by JT Ellison
He ran toward Alicia. She didn’t see the van. Her fingers wrapped around the handle of the garbage can.
Maybe he could push her out of the way. Save her. He was only feet away now.
The van fishtailed and he knew what was going to happen. The driver had lost control.
The last thing he heard was the goblin cackling.
“You’re mine now. I won you.”
And the world went dark.
The Perfect House
Lisa Morton
“You sure you wanna go to the old Ducommun place?”
If this had been a horror movie, the person asking that would have been a creepy old dude with one bad, milky eye, missing teeth, and a grizzled beard that might or might not have bits of flesh stuck in it. But this wasn’t a horror movie—at least not yet—and so the inquirer was a chunky teenager with a dyed blond ponytail who chewed gum while she talked (with an Alabama accent) and eyed me as if I’d just spoken in tongues.
“Uh, yeah, I’m sure. Why? Not like there’s anybody living there.”
The girl, who was maybe eighteen, finished bagging my protein bars and coffee drinks as she squinted at me. “Who told you that?”
“The woman who owns the house.”
She shrugged, handed me the bag. “You’d think she would know.”
“Are you saying there are people living there?”
“There’s lots of folks ’round here who come into town once a month, pick up a few things, and don’t nobody know exactly where they live. Maybe they live there, maybe they don’t.”
The transaction was done. I thanked the girl, picked up my bag, and walked out of the Piggly Wiggly.
I got into my rented SUV, unwrapped one of the protein bars, and shoved it into my mouth as I glanced around the small town of Jackson’s Corners. I’m a city boy by birth and preference; I wasn’t used to places where you could see half the town from one intersection. In fact, this was my first trip scouting a location in the South. When they’d told me what they needed—medium-budget horror picture set in a huge, broken-down mansion in the middle of an endless field of weeds—I’d known I wouldn’t find anything like that in L.A. I’d gone through websites and notebooks for days, I’d talked to other location managers and scouts. Finally, someone in Mobile, Alabama, told me about a new property that had just come up on a local website as being available for a shoot. He sent me the link, I checked it out, and heard that delicious inner “Bingo!” call the instant I laid eyes on the Ducommun house. It was strangely designed for the South—less plantation style and more edge-of-the-sinister-moors style, two stories with a lot of stonework, but that made it even more perfect. The movie, Haunted, was actually set in Britain in the 1880s; the production team had offices in Charleston. They only needed the house for a few days’ worth of exteriors, so going to Britain was too expensive. If the Ducommun place worked out, I’d be Haunted’s hero.
I finished my protein bar, swigged some of the coffee, and checked my notes again before starting up the SUV. The house should be no more than twenty minutes away. If it worked out, the residents of Jackson’s Corner would get a nice little economic boost for a few days, although I wasn’t sure they’d appreciate it.
The house’s current owner, MaryEllen Loewe, lived in upstate New York and wanted nothing to do with either her family estate or Jackson’s Corners. She said no one had lived in the house since the 1970s, and in fact she’d only visited it once, as a child on a family vacation. She’d put it on the market a few times, but it was apparently too isolated and too run-down to fetch any real money. One day she’d seen a ghost movie with a house that she thought was far less frightening, so she’d come up with the idea of offering the place as a location.
As I drove out of Jackson’s Corners, I thought back to my phone conversation with her. When I’d asked her how long it had been since anyone had been out to check on the place, she’d been evasive, told me she’d had a local friend take the photos I’d seen. Now it made me wonder if the grocery store clerk could’ve been right—might it have picked up some squatters along the way? If it had… well, as great as it looked in the photos, there were always other houses. I’d come up against squatters in the past, even had to work with the local sheriff once to oust them when the director had fallen so in love with the place that he just couldn’t have any other house in east L.A. The squatters had been a down-on-her-luck mother and three kids. I’m enough of a Hollywood Liberal to have felt guilty as hell about tossing them out, even though they’d trashed the joint. I would never do that again.
After leaving Jackson’s Corners, the two-lane county road wound through low, untamed fields punctuated by outbreaks of trees, clustered so thickly you’d think you could barely walk between them… and yet some of those dense gatherings held old structures, set so far back in the growth they were barely visible. Surely no one still lived out here… but there were dirt lanes leading back from the main road that looked well-traveled. Back in L.A., I lived in a Valley condo that I thought was wild because it backed onto a concrete-lined wash and I’d once seen a coyote down there. Living out here just seemed unimaginable to me.
Thank God for GPS, or I’m sure I would’ve missed the overgrown driveway that led to the Ducommun place. The house itself wasn’t visible from the road, although there was a crumbling brick pedestal with a mailbox on which the name could barely be made out.
The dirt drive was pitted and bumpy. I crawled over it at barely five miles per hour, thinking that the last thing I wanted was to destroy a rental miles from civilization. At some places the drive was little more than a path, so thoroughly overgrown that brush scraped against the windshield and the sides of the car. If anyone lived out here, they weren’t much on landscaping.
Finally, the woods cleared out and the house was revealed, lurking just beyond a tumbledown wrought-iron fence and gate. I parked, checked my phone, pocketed my keys, and got out.
The gate consisted of two doors that resisted my first push slightly—the hinges were rusted into place—but finally gave with a nerve-jangling screech. Beyond, an unpaved path led between knee-high weeds to the house itself.
The photos I’d already seen hadn’t lied—one look at it raised goose bumps. The house was built in a U-shape, with two wings that flanked a central courtyard and entryway. The wings had steeply pitched roofs with thick chimneys, while the house between was flat, with dormers jutting from the shingled roof. The center feature of the house was an entryway with a roof that was oddly reminiscent of a steeple, tall and narrow with a pitched roof that curved down on both sides. It was impossible to tell what the house had been built from—whether it was stone or wood, it was so aged and discolored that its grayish-brown walls looked ancient and even alien.
Rodrigo Alfaro, the young director of Haunted, was going to fucking love this place.
It was the perfect house.
Even the weather was ideal—an overcast day that shed a dull, flat light on the Ducommun house. I brought my phone up and started snapping pictures. I paused just once to review the photos on the phone’s screen, then continued to shoot.
Walking up closer to the house did nothing to dispel its aura of decay and mystery. The place just looked cold, even dead; no vegetation grew next to the house, where the air smelled of mold. Astonishingly, the windows were still intact, as were the interior draperies, making it impossible to spy into the house.
I walked around to the side, shooting as I went. I was still looking up at the house as I circled around to the back—but when I brought my eyes down, I stopped dead in my tracks.
I was staring at a clothesline, complete with freshly washed clothes flapping in the slight breeze. These weren’t old castoffs, hung out half a century ago and forgotten—one was a black T-shirt featuring the logo of a metal band that had been hot about ten years ago. Beyond the clothesline was a field that had obviously been tended—rows of corn ran straight, tomatoes clung to cages, potato vines were green and leafy.
> Suddenly anxious, I turned and looked up at the house and saw something I’d missed—black solar panels, so the house had an off-the-grid power supply. Of course I’d missed them from the front—they were only placed on the rear of the house, hidden from the view of anyone casually approaching from the front. A few feet to my left was a pump handle with a fresh puddle around the base.
On the bottom floor of the house, a drapery swung back into place.
Someone was in the house. And they were watching me.
Heart hammering, I turned to head back to my rented car. I kept my head down, tried not to seem obviously alarmed and rushed, even though my throat was dry and my palms were sweaty.
I never even felt someone behind me. At least I think they came up behind me. I only know that there was a sound like a cannon blast, one brief flash of pain in my head, and then nothing.
Pain. Dark. Unable to move.
Those were the first three things that came when I woke up. My head hurt and I was nauseous. I’d been hit on the head. I hoped I didn’t have a concussion.
Once my eyes adjusted, I saw I was inside. My arms were behind me, the wrists tied together; my feet couldn’t move, either. Weak sunlight filtered in around floor-to-ceiling draperies, making dust motes dance in broad shafts. Something glittered on my chest, and I saw that several necklaces had been draped around my neck. One had a crucifix dangling from the end, but I couldn’t make sense of the others. The air smelled strange, like a combination of mildew and herbs.
What the fuck?
I had to be in the Ducommun house. The drapes and the windows behind them matched what I’d seen from the outside.
“He’s awake.”
I jerked against my bonds, startled by the sound of a feminine voice. Squinting in the gloom, I could just make out a woman squatting on the floor about ten feet away. She sounded middle-aged, her voice husky. She was slender, seemed to be wearing something like a billowy peasant blouse and jeans. She wore the same kinds of necklaces that had been placed on me, and her arms were tattooed with images I couldn’t make heads or tails of.
A man strode up behind her. Big, husky guy, long grizzled beard; although I couldn’t see anything but shadow, I guessed there was a lot of gray in there. As he paused before one of the curtained windows, I could tell from his silhouette that he was over six feet and two hundred pounds. He also wore the necklaces, which I now guessed were supposed to be amulets or talismans, some kind of folk magic or hoodoo.
This wasn’t looking good.
The woman rose and approached me, leaning forward. “Can you hear me?”
I tried to answer, but my throat was dry and I choked.
She asked, “Do you need some water?”
At least they weren’t going to kill me. Or at least they weren’t going to kill me when I was still thirsty. I nodded.
She approached with a glass mason jar full of water and tilted it to my lips while the man watched carefully. The water was warm but good; I spluttered, but got enough down to loosen up my throat. “Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome.” She set the jar aside and stood over me, looking down.
Now I could get a better look at her. She was in her forties, might’ve been beautiful except that she had some of the telltale signs of hard living—leathery, tanned skin, nails so short they might have all been broken, so skinny that lines once curved had become angular.
My head was still throbbing, although thankfully the queasiness was fading. “Don’t suppose you’ve got an ibuprofen around…”
“Sorry, we don’t.”
The man stood behind her, scowling, unmoving. It was obvious that he didn’t approve of something; I only hoped it was the fact that I was being kept here at all, and not that I was being kept here alive.
Something else sprang up in my peripheral vision, something in the shadows behind the man. I turned my head slightly, and for a second I thought I saw a figure crouched there, glaring at me. Then the man shifted his weight, stepping in front of the bent thing with the bared teeth, and I wasn’t sure I’d really seen it at all.
I turned my attention to the woman, who peered at me with curiosity and sympathy. “Look, my name’s Dustin Mathers, I’m out from L.A. scouting locations—”
The woman cut me off. “What does that mean?”
“It means that somebody wants to make a movie here, and they’ll give you a lot of money if I can coordinate it.”
My two hosts exchanged a look at that, a shared expression that was one part amusement, one part alarm, and one part excitement. Now the man spoke, and his voice was a heavily-accented rumble. “Ain’t no movie gonna be made here.”
“I agree, and I know you probably thought I was a trespasser and that’s why you knocked me out, so how about we just call it even, you let me go, and you’ll never hear from me again—how’s that?”
The man stepped forward, and I saw he carried a length of steel pipe—probably what he’d used to hit me with. “So does everybody out in California think all of us down here in the South are just stupid?”
“No. No, of course not, but… well, there are people who know I was coming out here to look at this property. When I don’t show up for a while, they’ll start checking.”
The woman asked, “What people?”
“The woman who owns this place, for one.”
At that my two captors exchanged a look and then snorted in derision. “The owner, huh?” The woman barked a harsh laugh. “What else did she say?”
“That the house was unoccupied.”
The woman’s face turned red. For a moment her mouth hung open, moving a little like a fish on a dock. Then she screamed, “Bitch!” as she stormed out of the room.
“SueAnne, honey, wait!” That was the man, going after her. I heard them in another room, arguing about “that bitch,” and then a door slammed, the voices were muffled, and I thought they’d gone outside.
I was alone. I didn’t know for how long, nor did I know what kind of mood they’d be in when they returned—maybe they’d decide that saving me at all had been a mistake, and the next time that pipe came down on my head would be the last.
I had to try something while I could.
I tested the bonds on my wrists and realized it felt like a simple zip tie. That was good.
Why was that good? Because every experienced location manager carries a lot of shit they might never need. What folks might not realize about the job is that we don’t just find cool places where movies can film, we supervise those locations when the work’s actually happening. During shooting I wear a safari vest with pockets; those pockets are crammed full of everything from gaffer’s tape to phone chargers to power bars to wads of cash. Even when I’m not on a set or wearing that vest, I carry a few extra items with me. I figured my captors had taken my phone and my keys, but they might have missed the little knife I kept in a back pocket.
I seemed to be strapped to an old dining chair with a narrow back. I was able to move my hands to the left side enough to tap my rear pants pocket.
I felt a tiny bulge there and nearly passed out from relief.
It took some maneuvering, but I managed to get two fingers of my left hand into the pocket. Being careful—so careful!—not to drop the knife, I pulled it out. Another few seconds and I’d managed to get the knife blade out. Fifteen seconds later, the zip tie fell away from my wrists.
Moving as quickly as possible, I brought the blade down to saw through the tie at my ankles. I got to my feet, nearly stumbling as my vision swirled, but I steadied myself until the world stopped spinning. I shoved the knife away again and got my ass out of there.
The room we’d been in was on the ground floor and led into a central downstairs area. Other rooms opened around the sides. To my left, a big staircase went up to the second floor; to my right, grand double doors led outside.
I heard the couple arguing just beyond the doors. I was still trying to decide which way to go when their voices started
to come closer.
I opted for the stairs and ran up them two at a time.
I’d just reached the top landing when I heard the doors open. I sprinted down the hallway to my right, noticing two things right off the bat: There were a lot of closed doors up here; and the way my feet brought up clouds of dust made me think nobody had been up here in ages.
I was near the end of the hallway when I heard the man shout, “Fuck!”
They’d discovered I was gone.
To my right, a narrow flight of stairs led to an attic. Maybe they wouldn’t look for me up there. Maybe they wouldn’t think to follow the trail I’d probably left in the dust. I had no other choice at this point.
At the top of the stairs was a trapdoor. I pushed on it; it gave. I opened it all the way, climbed up through it, and lowered it as silently as I could.
The attic was pretty much what you’d expect to find in a house this old: Thin light filtered in through a few grimy windows, revealing a long space cluttered with boxes, broken furniture, abandoned toys, old steamer trunks. The roof peaked not far overhead; anyone taller than six feet would have to duck on the sides of the room.
Footsteps were thudding up the main staircase.
I looked around for somewhere to hide. There wasn’t much time. I picked a corner where I could crouch behind a low cabinet with a broken leg.
I positioned myself and listened. They were coming down the hall now. “Can you tell where he went?” called the man.
The woman—SueAnne—said, “I think he stopped here… maybe this way…?”
I tensed.
I peered around the edge of the cabinet, and movement caught my peripheral vision. I turned to look down the length of the attic to my left, and in the distance I saw a man. He had some sort of metal collar around his neck, studded with spikes so he couldn’t lower his head; the collar was attached to a length of heavy chain, which was secured around a support post with a padlock. The man was black-skinned, naked, covered in long, thin, horizontal wounds, some of which were fresh enough to ooze blood. He was wide-eyed in terror and agony, his mouth open in a silent scream.