The Flat: A Novel of Supernatural Horror

by Jack Douglas

  I do not know what to do, Amaro wrote. Right now she closed herself up in the bedroom, just as Mother used to do to our father. I am sick in the heart, brother. And I feel I am quickly going sick in the head.

  Craig’s stomach jumped. He vaguely remembered accusing Amy of fucking some bastardo downstairs, but now he couldn’t for the life of him recall why. It didn’t make any goddamn sense.

  Unless Craig hadn’t been speaking to Amy, but rather to this Fatima, to Amaro’s wife.

  Unless Craig hadn’t been speaking at all.

  Was it possible that Amaro had been speaking through him?

  Trying to draw a deep breath, Craig tossed this letter aside and moved onto number four, dated only the following day later.

  Something is very wrong, Amaro wrote to his brother. He and Fatima were trapped in the flat. Fatima believed Amaro had somehow sealed them in; Amaro insisted the landlord Otavio was at fault.

  They had run out of food. Amaro had not been so hungry since he was a child, since his mother locked him in the bathroom for days for dirtying his new pair of pants.

  The plumbing remained unfixed and they had no water. The telephone was broken.

  As Amaro wrote this, Fatima was screaming from the bedroom.

  The letter concluded with a series of jagged, barely legible words: I must go see what she wants from me, the crazy bitch.

  Craig took a deep breath. Tried to comprehend. According to these letters, more than forty years ago, Amaro Dias Silva and his wife Fatima were trapped in this very flat, left with no food or water, with no means of communicating with the outside world.

  “How?” Craig shouted, his voice echoing throughout the room. He set the letter down and moved on to the next.

  January 1975 Brother,

  Our situation is incredibly dire. I am afraid I may never see you again. I cannot adequately explain what is happening. Fatima has changed. My beloved wife is now someone else entirely. I, too, feel very strange. It’s the hunger, yes, and the cabin fever from being trapped in this awful flat. But it is something else, too. Something unnatural. I do not know what else to say. I feel as though the Devil himself is in me.

  Please, Carlito, wake me from this horror. Tell me, Brother. Convince me I am not in Hell.

  Fogo

  Craig slowly lifted the sixth and last envelope. Opened it. Three full sheets of paper fluttered out.

  January 1975

  I cannot allow this puta to get away with destroying my life. Last night we had a terrible fight and I struck her in the face. This after she tried to lock me from my own bedroom. She slammed the door so hard she severed one of my fingers, the cunt. I realize now there is no escape. No help is coming. We will die here in this flat.

  Craig scanned down the page.

  I have discovered a set of journals belonging to the previous tenant, who is none other than our current “landlord,” Otavio Caldeira. Otavio went maluco in this very hole. He and his wife Isadora too were trapped. And, Brother, he ate her dead flesh in order to live...

  Craig glanced toward the open closet where the black metal lockbox sat, holding Otavio’s journals. They were written in Portuguese, but it was no matter. Craig would no longer need to read them. Amaro had. And Amaro had translated everything germane in this final letter to his brother Carlito.

  In 1943, Otavio and Isadora had also stepped through this “door.” Thirty-two years before Amaro Dias Silva and his wife Fatima. From the writings in his journal it was clear that Otavio and Isadora were a troubled couple, a pair seeking a geographic solution to their marital problems. They hadn’t traveled far, only from Lagos in southern Portugal. Otavio had hoped it was enough to give their relationship a fresh start.

  However, only hours after the couple had moved in, the flat itself began to change. Its brightly colored walls dimmed, its carpets faded. Stains appeared out of nowhere on the freshly painted ceiling.

  Otavio and Isadora tried to escape immediately. They didn’t know what possessed the property, and they didn’t care to stick around to find out. But they couldn’t leave. Like Craig and Amy, like Amaro and Fatima, they were captives. Locked in the flat without food or water, with no ability to communicate with the outside world.

  Amaro, in his letter to his brother Carlito, said the writing in Otavio’s journals showed the man’s rapid descent into madness. But Otavio became obsessed and apparently made constructive use of his short time in the flat. He knocked holes through the walls and found balled-up pieces of blood-smeared papers that seemed to tell a similar story about a similar couple who lived in the flat in 1901.

  Those scraps Otavio discovered referred to others, to other couples, troubled couples, who had gone through a series of similar events. The noise, the transformations, the captivity.

  Fado, Otavio concluded from reading these pages, had traveled through these walls since its inception in the 1820s, lulling the flat’s tenants to their doom.

  The story of the flat was a hellish loop. But when had it all started? Otavio, consumed and savagely mad, needed to know. So he searched every inch of his third-floor prison, checked inside every wall. Tore up the carpets in the living room and bedroom. Pried the tiles off the bathroom walls and floor.

  Otavio finally discovered the answer by peeling up the ancient linoleum in the kitchen. There he found papers that alluded to the earthquake of 1755.

  The papers held the simple drawings of an eleven-year-old boy. A boy named Xavier, who told his story on the reverse sides of his pictures. “I am alone,” the boy had scribbled in Portuguese, “as this city comes crumbling down around me. My mother has abandoned me. I will die here on my own.”

  Otavio became convinced he had discovered the genesis of this loop. It arose from the rage of an abandoned eleven-year-old boy who had perished alone in one of Western Europe’s worst earthquakes.

  In the end, following eight days of hell on earth, Otavio took a knife to his wife Isadora. He killed her quickly, then slowly carved her into a meal he hoped would last him till he gathered the courage to take his own life.

  These letters may never reach you, Carlito. But if they do, please know I did everything I could to keep from going mad. But I can stand no more. Not from Fatima, not from this flat.

  I am about to kill the bitch. And then burn this hellish home in the fire that it deserves.

  Amaro

  Before Craig even set the page down, he smelled the smoke and spun his head, searching for the flames. The air was suddenly thick with heat. His eyes teared but he found no fire, no thick black clouds clutching for his throat.

  Still, he began to choke. To retch. On hands and knees he crawled, trying to keep low, heading in no particular direction whatsoever.

  Then the telephone began ringing in the bedroom. His one last chance.

  Painfully Craig rose to his feet and lumbered toward the bedroom door, his legs threatening to give out with each motion. He refused to let them, lurching on, moving with purpose in the direction of the ringing phone. This time he didn’t touch the burning handle, just crashed through, splintering the wood and knocking the door from its hinges. The phone sat alone in the center of the otherwise empty room. The furniture had vanished, the bed, the dresser, the bookcase, the night stands. The wall he and Amy had torn down with forks and knives, oven racks and bedposts, had been entirely resurrected, had somehow on its own risen up from the floor.

  Craig blinked away the shock and dove for the phone. Lifted the receiver in his left hand and held it to his ear.

  “Hello, hello,” he rasped into the mouthpiece.

  “Senhor...” The voice faded in and out. It was as though the man were high on a mountain, speaking through a walkie talkie. “...policia.”

  “Yes,” Craig cried. “Si, si. Help. Socorro! Ajude-me!”

  The voice on the other end paused, and Craig immediately thought all was lost. Then the voice returned with a newfound clarity. In fact, the man seemed to recognize that Craig’s primary language was E
nglish. “Okay, Senhor,” the voice said calmly. “Tell me where you are at.”

  But Craig all of a sudden couldn’t speak English at all. He thought the words Call an ambulance! Call the fire department! But they flowed through his lips in Portuguese. “Chame a ambulancia! Chameos bombeiros!”

  “Okay, senhor,” the voice said again. Still level, still calm. “Give me your address.”

  Craig had to think. The address escaped his mind. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  It wouldn’t come to him. Where am I?

  “Senhor?”

  Craig panicked, the heat bearing down on him, the invisible smoke now choking him all to hell.

  “Senhor?”

  Finally Craig pictured the return address on the envelopes of the letters written but never sent by Amaro. That was it, there it was, clear as if Craig still had the envelopes in front of him. He rattled off the address in English. Then followed with the directions, “Third floor! Three-oh-six! Opposite end of the lift!”

  There was another long pause on the other end of the line. Breathlessly, Craig waited.

  “Senhor?” the voice finally said. “I have the address you have given me.” Another long period of hesitation, as the unseen blaze melted the room’s four walls. “But, Senhor,” the man finally continued, “there is no lift in that building.”

  Craig was dazed. What the hell was this guy talking about? Fine, fuck the lift. Come up the stairs!

  “And Senhor,” the voice said, now breaking up again. “That building...”

  Static. “...abandoned...” Static, a strange noise.

  “...and has not had a third floor in over thirty-five years...” Craig pressed the phone hard against his ear trying to hear. “...not since it burned in the fire...”

  “Goodbye!”

  “Welcome!”

  From the living room Craig’s computer once more cried out to him. He listened for it over the roar of the fire he couldn’t see, heard it over his own hacking from the smoke that wasn’t there.

  “You’ve got mail!”

  Craig slithered on his stomach, the carpet clutching, scratching, clawing at his chest as he moved. His flesh burned.

  As he passed through the entryway of the bedroom, the door slammed into his ribs. He shouted in pain but kept on.

  Sweat poured down his forehead, the taste mixing with the copper tang of blood on his tongue.

  Every bone ached, every organ burned. Still, he pressed on until he rounded the corner into the living room.

  Here, too, the furnishings, the wall hangings, the boxes, everything had vanished. The laptop sat alone, open and on its side, in the middle of the living room. Craig’s eyes teared as he tried to scan the screen without moving any closer.

  “You’ve got mail!”

  He did. He did have mail; he could see the icon. He started crawling again furiously in the direction of the laptop.

  Almost there. Within arm’s length. He reached out, stretched with every scintilla of raw energy he had left.

  But before his fingers reached the keyboard the computer PINGED and an IM popped up in the right-hand corner of the screen.

  There was no name, none at all, but he didn’t need to guess at who the sender was.

  Ola, Senhor Devlin, the instant message read. Enjoying your stay at the flat?

  “Fuck you, cocksucker,” Craig said aloud, blood pooling on his tongue, spilling over his lips onto the floor.

  PING.

  Now, now, Amaro wrote. That is no way to speak to your landlord, senhor.

  “Fuck you!” Craig shouted. A spray of blood spattered like window washer across the screen. “Let me out!”

  PING.

  Senhor, the IM read, you are free to leave whenever you want.

  Across the room, the brass door handle slowly began twisting, turning, turning. The front door creaked open, slightly at first, then wider and wider until Craig could see clearly into the bleak maroon hallway.

  Hope rose instantly inside of him, even as he tried to fight it. Delirious with desire, Craig could barely focus himself to move in the direction of the door. For a moment he was frozen. Then finally he collected himself and began the long painful crawl.

  PING.

  Craig turned his neck as far back as he could and squinted at the new message on the screen.

  Of course, the message read, there are a few things to consider first. PING.

  I’m afraid there are penalties for breaking the lease.

  Craig swallowed hard and tried to smile. “You can keep our security deposit,” he rasped.

  PING.

  I doubt very much that will cover the cost of the damage you’ve done to the flat.

  Craig swung his head forward again and continued moving, pain erupting in every part of his body. “Then sue me.”

  PING.

  Don’t look back, Craig thought. Keep heading for the door. But, of course, ultimately, he couldn’t help himself. His head twisted so far around that he felt like the little blond bitch from The Exorcist.

  The new instant message read: It is not civil court you will have to worry about, Senhor Devlin.

  PING.

  You have just spoken to the authorities. They are on their way to our building.

  PING.

  And you have a dead body with numerous bite marks on the floor in your kitchen.

  “I didn’t kill her,” Craig shouted.

  PING.

  Ah, but your memoir says you did.

  Evidence. Craig’s mind fell back into lawyer mode, and he suddenly saw what a jury would see. What other explanation could a jury possibly believe? He had to clean up, had to dispose of the body, destroy the laptop...

  PING.

  You’ll be happy to know that your manuscript has already been sent, not just to your agent, but to Senhora Berdan’s family, as well as authorities both here in Lisboa and the United States.

  Craig stared at the screen. His Inbox was open. There were replies from his agent, from Amy’s brother, even an auto-reply from the NYPD.

  The screen suddenly changed to Mail Sent.

  There it was in the subject line: letters from lisbon, a memoir by craig devlin.

  His world sunk. What the hell could he do? If anything, this week had taught him that he could never survive confinement. Not in an apartment, not in a prison, or worse yet, a mental institution. Not in a fucking sports memorabilia store.

  PING.

  Of course, the instant message read, your new memoir could also serve as a suicide note.

  Craig turned back to the open front door. In the distance he could hear sirens. Hide. He could hide. He could go through the bedroom wall into the flat next door and hide until he could make good his escape.

  But, no. If he could leave through the other flat, he would have taken Amy and left before.

  What had he seen in there?

  PING.

  Nothing, of course. No, that couldn’t be. PING.

  You were free to leave the entire time, senhor. As was I. As was Otavio.

  We, each of us, were given a choice.

  “That’s not true!” Craig shouted, his voice echoing off the walls of the empty room.

  PING.

  Of course, it is true, senhor. But what then? You would have lost her. Senhora Berdan would have returned to New York. You would have been left here alone.

  (Just like you were in Hawaii.)

  Craig’s ear began pulsing.

  PING.

  Left here alone with a tumor. Or an aneurism. (With an aneurism you go like that!)

  PING.

  And worst of all, the IM read, you would have been unable to write.

  The sirens were closer now, but they were being drummed out by the pulsing in his right ear.

  Suddenly the floor beneath him began to shake.

  An earthquake? he thought. He flashed on Otavio’s story about Xavier, the eleven-year-old boy abandoned by his mother during the natural disaster of 1755.

  Here. It ha
d happened here. Here in this building. Here on this floor. Here in this very flat.

  Amaro’s voice suddenly invaded Craig Devlin’s head.

  (“All this, it is only an echo, amigo. What is happening has already happened and will happen again. You see, once an echo is released, it cannot be withdrawn, only amplified or drowned out by a new voice, such as yours.”)

  The ceiling shook. Flakes began to descend upon Craig’s head.

  (“It is why, amigo, the dead do not whisper. To be heard, we must scream.”)

  “Why me?” Craig said, clenching his teeth. “Why you? Why Otavio?”

  The sirens grew louder.

  “Why?” Craig shouted. “Because we’ve had our fucking hearts broken?”

  (“No, amigo. Not because our hearts were broken during our lives.”)

  The pulsing more intense.

  (“We were chosen because we three, like the boy Xavier before us, entered this world with broken hearts. Never wanted, never loved. We three, each of us, may as well have died in our mothers’ wombs. Because we never knew the capacity for love.”)

  Craig’s mother’s voice for the final time echoed in his head: “I fucking hate you,” she said. “You should’ve never been born.”

  (“We are one, amigo. We live here.”)

  Sobbing, Craig crawled on the rumbling floor toward the ice pick. He lifted it in his ruined right hand. With his left he moved the mouse, closed out of AOL,

  “GOODBYE!” “GOODBYE!” “GOODBYE!” and entered a familiar web address in the browser. Weeping, he pulled up the screen, clicked on Portugal, on Lisbon, on Housing, and finally on Post. He clicked on Apartments for Rent. Typing as quickly as his exhausted nine fingers allowed, he entered the Title, the Location, the Description. Quickly he uploaded Amaro’s photos of the flat and hit send.

  The sirens now were just outside. The ceiling rained down like hail.

  Grudgingly, Craig lifted again the ice pick. Pointed it. Placed the cold hard metal slowly inside his right ear.