“Eventually they bring out the kid’s body. It’s covered up on a stretcher. But something’s not right. Something’s really not right. You see, it’s too short, even for a seven- year-old’s body.”
Jacob had begun to follow Jesse’s torch, watching its erratic path across the front of the house. It was better than watching Rod.
The torch climbed upwards, finding a large dark window above the bench. Jacob turned to look at Jesse. Even in the dim light he could see how white Jesse had turned. Jacob thought he might bolt, or be sick, at any moment.
Rod stepped into the torch’s beam. “You see, that’s because the nut who kidnapped him, the freak who snatched him, he took a shotgun…”
Jesse couldn’t move. Rod drew closer with each word, the red glow from Jesse’s torch lighting up his face, growing more intense with every step. To Jesse he looked like the devil with a buzz cut.
“He took a shotgun and he pressed it against the kid’s face.” Rod made a gun with two of his fingers. He held it up in front of him, reaching out towards Jesse. Then the devil placed his gun against Jesse’s head.
Silence. Glen realized he was holding his breath.
“BANG!!!” Rod pulled the trigger. Everyone jumped. Jacob grabbed a hold of Jesse’s arm. Jesse jerked hard against his grip. If he hadn’t been holding him he would have run, or worse fallen off of the porch. Jacob held on tight. It wasn’t just to stop Jesse. He was terrified, too.
“The nut pulls the trigger…only, only one of the barrels fires.” In his panic, Jesse had dropped his torch. The light rolled away across the porch. Now, Rod’s words came out of the dark. Without the light to distract them, the boys’ imaginations ran wild.
“The shot blows half the kid’s head clean off… But it doesn’t kill him. It doesn’t kill him straight away and he’s lying there on the ground, he’s screaming, screaming in pain, broken, bleeding, crying out for help.”
Jacob put his free hand over his mouth. He still held tightly to Jesse with the other. What Rod described was terrible. Even his voice wavered, not quite so certain, not relishing the ghost story quite as much as before.
“The crazy bastard sees what he’s done. He takes the shotgun—he can’t bear the terrible screaming—and he puts it in his mouth… He closes his eyes and…”
Rod put his fingers to his mouth and shut his eyes.
“BANG!!!”
Glen let out a little scream, followed by: “Shit! Shit, Rod!” as he pulled himself together.
“He unloads the remaining round into his head, blowing his brains all over the walls.”
Jesse’s wide eyes darted around the porch looking for something to distract him from Rod’s story. He stopped on the outline of the black window above the bench. The mottled glass caught a little light from a streetlamp down on the road behind them. Jesse focussed on the glow on the pane. Anything was better than the darkness where his imagination lay screaming and covered in blood.
“That poor kid, lying on the floor, broken, screaming and bleeding. He watched as that monster ate his gun. They said that all night, even after they’d taken the body away, the cops on the scene kept hearing screaming, that terrible screaming. That’s right isn’t it?”
Glen nodded.
“Glen’s heard it. At night, if you listen very quietly, you can hear that horrible screaming.”
Rod’s voice grew quieter and quieter. He turned to look at the window behind him. The other three friends followed his gaze. For a terrifying moment Jesse thought he saw someone standing in the window. A black shape that moved when Rod moved, mimicking his movements. Rod’s reflection gained on the window.
The night had fallen silent, as if the whole neighbourhood leaned close, straining to hear the smallest movement, dreading the sound of the screaming Rod described.
“Right!” Rod’s words made all three of his audience start. He whirled around to face Jacob, Jesse and Glen. “Who’s first?”
“Wha…?” Jesse couldn’t take much more of this.
“The mail slot!”
Glen nodded. Rod had made his way to 1428 Montgomery’s front door. Slowly crossing the dark porch, the other three followed.
“The screaming moves from room to room. It moves through the whole house. Glen’s heard it, right?”
Glen nodded.
“Sometimes it comes right up to the front door.”
Rod listened intently, leaning close, in towards the door. Jesse hadn’t been this scared since that night he’d woken from a nightmare and gone downstairs to find his Dad watching The Shining. He’d stood in the doorway for ten minutes, watching, eyes as wide as tonight, fascinated and completely terrified until the crazy woman had started screaming, and then he was screaming too.
Rod turned from the door. “Two months ago there’s a new mailman. He doesn’t know his route yet and he accidentally posts the mail for Glen’s house here. It’s only after he’s done it that he realizes he’s got the wrong house. So, he knocks on the door but no-one comes. He looks through the windows. The place looks deserted. He lifts the mail slot—”
They all leaned in as Rod lifted the mail slot (as slow as possible for maximum effect). “And he reaches inside to try and grab back the mail. He’s reaching in when he thinks he hears something. Is someone there?”
Jesse realized he was standing right by the rotting bench. He could smell it. His eyes were drawn to the black window once more. Leaning closer, he thought he could make out his own shadow reflected in the dark glass.
Rod continued, “He reaches deeper inside, straining to try and reach the mail.” Rod stretched an arm out in front of him, not into the mail slot—he was acting, not crazy! He played his part just like he’d rehearsed it in front of his mirror that afternoon. Rod reached out pretending to grasp for the mail. “He’s almost got it when… out of nowhere, a cold hand clamps around his arm!” Rod’s other hand tore out of the darkness and clamped around his outstretched arm. Jesse screamed.
“He screams! He’s struggling to get away but the freezing hand holds him tight!” Rod played out the struggle to his captivated audience. Glen smiled—this was even better than when Rod had shown him that afternoon.
“Eventually he manages to snap his hand away! He rips his hand out of the mail slot and he runs! He doesn’t stop running till he’s far away from this place.” Rod turned as if he was watching the mailman flee screaming from the house and disappearing into the distance.
When he turned back, his voice was low, almost a whisper as he delivered his final, chilling warning. “If he hadn’t managed to get his hand free…God knows what would have happened to him.”
Rod reached into his coat pocket. “Safe to say, the next day there was a new mailman on this route!”
He cupped one hand over the other to hide whatever it was he’d just retrieved from his coat. The boys leaned in. What was it? What was Rod hiding in his hands? Rob whipped his cupped hand away to reveal…“Straws!”
Gripped between his thumb and his palm, their lengths hidden from the group, Rod held a line of four glow-in-the-dark drinking straws. He’d found them in the back of the kitchen drawer, left over from last Halloween. What a find! They were perfect for tonight. He’d left them on his windowsill all afternoon to make sure they glowed bright when the time came.
“Who wants to go first?”
Slowly, Rod waved the straws past each of the boys. “Whoever draws the short straw goes first.”
“Glen?” As they’d planned, the straws took a slow journey past Glen’s face. Rod faked a pause, a false start before heading onwards to Jesse. “Jesse?” Jesse let out a little moan of fear. For a horrible moment, he thought Rod was going to pick him.
“Jacob?” Rod shifted the straws to Jacob. There they lingered, just in front of Jacob’s nose. They weren’t going anywhere else; Rod had made his choice.
&nbs
p; Jacob looked to Glen and Jesse, who watched, transfixed. They didn’t want to draw first any more than he did. No one was going to come to his rescue. After a long moment, Jacob reached for the straw furthest to his right.
He changed his mind at the last moment and went far left. Jacob pulled the straw from Rod’s hand.
11
“It’s short! It’s short! You’re first!” Rod quickly returned the rest of the straws to his pocket. In truth, all four were equally short, but only he and Glen knew that.
Jacob looked from the straw in his hand to the mail slot. He thought about protesting but that would just make him look like he was scared. He was scared—terrified—but he kept quiet.
The front door to 1428 Montgomery was so cold that Jacob was surprised his hand didn’t stick to it. It felt like it was coated with ice. Even when he took his hand away, he didn’t seem to be able to shake the cold off. It felt like it had eaten into him, somehow fixed inside him. He shivered, looking to Rod in the hope that he’d relent, but Rod just stood watching, waiting…
Reluctantly, Jacob pushed open the mail slot to peer inside.
He wasn’t sure exactly what he expected to see on the other side of the freezing door, but all the possibilities he imagined were equally terrible. In truth, he couldn’t see very much.
The darkness in the entrance hallway was so thick he couldn’t even tell how near or far away anything was. That just made his heart race faster. He leaned close, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He felt cold air on his face, to him the breath of something long dead escaping from the mail slot. Jacob closed his eyes.
“It’s only a story,” he whispered so the other boys didn’t hear.
When he opened his eyes again, they’d begun to grow accustomed to the deep dark. Across the hallway a staircase had materialized. Or, at least, half of one. He followed it step by step upwards with his eyes, until the darkness blocked him from seeing any further. His eyes lingered on the last stair he could make out.
Anyone who goes further than that step will never be seen again, he thought.
Jacob’s eyes returned to the hallway. Everywhere he looked, shadows crowded the room—so many places for his nightmares to creep from. Demons eyed him from the darkness, the boy with half a head waited to stretch out his dead arms and grab at him.
“It’s only a story,” he repeated to himself.
Jacob pulled his sleeve down until it covered his hand. He gripped it from inside with his fist so it wouldn’t slip. Something to protect him from whatever lay on the other side of the door. Slowly, he pressed his fist into the slot.
With his hand balled tight it wouldn’t pass through the small gap. He tried again, trying to force his covered hand through, get this over with, but all he did was graze his knuckles on the metal surround. Reluctantly he let go of his sleeve, his fingers slipping out from the arm of his sweater. He felt the cold immediately.
It was like reaching into a freezer. Jacob’s fingers appeared on the other side of the mail slot, twitching like bait in the water.
“Shh, shh, what was that?” Rod didn’t look like he was joking any more. “Shhh! Did you hear that?”
Jacob froze, his hand half through the slot. “What? What?” The boys listened in silence.
Nothing.
The night was completely still.
“I can’t hear it now. I…er…I thought.”
Jesse was already backing away from the house. “Let’s go! Come on. Let’s go!”
“No, no! I can do this!”
Jacob’s bravery surprised even Rod. He felt sure he’d overplayed his hand just now.
Inside the house, Jacob’s hand gradually reached through the mail slot. His fingers became his hand, his hand his wrist.
“I can do this… I can do this…” Maybe if he said it enough times it would be true.
The slot was tight, pushing back Jacob’s jacket sleeve as he reached in. His bare arm disappeared deeper into the black.
Outside, his other hand hung forgotten by his side. Rod looked to Glen. Glen nodded. Rod looked into his bag. About twenty minutes before they’d arranged to meet up, while Jacob was having his daily half hour Playstation time, Rod had crept into the kitchen. He’d taken a freezer bag and filled it with ice cubes. Then he’d sealed it and hidden it, wrapped in his scarf, in his bag.
Rod unwrapped the bag. The ice cubes had begun to melt but they’d still do the job. He reached in and grabbed a handful. He was so pleased with his plan that he barely noticed the ice stinging his fingers.
“It’s so cold!” Jacob whispered, as if he was worried the screaming boy would hear him. Inside the house, the hairs on Jacob’s arm stood up, a last line of defence against the biting air.
Behind Jacob, Rod took his hand from the ice. His fingers hurt now, they throbbed with the cold, but it would all be worth it soon. He began to sneak into position.
Jacob pushed his arm in further still. He was up to his elbow now, almost as far as he could reach. His pale arm stood out against the swarming shadows. Through the window, Jesse thought he saw one of those shadows move.
“It’s only a story… It’s only a story…”
Rod reached out his icy hand to grab a hold of Jacob’s. Inside the hallway, the darkness closed in on Jacob’s arm.
Suddenly Jacob started to scream.
12
Thrashing, panicking, trying to tear his arm from the slot, Jacob screamed out, “There’s something in there! It’s got me! Rod! Help!”
Rod looked to Glen. He hadn’t even touched him!
Jesse was gone. He bolted, running, screaming from the porch. Rod just stared. All his bravado gone, he froze, rooted to the spot.
Jacob desperately tried to wrestle his arm from the slot. Crying and shouting for help, he pulled as hard as he could. The metal flap snapped down on his arm, biting into his skin, digging deeper each time he tried to wrench his arm free. Still he fought like his life depended on it.
“Help! Rod! Help!”
Rod wanted to help, he wanted to do something—anything—but he couldn’t move, he was just too scared. Who was that? Who else was screaming? He could hear it. Underneath Jacob’s cries, another voice fighting to be heard.
“Rod! Rod!” This time it was Glen. He rushed forward and jammed his hand into the mail slot. Finding the metal plate, he forced it up and off of Jacob’s arm. That should have freed him but still he struggled to get away.
Suddenly, Jacob ripped his bleeding arm clear. The metal plate had peeled back the skin where it had dug into his forearm, but he wasn’t feeling any pain. Spinning away from the door, he grabbed Rod by the arm and ran.
Three silhouettes, crying and gasping for breath, hammered through the overgrown front lawn. They didn’t look back.
Lucy heard the screaming and got quickly out of her car to investigate. When she saw Jesse—a blur of whimpering terror—race past her and run out into the road, she yelled for him to stop. He didn’t even slow down. The next child slammed into her waist.
Turning back, Lucy looked down to see who had run into her. There was no one there. Confused, she looked up just in time to catch a terrified Rod as he tried and failed to dodge around her. She grabbed him, pinning his arms to his sides.
“What are you doing? What’s going on?”
She knew she was holding him too tight, shaking him while she was speaking to him, but he’d come from that house and she had to know what had happened.
“There’s something! Something in the house! It grabbed Jake!”
“What are you talking about?”
Rod just stared at her, tear-stained and terrified. Lucy relaxed her grip on him. Straight away he wriggled through her fingers and ran.
Lucy looked up to the house. She could feel it urging her forward.
“Are you alright?” Matt
’s voice called from his car. How long had he been there?
“Why does no one just say ‘hi’ to me anymore?” Lucy eyed Matt awkwardly trying to lock his car while carrying two cups of takeaway coffee.
“Sorry, hi.” He precariously balanced one cup on top of the other.
“Hi.”
“What was all that about?” So he had seen her with the boy.
“Just some kids…playing games, I guess”
Matt joined her on the parking strip. He looked up to the house. She could see how it drew his gaze too. In this light Matt looked older than his forty-three years. Lucy didn’t remember him having those wrinkles around his eyes. He looked tired.
“What’s that?” He’d noticed the copy of The BFG she held. It had been one of Alex’s favorite books.
“Nothing.” Lucy turned back to her car. She threw the book onto the passenger’s seat. She planned to follow it, get into the car and leave.
“You want some coffee? I picked some up in case I saw you here.”
She could hear the loneliness in Matt’s voice. All they had was each other and that black house. Lucy closed the car door and turned back to him. “Okay.”
13
Matt’s car was still warm, but he switched the heating on all the same. He didn’t often have guests these days.
Lucy sipped her coffee. It had been over six months since she’d last sat in this car. It smelt the same as it always had—leather from the seats and oil from the endless weekends Matt had lost under the Camaro’s hood. It smelt like the winter they first met.
“How’s your new apartment?” It wasn’t really new. She’d leased the apartment on Berkley after Matt had found her cuttings. She’d moved out of their house the next day, a voice she’d come to trust whispering it was the only way. A place to store her words, herself, her son. That fractured voice had been her own madness, and less than a month later she’d found herself in the foyer of the William Tuke Psychiatric Hospital, pockets stuffed with paper.
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