The Smashed Man of Dread End

by J. W. Ocker

  This is a diary of my attempts to beat S.M.

  I hope it has a happy ending.

  Eleven

  The words in the diary were written with a strange sort of ink, thick and black and shimmery, like what the runes were painted in. But portions were unreadable, the ink congealing into a solid mass in places. The ink in those congealed sections was tinted purple, although it still sparkled. Noe settled deeper into her bed and continued reading what was legible.

  I’ve written it in star stuff so that the adults can’t read it and think I’m crazy. I bought a fountain pen online and

  The rest of the paragraph was a mass of purple ink. Star stuff? Was that why Dad had thought the diary was blank? And why his eyes went purple? She flipped to the next readable section.

  Try Number One

  PLAN: Have to start somewhere. Going to try the metal softball bat Mom and Dad keep under their bed (in case somebody breaks in, I think). Simple plans work best.

  RESULTS: I hit him in the head with the bat. Didn’t work. Felt like I shattered my arm and almost burned my hands off. The bat was scorched

  I know you guys didn’t like that I tried, so I’m not telling you about my plans anymore. Safer for you that way.

  Noe flipped the page. Try Number Two was completely unreadable except for the title, and she couldn’t see where Try Number Three or Try Number Four started or ended. Try Number Five was mostly intact, although portions had congealed into purple.

  Try Number Five

  PLAN: Brute force doesn’t work. Sharp things don’t work. Going after his eyes didn’t work. Any time I touch him with something, I get bruised or burned . . .

  water, bleach

  soda, hair spray, milk

  gasoline

  RESULTS: Liquids roll off him like he’s wax

  makes the dirt floor wet, smells up the basement.

  The next page just had one sentence on it:

  I’m running out of ideas.

  The pages after that were covered in shimmery purple blobs instead of shimmery black letters, so Noe wasn’t sure what attempt number it was when she finally found a page that she could read. But what she read made her eyelids stretch.

  realized none of you could see the white house. Your eyes went purple, like adults looking at S.M. Remember me screaming and running away?

  Noe stopped reading and looked around like she was hoping to find someone sitting in the room to discuss this with. The words were confusing, and she wished the beginning of the page was readable, but it seemed like Erica was saying that the girls couldn’t see the white house? Was that why their eyes turned purple? Not because the Smashed Man was out . . .

  Noe thought back to where everyone had been standing when she saw their eyes go purple. They had been behind her, facing the white house. An invisible house. That couldn’t be possible, could it? A house only Noe could see? And Erica. That somehow made Noe feel less alone. Even though she was still very alone, since Erica was comatose in a hospital bed half the country away. Noe kept reading.

  thought S.M. had escaped, so I went to the basement that night to see. He came out of the crack like always. I then had this horrible idea that there might be other monsters around Dread End like S.M. making your eyes go purple

  learned no adults could see it either. Looks like an ordinary house, except it has a large X painted on it in star stuff

  What followed looked like a partial drawing of a house that had fused together with some of the text and turned purple. Noe picked up reading at the next legible part.

  I didn’t tell you because you hate when I talk about S.M. too much. I know you’d rather we just live with it until we’re old enough that we forget about it or can move away like Brett

  seemed abandoned, so I broke in. Rock through the window. I don’t think it counts as vandalism if the house doesn’t exist to most people

  That’s when the snake in my dreams changed.

  Noe let the book fall back onto her lap. The snake in her dreams? Noe’s imagination conjured the purple snake she kept seeing in her nightmares. The eyeless one that floated in blackness like it was suspended underwater. The one that moved toward her slowly and then started twisting the closer it got. She picked the diary back up.

  found a notebook full of symbols

  On the next page, Erica had drawn the R from Rune Rock and the Dead End sign. Beneath the symbol was the word “Amberonk.” Below that was a note that read, “For protection.” Beside the R was an X. It was called “Nonatuke,” and its explanation was “For hiding.”

  The Nonatuke on the white house is why you can’t see it. It hides what it’s painted on. I don’t know why it doesn’t work on me. I’m probably special.

  Erica had drawn a smiley face with its tongue sticking out at the end of that last sentence. Noe had already started to like this girl who was courageous enough to hit a monster with a softball bat, but the joke made Noe like Erica all the way.

  I don’t understand the R’s, the Amberonks. Who or what’s being protected, and from who or what?

  more symbols, but none of the others had explanations, only names

  my snake nightmare. It’s black and glittery and doesn’t have eyes. It’s fast and rushes at me until it stops, like it hits a wall. It twists like it’s being bent by an invisible force. That’s when I always wake up. That part’s more terrifying than the snake.

  Noe’s forehead wrinkled as she read that paragraph. That wasn’t her snake nightmare. Her snake was purple and moved slowly. But it was close.

  The night I got back from the white house, I had the nightmare again. Except I didn’t wake up when the snake started twisting. It bent into one of the sigils in the book: Elberex.

  Here Erika had sketched three lines. The first was a simple horizontal line. Below that was another horizontal line, but with one end curving up and the other end curving down. Below that second line was a third one where the ends kept curving up and down until they touched in the middle of the line, creating a sideways eight. Noe recognized it as the symbol for infinity, but Erica had labeled it “Elberex.”

  no explanation for what the Elberex does, but I think it can destroy S.M.

  Noe read that part three times to make sure she had read it correctly. Erica thought she’d found a way to destroy the Smashed Man. With just a symbol. It was unbelievable. But so was the Smashed Man, and so were invisible houses. Noe turned the page and almost threw the book to the floor. It was the face of the Smashed Man, sketched in horrid detail.

  Noe’s arm skin goose-bumped as she imagined Erica sitting on the dryer in the basement with this diary in her hands, watching the Smashed Man oozing out, sketching until he was almost out, before running upstairs to reset him. She wouldn’t have done that, would she? Willingly waited for the Smashed Man? Maybe. This was a girl who took a softball bat to his head, after all. The only difference between the Smashed Man’s face on the page and the Smashed Man’s face in Noe’s memory was that this one had the Elberex on its forehead.

  need to draw the Elberex on S.M.’s head. I don’t know how I know. Just do. Deep down. When I sit quietly with my eyes closed, I know it. Like I know my name and my parents’ faces and the color of grass. But it wasn’t just the symbol. I needed star stuff from the white house to draw it with and I need him to come out of the wall as far as possible, because I think that weakens him

  More congealed ink. The inevitably of where this story was going shook Noe. She wanted to scream at Erica not to go forward with her plan. She wanted to slam the book shut. Wedge it back into the space between the dryer and the wall in the basement. To pretend she had never found it. She wanted to throw her blanket over her head. Beg her parents to move again. Run away. But she forced herself to keep reading.

  know it’s risky. I don’t want any of you hurt. If it works, then I’ll tell you right away and I’ll burn this diary at the next bonfire

  really wish I had a witch stone right now. I really wish you guys could wis
h me luck. The only thing that has made life on Dread End bearable is all of you.

  RESULTS:

  That’s where it ended. No result. None that Erica knew, anyway. Some of the pages at the end of the book were full of doodles, some congealed and others not. There were drawings of the Elberex—probably where Erica had been practicing—and lots of sketches of the Smashed Man. His face. His face with the Elberex on his forehead. Him coming out of a wall. The crack at the far end of the basement. Noe now knew that Erica had in fact sat there on the dryer watching the Smashed Man ooze out of the crack for many nights. Not so she could draw him. But to gather the courage she needed to face him. With glitter paint as her only weapon.

  Noe put the book down, tied her wrist to the bedpost, and settled in to try to sleep. But all she could think about was what had happened two floors below. She wondered how Erica could have such confidence in such a strange plan. Painting a symbol on the Smashed Man’s head? She wondered at what point Erica had realized her plan wasn’t going to work. She wondered what the Smashed Man had done to Erica. She wondered what she should do with the diary and the white house and everything that Erica had kept from her friends. She thought about the eyeless snake. Then she thought about the Smashed Man, not down in the basement, but under her bed. Or under her mattress. Behind her dresser. Behind her headboard. She quickly untied herself, grabbed a pillow and blanket, and went to sleep on the floor of Len’s room.

  The only light in Len’s room was the decapitated unicorn lamp beside her bed. It cast just enough illumination to show Len’s face in the dark. Usually that’s what it showed. This time it showed a fluffy toy civet staring at her from the hollow in the pillow where Len’s head should have been.

  Twelve

  Noe dropped her pillow and blanket, hit the light switch in Len’s room, and ran to the bed. She pushed around the bedclothes and stuffed animals. No Len.

  She dashed back into the hall. When she saw that the baby gate was ajar, Noe’s insides went prickly. She pushed through it and ran to peek into the darkness of her parents’ room. She could hear Dad snoring. See vague, dark lumps in the bed. She couldn’t tell if Len was one of those lumps. She stared at the spot where Len would most likely be and then flashed the light switch on and immediately off, too fast to wake her parents and too fast to see what she was looking at. She concentrated on the afterimage in her head. Mom lying on her side on top of the blanket. Dad on his back with a leg hanging out and his mouth open. No Len. Noe ran downstairs.

  She was getting better at navigating the house in the dark, and she skidded through the living room and into the kitchen without turning on any lights. She could feel her heartbeat pulsing in every part of her body. Could feel wetness down her back that had nothing to do with the summer heat.

  Even with the lights out, she could sense that the door to the basement was wide open. That the blackness of a void had replaced the blackness of the painted wood. Why wouldn’t Dad just put a lock on this door? She could feel the square of night in the window behind her, like it was oozing a flood of tarry blackness to push her into that void.

  But she didn’t need the motivation.

  Noe hit the light and tore down the stairs. At the halfway point, her socked feet slipped on the steps and her legs went out from under her. She grabbed the railing in panic and saved herself a fall down the stairs to hard dirt, although she hit her tailbone on the edge of a step, sending a painful shock up her back. She took a big breath, and then pulled herself to her feet and descended the last few steps, her legs a little wobbly. She didn’t bother to look around once she hit the floor, instead racing around the water heater to the far side of the basement to the crack where the Smashed Man lived. She stifled a scream with her fist.

  Len was there, her yellow pajamas strange against the dirt floor and rock walls. Tiny in the dim space. A stuffed narwhal under one arm. A stuffed cassowary under the other. She wasn’t moving.

  The Smashed Man was also there.

  He was slinking out of the crack. Almost all the way out of the crack. Wavering and floating in the otherworldly silence and the underground dimness like a nightmare. He was free to the middle of his thighs. His face was grinning and wild. His purple eyes so wide she could see the tops and bottoms of his eyeballs. The skin that showed through the rips and holes in his gray clothes was torn and wounded like his face. Whiteness that must have been bone shone through the red here and there. His extended arms were almost brushing Len’s face. Len stood there mesmerized, like she was watching a movie that was too old for her. Not reacting. Not hugging her stuffed animals. Just watching the Smashed Man.

  Except that she wasn’t watching. Her eyes were closed. She was in a sleep state. Len had sleepwalked down here.

  “Len!” Noe screamed, rushing to her sister’s side. She grabbed Len’s arm with one hand and, without thinking about it, swatted at one of the flat hands of the Smashed Man with her other.

  Instantly she felt a shock ten times as bad as her bruised tailbone. She flew across the basement, taking Len with her. They barely missed the water heater. Noe felt her body hit the ground hard, the air knocked out of her, the basement swimming around her, blackness creeping at the edges of her vision.

  She couldn’t black out. Not with Len and the Smashed Man in the basement together.

  Noe heard sobs and saw the stuffed animals sitting against the wall, dirty from having rolled to that spot. She got slowly onto all fours, and then leaned back until she was in a kneeling position. Finally she stood. Her entire body felt like the Smashed Man looked. Broken and bruised.

  Len was three feet away, lying on her back like she was about to make a snow angel, her face wrinkled and wet from sniffling. Noe picked her up by her armpits and raced across the basement and up the stairs. The last thing she saw of the Smashed Man was him floating there in the air, only his feet in the wall.

  Only his feet in the wall.

  They crossed the line from wooden step to the vinyl floor. Noe shut the door and collapsed onto the kitchen floor with Len in her arms.

  Only his feet were stuck in the wall. It must have taken a good five minutes for him to make that much progress from when she had first seen him. She gasped. She must have lost consciousness when she hit the floor. Her mind conjured a bird’s-eye view of the basement five minutes before. Her lying on her stomach on the floor, motionless. The two stuffed animals against the wall. Len lying on her back, confused and hurt and crying. And the Smashed Man. Wavering on the air with his arms out in front of him, inching out slowly but steadily in their direction.

  “Turn the light on!” said Len in a panic. Noe reluctantly heaved her body off the floor, every part of her aching, and found the light switch. The kitchen still looked gloomy with the light on.

  Len was looking around and wiping her face. “Narrie. Cappie. Where are they?”

  “Are you hurt?” Noe asked, kneeling beside her and looking at her face and hands. Light scuff marks on the back of one hand and on her elbows were the only visible signs that she’d been thrown across a room.

  “Narrie. Cappie,” Len insisted, pulling her hand away from Noe and wiping her nose with her pajama sleeve.

  “Can you stand up for me?” asked Noe. The way Len was moving and the fact that she wasn’t crying anymore were good news, but Noe wanted to make sure. If Len felt ten percent as bad as Noe did, Noe would need to tell Mom and Dad. And she had no idea what to tell Mom and Dad.

  Len got quickly to her feet and asked about her stuffed narwhal and cassowary again.

  “They’re still in the basement. We’ll get them tomorrow.”

  “The werewolves will get them down there.”

  “I know. The werewolves. That’s why we have to wait until morning.”

  Thirteen

  Noe sat on the top step of the basement stairs, her legs stretched in front of her to rest against the steps below. The morning light glowed through the kitchen window in shafts sliced by the forest trees. She was eating
a hard-boiled egg and a piece of buttered toast off a plate teetering on her knees. Dad had made them for her before heading upstairs to his home office. Mom was off to her office in Boston. Len was still asleep in Noe’s bed.

  Beside Noe were three objects: a diary, a stuffed fish with a unicorn horn, and a stuffed bird that looked like an ostrich with a bone sticking out of its head.

  She gazed down into the basement and imagined it as a deep pool cooling her legs. Above the surface was one reality, below it another. Maybe that pool was an ocean, dark and mysterious, hiding scary things below the surface that could at any moment bite her legs off. Hiding one scary thing, really.

  She felt herself turn ghostly.

  That was how the rest of the Dread Enders must feel. Ghostly. That was what had shocked her about them when she first saw them. Even now that she had gotten to know them. They didn’t laugh and fool around and play games and say stupid things. They were exhausted. Exhausted by terror. Exhausted by living their lives with the constant knowledge that below their feet was a monster. Exhausted by not knowing anything about him and not being able to do anything about him and being so isolated in dealing with him.

  A part of her wanted to do the only thing that was within her control. To head downstairs one night and stare at the crack until the Smashed Man came all the way out. She didn’t know what would happen, but maybe it was better than this, better to get caught by the Smashed Man than to live above his constant, low-burning presence, spooling and unspooling every time she went down into the basement, her parents literally blind to the danger. That was a decision the Dread Enders faced every day too.