by The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares- The Haunted City (retail) (epub)
She grabs it, throttles its throat, choking it hard, fingers so tight they crush the windpipe; shaking it so hard that she snaps its little neck. BANG! BANG! BANG! goes its skull against the tabletop. BANG! BANG! BANG! until the crying stops.
And it does stop.
And the silence wails instead.
It’s cold. Frozen. A wooden shack in an icy wasteland, miles from town. Miles from anything. From anyone.
And the woman with sandy-blond hair strips off her clothes, her milky white skin pulled tight over visible bones, her breasts raw from feeding. She opens the door, wind howling in, three feet of snow piled up outside.
Then she steps out, staggering into the night, half dead before the door swings shut in the wind behind her.
And the apartment melts back into place, the cabin gone, the dead struggling in her seat.
She pushes against her restraints, the leather giving way, stretching, about to burst.
The Superintendent braces himself against the door frame, grabs the door, slamming it shut.
“Hell is waiting for you, sin eater!” she shouts in a second voice, the first one still shaking the world apart. “There isn’t a sin eater born who finds his way to any other place!” Her restraints snap. She bolts upright.
But the Superintendent is quicker, if by only a fraction of a second. The blade sinks deep into her belly and the voice stops, her eyes melting back into a pale brown rimmed by a bloodshot white. “Not today,” he says. “Not ever.” He jerks up on the knife, slicing her open from stomach to sternum. The black blood gushes like a geyser, hosing him down in a sticky ichor, its smell like stinking carcasses, her sins too numerous to pick out from the scent alone. Entrails slop on the floor, rancid and foul, maggots writhing in black like twinkling stars.
“See you soon,” she gasps. And the world falls quiet again, the building once more at rest, once more at peace. It’s a cold, eerie silence, like standing in the middle of an empty freeway at midnight.
The Superintendent pushes her off the blade and her body collapses to the floor, her eyes staring lifelessly into the darkest corner of the room.
The Chopper
The blades whirled overhead with a WHUPWHUPWHUP that shut out the rest of the world. Beside him in the belly of the aircraft lay the rest of his unit, each torn apart or crushed, covered in silver blankets so he couldn’t look at their faces and see soulless eyes staring up at the roof. He was the last one left. His skin was pale, his stomach roiled, and he would have thrown up had he not already vomited everything left in his system.
He looked down out the window at the darkness below, knowing that they were there, creeping, jumping on anything they could find—he could almost feel them, skulking, braying, waiting for him. Screeching at the stars, wondering where he was. They were down there claiming the dead, dragging their souls headlong into Hell. And he was next. He knew it. They wouldn’t wait forever.
There had to be some reason he could see them, hear them, smell them. He just didn’t know why. And he didn’t want to.
The Superintendent took a deep breath, counting silently to himself, wondering how much longer it would be until they made it back to base, made it back to the light. There was a comfort in the light, even the cheap fluorescents that lit up the plywood and sheet metal structures. Even those lights were strong enough to chase the things away. Even those lights could be trusted to let him sleep. That’s all he wanted to do now. Sleep.
The Stoop
The Superintendent sits out on the front stoop, drinking in the afternoon light, smoking a cigarette. He normally hates it outside. There is too much commotion, too many people. It is too easy to get confused, find himself screaming again at some poor fool who has gotten too close, find himself swinging angry fists at a mother just trying to soothe a crying child. Loud noises mess with him, bring too much back. He likes it quiet, likes being alone, likes the night when it isn’t so dark.
The air has a comfortable chill to it, the trees holding tight their last bursts of autumnal color. He sits in his suit, still soaking in sticky black. No one would bother asking about it, no one was likely even to care. After all, he has the kind of face that makes people uncomfortable. Something about the way he never smiles, or his eyes wandering nervously looking for roadside bombs or beasts with snarling maws. It probably just looks like a sewer backup anyway, like he was some unlucky sap who had been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That’s how he always feels anyway. He might as well play the part.
He takes a moment and drinks in the building, its stone a roughhewn onyx, its glass gleaming, polished and almost as black: an ancient, crumbling, broken monolith with rusty wrought-iron fire escapes and two massive doors made of solid ebony. It is an eyesore to be sure, the sort of building no one pays any mind to when they pass, as if something primal inside of them whispers in the back of their brains to just keep walking. Maybe they can’t see it for what it is, or maybe they can and just can’t admit it to themselves.
He stares at the doors, each intricately carved with figures and scenes like a Rodin sculpture he’d once seen. They appear at first glance to be art deco re-creations, but the wood somehow hints at them being far older than that. One door has finely polished angels, cherubs, and seraphim; the other crudely carved demons, devils, and despots. Between them, along the inside edges, stand knights and knaves fighting for both sides. It is a war between Heaven and Hell, but if you look closely, examine the expressions worn into the wood, count the bodies piled on the ground, one could see that Hell is clearly winning.
The Superintendent smokes the last few puffs of his cigarette, enjoys his last few moments of daylight. He still has two bodies to drag down to the incinerator in the basement. They can’t be up there when the Landlord returns. He can’t do what the Landlord wants. He just can’t. Not anymore.
201. The Knotty Alder Door
He hears the bump, smells cheap cologne, musk, and beer in the air. The smells of the previous tenants linger in the hallways, but he can always smell when something new is coming through. What he doesn’t understand is what it is doing so far down the building. These things keep creeping closer to the ground. They are supposed to stay up high, as far away from the crack as they can, but now the lower rooms are filling up instead. This isn’t a good sign. Apartment 201 was the last one left that wasn’t his own. And they can’t manifest in his own room, can they?
The door is made of knotty alder, a rich, vibrant, expensive-looking wood. He fumbles through the keys, trying to find its match. He still doesn’t know what half the keys do, if they even do anything at all. Maybe they are for old doors; maybe they are for doors yet to be put in. He tries half a dozen keys until the seventh, a small copper one with only two teeth, fits like a glove.
He turns the key and the lock sounds out like a small-caliber gunshot. Shit!
He doesn’t have much time. If that thing is standing already, it might make a run for the door. He hasn’t brought the knife, hadn’t even thought to. Those things never know that he is coming.
The Superintendent swings wide the door, jumps through, slamming it loud and angry behind him.
The thing lies on the floor, trying weakly to stand, still coming to its senses.
The Superintendent grabs the chair from the corner of the room and some leather straps tucked into his waist. He places the chair in the center, facing a mirror, and hoists the thing on the ground up into it. It wears fatigues and a hard plate vest. It has a holster but no pistol for it. Its hair is black, cropped short, but styled. It looks familiar. Very familiar. And then the Superintendent freezes, jaw dropping, eyes wide with shock. He can’t even bring himself to finish tying the straps.
“I know you,” Burke says, still groggy, eyes struggling to give his face a name.
The Superintendent quickly regains his senses, tying the straps so tight that it might cut the circulation of a living man off entirely. “We served together.”
“We don’t anymore?”
The Superintendent steps back, giving himself a wide berth. “Not for a while now, no. I got out. So did you.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You will. It’ll come. With time.”
“With time? What the fuck does that mean?”
“It always comes. It just takes a while.”
Burke looks around the room. “What’s with the mirrors?” he asks, eyes avoiding them.
“The dead hate mirrors. It confuses them, angers them, reminds them of what they really are.”
“I ain’t dead.”
“Yeah. You are. You have been for a long time.”
Burke eyes him suspiciously. “What the fuck is going on here? Where are we?”
“Just a building. A very old one.”
“What kind of building?”
“The kind you build on top of a crack in the world. The kind meant to keep things in.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand.”
“You will. You’ll remember. You’ll remember everything. Iraq. The girl. The thing that came out of the darkness. Everything. And then you’ll remember what came after.”
“What came after?”
“Hell.”
“No.” Burke squirms against his restraints. “What the fuck is going on here? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?”
“You came back. You found the crack. And I have to send you back to where you came from.”
“No. No. No! Fuck no! That ain’t right. That ain’t fucking right!”
“Nothing about this is.”
The Superintendent withdraws, opening the door, slipping quickly, quietly into the hallway.
The door closes behind him, his heart pounding, head swimming. He can hear the chopper—the blades right above him. He can see the bodies, smell the bodies. Remembers them looking right at him. Remembers the bullet that tore out his throat, the thing that tore out his soul, the smell of his corpse on the chopper. The war comes rushing back. He punches the wall, his vision red…screaming, wailing.
Then black.
The Desert
“Get a load of this little shit,” said the brutish ox. He was big—easily six four—and ugly, his body a layer of thick fat laid over well-hidden muscle. His speech was slow and slightly affected, making him sound as beef-witted as he looked. Everything about him pointed to him having no other choice but to go to war—it was that or move heavy things around all day under strict supervision, lest he hurt himself. Nodding, he laughed as he pointed at the Superintendent. “What’s wrong with your eyes, little shit?”
His voice bellowed through the canteen, its deep bass resonating through the prefabricated fixtures meant to give the boys a little taste of home.
The ox’s friends laughed with him. Another piped in. “Yeah. He’s like one of those shaking little rat dogs.”
“Chihuahuas,” said another.
“Yo quiero Taco Bell?”
The Superintendent ignored them. It wasn’t the first time he’d been treated like that; it wouldn’t be the last.
“Hey! Chihuahua!” said the ox. “You hear me? You fucking listening, boy?”
“He hears you,” said Burke, standing up from his chair. “I hear you too. And if I keep hearing you, I’m going to put so many of those nasty, twisted backwoods teeth down your throat you’ll be shitting dentures.” He cracked his neck to both sides. “Now. Do you hear me, you sorry shit-for-brains piece of shit?”
The ox stood up. “You said shit twice.”
“Only because I didn’t think you could count that high.”
The ox swung hard, but Burke was faster. Burke ducked low, threw a wicked uppercut to the ox’s balls, then followed it with a haymaker to his jaw just as he doubled over in pain. The ox spun around, hit the ground with a loud crash, dazed.
An officer poked his head through the canteen door. “What the happy fuck is going on in here?”
“He fell,” said the ox’s friends.
“Yeah,” said Burke. “I was just getting up to help him to his feet.”
The officer nodded, knowing better but not really giving a shit. “All right. Carry on.”
Burke helped the dazed ox to his feet. The ox flinched but accepted the help.
“Don’t fuck with my squad,” said Burke, “and you and I will get along just fine.”
The ox nodded, returning to his chair slow and easy, his bell thoroughly rung. Burke sat back down next to the Superintendent.
“Thank you,” said the Superintendent.
“No worries, brother. With all the hajis out here trying to kill us, no reason for us to be shitting on each other like that.”
The Landlord
The Superintendent lies faceup on the red crushed-velvet sofa next to a roaring fire in the peaceful quiet of his apartment. The last thing he remembers is standing in the hall, assuming he might wake up to find himself lost in the maze of the second floor. But he isn’t. He is here. Across from him, once more in the rocking chair, sits the Landlord. And he doesn’t look happy.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t know?”
The Superintendent sits up, gathering his wits about him. “No, I…I mean—”
“The job was simple. Kill the things that come through and consume them so they can’t come back.”
“They haven’t come back.”
“When was the last time you went up to the fourth floor? Or the penthouse?”
He couldn’t remember. It had been weeks. Months, maybe.
“The building can only keep them for so long. They’ll work out the mazes, find their way down the stairs. They’ll find the door. They’ll find a way to open it. And then they’re out in the world. We work very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. We keep Hell where it belongs. That’s the job.”
The Superintendent nods. “I know, I just…I didn’t know how hard it would be.”
“That’s what you get for associating with the hellbound. Why would you even know someone like that?”
“I went to war.”
“Fair enough.” The Landlord leans over, picks up a wooden box, slightly larger than the one that holds the knife, sets it in his lap.
“If you thought this was hard before, it’s about to get much, much harder.”
He opens the box. Inside is a revolver—an old-style single-action Peacemaker with fancy inlay and a metal grip—a leather holster, and several rows of wood-tipped bullets.
“I thought bullets couldn’t kill them. That’s the point of the knife, right?”
“The dead can only be affected by the dead. It’s the reason for the doors, the wood floors, the chairs, the leather, all of it.”
“If you had this all along, why have I…why did you make me do it with a knife?”
“You said it yourself. This is a hard job. Some superintendents can’t handle it. It just becomes too much for them. We found that leaving a gun lying around, well…it’s easier to pull a trigger.”
The Superintendent nods. “I understand.”
“You know what you have to do?”
“Yes.”
“You know how hard this is going to be?”
“Harder than anything else.”
“Right.” The Landlord stands up, hands the box to the Superintendent. “It’s going to get harder the higher you go. Those things have been here far too long. I’d start with your friend.”
“I didn’t say—”
“You didn’t have to.” He pauses, standing to his feet, straightening his jacket. “Go put on your suit.”
201. The Knotty Alder Door
The Superintendent drags his dining room chair into the room behind him with one hand, the other resting on the grip of the pistol on his hip. Burke still faces the other way, eyes closed, head turned to the side. The Superintendent was right: Burke can’t stand to see himself in the mirrors.
“So this is it, then?” asks Burke.
The Superintendent spins Burke’s chair around toward his own and takes a seat, th
e two sitting face-to-face, though several feet apart. “It is.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You could have found something better than this.”
“I was born to do this.”
“Who told you that?”
“Not everyone can see you, you know. Almost no one can. You’re the thing that goes bump in the night. You’re the thing that slams doors and crawls inside little girls and makes them swear and spit and do awful things.”
“That’s bullshit,” says Burke. “I’m not any of those things.”
“Not yet. You aren’t strong enough. You’re still coming through. Once you’re all the way in, you’ll be nothing but hate and anger and pain.”
“So why don’t you just get it over with? Shoot me and be done with it. That’s all you have to do, right?”
The Superintendent doesn’t answer.
“What the hell else is there?”
“The things that come through—”
“Stop calling us things.”
“The things that come through. I have to eat them.”
“What the actual fuck?”
“I have to eat them. Swallow their sin. Purify them.”
“You fucking do that?”
“I used to. But I haven’t in a while.”
“Why not?”
“It’s hard. Hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
“Why the fuck do you have to eat them?”
“Limited transubstantiation. Or at least that’s the word they used. It’s supposed to cleanse them. Send them back clean so they don’t have enough power to come back through. I don’t really understand it. I still get confused sometimes and the words get jumbled. I just do what I’m told. What I can, at least.”
“Like Iraq,” says Burke.
“Like Iraq.”
Burke leans forward, genuinely curious, speaking softer than before. “What’s it like? The taste, I mean.”
“Sweet at first. Savory. Like good pork.” The Superintendent pauses, mind swelling with unpleasant memories. “But then you can taste them. The things they did. The things that rotted them from the inside out. All the evil little things pile up and it’s like eating stink. Raw, rancid, meaty stink. You can taste the piss, the shit, the cheating, the hurt, the murder. All of it. And then you’re sick for days. Puking, diarrhea. It’s about the most awful thing in the world.”