DAY 7: Palace of Assassins

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Fate says take what you want and pay for it.

My story begins on the prod of this line of 10 words. There are two kinds of terror, if you can imagine: one is the one you get from reading or watching a Stephen King flick, and the other’s what I’m about to show to you in these pages. I bought a house on a hill; it’s set up right there on the tip of Glittering Heights. Palace of Assassins it’s called. A curious name for a lovely place, do you think? And it’s seated right there on the top of the hill. Remember, what they said about a house on a hill? This one was smackdown in the middle of town. Everybody got to see it from the outskirts of town.

The east wall of the house had this floor to ceiling window looking out into the woods. I loved reclining in that spot, in my rattan chair. Watching the sun’s descent as it climbed down the back of the trees and crawled into wherever it hung its hat until the next day’s cosmic race across the skies. It was fun to watch the birds build their nests and play house in the old pine trees. I came to love this part of the house much better than any other part of that house. It was more entertaining than watching a giant LCD.

I write fiction. It’s how I make a living.

I hit this jackpot, if you can imagine. It wasn’t really like your real life jackpot. It took a lot of sweat, tears and blood to attain my spot in life. I wrote and wrote, revised and re-revised. I felt like there was no end in sight. And then, one day, here I was sitting in the kitchen of my old house which was, with all due respect, a glorified one room self-efficiency apartment. I can recall the events surrounding that day perfectly. I was caught up in thought, giving myself heebie-jeebies at the possibility of facing rejection from another publisher. (I had submitted the same manuscript to seven previous publishers and they all showed me the door.)

I was thinking I’d give up on writing completely. Get a real job, for drat sakes. I mean how much shit could a guy possibly take and still beg for more? My mind was made on that score. I’d done everything I could possibly think up and if I got rejected again, I’ve had it. I was gonna write myself off.

Somewhere along the line, my mobile rang and interrupted my shameful thoughts. The thing was in my shirt pocket. I plucked it out and picked my call, as my ringtone demanded. The caller ID was displayed on the screen; Dan Buster. My agent.

                        “It better be good news,” I muttered under breath. “God let it be.” I spoke into the iPhone. “Hit me with it, Dan.” And I meant every word. I wasn’t expecting pebbles, either. Boulders would have been about the size of it. Some monstrosity that would topple for all time, the pack of cards I called a writing life.

            “Congratulations buddy,” Dan said. There are moments I’ve felt like punching that guy’s lights out cause of his roundhouse optimism. He and his always looking up slogan. Give him something to really look up about trying the blood up his nose. Place a towel full of ice cubes on that while he’s at it. “It’s La Loteria, baby.”

La Loteria. Two words Dan and I picked off a Stephen King novel. Duma Key I believe it was called. It was the way we came to view life. Life is a lottery-sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. How much you took home depended on the fickle thing called luck.

Take Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, for example. It’s said that masterpiece went kicking around for twenty some odd years before people acknowledged it for the classic it really was. Life is a figment of luck. It’s how I always thought until I came to Palace of Assassins right on top of Glittering Heights.

Dan said, “We did it, bro. we made it this time, enough to go around. Big time.”

I’d actually had a couple of short stories that did well on the internet-I’d sold them off to online magazines. Spun one or two paperbacks under a pseudonym, which barely survived bookstore shelves.

Dan pressed. “We hit it big. Blew the top off all expectations.”

“Get to the point already, Dan.” I was on the edge of my seat and Dan’s filibustering was giving me the willies. If Dan had come through with this I could scream the cock off a terracotta monkey. I waited. Dan wasn’t forthcoming. “Dan? Are you still there, buddy?” I checked the screen of my iPhone.

            “Yeah, old buddy,” he said finally. And then, “500,000 bucks buddy!” He was screaming himself.

I forgot to breathe.

Had me screaming so loud and so long I suffered a sore throat for several days. That was all seven years ago. Since that rejection was broken I’d gone on to sell four other highly successful novels.

I write thrillers, actually. But this piece you’re reading is a detour inspired more by situation than by interest or choice.

When I moved out here to Glittering Heights, I came with dreams of a home-a family. I moved into Palace with my wife, Dorothy. Let me tell you something: I loved that woman. It hurts real bad mentioning her in these pages. We met at a friend’s wedding party and I found out later she was a writer, too. It wasn’t love at first sight but it was close enough for government work. We got married two months after our first meeting.

The Devil Knows How to Row was my second published novel and I was writing the second draft at the time of our wedding. Every time I looked at that tome, tears stung my eyes as the picture of Dotty (that’s what I called my wife) in her wedding gown popped into view.

Let me tell you something about Palace of Assassins which ought to be of interest to you and whet your appetite for my story. Something to set you off flying right, okay?

According to legend, the previous owners of this mansion all committed suicide and since then, the folks in town have come to call this place, The House that Gore Built. But, this is the 21^st century, right? And as far as legends go . . . legends don’t count for waffles. Legends are like fairytales. They’re strictly for entertainment or for scaring children at bedtime. That’s what I used to believe before I came to Palace of Assassins.

People from town have told different versions of the suicide family story. The first owners of the Palace of Assassins (This name was also derived from the event I’m about to relate to you.) had come to the dining table prepared to have dinner. It’s reported that the house help who was herself from the town had narrated this story. She was the only one to leave the house alive on said day. The family had come to the table meaning to have dinner and then one by one, from the eldest to the youngest they picked up their table knives and slit their right and left wrists. Two adults and seven children. Then, they set about the business of eating their meal with their blood careening down their arms and soaking their thighs as if they were drugged and couldn’t feel the pain.

The maid had witnessed all this but she was forbidden to get help. The man of the house even had a Glock on the table to keep her in check-make sure she obeyed orders. She was forbidden from helping the young ones as they slumped on their seats. She stood there weeping softly, watching the horror unfold before her eyes and then when the last of them, the head of the house passed out, she hurried into town to get help.

Instead of a door thrown ajar by a fleeing maid, the town’s people found the door closed and locked from the inside. Startled, they turned on the maid. “Why do you mock with such trivialities, Sue? If they are all dead how could the door be locked and from inside? The master and his household sleep and you would have us rouse them cause of this tale of yours?”

Well, get the door open they did. How Sue got them to do it belongs to posterity. When they came into the dining room, the same spot where I am seated writing this story, (I have since converted it to my study) the Martins family were seated round the table like pirates on a sunken ship preferring to die with their loot than abandon ship.

Do I believe any of this tattle-tale stuff? Once upon a time, I would have said, “Of course not. I was born in a day but not today. Somebody died in the house yeah, possibly, but back then the disease could not be properly diagnosed so the Martins family thought it was spell or curse or whatever and took a hike before a plague broke out.

Something happened to me that changed my view of the world entirely. It turned me inside out like a football jersey pulled off in a hurry.

Jameson, my ten year old boy went playing in the basement. (We discovered him in there after we searched around the house and couldn’t find him. Not on the swing in our backyard nor in the kitchen browsing the refrigerator which was somewhat a kind of sport for him.) It was Carol, the maid (wonder why it’s always the maid) finds the door to the basement open, it was only a crack. She stepped in, flips on the light and practically runs down the flight of stairs. She got to the landing and guess who she finds?

The basement door was always locked. Jameson could never reach the keys up on the ledge where I kept. So, who opened the door? There’s this loop down in our basement, I’ve never really questioned its purpose since we moved into the apartment. The loop could come very handy for an ambitious person. Jameson just turned ten last summer; he had a nice family and a promising future. He never for once showed any sign of depression or anxiety. He was full of life.

We saw a stack of boxes a few feet from where he was suspended. They were considerably lightweight, he could have pushed them to the spot under the loop turned noose and then piled them up and then . . .

I still can’t imagine Jameson able to conjure that level of evil intelligence.

He was ten years old.

He was dead.

He was my son.

Carol screamed like she was in shock. She’s never recovered fully from the ordeal.

Dotty took the worst hit. I never saw her smile again. She was comatose for three weeks after Jamieson was found dead in the basement.

Two weeks ago, while I was in my study writing nothing in particular-sometimes, your work feels like crap to you. Ask any writer who knows his worth. Dotty was in the kitchen cooking up one of her specials-she’d brightened up a little, lately but no smiles from Dotty. She even gave the whiff of a smile when I kissed her good morning.

A horrendous scream jarred me awake to my surroundings. It originated from the kitchen and it tugged at my heartstrings. I ran to the kitchen shouting, “Dotty” at the top of my lungs. Yet, the voice I heard sounded nothing like Dotty’s.

Dotty stood beside the sink, in her hands were the jagged edge of broken casserole. She had this look of utter terror on her face. I stepped across the threshold, slowly. I didn’t want to set off an alarm in her head; send her off faster than whatever had her intended. There was blood on her hands running the length of her apron and splashing to the floor in a sickening drip-drip.

            “Whatever you have in mind, Dotty, don’t do it,” I said. “This is not you. Fight it, Dotty. Whatever you do don’t let it control you.”

I might as well have been teaching a toad to sing.

Dotty held the jagged edge of the casserole to her pharynx and sawed away like a woodcutter working a chainsaw on a really tough bole. The look in her eyes said she would have preferred not to. There were beyond doubt, strange forces at work here.

Carol barely comes around these days. But I get along by myself. I’ve always been a workaholic. Yesterday evening, I went on a little tour of my house. Funny, I still call this hell hole by anything personal. But I observed minute details-things I would otherwise have overlooked.

I found a picture and it gave me a start.

It’s the portrait of a man who is almost the exact replica of me. The ancient apparel and his hairstyle are the only differences I’ve seen so far. I also found a manuscript. It’s an ancient account of a family of flesh (human) eating fiends who are accursed to keep reincarnating in different ages and keep killing themselves off.

I wanted an answer and uncovered what isn’t mine to decide. There is a note of victory, though. A member of the race of human-eating (for that is what I was in my own time) fiends must confess their sins to mankind or the curse would never be broken.

This I have done in a way I know how to handle it most effectively. I plan to send this out to magazines and get it published. I hope my bloodline may now be permitted to rest in peace by whatever force is at work here.

But who knows? I might wake up to find this was all a bad dream.