The Wrong Goodbye Read Free Page B

forgot myself and just stood there, agape and staring.
      There were three of them, propped around a table laid with silver as though they were enjoying a midday tea.
  They weren't.
      The farthest of them, an older woman, sat across the table from where I stood and beamed back at me with an expression of charmed delight – or rather, that's what it would have been, were she not dead. The putrid stink of her was overwhelming, and it was all I could manage to keep my feet. Her silver hair was pulled back into a bun, revealing flesh the color and texture of old shoe leather, cracked and peeling. Her mouth was set into a smile, revealing gray-brown teeth and gums of withered black. What I first took to be dimples were, in fact, metal pins, inserted into the flesh to preserve her expression. Her eyes were not eyes at all, but large, vaguely iridescent buttons, an X of rough twine at each of their centers, affixing them in place. I had a shock of recognition, but disfigured as she was, it took me a moment to place her. Her photo sat atop the mantle in the living room. This was Haas's wife.
      The other two sat on either side of the old woman, facing each other across the table. They had the look of a couple in their thirties, and they were fresher, it seemed – their flesh less desiccated – but their treatment had been the same. Worse, in fact, in the case of the man – his eyes had simply been stitched shut, his smile painted on; and though his shirt was clean and freshly pressed, an ugly smear of brain and blood streaked across his forehead still. But the woman – whose resemblance to Haas's wife suggested daughter – was truly a masterpiece. Gleaming eyes of glass stared out from bloodied sockets. Red lipstick graced her lips. Her teeth he'd replaced with the finest porcelain, at least mostly. A plate of yellowed molars and a pair of pliers sat atop a brown-stained rag on the table in front of her, and beside her was an empty chair. I guess I had interrupted Haas's fun. 
      You want to know where I went wrong? I was so freaked out by what I'd seen in that room, I went and dropped my guard. A creaky landing isn't much of a concern when you're sneaking up on a kindly old man, but when that kindly old man turns out to be a human-doll-making nutjob, it's kind of a big deal. Which is to say, I should've seen that mallet coming. 
      Of course, I didn't know it was a mallet at the time. Felt like he hit me with a dump truck. All I know is one moment, I'm taking in this nightmare tea party, and the next, I'm on the floor. He hit me again, and I heard something snap. Pain blossomed in my head like a firework, and the room went white. 
      And then, for a while, there was nothing.
      When I came to, my hands and feet were bound. My head was pounding, and my left eye was swollen shut. I raised my hands as one to touch it. The flesh was all hot and pulpy and wrong. I cast a glance at my fingers with my one good eye. More blood than I expected. If I didn't put pressure on that soon, I'd be lucky if I managed to stay conscious.
      Then I saw what Haas was doing, and I wondered if lucky was the right word.
      He was standing at a workbench at the far end of the room, stringing twine through a heavy darning needle and humming softly to himself. A small man, stooped and heavily lined, he wore a tweed vest over a blue Oxford, with matching tweed pants. His bald pate gleamed above a crescent of wispy gray. When he saw me watching him, he smiled.
      "Ah, good," he said in lightly accented English. "You're up!" He riffled through his toolbox for a second, producing a handful of assorted buttons. "Tell me – which of these do you like best?"
      I tried to speak, but my head was full of angry bees, and the words wouldn't come. The effort damn near made me puke.
      "I rather think this one," he said, crossing the room and holding it to my cheek appraisingly. "It complements the gold tones in your hair." 
      He