Brian Keene: Urban Gothic

“Taking a peek outside. I’m just gonna open it a crack.”

His hand turned. The knob didn’t move. He jiggled it, but it remained motionless. Frozen.

Stephanie squeezed closer to Brett and peered over his shoulder, watching Tyler. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s stuck or something. Fucking thing won’t open.”

Javier groaned. “Did it lock behind you?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Chill, bro. Keep your voice down. We don’t want them to hear us.”

“Fuck that. I ain’t staying in this shithole all night. My fucking brother’s car is out there.”

“You should have thought of that before.”

Tyler wheeled around, facing him. He jabbed a finger into Javier’s chest.

“This shit isn’t my fault. Brett’s the one who called them niggers.”

Javier stiffened. His jaw clenched. For a moment, Kerri thought he was going to punch Tyler, but then he relaxed. He held his hands up in surrender.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. Relax. But we can’t go breaking that door down, man. If they’re still out there, they’ll hear us. Our best bet is to go into one of these rooms, find some windows, and see if we can peer through the cracks in the boards. Maybe we can figure out where they are.”

Tyler nodded, slumping his shoulders.

“You’re right.”

He strode forward and opened the first door on his left. The rusty hinges creaked as the door swung slowly, revealing more darkness. Kerri stepped up behind him, holding her lighter over his head to illuminate the room beyond.

“Hurry up,” she whispered. “My lighter’s getting hot.”

Tyler hesitated.

And in his hesitation, everything changed.

Shit happened.

Kerri saw the looming, shadowy figure standing on the other side of the doorway. She knew that Tyler saw it, too, because his entire body stiffened. He made no sound. Kerri tried to speak, tried to warn the others, but her mouth suddenly went dry, and her tongue felt like sandpaper. Her breath hitched in her chest.

The person inside the room was impossibly large. She couldn’t make out any features, but its head must have nearly been touching the ceiling. The figure’s shoulders were broad, and its torso was thick as an oil drum. There was something in the figure’s hand. It looked like a giant hammer.

Tyler moaned.

There was a flash of movement.

When she was twelve years old, Kerri’s older brother had managed to get some M-80 firecrackers. They were as big as the palm of her hand and made her nervous when she held them. Her brother and his college buddies had shoved the explosive deep inside a watermelon just to see what would happen. When they lit the fuse, there was a titanic clap of thunder followed by a massive spray of seeds and pink pulp and rind.

That was what happened to Tyler’s head. Only it wasn’t seeds and rind, it was bone and hair and brains. Warm wetness splashed across Kerri’s face and soaked through her shirt and bra. She tasted it in the back of her throat. Felt it running down her head and inside her ears. Something hot and vile and solid trickled over her lips. She gagged and dropped her lighter.

Tyler stood there for a moment, jittering. Then he toppled over with a thud.

Kerri opened her mouth to scream, but Brett beat her to it.

The giant figure lunged toward them.

TWO

“Fuck this shit,” Leo muttered. “I ain’t going any further.”

Markus and the others gaped at him. They’d halted at the edge of the streetlights, about fifty yards from the abandoned house at the end of the block. A group of clouds had passed over the moon, and the area was now pitch-black.

“You just gonna let them get away with that?” Jamal asked. “You hear what they said?”

Leo nodded. “I heard. But look at the facts, Jamal. Six white kids. Judging by their clothes and shit, I’d say they were from the suburbs. Come into the city, got lost, broke down in the hood—and then we come walking up. Probably scared the piss out of them.”

“True that,” Markus said. “They probably thought we were slinging crack or something. Probably sit at home, watching The Wire and shit, and thinking everyone in the hood is a drug dealer.”

“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.