Story-a-day #7: A night with the devil

Agreeing was a mistake – a very bad mistake – but Larry Pearson was adamant he would manage one night at the old Foster house without losing his mind.  What was more, he was determined he would do it in style; without the expected lifelines of modern day living.

            He has heard many stories about Foster house over the years; none of which he can advise are true. But he supposes there may have been an ounce of truth in them, once. He also suspects any truth there may have been would now almost certainly have been watered down or forgotten over the years; replaced, instead, by far more relatable atrocities and small inner city lore. In fact, he was almost certain of it.

            “Ready?” Pete Whitehead asks, smirking. He was a tall brooding man of around thirty; immaculately dressed, immaculately manicured. “All you have to do is last the whole night and you’ve made it into the club.”

            “It’ll be a piece of cake,” Larry said simply enough. The club in question was the Porterhouse 903, an elitist backroom drinking room on the east side of Soho. It was the kind of place where admittance seldom arose, even for the empowered and sickeningly wealthy, so when opportunities did arise they were seized. “How hard can it be?”

            “You’d be surprised,” replied Pete. “A lot of people have tried ... and failed. They thought it’d be easy too.”

            “Obviously,” Larry chirps, “they didn’t posses my resolve.”

            Pete laughs and slaps Larry on the back so hard that he staggers forward.

            Larry looks up at the house. Early dusk has done the place no favours. Shadows have descended over the dirt riddled face of the building and crept and crawled across its rotten facade. Ivy, which has spread in all directions, now looks like dried arterial veins. There is a FOR SALE sign in the overrun garden. Larry can’t read much of what it once said, not that it matters now, of course, but above the old black and white wording something else has been sprayed. ABANDON ALL HOPE, it reads.

            He walks towards the front gate. He can hear the guys behind him talking in hushed tones amongst themselves (there’s only four of them, but it sounds like a lot more); taking bets on how long he’ll last, no doubt.

            “Do you understand the rules?” Pete asks.

Larry nods, yes.

“Once you’re in I’ll personally lock the door. I’ll be the only one who has the keys. Nobody else. I’ll be here midnight; you might see me hanging around if you look hard enough. After that, you’re on your own. I’ll be back at six in the morning to let you out.”

“Just you?”

“That’s right.” He pauses. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” Larry says. “Just curious.”

They start up the garden path and Larry hears the keys jingle in Pete’s pocket. Ominous. Before Pete unlocks the door, he seizes Larry by the elbow.

“I want you to take this,” He says, pushing an old cell phone into Larry’s hand. “My number’s pre-programmed – it’s the first on the list – just in case you want to bail out. I don’t want you to have a heart attack in there.”

“I won’t need it.”

Again, Pete smiles. “Yeah, you will. Everyone has. Nobody’s made it through the night without making that call. Take it.”

“No, thank you.”

“I’m going to insist. Take it. Don’t be an idiot. Nobody’s ever managed to spend the whole night with Satan. Everyone bails out sooner or later.”

“Not me. I’ll be fine.”

A smile, oddly one directional, touched his lips. “Take it anyway.” He pulled the discoloured Yale key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and handed Larry a flashlight that conveniently hung by the door. “Sweet dreams.”

Larry stepped inside. The floorboards creak and whine. A shadow crossed the hallway ahead of Larry. Pete shudders. Better you than me, he thinks.

The hours ticked by slowly and Pete saw neither sight nor sound nor turn of the flashlight within the old house. In the slight breeze that blew around him, he heard, or thought he heard, at least, someone screaming.

Shuddering, he glanced at his watch. It was five past midnight.

When Pete returned the following morning, he did so with a modest breakfast wrapped in a little tin foil and a hot drink. Enough, he reasoned, to maybe put the kiss of life back into Larry’s foolish, chilled, bones.

He smiled through the Datsun’s slightly frosted windshield; surprised Larry had made it through the night at all without picking up the phone to beg for his release. They always begged – it seemed natural somehow.

He walked up the front steps of the house and that was when he saw the dead cat in front of the door. He didn’t much like cats, especially black ones like this, but he almost felt sorry for this one. It was on its side, eyes wide, mouth open, and its tongue lolling out of its mouth slightly. It hadn’t been attacked, not that he could tell at any rate, and for one wild moment it seemed to him that the animal had simply laid down and died.

“Hey, it’s time to wake your ass up,” he called, stepping over the cat and into the cool morning gloom of the house. “You did it! You made the club!”

Silence.

“Hey, Larry, did you hear me? I said you made the club.”

Silence.

The house was no less daunting in daylight than at night, but at least the shadows were not so thick and the creaking and whining of boards not so unsettling.

Yet ... and yet there was something. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what that something was (and truth be known he may never put his finger on it because he didn’t like to think about those things too much), but his mind continued to circle endlessly around the inclination that –

“Hey, Larry?”

At first, he thought Larry was sleeping and that perhaps he was somewhere else in the house his voice had yet to reach. It was plausible, but, he figured, unlikely. Okay, I’m going to shout you one more time and then I’m gone, he thought. You can find your own way out and home.

Then, he found him.

Pete smiled to himself, seeing Larry curled in the corner of the living room. And the reason he had almost missed him, the reason he had never gotten an answer to his calls, was because Larry was asleep on his side beneath a quilt of shadow with his hands clamped perfectly over his ears. Pete strolled over, set coffee and sandwich on the dusty table beneath the window, and nudged Larry with the tip of his shoe.

“Hey. Wake up. You did it. Congratu-fucking-lations.”

Larry didn’t move.

“Hey, asshole, did you hear what I just said?”

He nudged Larry again. Still, he didn’t move.

“All right. That’s enough. Get up.” He said, sighing. He reached down, took hold of Larry’s shoulder, and rolled him. He was dead.

Oh, but how he must have died!

His eyes were plucked out, like people would pluck the stone from a cherry. His hands were clamped over bloodied ears, the nails of which had been pulled from their very tips. His mouth hung open in a silent scream of agony. And beside him, flipped open, lay the phone he had been left with. The display flashed only three words: OUT OF SERVICE.

Beside him, etched into the wood panelled walls less than six inches off the ground were the words HE’S REAL. Beneath that, clustered together, were the bloodied shards of Larry’s fingernails.

Pete picked up the phone, and for one brief moment, it actually sounded as if he could hear someone laughing on the end of the line.