Tiny Nightmares Read online

Glen’s boss said, If it’s not kids or homeless sleeping in there, best not mention it to the cops.

  Every time Glen walked through the sagging halls, he considered more appropriate land usage. The six-point-two acres could have been left as protected wetland, breeding grounds for waterfowl, a sandy stretch of beach for turtles to lay their eggs. If it had to be housing, why not affordable housing? Fifteen units at several hundred thousand a pop could have been a hundred affordable units for working-class families.

  Glen considered renting rooms to kids he went to high school with who griped about the housing shortage online. No one would know. He was the only employee checking the building. It would be easy to forge requests to have the power turned on. The septic leached only a negligible amount of fecal matter into the surrounding waters.

  But Glen couldn’t do it. Beyond the environmental sin, the building was going to fall into the sea. He wouldn’t let even vague acquaintances drown in their beds.

  There was also the creature living in the basement and its waterlogged birdcalls gurgling at all hours of the night. Glen didn’t know how it would take to having neighbors.

  Glen only had to flash his pistol twice. Most squatters left peacefully once discovered. The first was a pair of heroin addicts shooting up in a second-story unit. The second was a man kneeling on the basement stairs, screaming at the creature below. The thing had grown restless, whipping the standing water into a froth, its three skeletal tails cracking against the sunken steps in abrasive rasps. It nosed out of the water, a collection of mouths and overlapping teeth worrying the air, biting down again and again on its own scaled flesh. Glen had grown protective of the aquatic being, so he was a little more gruff with the man than he had been with the addicts.

  As he threw the man, still ranting, into the street, Glen managed to catch the end of his warning, That monster will be the death of us, mark my words. And Glen did. He jotted them down in the weekly report his boss continued to ignore.

  Glen had grown lazy in his search for squatters, preferring to stand at the top of the basement stairs, watching the creature’s fins as it gracefully swam about. He’d throw food into the water: hot dogs and bread, chocolate bars and cheese sticks. But the creature never ate, its many mouths remaining shut. When the laughter of children filtered through the ceiling one night, he couldn’t make up an excuse not to look, even though he hated evicting families.

  Shouldering through the condo’s door, he found three kids huddled around an electric lantern, reading knock-knock jokes from a library book in the dim light, the mother making sandwiches from Kraft Singles.

  “I’m sorry, but you have to leave,” Glen said.

  “I know,” the mother answered. “Could we just stay the night? The rain’s so heavy and there’s nowhere to go.”

  “I want to say yes, but this building’s collapsing.”

  “It won’t tonight.”

  Glenn sighed. “There’s also this thing in the basement. I don’t know what it eats. You might find it on your doorstep instead of me next time.”

  “I’m not worried about that. All houses like this have something in the basement, or the attic. Beneath the stairs, under the deck. We’ve been in enough places to know.”

  “It’s your call. If you promise to be out by morning, I won’t call the cops,” Glenn said.

  “We’ll be out before sunrise,” the mother replied, resignation tinting her words.

  Glenn nodded and walked toward the door. The kids began reading jokes as he slipped around their lantern-lit semicircle. Before stepping into the hall, he turned to the woman. “Do you know what that thing eats? The creature downstairs?”

  “I figured it ate whoever lived here first. Why would anyone abandon a house like this otherwise?” the woman said.

  “I don’t think that’s what—” Glen began to say before the woman cut him off.

  “No. I’m sure. People don’t abandon homes when they actually have them.”

  Glen nodded, closing the door behind himself. From the woman’s wide-eyed look, the way her teeth clenched behind cracked lips, he knew he wouldn’t change her mind. The next morning, when he’d come back to check, he hoped he’d find the creature swimming in its usual pool, the condo’s walls clean and blood-free, and the children’s library books gone from the top floor.

  Lifeline

  J. S. BREUKELAAR

  It was a weeknight, very late, so the club was half empty and the only people Joel kind of knew were behind the bar—he’d dated someone who didn’t work there anymore. There were some girls dancing and their loveliness made his eyes water but his need was emotional, not physical, and he knew that about himself, how he must reek of 40-proof loneliness. The girls slowed their dancing when he walked past like they could smell it too. Someone smiled at him from the bar and she was pretty but all he saw in her gray eyes was a reflection of his own need, so he kept on walking.

  Above the urinal there was a flyer that looked recently posted, for yet another psychic—a palm reader this time. The club was downstairs in a converted brick factory and according to the flyer, the psychic, whose name was Cherry, was upstairs. Joel thought that Cherry was a good name for a palm reader. cherry sloane, chirologist, the flyer said, and there were some letters after her name. Joel washed his hands and went out to the bar. He ordered a drink he didn’t want. He asked the bartender about the palm reader upstairs, and she said she hadn’t heard much about her, nothing bad anyway. Joel remembered that his ex had gone to a psychic, and he wondered if that had something to do with them breaking up. When Joel was little, his mother had taken him and his brother to a carnival and they’d put money in a “Chiromancy” machine and a card popped out that told his mother’s fortune, and she kept the card as a memento of one of the happiest days of her life.

  Joel put down his drink and followed the EXIT signs to some stairs, where a piece of paper with a penciled arrow said, CHERRY’S PLACE. He climbed the stairs, which were wide and pocked, and the music from the club receded to a muffled thud that slowly died, like a heartbeat that stopped. He emerged in a room so dark and vast that he couldn’t see the edges. Dirty windows overlooked the street below, the famous smokestacks blurry behind a buildup of silt and dust on the glass. A woman sat bent over a laptop at a table in the far-left corner, the glow of a desk lamp drawing all the light in the room to her face. He heard a whispering but she had her mouth closed. A slouched shadow heaved in a distant corner of the room.

  He knew then that he’d made a terrible mistake. But the minute he turned to go, the woman’s head snapped up and he froze. She was elderly with thinning white hair. Her face was covered in tattoos and there were tattoos on her hands, too, all the way to where her grimy cardigan covered her wrists. She had webbing between her fingers.

  “Lines, ten bucks,” she said. “Fifteen for mounts.”

  Joel wondered what kind of body-mod artist would do this to an old lady. He didn’t know what a mount was. He just wanted to get out of there, but those rheumy eyes peering from their mask of ink held him in place. Most of his friends had tattoos, and he had a couple too. A hamburger on the back of one calf, and his ex’s initials somewhere he’d forgotten now. The palm reader had the Milky Way tattooed across her throat, the entire solar system below that. He could see Venus from here, glowing malevolently between the missing buttons of her cardigan.

  “Just lines,” he said. “Don’t suppose you take—”

  She tapped on a credit card terminal with a long-nailed finger.

  Joel sat down opposite her at the desk by the window. A streetlight infused that corner of the room with a pee-colored glow. He could hear the rumble of trucks. He listened for music from the club below but the room was silent, except for the occasional whisper behind him that he must be imagining.

  “I can’t stay,” he said. “Not sure how long this’ll take.”

  “Places to go, people to kill, eh?” She didn’t smile, and her voice was phlegmy.

  “Just
some friends of mine downstairs. They dared me, you know, so.”

  She’d taken his hand in her webbed ones while he was talking. Her touch gave him a jolt of nausea; spit pooled in his mouth. She turned his hand over, touched the underside of his fingers with hers. “You don’t have any friends,” she said.

  A sound like a book dropping onto the floor made him start but she seemed not to hear it. She eyed him, still with her fingers resting lightly on his, and cradling his wrist delicately in her other hand, her pinky extended so that he could see tiny veins in the webbing.

  She placed his hand gently down on her filthy desk—there were tissues stuffed in a teacup—still without looking at it.

  “I can’t take your money,” she said. “Sorry.”

  Something in that voice said it wasn’t the money she was sorry about.

  “What?” he said. But he didn’t stand up. “Did you see something bad? You didn’t look for very long. Not even at my palm.” He shoved it at her, but she didn’t move.

  He drew ten dollars from his pocket and slapped it on the table. “What did you see?”

  “I’m half blind,” she said. “Who am I to—”

  “Tell me,” he said. “I can take it.”

  “You have no choice,” she said. “None of us do.” She swept her arms out across the room, exposing a swirling geography of tattoos on her crepey old-lady arms.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She slumped in her seat. “The others . . .”

  “I don’t care about the others.”

  She pulled a used tissue from a pocket. “None of them do. Or they wouldn’t come to me. But that changes too.”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  A tear oozed from her eye and began to fall down an impossible staircase inked on her hollow cheek.

  “You will die—” she said.

  Joel stood up so violently the chair crashed onto the floor. There was a shifting in the air behind him. “Crazy bitch!” he shrieked.

  He was almost at the stairs when she said, “—the moment you leave the building.” Turning back was the wrong thing to do, but he did it anyway.

  “What?” he said. Shapes began to solidify at the edge of his eye. “Your life will end with you walking out of here.”

  He began to laugh so hard that he started to cry.

  It was then that he noticed a pile of pizza boxes on one of the desks. A mattress on the floor—a guy bent cross-legged over a book. There were others, too. All of them around his age, propped against the wall, rolling cigs or murmuring together like they had always been there.

  A girl sat on a worn couch, trimming her brown hair with office scissors. “Welcome,” she said. She was maybe thirty, thirty-one. She stood up. Gilded hunks of hair floated to the floor. “I’ll show you your room.”

  Jane Death Theory #13

  RION AMILCAR SCOTT

  It’s possible, Officer Samuel Duncan1 mused while standing by his squad car with two of his colleagues late one night on the side of an empty road—it’s possible for someone to shoot herself while locked in a squad car with metal restraints binding her hands behind her back. His partner, Ron Marsh,2 became quiet, gazed sadly at the bloody mass in the backseat, and after a moment of thinking, replied, Yes. Let’s say she secrets the weapon in the small of her back so it’s invisible during a search, and since her hands are back there, she reaches for it. If she jerks her head to the left or to the right she could conceivably angle the gun toward her temple. Sure, Officer Duncan said. Sure. I can see how that, while not probable, could make a kind of sense in the absence of another explanation. Trooper 1st Class Stephen Hammons3 stood with his arms folded, frowning sternly, a shadow cast from the large brim of his trooper hat darkening his face, almost to the shade of their once-belligerent prisoner, Ron Marsh joked earlier. Trooper Hammons had refused to crack even the hint of a smile. Now he chimed in: And with her dead, she’s not able to provide any sort of counternarrative. Officer Duncan nodded: Yeah, that sounds possible, doesn’t it? Officer Marsh snorted, smoothed his mustache. Who would believe the alternative? he said. It’s almost too horrible to conceive, isn’t it?

  1. On November 19, 2013, the Durham, NC, police officer Samuel Duncan took seventeen-year-old Jesus Huerta into custody on a trespassing warrant after his parents called police to report that he had run away. Duncan searched the teen, handcuffed him (with his hands behind his back), and placed him in the back of a cruiser. Before he could make it to the police station, Huerta died from a gunshot wound to his face. Cameras in the cruiser were switched off at the time and did not record the gunshot. Authorities ruled the death of the handcuffed Huerta a suicide. (Source: abc11.com)

  2. In Little Rock, AR, on July 28, 2012, Officer Ron Marsh took twenty-one-year-old Chavis Carter into custody. He frisked Carter—turning up marijuana, but no gun—and placed him in the back of a patrol car. Carter suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head while handcuffed in the backseat of the cruiser. Authorities ruled Carter’s death a suicide. (Source: The Huffington Post)

  3. In August 2012, state police in New Iberia, LA, searched twenty-two-year-old Victor White III after taking him into custody, discovering only illegal drugs, and placed him in the back of a squad car. While in the squad car, White was shot. He died later from the gunshot wound. According to a Louisiana State Police spokesman, Trooper 1st Class Stephen Hammons, the handcuffed White shot himself in the back with a gun he hid from police during the search. An autopsy done by the Iberia Parish Coroner’s Office later determined that White was shot in the chest. Authorities ruled his death a suicide. (Sources: CBSnews.com; The Advocate; NewsOne)

  The Blue Room

  LENA VALENCIA

  The Blue Room is lit with cerulean light. With the exception of a narrow, elevated walkway and a pillow for visitors to sit on, its walls, floor, and ceiling are covered in blue soundproofing foam. In the middle of the floor, halfway sunken into the foam, like something washed up on a beach, is a 1994 Gateway 2000. It pulses the same cerulean, as if breathing. This is where the demon lives.

  Fern has been waiting to see The Blue Room for two hours. Normally, she’s able to cut these lines. Fern is a successful art world influencer. Tens of thousands of followers watch her account. But not even she can convince the gallery assistant to let her get any closer to the latest Josephine Fibonacci installation—the artist’s final work. Fibonacci has been declared officially missing as of last Tuesday, causing a stir in the art world. No doubt one reason for the line, which now snakes behind Fern through the streets of Chelsea. Finally, she gets to the front, where a large sign conveys the rules of the exhibition to visitors. No shoes. No jackets. No bags. And then: The Blue Room is a device-free space for contemplation. In order to fully experience the anechoic chamber and the demon that inhabits it, the artist requests that you surrender your electronic devices at the entrance.

  She ungracefully removes her platform combat boots, shoving them into the provided locker along with her purse and phone. She’s prepared for this. She’s hidden a second phone—her real phone—in the pocket of her billowing silk pants.

  There is some debate among critics as to whether the demon is real. Some say it’s just a metaphor for our obsession with screens, an illusion. But others have reported feeling an unexplained static electricity clinging to their skin after leaving the installation. Everyone wants to see for themselves, which is why Fern feels compelled to do what no one has yet done: capture the demon on video.

  Fern enters The Blue Room. She sits on the pillow, positioning her body so that the security guard can’t see her midsection, and pulls out her phone, slouching awkwardly to conceal it. She starts filming. For the first few minutes, there’s nothing but the blue pulsing. It’s silent. Fern hears her stomach gurgle, her breath, her heartbeat, and feels a profound reverence for the miracle that is the human body. The whisper-hum of the computer’s fan grows louder.

  The demon takes shape on the screen. It’s a woman, face and body b
lurred. It steps out of the screen and grows larger, until it towers over Fern. It’s wearing a long white dress, its yellow-green hair blowing around its face, though there is no wind. Fern gasps. The demon opens her mouth to speak, but its voice is obscured by the computer’s fan, now loud as a train barreling through the room. Somewhere she smells burning plastic. The demon begins to twirl. Fern grows dizzy watching it. She puts a hand on the floor to right herself.

  A chime goes off. The demon disappears in a flash of blue. Fern’s time is up. She stands, concealing her phone in her pants, and shakily exits the room.

  Outside, Fern watches the video she’s taken. On the phone, the demon looks unremarkable: vapor, a puff of steam, but on closer inspection she can still make out the face, the dress. Her ears ring. She’s lightheaded. Perhaps this is the effect of true genius. Her phone seems to grow heavy in her hand. She realizes she’s late for drinks with her friend Amir.

  Amir is drunk by the time she arrives at the bar. He thinks that The Blue Room is totally derivative, though he admits he hasn’t seen it. An artist himself, he’s into more transgressive stuff, she knows—Fibonacci is too tame for him. Still, she tries to explain her experience. The words come out as platitudes: the energy of the room, the stillness of it. Amir doesn’t seem to care.

  This will be the last time anyone sees Fern in person.

  Back home, Fern posts videos about her day: selfies in line for the installation; Amir drinking; a stencil reading “Never give up on beauty” on the sidewalk; the demon. Views and messages begin to roll in. Then, without warning, her phone dies right there in her hand. She groans and plugs it into the wall to charge.

  Fern tells people that she’s able to fully support herself through the endorsements she gets on Instagram, but the truth is her brother Ricardo, who works at a hedge fund, pays the rent and the phone bill. The endorsements can pay for groceries on a good week. Mostly the companies just send her free clothes and jewelry to wear and post about.