Voices in The Cellar
by
Janet Owenby
copyright 10-28-2003
Age Rating: 13 to 127
Sixteen-year-old Tacoma reads the sign in the yard of the dilapidated Victorian home; ‘ Welcome to Wellington Orphanage’. Well, at least it is not another sanatorium, he thinks to himself. He exits his father’s Mercedes and retrieves his luggage from the back seat.
“I’m sorry. I have to leave you here. I will come visit you every weekend,” his father promises.
Tacoma drops his head and walks slowly toward the door. He brushes back an auburn forelock and rings the doorbell. A poker-faced nun appears in the arch way of the open door. Tacoma stares at his Nike tennis shoes, and fidgets nervously with the fringe on his leather jacket.
Hi, I’m Sister Helena and you must be Tacoma. We’ve been expecting you. She carefully scrutinizes the young man towering over her. He is pale and extremely thin and his unkempt hair falls limply across his shoulders. His jade green eyes are expressionless, but his depression is evident in his appearance and stance. He looks nothing like the nefarious demon, she had previously invisioned. She felt sorry for the teenager. “Come in,” she says, with a warmhearted smile.
Tacoma follows her down the corridor to his room. “Lights go out in thirty minutes," she informs Tacoma. "You better unpack and get ready for bed." She exits the room without locking the door. He had not slept behind an unlocked door since his mother and Nathaniel died, eight years earlier.
Tacoma unpacks his belongings and slips on his pajamas. He takes the medication his father prescribed to help him sleep and crawls in bed. He awakes to the sound of Nathaniel’s sobbing voice. He follows his voice down to the cellar of the orphanage. He silently descends the rickety staircase. “Where are you?” He whispers. “Answer me, Nathaniel.”
"I'm over here," he answers, in a whimpering voice.
"Where? I can’t find you.”
“Turn on the light and close the door.”
Tacoma switches on the light and closes the door. Nathaniel crawls out of a large storage box. Black circles surround his swollen eyes. Bluish-purple bruises cover his cheekbones. His platinum curls are plastered to his scalp with dried blood. He is thin and pale from lack of proper nutrition.
"Tacoma, Please don't let her hurt me anymore," Nathaniel pleads, looking up at Tacoma with tears streaming down his chubby cheeks. "You have to stop her. Do it tonight, before she kills me. You are big and strong. You can help me."
Tears of compassion overwhelm Tacoma. No child deserves this kind of treatment. What kind of monster could abuse a child this way. He wants to stop her from hurting him, but Nathaniel had made him promise not to tell anyone he was down here. How was he supposed to help him? "What do you want me to do?"
"You have to destroy her," replies Nathaniel.
"What do you mean, destroy her?"
"You know. Kill her."
"Kill her! I can’t do that."
"Yes, you can. I will tell you how."
"No, I can't."
"Are you afraid, Tacoma?"
"They will lock me up again."
"No, they won't.”
“I will be sent back to the sanatorium. The psychiatrist will say I was physically abused by my mother. He will say I suffer from multiple personality disorder and the voices are in my head. I can't go back there.”
"This time will be different. I promise you, Tacoma. You get her down here. My friends and I will do the rest. She has to pay for what she has done to us. Until we dispose of her, we will never be free.”
"What do you mean your friends? Who are your friends?"
"You just get her down here and I will show you."
"Ok, but how do I get her to come down here?"
"You see that newspaper over there."
"Yeah, I see it."
"Go get it."
Tacoma walks over and picks up the newspaper. "What should I do now?” He asks?
"Do you have a lighter?"
"Yes, I have a lighter."
"Light the newspaper. Wave it under the vent and yell fire," Nathaniel replies.
"No, I can't do it," whimpers Tacoma.
"Come on Tacoma, It is not like you haven't done it before," Nathaniel coaxes.
Tacoma lights the newspaper and yells, "fire.”
Sister Helena awakes to the aroma of smoke coming from the cellar. She rushes down the steps. She sees him holding a lit newspaper and a gallon of gas. The last thing she sees is his grimacing face, before she is consumed by flames.
Nathaniel pushes against the brick wall at the back of the cellar and it swings open. Skeletons lay in heaps behind the wall. They arise from the ground and stand behind Nathaniel. "My friends," he exclaims proudly.
"Who are they?" Inquires Tacoma?
"They are dead people, just like you."
"What do you mean like me? I'm not dead"
Tacoma hears his mother and five-year-old brother’s screams coming from the cellar. He sees Sister Helena and the innocent orphan’s faces mutilated by gasoline flames. It happened just like, the district attorney, psychiatrist, and his father said. He must have killed them all. He deserves to die today.
Doctor Brooklyn watches silently, as the prison guards secure Tacoma in the electric chair. It will all be over soon, he thinks to himself.
When they place the sack over Tacoma’s head, he suddenly remembers the face of the man holding the lit newspaper, and gasoline can. It was not his face, but an older face he recalls.
He struggles against the restraints and screams, “I’m not crazy. I’m not a murderer.” The executioner ignores his screams and pulls the lever. High voltage electricity rushes through Tacoma’s body. He feels his mother’s arms embrace him and carry him behind the cellar wall. The wall is sealed behind him and he hears Nathaniel’s voice, “Welcome to Hell, Tacoma.”
”Maybe, if I'd been a better father, none of this would have happened.” Mr. Brooklyn confesses to his son’s attorney. “I shouldn't have left him at the orphanage.”
“Don’t blame yourself Dr. Brooklyn. I’m sorry I couldn’t get him off, with an insanity plea. I know this isn’t much comfort, but at least his troubled mind is at peace. He will never hear voices again."
Mr. Brooklyn leaves the penitentiary and gets into his Mercedes. He smiles and drives away. A mile down the road from the prison, he hears something scratching under the passenger’s seat. “Daddy, daddy,” he hears a voice calling his name. He glances over at the passenger’s side of his vehicle and sees Nathaniel’s charcoal figure crawling out from under the seat. ” This cannot be real,” he exclaims aloud. “It’s my guilty conscience.” He hears another voice coming from the back seat.
“Your conscience,” laughs Tacoma. “You don’t have one, remember.”
“You started the fire in the cellar that killed me and Mommy. You knocked Tacoma out with drugs. Then you murdered us and blamed Tacoma. You sent him to that asylum and had him pumped full of drugs. He started to get better and was released. You could not allow him to be free, because he might remember what he saw that night,” exclaims Nathaniel.
“You were afraid I might remember the truth, so you took me to the orphanage that day. After everyone fell asleep you snuck back to the orphanage and crawled through the cellar window, and then you set that fire,“ says Tacoma. “You carried me outside, while I was still knocked out on the sleeping pills. It was you who placed the gasoline container beside me and put the lighter in my hand."
“You always beat us up and locked us in the cellar without food, or water for days. Mommy threatened to report you to the authorities, and you murdered us,” proclaims Nathaniel. “You have to pay for your sins, daddy.” He reaches over and grasps the steering wheel. The car swerves off the highway and rolls down an embankment. His father’s body is trapped underneath the car. Nathaniel hands Tacoma, a crumpled newspaper. Tacoma ignites the newspaper and throws it on the overturned vehicle’s leaking gas tank. The car explodes.
“Our souls are free at last,” announces Tacoma, taking his little brother’s hand.
A passerby sees the flames and pulls over. He sees a teenage boy leading a smaller boy across the pasture away from the flaming wreckage. “Are you boys all right?” He yells over the guard rail. The two boys turn and wave at the stranger. They join two women and several more children in a circle of bright light, then mysteriously vanish.
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Thanks for clearing that up!^-^ I've heard of spirits, and passages through astral planes and stuff, but usually when that happens, no one can actually see them, sometimes not even the person they're trying to get back at. But I guess with fiction, anything is possible!n_n
NO his father is not imagining it. At the end they came back so they could avenge their murder
and set their spirits free to go to heaven. The man sees ghost. Have you ever heard of spirits being suspended between heaven and earth, supposedly because they have something left to finish, especially people who have been murdered. Remember it's fiction. I am going to write another version, and post it soon. I have an idea how to set the story up better , so the reader can understand a little better. Should fill in some of the questions.
Ok, two things I don't get, one, at the end when the boys end up in the back seat of the car, is this actually happening or is the father just imagining it? And two, if the boys are dead by the end of the story, how can that other person see them? The story is excellent by the way, the tenses aren't that confusing, and it really puts you into the mind of the character. And by the end, it's shocking how the father could do something like that, he definately deserves a more eviler name than Mr. Brooklyn! ^-^
I have been questioned on another site about my choice of present tense in this story. First of all I always prefer present tense, but in this story if you read carefully it has a very important purpose. He has been locked up, lied too, and over medicated for years. He is about to die and the first part of the story is what he remembers, You may argue memories are always past tense, but take into account not for him. The realization is only beginning to take place in his mind at this precise moment. To him it is all happening for the first time. A mind blocks out pain from the past and when the realization hits it is happening in the person's mind at this time. The impact is present tense on the mind not past tense. I wanted my readers to experience this with him. I change verb tenses only after his execution in the part where they are speaking of what has taken place in the past. Then I return to present tense because this is happening in the present time that my story takes place. Hope that explains my choices of past and present tense and why it is done intentionally and is not a mistake or improper usage. I try to go inside the charchters mind and write from what he is feeling and experiencing and if you had amnesia and all of a sudden something your forgot comes back to you that was a horrid experience, you would experience that, as if it is happening right now all over again. Ok, so I dont think or write like normal people, but none of my charachters in this story are exactly normal. I am writing from them, wearing their shoes, so to speak. I thought that was what fiction is about.
sanitarium or sanitorium is correct. Another one of those words our dictionaries disagree on. Sanatorium was the origional spelling, derived from the word sanitary, not the word sane. In earlier times they were used to quarantine people who suffered from communicable diseases, like diptheria, black plague, etc. Times changed and vaccines were found to treat most of the physical communicable diseases and the sanitoriums, or sanitariums, became places to house the mentally ill. Thought I would give you all a little history lesson on the word.
Welcome !
