by The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares- The Haunted City (retail) (epub)
—
I must have fallen asleep, because I awoke with a start, my head in the dirt, my body stiff, my mind disoriented. I had to brace myself against a tree to come to standing. I looked down and saw that all the lights were out in the Mortimer house. Everything was still. The witching hour, I knew, would just be starting for you. I hoped you were asleep. I hoped you wouldn’t see me. I went back to my car and opened the trunk. I used the flashlight on my phone to collect the few tools I needed. Candles. A crucifix. I counted out five polished stones and I took a glass bottle with an iron stopper. I started to take the sage but realized I wouldn’t need it. I didn’t want to repel them. I wanted to draw them to me. I left the car keys on the front seat. I might need to make a quick getaway.
I decided to approach the house from this hill and walk down to the backyard. My dress shoes slipped and slid in the dry dirt. I had to balance myself, hanging on to scrubby bushes and tree branches as I made my way down. I would ditch the shoes before I went into the house. They would echo on the wood floors. I had no idea how I’d get inside. But people rob houses all the time. They break in and rape women. Kill their exes. I would figure out a way. As I got closer to the backyard, I found a chain-link fence at the property line. It rattled when I put my feet and hands in the little holes and scrambled up as fast as I could. I stretched one leg over and found myself clinging to the other side. I leapt down onto the grass with a thud. A dog next door began to bark. I looked at my watch. It was 1:53 a.m.
I walked around the perimeter of the house, looking for an open window, trying all the French doors. Everything was locked tight. I looked under potted plants and under the door mats. It doesn’t take a psychic to know that everyone leaves a key somewhere. At the back door, an image came to me: Alexa reaching up to a ledge at the top of the door frame above me. I mirrored the movement and yes, there was the key. I slid it into the deadbolt and the door opened. I stepped inside, ready for relief, but instead I froze. An alarm panel was lit up on the wall beside the door, blinking for me to disarm it. In seconds it would blare its siren and wake everyone in the house. I started to sweat. Could I run fast enough to get to my car? The panel blinked; I remembered seeing numbers when I first looked at the house, a lifetime ago. Two sevens and two nines. I punched them in, then pressed the button for “disarm.” I held my breath. The alarm turned off. I had done it. I was inside.
I took off my shoes and carried them with me as I crept in. I passed through the kitchen first, with the comforting refrigerator hum, the lit-up clock on the oven. I had a strange feeling of mischief, being where I wasn’t supposed to be. I touched the counter. I wondered how long it would take them, the Entities, to show themselves. I went into the dining room, where I had spent my afternoon. I closed the slender, shuttered wooden doors that led into the living room. Setting my shoes under the table, I took out my candles and placed them on the table. The matches I brought made a shushing sound as they lit. I set the sacred rocks out. One for each of the five Entities I had encountered here. I placed them in a half circle around the candles. I set out the bottle and sat at the head of the table. I closed my eyes, opened my hands, and took a deep breath.
“I invite you. I invite you.”
Nothing happened at first. Then I felt a draft blow through the room, moldy and cold. The candles sputtered and there was a creaking sound…the shuttered wood doors were slowly falling open. Someone was here with me. I couldn’t know if the being in the room was an Entity or Alexa herself. I opened my eyes. The doors were open, but I could see no one. The bottle on the table began to shake and rattle. Above me, I heard a low bit of laughter. My eyes tilted upward. I saw her feet first, hovering. Ginny was there, near the ceiling, staring down at me, her head tilted, her grin derisive.
“What a very small bottle,” she chided. I stood as she floated to the floor. We faced each other, the table between us.
“I want to help you,” I said. “I want to set you free.”
She scoffed. “What is free?”
In the dim throw of the light, I felt them approaching. Their energy rippled through the air. The candles blew out. I felt fear then, but it wasn’t mine. It was my brother’s.
“Don’t, please, don’t,” he pleaded. But it was too late. They were here. They were surrounding me. Touching my face and my hair, as if they were a primitive tribe who had never seen another human. They stroked my skin, they moaned in pleasure, they suffocated me. Ginny entered first, prying my eyes open with her fingers, morphing into smoke and flowing into me. I opened my mouth, unable to breathe, and found myself set upon by another Entity. My body was stiff, strained. The sensations were fierce and sexual. Every cell in my body was on fire. My hair was standing on end, and my limbs were outstretched as the Entities buzzing inside me caused me to float upward. I was levitating, framed by the open double doors.
It must have been a terrifying sight.
I saw you standing in the living room, in your little pajamas, staring at me. I should have known you would awaken, that you would feel such a significant event. Then you screamed, a high-pitched wail louder than anything I had ever heard. The power of it!
Every light in the house suddenly blazed on. Every television blared out sound. The blender, the burners on the stove, the alarm pads, the toys in every part of the house, anything electrical was singing and whirring and shrieking and talking. I hit the floor with a thud, but I knew I was still carrying them all inside me. I was hyperaware of everything, even the blood in my veins. Out in the backyard, the dinosaur castle and its air-blowing motor roared to life, reinflating the monster, who grew tall, dwarfing the house. Inside was chaos. I heard your mother screaming, your father too…they would be coming for you. I had to get out. I grabbed up the bottle, the spirits inside me yelling and laughing, ran through the kitchen and out the back door. I paused there, hidden behind the dinosaur. I removed the crucifix from my pocket and put it around my neck. I felt the spirits inside me recoil. In one sweaty palm I held the bottle. I did what I had seen the shaman ask so many others to do when they had come to him for help.
I opened the bottle and put it to my mouth and blew. I knew I had to think of love and my mind alighted on you, your little blond head, your hand in mine when we faced the Entities.
The bottle in my palm glowed, becoming heavy. Wincing in pain at the heat of the glass, I felt them leave me. All of them, even Kyle. I could hear him screaming, threatening, begging. It was like having my insides ripped out. Tears filled my eyes. I covered the top with my palm until I could close the mouth of the bottle with the iron stopper.
And there I was, alone in my body for the first time in my life.
I heard sirens approaching. I knew I had mere moments. Still holding the bottle, I ran, around the huge barrier of the inflated dinosaur, heading for the back of the yard, to my car, to safety. As I came around the corner, I was faced with one last hurdle. Your father. Auraless Tom. Shirtless, fresh from his bed, so perfectly human and physical, no spirit to torture him, to give him any doubts.
He saw me, and I saw him, both of us holding something in our hands. He didn’t wait to see what I had. He had a gun, and he raised it, without any hesitation, and fired.
Bullets ripped through my body, each one like a blast from a blowtorch. I fell backward into the grass. The bottle dropped from my hand and rolled away. I couldn’t go after it. I was dying. The crime scene tape, the body on the gurney, I suddenly knew with perfect clarity that the body I had seen in the vision was my own. Tom kept firing, and the dinosaur died with me, bullets piercing the giant balloon, air bursting in whining knives of sound. The dinosaur sagged and wilted. It crumpled and I smiled, knowing it was about to be over, my short, uncomfortable life, and that I had made it count for something. In my last moment, I saw Tom, breathless, leaning over me, still holding the gun, looking down to see if I was dead. My eyes started to roll back in my head, my heart slowed, thump, thump, and it was then I had my last powerful, lucid thought. Not just
a thought. An idea.
—
It took Alexa and her family about eight months to return to normal after the shooting. The police questioned them at length, first that night and also in the days that followed. Alexa told them everything she knew about Edward Jennings, which was not much. Tom was angry with her that she hadn’t told him about the incident at the party, about how she found Edward with Lucas, and what Edward had said about their son. Renee Schwartz corroborated their story that Edward was an unstable personality. The detectives assigned to the case uncovered medical records that indicated Edward’s mother had unsuccessfully tried to have him committed in his early twenties. The newspapers wanted to do a story about the “psycho psychic,” but Tom made a few well-placed phone calls to hush it up. They had to think of Lucas. Edward’s motivation had obviously been kidnapping, and they didn’t ever want Lucas to know that. The police accepted her husband’s explanation that when Edward’s movements in the house set off the alarm system sensors, it must have triggered a power surge, but Alexa wasn’t sure. She wondered if the surge had been caused by some power in Edward. She couldn’t stop talking to her friends who were at the party. What was their reading like? Did Edward actually seem to know things? She trusted her own instincts, and she certainly thought there was something authentic about Edward. No matter how she tried, she could not shake what he had said about Lucas and the Entities surrounding him.
For many weeks after the shooting, she slept in Lucas’s bedroom. But strangely, after a childhood plagued by nightmares, he did not have any about Edward. In fact, Lucas started sleeping through the night, a feat he had never been able to accomplish before. Alexa expected Tom to pitch a fit and insist she come back to his bed. He had warned her before they got married that he was a twice-a-week kind of guy, at the very least, and that if she couldn’t guarantee that, they should split. It was a silly bargain at the time. It had made her laugh. She was very attracted to him, his masculinity, his practicality. But that guarantee had grown tiresome. It came as a surprise when Tom told her to take as much time as she needed with Lucas. Perhaps he saw the change in their son. Lucas started talking more. He looked them in the eye, and his stimming gesture disappeared.
The shooting had changed Tom as well. He’d become much gentler with Lucas. Alexa would wake up on a Saturday and find them sitting in the garden together, talking. He got Lucas a dog, and he started coming home in the afternoons for soccer. He would sometimes even put him to bed. There was nothing more attractive to a woman than a man who was a good father, and soon Alexa wanted to be with him again. Their first time after the shooting was amazing. It was like making love to a different person. He was so sensual, so into her body. There was a sweetness to their passion that had been lacking before. Right after the shooting, they had talked about moving. But she and Tom had now decided to stay. The house felt inexplicably safe to them, despite what had happened.
One night, when Alexa finished reading Lucas his bedtime story, she asked him, “Do you want the hall light on?”
Her son surprised her by saying no. She hovered, a dark shadow in the doorway, as he continued, “The bad people are gone now. Edward took them away.”
Alexa felt a chill down her spine. “You remember Edward?” Her son nodded. Alexa came back and sat on the edge of his bed. “You don’t have to worry about Edward, darling. He’s gone forever.”
And then her son did something strange. He laughed. A little giggle.
“Whatever you say, Mom.”
Alexa went to look for Tom. She found him in the dining room, at the head of the table, typing on his laptop. Papers were scattered around him.
“What are you writing?”
He closed the laptop. “Something for Lucas, a little primer about life, for when he’s older.”
Alexa made a half smile. “Can I read it? I could use a primer.”
“Nope. It’s a father-son thing.”
She laughed a little, then perched on a chair, glancing around the room. “This is where Edward did his readings.”
Tom looked down. He didn’t like talking about Edward, but she persisted. “Sometimes I think he did us a favor, in a weird way. Do you ever think that?”
Alexa watched him. Her eyes trailed to his hand. His fingers rested on the yellow paper. He was rubbing it, ever so slightly, back and forth against the table. She met her husband’s eyes. They held each other’s gaze for a suspended moment and then he stopped moving his hand. A clock ticked somewhere. Their hearts beat. Alexa rose. She came to him, traced a finger across his neck, and whispered in her sexy way, “Come to bed.”
He smiled. “I’ll be right there.”
As she disappeared into the back of the house, Tom opened the computer. He hesitated and typed in one more sentence. A simple one.
Sometimes the freaks do get a happy ending.
He rose and turned out the lights. Walking down the hall, he looked into the open door at his sleeping son, illuminated by the moon. He smiled, pausing for a moment, before moving down the hall, to his bedroom and his wife.
He did not see what Lucas had found earlier that day, deep back under the bushes in the garden, covered by old dead leaves and grass. He didn’t see the old blackened bottle with an iron stopper that Lucas had dug up, like buried treasure, and had placed on his bookshelf, where sometime that night it would begin to rock as if of its own volition, and fall to the ground, and break.
The body lay on the craggy, algae-draped sea rocks like a puzzle: a jigsaw, twisted, broken, mangled. Strange, isn’t it, what the mind allows us to assume and what it implores us to deny when confronted with bloody human puzzles? Assumptions and denials held hostage to our fears and desires. Strange. Yes, certain conclusions were drawn when the torturously bright police klieg lights initially blasted these rocks. One could correctly ascertain pieces of the puzzle: an arm, a leg, limbs of a human being jutting in and out of place, like a multi-needled compass pointing in different directions, pointing nowhere, pointing everywhere. A bit of the upper neck leading to an unfulfilled expectation, that of a head, a face. Expectations, assumptions not realized. Bright lights shining on physical chaos. Of course later, when dawn broke, when men and machines could successfully battle the undertow, moving earth and rock, a form would be revealed, that form would assume a gender, an age, and a name.
But for now, the sea owned this geometry of death.
The rhythmic tide collected and deposited this salty, bloody foam. The colors were titrating. Moving and amazing. Were it not a human body, one might think this a gallery installation. Colors deep and red, pulsating, a beautiful, kinetic work of art.
—
Perspective. Context. One ought to know the Setting, the Routine, the Process involved in creating a Jackson Grey Novel. For at this stage in his career, the production of a novel was not simply the act of writing a book, it was an industry, an industry flush with cash, with people, with players, an industry with many moving parts. Yet a precise industry. It had to be precise, if only because the people who surrounded Jackson, the ones who worked on his behalf, the ones who read his work, expected such precision. And, given such expectations, he delivered.
He always delivered…and, as Jackson began to mentally construct the shape and texture of the new book, he fully intended to deliver yet again. Novel Fifteen.
These books of horror no longer had titles. Rather, they had titles, but they were created by other people, specifically another person. Marlene. His editor at JB & Sons Books. Book titles meant nothing to Jackson; the numbers that spelled sales and success meant everything. Those numbers were high, extraordinarily high, and were due to Jackson’s mastery of a skill set: the ability to flirt, tease out an idea that led to the commencement of a novel of horror, construct said novel expeditiously, complete it, and wait. Wait for publication, tremendous sales, wait for the seductresses of television and film to call Jackson’s people and make offers. Jackson didn’t just write books; he had mastered a formula that tra
nslated into a career and an absolute fortune.
The Setting: Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Beautiful, expensive estate. Jackson bought it after Novel Two, and with it came beautiful, expensive ocean views. The weather? Foggy some of the time, chilly most of the time. Sunshine, or the lack thereof, was a topic, banal as it seemed, and it seemed banal to Jackson, discussed among neighbors. Jackson loathed talking about the weather and for some reason especially loathed discussing the weather with his neighbors. Where was it written that one had to speak with one’s neighbors? What was there to talk about? Only banalities.
The Routine: slip out of bed, without waking Katherine (when she was in town), his high-priced model-in-demand, live-in lover. It had been a year since Jackson’s introduction to Katherine had resulted in Jenna’s departure and Katherine’s residence. Like an unbroken line, Katherine moved in, replaced Jenna, and did so quickly. Katherine, like Jenna, twenty years his junior, was far above his socio-sexual pay grade, far above the women with whom he could sleep, fuck, live with were it not for the fact that he was Jackson Grey. Prolific, celebrated, wealthy, famous. Jackson prided himself on the notion that he was self-aware, far from self-deluded. Knowing full well the value of his celebrity and what type of woman that celebrity commanded.
Slip out of bed at seven a.m., Monday through Friday, seven a.m. Always seven a.m. Coffee, cigarettes, quick browse of The New York Times, delivered daily to his gate, placed dutifully on his mahogany coffee table by his V, loyal housekeeper, keeper of his schedule, his routine, his life, and his secrets. Keeper of all the things that kept the industry of bestselling success running efficiently.
V had been with Jackson so long now (God, nineteen years!)—this fifty-something woman, childless, with a green card, four sisters living somewhere in the States—that Jackson had forgotten V’s actual name. Victoria? Violet? Violetta? She paid herself, signed Jackson’s name, and the only time Jackson felt uneasy about this (Was it Novel Three?) he asked Cline, his entertainment attorney and business manager, about “the efficacy of such an arrangement,” and Cline—attorney/business manager/Los Angeles–Hollywood superpower—reassured Jackson that V was to be trusted. And that was that. He trusted Cline, therefore he trusted V. After all, it was Cline who had procured V for Jackson. Something Jackson always appreciated, for Cline need not have concerned himself with Jackson’s domestic issues, yet Cline went out of his way to do so. Cline felt that Jackson needed the right housekeeper. A perfect fit. Jackson had come to understand perfectly that is what men of power do for other men of power. They watch one another’s backs. Down to the smallest detail. Men of power. They procure housekeepers! They ensure perfect fits.