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  Jennifer screamed for her mother, the sound barely audible behind her gag.

  There was a sloshing sound and her mother’s head lolled again. Or at least Jennifer assumed it was her mother’s head. The only way she recognized her was from the floral sateen nightie she had gone to sleep in that night, so badly stained now that it was almost unrecognizable.

  There was a plastic bag around her mother’s head and it rustled as she struggled to raise it to look in Jennifer’s direction. When Agatha finally managed to summon the strength to force her head upward, she could see that it was taped tightly around her neck. Entler Department store, the logo of Dixon’s long ago defunct pride and joy was stretched across where her mother’s face should have been.

  “She made a mess of herself, I’m afraid.”

  Jennifer jumped, her skin screeching as her silver bonds dug into her flesh deeper.

  “It’s the digitalis injections. It causes nausea like you wouldn’t believe. The puking, my goodness. I managed it alright though, but then again, I had a lot of practice. Just like you. Really, you should be in a state not unlike the lovely Mrs. Stone. Furniture Queen of the Dixon Scene.”

  His voice came from the bank of darkness beyond the lights. She waited, her nose rasping as she fought for her panicked breath. When he stepped gingerly into the living room, she had to stifle the urge to scream again.

  Anger, hatred, fear, awe, she wasn’t sure what she was feeling anymore. It was all just merging into some red-hot animal sensation that made her pull against the tape regardless of how much discomfort it caused.

  Kingston frowned at her.

  “You’re going to bruise that lovely skin of yours, silly thing.” He walked through the ‘living room’ with the pride of a director, adjusting the large crystal candy bowl on the table as he crossed to her mother. He poked the bag that billowed around her face, something wet squelching around at its base where he had adhered it to her neck.

  “I might have switched up the doses. Given the big fatty dose to your mother instead. I mean, if I don’t get to work soon, she’s just going to end up drowning in all that vomit. Who would’ve thought such a small woman could make such a mess?” He looked back at her and Jennifer saw that his eyes sparkled with something horribly like excitement. “That would explain why you woke up so early. You’ve got to calculate the amount of poison in agreement to the body weight or it just won’t last long enough. Then again, too much and it will kill, I suppose.” He looked back at her mom and poked at the puke bag wrapped around her head again. “But, you know, I wouldn’t want to have to wrap up the party too soon. There’s still plenty of things to do. Plenty of more things for the audience to enjoy.”

  He moved his hand from the bag around her mother’s face to her arms where they were spread above her. He wrapped both hands around her upper arms and standing up on his toes, ran his fingers up the graceful arch of their length. She heard his breath begin to shake with pleasure as he slowly knelt as if in reverence. Her mother began to rapidly shake her head, the contents of the bag sloshing as she did so. She made awful noises. Jennifer imagined they were pleas but the injections had made her mother’s tongue nothing but a useless mass in her mouth.

  “Oh, don’t pretend to be shy. It’s too late for that now.” He ran his hands down in her legs like a woodworker checking the evenness of his lathing. His breath was jagged when he stood and turned to her.

  “Just perfect,” he announced. “Your mother is almost the best so far. Obviously, the boy was lovely too, so thin and flawless. But he was missing the female contours that are so appealing. Don’t you agree? Honestly, I’m not sure you’re getting this.”

  It had been excitement in his eyes. That excitement had turned to glee now and he moved with electric vigor to one of the floodlights closest to where her mother dangled. He picked it up, its clanking reverberating through what Jennifer was coming to realize was a very large room. When he spun it, the light shot out across what on first glance looked like an endless crowd of people.

  Jennifer screamed, her skin tearing where the tape gagged her mouth shut.

  White, expressionless faces stared at them. Bald and perfectly formed, their heads looked like rows of eggs receding backwards from the stage he had created until the shadows took them. The same exaggeratedly thin necks tapered down to torsos sexless in their perfection. The arms and legs, held perfectly still at their sides were as just as thin and muscle deprived as her mother’s.

  They were store mannequins. Hundreds of them filled the room around them like an army awaiting orders.

  “I had the same reaction.” Kingston’s soothing voice brought her back to whatever remaining sense she had. “Of course, I was much younger. Very young actually. Six I believe. They are a little unsettling, aren't they? Of course, most things that are perfect usually are.”

  He paused and then, leaving the light to illuminate the crowd that surrounded them, walked to the candy bowl. He picked up the lid with careful, delicate fingers and plucked three golden colored orbs from the pile within. When he spoke again, it was through a mouth full of caramels.

  “If you think you’re terrified, imagine spending an entire night with these things. Covered in your own piss, sticky candy all down your new suit. If I thought mother was mad when she locked me in here,” he shook his head, smiling wryly to himself despite his cheeks being stretched full of sweets, “you should’ve seen her when she saw the state of me the next morning.”

  Jennifer heard herself whimpering when he perched his lithe body on the armrest of her chair. His hip bone ground into her arm as he leaned toward her casually. “The bathing. She was always a big one for the bathing. As soon as she got it into her head that I was dirty, she couldn’t stop herself. You know, I’m starting to think it was a smart idea taking me out of school. Besides the obvious hurting other students thing, I think if anyone had actually seen the damage that boiling water and steel wool could do to a six-year-old’s skin? Let’s just say there’s never been a visit to the Entler house by any of those nosy ‘social servicers' and there never will be. RIGHT?”

  Jennifer jumped as he shouted his last word out into the darkness. Her nerves sang with adrenaline as he yelled again,

  “RIGHT MOTHER?”

  She watched as Kingston walked over to the floodlight directly in front of her.

  “What kind of scandal would that have caused? And we all know that scandal and the Entler name must stay as far away from each other as possible. God knows. Pack it away and keep it sedated.”

  He smiled at Jennifer as he lifted the light. She felt herself begin to shake her head, trying to plead with her tear-filled eyes for him to stop. His cheeks still stuffed with caramel, he turned the light toward what was the matching partner to Jennifer’s chair positioned directly across from her.

  For one second she believed that she was just another mannequin, positioned jauntily against the velveteen upholstery. When her eyes adjusted to the light, however, she saw differently.

  She recognized the woman from photos her mother had always displayed around the house with more pride than Jennifer’s baby pictures. Of course, the amount of decay made it difficult.

  It was Brynn Entler, chairwoman of her mother’s gardening club, leader of the Dixon business association and head of the defunct Entler Corporation. Her eyes were almost gone. They were sinking back into her rotting flesh in the same way the lips were starting to recede and blacken. Dressed in an expensive suit, her arms and legs were mottled with unnatural shades of black and blue where Kingston had made an attempt to pose her. The congealing blood in her calves made it look as if her legs were the burnt-out stump of a wooden match.

  The Stone women were going hoarse with screaming, Jennifer’s muffled screeches had caused her mother to join in and their combined din was deafening. The chair she was tied to began to jolt against the floor as Jennifer fought, sheer panic making her numb to any pain her bonds caused as they dug further into her.

/>   Kingston grimaced, holding his delicate hands to his ears.

  “Alright fine!” He spat caramel colored spittle as he attempted to yell above the women’s hysteria. “Fine! Jesus wept, ladies.” He picked up the light, knocking it to the side slightly in his haste. When it shone back at Jennifer it did so directly in her eyes. The brightness increased the pain in her temple and she stopped her screams, stunned by her blindness.

  She heard him chuckle slightly from behind the light. “You two. Keep it together. I just like to have her around, that’s all. It’s always been that way. She’s fine with it. We’re very close, you know.” Jennifer saw his shadow emerge in front of the light. He was walking toward her slowly, his shadow warping and growing against the flood of industrial strength white that blinded her. “I mean, it’s not like I still talk to her or anything. I’m not crazy.”

  *******

  When Piper opened the rusted door of Harrison’s car, the creaking sounded like a gunshot ricocheting across the empty street. She stepped out, digging her feet out from the sea of empty cans that littered the floor. Some of the mess was fast food wrappers, but in the darkness of the cab, she was able to make out that most of the cans were from the Dixon Brewing Company. She was starting to realize that Harrison had been drowning himself in something other than work for the last half-decade. When this was over, whatever this was, she was going to have to take a good look at her own coping skills.

  She stood in the shadow of the department store, looking up for a second at the crowded gothic architecture. It had been built and styled to express dominance. Just like the Entler mansion itself, it was so heavy under the weight of its own importance that it was more like a living thing than a building. Even with the majority of the windows boarded shut or broken, it still seemed to take up double the space, the world around them funneling toward the entrance like it had some kind of gravitational pull.

  “What are you doing?” There was a click beside her as Harrison inspected the gun he had taken from his house. He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke. “I can’t risk bringing you in there, you know that.” He swiftly ran through the parts and placed it in the holster beneath his jacket. When he looked up at her, his jaw was set, even though Piper had seen his hands trembling as they moved.

  “I am not staying here,” she said plainly.

  “Oh, yes you are. If you’re right and if that maniac is in there, I couldn’t handle losing you.” He corrected himself quickly, stuttering slightly with embarrassment. “I mean, I couldn’t have your death on my hands too. I don’t think I’ve got enough room for any more.”

  Harrison began to walk across the sidewalk to the store’s elaborate entranceway. Once the city’s most magnificent doorway, the arch, pillars and art deco goddesses that guarded the entrance now looked more like the ruins of an ancient city. Piper brushed the rain from her eyes and followed him.

  “I said I’m not staying in the damn car,” her voice perhaps a bit more strident than she had intended. He stopped in his tracks and turned back. He looked pained.

  “This isn’t drawing, Piper. Don’t make me state the obvious, but there’s no way you’re prepared for what might be in there.”

  Piper’s scoff was almost as loud as the creaking door had been.

  “And you are? Don’t make me state the obvious either, Harrison. Where’s the backup? What’s up with the shaking hands? You know once the DT’s get started, they can progress in seconds.”

  Harrison’s mouth dropped open. Her heart beating with the rush of confrontation, she caught up to him where he stood on the first step. Now closer to him, she could see the hurt in his eyes that last comment had caused. Regret slowed her heartbeat almost instantly.

  “I’m sorry. Yeah, that was out of line.”

  “No.”

  The rain was starting to soak into his jacket. It was the navy one she remembered him wearing whenever he needed to impress someone but now it was looking almost as weary as he did. She had always wondered if it gave him confidence. He held out his hand between them and watched it as it trembled helplessly.

  “It’s the truth. It’s pretty hard to make the truth out of line.”

  “I’m the one that got the address,” Piper said. “Shakes aside, when I was under, I was in a room somewhere in that rubble up there. Whatever is in there, you’ll get there faster with my help than without it.”

  There was a second when they stared at each other, Harrison sizing up the petite girl in front of him. The petite woman. It was hard to separate her from the lost cause teen he had promised the safe return of her mother to. It was hard for him to separate the present from the past most days and getting harder.

  This was his last chance. Piper was starting to understand it, and if he was really, really honest with himself? He was too.

  “Stay close to me and do whatever I say. No heroics. When I tell you to run, you run, understood?”

  She was already up the stairs ahead of him, leaping up the flight two steps at a time.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  * * *

  The Entler Family Mansion - Dixon City

  For the seventh time since they’d gotten into the car together, Officer Wright had to control the overwhelming desire to hit her accompanying officer over the head with the butt of her gun.

  They had done this on purpose, she knew that the moment that she received the dispatch. The jokers down at the office thought it was funny. It was a perfect example of the kind of stupid, sophomoric sense of humor that she’d had to endure from the whole pack of them since she started. It was boy humor, broad and just on the verge of being cruel.

  She looked up at him, all six foot something of him and had to consciously keep her hands away from her holster.

  “Jeeze, this place has really taken a beating, hasn’t it?” Officer Hallman, oblivious to her glares, stepped back from the door to examine the rest of the house. “I remember when we were kids, my dad used to drive us around this neighborhood, just to see how the other half lives, you know what I’m saying?”

  Officer Wright refused to acknowledge his chatter. He’d been running at the mouth since both their cars pulled up to the curb. His baseball coaching experiences, the bass guitar lessons he was thinking of taking, he had been doing his damnedest to impress her with his endless chatter practically since he’d stepped out of the car.

  Everyone knew Hallman had a crush on her. It was a source of great amusement, dim-witted, gawky Hallman and the fearsome, pocket-sized Wright. Boy humor.

  He shook his head again and pulled his flashlight from the inside pocket of his jacket. He shone the perfect circle of light up onto the house, moving systematically over the many shut windows and rain drenched stone outcroppings. He frightened a bird which took off suddenly into the night, causing Wright to jump. She hated birds almost as much as the painfully slow progression of this evenings’ little adventure.

  “I mean look at the place. Do you remember a few years ago when people started saying it was haunted? What do you think, does it look haunted to you?” He stepped closer to her. Involuntary or not, he was closing the distance between the two of them and it made her uncomfortable.

  “If it’s haunted by anything, it’ll be by all the workers she laid off when she shipped our economy overseas,” she mumbled under her breath. “I’m going to try the door again and then we should move around the back.”

  “No one’s seen Mrs. Entler for a month or so.” Hallman dutifully positioned himself behind her as she knocked loudly on the door a second time. “What if she’s dead in there or something? I mean, she was pretty old. Albert down at the clinic says the last time he saw her, they were bringing her into emergency for a fall or something. Who’d live in a place this big when they’re that old, anyway? All those stairs, she’s just asking for trouble.”

  Officer Wright’s knocking seemed to reverberate through the house but remained unanswered. Hallman shone his light up to the windows again.

  “No
thing. Not a peep. Her son still lives with her, doesn’t he? No one’s seen him for years, man. Maybe they shipped him off to Europe or something. If he is living with her, you’d think he’d help with the house or something. It’s turning into a shit heap.”

  She jabbed the doorbell to the side. They’d already tried it with no results but she stabbed it angrily with her finger, anyway. The way she saw it, it was better than yelling at Hallman to shut up.

  “It’s not working, remember?”

  She turned to face the street, her hands on her hips. She took a few deep breaths, inhaling the heavy smell of rotting vegetation that seemed to surround the house like a cloud. The lawn was overgrown, she noticed that straight away. The gardens on the property, the second and less notorious thing that Brynn was famous for, were starting to go feral. Even in the dark, she could make out where the rotted blooms drooped from bent stems and bushes were beginning to encroach on the beds. As dense as he was, Hallman had a point.