by The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares- The Haunted City (retail) (epub)
The soulless oblige me. They reveal knives.
They slice open each citizen’s chest simultaneously. The rhythmic, incessant stabbing begins as it always does—each of the soulless jackhammering the bloody chest with its respective blade, knife-fucking lacerated flesh. Over and over and over. The killers are moaning now, titillated by the spewing blood rush that rains down over the parade, staining the city streets, pouring over me like Satan’s benedictions.
Once again, I couldn’t save them. I am awash with their blood. Their screams have stopped.
Mine have just begun.
2
I’ve worked the late shift at the Two-Seven on Forty-Fifth, Midtown, for twenty years and the journey is always the same. I lumber down Broadway—awake now—under its neon sensory signage blast urging me to buy this shit, buy that shit, buy all the shit. The rain of blood from my dreams is invisible to everyone but me. It’s always there—as are the screams of those innocent citizens. The nightmare parade is ever present—awake, asleep, unconscious—whenever and wherever I am. It’s barely dulled by the drugs running roughshod through my system 24/7—a futile attempt to create a wall between me and those victims, those infinite cries, their flowing blood. These dead New Yorkers are fucking strong, fighting through whatever I imbibe—begging for my help. I can’t hide from them. Instead, I just run. I pop another Vicodin and barrel onward. It’s all I can do. I keep running.
The precinct is packed with the late-shift zombie squad—the pill poppers, drunk skunks, psycho po-po, the flotsam of the force, placed here in the center of the shit to deal with the nastiest the city has to offer. We barely speak—mirrors of one another’s pain—tormented by all we’ve seen in NYC’s witching and bitching hours.
I am the only broad—but gender doesn’t matter here. It once did, when I was a newbie with tits that stood tall and a face that wasn’t a map of places no one would want to visit. Against popular feminist opinion, I liked it better when they glanced my way and ogled my ass. Now I’m just another one of these damaged dicks with two ex-husbands, no children, a lot of acquaintances (no friends), and tired eyes that have seen unforgettable misery. We all share a similar story. We’re all just sifting through the detritus of our shattered psyches. We have nothing to offer one another. No solace. We leave one another alone.
My decrepit captain, who could sweat in Antarctica, grumbles at me from across the cramped room.
“There’s a new file on your desk.”
“Fuck you.”
“I understand.”
The file lies precariously on top of my shit. I don’t have time for this. I’m backlogged with twenty-five open homicide cases, some going back eight years. Before I raise holy hell and tear clammy Cap a new asshole, I glance inside. Morbid curiosity drives me, nothing else. It’s another body. Surprise surprise. How were you violated, John Doe? I riffle through the dossier and see it. This is not a new case.
It’s the same as the others. The fifth one in three weeks.
3
The white-robed and bespectacled coroner stands next to the body, describing in great detail how John Doe departed our earthly sphere. For a moment I wonder how many victims of NYC have lain upon this shiny table, how many gallons of blood were disgorged here? How many hearts honeycombed by hollow points were tossed nonchalantly into the garbage bin to my left?
The coroner drones on excitedly and I pay little attention, as it’s the same cause of death as the last four Does. This John is in his thirties, good-looking, in tip-top shape, with strong shoulders, tight abs, and a nice husky cock.
I can’t help but look. The coroner waits for me to peer back at him.
“Isn’t that something?” he says with a probing smirk, raising his eyebrows toward the exposed dead genitals. I toss him a look that conveys my venom—I’ll snap your fucking neck if you don’t look away from me. He gets the point and continues his medical musings.
I refocus on the victim’s chest, which bears the same foot-long crudely stitched incision as the four others who were on this table recently. Infected, swollen, oozing multicolored pus and bile. It’s as if JD went in for a heart bypass at the world’s worst hospital, with the world’s most incompetent doc, had his skin scalpeled with a rusty steak knife, his breastbone rent asunder with a chainsaw, and was then stitched back up by handicapped kids using Pixy Stix and a ball of yarn.
Like the others, the cause of death was sepsis, a fatal blood poisoning stemming from his filthy, man-made chest cleft. The quack “surgeon” who performed this procedure must have worn gloves he recently used to scrub a subway toilet.
The coroner proceeds to open John up and finds nothing that can tell me why his chest was opened and crudely closed. Once again, there are no signs of organ harvesting, nothing out of place.
There’s a serial killer loose in NYC.
It’s my case. I have no leads.
4
The nightmare continues, always the same. The midnight me parade. The soulless hooded hosts. The NYC citizen victim choir crying for my help. The blood flood. I combat its corrosive effects with more Vicodin. Weed. A hit of whiskey. Occasional porn and thoughts of John Doe’s pretty prick lead to attempts at masturbation, but I am uninspired and can’t lose myself enough to achieve release. Orgasm eludes me as it has for several years now. My evenings often end with Google searches of my ex-husbands and their current fat-assed wives, before finally I throw myself a pity party attended by the children I aborted. I named them Raymond and Darlene. I cut them loose from this world so they wouldn’t be subject to its unavoidable misery. I don’t regret sparing them the pain of this existence. It was the most maternal thing I could’ve done.
This daily routine of dope and distractions keeps the helpless victims at bay behind that frosty wall. Nothing blocks them completely. They are always there. I keep running.
Two more bodies land on my desk. This killer works fast and efficiently. He’s got a hearty appetite for whatever sick shit it is that he desperately desires. My mind races with theories—speculative, not one backed by any hard evidence. There could be more than one killer. It could be a woman. There were no signs of struggle…Do the vics know their killer?
The most recent John was a Wall Street broker and had a mild sex addiction. (Doesn’t everyone?) We do some interviews with cohorts and colleagues. Once again, all leads to nothing.
The routine continues. The nightmare, the waking dream. The dulling agents that don’t dull shit. Helpless New Yorkers hot on my ass, chasing me through thick and dark. They’re wearing me down. I can’t outrun them much longer. Where can I hide?
Then—a break.
5
She convulses spasmodically, her eyes rolled back in that clichéd found-footage-film possessed-by-a-demon way, bucking violently against arm and leg restraints.
She won’t stop. She emits high-pitched squeals that seem to come from the depths of her soul. Her pain is infinite, incomprehensible. Sedation isn’t working, not even a constant morphine drip. Something inside keeps her perpetually conscious and howling like a plump pig awaiting execution at a red-state slaughterhouse.
The doctors are baffled. I am baffled. I want her to stop screaming. I need her to stop screaming. This is too much pain, too continuous and bottomless. The mere thought of it makes people weep openly around her.
She will not relent.
I was called here because this Jane Doe bears the same crudely stitched incision on her chest. It too was infected. Three days ago, someone dropped her off anonymously in front of the hospital and drove off abruptly.
She is the first living victim of this serial crime. She hasn’t stopped convulsing in these demented paroxysms since she was brought in. Doctors have her on heavy antibiotics to fight the sepsis, with pads around her arms, legs, and head to prevent further damage from the convulsions and uncontrollable spasms.
The screeching wails don’t subside. They peak and valley, dipping to low-wattage moans, then crescendo to a fever
pitch, echoing through the hospital halls in waves.
She can’t speak. The doctors attempt to communicate, but Jane’s lost inside her infinite suffering, unreachable. What can cause such continuous pain and fear? How could this level of pain be sustained for so long, unabated? Is she caught in some timeless expanse of tortured existence from which she can’t escape?
Jane keeps screaming. They gag her so as not to wake the other sicklies.
I pop Vicodin and watch her day and night. I can’t leave. I can’t take my eyes off this woman. She has become a spectacle. People come to see her thrash and rock and howl and moan. She’s become famous within these walls and without. Priests want to perform exorcisms. I tell them to fuck off. Whoever did this is of our sick little Earth, not born on some otherworldly plane. Don’t explain this shit away with nonsense.
The priests don’t like my candor. Fuck ’em.
We cordon off her area, to keep the curious at bay. I have a front-row seat. Jane’s screams wash over me like sheets of rain. I can’t communicate with her so I fancy myself the Rosetta stone of wails, entering into them and trying to understand. Perhaps there are Morse code–like meanings in the ebb and flow of her screeches. Perhaps she’s trying to tell us something in the varying ululations of agony. Something that would allow us to help her. I listen intently, trying to decode caterwauls. I find nothing. I have one fleeting insight on the fourth day of yelling. Just before I doze off, her moans valley out and a subtle whimper is emitted from her raw throat. It sounds like ecstasy.
Blood pours from her mouth on the fifth day. Her larynx has ruptured, spurting ruddy pus. Her vocal cords severely damaged from overuse and abuse, Jane continues screaming, but her voice box no longer yields sound. Her mouth agape, silent wails escaping her insides. She appears like a tortured silent film star, under whose face the word PAIN! would be etched in the celluloid matte.
These new muted screams seem louder than anything before.
I can’t bring myself to leave. I am obsessed with her and her unrelenting pain. (Did the other victims experience this much pain before dying?) I stare at her for hours on end. Her ever-changing, twisted grimace, her contorted bruised, bucking body. I barely sleep in the white corridor, barely eat in the cafeteria. I can’t leave her. I’ve been up for days with nothing but Vicodin and nicotine in my system. I don’t want to miss anything. Late one night, I glimpse a harried nurse telling a doctor that Jane’s not only sweating profusely but also excreting urine and feces uncontrollably.
“And there’s an expulsion of fluid by the paraurethral ducts through and around her urethra.”
The doctor stares at the nurse, utterly baffled.
“As if experiencing orgasm?” he replies.
The nurse pauses, her expression betraying deep confusion and shock, as if she’s been contemplating this detail for some time. She then nods very slowly. The doctor evaluates this information as best he can.
“Her body is releasing everything—I wouldn’t be surprised if she began bleeding out from every orifice. None of this makes any sense…”
I remain right outside her door, unable to abandon her. I catch a glimpse of myself in a nearby window, a ghostly cop apparition. I am a mirror image of Jane’s sallow visage. Maybe that’s what I want. Doctors become concerned with my health. I tell them to fuck off.
—
On the seventh day, the silent screaming and spasms cease and Jane falls into an unconscious state. I stand anxiously at the threshold of her room, waiting. The pain seems to have ended. I weep silently for her as she’s been freed from whatever chains bound her. Her fever falls as the antibiotics work their magic. She suddenly seems serene, placid to the point of beatitude.
I’m jealous of her.
That night, I get light-headed from lack of sleep and food and all the other basic needs of human existence and I fall hard on the tiled hospital floor, passing out while staring at Jane, Jane of the Once Infinite Pain. It is the first time I’ve left her since this all began.
I wake up the next morning with an intravenous drip in my arm. My overworked and sweat-lathered captain hovers over me like a sick, bloated heavenly host, waiting to escort me up to some slightly better place. He informs me that in my absence Jane has regained consciousness. I move quickly and yank the intravenous needle out of my arm. Captain grabs my hand and stops me.
“I questioned her for three hours. She won’t get her voice back for weeks, so she wrote everything down. Her name is Evelyn Harchee. A nurse at Lenox Hill Hospital. She says she doesn’t remember anything.”
“What?”
“Nothing. She doesn’t know who cut her fucking chest open. Who dropped her off here. Or what’s happened this last week. No memory of the screaming, the convulsing, nothing.” He rolls his eyes. “She acted surprised.”
“You don’t believe her?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I pushed her: Someone almost killed you. She held firm: I don’t remember anything.”
He furrows his brow. He wants me to ask what’s on his mind.
“Something’s bothering you.”
“Her fucking chest was cut wide open. She should be more shocked. Doctors say it’s the morphine. I’m not sure.”
“Let me talk to her.” (I need to.)
He holds my wrist. “No.”
I’m going to bite his fucking plump, moist head clean off.
“I want you to take sick leave. Get healthy. You’re pushing too hard on this one.”
I stare daggers at him.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
He nods, acquiescing immediately in the face of resistance. He, like many others on this job, has given up the fight.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen. By the time Ms. Harchee’s released, I’ll be more than one hundred percent. I’m gonna follow her around, see what’s up once she falls back into her routine. Your rotten old gut is telling you that she’s hiding something. I trust your gut. She hasn’t seen me yet. I could trail her, get close, see what she’s not telling us.”
He nods, liking my plan, or just too tired to disagree.
“Good. Let’s hope you find something quick. Another body turned up this morning. Same chest incision. People want answers.”
6
Evelyn Harchee lives alone, like me, on the Lower East Side. It’s been several months since she was victimized, and she’s back at work traveling uptown via the D train, carrying a used paperback (always a bio of some long-forgotten film star). She works the late shift as an emergency room nurse at one of the busiest hospitals in Manhattan. She’s seen the shit and then some; her hands are regularly bathed in the bloody guts of the same victims I see on these dirty streets. Her mother and father are both deceased, both taken out by that cunt they call cancer. Her alcoholic yet sentimental brother lives in Michigan. She was an A student in nursing school and has since been a good citizen who pays her taxes on time and never jumps a turnstile.
Maybe Evelyn really doesn’t remember anything. She keeps her head in the sand and plows ahead. Maybe she’s another victim of Manhattan’s midnight marauders, preying on the innocent. Maybe she’s just one of the lucky ones who came out the other side still kicking.
Maybe there is nothing to find here. But I have to make sure. I have nothing else.
One thing about Evelyn gives me pause. Whether or not she remembers what happened, she carries the evidence of extreme trauma on her chest—a foot-long jagged scar, a constant reminder of the mysterious desecration of her body and soul—yet she doesn’t exhibit any other signs of someone who’s been violated: no jumpiness, no fear of what’s around the corner or what’s coming in her nightmares.
This draws me in for a closer examination.
We’re sitting next to each other in Cafe Gitane on Jane Street, replete with rough stucco walls, mosaic tiles, and woven kilim rugs in a futile attempt to evoke some kind of Moroccan vibe (or so I surmise). I guess that’s what hipsters deem cool nowadays, who the fuck knows? She’s sippin
g a double espresso and reading a book on Jean Harlow. I did some research on Harlow the last few nights and quickly strike up a conversation about The Beast of the City, one of her forgotten films. Evelyn’s intrigued that I’ve heard of it. I continue spouting some Google-learned nonsense about Harlow that really gets Evelyn jazzed up, and soon we’re sitting at the same table, sipping and shooting the shit.
I say I’m a social worker in the city, assisting the forgotten folk of the five boroughs. It cuts through and snares Evelyn like a fishhook. We’re kindred spirits now. I don’t feel guilty about lying. I’m undercover, trying to save some fucking lives here.
We start meeting once a week to discuss Harlow and Garbo, as well as the people caught in this city’s crossfire. We tell each other stories of the ones we could never forget. The heartbreakers and soultakers.
“I remember every single victim’s name.”
Her words resonate, reaching my damaged core. I am not lying, no longer undercover, when I respond.
“Same here. I remember every name. The date of every death. How they all died. Everything about them. They’re my only family now.”
Evelyn reaches out and touches my hand. Tears rise from human contact. I shudder, scared by my own emotion.
We continue meeting, more than once a week now. After several months of spilling our lonely, destroyed guts, Evelyn Harchee becomes a confidante, someone I can tell about the midnight parade and the blood rain that stains both my sleeping and waking worlds. She’s no longer a lead, no longer someone who could provide answers. I’ve found nothing in her life that requires deeper investigation. She’s a New York woman with a warrior’s heart who wakes up every day alone in this sick city; a survivor of some mysterious evil, who, against my shitty judgment, has become a friend. I crossed a line here and I know it. Fuck the line. I leap over it. I need Evelyn. She admits she too has tried everything from Vicodin to Valium to keep the victims’ cries for help as muted as she can.
