DEMENT: A Texas Ghost Story

Chapter IX

Luella heard the screams, indeed, and reacted with the most urgency she could muster. Unfortunately, though her brain has been growing increasingly, incredibly less foggy over the last couple of nights, it still occupies a body that has spent the entirety of the last several months lying on a warm mattress, only being rotated occasionally to prevent bedsores. Her knees snap and crackle like popcorn as she feels her way to the door, her every joint and muscle protesting.

Opening the door with fumbling, arthritic hands, Lu finds herself at the end of a long dim hallway. The noises came from the den, she feels, though she already finds it increasingly difficult to remember what kind of noises they were exactly. Lu does not know, does not recall, her way to the den.

It is a long and arduous journey, and by the end of it, Luella is not sure if she has been lost in the vast, labyrinthine, and empty halls of the house for five minutes or thirty. The corridors seem to twist and flex, the writhing tentacles of some massive creature, as she feebly wobbles down them. At times she thinks she sees figures, men and women, disappearing around corners into the darkness as she approaches. Not knowing what else to do, she follows them, and they lead her to the den. She turns on the lights.

The room is empty. "Dottie?" she calls into the silence. "Dottie, you back yet, dear?" Where did Dottie go, again?

Lu dodders off to the kitchen. The high black door is shut. All is quiet within. She rattles at the handle, and the door swings open easily.

The room is crimson and wet and smells of copper scouring pads. Amy lay in the middle of it. To say she is covered in blood would be understating; it is more as though the presence of Amy's body slightly obstructs the pool of blood that covers the floor: a broken, ineffectual dam. Luella creeps into the room on the balls of her feet, careful not to slip in the gore.

Is someone hurt?

Much as she tries, Lu cannot make herself understand the picture that has been painted in front of her.

Lu's eyes gaze into Amy's own staring orbs, two glassy circles of white and blue peeking out from the red. She is quite still. "Amy?" Luella whispers. "Are... are you alright?" Something wooden extends from the girl's stomach. That should not be there, Lu thinks.

Gripping the wooden handle, Luella gives a tentative tug and is startled at how effortlessly the knife slides out of Amy's flesh. Blood burbles from the wound pitifully. It seems her veins have little left to give. Lu stares at the blade in her hand. It is an evil-looking thing: long and slender and covered in rust, curving upward like an erection.

Knock. Knock.

Lu barely registers the noise, her eyes frozen on the curved boning blade in her grip.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

What is that sound?

"Amy!" calls a familiar voice from far away. "It's me!" Dottie? "The man was of absolutely no help. Shocking, I know."

Luella shakily rises from her crouched position on the kitchen floor.

"Amy!" Dottie yells again from the front porch. "Come on, hon! It's getting dark out here!"

Luella meanders into the den.

"Amy!" Dottie says a third time, a note of worry creeping into her voice. "Everything okay?"

As Lu approaches, the front door creaks open by itself. Dot steps in and immediately sees Luella standing there, still covered in blood, the wicked knife gripped in her palm.

"Lu?" Dot gasps. "Oh my God, Lu, are you okay?"

The old woman screws up her face in thought.

Am I okay?