Nowhere Blvd.

by Ryan Notch

  The twins came and hugged him goodbye, little Bobby and Benny whom he had just learned to finally tell apart. As Jack walked them out of the door, Spencer felt a lump in his throat and wondered if he would ever see them again back in the real world. As the door shut behind them, Spencer watched it very carefully for the workings of his harmless sabotage.

  He waited a little while and then, feeling confident everyone was asleep, he slipped on his clothes and made his way to the door. It didn’t open on the first pull, but when he slid the thin edge of a ruler he’d taken from one of the stores into the gap it was loose enough to get open the rest of the way.

  He slipped out quiet as a mouse, leaving the door just the tiniest fraction of an inch ajar so he could get back in later. Outside is was dark, much darker than the city he grew up in. And not just because there were no street lights. There was a moon, a fairly huge one actually, as if it were much closer than normal. Like the sun, it would fade and glow in place rather than rising and setting. But despite this moons large size, it didn’t cast much light, and where the stars should be was only inky blackness.

  Spencer was afraid of the dark, a little anyway. Much less than most kids, but still a little. Yet even in the dark, finding the way to Smiling Jack’s mansion would be easy. It was a straight shot north upon the road. It would be harder to miss it than to find it. Even if he lost the road, the hill it stood on dominated the whole north end of Nowhere Blvd and he would only have to walk up.

  As he walked he was amazed at the silence of Nowhere Blvd at night. No cars, no buzzing streetlamps, no insects, not even wind. Just his own footsteps and breathing to keep him company in the whole universe. It was almost maddening. He only had to tolerate it for a few minutes though before he felt the ground rising beneath his feet as he climbed the walkway to the front of the mansion.

  The large black doors stood there waiting, no lights on that he could see through the windows. He had no idea if they were unlocked or not, but figured that the front door was no way to sneak in to a house when the people inside were home. A house this big had to have lots of other doors. He snuck around the side, wondering if all the dark windows meant everyone inside was asleep.

  Until he finally did find one window with just a little bit of light coming out. A basement window, rising only a couple feet up from the ground. He put his face to it, saw that the room it looked into was dark, but the hallway beyond had light trickling out of it. He remembered that his aunt and uncle who lived in the woods didn’t lock their doors, so decided to take a shot at the window being unlocked by the same principles. He jammed his fingers into the gaps around it as best he could and pulled. The old wood was stuck, but after a few tries he got it to come loose, a little louder than he would have hoped.

  He lowered himself as best he could, hoping there would be a shelf or box beneath the window he could land on. When he reached the extent of his arms length and with his feet still dangling in air, he decided to chance it and let himself drop. Fortunately finding himself only another couple feet from the floor.

  Through the dim light of the hall and the dimmer light of the window, he surveyed his surroundings. The basement both was and was not like other basements he was used to. Stone floors and brick walls, wood beams holding up the ceiling. All that was familiar. But it went on so much further than a normal basement, and had things he’d never seen. Lining shelves and leaning on walls and sitting half disassembled on workbenches were the inventions of history. An old metal diving suit, vacuum tubes, Tesla coils, surgical tools ranging from modern scalpels to Victorian saws and all the way back to flint knives. Bits of mummies hands and stuffed fish and embalmed animals (including a horse fetus that had the color and texture of porcelain). And that was just the stuff he recognized. Most of it was bits of machines or tools that he had never seen before.

  It would’ve looked like a museum, only museums had stuff on display. This stuff was strewn about, beaten up. It looked like most of this stuff was actually used for something.

  Maybe Smiling Jack really is a magician, he thought.

  Spencer saw a flickering in the light pouring down the hall, heard footsteps a moment after. He hid behind a nearby shelf, fear and excitement flooding him in equal measure. It was just so fun to sneak around.

  Peeking from behind cover, Spencer could see that it was Jack who came into the room. Even in the dim backlighting there was no mistaking his tall lanky form, his tread so graceful yet cautious. He was looking for something amongst the shelves. Spencer looked for a way to move back, should Jack come looking over in his area. But there was no need, Jack found whatever he was looking for and walked back down the hallway. Spencer waited a few moments, then followed.

  He didn’t see where Jack had went, but it was easy to guess. At the other end of the hallway the light poured around the crack of a slightly ajar door. Spencer moved down the hallway as quietly as possible, ignoring the mostly dark rooms off to the sides.

  All except the last one.

  At the end of the hallway, on the left just before the lit doorway, was a tiny room with tiny kid sized chairs. The walls were old concrete, wet with humidity. It was plain and dank and no kid would ever want to sit in there. Only they wouldn’t have had much choice, because even in the dim light he could see that the chairs were bolted to the floor and each had shackles attached to them.

  It seemed obvious that a room like this had to be for kids who were bad, to punish them. But Spencer thought there must be another explanation, because it just seemed so unbelievable that Smiling Jack would do something like that.

  What he saw next, in lit room itself, changed forever what horrible things Spencer Williams was able to believe.

  He tiptoed up to the ajar door, crouched down so as not to be seen, and peeked through the crack at the room beyond. He took it on faith that he couldn’t be seen, like behind the gap in the curtain on the stage, though couldn’t be sure.

  Even from his position low to the ground he could see that it was an operating theatre of sorts. Older equipment, maybe even antique, but well kept. Polished and shining instruments of brass and silver. He saw Jack, wearing a leather smock over his fine suit, working on something at an operating table. Spencer couldn’t tell what exactly from his low angle. Though Jack’s smile was firmly in place, his eyes shone with a kind of maniacal concentration. He brows were furrowed as if he were having trouble with whatever he was doing. He was pushing hard at the table, causing it to rock with a wet squishing sound.

  After a few more moments Jack took his hands away from the table and reached for something under his shirt collar. For a second Spencer thought he was reaching to scratch an itch, but instead he pulled up a flap of his flesh. Except…Spencer realized it wasn’t his flesh, it was a fleshy mask Jack was wearing. As he pulled the edges up it was revealed that it covered his entire head. He whole face, hair and all, was part of a big coverall mask. For the shortest of split seconds Spencer was actually a little excited. He thought that now he would see the ordinary person Jack was underneath the mask, the first real glimpse behind the curtain of the place. Only under the mask Jack wasn’t ordinary at all.

  Not at all.

  The eyes struck him first. Black as ink, all the way through. And not smooth like normal eyes. Lumpy, as if divided into several sections. The skin next, gray and hairless and lifeless. It was covered with a thick sheen of sweat that Jack wiped away with a bloody sleeve. The skin pulled taut when he wiped at it, then fell slack again, as if there were no muscles to hold it in any expression.

  Except the smile. The smile remained, held in place by hooks at the corners. Without the extra skin Spencer could see the rest of Jack’s teeth, twice as long as a mans. Wires wrapped around from the hooks to a latched knob at the back of Jack’s head. In a moment he unwound the knob and pulled it off, leaving the dead skin of his mouth to hang in loose jowls.

  It was plain now that Smiling Jack wasn’t a person. He was a thing. He was a monster.

&n
bsp; And Spencer was in its basement.

  He had to go, right away. Of course he had to go, but first he had to know what was on the table. In a real way he didn’t care, just wanted to be gone. Yet it hypnotized him, the thought of what it might be. So he stood up, ever so slowly so as not to be seen. He was more acutely aware than ever that he was only guessing that he couldn’t be seen through the gap in the door.

  What he saw at the table was…confusing at first. He’d never seen anything exactly like it, so it took his eyes a moment to recognize and make sense of the horror of it. It was Bobby, one of the twins who Jack had taken away to go home only an hour or so ago. He was laying on his side on the operating table, facing the door. Behind him was what Spencer assumed was Benny. Jack was shoving on Benny hard over and over again. It looked as if he was trying to push Benny inside of Bobby through a large incision in Bobby’s back. Only no matter how hard Jack shoved at Benny he just couldn’t make him fit inside.

  Spencer could see Bobby’s face. Though his eyes were open he couldn’t tell if Bobby was still alive or not. It seemed like it wouldn’t be possible, but the fingers on his arm that hung half way off the operating table were still gently opening and closing. Whether by reflex or not Spencer couldn’t tell. But Bobby’s eyes were staring right at him. The look in them just seemed to say he had given up, too overcome with what was happening to him to deal with it.

  Spencer backed away, slowly. He didn’t take his eyes off the door, didn’t breathe. One step behind another, backing his way down the hall. He wasn’t even sure what his plan was, only that he had to put some distance between himself and that room. As he walked he noticed something he hadn’t on the way in. On his left one of the doors coming off the hall lead to stairs. If maybe he could find his way around the house at night then they would maybe lead up to the long hallway. And from there maybe he could get the closet to take him home somehow.

  A lot of maybes, and right now his instincts were telling him to get out of the house the only sure way he knew. He could warn the other kids and come back with them, escaping that way.

  So having made a decision he turned around and made his way back to the window he came in, trying to keep his ears open for Smiling Jack should he come back for more supplies. He found the window and jumped for it, trying to land softly when he didn’t reach the ledge with his outstretched fingers. He wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t reach it after the drop he had had on the way in. He looked for an alternative, a box he could stand on.

  In only a few moments he found one, off in the corner. An old crate filled almost entirely with different kinds of scissors. He tried to lift it but found it was too heavy to budge more than an inch. He felt like he could drag it, but not quietly. Looking around he didn’t see a viable alternative, so started as gently as he could to lift out handfuls of scissors and put them on the ground next to the crate. After only a few handfuls he heard a sound from down the hall. He moved quickly, finding a place to hide. He waited a few moments, then a few moments more, but didn’t see any shadowy movement from the hallway. And yet he could tell by the increase in light that the door to the hallway was now open.

  Is he coming? he thought. Did he go into one of the other halls?

  Spencer waited until his legs were cramped from crouching, and then a while after that. If he just went for it he might get caught while his back was turned for the scissors. If he waited Jack might finish what he was doing and go to work in this room. He was getting sick to his stomach and his hands were shaking. The initial rush of fear was turning inward and he was having a harder and harder time not thinking about what was going on in the other room. Finally he decided he didn’t have a choice and went back to work on the pile of scissors, working as quickly as he reasonably could.

  As he worked he could almost feel long fingers hovering over his neck. It even itched with the imagined sensation and he kept turning around expecting to see Smiling Jack (though by then it would be way to late). Finally, after an eternity, the box was half empty and he judged it light enough to move with a burst of all his strength. He hauled it over to the window, his fingers and arms straining not to drop it. Flipping it over would have provided better footing, but he was able to get his feet on the edges of it well enough.

  He still couldn’t reach, so balancing carefully on the edges of the crate he jumped and gripped the edge of the window sill. Not much different than hopping the fence at school, he used his feet to scramble up the rest of the way. Even as he squirmed out the window he felt sure he could feel a hand about to grab his ankles and pull him back in. He panicked at the last moment and in his hurry let the window close too harshly. It only made a minor tap, but it sounded like a shotgun blast. Rather than wait to see if the noise was heard, he ran for it.

  He sprinted down the hill, moving south as best he could back towards the cabin. He ran until he was utterly exhausted, and even then only ran slower rather than stopping. When he reached the cabin he charged right in, going to the bed of Marcus, the oldest boy and about two years Spencer’s senior. Marcus wasn’t much of an authority figure, preferring to be babied with the other kids, but he was the closet Spencer could get amongst the kids that were left.

  He shook Marcus awake roughly, trying to whisper and catch his breath at the same time.

  “Marcus…Marcus! Wake up, we’re in trouble!”

  “What is it,” Marcus mumbled sleepily. “Is that you Spence? What did you do?”

  Spencer didn’t reply at first, he was moving from bed to bed shaking all of them awake.

  “Get ready everyone,” Spencer said as he went. “We’ve got to go, we’re in trouble. Jack is a monster.”

  “You just had a bad dream Spencer,” said Marcus. “Go back to sleep!”

  “No Marcus,” Spencer said angrily. “It wasn’t a dream. I snuck out to follow Smiling Jack. I snuck into his house, I saw his experiments. He was trying to put the twins together.”

  “The twins went home Spence,” said Marcus with an expression he couldn’t quite place. It was like Marcus was mad at him, but why?

  “Smiling Jack wouldn’t hurt us,” Marcus continued. “Nanny would never let something bad happen to us.”

  At this point Spencer was willing enough to leave Marcus, content to just go off with the others. “We have to hurry,” he said to them, ignoring Marcus. “If Jack realizes I was there he’ll come for me. We have to hide, to find our way back to the closet we came in on.”

  “You’re lying Spence,” said Marcus, no longer sleepy. He was talking way too loud for Spencer’s taste. “You did something bad and now you’re trying to get us in trouble too. But we don’t believe you.”

  “Why…” Spencer started. He was going to say why would I lie. But something in the faces of the kids around him stopped him. They believed Marcus. He’d never lied to them before but for some reason they were believing Marcus.

  “I’m not lying,” said Spencer. It sounded weak even to himself. “Ok then. I’m leaving, anyone who wants to live come with me right now. Come on…”

  But no one moved, they were all looking towards Marcus and back again. They seemed unsure, that they would rather stay in bed right where they were. Spencer couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t believe it when they were warned of something horrible about to happen. He decided that if he walked out strongly, they would be sure to follow him. At least some would.

  So he walked away, not looking back. Outside he walked a few paces and waited, looking back. Not wanting to be too far away when the rest came out. He waited as long as he thought was safe, keeping an eye on the path towards the mansion.

  But no one followed. No one.

  So Spencer left, feeling betrayed and scared and alone. He didn’t go towards the mansion, even a split seconds thought of it was too much to bear. He went the opposite way, deciding the amusement park would be best for what he had in mind.

  By dawn he had found several hiding spots am
ongst the rides he knew would be perfect.

  * * *

  The second day back at home with his parents he woke with the sun, moving his bed back into place quietly so no one would question where it had been. He got dressed in some new clothes, all a bit too small, and stared out the window at the street. He listened to the birds and watched cars go by, both strange and hard to get used to. After a while he heard a furtive sound behind him and turned to find Baby Suzie opening his door to peek in on him. He wanted to tell her to go away but wouldn’t say the words. At this point he wasn’t sure why he wasn’t talking. He couldn’t think of any good reason to stay silent now that he was back. It just seemed somehow like the thing to do.

  Staring at Baby Suzie, Spencer decided he couldn’t hide in his room all day and so edged past her into the hall. He heard the sound of someone in the shower and wondered briefly if he should take one. His first shower in years had only been a couple days ago, attended by two strong orderlies and a power hose at the hospital. He decided to skip it and went downstairs.

  In short order he decided there were at least two things about the real world that weren’t a disappointment. The first was water. Of course he’d had water in Nowhere Blvd, of a sort. But clean water on tap was a God damn miracle.

  The second was TV. It took him a while to figure out the remote. When trying buttons like power and play didn’t do what he wanted them to, he began to doubt his ability to still read. The puzzle only made him want to figure it out more though, and eventually he found the right combo to turn on the right devices to actually get a picture.

  “Dora, Dora,” said Baby Suzie, walking in front of him a moment later and poking at the remote. Spencer actually remembered Dora the Explorer from before he left, and wasn’t any more interested in it now than he had been then. He considered hitting her with the remote to get her to shut up.