The Flat: A Novel of Supernatural Horror

by Jack Douglas

  “We have to go back to the flat,” he said.

  And before Amy could mouth her objection, he leaned forward and told the driver there was a change in plans. Craig gave him their address in the Alfama.

  “What’s going on?” she said, her words laced with urgency.

  “I don’t have my wallet,” he said, pulling a handful of euros from his pocket. “I’ve got enough to pay the driver but I don’t have anything for the hotel.”

  “Where’s your wallet?” There was an unmistakable tone of accusation in her voice.

  Craig shrugged. “I assume it’s back at the flat.” He stopped counting his euros and glared at her. “And I see you didn’t bring your purse.”

  “Why should I?” she said. “I supported you for three years. You assured me everything in Lisbon was your treat.”

  “But my wallet’s missing,” he said. More fiercely than he’d intended. Amy held out her arms as far as she could in the cramped cab. She wore an exaggerated look of bewilderment on her face. “Well, where did it go? You had it at the tavern.”

  Craig thought back. He did have his wallet at the tavern. He had been paying with cash from his pocket but he had felt the billfold in his pants when he sat. It was the new wallet Amy bought him for his birthday. The hard leather case from Banana Republic that was literally a pain in his ass. He had spent most of the evening leaning on his left cheek to avoid the discomfort.

  He took a deep breath. “The gypsies,” he finally said. “Gypsies? What gypsies?”

  In the front of the cab the driver laughed. The driver’s laugh was a cruel-sounding chortle that emerged from his throat, that sounded as though it were belched up in a cloud of thick black lingering smoke.

  Craig ignored him. “The two girls I asked for directions. I think they were gypsies. They must have pick-pocketed me.”

  The driver snickered again. “Did they grab your cock?” With his thick brash accent it sounded more like, “Deed dey grub yer cuck?”

  “No,” Craig said curtly, keeping his eyes on Amy.

  The driver smirked. “I bet they grabbed your cock,” he said. “That’s what they do, these gypsy girls.”

  Craig was flooded with a sudden rage, a powerful urge to rip his belt from his pants and strangle the son of a bitch behind the wheel. He breathed in and out slowly while he contemplated the back of the driver’s neck.

  It’s just the drink, he thought. It’s gotten me into trouble before.

  His temper had cost him plenty. Clients, relationships, an expulsion during his junior year in college. But his temper had been on a tight leash the last thirty or so months.

  Because I’ve been sober, he thought. And it only comes out when I drink.

  (That’s not completely true.)

  “What gypsies?” cried Amy. “You said you couldn’t ask for directions because whoever you heard out there wandered away.”

  “They must have grabbed his cock,” said the driver.

  “They were only there for a second...” Craig started.

  “You know what I think?” she cried. “I think you left your credit cards at the flat on purpose. You had no intention of going to a hotel. We didn’t even bring a change of clothes. You left your credit cards back at that filthy flat and then you finally ditched that wallet I gave you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I don’t want to go back to that damn flat any more than you do.”

  But that was exactly where they were headed, the fog lifting like magic before the taxi’s headlights, as though the Alfama had been waiting for them.

  Soon they rumbled once again along the broken streets, staring silently at the peeling facades of ancient buildings, peering down narrow alleys, where crumbling walls and cobblestone walks were swallowed by blackness.

  Casting its shadow over it all was the castle highlighted in Craig’s travel guide. Castelo de Sao Jorge watched over the quarter like a sentinel, minding its labyrinth of falling structures and narrow streets from its ramparts.

  And then their ramshackle orange building showed its face. Welcoming them like the gates of an asylum. If possible, the structure looked even uglier at night. With its front door opened wide, its windows all blacked, the building too appeared as though it had been waiting.

  As the taxi rolled to a stop, Craig fixed on the building and thought. He knew Amy couldn’t spend the night. Not here. So he twisted his neck, ready to say, “Fuck it. Let’s find a nice hotel and hang out in the lobby all night.”

  But Amy was already out the door and hustling up the walk.

  Muttering under her breath.

  Something about going home in the morning.

  Chapter Six

  Amy headed straight for the bedroom, her buzz replaced by a dull headache and an upset stomach. She flipped on a lamp. In the bleak light, she studied the double bed, trying to determine whether she could sleep on it. She pulled down the blanket, exposing the sheets. Cream-colored, though they might once have been white. No glaring stains, no pungent odors. The bed would have to do for tonight.

  She pulled her luggage through the doorway and set it on top of the antique wood dresser. She unzipped the suitcase (slowly, so that the fabric wouldn’t catch), and ruffled through her items for bedclothes. She caught her reflection in the cloudy mirror above the dresser mimicking her every move. She paused for a moment and stared at herself, her pale green eyes appearing darker than ever before.

  Truth was, she hated who she saw. She hadn’t called her mother, who was probably worried sick. It was too late to call now even with the time difference. She was angry at herself for not calling from the airport. For letting Craig hurry her out as though the atrium were on fire. He truly hated her mother. Still blamed her for Amy’s abandoning him in Hawaii.

  And Amy had let him believe that that was the case. That her leaving him in Honolulu was all her mother’s fault. That her mother had left her no choice.

  She loved Craig, she really did. He made her feel comfortable and they had shared some wonderful times together. He was a good guy deep down, and she knew he loved her very much. He was incredibly intelligent, a genius really, so attractive and so creative. But they were just so different now.

  She wasn’t a free spirit, a dreamer. Someone who could live without a steady job or the promise of a pension. She needed health insurance and a 401K. She needed some sort of security. She didn’t want to end up like her mother.

  Her poor mother. Amy turned away from the mirror and removed her shirt and bra. She thought, Just because his mother’s a cunt doesn’t mean mine is, too.

  But then, Amy had aided in widening the rift between Craig and her parents, and she had to accept some of the blame. She had facilitated one of their very first fights by crying to her mother that he had struck her.

  The fact was she didn’t remember what happened that night. She had woken with bruises and knew she had been upset. When her mother returned her drunken call that morning and repeated what Amy had said in her message, Amy stuck to the story she apparently told the previous night. Yeah, Mom, he hit me.

  But Craig’s version made more sense. She remembered being livid with him for checking her email. Not for checking it really, but for finding a message she didn’t want him to find. She had attacked him, he said. He merely pushed her off. And drunk, she had lost her balance and fell hard to the floor.

  Amy changed into a tee shirt and pajama bottoms and stepped into the bathroom in bare feet. It was a tight fit. The bathroom was a dreary blue and smelled of the mold creeping along the tiled walls of the miniscule shower. The room possessed a mirrored medicine cabinet, its door askew, clinging to its hinges for dear life; a toilet that would make public toilets ill; and (welcome to Europe) a bidet.

  Amy peed, brushed her teeth and got out of there as quickly as possible.

  Craig was puttering around the bedroom.

  “It works,” he said, pointing to the plastic yellow phone on the night table. “I’ll give you some privacy if you want to
call your mom.”

  “That’s all right,” she mumbled, taking one last look at the bed. “I’ll wait until morning.”

  “Afternoon,” he reminded her, removing his shirt. “Don’t forget the time difference.”

  He waited for her to crawl into bed, then he killed the lamp and climbed in beside her.

  They settled in, Amy on her side, Craig on his. Once they were comfortable, they craned their necks and leaned toward one another, each searching the darkness for the other’s lips. They exchanged their obligatory closed-mouthed kiss.

  She felt sorry for him. For what she was about to do to him. Again.

  Five minutes passed in utter silence. It rarely took Amy more than seven to fall asleep. But before she was able to drift off tonight, they heard it. Muffled music fighting its way through the wall just behind their headboard.

  Craig sighed. “Of all the goddamn luck.”

  Amy sat up. The room was windowless and pitch dark. “Maybe it’ll stop,” she said.

  Ordinarily she could sleep through an earthquake. The headache and upset stomach would never allow that tonight.

  She felt Craig push himself up onto his knees, knew he had placed his right ear against the wall.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Quiet.” He listened for several seconds in the blackness. “I don’t hear any people,” he said. “Just the music. Probably some guy who just stumbled home from the pub.”

  Amy smirked. She slid back down in the bed. “Forget it,” she said. “Just lie down and try to get some sleep.”

  Craig didn’t move. “I can’t sleep like this,” he said finally. “Listen. It’s getting louder.”

  It was getting louder. Amy could now make it out. It was the fado she had read about in Craig’s travel guide. Mournful Portuguese music about lost loves and unrealized dreams. Lovely, but not at three in the morning when you were trying to sleep.

  All of a sudden, Craig began knocking against the wall.

  Amy gasped. It took her a few seconds to catch her breath. It felt as though the sounds were coming from inside her woozy head. She said, “That’s not going to help.”

  But no sooner than she said it, the music stopped. The sound didn’t fade out as though the record had ended, it cut off abruptly.

  At least she wouldn’t need to stuff cotton in her ears.

  She turned on her side. Craig fell in beside her. He rested his hand on her hip and pulled himself close behind her. It was comforting. She couldn’t imagine never again sharing a bed with this man.

  She put it out of her mind and let her thoughts drift through the day. The airport in Newark, the seven-hour flight to Lisbon, the cab ride to the Alfama. The near-accident and her bloodied nose. Their first impression of the flat.

  She lingered on the email to Amaro and wondered whether he would really show up at four tomorrow as Craig requested. Should she wait at least until then to decide whether to stay?

  I already made my decision, she thought. I’m leaving.

  But before leaving, shouldn’t she at least see that Craig gets settled in another flat? Another night in Lisbon wouldn’t be all that bad. They could go out for dinner and drinks.

  Her mind wandered back into the cellar-like tavern with no name. To Diago, the bald-headed brute whose hobby it was to scare young americanos with stories. And, of course, to Gilberto, the small dark nine-fingered man with fish breath.

  Finally she started to drift.

  The sudden pounding on the wall reverberated in her chest. At first she thought it was Craig. The noise sounded so close. But then she realized he was as startled as she was, jumping from the bed as though there were gunfire.

  “What the fuck,” he shouted.

  Amy steadied herself with a few deep breaths. Her stomach was sick and she feared she might vomit. Her head throbbed in time with the pounding on the wall.

  With some urgency she left the bed, feeling her way in the dark. As she crossed the room her toes struck the post at the foot of the bed and she cried out. A sharp pain shot up her left leg.

  She moved delicately toward the wood dresser, fumbled around and finally found the lamp. She felt for the switch and flipped it on.

  The pounding on the wall continued without pause. The hits were spaced not a millisecond apart.

  “The walls must be as thin as paper,” she said.

  She was surprised by the calm in her voice, because her heart was thumping against the wall of her chest, her stomach threatening to spill its contents. Her toes felt as though they had been smacked with a hammer.

  Craig hurled himself toward the wall, slamming his fists and shouting obscenities. A deep red rose up his neck and into his cheeks. His bright blue eyes were wide with hell.

  With both hands raging, his pounding was still not nearly as loud or as fast as the pounding on the other side of the wall.

  When he finally stopped and turned toward Amy, his voice was hoarse and the knuckles on each fist were raw. “I’m going next door,” he said, reaching for his shirt.

  The pounding on the wall continued. Faster. Harder. More intense. As though there were a dozen sets of hands assaulting the wall from the other side.

  “You can’t,” she said. “You don’t know who lives there. What if they have a gun?”

  Craig shook his head as he sat on the bed, putting his legs through his pants. “This isn’t the States,” he said. “People don’t shoot each other here over noise disputes.” He stood and advanced toward the door.

  Amy followed him into the living room. She hurried her steps despite her painful toes. “Please. Don’t go over there. You said yourself, we’ll be out of here tomorrow.”

  He unlocked the lock then paused, his fingers curled around the knob of the door. He said, “We have to be able to sleep tonight, baby. Tomorrow’s a long day. We have the movers coming in the morning, Amaro in the afternoon. And we have to look for a new place.”

  Amy nodded then ran her fingers along the base of Craig’s neck. “I know,” she said. “We’ll get all that done. Just have a little patience. Whoever that is, they’ll tire out eventually.”

  She watched his eyes pinball between her and the bedroom, between the bedroom and the front door. Her mind raced, trying to find something else to say to keep him from going next door.

  “You promise?” he said finally. “Tomorrow we’ll look for a new place?”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  His fingers fell limply from the door. “All right.” As soon as he said it, the pounding suddenly stopped.

  She looked toward the bedroom. An uneasy sensation invaded the silence. She listened intently. No music. No pounding. Not a sound save for their breaths.

  “All right,” Then she let him lead her back into the bedroom.

  Chapter Seven

  Craig still couldn’t sleep. He was wired on anger and alcohol, anxious about what the following day would bring. The movers at ten, Amaro at four. And somehow they would have to manage breakfast and lunch in between.

  Of course, they would also need to find a new flat. Maybe something in the Estrela. They would need to rent a truck and move their boxes over. And all the while he’d be worrying over whether Amy intended to leave.

  He rested his hand on her left hip and immediately felt himself stir in his boxers. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d had sex but it had to be going on three weeks. Amy just wasn’t as receptive to the idea anymore. Not since he had returned from Hawaii. But like everything else, Craig figured that in time that would change.

  For now, he averted his thoughts. Focused instead on the incessant ticking of the second hand clock resting on the night table on Amy’s side of the bed. He wondered what time it was, whether he’d fall asleep at all before sunrise. It was possible. But probably not going to happen.

  Amy rolled over onto her stomach.

  They were god awful bedmates, Craig and Amy. They kept different hours. He stayed awake all hours of the night, sh
e was ritually in bed by ten. He slept beneath the covers, she on top, so that he was often pinned in the same position all night. She thrashed around like a drowning mackerel. He, a light sleeper, was caused by the thrashing to wake at least a dozen times during the night. When he did sleep, he was cool and comfortable. She sweat like Kobe Bryant in the fourth quarter of an NBA playoffs game.

  Craig closed his eyes. For all her faults she was still the most perfect thing that had ever happened to him. He was under no illusion. If not for Amy, he’d be back in New York, probably in the same place as Danny. What if she does leave me? he thought. A new surge of anxiety hit him like a brick to the head. I’ll be all alone. Alone the way I was when she left me on the island. A knot formed in his stomach. His neck began to ache. No. I won’t let that happen this time.

  (What the fuck can you do to stop it?)

  He opened his eyes. He was sweating and his mouth felt full of cotton. He regretted everything that had happened earlier in the night. The drinking, the gypsies, the argument with Amy on the cab ride back to the flat. Even his furious assault on the bedroom wall.

  Amy muttered something incoherent in her sleep.

  Early in their relationship, when she first started sleeping over at his Battery Park apartment, he had asked her questions in her sleep. He started off slowly—lucky number, favorite color, the name of her first pet—then gradually progressed into more personal queries. He learned a lot about her during those unconscious conversations, and often put the information to use during their dates. Sometimes to delight her, sometimes to surprise her. And, okay, sometimes just to spook her out a bit.

  The pulsing—thump thump, thump thump—suddenly returned to Craig’s right ear and he finally gave up on sleep.

  He moved gingerly from the bed so as not to disturb Amy. Not that she would wake to anything less than an explosion. Then he glided cautiously across the room in the dark.

  He closed the bedroom door behind him and flipped a switch. The drab living area was illuminated by a dying forty-watt bulb screwed into the ceiling socket overhead.

  He opened his laptop on the table. As he waited for it to boot, he crossed to the front door. He peeked through the peephole at the grim maroon wallpaper that lined the hall.