The Haunting of Ironwood Read online

  He unlocked the door and shoved it open. Earl's dark silhouette stood in the threshold, the axe cradled in his hands. He panted and quietly observed the room, and then, almost as if knowing exactly where she was, he set off for the corner.

  Katie pressed herself into the darkness, searching around for some place to escape to, but there was none.

  The dresser was pulled away with a rough jerk and Earl's hand was around her throat. He squeezed and Katie gasped for air. He let her go with a shove and the back of her head bounced off the wall. Light glinted off the axe blade and danced along her face. He leaned in real close and his breath was pungent and unpleasant as he breathed in her face.

  "Don't you ever question me or disobey me again," he said. "Next time I won't be so pleasant."

  Earl stood and left the room.

  Katie sat splayed out in the corner, panting. Tears and snot were on her face. Her lungs heaved, desperately trying to pull oxygen through her choked airways.

  Prisoner's Blues

  Days passed by and Katie conducted herself meekly, doing as she was told. In return, Earl was gentle with her. Thoughts of escape were in the back of her mind and she was always watching for an opportunity, on the lookout for a chink in the house's armor. But she kept those thoughts in the deep part of her mind, stowed away for the time being and awaiting maybe some distant and unknown event.

  Earl remained largely unseen, though he walked about the house from time to time. When he did walk around, Katie kept her eyes on the floor and stayed away from him as much as possible, other than when he directed her to come closer. When he wasn't physically present he would watch her on the cameras from a location she still couldn't determine. He played subliminal messaging over the speakers, filling the house with his repulsive words. More pictures began to fill Katie's bedroom of choice of the strange woman who she now fully understood to be Elizabeth. There was no getting away from it, and Katie knew that. Earl allowed her to wear the clothes she brought from her apartment, though on occasion he insisted she put on one of Elizabeth's old pieces. And Katie did, just as she was told. She would cry herself to sleep at night and awake with the stains of tears crusted in the corners of her eyes. Day by day she would exist in the house, floating around like a ghost, feeling some extra heavy pull of gravity weighing on the corners of her mouth, constantly pulling them into a frown.

  Katie sat at the dining room table now. The book was laid out in front of her. She stared down at it, her eyes glossing over the words.

  "Read it," the speaker on the ceiling behind her said.

  Katie read it.

  Stories of Elizabeth. Pictures of her, as if Katie hadn't seen enough already. Earl's voice in the background over the speakers as she read: "You are Elizabeth..." It made her shudder.

  Katie closed the book.

  "What are you doing?"

  "I can't read anymore."

  She expected a reply, but there was none.

  Footsteps filled the house from somewhere above. Then they came down the stairs and Katie shrank into her chair as Earl came into view.

  "Calm yourself," he said softly. "I won't hurt you." He walked around the dining room table and took a seat opposite her. He sat casually as if he were an old friend meeting her for lunch at a café (turned a little, his elbow propped on the back of the chair). He glanced down at the book for a long time, his eyes moving only a little as the long seconds passed by. Then Katie realized he was staring at her hands laid out on the table.

  She pulled them back.

  "You don't like me, do you?" he asked.

  She found it difficult to look at him. He was ugly in an especially repulsive way. His nose was too round. His cheeks too sallow and greasy. She didn't like the way his bug eyes looked at her. Katie stared down at the table and didn't answer.

  Earl maintained his calm composure. He reached across the table and flipped open the book. "Here, let's try it together," he said.

  Her eyes drifted to the splayed book and saw Elizabeth standing in a tank top on a beach, smiling at the camera. Some families were in the background. There was a father playing with his young son. Huge Coke bottles for glasses hung on his nose and he had black permed hair. These photos were old like all the rest; there were no recent photos of Elizabeth.

  "What happened to her?" Katie asked.

  Earl looked at her for a moment and she expected him to stay in his delusion and ask her what she was talking about, but a pleasant smile came to him instead.

  "Was she your wife?"

  "Yes." His fingers stroked her cheek on the page. "My Elizabeth. She... she died."

  "Decades ago?"

  He nodded.

  "How?"

  "I don't want to talk about it." He flipped the page and now there was a picture of Elizabeth eating a piece of orange fudge. The picture was taken from a side profile as she stared at a carnival game ahead through sunglasses. She didn't seem aware the picture was taken.

  Below, there was a description of the photo.

  "Why don't you give that one a try?" Earl said.

  Katie looked at it and cleared her throat. It felt like the interior of her esophagus was coated in molasses. "'Indiana State fair – Indianapolis, 1983,'" she began. She looked at Earl and he nodded.

  "Go ahead," he said encouragingly.

  "'Elizabeth just came off the tilt a whirl and stopped for a treat. She's standing here wanting to play the ring toss. She asked her friend for a quarter, but she was off buying a snow cone. She's not in this picture.'"

  "Very good," Earl said. "Do you remember that day? Do you remember the fun you had?" His smile hung on his face. His beady eyes widened. He was expectantly waiting for her affirmative answer.

  Katie's toes curled up, expressing the tension coiled up inside of her beneath the table where he couldn't see. She opened her mouth, but the words were hard to spit out. "I... I'm not her. I'm not Elizabeth."

  Earl's face fell.

  Tears came out of her eyes almost instantly at the reaction. "Please don't hurt me," she pleaded.

  But he softened. "I would never hurt you, Elizabeth." He leaned forward and reached out to stroke her cheek, but she recoiled. He paused. "I know this is hard. But you'll get it. I know you will."

  He closed the book.

  "I think that's enough for today. I'll make dinner for you tonight. You can eat it on your own. Would you like it down here or would you like me to bring it up to your bedroom?"

  Katie wiped her face and hid herself with her hand. "I'm not hungry," she choked out.

  Earl stood and rounded the table. He put his hand on her shoulder. "I'll leave something down here in case you change your mind."

  Her shoulder felt like ice, and when he left she quietly sobbed into her hands.

  She spent the rest of the evening in her bedroom with the door shut and locked. A plate of pork chops and mashed potatoes sat on the dining room table downstairs. It went uneaten and cold. Katie's stomach rumbled, but even the thought of eating made her sick. She lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, dried tears crusted on her face.

  The same prerecorded message came over the speaker hidden up in the corner of the closet, and closing the closet door did nothing to drown it out. That horrible voice: "You are Elizabeth... You are Elizabeth..."

  Fresh tears welled up in her eyes and she turned over and clamped one of the pillows over her head. It took a long time for her to settle down, but when she did she heard a faint scratching sound.

  She pulled her head out from under the pillow and craned her neck, trying to find what was making the noise. It came from the window, and when she looked she saw the black cat sitting on the sill outside between the iron bars. He was stretching up and clawing on the glass, uttering a silent meow from the other side.

  Katie turned away from him and stuffed her head back under the pillow. But then a moment later, like a flash of lightning, an idea filled her mind. She sat up and turned to the cat. But then she restrained herself, mindful
that her every movement was being watched.

  She had a pretty good idea where all the cameras in the bedroom were: the one on the bookshelf peeking out from behind the bear (that Earl had tidied up when she'd been downstairs one day); one in her closet near the speaker; and one very tiny camera fixed into a drilled hole in the lamp on the nightstand on the other side of the bed from the bookshelf—that one she'd found just this morning.

  Katie searched around in the drawers of both nightstands and found a small pad of paper and a pen. She sat with her back pressed against the headboard and her knees hiked up, laying the pad against her thighs. She knew the cameras wouldn't be able to see what she was writing from the sides. She wrote her message casually with no emotion on her face as if she were writing down a passive thought. Her message: I'm in the house up in the woods—14 Chestnut Lane. I've been kidnapped. Please send help!

  She was careful to tear off the first two sheets on the pad. Using the best sleight-of-hand she could muster, she slipped the blank second page underneath in front, then she shook her head and crumpled it. As she leaned back over to the nightstand to put the writing materials away, including the crumpled sheet, she slipped her message under the covers and hastily folded it out of view of the cameras. She looked over to the window as if first noticing the cat, then she got out of bed and approached it, palming the sheet of paper with her message on it in her hand.

  "You're back again?" she said a little louder than she normally would have.

  The black cat pawed at the window then watched and licked his lips as Katie opened it.

  He immediately started purring and stepped onto the windowsill inside her room.

  "I know you're hungry," Katie said. "But I have nothing to give you." She pet the length of his body with both hands, using one to cover the other as she slipped the folded paper snugly beneath his collar, making sure her body was between the cameras and the cat as much as possible. When she was sure it was secured, she apologized to the cat out loud then leaned her face next to it and whispered in his ear, "Get out of here and find someone! Hurry!"

  And with that, she nudged the cat out and closed the window, drawing the curtains shut.

  Katie returned to her bed and lay down. She closed her eyes as a whirlwind of emotions swirled inside of her like a storm. She wasn't the religious type, but she prayed to God that the cat would find someone. Her life depended on it.

  To the Rescue

  Bounce.

  Bounce.

  The rubber ball Katie found in the bedroom closet rebounded off the wall above her and fell into her open hands. She lay flat on the bed and hoisted her arm again, lobbing the ball up and hitting the wall above the headboard. She held her hand open and caught the ball as it fell. She lobbed it again but this time missed her catch and the ball struck her forehead and rebounded dully onto the bed next to her. She didn't care; she was already numb. With her mind elsewhere, she picked up the ball and bounced it again.

  "Stop that."

  Katie stopped her arm in mid-swing and swiveled her head toward the open closet on the other end of the room. His voice came from the speaker in there next to the small red light of the camera.

  She whipped her arm up again and tossed the ball.

  Bounce.

  Bounce.

  Bounce.

  "I said stop that!"

  Katie scowled. She threw the ball across the room in anger then twisted onto her side and clutched a pillow over her head to hide from him. She peeked out from under the pillow at the bookshelf and saw the camera there, too. She moaned and crawled under the covers, pulling them over her head. The air quickly became sticky and uncomfortable, but she didn't care.

  So the bouncing of the ball was getting on his nerves, was it? Why? She already knew he could hear her just as well as he could watch her, but was it microphones somewhere in the room or in the cameras, or was the place from where he was observing her close enough that he could hear the ball bouncing off the wall? Feel it. The house wasn't huge, but it was big enough.

  But Katie's mind already went cloudy thinking about such things. She had a swirling maelstrom of emotions: numbness and acceptance of her fate; anxiety, wondering if the cat would wander off the property and find someone; hatred; guilt. She briefly thought of Josh, but he, too, was too complex a problem for her brain to want to parse at the moment.

  She cried until she fell asleep.

  "Why didn't I meet you at the bar?" Katie muttered. "Why didn't I just meet you at the bar? Why didn't I... didn't I meet you at the bar?"

  Katie's eyes snapped open and she lifted her head off the pillow. She looked around in the darkness of the bedroom in bewilderment, waking up from an awful dream. And then when she realized where she was, she understood that her nightmare was a blessing compared to her present circumstances.

  But she wondered if that was all that woke her up. She felt that there was something else, something she couldn't put her finger on. And then she heard them.

  Voices.

  She heard them through the window, muffled and far away. They didn't sound familiar to her.

  Katie looked at the clock and saw that it was two in the morning. Then she remembered writing her note and stuffing it in the cat's collar in the evening.

  In an instant she was fully awake and up out of bed. She rushed to the window and placed her face against the glass.

  "Come on, little kitty, where are you bringing us?" the voice said. Laughter followed.

  "Dude, this place is huge! Maybe there's a party here," another voice said.

  Katie watched with bated breath as two dark silhouettes came into view at the side of the property. The black cat was walking in front of them.

  "There's no lights on, dumb ass," the first one said.

  "Or maybe it's one of those secret nighttime parties. You know, like that Eyes Wide Shut shit."

  "No, it said something about someone being kidnapped."

  "Kidnapped?" One of the silhouettes, whose features were coming into view now, reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He flattened it and tried to read it, adjusting it and holding it at every angle. "Man, I can't see nothing. Too dark out."

  Katie clutched the ledge of the window and paused. She glanced over her shoulder, wondering if Earl was watching. But he had to sleep sometime, and regardless, right now there were two people who could help her.

  "Give me that," the other one said, taking the note from him.

  "Can you see it?"

  "No," he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "That vodka hit me harder than I thought tonight. There's a reason we're walking."

  "Well we gotta find out who's in there," the second, drunker one said. "If the only pussy that's here is this cat, I'm gonna be upset."

  "Hey!"

  The two college kids looked at each other. "You hear that?" one of them said, and the other nodded.

  "Hey!" Katie called out to them as quietly as she could while still being audible.

  One of the young men knocked the other on the shoulder and pointed up to the second-floor window. "Look, up there!"

  "Aw, who's that?" the other one asked, taking a few steps back and holding a ridged hand over his eyes as if that would do anything to help him see. "Is that a chick? It sounded like a chick."

  The black cat stood by their ankles, staring up at them and periodically meowing as if urging them to be helpful.

  "Help me, please!" Katie whispered to them.

  "Help? What do you need help with, baby girl?"

  "Call the police!"

  "The what?"

  "The police!"

  "Girl, you're crazy. You don't call the police on a party, don't you know that? What kind of square are you?"

  Katie looked over her shoulder at the shadows looming behind her, feeling an intense sense of impending doom, like the walls of time and opportunity were closing in on her.

  "He's got me locked up in here!" she said. "I think he's going to kill me! You hav
e to get me out of here!"

  Her words started to cut through the drunken boorishness of the two men and their tone became somber.

  "Are you really trapped in there?" one of them asked.

  "Yes."

  Suddenly feeling brave under the attention of a female (though he couldn't tell how attractive she was yet), the second one rolled up his sleeves. "Don't worry, girl, I'll come get you. How do I get in there?"

  "Please, just call the police!" Katie implored. "The front door is bolted. I don't know if you can get in there."

  "A window, then," he said, looking around on the ground for a rock and not at all noticing that every window was covered in iron bars.

  The other one took out his cell phone, his eyes carefully resting on Katie. She couldn't see his expression in the darkness, but she felt that it was sobered and concerned as he began to truly take in the disturbing qualities of the house for the first time.

  "Yes, please," Katie said, "just call the police and wait until they get—"

  Katie screamed.

  The head of the axe cleaved through the night and sank into the back of the one fiddling with his phone. Something like a muffled gurgle came out of his throat and his cell phone slipped out of his fingers. He sank to his knees and Earl put his boot on the young man's back and pried the axe out of his flesh.

  The other one spun around and saw him, immediately panicking and falling onto his ass. He scrambled on the ground like a crab, stuffing his hand in his pocket for something. He pulled out a pocketknife, using his legs to push himself away from Earl as he struggled to unfold the blade. Earl marched toward him and the boy was terrified at how fast he moved. His sweaty fingers slipped on the blade and Earl was upon him. Terrified, he flung an arm over his head. "Oh God, no!"

  Earl brought the axe down and cut into his forearm, breaking his bones. The young man let out a bloodcurdling scream as he tried to scramble away and defend himself at the same time. But Earl was right on top of him and launched blow after blow onto his body.