Copyright © 2018 by Chris Sorensen.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Author’s Note
Biography
For Debbie
The boy woke to the sound of his own screams. He quickly extinguished his cries, hands clasped over his mouth. Had he caught himself in time?
No…
He heard a the creak of door opening down the hall. The Old Man was awake.
“Goddamn it, boy!” his father roared. “Goddamn it!”
The man staggered into the doorway, his hair a tangle. He was wearing a stained flannel shirt and grey work pants, held cinched about his thin, knotted frame by a thick belt three notches too big. His grizzled face was a mix of anger and annoyance.
“I’m sorry,” the boy squeaked, trying to pull the wool blanket up over his nose.
“Do you know what time I have to get up? I need my fucking sleep!”
“I’m sorry!”
“Sorry don’t cut it!”
As the man stepped into the room, the boy’s bladder let loose a warm stream, soaking his PJs and the sheets.
The man yanked off the covers and recoiled. “Jesus! Did you piss yourself? Je-sus!”
“I’m sorr—”
His father smacked him hard across the face with the back of his hand. The boy’s cheek went red.
“Get up. Get up, get up, get up!” the Old Man shouted. “Are you deaf? Get up!”
The boy did as he was told. He was soon standing before his father, the legs of his rocket ship PJs—a prized find at the local Goodwill—soaked in urine.
His father looked down at him in disgust. “Six and still wetting the bed like a baby.”
“Seven.”
“What’d you say?”
The boy tensed. He knew he risked another slap, but for some reason he couldn’t help himself. “I’m seven. Not six.”
The Old Man bared his teeth, but the blow never came. Instead, his father grabbed him by his collar and dragged him from the room—like a dog from its cage.
Unable to keep up, the boy’s feet slid across the buckled and sagging hardwood floor. More than once the odd splinter stabbed his soles, causing him to wince but not to cry out. Never to cry out.
His father grabbed the banister and proceeded down the stairs, his son thumping along behind him. The boy squirmed to avoid the constant cracking of his ankles against the steps below.
“Should know better than to let you sleep in your bedroom,” the Old Man grumbled as he reached the foot of the stairs. His thought was interrupted by a wide-mouthed yawn that caused his jaw to crack. “God, I’m dead tired.”
As the boy continued to stumble after his father, he found himself taking mental snapshots of the rooms they passed. The dining room, once complete with dining table, now a storeroom for the boxes of ‘treasures’ the Old Man swiped from his garbage runs. Snap! The kitchen containing the useless stove and the microwave oven the size of a Buick. Snap! The hall closet still filled with his mother’s coats, jackets and hats. Snap!
The boy pinwheeled as his father rounded the corner; he heard the neckband of his PJs rip. The basement door was coming up fast, and a sour, sinking feeling curdled the boy’s gut.
“I’ll be good. I’ll be quiet,” the boy pleaded.
“Tell it to the Marines,” the Old Man snarled.
The man threw open the basement door. A rush of mildewed air rose up from the darkness, like the hideous breath of some subterranean thing. He flicked on the light, and the cascade of descending stairs came into view. Among their number was the treacherous one midway down, the one that bent like a bow at the slightest weight.
“Are you going down on your own or do I have to make you?”
The boy looked up at his father. The anger that had fueled him thus far was fading, seemingly sapped by the trip from the boy’s bedroom. Instead, his father looked pained. If he didn’t know better, he might think the Old Man was about to cry. But his father had said he was tired. Dead tired. And perhaps it was as simple as that.
"I'll go," the boy whispered, and he took the first tentative step down.
The change in temperature was immediate; it was like diving into a cold pool. He took another step down, and another.
He paused on the third step and looked back at his father. The bare bulb above paled the man’s countenance. The grey circles under his eyes made him look like he’d been bludgeoned.
“Git!” the Old Man snarled. The boy went. When he reached the sagging step, he stopped, took a breath and leaped over it. His heel hit the lip of the next step, but the wood was damp, and the boy came down hard on his butt.
“Get some sleep. And no more dreams.”
As if he could help it.
His father closed the door, and the lock clicked. It would not open again until morning.
The boy descended the final few stairs and stepped onto the floor. Ice-cold cement sucked heat from his soles. He squinted, trying to adjust to the dark.
The usefulness of the light bulb ended a few feet into the basement. And there was no more source of light until he reached the…
The gears in his head ground to a halt, stopping short of allowing the dreaded name to be uttered.
He started picking out objects around him. The solemn metal face of the furnace, a stack of water softener salt bags, the frame of an old bicycle.
Straight ahead lay a distance of twenty or so feet before he'd come to a door. Three-quarters of that stretch was in pitch black. To get to the door, to get to the room, he had to dash through the darkness until his hand found the doorknob. Then, he would throw the door open, reach to his right, flip the wall switch and presto. An island of light in an ocean of black.
He girded himself for the sprint.
“One…
two…”
He hesitated…but why? He’d already made this run two times this week. Both Monday and Thursday, he’d awakened screaming, bringing down the Old Man’s wrath, and sending him here. To the penalty box. To time out. To the Night—
“Three!”
The boy startled at the sound of his own voice, and he lurched into motion. He hurtled into the darkness, his feet slapping the floor, echoing off the walls in hollow applause.
He bumped into something and spun, temporarily throwing himself and his inner compass off balance. He skidded across the floor and came to a stop.
Heart pounding in his chest, he quickly located the lit stairs off to his left. He made a rapid calculation and turned to face the invisible pathway to the room. He bolted, coming to a halt only when he slammed head-on into the door.
His hand floundered before finding the knob. He launched into his practiced routine. Open door, flip switch, step inside.
In seconds, the boy slipped into the room and slammed the door shut. A pink light overhead bathed him in imaginary warmth—he had made it.
He stepped back and sank into the waiting beanbag chair, facing the door. The small room with its mint green walls and rollaway bed felt almost welcoming, an odd feeling for a place that was meant as a punishment.
The boy pulled a quilt from the bed and wrapped it around him tight. For the first time in his life, he felt safe here in this room—in the Nightmare Room.
Because he hadn’t bumped into something out there in the dark. He had bumped into someone.
He was almost certain of it.
He kept one eye on the door as the minutes hummed past on the illuminated clock on the nightstand. He busied himself with crayon and paper, doodling to keep his mind quiet. Soon, his vision began to flutter; the room began to strobe. And, in the space between two breaths, the boy sank into his beanbag chair and fell into a fitful sleep.
The doorknob twitched.
The boy bolted upright. He pressed back into the chair. His whole body started shivering, and he feared he would wet himself for the second time that night.
A thought…no, a voice crept into his head.
Coming in.
The door quivered as if someone was leaning against it, trying to stifle a laugh. Nails scratched against the wood.
“Dad?” the boy whispered.
The door shuddered.
“Is that you?” Knowing it was not.
Coming…
“Please don’t.”
Coming…
“No.”
Coming…
“No!”
In.
Peter smelled the town before he saw it—a rich, meaty musk that had always reminded him of Purina Dog Chow. Later in life, he would learn that it was the smell of burning skin and hair as workers blasted the pig carcasses with gas-guns. The Primeland pork processing plant employed a large number of Maple City residents. And saw thousands of hogs to their deaths.
Peter squinted as a semi approached in the opposite lane. It rushed past, causing the Ryder truck to rock and the old Prius it was towing to rock even more. Hannah stirred in the seat next to him but didn’t wake. She had taken the long stretch through Indiana and around Chicago and had only turned over the wheel when she couldn’t keep her eyes open just past Naperville.
He looked at her, slumped against the window, her loud Def Leppard t-shirt—a favorite of his—a glaring contrast to the woman who wore it. God, she was fetching, with her olive skin and the dark curls of hair she was never able to tame.
People always said Hannah didn’t look her age, that she couldn’t possibly be thirty. But the past weeks had taken their toll, and he thought his wife finally did look her age. Five years her senior, he could only imagine what he must look like.
Hannah snored as they rumbled into town with a substantially pared-down version of their earthly possessions crammed into the cargo section of the truck. They were pioneers, rolling in from the East in search of a brighter tomorrow.
We sure as hell could use one.
Peter tallied the number of dark yesterdays he and Hannah had accumulated these past few months.
He passed the sign stating Welcome to Maple City! Home of…and that was it. The rest of the greeting had been painted out. Up ahead, the first gas station appeared. Gas-4-U was lit up like Christmas, but the sign on the door said Closed.
“Good thing we filled up in the Quad Cities,” he said aloud. Hannah mumbled and shifted in her seat.
Peter passed through the intersection—the crossroads between Routes 67 and 34—and headed into the city limits. Off to the left sat the old fashioned but well-kept Intermission Motor Lodge. The attached restaurant looked shuttered up, but the motel itself seemed to have a dozen or so reservations. The curtains of a lone window on the second floor flickered blue. Either someone couldn't sleep, or they had nodded off in front of the tube.
There used to be a large cow on top of the roof of the restaurant. A black Angus.
He crossed over the railroad tracks that cut a diagonal line through town, and he was on Main Street proper.
Their decision to move to Illinois had been made quickly. His sister had called about their father’s downturn just a week ago, barely twenty-four hours after Hannah’s Bad Day. That’s how life worked, wasn’t it? Awful tended to cluster together.
He passed the First National Bank, and the clock by the fountain informed him that it was just after five o’clock. The sun wouldn’t be up for another half hour, and their meeting with his dad’s lawyer wasn’t until eight.
A trip down memory lane? Why not?
He steered off Main and headed down Euclid Avenue, passing a hair salon, dry cleaners, a nail salon. It was sad. This block had once been populated with a candy store, a bookstore and a mom and pop office supply shop. It had moved on like most of the country—from the unique to the generic.
The town’s founders had certainly done their job when naming the place. The streets were lined with maples—silver, sugars and the occasional red. In the predawn glow of the halogen streetlights, they stood standing watch over the avenues of Maple City, like onlookers at a parade. It was late August, and already a few of the trees were starting to show their fall colors. Giving up the ghost early this year.
On Oak Street, he hung a quick left. Something large shifted in the back of the truck, and he hoped that his Hush Room hadn't just done some major damage. The audio booth was portable, yes, but it was also heavy as hell. He made a mental note to go easy on the turns.
As they moved further into the neighborhood, Peter marveled at how much had changed. Gone were the dilapidated houses owned by the Brewsters and the Hollins—food stamp families with mean dogs and even meaner kids. In their place stood a row of college dorms. The campus was spreading. Good news for the college; bad news for the Brewsters and Hollins.
The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon as he parked the truck in front of 94 Oak Street.
At least it hadn’t changed.
And yet it had. The lawn his father had always kept closely shorn was uneven. It had been mowed recently, that much was clear, but there had been no effort to trim around the trees, around the drain spouts. And Pop had always been careful to make horizontal passes across the lawn, leaving it as manicured as a golf course. It was the work of a kid trying to get the job done as fast as possible.
The house itself was still in fine order—no peeling paint, no hanging gutters. But the state of the lawn brought on a wave of loneliness that Peter couldn’t weather alone.
“We’re here,” he said, gently nudging Hannah. “All ashore that’s going ashore.”
His wife wrinkled her nose, opened her eyes and yawned. “We’re here?”
* * *
Peter fished the spare key from underneath a ceramic frog sporting a fishing pole and opened the door.
“Oh, no,” Hannah said, putting her hand over her nose. “That’s bad. I mean bad bad.”
The
stink of rot hit Peter’s nose like a sledgehammer. The house was hot inside, and the combo of heat and decay was hellacious.
“We’re going to have to fumigate the place before we move in,” Hannah said as she forced open a window. "What the hell is that?”
“I’ll go check,” he said, slipping past her. “Would you take a look at the thermostat? It’s got to be a hundred degrees in here.”
He walked down the hall, past his mothers’ collection of framed doilies hanging on the walls. He took a quick peek into the half bathroom—he wished he hadn’t.
Peter stopped short of the kitchen, his foot poised over the linoleum floor.
“Oh, God.”
The entire contents of the freezer had been emptied and laid out on the kitchen table. A mountain of pork chops sweltered inside ballooning ziplock bags. A carton of Whitey’s chocolate ice cream—his father’s favorite—sat in a dried brown puddle. Scattered bags of corn, vegetable medley and peas completed the picture.
“I turned it down!” Hannah called from the other room. “It was set at eighty-four.”
“Don’t come in here,” he replied, venturing closer to the mess. One of the ziplock bags had burst, exposing a stack of pork chops to the air. White maggots wriggled across the surface of the grey meat. “Not unless you want to lose your lunch.”
“I haven’t even had breakfast,” she countered, but she stayed put.
Suppressing his rising gorge, Peter opened the cupboard, fished out a box of trash bags and got to work.
* * *
After detaching the Prius from the truck, Peter and Hannah spun past a gas station, filled the tank and arrived at the Heartland Diner just before eight. When the menus came, neither of them had much of an appetite.
“Share a cinnamon roll?” Peter asked.
“Sounds good.”
They placed their order with an overworked waitress and sat back with their coffee.
Hannah glanced about the diner, taking in the farmhands in the corner, the church ladies at the big center table and the cop at the counter. Big breakfasts all around.
“I like the house,” she said. “It’s bigger than I remember. And nicer. Well, except for the…”
“The kitchen from Hell?”
The Nightmare Room Page 1
