VHS
By Keith LaFountaine
The house was cold without Pa there. The stale odor of his cigarette smoke still clung to the walls, as did the sallow nicotine stains. His bookshelf was tucked in the corner of the living room, next to the couch. Paperbacks with old pages stinking of must were stuffed in the shelves, some stacked neatly. I stared at that bookcase for a long while, mainly because it reminded me of the old days. As did the cathode-ray TV and his silver VCR, both of which were covered with a thick film of dust.
I sat on the couch and allowed the smallness of the apartment to sink in. Ma died a few years back, so her stuff was already neatly packed in the basement. There wasn’t much left. Pa was a sentimental man, but he had an old lover’s heart. Photos and clothing got stored away from prying eyes. Away from his gaze in those final years. The only thing of Ma that survived his heartbroken purge was an old charm bracelet she wore on her wrist. He kept that on the nightstand, right next to his glass of ice water and his ancient alarm clock. The silver was all tarnished, but it still glittered in the fading lamplight, as though Ma was there, trapped in the band, watching over Pa as he tossed and turned his brittle body.
I stood and walked into the kitchen, surveying the collection of pots and pans still in the sink, the upside-down glasses on the drying rack, the forks sitting upright in the strainer’s plastic holder. I’m not sure why, but something compelled me to finish the dishes he’d started forty-eight hours prior. They stank, and drain flies were sure to start buzzing if I didn’t act quick. So, I flipped on the water and scrubbed away at the pan, which was caked with homemade pasta sauce and bits of burnt noodles. It was almost calming.
Once done, I dried my hands and walked back out to the living room. Again, I looked at the bookshelf. It epitomized the main thought that swirled around in my head: how the hell am I gonna get this shit out in a couple days?
Landlord’s orders, sent via email in about as impersonal a manner as you can imagine. To whom it may concern, considering the sad passing of Mr. Roger Chambers, we request your assistance in the removal of his property from 645 North Avenue Apt. 12B. Our condolences and thanks in advance: Mr. John B. Handy.
Assistance. The word pulled a chuckle from my lips. The only assistance he offered was to pay for the moving truck I rented. After the fact, of course, and considering the pending litigation downtown against Mr. John B. Handy, I wasn’t convinced I would even recoup that loss. The woes of an only child with career-centric friends, I supposed.
I sighed and opened the door in the hallway, peering down the stairs that led to the basement. A dark groundswell overwhelmed my chest as I stared into the yawning blackness. Wet and gritty. Everything was on pallets, and it flooded at least once a year. The wooden stairs groaned with each step. The cement walls trapped sound, too. But down there was where Pa kept his totes and errant boxes, so I walked down the steps.
A silver chain glittered in the faint light that filtered from upstairs. I grabbed it and pulled. The bulb flickered on, casting a dull yellow light across the cement floor and the rotted pallets. I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my jeans and crossed the basement, making a beeline for the broken-down boxes at the far end. On other pallets was an assortment of odds and ends: a broken computer from the ‘90s, a collection of photo albums, a tote full of blankets covered in mildew, a collection of empty whiskey bottles, and…
There, atop a dusty tote, was a VHS tape. A strip of scotch tape adorned its front, upon which was simply written: WATCH ME.
***
I looked down at the tape for a long while, turning it over in my hands, inspecting it, hoping for some indication of what the ribbon inside contained. Lady Luck did not stare down on me though, or perhaps she just covered her eyes in shame because the only thing on the black plastic was that strip of scotch tape. WATCH ME. A command? A taunt? Or something else?
A muted chill wrapped its freezing fingers around the base of my spine. With the tape in hand, I scurried out of the basement, climbing the rickety stairs two at a time. Once in the hallway, I slammed the door closed behind me. The chill melted away. I thanked the kitchen light for that.
Focusing again on the VHS, I chewed on my bottom lip. It was Pa’s handwriting on the strip of tape: all capital letters, each slashed with his heavy penmanship. Something about it was off, though. Pa’s VHS collection was prolific, with ‘80s horror movies, John Wayne westerns, and Jerry Lewis comedies stacked up in a line on brown shelves. He was an avid watcher. A Polaroid was his method of capturing memories, though, not a video camera. In fact, as I racked my brain with my back against the basement door, I couldn’t remember him ever owning a video camera. They were too bulky, he claimed. Too expensive.
So, what the hell was on the tape?
***
The TV’s screen swelled with a brilliant blue color after I punched the power button. The VCR was next, and it whirred up with ease. I looked down at the tape one last time before pushing it into the VCR. The ancient machine clucked and chortled as it accepted the tape. I pressed the play button.
I felt like a kid again, sitting on the floor of Pa’s living room, watching some illicit movie. Only, back then, it’d been John Carpenter’s The Thing, not some random VHS tape found amidst family memories and cardboard boxes.
The screen went dark, followed by three lines of white fuzz that traipsed down the black mirror.
Then, an image faded up. A woman in a chair. Her hands were bound against the wooden arms with cords of rope. Her eyes shone with tears. A makeshift gag was wrapped around her head. Her long black hair hung around her face. Her swollen stomach protruded from the thin nightgown she wore, a flash of pale flesh standing out.
It wasn’t Ma. She had blonde hair, for one. But there was something else about the woman I couldn’t quite place my finger on. Queasy anxiety twisted my gut as the woman pulled against her bonds.
The woman jerked her head up, and at that moment, I felt her staring at me. Like the TV was a window into some darker truth. Her blue eyes glistened with tears, and that sheen reflected the dim lights: yellow dots in her pupils. She pulled against the restraints again, and that’s when I heard something tinkle. My gaze descended to the woman’s hands, and there I saw the bracelet. Ma’s? It looked the same. Tarnish on the silver band. Charms hanging from it. I looked back at the woman’s eyes, holding her stare for what felt like an eternity.
And then the TV went dark. The VCR whirred, indicating the tape was finished. I sat still, shock slipping its cold vines around my body, holding me in place.
***
The charm was on Pa’s nightstand still, next to a cup of water surrounded by a ring of condensation. I stared down at it, afraid to pick it up. So, instead of doing so, I turned and left the bedroom, closing the door behind me.
Despite the churning nausea in my gut and the bitter tang of fear in my throat, I returned to the basement door and pulled it open. Downstairs, the light was still on. I descended, my mind still emblazoned with the woman’s eyes, the sheen of terror, the fear…
The glow of the bulb in her eyes.
Could it have been?
No. I pushed the thought away. I could only acknowledge confusion and panic, not my parents’ culpability. That was still crazy, impossible. Not Pa, who volunteered with cancer-stricken children at Camp Ta-Kum-Ta. Not Ma, who worked at the homeless shelter in downtown Burlington. Not the people who taught me the value of consent and the importance of careful thought. But even as these scattered and panicked thoughts raced through my mind, I spied the chair in the darkest of the corner of the basement, toward the back, tucked behind the fake Christmas tree Pa dragged out the day after Thanksgiving, without fail. I approached it, pulled it into the light, and almost vomited up the diner food I’d eaten before driving here.
Three parallel lines were visible in both arms of the chair, carved into the wood.
Fingernail scratches.
I pushed the chair away. It toppled backward and clattered against the cement floor, the resulting crack sounding muted and hollow. My legs wobbled underneath me, and I fell to the floor, my bottom hitting the ground hard, sending a spike of pain up my tailbone. I ignored it. Hot tears coursed out of my eyes.
What the fuck? That was all I could think. If my mouth worked at that moment, it would have been all I uttered, too. Repeatedly, until some semblance of sense sank in. The confusion only grew there on the floor when I spied a slab of metal duct-taped to the wall.
Don’t, my mind begged.
But I did.
***
The tape came away from the wall easily, and I pried the metal off with minimal effort. Tossing it aside, I peered into the dark hole. An odor rushed out toward me, a combination of sulfur and must. I wrenched my head backward, again fighting the urge to unload my breakfast on the cement floor. With my nose wrinkled and my eyes straining, I reached a hand into the hole, and my fingers closed around a folder of some kind. As I pulled it out, I realized it was exactly that, with twine wrapped around it.
The basement retained its uncomfortable qualities, so I tucked the folder under my arm and rushed to the stairs, climbing them as fast as the shaking wood beneath my feet allowed. Once again in the comfortable kitchen light, I slammed the door shut. Then, to help ease my quaking fear, I pulled the hamper from Pa’s room and pushed it against the basement door.
I placed the folder on the kitchen counter, next to the pile of dishes I’d cleaned. I don’t think I could have stopped my hands from unwrapping the twine and opening the green folder, even if I wanted to.
It was mostly empty, save for a single sheet of yellow paper and an assortment of photos. On the page, I again saw my father’s hasty scrawl.
Son, if you have found this, I know we may seem horrible. I only ask you understand our choices. We did what we did with a desperate love, and we raised you with that unconditional compulsion. Love, Dad.
Underneath the grubby page was the picture of the woman from the tape. Only, she wasn’t sobbing and tied to a chair. She was smiling. She wore ruby lipstick and held a hefty glass of wine.
In our kitchen.
I flipped to the next picture. Ma with her arms around the woman, who held a pregnancy test. One hand was pressed over the woman’s mouth while the other gripped the white stick. Ma’s arm was wrapped around the woman’s shoulder, her fingers pressing into the pale flesh. A gleeful smile lit her face. Lit her green eyes.
Hot tears threatened to burst from my eyes as I flipped to the next picture – mostly out of confused fear than anything else. But when I saw the photo, I fell to the ground, and an unhinged sob came writhing from my lips.
The picture was a sonogram. Underneath it, written again in my father’s slashing capital letters: ANDY CHAMBERS, 20 WEEKS.
***
Rifling through Pa’s things churned at my gut, but I ignored the feeling. Anger had set in, sometime between my initial shock and the sadness that followed seeing the picture of my mother. My real mother.
There was nothing in Pa’s nightstand, nor anything hidden in the bookshelves. I didn’t want to go down to the basement again, but it seemed the most logical place for him to hide something. Walking back to the hallway, I pushed the hamper aside and wrenched the door open. The wooden steps shifted from side to side as I stepped down. The odor of must was omnipresent, as was the stinking fear in the air that produced goosebumps on my arms.
For what must have been an hour, I ripped open all the totes, inspected all of the pallets. And still, I found nothing beyond old magazines, wedding albums, and the occasional notebook that contained Pa’s musings on politics. Frustrated, I kicked one of the totes, sending it skidding across the floor. It made a horrible sound as plastic ground against cement, and I sat down in the dank darkness, rubbed at my eyes and shook my head.
They weren’t my parents. Or, Ma wasn’t my mom. Who is that woman? What happened to her?
A chill swelled in the basement, almost as though someone left the freezer door open, and the cold air came wafting out. I turned my head toward the source of the cold. The basement door was open, as I had left it, but now there was a shadow standing in the rectangle of light that filtered down.
Its feet did not touch the floor.
I stood, even as my legs wobbled, as my teeth went numb. There was something in the shadow’s hand, something rectangular and thick. A thousand horror movies raced through my mind in a matter of seconds, as did my response to the TV every time a character yelled at a ghost. But my mouth opened, perhaps from instinct, perhaps from terrified stupidity, and my throat vibrated as that fabled word – hello? – prepared to spill from my mouth. At the same time, the figure thrust the object forward. It hit the stairs end over end, and I realized it was a book. The pages flapped open, and from them came flying another polaroid, along with a flurry of papers that drifted side to side. The book hit the cement floor with a dry clap! and the pages whispered as they settled on the ground. The figure turned and walked away. The wood above me wheezed with her steps. Dust twisted down from the rafters.
I scrambled forward, picking up the pages and the picture. The book, oddly enough, had HOLY BIBLE stamped on its front in silver letters. Upon inspection, I noticed that the inside was carved out, the onionskin pages ripped and shredded.
The word came tumbling out anyway. “Hey!” I yelled.
I sprinted up the stairs, tripped on the landing, and banged my knee on the hardwood floor. To the kitchen, I went. The yellow glow from the lamp – it was difficult to express how comforting it felt basking over me. More comfortable than the living room, with the television’s distorted black mirror, or the bedroom with the old water and the charm bracelet.
I packed the contents of the folder together, wrapping the twine around its green exterior, and pushed it aside. Then, I laid out the new documents from the carved-out Bible.
The picture was of our bathroom mirror. Pa’s reflection was clear. His face was not exactly youthful but also not approaching the antiquity of his final few days. Chewing on my bottom lip, I guessed it had to have been a few years prior. His countenance was hard to read. He held the camera against his chest, but his eyes were looking elsewhere, at another part of the mirror. I leaned against the kitchen counter, looking closer.
The bracelet was on the sink, its charms glittering under the bathroom lights. And there, in the mirror, hiding in the dark reflection, was a shadowed figure with long hair. It was hunched over, as though preparing to lunge.
It was then I recognized Pa’s countenance. Resigned. Accepting. Almost willing the woman to take him down.
I turned back to the pages, rubbing at my arms. Goosebumps lined my skin, and a deep chill settled into my chest. I felt like I needed a good, long shower.
Son, your Ma did not die of a brain tumor. There is no way to explain the truth. But she did not die of a brain tumor. And when I die, it will not be from some accident. It will be a well-deserved, long-telegraphed death. One we accept, even with its suddenness.
I looked at the next page. My saliva was sticky and solidified. It chugged around in my throat like a massive boulder. Swallowing it was hard, but I did. Pa’s handwriting was uncharacteristically hurried on the page. Smudged ink and misspelled words dotted the yellowed paper.
She wants you, son. I understand it, I dew. But I won’t let that happen. We did a wrong thing, taking her from that shelter. Your mother just wanted a child. Just wanted a baby. Nobody wood miss her, we new that. Christ, I’m sorry. Don’t judge her, pleese. She did what she did out of love. And we love you.
I wrenched my hand around my mouth to stop the horrified yelp from escaping my numb mouth.
They killed her. That much was clear. She gave birth, and they killed her, taking me.
Shame filled me, shame that tasted bitter, like almonds, on the way down. It wasn’t supposed to be my shame, yet here I was, with tears in my eyes.
Half of my mind was set on leaving when I turned to walk into the hallway. Let the landlord deal with my father’s shit, with his half-hearted confession and his horrid VHS tape. I would have had I not turned and seen the shadowed figure, the woman, my mother, standing under the yellow light, staring at me.
In the polaroid picture, she was eerie. In person, I pitied her. Her face was pale and swollen, one of her eyelids fused over its glassy orb. Her top lip was fattened, jutting out over the bottom one. The beauty I saw in the old image of her, the one where she was drinking wine, the one with Ma’s arm around her shoulder, was still there. But it was shrouded by the horrible things Ma and Pa had done to her.
She opened her mouth all the same, extending her arms outward. I saw her chipped nails, the broken fingers, the red marks where ropes had chafed and torn her wrists. God, they tortured her. Filmed her. Killed her. For me? For the chance to raise a baby?
This time, there was no holding back. I turned and unloaded my breakfast into the sink. Tears streamed from my eyes, though I couldn’t tell if they were the product of my sickness or my discoveries.
Both, I supposed.
When I wiped my mouth with a dishtowel and lifted my head from the sink, the woman – my mother – was gone.
“I’m sorry,” I called out. “I – I don’t know what to say, other than that I’m sorry.”
I tossed the dishcloth aside and marched toward the living room. Fuck this place. Fuck Ma and Pa. I readied to leave, to never look back. Let their shit fester in the dump upstate. Let some teenagers with nothing to do during the afternoon pick through their treasured belongings.
Except…
My hand hovered just before the doorknob. I chewed on my bottom lip, turned, and marched into the bedroom. I grabbed the charm bracelet from the nightstand. Then, after a moment’s consideration, I batted at the glass of water, sending droplets spilling over the wood.
I didn’t know what I was going to do with the bracelet. I didn’t know how I was going to unpack Ma and Pa’s horrible truth. But I wasn’t going to do it in their house, on their terms.
I grasped the doorknob, pulled the door open, and left without looking back.
THE END
Author Bio: Keith LaFountaine is a writer from Vermont. His short fiction has been published in various literary magazines, including Dread Stone Press, Teleport Magazine, and Not Deer Magazine.