Saving Autumn: Two Houses Connected -- Part 8

Autumn hated nursing homes.

It smelled like urine and feces.

The staff was inhospitable and condescending.

She didn't know why anyone would put their elderly relatives in such a place.

An orderly led Autumn and Tommy along the hallway of beige walls and cheap tile flooring to door 306, knocked on the door and then opened it without bothering to wait on a response.

"Miss Longstreet?"

"It's Mrs. Longstreet. How many times do I have to tell you? I was married for more years than you've been alive."

"You gonna be nice? You have some visitors."

"Don't talk to me like I'm a five-year-old! I have socks older than you."

He nodded. "Well, if you're not gonna be nice, I'll just have to tell them that you're having a bad day. They'll have to wait for another day."

"Do you know how old I am? I might not have another day."

"You gonna be good?"

Autumn couldn't see Mrs. Longstreet, but she could feel the cold stare from where he was standing.

"You know who has to clean it up if I mess myself?"

The smile fell off the orderly's face. "You have heart failure. You're not incontinent. You mess yourself, and you'll sit in it until I get caught up."

"Send 'em in," she snapped.

The orderly gave Tommy and Autumn an exhausted look and opened the door.

"If you need anything, I'll be at the nurse's station."

Autumn looked after him and then followed Tommy inside.

They passed the kitchenette on the way in. All the lights were out and the shades drawn on the windows. The smell of the apartment reminded Autumn of the odor of a dirty litter box.

Past the kitchenette, stood a small den where a very old and skinny woman sat in a lift chair staring into the television which seemed to be playing "All My Children."

Molly Longstreet was wearing a blue mumu with giant, red flowers and gumming her lips.

"Hello Mrs. Longstreet," Tommy said.

She turned her head in the direction of his voice and squinted.

"Cummir, yungun, and let me get a closer look at ye."

Tommy stepped closer.

"Good lord! You look like you got one foot in the grave."

Tommy ignored her and turned to Autumn. "This is Special Agent Autumn Welborn."

She squinted again, this time at Autumn.

"What do you want?"

Tommy gave her an innocent look. "You might ask us to sit?"

"Pull up a stump! I ain't stoppin ye."

Tommy and Autumn took a seat at the love seat just before the window, and Autumn flipped through her legal pad and found her place.

"Autumn here has some questions she'd like to ask you about Willie."

"Willie? He's dead."

Autumn cleared her throat. "We just want to make sure that there was no error in his conviction."

Tommy gave her an appreciative nod.

"Little late fur that, ain't it?"

She shook her head. "We're auditing the Sheriff's Office."

She bunched her lips together. "Naw, they ain't no mistake. Them two boys hated each other."

"Why?"

Molly Longstreet sighed as if Autumn was imposing on her. "It started when Willie's girl came up missin. Willie always blamed 'em."

Autumn scribbled her response.

"Why?"

The old woman frowned. "He wasn't too good with women. It was Momma's fault. It was down-right mean the way she used to do 'em."

"Who, Willie?" Autumn said.

"No," she snapped. "Aaron. Our younger brother. Anyhow, Willie's girl looked a lot like momma. I don't recollect exactly what happened, but I know Willie took his girl and Aaron to town for somethin, an' th' next day, she came up missin."

Autumn looked at Tommy. "Did you know about this?"

Tommy rolled his eyes. "Aaron had an aliby."

Autumn looked back at Molly. "I thought Willie and Aaron's quarrel was over some property that your father left Aaron in his Will."

She shook her head. "That was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Both Willie and Aaron were high-strung."

Autumn jotted it down.

"What about Willie. How was he with women?"

She grimaced impatiently. "He was like Daddy. Mean but he wouldn't kill nobody."

"You said something about how your mother treated Aaron. What did you mean?"

"He'd get in a tussle with me and Vicky when we were kids, and he'd hit us. Momma would dress him up like a girl and take him to town -- make 'em wear it all day. Sometimes she'd threaten to cut off his peter. 'Coupla times, she made 'em pull it out, and she held a knife over it and made 'em beg."

"Did she ever do any of this to Willie?"

"'Course not! Momma wasn't right, by the time Aaron came along. Daddy had beat 'er too much."

Autumn gave Tommy a look of condemnation. Tommy gaped back on her with a worried expression.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A red door.

Autumn looked at it from the middle of a circular room of black and white marble tiles, exquisitely carved and stained mahogany panels and antique white walls.

She looked over her shoulder. -- A grand staircase -- each step adorned with black and white ceramic tiles causing them to look like the grids on a chessboard. And rising from either side of this staircase were evenly spaced brass pillars supporting what appeared to be two enormously heavy handrails made of curving oak.

She looked back at the door and frowned hard.

Who would dare?

It wasn't there before, but someone posted a sign on the door while her back was turned. -- A simple but gaudy black and white sign reminding her of the days of old when a millionaire lived on every block, and Rockefellers and Vanderbuilts erected enormous trophy houses so lavish -- so inexplicably expensive -- so ridiculously gluttonous -- that all men would look upon them forever in awe of their vanity.

"Who would dare post a sign on a door in my house," she demanded, her voice echoing like thunder through the cavernous corridors.

But then, she lived alone, and she seldom had guests. Unless there was a censor unseen, she had posted the sign. That had to be it. Someone was intruding in her house. But no one could get in unless she allowed them. And she lived alone.

"We all do, here," she mumbled.

Sadly but with security and wondering about herself all the time, she studied the simple sign hanging on her door. The blotchy, yellow paper could be nothing other than parchment, and a simple thick line of black ink boxed in the fine lettering.

And the lettering, the hand -- calligraphy -- something she knew nothing about, or did she?

And the words Do Not Enter mocked her from the center of the page.

She frowned soberly and marched toward the sign -- the sounds of her pumps clacking against the marble tiles swiftly reverberating like the reports of a shot gun off the walls.

Who would dare?

I live alone.

We all do here.

She reached the door and glared at the sign wondering what she or some uninvited someone didn't want her to see.

She stretched out her hand.

Her fingers touched the cold brass.

She swung the door open.

Beyond -- the sounds of crickets chirping, the rushing of water from a stream, and a winding glass catwalk trailing off into darkness. A path made for her, one she was certain she'd traveled before, and one she must always travel alone.

"We all do here," she sighed.

She stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind her and looked back at her house.

Immaculate.

White.

Rising three stories into the black, and glowing without electricity. The third story was much wider than the second, and the second much wider than the first. It looked like someone had taken one of the layered pyramids of Egypt and turned it upside down.

But how could that be?

The enormous weight of the first and second stories should crush the bottom.

It should topple in the wind like a top-heavy pine.

Yet it stood as strong as an ancient temple.

She turned and squinted back down the catwalk, and far of in the distance but growing nearer, she saw her destination.

A house that looked precisely like her own connected to her own. But different.

It didn't have the lightless glow of her house, and in the openings where windows should have been -- nothing but blackness -- like the empty eye sockets in a skull. Only flakes of the white paint that had once covered its exterior remained. It was nothing more than a sad hulk of bare concrete, and rotting green wood.

Compelling her.

Calling her further along the path.

It's allure subtle but irresistible like the song of a siren, or the site of a grisly car crash.

She reached the front door before she realized she was moving. Chips of the red paint that had once covered the rusty door lay at her feet like tiny strips of shredded paper.

She touched the door gently with her palms and felt the pulse of revelation waiting for her on the other side.

Should she or shouldn't she?

We all live alone here.

She swung the door open.

She stepped over the threshold.

The door slammed shut behind her.

Then, subtle noises.

A dripping of water somewhere way off. It's sound maddening -- like the tick of a grandfather clock on execution day. The air soured into fumes.

Rat excrement.

Urine.

And someone's body heat was on the side of her face. It was as if he were leaning close to whisper a secret in her ear.

She glanced in the direction of the warmth but saw nothing. She heard shuddering breaths. The brown and green smell of rotten teeth.

Then a whisper surfaced. At first, almost inaudible, then swelling until the sound of it nearly split her skull.

"I wanna see you bleed."

"No," she cried.

Suddenly, bright lights.

Someone wearing a green wart-laden witches mask jumped up in front of her. She shrieked, and ripped the mask of the girl before her.

Mom! Cindy!

But the thoughts sounded simultaneously like two people speaking at once, and both voices where her own.

And Cindy couldn't be a day older than twenty.

"That wasn't even funny," she snapped.

"Yes it was," Cindy assured, still laughing. But her attention had been directed elsewhere.

"What were you thinking? I could've knocked your block off!"

Cindy pointed in front of her. Autumn followed finger to a person wearing a gorilla costume who was holding a miniature pumpkin. The gorilla came to a bouncing halt before her.

"What?" Autumn snapped.

The gorilla pushed the pumpkin into her stomach.

She took it and found a typewritten note on the top of it.

"Open Immediately," it read.

"This isn't some kind of lame joke is it?"

The gorilla shook his head vigorously. Autumn gave Cindy an interrogative look.

"I dunno, Cindy, what do you think?"

She winked.

Autumn looked back at the gorilla.

"If something jumps out of this at me, you're gonna become the missing link."

Cindy giggled girlishly. Autumn looked back at her, back to the gorilla, and then lifted the top off the pumpkin, and dangling from a piece of thread affixed to the lid of the pumpkin was an engagement ring.

The gorilla mask flew across the room, and the man behind knelt. Autumn gasped. -- It was Tommy, but he had all his hair, and his mustache didn't have a hint of gray in it.

"Autumn Marie Elder," he was saying, "will you marry me?"

Autumn screamed and covered her eyes with her left hand.

Someone kissed her. She moved her hand.

She was lying down in a room of lime green walls. She rolled over, and Tommy, still just as young, stared back at her from the opposite side of the bed.

"Don't go," she pleaded.

Tommy sat up, swung his legs off the side of the bed and lifted his National Guard uniform shirt off the bed post.

"I have to."

Autumn sat up and folded her arms over her blue nightgown-- poking her lower lip out like a pouting child. "Why?"

Tommy stood up, faced her, and grinned.

"You like to eat, don't you?"

"No, I want you."

Tommy laughed and shook his head.

"So does Sergeant Edwards, and he has a gun."

"Fine! Go play with Sergeant Edwards' gun. See if I care."

Tommy knelt and looked into her eyes.

"I love you."

Autumn grinned mischievously. "Awe -- wanna have sex?"

Tommy stood shaking his head and stuffed his arms through his shirt. "You're gonna get me court-marshaled."

Autumn folded her arms and poked out her lip again. "Zat mean you don't wanna have sex."

The soft expression fell off Tommy's face, and he stared at her for a moment. Then he leapt onto the bed and kissed her hard.

When she opened her eyes, he was gone.

She was staring up at the ceiling in the same room at what looked like the shape of a bear frozen in the plaster.

A heavy knock sounded on the front door.

She rolled over and covered the back of her head with the pillow.

Then she heard the front door swing open.

"Maintenance," a gruff voice called.

An alarm shot through her body. A man was in the house with her, and she was only wearing a nightgown.

She jumped out of bed and started for the rolling closet doors, but before she took two steps he was standing in her doorway.

Tall and slim to the point of looking unhealthy.

Ratty red hair and a beard.

Sunken eyes.

He sat down the metal tool box he was carrying.

"Sorry ma'am. I didn't think no one was in here."

"I didn't call for maintenance," she snapped.

"It's regular maintenance. We're just checkin the wall heaters to make sure you don't burn yourself up when you turn them on this winter."

"I'm moving out in two weeks."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Miss, but I still have to check 'em."

"Well, can I get dressed?"

"Oh, I'll just check out the units in the kitchen and den first."

Autumn glared at him. "You do that."

She turned around to collect her housecoat from her bedpost when she felt him behind her. She spun around and felt a sharp blow to her abdomen.

She stared as his face.

No emotion.

The room went black behind him, and suddenly, the smell of rat urine and mold.

She looked down.

The handle of a knife protruded from her bare abdomen.

Autumn sprang forward panting into the darkness of her motel room. She glanced at the green LCD of the alarm clock.

2:51 AM.

And now she was terrified.

* * * Coming Soon: Saving Autumn Book 2: The Cyclical Machine * * *