John Manning - The Killing Room

“The force is angry that we survived,” Douglas explained.

Jeanette nodded. “I deduced that. In the study we saw a dead man.”

“Dean,” Uncle Howard said with evident grief.

“And in the parlor were the bloody remains of a young woman,” Jeanette added.

“Oh, no,” Carolyn cried.

“Who?” Douglas asked.

“It was hard to see for all the blood,” Jeanette said. Her long years of silence seemed to have left her unnaturally calm. She did not blanch as she described the scene. “The woman had been terribly mutilated. She seemed young, so I wouldn’t remember her. No doubt she was born after my own night in that room.” She paused. “But she was blond. I could see that much.”

“Chelsea,” Uncle Howie said, his voice breaking.

“Was there anyone else in the parlor?” Douglas asked.

“No one else,” Jeanette informed him. Douglas didn’t know if that was a hopeful or an ominous sign.

“Jeanette,” Carolyn said, “you need to know you’re in danger here. And so is Michael. There is a killer in the house, and unless we can find out a way to stop him, he is bent on taking us all before the day is over.”

“We should call the police!” Michael said, whipping out his phone only to see it had lost all service.

“I told you as we walked through the house viewing the carnage that the police were useless,” Jeanette said. “In my long years sitting there at Windcliffe, I saw many things. I saw that what happens here is beyond the control of ordinary humans. I saw things that no one else could see in this house, sitting here all alone, isolated on top of this hill.” She paused. “And from everything that I have seen, I think I know who’s doing the killing here.”

“His name is David Cooke,” Carolyn told her. “And I need to tell you again that he is extremely dangerous.”

Jeanette shrugged. “I’m not frightened. I survived a night in that room, remember? You did, too, didn’t you? I saw you in there, Carolyn. You and Douglas. You saw what I saw. You saw the terrible thing that happened that night.”

“The murder of Beatrice?” Douglas asked.

“You didn’t see that, because neither did I,” Jeanette corrected him. “You saw her dead body. But it was someone else you saw murdered.”

“Beatrice’s baby,” Carolyn said.

Jeanette nodded.

Uncle Howie groaned. They all turned to look at him.

“We saw Clem kill the baby,” Jeanette said, approaching her uncle. “It was a terrible thing to see.”

The old man was silently crying.

“It’s Malcolm doing this, isn’t it, Uncle Howard?” Jeanette asked. “It’s Malcolm who’s the controlling force of that room.”

The old man just continued to sob.

“Who is Malcolm?” Douglas asked.

Jeanette looked up at him. “Malcolm,” she told him, “was Beatrice’s baby.”

Ryan was getting desperate. He could not find a way out of the house. Doors and windows refused to open; glass refused to break, even with heavy pewter candlesticks tossed at it. What kind of spell had been cast over this place? Were the forces of the room so powerful that they could trap him inside forever?

Ryan shook the knob on the kitchen door again. It didn’t budge.

It wasn’t fair! Others had gotten out. He’d watched from the window as Linda and Paula and some other woman ran across the yard with those two bratty kids toward the barn. How did they get out? How come whatever forces were controlling this house took pity on them and not on him?

Because of what we did.

He tried to block the thought from his mind, but was unsuccessful.

When you tamper with the lottery, when you don’t follow the rules, you are punished.

Ernest Young had learned that lesson when he’d run away, only to be massacred with his family in their beds.

And now Ryan’s family was being massacred.

Running from room to room in the house, he had found the mutilated bodies of his father and sister. It was easy to think they were being punished for their deception. But Dean was dead, too. Ryan understood that, in the end, they were all fair game. They were all just sport for the bloodlust of the thing that was tormenting them.

He tried the French doors that led out onto the terrace. But again they were sealed shut. In frustration, he slammed his fist against one of the panes of glass, but the glass might as well have been iron. He just bruised his knuckles.

A short time before, he’d had a glimmer of hope. A woman and a man had come through the front door. The door had opened easily from the outside, allowing them to enter. Ryan had been watching from an alcove; he had become so paranoid that he trusted no one, so he stayed very quiet, not revealing himself. After the man and woman had passed down the hallway, Ryan ran to the door, hopeful that it was now open. But it had reverted to immobility. He burst into tears.

Now he prowled from room to room, feeling like a caged animal. His mind no longer thought logically or critically. He just wanted to get out.

And then the laughter began.

High-pitched and shrill. Like a child’s. The laughter came from everywhere, as if an unseen audience were watching his crazy antics and finding them all too amusing.

“Stop!” Ryan cried, wandering into the foyer. “Stop laughing at me!”

But the laughter just went on. The sound assaulted him, almost like spears being tossed at him from all sides of the room. Each gale of laughter pierced him, hurt him. Ryan cried out in pain.

“Stop!” he shouted. “Please stop!”

He fell to his knees, clapping his hands over his ears, but the laughter only increased in volume and intensity.

“Kill me! Take me!” Ryan cried. “Just stop laughing at me!”

That brought about even more hysterical laughter.

Ryan collapsed into a ball, sobbing. Terrified, broken, he pissed his pants.

All around him the room filled up with laughter. It seemed to Ryan that he’d never hear anything else again except the laughter. He fell over onto his side, reduced to a blubbering fool on a floor covered with blood and urine.

From the foyer came the sound of laughter.

Carolyn faced Howard Young with new urgency. “You must tell us!” she demanded. “You must tell us everything you know!”

The old man just sat there, yellow tears rolling down the flaking parchment of his cheeks.

Douglas had peered out the door. “Ryan’s out there,” he reported back to the group. “I can hear his voice.”

“Mr. Young,” Carolyn said. “Is Jeanette correct? Is all this being done by Beatrice’s baby?”

Slowly, the old man nodded his head.

“How is that possible?” Carolyn asked. “For a mere baby…”

“Malcolm has learned a great deal in his eighty years in that room,” Jeanette explained. “He has learned to mimic our speech, our words… He has even learned how to make letters on a wall.”

Carolyn stared at her, dumbstruck.

“He’s learned other things as well,” Jeanette continued. “He’s learned about the ways in which people seek revenge.”

“Dear God,” Carolyn said.

“But at his heart, Malcolm is still just a baby, with a baby’s emotions. He is angry and frustrated and frightened.”

“All of this,” Carolyn said, the full realization hitting her, “is merely a baby’s tantrum.”

“That’s right,” Jeanette said. “That is an excellent way of putting it.”

“How do we stop him then?” Douglas asked.

Jeanette had turned once again to the old man in the chair. “Uncle Howard,” she said, “you must tell us everything that happened eighty years ago in this house. There could still be time to do what is needed to end this!”