But that wasn't really the scary part, was it?
No, the scary part was not that he believed this was happening and that therefore his mind was going. The scary part was that his mind was not going, that this thing really existed. This creature, this being, this demon, this ghost, this whatever-it-was could actually be conjured up by making macaroni and cheese.
But could it be conjured up at any time, or was it only on Saturdays and only at lunchtime?
He didn't know.
That night the apartment seemed much darker than it did ordinarily. There were shadows on the sides of the couch and at the foot of the bed, echoes of darkness in the corners of the rooms.
He went to sleep early.
He left the lights on.
He dreamed of a man in a doorway with an ax.
He had the rest of the week to think about what had occurred. Afraid, he stayed away from the apartment as much as possible, leaving early for work, coming home late. He cooked no meals for himself but ate out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner: Jack in the Box, Der Weinerschnitzel, Taco Bell, McDonald's.
He'd thought the fear would abate with the coming of a new day, that as the hours passed the horror of the occurrence would dim. He thought he'd be able to find a rational explanation for what he had seen, what he had heard.
But it had not happened.
He recalled with perfect and profound clarity the contours of the bubbly foam face, the way the boiling water had made it smile. He heard in his head the whispered word.
Blood.
There was nothing he could do, he realized. He could move, get a new apartment, but what would that accomplish? The impetus for this horror might lie not in his home but in himself. He could never cook again, or at least never make macaroni and cheese, but he would always know that the face was there, waiting, unconjured, below the surface reality of his daily life.
Blood.
He had to confront it.
He had to try it again.
***
Everything was the same. He put in the water, put in the salt, put in the macaroni, turned on the flame, and out of the pot's swirling contents emerged a face. He was not as frightened this time, perhaps because he had been prepared for the sight, but he was nonetheless unnerved. He stared down at the white foam.
"Blood," the mouth whispered. "Blood."
Blood.
There was something hypnotic about the word, something almost... seductive. It was still terrifying, still horrifying, but there was also something attractive about it. As he looked at the face, saw its vague familiarity, as he listened to the whisper, heard its demand, Alan could almost understand what was wanted with the blood. In a perverse way that was not at all understood by his conscious mind, he felt that it made a kind of sense.
Outside, a dog barked. Alan looked up. The barking came closer, and through the open window he heard the sound of paws on the dirty sidewalk of his small patio. The animal continued to bark loudly, annoyingly.
Alan looked down into the swirling pot of macaroni.
"Blood," the face whispered.
Nodding to himself, Alan opened the cupboard under the sink and drew out the small hand-held hatchet he used to cut rope. He moved out of the kitchen and walked across the living room to the front door.
Apparently no one had ever done the dog harm or had in any way subverted the animal's natural trust. With virtually no coaxing at all, the innocent pet happily followed him into the apartment on the soothing-voiced promise of lunch. Alan searched through the kitchen for something resembling dog food, found a can of beef stew, and walked into the bathroom, dumping the contents of the can into the tub. The animal hopped over the low porcelain side and began gratefully chowing down.
He cut off the dog's head with one chop of the hatchet.
Blood spurted wildly from the open neck and severed arteries, but he caught some of it in the water glass he used for brushing his teeth.
He hurried back to the kitchen and poured the blood slowly into the simmering pot. The blood swirled and whirlpooled into the center before mixing with the water and spreading outward. The foam turned red, the mouth smiled.
Alan stirred the macaroni. The mouth pursed, opened, closed, and beneath the bubble and hiss he heard a new whisper.
"Human," the face said, "blood."
Alan's heart began to pound, but he was not sure this time if it was entirely from fear.
His palms were sweaty and, as he wiped them on his pants, Alan told himself that he was being crazy. A dog was one thing. But he was about to cross over the line and commit a serious criminal act. A violent act. An act for which he could spend the rest of his life in jail. It was not too late to back out now. All he had to do was go home, throw away the pot, never make macaroni and cheese again.
He got out of the car, smiling at the child.
He used the hatchet to cut off the boy's arm.
The kid had not even started screaming by the time he had grabbed the arm, hopped in the car and taken off, the child's shocked brain not yet able to process the insane information it was being fed by its senses. Alan dropped the arm into the bucket even as he put the car into gear.
It was a clean getaway.
Back home, curtains closed, he poured water into the pot, added salt, dumped in the package of macaroni. The face appeared as the water started to boil. It looked stronger this time, more clearly defined.
The mouth smiled at him as he poured in the child's blood.
As the water turned pink, then red, as he stared at the happy, bubblefoam face, he felt the mood shift in the kitchen, a palpable, almost physical, dislocation of air and space. He shivered violently. A change came over him, a subtle shifting of his thoughts and emotions, and he seemed to realize for the first time exactly what it was that he had done. The mad savagery of his actions, the complete insanity of his deeds hit him hard and instantly, and he was filled with a sudden horror and revulsion so profound that he staggered backward and began retching into the sink. For a few blissful seconds, he heard only the harsh sounds of his own vomiting, but when he stood, wiping his mouth, he realized that the kitchen was alive with the sounds of whispering. He heard the bubbling of the water, and above that the voice of the macaroni, calling to him, whispering promises, whispering threats.
Against his will, he found himself once again leaning over the stove, looking into the pot.
"Make me," the face whispered. "Eat me."
Moving slowly, as if underwater, as if in a dream, he drained the macaroni, added butter, added milk, poured in the package of powdered cheese. The finished product was neither cheese orange nor blood red but a sickening muddy brown that looked decidedly unappetizing. Nevertheless, he dumped the contents of the pot into a bowl, brought it over to the table, and ate.
The aftertaste was salty and slightly sour, and it left his mouth dry. But when he drank a glass of milk, the taste disappeared completely.
After lunch, he chopped the boy's arm into tiny pieces, wrapped the pieces in plastic wrap, put them in an empty milk carton, buried the milk carton deep within the garbage sack, and took the sack out to the trash can in the garage.
That night, he dreamed that he was a small child. He was sleeping in his current bed, in his current bedroom, in his current apartment, but the furniture was different and the decorations on the wall consisted of posters of decades-old rock stars. From another room he heard screams, terrible I horrible heart-stopping screeches which were suddenly cut off in midsound. Part of his brain told him to break the window and jump out, run, escape, but another told him to feign sleep. Instead he did neither, and he was staring wide-eyed at the door when it burst open.