A Place So Wicked

by Patrick Reuman

  That was when it happened.

  She turned to him, swinging around the empty solo cup in one hand, and said something to him that to this day he was unsure of, and then dove at him for a kiss. Her tongue found its way into his mouth, which he would have enjoyed under normal circumstances, except her mouth tasted very strongly of alcohol and something else he couldn’t place. After a few seconds of kissing and her hands moving about his body in ways no one had ever touched him, she pulled away as if a sudden realization had come over her. She stared at him for what had to be one of the longest minutes of his life and then walked away without a word.

  The following Monday, he didn’t even want to go to school. He was afraid. It wasn’t like he saw Kelly often. They shared no classes together. He only knew her because, well, everybody knew her. She was easily one of the most popular girls in school. But, somehow, he knew without a doubt that he would bump into her because that’s just how the universe worked.

  He did.

  There were two options. One, she didn’t want anybody to know of the social crime she had committed by kissing him, or two, she didn’t even remember what had happened. Because that Monday, when he walked by her in the hall at school, she didn’t say a single word to him. Toby leaned further toward the theory of her not having remembered the incident at all, because not only did she not say a single thing to him, but she hadn’t even looked at him with the threatening “don’t tell a soul what happened” look he would have expected had she remembered.

  In fact, it was never brought up by anyone, ever. And he never received another kiss. That was, until that day when Addison kissed him. Many things separated their kiss from the others, one being that it wasn’t a dare. But, perhaps most importantly, she was the one that kissed him—on purpose.

  Not only did she kiss him, but she did it twice. His thoughts were racing now. What exactly did this mean? Were they dating? Was she his girlfriend? Was he supposed to call her “babe,” which seemed to be what everybody referred to their girlfriends as?

  Or did it mean nothing? They hadn’t known each other that long. But that didn’t mean anything. She herself said there was just something about him and that she felt like she could really be herself around him. Those words had to mean something. They definitely meant something to him.

  He was overthinking things. The smart thing to do was to just let things roll, to allow the world to work out how it was supposed to. He didn’t believe in fate, or destiny, or anything like that, but what were the chances that they would move into this specific house, across the street from that specific girl? He wasn’t sure. But whatever it was, he didn’t want to mess with it.

  He stared to the window, through it, to the house across the street. He couldn’t see Addy’s window from where he lay, so he scooted closer to the edge of his bed. He wasn’t doing it because he hoped to see her naked again; at least that’s what he told himself as loudly as he could. He just missed her and that’s where her room was.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d stared at Addison’s window, but at some point, he fell asleep. Time skipped. He dreamed about a woman. She was in the attic, and she was trying to get the window open, to get out of the house. Before, he had been so stunned that his mind wasn’t functioning correctly but then, there in his dream where he didn’t know he was dreaming, he wondered why in the world the window wasn’t opening. He hadn’t touched the latch himself, but he couldn’t imagine why it would be refusing so adamantly to open. All the windows in the house seemed to work just fine, them all having been open most of the day to filter out what they could of the putrid basement air.

  What was she trying to get away from? He knew, despite any hard evidence, that she was definitely trying to get away from something. It was the look he saw in her fading eyes that told him this fact. Whatever it was she was trying to escape, it had her in a state of fear, a horrible state of pure terror.

  Cold gripped his body, and he jerked awake. He looked around the room for a second, making sure he was truly in his bedroom, in his bed, not in the attic where the girl had been and where that terrible cold was. What had woken him? Was it the cold?

  He found his eyes drifting back to the window, across the street. He wondered what she was dreaming about. Was it him? Whatever it was, it had to be better than his dreams. He didn’t even want to go back to sleep. A strong feeling told him he would return to the attic in his sleep and see that woman and feel that icy chill down to his bones.

  There was a creak. He nearly leapt from his bed. His heart pounded in his chest. He didn’t know what caused the sound, only that it came from by his window. There was another crack, only this one was quieter, and he thought he saw what caused it. Something had hit his window from the outside, maybe a stone. He wasn’t sure. He was surprised that the old glass hadn’t shattered.

  He hurried to the window, lifting it before whoever it was could throw another rock and get less lucky the second time. Addison was there, standing in the yard below the window. She smiled at him; her face just barely lit in the light of the streetlamps.

  “I thought you would never wake up. I was about to give up!”

  He didn’t say anything in return. He wasn’t even sure he was awake. Part of him was fairly certain this was another dream.

  She smiled. “Come downstairs for a minute.”

  He stared at her for another moment before speaking. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll be right down.”

  He closed the window and headed for the bedroom door. He peeked out quietly, not wanting to wake his parents. But he didn’t peek long. After just a second, he hurried out, closing the door behind him, then moved down the stairs in a few swift steps. Something told him that if he didn’t move quickly, he would wake from this dream and find himself back in his bed, alone and without Addy.

  When he pulled open the door, she was still out there, standing right there waiting to greet him. Even in the dim light, her teeth glowed brightly in the small crack between her lips. Her hair was in a mess, like she had just gotten up from bed on a whim and come running across the street. It dangled in front of her face in a careless way, a few strands hanging down in front of her eyes. He preferred it, he thought, to the fixed and ready version that he had always seen until then.

  “Thanks for coming. It’s pretty cold out here,” she said, her arms wrapped around herself in an embrace.

  Standing in the doorway, he knew it was a bad idea. He would get in loads of trouble if they got caught, but the words came out anyway, as if they needed to escape as badly as he wanted them to. “Did you want to come inside?”

  Her smiled widened. “No. No thanks. I was actually hoping you would come out here with me.”

  20

  Trevor couldn’t believe it. Already, he was back to feeling just as shitty as he had been earlier that morning, before going to the doctor. Well, maybe not quite as shitty, but he was definitely getting there. He was laying in the fetal position wondering, for the first time since this all started, if he was going to die. Feeling like this, this constant pain and draining agony, just wasn’t normal.

  It felt sort of like he had just got done with the most intense workout of his life except he hadn’t worked out at all. Not only that, but he had a whole new symptom, one he hadn’t had before. He felt dizzy.

  The room seemed to be moving, all of it. The window drifted ever-so-slightly. The closet door couldn’t seem to stand still. The darkness that retracted into the corners of the room, away from the light that poured in through the windows, felt alive.

  He took in a deep breath, his mouth dry. He wanted a cup of water, but he didn’t want to go downstairs. Here, he had the window and its light. Out there, in the hall, it was windowless and dark. Unsafe.

  If he had cancer, he reasoned, there were treatments. He wasn’t sure what cancer felt like, but something told him that this had to be close. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. The ceiling wasn’t moving; that was in his head, a part of the dizzy deliriu
m that had crawled out from the depths of his mind, brought on by whatever bastard sickness was gripping him.

  If he shut his eyes, which he did right then, it would all go away. How could the world spin if he wasn’t there to see it? But even after his eyes were closed and the light was gone, the pain in his stomach remained, its tendrils snaking their way around every bone and muscle in his body, leaching the energy from his soul.

  He heard a sound. It was a door opening. When he opened his eyes, allowing the madness back in, he saw that it was not his bedroom door that had opened. But he knew that. The sound had come from too far away to be his, echoing to his ears from somewhere else in the house, but somewhere not all that far.

  The old floorboards in the hall groaned. There were squeaks and then the patter of footsteps. Something sprinted down the stairs. This wasn’t in his head. He sat up, the room coming to a standstill.

  He didn’t know who or what had just walked down the stairs. It could have been one of his family members. Or even a burglar. Could have been…something else. What he did know was that he was thirsty, very thirsty, and needed to go downstairs anyway.

  He also wanted to know what had just made those sounds in the middle of the night. Surely, everybody else in the house had to be sleeping. He was awake because his body was going insane, but the others, all except Robbie, seemed to be just fine and should, just as any normal person was, be sleeping.

  He trembled, just now realizing that his entire body was shaking. He was afraid; of the dark, of his sickness, of whatever just went downstairs. He slammed his fist into the bed, making a soft, quiet thud. He was so frustrated, with everything, but mostly with himself. He needed to grow up. He needed to become a man.

  The dark was not alive. All the dark was was the absence of light. It was a simple, scientific fact. The only reason some people were afraid of it was because they couldn’t see very well in it. Well, news break, he thought, there were light switches down there, he was in his own house, his family was there, and there was nothing to be afraid of in the god damned dark.

  He stood from the bed, almost stumbling. He held on to the corner of his bed as the vertigo faded. Snap out of it! He walked to the door, grabbing the handle. The cold of the metal felt invigorating, a new sensation, one other than the plaguing pain and exhaustion.

  The hall was dark, even darker than he had imagined. Or it wasn’t. The dark couldn’t get darker; that wasn’t how things worked. Dark was dark, and that was it. He stepped forward, the hall like a cave tunnel a hundred miles below earth’s surface. He could see the walls but only just barely, shadows of light emanating through Trevor’s open bedroom door and off whatever surfaces it could reach.

  Seeing was like comparing blacks to greys; everything looked almost the same but not quite. The floor was terribly quiet underneath his feet, as if he wasn’t really there, wasn’t really walking down this hall toward the sound. He felt like he was in a dream and he may have believed it had the pain he felt not continued so persistently.

  Every door he had walked by was closed, only silence behind them, and all around them. He heard a barely audible snore coming from his parents’ bedroom as he reached the stairs, reminding him as he turned and looked down the shaft to the first floor that his entire family was only one scream of terror away.

  He wanted to call down the stairs, to ask if anybody was there. It was a silly instinctive thought that he put away before he could do it. If there was a burglar down there, it wasn’t like they were going to answer back. Calling out, asking if anybody was there was just something silly that happened in horror films. Plus, he didn’t want to wake his parents, not yet at least. And on top of that, if there was someone or something down there, he didn’t want it to know he was looking for it.

  The stairs did creak a little, which deep down, he was thankful for. Perhaps the sound, unlike his own childish voice, would tell the intruder that someone was awake and coming for them or scare them off altogether. He could only hope.

  Why hadn’t he just woken his parents? If there was someone in the house, his parents would want him to wake them, not take on the intruder himself with nothing but the merciless strength of a sick boy. But deep down, he knew the answer to that question. He didn’t really think anybody was in the house. He wasn’t sure what he had heard, but he didn’t think it was someone breaking in to rob them or come kill them. That was insane, and they had nothing worth stealing anyway.

  Maybe he just needed a reason to face his fears. He had allowed the sickness to control him since day one. Now that he had experienced what it was like to feel good again, he didn’t want that, to be controlled, to be a hostage in his own body. He wanted to take his life back.

  The pain disagreed. It lurched at him and pulled on his nerves as he reached the bottom of the stairs. He fought against the oncoming vertigo, demanding that his mind remain steady. But it wasn’t that easy. As badly as he wanted to feel better, that didn’t make the sickness any less real.

  He stumbled into the living room, where he caught himself on the couch. When he looked up, a reflection in the television screen made him jump. He turned to face where the reflection should have been, but the space was empty. What he thought he saw was a woman, her hair long and brown, her skin a pale white. She was gone. The reflection in the television was a vague outline of the couch now.

  He was breathing heavily, regretting having come downstairs. What was he thinking? He wasn’t brave. He saw something near the corner of the room and jumped, only for whatever it was to be gone by the time he had finished blinking. Was it a man?

  No. It wasn’t a damn man. And the reflection hadn’t been a woman. He had to get back upstairs and get to bed. He was sick. There was a throng in his head and his hand moved up to his forehead. He had to calm down. Freaking out wasn’t going to help anything.

  He lifted his head and saw another woman, this one’s hair as white as her skin. She was in the shadows, barely discernable from the wall. She may have been the wall, he wasn’t sure. Everything was beginning to move again. Faces began to pop up everywhere. The shadows became one undulating mass of people and faces, quivering around from the floor to the ceiling.

  His head pounded. Groans and moans filled the air. Voices: too many of them to understand any single one. They were all yelling at him, but he didn’t know what they were saying. He stepped back. There was a scream like someone was being stabbed to death somewhere just out of view.

  “Trevor!”

  He swung around, his heart pounding, his eyes near tears. It was Paisley.

  “Are you okay? What are you doing?”

  He looked around. The shadows were still. Light came in from the streetlights out front. There was nothing in the television’s reflection or in the walls. He blinked and swallowed, trying to get a hold on himself.

  “Trevor,” she repeated as she stepped forward and put her hand on his shoulder. “I thought I heard you leave your room, and when I heard you heading down the hall, I thought maybe something was wrong.”

  There was something wrong. But it was him. He felt his legs trembling. He shook his head no. “I’m—I’m fine. I just came down to get a drink of water.”

  He stared into her eyes, doubting she would believe him but hoping she would so he didn’t have to tell her what he thought he was seeing. He already thought he was going insane; he didn’t need his sister thinking it, too.

  She looked around the room as if checking if there were others. “Do you want to go in the kitchen, then?”

  He just stared at her for a moment, unable to articulate his thoughts.

  “How about you sit on the couch,” she said. “and I’ll go get you a cup of water?”

  He nodded. “Thank you,” he said as he found a hold on the couch and sat.

  She disappeared around the corner. He stared into the shadows, at the corners of the room, and saw nothing but walls. It was quiet, and he heard the sink turn on, run for a second, and then turn back off. When she retu
rned to the living room, he was relieved. He stood and took the water from her hand.

  “Thank you,” he said, lifting the cup to his mouth. He felt the river of water trickle down his throat in heavy waves, relieving the dry that had accumulated there.

  She stared out the window, and he followed her gaze. It looked silent out there. But mostly, it looked dark. He stepped forward to get a better view out the window. The entire road aside from the house across the street was dark, and even that house was mostly dark, too, as it should have been at this time of the night.

  He remembered how shaken his mother had been when they realized the neighboring house was empty. He knew she was wondering if the others were empty, and so was he. He suspected his sister may have been asking herself the same thing as well. Whereas you could see small traces of light coming from across the street, perhaps made by phones, or clocks, or televisions left on, the others, all up and down the street, at least from where he stood, looked to be in absolute darkness. It just didn’t feel natural.

  21

  Lisa ran from one house to another, the moonlight shining down in bright waves, lighting the whole street. Each house was as empty as the last. More importantly, they were all locked. She pulled at a doorhandle with everything she had but it did not move.

  She let out a wretched sob. Please open. Please just open. She glanced back up the road, in the direction she had come. Even with the moon so incredibly bright, she couldn’t see whatever was after her. That’s because it was all things. The thing, the creature that was pursuing her, it was the street, the lights, the grass, everything.

  She pulled on the door again, this time so hard that it left an imprint on her hand when she let go. Nothing. It wouldn’t budge. All she could do was try the next house.

  She sprinted across the yard to the next house. It was a mirror copy of the last, and the one before that, and all the rest. The windows in the front weren’t blocked, not like when she and the kids had looked. Inside, she could see the empty innards of the house. There was nobody within to help her.