The Barrens & Others

  "Don't be. Annie was...deformed. Terribly deformed. She never really had a chance."

  *

  Open trunk from inside. Get out. The Detective Harrison's house here. Cold night. Cold feel good. Trunk air make sick, dizzy.

  Light here. Hurry round side of house.

  Darker here. No one see. Look in window. Dark but see good. Two little ones there. Sleeping. Move away. Not want them cry.

  Go more round. The Detective Harrison with lady. Sit table near window. Must be wife. Pretty but not oh-so-beauty. Not have mom-face. Not like ones who die.

  Watch behind tree. Hungry. They not eat food. Talk-talk-talk. Can not hear.

  The Detective Harrison do most talk. Kind face. Kind eyes. Some terrible sad there. Hides. Him understands. Heard in phone voice. Understands. Him one can stop kills.

  Spent day watch the Detective Harrison car. All day watch at police house. Saw him come-go many times. Soon dark, open trunk with claw. Ride with him. Ride long. Wonder what town this?

  The Detective Harrison look this way. Stare like last night. Must not see me! Must not!

  *

  Harrison stopped in mid-sentence and stared out the window as his skin prickled.

  That watched feeling again.

  It was the same as last night. Something was out in the backyard watching them. He strained to see through the wooded darkness outside the window but saw only shadows within shadows.

  But something was there! He could feel it!

  He got up and turned on the outside spotlights, hoping, praying that the backyard would be empty.

  It was.

  He smiled to hide his relief and glanced at Martha.

  "Thought that raccoon was back."

  He left the spots on and settled back into his place at the table. But the thoughts racing through his mind made eating unthinkable.

  What if that maniac had followed him out here? What if the call had been a ploy to get him off-guard so the Facelife Killer could do to Martha what he had done to the other women?

  My God...

  First thing tomorrow morning he was going to call the local alarm boys and put in a security system. Cost be damned, he had to have it. Immediately!

  As for tonight...

  Tonight he'd keep the .38 under the pillow.

  *

  Run way. Run low and fast. Get bushes before light come. Must stay way now. Not come back.

  The Detective Harrison feel me. Know when watched. Him the one, sure.

  Walk in dark, in woods. See back many houses. Come park. Feel strange. See this park before. Can not be –

  Then know.

  Monroe! This Monroe! Born here! Live here! Hate Monroe! Monroe bad place, bad people! House, home, old home near here! There! Cross park! Old home! New color but same house.

  Hate house!

  Sit on froze park grass. Cry. Why Monroe? Do not want be in Monroe. The Mom gone. The Sissy gone. The Jimmy very gone. House here.

  Dry tears. Watch old home long time till light go out. Wait more. Go to windows. See new folks inside. The Mom must took the Sissy and go. Where? How long?

  Go to back. Push cellar window. Crawl in. See good in dark. New folks make nice cellar. Wood on walls. Rug on floor. No chain.

  Sit floor. Remember...

  Remember hanging on wall. Look little window near ceiling. Watch kids play in park cross street. Want go with kids. Want play there with kids. Want have friends.

  But the Mom won't let. Never leave basement. Too strong. Break everything. Have tv. Broke it. Have toys. Broke them. Stay in basement. Chain round waist hold to center pole. Can not leave.

  Remember terrible bad things happen.

  Run. Run way Monroe. Never come back.

  Till now.

  Now back. Still hate house! Want hurt house. See cigarettes. With matches. Light all. Burn now!

  Watch rug burn. Chair burn. So hot. Run back to cold park. Watch house burn. See new folks run out. Trucks come throw water. House burn and burn.

  Glad but tears come anyway.

  Hate house. Now house gone. Hate Monroe.

  Wonder where the Mom and the Sissy live now.

  Leave Monroe for new home and the Old Jessi.

  *

  The second call came the next day. And this time they were ready for it. The tape recorders were set, the computers were waiting to begin the tracing protocol. As soon as Harrison recognized the voice, he gave the signal. On the other side of the desk, Jacobi put on a headset and people started running in all directions. Off to the races.

  "I'm glad you called," Harrison said. "I've been thinking about you."

  "You undershtand?" said the soft voice.

  "I'm not sure."

  "Musht help shtop."

  "I will! I will! Tell me how!"

  "Not know."

  Harrison paused, not sure what to say next. He didn't want to push, but he had to keep him on the line.

  "Did you...hurt anyone last night."

  "No. Shaw houshes. Your houshe. Your wife."

  Harrison's blood froze. Last night – in the back yard. That had been the Facelift Killer in the dark. He looked up and saw genuine concern in Jacobi's eyes. He forced himself to speak.

  "You were at my house? Why didn't you talk to me?"

  "No-no! Can not let shee! Run way your house. Go mine!"

  "Yours? You live in Monroe?"

  "No! Hate Monroe! Once lived. Gone long! Burn old houshe. Never go back!"

  This could be important. Harrison phrased the next question carefully.

  "You burned your old house? When was that?"

  If he could just get a date, a year...

  "Lasht night."

  "Last night?" Harrison remembered hearing the sirens and fire horns in the early morning darkness.

  "Yesh! Hate houshe!"

  And then the line went dead.

  *

  He looked at Jacobi who had picked up another line.

  "Did we get the trace?"

  "Waiting to hear. Christ, he sounds retarded, doesn't he?"

  Retarded. The word sent ripples across the surface of his brain. Non-human teeth...Monroe...retarded...a picture was forming in the settling sediment, a picture he felt he should avoid.

  "Maybe he is."

  "You'd think that would make him easy to–"

  Jacobi stopped, listened to the receiver, then shook his head disgustedly.

  "What?"

  "Got as far as the Lower East Side. He was probably calling from somewhere in one of the projects. If we'd had another thirty seconds–"

  "We've got something better than a trace to some lousy pay phone," Harrison said. "We've got his old address!" He picked up his suit coat and headed for the door.

  "Where we goin'?"

  "Not 'we.' Me. I'm going out to Monroe."

  *

  Once he reached the town, it took Harrison less than an hour to find the Facelift Killer's last name.

  He first checked with the Monroe Fire Department to find the address of last night's house fire. Then he went down to the brick fronted Town Hall and found the lot and block number. After that it was easy to look up its history of ownership. Mr. and Mrs. Elwood Scott were the current owners of the land and the charred shell of a three-bedroom ranch that sat upon it.

  There had only been one other set of owners: Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Baker. He had lived most of his life in Monroe but knew nothing about the Baker family. But he knew where to find out: Captain Jeremy Hall, Chief of Police in the Incorporated Village of Monroe.

  Captain Hall hadn't changed much over the years. Still had a big belly, long sideburns, and hair cut bristly short on the sides. That was the "in" look these days, but Hall had been wearing his hair like that for at least thirty years. If not for his Bronx accent, he could have played a redneck sheriff in any one of those southern chain gang movies.

  After pleasantries and local-boy-leaves-home-to-become-big-city-cop-and-now-comes-to-question-small-town-cop banter
, they got down to business.

  "The Bakers from North Park Drive?" Hall said after he had noisily sucked the top layer off his steaming coffee. "Who could forget them? There was the mother, divorced, I believe, and the three kids – two girls and the boy."

  Harrison pulled out his note pad. "The boy's name – what was it?"

  "Tommy, I believe. Yeah – Tommy. I'm sure of it."

  "He's the one I want."

  Hall's eyes narrowed. "He is, is he? You're working on that Facelift case aren't you?"

  "Right."

  "And you think Tommy Baker might be your man?"

  "It's a possibility. What do you know about him?"

  "I know he's dead."

  Harrison froze. "Dead? That can't be!"

  "It sure as hell can be!" Without rising from his seat, he shouted through his office door. "Murph! Pull out that old file on the Baker case! Nineteen eighty-four, I believe!"

  "Eighty-four?" Harrison said. He and Martha had been living in Queens then. They hadn't moved back to Monroe yet.

  "Right. A real messy affair. Tommy Baker was thirteen years old when he bought it. And he bought it. Believe me, he bought it!"

  Harrison sat in glum silence, watching his whole theory go up in smoke.

  *

  The Old Jessi sleeps. Stand by mirror near tub. Only mirror have. No like them. The Jessi not need one.

  Stare face. Bad face. Teeth, teeth, teeth. And hair. Arms too thin, too long. Claws. None have claws like my. None have face like my.

  Face not better. Ate pretty faces but face still same. Still cause sick-scared look. Just like at home.

  Remember home. Do not want but thoughts will not go.

  Faces.

  The Sissy get the Mom-face. Beauty face. The Tommy get the Dad-face. Not see the Dad. Never come home anymore. Who my face? Never see where come. Where my face come? My hands come?

  Remember home cellar. Hate home! Hate cellar more! Pull on chain round waist. Pull and pull. Want out. Want play. Please. No one let.

  One day when the Mom and the Sissy go, the Tommy bring friends. Come down cellar. Bunch on stairs. Stare. First time see sick-scared look. Not understand.

  Friends! Play! Throw ball them. They run. Come back with rocks and sticks. Still sick-scared look. Throw me, hit me.

  Make cry. Make the Tommy laugh.

  Whenever the Mom and the Sissy go, the Tommy come with boys and sticks. Poke and hit. Hurt. Little hurt on skin. Big hurt inside. Sick-scared look hurt most of all. Hate look. Hate hurt. Hate them.

  Most hate the Tommy.

  One night chain breaks. Wait on wall for the Tommy. Hurt him. Hurt the Tommy outside. Hurt the Tommy inside. Know because pull inside outside. The Tommy quiet. Quiet, wet, red. The Mom and the Sissy get sick-scared look and scream.

  Hate that look. Run way. Hide. Never come back. Till last night.

  Cry more now. Cry quiet. In tub. So the Jessi not hear.

  *

  Harrison flipped through the slim file on the Tommy Baker murder.

  "This is it?"

  "We didn't need to collect much paper," Captain Hall said. "I mean, the mother and sister were witnesses. There's some photos in that manila envelope at the back."

  Harrison pulled it free and slipped out some large black and whites. His stomach lurched immediately.

  "My God!"

  "Yeah, he was a mess. Gutted by his older sister."

  "His sister?"

  "Yeah. Apparently she was some sort of freak of nature."

  Harrison felt the floor tilt under him, felt as if he were going to slide off the chair.

  "Freak?" he said, hoping Hall wouldn't notice the tremor in his voice. "What did she look like?"

  "Never saw her. She took off after she killed the brother. No one's seen hide nor hair of her since. But there's a picture of the rest of the family in there."

  Harrison shuffled through the file until he came to a large color family portrait. He held it up. Four people: two adults seated in chairs, a boy and a girl, about ten and eight, kneeling on the floor in front of them. A perfectly normal American family. Four smiling faces.

  But where's your oldest child. Where's your big sister? Where did you hide that fifth face while posing for this?

  "What was her name? The one who's not here?"

  "Not sure. Carla, maybe? Look at the front sheet under Suspect."

  Harrison did: "Carla Baker – called 'Carly.'"

  Hall grinned. "Right. Carly. Not bad for a guy getting ready for retirement."

  Harrison didn't answer. An ineluctable sadness filled him as he stared at the incomplete family portrait.

  Carly Baker...poor Carly... where did they hide you away? In the cellar? Locked in the attic? How did your brother treat you? Bad enough to deserve killing?

  Probably.

  "No pictures of Carly, I suppose."

  "Not a one."

  That figured.

  "How about a description?"

  "The mother gave us one but it sounded so weird, we threw it out. I mean, the girl sounded like she was half spider or something!" He drained his cup. "Then later on I got into a discussion with Doc Alberts about it. He told me he was doing deliveries back about the time this kid was born. Said they had a whole rash of monsters, all delivered within a few weeks of each other."

  The room started to tilt under Harrison again.

  "Early December, 1968, by chance?"

  "Yeah! How'd you know?"

  He felt queasy. "Lucky guess."

  "Huh. Anyway, Doc Alberts said they kept it quiet while they looked into a cause, but that little group of freaks – 'cluster,' he called them – was all there was. They figured that a bunch of mothers had been exposed to something nine months before, but whatever it had been was long gone. No monsters since. I understand most of them died shortly after birth, anyway."

  "Not all of them."

  "Not that it matters," Hall said, getting up and pouring himself a refill from the coffee pot. "Someday someone will find her skeleton, probably somewhere out in Haskins' marshes."

  "Maybe." But I wouldn't count on it. He held up the file. "Can I get a xerox of this?"

  *

  "You mean the Facelift Killer is a twenty-year old girl?"

  Martha's face clearly registered her disbelief.

  "Not just any girl. A freak. Someone so deformed she really doesn't look human. Completely uneducated and probably mentally retarded to boot."

  Harrison hadn't returned to Manhattan. Instead, he'd headed straight for home, less than a mile from Town Hall. He knew the kids were at school and that Martha would be there alone. That was what he had wanted. He needed to talk this out with someone a lot more sensitive than Jacobi.

  Besides, what he had learned from Captain Hall and the Baker file had dredged up the most painful memories of his entire life.

  "A monster," Martha said.

  "Yeah. Born one on the outside, made one on the inside. But there's another child monster I want to talk about. Not Carly Baker. Annie... Ann Harrison."

  Martha gasped. "That sister you told me about last night?"

  Harrison nodded. He knew this was going to hurt, but he had to do it, had to get it out. He was going to explode into a thousnd twitching bloody pieces if he didn't.

  "I was nine when she was born. December 2, 1968 – a week after Carly Baker. Seven pounds, four ounces of horror. She looked more fish than human."

  His sister's image was imprinted on the rear wall of his brain. And it should have been after all those hours he had spent studying her in loathsome face. Only her eyes looked human. The rest of her was awful. A lipless mouth, flattened nose, sloping forehead, fingers and toes fused so that they looked more like flippers than hands and feet, a bloated body covered with shiny skin that was a dusky gray-blue. The doctors said she was that color because her heart was bad, had a defect that caused mixing of blue blood and red blood.

  A repulsed nine-year old Kevin Harrison had dubbed her The
Tuna – but never within earshot of his parents.

  "She wasn't supposed to live long. A few months, they said, and she'd be dead. But she didn't die. Annie lived on and on. One year. Two. My father and the doctors tried to get my mother to put her into some sort of institution, but Mom wouldn't hear of it. She kept Annie in the third bedroom and talked to her and cooed over her and cleaned up her shit and just hung over her all the time. All the time, Martha!"

  Martha gripped his hand and nodded for him to go on.

  "After a while, it got so there was nothing else in Mom's life. She wouldn't leave Annie. Family trips became a thing of the past. Christ, if she and Dad went out to a movie, I had to stay with Annie. No babysitter was trustworthy enough. Our whole lives seemed to center around that freak in the back bedroom. And me? I was forgotten.

  "After a while I began to hate my sister."

  "Kevin, you don't have to–"

  "Yes, I do! I've got to tell you how it was! By the time I was fourteen – just about Tommy Baker's age when he bought it – I thought I was going to go crazy. I was getting all B's in school but did that matter? Hell, no! 'Annie rolled halfway over today. Isn't that wonderful?' Big deal! She was five years old, for Christ sake! I was starting point guard on the highschool junior varsity basketball team as a goddam freshman, but did anyone come to my games? Hell no!

  "I tell you, Martha, after five years of caring for Annie, our house was a powderkeg. Looking back now I can see it was my mother's fault for becoming so obsessed. But back then, at age fourteen, I blamed it all on Annie. I really hated her for being born a freak."

  He paused before going on. This was the really hard part.

  "One night, when my dad had managed to drag my mother out to some company banquet that he had to attend, I was left alone to babysit Annie. On those rare occasions, my mother would always tell me to keep Annie company – you know, read her stories and such. But I never did. I'd let her lie back there alone with our old black and white tv while I sat in the living room watching the family set. This time, however, I went into her room."

  He remembered the sight of her, lying there with the covers half way up her fat little tuna body that couldn't have been much more than a yard in length. It was winter, like now, and his mother had dressed her in a flannel nightshirt. The coarse hair that grew off the back of her head had been wound into two braids and fastened with pink bows.