Next Door Read online

he charged into the hall then pivoted to wrench the barrier shut.

  He wasn’t going back until that sucker was gone!

  The kid huddled miserably in a corner of the couch, taking refuge in the dusk-shrouded den, impatient for his parents to arrive. Where were they? What was taking so long?

  “Get a grip,” he chided. “Once they’re here, you’ll wish they weren’t. You’re never satisfied.”

  A gale buffeted. Great, was it about to storm? The talons of a tree branch scraped.

  He rose and paced the first floor, navigating by the glow of streetlamps. “I should call the police. My parents are missing. The neighbors are psychos. And I’m alone!”

  Teeth chattering, the boy peeped through a side pane.

  A pallid visage goggled from the house next door.

  Gasping, Kat ducked.

  The apparition had vanished when he looked seconds later.

  Scuttling to the sofa, the lad hugged himself behind it and whimpered, “Come home, come home!”

  “I sound like a girl,” he moaned.

  He scrabbled on hands and knees to the window and peeked over the sill. A ghastly face was pressed to the glass!

  Yipping, Kat dove.

  An interlude of tense biding. A suspenseful aching hush.

  Hinges creaked upstairs. Eyes bulged in terror. A dervish spiralled to the base of the steps. The squishy blob unspooled and towered aloft, snout twitching as if to sniff for prey. Humongous, the parasite targeted Kat. The anxious adolescent retreated.

  The leech chased him, a fast wiggler.

  He clutched a curtain, tugged himself to his knees. The drape collapsed. He scrambled on a chair and flung pictures from a mantle. Frames shattered.

  The night-crawler snarled then launched at the kid’s frightened countenance.

  Kat screeched. He grabbed the trunk of a potted ficus and heaved it to bash the bloodsucker repeatedly, destroying a ceramic basin, slinging dirt.

  He dropped the plant, exhausted, spattered with crud.

  Inky blotches rejuvenated on walls, the floor. An army of bloodsuckers morbidly slithered and stalked.

  Caterwauls arose. “That does it,” Kat declared.

  After the leech, the worm-infested fruit, he was determined to investigate.

  The teen paraded to the door. A snailstrom sneaked enmasse. Their quarry brashly unlatched bolts. Rapacious globules slid to a halt.

  Kat tugged the door, heels mashing writhes. The rest dispersed.

  Marching past the hedge, he blinked at rows of neatly painted letters across a whitewashed sheet of plywood:

  FREE CANDY

  ALL AGES WELCOME

  INQUIRE WITHIN!

  Kat gawped at the looming structure and swallowed. Definitely weird.

  “It is Halloween!” his inner coward protested. “What’s so weird about free candy? I’m sure everything’s fine.”

  “It’s not and you know it.”

  Memories of quirksome peripheral discrepancies, notably subtle chaotic occurrences flitted through Kat’s mind. Furtive dartings. Minute scritchings. Fleet lurks and leers that made him peer twice. There had been omens. Less obvious signs. Ulterior indications that what dwelled in the house next door was pure adversity, the stark-raving-lunatic contrast of fine!

  Shoulders squared, he advanced to an imposing door and knocked, his knuckles rapping wood.

  No answer.

  “Oh well.” He turned to chicken out.

  “Somebody has to be there.” He could still hear the yowls and hammered louder.

  The laments desisted.

  Kat tested a brass knob. The door creepily swung ajar. “I don’t know about this.”

  Showered by a pool of red fog, he blinked at solid gloom. The primal pith cajoled and wheedled. Or was that a figment of his apprehensive plight, his quaking solemn stance?

  Inhaling deeply, Kat braved a bleak chamber completely blind. Groping through shadow, he followed a flat surface to another door.

  A cold knob startled his touch. The door opened and he yelped, sprawling, pummeled by an avalanche of clanking fallout. The tumult ended.

  He whisked layers of lopsided tubes and spheres from his abdomen. Fingers plunged inside a pair of sockets. He discerned the nasal cavity, the leering enamels of a human skull.

  With a holler he pitched the gourd. It bounced and rolled, echoing.

  The dweeb vaulted to his feet, sprinted toward a scarlet rectangle. Emerging, breathing hard, he was faintly aware of scurrying youngsters up the lane. And hoped with all his heart none would dare the journey to the dismal dead end.

  Hurrying home, he barricaded his front door.

  Music swelled, piano and strings. For an instant Kat thought his computer had restarted itself. The sounds of revelry, a party, floated from next door.

  The lad hastened to a window. Silhouettes glided behind illuminated curtains. Merriment wafted from a gilded setting.

  “No way!” the kid refuted. “I was just there!”

  He clawed at obstructions, burst out, raced beyond the hedge. And stopped in amazement.

  The words on the signboard had changed.

  Kat strolled forth in a daze to behold the announcement:

  HALLOWEEN BASH

  EVERYONE WELCOME

  THAT MEANS YOU!!!

  This was too bizarre, the boy marveled. It was like the signs were aimed at him — luring, baiting, coaxing — exploiting his desires, however meek.

  He shouldn’t go. He knew their game, suspected the purpose. Yet he felt an obligation, a responsibility to save the bawling child. He could ignore the cries no longer.

  “Okay okay, I need equipment!” the teen babbled, rushing to his house. A frantic hunt ensued. Flashlight. Slingshot. He fished inside an aquarium for marbles, filling trouser pockets, then dripped to the garage to improvise an outfit.

  Plain cartons sliced with eye and arm holes approximated a robot. A broad door automatically elevated. Kat awkwardly shuffled to the sidewalk. He rustled over leaves to the party, a conspicuously covert invader, and raised a fist to pound the gate.

  Music and voices quit. The figures vanished. The door squeakily budged inward.

  “Guess I don’t need a costume.” Kat shirked his cardboard disguise. He trained the torch into coalish depths.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” The nerd slowly explored a shaky beam. Disassembled skeletons lay scattered near a closet. The vacuous chamber lacked furnishings.

  Brushing cobwebs, Kat gingerly tiptoed under an arch leading to the back of the house, detecting a distant jumble of voices, strains of music.

  A corridor stretched. The intruder trudged, ambled, plodded an eternity.

  “It doesn’t seem this huge from outside!”

  As if on cue the passage veered. Kat meandered a confusion of false shafts, angular bends. He feared he would be trapped forever and expelled a forlorn sob.

  The elderly man stood somber, a bright grayish form. Then the aisle ahead was vacant.

  “Hey!”

  The revenant popped into view. A different spot.

  “What’s going on here?” the teen yelled.

  A raucous glut of voices responded.

  The relic gestured, a grim flourish, then vaporized.

  And materialized at his back, arid complexion pierced by scads of leeches that rippled and elongated raptly, savoring the lad’s sanguine bouquet.

  Kat scrunched his nose. “What’s that smell?” A rank odor permeated. “Gruesome!”

  He swiveled to check. Thin air.

  “This is nuts!” Clamping the small flashlight with incisors, Kat wielded his cell phone and punched an index number. The reply was crackly, broken.

  Transferring the flash to a pocket Kat whined, “Mom, where are you? I’m at the house next door. These people are insane! The old guy keeps disappearing. I heard the baby howling. I think I’m lost. I need you to come
home!”

  Frowning, he struggled to interpret garbled phrases.

  “Next door . . . talking about . . . nobody lives . . . condemned . . . shouldn’t be there . . . empty for years . . . trespassing!”

  Static.

  “Mom?” Kat’s voice wavered.

  The phone died.

  He traded it for the flashlight. Comprehension sank in. “I think she said no-one lives here. Can’t be. I’ve been seeing —”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  “— ghosts?”

  The wraith hooted, rotten teeth bared.

  Kat stumbled away as the ghoulish entity strobed. Jerky visions revealed a bald dome flecked with scaly tissue, ringed by sparse white strands. Creases, veins, and discolorations marred the sagging flesh of an archaic visage.

  Kat flinched as bumps swam below the ruined aspect, then probed outward with elastic lurchings.

  The flashlight dropped. A crooked beam speared the dark. A sonic peal concussed, throwing Kat to the floor. A blast of heat engulfed. Tenors and timbres assailed, keening, vacuuming oxygen from the corridor. Paralyzed, Kat was sucked toward the noise.

  The commotion faded.

  Trembling, the boy regained his footing and attempted to load his slingshot, spilling marbles.

  He fired at the radiant specter, nicked a wall. The shot bounced and clattered. He wished he were a better marksman. The weapon had been a gift from Chester, unvalued till that moment. Kat wished he had silver bullets, or whatever killed ghosts.

  The sling plummeted from his hand. If ghosts were dead already, would nothing kill them?

  A grin split a wizened mouth. A sharp tongue wagged then vibrated rapidly in a blur. Voices merged to a throbbing narrative. “I am Nethos. An ancient spirit. I existed like you. Uninvolved. Unable to appreciate the world’s opportunities. My people were unkind. They tortured me with embraces and bruises. Taught me human nature can be