IV. Woman
Ingrid had twice in her life visited the Toledo Zoo, located about seventy miles west of Norwalk. Two distinct things about it clung in her memory. The first was its rather odd parking scheme: Visitors were obliged to leave their cars in a lot on the far side of a multi-lane freeway, then walk through a tunnel to reach the main gate. Ingrid had done this at eight and then again at eleven years old. Both occasions provided the sensation of being buried alive. The walls shook as cars and trucks passed by overhead. The lights sometimes flickered.
The second thing she remembered was the smell from the gorilla pit. This smell was, in fact, impossible not to notice. Even before the exhibit came into view, the odor--a stench of sweat, dirty hair, and excrement--would be hovering in the air. Some visitors complained, others wrinkled their noses. Ingrid always made it a point never to be eating anything whilst passing through this section of the park, but that was all the further her intolerance went. She had known even then the animals themselves, though large and intimidating, were for the most part peaceful. Creatures like Randy, Ingrid had known (even then), were uglier by far than the gorillas would ever be.
Still, it was to a gorilla her mind leaped upon setting foot in the house. The living room smelled hideous. It looked to have been ransacked, as if an anthropoid had been at play with the furniture. The couch was overturned and torn apart, its cushions scattered. The television lay facedown on the floor. Also on the floor was a large and lethal-looking shard of wood Ingrid realized had been broken off from the banister. Next to the banister was a gigantic, wet blotch, the smell of which was unmistakable: urine. Someone (or something?) had peed on the floor.
"Dad?" Ingrid called.
The light in the kitchen was on; it spilled forth in a sardonic invitation to see more. Ingrid didn't want to see more, but jumped the puddle anyway and leaned to peek into the kitchen area. It looked much the same as the room behind her. Pots were scattered. Dishes were broken. The faucet was running.
Ingrid's feet dragged on the tiles. She called for Mister Semeska again and again received no answer. To her right was the dining table; it had been flipped over, so its legs now poked at the ceiling like the petrified limbs of a dead animal.
She turned the faucet off. It was a mistake. In the sudden silence, Ingrid's mind froze. She could not think of what to do next, or where to go. What in blazes had happened here? Had Randy gone insane? Had he gotten into a shouting match with Nancy and then wound up breaking furniture and peeing on the floor?
Oh God, girl, just leave. Leave the house right now.
A noise made her turn her head. The door that let on the basement steps was wide open, but the threshold was dark. Ingrid took a step towards it. The noise did not repeat itself. Had she imagined it? It had sounded dry and raspy--a spider scuttling over a sheet of sandpaper. She took another step, and then another--
The noise came again: SSSSSST!
There was something in the basement. Ingrid's bare knees wobbled as she moved to the door. Closer, closer. Her tongue wet her lips. Or rather, tried; she had no spit at the moment.
Why are you doing this? Leave!
No, not yet. She couldn't leave...quite yet. She peered into the dark. It was silent. Blank. Ingrid squinted, trying to force her eyes to adjust faster. A car passed on the street. There was something wrong with the basement steps. It took Ingrid a moment to realize what it was: They were gone. The first two steps were right there at the bottom of the door, just like always, but beyond them there was nothing. In the weak light, Ingrid could just make out a pile of broken wood on the floor below.
SSSSSSST! SSSSSSST! SSSSSSST!
Ingrid leaped back. Standing this close to the door, she could now identify the dry sound as it came again, and again, and again. It was the sound of feet, heavy feet, moving over cement. It was the sound of someone (something) walking to and fro.
Ingrid's curiosity had been holding out strong since she'd entered the house. Finally, it collapsed. She turned to run--
And with a terrified scream crashed into Scott Bremman's chest.
He put his arms around her, doubtless attempting to calm her, but Ingrid was beyond sedation. Her finger shook at the door.
"There's something in the basement!" she wheezed, not daring to scream the words. "There's something in the basement!"
Scott peered over her shoulder. His face looked puzzled but not disbelieving. What skepticism he might have maintained died when the thing in the basement let out a howl.
It was the howl of a very large beast--Ingrid would later be able to remember that much. Yet it was not to gorillas that her mind leaped this time. The howl was low and hollow--the howl of a grizzly bear from deep inside a cave. Ingrid looked through the door and saw two round, yellow eyes looking back. The eyes widened in interest from the size of baseballs to the size of softballs, and then the howl came again.
Screaming, Ingrid buried her face into Scott’s chest. Her nails clawed the back of his neck. She was too frightened to run.
Somehow, she made herself look back through the doorway. The eyes were gone. A moment later, the sound of crashing and blundering came from the far end of the basement. Ingrid screamed again as a large pane of glass out back of the house was suddenly smashed to pieces.
"The sliding glass door," she whimpered into Scott's chest. "It broke through it. It's going outside."
They went across the kitchen to a picture window overlooking a patio in back of the house. From here the howler was still not visible--not all of it, at least. Nevertheless, Ingrid knew something was standing next to the low wooden fence where Nancy sometimes planted flowers in the summer. A black humanoid shape, maybe nine feet in height, idled.
"I see it," Ingrid whispered, clinging to Scott's torso.
"Me too," he whispered back. "But what the hell is it?"
The shape stomped across the patio and into Nancy's vegetable garden. Here, the moon caught its yellow eyes, making them gleam. Its head snapped around. Something beyond the fence had caught its attention. It crouched a little, showing a mouthful of long white teeth. The howl came a third time, deep and ululating.
Ingrid had no idea what the beast could be looking at. None of the neighborhood dogs were barking--likely they were cowering in terror instead. The answer came seconds later when a horn blew from the north side train yards. Once more, the creature in the garden gave a howl, only this time, instead of standing pat, it leaped the fence and bounded off through the trees.
As it disappeared Ingrid felt Scott's hold on her loosen a little. She tightened hers by way of response, sending a message (she hoped) that they weren't out of danger just yet. Her eyes could just pick out the gleam of tracks in the moonlight. She watched them, not knowing what it was she was waiting for. The train horn blew again, closer now. The bell from its diesel engine rang through the night. Headlamps spilled over the rails.
Look away, Ingrid told herself.
She couldn't. The tracks had her mesmerized, and just as it seemed there would be nothing further to see--that the creature with the yellow eyes and the black cave howl was gone for good--something huge, covered from head to foot in black hair, threw itself in front of the train and down the other side.
"My god," she heard Scott say.
"Out of here," she murmured, her eyes welling with fresh tears.
"What?"
"Let's get out of here. Please."
They left the kitchen. In the hallway was a china cabinet that had been empty for years. Nancy was not a collector, nor was Randy one for painting model airplanes. Ingrid's father, as far as she knew, had never looked twice at it. Now he was inside of it. Two eyes, bulbous, gaped through broken glass, set into a scream-torn face. In back of the cabinet, blood was splattered everywhere. An arm rested on one of the shelves. A leg rested on another. Passing the cabinet earlier, Ingrid hadn't noticed any of it--she'd been too caught up in the putrescence and the piss and the overall pandemonium that greeted her at the door. Seeing her foster father's dead body now, in her already weakened state, was the last straw. She shrieked out in absolute terror, and would have collapsed had Scott not been there to bear her up. He lifted her and carried her through the living room. This was the only way Ingrid could think, minutes later, of how she had gotten into the passenger seat of his car. Her memory was hazy. She was trembling. Tears flowed from her eyes in rivers.
"That was my dad," she managed at some point. "My dad."
Except Scott wasn't there to hear her. He was standing outside, puking his guts.
It gave her time to gather some composure. She leaned to put her head between her knees. The tears kept flowing. She let them come. Bitter experience had taught her that the best way to get through a cry was to just keep crying. After a few minutes Scott was sitting beside her. His sour breath permeated the inside of the car.
"That was my dad," she said again.
"What's going on?" he croaked.
"No idea."
"Nancy and Randy?"
"What about them?"
"Are they inside too?"
"I didn't see them. But then I didn't go upstairs."
Here was a new thought, and one she didn't like. Nancy and Randy, also dead, also dismembered, lying somewhere in the house.
"We should call the police,” Scott said.
"Yeah," she nodded, running her hands through her hair. "But what are we going to tell them?"
He did not reply. Ingrid could sense his frustration, though she was still looking down at her lap. She suggested they drive to Lisa's house and call the police from there. He thought about it for a moment before nodding. The idea made sense--as much sense as could be made on a night like this anyway. Too bad it was not so cut and dry. Ingrid had nothing to wear except the clothes she had on--the clothes she had been wearing all day. Her duffle bag was still at Scott's apartment, but the clothes in it were dirty as well.
"Let's just go," she said to herself.
But Scott sensed something in her tone. "What's wrong?" he wanted to know. "Besides the obvious, I mean."
She shrugged. "Well I...don't have any clothes to wear. And I'm not going back into the house."
"Your room is upstairs?"
"Yep."
He craned over her to peer at the windows. "Let me run in real quick. It won't take long."
His tone was reluctant, and Ingrid didn't blame him in the slightest. She looked at him. Her hands clawed at the hem of her skirt. "No."
"I can throw some stuff in a bag for you, Ingrid. We're talking minutes at the...at the most."
"And what if that thing comes back?"
He looked back at the house before answering. "I don't think it will. It ran off so fast."
"You don't think."
But she was already giving in. She hated herself for it a little--but then, Ingrid Semeska knew she had never been a big fan of Ingrid Semeska in the first place.
"There's a shopping bag under my bed," she went on vacantly. "You could just...go through my dresser and dump whatever you can into it."
"All right. Is there anything special you want me to grab?"
Refusing to look at him, she shook her head. "There's a bathroom at the top of the stairs. Walk past it. My room is right next to it."
"I'm going to leave the keys here with you. If anything does happen, drive off. Fast."
He said these things as he opened the door, trying to sound brave, trying to sound in control. Ingrid didn't think he was either at the moment. He stopped in front of the house to once again look at her window.
Five minutes, that's all he's going to need.
Scott went inside the house. Ingrid waited. She wondered again what it was they had seen jump the railroad tracks. She wondered what was going to happen to her now--house torn apart, father dead, mother and brother missing. And yes, what was she going to tell the police about those things?
As if on cue, the sound of sirens began from downtown. Two patrol cars, their lights flashing, came flying around the corner at Benedict Avenue. Ingrid ducked as they approached, more out of instinct than out of any thought that they might stop in front of her house.
They stopped in front of her house. Cursing, Ingrid sank lower. Lights of red and blue fluttered in the mirror, on the house, everywhere. Car doors slammed. Two police officers walked to the driveway. Their radios chattered incomprehensible codes: Seventy-four, five-by; eighteen-twenty in progress; One-forty-six at Norwood and Fair Road.
Ingrid peered overtop of the door. The two officers were talking, gesturing, pointing at the house. Cautiously, keeping her body low as she could, she slithered to the driver's seat. The officers kept talking. Ingrid did not know what the right thing to do was. Scott was going to be arrested. Should she get out with her hands up, and be arrested with him?
She hoped not, because she wasn't going to do that. Scott might begin to hate her for it (at last, he might begin to hate her), but the night had already been horrific enough. Ingrid did not want to end it with being handcuffed at the police station, under accusation of murder.
"Are we going in?" she heard one of the officers ask.
The other said something that sounded like yes. Both officers walked towards the side entrance.
Ingrid's hands shook some more. Her heart raced. She was going to do it, she was really going to do it: She was going to drive away and leave Scott to explain things to the Norwalk Police Department all by himself.
The officers went inside the house. Ingrid waited for a minute. It was nearing midnight. Utter silence enveloped the street. Crying, she started the car and pulled away, leaving the headlamps off. Maybe it wouldn't matter, she told herself. The engine was well-tuned, but maybe the police would hear it anyway and come charging out, yelling all the things they yelled in the movies: Hold it right there! Halt! Pull over!
But the driveway was empty when she looked back. The car rolled farther and farther down the street. She looked back again. Empty still. No one was going to come out and tell her to pull over.
She made a left onto State Street and turned on the headlamps. She listened for sirens--there were none. She looked for spectators on the sidewalk, crowds that would gather at any scene exciting enough to bring two police cruisers screeching through the night with their sirens on. There was no one. The rear-view mirror showed her nothing but a few parked cars and some trees sleeping beneath an arc-sodium lamp.
"Oh God," she said to herself. "Oh God, oh God!"
She could not bring herself to drive faster than fifteen miles per hour. Her chest hitched with sobs. Her eyes stung. It took five minutes to get over to Milan Avenue, where a turn north would take her back to Sandusky. On League Street was a man out walking his dog. At the corner of Marshall Street another man was unlocking his car. Neither of them so much as glanced in Ingrid's direction.
Half an hour later she was parked on Erie Street, in front of Lisa Felton’s house, needing to get herself under control before she got out and knocked on the door. But the task wanted too much time. Giving it up as a bad job, she stepped onto the curb. She had to seize her right wrist with her left hand in order to get Scott's key steady enough to lock the driver's door.
Lisa's door was set back on a long porch where tree shadows swept long, black fingers to and fro. Ingrid rang the bell and waited. Not a single light came on inside the house, which was not surprising given the hour. From somewhere nearby came the sounds of a midnight basketball game. Ingrid rang again, then stepped back to get a view of the upper windows. They were both dark. She considered tossing a stone up, and was about to act upon the notion when one of the windows glowed into life. Moments later the downstairs lights came on.
"Who's there?" a sleepy voice asked.
Recognizing the speaker easily enough, Ingrid replied: "It's me, Lisa. Ingrid."
And that was how at one o'clock in the morning she found herself sitting at a table in a small but tidy kitchen, drinking coffee, sharing secrets, and discussing plans.
Just seeing Lisa again helped Ingrid to calm down. Over coffee and cake, Ingrid told her everything that happened after she'd gotten off work at Cedar Point. It didn't take long once she was able to stop crying. The most difficult part of the story came in describing the creature in the basement. Ingrid did not for one minute think Lisa would believe it, so she decided to blur her description of the beast somewhat, leaving out the parts about the yellow eyes and the black hair. But Lisa, in a tone far from derogatory, began to ask questions about it right away, until Ingrid was forced to supply a detailed account of what she'd seen. The other woman became very pale. Fear rose in her eyes like floodwater behind a dam, threatening to spill over. It did not spill over, but it did get Ingrid's hands shaking again; she had never seen Lisa, who was always so placid, afraid before. Her questions stopped. She told Ingrid to finish her story. This Ingrid managed to do, mostly by treating her coffee mug like a stress ball, squeezing it as her lips expelled the narrative. She began to cry again as she described the scene of her foster father, dead in the hallway, then kept right on crying when she came to the part about Scott going back into the house and getting trapped by the police.
"I drove off," she said, wiping her eyes with tissue paper. There was a small pile of it on the table by now. "I don't think the police noticed a thing. I just drove off and...