Firstborn. Firstborn could make you go away. Forever. And Firstborn had said no one was to go near the monster’s house.
“Do you really think he’ll find out?”
“Not if you stay there,” Sly said. “When the monster comes back, call me.”
Sly hung up.
Tard slowly set the phone back down on the roof. So slowly — if you didn’t want the monster to take you into his basement, it was best to not move at all.
Fear of the monster. Fear of Firstborn. The need to go out, to find a won’t-be. Wanting to be brave so Sly would like him, so Tard could make some friends. Too many things to think of.
Sly had said only the bravest of Marie’s Children could watch the monster. The monster had killed everyone who went near the house. Many brothers and sisters had tried to kill the monster, sometimes with guns and everything. None of them ever came back. So watching the house, well, even that was just dang dangerous. But if you could do it, if you could watch, Sly said, then everyone would know you were brave and everyone would like you.
Except Tard couldn’t tell anyone about his job, because Firstborn said no one was ever to go near the monster’s house. Sly said it was okay, though, to ignore Firstborn’s orders, as long as no one found out.
Movement. Down by the monster’s house. By the back door. It was the man dressed in black, the man who had been circling the block earlier. How exciting! Tard stayed very still, because he was good at that.
Tard watched.
Cowardice
John Smith checked the caller ID: POOKIE CHANG.
What now? Pookie had just called thirty minutes earlier with that murder-rate research project. John loved Pookie and would always have his back, but truth be told the guy was more than a little too quick to delegate detective work.
John answered. “Pooks, you gotta give a guy a chance. I haven’t even started to search the database yet, let alone start tabulating stuff. This isn’t—”
“John, I need you, right now.”
Pookie never called him John. “What’s happening?”
“Bryan’s having a meltdown. I need you at Erickson’s house, ASAP.”
John looked to his apartment window even though he knew what he’d see — the blackness of night, lit up only by streetlights and the glowing windows across the road.
“It’s dark out,” John said.
“I know it’s dark out, John. Bryan is going in there without a warrant, and if he does, Zou is going to screw him right to the wall. I don’t know if I can stop him on my own — I need your help.”
John stared at the window. Stared and shook his head. He wanted to help Bryan, he did, but it was dark outside and Pookie wanted him to go to the house of a killer?
“Pooks, I … I just can’t.”
“The fuck you can’t! Your black ass would be dead if it wasn’t for Bryan. I’m so sorry for what happened to you, I am, but you get your gun, get on that Harley and move.”
John nodded. Hard to breathe. Bryan needed him. Erickson’s. It wasn’t all that far, not at this hour, using the bike to slide between traffic, if there was any traffic …
“Yeah, okay, I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Make it ten,” Pookie said. “And don’t forget your gun. This isn’t about you anymore. Man up, or just stay in your goddamn apartment for the rest of your life.”
Pookie hung up. John closed his eyes tight. Breathe. You have to go, you HAVE to.
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out his Sig Sauer.
His hand was already trembling.
The Kill
The sound of a shutting door made Rex snap awake.
Had someone found him?
He was still in the brown garbage can. The lid was still closed. What had happened? He had just closed his eyes, tried to think of his people finding him. Had he fallen asleep? It was totally dark out. Was it past midnight? He didn’t have a watch, didn’t have a phone.
He heard a click-click-click sound. He rose slowly, the top of his head lifting the hinged lid so he could peek out under it. There was April, walking away from the house, a big smile on her face. Her high heels clicked on the concrete. Maybe she had just fucked Alex. Maybe she had given him a blowjob. She looked dirty. Unclean.
There was no one else on the street. There were no cars. She was walking away, fast, like she was fleeing him. It spun him up to think that she was trying to escape.
No one else on the street — his attempt to make his so-called family come had failed. Maybe it didn’t work that way, he didn’t know. What if April didn’t return? What if she was going to get help? What if she was going to get her parents? What if Rex wouldn’t have another chance?
She would have a key. Alex would be alone in the house.
Rex quietly crawled out of the garbage can. Blanket wrapped around him, he walked after April. Could he get her? He’d killed Roberta … Roberta was bigger and stronger than April the meth-head.
His feet carried him after her. He had to get her.
Click-click-click.
Rex’s feet made no noise. He reached out for her, locked his hands around her neck and squeezed. She grabbed at his fingers. She tried to turn, but he wouldn’t let her. She made little grunting noises — not enough air for a real scream. Her nails raked the backs of his hands, so he squeezed as hard as he possibly could.
April twitched, she kicked out weakly … she stopped moving.
Rex was so turned on, so damn turned on. He pulled her into an apartment building entryway and gently set her on the ground. He wouldn’t have long. Rex looked in her little purse and found the keys.
He couldn’t hide here forever. He had to face Alex, Alex who had stomped on his arm, broken it. Alex, who had punched Rex in the face so many times, kicked him in the stomach …
Rex shook his head. He wouldn’t be afraid anymore, he wouldn’t. He was the king.
He looked around again to see if anyone saw him. The street was silent. There was no movement. Rex walked to the house. He tried to breathe. Alex was inside. Rex’s hand caressed the front door’s white-painted wood.
He had killed two women — Alex Panos wasn’t a woman. Alex was big and strong. Rex couldn’t run now, couldn’t stop himself from going in. One way or another, Alex’s endless torment ended now. Rex’s breath came in deep, ragged spurts.
Kill Alex. Kill Alex. Kill Alex.
Rex’s hand slid down to the brass doorknob. Cool to the touch. He tried a key: didn’t fit. He tried another, staying as quiet as he could. The third one slid in. He turned the key, then turned the handle.
Rex stepped inside. There was a room to the right. Coming from inside that room, the blue/white flashes of a TV playing in the darkness.
From that room, a voice: “Did you get me my Chocodiles? You better have my Chocodiles, girl.”
Rex walked into the room. Alex Panos — big, strong Alex Panos — sat in a chair facing a huge TV screen.
Alex stood up quickly. He looked across the room, somewhere to Rex’s right, then looked back at Rex. Alex’s hands curled into fists.
“You little faggot,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
The voice froze Rex’s feet in place. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think of anything but the fists smashing against his nose, the knees breaking his lips, the boot snapping his arm.
The flickering light from the TV played off of Alex’s blond hair. “The news said you killed your mom,” he said. A statement with an underlying meaning: you killed your mom, are you here to kill me?
Yes. That’s exactly what Rex was there to do.
His feet came unglued. He took one step forward.
“Don’t,” Alex said. “Get out of here, or I will fuck you up. Did you tell anyone where I am?”
Rex took another step.
Alex looked to Rex’s right again. There was something there Alex wanted, but Rex wouldn’t take his eyes off the prey even for a second.
“You better run
away, motherfucker,” Alex said. “Go now, or I’m going to hurt you real bad this time.”
The voice of anger, the voice of hate, but there was something new in there: fear.
Rex breathed in deep through his nose. He didn’t just hear Alex’s fear, he smelled it.
Alex suddenly ran to his left, crossing in front of the TV. Rex shot forward before he even knew what he was doing. He slammed into Alex, driving the bigger boy back into the TV. Plastic cracked, something sparked, and they both hit the ground hard. Alex cried out, a squeal of pain very unlike his manly words of threat.
Rex started to stand, then felt a fist slam into his mouth. So hard. He fell back and landed on his ass. A boot crunched into his stomach, crushing the air out of his lungs, making Rex’s body curl up into a ball. All the fear came rushing back. The terror of beatings past consumed him, because he knew this one would be worse than all the others — he shouldn’t have come here.
A big fist hit him in the back of the head, bouncing his face off the wood floor.
“You ruined April’s TV, you asshole!”
A steel-toed boot hammered his ribs. Rex started to scream, to cry out, but he clenched his teeth together — it didn’t hurt as bad as he remembered it.
Rex opened his eyes. Right in front of him, a foot, a shin, a knee. He reached out, grabbed Alex’s heel and yanked.
Alex went down fast, the back of his head cracking off the floor. His eyes scrunched tight and his mouth opened in a silent gasp of confused pain. He rolled to his side, hands holding the back of his head.
Blood dripped from his fingers.
Rex had done that. He had made Alex bleed.
Rex stood on shaky legs. He felt blood trickling from his own nose, his own mouth. He stepped forward and raised his foot.
Alex looked up just as Rex’s heel smashed down. The bigger boy let out a noise, part fear, part rage, part agony. He rolled away, blood pouring from his now-ruined nose. He looked confused, shocked.
Rex smiled a bloody smile, the smile of a fighter. His hands curled into fists.
“It’s your turn, bully,” he said. “It’s your turn to hurt.”
Alex scrambled away on hands and knees. Rex started to follow, but stopped when he heard a loud noise from above. Several noises. Something landing on the roof?
Both boys looked up to the ceiling, eyes searching for the source of the sound as if their eyes could penetrate wood and plaster.
“Shit,” Alex said. “The fuck is this?”
Rex’s chest started to thrum — ba-da-bum-bummmm … ba-da-bum-bummmm, the same feeling he’d experienced when he met Marco.
His family had arrived.
How perfect.
Rex looked back at Alex, but Alex had moved. He was standing to the right of the door, next to a small table. He held a gun. Too late Rex realized that’s what Alex had been glancing at while they had talked. The gun had been on the table the whole time, just an arm’s reach away, but Rex hadn’t looked.
No, no fair, I beat him I beat him I had my revenge no fair—
“Fuck you, faggot,” Alex said, then pulled the trigger.
Something slammed into Rex’s belly. His legs gave out. As he fell, he heard a combination of sounds — splintering wood, another gunshot, and then the screams of Alex Panos.
The Basement
Bryan Clauser stood in the shadows of trees that were themselves drenched in the shadows of tall buildings. He flexed his hands, fists making his leather gloves creak. He stared at the back of the gray house.
He stared at the cellar door.
The basement. Whatever bad thing was happening, it was in the basement. He had to know.
The cellar door waited for him, a demon mouth ready to open and bite, to chew and shred and tear and crunch. Dream-memories blurred his reality, merged and shifted with what he saw until he wasn’t sure what was actually there.
Come closer, the house seemed to say. Come, little fool, save me the trouble of reaching out to pull you in …
His Nikes slid across the grass, carrying him to the door. He bent, reached out a hand, touched. It wasn’t wood. Heavy-gauge metal, painted to look like the same wood as the rest of the house. In the door’s upper left corner, a key-pad lock. The thing was bomb-shelter solid — he couldn’t open it.
Was he dreaming? Was this really happening?
Did you think it would be easy? the house said. You’ll have to work harder to find your death …
Bryan closed his eyes and rubbed them hard with the heels of his hands. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t. He had to get in there.
You think a house is talking to you. Sounds crazy to me …
“I’ll burn you to the ground,” Bryan said. “Burn you and piss on the coals.”
Then you’ll never know what’s inside … neverknow … neverknow …
Bryan bit hard into the heel of his left hand. The pain rose up, clearing his thoughts. That helped. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t.
He walked to a window and peeked in. Beyond the glass, the dull gleam of metal revealed some kind of inside shutter. It looked just as tough as the cellar entrance.
He’d have to try the front door.
Bryan drew his Sig Sauer and walked down the side of the house, his left shoulder almost touching the slate-blue wood, shadows curling around him in a lover’s embrace.
Pookie turned onto Franklin Street, then floored it. The Buick’s engine roared. He kept to the middle lane as much as he could, swerving left or right when he needed to, running red lights with little care for what might happen.
He’d dressed for the occasion. No ill-fitting suit jacket this time. Black jeans, black shoes, a black sweater stretched over his gut, and the black Glock 22 in the black holster attached to his black belt. It was a fashion statement that would win the Bryan Clauser seal of approval. Pookie didn’t use the bubble-light or the siren. Couldn’t draw attention. If any other cops showed up, the Terminator was screwed.
He hoped Black Mr. Burns would get there quick.
The Harley’s big twin engine roared at the night, the sound bouncing off the buildings on either side to fill the street with an echoing, angry gurgle.
John forced himself to breathe. His neck already hurt from trying to look in all directions at once. So many buildings, so many windows, so many places for someone to hide, to point a gun.
He rolled the throttle back and the Harley picked up speed. He slipped around a truck, then lane-split between a pair of BMWs. Maybe someone was aiming at him right now, tracking him, lining up the shot.
The feeling pressed his chest inward like a tightening vise wrapped all the way around his ribs. His breaths came faster. He was starting to hyperventilate.
He shook his helmeted head. Bryan needed him. So did Pookie.
Just this once. He could push the fear down just this once, and for a single night be a man again.
Gun in hand, Bryan walked up the mansion’s wide steps. Traffic rolled along on Franklin Street behind him, but it was a part of some other world, some other dimension.
Bryan stood before the front door. The porch roof blocked the streetlights, bathing him in the night’s thick black. He reached out a hand, let his fingertips touch the double doors’ ornate wood.
Come on, little one, come and taste the end …
“Shut up,” Bryan hissed. “Shut up, I’m not hearing this.”
You and only you hear it. And they call you the Terminator? You’re a joke, and here you are walking to your own death. Come on, little one, don’t you want to know what’s inside? Neverknow … neverknow …
“You talk too much,” Bryan said, then he raised his left foot and kicked just below the door handle. Wood cracked with a cannon-blast sound. The double doors flew open, the right one tumbling into the hallway beyond to crash hard against the floor. The door had looked a lot more solid than that; must have been some cheap pine and not the old oak Bryan had thought it was at first glance.
Then came the b
laring shrill of an alarm.
Bryan walked inside. He didn’t notice his surroundings. He was looking for one thing and one thing only.
Somewhere in here was a door to the basement.
The break-in tripped a magnetic sensor, which sent a signal down a thin wire to the small alarm-control box in the basement. That had triggered the Klaxon that screeched through the house, but the system wasn’t finished. A telephone wire ran out of the control box into a multi-line office phone, the kind that had once been white but had yellowed with well over two decades of age. The phone had a handset, next to which ran a vertical line of eight buttons, each with a red light. The red light next to LINE ONE lit up. The phone’s speaker let out a brief dial tone, then seven rapid digital beeps.
Pookie saw the tall turret of Erickson’s mansion up on the left. Cars lined the curb, leaving nowhere to park. He saw the house’s driveway — it was wide open. He didn’t want to park there and draw attention from anyone who might be in the house, but he was out of time. He pulled in, locking up the breaks to skid agross the gravel. He grabbed his Streamlight Stinger flashlight and was out the door even before the Buick rocked back from the sudden stop. He heard the house’s ringing alarm. Pookie ran to the mansion’s steps, up to the porch, and saw the smashed-open front doors.
Bryan was already inside. Pookie had to get him out.
In the distance, over the alarm’s blare, he heard the oncoming heavy gurgle of a Harley.
Pookie drew his Glock. Gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, he entered the house, stepping past the fallen door that lay flat on the entryway floor. The alarm screeched its constant, metallic tone. Pookie knelt and aimed his flashlight beam at the door’s edge — it was solid oak. Almost two inches of solid oak, strong as hell. Had Bryan done that? With what? A pair of deadbolts winked in his moving flashlight beam. Then Pookie saw something else — a three-foot-long steel bar, the kind used to secure a door.
The bar was bent at one end.