Urban Gothic

ONE

“Shit happens,” Javier grumbled from the backseat.

A car rolled slowly past, its underside so low to the ground that it almost scraped against the road. The windows were tinted, and they couldn’t see the driver, but the vehicle’s stereo was turned up loud enough to rattle their teeth.

Brett sighed in frustration. “Now’s not the time, Javier.”

But he’s right, Kerri thought, gazing out of the passenger window. Javier is right. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes, events just spin out beyond our control. Sometimes, no matter how careful we are, no matter how much we try sticking to the script or routine, our day gets off track, and nothing we say or do will fix it before night comes around. Shit happens. And when it does, things get fucked up.

Like now.

However, while the situation they were in now was indeed fucked up, it wasn’t just a simple case of “shit happens”—at least, not entirely. Perhaps some of it could be blamed on fate, but the rest of it was purely Tyler’s fault.

Kerri wondered how it was possible to simultaneously love and hate her boyfriend—because that was how she felt.

They’d driven in from the suburbs of East Petersburg to attend the Monsters of Hip Hop show at the sprawling Electric Factory club in downtown Philadelphia. While the venue wasn’t in the best part of the city, the show had definitely been worth it. Headliner Prosper Johnson and the Gangsta Disciples had gathered together some of the biggest names in hardcore, gritty hip-hop for a nationwide benefit tour—Lil Wyte, Frayser Boy, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Tech N9ne, The Roots, Mr. Hyde, Project: Deadman, Bizarre, Dilated Peoples, and Philadelphia’s own JediMind Tricks. The girls preferred hip-pop, rather than hip-hop, but they tagged along anyway because it was an excuse for all of them to hang out together and get out of East Petersburg for a night. They were in Philadelphia, after all. It sure beat the hell out of hanging around Gargano’s

Pizzeria for another evening.

Kerri and Tyler.

Stephanie and Brett.

Javier and Heather.

They’d been friends since elementary school—long before they’d actually started dating and paired off into couples. Now things were changing. Graduation was over. College loomed. Adulthood. The real world. Although none of them verbalized it, they all knew that this could very well be the last time they’d all be together like this. Most of them were going their own way in a few months, so they were determined to live it up. One last great time before life intruded.

When the concert was over, all six of them had shuffled out to the parking lot with the rest of the crowd. They piled into the old station wagon Tyler had inherited from his brother Dustin, after Dustin went off to Afghanistan. Dustin had always kept the car running like it was fresh off the factory floor. The engine had been tuned to purr when it idled and to roar when Dustin stomped the accelerator. When he’d first gotten the car, Tyler had made an effort to keep it in perfect shape. But eventually, he ran it ragged, just like everything else in his life. When Kerri asked him about it, Tyler’s excuse was that he wasn’t as good with his hands as his brother had been. He’d never been mechanically inclined. Tyler’s talents lay elsewhere—scoring a bag of weed or six third-row tickets for this concert. He liked to call these things “acquisitions.” He was the closest thing to street smart they had in East Petersburg, and he knew it, too.

Half-deaf from the concert, and adrenalized by the late hour, they’d driven out of the parking lot with the windows down, laughing and shouting at one another. It was summer and they were young. Happy. Immortal. And all the bad things out there in the world?

Those bad things were supposed to happen to someone else.

Until they’d happened to them.

It started when, five minutes after pulling out of the lot, Tyler decided to visit a friend of his on the other side of the river, in Camden. No one in their right mind went into Camden, New Jersey, after dark, but Tyler swore that he knew what he was doing. He’d promised them this friend had great weed. Tyler navigated the station wagon through a bewildering maze of city streets, insisting that he knew where he was going. They drove past block upon block of row homes, seeing only the occasional business—a mattress store, a Laundromat, a pizza shop and a bail bondsman. A group of men were hanging out on the stoop of one of the row homes, watching as they drove by. Their intense stares made Kerri nervous. Despite his insistence that he knew where he was going,

Tyler got flustered when the road he needed was under construction and closed. Orange-and-white oil drums topped with flashing yellow lights barred their passage.

“What the fuck is this all about?” Frowning, Tyler pointed at the large, dented ROAD CLOSED sign.

“It’s blocked off,” Brett told him.

“I know it’s blocked off, shithead. Thanks for your help.”

“You need a GPS,” Stephanie said. “My parents bought me one for my birthday last year. I never get lost.”

Tyler’s frown deepened. “Your parents buy you everything, princess.”

Stephanie shrugged. “Well, if you had a GPS, we wouldn’t be sitting here now would we?”

“I’m surprised you know how to program the fucking thing.”

“Hey.” Brett spoke up, trying to defend his girlfriend. His tone was nervous. “Chill out, Tyler.”

“Shut the fuck up, Brett.”

“There’s no need for that. Knock it off or I’ll . . .” Brett’s voice trailed off. He squirmed uncomfortably.

“You’ll what?” Tyler teased. “Beat me at chess? Sit back and shut the fuck up, pussy.”

Sensing his growing agitation, Kerri tried to calm her boyfriend. “Tyler, why don’t we just turn around and go home. We don’t need weed that bad.”

Tyler’s handsome features pinched together for a second, and she saw him trying to control his temper. In private, when it was just the two of them, Tyler could be really sweet, but he also had anger issues. When his temper got the better of him, things usually ended badly. He’d never hit her or anything like that. But he said things—words more hurtful than any blow.

He shook his head. “It’s all good. I can get around this. I just have to go down one block and then backtrack.”

Ultimately, the detour took them in the opposite direction of the Ben Franklin Bridge. Tyler’s calm demeanor cracked when they found themselves driving on a meandering stretch of the Lower Carlysle Thruway, winding through some of the worst parts of Philadelphia. Hookers roamed the streets, looking hollow and emaciated. A woman with haunted eyes and fire-engine red hair gave them the finger as they drove by. A huge herpes sore dotted one corner of her mouth. Brett waved at her. Steph nudged him in the ribs with her elbow.

The road was rutted and cracked. The car bounced over a gaping pothole, thumping and rattling in ways that would have surely sent Dustin after his little brother with an assault rifle. Something scraped along the underside of the vehicle. Brett gasped from the backseat, and the others cringed at the sound as the car continued to scrape along.

“Fuck me,” Tyler whispered under his breath.

“You wish,” Kerri replied.

He smiled, but there was no humor in the expression. They’d continued down the street, slowing to a crawl. The landscape grew steadily bleaker. They drove past a cluster of seedy-looking bars, patrons lounging outside, bathed in garish neon. Then the bars gave way to pawn shops and liquor stores and rundown, shoebox housing.

“Jesus,” Brett gasped. “Look at these houses. How can anybody live like this?”

They’d stopped at a red light. Thumping bass from the car next to them rattled their windows. A large group of black youths stood on the street corner, peering in at them. When one of the teens sidled up to the station wagon and gestured, Tyler gunned it, racing through the light. A car horn blared behind them.

“Lock the doors,” Heather urged, staring wide-eyed.

Tyler ignored her request, but everyone else rolled their windows up. After a moment, he begrudgingly did the same.

“Where the fuck is the turn?”

From the back of the station wagon, Javier said, “Dude, there’s a sign for Route 30. Doesn’t that take us back to Lititz?”

“I don’t want to go back to Lititz. I want to go to Camden.”

“Fuck Camden,” Javier shouted. “Have you looked outside? You’re gonna get us carjacked!”

Tyler stared straight ahead. “You guys worry too much. For fuck’s sake, we just came from a rap concert. Now y’all are worried about driving through the city? Bunch of white-bread motherfuckers.”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Brett said, “you’re white too, Tyler.”

“I’m not white. I’m Italian.”

Javier sighed.

“Everybody just calm the fuck down,” Tyler continued. “We’ll be fine. Long as you don’t fuck with anybody, they won’t fuck with you.”

He’d kept his voice calm, but his teeth were clenched. Kerri knew from experience that his anger was building inside again.

The last of his facade shattered when the engine light came on and steam began billowing out from under the hood, blanketing the windshield.

“Shit!”

The engine sputtered, then died. The radio and head-lights died with it. Their speed decreased from forty miles an hour to five. They’d rolled a few more yards and then came to a halt. Another car horn blared behind them, the driver impatient. Tyler tried turning on the emergency blinkers, but they didn’t work.

“Motherfucker.” He opened the door, got out, and waved the other car around them. Then he ducked back into the station wagon and pulled the hood latch.

“Stay in here,” he said, then stomped off to the front of the car.

And now here they were—broken down in the middle of the hood.

Tyler’s fault.

Kerri shook her head and sighed.

“Shit happens,” Javier grumbled again.

Heather nodded in agreement. “He just had to go to Camden tonight. If he’d listened to us, we’d be on the turnpike by now.”

“Maybe we should go out and help him,” Brett suggested. “I mean, Tyler doesn’t know shit about cars. Dustin was always the motor head. What’s he gonna do out there?”

Kerri frowned. “Tyler said to stay in the car.”

“Screw that,” Brett said. “It’s hot in here, and there’s no way I’m rolling the windows down.”

“You’re afraid to roll the windows down,” Heather said, “but you’d rather stand outside with Tyler?”

“Yeah,” Javier said. “What’s that about, bro?”

Smirking, Heather adopted a baby-talk tone. “He knows Tyler will beat up the big bad gangbangers if they mess with us. He’s afraid.”

Brett’s ears turned red. Instead of responding, he opened the door and got out.

“You know,” Stephanie said, turning to Heather. “That was a real bitch move.”

Heather’s smile died. “I was just kidding.”

“Well, Brett’s sensitive. You know that.”

Sighing, Javier and Heather got out of the car to apologize to Brett. Stephanie remained seated, rummaging through her purse. She pulled out a pink cell phone and flipped it open. The display glowed in the darkness.

“Who are you calling?” Kerri asked.

“My parents. They’ve got Triple A. They can send a tow truck for us.”

“Hold off on that. Let’s just wait a minute and see what’s wrong with the car first.”

“Screw that,” Stephanie said. “I’m not sitting around here waiting to get mugged. Have you taken a look outside? It’s like Baghdad out there.”

Kerri rubbed her temples. A headache was forming behind her eyes.

“Please, Steph? Let’s just wait a few minutes. If you call them now, you’re just going to piss Tyler off even more.”

“I don’t care.”

“I know you don’t, but you’re not the one who has to deal with him when he’s angry. Please? Do it for me?”

Stephanie shook her head. “I don’t know why you put up with that shit. If Brett treated me that way, I’d have dumped him a long time ago.”

“Brett lets you walk all over him. He’s done that since middle school. He’s a pushover.”

“Maybe. But he’s sweet, and he treats me the way I deserve to be treated. He respects me. Like I said, I don’t know why you put up with Tyler. He doesn’t respect anyone or anything. Not even himself. ”

“I won’t have to put up with it for much longer. Once I’m at Rutgers, things will be different. We’ll drift apart.”

“Why not just break up with him now?”

Kerri paused before answering. “Because I care about him, and I don’t want to hurt him. I’m afraid of what he might do if I did.”

“To you?”

“No. Not to me. To himself.”

Stephanie didn’t respond. She quietly closed her cell phone and stuffed it back into her purse.

Kerri murmured, “I don’t think Tyler likes himself very much.”

“You think?” Stephanie’s tone was sarcastic. “What was your first clue?”

“It’s so easy for you, isn’t it? Pretty little Stephanie, who gets everything she wants. Some of us don’t have it that easy, Steph. You’re supposed to be my best friend. I don’t need that shit from you. You gave Heather shit for picking on Brett, but then you’re going to turn around and do it to me?”

Scowling, Kerri opened the passenger door and stepped out into the street. Stephanie quickly followed her, offering apologies. They joined the others huddled around the open hood. The guys were peering down at the engine intently. Steam rose from the radiator. The motor smelled of oil and antifreeze. Heather was smoking a cigarette. Kerri bummed one from her. Stephanie made a disgusted sound when she lit up.

Tyler raised his head and looked at them. “I thought I told you guys to stay in the car. Doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?”

“It’s hot in there.” Stephanie tossed her head. “Want me to call my parents? They’ve got Triple A.”

“No.” Tyler returned his attention to the engine. “We can figure this out.”

“You’re doing a great job so far.”

Tyler’s knuckles curled around the car’s front grille, clenching tightly. Kerri and Brett both motioned at Stephanie to be quiet. Another cloud of steam drifted up from the engine.

Even though the sun had gone down, it was still excruciatingly hot outside. The heat seemed to radiate off the sidewalks and the pitted blacktop in waves. The air was a sticky, damp miasma. Kerri tugged at her blouse. Between all the sweating she’d done at the concert and the temperature here on the street, the sheer fabric stuck to her skin. She took another drag off the cigarette, but with the extreme humidity, it was like inhaling soup. She smelled food cooking. Gasoline. Piss. Booze. Burned rubber. Hot asphalt. Stephanie’s perfume. The mix was nauseating.

Coughing, Kerri breathed through her mouth and looked around, nervously studying their surroundings. She’d heard the term urban blight before, but had never really understood it until now. Most of the streetlights weren’t working, and the few that were operational cast a sickly yellow pall across the neighborhood. Combined with the moonlight, it made for an eerie scene.

They were surrounded by decrepit row homes, none of which looked hospitable. In the gloom, the squat houses seemed like monoliths, endless black walls with deteriorating features. Dim lights burned behind dirty curtains or through broken windows—some of which were covered with clear plastic or stuffed with soiled rags. Many of the buildings were missing roof tiles, and the outside walls had gaps where bricks or boards had crumbled away. Some were covered with graffiti—gang tags and names she didn’t understand. None of the homes had yards, unless you counted the broken sidewalks, split by the roots of long-dead trees and cracked by blistering summers and frigid winters. Cockroaches and ants scuttled on the sunken concrete amidst crack vials, cigarette butts and glittering shards of broken glass. Ruptured garbage bags sat on the curbs, spewing their rotten contents into the street.

The sidewalks and stoops were deserted, except for a surly-looking gang of youths lurking on the street corner about a block away. Kerri’s gaze lingered on them for a moment, before moving on. The only businesses on the street were a pawn shop, a liquor store, and a newsstand. All three were closed for the night, shuttered with heavy steel security gates. Many of the businesses also had graffiti painted on them. So did some of the junk cars sitting along the curb. A few of the vehicles looked abandoned—shattered windshields, missing tires replaced with cement blocks, bodies rusted out and dented, bumpers hanging off or bashed in.

She turned in the opposite direction and looked farther down the street. It seemed to terminate in a dead end. Beyond the row homes was a large swath of debris covered pavement, as if all the buildings in that section had been knocked down. The moonlight was stronger there, and the headlights of passing cars illuminated the scene. Chunks of concrete and twisted metal girders jutted from the devastation. Beyond that was a single house, much larger than the rest of the row homes. Kerri thought it must be at least a hundred years old, judging by the architecture. Maybe one of the original buildings in this neighborhood, standing there long before the slums had been erected. She supposed at one time it had been very pretty. Now it was a desolate ruin—in even worse condition than the other row homes. It seemed to squat at the end of the street, looming over the block. Beyond it was a vacant lot, overgrown with weeds and brambles. Behind that was a tall, rusted chain-link fence. Kerri stared at the house. She shivered despite the heat. She had the uncanny impression that the abandoned building was somehow watching them.

Tyler cursed, rapping his knuckles against the car, and Kerri’s attention returned to her friends. As she did, she noticed that the street had emptied of traffic. They were suddenly all alone.

“Maybe we should call Steph’s parents,” Brett suggested. “It’s pretty late, and we’re in a bad neighborhood.”

Tyler glanced up at him, opened his mouth to respond, and then stared over Brett’s shoulder. Kerri saw his face twitch. Then she and the others turned around to see what had attracted his attention.

The group of black men she’d noticed a moment before was slowly approaching. The boys appeared to be about the same age as they were. Most of the youths were dressed in either athletic jerseys or white tank tops. Their pants, held up only by tightly cinched belts and the tongues of their high-topped sneakers, sagged almost to their kneecaps, exposing their boxer shorts. Gold rings and necklaces completed the ensemble. A few of them wore backwards ball caps on their heads. The one in the lead wore a black do-rag on his head. Gold hoops glittered from each of his ears. He reminded Kerri of a pirate.

“Oh shit,” Brett whispered. “What the hell do they want?”

Stephanie whimpered. “We’re going to get mugged.”

Brett nodded. “This is bad. This is really fucking bad.”

“Calm the hell down,” Javier said. “You guys automatically assume that just because they’re black, they’re gonna mug us?”

“Look at them,” Brett insisted. “They sure as hell don’t look like they’re here to sell us Girl Scout cookies.”

Javier glared at him, speechless.

The group shuffled closer. All of them walked with a sort of lazy, loping gait. Kerri’s nervousness increased. She wanted to agree with Javier, but then she considered their situation and their surroundings. Panic overwhelmed her. She reached for Tyler’s hand, but he was stiff as stone.

“Shit,” Brett moaned. “Fucking do something, you guys!”

Javier shoved him. “Dude, chill out. You’re acting like an asshole.”

When the group was about ten feet away, they stopped. The leader stepped forward and glared at them suspiciously.

Slowly, his friends stepped alongside him.

“The fuck y’all doing around here? You lost?”

His voice was deep and surly. He stood tensed, as if ready to spring at them.

Stephanie and Heather clasped hands and took a simultaneous step backward. Brett slipped in behind them. Javier stepped out from behind the car and faced the group. Tyler slowly slammed the hood, then joined him. Kerri stayed where she was. Her feet felt rooted to the spot. Her heart pounded beneath her breast.

Another of the black youths spoke up. “Man asked you a question.”

“We don’t want any trouble,” Tyler said.

Kerri cringed at the plaintive, pleading tone in his voice.

“Well, if you don’t want no trouble,” the leader said, grinning, “then you’re in the wrong place.”

His friends chuckled among themselves in response. He held up a hand and they immediately fell silent.

“Come into this neighborhood after dark,” he continued, “then you must be looking for trouble. Or dope. Or be lost. So which one is it?”

“Neither,” Javier challenged. “We had a little car trouble. That’s all. Just called for a tow truck and they’re on the way.” He paused. “Should be here any minute now.”

The leader elbowed the gangly kid next to him. “You hear that shit, Markus? He said a tow truck is on the way.”

Markus smiled and nodded. “I heard that, Leo. What you think?”

The leader—Leo—stared at Javier as he responded. “I think this esse be bullshitting us, y’all. Ain’t no tow trucks come down here after dark. Not to this street.”

Javier and Tyler glanced at each other. Kerri saw Tyler’s Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. She turned to Stephanie, who was slowly pulling her cell phone out of her purse.

“Now for real,” Leo said. “What y’all doing down here? You looking to score?”

“M-maybe,” Tyler said. “What you got?”

Leo stepped closer. “The question is, what you got? How much money you carrying?”

Oh shit, Kerri thought. Here it comes. Next, they’ll pull out a knife or a gun.

“W-we came from the M-monsters of H-hip Hop,” Brett stammered, hidden behind the girls. “We’re j-just trying to g-get home.”

The group broke into raucous laughter. Kerri couldn’t tell if it was over the all-too-apparent fear in Brett’s voice, or the fact that a bunch of white, obviously suburbanite kids had been at a hardcore rap concert.

Leo glanced at the car, then at each of them. Kerri felt his eyes lingering on her. She shuddered. Then his gaze flicked back to the car again.

“Alright,” he said, “let’s handle this shit nice and easy. Tell you what we’ll do. Y’all give us—”

“Fuck you, nigger!”

Kerri was just as surprised as Leo and his cronies. She heard feet pounding on the pavement, and turned to see Brett running away, racing toward the large abandoned house at the end of the block. A second later, Stephanie and Heather dashed off after him. Stephanie’s cell phone slipped from her grasp and clattered onto the pavement as she fled. She didn’t stop to retrieve it. Tyler chased after them, shouting. Javier and Kerri stared at each other for the beat of one heart, and then he grabbed her arm and pulled her along.

“Come on!”

“Hey,” Leo shouted. “The fuck did you just call me?”

“Oh Jesus,” Kerri gasped. “Oh my God . . .”

“What the hell is wrong with you guys?” Javier called after their fleeing friends. “You assholes are gonna get us killed.”

“Shut the fuck up and run,” Tyler answered, not bothering to look over his shoulder and see if Kerri was okay.

“Yo,” Leo yelled, “get back here. Hey, motherfuckers. I’m talking to you!”

Kerri screamed as she heard them give chase. Leo had stopped shouting. Their pursuers moved in silence, save for grunts, gasps, and the sound of their feet slapping the sidewalk.

“Go,” Javier said, shoving her forward. He kept up the pace behind her, putting himself between Kerri and their pursuers. He paused only to duck down and retrieve Stephanie’s cell phone.

The chase continued down the street—Brett in the lead, followed by Stephanie and Heather, then Tyler, with Kerri and Javier bringing up the rear. The strap on one of Heather’s sandals broke, and the shoe flew off her foot. She slowed for a second, and Tyler shot past her, not stopping. Crying, Heather kicked off her other shoe and sped up again, running barefoot. Kerri noticed in horror that her friend was leaving bloody footprints. Heather must have cut her foot on some of the broken glass littering the sidewalk. Kerri wondered if Heather even realized it, or if adrenaline and instinct had overridden the pain.

They fled past the row homes and entered the wasteland of jumbled debris. The streetlights in this section weren’t functioning, and the shadows deepened around them. Kerri heard something scurrying behind a pile of crumbled masonry and nearly shrieked. Behind them, the sound of pursuit halted.

“Yo,” Leo bellowed. “Get the fuck back here. You all are asking for trouble you keep going.”

Ignoring him, they made a beeline for the abandoned house. It loomed before them in the darkness. Heather stumbled and fell behind, but Kerri and Javier helped her. Even though the pursuit had stopped, they didn’t slow. Kerri’s breathing became jagged, more frantic. She tried to calm herself by looking at her friends. Stephanie was mouthing the Lord’s Prayer. Brett’s face was set in a worried scowl, his steps drunken and dazed. Tyler’s eyes were wide and panicked, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

Kerri glanced back and saw Leo and the rest of his gang lurking at the edge of the wasteland, slowly milling back and forth. He shouted something, but they were too far away to hear him. Probably another threat. Kerri wondered why they’d given up chasing them so easily.

Maybe they were content to busy themselves with Tyler’s car. She felt a pang of sorrow. Poor Tyler—Dustin would be livid when he found out.

Javier urged them on faster, careful to step over the worst holes, guiding them around piles of debris. Brett mumbled something, his voice low and on the edge of hysteria.

“Shut the fuck up,” Javier told him. “It’s your stupid ass that got us into this mess. What the hell were you thinking, you dumb motherfucker?”

Instead of responding, Brett quietly sobbed.

Javier handed Stephanie her cell phone.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

“What now?” Tyler asked, conceding to Javier.

“In there.” He nodded at the abandoned home. “We hole up inside and call the cops.”

“But they’ll see us go in,” Heather whispered.

“I don’t think so,” Javier said. “We can see them back there because of the streetlights. But here it’s dark. I noticed as we were running up—you can’t see shit from back there. Just shadows. Long as we’re quick and quiet, we should be okay.”

Stephanie eyed the house warily. “What if somebody lives there?”

“Look at it,” Javier said. “Who’s gonna live inside a shithole like this?”

“Crackheads,” Kerri answered. “Homeless people. Rats.”

Instead of replying, Javier pushed past them, plodding up the sagging porch steps. They groaned under his weight, but held. The handrail wobbled when he grasped it for support, and small flakes of rust and paint rained down onto the pavement. The others followed. Kerri studied the rough brick and mortar of the exterior wall. It was covered with sickly, whitish-green moss. The windows were all boarded over with moisture-stained plywood sheets. Curiously, unlike the occupied row homes, this abandoned house was free of graffiti.

When they were all on the porch, Javier explored the pitted wooden door. It was misshapen and water-warped, and several coats of paint peeled off it, revealing a variety of sickly colors. He found the doorknob, an old cut crystal affair, and turned it. The door opened with a grating squeal. Dirt and paint flecks fell onto his forearm and dusted his hair. Standing back, Javier brushed the debris away.

“Hello?” Brett’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Anybody home?”

There was no answer.

They peered inside, but the interior was hidden within a deep, oppressive darkness. Kerri had the impression that if she reached her hand out, the darkness would be a tangible thing, capable of sticking to her fingers like tar. Javier shoved forward, stepping into the gloom. Kerri followed him. Stephanie and Heather hesitated for a moment before proceeding. Heather limped, still leaving bloody footprints in her wake. Brett trailed along behind them, followed by Tyler, who slammed the door shut once he’d stepped through it. The sound echoed throughout the structure. The others glared at him in annoyance. Tyler shrugged defiantly.

“We need some light,” Kerri whispered.

She pulled out her cigarette lighter and flicked it. The shadows seemed to converge around the flame. Tyler opened his lighter and did the same. Heather, Javier, and Stephanie flipped open their cell phones, adding the weak, green illumination from the display screens.

Kerri turned in a circle, sweeping the lighter around. A cobweb brushed against her cheek. She shuddered, brushing it away. They were standing in a dank, mildewed foyer. A hallway stretched into the darkness. Several closed doors led off from it into other parts of the house. Yellow wallpaper peeled away from the dingy walls in large sheets, revealing cracked bare plaster splattered with black splotches of mildew. There were holes in the baseboards where rats and insects had chewed their way through.

Something scurried in the shadows—a dry, rustling sound. Heather stifled a shriek.

“Hear anything?” Javier asked Tyler, nodding toward the door.

Tyler leaned close and listened. Then he shook his head and shrugged. “Nothing. This lighter is burning the shit out of my fingers, though.”

He released the button and the flame disappeared. Somehow, even with the other lighter and the cell phones still glowing, it suddenly seemed darker.

“Maybe they’re gone,” Brett suggested. “Maybe they gave up.”

“And maybe,” Tyler said, “they’re fucking up Dustin’s car while we’re standing here. Fuck this shit.”

He reached for the doorknob.

“What are you doing?” Kerri whispered.

“Taking a peek outside. I’m just gonna open it a crack.”

His hand turned. The knob didn’t move. He jiggled it, but it remained motionless. Frozen.

Stephanie squeezed closer to Brett and peered over his shoulder, watching Tyler. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s stuck or something. Fucking thing won’t open.”

Javier groaned. “Did it lock behind you?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Chill, bro. Keep your voice down. We don’t want them to hear us.”

“Fuck that. I ain’t staying in this shithole all night. My fucking brother’s car is out there.”

“You should have thought of that before.”

Tyler wheeled around, facing him. He jabbed a finger into Javier’s chest.

“This shit isn’t my fault. Brett’s the one who called them niggers.”

Javier stiffened. His jaw clenched. For a moment, Kerri thought he was going to punch Tyler, but then he relaxed. He held his hands up in surrender.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. Relax. But we can’t go breaking that door down, man. If they’re still out there, they’ll hear us. Our best bet is to go into one of these rooms, find some windows, and see if we can peer through the cracks in the boards. Maybe we can figure out where they are.”

Tyler nodded, slumping his shoulders.

“You’re right.”

He strode forward and opened the first door on his left. The rusty hinges creaked as the door swung slowly, revealing more darkness. Kerri stepped up behind him, holding her lighter over his head to illuminate the room beyond.

“Hurry up,” she whispered. “My lighter’s getting hot.”

Tyler hesitated.

And in his hesitation, everything changed.

Shit happened.

Kerri saw the looming, shadowy figure standing on the other side of the doorway. She knew that Tyler saw it, too, because his entire body stiffened. He made no sound. Kerri tried to speak, tried to warn the others, but her mouth suddenly went dry, and her tongue felt like sandpaper. Her breath hitched in her chest.

The person inside the room was impossibly large. She couldn’t make out any features, but its head must have nearly been touching the ceiling. The figure’s shoulders were broad, and its torso was thick as an oil drum. There was something in the figure’s hand. It looked like a giant hammer.

Tyler moaned.

There was a flash of movement.

When she was twelve years old, Kerri’s older brother had managed to get some M-80 firecrackers. They were as big as the palm of her hand and made her nervous when she held them. Her brother and his college buddies had shoved the explosive deep inside a watermelon just to see what would happen. When they lit the fuse, there was a titanic clap of thunder followed by a massive spray of seeds and pink pulp and rind.

That was what happened to Tyler’s head. Only it wasn’t seeds and rind, it was bone and hair and brains. Warm wetness splashed across Kerri’s face and soaked through her shirt and bra. She tasted it in the back of her throat. Felt it running down her head and inside her ears. Something hot and vile and solid trickled over her lips. She gagged and dropped her lighter.

Tyler stood there for a moment, jittering. Then he toppled over with a thud.

Kerri opened her mouth to scream, but Brett beat her to it.

The giant figure lunged toward them.

TWO

“Fuck this shit,” Leo muttered. “I ain’t going any further.”

Markus and the others gaped at him. They’d halted at the edge of the streetlights, about fifty yards from the abandoned house at the end of the block. A group of clouds had passed over the moon, and the area was now pitch-black.

“You just gonna let them get away with that?” Jamal asked. “You hear what they said?”

Leo nodded. “I heard. But look at the facts, Jamal. Six white kids. Judging by their clothes and shit, I’d say they were from the suburbs. Come into the city, got lost, broke down in the hood—and then we come walking up. Probably scared the piss out of them.”

“True that,” Markus said. “They probably thought we were slinging crack or something. Probably sit at home, watching The Wire and shit, and thinking everyone in the hood is a drug dealer.”

“That’s fucked up,” Chris replied. He was the youngest of the group and looked up to them all. Leo and Markus, especially. Wanting their approval, he always went along with whatever they decided. “So what are we gonna do?”

Leo paused, considering their options. He stared at the house and the darkness surrounding it. It had been a good evening. They’d gone to a party, met some girls, had a fun time. All was right with the world. They’d been walking home, bullshitting with one another and laughing, when they’d come across the broken-down station wagon. They knew right away that the teenagers inside needed help. They didn’t belong here. They were outsiders. Easy prey. This was a bad neighborhood during daylight, but at night—at night, it really was a jungle. At night, there were monsters on the streets.

And even worse things in the shadows.

Crack, heroin, and meth whores roamed up and down the street, opening their diseased mouths and other orifices for ten or twenty bucks—enough to get the next fix. Drug dealers controlled everything—the street corners, the houses, the apartment buildings, and all that lay between them. The homes had rats, mold, mildew, roaches, and all sorts of other health hazards. A broken sewer pipe spilled shit and piss into the street, yet the public works department did nothing about it. The cops didn’t come down here unless they were passing through on their way to another call. Neither did the ambulances or firemen. To serve and protect didn’t mean much in this part of the city.

Two years ago, an obese woman who was too fat to get out of her house, had suffered a heart attack in front of the television while watching Judge Judy. Her family had called 911. Twice. And then the next day. And the day after that. A week passed before paramedics arrived. By then, the dead woman had begun to lose weight.

Just another day in paradise.

A year ago, a twelve-year-old girl with cerebral palsy had died just a few doors down from where they were now standing. She’d lain for days on top of a feces-and-urine covered bare mattress in a fetid, sweltering room, begging for water. Her family ignored her cries. Malnourished and dehydrated, she was covered with maggot-infested bedsores and her muscles had begun to atrophy. When she was finally discovered, the little girl weighed less than forty pounds. The outline of her body was imprinted on the mattress. The Department of Human Services could have helped her—but the social workers never came to this section of the city.

No one did.

And the shunned house at the end of the street was very hungry.

Leo’s gaze was drawn back to it again. He didn’t want to look at the structure, but its terrible allure was magnetic. He had to look. He shivered and hoped the others didn’t notice. He didn’t want them to know he was scared—even though he knew damn well that they were, too.

Everyone was scared of the house at the end of the block. Better to let your kids play in the middle of the Interstate than to play down there. People who went inside that house were never seen again.

They were heard sometimes—faint, muffled screams that ended abruptly. But they were never seen.

Every neighborhood—even theirs—had a haunted house.

Leo shook his head. Why did those white kids have to react like that? He and the guys were just having a little bit of fun. He was about to say, “Alright, let’s handle this shit nice and easy. Y’all give us twenty bucks and we’ll fix the car for you.” And they could have, too. Angel Montoya ran a chop shop two blocks down, and Angel liked Leo and his crew. He let them hang out at the garage sometimes and gave them free sodas from the dusty machine out back. He’d have fixed the car if they’d asked him to. But before Leo could finish the sentence, the kid with the glasses had shouted “Fuck you, nigger” and then they’d fled. Leo had been momentarily stunned by the reaction. It wasn’t the first time a white person had called him that, but he hadn’t been expecting it tonight—not under these circumstances. He’d felt angered and hurt, and it took him a moment to recover from his shock. Then he’d shouted after them, trying to warn them not to go any farther, not to run into the darkness at the end of the street, not to venture near the house. He didn’t know if they’d heard him or not. They kept running. Hell, the one girl had dropped her cell phone and left it there. Another dude had picked it up, but obviously, she wasn’t too worried about it. None of them had even glanced back. In hindsight, looking at it from their eyes, he couldn’t blame them if they had heard his shouts and just ignored him.

He probably shouldn’t have called them motherfuckers. Not the best way to win friends and influence people, in hindsight. The distant sound of gunshots rang out from several blocks away. Neither Leo or the others even bothered to duck. They were used to it. The noise was as common as traffic or sirens or pigeons or any other city sound. Leo’s older brother used to say that the sound of gunshots helped him sleep at night.

Now his brother was upstate at Cresson, serving twenty years to life on some bullshit charges. Leo wondered what sounds lulled him to sleep at night in prison.

“What are we gonna do?” Chris asked again. “We just gonna walk away and pretend we didn’t know they were here?”

“I like the sound of that,” Jamal said. “Better if we mind our own business. Safer that way. Know what I’m saying?”

Leo glanced at his friends, studying their faces. Then he turned his attention back to the house.

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re gonna call the po-po.”

Markus laughed. “Five-oh ain’t gonna do shit. Might as well call in the National Guard.”

“You’re probably right,” Leo agreed. “But it ain’t right, letting them go in there. You all know the stories about that place. Any of you feel like going in to rescue them?”

Markus stared at the ground. Jamal and Chris glanced at each other. The others looked away.

“None of you want to play hero?” Leo teased. “None of you want to rush in with guns blazing?”

None of them responded.

More gunshots rang out, then faded. A sleepy, laconic sounding police siren started up from far away.

“Well,” Leo said, after a pause. “That’s okay. Because I don’t want to, either. Not in that place.”

He turned around and stared at the house again.

“Not in there.”

THREE

As the looming figure lunged into the foyer, Kerri and Javier backed away, nearly knocking over Stephanie, Brett, and Heather. Bits of Tyler’s hair, scalp, and blood dripped from the weapon the killer clutched in its gnarled hands—a rough-hewn chunk of granite the size of a watermelon. The boulder was affixed to a length of iron pipe. Together, they formed a crude but effective war hammer. Stunned, Kerri wondered how it was possible to lift such a thing, let alone swing it. Then her gaze turned to their attacker, and she wondered no more.

He drew himself up to his full height, raised the hammer, thrusting it before him, and bellowed—whether from rage or laughter, Kerri couldn’t tell. Perhaps both. He stood well over seven feet tall. His chest, arms, and legs were corded with thick slabs of muscle. His skin was the color of provolone cheese and covered with large brown moles and festering sores. Bloody saliva dripped from his open mouth, leaking around gums that had receded from his black, broken teeth. His breathing was harsh and ragged. His head was bald and misshapen. He glared at them with eyes that were almost perfectly round, rather than oval-shaped. His pupils were black. He was nearly nude, clad only in black garbage bags held together with frayed duct tape. They rustled as he moved. His penis—as big as the rest of him—bobbed and swayed, jutting from between the plastic bags. Kerri gagged at the sight. He was uncircumcised, and the foreskin looked infected. Pus dripped from the putrid member, splattering onto the floor. Worst of all was the attacker’s stench. It was revolting—sour milk mixed with feces and sweat. Kerri’s nose burned.

She noticed all of this in a matter of seconds, but it was the longest moment of Kerri’s life. Time seemed to pause.

Then it came rushing back with a wallop.

The hulk backhanded her, knocking Kerri off her feet. She slammed into the opposite wall and slumped to the floor. Spitting blood, Kerri spotted her cigarette lighter. Without thinking about it, she reached out and snatched it. The madman laughed. Kerri scrambled to get to her feet, but she slipped in a spreading pool of Tyler’s blood.

Their attacker laughed again. With his other hand, he swung the mallet. Kerri watched, cringing as Javier dodged the blow, narrowly avoiding having his chest crushed.

The five teens scattered. Shrieking, Heather ran to the end of the hall and flung open one of the doors, disappearing through it. The only signs of her passage were the bloody footprints she left in her wake. Javier shouted after Heather, but if she heard him, she showed no sign. While the figure menaced Brett and Stephanie, Javier kneeled over Kerri and thrust out his hand. She grasped it, and he pulled her to her feet. They ran down the hallway in blind panic, forgetting about Stephanie and Brett. Forgetting about Tyler. Even forgetting about each other. The only thing their minds comprehended was survival.

They followed Heather’s crimson trail through the open doorway. Kerri glanced back once and saw what was happening to Stephanie, but her feet kept moving.

Their friends’ screams faded behind them.

***

“Open, you fucker!”

Sobbing, Stephanie clawed at the entrance, trying to get back outside. She beat at the locked door with her fists. Tears coursed down her mascara-stained cheeks. She babbled a string of nonsense—jumbled prayers and pleas for her parents to come and get her.

Brett tugged at her arm. “Steph, come on!”

She shoved him away.

A massive shadow fell over them both, and the hammer whistled through the air. It slammed into Stephanie’s curled fist with a sickening crunch. Blood and pulp squirted out from beneath the stone. Stephanie wailed, gaping at the pulverized flap of meat where her hand had been. The attacker pulled the hammer back for another swing, and Stephanie flailed helplessly. Blood jetted from her crushed appendage. Brett moved to help her, but before he could, the man swung the hammer again. This time, the blow crushed Stephanie’s head.

Brett froze, helpless, feet rooted to the floor. All flight instinct had left him. He stared at Stephanie’s body, trying to understand what he was seeing. Put him behind a chessboard and everything was crystal clear. Give him a trigonometry problem and he’d solve it. Those things made sense to him. They had logic and order. Rules.

There was no logic here. No order. There were no rules that he could see and understand. Instead, there was some kind of monster (because it couldn’t be a man—no, his mind wouldn’t accept that this thing was human). It had killed Tyler. And now it . . .

Brett screamed.

Something was wrong with Stephanie’s face. He saw it as she slid down to the floor. Her features were mashed together. Her eyes and nose and mouth—they were too close. Her lips—lips he’d kissed just an hour ago—were smashed almost beyond the point of recognition. Her head wasn’t round anymore. Instead, it looked like a deflated basketball. The top of it was split open, and inside that red chasm was something that looked like curds of jellied lasagna.

Her brains, Brett thought. Oh, Jesus, that’s her brains.

Brett winced as the bile rose in the back of his throat. It burned. He glanced up at the killer.

The killer laughed a third time—hoarse and booming.

In that instant, Brett fell back on what he knew best—logic. This was nothing more than a puzzle. A real-life video game. All he had to do to survive was figure it out. As their attacker raised his bloody weapon, Brett ran through the possibilities. Then he did the last thing he hoped the monstrosity would expect—he raced right past it and flung himself into the room from which it had emerged. The man-thing roared, clearly enraged.

Even as he wept, Brett couldn’t help smiling.

Weren’t ready for that, were you, fucker?

He ran, charging across the room. Ahead of him was another door. It led deeper into the house. Brett dashed through it without hesitation, plunging into the darkness, heedless of where it might lead.

His pursuer’s feet plodded along behind him, shaking the wooden floor.

Somewhere beyond the walls, perhaps in another room, Kerri started screaming, her voice broken and shrill.

Brett knew just exactly how she felt.

FOUR

Kerri’s world had shattered before her eyes. Tyler was dead. Stephanie was dead.

Shit happens . . .

Stephanie had been her best friend since kindergarten. They’d gone to the same classes at St. Mary’s Catholic School from first grade through seventh, at which point they’d both switched to public school. They’d studied together. Grown up together.

Kerri’s breath caught in her throat as Javier urged her along through the darkness. Although their vision had adjusted, their only source of light was Javier’s cell phone, which he held open. Her hands were shaking too much to hold her cigarette lighter. Kerri heard Javier’s nose whistling as he breathed. She tried to speak, tried to tell him to slow down, to ask him if he’d called 911, but she couldn’t find her voice. Kerri shuffled forward a few more steps and stopped. She felt dizzy all of the sudden. There was pressure building behind her eyes.

She closed them, hoping the pain would go away.

Maybe Steph wasn’t dead. Maybe she was still alive back there. After all, she and Javier had been fleeing. Maybe what she thought she saw happen hadn’t actually occurred.

Kerri heard the sound again. That awful noise the hammerhad made when it . . .

Tyler and Steph . . .

Steph and Tyler . . .

They were definitely both dead. And she’d done nothing to help them. Instead, she’d run away. How was that possible?

Tyler had taken Kerri’s virginity. Steph was the one who listened to all the details afterward, just like she had when Steph lost her virginity under less pleasant circumstances a few years earlier. Steph was her sister in every way that mattered and now she was dead.

Tyler wasn’t just her boyfriend. He’d been her world. Yes, things had been difficult lately. They’d been fighting a lot. Fed up with his immaturity, she’d been thinking about leaving him. But all the arguments and annoyance—those things just proved how much they’d really loved each other. You didn’t fight with somebody if you didn’t care about them. And now he was gone. Dead. Lying on the floor at the front of the house, cooling and coalescing, his blood mingling with Steph’s.

The pressure in her head boiled over. Kerri opened her eyes and screamed. It was a deep, raw, throat-stripping shriek that seemed to go on forever—

—until Javier clamped his hand over her mouth and pressed tight.

“Stop it,” he whispered. “Just stop.”

She struggled against him, and his grip tightened. Kerri felt her snot running between his fingers. She tried to talk, tried to tell him that they had to go back for Tyler and Steph, but he stared into her eyes, unblinking, and shook his head.

“I know. I know. I’m feeling it, too. But we’ve got to keep going. Got to find Heather and the others, and then get out of here. You keep screaming and that fucking thing will find us first. Now, stop it. Okay?”

His long-fingered, almost feminine hand remained on her mouth, but the pressure decreased. His eyes glittered in the open cell phone’s dim light.

Kerri blinked.

Javier removed his hand and she sobbed. He pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her again.

“No. Not here. Not anymore. We have to leave here.”

After a moment, Kerri nodded. Javier removed his finger. She regretted it almost immediately. His touch—that tiny bit of human contact—had been reassuring. Now panic and grief threatened to overwhelm her once more. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. “Did you call someone?”

“I can’t get any bars in here. Old place like this? Probably asbestos in the walls or some shit.”

Kerri frowned. Could asbestos block cell phone coverage? She didn’t know.

“What now?” she asked.

“We sit a minute and listen. I think it went after Brett and Stephanie.”

“Steph’s . . . it got her.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw it as we were running away. It . . . that thing smashed her head with the hammer.”

“What about Brett?”

“I don’t know.”

“Shit.” Javier took a deep breath and paused. “We need to find Heather. Then we find a way out.”

“What about Brett? And we can’t just leave Tyler’s and Stephanie’s bodies behind.”

“We’re not going to do them much good if we’re dead.”

He beckoned her to follow him, and crawled behind an old couch that had been covered with a filthy, moldy tarp. Kerri crawled along behind him. They sat there, huddled together in the darkness, and waited. They heard no sound, save their own breathing. Kerri glanced around the room, trying to discern their surroundings. She couldn’t see much. The shadows were too thick. Maybe it had been a living room at one time, but now it was a junk heap. The very atmosphere seemed full of the same despair she felt inside. Garbage lay strewn across the dirty wooden floor—empty cans, broken bottles, shattered drug vials, a shriveled condom. She wondered what had happened to the people who’d left the trash there. Had they been slaughtered, just like Tyler and Steph? In addition to the sofa they were hiding behind, there were a few other pieces of broken furniture in the room. She could make out their shapes, sitting beneath tarps in the gloom. Above her, a cracked, smudged mirror hung askew. The nail it was hanging from was slowly working its way out of the plaster. Kerri considered that they were lucky their passage through the room hadn’t caused it to crash to the floor, alerting their pursuer to their location.

She pulled out her lighter and flicked it. The small flame did little to dispel the gloom, but it made her feel better.

They spotted a few bloody footprints on the floor, but there were less of them now. Kerri assumed that Heather’s wound had started to clot.

Javier held the phone up to his face and squinted at the display. Kerri stared at him, hoping to see a positive expression. Instead, he merely frowned and shook his head.

She looked up again and caught her reflection in the cracked mirror. Her blue eyes were nearly perfectly round and the freckles on her face stood out in the faint cell phone glow and lighter flame like black spatters of paint. There were dark circles under her eyes that hadn’t been there an hour before.

Javier lowered the phone again. Then he grabbed Kerri by her elbow and forced her to move, directing them to another door on the far side of the room. She put her lighter back in her pocket. They crawled on their hands and knees, and Kerri winced as a long splinter of wood pricked her palm. She pulled it out with her teeth and spat it aside. A thin bead of blood welled out of the cut. She glanced back down at the floor and saw another drop of her blood there. As she watched, it disappeared, almost as if the floorboards were drinking it up.

Maybe that’s why we’re not seeing as many of Heather’s footprints, she thought. The house is gobbling them all up.

They reached the open door and Javier leaned forward and peeked around the corner. Then he nodded at her, indicating that the coast was clear. They crawled through the doorway into another hallway. Above them, an ornate lamp hung from the ceiling, draped with spider webs. The floor was covered with worn, stained carpet the color of lima beans. Several closed doors lined the narrow hall. Kerri shook her head, trying to get a sense of the house’s layout.

Javier must have been as puzzled as she was. He said, “Place is like a goddamned maze. I can’t figure it out.”

“Well, we know what’s back that way.” Kerri pointed.

“Yeah, but we don’t know what’s ahead. Or where Heather is.”

“She’ll be okay. We’ll find her.”

“I hope so,” Javier said. “I don’t know what . . .”

His voice trailed off, choked with emotion. Kerri felt him trembling beside her. She touched his shoulder.

“It’ll be okay,” she whispered.

He glanced up at the ceiling and frowned. Kerri followed his gaze. A crude string of electrical cords and bare lightbulbs dangled from the ceiling. They didn’t look like part of the house. To Kerri, it appeared as if they’d been added as an afterthought.

“Weird,” Javier muttered.

She nodded.

Javier stood and helped Kerri to her feet. Moving cautiously, they tried the first door. It opened easily, revealing a brick wall.

Javier grunted. “What the hell is this shit?”

Kerri tapped him on the shoulder. “Do you think Heather came through here?”

“Through the wall?”

“No! Through this hallway.”

Javier shrugged. “She must have. I don’t see any more footprints, though.”

“Maybe her foot stopped bleeding.”

He turned back to the bricks and placed his palm against them. Kerri studied them, too. The mortar was cracked and covered with moss and mold, but the wall still stood firm.

“We can’t just stand here,” she said. “That thing could come back at any minute.”

Nodding in agreement, Javier started forward. The floorboards creaked slightly as they walked. They froze, waiting to see if the sound had attracted attention. The house remained quiet. Kerri pulled her lighter out and flicked it on again. Dust swirled around the flame. Moving on, they stopped at the next door, on the opposite side of the hall, and listened. Hearing no sound from inside, they opened it.

Kerri slapped her hand over her mouth and bit down, trying not to scream.

Beyond the door was a small room devoid of furnishings save for an old, rusty heater sitting against one wall—

—and the scattering of bones that littered the floor.

There was no question that they were human remains. The two and a half human skulls were a dead giveaway. The other bones were too big to belong to an animal—at least, any kind of animal that would be found in a Philadelphia ghetto. One of the hands still had a wedding ring on its finger. The flame from her lighter glinted off of it.

“Jesus.” Javier turned to her. His eyes were wide and wet. “Jesus Christ, Kerri. What the fuck have we stumbled into here? What is this?”

The scream she’d been suppressing turned into a giggle. The sound alarmed her, but she couldn’t help it.

“It’s like you said, Javier. Shit happens.”

Then the laughter bubbled over. Javier hissed at her to shut up. Kerri could tell by his expression that she was freaking him out. Hell, she was freaking herself out. But the laughter came anyway, and echoed off the walls.

It didn’t stop until another door on the other side of the hallway crashed open and a figure jumped out at them.

FIVE

Perry Watkins peered out his smudged window and shook his head. Behind him, his wife, Lawanda, made a clicking noise with her tongue and mirrored the motion with her own head.

“What the hell was that all about?” Lawanda’s tone was shaken. “I heard shouting. Those slingers fighting for the corner again?”

Perry shook his head harder, picked up an empty beer can, and spat a wad of phlegm into it. His heart was beating fast, and his knees felt weak and rubbery. The house at the end of the block had always had that effect on him. Had since he was just a little boy. Still did. Especially when someone went inside.

“Damn fools. That’s what it’s about. Goddamned fools.”

“Who?”

“Bunch of white kids. Looks like their car broke down or something. Leo and that group of kids he hangs out with tried to help them, but the white kids run off.”

Lawanda paused. “Which way did they run?”

Perry lowered his voice. “Guess.”

“Oh Lord.” Lawanda’s eyes grew wide. “No one goes near that building. Not if they want to live. Everyone round here knows that place is haunted.”

“Everyone around here,” Perry stressed. “But I’ll be damned if them kids were from around here.”

“Come on, baby.” Lawanda pulled nervously at his shirt. “Get away from the window. Somebody might see you.”

Perry resisted the urge to pull away. “Who’s gonna see me? The ghosts in the house? They’re busy right now. They’ve got . . . company.”

“You know what happens when folks don’t mind their own business with that place.”

“What? You think they care about an old man looking out the window? They gonna come up through our basement? Get me while I’m sitting on the toilet? Bullshit, Lawanda. There ain’t nothing supernatural in that house. It’s just crazy, inbred crackheads.”

“Since when did you stop believing the stories about that place? After all the folks that have gone missing?”

“I ain’t saying I don’t believe. Sure, the place is dangerous. Spooky. But it ain’t monsters. Whatever it is that lives inside there, they don’t bother anyone unless folks go sticking their noses inside. It’s just like everything else in this neighborhood—the best way to stay out of trouble is to not get involved. Long as we stay out of it and don’t go bothering them, we’ll be alright. You know how it is around here. You’ve got to watch your back and take care of your own shit. If you don’t, sooner or later the street will get you.”

He pulled back the shade and peered outside again. He noticed that several of his neighbors were looking through their windows, as well—just as worried, just as perplexed.

Just as guilty of inaction as he was.

But what were they supposed to do? Storm in there with torches and pitchforks? It had been tried, and the neighborhood had paid the price in blood. Call the police or the fire department? That had been tried before as well, with even worse results. Picket city hall and demand action? Hell, city hall was part of the problem. They knew all about the house. They just didn’t care. Wouldn’t do to have something like that show up in the press. Not with its history—not with the string of murders and disappearances. No, city hall was content to sweep it under the rug, just like they did with all the other problems down here.

“Now if it was happening in the suburbs,” Perry muttered under his breath, “you know damn well they’d do something about it.”

“What are you mumbling about?”

“Nothing. Leo and them boys are coming back this way. They probably gonna steal the car.”

“You always think the worst of people.”

“Maybe I do, but can you blame me? Leo used to be a good kid, but he don’t come around no more. He’s probably into drugs. You know how all these kids down here turn out eventually. Rotten. Or dead. It’s like this place poisons them.”

“Not always,” she said, even as she nodded in reluctant agreement. “What are they doing now?”

“It looks like they’re . . . oh, hell no. They’re coming up on our porch. What the hell do they want? I ain’t getting involved in this shit.”

As if on cue, there was the sound of footsteps plodding up their porch stairs, followed by somebody beating on their door. It sounded like the knocker was using their fist. The door rattled in its frame, and the chain lock at the top jingled.

Still muttering, Perry rose from his seat. Lawanda grabbed his arm.

“Don’t answer it, Perry.”

He pulled his arm free. “If I don’t, they gonna knock the damn door down. Now stay here.”

The pounding increased—thunderous blows that seemed to shake the entire house.

“Hold your horses, goddamn it! I’m coming.”

In the corner, next to the door, were a coat rack and a small roll top desk. Perry opened the desk drawer and withdrew a revolver nearly as old as he was. He didn’t have to check to make sure that it was loaded. He never took the bullets out of the weapon. Stuffing it in his waistband, he moved toward the door. The pistol felt snug against the small of his back.

He opened the door and saw Leo with his fist raised, ready to knock again. Behind him stood Jamal, Chris, Markus, some kid they called Dookie (Perry didn’t know his real name) and some other youths Perry didn’t recognize.

“Mr. Watkins,” Leo said. “You sleeping?”

“Does it look like I was sleeping, boy? Why you beating on my door this time a night?” His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You on drugs?”

“No, we ain’t on no fucking drugs! You know me better than that, Mr. Watkins.”

“Maybe,” Perry admitted. “Can’t be too sure these days, though. I thought maybe y’all was coming in here to rob me or something.”

Leo looked genuinely offended. “Now why would you go thinking something like that?”

“What happened with them white kids? Y’all spook them?”

“We didn’t do shit,” Jamal exclaimed, but fell silent again when Leo glared at him.

“Maybe a little bit,” Leo admitted, turning back to Perry. “But we didn’t mean nothing by it. We were just goofing around and shit. We were gonna help them with their car.”

Perry scowled. “Help them? You ain’t no mechanic.”

“No, I ain’t. But Angel is. We were thinking—”

“The fella who runs the chop shop?”

“Yeah. We figured those kids had money, right? I mean, they were wearing nice clothes and it was pretty obvious that they ain’t from around here. We’d hook them up with Angel, get him to fix the car, and then we’d get a payment—you know, like a finder’s fee and shit.”

Perry threw his head back and laughed. “A finder’s fee? Boy, you ain’t Triple fucking A.”

Leo ignored the taunt. “Can we use your phone, Mr. Watkins?”

“For what?”

“To call the police. Tell ’em about those kids.”

“Ain’t y’all got cell phones?”

The youths shrugged and shook their heads.

“No,” Chris said. “We can’t afford them.”

“Well, I ain’t got no phone either,” Perry lied. “The damn phone company shut it off two weeks ago. Said I—”

He fell silent as Lawanda crept up behind him and gently pulled him away from the door.

“You boys come on inside. But mind your shoes. Take them off at the door. I don’t want you tracking dirt up in here. I just cleaned this morning.”

Smiling, Leo stepped into the house and did as he was told. The big toe on his left foot stuck out of a hole in his sock. One by one, the other kids followed him inside and removed their shoes.

Perry groaned. “Oh, for God’s sake, Lawanda . . .”

She shushed him with a stern look. “Leo and his friends want to get involved and do the right thing. That’s a sure sight more than anyone else wants to do around here these days. If they want to use our phone, then you darn well better let them. A fine example you’re setting, Perry Watkins.”

Leo beamed. “Thank you, Mrs. Watkins.”

“Never you mind, Leo,” she scolded, turning her attention to him. “Not that I think that calling the police will do a lick of good, but I ain’t about to stop you from doing the right thing. But none of y’all should be out this late. You know what these streets are like after dark. The phone’s in the kitchen. Leo, you go make your call. The rest of you sit down. I’ll fix you something to eat.”

While they got settled, Perry shuffled toward the refrigerator and pulled out a can of beer. Before popping the top, he pressed the cool can against his forehead and sighed. It was going to be a long night. There was nothing Lawanda liked more than playing den mother to a bunch of teenagers. They’d never been able to have kids of their own, and she absolutely doted on all the kids who lived on the block. Every week when they went to church, Lawanda asked God to watch out for them all.

Perry shook his head again and wondered if God was watching out for the kids who’d run into the house at the end of the street.

He hoped so.

But he had doubts. Serious doubts. He’d lied to Lawanda before. He believed everything that was said about the abandoned house.

Like most other people, God didn’t have any business inside of that place.

But if you listened to all the neighborhood rumors about the place, the devil sure did.

SIX

Heather felt like her heart was going to explode. She sat in absolute darkness, unable to think or move—barely able to breathe. She shivered—partly from shock and partly from the cold wetness soaking her underwear and jeans. She’d peed herself at some point, and hadn’t even realized it until now. Her foot still hurt, but at least it had stopped bleeding. She’d been afraid to look at the wound, but she had to. It wasn’t deep, but it was long and filled with dirt and debris. She knew she’d have to clean it soon or risk infection.

Heather shook her head, exasperated with herself. Infection was the least of her worries right now.

She listened intently, expecting to hear the heavy, plodding footsteps of their pursuer, but the bizarre house was quiet. Somehow the stillness was more disconcerting than if she’d heard screaming. When she was younger, Heather used to play hide and seek with her two older brothers. She’d find a good hiding spot—the shrubs in front of the house, the toolshed down by the garden, the basement—and hunker down, but then her brothers would stop hunting for her and go play video games instead. It used to frustrate her, and she’d end up shouting, trying to lure them to her hiding place. For a brief moment, Heather considered yelling now—just standing up and hollering, You’re getting colder! like a game of hot and cold.

But the only thing growing cold was Tyler’s corpse.

Heather bit the inside of her lower lip to stop from braying nervous laughter. Why was this happening? She felt a sudden surge of anger for Tyler. Dead or not, this was his fault. He had to come out and get his fucking drugs. He couldn’t wait for another time. No, he had to screw everything up again because he was an asshole. What had Kerri ever seen in him?

She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them, shivering. She felt a twinge of guilt over that thought. Tyler was dead, after all, and no one was supposed to talk ill of the dead, at least not according to her mother.

She considered pulling out her cell phone and calling for help, or at least using the display pad’s light for illumination, but she was worried that if she did, the killer might hear the tones as she dialed or see the light from under the door.

Her thoughts turned to Javier. She hoped he was okay. Instead of following her, he’d stayed behind to help Kerri. Despite her fears, Heather felt pangs of jealousy. Why would he do that? Javier was her boyfriend, not Kerri’s. Kerri’s boyfriend was dead. She didn’t need to get Heather’s boyfriend killed as well.

Heather rocked backward and something soft brushed against her head. Stifling a scream, she batted at it. Her hand came away sticky. A spiderweb.

She wondered what else was in here with her in the darkness.

Out in the hallway, she heard a floorboard creak. Heather froze, holding her breath.

The sound was not repeated.

Heather’s fingernails dug into her palms, drawing blood. She barely felt it. She imagined the killer waiting outside the door, standing in the hallway, foot poised over the creaky floorboard, waiting for her to come out. She waited, expecting at any moment to hear his terrible cry, or for the big hammer to smash down the door.

Instead, she heard somebody start laughing—a high-pitched, frantic sound, almost veering into crying.

Kerri?

It sure sounded like her.

The laughter came again, followed by a harsh, male voice that, despite the whispered tones, was familiar.

Kerri and Javier! It had to be. Heather was sure of it.

She jumped to her feet and stumbled toward the door, flinging it open. Even though the hallway was dark, it was still lighter than the room she’d been hiding in, and at first, Heather couldn’t see anything. Before her eyes could adjust, she was greeted by screams.

***

Brett held his breath and crept across the old sagging floorboards, trying to tread as lightly as possible. He’d lost count of the number of rooms he’d fled through, running headlong, not stopping to examine his surroundings, just trying to lose his pursuer. He was left with the vague impression that the derelict house wasn’t laid out like a normal dwelling. There were too many doors—some of them leading to nowhere, as he’d soon learned, much to his chagrin. There were hallways that seemed to double back and rooms that served no logical purpose. A bathroom with a loveseat propped against one deteriorating wall. A bedroom with shattered porcelain shards from a toilet strewn across the floor. Perhaps most bizarre was the absence of windows. From the outside of the house, he’d noticed many boarded-over windows on both the first and second floors. But here, inside the abandoned dwelling, all of those windows were missing. Someone had constructed walls over the panes. He’d also noticed that some of the rooms and hallways had makeshift lighting installed—a rough series of lightbulbs connected by a frayed power cord. So far, he’d found no way of turning them on.

As baffling as the layout was, he hoped his pell-mell dash through the labyrinthine construct would confuse the killer as well.

He peeked his head through the open door in front of him and found a kitchen. Quickly verifying that the room was clear, Brett ducked inside the kitchen and shut the door behind him. The hinges groaned, and flecks of rust fell onto his hand. The door had no lock, and the doorknob itself jiggled in his hand. Brett felt for the light switch. It was sticky. He pulled his fingers away in disgust, reprimanding himself for forgetting that there was no power in the house anyway. He’d tried the light switches in the other rooms and none had worked. He fumbled for his cell phone, flipped it open, and used the meager light of the display screen. At least it was good for illumination; he’d had no signal since entering the house.

He scanned the shadowy corners, looking for something to blockade the door with. He spotted two other doors. One looked like it led into a pantry. He assumed that the other door led out of the kitchen, unless it was another false door, opening up into a brick wall. The kitchen counters were cracked and warped, and covered with inch-thick layers of dust and grime. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling like party streamers, and the corners and sink were full of rat droppings and dead flies. The air was thick with the smell of mildew. Brett stepped closer to the sink. The stainless-steel basin was encrusted with brownish-red stains and there was some sort of shriveled organic matter in the strainer over the drain. Wrinkling his nose, Brett turned his attention to the oven. The door had a brown handprint on it. Brett assumed it was blood, but long since dried. His eyes settled on an old, dented refrigerator. If he could move it over to the door without making much noise, it would serve as a decent blockade.

The memory of Steph’s head suddenly appeared in his mind. Moaning softly, Brett gritted his teeth and forced the image away.

Flipping his cell phone shut, Brett tiptoed across the kitchen and pushed on one side of the refrigerator. It scuffed along the floor with a loud groan, moving only a fraction of an inch. Something rolled around inside of the appliance, jostled by the sudden movement. Brett opened the door and peered inside. With the darkness and his state of shock, he didn’t comprehend what he was seeing at first. A jumble of whitish-yellow forms filled the refrigerator’s shelves. Slowly, he reached out and touched one. It was dry and textured, and felt fragile. He picked it up and pulled it out for a closer look.

It was a rat. The refrigerator was full of rat skeletons.

Gasping in disgust, Brett flung the bones to the floor and wiped his hands on his cargo pants. As he closed the refrigerator door, he heard footsteps approaching. Rather than the powerful, plodding steps of the guy who had been chasing him, these were lighter. More hurried. Brett scampered across the kitchen and hid inside the pantry. He’d barely closed the door behind him when the other door on the far side of the kitchen opened and another figure entered the room.

Another one? Brett’s fear grew strong again, threatening to overwhelm him. How many of these freaks are in here?

The new arrival was carrying a lantern, and its soft glow filled the room. Brett peered through the slatted cracks in the pantry door, watching. This one was female. She was shorter than Tyler and Stephanie’s killer, and more misshapen. She was naked and hairless. Both her head and her vagina were shaved. Her breasts hung low and flat, stretching almost to her belly, and barely moved as she walked. Something was wrong with her skin. It seemed too smooth, too shiny. And there were strange black lines crisscrossing her flesh—around her waist, up each leg, down her abdomen and encircling her neck. He stared harder, realizing what they were. Stitches.

The woman’s skin wasn’t her own. She was wearing someone else’s.

Jesus, he thought. Is she even a woman?

As if sensing his presence, the freak turned toward the pantry, giving him a full frontal view. The tip of a pale, flaccid penis dangled from between the tanned, dead vagina.

Well, that answers that question . . .

The new arrival wasn’t a hermaphrodite. It was a man wearing a dead woman’s skin.

Maybe.

It was too dark for Brett to be sure.

Brett gaped, trying to keep as still as possible. The pantry was musty, and dust filled the air, getting into his nose and throat. His shoe brushed against something soft. He looked down and saw that it was a dead mouse—the carcass alive with wriggling, bulbous gray-white maggots.

The intruder shuffled closer. She/he raised its nose and sniffed the air. Then it was suddenly seized by a violent bout of harsh, ragged coughing. The figure doubled over, hacked up a wad of phlegm, and spat the fluid into its hand. It rolled the pinkish mucous between its fingertips and then wiped it on its human vest. Then it raised its fingers to its nose and inhaled.

Grunting, it stepped toward the pantry door. It was close enough now for Brett to smell it. The stench was cloying—an overpowering mix of sweat, feces, urine, and blood. It reached for the door and Brett tensed, ready to leap out and clobber it as soon as the door was opened. His only advantage was the element of surprise.

Before the creature could open the door, however, it was distracted by the sound of approaching footsteps. Brett recognized them immediately. They were the same footsteps that had been chasing him through the house.

The kitchen door opened and the hulk that had killed Tyler and Stephanie appeared. He walked backward, dragging their corpses into the kitchen. Each of his hands clutched one of their legs. Its hammer was slung over its misshapen back and tied with a length of frayed extension cord.

The other creature giggled.

“What you got there, Noigel?” Its voice sounded like someone gargling with broken glass. The tone answered for certain the question of its gender. Brett was pretty sure that no woman could ever sound like that. Besides, its shoulders were too broad to be a female’s. It coughed again, and hocked up another wad of phlegm.

The big one—Noigel—grunted in response. Then it let go of Stephanie’s leg. Brett winced as her foot thudded on the floorboards. He wanted to scream. Wanted to charge out of the pantry and kill the fucker who’d done this to her. Instead, he stood there, quaking. His terror filled him with shame and guilt. Javier would have fought back. He wouldn’t have let Heather be murdered like that. Tyler would have kept it from happening to Kerri. Brett felt snot and tears running down his face. What had he done to save Steph? Nothing. He’d been too scared.

He’d run away.

Enraged—at both himself and the killers—Brett looked through the slats again.

Noigel held up four fingers.

“Four more?”

Noigel nodded, then whined. Brett was reminded of a dog, begging for a treat.

“No,” the other one said. “You get those two down below. Let the others have some fun. Been too long since we had company. We let the little ones up to play. They haven’t had a chance to hunt in a while.”

Little ones, Brett thought. Children?

Noigel’s malformed lips stuck out in a pout. The smaller one crossed the kitchen and smacked him in the chest.

“Do what I said.” The smaller one bent over and examined the corpses. “Look at this, Noigel! You smashed their heads. That’s the best part. Why you wanna do that for?”

Noigel groaned apologetically.

“It’s okay, you big baby. Long as I get one of their hearts, that’s okay. Or this one’s dick. I could go for a good man-chew. Better than beef jerky! Come on, I’ll give you a hand.”

The man in the woman suit leaned over and grabbed Stephanie’s leg. Noigel whistled.

“I wish you’d learn to talk. What’s wrong now?”

Noigel held up four fingers again.

“It doesn’t matter. Not like they’re gonna escape. Only way out is down below, and they’ll never make it past the rest. Besides, the little ones will find them long before then. They out searching the house right now.”

The thing called Noigel grunted. His friend cackled with laughter, which in turn gave way to another bout of coughing.

They dragged the bodies out of the room. Brett caught a glimpse of Stephanie’s corpse, and hot tears streamed down his cheeks. The two cannibals left the room, disappearing through the second door that he’d noticed when he first entered the kitchen. The door slammed shut behind them. Brett could still hear the guy wearing the woman’s skin talking, but now it sounded like they were beneath him. Brett assumed the door must lead down to a basement level. Brett listened to their footsteps fade, but when the silence returned, he stayed inside the pantry, too afraid to move. Noigel’s friend had mentioned that there were more of them inside the house and “down below.” Brett assumed that meant in the basement. How many, and more importantly, where were they right now? The man wearing a woman’s body had said they were searching the house. Were they on this level, hiding in the shadows, waiting for him to pass by? Hunting his friends?

He had to find Javier, Heather, and Kerri. Had to warn them. Had to escape. But when he willed his feet to move, they rebelled. His knees trembled. His balls tightened and shrank. He glanced back down at the dead mouse and wondered how long it would be before the maggots started working on Tyler and Steph.

Then he imagined them going to work on himself.

Damn it. I can do this. I can’t just hang out here in the closet and wait for them to come back.

Brett reached out with one shaking hand and pushed the pantry door open. Then he hurried across the kitchen, heading back in the direction he’d come. He reasoned that if there were other hunters on this floor of the house, they were probably in other areas and rooms. Otherwise, he’d have seen them during his escape from the foyer to here.

He took a deep breath, exited the kitchen, and tried to remember which direction he should go. He felt like crying.

SEVEN

Leo leaned forward in the chair and peeked through the curtains.

“How many times you gonna stare out that damn window?” Perry asked Leo. “You think the police will show up any quicker if you keep looking?”

Shrugging, Leo let the curtain fall back into place and slumped down in the chair.

“Gawking out that window,” Perry continued, “ain’t gonna do nothing but attract unwanted attention.”

“Leave that boy alone,” Lawanda scolded her husband. “You were doing the same thing just a little while ago.”

Chris, Dookie, Markus and Jamal chuckled in the corner.

Perry took another swig of beer and shot his wife a dirty look over the rim of the can. It had been fifteen minutes since they’d called 911, and so far no one had responded to the call. Perry had suggested the boys wait outside for the cops to show, but Lawanda had shut that idea down in a hurry, inviting them to wait in the living room. Now he was stuck entertaining them when he should be getting ready for bed. On the television, a studio audience laughed as Tyler Perry ran around in drag. Perry groaned, wondering why the man had to dress like a fat woman in all his shows and movies. He hated Tyler Perry’s sitcoms, but he watched them because Lawanda usually controlled the remote. Every evening, he resigned himself to episodes of Dancing with the Stars and bullshit sitcoms.

“The cops ain’t gonna show,” Markus said. “We’re wasting time, yo.”

“Maybe,” Leo agreed. “Maybe not. But at least we did something.”

“That’s a good outlook,” Lawanda praised, offerring them a plate of cookies. “You’ll go far in life if you keep it.”

Leo smiled, but Perry could tell that the youth was merely humoring Lawanda.

“Go where?” Jamal asked. “The next block? Shit, Mrs. Watkins. There ain’t no escape from this place unless you can rap or play basketball. Or want to sell drugs.”

“You got that shit right,” Dookie said.

“I’d appreciate it if you boys wouldn’t curse in my house.” Lawanda set the cookies down. “Mr. Watkins does it, but that’s because he’s old and set in his ways.”

“Sorry.” Dookie slumped down.

“That’s okay. And listen to me. Don’t be saying that there’s no way out of this neighborhood. Don’t think that way. There are always opportunities. There are always doors. You just have to wait for the right door to open. Y’all can be anything you want to be. People said there would never be a black president, and they were wrong, weren’t they?”

“He ain’t black,” Jamal said. “His momma was white.”

Lawanda frowned. “Show some respect. The man is your president. Do you know how hard he had to struggle to get to where he is today? You should look up to him, instead of these rappers.”

“Maybe,” Jamal agreed, “but that don’t change the fact that his momma was white.”

“So what if she was?” Lawanda said. “It doesn’t matter. He’s as black as you or me.”

“He’s damn sure blacker than Chris,” Markus teased. “Ain’t nobody more yellow on this street than Chris.”

“Fuck you, motherfucker,” Chris said, raising his voice. “Knock it off. I told you before about that shit.”

“Yo,” Leo shouted. “She asked us to watch our language, you dumb shits. Now quit swearing!”

Perry took a deep swig of beer and silently cursed his wife’s sense of charity and community responsibility. He glanced at the television again, then added her choice of quality entertainment programming to his list of things to curse.

Headlights flashed across the wall, bleeding through the curtains, tracing across framed photographs and the clock that Perry and Lawanda had received as a wedding present. Leo pulled the curtains back and glanced outside again.

“Is that the po-po?” Markus asked. “They finally show up?”

“No,” Leo said, staring more intently. “It’s an old van. Cruising by real slow, like they’re looking for something or somebody.”

“SWAT,” Perry suggested. “Or maybe some undercover boys.”

“I don’t think so.” Leo shook his head. “It looks pretty beat up. White dude driving it, though. Can’t see him real well, so I can’t be sure, but I don’t think I ever saw him around here before. The van either.”

“Where’s he going?” Perry asked.

“Oh, shit . . .” Leo turned around and stared at the group. His eyes were wide. “Toward the house.”

Perry sat his beer down. “Well, then it’s got to be the cops.”

“Let’s go outside and watch,” Jamal suggested. “Might see some shit go down.”

The boys stood, but Lawanda raised her hand, motioning at them to sit back down again.

“Just hold up,” she said. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen. If there’s shooting or something, then y’all are safer in here.”

Perry jumped to his feet. “Oh, let them go look. Ain’t no harm gonna come to them, long as they don’t go down there.”

And besides, he thought. It will get them out of our house that much sooner.

Lawanda scowled at him. Perry scowled back. They stared at each other for a moment, and then Perry’s will broke. He turned away with a sigh.

“Come on, y’all,” Leo said, moving to the door. “We took up too much of your time already, Mrs. Watkins. We should get going. Thanks for letting us use your phone.”

“Boys!” Lawanda leaped up from her chair, flustered. “I really wish you’d stay inside.”

Leo glanced from Perry to his friends to Lawanda, and then shook his head.

“That’s okay. We’ll be alright. Like Mr. Watkins said, ain’t nothing gonna happen as long as we stay up here.”

“Shit,” Markus muttered. “On this block, something can happen no matter where we stand. Motherfuckers be tripping twenty-four seven.”

Lawanda put her hands on her hips, pressed her lips together tightly and nodded at Perry.

“You go out there and wait with them.”

Perry opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. He’d seen the expression on his wife’s face before. If he defied her, he’d be sleeping on the couch again. He hated the couch. It fucked with his hip and his arthritis. He was defeated and he knew it. Worse, so did Lawanda. Shoulders slumping, he walked toward the door and followed the teens out onto the stoop. The strange van was just passing by the house at the end of the block. They watched the brake lights flash as it slowed. Then the driver shut off the headlights. A moment later, the vehicle disappeared into the shadows. There were clouds covering the moon, and that end of the street was shrouded in gloom.

“That’s weird,” Leo mumbled. “What the hell’s he doing?”

The street was silent. It made Perry uncomfortable. The street was never quiet. He glanced at Leo and his friends and noticed from their stance that the stillness was making them nervous, too.

Then gunshots rang out from a few blocks away, and they all relaxed.

“Think he’s driving around?” Markus asked. “Scoping shit out before he goes up to the door?”

Perry shrugged. The van was still out of sight.

“Whatever he’s doing,” Leo muttered, “he’d better hurry his ass up. They been inside there a long time now.”

The other boys murmured their agreement. Perry nodded, but didn’t respond. Personally, he figured it was already too late for the kids inside the house.

***

With one hand on the steering wheel, Paul Synuria eased the van toward the curb. His other hand clutched a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee that he’d bought at a rest stop along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He’d spiked it with a splash of Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey, the half-empty bottle of which was wedged under his seat. With the headlights off, he couldn’t see very well; there were no working streetlights or other homes near this abandoned house, and a bank of thick, slow-moving clouds covered the almost-full moon. His front driver’s side tire bumped up over the curb. The van shook and vibrated, and then slammed back down to the road again, jostling him. Coffee spilled all over his crotch. Cursing, Paul put the van in park. Then he set the coffee in the cup holder and rummaged around until he found a fastfood bag with a napkin inside. He wiped and blotted his pants. It looked like he’d pissed himself. At least the coffee hadn’t been hot.

On the van’s stereo, Slipknot’s “New Abortion” gave way to Jimmy Buffet. Paul liked to tell people that his eclectic musical tastes reflected that he was a man of contradictions. He’d say that he was the only Maggoty Parrothead around. But the truth was that he’d never heard Slipknot until a few months ago, when he found a carrying case full of compact discs at a construction site he’d been sneaking around. All the CDs were heavy metal—or what passed for heavy metal these days. No big hair. Just vocals that sounded as if Cookie Monster were fronting a band. He’d sold the stash at a pawn shop, but had held on to the Slipknot discs. He liked their melodies, and their shtick reminded him of KISS, from back in the day. Their music pumped him up before he scavenged a site.

Like now.

Paul turned off the engine so that the idling motor wouldn’t attract any unwanted attention. Then he blotted at the coffee again and shook his head, wondering, not for the first time, how he’d come to this. He’d once been the site coordinator for a group home that served people who had mental illnesses. He’d loved the job. Sure, it was stressful sometimes, but that tension had evaporated each day when he came home to his family—his wife, Lisa, and their two kids, Evette and Sabastian. But then the group home had been bought out by a bigger corporation, and they brought in their own people to fill many of the positions. After fourteen and a half years, Paul found himself out of work.

When his unemployment ran out, Paul still hadn’t found a job. There were no other group homes in his area, and when he searched beyond his region, he found that many of those facilities were also downsizing. Desperate, he’d taken a job at a metal scrap yard.

And that had led to this.

At first, Paul had been amazed. He’d had no idea that scrap metal recycling was such a big business. It was a booming, sixty-five-billion-dollar industry, thanks to an increasing global economy and the current social movement toward environmental awareness. Scrap metal was America’s largest import to China, after electronic components. Before getting the job at the scrap yard, Paul had always envisioned recycling centers as something out of Sanford and Son reruns. The truth was something different. There was money to be made in junk.

Especially on the black market.

He’d started simply enough. Legally, too. He’d been at the yard for a week. On his first day off, Paul explored his basement and the corners of his garage and toolshed. The assorted, castaway debris of their lives had been tossed into cardboard boxes, plastic milk crates, garbage bags, and footlockers and left forgotten in these places. Paul was pleasantly surprised by the amount of recyclable material he discovered—aluminum soda can tabs (saved for some long-forgotten charity but never turned in), brass fittings from an old cutting torch he no longer owned, bits of copper wire that he’d saved from various home wiring jobs, copper and brass pipe fittings, and other assorted junk. He’d hauled it all to the scrap yard the following Monday and made enough cash to cover one of his and Lisa’s payments on their auto loan.

So Paul went looking for more. Before this, he’d never broken the law. Sure, he had a few unpaid parking tickets, and there was a citation for public drunkenness when he’d been in college, but that was all. He took to blackmarket metal thievery like it had been what he was meant to do all along. Looking back on it, maybe he’d been bitter about how things had turned out—giving most of his adult life to a company only to be tossed aside like so much garbage. He told himself he was doing it for Lisa and the kids—the money he brought in was more than he’d ever made in his life, and although they didn’t know how he was earning it, they were happy with the results. But the truth was, he enjoyed it. After a life behind a desk, a life of board meetings and memos and stress, being a metal thief was exciting. Liberating.

He broke into construction sites, new homes that were not yet occupied, storage areas, foundries, ware houses, abandoned buildings, and even other recycling facilities. He scavenged electrical cables, aluminum siding and gutters, pipes, manhole covers, railway spikes and plates, electrical transformers, bolts and screws—anything he could resell. He even managed to score one hundred and twenty feet of steel and copper from an old abandoned radio tower in a remote section of Adams County.

Paul was smart about it. He didn’t steal near their home, preferring instead to scavenge throughout the rest of the state, and even into Ohio and West Virginia. He used the van, which wasn’t registered to him, and changed the tags each time he made a run. He drove the speed limit and obeyed all the traffic laws so he wouldn’t get pulled over. Since most scrap processors required a driver’s license for each transaction, Paul had obtained two phony licenses. When he sold scrap, he did it under the aliases of Mike Heimbuch or Jeff Lombardo. He’d practiced signing their names on sheets of paper until both signatures looked different from each other—and nothing like his real signature.

Since the economy’s downturn, he’d had to scavenge more metal than ever. Prices for copper, lead, and zinc had plummeted to levels lower than those during the Great Depression. Paul had come to Philadelphia because he’d heard that the pickings were good, and he hoped he could make up for the lower prices with a higher take. He’d never been to the city before, so he’d just driven aimlessly until he found a location that looked promising. The deeper into the city he went, the worse the neighborhoods became. Paul locked the doors and stared straight ahead, not wanting to attract attention.

Now, as he gazed out at the decrepit old Victorian home across from him, he wondered if he should scout around for another location. Surely this place had been picked clean already. It looked positively ancient—older and bigger than any of the row homes located farther up the block. He studied it for a moment longer and decided that he should at least take a closer look.

Paul got out of the van and quietly closed the door behind him. He glanced up and down the street, making sure nobody was watching him. Farther up the block, he saw a group of people gathered on a porch step, but he couldn’t tell if they were looking in his direction or not. Near them, on the other side of the street, a lone hooker leaned against a brick wall, adjusting her skirt. Otherwise, the street was deserted. No cars or pedestrians. Paul turned his gaze skyward. The clouds were still covering the moon. He was pretty sure that even if the group on the porch steps was looking his way, they wouldn’t be able to see him. It was dark.

He made his way to the rear of the van, opened the door, and pulled a large toolbox toward himself. Inside were various items that he used from time to time: flashlights, wire cutters, metal shearers, bolt cutters, crowbars, a tool belt, screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, chisels, leather gloves, and a small, handheld acetylene torch. He slipped on the gloves and flexed his hands. Then he grabbed a flashlight and a flathead screwdriver. His intention was to quickly check the house. If it looked promising, he’d return to the van and retrieve the tools for the job.

Paul approached the house cautiously, alert for any sign that squatters or other undesirables inhabited it. The structure was silent. He tiptoed up the sagging porch. The boards groaned beneath his feet. He reached out and tried the door. It was locked. He rattled the brass knob, surprised at its resilience, and made a note to pry it off later. While not as in demand as copper, brass still fetched a good market price.

Paul moved around to the side of the house, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the coast was still clear. When he got out of sight of the street, he approached one of the first-floor windows and peered inside. It was pitch black. He turned on the flashlight and shined it into the window. The light reflected back to him. It took Paul a moment to realize that the glass had been painted black. A quick check verified that the rest of the windows on this side of the house had also been painted over. Shaking his head, he listened one more time. The house was still quiet. Paul pulled out the screwdriver and rapped the corner of one pane. The glass cracked, but did not shatter—exactly what he’d hoped would happen. Using the screwdriver, he pried the triangular wedge of glass loose from the window, then shined his light inside, peering into the hole.

He saw nothing but brick.

Somebody bricked over the window?

Now he was intrigued. If someone had taken the trouble to prevent entry in that manner, then there was a possibility that the building had remained free of squatters or looters. There was no telling what he might find inside.

He moved on to a second window and repeated the process. Behind it, he found another brick wall, but the masonry was a different color and texture. Paul assumed that it had been built at a different time than the previous wall.

No way I’m getting in here.

He walked around the house and found a back door. It, too, was locked and just as sturdy as the other. Paul had no doubt that he could break either door down, but doing so would make a lot of noise and might attract unwanted attention. Instead, he decided to see if the place had a basement, and if so, if there was outside access—storm doors or even just a set of stairs. He searched for several minutes, and while he determined that the building did indeed have a basement, there was no access from out here. There was, however, a nearby manhole cover. Paul wondered if the tunnel led into the cellar somehow. That happened sometimes in these old houses.

He returned to the van and fetched a thin but strong cable. Then he went back to the manhole cover. He threaded the cable through the lid, braced himself, then lifted the cover, grunting with exertion. Pain coursed through his lower back, and the tendons stood out on his neck, but the manhole cover moved. An inch. Then two. Finally, he moved it out of the way, revealing the hole. He let the cover drop on the ground with a muffled clang.

Sweat dribbled down his forehead. He wiped it with the back of his hand. Manhole covers were always a bitch—but they were also worth good money. He’d have to load this one into the van before he was done.

Paul picked up his flashlight and shined the beam down into the shaft. A rusty iron ladder had been built into the side. It was dark at the bottom. He heard the sound of trickling water. A noxious stench wafted up from the tunnel. Paul winced, turning his head aside. He smelled sewage, obviously, but there was something else, as well. Something he couldn’t identify.

“Fuck it,” he muttered. “I came this far. Might as well check it out.”

He returned to the van and put on the tool belt, adjusting it to fit around his prodigious belly. He equipped himself with a variety of tools—the portable acetylene torch, bolt cutters, crowbar, screwdrivers, and other items. There was no telling what he might need once he got inside, and he didn’t feel like running back and forth to the van. Satisfied, he returned to the hole. Then, tucking the flashlight under his arm, Paul started down the ladder and disappeared from sight.

EIGHT

Javier clamped his hand over Kerri’s mouth before she could scream again. She squirmed against him, her mouth hot on his palm, and let loose with a string of muffled squeals. Javier squeezed her tighter, and Kerri’s hands flailed, slapping at him. He barely noticed. Instead, he stared wide eyed at Heather, who had just emerged from a room to their right. Her expression of astonishment matched his own.

“Javier?”

“Heather! Holy shit, where have you been? Are you okay?”

Kerri went slack. Javier released her and embraced Heather, hugging his girlfriend tight.

“Are you okay?” he repeated. “When you took off like that . . .”

“I’m fine . . . now.” Sighing, Heather slumped against him. “Feel like I’m going to throw up. That’s probably the adrenaline.”

He stroked her hair. “Are you sure? You cut your foot.”

“It stopped bleeding, but it still hurts. I lost my shoes. I’m a little banged up, but nothing serious. I was so worried that you guys were . . . that he’d gotten you.”

Javier squeezed her tighter. “We got away. So did Brett.”

“Where is he?” Heather glanced around, looking for him.

“We don’t know. Kerri saw him take off in the other direction. We’re guessing that thing went after him.”

“Oh my God. I hope he’s okay. And Steph, too.”

Neither Javier or Kerri responded.

Heather’s eyes grew wide. “Steph’s okay, right? She got away, too?”

“She’s dead,” Javier said. “That . . . big guy got her.”

“Steph . . .”

Something scratched behind the walls—light, feathery scuffling noises. Heather and Kerri both jumped, startled by the sound.

“Just a rat,” Javier whispered. “Ignore it.”

Heather wiped her nose with the back of her hand, then brushed tears from her eyes. Javier watched her, cracking a slow smile.

“What’s so funny?” she asked. “How can you be smiling, with everything that’s happened?”

“Your mascara,” he explained. “It’s running. You look like a raccoon.”

She pushed away from him. “Asshole.”

“Hey, come on. I was just kidding.”

Heather gave Kerri a quick hug.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Kerri shrugged.

“I’m sorry about Tyler,” Heather said. “I know you guys were having trouble lately, but still . . .”

Before Kerri could respond, Javier interrupted. “We need to—”

A door slammed. All three jumped at the noise. Footsteps shuffled toward them, but they sounded weird—as if the person was hopping on one foot and dragging something along behind them. They heard a faint electric hum from somewhere in the house. The string of lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling flickered to life. After growing accustomed to the darkness, the sudden brilliance blinded them for a second. They squinted, shielding their eyes from the glare.

“What do we do?” Kerri’s voice trembled.

Javier motioned toward the room Heather had just emerged from. When the girls didn’t move, he shoved them forward.

“Hide.”

They ducked into the room, and Javier shut the door behind him, quickly but as quietly as possible. He held his breath, hoping the hinges wouldn’t squeak. They didn’t. His cell phone was their only source of light. Heather’s and Kerri’s faces seemed almost ghoulish in the illumination. It didn’t help that his night vision was all screwed up now, thanks to the hallway lights. He glanced around the room, only able to see a few feet in any direction. The room was sparse, but he found a piece of termite eaten wood about the length of a baseball bat. A long, rusty nail jutted from one end. He picked it up and tested its weight. It wasn’t much, but it made him feel better. More confident.

In the hall, the strange footsteps grew louder, accompanied by wet, raspy breathing and a slightly sour stench. It didn’t sound like a human being’s breathing. Instead, it sounded like an animal.

“What if it’s Brett?” Heather whispered.

“Shhhh,” Javier hissed, motioning at them to go to the back of the room. He stuffed his cell phone back in his pocket as the girls retreated. They vanished from sight almost immediately, swallowed by the shadows, and Javier reluctantly wished that he’d told them to stick by his side instead. The room seemed more sinister without their presence, and even though he knew they were still close by, their absence seemed greater. He couldn’t believe how dark it was inside the room. Hefting the piece of wood, he flattened himself against the wall next to the door and waited. His heart beat faster. A strand of cobweb brushed against his face, sticking to his hair and skin.

Something pawed at the doorknob. Javier tensed. The door slowly swung open. The light in the hallway seemed like a mini sun. The sour stench became overwhelming. A shadowy form stepped into the room. Its asthmatic wheezing seemed to fill the space. With a cry, Javier whirled, swinging his makeshift club at the space where the intruder’s face should be. The length of wood whistled through the air and smacked against the doorframe. The shock vibrated through Javier’s arms. Dust and plaster from the ceiling rained down on his head.

I fucking missed?

Javier’s eyes adjusted to the light. He glanced down at the figure and saw why he’d missed. The intruder was a midget.

With a very large knife clutched in one gnarled fist.

“Gotcha,” it wheezed, and then slashed at his crotch with the blade.

Heather and Kerri screamed.

Javier leaped backward, narrowly avoiding the attack. He winced as the tip of the blade brushed against the fabric of his jeans. Luckily, it went no farther. Javier swung the club again, this time in a downward arc. The midget shrieked as the nail tore a ragged gash in his lumpy forehead. Blood ran into his eyes. He stumbled around, squealing with rage. Not pausing, Javier swung a third time. The nail caught the dwarf just beneath the chin. His jaws slammed shut as the nail sank deep into the flesh.

With a cry, Javier jerked the nail out. Part of the midget’s jaw and throat came with it. The skin stretched, and beneath it, muscle and gristle ripped and snapped. Blood gushed from the gaping wound. The intruder’s eyes opened wide with shock. Dropping the knife, he brought his hands to his ruined throat. Blood jetted out across his fists and ran down his stubby forearms. He squawked, then toppled backward. Emitting choking noises, the midget jittered and shook on the floor. Blood continued to pump from the wound.

Heather and Kerri continued to scream.

Javier let the club drop to the floor. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and turned to the girls.

“Shut up!”

Grimacing, he bent over and grabbed the midget’s feet. The dead man wore no shoes. The bottom of one grimy foot was covered with thick yellow calluses. The other foot was terribly malformed—more of a withered stump than an appendage. His skin felt rough and flaky. His ankles were covered with scabs and insect bites. His legs twitched in Javier’s grip. The midget uttered one last warbling cough, and then he was still. The stench roiling off his unwashed body was revolting. Turning away, Javier dragged the corpse into the room. He let the legs flop to the floor, then shut the door again—leaving it slightly cracked so that a thin sliver of light crept into the room.

“It’s okay,” he whispered to the girls. “He’s dead.”

There was a rustling in the shadows as Heather and Kerri crawled forward. Javier pulled out his cell phone again and opened it. He aimed it at the midget and took a picture. All three of them blinked at the flash.

“What are you doing?” Heather asked.

Javier shrugged. “Evidence. I’m documenting everything.”

“Why?”

“So that when we get out of here, I can show the police.”

Kerri stared down at the corpse. “You killed him.”

“Yeah,” Javier said. “I did. And please don’t give me any shit about it right now. He wanted to cut my fucking dick off. Not to mention that—”

“No,” Kerri broke in. “That’s not what I was going to say. I’m not arguing with you. But this isn’t the guy who killed Tyler and Steph. This is someone different. That means there’s more than one.”

The three teens stared at each other.

“H-how many?” Heather thrust an index finger into her mouth and began gnawing on the nail. As if in answer, another set of footsteps shuffled down the hall. The approaching gait was much stealthier than the midget’s had been.

And much faster.

Javier scooped up the knife and ducked behind the door. Kerri grabbed the club and flattened herself against the wall where Javier had previously been positioned. Heather melted back into the shadows.

Outside in the hall, the footsteps paused, then continued. Javier pressed his ear to the wall, listening. They paused again.

Somebody’s checking the doors, Javier thought. His muscles tensed. His palms grew damp with sweat. He tightened his grip on the knife handle and tried to remain still.

The footsteps continued down the hall, louder now. Then they paused again. The light shining into the room from underneath the door flickered. Then the door opened. An inch. Then two. Javier heard heavy, panicked breathing. The door opened a few more inches, and Javier flattened himself against the wall, holding his breath and sucking his stomach in so the door wouldn’t hit him. He had the sudden urge to piss. Javier gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it. He contemplated slamming the door shut on the intruder, but that would just leave them trapped inside. Better to let the lurker enter the room completely, and then creep up behind them and slit his throat. Javier could see it all in his head. The brutality didn’t shock him. Although he was scared, he had no qualms about the killings. This was survival. It was no different than a video game, except that now, if he died, he died for real.

With the door open, light flowed into the room, stretching across the floor. As the door reached farther. Alarmed, Javier realized that he could see both Heather and the dead midget’s feet.

So could the figure in the doorway, because the heavy breathing turned into a gasp

The intruder said, “Heather?”