Where did she learn how to do that?
That’s what I want to know. That’s what I say in the car to nobody when I want to blame her for what happened. Penny has been “missing” for fifteen years today.
We’d only come back to school from the holidays a few weeks ago, and hadn’t seen one another during that time. After a weekend visit spent with my parents in the living room, we were eager to find a space to be alone.
I suggested the rectory on Mark Street, a nineteenth century building maintained by a local historical foundation but otherwise empty. The church it had literally been attached to burned down several decades ago.
I’d overheard my dad talking about it to my mom, though I never learned why until much later. He thought it should be demolished because it was dumb, in his opinion, to keep a place around and not use it for anything.
“Just an empty building.”
Penny and I were only planning to scout it out that day. It was in a pretty rough part of town. The houses around the rectory looked abandoned too but shittier. There were shady people lurking on the porches, staring at us. They didn’t look like they lived there or anywhere.
I was starting to get nervous but they all found something else to do as Penny tugged my arm to the front door.
“It’s open,” she said, grinning and laughing as she weaved her fingers into mine and gently pulled me into a fancy looking foyer from a different age. The furniture, the floors, the walls, the windows, and everything was ornate and polished and clean.
I found it strange. We could grab a lamp or walk out with a sculpture. Nobody appeared to be around to stop us. So why hadn’t the scummy people outside done just that? Maybe I judged them wrong but I don’t think so. The way they stopped looking at us was intentional. Now I know why.
Only Penny’s persistent pulling kept me going further into the homestead. It was cold; there was no modern furnace or running water. The place seemed huge for the priest who must have lived there some time ago.
We found a study and a living room with a fireplace. Penny thought we should build a fire.
“People will see the smoke,” I said. “Plus, there’s no firewood.”
She looked disappointed. I couldn’t bear to see her sad. I loved her deeply but felt it was too soon in the relationship to tell her.
God, she was beautiful. To list her features wouldn’t express the light she carried. She could share a little of it with her admirers, of which there were many, with her smile, an expression that embraced joy fully, without fear or shame or reservation.
Unapologetic happiness, I might call it, if that were completely accurate.
Imagine a person who tells you over and over again that everything will be alright and how each time they do, you feel worse.
Then imagine someone smiling because they accept that everything may not work out, and there’s absolutely nothing to be done about it.
That was Penny.
I’ve never met another person like her. I miss her every day.
“Let’s look around,” I said. “Maybe we’ll find some wood.” Really, I wanted to ensure we were alone. As we went through the foyer again on our way to the stairs, I locked the front door.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“If somebody comes, it’ll give us a few seconds to get away or hide.”
She reached past me and opened the deadbolt. “If there’s someone in here, it’ll slow down our escape.”
“Oh, right.”
She kissed me and took my hand again. The stairs creaked so much there wasn’t any point in sneaking. If somebody was upstairs, they heard us coming.
Sunlight illuminating the hallway from an open bedroom window extinguished with the scraping sound of curtain rings sliding along the rod. It wasn’t pitch black, but it was dark.
I turned around but felt resistance from Penny. “Let’s go. There’s someone here,” I whispered. Tugging her proved futile. “Penny, come on.”
Her hand slipped from mine, and she leapt the last step, grinning as she crouched like a spy. “I don’t think anyone is here.”
I shook my head incredulously. “Penny, this isn’t a game. It could be someone dangerous.”
The grin faded. “I just want to be sure. I want to be alone with you. We could pretend this is our house for a while.” She got a little closer; her breath smelled like sweet tarts and root beer. “If we find someone, we’ll run, I promise.”
Stupidly, I agreed to her terms. “It came from there,” I said, pointing to the nearest, open bedroom door.
“We mean no harm,” Penny called out, and I winced. “Tell us to go, and we will.” She gave me a wink while we waited for a response.
Nothing followed. We crept forward together into the threshold of the bedroom. Again, every piece of furniture - the bed, the dresser, a jewelry box - had been meticulously maintained.
Penny walked right in before I could stop her. There were only a few places to hide, and she quickly searched them all, including a look under the bed.
That left the closet. Those hazel eyes containing all the stars in the universe ran over the polished redwood door and the brass knob.
“Penny, don’t.”
“It’s the only place left to hide.” Her eyebrows danced, and she stuck her tongue out at me.
“In this room,” I said. “There’s still the rest of the house.”
“We’ll lock the door or block it with the dresser.” She wrapped her arms around my back, lightly tracing my shoulder blades with her fingertips and kissing me. It’d been a long time since we’d been alone.
“Let’s go to bed,” she whispered, pulling, again, this time toward the bed covered with an antique quilt. I almost put aside my unease and fear and surrendered entirely to the girl I would love forever. If only I had.
Instead, I detached from her when she started fumbling with my belt; if we started something, there’d be no way I could stop.
I went to the closet and threw open the door and found my exact fear standing there: A man, huge and menacing and dressed in a cloak lurking in the dark.
I released a strangled shriek before leaping away and knocking over a small table. The glass candle holder on it fell and smashed to pieces on the hardwood floor.
Penny laughed, and it hurt. The situation felt like an ambush.
“You…” I said, my tone an accusation.
For the first time, her unabashed smile faltered. She got off the edge of the bed and walked into the closet while I hyperventilated. Penny dragged a full sized, wooden mannequin into the dim light of the bedroom and let it fall.
Most people are familiar with the desk sized version of the featureless and posable wooden man. I didn’t know they were also made really big. This one looked constructed of the same wood as the floor. The oval head appeared camouflaged for the colours throughout the rectory.
If it wasn’t for the black long coat (not a cloak) on it, the mannequin would have been practically invisible.
“Penny,”I said, “I’m sorry.”
She ignored the apology, her attention concerned with the doll. “What is this thing?”
“An old timey mannequin?”
“Like for an artist?”
I shrugged.
Penny pulled open the longcoat to examine the model’s genderless crotch. “Doesn’t seem to be a sex doll.” She laughed and started lifting it.
“What are you doing?”
She groaned from the strain of the solid homunculus. “Help me put it on the bed.”
“Okay…” We lay it on top of the blankets as Penny roughly placed its head on the pillow. She pulled open the curtains - the same ones I swore I’d heard closing before - to let in sunlight, but the day had gone grey, and it didn’t help to brighten the room much.
Undaunted, Penny climbed into bed with the mannequin and ran her fingers suggestively over its bare chest. “Finally, a partner who’s chill.”
I bore the slight without reply. Her words stung, though. Like a fool, I stood there, unsure what to do next. Our moment alone seemed to be passing, and I didn’t know how to rescue it.
Penny’s keys jingled as she pulled them from her jacket pocket. She held the tip of one to the mannequin’s polished and featureless face and started scratching out a mouth.
“Penny, what are you doing? Stop.” My boots crunched the broken glass as I went to the bed.
“Making someone who’s happy to be here with me. He can’t move, so he has to trust me.”
“I trust you,” I said, but it sounded pathetic. “I was scared, and you just smiled when I opened the door and thought we’d found a squatter.”
The mouth she’d carved was full of square teeth, smiling but not with joy or freedom. Its face would look forever sadistic after Penny’s work. And she’d only just begun.
Her whittling did not cease as she replied, “You think I brought you here to have you killed or something? It was your idea.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What are we doing together? What is our relationship?” The carving slowed as she closed the mannequin’s first eye socket, a wobbly circle. “I thought we were going somewhere.”
“We are,” I said. “I hope. Penny, I love you. I haven’t said it because it hasn’t been that long -“
“How do you love somebody you don’t trust?”
The discussion had escalated to such a heightened state. I lost my words again and couldn’t seem to swallow in a throat gone dry.
After a prolonged quiet punctuated by the scraping of her key, now along its chest, I spoke. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I definitely didn’t mean to leap to such a stupid conclusion. People make poor choices when they’re afraid.”
She sighed, and a ripple of fatigue seemed to leak from her expression for just a moment. I didn’t realise then the part she hid from the world, and the constant fight within her to stay in the moment. Penny never told me about her real parents.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, grinning once again. “Help me with our man here.” She unlooped a key from her rabbit’s paw and gave it to me. “Whenever I get sad, I try to put those feelings into some art or exercise. Let’s put all of our mistakes and self-hatred into the mannequin.”
I examined the key because I didn’t understand what she meant.
“Don’t think too much,” she said. “Let go.” The carving continued, but instead of personifying the blank doll more, Penny rented symbols I didn’t recognize, arcane sigils and runes. She read a lot; maybe the signs were from a book.
I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to wreck her suggestion for mending our apparently fragile relationship. The tip of the key peeled the surface of the wood with surprising ease.
PiG, I wrote across the new man’s forehead. I don’t know why. Penny squeezed my hand as I studied my first contribution. Why did I write that?
“Don’t think. Keep going.”
Our work began in earnest. I wrote swear words along his legs and added LOSeR to the top row of his square teeth. We were laughing as we flipped him over. I began adding more humanity to him in the form of moles, scars, and scraggly hair on the back of his otherwise bald head.
UGLY
USELESS
PAtheTIc
ALoNe
The room filled with night a few moments after we’d finished humiliating the mannequin. We’d been at it for hours. It felt good to humanise an object only to shame it afterward. But it also felt wrong. I was sweaty and out of breath. So was Penny.
She pulled me onto our creation and undid my belt, and found the button of my jeans. My hands found her, and it was truly dark when we finally got to the reason we’d come in the first place. It wasn’t what I expected. We’d never gone all the way before, and this was my first time.
I loved her, but having sex on top of the mannequin was weird and physically uncomfortable. And yet, it all felt so good.
Penny held me close as I began to cry.
“I can feel your tears,” she said, “Why are you crying?”
I couldn’t explain the perfection of us at the moment. I was really happy for the first time in my life, and the last.
Penny’s fingernails dug into my back, and then she started slapping me wildly.
“Penny? What are you doing?”
I grabbed for her blindly and tried unsuccessfully to trap her arms and pin her writhing body with my weight.
The sturdy objects in the room absorbed the sickening pop of her bones. Penny went limp.
“Penny? Penny?!”
It was too dark to do anything. I needed some light, and all I could think of was the oil lamp I’d seen in the front hall. Charging into the hallway, I misjudged where I thought the staircase was and ran into another small table. Yet another fragile object fell and shattered on the floor.
I took a deep breath. Penny. I had to be calm if I was going to help her. When I moved back toward where I thought the bedroom was, I encountered something solid. Before I could figure out what, I was on my ass. Bits of glass on the floor cut into my palms.
“Penny?”
I thought we’d bumped into one another. A heavy step connected with the hardwood. Quiet followed. It wasn’t Penny. I would’ve knocked her down in a collision. Somebody else was in the house. I should have searched everywhere.
Somewhere behind me, the hallway went on to who knew where. I ran and tripped over the first few steps of another ascending staircase. Like an animal, I padded up the jagged slope - stairs in the night - and thudding clomps followed.
The stairs turned on a landing, and then I felt the space open into an empty void. There could be anything ahead, but the pursuer continued. I had no choice but to keep going with the thought of getting out of the way and hiding in the dark.
They had no light but did have the advantage of having been here longer and knowing the layout. Still, that wouldn’t help them if I hid at the top and pushed them down when they came near. I had to get to Penny.
With trembling hands outstretched, I waited to feel them mount the top step. Their heavy marching ceased, however, and the silence that followed scratched at my fragile calm. I chose to run again, and the methodical knocking sounds of the chase resumed.
I don’t even know where I ended up. The darkness in the house was so complete. Everywhere, I was followed as I crashed through possessions and tore at handles, and slammed them shut behind me.
Eventually, a window with open curtains provided some light, and I could see enough to find a book of long matches on a mantel and one of those oil lamps. I whispered curses as I struggled to light it and figure out how to turn up the flame.
I almost dropped the thing when I looked again out the window, figuring maybe I could jump to escape. There were people in the yard watching the house, and I think they were the same sketchy ones I’d seen when we first arrived at the rectory.
When I turned, it was there in the doorway. Of course it was. Where else would it be unless under the dead body of my love?
Quiet, I thought, she can’t be dead, and this can’t be here unless someone moved it.
The unsteady flicker of the lamp made a rippling shadow over the hateful words I’d carved and the strange symbols Penny had left. Aside from these additions, the mannequin looked much the same as when I found it in the closet. Even its long, black coat had been put back on, though left undone.
“You don’t scare me,” I lied, and the tremor in my voice practically screamed my fear. “Please, let me go. You don’t have to scare us. Please let me go to my girlfriend. I don’t know what happened, but if you let me go to her, I’ll just get her some help and we’ll leave. We won’t tell anyone.”
The polished face sneered with the only expression Penny had allowed. It blocked the way, and that was fine, so long as the squatter or squatters that put it there left me alone. I could squeeze by. There was room.
“I’m going now,” I said. “Please don’t try to stop me.” I took a step and froze.
The mannequin’s wooden digits were jointed and textured enough to trick a button into the hole of the longcoat. I watched as it did them all and folded its hands over its stomach, seemingly waiting, when it was done.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
It had to be. Somebody must be pulling strings and the mannequin some kind of marionette or robot.
As if aware of my rationalising, it stepped into the room. There was no more doubt that the wooden feet had been the same noise as those made in the dark.
The creature came to me and leaned its hideous mask close. I winced and shriveled low to the floor, closing my eyes, begging god to save me.
I didn’t believe in god, but I prayed.
I don’t believe in god now, and I will never pray again
“God is dead,” said a cruel voice within my head, the intrusive thought of the mannequin or whatever foul thing possessed it. “Die and give yourself to me.”
Its hands clasped around my neck and lifted. I grabbed hold of its forearms and felt my feet leave the floor. In the process, I dropped the oil lamp. The top fell off, and oil spilled onto the mannequin’s foot, catching fire instantly.
I was tossed over its head and plunged into darkness again. My head connected with the lintel of the doorway. Fighting unconsciousness, I crawled into the hallway until its wooden hand grabbed me by the ankle. I was upside down and burning a second later.
The whole mannequin had been polished with very flammable oil. Fire climbed its torso and lit the longcoat. Yet, it did not seem concerned as it calmly flung me down the staircase. I landed on my back again and, while disoriented, bruised, and bleeding, I hadn’t broken anything.
It watched from above as the letters of PiG were traced in flame. The consuming fire illuminated the hallway below. I hopped down and ran into the bedroom.
Penny, or her body, at least, was gone. The bed was empty.
I ducked back out in time to cross the hallway and beat the engulfed and graffitied monster across to the next stairwell. I leapt down to the first landing but slipped, smacking my head and blacking out for a few seconds.
Pinpoints of fire unfurled to reveal the full horror of the situation. It held me by my wrists and began pulling me apart. I could feel the stretched muscles tear.
When my left shoulder popped, however, I started to dangle, and for some reason, it let go of that arm and tossed me down the remaining steps to the front hall. I bounced off the wall and landed on my ass.
“You will not leave,” the mannequin roared, and the drawn mouth Penny had created split into a cracked approximation of the real thing. It climbed down the steps, and I staggered and stumbled to the exit. If it caught me again, I was finished.
Penny saved me. Her way of looking at the world and lack of worry ensured the deadbolt remained open.
I had neither the strength nor calm to work a lock, but turning a knob was easy enough. Cold air swept through the doorway, soothing the burns on my body, as I continued to run. The raging fire consuming the mannequin grew as it followed me out onto the porch.
I did not look back. I ran right past the people gathered on the lawn. I was right. They were the same who’d watched Penny and I go into the rectory.
None of them would look at me. All had their heads bowed too, unbothered by the burning figure in their midst.
Asking for their help didn’t seem wise. I ran and kept running until I made it home and to my parents. They called the police and Penny’s house and took me to the hospital. I lost track of reality for a bit. Apparently, I kept saying, “Penny. Where’s Penny? Penny? Where is she?”
Nothing felt real for a long time after that. Police questioned me about the whereabouts of Penny, and obviously did not accept what they called my “version” of events at the rectory.
Eventually, a detective showed me photos of the rectory from the next day. Nothing had been damaged or burned, and no wooden man, singed or otherwise, was found. More importantly, Penny wasn’t there, and there were no signs of any kind of foul play.
“What you say,” the detective said, “can’t be true.” There was pressure then to tell what really happened, but I had nothing different to say.
Penny’s “parents” showed up a few weeks later to make a sympathetic appeal for the truth.
“I told the truth,” I said.
They were an odd pair. One was too old and the other too young. The young woman snapped at me after a few silent moments.
“We’re her foster parents.”
The old guy was the young woman’s dad. They fostered half a dozen other kids, and while I learned their house was stable, they weren’t trying to make close relationships with the kids they took in. Government funding was their aim. Foster care was their business.
I felt even greater sadness for Penny.
“Another run away,” the old guy said on his way out of the door.
“She didn’t,” I called after him. He didn’t notice or simply didn’t care.
Life resumed in an altered state. I required therapy and drugs and the same conversation with my parents long into the night.
“I don’t understand,” I’d tell them. “It happened. I broke things. There was a fire. Where’s Penny?”
They’d comfort me the best they could. One night, the following summer, my dad brought a six-pack onto the porch and asked about the rectory first. He understood why we’d gone there, but didn’t know how we’d known about its existence.
I revealed I’d heard him mention it and we were only planning to check it out that night. He thought that might be the case and told me why he’d mentioned it to my mom. He worked as a carpenter, and his boss had his proposal to update the rectory into housing denied by the city with ferocity. His boss didn’t get it, but a councilor made a point of tearing a strip off him about it.
“Somebody likes that place the way it is,” my dad said. We got a little drunk and went to bed. Years crawled, and I did not recover. I grew up, took a job, and avoided people as much as possible. Every day, I thought of Penny and the thing in the rectory.
And one night, after a few, I got brave and decided to pay the neighbourhood a visit. It wasn’t late when I got there, and the shady folks were out on their porches and stoops smoking despite the chill.
“Stop,” an old lady smoking a rolled cigarette said as I approached. “She’s gone. You survived the ghost of the cambion priest that used to live there. Isn’t that enough?”
“No,” I said.
“What do you want from us? We keep the rectory intact. We keep him there. Isn’t that enough?”
“No,” I said. “Where’s Penny?”
The woman appeared wistful as she repeated her words. “She’s gone. She’s gone away from here. He could have kept your soul, but not hers, no, not one like hers. Isn’t that enough?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I wept, “I’m still here.”
The rectory door would be open, but would I have the courage to throw the deadbolt?
Fifteen years says no.