Borderlands 5 Read online

  “We can’t!” said Charles. “Father wouldn’t like it.”

  “With so many, he’ll never miss a few. Let’s see it work.”

  Charles backed away, but stood transfixed as James set up the machine.

  James started the engine and moved the lever at the base to the highest setting: liquefy. It made a shrill whir. This would not wake Mother, who slept through loud equipment noises coming from the kitchen every night. James dropped a bowl down the spout; a short ripping sound interrupted the steady hum. He stopped the machine and opened the trap at the tank’s base. Inside, he found a thin layer of liquid steel, enough to dampen a fingertip. “It works,” he said.

  He closed the trap and turned the motor on again. He gathered more bowls and this time Charles helped him, eager to feed the machine himself.

  The blades responded with a tink for each bowl fed in.

  When the final one disappeared down the spout, James smiled. He told Charles to help him shove the food processor into the corner again for the night. The tank heavy with broth, the brothers couldn’t move it.

  “How are we going to get that liquid out?” said Charles.

  James peered into the tank. It brimmed with steel soup. He dipped his finger, licked it. “We’ll drink it,” he said.

  “I’m too full,” said Charles.

  “It’s only a few more gallons.”

  James removed the cover. He leaned into the tank. He gulped the liquid. Steel coated his insides. The more he drank to more he wanted. He climbed into the tank to drink more easily.

  Charles pulled over Mother’s rocking chair to stand on and climbed into the tank himself.

  Finished, they stood tall, strong. James and Charles climbed out to get other things for the food processor. They broke up the table that had been set out for their birthday dinner and fed the pieces through the spout. They drank the wood soup.

  They shoved every loose thing down the spout: furniture, woven rugs; they went to their bedroom, brought out the beds, and ground them up.

  Charles picked up Mother’s rocking chair. He lifted it overhead, ready to crush it to splinters.

  “No!” shouted James.

  “Nothing’s left,” said Charles.

  “There’s plenty upstairs.”

  “Yes, but we’re not supposed to go up there.”

  “We’ll have a peek. Maybe Father’s gone. Or sleeping.” Charles shivered.

  Neither had ever seen Father in the flesh. “Let’s go as far as the door,” said James.

  They lifted the food processor without effort now, and carried it to the foot of the steps. James climbed the stairs. He bent down to the vents and listened for pots clanging, food sizzling, or Father’s booming voice. Silence.

  He tried the door: locked and too solid for him to pull it open, even with the strength gained from the bowls and furniture they’d drunk. He descended.

  “Help me turn the food-processor on its side.” Charles helped, but backed away afterward.

  James aligned the spout with the bottom step. He held on to its base and told Charles to do the same.

  “I don’t want to,” he said.

  “We’re not allowed.”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  The boys held on fast. James started the motor. Again, he moved the lever to liquefy.

  The machine swallowed the stairs, driving upward.

  It reached the top, crashed through the door. The boys held tight.

  The food processor kept going, into the kitchen, sucking up pots and pans and implements in its path. James managed to reach the lever. The machine whirred to a stop.

  He stood up. It had cut a swath deep into the stacks and stacks of pots, pans, and implements that filled the kitchen. They righted the food processor. James opened the cover to drink the tank’s fresh contents.

  “Where’s father?” said Charles.

  James lifted his head. He turned. He stepped through a curtain of mixing spoons and butcher’s knives. Past it, he peered deep into the kitchen.

  Prone, on a long chopping table, lay Father, as big and round as ten cooks: chef’s hat awry, white clothes stained with the grease of dishes he’d made James and Charles eat that night. The table held the remains of a hundred ingredients: skins, feet, guts. Father awoke, sat up, scratched a neck boil.

  James backed away. He fell against the utensils curtain. Father jumped up.

  “Son James! Why are you here without permission?”

  “To use our birthday present, Father.”

  Father lumbered forward, through the pot and pan curtain. Charles hid himself under a stock pot. Father bent down to lift the food processor’s lid. James braced himself.

  He looked into the contents of the food processor: the soup of staircase, and pots and pans that had been in the machine’s feeding path. He took a ladle from the curtain and dipped in into the soup. He brought the ladle up. He sipped. He swallowed. His eyes widened. “What have you done!”

  Father spat out the soup. James ran.

  Father chased him. James pumped his legs and arms. The steel and wood he’d taken fueled him, but he lost ground. Father’s long strides closed the distance.

  James led him to the basement door. He crouched at the threshold. Father stepped off into the darkness. His magnificent bulk fell. A cry escaped. Not Father’s.

  James peered down into the darkness. He could see little, only black shapes in the gloom below. Father moved, drawing up his body. He bent up, then stood. He lifted the limp mass that he had fallen on. Mother. An enraged cry escaped his lips. Liquid gurgled within his throat, and deep down in his chest. If he spoke words, James could not understand them. Father dragged Mother’s broken body with him and, wrecked from his fall, stumbled in dizzy circles within the basement-prison. James shivered in fear that Father would look up and see him, but he could not make himself run away.

  Father spat, clearing the liquid from his throat. “Boys! Where are my boys? What’s become of my family?”

  He raised Mother, tiny, a tiny spare-rib in contrast to Father’s beefflank arm, dangling her. He brought his free hand up to his own jaw and worked it open, stretching the skin around his mouth, widening the mouth’s gape.

  He stretched it into a maw, an eating machine. James leaped back. he could see Father intended to consume her, to take back in that better part of himself.

  The food processor lay right where they had left it upon using it the crash into the kitchen. James put his shoulder against the processor and pushed. It would go faster with Charles’s help, but Charles was still hiding, and it would not do for his to see what happened to Mother. James’ legs ached, his shoulder ground against the cold steel. The processor moved. A quarter inch, half an inch, at a time, until it tottered on the precipice. James peered around it. Father raised Mother over his maw, his face was only teeth and eyes glistened by the food processor’s sheen. James pushed.

  The food processor tumbled through darkness. It hit Father and Mother and clanged in the hollow of the basement. There was silence.

  James realized he was standing on the power plug. The power cord stretched down to the basement, tensed to its limit.

  Careful not to move his foot, he stretched himself over to the pot Charles hid under. James lifted it.

  “We can’t go back now,” said James. “We’ll stay above. Help me pull the machine back up. It fell,” he said, protecting his brother.

  Together, they pulled it back up. James did not allow Charles to look down into the basement. The brothers were hungry and fed one implement after another into the food processor, stopping to drink each time the tank filled, making room for more. At dawn they started on the fixtures, then the ceiling, then the great kitchen’s walls. Finally, they exposed the outside world of rock, tree, and road that they had known only from books Mother read them.

  Charles told James he wanted to go below and find Mother. “This is not the time,” said James. “We have to change the world.”

&n
bsp; He picked up a piece of earth and fed it into the machine.

  The boys found the landscape nourishing and pushed the food processor forward. Bit by bit, they ate a path to the city.

  Story Time with the Bluefield Strangler

  JOHN FARRIS

  As much as we like to publish the work of new talents, it’s just as much fun to be able to present the work of acknowledged masters in this field. John Farris, the author of such classics as When Michael Calls, The Fury, and All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By surprised us with the following story.

  Six-year-old Alison on the candy-striped swing set in the side yard of the big white house on the hill. Turning her head at the sound of tires on the gravel drive. Daddy’s home. Alison holds Dolly in the crook of one arm, holds the swing chain with her other hand. Alison has many dolls that Daddy and Mommy have given her but Dolly was the first and will always be special, in spite of wear and tear.

  Alison turns her head when Daddy calls. He comes across the bright green lawn of the white house on the hill smiling at her. Daddy smiles a lot. He doesn’t frown. One hand is behind his back. Of course he has a present for her. He brings home something every day. There is one huge tree on the lawn at the top of the hill (Alison sometimes forgets that). The leaves of the tree are dark green. They shade the swing set and play area where she spends her day. Every day. Because it never rains in the daytime on the hill with the big white house.

  Daddy sets his briefcase down. Some days he wears a blue suit to work, some days it’s brown. His shoes are always black and shiny. One day Daddy had a mustache but Alison decided she didn’t like it so Daddy doesn’t wear it any more.

  “Here’s my girl!” Daddy says, crouching and waiting for her to run into his arms. It’s what he says every afternoon when he comes home.

  (“Where does your daddy work?” Lorraine asks Alison, and after a few moments Alison says, “In a office,” as if it isn’t important to her. “Do you know what kind of work he does?” Lorraine asks then. Alison shakes her head with a hint of displeasure. Lorraine smiles, and doesn’t ask more questions.)

  Alison reaches around Daddy trying to find out what he has for her. Daddy laughs and teases for the few seconds Alison will put up with it. Then he offers her the present. It’s tissue-wrapped, and tied with a pink ribbon. Alison allows Daddy to hold Dolly, which is a special privilege on the occasion of gift-bringing, while she unwraps her present.

  It’s a glass jar in the form of a girl with pigtails. Like Alison herself. And it’s filled with candy. Red candies. Daddy shows Alison how to open the jar. The glass girl’s head twists off.

  Mommy comes out to the back steps of the porch and waves. “Hey, you two.” Mommy wears her blue apron. Mommy is beautiful. She is so blond her hair looks silver in the sunlight. She wears it in a bun on the back of her head. Alison calls back as she always does, Daddy’s home! (as if Mommy can’t see that for herself), and he brought me a present.” (As if Mommy couldn’t guess.) They love Alison so much.

  Mommy calls out, “Just one of those before supper, Alison!”

  “Just one,” Daddy repeats to Alison, and she nods obediently. Daddy picks up his briefcase and walks across the lawn as if he has forgotten that he has Dolly in one hand. Alison runs after him and tugs Dolly away from him. Privilege revoked. She hugs Dolly and the glass girl against her breast and watches Daddy give Mommy a big hug. They love each other, a whole lot. Alison watches them and smiles. But then she looks up from the porch, way way up, to the third floor of the big white house, and he’s up there in one of the rooms looking out the window. Alison can’t smile any more. She takes a deep breath. Big Boy is home. The day is spoiled.

  (“Why haven’t you said anything to Daddy and Mommy about Big Boy?” Lorraine asks, after an unusually long, glum silence on Alison’s part. Sometimes Alison isn’t willing to talk about Big Boy. Today she shifts Dolly from the crook of one arm to another, picks at a flaking lower lip while she slides down until almost horizontal in the big leather chair in Lorraine’s office. Staring at her feet straight out in front of her. Her shoes are red slip-on Keds sneakers. “Because they’d be scared,” Alison says finally.)

  After dinner. After her bath. Mommy undoes her pigtails and brushes her hair smooth down over her shoulders while Alison reads to both of them from her storybook. Daddy comes upstairs to Alison’s room with cookies and milk. Then it’s lights out and time for sleep. Mommy forgets and shuts the bedroom door all the way. Alison calls her back. The door is left open a few inches. Mommy and Daddy go down the hall to their own bedroom. Alison lies awake with Dolly on her breast and waits for Big Boy.

  (“How long has Big Boy been in the house?” Lorraine asks. Alison fidgets. A long time. It’s his house.” Lorraine nods. “You mean Big Boy was there before you and Daddy and Mommy moved in.” Alison mimics Lorraine’s sage nod. She fiddles with her box of crayons. The lid remains closed. Alison hasn’t drawn anything today. Not in the mood. “Only nobody knew about him,” Lorraine says. “So does that mean he hides during the day?” Alison nods again. She opens the Crayola box and pulls an orange crayon half out and looks at it with one eye squinched shut. “Do you know where?” Lorraine continues. Now Alison shrugs. “Oh, in the walls.”

  “So he lives in the walls.”

  “Yes,” Alison says, turning around so that she is on her knees in the big leather chair with her back to Lorraine. Well-traveled Dolly continues to stare at Lorraine with a single button eye. The other eye is missing. Dolly has yellow yarn curls around a sewn-on face.)

  Tell me a story, Big Boy says. It’s always the first thing he says to Alison on those nights when he comes out of the walls. The second thing is, Or I’ll go down the hall to their room and hurt them.

  Alison holds herself rigid beneath the covers so that he can’t see her shudder. She looks at his shadow on the section of wall between the windows with the shades half pulled down on the tree of night and stars so bright beyond the hill where the big white house is. She doesn’t look at Big Boy’s face very often, even when he comes to stand at the foot of her bed, lean against one of the bedposts with folded arms. One hand tucked into an armpit, the other, the hand with the missing finger, on his elbow. Big Boy’s hair is dark, short, mussed-looking. He’s only fifteen, but already he has a man’s shoulders and strength.

  Alison clears her throat.

  There was a beautiful butterfly, Alison begins, a thrum of desperation in her heart, who—who lived in a glass jar shaped like a little Dutch girl with pigtails.

  (Bluefield detective sergeant Ed Lewinski says to Lorraine, over coffee in the cafeteria of the children’s hospital, “I did a global on the street name ‘Big Boy.’ Nothing turned up. No wants, no arrest record, juvenile or adult.” Lorraine sips her coffee. “What about the missing finger? That’s an interesting detail, even for an imaginative six-year-old.” But Lewinski shakes his head. He’s having a doughnut with his coffee. The doughnut’s stale. After two bites he shoves the plate away. “Maybe that wasn’t just the kid’s imagination, Doc. She could’ve seen someone on staff here at the Med who has a missing finger. That could be a traumatic thing, for a kid who may have been traumatized already.” “May have been?” Lorraine says with a wry smile. “Traumatized? Oh, yes, deeply. Alison is quite a challenge, Ed.” Lewinski nods sympathetically. “Three months, but nobody’s come forward. Kids get abandoned all the time; we have to assume that’s what happened to Alison.” Lorraine doesn’t disagree. “How long before Family Services takes over?” he asks. Lorraine says firmly, “She’s not emotionally prepared to go into a foster home. Alison shows no willingness to interact with other children here. Abandonment can crush a child. In Alison’s case her psychic refuge, her protection, is a vivid imagination. Betrayed by her real mother and/or father, she’s blanked them from her mind and created new ones—parents who adore her and never, never, would do such a terrible thing to her.” Lewinski thinks this over. “I understand her need to invent new parents. But
what’s all this about ‘Big Boy?’ How does he fit into her, what d’ya call it, psychological schematic?” Lorraine checks her watch, says, “Let you know when I know, Ed. I have a couple of ideas I want to explore.” They walk out of the cafeteria together. “Do something different with your hair this weekend, Doc?” “I cut it. Two weeks ago. Some detective you are.” Lewinski has a fair face that blushes easily. “Seeing our girl this afternoon? Sorry I couldn’t turn up ‘Big Boy’ for real; might’ve been some help to you. Bad for Alison, but a break for us cops.” Lorraine, already on her way to the elevators, turns and stares at him. Lewinski laughs. “I mean, Bluefield doesn’t need another teenage strangler, no matter what his name is.”)

  Three a.m.

  The low drone of a siren in the night. Alison wakes up on her back looking at the flush of ambulance light on the ceiling of the small room. Dolly in the crook of a thin arm. Alison knowing instantly that she’s in the Wrong Place, where they keep the crazy children. She must get back to the White House on the Hill, to her beautiful room with wallpaper and the white cases filled with dolls and books that Daddy made for her in his workshop. But something bad has happened. Out There. On a lonely street. With trees to hide behind, shadows. The red light swirling on her ceiling, a crackle of radio voices too distant to be understood distracts her; she can’t leave the Wrong Place.

  Alison trembles.

  And becomes aware of someone standing in a corner opposite the iron bed in this bleak room that smells like medicines, stale peepee.

  Oh no!

  “Wake you up?” Big Boy says.

  “What are you doing h-here? You’re never sposed to be here.”

  “Tell me about it,” Big Boy says; and he moves a couple of steps, to where the light from the single window with its chicken wire glass and shabby shade bathes his face in a hellfire glow. “But if you’re here, then I have to be here, don’t I?”

  “No! I don’t know. Just go away.” Big Boy, grinning. Closer.