John Manning - The Killing Room

It was, however, about to get more terrible.

Ryan heard a sound. He turned. He heard it again. He spun around.

It sounded as if someone was in the room with him, though he could plainly see he was alone.

But then he heard it again. Footsteps. Not from above. Not from outside the room. But within the very room.

His father’s study was large but very open. The desk was set near the windows, surrounded by wooden cabinets. The other half of the room contained two comfortable chairs positioned in front of a fireplace. There were no closets, no alcoves. If someone were in the room with him, Ryan would have been able to see them. There was nowhere for someone to hide.

The sound this time came from behind him. Spinning around once more, Ryan saw no one there.

But it had sounded as if someone had just walked up behind him!

“What the fuck?” he whispered to himself.

Now there was another sound. Metal. It sounded like metal being tapped against the tiles of the floor. Someone walking around the room, banging something made of metal. Not heavy metal. The sound almost had a musical tone to it. There was reverberation in the air. If Ryan strained his ears, he could still hear it.

“What the fuck is going on?” he whispered again, and for the first time, he felt a little flicker of fear.

He would break the window. It was the only way. He picked up a heavy marble paperweight from his father’s desk and aimed it at the glass. But even as he did so, he heard the sound again. A footstep. The tapping of metal against tile.

He glanced around quickly.

And this time he saw it.

A man. A man in dirty overalls and a straggly beard. And in his hand he held an enormous pitchfork, its sharp tines scraping against the floor.

“Who the fuck are you?” Ryan screamed.

The man stood there, gazing at him with eyes so dark that they seemed dead. There was no emotion in the man’s face. Only dumb, brute power.

“How did you get in here?” Ryan demanded.

It was amazing how many thoughts could rush in to fill his mind in so short a time. A new landscaper. That’s who it must be. Someone Dad hired. A big old dumbass. Blundered into the house.

Or maybe not so dumb. Maybe he was trying to rob the place…

But why would he be carrying a pitchfork? There were no haystacks on the property…

“Who are you?” Ryan asked again.

The man seemed jolted into movement by his words. He took a step toward Ryan.

Ryan drew his arm back and let the paperweight in his hands go flying across the room. He watched as the heavy object struck the brute in the forehead. It bounced off easily, leaving no mark, drawing no blood. The man didn’t even blink, didn’t even seem to notice. He just kept walking toward Ryan.

“Stay back!” Ryan shrilled.

Now the man lifted the pitchfork.

He means to kill me, Ryan thought. He is going to stick that thing right through me!

He leapt behind his father’s desk just as the pitchfork came crashing down, piercing the wall behind him instead. There was a second’s delay as the man extracted the prongs out of the plaster, just enough time for Ryan to yank open his father’s bottom desk drawer and remove the pistol he knew he kept inside. He stood, holding it toward the man, his hands shaking terribly.

“Come any closer and you are a dead man,” Ryan said.

The words didn’t faze the maniac. He just aimed his pitchfork at Ryan and resumed his approach. Ryan fired.

He saw the bullets hit the man. He saw them tear the fabric of his stained old overalls. He fired three shots. Each one tore through the man’s chest. But once again there was no blood. Once again there was no stopping the man.

“Please, don’t!” Ryan screamed, crumbling to floor as the man stood over him with the pitchfork. “Please don’t kill me! I beg you! I can make you rich! Richer than you ever dreamed of.”

The man with the black, dead eyes looked down at him.

“Rich,” Ryan cried, tears streaming down his face. “I can make you rich.”

“Kill him,” came a small voice from somewhere. “Kill him.”

The man seemed to hear it. He raised the pitchfork higher, intending to bring it down onto Ryan’s chest.

Ryan screamed and closed his eyes, bracing for the impact.

“What’s the matter?”

Chelsea’s voice. Ryan just continued screaming.

“What the fuck is the matter?”

He opened his eyes. Instead of the man with the pitchfork, his sister stood over him. She looked pissed.

“What is going on?”

“The man!” Ryan shouted, getting back to his feet. “Where is he? We’ve got to get out of here! He’ll kill us!”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Did you do too much coke?”

Ryan glared at Chelsea. “The man! He has a pitchfork! We’ve got to get out of here!” He grabbed her hand and began pulling her toward the door of the study. It was wide open now.

Chelsea shook off his grip. “Did you drop acid or something? Or are you doing crystal meth again?”

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Ryan shouted. “The man!”

“There’s no man!” Chelsea shouted back at him. “I’m upstairs, trying to sleep off this hangover, and I hear you screaming. And were those gunshots?” She looked down at the floor, stooping to pick up her father’s gun. “Who were you shooting at?”

“The man! The man with the pitchfork! He locked me in here and was going to kill me! You had to have seen him! I was right there!” He pointed to the spot behind the desk where he’d been cornered. “He was standing over me with the pitchfork when you came in!”

Chelsea made a face. “You are so fucked up on something, big brother. Don’t tell me you didn’t snort something up your nose.”

“I didn’t! I’m totally sober! Totally straight!”

Chelsea laughed. “I came down here, and the door was open, and I saw you cowering behind Daddy’s desk. You were alone, Ryan! Alone! No man with any pitchfork!”

“There was a man! I shot at him! The bullets didn’t even slow him down!”

Chelsea rolled her eyes, not unlike the way Ryan had done earlier. “Okay, whatever. Just go upstairs and lie down, okay? Just chill. And no more of whatever you were smoking or snorting.”

Ryan couldn’t form the words. What had just happened to him?

His sister pushed past him. “I’m going back to sleep. Please! No more screaming or shooting guns!”

He grabbed her arm. “He must still be in the house,” he told her. “He must have snuck out when you opened the door. We’ve got to get out of here!”

Once again she shook him off her. “The door wasn’t closed, Ryan. It was open. I could see you from the hallway. Listen to me! There was no man!”

Her eyes held his. Ryan began to shudder. He wrapped his arms around himself.

Chelsea walked out of the room and headed back up the stairs.

Ryan couldn’t stop trembling. He looked around the room, ran out into the hallway, peered out the windows into the yard. There was no man. No sign any man had ever been there. The front door was locked. He checked every room in the house.

There was no man.

He returned to the study and looked around. Was Chelsea right? Had he done some coke? Maybe he had. He often resorted to blow when he was crazed with work and stress. Maybe he’d been feeling stressed out about leaving for Maine tomorrow and had decided to get a little high. Maybe he’d done a line and now he couldn’t remember doing it. Maybe it was bad stuff. Crack. Maybe it was crack. And maybe it had done things to his mind…

It was only then that he remembered the wall.

He hurried over to look at it.

He gasped.

They were there.

Five holes.

Five holes where the prongs of the pitchfork had pierced the plaster.