Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

When Father and I left the room, now deemed ready, Father stopped by the heavy steel door, the shining heads of the sliding bolts poking inch-high from the edges of its frame.

“One last thing,” Father said, taking off his lab coat and hanging it on a bent steel nail next to a mask and a tarnished yellow rubber suit. “And this is the most important thing of all. There’s always a chance, a very, very slim chance, that Mother won’t keep turning. That she’ll turn once, and stay that way. Forever. You understand?”

I nodded.

“If that happens… or, if anything goes wrong. If I’m not here, for whatever reason…” He paused, because there were too many wrongs to think about. “Well. There’s one last fail-safe.”

I waited, thinking it silly, knowing Father would always be around, but willing to hear him out, to learn.

“It’s a timer, see?” he said. “I start it every time your mother goes into the room. If for any reason, any reason at all, I don’t stop or reset that timer in twenty-four hours, the room fills with gas.”

“Whoosh!” I said, mimicking Father’s hand gesture.

“That’s right,” he said. “That way, if something, well… if something goes amiss, then all you have to do, see, is wait it out. You don’t have to do a thing. Just wait twenty-four hours, and that timer will tick off, and things will be handled inside. The gas will go off, and the gas is poison. Poison that kills. You got that?”

I remembered something from my lessons. “Like the cat.”

Father’s eyebrows came together in confusion.

“Schroeder’s cat.”

Father thought a second, then laughed out loud, a wonderful laugh that filled the steel and concrete room he and his friends had just completed.

“Schrodinger!” Father bellowed, still laughing. Laughing so hard he was wiping tears from his eyes. “Schrodinger’s cat. Not Schroeder. He’s from Peanuts.”

Father continued laughing, wiped his eyes once more, and rested a hand on my shoulder, pushed me gently from the room.

“But yeah. Sure, I guess. Like that.”

We tested the room many times. Mother inspected every inch of the walls, the floors, the vents, the cameras. Inspected the restraints, the heavy steel cuffs, the chains and cables that held them, the clasps that bound them fast to the wall.

The first night we were all a bit nervous.

Mother had always been with Father’s friends on these nights. They were infrequent, yes, but regular. But Father seemed calm, and we both helped secure her to the new restraints. She smiled at me as I locked her wrist tight. She watched our work closely, studied the clamps around her wrists, tested them. She yanked her arms against them hard, making them clink. I took an unthinking step away from her.

“Not that testing them now matters,” she said that first time, smiling sadly at Father. “I’m half the strength.”

“If that,” Father agreed, but nodded. “They’ll hold. They could hold a mad gorilla.”

Later, Father and I sat outside the room. Father watched the monitors closely. I sat on a stiff, dusty-smelling couch behind him, reading a comic book.

“There,” Father said.

I set down my comic, walked over to the monitors. I watched in grainy color, like a television, as my mother turned.

Her eyes, then her skin. She looked up at the cameras, watching us watching her. As I looked on in fascination, she went still. Sort of… slumped. I held my breath. A trick , I thought.

Then she went mad. A whipping tornado wrapped in flesh, all teeth and nails, venom and fire. Her mouth spread open, chin dropping impossibly, eyes bulbous, her muscles doubling in size, squeezing against the inside of the restraints. She screamed at the pain. Pure fury. She looked so strong. She thrashed and kicked like a pale-skinned monster.

“Holding just fine,” Father said, sounding relieved, and a bit proud. “Holding just fine.” He turned to me and smiled.

“She won’t be getting us tonight.”

In the months after Mother’s first night in the new room, things went perfectly. I enjoyed having Mother home more, even though some nights I couldn’t see her. It comforted me because she was still there . Still home. Even if she was locked away.

Father’s friends came over and watched the first few times, assuring themselves of the safety and security of the room. I sat nearby and listened while Father explained the fail-safes to them. He patiently explained the gas, and the timer.

The men watched, some shifted their feet. A few turned away from the monitors.

When they were all there, crowded around, I could not see Mother on the screens, but I knew she had already turned. They called it turning because she turned a little and she was one thing. But then she kept turning and was herself again. Turning and turning forever. The Great Fear was that she would turn and not turn back. It had happened to others. I always prayed it would never happen to her.

“Here,” Father said, and flipped a switch.

The room filled with screams. Mother’s screams. They were terrible. They reminded me of a screeching eagle I had seen on television. Screeching so loud it echoed in the room around us, swirled around our heads.

“She could talk if she wanted,” Father said, raising his voice to be heard. “She could sound just like herself. But not when she’s angry like this.” He watched her writhe a moment, as if considering. “Not when she’s hungry.”

“Turn it off,” one of the men said, the biggest one.

Father flipped the switch and the screeching stopped, leaving the room so thick with silence no one dared speak.

“Should he be here?” one man said, tilting his head toward me. Another man turned around to look at me, eyes narrowed, but by doing so exposed the small screen on the desk. I could see Mother, naked and twisting, bleeding from the wrists, teeth large and snapping, black tongue whipping across her lips.

Father looked at me, then back to the man, holding his eyes. The man seemed nervous and swallowed and said nothing more.

After a while they all seemed satisfied. They waited until the morning, waited until Mother was okay to be let out. Father went in, dressed her, treated her wounds. After a few minutes they came out. As always, Mother seemed tired, her skin slick with sweat and covered in a hot rash but pleased to have it behind her. Wrapped up in a coarse green blanket, she looked at me and winked. I tried to wink back—it was hard doing just one eye—but she smiled so I figured I’d done close enough.

They all talked then for a long time. I got bored and wandered across the basement and upstairs. I went outside, closed my eyes, and listened to the sounds of the neighborhood. Cars rolled by. Kids laughed from somewhere in the distance; behind a neighbor’s house, maybe. I opened my eyes, saw a man watering some bushes with a hose, watching me. It was so sunny and peaceful… I’ll never forget it.

After a few minutes I turned away, went back inside, and closed the door.

Once the routine had been established, I felt we were just like any other family.

The last evening, we sat around the dinner table. Mother had prepared fish and salad. We didn’t eat meat.

I drank milk. I drank a lot of milk, because my parents assured me it would help me grow. And I wanted to grow. Wanted it more than anything. I would be thirteen in two days, and I couldn’t wait. Thirteen meant manhood. Thirteen meant adult.