The Devil Next Door

The bedroom was long and narrow and ran the length of the back of the basement. It wasn’t a bedroom really, but more of storeroom where everything went that didn’t seem to have a place anywhere else. There were cardboard boxes stacked right up to the bare rafters overhead, stray pieces of furniture, racks of clothes with aisles in-between. It was dim in there, no window to the outside. Louis felt blindly along the walls until he found a switch. A single bank of fluorescent lights buzzed on overhead. Only one tube worked, the other dirty and flickering. It cast an uneven, surreal illumination, shadows jumping all around him.

Louis walked down the aisles of clothes that were hung from rods connected to the beams overhead. Lots of the clothes were Jillian’s and Macy’s, old coats and snowsuits and you name it, but much of it was men’s suits and jackets, a couple dusty overcoats. This must have been Macy’s father’s stuff. Jillian had never thrown any of it out, just relegated it to this rummage sale, this morgue of cast-offs.

Everything smelled moldy down there, like mothballs and rotting linen.

Louis moved down the rows of coats and dresses, brushing them with his fingers as he passed. He wasn’t even sure by that point why he was even bothering. All these clothes dangling around him, much of them in motion now from his brushing against them. Wild shadows creeping around.

“ Well, I suppose you’re not here, Jillian,” he said.

He pushed on to the end, stepping over cartons of Macy’s baby clothes, boxes of old toys, a stool, his hands parting clothes as he went. Denim and corduroy and twill…and then his fingers touched something cool and rubbery at the same moment that his eyes caught sight of a hulking shape that did not belong. Yes, right there, tucked between a couple coats.

Louis let out a cry and stumbled back, falling right over a carton of toys.

Jillian was here, after all.

She was hanging there amongst the coats. She was naked, her flesh pale, her head cocked to the side from the noose encircling her throat. Her face was livid like a bruise, her eyes open, and her tongue dangling out thickly.

“ Oh no,” Louis heard himself. “Oh, Jillian…not this…”

She’d tied clothesline rope around her throat?and very tightly by the looks of it?and tied off the rope around a roughhewn rafter above. Then she’d jumped off the stool and hanged herself, tucked neatly amongst the other hanging things.

Louis just stared up at her with a horror that was shocking and depthless, his eyes wide, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He wondered what it had been like, what had gone through her head. He was picturing her almost casually undressing, her mind filled with blackness. Maybe folding her clothes very carefully. Coming down here and tying off that rope, fastening it around her throat, maybe whistling the whole time.

Dear God.

But he would never know what she had done exactly or what she had thought and he was glad for this.

Jillian just hung there, swaying slightly from side to side, turning in a slow and lazy semicircle. What struck Louis the most was not her puffy and purple-blue face, but the fact that she was naked. Even in death, she was somehow sensual and well-proportioned like maybe wasn’t dead at all.

Louis did not look away from her.

For some reason, he did not dare.

The idea of taking his eyes off that hanging corpse was unthinkable. His belly rolling with nausea, his hand feeling oddly cold where he’d brushed hers, he backed away, finally finding his feet and dashing out of there.

“ Louis?” Macy called.

Good God, he’d forgotten about her.

Louis stood in the barroom, looking from the dangling hippie beads that were still moving to the steps leading upstairs. He could hear Macy coming down them. He started to sweat, to panic. Okay, buddy boy, are you going to let Macy see her mother like this or are you going to move? There was no real choice in the matter. He went over to the stairs and stopped her before she got down there and got any fool ideas about looking around herself.

“ She’s not down here,” he said, a little louder than he’d intended.

“ Okay,” Macy said. “Okay.”

Taking her hand, he led her up the stairs and didn’t relax any until the cellar door was shut, hiding its sins in its dark belly. He stood there a moment, just breathing. Macy was staring at him. She looked concerned.

“ Louis…you’re not… losing it, are you?”

He almost burst out laughing. “No, no, no.”

“ You had me worried,” she said. “You sure you’re all right? You look a little green or something.”

Sure, he was green. Who wouldn’t have been? His stomach kept trying to crawl up the back of his throat like it wanted out, wanted to jump out his mouth and pirouette on the floor. He touched his face and it was cool, clammy, moist with sweat.

“ Tell me what’s wrong,” Macy said. “Please.”

Louis thought quick because he had to. “Um…it’s just closed-in spaces. I get kind of claustrophobic sometimes. It’s nothing.”