Apartment Building E (2 page)

Marge lowered her head and ran between Madeline and Jack. She knocked Madeline to the floor and pushed Jack against the wall.

When she got near the stairs she turned and cried, “If you don’t believe me ask Verde!” She swung her right arm and the cat sailed through the air screeching wildly. Jack ducked. An outstretched paw managed to catch Jack on the cheek, scraping three parallel lines across his face.

The cat bounded off the wall, barely managing to land on its feet. It ran across the hall and butted its head against the plaster. Hissing, it sprinted back into Marge’s room. Jack could hear Marge laughing on her way down the stairs. It was a crazy person’s laugh; long, hollow, and unnerving.

Jack grabbed Madeline by the shoulders. “Are you all right?” She was crying and nodded her head. He picked her up and headed down the hall to the last door. Blood tickled his face as it ran down his cheek.

He passed the open door to Marge’s apartment and saw branches covering the ceiling. There was green mold on everything.

He panicked and ran.

They approached the last door on the right and Madeline pointed down. Jack looked and saw a green film extending out from under the door. He grabbed the knob and twisted. It was locked.

Jack set Madeline down who was sobbing. “Madeline, listen! Is your mommy in there?” She sniffled and nodded. He knocked on the door. No answer.

There was a creaking and then a loud crash at the other side of Apartment Building E. Madeline screamed.

Jack pounded on the door. “MISS! Your daughter’s out here!” He had no idea what the crash was. It took all of his will not to turn around and get the heck out of there. He couldn’t just leave Madeline sobbing in the middle of the hallway.

I am going to knock this door down if her mother doesn’t answer.
Jack was getting desperate. He could hear hissing from the other end of the hall; he imagined it was burst water pipes. He hoped the natural gas lines were still intact.

There was a tugging at his side. Madeline was grabbing at the keys on his belt, tears streaming down her face. “
Mommy,
” she muttered.

The keys!
He fumbled through the ring of keys Bill Frisk had given him. He realized he had no idea which one to use. He picked one and tried it. No good. He grabbed another one and tried it. It worked. The door opened and Jack was immediately greeted with scratchy branches brushing his face.

“Stay here, Madeline!” he yelled. He heard another crash, this time closer. There were voices yelling in the hallway behind him. Jack charged into the apartment with his arms out in front sweeping aside bundles of whip-like branches hanging everywhere. The floor was slick with mold. It stank of vegetation and mildew. He stayed low and moved further into the room. There were pieces of furniture coated with dark green ooze and he scanned for any sign of Madeline’s mother. “ANYBODY HERE?” he called out. No answer.

He was about to turn back when he heard a soft moan. It sounded like it was coming from his left, but he couldn’t see more than a few feet through the branches.

“Are you there?” He took a few steps in the direction he heard the moan, pulling the branches back with his arms.

Then he spotted her. Or, at least what he thought was her. There was a large hump in a mass of thin leaves crowded against the wall. Jack knelt down and began to tear away pieces of willow. The thin branches were wrapped tightly around her like a net, tough and stringy. Jack felt the branches from above closing in on him, settling on his shoulders.

He brushed them away and continued to tear at the branches holding Madeline’s mother against the wall. “I’ve found her!” he yelled to Madeline. He grabbed leaves and branches with both hands, tore them away, and finally exposed a woman’s arm. He pulled on it with one hand and pushed branches aside with the other.

Madeline’s mother came free.

Her eyes were closed and she was covered with the greenish mold. Jack grabbed her arm and lifted her up enough to dip his shoulder under her stomach. He stood. The putrid smell of the ooze filled his nose and he coughed, forcing his way towards the door. He held his breath as long as he could, remembering Marge’s green and insane-looking eyes.
That’s not happening to me, by God.

Jack pushed himself to the door, the hanging willow branches seemed to hold him back. They brushed his face and hundreds of thick and stringy branches settled around his shoulders. He slowed against the pressure and his feet began to slip.

A small hand reached through the greenery and grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

“Pull, Madeline!” Jack shouted. His shirt tightened and the extra force enabled him to stumble through the door into the hallway. Madeline’s mother tumbled to the floor, a mess of green ooze and twigs.

Jack was out of breath. “We have
…
to get out of here.”

Madeline was staring at her mother lying on the floor. The woman was breathing short raspy breaths. The girl stopped crying. She reached down and wiped the mold-slime from her mother’s face.

Jack looked down the hallway toward the stairs. He could still hear a hissing noise in the building and a few voices were arguing. He wanted to get out of there,
badly.
He thought a wall had collapsed somewhere and damaged some water pipes, or even worse, a gas line.
This could blow any second.

He stooped and lifted Madeline’s mother in a fireman’s carry and said as calmly as he could, “Madeline, grab the back of my shirt and hold on. We’re getting out of here.”

The woman was heavier than Jack remembered and he grunted under her weight.
C’mon, Jack. Just get her to the stairs and it’s all downhill from there.
He moved forward and felt a small pull on his shirt. Madeline was following.

As they passed Marge’s room Jack could feel a breeze and beyond the remains of the far wall he saw slivers of blue sky. There was water spraying from a damaged interior wall and Jack imagined he smelled the distinct odor of natural gas. They made for the stairs.

Each stair was slow and Jack’s steps were heavy. His shoulder ached from the pressure and the smell of the mold was making his stomach turn. He finally reached the first floor and saw several doors along the hallway open. Willow branches stuck out.
Everyone left when that wall collapsed,
Jack thought. He wondered if they all were as infected as Marge.

“How many people…live here, Madeline?” He asked, his cheeks puffing in and out.

“Ten.” Her voice sounded small, far away. She was gripping Jack’s shirt with white knuckles.

“We’ll go out the back way,” Jack wheezed. He led her down the hall, past the open doors and turned into the maintenance room. They stepped over the junk, past the wood working tools, past bottles of mysterious liquids, and exited out the door. The last thing Jack saw in Apartment Building E was a jar of green fluid labeled: “FLORA-FAUNA ARW 1839.”

*

A few weeks later Jack was sitting in his favorite chair sipping his favorite drink, Galapagos Tea with a pinch of sugar, watching the news. Nathan, his six-year-old boy, was playing with a chemistry set on the floor and his wife was knitting in the rocker. The TV flicked off and Jack set down the remote.

“So, that’s it then.” Jack said. His wife looked up. “They bulldozed it and cut down the willow. Six residents were admitted to a mental hospital and there are charges pending against the manager.” Even as Jack said this he could hear the hum of the bulldozers around the block at the apartment building complex. He went to the window.

Jack could see black puffs of exhaust from the demolition work as he peered through the branches of his own young willow tree in his backyard. The harrowing events at Apartment Building E still haunted him; the great poisoned willow, Marge’s terrified, insane look and her cat that scratched him with its razor claws, Madeline’s mother gasping for breath beneath the branches of infected willow. Jack shuddered. Their eyes had bothered him the most. They had all been
green
, poisoned by the great tree, that mother of all willows.

“Jack.” He spun around. His wife was bent over their son, holding him by the shoulders, peering into his little six-year-old face. Nathan wore a blank expression; a faraway look Jack immediately recognized. It was the very same insane look of the tenants of Apartment Building E!

“Jack,” his wife said again. “Look at Nathan’s eyes. They’re not blue anymore. They’re green, Jack!”

With horror, Jack realized the infection of the great willow may have spread. What if it had spread across the neighborhood, even to his own backyard tree?

Jack sprang to the door and bolted outside. He ran to the young willow tree standing like a sentinel in his backyard. Its long, whip-like branches sent an immediate chill down his spine. He tore at the trunk, bloodying his fingers as pieces of bark sprinkled down around his feet.

His fingers began to slip on something under the bark. Jack stopped and raised his palms before his eyes. They were covered in slimy green mold.

END