The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares

by The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares- The Haunted City (retail) (epub)

  A staircase materializes in my path, and I take the stairs two at a time. Orange helium balloons are tied to the railing, most of them partially deflated, sagging in the breeze. AUGUST IS FRIENDS AND FAMILY MONTH! Some distant part of my brain registers this with alarm; I had thought we were only halfway through June.

  As I reach the double doors at the top of the stairs, a guy in baggy beach shorts emerges, adjusting the straps of his bicycle helmet. Without slowing down, I sink the machete into the fleshy part of his shoulder. It’s nothing personal, but I have to be sure that thing is still following me. Mr. Bike Helmet is too surprised even to react. The muscles in his face sag all at once, his expression going slack, like he’s somehow disappointed in me. He sits down with a grunt. I tug the blade free and stumble through the swinging doors.

  It’s a gym, one of the trendy upscale ones, with rows of stationary bikes overlooking a maze of Nautilus equipment. Two pretty young girls are perched behind the counter. One of them starts to smile at me, but then she sees the machete and her mouth twists.

  I quickly scan the room, searching for the emergency exits. There has to be another way out of here, or I’m a dead man.

  I feel a sudden drop in air pressure, a change in the room’s equilibrium. Behind me, I hear a dry clacking noise, claws against cement, and realize it’s already too late. I’m out of time.

  —

  I paid one more trip to the little white house on Kirkwood Drive. By that point I had been hunting long enough to understand the creatures’ methodology. I knew if they were hanging around Kimberly’s house, there was probably a good reason.

  She was consorting with the goddamned things.

  Communing with them.

  She was Kimmy to her friends, but it was becoming obvious that she would always be Kimberly to me. I got to her house a little after two in the morning, and this time she was home.

  She answered the door still half asleep, wearing yoga pants and an oversized Ohio State sweatshirt. Her hair was pulled back, tucked beneath a scarf with a red-and-white gingham pattern. She must have been expecting someone else—a boyfriend, perhaps, or possibly even one of them—because it took her a moment to recognize me. When she did, that dreamy little half smile disappeared. She tried to shut the door, but I was faster.

  By the end, she confessed to everything, just like I knew she would. I clawed it out of her, the truth, the awful truth, piece by piece. And when I had heard enough, I wrapped the scarf around her neck and pulled both ends tight. Her heels drummed against the kitchen tiles, fluttering like an arrhythmic heart, beating out a message in a code meant just for me. She never blinked, never broke my gaze. Her damp hair spilled across the floor, spreading like a stain. She must have just washed it, because it still smelled like coconut oil.

  —

  I spot the creature, gliding forward on silent paws, and I feel another pinching sensation behind my sinuses, another white-hot starburst of pain. For an instant I’m somewhere far away, sitting in an antiseptic examination room, staring at cold blue X-rays, images of a hollowed-out skull flecked with malignant patches of white, while the friendly, round-faced doctor asks me if there’s someone I can call. I push the memory aside and stumble forward, ignoring the shouts of alarm. A black man with a shaved head reaches for me, his expression concerned, almost gentle. I shove him aside, forgetting about the parang in my hand. He jerks away with a cry, cupping his left wrist, blood bubbling up between his fingers.

  Ahead of me is a staircase leading to the second floor, where the free-weight equipment is located. There’s a blond girl marching up and down the stairs, head bowed, her legs pumping like pistons. She’s wearing earbuds, a lucky break. She doesn’t hear me coming.

  I feel another rush of air as the creature comes for me. I grab the girl’s arm and spin her around. She’s pretty, with wide-set hazel eyes and a mouth that forms a perfect circle of surprise. All at once I’m struck by her resemblance to Kimberly. They could be sisters. Then her gaze flickers up and to the right, focusing on something just over my shoulder, and she sees it too. Sees the creature scrambling toward us on all fours, thick and ungainly, slobber spilling from its cracked mouth, its eyes twin pits of burning coal.

  I’m not crazy, I think, feeling a sudden, desperate surge of gratitude. It’s real. She sees it too.

  The creature flows up the steps behind us. It leaps into the staircase railing—ping!—then passes into the girl’s hand—ping!—running along the length of her entire arm. For one brief instant, she is part of the creature, and it is part of her.

  And in that instant, the creature is tangible.

  Mortal.

  Using both hands, I ram the blade through her chest, putting my full weight behind it. There is a moment of terrible resistance as the blade scrapes along her sternum, then it slips a few millimeters to the left and slides the rest of the way in. The girl’s teeth snap shut and she arches her neck. In some distant corner of my mind, I can hear the creature shrieking, its voice reedy and childlike.

  Got you, you fuck.

  Got you good.

  The girl’s legs give out, and I gently lower her to the ground. All around me, people are trampling toward the exit. I know that I should be running too, but all I feel is a sense of peace. My skin is warm to the touch, and the pressure in my sinuses has vanished entirely. I always feel like this in the moments following a successful hunt. Like I’m floating in tropical waters.

  Carefully, I wipe the blade on the girl’s shirt. I hold the gingham scarf over her mouth for a moment, hoping to capture her last breath, perhaps even some small part of her essence. She’s staring up at me, her eyes wide and puzzled. I hesitate, then reach down and slide her eyelids shut. I feel sorry for her, of course. It hardly seems fair that she had to die. But she was part of a larger war, whether she knew it or not, and wars demand sacrifice.

  I leave her there, sprawled across the steps, one leg bent crooked beneath her body, and I head for the emergency exit. The front desk is deserted, but the music is still playing from somewhere high overhead. I push open the exit door and jog down the stairs. I realize I’m smiling, a great daffy grin plastered across my face, and I wonder if it has been there the whole time.

  I can already hear sirens in the distance. They’re headed this way, but I’m not worried. They won’t catch me, not tonight. After all, I’m good at hiding.

  I learned from the best.

  The Lobby

  The clack-clack-clack of his wing-tip shoes rings out stark and steady against the polished marble floors, echoing with a tinny din through the cavernous old lobby. At one time this place was the height of luxury, but now the wallpaper is decades old, yellowed with water stains, peeling in places, the mahogany front desk chipped, abused, languishing just this side of total ruin. Yet somehow the browns, yellows, and whites blend together into something homey, comforting. In the right light it might even seem quaint.

  But it never quite holds the right light. In fact, it is rare that this building has exactly the right light at all. Quirky. That’s how the Landlord had put it. The wiring is quirky. Damned inconvenient is what it really is.

  He’s pacing again, counting his steps again, each stride just shy of covering the breadth of the black-and-white checkerboard pattern splayed from one dingy wall to the other. Eighty-seven and a half steps wide, 112 from door to desk. But it feels bigger. Sounds bigger. It seems to change shape in the night, the walls growing farther apart or contracting inches at a time. But it is always 87½ steps wide and 112 steps from door to desk. No matter how many times he counts, it is always the same.

  He stops. He turns. And there are his groceries. Two large paper bags filled with the same items they held last week. And the week before that. And as many weeks back as he can remember.

  He didn’t hear a knock, or a key in the tumbler, and the delivery boy made no announcement. He’d always assumed the delivery boy was scared of the place, creeped out by the images on the carved ebony front doo
rs, chased off by the eerie silence that always pervades this place. But he never saw him, never spoke to him, couldn’t say with any certainty that such a delivery boy even existed. Groceries simply appeared, always when he wasn’t looking. So he walks back 112 steps, picks up his groceries, and walks 43 steps back toward a large oak door with a small, slightly corroded brass plate that reads: SUPERINTENDENT.

  The Superintendent fumbles in his jacket pocket and keys clatter into his hand, several dozen different cuts and shapes and metals all bound together on a single large brass ring. He thumbs through them, finding the right one by touch. The key goes in smooth and silent, the lock clicking only faintly, the knob whispering gently as it turns. It is the quietest door in the building. It has to be, for it hides its greatest secrets.

  He opens the door, slides quickly in, and sniffs deeply at the air of the place.

  The apartment beyond is opulent, almost ridiculous, both in size and architecture. While all of the rooms in the building are unusually large, the Superintendent’s dwelling is second only to the penthouse in size. In any other building it would sell for millions, but in this one, nothing—a prize instead only for someone willing to hold the building together with spit, baling wire, and moxie alone. The ceilings are vaulted, ebony beams running across them, chandeliered lights dripping from the center of nearly every room. The floors are hardwood, dark, scuffed, the wood soft in places from the tread of a century’s worth of traffic. The walls had once been white but are now a sort of eggshell from the smoke of five previous superintendents. The fireplace is massive, brought stone by stone across the sea from some ancient residence. And the kitchen is large, designed with servants in mind, updated just enough to be modern, but not so recently that everything worked properly.

  Despite the opulence, the apartment on the whole is spartan. No art, no photos, no statues or sculptures, just a simple table with a single chair, one red crushed-velvet couch—well worn—a rocking chair by the fireplace, and a bed, a wardrobe, and a nightstand in the adjoining master bedroom. It is otherwise stone, wood, and wallpaper. Nothing more.

  The Superintendent methodically puts his groceries away in the kitchen, each sundry finding its way to a very specific, well-rehearsed location. There is an order to it, almost a ceremony. The flour goes in a perfectly sized clean spot amid a dusting of scattered meal where all of the other bags of flour had rested before; the oil in a spot flush against the cabinet’s back corner; the carton of milk immediately below the refrigerator’s bulb. Each item in its exact place despite there being no lack of room for them to find another home. It is as he wanted and no other way.

  THUMP.

  He looks up, eyes narrowed at the room above him. Apartment 202. The one with the ironwood door. Another THUMP. Then a series of rumbles and rattles like an awkward tap dance by large, clumsy, untrained feet. The Superintendent sighs deeply.

  It shouldn’t be time yet, he mutters to himself.

  He quickly puts the last remaining groceries away before adjourning to his bedroom to get changed. Strips out of his sweatpants, jacket, and T-shirt, opens the doors on the antique mahogany wardrobe. Inside, a single gray wool suit. Three-piece. Single-breasted. A narrow gray wool tie. And a cotton shirt with bone buttons. The Superintendent dresses quickly, leaving neither a hair nor fiber out of place.

  He opens the bottom drawer, digging through a pile of T-shirts and pants, drawing out from beneath them a small fifteen-inch ebony lockbox, carved seemingly from the same wood as the front doors and almost identically decorated. Angels upon demons upon knights and knaves. The Superintendent takes a deep breath, cracks his neck from side to side, and leaves his apartment, grabbing his key ring on the way out, locking the door silently behind him, and making his way across the lobby to the elevator.

  The Desert

  He was swallowed by the moonless black so deep and far-reaching, the only way to tell the difference between the earth and the sky was by where the stars began. The sky was riddled with them. More than he’d ever seen at once. It was the type of sky one expected to see only in the still quiet of an uneventful night. But this was far from that.

  There was shouting, screaming. And when a mortar exploded half a football field away, the BOOM rattled his bones and the landscape lit up with a flash of daylight. But just for a moment, a scant terrifying moment. He scanned the ground for shadows, for bodies, for the things that might be hiding, waiting for him in the black. His breaths were measured, controlled, desperate for calm, and he counted his paces—253 of them in total between the latrine he’d just left and his bunker.

  He had to find his way back, had to get back to the concrete bed beneath which he could cower and cry to himself, more afraid of the things that might be lurking just outside the light than the explosives and shrapnel that might shred him into a puff of pink mist. Only fifty more steps to go. Only forty-seven more steps to go. Only forty-three more steps to go. Only forty more steps…

  202. The Ironwood Door

  The lift key turns and the tiny antiquated brass-and-iron elevator rattles to life. It jerks and sputters in fits on the way up, but it’s better than taking the stairs. You never know how long the stairs will take. The insides are polished to a high shine and the Superintendent eyes his reflection, nervously adjusting his tie before brushing a bit of stray dandruff from his shoulder. It takes nearly a minute to get to the second floor, and when the doors open he quickly steps out, staring headlong into a mirror. He looks both ways down the hall, unsure where 202 is today. These halls are tricky. They coil around like snakes twisted up in themselves, the lengths seeming sometimes impossible, other times merely improbable.

  To the right the overhead lights shine bright and steady, but to the left they dim ever so slightly every few seconds before brightening back up, an ever-present buzz oscillating along with them. The lights are always stranger near 201, so he turns to the right and begins a winding tour of the second floor. One hundred twenty-four steps. It is always 124 steps. Three turns and a long corridor later he finds it. Just as he remembers, 124 steps in. The ironwood door. Three small brass numbers. Two zero two. And a brass knocker, a small piece of note card slotted into it with the tenant’s name: Mr. Fitzpatrick.

  The Superintendent jangles his keys, searching for 202. He hasn’t used it often yet, still hasn’t memorized its shape, and tries three different keys, all black stainless steel. The first two get stuck halfway in; the third slides in like cutting through butter. The knob creaks a little as it turns but not too loud, and the hinges whine softly as the door swings open.

  The inside of the apartment is even more spartan than his own. White walls. No table. No fireplace. Just three mirrors, each on a wall of its own. And a single wooden chair.

  Tied to that chair with brown leather straps is Mr. Fitzpatrick.

  Fitzpatrick is a nebbishy man. A small man. Wiry. Like a bundle of sticks pieced together beneath khaki pants and a polo shirt, each stick ready to snap under the slightest pressure. His hair buzzed close, balding around an ailing widow’s peak. Skin pale, chin weak, eyes a little too close together. Trembling, he looks up at the Superintendent, lip quivering, a scream caught in his throat.

  “Please, don’t kill me.”

  “What did I tell you?” asks the Superintendent, his voice croaking, deep with bass.

  “Please God. Don’t kill me. Just let me go.”

  “What. Did. I. Tell. You.”

  Fitzpatrick looks shamefully down at his ragged tennis shoes. “Not to make a sound.”

  “So why am I up here?”

  “I made a sound.”

  “You made several.”

  “You’re just going to kill me anyway.”

  “I don’t want to,” says the Superintendent.

  “But you will.”

  “I don’t have a choice. Not now.”

  “You don’t have to kill me.”

  “This is all on you and you know it.”

  “Please,” begged Fitzpatric
k. “I have a family.”

  “No, you don’t,” he says coldly. “Not anymore.”

  Fitzpatrick’s eyes go wide, his mouth yawning in terror.

  “What did you do?” he whispers.

  The Superintendent slowly opens the ebony box, eyeing Fitzpatrick all the while. Inside is a twelve-inch wooden dagger, blackened by fire, sharpened from hilt to tip, decorated with symbols and scrawl, letters from a long-dead language. He grasps the hilt, squatting to set the box gently on the hardwood floor. Then he springs across the room, holding the blade against Fitzpatrick’s neck, rage spilling out from calm waters. “Who are you?” he bellows.

  “Jerry Fitzpatrick!”

  “No! I didn’t ask who you were. Who are you now?”

  “Jerry!” Fitzpatrick bounces around in his chair, screaming. “I don’t know what you want me to say! Tell me and I’ll say it! I’ll say anything! Please!”

  “I want the truth.”

  “I told you the truth. You want me to lie.”

  “You’re full of lies. Nothing but. Tell me who you are and this can all be over.”

  Fitzpatrick looks down at the knife. Wooden, but carbonized and razor sharp. He wets himself.

  “Jerry Fitzpatrick,” he says meekly, knowing full well what is coming.

  The Superintendent clenches a tight fist, punches him square in the jaw, knocks the chair over onto its back. Fitzpatrick’s head bangs against the floor, the sound like a hollow being hit by a hammer. Tears stream down the side of his face into his hair, piss turning half of his khakis a deep soaking brown.

  The Superintendent looms over him, pointing the blade like a wand directly at his heart.

  “Who are you?”

  THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

  They both look up, Fitzpatrick’s eyes wide with surprise, the Superintendent furrowing his brow, scowling at the ceiling. Three oh one. Goddammit. The Superintendent leans over, grabs the back of the chair with his free hand, flinging it upright in a single motion.