Dark Avenues

by Brian J Smith

  “What the hell–” Dad said in a resounding voice.

  “I’m sorry, Momma.” Jan plead, her voice garbled.

  I shook off the fear that pinned my feet to the floor outside of her bedroom and ran downstairs as fast as I could. I slid to a stop at the foot of the stairs, sweat trickling down my face and gripped the banister to keep myself from falling. Jan stood beside of the front door, her long black hair falling down around her left cheek; drops of blood peppered her face, clothes and fingernails.

  We gazed at her, our eyes and mouths wide with fear. Outside, the sun sank, spreading a bruised-purple light across the sky.

  “What the hell did you do?”

  “I was getting out of bed to wake up Tyler when I saw these kids outside walking around outside and they were calling us names and one of them threw a rock at Dad’s pickup truck and broke the back window and when I told them to leave they laughed and called me a freak so I leaped out of the window and all I wanted to do was scare them but the hunger hit me and I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted-wan-bu-I-couldn’t–I tri-bu-I-cou–”

  Her words were muddled by her own gut-wrenching sobs.

  “Did you kill them?”

  She nodded. “Only one of them got away.”

  “Shit.” Dad hissed through his teeth, then shifted his angry gaze in my direction. “Why weren’t you up with her like you’re supposed to be?”

  “It’s not my fault.”

  “The hell it isn’t.” He said behind clenched teeth. “If you’d done your job, none of us would be in this mess.”

  “Wow!” Jan sighed. “It’s nice to know that you think of me as a mess.”

  “Shut the hell up, Janice.”

  “Stop it, Geoff.” Mom begged, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “You had one fuckin’ job to do and–”

  “It’s not his fault.” Jan said in a deep guttural voice.

  She clenched the crown of his shoulders with both hands, hoisted him three inches off the floor and pinned him against the corner of the room beside of the front door. Her brute inhuman force shook the house, jarred the living room windows inside of their panes and sent the picture frames sweeping back and forth across the walls like tiny pendulums. Dad recoiled, his face sweaty and pale with fear, and raised his loose-knuckled arms up and across his face.

  She repeated her testimony in her human voice and then released her grip.

  “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “Yes, I do.” She nodded. “and I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry isn’t going to buy you a new family.”

  We knew he was angry but he still shouldn’t have said it like that. It was a bitter pill to swallow; not that I was keeping track but there are somethings that don’t go unnoticed. Mom wandered away and paced back and forth across the living room, hugging herself with both arms whilst gazing down at the floor to shake Dad’s hateful insult from her memory.

  “We don’t need to act like this.” She insisted, chopping her at the air with her hand. “We need to put our heads together–”

  We heard the slow growl of a car engine climbing over the hilltop, followed by the sound of tires crunching over loose gravel. Mom moved over to the window, tiny creases of confusion etching her face, and gazed through the narrow slit between the curtains. A mix of red, white and blue lights swept across the window, accentuating the worry lines bracketing the corners of her mouth.

  Mom hurried away from the window, clamped her left hand across her mouth to quash another sob and joined us beside of the front door. Dad unpinned himself from the wall, kissed her on the forehead, wrapped his arms around her and peered at me from over her right shoulder.

  His look said more than his words could. There was an uncomfortable glint in his eyes that told me he knew it would come to this one day but not just any day; it had to happen tonight. No matter what we said or did, the drastic measure we didn’t want to take was now our only option.

  Something rapped against the living room window with a muffled thud. We flinched at the sound of broken glass and cocked our heads into the living room in time to see a fist-sized rock burst through the curtain and roll across the floor. The curtains parted like specters and weaved amongst the funnel of cool air whistling through the gnarled toothy grin in the window; moonlight glinted off the trail of broken glass strewn across the carpet.

  “Get your galdamn ass out here, you fucking freak.” A drunken angry voice bellowed, belonging to Mr. Hoffman, the town barber.

  “Damn it, Cal.” An authoritative voice demanded, belonging to the one and only Sheriff Randy Chambers. “I told you I’d handle it now get the hell back.”

  “That little bitch killed both of my sons. I want her hung by the galdamn neck until she stops shittin’ and kickin’.”

  Hoffman’s words brought a strangled cry from Momma’s lips. Dad held on, reassuring her that everything would be okay when we knew better.

  “Get out here, you little bitch.” A strangled female cry bellowed.

  Mrs. Hoffman, local librarian and now distraught mother.

  “Everyone just stay back, damn it.” Chamber bellowed. “I’m the sheriff and I’ll take care of this, Evelyn”

  “Tyler.” Dad hissed, tugging at my tee-shirt. “Do it now.”

  “What?” Jan asked, her eyes wide with fear. “What are we doing?”

  “We got to go.” I whispered.

  When I took her left hand, a cold sensation streaked my veins, coiled around my spine and raising the hairs along my arms and the back of my neck. Although I was scared that she would assault me like she’d done to Dad a little bit ago, I wouldn’t be surprised that her keen supernatural senses didn’t detected it before.

  “No.” She pleaded, her face chalky and pale with fear. “We can’t. I won’t.”

  “Do you want them to come in here and hurt us?”

  “I’ll kill them.” Her temples throbbed with rage.

  “Then we’ll have a fucking bloodbath.” Dad whispered. “And we can’t have that kind of attention.”

  A tall, broad-shouldered shadow rose across our fiberglass front door, stopped and knocked hard enough to rattle the window. Evelyn Hoffman’s cries of misery and grief echoed across the driveway, raking at the night like sharp talons; a blanket of harsh-white light draped the living room windowsill, projecting the floor with a weird overlapping shadows.

  “Open the door, Geoff.” Chambers demanded. “You’d make my job a lot more easy if you bring the little lady out with you.”

  “I’m coming.” Dad said, then turned and whispered to me. “You need to get her out of here right now.”

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  “Goddamn it, Jan.” Mom whispered, her eyes wet and red from crying. “Go with your brother right now. I’d rather go to jail knowing that you’re safe with your brother rather than see them put you in handcuffs.”

  Mom gave me a sad, adamant stare that never saw on her face before and nodded. I tugged on Jan’s left hand and tried to drag her toward the back door. She yanked her hand away and began to massage Mom’s shoulders until she looked up at her.

  “Go!” Dad grimaced.

  I wrapped my arms around Jan’s waist, ignoring the deathly-cold touch of her skin, and carried her away. She squirmed and kicked but I refused to budge because if I set her down she would’ve ran back to Mom and Dad. I thought she was going to bite me but she didn’t do that either.

  “Love you, baby.” Mom whispered, a fresh set of tears cascading down her cheeks.

  “Go around the back.” An outside voice bellowed.

  As much as we didn’t want to, Jan saw the gravity of the current situation and knew there was nothing she could do to change their minds. I set her down and led her toward the back door, a second wave of cold fear bristling across my skin. Two men began to approach the back door, their shadows projected across the floor by the sour gray sunlight sifting through the screen.

  She waited until we
were close enough and gave a loud guttural cry. Her eyes now bright red cores of swirling red light, she pushed the door open with such tremendous force that shook the house and rattled the windows; a mist of jagged brown splinters and two hapless bastards flew across the backyard.

  I couldn’t see who it was because it happened so fast I didn’t have the inclination to care. We were halfway across the back yard when we heard the front door burst open and Sheriff Chambers growl under his breath like an angry beast.

  “They’re getting away!” He bellowed.

  I ignored their accusing voices and followed my little sister head first into a dark and impenetrable world that felt much safer than the one outside of it.

  *****

  WE got off the train outside of a little town called Kayson, a rural stretch of cozy brick and stucco houses slapped between a trailer park and a shopping center whose grandeur was relegated by the damages of time and financial decline. We made our way across town, sauntering past the chain of neon-gilded restaurants, nightclubs, gas stations and other establishments. When we neared the end of town, everything was reduced to shotgun shacks and poorly-maintained lawns littered with toys and cars sitting on cinderblocks.

  A roiling black cloud slithered across the fat white moon reducing its soft alabaster glare. The cool summer breeze stirred the trees, tousled our clothes and caressed our skin.

  “Where are we going?” Jan asked.

  “We’re heading north.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we a–” I said, then saw the sarcastic grin on her face. “Smart ass.”

  I nudged her with her elbow and she laughed. It reminded me of the relationship we’d had before she “changed”.

  To be quite honest, I didn’t know where we could go except for Cleveland or maybe Canada and then figure out what to do from there. Wherever we ended up, we’d have to assimilate there as we’d done back home; might even have to cut or dye our hair while I grew some kind of a beard to hide my face.

  “How are we going to get there?” She asked, meeting my gaze.

  Under the overhead glare from the street lights, my shadow was the only one I saw. I looked away before she noticed it because I didn’t want her to feel any worse than she already did

  “We’re gonna hitchhike.” I chuffed. “I can’t just jump on you so you can–”

  I didn’t realize she’d stopped beside of the cream-colored Buick until I was five feet from her. Before I could turn around, a large blunt object struck the back of my head and sent me stumbling face-first onto the pavement. My breath burst from my lips like a deflated balloon; pain sliced across my skull, squeezing hot lucid tears from my eyes.

  I rolled onto my back and, grunting from the pain, glared up at my attacker. He looked to be about sixteen but his thick meaty shoulders and sturdy frame made him look much older. His short brown hair sat above a square pudgy face with wide green eyes, a piggish nose and thick lips; his dingy-white shirt, jeans and boots looked like they hadn’t been washed since Obama’s first term.

  His mouth spread into a self-righteous grin, he planted his right foot on my chest, pinning me to the ground and said, “Stay down or I’ll put you down.”

  A skinny dark-haired boy in a white shirt under an open blue FUBU jacket stepped out of the shadows on my left, pressed a crumpled brown paper sack up to his mouth and inhaled until it hurt. He had a gaunt pale face, sunken cheeks and a clean-shaven head; a thin jagged burn mark streaked across his left cheek and stopped at the edge of his jawline.

  “You want some, Nicky?” He said, referring to my attacker.

  He extended the bag then yanked it out of his reach and chuckled. Nicky ignored him and grinned at my dilemma.

  “Do you want some K-Dog?” He asked.

  He extended the bag toward his left.

  “Not really but I’ll take a slice of pie instead.”

  A young rawboned boy in a red-tee shirt, jeans and sneakers that probably didn’t belong to him appeared out from behind the cream-colored Buick, holding Jan out in front of him. His thick-black eyeglasses did nothing for his wide-set blue eyes or his tan skeletal face. He pressed his face against her left cheek and, ignoring the mask of disgust twisting her features, sniffed the angled slope of neck from under her earlobe before stopping at the crown of her shoulder.

  “You walked into the wrong yard, motherfucker.” K-Dog said in a chauvinistic voice.

  “Where the fuck are you going in the first place?”

  I opened my mouth to answer him when Nicky prodded my chest to remind me who was allowed to speak and who wasn’t.

  “Answer him,” He hissed. “or I’ll plant this boot in your fucking throat.”

  “We’re going north.” Jan exclaimed.

  She winced and struggled to free herself from his grasp. He jerked back on her right arm, jostling her head a little and gave her a scornful look.

  “The more you fight me,” He said with a grimace. “the sweeter it’ll be.”

  The three boys glanced at each other, wide satisfied smiles creasing their faces. This was the kind of happiness they craved for because their parents had given them either because they just didn’t care. We were no different than the wings of a fly that were about to be plucked away from our bodies like the petals of a flower or an army of ants scampering blindly under the stinging hot glare of a sunlit magnifying glass.

  Her cherub-face sagging with terror, Jan’s eyes glistened. She bit down on her bottom lip to contain the scream that would’ve gotten my head stomped into the pavement.

  “Doesn’t look like you’ll be going anywhere tonight, babe.” Sam grunted.

  “We run this whole town.” Nicky said, motioning to them by swirling his finger across the air in a circle. “Everything you see around you belongs to us. No one does anything in this town without telling us about it first.”

  I believed him like the other kids in school.

  Sam took another drag from his bag, chuckled from behind swollen red cheeks and coughed, his body spasming from the toxic contents swirling through his brain. K-Dog opened his mouth, grazed his slick pink tongue across her left cheek, gave a piggish grunt and slid his hand down between Jan’s thighs. My heart thudding with rage at what I was forced to watch, I gnashed my teeth together until my jaw hurt.

  When his hand drifted toward Jan’s naughty place, I sat up and said, “Get your fu–”

  Nicky whipped his left hand hard across my right jaw like a drunk father and bounced my head off the pavement. A strobe of white light flooded my vision before dissolving into tiny pinpricks of stars; more pain blossomed across my skull pressing it against my brain. In the time it would’ve taken me to shake off the pain, Sam planted his left foot onto my left wrist, pressed my knuckles against the pavement and chuckled.

  “Shut the fuck up,” He said, wagging his bag across my face. “You’re not leaving here tonight until we say, got it?”

  A faint noxious cloud drifted past my face. I turned my head to the right and held my breath, hoping I hadn’t breathed any of it.

  “If you want to leave town.” He said. “We get to sample a bit of your cargo.” K-Dog said in that same pre-pubescent voice.

  When he kissed the crown of her left shoulder, Jan freed her arm from his grasp and slid her left hand down the front of his jeans. K-Dog grinned and chuckled with pride when a bone-jarring crunch emitted across the street; the smug look on his face sunk into a hangdog expression that might’ve been either ecstasy or misery. He gave a loud painful yelp as she jerked her hand back, cupping his torn testicles between long pale fingers fitted with long pale talons soaked in a dark crimson liquid that dripped between stretched fingers and onto the pavement like a ruptured oil pan.

  As much as I wanted to save these pathetic assholes, it was already too late. They’d pushed her buttons for as long as she was going to allow them to, just long enough for her to trap them right where she wanted them; the stench was overpowering much stronger and more potent t
han the fumes in Sam’s bag. Her lips drew back from her bright-pink gums, revealing two rows of sharp serrated incisors between two elongated canines stained pink from months of fresh carrion.

  K-Dog stumbled back, his ragged bloody crotch spewing a trail of hot urine and fresh blood across the pavement. She sniffed the odor of blood wafting from her left hand and, her eyes bright with demonic red desire, buried her face deep into her slick red hands. K-Dog slumped onto the shoulder of the road, his arms slumped down by his sides as his eyes rolled back inside of their sockets.

  She gave the same piggish grunt he’d given her a few minutes ago and gnawed on his slick red shaft. The loud slurping noises coming from her mouth churned my stomach under a mix of nausea and unease.

  Nicky and Sam, their faces shifting under mingled expressions of horror and dismay, backed away from me. When they released the pressure from my hands, I scuttled across the street and used the Buick’s rear bumper to hoist myself up.

  “Wha-wha-wha-” Sam stammered. “What the fuck, man?”

  Jan lifted her head up from her dripping red prize and, nostrils flaring, cocked her head at them. They broke into a mad dash toward the end of the street we’d came from, their sneakers slapping rhythmically against the asphalt. She gave a loud guttural protest, drew her lips into a tight angry snarl and raced after them in a faint-white blur.

  Nicky peered over his right shoulder, his eyes wide with shock and drove his right elbow hard into Sam’s left rib. The blow sent shockwaves of pain and agony coursing through his stomach, knocking him off balance. He ran to the right and disappeared from my sight, his bulky frame was barely visible through the wall of darkness and knee-high grass.

  Sam knelt onto the pavement, cradling his stomach in both hands when Jan finally caught up to him. She leaped onto his back, wrapped her legs around his waist and planted him face-down onto the pavement. She jabbed the talons on her left hand deep into the left side of his neck, gripped his jugular inside of her fist and tore it free like a piece of taffy; he gave a loud gurgle, his body twitching as a river of arterial blood oozed onto the pavement.