The Flip (An Angel Hill novel)

by C. Dennis Moore

  The room was black and empty, but that scratching noise persisted, so he moved forward one step, just over the threshold, listening, trying to figure out where it was coming from. Was it a mouse? A rat? Something bigger? He couldn’t tell.

  He reached for the light switch, but just as he was about to flip it up, a voice said, “Don’t. Leave it off. Go away. Get out of the house. Get out of the house.”

  He jumped at the sound of a voice, but then it happened so fast, he didn’t have time to run, it was just this swelling of movement from out of the dark, rushing toward him, a grey and twisted figure, a face ringed by dark hair with big eyes open wide and a mouth twisted in a grimace as it screeched to “Get out of the house, get out of the house, get out of the house!” and he realized just as the face came up to meet his that this was Amy, that this was what the house had done to her, it had bent her out of shape and devoured everything that made her beautiful. She raised one twisted claw hand and reached out to touch him, but Steven had jumped awake at the last second, and now, coming down those same stairs, he felt a shiver of déjà vu running through him and he was suddenly very aware of every noise in the basement.

  This was different, though, because he had turned on the light before coming down, so there were no sinister shadows to hide in. But he still didn’t want to go into that bathroom wedged between the other two rooms. It was too close to where he’d dreamed that awful scratching, too close to where he’d come face to face with Amy’s corpse.

  He felt short of breath as he went into the bathroom and closed the door. The light was on and the hum of electricity was in his ears coupled with the sound of his piss hitting the water, but over it all, he thought he still heard the noise from the other room. He flushed and as the sound died down, he felt like he could hear her voice rising to replace the sound of the toilet.

  “That was a dream,” he muttered, but even his own voice in his ears couldn’t drown her out.

  “Get out of the house,” she told him over and over, first with a despairing whisper, but by the time he reached the top of the stairs, she stood at the bottom of them, looking up at him and screaming it.

  Brian had had a dream the night before as well, and like Steven, it came back to him suddenly while he stood in the bathroom. The light was on and the door closed as he remembered it. It was the night he had come here alone, and he was in the old bathroom, standing there behind the closed door, listening to the noises coming from outside.

  Something was in the house, but he couldn’t tell what. It wasn’t footsteps he heard, so he didn’t think there was another person here, but something was definitely moving out there.

  He put his ear to the door and tried to make it out, but there was just no way to discern what he was hearing. Something thumped but, again, it wasn’t footsteps. More like something heavy had fallen.

  For some reason, he thought of a huge snake, as big as himself, slithering around in the dark, its giant tail flopping over onto the floor. Or a rat the size of a bulldog, with a tail a thick as a baby’s arm, and teeth like bits of broken crockery, jagged and crooked and ready to bite.

  It was a legless thing out there, dragging itself forward on its meaty arms, something pink and terrible with no face, just a sagging mouth and one lone, staring eye.

  It was his mother. He knew it. She had found a way here, she had found him.

  He was going to open the door but instead of seeing her on the floor she would be standing directly on the other side of the door, staring into his face with her mouth wide open and grinning and before he could do anything, she would shriek at him again to “Get out of the house, get out of the house!”

  He had waited in there that night for a long time before he worked up the courage to open the door. And when he did, he was almost surprised to find his mother wasn’t waiting there for him.

  He left the bathroom and stepped into the kitchen, looking around, wondering if he was alone and feeling sure that he wasn’t.

  The shadows played tricks on him, disguising themselves as trolls or goblins, lying in wait, monsters of unknown origin and indescribable appearance, a Lovecraftian menagerie of horrors.

  There was a streetlight on the corner just outside the house, Brian could see its light through the window, could see it shining, but somehow that light didn’t penetrate the room. He could see the front window from where he stood, could see outside at the light illuminating the street, the yard, but there were no shadows on the floor cast by the light coming in through the front window.

  There was no pool of street- or moonlight on the floor where he knew there should be. There was only darkness. He walked to the front window and looked outside at the streetlight. Then inside at the floor where there was nothing. He held his open palm up to the window and looked at it. It was dark. The light from outside seemed to come right to the window, but refused to go any further.

  He thought how strange that it should do that and he wondered if there was some kind of treatment on the windows that prevented the light from penetrating into the room.

  Then he felt something behind him, and he heard a breathing, a calm but labored intake of breath followed a second later by an equally slow exhalation, but it sounded like it was coming from tired, raspy lungs.

  He turned and looked into the dark, but saw nothing behind him until he realized the darkness coming from the dining room and kitchen wasn’t darkness, but a shadow, a deeper darkness moving within the dark of the room, unfolding itself from the floor, something huge standing up, coming out of hiding. He stepped back, but the window was behind him and there was nowhere for Brian to go as the thing spread its arms which seemed to span the width of the room, trapping him, and it moved closer, making that awful thumping sound he’d heard earlier, but Brian couldn’t make out its lower form so he couldn’t see how it was making it or how it was moving at all, it just grew bigger and moved closer and then he remembered he had jumped awake in the dark.

  He sat up quickly, looked around the room, waiting for it to jump out at him and finish what he thought it had started that night. But then, try as he might, he still couldn’t remember what had happened that night when it closed in on him.

  He remembered Mike waking him up the next day, but he had been in the bedroom, not the living room. Maybe he was remembering it wrong. Maybe none of it happened, and it was all a dream brought on by what had happened, or what he thought had happened, when he left his old house that night coupled with sleeping in a strange, uncomfortable place.

  To this day, Brian still couldn’t say with certainty what did or didn’t happen when he came out of the bathroom that night. But he knew if he continued to dream about it, he was going to have some incredibly restless nights.

  He zipped up, flushed, and stepped to the closed door, but then froze. He could hear himself breathing in the stillness and he found he was waiting and listening for something outside. Because he wanted to open the door and hear the sounds of Mike and Keith talking in the living room, he feared he was going to open the door and find a dark and empty house with something lying in wait for him.

  He stood there and waited. Finally, he heard a voice. It sounded like Keith.

  He opened the door, turned off the light, and stepped out.

  Keith waited until Brian and Steven were gone before turning to Mike and asking, “So did you ever tell them about what the guy said about the house?”

  “Nope,” Mike said. “And I’m still not going to. It’s bullshit.”

  “You hope.”

  “It’s got to be,” Mike said. “That dude was a lunatic.”

  “Probably,” Keith said. “But, man, I had this dream last night. I don’t know, it messed me up.”

  “What was it?”

  “Michelle was there,” Keith said.

  “I see. That couldn’t have been good for your mental wellbeing.”

  “No shit. She was all fucked up, too, and dead and bloated and rotten and shit. I mean, I know it’s only been a coup
le weeks, not even that long, and she doesn’t look like that, but it was a dream, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said.

  “So I was pulling up in front of the house here, but there was nobody here. The lights were all out and everything, but I knew, in my dream, that the work was already done, but I was still coming here to work on it, or to see what needed to be done, I don’t really remember all of it. Just the part mostly where I came up to the door and opened it and there was Michelle standing there, naked and dead--”

  “Nice body?”

  “You fucking know she did. But so she’s there naked and she won’t let me in the door and I’m like, ‘Come on, I have to work on the house, we need to get it done so everyone can move in.’ Cuz, like, we were all four supposed to move in here, in my dream.”

  “Did it have an extra bedroom?”

  Keith shrugged.

  “But, so, she wouldn’t move and let me in so I tried to just like put my hand up and kinda move her back a little so I could get in. But instead of moving her, her whole shoulder comes off in my hand. Like she’s one of those chocolate Santas, you know? Just this chunk of shoulder comes off in my hand, but I don’t freak out, I’m just like, ‘Now see what you did?’ But she don’t even notice. In fact, she’s not even looking at me anymore, she’s just staring straight ahead like she’s looking at something behind me, but there’s nothing there. And then she kinda smiles, like a grin, and then that freaked me the hell out.”

  “I can imagine. I can see it in my head and it’s freaking me out.”

  “Yeah, so I’m trying to hurry up and get in cuz now I’m thinking there’s something behind me, but my legs aren’t moving or anything and then Michelle starts yelling at me, ‘Get out of the house, get out of the house, get out of the house,’ like that, and I’m trying to get in the house cuz whatever she’s looking at behind me, you know?”

  Mike nodded.

  “It was some freaky shit. But it made me think about it again, what you said that guy told you.”

  “Fuck that dude,” Mike said. “He was mad because he didn’t live here anymore and we owned his house. Shoulda paid the bills, dude.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t the first time. There’ve been a few times I thought I saw her, usually out of the corner of my eye or something and when I look, there’s nothing there. But that night we did the cabinets and had pizza afterward, I don’t know. I thought I saw her in the kitchen, but it wasn’t just a shadow or anything, I mean I saw her come up from the basement. I know it was her ghost, man, and she was pissed. And you don’t think it’s weird what happened to Kevin and his guys? I was keeping track, ever since you told me that. Paul finishes the plumbing, Paul dies. Every time we got to a point where he needed fewer people to do the work, we had fewer people to do the work.”

  “That doesn’t mean the house did it,” Mike said, speaking as if to a child about the tooth fairy and just because she didn’t take a tooth and leave a dollar didn’t mean she wasn’t real, it just meant she had a busy night, and she’ll be by tonight for sure.

  “I don’t want to think it did, either, but it’s still fucked up, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think about it,” Mike lied. “It’s a house. And after this one, there’ll be another house, and that one will have things about it, and the next one and the next one. Every place is different, every place has a history. We can’t help that. We get in, we flip it, we sell it for profit and move on.”

  “Right on,” Keith said, although his tone said he didn’t believe that anymore.

  Brian and Steven came into the room and Mike asked, “Is everybody ready?”

  They piled into Brian’s Impala. The mood in the car felt a little off, so Brian turned on the radio to give them all a distraction.

  The Black Crowes were singing about needing a remedy and he turned it up. He took Quinault over to Ninth Street, then Marshall over to Tenth, which he would take all the way to Henry. He thought at first of taking Vogul, which cut diagonally through town from north-west to south-east, which was where they were headed, but he needed to stop for gas and there was a gas station at Meyer on Tenth.

  He pulled up to the pump and tried to insert his Visa, but the display told him to please see the cashier. He sighed and told the guys, “I gotta go in and pay, I’ll be back.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Keith said.

  “I think I can handle it.”

  “I gotta go. I didn’t go at the house.”

  Keith got out and they went inside, Brian stopping at the register while Keith continued toward the bathrooms.

  Brian slid his card across the counter and said, “Can I get twenty on--” he paused to look outside and see which pump he was on.

  When he turned back toward the cashier, all he saw was the gun in his face.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  The face that stared back at him was marked by a series of tattoos that were supposed to look like stitches or scars.

  “I’d stay put if I were you,” the guy said. “I’m almost done here. Nobody needs to get hurt.”

  “You got it,” Brian said, raising his hands.

  The bathroom door opened, the sound of the flushing toilet echoing, and Keith stepped out and said, “Man, I thought I was gonna need an epidural for a minute there.”

  The robber glanced over, but kept the gun on Brian.

  Brian said, “Keith.” Keith looked up, saw Brian’s look, then saw the cashier, and the gun.

  “Shit,” Keith said.

  “That’s what I said, too.”

  “Both of you shut up.” They did as they were told. “I’m almost done.” He was grabbing money from the cash drawer and shoving it into his pockets. Some of it spilled out, and he ducked to pick it up, just for a second, but Keith couldn’t let the chance go. He jumped toward the counter, reached out and tried to grab the barrel to yank it from the guy’s grip. Instead, the movement of the gun being yanked forward, while the robber’s finger was on the trigger, caused it to fire.

  The blast was loud and fast, startled all of them. Brian leapt sideways, as if trying to dodge the bullet while Keith, who had no leverage or traction, just fell forward onto the counter. It took a second for Brian to realize Keith had been shot. When the fact registered in his mind, his instinct was to run out the door, but the guy was already on his feet, the gun pointed at Brian’s head. He wouldn’t make it out the door.

  “Calm down,” he said. “That was an accident.”

  “I told you to stay put.”

  “It wasn’t me. He was just--”

  “I know what he was just. I said to stay put.”

  “It was an accident, man. Just take what you came for, I won’t stop you.”

  “Like you could,” he said, and fired.

  In the car, Mike and Steven had heard the first shot and both looked around, wondering what the hell was going on.

  “Holy fuck” Mike said when they saw Keith hit the floor.

  “What’s he doing in there?” Steven asked, watching Brian just standing there.

  “I don’t know,” Mike said. “We have to go see, though. We can’t leave him in there.”

  “Somebody in there has a gun! You want to run toward the danger?”

  “Fuck. What do we do?”

  It didn’t take long to ponder; the second shot, the one that sent Brian into the door, then to the floor, came quickly.

  “Fuck!” Mike yelled again, then tried to climb over to the driver’s seat before he realized Brian had the keys. “We have to run for it,” he said.

  “To where?” Steven asked.

  “Who cares, man, away from here. Now, before whoever that is gets out here.”

  They both climbed out of the Impala and took off running toward Cross Street a block south. They heard more shots behind them and Mike turned to look and nearly fell, wanting to throw up; Steven had been hit in the head and his skull had cracked, popped open like a block of ice, when he slammed against the pave
ment.

  Mike kept running, trying to get to cover wherever he could, hoping someone around here had thought to call the police. He only needed to keep moving long enough to hear the sirens, he told himself. Once he heard them, he would know help was here. But his legs were starting to burn and his stomach felt like a pit of acid while his lungs felt like they were filled with mustard gas.

  What the fuck, he thought.

  “It’s not right,” he said, his mouth dry from panting. “It’s not fair, we didn’t do anything wrong!”

  He felt his fear turning to anger, then to hatred, and he wanted to walk back to the house on Irving and throw a Molotov cocktail in the window and send the fucker up in flames. He wanted to stand in the front yard and watch it go up. He wanted to revel in the breaking glass and popping wood. He wanted to laugh when the roof collapsed. He wanted to walk among the ashes and piss on them.

  He wanted to find Sean Ellis’s corpse and beat it to mush for not warning him sooner, for not tearing the damn house down himself. Or Lynette for selling it to them. He wanted to punish everyone for what had happened, but he knew this was his fault, and his alone. He had found the house. He had convinced the others to join him on this ridiculous venture. He had been the first to step foot inside.

  The burden for this lay on Mike’s shoulders.

  He ducked into a yard and hid behind a bush, trying to catch his breath and let his legs rest. He didn’t think they would be able to carry him much further. He reached for his phone to call the police, but it wasn’t in his pocket. Where was it? Then he remembered, he had plugged it in when he got home from the airport. He was used to unplugging it when he woke up; it was always in his pocket when he left the house and he hadn’t thought about grabbing it. He saw an old man looking out the front window at him and Mike nodded and held up his hand in an “I know, I’m going” gesture. He should have asked if he could use the old man’s phone, but Mike could tell from the glare the old guy wanted nothing to do with whatever Mike was doing.