by Brian Keene
“That’s fucked up,” Chris replied. He was the youngest of the group and looked up to them all. Leo and Markus, especially. Wanting their approval, he always went along with whatever they decided. “So what are we gonna do?”
Leo paused, considering their options. He stared at the house and the darkness surrounding it. It had been a good evening. They’d gone to a party, met some girls, had a fun time. All was right with the world. They’d been walking home, bullshitting with one another and laughing, when they’d come across the broken-down station wagon. They knew right away that the teenagers inside needed help. They didn’t belong here. They were outsiders. Easy prey. This was a bad neighborhood during daylight, but at night—at night, it really was a jungle. At night, there were monsters on the streets.
And even worse things in the shadows.
Crack, heroin, and meth whores roamed up and down the street, opening their diseased mouths and other orifices for ten or twenty bucks—enough to get the next fix. Drug dealers controlled everything—the street corners, the houses, the apartment buildings, and all that lay between them. The homes had rats, mold, mildew, roaches, and all sorts of other health hazards. A broken sewer pipe spilled shit and piss into the street, yet the public works department did nothing about it. The cops didn’t come down here unless they were passing through on their way to another call. Neither did the ambulances or firemen. To serve and protect didn’t mean much in this part of the city.
Two years ago, an obese woman who was too fat to get out of her house, had suffered a heart attack in front of the television while watching Judge Judy. Her family had called 911. Twice. And then the next day. And the day after that. A week passed before paramedics arrived. By then, the dead woman had begun to lose weight.
Just another day in paradise.
A year ago, a twelve-year-old girl with cerebral palsy had died just a few doors down from where they were now standing. She’d lain for days on top of a feces-and-urine covered bare mattress in a fetid, sweltering room, begging for water. Her family ignored her cries. Malnourished and dehydrated, she was covered with maggot-infested bedsores and her muscles had begun to atrophy. When she was finally discovered, the little girl weighed less than forty pounds. The outline of her body was imprinted on the mattress. The Department of Human Services could have helped her—but the social workers never came to this section of the city.
No one did.
And the shunned house at the end of the street was very hungry.
Leo’s gaze was drawn back to it again. He didn’t want to look at the structure, but its terrible allure was magnetic. He had to look. He shivered and hoped the others didn’t notice. He didn’t want them to know he was scared—even though he knew damn well that they were, too.
Everyone was scared of the house at the end of the block. Better to let your kids play in the middle of the Interstate than to play down there. People who went inside that house were never seen again.
They were heard sometimes—faint, muffled screams that ended abruptly. But they were never seen.
Every neighborhood—even theirs—had a haunted house.
Leo shook his head. Why did those white kids have to react like that? He and the guys were just having a little bit of fun. He was about to say, “Alright, let’s handle this shit nice and easy. Y’all give us twenty bucks and we’ll fix the car for you.” And they could have, too. Angel Montoya ran a chop shop two blocks down, and Angel liked Leo and his crew. He let them hang out at the garage sometimes and gave them free sodas from the dusty machine out back. He’d have fixed the car if they’d asked him to. But before Leo could finish the sentence, the kid with the glasses had shouted “Fuck you, nigger” and then they’d fled. Leo had been momentarily stunned by the reaction. It wasn’t the first time a white person had called him that, but he hadn’t been expecting it tonight—not under these circumstances. He’d felt angered and hurt, and it took him a moment to recover from his shock. Then he’d shouted after them, trying to warn them not to go any farther, not to run into the darkness at the end of the street, not to venture near the house. He didn’t know if they’d heard him or not. They kept running. Hell, the one girl had dropped her cell phone and left it there. Another dude had picked it up, but obviously, she wasn’t too worried about it. None of them had even glanced back. In hindsight, looking at it from their eyes, he couldn’t blame them if they had heard his shouts and just ignored him.
He probably shouldn’t have called them motherfuckers. Not the best way to win friends and influence people, in hindsight. The distant sound of gunshots rang out from several blocks away. Neither Leo or the others even bothered to duck. They were used to it. The noise was as common as traffic or sirens or pigeons or any other city sound. Leo’s older brother used to say that the sound of gunshots helped him sleep at night.
Now his brother was upstate at Cresson, serving twenty years to life on some bullshit charges. Leo wondered what sounds lulled him to sleep at night in prison.
“What are we gonna do?” Chris asked again. “We just gonna walk away and pretend we didn’t know they were here?”
“I like the sound of that,” Jamal said. “Better if we mind our own business. Safer that way. Know what I’m saying?”
Leo glanced at his friends, studying their faces. Then he turned his attention back to the house.
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re gonna call the po-po.”
Markus laughed. “Five-oh ain’t gonna do shit. Might as well call in the National Guard.”
“You’re probably right,” Leo agreed. “But it ain’t right, letting them go in there. You all know the stories about that place. Any of you feel like going in to rescue them?”
Markus stared at the ground. Jamal and Chris glanced at each other. The others looked away.
“None of you want to play hero?” Leo teased. “None of you want to rush in with guns blazing?”
None of them responded.
More gunshots rang out, then faded. A sleepy, laconic sounding police siren started up from far away.
“Well,” Leo said, after a pause. “That’s okay. Because I don’t want to, either. Not in that place.”
He turned around and stared at the house again.
“Not in there.”
THREE
As the looming figure lunged into the foyer, Kerri and Javier backed away, nearly knocking over Stephanie, Brett, and Heather. Bits of Tyler’s hair, scalp, and blood dripped from the weapon the killer clutched in its gnarled hands—a rough-hewn chunk of granite the size of a watermelon. The boulder was affixed to a length of iron pipe. Together, they formed a crude but effective war hammer. Stunned, Kerri wondered how it was possible to lift such a thing, let alone swing it. Then her gaze turned to their attacker, and she wondered no more.
He drew himself up to his full height, raised the hammer, thrusting it before him, and bellowed—whether from rage or laughter, Kerri couldn’t tell. Perhaps both. He stood well over seven feet tall. His chest, arms, and legs were corded with thick slabs of muscle. His skin was the color of provolone cheese and covered with large brown moles and festering sores. Bloody saliva dripped from his open mouth, leaking around gums that had receded from his black, broken teeth. His breathing was harsh and ragged. His head was bald and misshapen. He glared at them with eyes that were almost perfectly round, rather than oval-shaped. His pupils were black. He was nearly nude, clad only in black garbage bags held together with frayed duct tape. They rustled as he moved. His penis—as big as the rest of him—bobbed and swayed, jutting from between the plastic bags. Kerri gagged at the sight. He was uncircumcised, and the foreskin looked infected. Pus dripped from the putrid member, splattering onto the floor. Worst of all was the attacker’s stench. It was revolting—sour milk mixed with feces and sweat. Kerri’s nose burned.
She noticed all of this in a matter of seconds, but it was the longest moment of Kerri’s life. Time seemed to pause.
Then it came rushing back with
a wallop.
The hulk backhanded her, knocking Kerri off her feet. She slammed into the opposite wall and slumped to the floor. Spitting blood, Kerri spotted her cigarette lighter. Without thinking about it, she reached out and snatched it. The madman laughed. Kerri scrambled to get to her feet, but she slipped in a spreading pool of Tyler’s blood.
Their attacker laughed again. With his other hand, he swung the mallet. Kerri watched, cringing as Javier dodged the blow, narrowly avoiding having his chest crushed.
The five teens scattered. Shrieking, Heather ran to the end of the hall and flung open one of the doors, disappearing through it. The only signs of her passage were the bloody footprints she left in her wake. Javier shouted after Heather, but if she heard him, she showed no sign. While the figure menaced Brett and Stephanie, Javier kneeled over Kerri and thrust out his hand. She grasped it, and he pulled her to her feet. They ran down the hallway in blind panic, forgetting about Stephanie and Brett. Forgetting about Tyler. Even forgetting about each other. The only thing their minds comprehended was survival.
They followed Heather’s crimson trail through the open doorway. Kerri glanced back once and saw what was happening to Stephanie, but her feet kept moving.
Their friends’ screams faded behind them.
***
“Open, you fucker!”
Sobbing, Stephanie clawed at the entrance, trying to get back outside. She beat at the locked door with her fists. Tears coursed down her mascara-stained cheeks. She babbled a string of nonsense—jumbled prayers and pleas for her parents to come and get her.
Brett tugged at her arm. “Steph, come on!”
She shoved him away.
A massive shadow fell over them both, and the hammer whistled through the air. It slammed into Stephanie’s curled fist with a sickening crunch. Blood and pulp squirted out from beneath the stone. Stephanie wailed, gaping at the pulverized flap of meat where her hand had been. The attacker pulled the hammer back for another swing, and Stephanie flailed helplessly. Blood jetted from her crushed appendage. Brett moved to help her, but before he could, the man swung the hammer again. This time, the blow crushed Stephanie’s head.
Brett froze, helpless, feet rooted to the floor. All flight instinct had left him. He stared at Stephanie’s body, trying to understand what he was seeing. Put him behind a chessboard and everything was crystal clear. Give him a trigonometry problem and he’d solve it. Those things made sense to him. They had logic and order. Rules.
There was no logic here. No order. There were no rules that he could see and understand. Instead, there was some kind of monster (because it couldn’t be a man—no, his mind wouldn’t accept that this thing was human). It had killed Tyler. And now it . . .
Brett screamed.
Something was wrong with Stephanie’s face. He saw it as she slid down to the floor. Her features were mashed together. Her eyes and nose and mouth—they were too close. Her lips—lips he’d kissed just an hour ago—were smashed almost beyond the point of recognition. Her head wasn’t round anymore. Instead, it looked like a deflated basketball. The top of it was split open, and inside that red chasm was something that looked like curds of jellied lasagna.
Her brains, Brett thought. Oh, Jesus, that’s her brains.
Brett winced as the bile rose in the back of his throat. It burned. He glanced up at the killer.
The killer laughed a third time—hoarse and booming.
In that instant, Brett fell back on what he knew best—logic. This was nothing more than a puzzle. A real-life video game. All he had to do to survive was figure it out. As their attacker raised his bloody weapon, Brett ran through the possibilities. Then he did the last thing he hoped the monstrosity would expect—he raced right past it and flung himself into the room from which it had emerged. The man-thing roared, clearly enraged.
Even as he wept, Brett couldn’t help smiling.
Weren’t ready for that, were you, fucker?
He ran, charging across the room. Ahead of him was another door. It led deeper into the house. Brett dashed through it without hesitation, plunging into the darkness, heedless of where it might lead.
His pursuer’s feet plodded along behind him, shaking the wooden floor.
Somewhere beyond the walls, perhaps in another room, Kerri started screaming, her voice broken and shrill.
Brett knew just exactly how she felt.
FOUR
Kerri’s world had shattered before her eyes. Tyler was dead. Stephanie was dead.
Shit happens . . .
Stephanie had been her best friend since kindergarten. They’d gone to the same classes at St. Mary’s Catholic School from first grade through seventh, at which point they’d both switched to public school. They’d studied together. Grown up together.
Kerri’s breath caught in her throat as Javier urged her along through the darkness. Although their vision had adjusted, their only source of light was Javier’s cell phone, which he held open. Her hands were shaking too much to hold her cigarette lighter. Kerri heard Javier’s nose whistling as he breathed. She tried to speak, tried to tell him to slow down, to ask him if he’d called 911, but she couldn’t find her voice. Kerri shuffled forward a few more steps and stopped. She felt dizzy all of the sudden. There was pressure building behind her eyes.
She closed them, hoping the pain would go away.
Maybe Steph wasn’t dead. Maybe she was still alive back there. After all, she and Javier had been fleeing. Maybe what she thought she saw happen hadn’t actually occurred.
Kerri heard the sound again. That awful noise the hammerhad made when it . . .
Tyler and Steph . . .
Steph and Tyler . . .
They were definitely both dead. And she’d done nothing to help them. Instead, she’d run away. How was that possible?
Tyler had taken Kerri’s virginity. Steph was the one who listened to all the details afterward, just like she had when Steph lost her virginity under less pleasant circumstances a few years earlier. Steph was her sister in every way that mattered and now she was dead.
Tyler wasn’t just her boyfriend. He’d been her world. Yes, things had been difficult lately. They’d been fighting a lot. Fed up with his immaturity, she’d been thinking about leaving him. But all the arguments and annoyance—those things just proved how much they’d really loved each other. You didn’t fight with somebody if you didn’t care about them. And now he was gone. Dead. Lying on the floor at the front of the house, cooling and coalescing, his blood mingling with Steph’s.
The pressure in her head boiled over. Kerri opened her eyes and screamed. It was a deep, raw, throat-stripping shriek that seemed to go on forever—
—until Javier clamped his hand over her mouth and pressed tight.
“Stop it,” he whispered. “Just stop.”
She struggled against him, and his grip tightened. Kerri felt her snot running between his fingers. She tried to talk, tried to tell him that they had to go back for Tyler and Steph, but he stared into her eyes, unblinking, and shook his head.
“I know. I know. I’m feeling it, too. But we’ve got to keep going. Got to find Heather and the others, and then get out of here. You keep screaming and that fucking thing will find us first. Now, stop it. Okay?”
His long-fingered, almost feminine hand remained on her mouth, but the pressure decreased. His eyes glittered in the open cell phone’s dim light.
Kerri blinked.
Javier removed his hand and she sobbed. He pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her again.
“No. Not here. Not anymore. We have to leave here.”
After a moment, Kerri nodded. Javier removed his finger. She regretted it almost immediately. His touch—that tiny bit of human contact—had been reassuring. Now panic and grief threatened to overwhelm her once more. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. “Did you call someone?”
“I can’t get any bars in here. Old place like this? Probably asbestos in the walls or some shit.
”
Kerri frowned. Could asbestos block cell phone coverage? She didn’t know.
“What now?” she asked.
“We sit a minute and listen. I think it went after Brett and Stephanie.”
“Steph’s . . . it got her.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it as we were running away. It . . . that thing smashed her head with the hammer.”
“What about Brett?”
“I don’t know.”
“Shit.” Javier took a deep breath and paused. “We need to find Heather. Then we find a way out.”
“What about Brett? And we can’t just leave Tyler’s and Stephanie’s bodies behind.”
“We’re not going to do them much good if we’re dead.”
He beckoned her to follow him, and crawled behind an old couch that had been covered with a filthy, moldy tarp. Kerri crawled along behind him. They sat there, huddled together in the darkness, and waited. They heard no sound, save their own breathing. Kerri glanced around the room, trying to discern their surroundings. She couldn’t see much. The shadows were too thick. Maybe it had been a living room at one time, but now it was a junk heap. The very atmosphere seemed full of the same despair she felt inside. Garbage lay strewn across the dirty wooden floor—empty cans, broken bottles, shattered drug vials, a shriveled condom. She wondered what had happened to the people who’d left the trash there. Had they been slaughtered, just like Tyler and Steph? In addition to the sofa they were hiding behind, there were a few other pieces of broken furniture in the room. She could make out their shapes, sitting beneath tarps in the gloom. Above her, a cracked, smudged mirror hung askew. The nail it was hanging from was slowly working its way out of the plaster. Kerri considered that they were lucky their passage through the room hadn’t caused it to crash to the floor, alerting their pursuer to their location.
