"Mom?" I asked the darkness.
"No, stupid." There was a voice attached to the hand. "It's me. Ricky. Your little brother." His breath smelled sweetly of alcohol.
I looked at the digital alarm clock beside my bed. "It's two-thirty, Ricky. What do you want?" By now I could make him out. He was sitting on the edge of the bed in his street clothes, looking at me as one regards a stranger.
"Put on your clothes," he told me. "Hurry up. Before she goes back to bed."
I rolled away from him. He yanked me over on my back, clawing into my shoulder. "When're you going to cut your fingernails?!" I yelled.
"Sshh!" he insisted. "You'll wake Mom. Now get your butt up and come with me."
"I'm getting too old for this," I told him.
He helped me out of bed and threw a sweatshirt in my face. When I squirted my head through the collar, I could see Ricky standing at the window, parting the blinds and gazing out on the blue street. "Excellent," he said, snapping the blinds shut. "She's still up."
I pulled on a pair of jeans. "Who, Ricky? Who's still up?"
"The old woman across the street. You know."
He was referring to little Ms. Higginson, the retired librarian. Everyone on our street called her Lucille. An eccentric old woman, she rarely strayed outdoors. In fact, I hadn't seen her leave her house in nearly a year. Some people said she'd died in there.
"What's the deal with Lucille?" I asked as I tied my shoelaces. "I thought she was dead."
He turned to me and smiled, swaying, like a tree drunk on wind. "Oh, no," he said, waving a conspicuous finger. "You'll see." His laugh reminded me of the Ricky I used to know when we were kids, always so happy.
Before I could retort, he took me by the hand and led me out the front door. I could hear our mother snoring in the house behind us.
Outside, I could see my breath in our porch light. "Why didn't you tell me it was this cold?" I scolded him. But he ignored me, pulling me by the hand across the deserted street. Our footsteps were the only sounds in the world.
Lucille's porch light shone like a halo in the darkness. A spooky blue glow danced behind a tiny upstairs window. "See? She's watching TV," Ricky said as he pressed on.
We climbed the creaky steps that led up to her porch and stopped at the front door. A cold wind picked up, rocking the porch swing, waking the wind chimes. Their shadows played across Ricky's ruddy face as he rang the doorbell. He still had hold of my hand. I tried to pull it away, but his grip on me tightened. "This is embarrassing, Ricky," I complained, but he shushed me.
Feeble footsteps could be heard within, descending slowly, deliberately down a stair. A lightswitch clicked behind the door. "Who's there?" a hoary voice asked.
"It's me, Ricky. From across the street? And my big brother George."
"What do you want?" the voice persisted.
"The treatment." Ricky wriggled his eyebrows at me. They reminded me of woolly caterpillars, the kind with pinchers at the ends. His hand was moist in my hand.
"I don't do treatments anymore," the voice behind the door said. "I'm too tired."
"Oh, please? Just this once?" Ricky was practically begging, cupping our hands together in a beseeching gesture. "This will be the last one. We promise."
"The last one?" the voice asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
"And you promise."
"Absolutely."
There was a pause behind the door. Suddenly, the clacking of several locks, and the door swung open, revealing a smaller, paler Lucille than the one I'd seen a year earlier. She wore a green cardigan sweater, its frayed cuffs stuffed with soiled tissues. Her black skirt cascaded down to a pair of fuzzy pink slippers. The wattled flesh of her neck quivered like pink Jell-O. A sweetly-turdy smell like mothballs permeated the air.
"Bonjour," she said in bad French. Her head had a discernible tic.
"Hey," Ricky said. "This here is my big brother George."
"Hello," I offered.
Lucille stood there marveling at us. "My, how you two have grown. Why, you boys are men now."
"Yes, ma'am," Ricky said bashfully. "I guess we are."
"Why, I can remember when you used to rake my leaves," she told Ricky.
"No, ma'am," Ricky said. "That was George."
"Oh," Lucille said.
The wind pushed a pause in among us.
"Well?" Ricky invited.
"Oh, yes, of course," Lucille said. "The treatment." She stood aside and pointed into the murky house. "Go down this hallway here. First door on your left. I'll be down in a minute."
"Thanks," Ricky said. He went inside, tugging me along.
"Thank you," I called over my shoulder, not knowing what for.
Lucille smiled at me, looking small and old, and bolted the locks.
The door on the left opened onto a dark stair creeping down into a dank cellar. Ricky turned a black knob on the wall, and a light came to life below. We descended down into a mildewed dungeon, and the door slammed shut behind us.
"I don't like this, Ricky." I said.
"Relax," he assured me. And, "Just mellow out, okay?"
A lightbulb swung from a cord in the ceiling, throwing menacing shadows all around us. The walls of the cellar were made of packed dirt. In one corner, there was a deep, dug-out crevice with prison bars extending across the front and an open cell door.
"So what happens now?" I asked.
"Wait." Ricky licked his lips.
Suddenly, the cellar door flew off its hinges. A cold wind spooked down the stairs, carrying with it the scent of mothballs. "You boys ready?" a husky voice called. It sounded like Lucille on steroids gargling with sulfuric acid.
"Come! on! down!" Ricky shouted like the game-show host.
Heavy feet came pounding down the stairs. Lucille's shadow on the wall got bigger and bigger. I looked at Ricky. He looked at me. Together we made a break for the crevice in the corner and slammed the cell door shut, waiting to see what monster would emerge from the cryptic stairwell.
A huge hairy foot thumped on the dirt floor, followed by the other, and then Lucille, tall as Norman Bates and as demented, appeared at the landing. She was completely naked from head to claw, with hirsute appendages, and was clutching a sledgehammer. The swinging bulb in the ceiling cast light upon her horrid face, then darkness, then light, then darkness, and every time the light crossed her face, her eyes became more wretched, her smirk a blooming rose of evil, dripping with drool. The taut muscles in her neck were like steel chords.
"Bonjour!" she said in perfect French. She approached the cage with a vengeance.
"Oh, my god!" I heard myself scream. My voice was higher than it had ever been before. "Lucille's big! I didn't know old people could grow big!"
And Ricky said, "It's her soul."
We pressed up against the wall, face-first. It felt wet and lumpy, and something was staring back at me. The wall was covered with eyes, hundred of eyes, beautiful, seductive eyes, the eyes of victims' eyes, staring.
Lucille rattled the bars of the cage. She reached in, groping for me and Ricky. "Trompe le monde!" she bellowed. "Trompe le monde!"
A sharp breeze cut across the nape of my neck, chilling my soul. From her shadow on the wall I could see Lucille swinging her heavy hammer at us. Another swipe, shaving my hair, and her mighty blow crashed into the wall, exploding several eyes.
"Trompe le monde!" she wailed.
I looked at Ricky. His eyes were swings, following the course of the hammer. "What does trompe le monde mean?" he asked calmly.
"Fool the world," I told him. "Now get me out of this nightmare."
He didn't seem to know what I was talking about. "Are you kidding?" he said. "I dragged you into it."
The next swipe grazed my skin, smashed the screaming eyes. Lucille shook the cage and snarled, winding up for the fatal neck-crash. "Trompe le monde!" she howled like a god. "Trompe le monde!"
THE END
Chris Wood's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet, Bohemian Bridge, Now & Then, The Melic Review, In Posse Review, and Doll World.
E-mail: woodc31@hotmail.com
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