The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares
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“Jason Blum has done it again with this collection of startlingly imaginative and remarkably potent tales. Anyone who loves a brilliant story—scary or otherwise—should read this book.”
—Ryan Murphy, co-creator of American Horror Story
“Like the best horror movies, these stories begin in the real world, then slyly move you to a darker place, a nightmare world just beyond our reality. I enjoyed my visit to The Haunted City—but I am still shivering.”
—R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps and Fear Street
“I found myself double-checking that my door was locked. This anthology is a compelling reminder that it does not take anything but a good story to terrify.”
—M. Night Shyamalan, writer and director of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable
“Great horror storytelling. Jason Blum has assembled the top twisted talents for this anthology.”
—James Wan, director of Insidious, The Conjuring, and Furious 7
“The stories in this book are written by some of the most macabre, original minds working in cinema today….I loved it. You’ll love it, too.”
—Leigh Whannell, cowriter of Saw and director of Insidious: Chapter 3
“The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares is the perfect book to read at bedtime…especially if you want to stay awake with the lights on all night.”
—Jeff Lindsay, New York Times bestselling author of the Dexter novels
“The best chills always start with great stories and sometimes short ones, too! This anthology shows how sharp Jason Blum is when it comes to finding fresh blood to haunt our nightmares.”
—Alexandre Aja, writer and director of The Hills Have Eyes and Mirrors
A BLUMHOUSE BOOKS / VINTAGE BOOKS ORIGINAL, JULY 2015
Copyright © 2015 by Blumhouse Productions, LLC
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., Toronto. Simultaneously published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Blumhouse and colophon are trademarks of Blumhouse Productions, LLC.
This page constitutes an extension of the copyright page.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:
The Blumhouse book of nightmares : the haunted city / presented by Jason Blum.
pages cm
1. Horror tales, American. 2. Fantasy fiction, American. 3. American fiction—21st century. 4. Cities and towns—Fiction. I. Blum, Jason, editor.
PS648.H6B65 2015 813'.0873808—dc23 2015015090
Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9781101873915
eBook ISBN 9780385540001
eBook design adapted from printed book design by Michael Collica
Cover design by Michael J. Windsor
Cover images: (octopus) Joanne Schmaltz; (man) Tara Moore/Getty Images; (roots) andreluc88/Shutterstock; (eyes) Bruce Rolff/Shutterstock
www.vintagebooks.com
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Jason Blum
Hellhole
Christopher Denham
Valdivia
Eli Roth
Golden Hour
Jeremy Slater
A Clean White Room
Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill
The Leap
Dana Stevens
Novel Fifteen
Steve Faber
The Darkish Man
Nissar Modi
1987
Ethan Hawke
Geist
Les Bohem
Gentholme
Simon Kurt Unsworth
Donations
William Joselyn
The Old Jail
Sarah Langan
The Words
Scott Stewart
Dreamland
Michael Olson
Meat Maker
Mark Neveldine
Eyes
George Gallo
Procedure
James DeMonaco
Permissions Acknowledgments
About the Contributors
There is an old saying in Hollywood: Those who can’t write or direct, produce. Hence, producer Jason Blum. I knew at an early age that I wanted to work in the movie business, but writing and directing are not my thing. So I learned how to support writers and directors by building the right environment in which they can thrive. That is what we try to do at Blumhouse in film, television, and now books.
Whenever I am meeting with a new filmmaker, I always say the same thing: “I can’t promise you a hit movie, but I can promise you that it will be your movie.” At Blumhouse we call it relinquishing creative control.
To ensure directors get that freedom, we keep the budgets low. Sometimes, those compromises can be frustrating. But oftentimes, they inspire ingenuity and creativity, as when James Wan created a ghoul merely by putting a gas mask on a puppet in Insidious. Or when Scott Derrickson had a ghost in a paused video turn his head ever so slightly in Sinister. Or when Oren Peli attached a harness to Katie Featherstone and yanked her out of bed in Paranormal Activity.
In Hollywood people who make horror movies are outsiders. We operate, to a large degree, outside the traditional system. As a result, an incredible community has grown, filled with some of the most talented storytellers around. We all know one another and we all help one another out. We want one another to succeed simply for the love of all things scary.
This incredible sense of community is what we wanted to replicate and build on in the anthology you now hold in your hands. Growing up, I read all the classic horror stories and later many of the great horror novels. My current scary-reading obsession is true crime. So it was a thrill to fulfill a longtime dream and invite some of today’s most powerful storytellers to contribute to The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares: The Haunted City.
They were given only two guidelines—let it take place in a city and enjoy no other creative constraints whatsoever. When I first started approaching the creators, I joked that this is the first project I’ve done where they didn’t have to worry about going over budget. They could write as big or as small as they liked. And that is what they did.
I hope you enjoy their work as much as I have. But you just might want to avoid doing that at bedtime. They say movies are the shared dreams of the audience—that’s why they have to be experienced in the dark. Well, when you turn off the light, these stories may cause nightmares. And there’ll be no one with you in the audience to share it.
Sleep tight,
Jason Blum
“One point three million for a one-bedroom?”
Sam and Martha Rathbone stood still in the vacant apartment. As if any sudden movement would further reduce the square footage. “That’s just the asking price,” the Broker said. “Two bids came in at one point eight. Cash.”
“It’s one bedroom,” Sam said. “And there are three of us. Three people.”
“Technically, two people,” the Broker said. “One child.”
“Technically, the child is a person.”
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“A small person.”
Martha said, “I think our son needs his own room.”
Sam checked the stairwell, where their six-year-old son, Max, was coloring in his coloring book. Max made a funny face at his dad. Sam made the face back. It was their face.
“Everybody wants to be in Brooklyn,” said the Broker. “At your price point, Williamsburg is out of the question. Williamsburg is for Alexander Wang models. Greenpoint is for trust funders. Carroll Gardens is colonized by shortlisted novelists. And Bushwick has been bought up by boys in bands. At your price point, you’re going to have to go off the grid.”
“Can you please stop saying ‘price point’?” Sam turned to his wife. “Maybe we should just stay in Manhattan. Keep renting.”
“Renting is just throwing our money away,” Martha told him. “It’s time to leave the Lower East Side. It’s time to buy. Before the interest rates balloon. Everybody’s buying.”
“How can anybody afford this?”
The Broker broke up the domestic disturbance: “Brooklyn does go beyond the first three stops on the L train. Do you want to be followers? Or do you want to be pioneers? Stake your claim in terra incognita. This isn’t just real estate, folks. This is manifest destiny.”
“It’s our destiny to raise our son in a studio,” said Sam. “You’ve showed us ten places and every place is totally undersized and totally overpriced.”
“Well,” said the Broker, “I do have one more place to show you.”
—
They shared a cab from Williamsburg. Sam, Martha, and Max in the backseat and the Broker up front. Looking out the window, Sam watched the pageant of epicene hipsters in genitally challenging pants drinking forties up and down Bedford Avenue. Sam and Martha used to spend more time in Brooklyn. Back when they used to get tattoos. Back when Sam used to have gallery shows and drink his weight (160 pounds) in foam Budweisers at Rosemary’s Tavern. The drinking days were done. The days of skateboarding across the BQE with seven cans of Molotow and spray-painting rubyliths across the viaduct, pretending to be some gutterpunk Basquiat. Pretending he didn’t have a BFA in painting from RISD. Sam didn’t do street art. Not anymore. He repaired furniture. He refurbished divans. Hell, they had bills to pay. They had a child. And they were about to have a mortgage.
“Dad?” Max asked. “Where’s that flag from?”
Max pointed at the faded blue, yellow, and red flag decal adhered to the taxi’s Plexiglas partition. Sam said, “I don’t know, Mad Max. I sucked at flags in school.”
Martha said, “Honey, why don’t you ask the driver?”
The taxi driver had a cleft-palate scar on his upper lip and was listening to very loud, very foreign music. The music, Sam thought, sounded weirdly pastoral. Incessant tambourine. Russian? Belarusian? Gypsy music.
Max asked for Martha’s cell phone and googled national flags and found, on Wikipedia, the corresponding ensign that matched the peeling decal. “Romania,” said Max. “The driver is from Romania.” Max opened Google Translate. It was his favorite app and he would spend hours translating random languages. Sam and Martha thought it was a better heuristic hobby than all those books about boy witches. Max typed in a few words and an automaton voice translated into Romanian: “Numele meu este Max! Sunt vechi de şase ani!” (My name is Max! I’m six years old!) The driver spewed out a spate of foreign declamations and fist-bumped Max: “Baiat bun!! Baiat bun!!”
From the front seat, the Broker turned and said, “Welcome to your new neighborhood.”
—
Crown Heights was not a neighborhood they had considered. Too dangerous. Too far for Martha’s daily commute to Manhattan, where, as an advocacy lawyer, she made no profit working for a nonprofit. Sam, Martha, and Max bundled up against the winter wind and followed the Broker across Nostrand Avenue, whose concrete median segregated the Hasids on one side and the Caribbeans on the other. Kosher bakeries. Check-cashing joints. Family Dollar.“Trust me,” said the Broker, “Crown Heights is a diamond in the rough. It’s where everybody who is anybody will be in two years.”
Just off Franklin Avenue, they passed a sketchy windowless bar/social club from which a man in a tracksuit emerged and mumbled Eastern bloc obscenities about Martha’s ass.
“It’s not exactly SoHo,” said the Broker, “but there are plenty of places to eat and drink.”
“My dad doesn’t drink,” Max told the Broker. “My dad went to rehab.”
“Okay, Max,” Sam said, taking his son’s hand. “Thank you for sharing.”
Sam locked eyes with the West Indian employees inside a bodega. They sold blunts and pirated DVDs. And, judging by their derisive faces, the locals didn’t just see Sam and Martha as speculative homeowners. They saw Pilgrims on the shore proffering smallpox blankets, the harbingers of an impending invasion of craft beer and artisanal cheese.
The Broker also attracted his share of sideways glances at his coiffed fauxhawk, skinny tie, and androgynous gait. Impervious, he led the charge past the parkway, past Empire Boulevard, and down Midwood Street, a residential side street flanked by ill-maintained, boarded-up, turn-of-the-century row houses. “You’ll notice the gabled roofs. Casement windows. Transoms. All the original mullions.”
Martha said, “I bet this block used to be beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Sam muttered. “When it was built in the last century. Now it’s just crack dens.”
“What’s a crack den, Dad?”
“It’s a place where plumbers live and you see their butt cracks all the time.”
“Are you ready?” said the Broker. “This is the place.”
They stopped outside 223 Midwood. A decrepit brownstone. Sagging gutters. Graffiti sprayed across the plywood in the windows. A FORECLOSED sign staked into the moribund grass. Martha said, “It looks like it’s seen better days.”
“It looks like a monster, Mom.”
The Broker unlocked a chain lock, pushed aside the plywood, and led them inside. Sam was stunned at the state of disrepair. The banisters were barely held in place by loose spindles. The high ceilings had water damage, wreaking havoc on the plaster moldings. Sam had his doubts about the structural integrity of the vaulted hallways. The bathrooms were shellacked with rust.
“You’ll notice the fireplace,” said the Broker.
Sam unlatched the flue and the fireplace rumbled an inchoate epithet.
“Santa might get killed coming down this.”
Martha, on the other hand, saw potential in the mahogany floors. The dust-covered cast-iron stove. She fell in love at first sight with the copper claw-foot bathtub. She saw children’s names and heights sketched onto the door frame: ciprian 4'11". dragos 5'7". rodica 5'4". This house had a history. This house had been a home. A place where a family lives. A place Martha, raised by a single mother in a series of single-bedroom apartments, had never had.
“Built in 1946,” the Broker said. “Can’t you just feel the history?”
“I can smell the asbestos,” Sam said.
Martha asked, “Who used to live here?”
“It was a foreclosure, so it wasn’t disclosed,” the Broker said. “It’s a great bargain.”
“It’s definitely a fixer-upper,” Martha replied, “but my husband definitely loves power tools.”
“That’s right,” the Broker said. “Remind me, Mr. Rathbone; you build stools or something?”
“Furniture. Not stools exclusively. But this might be a little above my pay grade.”
“My mom makes more money than my dad,” Max told the Broker.
“Thank you for sharing, Max.”
The Broker led them into the dark basement.
“This is huge!” Martha gushed. “It’s totally perfect for your studio, Sam.”
“It’s totally unfinished,” Sam said. “We’d need to insulate. Plus, I bet we’ll be sinking money into a sump pump. This place would need a lot of work.”
“This place has a lot of potential,” Martha said. “Did you s
ee that claw-foot bathtub?”
“Do you hear that furnace? The radiant coils are rusted.”
The Broker said, “For the square footage, you’re not going to get anything close to this at your price point.”
“What’s the list price?”
“Two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars,” said the Broker. “It’s a steal. I have ten other clients seeing this house. Someone will be buying it today. It should be you. C’mon, Max, I’ll show you the backyard. You have a dog, right?”
The Broker led Max upstairs, leaving Sam and Martha alone in the basement.
“I think this might be it,” Martha said.
“Uh. I think it’s a hellhole,” Sam said. “It’s a money pit.”
“It’s the best our money can buy,” Martha said. “It’s exactly what we need. It’s not just a place to live, Sam. It’s a new start.”
He knew she was right. She deserved a clean break. He owed it to her. To Max. After all the shit he had put them through. After what he had done. What he could not undo. “This will be a lot of labor,” he said. “Like some Bob Vila–type shit.”
“Bob Vila gets me hot and bothered,” Martha said, kissing Sam. “I like men who know how to use their hands. All that elbow grease all over me. Why don’t we go upstairs and test out that claw-foot bathtub?”
“Martha. Honey. You can’t seduce me into buying real estate.”
“You can’t resist.”
Her lips were warm on his neck. He said, “You make a good argument.”
“I am a lawyer,” she said.
“I guess we’re buying a house.”
“It’s not a house,” Martha said. “It’s a home.”
They kept kissing, illuminated by the single bulb in the mildewed basement.
On the front lawn, the Broker took a cell-phone picture of Sam, Martha, and Max posing for a family portrait in front of their new home.
“We’ll take it,” Sam said.