“I thought bullets couldn’t kill them. That’s the point of the knife, right?”
“The dead can only be affected by the dead. It’s the reason for the doors, the wood floors, the chairs, the leather, all of it.”
“If you had this all along, why have I . . . why did you make me do it with a knife?”
“You said it yourself. This is a hard job. Some superintendents can’t handle it. It just becomes too much for them. We found that leaving a gun lying around, well . . . it’s easier to pull a trigger.”
The Superintendent nods. “I understand.”
“You know what you have to do?”
“Yes.”
“You know how hard this is going to be?”
“Harder than anything else.”
“Right.” The Landlord stands up, hands the box to the Superintendent. “It’s going to get harder the higher you go. Those things have been here far too long. I’d start with your friend.”
“I didn’t say—”
“You didn’t have to.” He pauses, standing, straightening his jacket. “Go put on your suit.”
201. The Knotty Alder Door
The Superintendent drags his dining room chair into the room behind him with one hand, the other resting on the grip of the pistol on his hip. Burke still faces the other way, eyes closed, head turned to the side. The Superintendent was right: Burke can’t stand to see himself in the mirrors.
“So this is it, then?” asks Burke.
The Superintendent spins Burke’s chair around toward his own and takes a seat, the two sitting face-to-face, though several feet apart. “It is.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You could have found something better than this.”
“I was born to do this.”
“Who told you that?”
“Not everyone can see you, you know. Almost no one can. You’re the thing that goes bump in the night. You’re the thing that slams doors and crawls inside little girls and makes them swear and spit and do awful things.”
“That’s bullshit,” says Burke. “I’m not any of those things.”
“Not yet. You aren’t strong enough. You’re still coming through. Once you’re all the way in, you’ll be nothing but hate and anger and pain.”
“So why don’t you just get it over with? Shoot me and be done with it. That’s all you have to do, right?”
The Superintendent doesn’t answer.
“What the hell else is there?”
“The things that come through—”
“Stop calling us things.”
“The things that come through. I have to eat them.”
“What the actual fuck?”
“I have to eat them. Swallow their sin. Purify them.”
“You fucking do that?”
“I used to. But I haven’t in a while.”
“Why not?”
“It’s hard. Hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
“Why the fuck do you have to eat them?”
“Limited transubstantiation. Or at least that’s the word they used. It’s supposed to cleanse them. Send them back clean so they don’t have enough power to come back through. I don’t really understand it. I still get confused sometimes and the words get jumbled. I just do what I’m told. What I can, at least.”
“Like Iraq,” says Burke.
“Like Iraq.”
Burke leans forward, genuinely curious, speaking softer than before. “What’s it like? The taste, I mean.”
“Sweet at first. Savory. Like good pork.” The Superintendent pauses, mind swelling with unpleasant memories. “But then you can taste them. The things they did. The things that rotted them from the inside out. All the evil little things pile up, and it’s like eating stink. Raw, rancid, meaty stink. You can taste the piss, the shit, the cheating, the hurt, the murder. All of it. And then you’re sick for days. Puking, diarrhea. It’s about the most awful thing in the world.”
“So you’re gonna eat me?”
“I don’t want to. I know what you’ve done. I remember. I don’t want to taste that. I don’t want to know what it’s like. Not that.”
“But you will.”
The Superintendent nods. “I have to.”
“So why haven’t you done it yet?”
“I’ve been alone here a long time. Alone in general even longer than that. It’s been a while since—”
“Since you’ve had a friend.”
“Yeah.”
“But now you have to kill me.”
“Yes.”
“And then you’re going to eat me.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t think that’s a little fucked up? You don’t think that they might be lying to you? Maybe they didn’t choose you because you were born special. Maybe they chose you because they knew you might believe them, that you might do all of these fucked-up things without asking questions. Like Iraq.”
The Superintendent shakes his head. “No, I—”
“How do you know we escaped? How do you know we weren’t let go—maybe we did our penance and got lost somewhere along the way. Maybe you’re the bad guy. Maybe you’re the one doing all the awful things. Just think about what you’re saying, what you’re doing. This ain’t right. This shit ain’t right. They’re playing you for a sap.”
“That’s not what’s happening.”
“Then just fucking do it! Get it over with. Eat me and send me back to the great beyond. You’re right. All of this is real. Every last bit of it. Hell. Demons. Mirrors that can scare spirits. Hallways that move and change to keep us lost. All of it.”
The Superintendent narrows his eyes. “I didn’t say anything about the hallways.”
Burke smiles, his shit-eating grin crawling all the way up to the wrinkles around his eyes. “You didn’t?”
The Superintendent stands up, his hand on the pistol. “No, I didn’t.”
“Well, shit.” Burke sighs. “So this is it, then.”
“Afraid so.”
“Not like this, though.”
“There’s no other way.”
“Not sitting down. Not shot in the face like that. Don’t let this be an execution. Let me stand.”
“I can’t.”
“I won’t struggle. I won’t fight. Let me die on my feet, that’s all I ask. Pay me that kindness. Let me die like a man.”
“No,” says the Superintendent firmly.
“I thought we were friends.”
“I was friends with Burke. You aren’t him. You’re something . . . else.”
Burke smiles. “You’re right. I am.”
The walls quiver, mirrors vibrating. Burke’s eyes become a solid, glassy black, and his smile shifts into something sinister without his muscles moving at all. The entire building buckles under the strain, groaning against the evil taking hold of it. Everything shakes. Everything except the Superintendent. He stands firm, raises the revolver, points it right at Burke’s heart.
“I’ve seen this show already. And it didn’t turn out so well for her.”
Burke struggles against the restraints. They stretch, threatening to burst. Still, he smiles. “Sure. But was there an extra chair last time?”
“What?”
201. The Knotty Alder Door
He awakens facedown on the floor, head splitting, ears ringing, covered in the battered remnants of the dining room chair. The Superintendent isn’t sure how long he’s been out, but the swollen puddle of drool creeping away from his face suggests it has been more than just a few minutes.
He shoots upright, looks around. The door is wide open. All the mirrors are shattered, glass scattered across the floor in wide arcs. Burke is gone. The Superintendent pats himself down. The keys! Gone. He fumbles for his revolver, finding it a few feet away, and says a silent prayer for small miracles. But this is bad. Really bad. There is no telling how long ago Burke escaped, no telling how far he’s gott
en.
He wipes the splinters of the chair from his suit and cradles the knot on the back of his head. He checks his hand for blood. Not enough to worry him. He shakes off what he can of the blow and races into the hallway.
The elevator is 133 steps away, but he has no idea in which direction. The halls could have moved while he was unconscious and probably have. Time is running out. Burke has the keys and could open the front doors, could get out into the world, never to be seen again. Not by him anyway, not by the Landlord. There won’t be any clean white room waiting in his future. All of this for nothing. All of it. He can’t let that happen. He can’t let Burke out. Burke was a monster in life; there is no telling how bad he could be now that he’s brought some of Hell back with him.
He takes a left—as good a choice as any—and starts counting steps. The lights flicker overhead, the ever-present buzz like a swarm of gnats further aggravating his headache. He moves slowly, carefully, gripping the gun tight, unsure if Burke has even managed his way off this floor. Step. Step. Step.
Nothing but the buzz.
Step. Step.
The building groans again, creaking, shifting. No, no, no! If he wasn’t entirely lost before, he’s lost for sure now. He runs, bolting around one corner, barreling down the hallway beyond. Ahead of him, the hallway twists, rolling over itself, and snaps into place with a slight wobble like waves rippling across the surface of a pond.
He turns the corner, looks down the hall, and sees Burke’s knotty alder door, still open. It was on the exact same side of the wall as he’d left it. Somehow he was now on the other side.
No turning back now.
He presses on, sprinting in the same direction as when he had started. He rounds the corner and races down another hall. Another corner. Another. Another. And another.
And then the elevator.
He reaches for his keys before remembering that he doesn’t have them. He will have to take the stairs. Fuck. He hates the stairs.
He looks up at the small brass arrow above the elevator doors. It points at 3 and doesn’t move. Why the hell would he want to go up? Then the answer hits him hard, and his heart sinks so deep in his chest that he could poke it through his navel. He isn’t ready to leave. Not yet. Not alone.
The Superintendent steps to the side, grabs hold of the stairwell door handle, summons all of the courage he has left, and pulls it open, his eyes shut as tight as he can manage.
The House with the Red Front Door
It was a white house, the kind with two pillars out front, a green, well-manicured lawn, and a bright red door dead center like a beacon. Eight Thirty-Seven Briar Street. It had a long driveway and a two-car garage, but there was only one car there, and had been for quite some time.
He was seven years old and this was the first time he had seen them. Not the cars. The things.
Every child hides under the covers from the noises he hears in the dark. And until this night, so too had the Superintendent. It was late, he was thirsty, and now that Mommy had gone to live with Daddy’s friend, he had to get up and get his own damned water. That’s what Daddy said. Be a fucking man. Be a fucking man. It became a mantra. Be a fucking man and get your own damned water. He always stank when he said it, so the Superintendent became accustomed to sniffing out how angry Daddy would be that night. Some nights he didn’t get angry at all. Some nights he just cried. But not tonight. Not at first.
He was angry as all hell that night. He’d punched walls. Screamed about the bike in the driveway. Drank everything in the house. Kept saying that bitch and that literal motherfucker. The Superintendent went to bed early that night. It was all he could do to not get hit again.
So he crept down the hallway on his tippy-toes, every muscle tense, trying desperately not to squeak the hardwood floor. Some of the boards were loose, but he knew where each one was. He took five steps, counting silently in his head, then turned, took two steps more, and turned again. Seven steps. One step. Two steps.
And then he smelled it. It didn’t smell like anger. It smelled like fear. It smelled rotten. It smelled like old death. It was something the Superintendent wouldn’t understand for a long, long time.
The therapist would tell him that he imagined it; that it was a memory created after the fact. But he knew better. He knew what it really was. And when he saw it for the very first time he knew nothing would ever be the same. Tall, lithe, impossibly thin. Claws. Glinting teeth. Cold and sickly. Corpse-pale gray. All of it. It slunk from the shadows, swelling large and terrifying out of the dark, hulking over his tiny seven-year-old frame.
It leaned in, growling low and mean, sniffing him up and down, vacuuming up every scent.
Then came the POP from Daddy’s room. It was like fireworks, but sadder. Lonelier.
And the thing grew excited, forgetting the young boy in front of him, darting for Daddy’s room like a dog racing for fresh meat. Teeth bared, snorting, leathery wings knocking pictures off the walls of the hall. Daddy’s door flew open, the light of a nearby lamp enough to reveal the remaining half of Daddy’s head, with just enough light left over to see the rest of it dripping red and viscous from the ceiling.
The thing pounced, reached in through the wide hole atop Daddy’s head, and pulled his soul out screaming into the night.
It knew. It knew before it happened. It was waiting for him to do it.
That’s what they were. They were the things that knew. Death didn’t follow them and they didn’t bring it. But you never saw them without death nearby. Seeing them meant death. Seeing them meant Hell.
No. This wasn’t some memory he created after the fact. That was therapist bullshit. This happened. He knew it. And it kept happening. Time and again. This was real. It was all real. It had to be.
The Stairs
The Superintendent spends a lot of time with his memories. He clings to them like a group of friends he can’t quite stand anymore but knows deep down he can’t live without. Sometimes they hang in the air like a stench; sometimes they are as real as anything else. But he always knows the difference between a memory and the present.
The stairs don’t.
Even with his eyes shut he sees it. Clear as day. Iraq. The dark. The stars a full half of the world. The flashes of the mortars around him. He is halfway between his bunker and the latrine. He tries to remember how many steps he has left. But he can’t. He doesn’t know where he is.
And then he remembers that he isn’t there at all. Not now. This isn’t Iraq. These are the stairs. He tries to ignore the screams and the whistling and the explosions. But the stairs will not relent. They keep screaming. They keep whistling. They keep exploding around him.
He has to keep walking. He has to count the steps from the door, not the latrine. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This is not real.
One. Two. Three. Four. Only fifty-nine more steps to go. Five. Six.
An explosion. Red mist. Winthrop. This is the night Winthrop died. He never knew Winthrop, but everyone will speak about him in the morning as if they had.
Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen.
He hears the soul torn from its mooring, but he can’t see the thing. Not tonight. Not that night. He has to remind himself. He isn’t there. None of this is real. Not this time.
Thirty-three. Thirty-four. Thirty-five. Turn.
He hopes he is counting right. Hopes Burke won’t be waiting for him at the top of the stairs. Hopes that this is the last time he has to take the stairs.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Another flash, but no mist. No more screams. No more souls being dragged off to Hell. But snarls. He hears the snarls. He hears them waiting. They know death is coming. It might even be his own.
Sixty-three.
He reaches out into the dark. Grasps for a handle he can’t see. Prays silently that he hasn’t lost count.
302. The Brazilian Rosewood Door
The door opens and Iraq fades away, only the darkness of the unlit stairwell enveloping him now. Concrete
stairs and wrought-iron railing trail behind him into the gloom before vanishing entirely in the murk—a distance he doesn’t remember traversing. Not for a moment. Just outside, past the door, the third floor beckons—less frightening than the stairs, but no safer. He thinks back to how recently he’d been here, wondering just how long ago that really was. The Superintendent isn’t good with time anymore. When he’s hungry, he eats; when he is thirsty he drinks; and when he has to piss, he does. Time doesn’t otherwise seem to matter in the building, doesn’t seem to make much sense. Was it this morning that I was here? Yesterday? Last week?
He honestly can’t remember.
And it doesn’t really matter.
He steps out into the hallway, scanning for Burke, not seeing a damn thing but tacky wallpaper and shadows from a handful of burnt-out lights. The large brass arrow on the elevator points sternly to 4. Fuck. In the time it took him to make it up the stairs, Burke has moved on. The Superintendent has to move quickly, has to make sure this floor’s last remaining occupant is still in his room.
The shadows on the wall flutter just enough to look like a trick of the eyes. His heart skips a beat. But nothing comes of it. Room 302. One hundred forty-five steps. He turns and starts counting, takes a right where there should be a left, walks fifteen paces before another sharp turn.
Down the hall he sees it: apartment 302. The one with the Brazilian rosewood door, the grain of its wood dark and wavy, its finish a deep crimson—almost blood red from his distance. Wide open. A gaping maw having loosed its terrible tenant into the halls. Or has it?
The Superintendent slowly reaches for his gun, drawing it silently as he takes several careful steps down the hall. His training kicks in, heart pounding, adrenaline surging through his veins. He’s kicked in a lot of doors in his life. Shot a lot of people on the other side. Of all the things he has to do as superintendent, this comes the most naturally.
He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth. In through his nose, out through his mouth. In through his nose, out through his mouth. His heart slows, his head clears.
We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories Page 17
