Free SHUDDERVILLE SIX by Mia Zabrisky

 
Episode Six
A Terrible Thing
    Dignity, Vermont
    There’s a house in Vermont you don’t want to know about. A Victorian ruin on the edge of a nondescript town. The front door is scratched and weathered beyond time, and the façade has a tired, ghostly look that makes you pause in mid-step.
    Natural forces have squeezed the house until it has taken on the distorted shape of a crushed cardboard box. As soon as you enter it, you can smell the wet insulation. You can hear the rain coming down, and the water seeping through the foundation walls. Walls so unstable, they will need shoring up to prevent their inevitable collapse.
    Picture a basement with very little afternoon light coming in through the ivy-covered casement windows. Picture a dungeon-like bathroom with a tarnished, cracked mirror that makes your face look freakish. See the gooseneck showerhead mounted on the wall, the funky drain on the floor, the rust-streaked porcelain tub and seat-less toilet. The smell of insanity is strongest down here—a dank musk, a black pit, a waterlogged silence.
    Now listen. Out of the darkness comes a low groan. Follow the groan through a long passageway, down three cement steps toward the back of the basement, where an old wooden door cracks open. The groan is coming from inside this small dark room.
    This is where Bella lives. Her wings forced back with twine.
    The small room smells of root vegetables and damp earth. On the far wall, lit by candles, is an odd alter composed of prosthetic limbs. A man stands with his back to us. He wears jeans, a T-shirt and a black mask that fits snuggly over his head. We can see the tips of his ears through the holes in the mask. He makes a low, repressed sound.
    Heaped around him in the shadows are the carcasses of plastic dolls, their glass eyes removed. Their hollow sockets stare out at us—apocalypse on a miniscule scale.
    The muscles of the man’s back contract. He is holding something in his hands, squeezing. His breathing becomes amplified, more rapid.
    We travel closer, over his shoulder—he is holding onto a woman, lovely, thin, so pale and waxen she could be dead. His thumbs are pressed into her painted white shoulders. She’s alive. She’s staring up into his face. Horrified by the sight of him. She despises him—everything he is and everything that he has done to her.
    Close on the man’s face—through the “mask” we see his eyes. They are piercing and frenzied. His ears are large and defined. He can hear everything with those ears. Even the smallest peep.
    He squeezes his thumbs into the woman’s painted shoulders and screams, cords of his neck standing out. He digs his thumbs deeper into the flesh of her arms and his voice builds to a rageful, insane hiss, like a pressure-cooker screaming.
    He screams until she can’t stand it anymore, until her wings pop open and spread fully behind her. Like an eagle about to take flight. The man joyously throws his head back and howls.
    Nobody can hear them down here.
    Bella just wants it to be over with.
    She wants him dead.
    Hope Hollow, New York
    Tobias Mandelbaum sat for a moment inside his parked car, observing the house on Welcome Street. The mailbox said Kincaid. He peeled off the wrapper and ate his candy bar in two or three bites, then carefully folded up the wrapper and stuck it in the glove compartment. He removed his sunglasses and wiped them on his shirt.
    He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Too much coffee hurt his stomach. He stepped out of the car, opened the trunk, took out the 30-year-old backpack and slung it over his shoulder. He stood for a moment, inhaling the fresh chilly air. Then he headed across the snowy front yard toward the house.
    Behind the house, the land sloped down into a field, and then rose up into the woods. Everything was dusted with powdery white snow. The first snowfall of the season. He could see his exhalations clouding the air as he approached the front door and then paused for a moment. You