by Joe DeRouen
“I’m not lazy. I’m just not smart. Not in the book way. I like cars. Maybe I can be a mechanic.”
“Then go to a vocational high where you can learn mechanics.”
“Yeah, maybe. I just get impatient, you know.” He smiled at me in the dark and stood up, meaning to start on his way down. But some instinct, some inner pull, made him look up one last time, and he froze on a gasp. His hand gripped the railing, and he stood as one turned to stone, gaze glued to the roof line.
“Robbie, what is it? Robbie?” I reached out to him and shook him to get his attention.
“Jesus. Oh, Jesus, Oh Jesus, how can it be?” he murmured to himself.
Terrified of what I might see, heart pounding in my ears, but unable to do differently, I turned my head to the roof. There, against a background of stars and a few sailing clouds, a figure stood gazing down at us, his arm extended, his pale hand curling and uncurling in a come-hither gesture. I could hear the flopping of his cape in the gusts of breeze. A wave of vertigo hit me, and I whimpered in fear as I clung fiercely to Robbie.
“I need to go. I need to know who it is, and what he wants with me.” Robbie’s voice was raspy, the smell of the cigarette carried on every breath that touched my face.
“You’re crazy! No, you can’t go. The problem is not who he is, but what he is.” I held on to my friend for dear life. I knew what was calling, was evil. It had targeted us. The streets had been packed with people, but only we had seen it.
“I have to go. I somehow know it will not rest until I go. If I refuse to talk to it, will it hang out my window every night? Will its face hover over me in my nightmares? I am a man, Sonia. Being a man means facing your fears. I am going up there. I think it wants to tell me something about what happened two years ago.”
“Then, I’ll go with you. Just to make sure.”
“Make sure of what?”
“I don’t know. Make sure you come back and don’t disappear where ever it was that he went when you guys couldn’t find him.”
“You are going to climb the firescape? You who never lets go the window sill with your fear of heights?”
“You’ll help me. Stay right in front, so I can touch you at all times. You can talk to him from the ladder. You don’t have to get on the roof itself.”
“All right. That makes sense. I can do that.”
The cold metal was stark to my bare feet. I stood trembling, eyes glued to the steps before me, fear of vertigo keeping me from looking sideways or down into the certain death I was sure awaited me below. The keening wind made the metal vibrate, and my hands clutched the metal handrail so tightly, I was sure I was getting cut. In front of me, Robbie started up the ladder.
“Wait,” I whispered desperately. “You need to go slowly. I can’t go up fast. I’ll get dizzy.” Robbie looked back and waited. Holding tightly with my right hand, I reached with my left one and lifted my left foot, feeling for the next step. I pulled myself up and held on for dear life. A strong gust pushed at my side, and I closed my eyes in terror.
This was insanity, I thought, but Robbie took another step, and I followed, my greater terror was being left alone in the windy heights. Images of the ancient, rusting, metal structure tumbling down into the space below ran through my mind, and I leaned into the ladder, and pulled myself up in desperation not to be left on my own. I could tell Robbie was eager to get going, but I was a tether holding him back.
“Hurry up,” he urged impatiently in a low voice.
“I can’t. I am going as fast as I can.” I loud whispered back. From below, drunken voices drifted up, providing a small connection to the safe world below. The bodega was closing, and the last few old men were crawling home. I hugged the metal and kept very still not to attract attention. Up here, there was little light and unless someone was specifically searching for us, we were not likely to be noticed.
We clung to our perch a few moments longer, giving the men below time to disappear. I turned my head slightly to the left and over my elbow, forcing myself to crack my eyes open and peek out. The sensation of being suspended way up high, with nothing to hold me, assaulted my senses. The blanket of city lights below was waiting to catch me, and the wind was eager to pluck me from the metal and hurl me down. I was in trouble! Paralyzed in my fear, I could not move up or down.
“Robbie!” I cried and buried my face in my right shoulder. “I can’t, I can’t.” The soles of my feet were starting to sweat, and a new fear assaulted my senses: fear of my feet slipping off.
Robbie took one step down to stand on the rung just above the one my hands clutched. “Ok, go back down. Just go back and wait.”
“I can’t. I can’t move,” I said. “I’ll fall. I know I will. From five stories up, I’ll splat like an egg. I’m dizzy already.”
“Just like a silly girl. We’re only a few feet from the sixth-floor landing. If it comes to it, you’ll cling to Mrs. Mariani’s window and tap until she lets you in.”
Just like a silly girl, he’d said. The right words to piss me off. New resolve washed over me. I closed off my thoughts and made my mind a blank slate. Loosening my right hand from its hold, I reached for the next rung. I could feel Robbie’s foot. I climbed the next step and the next in quick succession, following him desperately. When the landing came within reach, I crawled my way to the window and sat there feeling its security against my back. Robbie sat next to me and placed his arm around me in a comforting gesture.
“See, nothing happened. If you want, you can stay here. It’s only one more level to the roof.”
“Is he there? Can you see him? Can you make out his face now?”
Robbie looked up, but the overhang lip of the parapet was too close and blocked the edge view that we had from the fifth level. “No, I can’t see him. I wonder how he is getting up and down? There has to be a secret exit to the roof, and I am going to find it.” Robbie was far more realistic than me.
“What if there isn’t?” I offered. “What if the answer is something else?”
“What else can it be? Are you believing in vampires now?”
“No, silly, not that. Those are fiction. Something else entirely.”
Robbie sat there deep in thought for a few moments. “He looks familiar, you know.”
“What do you mean? Like someone from the neighborhood?”
“Like Gus. He’s wearing a similar costume. Gus was wearing a cape, that night. He was pale white and had dark, longish hair.”
“What if he didn’t really die that night? What if it was someone else and the police made a mistake?” I said with excitement. “A fall from up there must do a lot of damage. Maybe that is your friend. He could be hiding because he pushed someone else and made it look like it was him. He could be calling you because he is lonely and wants your help.”
“Yeah,” said Robbie excitedly. “That makes sense. He’s been hiding all this time, using a secret way to the roof. Sure it makes sense. He was getting in with some shady people. The junkies, you know. I bet he’s in hiding. If that’s the case, my sister is going to kill him for real.” Robbie got up and started up the ladder again. “Stay here. I’ll be back,” he said, now full of confidence and eager to solve the riddle.
I watched as Robbie went up the ladder quickly now that he didn’t have me to slow him down. Suddenly, I was alone in the night, way up on a terrifying perch. I crawled over to the ladder and looked up. Nothing was visible. What was going on up there? What was Robbie doing?
“Robbie?” I called up in a loud whisper, afraid to wake up old Mrs. Mariani. He didn’t answer. In the distance, I could hear and feel the familiar rumble of the G train, and the metal ladder vibrated with it. It was now very cold to the touch, and the final leg of the ladder called to me, the safety of the solid roof enticing, the answer to the mysterious riddle within reach.
I began to crawl up the ladder, one step at a time, keeping my eyes straight ahead, glued to the brick wall, one arm tightly wrapped around a rung at all ti
mes. My corduroy bell bottoms flapped around my ankles in the wind, my ponytail snagging on the metal. “Robbie,” I called up, louder this time. No answer came. “Robbie, where are you? Answer me, please.” I stopped and waited.
“Robbie, I need your hand. I can’t pull myself up without help.” The eerie silence from above was in stark contrast to the far off city sounds in the distance. Then, Robbie’s familiar face was looking down on me.
“There’s nothing up here. I can’t understand it at all,” he said as he reached a hand down for me. As I reached my hand up to his, behind him, a shadowy figure rose, and a face pale as moonlight looked down on me, eyes black and fathomless. My gaze filled with horror, my mouth opened to scream. Robbie, realizing my terror-filled eyes were focused on something behind him, turned fast to look over his shoulder. Suddenly, inexplicably, he was hurtling over the parapet, his grasping, desperate hand banging the metal ladder, tangling in my hair and pulling a big chunk of it as he fell, a terrifying scream tearing the space around me as a pale, ghostly hand reached down to me. I screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed.
Chapter Five
I woke up weeks later in a ward at Belleview. That’s the hospital where they took the loonies in the city. I spent months there. When my parents took me back home, it was to a different place. Pop bought a small, two-family house in Queens with some money his brother lent him. I was so glad not to have to return to 601 Marcy Avenue.
My brother Jimmy told me later that the firemen had rescued me from the ladder where I clung with an iron hold, screaming hysterically. They’d pried my fingers off, breaking a couple of them as I clung to the metal in terror, mindlessly striking out at anyone near.
The police wanted answers from me, but I had been insane, unable to give them the answers they wanted. Only strong sedation kept me under control. At first, they thought that maybe I had pushed Robbie, but that theory was quickly discarded as I had remained on the ladder, and he had tumbled from the roof.
When I finally was able to talk to the detective in charge of the case, he listened to me with kindness and a sad look on his face. It was obvious he thought I had lost my mind in the ordeal and was worthless as a witness.
Pop took me to the cemetery once, and I left flowers for Robbie. By coincidence, his sister was there, and if looks could kill, hers would have incinerated me. She probably thought I was to blame for her brother’s death. The whole neighborhood probably thought so.
For the longest time, Robbie haunted my thoughts and my dreams. Years after, I was still taking valium and talking to counselors. Every night, before going to sleep, I reached under my pillow and touched the Bible that my mother said would protect me. Sometimes, I recited Psalm 91 half a dozen times before falling asleep. I needed it to keep me from seeing that pale, soulless face in my dreams.
The Halloween before my eighteenth birthday, my friend Bridget got her driver’s license. Her well-to-do uncle gave her the cutest little Volkswagen Bug. She insisted we go cruising that night. She wanted to drive by the neighborhood of this really cute guy she liked.
She took Myrtle Avenue, and followed the elevated train, getting closer to the neighborhood I knew so well and had not seen in five years. My heart in my throat, I watched as she turned into Tompkins Avenue and followed it down to DeKalb, where she made a right, and then another right into Marcy. She parked on Marcy right after Pulaski.
“We’ll walk,” she said. “His father owns a bodega not far from here.”
“Bridget, I know the one. This guy you like is a snob. He only likes the pretty, popular girls that have money. You deserve better than that.”
“I know I’m not pretty. Still, I have something better than pretty.” She half turned and stuck out her out-of-proportion rear end and winked at me over her shoulder. I had to laugh. It was true, Bridget might not be gorgeous, but she had an ass boys went crazy for.
“Come on,” insisted Bridget as she pulled me by the hand. “I want to go in and buy something. I want to see if he’s working the counter. You know, I’ll act surprised, like I had no idea it’s his place.”
“Oh, yeah. That will fool him. I’m sure it’s been never tried before.” We went into the bodega which was packed with trick-or-treaters and girls our age, probably all looking for the cute son of the family. “Good luck,” I said to my friend. We walked around while Bridget kept an eye out for her guy, but the place was too crowded for me.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” I called out as I made my way out of the store. I stood in front of the place along with the bunch of usual suspects. The crowds of ghost, witches, and goblins were out as normal on Halloween night. My heart felt a familiar squeeze of longing. This was my neighborhood for years. My old middle school was a ten-minute walk away. My uncle’s bodega was still there. My old apartment had light spilling from the window as another mother stood watching from it.
I allowed my eyes to gaze at the old firescape, and my heart thundered in my ears. I followed its line up past the sixth floor and up to the roof line.
“He’s not there,” said a disappointed voice at my side. I jumped out of my skin, startled out of my reverie. “I bet he’s out and about. We should walk around for a while and maybe we’ll run into him.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, but my attention was up on the roof line. There, among the shadows, something moved. I stepped up to the edge of the sidewalk, my eyes scanning the parapet of my old building. One after the other, they came into sight. Two faces. Two young men, one taller and pale, wearing a cape. The other, sporting a jacket and dark, short hair, I knew well. As I stared in mute fascination, they stretched out pale hands and beckoned for me to come.
“Who are those guys?” asked Bridget as she followed my line of sight. “You know them?”
“I knew one of them,” I answered through the ache in my heart and the fear in my soul. “This was my old neighborhood, but that was a long time ago. He’s trouble now.”
“A junky?”
“No, nothing like that. He just keeps bad company. We’d better go.”
***
Through the years, I went back to the old neighborhood several times, always on Halloween night. I stood across the street, in front of the bodega that has changed owners many times. Always, they came to the parapet and beckoned to me, and I could swear that Robbie’s face was sad and lonely. The last time I visited, there were three faces calling to me. Someone else had climbed the firescape to join the small group.
Eventually, I left New York City. I lived in many places all over the world. I have grandchildren now. Recently, my brother Jimmy told me he looked on Google Earth, and he saw that old 601 no longer stands. They knocked those old tenements down and built new, smaller housing. Even the ghosts are being pushed out by urban renewal. I wonder where Robbie and his friends went.
About the Author
Zeecé Lugo was born in Puerto Rico, grew up in Brooklyn, and lived in many places. She spent seven years in the U.S. Air force, taught for many years in Miami, and even spent a year working for the IRS.
Her early love was reading. The worlds of Pern, Middle-earth, St. Mary Mead, and Shrewsbury Abbey had an incredible influence and hold on her imagination.
She wrote her first novel, Daniel’s Fork, in two months, spending long hours at her task. During that time, she ensconced herself in her bedroom with her computer, barely coming out to grab a cup of coffee or a snack. One day, her nearest neighbor came desperately knocking at her bedroom window, afraid that Zeecé might be dead; no one had seen her for days!
Daniel’s Fork was meant to be the first book in a romantic trilogy. Little did Zeecé know that stories have a way of going where they want to go. Daniel’s Fork turned out to be a journey to the future past! It is a sexy mystery set in the future, giving birth to a fictional universe: the Daniel’s Fork universe.
"Five Stories Up" is a short story written specifically for this anthology, and it is not part of her previous work. In fact, it is the first
time the author has ventured to write horror. She drew from her own childhood experiences growing up in Brooklyn, and 601 Marcy Avenue did, in fact, exist. It was the actual tenement building where she spent her early years. It was definitely haunted!
Visit her Blog at http://zeecelugo.com and Begin your Journey to the Future Past!
Sold
Angie Martin
Chapter One
Alice Marcel hung up her phone with a smile on her face, the first one in months. A well-known serial killer’s home had been listed for sale on the real estate market, and there had been a barrage of ghostly sightings and unexplained disturbances. The owner now wanted to use the publicity of the ghosts to sell the home at a premium. Would Alice like to visit the home and chat with the owner?
The call was nothing unusual, not in her line of work. As a producer of the reality television show Ghost Explorers, she received calls to scout locations several times a day. More than ninety percent of them never panned out, but this one was unlike any other reported haunting the team of ghost hunters had ever investigated.
Serial killer Bill Farr met his maker one year ago this week, after being executed by lethal injection. The state of Texas and a jury of his peers had been far kinder to him than he had ever been to another human being, or even an animal being. When the FBI finally honed in on their suspect and served a search warrant, they found all manner of depravity in Farr’s basement, things that leaked out onto the Internet for corrupt minds to explore during their swirling descent into darkness. Their festering desire for sadism satisfied with explicit pictures of chains, dried blood, and rotting corpses.
But, now it seemed the women that suffered so horribly in that basement, 31 in all, who slowly died of starvation while being tortured and enduring vile sexual assault for months on end, had returned from the grave to haunt the premises. Their tormented souls appeared tied to the location of their trauma. Or, some speculated, maybe Farr himself could not get enough of the home where he lived out his most secret of fantasies and returned there after his much more pleasant death. While some witnesses reported seeing emaciated silhouettes, others had attested to seeing a shadowed, menacing specter which could not be identified as either male or female.