by The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares- The Haunted City (retail) (epub)
Over the next few days, as Jerry drove his delivery truck along the cracked and buckled streets, he began to notice subtle changes here and there. Familiar things had been mysteriously altered, seemingly overnight. The alterations were small, at first, barely noticeable. A missing segment of a building’s exterior piping, or an old, rusted street sign suddenly vanished without a trace. Nothing out of the ordinary. Things went missing in Detroit all the time, be they pipes, signs, cars, or even people.
But soon the adjustments to the city became more pronounced, and Jerry began to see the “mandatory donations” for what they were. Someone was taking things, ripping them away from the city as a child might tear clumps of grass from the lawn on which he sits.
Out on his standard route one morning, Jerry saw a sight so bizarre, so extraordinary, that he was forced to slam on the brakes. His truck slid on the snow- and ice-glazed road, but he quickly recovered and brought her in for a gentle curbside landing.
He climbed out of his truck and stepped into the middle of the desolate street for a better look.
The corner apartment building was missing one entire half. It looked as if a scalpel had come through overnight and sliced the structure right down the middle.
On the top floor, a young woman stood in her bisected living room, oblivious to the wind whipping her hair and the snow gathering on her carpet and furniture. She stared blankly out the opening where there had once been a wall, her eyes fixed, as though glimpsing some unseen realm.
Transfixed, Jerry suddenly noticed that the woman was missing her right arm. It ended, just past the shoulder, in a crimson-soaked bandage. Blood dripped from the wrappings and onto her snow-dusted carpet.
Jerry scrambled back to his truck and drove off. Throughout the rest of the day, he saw many more amputations, both to city and to the people who resided there. Detroit was getting picked apart by scavengers, so many bits and pieces missing, both large and small, pilfered with no discernible pattern.
He couldn’t help but think of the shadow man’s words in the bar, his talk of surgeries, of cutting away the cancerous tissue.
He drove down Woodward Avenue. It wasn’t on his route, but he was feeling a strong urge to keep going north, out to the suburbs. As he neared 8 Mile, he came upon a cluster of vehicles blocking traffic. Drivers and passengers alike stood in the middle of the road, all in a state of shock.
Jerry brought his truck to a stop and looked past the gathering. Woodward had suffered a horrific wound. An enormous chasm sliced across the south- and northbound lanes, creating a wide-open mouth across which no one would ever cross.
Jerry played with his radio dial. There was only one station still operating in the city, but when he tuned to it, he heard the voice of the shadow man.
“Fear not, my friends,” he said. “Do not panic. The changes you see all around you are the necessary measures by which we shall heal this great city. All is going according to plan. Detroit will soon begin anew.”
Jerry backed up his truck and turned around. As he drove, his radio screeched with static and then the regular radio host returned in midsentence. She sounded extremely panicked as she raced through updates: “…no way in or out of the city. Portions of I-75 missing, Woodward, the Lodge…”
Jerry killed the radio and floored the gas. It would be dark soon, and he didn’t want to be out on the streets come nightfall. He took a circuitous route home, for all of his familiar pathways had, in some drastic way, been modified. When he finally arrived back at his building, he was relieved to find it still standing in its entirety. He hurried to his apartment on the third floor, shut and locked and bolted the door, then took a quick inventory. Everything looked in order.
He turned on his TV. It took a few seconds to warm up, but when it did, he was able to see frantic breaking news reports from all over the city. Joe Louis Arena was gone; the upper half of the Fisher Building had been cleanly shorn from its lower half; large portions of Comerica Park were missing. The city was in chaos.
Long-neglected streets had had entire blocks carved away. The center of the Ambassador Bridge had been taken. The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel had collapsed.
But it was the people who disturbed Jerry the most, those who happened to be in view of the numerous cameras filming the city’s widespread surgeries. Just like the woman with the missing arm, they had also had vital parts excised from their bodies. He saw bloodied bandages over missing limbs, gauze wrapped around heads and faces. One poor man had lost both of his eyes and was staggering about, blindly flailing his hands.
The news cut to the mayor. He was missing both of his lips, as well as one eye. His spoke like a bad ventriloquist, unable to form consonants properly as he begged the citizens of Detroit to remain calm. The shadow man stood behind him, so close he was practically sewn to the mayor’s back. When the mayor finished speaking, the shadow man took over.
Jerry stared at him.
The shadow man appeared to stare back.
“These donations are important to the welfare of this great city. When all is done, Detroit will begin to heal, to regenerate, rebuild. The city will thrive again, mark my words, but you must allow us to complete our work. It is your civic duty to comply.”
Jerry nodded. He understood.
Outside, the day had bled out, the city’s corpse now draped in the dark cloak of night. Snow fell steadily and the metamorphosis continued. Streetlights flickered. Jerry went to the window and looked out. One by one, the lights vanished, simply plucked from existence until only blackness remained and snow falling like twinkling stars.
They were coming for him.
He had nowhere to run. By all accounts, Detroit was an island cut off from the rest of the state, the country, the world.
Jerry went to his refrigerator and grabbed a beer. With nothing to do but wait, he cracked it open and took a long, satisfying sip. Ice cold, and oh so refreshing, even on such a frigid night as this.
He sat back down in his chair by the window and watched the news reports flood in. As one reporter stood in front of the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice, the building behind her vanished.
Jerry leaned closer to the screen. Shadows peeled away from the emptiness and flowed toward the reporter like spilled ink. She dropped her microphone when they took both of her arms. She did not scream or cry. She smiled.
He reached out a hand and touched the television screen. It crackled with interference and then shut off. As Jerry sat back, the TV disappeared completely.
The walls of his apartment rattled. A few framed photos fell to the floor and shattered. Jerry calmly sipped his beer and looked down the hall to the door. It rippled, then was torn from its hinges, yanked into thick, soupy darkness.
The shadow man entered.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Jerry said.
“We saved you for last,” the man said.
“What do I need to do?”
“Nothing, Jerry,” said the shadow man. “Just sit back and relax and I’ll take care of everything.”
“Do what you have to do.”
Jerry closed his eyes. He realized that it was all for the good of the city, his beloved Motown. He felt no pain whatsoever as the shadow man began to cut.
“I’m possessed!” my brother Ezra shouts as he stubs out his cigarette.
“Good to see you too!” I shout back—it’s a noisy autumn day in Manhattan. A construction crane packed with steel beams screams its warning like a furious dinosaur, roused after three million years of sleep.
I follow Ezra into 640 Park Avenue. He’s wearing a filthy red uniform, his pale skin scabbed from too much scratching, his breath like cat shit. We round the doorman’s post and head into the old-fashioned elevator. Its thick limestone shaft muffles the outside clamor.
As soon as we’re in, Ezra pivots. He gets in my face. “I knew you’d come. I sent my psychic message. Listen, be warned. The demon slimed inside my ear because I love Bar-tók!”
“Is this a Star Trek
plot?”
Ezra’s eyes bulge. He shouts. “Libertine! Look at me! My eyes are burning. It won’t let me blink!”
I’m tempted to suggest that his eyes are red because he’s farting pure sulfur, and that a man who subsists on butter pickles and Beefeater Gin should expect a downside. But I’ve never actually enjoyed making fun of him. It’s just this thing I can’t help doing.
“It’s got everything but my frontal lobe,” he continues. “It hates higher thinking, so that’s the attic where I hide. But I’m a prisoner, Grady. The only reason it’s let me keep my tongue to talk is because it wants you for a host. To cast it out, I’ve got to call it by the name of the first human it possessed.”
“So cast it out and let’s grab lunch at Chipotle!”
“I don’t know its name!” He flicks all ten fingers at me like an angry magician. “I don’t know its name! Help me! That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“I’m here because management called. They say you punched a poodle. I’m hoping that’s a euphemism. Anyway, they want me to tell you that you’re fired.”
Ezra’s wire-tense posture slackens like someone’s just unzipped him from a truss. He sighs. “Oh, the poodle…”
I can’t help it. I laugh. Ezra watches to make sure I’m not poking fun, then joins in. “It’s bad to punch dogs. I’ll admit that,” he says.
My brother’s a paranoid schizophrenic with an IQ of 150. He wasn’t ever normal, but we pretended and hoped for the best. The real trouble started when he got a job in academia. As an adjunct history professor at Bennington, he accused his department chair of activating an al-Qaeda sleeper cell with a penlight. His tenure got denied. When he moved back with my parents in Larchmont, they told him to snap out of it. A few weeks later, he greeted them at the dinner table draped in a sheet. When he lifted his arms, blood gushed down all sides: he’d driven ten-penny nails clean through both wrists.
Ezra was released from Mount Sinai’s inpatient psychiatric program six months ago. He wasn’t cured; we just ran out of money. Over the years, that four million dollars in hospital fees devoured my family’s savings. My status in life has fallen accordingly. My kids go to public school and my clothes are off the rack. We vacation on our roof and call it Forest Hills Beach.
After my parents moved to Florida, I volunteered to be Ezra’s emergency contact. Some people consider that kind of thing a burden. I don’t. I love the guy. Or, I love the idea of him. That’s probably more honest. Anyway, 640’s management called this morning about the poodle, and also about the fact that he’s been squatting in their basement. So here I am, crammed inside the closet-sized elevator of a prewar apartment building in the wealthiest part of Manhattan, talking to my wack-job twin brother about demonic possession.
“Okay. I’ll bite,” I say. “Demons are infectious diseases. You’ve come down with a bad case. That’s why you’re talking kind of retarded and you smell like ass.”
“Yes!” he shouts, his whole body jerking, limbs shivering, delighted I might actually believe him. “Oh, yes, yes! I knew you’d un-der-stand. God sent you.”
“Well,” I say. “No.”
“I’m not alone, either. A woman and a young boy from the sixth floor are infected too. Their names are Margaret Brooks and Lucas Novo and they speak to my demon while I sleep. I’ve viewed the incriminating el-e-vator security footage. You can see it for yourself.” He does that magician finger-flick thing again. Think a blond David Blaine at his creepiest. “And now that you know the awful truth, you must use your writing talent for the side of good, and preach to the world!”
“Ezra, this is all compelling stuff and I’m going to think hard on it. But I’ve got to ask, are you snorting your meds again?”
Ezra wipes his eyes, which it’s true don’t blink. Then he smiles this sweet, trembling smile, and I see his future: the homeless guy you’re not scared of; the old vagabond sleeping over the subway grate, whose family you decide must be useless to have left him so alone.
“Come to the base-ment,” he says. “You’ll be-lieve me then.”
Just then, a sunbeam-skinny young woman in flamingo pink workout clothes strides through the lobby. She seems to want to go someplace on the elevator, unwitting that its operator is insane.
I tap the century-old metal-caged lift with my knuckles. “Sorry. Technical difficulties.”
She looks from me to Ezra. We’re identical, but I’m clean-cut. A button-down polo, buzzed-short hair, married, two kids, a mortgage and migraines. I keep a reporter’s notebook in my pocket because I like writing more than typing. “Ever see The Patty Duke Show?” I ask. I’m an utter clown around beautiful women.
She shrugs, and I realize that no one born after 1980 has seen The Patty Duke Show. We’re so goddamned old. “Can you guys do your plumbing or whatever later?” she asks in this screeching, high-pitched whine. “I need to go to my apartment.”
“It’s a private matter. We’re just—”
Propping her hands on bony hips, she gets nasty. “See this building? This is my house. I come here to relax. One of you needs to take me to my apartment. That’s what I pay you for!”
“But—” I start.
“Right now!” she shrills.
“Go eat some poor people,” I tell her.
The woman glares at my chest, then Ezra’s. She finds his name tag and presumably memorizes it. I notice, then, that she’s emitting that same eau de cat shit as Ezra. Stranger still, what I’d thought was gloss on her lips is glistening blood. It crawls down the sides of her mouth, vampiric. She spins, her white-blond ponytail whipping, and jogs for the stairs.
“Let’s get you checked into Sinai before she calls the cops on both of us,” I say.
He looks at me with puppy eyes. “What about my proof? It’s in the base-ment.”
“Make it quick.”
A funny thing happens as we descend. There isn’t enough light to see past the elevator’s metal bars, so I tell myself it’s shadow play as an inky thing swims out from behind my brother’s irises. It blooms, swallowing the whites of his sclera, until his eyes are black as giant marbles.
“Ezra?”
Clink! We land in the basement. He swings open the gate door. It’s not as well kept down here. The paint is peeling. A ceiling bulb splashes chiaroscuro radiance against pink cinder block.
“So, what’s the magic surprise?” I ask.
Ezra heads into the long hallway without answering. His arms, legs, and neck move jerkily and out of sync. I watch him from behind, and the only comparison I can draw is that he’s like a puppet with a giant hand crammed inside him, tearing his very fabric wherever it needs extra space.
“Hey! Ezra!”
He rams his bony shoulder against the last door on the left. I catch up and see that someone has penciled eyes all along its archway. They’re true sized, all differently proportioned, all intricate. I get the feeling they’re watching me.
“Trapped souls. Trip-trap!” he says as he walks inside.
I follow. It’s a boiler room. Scribbled in black Sharpie on the dingy white walls are thousands of inscrutable hieroglyphs. Scattered among these hieroglyphs is one sentence of English, written again and again: Ezra is Dead.
“Ezra? I’m a little freaked out right now.”
“You see?” Ezra asks in this hollow, echoless voice that I can only describe as a digital approximation of sound. I’m so goddamned scared. He opens the third locker from a row alongside the door. A four-foot pile of glinting white and red hunks cascades out.
I point. “Is that a human femur?”
Ezra charges. His legs jerk underneath him like a dog on ice. I don’t see the switchblade, but I know enough to raise my hand. He stabs clean through my palm. It’s not painful. All I feel are cold blue sparks.
He keeps swinging, his aim terrible but wide and manic enough to harm. I’m nicked between the ribs, then again in the shoulder. I clench my good hand and spring.
It’s a straight
blow under his chin. The kind of punch that ought to bring a man down. But he grins like it’s nothing, black eyes glued to mine. He works his mouth, jaw clenching. I don’t understand what’s happening until he spits. A wet mound drops. It’s his tongue.
“Hey! Don’t!” I rush toward him.
It’s a trap. He gets a leg behind me and swipes. I hit the floor. He straddles me, driving the blade down with both hands. I knee his balls and roll. Steel plinks against cement.
“Ezra!” I shout like we’re still fifteen. “Truce! Jesus, truce!”
The knife cuts the air. I’m grunting, or he is, or both of us. I turn the blade around and slide it easy as grease into the depression between his clavicles.
The thing—my brother—reels, blood gushing. “Uhhhhh!” he grunts, slapping against the boiler and walls, leaving giant moth-shaped stains like there’s an animal inside him that’s trying to fly away. “Uhhhhh!”
It takes a while before I’m able to catch and hold him still. “I’ve got you,” I say. “Calm down so I can help.” As I watch, his black eyes recede to blue. He smiles like the goofy kid he used to be, sweet and nervous and hiding his madness like a set of soiled sheets. He drives the blade deeper into his own throat, slicing left to right.
—
“It’s the story of the century,” I tell Tom White, my publisher, over the phone. “I want a three-part series.”
“We don’t do long form anymore. You know that,” Tom answers.
It’s been a month since my brother’s suicide. The events immediately following remain a blur. Eyes watched. An inky thing slithered. Police came. My hand was stitched and bandaged. A southern woman in a black suit shined a flashlight in my eyes.
“You’re blinkin’ like a pro,” she told me.
“Well,” I said.
She handed me a card:
Anna Beth Cassavetes
Interglot
(212) 555-0341
