There was something about the way I told the story that night. What can I say? It clicked. The unbelievable seemed believable. It was the type of yarn best told around the flickering red and orange ghosts of a camp fire with a lone lit flashlight under one's chin, when the last of the marshmallows have been toasted, and the forest creaks and groans in the deep dark night with the strange foreign tongue of mother nature . The Mrs. Kurtz story contained the fear, shock and sheer horror of the best tales of that ilk, sending a chill coursing through your veins like the cold night air holding up the canvass of pin-holed stars . . . and I had Ellis’s full attention.
This of course included my bit about Mrs. Kurtz and her miles of hoses, wires and catheters sticking out of every orifice in her body.
"What’s a ca-los-to-my bag-- it doesn’t sound to good dude."
"It’s full of human waste Ellis that’s all you need to know and ---they only change it once a week."
"Oh my God!"
"Yeah I know. Sometimes it gets so full It’s like a balloon man," I said, matter of factly in hushed tones.
"And we’re going there?"
"Yes."
"To her house?"
"Well, her daughter’s house, but she’s there in a room just off of the kitchen. Yes."
"Ohh," Ellis replied shuddering.
"That’s OK kid you’ll do just fine and I’ll be right there with you." I patted Ellis on the shoulder as he stared out the front window of the truck. I smiled to myself.
We pulled up to Bonnie Aaronstein’s mansion. It was already late and the sun had packed up and gone home two hours ago. The full length windows, where Bonnie's mother could be found
bed ridden, gave off an eerie soft glow into the court yard below. Remember that famous piece of cinematography from the Exorcist where the light was shining on Father Marin when he arrived. Well it was like that.
The cedars in the court yard and the mighty oaks like sentries surrounding the fortress were conversing in the wind with the rustling leaves chit chatting. A gust of wind would suddenly create an on coming rush like a tide of whispering voices.
Twice I had to bump Ellis with my box as he apprehensively moved toward the house.
I buzzed the intercom and waited for the voice of the Filipino maid.
"Who eeze there?"
"Ultimate Produce, We have a delivery for Connie."
"Take eit to the kitchen." The voice buzzed us in.
The door clicked open and swung slowly inward with an audible creak.We began the laborious task of bringing all eight boxes into the kitchen.
The place was dark, quiet and seemed deserted. If it hadn’t been for the maid on the intercom, I would have sworn it was so. We treaded gingerly down the massive foyer, decorated on either side by paintings incased in elaborate gold frames. Plush velvet curtains were pulled back as the hall ended at a T junction. To the right a library filled from floor to ceiling. To the left our path to the kitchen and by ---the room.
Ellis was marveling at the sheer size of the house as he walked. His head was like a search light wandering back and forth from floor to ceiling. He was creeping along like a kid who has to walk into the haunted house in the neighborhood to pass the initiation into the club house.
After we set the first two boxes down in the expansive eighteen foot catacombs of chrome and steel with intricate moldings inlayed with gold, that made up the food preparation area, we headed back to the truck.
There it was directly ahead of us. Mrs. Kurtz’s room. Ellis stood transfixed unable to look away like a deer caught in the headlights and frozen there until its life is ended in a moment of screeching tires and the indenting kiss of bumper on venison. The machines clicked and beeped as was their purpose and the end of a hospital-like bed could be seen jutting out like an enticing finger in a come hither motion. The trees outside, dancing in the wind cast sinister moving shadows on the walls.
"Come on Ellis." I tapped him on the back as I started for the truck.
"Huh!" He jumped noticeably and finally followed.
On each trip Ellis seemed to pause longer drawn closer to the inevitable as if a black hole existed at the core of the room just beyond the trim of the doorway and sucked his very being into it.
On our last trip, I noticed he wasn’t even in the kitchen with me and turned to see him walking slowly with the box he was carrying into the forbidden room, the moth to the flame.
"Ellis no," I hissed, but he couldn’t hear me. I quickly set the box down and headed briskly for the portal of the bedroom, or as briskly as one could go who feels that he is moving in slow motion.
Ellis was at mid bed with the order still in his hands moving slowly as one passing an accident and unable to keep from rubber necking. The room had that serile hospital smell that invaded the nostrils. Mrs. Kurtz lay there on her back, her eyes glassy, staring at the ceiling. Her mouth was open and moving like that of a fish out of water sucking air.
"Ellis," I hissed again. "Get out of there."
"I had to see for myself," he said turning back to me.
A gaseous sound escaped her body. It sounded like a dying goat somewhere under the covers.
Ellis’s expression changed from one of awe and wonder to sickly disgust. "Ahh Dude that’s just so wrong."
A stern Filipino voice commanded from behind me, "What you do here?!"
Startled, I yelled.
Ellis yelled.
The maid yelled.
Mrs. Kurtz continued to gaze at the ceiling.
Ellis screamed.
Another goat died its slow death under the covers.
Ellis dropped the box he was carrying spilling its contents. An acorn squash rolled under the bed trailed by a fellowship of vegetables.
"I’m sorry," I said to the maid, "but you startled us. My co-worker here," I pointed to Ellis as his ass stuck out from under the bed in a bid to retrieve the fallen food items. "He’s new. He’s never been here before and simply lost his way." I turned my attention briefly to Ellis. "For God's sake man you should be wearing surgical gloves."
"I’m all right," came Ellis’s muffled response, as he slowly pushed two yams out from under the bed, where his legs still wriggled.
"Now that we’re finished our delivery we’ll be going," I told the maid reassuringly.
The maid looked at me disbelievingly with a sour expression still across her face like it had been smacked on.
Ellis apparently triggered something in his struggle from down under. The head of the bed with Mrs. Kurtz in it began to rise.
The maid in sudden shock, lurched forward. "Oh no! The Mrs. Kurtz. She must not move like that!"
Ellis crawled out from underneath and scurried out of the way with the last of the produce as the maid ran to various machines to get the bed to stop its assent.
"Ellis! come on, she’s going to dump truck," I said through clenched teeth. Our window of escape was closing. I motioned with my head to the door.
Ellis scooped the stuff into the box and joined me in my exit as the maid was pushing on the head of the bed with all her weight trying to get it to go down. She clicked furiously with her foot on an automated pedal without any luck.
When we reached the front door, we started to run just as I heard a thud of something hitting the floor and the horrified voice of the maid.
"OH no! The Mrs. Kurtz ---she fall."
"Better than Mrs Kurtz ---she dead," I thought to myself, and somewhere Joseph Conrad was turning in his grave.
No comments:
Post a Comment