Three Truths and Other Unsettling Tales Read online

  “She’s beautiful,” I told her.

  Magda smiled at me. I had gained her trust. “Magda,” I asked her, “why don’t you let anybody know you’re here? Why don’t you scream for help?”

  “The boy,” she said, “he told me he’ll kill the boy if I make any noise.”

  I thought back to the child who’d left with his parents earlier. “He’s gone right now. I think they went to a Christmas party.”

  That seemed to reinvigorate her. She carefully put Perla back into her hiding spot. “You’ll be safe here,” she said to the doll. She took her seat on the floor and picked up her file, which she began moving back and forth against the chain with determination.

  “I’m leaving tonight,” she said as she filed. “I’m going to wait for Santa in the big house and have him take me away from here, up to the North Pole where people are nice.”

  “I don’t know if Santa can help you, Magda.” Her face fell at those words. “But I can.” That made her smile.

  Together we came up with a plan. I would try to draw Corbin outside – once he was distracted, Magda would sneak away and run into the manor where she would use the phone to call for the police. “Just dial zero and the operator will connect you,” I instructed her. “Don’t wait for Santa.”

  Magda got back to work with her file, and in only a few minutes, she succeeded in cutting through the chain, freeing herself from its bitter grasp.

  I moved back into the main room, where Corbin was still working on his lawn mower. Using every last ounce of breath, I yelled his name. “Corbin!” He jerked his head up. “I’m over here!” I yelled.

  “The fuck is goin’ on here tonight?” His agitation was evident as he stood fully upright. “Who is that?”

  “I’m outside!” I shouted as I began pushing myself through the outer wall. He took a step toward the front door, then thought better of it and went to the bedroom. He flung the door open, only to see Magda appear to be sleeping on the floor, still wrapped in her chain.

  Leaving the girl where she was, he stomped back across the bunkhouse and shoved open the front door, nearly tearing it off its hinges. His head swiveled both ways as he looked for the source of the distraction.

  Moving a little farther outside, I shouted again, “Over here!” I could see Corbin’s ears twitch as he tried to understand what he was hearing. He took a tentative step out of the building, but didn’t appear willing to move any farther. I screamed for him to come find me. He shuddered momentarily, then a heated sneer grew on his face.

  “Whatever son of a bitch is out there, you best run.” He pulled a switchblade from his pocket and opened it with a click. He stepped away from the bunkhouse, closer to me. Behind him, I could see Magda slowly stepping out of the bedroom. Her slight frame worked to her advantage as she glided silently across the floor. I kept calling to Corbin, who’d taken about ten steps out of the bunkhouse. It took Magda only a few more seconds until she was standing in the doorway behind him. The sneer dropped from Corbin’s face, replaced with a baffled stare as he scratched the back of his head. Magda wavered on the stoop, unsure if she should continue on or not. She began to shake. I was already screaming as loud as I could at Corbin, but it was having less effect with each passing moment.

  In desperation I began cussing and swearing. Instantly he turned back and faced my position, as if he could intrinsically tell that someone was cursing his name. The sneer returned to his face, and he boldly stepped closer. Magda took the opportunity and left the bunkhouse, and with feathery footsteps she moved toward the manor. Only a few seconds later, Corbin lost all interest in what I was doing and turned back around, barely missing the sight of Magda disappearing around the corner of the Manor.

  I followed her, praying that she’d quickly call the police like we’d planned. I felt a moment of panic when I saw her footprints in the slushy snow, and I knew that we wouldn’t have too much time before Corbin came looking for her. Her path led to the opposite side of the Manor, where she had used a rock to break the window into the library. I was impressed with her resolve. I passed through the wall and into the house. I called to her, but got no response. I continued on my way until I made it to the parlor. The Christmas tree was aglow with lights and bulbs and garland. Beautiful gifts were wrapped at its base. Kneeled in front of it was Magda.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked as I entered. The blues and reds and greens from the lights colored her face and made her look a little less pathetic.

  “C’mon,” I insisted, “we need to call the police. The phone is in the kitchen.”

  Magda looked at the fireplace. “Santa will be here any minute, and he’ll save us both!”

  “No he won’t. Santa’s not coming.”

  “My momma told me all about him. I already made a wish for him to take me away.”

  I noticed movement in the darkness outside the window. “Magda, we don’t have much time.”

  Emerging from the shadows, I could see Corbin’s outline coming toward the house. He was following the path in the snow that had been created minutes earlier by Magda.

  “Hurry!” I yelled at her.

  Magda shot up, and any fantasies she had about Santa taking her away were momentarily put aside. “What do I do?” she asked in a panic.

  “The kitchen! Go to the phone!”

  Magda followed my voice as I led her to the kitchen. At that same moment, we heard Corbin kicking in the library glass, making the hole in the window big enough for him to climb through.

  Magda found the phone along the wall. “I’ve never used one before.” It was a rotary phone, which I was vaguely familiar with.

  “Put your finger in the zero hole, and spin the dial.

  She did as I told her and put the handset to her face. “I hear it ringing!”

  The sound of Corbin stomping around echoed through the halls as he tromped through the house. “Where you at, you little bitch?”

  “There’s no time!” Magda shrieked as she dropped the handset and ran toward the parlor. The sound of the phone hitting the floor attracted Corbin, who entered the kitchen from the south door as Magda left through the other side.

  I followed Magda down the hallway. “Hide!” I shouted to her. “I’ll try to distract him!” I ran back toward Corbin and screamed at him, trying to draw him upstairs, but he paid no attention, blasting right past me in his search. I followed him into the parlor where we both scanned the room for Magda. She was hiding.

  Without saying a word, Corbin walked up to a set of floor-length curtains that covered one of the large windows. He pushed each one aside with his sinewy arms, but failed to find her. He looked under the table and behind the Christmas tree. Getting annoyed, he tried to coax Magda out. “Now c’mon, girl. Get yourself out here and I won’t hurt you.”

  There was no movement. Corbin scanned the room. Across from him, there was a second set of billowy curtains with a slight bulge in the middle, one that might be hiding a person. He stomped over, pulled his arm back, and punched the bulge square in the middle, only to have his hand connect with something too solid to be human. “Damn it!” he screamed as he shook his hand back and forth in pain. He moved the curtain aside to see what he’d hit, and found a large ceramic Santa that had been placed in the window. He pushed it to the floor in anger and kicked it.

  Behind Corbin there was a large set of cabinets. One of the doors moved slightly, revealing Magda’s hiding place to me. I knew it wouldn’t be long before Corbin checked there.

  I yelled to her, “Run now! He’s distracted!” She responded immediately, pushing the door open and climbing out from the tight space while Corbin continued his angry tirade on the ceramic Santa, smashing its face with his foot. She ran much faster than her malnourished frame would’ve suggested – almost fast enough to make it out of the room, but Corbin, who saw her dart away from the corner of his eye, was much faster. He caught up to her right as she passed through the threshold and forcefully yanked her backwards by her
hair. She fell to the ground and skidded to the center of the room.

  Corbin walked up and kicked her. “Now get over here,” he said as he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder. Magda, refusing to give up, bit the back of his arm, drawing blood that ran down her face. He slammed her to the ground in pain, and with his next motion, he withdrew his switchblade and opened it up.

  “You don’t ever do that!” he yelled at her. “Now stand up.”

  Magda slowly rose to her feet while Corbin’s hand shot out and grabbed her by the throat. He looked right at her. “Bitch.” With fury in his eyes, he thrusted his blade deep into her belly. Magda coughed and gasped for breath. Blood oozed from her wound and dripped to the carpet below.

  “That’s what you get,” he said as he let her fall to the ground. A red puddle formed around her dying body.

  I kneeled next to her. “I’m here,” I told her. “You’re not alone.”

  “I’m glad you’re with me,” she rasped. Corbin looked at her as if she was insane. I stayed next to Magda as her breaths came with increasingly longer gaps between them. Finally, she breathed no more.

  Corbin seemed anxious as he gazed at both the body and the bloody room around him. I could sense that he was trying to figure out a way to erase the mess he’d created, and soon he began nodding his head as if he’d thought of a solution. With little effort, he scooped up Magda’s corpse and walked her out of the room. I stayed behind, devastated by what I’d seen.

  I soon found that I was immobilized. With my failure, whatever power of movement I’d been granted had ended. Slowly, the room around me began to fade from my vision. One of the last things I remember seeing was Corbin coming back inside and looking at all the blood. He took off his shirt and tried to soak some of it up, but there was no way he could’ve cleaned it all. He stared at the Christmas tree and felt its dry branches. He left and returned a couple of minutes later with a bottle of clear liquor, which he splashed over the tree and the surrounding floor. The liquor proved its potency when he lit the tree – it flamed up without hesitation. He stepped back from the blaze and watched it grow. The flames crept up the walls and devoured the blood spatters. The pooled blood on the floor began sizzling and smoking under the heat. Corbin left the room and I heard a car start up. A deep, powerful engine growled out into the night, and soon it faded away.

  For my part, I was amid the flames. It was quite a peculiar feeling, as I could feel the heat without any of the accompanying pain that it should’ve caused. Even in the firelight, my vision continued to grow darker. Soon I could see nothing at all, and I could only hear the sound of the flames lapping their way up the walls of the parlor. Then, I was gone from that place.

  It was daylight. I was lying in the snow not too far from the manor. It was immediately evident that I was back in my own time. My father’s car was out front, and the parlor, which I had last seen consumed in flames, was intact and proudly displaying our Christmas tree through the window. I got up and stumbled back inside, finding my parents safe in their bed. I vowed that I would put the events of the previous evening out of my mind and enjoy my Christmas, even as I felt the lump of scar tissue on the side of my tongue.

  By springtime I had mostly succeeded in blocking my memories of Corbin. It helped to find distractions – school, friends – those sort of things helped keep me focused in the present, and made it easier to convince myself that the whole thing had just been one terrible dream. According to the wretch, Corbin visited his charges annually, but I felt that if I could simply forget what happened, then somehow the whole damn thing would simply stop.

  Like nearly all of the trees before it, our family’s Christmas tree had been firmly planted in the ground, and it was beginning to sprout new needles. The line of trees was now that much longer, and I challenged myself to run the new distance in record time. On a warm day I set my stopwatch and started off on my run. I flew past the teens, twenties, and thirties at a terrific speed, but by the late forties my lungs were burning. “Pace yourself,” I thought. I settled into a slower gait while glancing at the stopwatch on my wrist. When I looked up again, I saw her – Magda, standing quietly among the trees. She looked just as I’d last seen her, with her ratty dress and unkempt hair lying stuck against her face. Her skin was gray, almost like she was pulled from a black and white TV show. She was trying to speak, but whatever words she was making, they left her mouth silently.

  “Hello,” I said with cautious surprise. The sight of her made my already racing heart go just a little bit faster. She was a miserable, heartbreaking picture. I felt nothing but pity for her. “It’s me, Charlie,” I said.

  She looked straight up to the sky while her facial features began to warp and distort. Her mouth opened impossibly wide as her forehead and chin melted into her neck, which in turn melted into her torso. I could still see her tongue and her teeth through the large hole that had been her mouth. As she continued to sink into the earth, her whole body turned into black tar, and after a few more moments of me staring in awe, the tar absorbed completely into the earth, leaving a dead spot on the grass.

  So much for trying to forget about Christmas. I fell back onto the ground, no longer concerned about making a new personal record. Images flitted through my mind – I saw Magda in her worn dress, holding onto Perla. I saw Corbin angrily gripping his steering wheel while he sped along his ethereal highway.

  Later that day I walked behind the Manor to the spot where the bunkhouse had once been. It was far enough from the main house that the gardeners felt little need to maintain it full time, and it had reverted to a mostly natural state. I walked among the bushes and sedges that grew there. I had never noticed, but much of the bunkhouse’s cement foundation was still in place. It’d been broken up and parts of it had been carried away, but if one knew what to look for, the building’s footprint was still visible under a tangle of vines and low-slung branches.

  Pushing through the growth, I walked to where the bedroom once was. I scanned the ground, looking for... there it was – the small hole in the foundation where Magda had hidden Perla. It was still covered by a slab of cement. I kneeled down and brushed the dirt from around the slab, then lifted it carefully. A breath of dust escaped from the opening. After a cautious pause, I reached into the darkness. My hand brushed up against a scrap of material, which I grasped and pulled out. I looked at what was in my hands - Perla hadn’t aged well, though it was still recognizable as the doll Magda had created. I held it carefully to prevent it from falling apart.

  Once I obtained Magda’s treasure I had no real idea of what to do with it. The existence of Perla essentially confirmed that my adventures with Magda and Corbin hadn’t been some sort of dream, which set me in a mild panic for the remainder of the day. That night, I ended up storing the doll in the top drawer of my dresser, which is where it stayed – until the next time I saw Magda, that is.

  It was probably a couple of months later when her specter showed up in my bedroom. I’d been asleep when a bitter cold wind woke me. I cursed at the open window and pulled the blanket up high to my chin when I saw her. Just like the time before, she was grayish in hue. Moonlight filtered in and lit my room just enough to see her. Her mouth opened and closed, though the only thing I could hear was the rustling of the leaves outside. Slowly, she lifted a finger to my top dresser drawer and pointed.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked her.

  She continued pointing at the dresser until little bits of her started falling off. Her finger detached and hit the floor, where it disappeared in a smoky mist. The rest of her arm broke into pieces and followed suit, then her head simply rolled off and hit the ground. It too disappeared. The rest of her deteriorated in the same manner. Soon, there was nothing left.

  I took to carrying Perla in my pocket wherever I went. It was bulky and uncomfortable, but it seemed like Magda had gone out of her way to send a message to me, though I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. Still, I felt that it would be wise t
o keep Perla close.

  Many times I contemplated telling my mother and father about what’d happened. They were very devoted parents, but I had the fundamental understanding that there was really nothing they could do for me, even if they had believed my story, which they wouldn’t have. However, I did have an interesting conversation with my father about the missing 1958 Christmas tree. He had been in town talking with some long-time residents, and they told him that nearly half the manor had burned down at some point during the fifties. “The fire started with the Christmas tree, apparently,” he explained to me. He glanced around the parlor, where we were sitting. “They did a marvelous job matching the new construction to the old,” he said. I agreed with him. “So it looks like that’s your answer about the missing tree. It got destroyed before they ever had a chance to put it in the ground. I’m guessing that they left a gap there as a memorial to the lost tree, kind of like a gloomy placeholder for the Christmas that wasn’t,” he surmised.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said quietly.

  After school started in the fall, I would often stop by the library on my way home to look through the old microfiches of the local newspapers, hoping to find a mention of Magda. I had no luck. It was almost like she never existed. I did find information on Corbin – his last name was Montreau, and just like the wretch had told me, he’d been put to death in the electric chair in 1974 after being convicted for a string of murders dating from 1960. The police and prosecutors never even knew about Magda, his first victim.

  More months passed. I didn’t see Magda in that intervening time, though I could feel her presence around me. My unease grew as Christmas drew nearer and my memories of Corbin came into sharper focus. I threw myself into my schoolwork and chores, trying my best to keep occupied.

  On December 24th I went to church with my parents. I prayed for salvation, forgiveness, and everything in-between. I wasn’t sure if it would help, but I knew it wouldn’t hurt. My parents let me open a couple of gifts before they went to sleep, but the rest were saved for Christmas itself. I made sure to cherish the moment, not really knowing what fate awaited me and my family that night.