The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares

by The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares- The Haunted City (retail) (epub)

  She presses her bare bottom so it’s against my hips. Her warm skin is a salve. “Have you tried a private investigator?”

  “There’s no money for that.” I’m furious. Shaking. “How are we supposed to raise girls in this kind of world?”

  “Like people have always done.”

  I sigh. “I miss Ezra.”

  “I know,” she says. “You’re going to be okay, Grady. You’ll get through this.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and it occurs to me for the first time that I’m still grieving.

  After that, we talk about meaningless things, laughing softly so the kids don’t wake. She wants a vacation in the Poconos, so she can take a bath in a champagne glass. I tell her she’s gotten tackier with time.

  We have sex again. It’s better the second time because we’re both aroused.

  I fall asleep feeling lucky and less angry. I might even be smiling.

  —

  First thing Monday morning, I head for my next interview. It’s at the armory construction site. A guy in a hard hat takes me up an outdoor elevator. We rise above floor after floor of steel beams until we’re at the top, an airy penthouse. The street-side wall isn’t there. Everything’s open. You could fall right out.

  The guy in the hard hat rides back down, leaving me in the penthouse in the clouds. I find a sixty-something-year-old man in a high-backed leather chair. Smoke wafts all around him. “Mr. Fuller?”

  He signals for me to take the matching couch, then blows a smoke ring from his Marlboro Red. The gesture is vaguely sexual. “I’m Dan Khan. I run things.”

  The name rings a bell I can’t place.

  “Sorry. This was supposed to be with Mr. Fuller. What’s your capacity?” I ask. “For my article.”

  He pulls a long drag. His smoke crackles. Another ring. “Chairman of the board,” he says. “Fuller’s just the president.” Khan’s wool suit is perfectly tailored, his six-foot frame tall and fit. I, on the other hand, could pass for homeless. My bandage is bleeding and I haven’t shaved yet this week.

  “I don’t want to squand-er your time, so I’ll get right to the point,” I say. “No one at the In-ter-glot will take my calls, and I wanted to ask you about the axdent that broke its ceiling.”

  Dan smiles. His teeth are perfect. “Of course.”

  “Have there been any murders at this site? Complaints of demonic po-ssession?”

  Dan puffs out a wide ring. This one hits my chest. “That’s rich,” he says. I’m about to get up and tell him to blow someplace else, but I realize with stark horror that I can’t stand because I’ve got an erection.

  My hands go south and my smile comes fast and forced. I can’t calm down. It’s like a swollen blister. What’s wrong with me? “Well. Ahem. Okay, then. Three people in Six Forty Park Avenue thought they were possessed by demons. I was wondering if you’d had anything like that over here. I believe the symptoms are related to your company’s accidental break into the Interglot.”

  Dan leans forward. He’s sitting a lot higher than me. “Buddy, I agreed to this because I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. You’ve gotta be a fucking cracker to think I’d tell you if my staff was demonically possessed. This company’s worth three billion. Here’s my deal: I’ve got headaches with the city—they don’t want us here, but they can’t afford the upkeep. They’re trying to Indian give.”

  Smoke-ring fragments cling to my arms and legs, wriggling. Does he do this with all his reporters, or am I special? “What do you want me too doo about it?”

  “I want you to write a pretty fluff piece about all the happy taxpaying billionaires who’re going to live here.”

  “I don’t rite fluff pieces.”

  “No shit, Sherlock! Look at you,” he says. “You’re one of those assholes who thinks he’s too special to sell out. So now you can’t rub two nickels together and you wish you could do it all over again. Great American fucking tragedy. Am I right?”

  “Well,” I say. Something slithers. My stitches have all popped and my bandage is gone. I’m bleeding on his pretty couch and my dick is stiff as a rock.

  “Kid,” Dan says. He’s got the most beautiful black eyes. They’re like aggie marbles. “I’ve done my homework. I’ve got an interest in you and that could work out for both of us. This is your last shot at the big top. If you’re smart, you’ll take it.”

  My blood’s soaking his couch, but I’ll turn it around. I’ll do my job better than I’ve ever done it before, and he’ll forgive my mess. “Why doo yoo nede good press?” I ask. “You’ve got the deed.”

  Dan grins. “Well, like all the girls say, there’s lawful possession, and there’s consensual possession. But why am I telling you? You don’t have the salt.”

  “Give me a chance,” I say.

  Dan laughs heartily. If I worked for him, I’d be rich and loved and I’d never have to ride the subway again. I’m in love with him, I decide. I’d have his babies if he wanted. Tiny little worm babies.

  “The city lost the space because it filled out some forms wrong, kiddo. We slipped in and nabbed it. Typical red-tape bureaucracy. The right hand and the left hand and nobody’s washing anything.”

  “What about the lower flors? The In-ter-glot? Have you bene there? I have reeson to believe it’s a secret jail. I suspect they experimented with psychotropic drugs on the prisoners and now they’re trying to cover it up.”

  Dan waves his hand. “Who knows with these public titty douches? Listen, they played the poor card and blackballed us for building condos, but nobody’s mentioned how much taxpayer money they dropped on this place. And what for? Listen, water levels are rising. We gotta build fifty-foot sea walls all around this chintzy island. Who’s gonna pay for that? New York doesn’t need working stiffs. It needs taxpaying billionaires!”

  “Oh.” Then I get it. I understand. “You plan to acquire the In-ter-glot, and you want my article to pro-pel you toward that goal. I’m to eviscerate the current owners and enginder a popular uproar.”

  “The boy can read tea leaves,” he says, still smoking and exhaling rings. They wriggle all over me, fondling me like gauzy snakes. Am I stroking myself? Why, yes! Oh, god, yes! I am!

  “So? Can you horse-trade?”

  “I’ll do it,” I say. “I’ll do the best job in the world.”

  Dan smiles wide. Instead of a tongue, he’s got a stump. How’s he been talking? Then, I understand. Something else lives in there. It’s moist and black and it kisses me.

  It happens. I come.

  The lights flicker. A pig squeals. My hand opens. Everything blurs. I’m dreaming, and in my dream, a rat bites the strings off a violin. I sink down beneath this floor, and the next, and the next, to the bottom of the armory—the Interglot. I’m trapped in a tiny jail cell lined with funhouse mirrors. The man in the mirrors looks like Ezra: “Get thee to an exorcist!” he shouts.

  I wake with a snap, looking back at Dan, who’s dripping Visine into his eyes. There are about forty stubbed-out cigarettes in the ashtray; when last I looked, there were two.

  “How long have I be-en here?” I ask. Words feel funny on my tongue. My skin feels funny on my body.

  Dan grins. I get a flash of something—I’m screaming in an impossibly small space, but the scream is wrong. It’s the sound of a pig.

  “Sorry?” I ask.

  “I was just saying how glad I am we met!” Dan announces as he stands and walks me out. “Now, you write what we talked about, and you’ll see, the world will pay you back a thousandfold. Fuck that bitchy little Pulitzer. You’ll get a Nobel.”

  “Oh…What did I say I’d write?”

  He reaches across me to open the elevator gate. In a glimpse, I can see that he wants to shove me off the ledge, to my death. He’s shaking from the temptation of it. But the guy in the hard hat is waiting, so instead he leans in, his eyes utterly black.

  “Take good care of those littel little girls.”

  —

  “I cracked it
. There’s a tox-on leeking from the lower levels of the arm-o-ry. They’ve been experimenting with prisoners and chemical weapons. It infected Margaret Brooks, and she manipulated the hallucinations of the weeker personalities under her control,” I tell Tom White from my cell phone as I walk across the East Side to the 6 train. “This guy Dan Khan was exposed, too. He’s crazy. Anyone near the Interglot too long goes nuts. I’ve got a touch of it myself.”

  “Get the hell outta here!” Tom laughs. “I got your article this afternoon. Different direction than we talked about, but it works. Front page, buddy. I love you, you joker. I knew you had it in you.” I hear close, loud moaning and realize he’s rubbing a girl out.

  “Really?” I ask.

  “See you tomorrow!” Tom answers, and hangs up.

  I load my e-mails and get on the train. It takes two hours to get home because of the transit slowdown. I use the time to read the file I sent to Tom White. Around the time I was sitting with Dan Khan, I apparently wrote and delivered a twenty-thousand-word, three-part series on the battle over the Park Avenue Armory. It’s a gorgeous piece of propaganda. I’ll have convinced anyone reading it that the armory, including the Interglot, belongs in the hands of the Fuller Corporation. I had no idea I could write this well.

  I’m digesting all this as I debark in Queens. A text arrives, telling me that my bank account in Switzerland has been activated. Its first deposit of two million dollars, from the Fuller Corporation, has arrived.

  I call Tom White back and tell him he needs to pull my story. It’s corrupt. Someone paid me.

  He laughs. “Kid, I already kicked it to the top. They love it. And not for nuthin, but who do ya think’s paying me?” All the while, a woman groans. Still? Is he fucking her or killing her?

  I look at my phone. Make sure it’s plugged in and I’m really talking to someone. I’m not totally out of my mind. Yes, it’s plugged in. “Fuck you. I’m going to the Post,” I tell him as I hang up.

  When I get home, I write about everything that’s happened, from the moment I met Ezra at 640 Park until now. The result is too fantastical, even for a rag like the Post, so I rewrite it to cover just the things I can prove: three homeless men were found dead and eaten in 640 Park Avenue’s boiler room. I can’t get police corroboration or comment, but I don’t need it. The autopsy, interviews, and photos of runes are enough to indicate that some crazy people live there, and they did some really bad things. I send it to my contact at the Post.

  When the front door opens and my family arrives home, I’m surprised by the dark. The only signs I’ve been sitting at my desk for eight hours without moving are my sore hips and the urine I’ve just released all over my khakis.

  Someone has drawn an eye on the palm side of my bandage. It looks like Ezra’s eye. Like my eye:

  We wake that night when Daisy punches us dead in the chest. It takes us a second to figure out that we’re in our bedroom, that it’s night, that we’re not having a heart attack.

  Daisy leaps out of bed. The air smells like her adrenaline. “What the hell, Grady?” Her voice is rags and broken glass.

  “Did yoo hit me?” we ask.

  She peels the neck of her flannel nightgown and angles her left shoulder. Finger-shaped impressions look like they’ve been branded into her flesh.

  “Who did that to yoo?”

  She’s panting, her face flushed, her polyester nightgown dog ugly. “Listen! I get it. You want more sex. But what the hell? You mount me in the middle of the night and start strangling? Since when are you an animal?”

  We notice that the stapler on our nightstand is a perfect blunt object. We could murder her and eat her remains. It would be cleanest. Kindest. Why lead her on?

  She follows our gaze, and it’s like she’s reading our mind. “I think you’re having a nervous breakdown,” she says. “I don’t want to force you into this. But one of us has to call Sinai.”

  Her thick hair is braided in pigtails so it won’t tangle in her sleep. It’s glossy and was one of the first things we noticed about her fifteen years ago. “I have vi-lence,” we say.

  She comes back to bed and sits on the corner nearest us. We giggle on the inside, frown on the outside. She’s so dumb. “I wish you weren’t so unhappy,” she rasps, still holding her throat.

  “I’m not un-happy. I’m dee-lyted.”

  She plants her palms on her knees. Eczema has rosed her finger creases. We’ll wait until she looks at us, so she sees it coming.

  “Well, I am. I’m unhappy.” She looks up, her eyes red, and we forget we’re supposed to murder her and rape our children to death. Her expression is scarier than anything Grady’s ever seen.

  “Yoo don’t luve me anymore?” Grady asks.

  Her eyes skate over the bare walls, the cracked ceiling, the chintz bedspread. “I feel like the last grown-up in the world.” Then she’s crying. Tears drip-drop down her nose like snot. “Why do you bother living here? We both know you want to leave.”

  “That’s not troo,” Grady says. I say. I’m Grady, aren’t I?

  “Huh! Huh!” she bawls. Her entire stomach cramps as she gasps for air. “Huh! Huh! I mean, I get it, you resent us. But you’ve got to stop scaring them. Those drawings you hung over their beds are disgusting!”

  “I didn’t do them. E-lane did.”

  “I saw you tape them up! I thought it was a joke between you and the girls, but come on. It’s not funny. It’s sick.”

  I’m holding her, and I’m crying too. I’m Grady, her husband, and it kills me that she’s so sad. It’s my job to make her happy, and I keep screwing up.

  “Huh! Huh!” she gasps. “You think you’re the only one.” Her lips draw tight and her brow creases in ugly mockery. “I’m so sad for you that you’re not rich and famous. Huh! Huh! I’m so sure it’s all our fault. Like I don’t have dreams. Like I don’t feel trapped. You’re so arrogant!”

  “It’s not that,” I tell her. “I’m a-shamed. I hate witnesses.”

  “What does that mean?” she barks, pure fury. A neighbor bangs and she bangs back with both fists. “Go back to Manhattan, asshole!” Then she turns to me. “Witnesses? What?”

  “I’m…” I can’t say it. It’s too hard. But then she stands, and I have the strangest notion that once she leaves the room in that ugly nightgown, she’s taking our children and she’s not coming back. “I’m a failure!” I bark. “I hate myself. I always have.”

  “And me?” she asks. “The girls?”

  I can’t answer. I should, but I can’t. “There’s something wrong with me,” I say instead. “It’s a toxicological exposure. The same thing that killed Ezra.”

  As she looks at me, sees me, her spite recedes. In its place is softness; compassion.

  I lay my hand on her throat. It’s as if someone set fire to her skin. “That must smart.”

  She cries more softly now. “How do I make up for hurting you like this?” I ask. “Is this something that can be forgiven?”

  She keeps crying and I wish she’d answer. There’s this hole in my heart that not even the slithering thing can fill. But at least she’s next to me, and we’re talking about something besides the children and our jobs and what groceries we can’t do without.

  “Let me show you something,” I say. Then I give her the articles I’ve written. We stay up most of the night going over my research. It’s only then, talking to her, working with her, that I realize I’ve been lonely too. What a strange thing marriage can be. You can stand next to the person you love for so long that she becomes invisible.

  —

  After dropping the kids at school the next morning, Daisy calls in sick to work and we head to the clinic on Ascan Avenue. We tell the on-call doctor I’ve been having vivid dreams and hallucinations from a potential toxicological exposure. Also, I whisper to one of the nurses, I tried to strangle her. But it’s not like it sounds. I don’t remember it.

  The staff runs full toxicological panels and neurologic CTs. They releas
e me five hours later with a tube of Visine, saying that whatever the problem, I’m not in imminent danger, though I do have a porous amygdala—my eyes don’t blink as often, nor do my pupils react quickly enough to light. They tell me that if it gets worse, we should come back. I find myself wishing I had better health insurance, because I’ve just been told that I have holes in my brain, and I’m still getting released.

  Good news arrives when the senior editor at the Post rings my cell. “Classified autopsy reports? A cover-up in a glitzy building? Hot diggety! How can I poach you from the Times?”

  I quote double my salary and ask for benefits too. Why not? What’s crazier, he takes me up on it. I’m suddenly an employee of the New York Post. The editor’s one condition: I’ve got to get a comment from Lucas Novo’s family. This is opportune, since I’m supposed to meet them in two hours.

  When I get off the phone, Daisy gives me an open-lipped kiss of congratulations. She’s genuinely happy for me, and for just a second, I remember that we’re on the same team.

  “You know,” I tell her, “I especially like that the teenaged girls in your novel aren’t damsels in distress. Also, your historical details are pitch-perfect. Mustard gas! I feel as if I’m really inside a mobile hospital on the western front.”

  She beams. And I mean beams. She’s a laser of joy bopping inside a chunky blue sweater and high-waisted mom jeans. “Really? You like it? Because I thought you didn’t.”

  “I love it,” I tell her. “I’m so proud of you.”

  She grins wide as a cat. “I love you.”

  I want to answer in kind, but something holds me back. What if this mutual goodwill cascades and I wind up telling her about the giant fucking snake in my mouth?

  She frowns. “Oh, Grady. Get over yourself.”

  We split up. She heads to Metropolitan Avenue to pick the girls up from school. I take the subway to Manhattan for my final interview. I wave to her and watch her get smaller, and somehow, I know that Grady Wright will probably never see her again.