A Place So Wicked

by Patrick Reuman

  He heard his mother comforting his father as he reached the lower floor. He was no longer hovering over the sink but was instead sitting at the kitchen table. They were sitting alongside each other, talking quietly. He couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, and they stopped when they saw Toby enter the kitchen.

  “Are you guys okay?”

  “Yes, of course, hun. We’re fine. It was just a spurt. We must have contracted whatever your brother and Robbie have, but we’ll be fine.”

  They didn’t look fine, and neither did Trevor and Robbie. “Maybe we should all go to the hospital,” Toby said.

  “No, it’s fine. Really,” she said. “They’re up there sleeping; we should leave them be. And I called the doctor. They couldn’t fit us in today, but we have an appointment first thing in the morning. Don’t worry.”

  Paisley was approaching the house. She hated how it stood there, huge and hovering, like a colossal being watching her approach, waiting for a chance to consume her. She tried not to look at it, staring down at the sidewalk instead.

  She had left Eli a few minutes prior, but she still felt great. She wished he would have walked her all the way home, but he refused to join her any further than the end of her road. He said he had some things to do, which he probably did. She was just being greedy.

  She enjoyed spending time with him. At the restaurant, they had breakfast, both of them choosing omelets. Neither ended up eating all that much. They were far too busy talking, and once that started, her stomach forgot all about being hungry. He told her all about the school he attended, the one she would be going to. Turned out, he was actually a year older than her and, thus, a year ahead of her in school. But he said the school wasn’t all that big, so they would probably still see each other quite often.

  Eli had only lived in Black Falls for a few years now. They had moved there after Eli’s father lost his job in a factory shutdown. His aunt, his father’s sister, had lived here for years and convinced them that moving here was the best thing to do. That way, she could help them, and the town was just amazing, they were told.

  Paisley was glad at least one person thought their new home was worth living in because Eli didn’t seem to agree. He didn’t say those words exactly, but it was something in his tone, Paisley thought, when he spoke about how fantastic the town was supposed to be, that told her the truth may be the opposite. Frankly, so far, she wasn’t that fond of it, either.

  The silence was nauseating. As she drew only a couple houses away from her own, she turned and looked at a different house. It wasn’t the neighboring home, the one that they had looked at before, but the house after that one. It looked just as empty as the one alongside it. And she bet, if she were to approach the window and succeed at peering inside, she would see the same emptiness as the other. But she wasn’t going to do that. She didn’t want to see its emptiness. Because if it were empty, what would that even mean? And if she checked all the other houses on her street, would she find the same way?

  She turned away, eager now to get home, just to get off that barren street. She also wanted to check on Trevor. If she were lucky, he would be doing better. Maybe they could go do something. She wasn’t sure what, but pretty much anything was better than sitting in that house.

  She opened the front door to find Toby standing in the hallway, staring into his phone. He looked up when he heard the door. He put the phone away and turned to her, seemingly glad to see her. To her right, the living room was empty. She wondered where everybody was.

  “Mom and Dad are upstairs,” Toby said, reading her. “Everybody is, actually.”

  She started toward the stairs, but Toby stopped her. “Everybody is sick now, except you and me, apparently.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mom and Dad got sick this morning. Just a little vomiting, but it still has me worried.”

  “It must be the flu or something,” Paisley said. “What else would spread like this?”

  “I don’t know. It’s weird, isn’t it? How Trevor seemed fine yesterday and now, today, he is back to being sick? And we are fine even though we have been around them.”

  “Is he worse now?” she asked, alarm treading into her eyes.

  “No, I don’t think so. I mean, he’s sleeping now. He’s been sleeping all day, for that matter. So has Robbie. Mom and Dad went upstairs as well, not long ago, to lay down, and to get away from this horrid smell, I expect.”

  “Shouldn’t we all go to the hospital or something? This is getting a little out of hand, isn’t it?”

  “We are tomorrow, Mom said. She has an appointment scheduled already with that doctor they went to see yesterday.”

  Paisley nodded. “I’m gonna go check on Trevor.”

  She walked up the stairs straight to Trevor’s room. She found him inside, laying there asleep, just as Toby had said. She sat beside him on the bed. He didn’t stir. She wished he had. She placed her hand on his back and felt his upper body flexing in and out with his quiet breathing. She supposed the silence was better than him groaning in pain but only just barely. Toby said he had been sleeping all day. That wasn’t like Trevor at all. She wondered if he were in more of a coma than a sleep.

  Toby waited until his sister had disappeared up the stairs before turning to face down the hall. She had come in right when he was deep in thought. While Paisley questioned if this sickness was the flu or something of that sort, he was wondering if it was something far different altogether.

  Why was it that the two who were most sick smelled the strongest, the most similar to the basement? He wasn’t so sure the sickness was even a sickness, at least in the classical sense. He didn’t know exactly what he was even trying to say. All he knew was that something strange was happening, and he thought it may have something to do with whatever was causing the stench in the basement.

  But whatever was causing the smell was locked away behind that impenetrable barrier. As he stared at the basement door, he recalled the markings he saw etched into the red door below. He tried to recall what the words read, the letters forming a language he was almost certain was not English.

  There was a loud knock at the front door.

  “Got it!” Paisley called out, already on her way down the stairs.

  Toby heard the door open and voices exchanging words. Before he could head around the corner, Paisley shouted to him.

  “Door’s for you, Toby!”

  His heart dropped. It must have been Addison. That was exactly what he needed. After the night before, he felt closer to her than ever. Perhaps even closer than he had ever felt to anyone in his entire life. It had been difficult for him not to head across the street earlier and ask to see her. But he didn’t want to seem clingy. It was a lame thought, but that seemed to be how things worked, at least in high school.

  All he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her and kiss her. His cheeks turned red just thinking about it. That feeling of butterflies returned to his chest.

  The front door was mostly closed when he came down the hall. But when he pulled open the door, the butterflies scattered, replaced by angry bats, and he felt his skin turn pale white, because it wasn’t Addison who he was looking at. It was Robert.

  27

  Toby just stood in the doorway for a moment, unsure if he was awake or asleep. Had he passed out in the basement and just never woke up? Or was Addy’s friend Robert really standing at his door looking for him?

  “Toby!” Paisley said.

  “Huh? What?”

  “Are you going to say something or…just stand there staring at him?”

  “I’m sorry,” Toby said. “Sorry. What’s up?”

  Robert wasn’t smiling, nor did he look angry. He appeared completely passive, as if this was a business meeting he didn’t want to be at but was forced to attend. It must have been Robert’s turn to be silent because he wasn’t saying a word. Paisley looked at them both like they were aliens.

  “Okay,” Toby continued. “Did you
want to come in?”

  This woke Robert. He looked at Paisley now, a wild glare in his eyes. He took a step back, as if Paisley were going to pounce on him.

  “No. I don’t want to go in there. I was hoping Toby would come hang out for a bit.” Robert was suddenly smiling, like everything that was taking place was completely normal and he was a regular visitor to the Harrington household.

  Toby did not want to go hang out with Robert, not even a little. In fact, he was quite scared of Robert. He was fairly certain Robert didn’t like him in the least bit, and his being there was very suspicious.

  “Well, don’t look like I just pissed in your cereal.” Robert laughed. “I just want to talk a bit. I’ll have you back in no time.”

  In how many pieces would the bigger kid have him back in? Toby looked past Robert to Addison’s house. He hoped she would come out, see Robert there, and come save him. He was sure she would find it just as strange that Robert was there as he did. But the house across the street looked just as empty and quiet as all the other houses on the road just then, as if Addy had never lived there, as if nobody had ever lived there.

  “Okay,” Toby said, realizing that Robert probably wasn’t going to go away and that he just had to man-up and face whatever this was head-on. All Toby had to do was be smart. “Just really quick. I have some things I’ve got to get done around the house.”

  Robert smiled. “Right.”

  “Just let me get my shoes on,” Toby said.

  Paisley stepped back and nudged the door closed a bit then whispered to Toby. “Is everything all right? You seem a bit off about Robert being here.”

  “I’m all right. I’ll just be a minute. I’m not going to go far.”

  Toby pulled the door back open and stepped out into the sun. Robert made room for Toby to join him on the walkway. Paisley watched the two boys for a few seconds before closing the door. She was concerned for her older brother, about how he was acting toward the kid being there, but she was even more worried about her being there alone with everybody sick. She was thankful he intended to come straight back.

  Toby noticed something as he and Robert walked toward the sidewalk. The grass appeared to be greener, like someone had come back and painted it. But if they had, they’d done a horrible job. Only part of the yard was green again, the area closest to the house still brown and dead looking.

  Robert led him down the road, just a couple feet ahead. Toby trailed wordlessly. Part of him hoped that if he never said anything, the two would just make a lap around the block, ending up back where they started without a word ever being said. But Toby wasn’t a fool and he knew Robert was there for a reason. That’s why he was keeping his guard up, his eye on the other boy. Addy had said Robert held a life-long crush on her. Perhaps he had somehow found out that Toby and Addy had had sex. He wanted to believe she wouldn’t tell him something like that, but he saw no other reason why the burly kid would be there. His only questions were why she would have told him and what he was planning to do about it.

  When they reached the end of the road, Robert came to a stop. He looked up the road, in the direction the three of them had walked the day before, an expression on his face as if he were deep in thought.

  Toby wanted to put an end to any idea Robert had before he could put it in action. They definitely weren’t going back up to monkey hill, just the two of them. “I don’t really have the time to go anywhere. Do you want to just take a walk around the block?”

  It sounded incredibly strange asking Robert this, but he had to. The closer he kept them to Toby’s house, the safer he was. Or that’s what he told himself. He supposed if Robert’s plan was to kill him in a jealous rage, it wouldn’t matter where they were, on his block or a mile away, he was still going to do it.

  “Okay,” Robert said, starting off to the right.

  Toby remained in the back, trailing. He felt he could keep a better eye on Robert that way, making it less likely Robert could get the jump on him. Toby may have been smaller than him in stature, but he was fairly certain he could outrun the boy if he needed to.

  It wasn’t until they were just over halfway around the block, passing the houses that lay right behind Toby’s house, just beyond the backyard woods, that Robert finally spoke.

  “You and Addison had sex, then,” the boy said so casually that Toby nearly stopped in his tracks.

  Toby had been staring at the houses as they passed by, noting how vacant they looked, just like the ones on the next street over, his street.

  “What?” Toby said.

  “There’s no sense in denying it,” Robert continued. “I mean, why wouldn’t you? She’s beautiful. Plus, she told me. She can’t help it. She looked like she was going to burst if she didn’t get to say it. Not sure why it is such a big deal, not like it was the first time she did that.”

  The words caught Toby off-guard, stinging him a little. It wasn’t like he had thought it was Addison’s first time. Quite frankly, he hadn’t really thought about it at all, how many men she had been with or anything like that. But it had been his first time. And to hear it spoken about like that, in such an unimportant way, it hurt him a little. To him, even though it sounded corny, the moment had been special.

  He cleared his throat and then tried to proceed as though the words meant nothing to him. “Okay. Yes, we did.”

  Robert nodded. “Yeah, she has a thing for you people.”

  Now that confused him. “You people? What does that mean? It was just me and her. There was nobody else there.”

  Robert laughed, like Toby was a fool, like Robert knew something that Toby should have known but was too stupid to see.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean, then?” Toby snapped, getting a little frustrated.

  They were nearing the end of the road. Robert rounded on him. Toby jumped back, readying himself. He looked down at Robert’s hand, noticing one of them had been in his pocket the entire time. Robert noticed Toby’s curious gaze.

  “Calm yourself,” he said, pulling his empty hand from his pocket. “I don’t have a weapon or anything like that. I’m not going to hurt you. There’s no need.”

  There he went again, with his weird, vague sentences. No need to hurt him? It was obvious that Robert thought someone else was going to do it for him. Perhaps Addison. Maybe she was going to reveal that he was being set up that whole time. Despite what he tried to tell himself, that would hurt him, perhaps more than anything else.

  Robert laughed again, Toby’s confusion apparently just as clear as it was hilarious. “You guys figure out yet why people are leaving random food on your doorstep?”

  Toby didn’t answer. They had been wondering, but how did this asshole know about it?

  “That one is always hilarious.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Toby said.

  “Did you think they were welcoming gifts? Did you think the food was left there to wish you well? Speaking of well, how is everybody, anyway? I didn’t see your parents come to the door. Are they okay?”

  “They’re fine!” he lied, not sure why other than that he was starting to get really pissed off at Robert’s attitude.

  Robert nodded, the smug smile still there, still laughing at him. “Right, of course. I expect they’ll get a lot worse soon. That seems to happen toward the end.”

  Toby lunged out, shoving the bigger kid. He was furious, and ready to fight, even though he knew in the back of his mind that he would most likely lose. But he couldn’t just let this asshole talk about his parents like that.

  “You shut the fuck up!” Toby yelled. “You don’t know shit!”

  “Oh, so they aren’t doing well. Just as I feared.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Toby demanded. “What the hell did I do to you? Are you just mad because Addy doesn’t like you and never will? Because she likes me instead?”

  Robert’s laughter turned to anger, but only for a second before the malicious
smile returned. He laughed out loud. “You think she likes you?”

  Toby just stared at him, scathing.

  “No. She doesn’t like you. She just has a thing for the sacrifices. She fucks all of you. It’s her weird little kink. At least the boys, the ones her age. She gets off on it. It’s weird as hell to me, but I’m not here to judge.”

  Toby shook his head, unsure of what part of Robert’s words made less sense to him. Sacrifices? Fucks them all?

  He stepped toward Toby, forcing him to take a step back unless he wanted to bump chests with the larger kid. “The food that people are leaving at your doorstep, those are just offerings. They don’t care about how you’re doing. They already know. They’re just paying their respects.”

  Toby had questions but couldn’t seem to get any of his thoughts to form actual sentences. He just stared at Robert instead, waiting for him to explain exactly what the hell he meant by all this, still waiting for him to yell “gotcha!”

  But he didn’t.

  Robert stepped toward Toby again, his height suddenly seeming greater, his leer darker. “I’m not going to hurt you because I don’t have to. The house will do it for me. You’ll all be dead in a day or two. None of them last long, and you’re coming into the final stretch.”

  28

  Toby sprinted back to the house, leaving Robert where he stood, his laughter echoing behind him as the kid watched Toby flee. His head was spinning, his mind lost in a maze of thoughts, all of them fighting to be at the forefront of his mind.

  Addy didn’t like him? She fucked them all? They were sacrifices? They were all going to be dead soon? None of it made any sense at all. Or did it? His mind was trying to piece it together even as he ran.