by Brian Keene
***
Brett held his breath and crept across the old sagging floorboards, trying to tread as lightly as possible. He’d lost count of the number of rooms he’d fled through, running headlong, not stopping to examine his surroundings, just trying to lose his pursuer. He was left with the vague impression that the derelict house wasn’t laid out like a normal dwelling. There were too many doors—some of them leading to nowhere, as he’d soon learned, much to his chagrin. There were hallways that seemed to double back and rooms that served no logical purpose. A bathroom with a loveseat propped against one deteriorating wall. A bedroom with shattered porcelain shards from a toilet strewn across the floor. Perhaps most bizarre was the absence of windows. From the outside of the house, he’d noticed many boarded-over windows on both the first and second floors. But here, inside the abandoned dwelling, all of those windows were missing. Someone had constructed walls over the panes. He’d also noticed that some of the rooms and hallways had makeshift lighting installed—a rough series of lightbulbs connected by a frayed power cord. So far, he’d found no way of turning them on.
As baffling as the layout was, he hoped his pell-mell dash through the labyrinthine construct would confuse the killer as well.
He peeked his head through the open door in front of him and found a kitchen. Quickly verifying that the room was clear, Brett ducked inside the kitchen and shut the door behind him. The hinges groaned, and flecks of rust fell onto his hand. The door had no lock, and the doorknob itself jiggled in his hand. Brett felt for the light switch. It was sticky. He pulled his fingers away in disgust, reprimanding himself for forgetting that there was no power in the house anyway. He’d tried the light switches in the other rooms and none had worked. He fumbled for his cell phone, flipped it open, and used the meager light of the display screen. At least it was good for illumination; he’d had no signal since entering the house.
He scanned the shadowy corners, looking for something to blockade the door with. He spotted two other doors. One looked like it led into a pantry. He assumed that the other door led out of the kitchen, unless it was another false door, opening up into a brick wall. The kitchen counters were cracked and warped, and covered with inch-thick layers of dust and grime. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling like party streamers, and the corners and sink were full of rat droppings and dead flies. The air was thick with the smell of mildew. Brett stepped closer to the sink. The stainless-steel basin was encrusted with brownish-red stains and there was some sort of shriveled organic matter in the strainer over the drain. Wrinkling his nose, Brett turned his attention to the oven. The door had a brown handprint on it. Brett assumed it was blood, but long since dried. His eyes settled on an old, dented refrigerator. If he could move it over to the door without making much noise, it would serve as a decent blockade.
The memory of Steph’s head suddenly appeared in his mind. Moaning softly, Brett gritted his teeth and forced the image away.
Flipping his cell phone shut, Brett tiptoed across the kitchen and pushed on one side of the refrigerator. It scuffed along the floor with a loud groan, moving only a fraction of an inch. Something rolled around inside of the appliance, jostled by the sudden movement. Brett opened the door and peered inside. With the darkness and his state of shock, he didn’t comprehend what he was seeing at first. A jumble of whitish-yellow forms filled the refrigerator’s shelves. Slowly, he reached out and touched one. It was dry and textured, and felt fragile. He picked it up and pulled it out for a closer look.
It was a rat. The refrigerator was full of rat skeletons.
Gasping in disgust, Brett flung the bones to the floor and wiped his hands on his cargo pants. As he closed the refrigerator door, he heard footsteps approaching. Rather than the powerful, plodding steps of the guy who had been chasing him, these were lighter. More hurried. Brett scampered across the kitchen and hid inside the pantry. He’d barely closed the door behind him when the other door on the far side of the kitchen opened and another figure entered the room.
Another one? Brett’s fear grew strong again, threatening to overwhelm him. How many of these freaks are in here?
The new arrival was carrying a lantern, and its soft glow filled the room. Brett peered through the slatted cracks in the pantry door, watching. This one was female. She was shorter than Tyler and Stephanie’s killer, and more misshapen. She was naked and hairless. Both her head and her vagina were shaved. Her breasts hung low and flat, stretching almost to her belly, and barely moved as she walked. Something was wrong with her skin. It seemed too smooth, too shiny. And there were strange black lines crisscrossing her flesh—around her waist, up each leg, down her abdomen and encircling her neck. He stared harder, realizing what they were. Stitches.
The woman’s skin wasn’t her own. She was wearing someone else’s.
Jesus, he thought. Is she even a woman?
As if sensing his presence, the freak turned toward the pantry, giving him a full frontal view. The tip of a pale, flaccid penis dangled from between the tanned, dead vagina.
Well, that answers that question . . .
The new arrival wasn’t a hermaphrodite. It was a man wearing a dead woman’s skin.
Maybe.
It was too dark for Brett to be sure.
Brett gaped, trying to keep as still as possible. The pantry was musty, and dust filled the air, getting into his nose and throat. His shoe brushed against something soft. He looked down and saw that it was a dead mouse—the carcass alive with wriggling, bulbous gray-white maggots.
The intruder shuffled closer. She/he raised its nose and sniffed the air. Then it was suddenly seized by a violent bout of harsh, ragged coughing. The figure doubled over, hacked up a wad of phlegm, and spat the fluid into its hand. It rolled the pinkish mucous between its fingertips and then wiped it on its human vest. Then it raised its fingers to its nose and inhaled.
Grunting, it stepped toward the pantry door. It was close enough now for Brett to smell it. The stench was cloying—an overpowering mix of sweat, feces, urine, and blood. It reached for the door and Brett tensed, ready to leap out and clobber it as soon as the door was opened. His only advantage was the element of surprise.
Before the creature could open the door, however, it was distracted by the sound of approaching footsteps. Brett recognized them immediately. They were the same footsteps that had been chasing him through the house.
The kitchen door opened and the hulk that had killed Tyler and Stephanie appeared. He walked backward, dragging their corpses into the kitchen. Each of his hands clutched one of their legs. Its hammer was slung over its misshapen back and tied with a length of frayed extension cord.
The other creature giggled.
“What you got there, Noigel?” Its voice sounded like someone gargling with broken glass. The tone answered for certain the question of its gender. Brett was pretty sure that no woman could ever sound like that. Besides, its shoulders were too broad to be a female’s. It coughed again, and hocked up another wad of phlegm.
The big one—Noigel—grunted in response. Then it let go of Stephanie’s leg. Brett winced as her foot thudded on the floorboards. He wanted to scream. Wanted to charge out of the pantry and kill the fucker who’d done this to her. Instead, he stood there, quaking. His terror filled him with shame and guilt. Javier would have fought back. He wouldn’t have let Heather be murdered like that. Tyler would have kept it from happening to Kerri. Brett felt snot and tears running down his face. What had he done to save Steph? Nothing. He’d been too scared.
He’d run away.
Enraged—at both himself and the killers—Brett looked through the slats again.
Noigel held up four fingers.
“Four more?”
Noigel nodded, then whined. Brett was reminded of a dog, begging for a treat.
“No,” the other one said. “You get those two down below. Let the others have some fun. Been too long since we had company. We let the little ones up to play. They haven’t had a chance to hun
t in a while.”
Little ones, Brett thought. Children?
Noigel’s malformed lips stuck out in a pout. The smaller one crossed the kitchen and smacked him in the chest.
“Do what I said.” The smaller one bent over and examined the corpses. “Look at this, Noigel! You smashed their heads. That’s the best part. Why you wanna do that for?”
Noigel groaned apologetically.
“It’s okay, you big baby. Long as I get one of their hearts, that’s okay. Or this one’s dick. I could go for a good man-chew. Better than beef jerky! Come on, I’ll give you a hand.”
The man in the woman suit leaned over and grabbed Stephanie’s leg. Noigel whistled.
“I wish you’d learn to talk. What’s wrong now?”
Noigel held up four fingers again.
“It doesn’t matter. Not like they’re gonna escape. Only way out is down below, and they’ll never make it past the rest. Besides, the little ones will find them long before then. They out searching the house right now.”
The thing called Noigel grunted. His friend cackled with laughter, which in turn gave way to another bout of coughing.
They dragged the bodies out of the room. Brett caught a glimpse of Stephanie’s corpse, and hot tears streamed down his cheeks. The two cannibals left the room, disappearing through the second door that he’d noticed when he first entered the kitchen. The door slammed shut behind them. Brett could still hear the guy wearing the woman’s skin talking, but now it sounded like they were beneath him. Brett assumed the door must lead down to a basement level. Brett listened to their footsteps fade, but when the silence returned, he stayed inside the pantry, too afraid to move. Noigel’s friend had mentioned that there were more of them inside the house and “down below.” Brett assumed that meant in the basement. How many, and more importantly, where were they right now? The man wearing a woman’s body had said they were searching the house. Were they on this level, hiding in the shadows, waiting for him to pass by? Hunting his friends?
He had to find Javier, Heather, and Kerri. Had to warn them. Had to escape. But when he willed his feet to move, they rebelled. His knees trembled. His balls tightened and shrank. He glanced back down at the dead mouse and wondered how long it would be before the maggots started working on Tyler and Steph.
Then he imagined them going to work on himself.
Damn it. I can do this. I can’t just hang out here in the closet and wait for them to come back.
Brett reached out with one shaking hand and pushed the pantry door open. Then he hurried across the kitchen, heading back in the direction he’d come. He reasoned that if there were other hunters on this floor of the house, they were probably in other areas and rooms. Otherwise, he’d have seen them during his escape from the foyer to here.
He took a deep breath, exited the kitchen, and tried to remember which direction he should go. He felt like crying.
SEVEN
Leo leaned forward in the chair and peeked through the curtains.
“How many times you gonna stare out that damn window?” Perry asked Leo. “You think the police will show up any quicker if you keep looking?”
Shrugging, Leo let the curtain fall back into place and slumped down in the chair.
“Gawking out that window,” Perry continued, “ain’t gonna do nothing but attract unwanted attention.”
“Leave that boy alone,” Lawanda scolded her husband. “You were doing the same thing just a little while ago.”
Chris, Dookie, Markus and Jamal chuckled in the corner.
Perry took another swig of beer and shot his wife a dirty look over the rim of the can. It had been fifteen minutes since they’d called 911, and so far no one had responded to the call. Perry had suggested the boys wait outside for the cops to show, but Lawanda had shut that idea down in a hurry, inviting them to wait in the living room. Now he was stuck entertaining them when he should be getting ready for bed. On the television, a studio audience laughed as Tyler Perry ran around in drag. Perry groaned, wondering why the man had to dress like a fat woman in all his shows and movies. He hated Tyler Perry’s sitcoms, but he watched them because Lawanda usually controlled the remote. Every evening, he resigned himself to episodes of Dancing with the Stars and bullshit sitcoms.
“The cops ain’t gonna show,” Markus said. “We’re wasting time, yo.”
“Maybe,” Leo agreed. “Maybe not. But at least we did something.”
“That’s a good outlook,” Lawanda praised, offerring them a plate of cookies. “You’ll go far in life if you keep it.”
Leo smiled, but Perry could tell that the youth was merely humoring Lawanda.
“Go where?” Jamal asked. “The next block? Shit, Mrs. Watkins. There ain’t no escape from this place unless you can rap or play basketball. Or want to sell drugs.”
“You got that shit right,” Dookie said.
“I’d appreciate it if you boys wouldn’t curse in my house.” Lawanda set the cookies down. “Mr. Watkins does it, but that’s because he’s old and set in his ways.”
“Sorry.” Dookie slumped down.
“That’s okay. And listen to me. Don’t be saying that there’s no way out of this neighborhood. Don’t think that way. There are always opportunities. There are always doors. You just have to wait for the right door to open. Y’all can be anything you want to be. People said there would never be a black president, and they were wrong, weren’t they?”
“He ain’t black,” Jamal said. “His momma was white.”
Lawanda frowned. “Show some respect. The man is your president. Do you know how hard he had to struggle to get to where he is today? You should look up to him, instead of these rappers.”
“Maybe,” Jamal agreed, “but that don’t change the fact that his momma was white.”
“So what if she was?” Lawanda said. “It doesn’t matter. He’s as black as you or me.”
“He’s damn sure blacker than Chris,” Markus teased. “Ain’t nobody more yellow on this street than Chris.”
“Fuck you, motherfucker,” Chris said, raising his voice. “Knock it off. I told you before about that shit.”
“Yo,” Leo shouted. “She asked us to watch our language, you dumb shits. Now quit swearing!”
Perry took a deep swig of beer and silently cursed his wife’s sense of charity and community responsibility. He glanced at the television again, then added her choice of quality entertainment programming to his list of things to curse.
Headlights flashed across the wall, bleeding through the curtains, tracing across framed photographs and the clock that Perry and Lawanda had received as a wedding present. Leo pulled the curtains back and glanced outside again.
“Is that the po-po?” Markus asked. “They finally show up?”
“No,” Leo said, staring more intently. “It’s an old van. Cruising by real slow, like they’re looking for something or somebody.”
“SWAT,” Perry suggested. “Or maybe some undercover boys.”
“I don’t think so.” Leo shook his head. “It looks pretty beat up. White dude driving it, though. Can’t see him real well, so I can’t be sure, but I don’t think I ever saw him around here before. The van either.”
“Where’s he going?” Perry asked.
“Oh, shit . . .” Leo turned around and stared at the group. His eyes were wide. “Toward the house.”
Perry sat his beer down. “Well, then it’s got to be the cops.”
“Let’s go outside and watch,” Jamal suggested. “Might see some shit go down.”
The boys stood, but Lawanda raised her hand, motioning at them to sit back down again.
“Just hold up,” she said. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen. If there’s shooting or something, then y’all are safer in here.”
Perry jumped to his feet. “Oh, let them go look. Ain’t no harm gonna come to them, long as they don’t go down there.”
And besides, he thought. It will get them out of our house that much soon
er.
Lawanda scowled at him. Perry scowled back. They stared at each other for a moment, and then Perry’s will broke. He turned away with a sigh.
“Come on, y’all,” Leo said, moving to the door. “We took up too much of your time already, Mrs. Watkins. We should get going. Thanks for letting us use your phone.”
“Boys!” Lawanda leaped up from her chair, flustered. “I really wish you’d stay inside.”
Leo glanced from Perry to his friends to Lawanda, and then shook his head.
“That’s okay. We’ll be alright. Like Mr. Watkins said, ain’t nothing gonna happen as long as we stay up here.”
“Shit,” Markus muttered. “On this block, something can happen no matter where we stand. Motherfuckers be tripping twenty-four seven.”
Lawanda put her hands on her hips, pressed her lips together tightly and nodded at Perry.
“You go out there and wait with them.”
Perry opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. He’d seen the expression on his wife’s face before. If he defied her, he’d be sleeping on the couch again. He hated the couch. It fucked with his hip and his arthritis. He was defeated and he knew it. Worse, so did Lawanda. Shoulders slumping, he walked toward the door and followed the teens out onto the stoop. The strange van was just passing by the house at the end of the block. They watched the brake lights flash as it slowed. Then the driver shut off the headlights. A moment later, the vehicle disappeared into the shadows. There were clouds covering the moon, and that end of the street was shrouded in gloom.
“That’s weird,” Leo mumbled. “What the hell’s he doing?”
The street was silent. It made Perry uncomfortable. The street was never quiet. He glanced at Leo and his friends and noticed from their stance that the stillness was making them nervous, too.
