by The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares- The Haunted City (retail) (epub)
We lurched forward in the darkness as if we hit something and Victoria giggled. I leaned in to her and was about to tell her everything when she actually surprised me. She wanted to have sex right then and there in the boat.
Before I could answer her, we were illuminated by the beam of a flashlight. A large, hulking figure stood over us. I leapt up and grabbed the flashlight from his hands and was about to throttle him with it when I heard the squawk of a walkie-talkie. I turned the flashlight around and discovered that I had grabbed on to a ride attendant. I apologized profusely as he unhooked the boat and shoved us on into the dark. I did my best to catch my breath. Victoria couldn’t stop laughing.
My mind reeled as I drove home. Should I tell Victoria? Should I go to the police? This was the most exciting thing that had happened to me in a very long time, and I was reluctant to let it go.
As I got ready for bed I couldn’t find my iPhone. I had no luck locating it anywhere in the house. I didn’t remember using it after I left the office. Did it fall out of my pocket on the Dragon Coaster or on the Olde Mill? A chilling thought crossed my mind. I had dropped it in the woods. I prayed it was at the bottom of the stream as opposed to being alongside the fence I ran into where it could easily fall into his hands.
I was about to slip into a deep sleep when the landline rang just after three a.m. Victoria jumped awake, convinced something bad might have happened to her mother. I picked up the phone and listened. No one said anything. There was only silence, followed by the sound of the wind and then a passing train. A moment later, I heard a train pass just a few blocks away. Victoria asked who was on the phone. The caller broke out into a blood-curdling scream. It sounded almost like gargling. The cacophony ended as the voice fell to a calculated whisper.
“Your wife is very pretty,” the caller said and hung up.
Victoria asked who the caller was. I told her it was someone from the amusement park who had found my phone. She got pissed that they would call so late and within minutes was back asleep. But not me. I couldn’t sleep now. I knew that fucking lunatic was out there and that he had my phone.
The next morning I could feel his presence as I walked to the train station. Victoria had left ahead of me and gone to work, so I felt that she would be okay. It wasn’t her he was after anyway. It was me.
I got on the train, hoping I would see him. I went car to car, checking every last seat to make sure he wasn’t on board. As we came up on 125th Street, I thought about getting off, heading north and finding him. Reconciliation, I thought. That’s how I’ll end this. Maybe money would do the trick. I’ll tell him I’m sorry. I stepped forward as the doors hissed open. I wondered if he could even comprehend the notion of forgiveness. He was the personification of evil—or was this just my upper-middle-class fear of the homeless manifesting some way? He could certainly be psychotic. Trying to reason with him might just make it worse.
In Grand Central Terminal I could swear he was on the upper level looking down on me. I took the escalator up and looked around. I found a homeless guy there with his hand out, seated with his back against the wall. He stunk of his own piss and vomit. I handed him some money, hoping I could leverage my guilt with the universe. He refused to take the money and laughed a horrible throaty cackle. Then he told me that I was dead, I was dead and didn’t know it. I put the money back in my wallet and headed to the office.
At lunch, I told Packer about everything that had been going on over the last few days as he gulped down beer after beer. I ended by saying that I was thinking of going to the cops. He convinced me that this was a bad idea and that there was nothing the cops could do. I would come off like an idiot trying to explain it all. Last, he gave me his patented hard sell that he could straighten all of this out if I invited him over for dinner. There was nothing he could do, but I agreed.
We stopped and had drinks at a bar in Grand Central and then got on the train. When the doors opened at 125th Street, Packer leapt up and took off down the platform. I yelled after him to get back on the train, but he took the stairs down to street level. I had to follow him just to make sure he didn’t get himself killed.
I felt very alone and vulnerable. It was a loud place. Lots of riffraff, and I felt like a target. I finally caught up to Packer. We walked for several more blocks and over a bridge into the Bronx. I took him to the spot where I had first seen the object of what had become my nightmare. Packer laughed and looked at me when he saw the trash can. He admonished me for being frightened of some homeless idiot and called me a pussy. Then he yelled out into the evening that we weren’t afraid of him and kicked over the trash can. There was a shopping cart a few feet away. It was filled with the necessities one would have to use to live on the street. There were plastic bags, old dirty blankets, cans, and for some reason, a teddy bear. Packer took the cart and wheeled it away. Against my wishes he pushed it down a set of stairs that led to God knows where. After shouting some more obscenities at whatever phantom might be listening, he turned and headed back to the train station. If this was Packer’s idea of fixing the situation, it was far from helpful. I caught up with him and said that what we were doing was wrong. Some sense of civility took over in me and I said that the homeless guy was a person too. Packer laughed in my face and said that some people just didn’t count.
At dinner, Packer drank a lot more than usual. He had twice as much steak as Victoria and I put together. Then, after smoking several of Victoria’s cigarettes, he grunted something about her being very beautiful, followed by his need to go home immediately. He was leaving for Vegas the following day to do his presentation.
A little later, I drove him back to his apartment in Brooklyn Heights. It was raining hard: a cold, mean, nasty rain that punished everything around us. I let him off and watched him as he stumbled toward his building. The doorman took over from there, letting Packer inside, used to this behavior.
As I took the Bruckner Expressway through the Bronx, I wondered where the homeless guy would go to stay dry in this kind of weather. I couldn’t imagine him in a shelter, grateful that someone had given him a roof over his head and a bowl of hot soup. How the hell does someone get so far off track? Was he always crazy, or did it happen incrementally until one day he just gave in to madness? Then I wondered about myself and the way I was behaving. I was being threatened and doing very little about it. I thought for a moment that I would take the exit, go to his neighborhood, and end this, whatever that meant. But no, I was civilized. I kept driving. I wondered if being civilized was just an excuse for being cowardly. I couldn’t shake what Packer said to me. Some people just don’t count.
When I got home I walked into the bedroom and found Victoria lying there naked and asleep. She looked amazing lit by the light coming through the bathroom door. She did this on purpose. I was sick and tired of asking permission for sex with my wife. She wasn’t about to get fertilized, or we weren’t about to make love, or any other bullshit. We were going to fuck and that’s that. I rolled her over. She moaned and whispered something unintelligible as I entered her. She seemed to be going along with the program until she finally awakened. Then her eyes went wide and she looked at me in an indescribable way. Then she started to fight me. She cursed. She flailed. She did everything she could to get out from under me, but I just wasn’t going to stop. We used to have rough sex all the time, I told myself. So what? She tried to cry out but I covered her mouth. Then she bit my hand. Hard. I didn’t let up until I was done. Afterward she rolled over on her side, silent. I waited for her to say something, anything, but it never happened.
I went to the kitchen and had some orange juice. I sat in the dark for a while. The longer I was there, the more guilty I felt. I knew that if I woke her and apologized it would only make things worse.
I was awakened in bed around three a.m. The phone was ringing again. On the other end all I could hear was grunting and what sounded like someone beating watermelons with a baseball bat. Then, after a long silence, that same voic
e whispered to me as it did before. It was oddly calm and even more oddly articulate. “I’ll bet your wife has a pretty cunt.” Victoria, having been awakened, called me every name in the book. She told me that what I had done to her was horrible and that I needed to go see a psychiatrist. Then she ordered me to sleep on the sofa.
The next day at work my boss informed me that Packer had not showed up in Vegas.
I left work early and cabbed it to Packer’s apartment. I had a key to his place, having had to crash there a few times when we worked through the weekend. The apartment looked immaculate, except that the faucet to the kitchen sink was dripping. I turned it off and I noticed some fruit flies buzzing around the drain. I hit the garbage disposal button and what I saw made my mouth fill with vomit. Blood, hair, and chunks of flesh bubbled out of the drain and began to form a sticky, disgusting pool. My legs gave way as I heaved my guts out. The pulpy remnants of what I assumed was Packer spilled off the sides of the sink and spread across the floor toward me.
I don’t remember calling the cops or what I said, but a short time later I was surrounded by detectives in Packer’s living room, telling them all I knew. After questioning me from every angle, they said I could go but that they’d be in touch.
When I got home I saw my cell phone on the table. Victoria picked up right away that I was surprised to see it. Jesus, I thought. The homeless guy has been inside our house. I did my best to play it off and suggested that we get a hotel room for a few days. I told her that I wanted to make up to her for what I had done the night before. She wasn’t buying it and kept on pressing me. Finally, I told her the truth. Every last horrible detail. I expected her to yell and scream. None of that happened. All she did was quietly grab a few odds and ends and leave. I couldn’t blame her and didn’t try to stop her. She took our car and was gone in no time.
A little later I picked up my cell phone to call her, but my photos came up instead. Shots of the yard. Shots of the house. A great one of Victoria laughing as we watched TV. As I continued to scroll, I came across some new ones I didn’t take. Victoria shopping. Me on the street in New York near my office. Me and Packer in the Bronx dumping the shopping cart. Victoria and me as we slept in our bed. Packer beaten to a bloody pulp. Packer gutted and chopped up into several pieces. Then more of Victoria. Her meeting some guy for lunch. Laughing with him. The two of them kissing in his car.
Hours later I was still sitting on the sofa. I was shattered but not all that surprised. Victoria had been slipping away for months. Somehow it all paled next to seeing my friend Packer chopped to little bits and pieces. Then my iPhone buzzed. I hoped that it was her and that she had come to her senses. I wanted to know who the guy was and how long all of this had been going on so that I could punish myself with all the gory details. But truth be told, I was relieved. I’d been living under a cloud of lies for too long. I had thrown off a switch in my brain. I was just marking time day after day doing everything in my power to not look at what was clearly in front of me.
But instead of a text from Victoria, there were photos. Victoria was naked and tied to a pipe in a concrete room with dirty water on the floor. A text followed.
“Not only pretty, but tasty.”
Something welled up in me that I didn’t know existed. It was a wonderful feeling of joy and complete excitement. I felt that a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders and that I was about to indulge in something that I had kept at bay for nearly as long as I’d lived. I was really going to kill someone, and I had no sense of anxiety or guilt. Someone who didn’t deserve to live. Someone no one would miss. Someone who didn’t count.
I went into the kitchen and collected several knives, the largest being our carving knife, which I sharpened to perfection. Then I went to the neighbor’s house and told him that I had a family emergency and I needed his car.
I drove to the Bronx. The night was alive and the air crystal clear. I listened to jazz as I drove south and into the wretched bowels of his neighborhood. I parked the car a few blocks from the train station and got out with a sense of power. I was amazed at the clear, cold smells of concrete and steel. The moon was bright, and I moved joyously and without a shred of fear. I was using senses I didn’t know I had. I went where I could feel his presence.
I found an entranceway to the storm drains where all the waste from Manhattan washed out into the river. I walked into the cavern and was instantly hit with the smells of rat shit, sweat, and urine, just like in my dream.
There was a whole world down here that existed apart from the city streets above. Bums out of Dante’s Inferno were huddled in groups. Some of them were asleep, others gathered around fires. The deeper into this stinkhole I traveled, the more I felt the desire to rescue Victoria. Not because I dreamed of some happier future for both of us, but merely for an odd, pulsating, egocentric desire to liberate the primal male that beat in my heart, which had been denied for way too long.
I could feel eyes watching me. No one was going to stop me as I continued downward. Not one. Not a single one. Then I heard Victoria sobbing, pleading for someone to help her. She was calling out my name. I was still the one she counted on in her moment of terror and weakness. I took solace in that. She had married me for a reason.
I found her tied to the pipe just like in the picture. She couldn’t believe her eyes when I appeared.
“Martin?” she called out. “Martin?”
It was as if I were hearing my name for the first time. I untied her and wrapped her up in my coat. She broke down, but I told her to be still.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s just get out of here.”
I could feel him close by. This wasn’t about her. This was all about me.
Victoria shrieked and I turned and we finally came face-to-face. It was the first time that we were separated by only a few feet.
He was so much larger than me. He had a long face, almost too long for his body. In the dark I couldn’t tell where his head ended and his hoodie began. His breath smelled like garbage. His teeth went every which way. He held an aluminum bat and smiled. Then he took a swing at me.
I could have ducked but chose not to. I let him hit me square in the jaw. I felt my jaw break and saw stars. Considering the blow, I recovered quickly and allowed myself to relish this new feeling of pain. It was wonderful. I was alive. Fucking alive. My mouth filled up with warm blood and it sent tingles of joy throughout my body. He swung again and this time I ducked. He overreached and lost his balance. I took the opportunity to stick him with my carving knife. It was a lovely deep plunge just below his ribs. He was surprised that I’d stuck him so quickly. He flailed at me, but I only drove the knife in more deeply. As he screamed, I grabbed a steak knife from my back pocket and stuck him through the neck. Blood sprayed in my eyes and mouth. Then he smiled. I couldn’t believe it. He smiled as his life was leaving him, and he fell to the wet concrete with a nasty thud.
Victoria cried out, but I sure as hell wasn’t through yet. While he was still breathing I placed my knee on his throat and cut out his fucking eyes. Victoria was right. Keepsakes and souvenirs do help us remember. She was nothing short of a fucking genius.
Afterward, I led Victoria out of the sewers and back to the street above. The pain in my jaw was overwhelming, but I was still enjoying it. The sun was just beginning to crest as we reached the car. The streets were empty except for a few bums. One attempted to give me some attitude, but I stared him down in a way that told him it was in his best interest to move on.
I put my wife in the car. She said nothing. I reached into my pocket. His eyes were still warm. They felt good. Alive. Like victory.
Then I heard a rumbling sound. It was the sound of the commuter train I took to work every morning. I looked up to see the faces of the passengers on board. That’s what they are, I thought. Just passengers. Not one of them at the controls. They all looked so pathetic to me. One guy in particular. He had an owlish face
and glasses.
He looked down at me and our eyes locked. My contempt for him and his stupid pointless life was beyond description.
We didn’t unlock our eyes.
Fuck him, I thought. Fuck him.
1
The nightmare is always the same. The mile-long midnight parade moves down Broadway, hulking and wending its way toward some indeterminate destination. The parade floats are black and shapeless, just heaping mounds of papier-mâché, bulbous black tumors hovering above this endless New York street. Twelve-foot-tall black-robed and hooded figures pull these monstrosities along with ropes, like pallbearers hauling megacoffins.
These carriers are not only faceless but also soulless.
This I know—in my dream I know this.
I am the only person in this night parade—I am the only soul. I stand atop a mountainous float, carefully balancing on the dark-papered amorphous street mass—slowly moving along—ushered by the empty hoods. What did I do to deserve this soulless tribute in this, my city—my city that I love to hate?
Then I hear it. A cacophony of cries and screams as wails of mindless agony rise all around me. So many. So many. I am overwhelmed, spinning, trying to locate the source of this collective cry of despair, pain, and fear. I find it in the city’s skyscrapers, each reaching high into the sky dome of night, like fingers outstretched and groping futilely for heaven’s aid. The buildings’ windows open simultaneously, revealing hundreds of sinewy hooded figures. Their rotting hands grip people—people I recognize. The last time I saw them they were dead—victims of NYC’s psychosis. Infants imploded inside microwaves by cracked-out parents. Children eviscerated by pederasts. Teens cut down by bullets in gangland shoot-outs. Women pummeled to pulp by piss-drunk husbands. Merchants murdered for pocket change.
New Yorkers I couldn’t save—all alive again.
The soulless hang the innocent victims out of windows, high above the city, above the midnight parade, above me. I reach up to them but there are too many and they’re too far—and their cries for help are deafening. I can’t take it. I can’t reach them. I can’t help them. Make it stop.