The Nightmarys

by Dan Poblocki

  ALSO BY DAN POBLOCKI

  The Stone Child

  For Brendan and Emily

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part 1 - Invisible Things

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part 2 - Edge of Doom

  Interlude

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part 3 - The Haunting of Abigail Tremens

  Interlude

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part 4 - The Nightmarys

  Interlude

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Part 5 - Graduation Day

  Endings

  Chapter 49

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  … the act of the passing generation is the germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far-distant time …

  —Nathaniel Hawthorne,

  The House of the Seven Gables

  Where does madness leave off and reality begin?

  Is it possible that even my latest fear is sheer delusion?

  —H. P. Lovecraft,

  The Shadow over Innsmouth

  “The girl’s got sass,” said the old man with a snarl.

  “But that’s never stopped me before.”

  —Ogden Kentwall,

  The Clue of the Incomplete Corpse:

  A Zelda Kite Mystery

  INVISIBLE THINGS

  PRELUDE

  THE MAYFAIR APARTMENTS—

  NEW STARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS

  On a Tuesday afternoon in early March, Zilpha Kindred prepared to do the laundry, as she’d done almost every Tuesday afternoon for the past forty years. This week, though, the old machine in her apartment was broken, so she left her schnauzer mix—an inquisitive little dog named Hepzibah—and wheeled the laundry basket to the elevator.

  Downstairs, when the doors opened, the basement was almost entirely unfamiliar to the elderly woman, and a wave of unease overcame her. The corridor was longer than she recalled. The light was dim. The pipes hung from the low ceiling, craning at wicked angles every which way. A bitter scent lingered in the air. She was suddenly afraid and briefly considered returning to her apartment to call the local laundry service. But she had been doing her own laundry forever. And really, what did she have to be afraid of?

  Zilpha walked for what seemed like an eternity before turning toward the laundry room. Its flickering fluorescent light instantly made her dizzy. She wished then that she had followed her earlier instinct and turned around. But she figured the job would be quick, and then she could go back upstairs and carry on with her day. In the meantime, she’d brought an old paperback to keep her company.

  She filled and started the washer, then sat and waited and read her book. The water cycled. After a few minutes, Zilpha heard a thumping noise inside the machine. It became a hard, constant banging, as if she had accidentally dropped a shoe in with the detergent. When she opened the lid, she found the basin filled with soapy water. Whatever was making the sound was hidden at the bottom. With a huff, she rolled up her sleeve and reached in, digging through the wet clothes. Finding nothing unusual, she closed the lid. Whirring, the machine started up again.

  But before she sat down, the thumping noise returned. She thought it might just be the shifting weight of the load working itself out somehow. She listened for a few more seconds before opening the lid again.

  To her surprise, a red froth had boiled at the water’s surface. Unlike the suds she’d seen earlier, there was a new substance, which reminded her of fat particles that rise to the top of a soup broth. Oily like meat. And worse, that bitter scent she encountered when the elevator door had opened was stronger now, as if coming from the red water. Her first instinct was that there was a problem with the machine or possibly the pipes. She decided to try another washer. Disgusted, she slowly reached into the basin to remove the pile of wet clothes.

  But as Zilpha held the load, the laundry seemed to squirm like a fish. Alive. She shouted and dropped the pile back into the water, then stumbled away, her stomach in her throat.

  Immediately, she tried to reason that she had imagined it. Briefly, she worried that Hepzibah had slipped inside the laundry bag upstairs, but then remembered kissing the dog goodbye at the apartment door. Zilpha could think of nothing, absolutely nothing, that might have provided a logical explanation for what she had just experienced, and so she reasoned that the sensation must have been in her head.

  She eased her breathing, trying to calm her nerves. As she peered into the basin, where the clothes had sunk beneath the surface, her own dark reflection stared back from behind chunks of gristle. White globs of gore clung to her blank silhouette.

  Then the lights flickered, and she could not bear another moment in that horrible basement. She decided to find Mario, the doorman, upstairs. She didn’t care if she came across as a foolish old ninny. But when she headed back toward the long hallway, she heard something splash behind her. Zilpha turned and looked. The lights dimmed further, as if playing a game.

  Then the entire washer lurched toward her so violently, the cords and pipes pulled out of the wall. The red water spilled over the edge of the basin and ran like blood down the front of the machine in a great gory wave.

  That was enough to set her running. She did not look back until she reached the elevator and frantically pushed the button. The long hallway stared back at her quietly. Seconds later the door opened and she slipped into the car, pressing the button for the lobby.

  But before the door slid shut, Zilpha saw a man come around the corner at the end of the hallway. She could not see his face, but she knew him nonetheless. He stood there in his tall dark overcoat watching her, as he had watched her in her memories for many years. As the door closed between them, she felt herself slipping away. By the time the elevator reached the lobby, she was unconscious.

  She awoke in a hospital bed. Mario had found her and called an ambulance. The doctor explained that Zilpha’s daughter and granddaughter were on their way from New Jersey to help take care of her, but this news did not calm the old woman. If what she’d seen in the basement was real, she would have wished Sarah and Abigail to be as far from New Starkham, Massachusetts, as possible. When she asked the nurse for a phone so she might contact her daughter to convince her to stay home, the nurse simply placed her hand over the old woman’s own, trying to comfort her. Zilpha, however, knew that this was not the type of demon who was quelled with comfort.

  Action must be taken, and soon.
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  This was not good. Not good at all.

  1.

  Timothy July first noticed the jars lining the top shelf along the side of room 117 at the beginning of the school year, but by mid-April he’d still not looked closer. The specimens inside the jars had been pickled decades earlier in an opaque and yellowish liquid by some forgotten alumnus of Paul Revere Middle School. Over the years, most of the labels had faded or peeled away from the glass, and so the true identity of the strange multilegged worms, the twisted slimy bodies of mammalian fetuses, and the hollow exoskeletons of beetles would be left to the imaginations of those students who bothered to crane their necks and peer into the dusty heights of the classroom’s shadowy wall.

  Until today, Timothy had taken no interest in them. No one had, not even Mr. Crane, Timothy’s seventh-grade history teacher, over whose classroom the specimens watched silently and who was presently providing instruction for the next day’s field trip.

  “You’ll work in pairs,” said the teacher evenly, pacing in front of the long green chalkboard. “Together, you will choose a single artifact to study. I want ten pages from the two of you, illustrated in the manner of your choice—collage, drawings, charts, graphs, whatever—describing where your artifact is from, how it compares to the art of the era, and how …”

  Timothy was not paying attention. Something in one of the jars was staring at him with a glassy black eye.

  Stuart Chen leaned across the aisle and nudged him. Timothy jumped. “This is so lame,” Stuart whispered. “I thought field trips were supposed to be fun. I can’t believe he’s actually going to make us do work.”

  Timothy glanced at his friend and distractedly grunted in agreement before turning back to the specimen in the jar. It’s funny, he thought, how things that were once invisible suddenly become visible. The black-eyed creature continued to watch him, silent and unmoving, as if waiting for him to turn away so it could shift position … or maybe unscrew the lid. Timothy shuddered with the sudden thought that there might be countless other invisible things out there in the world that he’d never noticed before, watching him all the time.

  “The whole idea is dumb,” Stuart quietly droned on, speaking over Mr. Crane’s speech. “I mean, how are we supposed to know what to pick? Anything in the whole museum …?” He glanced at Timothy. “You’re going to have to choose for us. I don’t really care.”

  Timothy nodded. “I don’t care either,” he whispered.

  To his right, he heard a strange clicking sound. For a brief moment, he thought the thing in the jar had actually moved; then he quickly realized that the sound had not come from the shelves above but from two rows away in the back corner. The new girl was hiding something underneath her desk. She rested her left ankle on her right thigh and stared at something she held in the crook of her knee. Timothy heard the clicking sound again and watched as a small flame from a silver lighter burst at this new girl’s fingertips.

  “Let’s get you paired up,” said Mr. Crane, taking a notebook and pen from his desk.

  As the teacher began to ask each student whom they would like to work with, Timothy watched the new girl in the last row continue to quietly flick the lighter open and closed. Like the specimen jars above her head, he’d never really paid attention to her before. She’d only been at the school for a month. She was quiet and didn’t speak to anyone. She wore gray—sweatshirt, jeans, sneakers. If it weren’t for her thick, messy red hair, she might have faded entirely into the wall. The next time she lit the lighter, to his surprise, she held it against her ankle. The flame raced up her white sock before extinguishing itself. Timothy couldn’t have been more shocked if the thing in the jar had leapt off the top shelf behind her and landed in her lap.

  “This is going to stink,” Stuart said, not noticing the pyro in the corner. Timothy was too fascinated by what she was doing to pay any attention to his friend. Stuart poked Timothy in the shoulder and said, “Right?”

  Suddenly, her brown eyes shifted toward him, and Timothy realized that he’d been caught.

  “Abigail Tremens?”

  The girl cupped the lighter in her fist and looked to the front of the classroom, where Mr. Crane was staring at her. “Yeah?” she said.

  “Who would you like to work with?”

  “Oh.” Abigail let her eyes fall to the desk. “I … uh … don’t know.”

  Mr. Crane peered across the blank faces of his students, who waited in silence for him to continue. “Would someone please volunteer to be Abigail’s partner? We’ve all got to have a partner.”

  Abigail seemed to shrink into her seat with embarrassment.

  The class did not answer.

  Timothy absentmindedly scratched at his ear. Mr. Crane suddenly exclaimed, “Timothy July! Good.”

  Surprised, Timothy managed a weak whisper. “But—”

  Mr. Crane didn’t seem to notice. “Abigail and Timothy,” he said pointedly, writing their names down in his notebook.

  Timothy turned around. The girl stared at him, her mouth open in shock.

  “Moving on. Stuart Chen, who would you like to work with?”

  Timothy glanced apologetically at the boy who had been his usual partner, whenever they’d been given the opportunity, since kindergarten. But Stuart’s mouth was pressed tightly shut; his face shone faintly red through his olive skin. He glared at Timothy, sending a different type of fire across the three-foot aisle.

  2.

  After sneaking away from the history classroom without speaking to Stuart, Timothy gathered books from his locker for his next class. His friend was angry, and Timothy knew he had every right to be. If their places were switched, he would have been just as upset.

  After a moment, he decided it would be best to explain that it had been an accident. And if Stuart didn’t get it—well, too bad.

  Something was happening in Timothy’s life that Stuart could not possibly understand, something his parents had made him promise to keep secret, a task he was finding more and more difficult with every passing day.

  He’d just taken his hand out of the locker when the door slammed shut. Timothy leapt backward to find Stuart standing beside the locker, smiling strangely. After a few silent seconds, Timothy managed to say, “Hey, I’m really sorry about the whole partner thing. It was—”

  “A little late for that now,” Stuart interrupted. “You could have said something to Mr. Crane during class.”

  “I—I said I was sorry,” said Timothy. “We’ll be partners next time. Promise.”

  “Fat Carla,” said Stuart, his eyes darkening. “How would you like to be working with Fat Carla?”

  “I’d like it all right.” This was what he’d been afraid of.

  “Liar.”

  Timothy felt his face start to burn. “You’re kinda being unfair, don’t you think? It wasn’t my fault. Plus, during class, you kept saying how lame the project was going to be.”

  “That’s ’cause it is going to be lame,” said Stuart. “But at least we would have been in it together.”

  Something was bubbling deep inside Timothy. Something he’d wanted to say to Stuart for a while now. “Maybe it’ll be good to try something different.”

  “Different? What do you mean—different?”

  “Stuart,” Timothy whispered. “Sometimes you can be …”

  “Be what?” Stuart’s smile finally dropped away.

  “Not everything is lame. Not everyone is ugly and stupid. In fact, I think the field trip tomorrow might be fun. You’re always so … I just think … maybe it would be a good idea …”

  “What would be a good idea?” Stuart’s voice hardened.

  “To work with a different partner on this project,” said Timothy, clutching his math book. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Oh, that’s all you’re saying?”

  “I gotta get to class.” Timothy started to back away, heading toward the math wing.

  “You wanna talk about different?” said Stuart,
following him. “You should know. You’ve been acting different ever since … I don’t know when.”

  Timothy felt his face flush deeper. He knew why he’d been acting differently lately, but he hadn’t figured out a way to tell Stuart without breaking his promise to his parents. “Look, just forget it,” Timothy said. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Whatever,” said Stuart, before turning around and walking away.

  Timothy closed his eyes for a moment, trying to shake away the horrible sensation in his head. But he didn’t have the energy to think about Stuart and all his stupid crap.

  He was about to head into his math class when someone grabbed his arm, jerking him to a stop. Abigail Tremens stood behind him, glaring with her deep brown eyes. She quickly crossed her arms over her chest.

  “So … you think you’re, like … my boyfriend now?” she mumbled.

  Timothy felt like she’d slapped his face. “Uh … no.”

  “Good. ’Cause I don’t need a boy to rescue me or anything. I don’t need a boyfriend. I don’t need a friend. I don’t need anything. Okay? I’m fine by myself.”

  “Mr. Crane said we all needed a partner. Now you have one. What’s the big deal?”

  Abigail stared at him for another moment before saying, “Just stay away from me.”

  3.

  At the end of the day, despite the drizzle spitting against the school’s front doors, Timothy purposely missed the bus home. He simply waited in the boys’ bathroom until a little after three o’clock, when he knew the long line of buses would clear away from the main entrance of the school. He couldn’t imagine sitting next to Stuart for the entire ride back to Edgehill Road.

  For a while now, their friendship had felt weird; the shape of their history was a puzzle piece that no longer fit the empty space Timothy knew was inside him. It was odd—they both still liked to play video games. They watched the same television shows. Their comic books had become so mixed-up over the past few years, it was no longer possible to distinguish which belonged to whom. Together, the boys attended swim-team practice three nights a week and every other Saturday morning. And their parents had always been close, at least until recently.