Dark Avenues

by Brian J Smith

  “That’s gross.”

  He licked his lips and gazed down at his feet. Mom rubbed her fingertips across the knuckles of his left hand in a calm, reassuring manner.

  “They found sixteen bodies inside of that house including Larson himself. They’d consumed enough absinthe and psychotropic drugs to kill an elephant before they killed each other. The sheriff found this crude symbol scrawled on the wall in the far left corner of the room and it sho–”

  “An oval painting of a pathway leading toward a door sitting on the edge of a horizon.”

  His brows furrowed, he asked, “How did you know?”

  I reminded him that I saw the symbol painted on one of the walls inside of the house and then told them about the one that Jared had left behind back at Mattie’s Country Barn. He shook his head, sighed, glanced up at the ceiling and then back down to me.

  “When your tenth birthday came around,” He said. “A woman named Maureen Butler moved in with her two little girls Ab–”.

  “Abbi and Daisy.”

  They opened their mouths as if they were about to ask me something, but changed their minds.

  “It wasn’t too long before the house drove her crazy.”

  “She wasn’t a swinger, too. Was she?”

  “No.” Dad said, then chuckled. “She tied her kids to the kitchen table and–”

  I waved my hands to protest him from further explanation. I felt foolish because here I was the whole time thinking that it was Larson who’d possessed Jared and killed all of those people.

  “Why didn’t they just tear it down?”

  “After the Butler incident,” Dad shrugged his left shoulder. The city condemned it when the landlord failed to keep up on much needed repairs. As the years went on, the place became an eyesore to the neighborhood but no one really bothered it.”

  “Somethings are born evil, Mollie.” Mom stated. “They don’t have to be created by evil; they just exist to do evil things. That house reads your mind and coerces you to do strange things to others in return for giving you what you want.”

  A loud chime exploded from Dad’s front pocket, cutting through the cloud of silence permeating between us. We flinched; Mom and I clutched the edge of the table while Dad cursed under his breath and went digging through his pocket. Two curse words later, he answered it on the third ring.

  Mom took my hand, tears brimming in her eyes. We waited for a thumbs-up or a nod that could tell us what the doctors were able to do for Jared.

  He pressed the phone to his ear and nodded. He clamped his left hand over his left ear so he could hear better because cell phone reception in this area wasn’t as good as it would’ve been had we lived in the city. We tried to watch his facial features to determine what she’d been telling him but his face didn’t budge.

  “Okay, man.” He spoke in a slow syrupy voice. “Let us know if you need anything.”

  He killed the call, slid his hand down his face and sighed. He glanced back at his cell phone and then back at us.

  “He started to come out of it and asked his mother for something to drink. When she came back into the room, his window was open and she heard a commotion coming from outside of the building.” He sighed, his eyes glistening in the sour gray sunlight. “Jared had jumped out the window and fell eight stories onto the hood of a parked car.”

  Mom gave a heart-wrenching whine, her face dulled by a mix of shock and horror. Her eyes brimming with tears, she buried her face in both hands, slid out of her chair and onto the floor. Dad sprang out of his chair, crouched down beside of her and hugged her trembling body; her sobs were a song I didn’t care to hear anymore but yet felt I was responsible for.

  I clamped my hand across my mouth, slid out of my seat and ran upstairs as fast as I could. I dove face first onto my bed and sobbed until it hurt; my fingers shook as hot lucid tears trailed down my burning cheeks. A barrage of memories came flooding back to me in a wave of still images, each one just as perfect as the one before it: the day he carried me home after I fell out of the tree and broke my ankle; the time we found that old refrigerator last winter and went sledding down the hill toward Lake Michelle; the time he punched Rudy Castro (a little creep who lived at the bottom of the hill) in the nose for lifting my dress up and over my head during his sister Lori’s twelfth birthday party.

  I couldn’t blame Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bruce if they never wanted to talk to me ever again. I should’ve said something when I had the chance but I didn’t now all of this was my fault.

  I raised my head up from my pillow and peered through my bedroom window, my hand bunched into tiny pale fists. Through the film of gauzy white tears clouding my vision, I gazed at the gothic eyesore sitting down the street in all of its dark and desolate grandeur with more hatred than I could ever have for anything or anyone.

  There was only one thing left for me to do, whether my parents liked it or not. If not for me, then for someone else.

  8

  LATER that night, I waited for Mom and Dad to be asleep because they’d have kill me if they knew what I was doing. If they caught me, I wouldn’t be able to talk myself out of it.

  It was now or never. Now that the house had taken Jared, who knew what else it was capable of doing to the next person and the one after that and so on.

  When I knew the coast was clear, I slid out of bed, slipped into a white tee-shirt, jeans and a bright red hoodie. I snuck down stairs, holding my breath the entire time, and opened the sliding glass doors. I breathed a sigh of relief, stepped out onto the patio and shut the doors behind me.

  The cool summer air caressed my face and hair. A veil of odd moonlit shadows partially obscured my parents’ bedroom window before cascading across the roof. My gut churned with an amalgam of fear; my nerves were a spring-loaded trap waiting to be unleashed by the tinniest sounds or any sudden movement.

  A slow procession of roiling black clouds drifted past the milky-white moon in a failed attempt to conceal it. Skeletal tree branches overhead weaved in the licorice-tainted breeze, scraping at the roof like the fingers of the dead clawing for their freedom.

  I crept over to Dad’s tool shed and jerked back on the flimsy metal door just hard enough not to scrape the bottom of it across the grass. The various smells of paint, rust and other chemicals tainted the air and stung my nostrils.

  I thumbed the button on the pen-sized flashlight I found in the tool drawer in the kitchen and swept the inside with a cone of harsh white light. I found the red plastic gas can sitting under his work bench between a couple of brown plastic crates packed with other manly junk.

  I didn’t know how much I’d need to get the job done but I didn’t care. I shut the door just as carefully as I did when I opened it and then crept back toward the front of the house to retrieve the box of matches Dad used to light the propane grill. I considered dousing the outside of the house then lighting it up so that the flames could eat their way through but there was only one way to get at something as evil as 1342 Lindley Drive.

  Go for the throat or don’t go at all.

  With my head bowed and my shoulders hunched, I hurried up the hill away from my house. My fist clenching the handle of the gas can, I saw the ramshackle succubus sitting under the moon-lit sky like a ravenous predator huddling in the shadows to consume fresh, ignorant prey.

  I peered through the wall of trees shrouding the driveway and saw halos of brightly colored lights flickering across the front window in soft luminescence. A song about incense and peppermints blared from somewhere inside of the house; faint black shadows floated across the windows as if they were projected across the screen of a movie theater, their shapes animated by the raucous mix of laughter and loud conversations.

  A late-night fiasco at two in the morning. I was surprised that no one else had come by to see what all the noise was about but then if I had the chance to ignore this place then so would I.

  The more I looked at it the more it made me wonder why someone would even bother to let
it remain here in the first place. It reminded me of all of those televangelists my grandma used to watch on television on Sunday mornings; the ones who preached His word, gave examples on how it defined current events or personal situations and then coerce you into buying a bottle of special water, a new “New Testament” or a piece of magical cloth that can cure all of your ails; the ones who welcome you with open arms when you’re “contributing” to their million dollar homes and mega-churches but yet lock their doors when your city is hit by a natural disaster.

  The difference between this house and them was as plain as the nose on my face. It didn’t seek a higher power through God and it didn’t deliver His message through any fancy products either. Instead, it sought a higher power by telling people what they wanted to hear because it made them feel good about themselves; when you give someone enough attention they’ll want it more and more because it’ll ease the pain they felt when others never gave it to them. In return for the joy it brought them, they sign the contract and sell their souls to prolong the sense of happiness they hadn’t felt in such a long time.

  My mind flicked back to what Maureen Butler had said to her daughters in my last dream. It resonated in my head.

  “The more you fight it, the harder it’ll be for us to cross.”

  Cross?

  The last time I heard a woman say that word she didn’t live to tell about it. What connection did the house have with this so called “Crossing”? Was it the doorway to Heaven or Hell?

  For as long as I can remember, people who committed suicide had gone to Hell. I think Hell is more than just little devils with pitchforks, towers of fire and days of prolonged misery.

  Hell is trying not to throat punch the first person you see when you get to work on Monday; a traffic jam on the expressway during rush hour; a flat tire on a lonely stretch of road with no cell phone service. A parent who never comes home after they said they were just “going down the road for a little bit”.

  It’ll always be whatever we want to make it. It’s what we do to overcome it that determines who we really are.

  I reached the mouth of the driveway when the nauseating stench of licorice wafted across my face. I winced and slid the front of my tee-shirt up and over my nose to shield myself from that ghastly smell. I knelt, spun the cap off of the can and carried it toward the front door; my chest rose and fell with each breath I took to calm the fire in my nerves.

  I cursed under my breath for not grabbing one of Dad’s old work towels from his shed and scanned the neighborhood for any witnesses. Nothing. I sighed and ambled across the driveway toward the covered front porch.

  When I rammed my left shoulder against the front door, it flung it open with a loud splintery crack; the hinges gave off a series of slow piercing creaks that made my skin prickle with fear. The lights that once glowed in the window died, plunging the house into a dark and eerie state of silence that sent cold chills creeping down my spine; the stench of licorice mingled with the thick fetid odors of mold, urine and mildew. Something brewed inside of this bottomless gloom, biding its time until the next person came along to feed its insatiable hunger.

  A deep chill tunneled through my body and settled into my bones. My breath blew across my face in thick white tendrils that dissipated in thin air. I brushed my fears aside, took a slow hesitant step across the doorway and stepped inside.

  Large white cobwebs clung to the corners of the ceiling and danced in the cool air spewing in through the open door; a line of black gunk and dust gathered along the wainscoting along the bottom of the floor. The carpet of moonlight and shadow pouring through the kitchen windows exposed a gold-on-white linoleum floor and a yellowed Formica countertop strewed with thin jagged cracks and caked with dirt.

  Odd black shadows lengthened across the living room floor and grasped the walls like desperate hands. I gazed across the house and spotted a thick wall of darkness clogging the main hallway that no sane man would venture toward.

  I raised the gas can with both hands, my fingers shaking with anxiety when a burbling female voice rang in my left ear.

  “We’re so happy you could finally join us.”

  The door swung shut loud enough to vibrate the windows and drench me in a patch of semi-darkness. A chill traced the contours of my spine and sent a fresh streak of gooseflesh across my skin. I snatched a quick breath, filling my lungs with the stale musty air permeating through the house.

  I lurched back, arms flailing drunkenly out from my sides and backed up against the edge of the kitchen countertop. I sighed amongst the current of pain that traced my hips, streaking down my thighs and calves.

  Iris emerged from the pocket of darkness beside the front door and floated across the kitchen on skeletal gray feet that never touched the floor, her milky-white eyes surrounded by ancient-gray sockets; deep gashes etched along her throat and shoulders exposed a network of flesh, blood and sinew surrounded by large crusts of dried blood. A wide devilish grin spread across her face, exposing two rows of rotten black teeth; her skin cracked, spilling plumes of gray ash down the front of her tattered clothes.

  I tightened my fist around the handle of the gas can and slid away from the countertop when a cold sensation skated across the back of my neck. I spun around on the balls of my feet and saw Abbi and Daisy standing behind me, their lithe pale forms floating above the floor like a bedsheet in the breeze.

  “Jared was right.” Abbi said through crooked black teeth. “You’re way prettier than he said you were.”

  “We could always use another sister.” Daisy said in a syrupy warped voice.

  A gust of wind blew across the kitchen as an unseen force collided with my back and knocked off my feet. My back arched from the impact, the gas can jarred loose from my grasp and tumbled across the room, spewing a stream of gasoline across the floor. I flew across the room, my body lighter than air, and face-planted on the floor with a loud bone-jarring thud.

  I winced at the rivers of pain streaming across my entire upper body and rolled onto my left hip. I blinked the stars out of my eyes, planted my hands firmly against my calves and sat up. The shadows lengthening through the house congealed into a horde of faceless white shadows that rose up from the floor, followed by a chorus of soft whispers that echoed off the walls.

  They’d worn the same clothes they were wearing the last time I saw them. Ethan, the cute blonde guy and the heavyset man who were eviscerating each other at the party and Maureen and her two little girls.

  Fear pinned me to the floor; my heart thudded. An alarm rang in the back of my head, urging me to run but my brain refused to register. Something crackled and popped; “White Room” by Cream burst from somewhere inside of the house. A seventh shadow floated across the room, wearing the same red tee-shirt and denim shorts he’d worn the night his curiosity got the better of him and landed next to Ethan.

  “Come on, Mollie.” Jared replied in a smooth velvety tone. “It’s not as bad as you might think. Once you get over here, there are all kinds of fun things to do.”

  I swallowed the sour aftertaste burning the back of my throat and said, “You’re not my cousin. My cousin died today.”

  “There’s no need to fight it.” said a deep masculine tone that might’ve brought the angriest of Vikings to tears.

  In his breezy white blouse and dark-blue flares, Noah Larson floated across the living room, his nickel-plated eyes glinting. Maureen Butler floated beside of me, her long dark hair fluttering from the back of her head; the same wicked grin she wore when she pushed her little girl towards death spread across her face.

  They weren’t the source of the house’s impenetrable evil, but their presence reminded me of what it was capable of; it used them to draw everyone into its evil grasp, including me.

  He knelt down beside of Jared and raked his hand through his hair with fatherly love. The others floated above me in a swirling white halo like hungry vultures appraising my fear before the initial feeding.

  “Some peo
ple just don’t understand, Jared.”

  Jared shook his head. His shoulders slumped, he stared down at the floor as tears brimmed in his eyes.

  “I was hoping she would.” He pleaded. “I was really hoping she would finally come around to our level.”

  “She came here to destroy us.”

  Jared glanced at Larson then back to me. His milky-white eyes glistened with tears as his face wilted with sadness; it wasn’t supposed to end like this.

  Nothing like this at all.

  “I really wanted to make her a part of the family.”

  “I know.” Larson said to Jared, then said to me. “You’ve really disappointed everybody, Mollie. All we want is what is best for you and this is how you repay us.”

  “We love you, Mollie.” The horde of phantoms softly wailed.

  “I don’t know what to do with you.” Larson said in a sulking tone. “We’ve tried to welcome you into our circle and yet you refuse to join us.”

  “I guess,” Maureen hissed. “we’ll have to kill her. Won’t we?”

  A large wet hand reached out from the darkness and brushed across the back of my right hand. I flinched and scrambled back toward the big picture window facing the covered front porch. I glanced down at the puddle of gasoline pooling across the middle of the living room toward the far left corner of the house.

  I groped my pockets, trying to remember which pocket I’d put them in but forgetting which one exactly. I snatched the box of matches out of my right pocket and slid the box open when I heard a protesting grimace in my left ear. Maureen bared her crooked black teeth in a wide angry grin, swooped down from the ceiling and slapped them out of my hand.

  Before I could reach out to retrieve them, she seized my wrist in her right hand and stretched my arm high over my head like a piece of taffy. Her bitter cold grip pressing against my skin, I snatched a quick breath to combat the pain throbbing against my shoulder; a bone-deep paralysis locked me into place. She lowered her head, inching her face toward mine and inhaled until the pleasing scent of my misery filled her lungs.