by The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares- The Haunted City (retail) (epub)
I nodded, relieved. The images I had seen—the crime scene tape, the dead body—must belong to an old family. Another time. My heartbeat grew calm as she chattered on.
“The sign-up is completely full, people are actually fighting over the spots! I may have to ask you to stay another half hour, but I’m glad to pay. You only turn forty once, right? Just don’t tell my husband,” and she touched me again, leaning in. I said something, I don’t remember what. Her aura was like a drug, like a pulse waving through my brain, temporarily shutting down all systems.
She set me up in the cool, dark dining room, which was, of course, the perfect place to read. Everything she did seemed perfect. She gave me a glass with some ice and a bottle of Coke. Her adorable sign-up sheet was resting on the table. She had given people fifteen-minute intervals, and that was more than enough for her shallow party guests. Renee came in before I started and scolded me for neglecting to bring a stack of business cards. I found about ten in the pocket of my jacket…a little dirty around the edges, but I put them out. They were simple; my name, Edward Jennings, my cell phone number, and my e-mail. I asked Alexa to tell people that I would not be touching them or reading their palms. They would write down one question on a piece of paper and hand it to me. The questions give their fifteen minutes a focus. But truthfully, all they had to do is walk into the room. With very little concentration, information would start coming. I would use the paper, rub it back and forth on the surface of the table, to keep myself from tapping my forehead, especially if the reading became frightening. Most clients want the psychic to look deeply into their eyes, to be parental. If a psychic treats you like that, he is a fake. We are not parental. We are wary. People gave me their questions, and they wanted to feel seen, they wanted someone to know them. They wanted to touch an ancient human energy that, if they weren’t assholes, sent shivers across their arms. If I read them right, it was like sex to them. Like sucking their mother’s milk and looking into her eyes. Talking to a psychic, they felt both daring and safe. Even though no one is safe. Safety is a pipe dream.
I took a moment to walk into the backyard and survey the group. Alexa had a few interesting friends, but none of them even approached her violet aura. I wondered how she ended up here, and why. Violet-aura people usually cluster together. But they also tend to have a purpose. I had no sense of hers yet. It certainly wasn’t the husband, Tom, a big athletic type whose aura was a muddy green. I’d never met somebody so tethered to the earth. He struck me as a bully. Naturally, he did not want a reading. He just wanted to size up the charlatan who was taking his money to entertain the troops. When he shook my hand, images came to me: a young woman, dress bunched at her waist, bent over a sofa, his hands gripping her naked thighs and pounding into her, animal-like. The woman was not Alexa. I let go of his hand immediately, and he looked away. He murmured something about finding his son and wandered to where Alexa was.
“Honey, where’s Lucas?” Tom said to her.
“He doesn’t like the dinosaur.” Alexa’s eyes searched the yard. As I watched her, suddenly Renee was standing beside me.
“Their son is on the spectrum,” she whispered. “Probably autistic, but they’re in denial.”
I hated Renee in that moment. It was time to get started, if only to get away from her. I wandered inside and through the empty house, surprised I had not encountered any Entities. Every house has at least one or two, but Alexa’s seemed strangely clean. I would not need to take my usual precautions, smudging with sage, wearing a religious icon, sending out messages of love. They hide from love, the bad ones. I returned to the cool darkness of the dining room.
The party guests on the sign-up sheet came sheepishly, one by one: a panicked single girl who had lost her job, a middle-aged man whose question read: “Would I be happier as a woman?” There was a female Entity curled in his paunchy middle, hiding there, probably because he was strong and she was afraid. He may have invited her in, with his desire to be a woman. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I couldn’t tell. Perhaps this Entity had been there for years, deposited by his mother, messing him up with her own demons. Mothers are powerful. The ones at the party asked me about their children and whether they would succeed. I liked children and supported them unconditionally, maybe because no one had supported me. Telling mothers their children were special made me feel like I did some good in the world. Several ladies asked me about their marriages and whether they should get divorced. In those cases I read the level of unhappiness in their auras and advised them accordingly. If they were just a little unhappy, I told them there was still hope. The truth was their poor husbands just wanted to have more sex with them. Sometimes I even told them that. Then the Saras and Katies and Lisas would laugh. Some would say things like “Tell him to shave his pubes.” And I would laugh too and say, “You should tell him yourself.” And they would smile. It was a lot like therapy, seeing a psychic.
The two hours passed quickly. My brother was quiet. I began to wonder what all that dread was about. I was seriously reconsidering my aversion to parties. It was cozy here in the corner dining room. I had my usual dull headache after so many readings, but I didn’t mind. I knew that eventually Alexa would come in. She had to get a reading. She was the birthday girl. And her hand I would offer to touch. I would insist on it.
Someone rapped on the thin French doors of the dining room. A feminine knock. Perhaps this was my moment. I told her to come in. It was a woman, not Alexa, and she paused in the doorway.
“I didn’t sign up.” She had already written her question and was holding the paper in her hand. She was pretty, like the others, perhaps a little more innocent looking, with no makeup, in a flowered dress with buttons.
“No worries. Come, sit down,” I invited her. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Ginny.” She sat down across from me and stared, a weird smile frozen on her face. I stared back, trying to get something. She slid her paper across the table. I picked it up and opened it. Two words were scribbled there in alarming black capitals.
FUCK OFF
My brother began to mutter. Here it was. It was like a clammy fist closed around my heart, whenever they appeared. I never got used to it. Especially when they took me by surprise like this. Ginny was an Entity. I could see now that her clothing was an older style, that her skin pulsed with hunger, eyes glittering with malevolence. She knew I could see her, reveal her. I had spent my short lifetime running from these Entities. They are drawn to me, because my mind is more open, because I have the gift. In the past year I had trained with a shaman I met up in Santa Barbara and we managed to rid my apartment building of all unsavory spirits. I was finally sleeping through the night. I wished desperately that the shaman was with me now.
Ginny’s face began to change, skin stretching, bones visible beneath it. Her eye sockets sunk to dark pits. She was trying to scare me. She rolled her neck, and it crackled sickeningly. Her mouth opened as if she wanted to say something, but before she could, something black and snakelike pushed out from within her, something fat and wet and too large for her mouth, with sharp white fangs that snapped out at me. I shouted and dove under the table, terrified, my brother shrieking, “You idiot!” I wanted to cover my ears. But as I huddled under the table, I came to realize, there was someone else under the table with me.
A little blond boy with big brown eyes, maybe five years old.
You.
This is the moment I first saw you. Under a table. Your arms wrapped around your knees, your fingertips tapping, tapping against one another in a gesture so similar to my own. I knew what it meant. I knew the fear you must be feeling. I knew that you must be Lucas, Alexa’s child whom Renee had hissed about in my ear. And I knew one more thing: you weren’t on the fucking spectrum.
My brother was still berating me. You and I watched in horror as the tablecloth slowly rolled upward and Ginny, her neck at an impossible angle, as if her head were attached at her knees, leaned toward us, smiling, he
r teeth still black.
“Come here, Lucas.”
You shrunk into my arms, your small hand gripping mine, alive and warm and bony, a baby bird in my palm. An Entity like this could slither in and out of you with ease, your open child’s mind like a revolving door. I barked in your ear with urgency, “Think about love, someone you love.”
You shut your eyes tight. We both did. I thought about my brother. I knew what you were thinking because I heard you whisper.
“Mommy.”
We both opened our eyes. Ginny was gone. You turned to look at me. You were so pleased, as if I had performed a magic trick. You smiled. For once in my life I felt known. You and I were the same. We recognized each other. “Are there others?” I asked. You nodded. “A lot of others?” You nodded again. “Show me.”
You climbed out from under the table, and as I followed, I heard a new voice. “Lucas? What are you doing?”
It was Alexa.
I saw her face, confused and suspicious, as I emerged from under the table behind you, my face flushed red. “What’s going on here?” she said, her beautiful violet aura tinged at the edges with yellow.
I tried to smile, to reassure. “I don’t know how long he’s been there. I just found him myself.”
She kneeled before you, looking into your eyes, “Why were you hiding? Mommy was worried.” You just looked at her. She spoke again, softly. “Are you afraid of the dinosaur?”
But the dinosaur was the least of your fears. Two more Entities, males, crouched up in the corners of the ceiling; the one called Ginny, her mouth and dress fouled with black slime, stood in the doorway to the living room, next to your mother, a horrific doppelganger. Beyond her two more passed by in a distant hallway. The house was teeming with Entities. Why hadn’t I seen them? I understood when you slipped away from your mother and ran to your room. They followed you. It was you they wanted. A child. A gifted, powerful child with an entire lifetime ahead of him. They could live for eighty years, ninety, inside a child like you. The thought of it sickened me.
My fingers tapped uncontrollably on the shiny lacquered tabletop. To stop it I placed my fingers on Ginny’s folded paper question and moved it back and forth. Alexa watched me. She glanced over at the sign-up sheet. All the names had been crossed off. She looked back at me.
“I won’t be needing that extra half hour.”
I forced myself to face her, and in her eyes I saw the worst vision of all…how she saw me. She shunned me, this powerful creature, this Violet. I could see right through her beauty to her very soul. But she only saw my patchy hair, my yellow teeth, my nervous tics, which she assumed were a response to being caught under the table with this miraculous boy, her son. How could she know we were battling Entities that were drawn to us like moths to a flame?
Why hadn’t I taken precautions? Why hadn’t I burned the sage? I knew better than that. My brother had warned me, but I ignored him. I had passed judgment on this house. I thought these were people who never knew misfortune, who never drew the bad card.
Alexa laid a stack of cash down on the table.
“You need to go.”
She could barely look at me. My brother’s voice filled my head. He tried to make me spit something mean at her, like, “Fuck you, rich bitch,” but I resisted. I had to rein him in. I was afraid he would hurt her. And I had never wanted to hurt anyone less.
I stood still as she walked to the front door and opened it. A wedge of sunlight fell across the floor. Good old sunlight. I could see it made her feel better. Stronger. I passed close enough to smell her delicious perfume as I stepped outside, onto the brick porch. She was there, behind me, starting to close the door…
I turned back. I felt my brother’s hands closing around my neck, but I had to say something. I had to. My voice came out strained and constricted.
“Mrs. Mortimer. I saw things in your house.”
She stared at me. “What things?”
“Entities,” I told her. “There are Entities in the house. Surrounding your son.”
“Entities?” She was glowing yellow now, truly frightened.
“Energies.” I tried to soften it, to keep her listening. “I can help. If you’d let me come back, with the proper tools…”
Almost in slow motion, an ugliness took over her face. A look of anger and cynicism. “You’re trying to frighten me. Trying to make a buck, to keep me calling you, like Renee does.”
“Please let me help you. Let me help your son—”
She physically recoiled. “Get out of here. Get off my property.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Fucking pervert.” She slammed the door in my face.
I stood there, not moving, not leaving. You were still there, looking out a window off the living room, watching me. Then you vanished. After a moment, I trudged down the walk and let myself out the low white gate in the picket fence. My car was parked some distance away, the curbs lined with the shining vehicles of the well-to-do. As I walked I heard the distant singing of “Happy Birthday.”
I got in my car and shut the door behind me, sealing myself with a thunk into silence. And then I wept. I wept for myself, and I wept at the thought that you, a perfect, beautiful child, would grow up to be like me. Why do the Normals call them psychic powers? They make films about us exploding buildings. Carrie covered in blood, a goddess of gore, burning down the high school gym and all her tormentors within it. I wish. Even when I’m angry, I have no “powers.” I cannot start a fire or bend a spoon, and even if I could, I certainly wouldn’t. I moved quietly through the background, afraid they’d find out. They’d have me committed and give me pills that would make me blank and simple and take away my brother, who was the only true friend I’d ever known.
He wasn’t speaking now. He was punishing me. My mother told me that I didn’t have a brother. That was cruel of her, to make me think I was just garden-variety crazy. Maybe she was hoping that I would “grow out of it.” I knew from a very young age that she didn’t like me. She was busy with work and her boyfriends. She never told me who my father was. Perhaps she didn’t know. She would disappear for days at a time. She left me money for pizza and milk, but she never left a note. And when she returned she never made a fuss over me. She wasn’t much for words, my mother. I discovered her lie after she died, ironically, of throat cancer.
I found his birth certificate in her old steel filing cabinet. The one with the rust spots. There was mine, Edward Jennings…and then behind it, there was another. Two babies had been born that day. Kyle Jennings, my older brother, lived for exactly three minutes, twenty-seven seconds. She had given birth to twins, but only one of us survived. The spirit inside my brother wanted to live. That’s what all Entities want. Life in a body, even an ugly one, was so pleasurable. Kyle wasn’t going to miss out on that. He must have leapt inside me while we were still in the delivery room. Kyle is the name of a strong man. A handsome man. He told me he should have lived and I should have died. Kyle said I’d be nothing without him. He said he was the brave one, I was the pantywaist. The ball-less wonder. But he was wrong. I faced the world, every day: the loneliness, the strange looks, the derision, the hurled insults from women you ache to touch. That took courage.
I started the engine. I drove around the corner and up the hill and parked on a street above the house. I got out and walked into a scrubby grove of trees, through which I could look down and see into your backyard. The guests gathered together, eating their cake with plastic forks. Tom put his arm around Alexa and kissed her, and I saw his hand travel to her ass and settle there, proprietary. He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve you, a sensitive boy he would never understand. You were standing off to the side, away from the other children and the dreaded dinosaur bouncy. I sat in the weeds. I stayed there a long time, until the last guests trickled away, the caterers in dark pants and white shirts cleaned up their buffet stations and loaded their wares into a van that had been pulled down the driveway to the backyard. Dusk fell, and still no one had c
ome to take away the bouncy. Alexa, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, came out, holding your hand, leading you toward the castle. Her voice floated up, distant, on a breeze.
“See? It’s just filled with air…like a balloon.”
You were wary. There was a boxlike motor behind the castle, keeping it pumped full of air. Alexa flicked a toggle switch and the motor died with a diminishing whir. The dinosaur’s long neck flopped forward, and the castle softly folded, reduced to a harmless heap of vinyl on the grass. I stood up to see you better, see your reaction. Your mother looked up, motionless, and stared. I stepped back among the trees.
I didn’t want to frighten her.
My brother finally reappeared. “You don’t scare anyone. You just don’t want her to call the cops.” I didn’t argue with him. The day had taken so much out of me. I needed to sleep. “Let’s go,” he said. “This isn’t our problem.”
He was right. No one could help. You didn’t stand a chance, your father a brute with no aura to speak of and your mother too frightened to see. And then it came to me. A voice, as strong as my brother’s, but not his. This voice was mine. It said: “Stay.”
I would wait until they had all gone to sleep, and then I would go back inside that house. I would save you. My life, so long a series of defensive postures, struggling not to be crushed like a bug, suddenly had meaning. This was supposed to happen. You could follow the chain: I know Renee, Renee knows your mother, the woman your mother hired canceled, she phoned me. I didn’t like parties, but I took the party. Even at the door, I wanted to leave, but I didn’t because I had seen your mother. I knew her already. My brother was wrong. This was for me. I watched the glowing lamps turn on in the house. My brother started yammering: “Whatthefuck whatthefuck?” But I ignored him.
I sat down on the cold, hard ground, settling in for the night.