Murder House

51

He is cold, though the sun beats down on him at this beach café, the temperature nearing ninety degrees.

He has to piss, though he just went twenty minutes ago.

His stomach churns like rusty grinding gears, though he’s just eaten.

He sees her through his sunglasses, basking in the white-bright sunlight, a bronzed, lithe body, the backpack over both shoulders, a white tank top and denim shorts, sunglasses perched atop her white-blond hair, as she takes a photo of herself on her smartphone with the Atlantic Ocean in the background.

He watched her. Watched her as she ate at this very café — vegetables and hummus, a glass of Chardonnay — and texted on her smartphone, and told the waitress what she’s doing this summer, and got a recommendation for a good beach to “crash on” tonight. She and the server even talked music briefly — she likes the modern pop stuff but prefers classical, cello music mostly, of course Yo-Yo Ma and du Pré but also a newer crop, like Alisa Weilerstein, whoever that is.

He likes the name Alisa. It would be cool to have a girlfriend named Alisa.

He wrote down everything she said. The beach where she will sleep, her musical preferences. And this, too: Sally. She told the waitress her name was Sally.

Not quite as exciting a name as Alisa.

He reaches for the check the waitress has left and notices the tremble in his hand. His fingernails chewed down to the point of bloodiness. He shouldn’t chew his nails. He knows that. His mother would say it makes him look “unrefined.”

But he’s got lots of... refinement. Is that a word? He’ll look it up later.

He feels the pressure building in his bladder, a dam on the verge of bursting.

Sally is exiting the beach now, walking up onto the asphalt parking lot, her hands gripping the shoulder straps of the backpack. The muscles in her legs straining, well defined. Her arms are hard, too — long thin slivers of muscle.

But his favorite part is the backpack. It means she’s passing through. Not a native. A loner.

No friend or spouse or lover expecting her home tonight.

Holden is smart. Maybe not school-smart. But he isn’t dumb.

And he knows his history well:

He walks over to his motorcycle and throws on his helmet but keeps the shield up. Climbs onto the bike. Looks over at Sally as she passes. Nods to her.

Too nervous to speak, though. And probably best that he doesn’t. His voice might shake. He’s still a little nervous. A little rusty.

He drives off, lets time pass, the sun disappearing in a burst of color to the west.

He uses his secret entrance into 7 Ocean Drive, the one specially for him. The one he used when Annie and Dede were staying there. The one he uses when he wants to sleep there himself, which he does from time to time.

It’s his house, after all. Even if nobody else knows it.

Once he’s inside, down in the basement, he drops his Fun Bag and gets to work. He lays down the tarp, tests the chain’s connection to the ceiling, locks and unlocks the handcuffs.

Tonight he’s going to feast on duck and pheasant, on grapes and cheese.

And then he’s going to find the girl named Sally and bring her back to the chamber.

52

Sally Pfiester stretches her legs in the cushy sand and rests her head against her soft pack, the water crashing to the shore only ten yards away. She looks up into a purple sky and lets out a satisfied breath. This is just what she needed, this summer. After a soul-killing desk job for two years and a ridiculous decision to accept that marriage proposal, she was starting down a road from which she would not be able to turn aside. Oh, he was a nice enough guy, and he had a terrific smile, a good sense of humor, but he didn’t ignite that pilot light inside her.

Isn’t life supposed to be exciting? Aren’t you supposed to love, not merely tolerate, your job? Aren’t you supposed to commit to a man not because it’s “time,” or because you want kids, or because he’d be a good provider — but because he makes your heart go pitter-pat?

Of course. Yes to all of that. It seems so obvious now. It didn’t when she was stuck in that rut, like a hamster on a wheel. But once she opened her eyes and broke off the engagement, quit her shitty job and gathered up her savings for a year of travel, it revealed itself to her so clearly. She wants to explore. She wants to meet people and experience new things. She wants a man who’s adventurous, nonjudgmental, not materialistic. She wants a man who is patient and at ease with himself. She wants a man who transports her to a world she’s never known. Or fuck it, she’ll do without a man altogether.

The decision to travel alone — deemed by her mother insane, by her envious friends awesome — was the best she could have made. She’s only nine weeks in thus far, traveling the beaches of Long Island this summer by foot before heading to the West Coast and then Europe, but she’s learned so much about herself, about what she wants and needs and expects from life.

And damn, all this walking has restored her triathlon physique from two years ago. She feels like herself again.

She’s reaching for her smartphone — because solitude has its limits; she still posts regularly on Facebook and texts with her friends — when she sees something out of the corner of her eye, a figure emerging from the ocean in a wet suit, the glow of moonlight on him. She’s a night swimmer, too, but it’s a bit chilly this evening, so she took a pass.

The man trudges up the beach in her general direction, but then stops. For the first time, she notices that he’s staked out a spot on the beach just like her, about twenty yards to her left. There aren’t that many people sleeping on the beach tonight, but then again, she chose this remote beach for that very reason.

A light comes on by the man’s spot — a flashlight? No, a battery-charged lantern — and he seems to be settling in for the night. She watches him for a time and then returns her gaze to the sky.

Sometimes she likes company and seeks it out, hangs out at bonfires, shares a bottle of wine or a joint, but other nights, like this, she prefers the quiet of her own company. It’s her choice. That’s the best part. It’s her decision entirely.

And then: Faint at first, and then her hearing adjusts to it, over the sound of rolling waves — music. The soft whine, the dramatic upward lilt to the impossibly high notes, so sweet and despairing.

Cello music, she thinks. He’s listening to cello music.

53

He can see why Sally likes this music. It’s really good. It can be really loud and it can be really quiet, really fast and really slow. It can be violent. It can be chaotic. And it can be like a lullaby, almost. It makes him feel happy and sad within the same song — except they don’t call it a song, they call it a concerto. He already knew that. He knew they were called concertos before he looked up the cello stuff this afternoon.

This music can do one other thing, too, at least tonight: It can get Sally’s attention, up the beach a ways.

“Excuse me.”

He pretends to be startled at Sally’s voice. It’s actually not that hard to pretend, because he’s nervous, anyway. So it kinda works double like that.

“Sorry to bother you. Is this — is this Weilerstein?”

“Oh, um... is the music too... too loud?”

“No, not at all—”

“Sorry.”

“No, I love this music. You’re a fan?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “I don’t know much about it. I just... like it.”

See, he planned this out. He knew that if he pretended like he knew all sorts of stuff about the cello, she’d ask him questions he couldn’t answer. That’s an example that he’s maybe not so smart in school, but smart in planning stuff.

She laughs. “That’s all you need to know. People get so caught up in all the pretentious bullshit.”

“Yeah. It’s just so...” He leans forward. “Like you feel happy and sad at the same time, kinda.”

“I totally know what you mean. It can be so emotional, right?”

He can hardly see Sally’s face as she stands over him, but he can smell her. Fruit. She smells like fruit.

“I have... wine,” he says. “If you...”

“Yeah, I mean... if that’s cool.”

“Okay, yeah.” Still nervous. But that’s okay, because it makes him seem harmless to her.

She sits down next to him on the blanket he’s laid out, next to the Fun Bag with the wine bottle sticking out.

Through the speaker on his iPod, the cellist bursts out of a lull with a crisp flourish.

Holden pours some wine into a plastic glass and hands it to Sally. “It’s not... fancy or anything,” he says.

“No, that’s cool, whatever.”

He hopes she doesn’t notice his fingernails, all chewed up. But it’s dark.

They listen to the music. The smell of the ocean, the gentle rush of the waves, the berry scent of Sally’s shampoo...

“Now, this is paradise,” Sally says. “I mean, what’s better than listening to music like this with the waves crashing out here, the stars in the sky, and a glass of wine?”

The wind kicks up, plays with Sally’s hair. She has on a sweatshirt, but her legs are bare. He considers offering her a blanket — but better to stay low-key.

One concerto ends, Sally making a comment about the fluidity of the cellist’s bow strokes, and before long she has drained her glass. That should be enough.

“I’m Sally, by the way.”

“Holden,” he says.

She looks over at him. “That’s a nice name. Unique. Like The Catch — oh. Oh, wow.” She puts her hand on her chest, sits upright.

A new concerto. The cellist hits a climax early on, joined by other strings and some percussion.

“I think... I think something...” Sally lets out a low moan.

He lifts his face to the sky, feels the gentle breeze. “I think... it’s time,” he says.

“I–I feel funny.” Sally lets out a moan. She tries to push herself up, but it’s like the signals aren’t reaching her limbs. She can’t make her arms or legs work.

“I finally... get it,” he says. Warmth spreads through him, like a cup of hot cocoa.

There is a monster inside me. It can sleep for days, for months. But it will never go away.

“Help... help me.” Sally turns to him, her face tight with fear, her eyes searching his. He watches her face closely, the trembling lips, the wide eyes, the flaring nostrils, pure horror. So pure. So real.

She’s losing her motor functions. She can’t move her arms or legs anymore. She’ll have trouble speaking, too. But she can still breathe.

“I... pl-please...” Just a whisper now. Her arms give out and she falls prone on the blanket, the music dropping to a low point. Lots of highs and lows with this cello music. Like a roller coaster. Like his stomach feels sometimes.

Her lips are quivering and her eyes move frantically about. That’s going to be the extent of her physical movements until the drug wears off. By then, it will be too late.

He puts himself over her, lowers his face to hers. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispers, his voice feeling stronger now. “You can’t... move, but... you’ll still feel.”

Her trembling lips try to form a word.

“You’ll feel... everything,” he says.

54

He rests his cheek against the concrete wall, sniffing the faint smell of bleach. The chamber is all concrete — floor, walls, ceiling. The acoustics are poor and the lighting is dim; there is no electricity in here and zero sunlight, so he makes do with three kerosene lanterns he has placed strategically. The effect is haunting, the light constantly changing as the small torches flicker inside their containers.

Is this what it used to look like? He imagines it is. The walls were probably padded in some way back then, and of course there were a cage and a long chain — but otherwise, this seems right.

“Let me go, mister... I promise I won’t say anything...”

Sally: straining in a backward position, suspended in the air like a roasting pig over a fire. Her back arched painfully, her hands cuffed behind her back, her legs bound together likewise, then the hands and feet joined together by yet a third set of cuffs, attached to the chain that loops through a hook in the ceiling and runs to the crank attached to the wall. A crude pulley system. Not so crude, really, in fact quite well constructed and in fair working order, despite decades of nonuse. They don’t make ’em like they used to.

The metal pole, built into the floor, protruding upward five feet with a steel tip, only two or three feet below Sally’s straining, suspended body, lined up almost precisely with the lowest point of her body, near her belly button, her intestines, allowing gravity to do its work when the time comes.

He turns the crank one full rotation. Sally’s body free-falls downward a foot or so, the chain shaking but holding. Her head bobs from the impact, but her body hardly moves, bound up as tightly as it is. She lets out a squeal, more animal than human.

He walks over to her to measure things up, her terrified eyes, in the flickering light, like something primeval. She is so beautiful. Fear is so raw, so pure.

She tries to wiggle free. Admirable, but useless. She is basically hog-tied in midair, and even if she were somehow able to free herself of the various steel handcuffs — to pull a stunt beyond even Houdini — it would only mean a quicker and more violent death on the spear.

Maybe that’s what she wants now. Maybe she’s given up. Dede and Annie didn’t. They fought. The prostitute, Barbie, though — she gave up. That was the best, watching her eyes surrender all hope, waiting, praying for the end to come.

He touches Sally’s face and she snaps her head away violently.

That wasn’t very nice.

“Let me down from here, mister, please! I have money!”

He can’t let her go. He realizes that now.

I can no longer resist it, any more than I can resist my very existence.

Shaken, he returns to the wall and grabs hold of the crank.

There is a monster inside me. It can sleep for days, for months.

He turns the crank another full rotation.

But it will never go away.

It will feast on me, prey on me, until the day I die.