very familiar to Carrie. He had dark hair and dark eyes (except he was wearing a big white Band-Aid on his cheek now for some reason) and was smiling brightly as he approached the car. It was also evident that he was carrying something behind his back.

As the man came within a foot of Carrie’s window he leaned forward at the waist and, still smiling brightly, sang, “Look who I’ve got…!”

Josie the doll was whipped out from behind the man’s back and pressed up against the car window.

Carrie’s eyes jumped with delight and her squeal of “Josie!” reverberated through the car window and above the idling car.

“Hi, Carrie,” the man said loudly through the glass. He over-annunciated each word. “Your mommy and daddy are at my house. We’re having a big party and they asked me if I would come pick you and your brother up and bring you over there.”

He held the doll up against the window again and moved it from side to side as though it was dancing. Carrie giggled and the man laughed. He then asked, “Do you think you could unlock the door for Josie and me?”