by Jack Potchen
kinda sick when I think about it today, how much power my father had over me, to make me stay downstairs with a monster. I think now that I wouldn’t even have run upstairs if The Sludge Man was completely out of the drain and chasing me. I made a lot of bathroom trips though.”
“What about your brother? Did you tell him?”
“Yeah. I told him that night. He cared about me a lot, you know? After I got hit he came down to talk to me. We were close, even for brothers. But even he had a hard time believing what I told him. I showed him my arm and he knew it wasn’t a joke. I took him back to the drain and showed him the gray matter still stuck in the rim of the drain and he started to believe me. By bedtime, we were working together to push our bureau in front of our door. He was only seven and I felt terrible about scaring him. But I’m not stupid, you know? I had to tell him. To be honest, after I told him that story I think he was just as scared as me.
“So we spent the night that way, barricaded in our room. My father upstairs in his room. I’ll never forget what Billy said to me that night. The lights were on, I was lying on my back with my eyes wide open, scared out of my mind but unable to show it in front of my brother. Billy was in his bed on the other side of the room. I told him to get some sleep, but he was just as awake as me. Do you wanna know what he said? He said ‘Will anything happen to us?’ I sat up, looked at him and told him no. ‘Promise?’ he said. ‘I promise,’ I said.
“And you wanna know what? Of all the things that have happened, the promise I made to him, that’s what haunts me the most.”
“I’m sorry.”
Amy put down her notepad and didn’t pick it up again. Ben glanced at it and noticed that there were barely any notes at all. “Did anything happen that night?” she asked.
“Yeah. Sometime around midnight, the gurgling sound started up again. Both of us were still awake, lying in our beds, listening for the faintest sound of the monster. The sound was so sudden, so not faint, that we practically fell out of our beds. My father didn’t hear it. He was still snoring upstairs. Hell, he never heard anything until the end. That was what it wanted.
“We huddled together at the far wall of our room, as far away from the door as we could. Again came the click growl click click growl. It was out. It was walking around. It was beckoning us to push the bureau aside and walk through that door . . .
“And all we could do was cry.”
Amy was silent, but her weary eyes pleaded Ben to continue.
“It stood on the other side of our door all night. The next morning I fell asleep in class, and I cried and pleaded to Mrs. Shannon not to write a note. Please not this time. She had to spend at least ten minutes trying to calm me down. She didn’t send me home with a note after all. That time I won. I tried to tell my friends about what happened, but all of them thought I was putting them on. I was the kidder, you know? The class clown. The guy who got in trouble every day even though the things he did weren’t always that funny and who would be grounded and sometimes beaten for it. Who were they to believe me? My best friend Henry Sutter, he looked at me with a thin little smile, as if waiting to hear the joke at the end of it all. But no joke ever came. No one ever came any closer to believing me. My brother had some success with his more immature peers, but his teacher, threatening to send him to the counselor, quickly silenced his story.
“Talking more just made it harder for people to believe.”
“I know.”
“I knew even then that it was just me and my brother, alone against the monster. And that was the way we lived. The Sludge Man would ooze back into the sewers during the day, keeping quiet, invisible. Somewhere dark where it lay among the waste and the rats, biding its time. When night came it was free to roam the basement, and me and my brother would listen. It didn’t come into our room, didn’t even try the doorknob, at least during that time. Like I said, the fear was more satisfying than anything else. At least that’s what I think. Some nights we wouldn’t hear anything at all, but that was bad too. When things get really quiet in the movies, something big and bad attacks. Those nights, the weeks of torture, the unknowing, the suspense, that was all the calm before the storm. I guess I always knew that, too.
“My brother slept for a couple hours at a time. He had to, he was just a child, but he never slept well. To be honest, by the end it looked like he was wasting away. I don’t think I slept more than an hour every night myself, and I haven’t slept a full night since. It was during those long weeks that I realized it was trying to wear us down mentally and physically. Just like a lion running its young prey til exhaustion. It could kill us whenever it wanted, but if it wears us down, there is less resistance. Maybe it thinks we would even be compliant, almost relieved that it was finally willing to put us out of our misery. The very thought made me sit straight up in bed and clutch my head in bitter frustration. I started crying. Over my sobbing, I could hear it clicking away, sounding closer than it had been that whole night.
“It knew we were getting weak.
“It waited . . .
“It waited . . . how long had it been down that drain? A month? More? It’s hard to remember. When you don’t sleep, the day never ends. I got more tired. My teacher sent more notes. I got hit more. I tried telling my father but he told me to cut the shit. After a while I didn’t care about getting hit, I didn’t care about failing tests. All I cared about was our Boogeyman, our l’uomo nero, our Goni Billa, and how it was getting more restless with each passing night.
“And I cared about sleep. I cared about sleep a lot.
“I think it was a month. That was how long it lasted. One night, the last night, it decided to show itself.”
Amy sat up straight. She made a reach for her notepad but at the last second pulled her hand back. Ben eyed her curiously before delving back into his memories.
“That night . . . it happened so fast. It was like a nightmare, but it was too real. I try to forget it, I try to put it behind me, but there are some things one can never forget. Strange enough, as the years go by it gets even harder. That night, stuff like that poisons your head, you know? And poison spreads. It’s why I look like I do.”
“Mr. Downs, please, what happened?”
Ben was taken aback by the pleading sound of her voice, but he continued, “It snowed that whole day. There had to have been at least three feet of snow on the ground. The school was closed—hell, the whole town was closed. We were completely snowed in. But inside, the night was like any other—me and my brother would push the bureau in front of our door and Billy would try to get some sleep while I played guard. I was reading comic books, I remember that, they always helped me keep busy. I couldn’t believe when I looked at the clock that it was already midnight. I could imagine my father getting ready for bed upstairs. Soon enough, something would happen just like usual.
“Looking back, even then I felt that that night was different. Maybe it was the snow. The feeling of being trapped never felt more real.
“Anyway, soon enough, The Sludge Man came out of the drain. I heard the usual gurgling noise, as if it was pushing with all its strength to squeeze itself out. I heard it walking around—that usual squishy sound of its footsteps. It was right up against the door.
“And our bedroom . . . it looked dimmer. I tried to convince myself that it was just in my head . . . or maybe the storm was doing weird things to the electricity. I don’t know, I was just a kid, I was just trying to calm myself down.
“Then I thought about the moon, how during my attack it seemed to just disappear.
“I stood up, walked to the door. I don’t know why, it was almost as if The Sludge Man was in some way calling to me. Yeah, in some sick way it was calling to me, it’s that same feeling I got when I bent down over that putrid drain the first night. I knelt down and sta
red into the dark space between the bureau and the door. There was sludge, just like the first night. It was slowly seeping underneath the door. The smell, I could smell it again. It made me want to puke, it stung my eyes, my throat.
“That smell made me conscious again. I bolted upright and shook Billy awake. I could barely utter a word to him when The Sludge Man tried the doorknob. Then, the whole door was shaking, as if a giant was leaning against it.
“‘Oh God,’ I yelled. ‘Oh God oh God oh God.’ It was the best thing I could think of. Billy clutched onto me, his arms wrapped tight around my neck. ‘Benny, do something!’ he yelled.
“And then it started: click click click click—louder and louder and louder—click click click click click—the door was starting to bend, it was pushing—growl click click growl—the doorframe was cracking. . . .
“Billy screamed. I screamed. Then came the crash. It was inside, and it took the whole fucking door with it, like it was nothing.”
Ben paused. He looked down at his shaking hands. The cigarette he had been holding was burnt to the filter. He put it out and looked at the far wall, trying not to make eye contact with Amy.
“After that,” he said. “After that . . . it’s a little hard to describe.”
“Please.