The Flat: A Novel of Supernatural Horror

by Jack Douglas

  (“The dead don’t whisper. They scream.”)

  Clearly she wasn’t right in the head. She had hallucinated earlier in the day, had acted like a complete loon last night. Maybe it was the thirst or the hunger, or maybe it was shock inducing delirium. Whatever it was, she needed serious medical help and fast. He probably did too, for that matter.

  He picked up his microcassette recorder and clicked it on, put the microphone to his mouth. He parted his lips to speak into it, then he set it back down.

  When the hell did she learn how to speak Portuguese?

  He searched around for his phrase book. Maybe she was just uttering random words here and there, common phrases she had picked up from his travel guide. The room is too hot. That was common enough. Too noisy. Not so difficult. The room is too dirty. Why not? But No consigo dormir? I can’t sleep? Where did the hell did she learn that? He finally found the phrase book under a pillow on the couch. So she had been looking at it while he was asleep. He sat on the sofa and started flipping through the pages, trying to remember what else she said.

  Chiera mal. That had stood out. Mal, he knew, meant bad. But what about chiera? He found the phrase. It smells. It smells bad. He thought about the vomit, about the feces, and was ashamed of himself again.

  He tried to remember what else she had said. His mind was fuzzy. And he hadn’t really been paying attention when she first started mumbling in her sleep. Had thought she was just speaking gibberish. But toward the end he had listened quite carefully. And he had a fairly good ear for language.

  What was it she kept repeating?

  Porta. He skimmed a few pages. Found it. Porta. Door. What about it? No posso. I can’t. I can’t what? Abrir. Open. I can’t open the door. Jesus, what else? Janela. She kept saying janela, too. No possoa brir a janela. I can’t open. I can’t open what? He followed his finger down the page. Window. I can’t open the window.

  That was what she had been repeating over and over again. I can’t open the door. I can’t open the window. I can’t open the door. I can’t open the window.

  He looked up from the book, tried to picture her sitting alone in the living room learning these Portuguese words, deciphering how to string them together as sentences. He couldn’t see it. But somehow she’d done it. And in only a few hours. While throwing back two bottles of port wine.

  What else had she said?

  He stood from the couch and stepped over to the table, stared down at the microcassette recorder, wishing he had taped her last night. First he noticed that the button was pressed down, then he saw the red blinking eye. The recorder was running. That’s right, he thought, lightly smacking himself in the head. He’d clicked it on to dictate some notes, had forgotten to click it back off. He did that now.

  A few moments later Amy stepped out of the bedroom. She was dressed now in nightclothes and her hair was a mess. Her eyes were small and bloodshot and she looked as though she hadn’t slept. She held her hand against her forehead.

  “What happened last night?” she said.

  Craig pursed his dry, cracked lips. “You don’t remember?” She shook her head. “What happened to the sheets?”

  He scratched at the growth of beard beneath his chin. “You, um, you had an accident, baby.”

  “I did?”

  “A couple of them actually. It was coming out both ends.” He stepped around the boxes and moved toward her. “It’s all right. I cleaned you up with the last of my Purell and you’re fresh as a daisy now.” He tried to smile. “Good as new.”

  The waterworks started again. “I’m so, so sorry,” she said. He reached for her “Don’t sweat it, honey.”

  She sobbed harder. “But it smells so bad in there.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Really. It’s not your fault. You just drank too much.”

  “Oh my god. How the hell are we going to get out of here, Craig?”

  He clenched his teeth, pulled back and looked at her, tried to think of something comforting to say. Then he caught something out of the corner of his eye. Outside the window, down in the alley, hustling along the cobblestones toward the street. It was a man, a young man of maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, dressed in a light black coat and a pair of shabby blue jeans. Craig tore himself from her, went to the window and began pounding as hard as he could against the pane.

  “Senhor!” he shouted. “Up here!”

  Amy joined him, smacking against the glass with the palms of her hands, screaming inches from Craig’s ear. “Help!” she yelled. “Help us! Up here!”

  Together they hollered until they were hoarse. They punched at the window until the young man disappeared.

  Craig stood back, hunched over with his hands on his knees. The man hadn’t heard them. Or if he had, he hadn’t let on.

  “Holy fuck,” Amy shouted, crying again.

  Craig took deep breaths, fighting the panic that set in. Think, you son of a bitch, think... His heart pounded in his chest and he feared he would hyperventilate. He was resilient, skilled in problem-solving, resourceful; if anyone could escape this fucking prison it was him. But his mind, his mind was clouded, his thoughts floating away like helium balloons cut from their strings. How could he wrap his mind around a solution when he couldn’t concentrate?

  Finally he lifted his eyes from the floor, looked wildly around the room. What did he have to work with? Luggage, boxes, clothes, books, furniture. After a few moments, he focused on the front door.

  “Let’s try something.”

  He located the nearest legal pad and tore off the top yellow page. Then he moved toward his luggage and dug into his carry-on for a Sharpie.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Here.” He held the items out to her and guided her back over to the table. He took the piece of paper out of her hand and set it down flat. Then he held the table steady with his hands. “Write a message,” he said. She uncapped the Sharpie and the smell of the marker hit his nostrils like a piece of lead. He and his friends had used these markers in middle school to get a quick, cheap and easy high. These and whipped cream cans and cough medicines and glue.

  “What should I write?” she asked.

  He looked up at her. “Just, you know, tell whoever finds the message what’s wrong. That we’re trapped in our flat. That we need help.” His throat was sore and it hurt to speak. “Keep it short and simple.”

  Her right hand was shaking; she tried to steady it with her left. She started writing.

  Help! We’re trap

  Craig yanked the sheet of yellow paper from under her hand. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m writing what you told me to write.”

  He swallowed hard and scratched at his face. “You’re writing in English. The message can’t be in English. It has to be in Portuguese.”

  Her jaw dropped and her eyebrows shot inwardly. “Well, how the hell do you want me to do that? I don’t know Portuguese.”

  “You know enough.” He tore off another piece of paper and set it down, smoothing it out flat. “Just write down what you were saying last night.”

  She capped the Sharpie and bounced it off the table. “What are you talking about?”

  He slapped his palm down against the splintered wood and let fly an exasperated sigh. “I know you’ve been studying the phrase book, Amy. You were speaking the language pretty goddamn fluently last night in your sleep.”

  “In my sleep?”

  He exhaled. “Look, we don’t have time for this.” He hurried over and grabbed the phrase book off the couch. He set it open on the table and leafed through the pages with quivering fingers, looking for the Portuguese word for help.

  Finally he spotted it. Socorro. Sounded familiar. He thought maybe Amy had used that word last night. He picked up the Sharpie, pulled off the cap and wrote the word in big bold letters across the top of the page.

  “What is that word?” she asked softly, peering over his shoulder.

  “It means help.”

 
She suddenly grabbed hold of the chair, her legs trembling. She faltered, very nearly fell to her knees. Her face had drained completely of color again.

  He reached for her arm and steadied her. “What’s wrong? He followed her eyes back to the yellow page. “Socorro? That word? You recognize it?”

  She nodded, maintaining her gaze on the page. “It was...That woman on the phone when the lines were crossed. That’s...That’s what she said.” He waited a moment and then let go of her, turned back to the phrase book and found his place. “She was probably trying to reach the operator,” he said. “No—”

  “Probably just asking for help with the phone.”

  “No. That’s not what it sounded like, Craig. Not what it sounded like at all. She sounded...scared. Terrified. At the end...At the end she was screaming.”

  (“The dead don’t whisper.”)

  He ignored her and wrote the word Emergência! on the yellow sheet. Then he started searching for the phrase: Call the police.

  “I’m telling you, Craig, this woman...”

  (“They scream.”)

  “...on the other end of the line, she was absolutely frantic.”

  Found it. He quickly scribbled the phrase down and folded the note so that the writing faced up. He read it again and said, “All right. Let’s slip this bad boy under the door.”

  She tailed him through the living room. “I’m telling you, Craig,” she said, her voice breaking again, “something about this is wrong. Dead wrong.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, Amy.” He dropped to his knees in front of the door. There was a very narrow space underneath. Maybe just enough. “In case you haven’t noticed, sweetheart, I’m trapped in here right along with you.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.”

  He pushed the yellow paper under the door, then rose from his knees and turned to face her. “Then what the hell are you saying, Amy?”

  Her cheeks were now red and thin, her eyes moist with tears. “I’m saying this fucking place is—”

  “Welcome!”

  Both of them jumped and swung their heads in the direction of the laptop on the table. Craig’s heart raced again. The pulse returned to his ear and he suddenly became aware of a fierce thumping on the right side of his neck. He waited a beat.

  “You’ve got mail!”

  Then he made for the computer.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Amy turned from the door to follow Craig as he hurried toward the laptop but her knees buckled and she dropped like a rock to the floor, crying out in pain.

  Craig planted a foot and spun around to help her but she frantically waved him off.

  “No, no,” she yelled. “Just go. Send a message while we still have a connection.”

  She watched as he tossed the chair aside and stood himself in front of the laptop. Then she began pulling herself toward him, clawing with her hands at the worn gray carpet. Slithering across the living room on her elbows, scraping them raw. Her legs felt as though they had been trampled. Soon her arms, too, began to ache, as though she had spent the past three days lifting heavy weights.

  Craig tapped away furiously on the keyboard, his face set, his bright blue eyes intense.

  “Who are you writing to?” she cried. “My mother.”

  His mother. Amy had only met her once, and once had been enough. The three of them gathered at a restaurant near his mother’s home in Wall, New Jersey. His mother, she had been sweet at first, not at all like Craig had described her. But as the evening wore on and the talk turned to careers and where he and Amy might decide to settle down and raise a family, she became something else entirely.

  “San Diego?” his mother had said, making a face. “California’s shit. Nothing but wildfires and earthquakes. And southeast Florida? Don’t even consider it. It’s too fucking hot and lousy with Jews and spics.” She pushed aside a plate of fresh warm bread and reached for her wine, already her fourth glass of the night. “Besides, you don’t go to Florida to live, you go there to die.”

  Craig had folded his hands and stared down at the starched white tablecloth. His face flushed. “Ma, we’re just talking,” he said. “Just tossing a few places around at this point.”

  This was that November, a few days after Danny, a few weeks before they had decided on Hawaii.

  “We’re also thinking about Honolulu,” Craig went on. “Maybe even Portland, Oregon.”

  “Oregon?” She scowled. The wrinkles in her face formed sharp, severe lines. In the candlelight she looked old, with too much make-up caked on her face. “And Honolulu? Is that even part of America? Are you both out of your fucking minds?”

  Amy felt queasy, excused herself from the table. She went to the ladies room and almost started to cry. She feared she might vomit. It had been a difficult week to say the least. First it was Craig’s best friend Danny, and then she had to break the news to her mother that Craig had proposed marriage.

  Her mother had not taken it well. “Proposed? I have never even met him,” was her response. She reminded Amy of all the times Craig had backed out of plans to meet her family. And now Craig was hellbent on moving them away. And Amy, having finally met Craig’s mother, was beginning to see why.

  When she returned to the table, Craig and his mother were still going at it.

  “I told you not to go to that goddamn law school,” she was saying. “I told you after college to go out and get a damn job, to go to work.” She fiddled with her butter knife then dropped it onto the plate. People at neighboring tables glanced over then quickly looked away. “Now you don’t want to practice law anymore? What are you going to do? What the hell are you good for? How are you going to pay back all those student fucking loans, the ones I had to co-sign for? Don’t tell me she’s going to help you.”

  He shook his head without looking up, seemed to be taking deep breaths. “Ma,” he said, “this isn’t what we came here to talk about. I just wanted you to meet Amy, that’s all. I wanted to let you know we’re engaged.”

  His mother took a long sip of wine. “What the hell do I care? The two of you say you’re moving away anyway. Neither of you has a fucking brain in your head. I wouldn’t leave this state in a million years. And neither should either of you.” His mother pointed her finger at him. Her nails were long and sharp and freshly painted. She wore gold jewelry up and down her arm. Bracelets chimed like death knells every time she moved her wrists. “But if you are, then this is goodbye. Then I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to hear from you, and I’m cutting you the hell out of my will.”

  Now, just as Craig finished pecking at the keyboard, Amy heard the ding of an instant message on AOL.

  “Who is it?” she said, grabbing hold of the table and lifting herself to her knees. Oh, the pain! The awful pain.

  Craig stared down at the screen. “It’s your mother.”

  “My mother?” She bore more terrible pain so that she could pull herself to her feet. She watched Craig hit send, breathed a sigh of relief at the small blue box that appeared. It read: your mail has been sent. Their email was off to Ms. Devlin and now her mother was awaiting a return IM. Something was finally happening to get them the hell out of here.

  Craig opened the Instant Message box.

  Craig, is my daughter there? I haven’t heard from her in days.

  Amy watched over his shoulder as he typed the reply.

  she’s right here. hold on.

  He quickly moved aside and picked up the chair, set it down in front of the laptop so that Amy could sit.

  In a fury, Amy started typing.

  mom, we’re in the flat in lisbon. we’re trapped in here. we need help!

  Amy’s heart raced. Her fingers were sweating. She slid them over the mouse and hit send.

  Amy kept her hands poised over the keyboard, waiting for her mother’s reply. Her thoughts were dulled by the hunger, her brain made lazy from thirst. She needed to concentrate, to convey only the relevant facts, to
separate them from the scores of garbled fragments sweeping through her mind. Finally her mother’s return message arrived.

  Well, that’s good to hear. Your dad and I were starting to worry because you hadn’t called.

  Amy reread the message twice, perplexed. “What?” she finally said aloud.

  Craig, hovering over her shoulder, pointed at the screen. “Look.”

  She raised her eyes to her own message, the plea for help she had just sent. Now it read:

  mom, we’re in the flat in lisbon. everything is just fine.

  Another ding. Another message from Craig’s account to Amy’s mother’s appeared.

  sorry i haven’t called, mom. we’ve just been so obsessed with the flat. getting it pretty, making it smell good, stuff like that. we love the place though. it’s so beautiful, so peaceful. we could easily stay here the rest of our lives.

  Amy gasped. She leaned forward, her fingers jumping from letter to letter, trying to type another message.

  The keyboard was frozen. Meanwhile, her mother replied.

  Well, you know I’m not thrilled that you’re so far away, but I’m glad that you’re safe and happy.

  Amy slammed her fist on the table. Pain shot up her arm. Then she read her own reply.

  oh mom, we really are. we really, really are. but i gotta run right now. craig is calling. we’re going out to eat. the food is soooo good here in lisbon. you’d love it. ciao!

  She wanted to scream, she needed to cry. Their only way out was about to sign off thinking everything was fine. The reality of it came crashing down all around.

  Her mother wrote back.

  Well, how can we get in touch with you? You haven’t been responding to our emails.

  Amy experienced a glimmer of hope as Craig leaned over her shoulder and stabbed at the keyboard, hammering out a message. She glanced up, saw the letters miraculously appear on the screen.