Short Horror story- THE VACANT HOUSE ON BURDOCH STREET

THE VACANT HOUSE ON BURDOCH STREET

In the long, cold Autumn of 1982, Mike and Nancy Callahan moved their few possessions to a small and affordable property in the town of Lakeville, Massachusetts. The place was cheap for several reasons: one, that the previous occupant had left the building in poor condition and that two, the house itself was thought to be haunted. Exploiting these small-town superstitions, Mike had happily paid many months in advance and, with the help of Nancy, would rebuild the house from scratch. It would be their dream home: a safe place where they could raise their kids and enjoy life outside of the city. Nancy stood on the porch of the old, dilapidated house, her fingers running through the flaking paint of the doorway. “It's going to take a lot of work, baby,” she said, warm sunlight falling on her snow white skin and soft red hair. Mike turned to her, lighting his cigarette, his messy beard revealing a little smile, “No rest for the wicked, my darling.”

Mike held his wife with one arm, pushing his grizzled face into her cheek. With a notepad he went around the house, noting down dimensions and sketching out ideas – he was always mindful, alert, a project on his mind. Nancy, however, wanted to absorb the atmosphere: she sat in the rusty swinging chair, watching the occupants on the other side of the street. They seemed gentle, average, waving to each other and exchanging pleasantries. After a while, she began to feel a presence of some kind, that strange feeling of being watched. Scanning the pavement, she finally noticed a house – it was taller, more withered looking than the others, more like a small manor than a two story home; the place had the look of being built in several conflicting styles. Out of the estates iron gate came a figure, walking toward her at some speed.

While Mike inspected the bathroom, the sink stained by some unholy brown markings, he could hear the swinging of Nancy's chair – this comforted him, knowing she was out there, the love of his life on their own front porch. But Nancy was not comfortable at all, watching as the figure got closer, taking off her sunglasses to greet the visitor. It was a man, clean shaven and badly sunburnt, a large straw hat on his head. “Hi there, Neighbour,” the man spoke, making a slow, jaunty kind of wave. “Hello,” Nancy replied, rising from the swing quite slowly; she extended her hand and walked down the steps. “You folks moving into this place?” He asked, shaking her hand quite warmly. “Yes, yes, we are. It's our first day. We're gonna.. fix it up, you know?” The man nodded, smiled, taking a parcel from under his arm. “Well, we'd sure love to meet you both. Take this as a little house warming gift,” the man said, passing Nancy the package. “And, if you feel like it, we're throwing a Halloween party this Thursday. We'd sure love to see you there; it's a great way to meet everyone on Burdoch, that's for sure.”

Nancy nodded, thanked him, and went inside to find her husband. “Mike, take a look at this. A neighbour brought us something.” Mike looked up from beneath the bathroom sink, a wrench in his hand. “What is it, babe? Open it.” Carefully Nancy undid the wrapping, revealing a small statue of a
naked woman. “Oh, god,” she said, laughing a bit with a flushed face. “Do you think they're.. swingers?” Mike reached out, taking the small statuette in his hands, his thumb running over its face. “I think it's based on the Venus de Milo. Probably just art lovers; nothing to worry about.” Nancy tapped her foot a little, pondering the gift. “They invited us to a party on Thursday. For Halloween. He said we could.. meet the neighbours.” Mike paused, the clanking of his wrench turning on the faucet, cold water suddenly spraying into life. “Sounds like a great idea. What have we got to lose?”

Later that night the couple lay on the mattress, a temporary slab they'd set up in the corner. The large, unfurnished bedroom looked like an old church, the bare white walls absorbing the moonlight. While Nancy snoozed on Mike's chest, he lay wide awake, listening to the sounds of the neighbourhood. He could hear passing cars, cats and dogs, but mostly something he wasn't used to -
a strange, ethereal silence. Slipping gently onto his feet, he stood shirtless by the light of the moon, standing on the creaky porch and smoking into the cold night air. The street lights flickered opposite the house and a dog howled far off in the distance.

A few days later it was Halloween, the Autumn leaves falling from the branches of Burdoch's many elms. While Nancy was busy painting one of the rooms red, Mike had driven out to the towns one supermarket, 'Lakeville Superstores,' to buy a few outfits for the evening. He'd managed to pick up a few bottles of wine, a Werewolf mask, some potato chips and some fake plastic fangs. By the time he'd got home the sun was now setting, costumed children running up Burdoch street with tiny pumpkins full of treats. Knocking on the door, Nancy answered with a powdered face and a velvet black dress. A splash of fake blood ran down from her lips. “Did you bring the vampire teeth?” she asked, smiling as Mike set down the bottles on the dinner table. “Got them,” he replied, offering the packet to her. Mike then noticed that beneath the lamp stood the Venus statue, its strange shadow cast out across the wall. It seemed cruder, stranger than he'd first thought: perhaps carved by an ill-trained hand. “Let's hurry it up, babe,” Mike said, putting on a black suit jacket, “We don't want to make a bad impression.”

Arriving at the gates, the couple found themselves welcomed in by a group of elderly women holding candles, cooing with excitement upon their arrival. “Oh, darlings,” one said, “you're the couple at number seventeen, is that right?” They all began clapping, touching and ushering in the couple, until soon they were right in front of the house. It seemed gigantic, fearsome, like nothing else Mike or Nancy had ever seen – Mike saw, from the corner of his eye, that the basement had several entrances, each one carefully painted with strange, moon-like symbols. Once they ascended the staircase they were both offered champagne by a butler and guided into a large living room, soft jazz music played by a live band. “Gosh, they've really pulled out the stops,” Nancy said, her arm curling around Mike's. “I know.. I mean, I knew this neighbourhood was expensive. But this is something else.”

Soon they were drinking, dancing and socializing with their neighbours; everyone seemed nice, if a little older and strangely inquisitive. Mike stepped into the garden for a cigarette, noticing that Nancy was very popular with the older male guests. A series of men dressed as devils had surrounded her, asking her questions about her life, her history. Nancy obliged, drunk enough on punch that they seemed rather charming. “Will you be joining us downstairs, young lady?” One asked, running a red gloved finger through her vampiric hair. “I don't know,” she said coyly, smiling, “what'ss downstairs?” The men began to laugh, knocking their tridents together.

Mike went to stub out his cigarette, his rubber mask under one arm. He noticed several younger women were holding fiery torches, standing around a small statue of some kind at the very end of the garden. Not wishing to leave Nancy alone, he turned back into the house and clambered toward her, gently pushing through the crowd. Just before he could reach out for her, a cold hand grasped his wrist. “You're from number 17, aren't you?” Asked a sultry, feminine voice; looking up, he saw a
middle aged woman dressed as the Bride of Frankenstein, her purple lips curled into a smile. He was immediately enchanted by her, forgetting all about Nancy for a few solid minutes. And after a while, more glasses of punch were poured, until he only could remember a few particular sights: seeing some kind of orgy in a garden shed, seeing Nancy dancing with a tall, masked man, of briefly kissing that woman's lips in front of a video camera. His mind blurred into a mess of images, vomiting up the contents of his stomach outside the garden statue: it was a large replica of the gift they'd been given, a crude statue of a goddess. Wherever he went he seemed to be watched, observed by beautiful women or by fat bellied, aging gentlemen, each persons face obscured by costume.

Nancy had tried to find Mike, having finally decided they should leave – she was drunk out of her mind and felt incredibly, strangely vulnerable. A few men had been showing her leatherbound books, weird tomes full of symbols and engravings; one had held the illustration of some kind of bloated, eyeless corpse, a vision that had now been forever stuck in her mind. After finding Mike to be nowhere in sight, she was forced to ask someone for help; an old woman dressed in green emeralds. “Where are you going, sweetheart?” Asked the woman, grasping her hand with a sparkled green glove. “I need.. to find.. my husband..” whispered a deranged, drunken Nancy, who by now was slurring her words and stumbling across the party. “Let me show you, honey. He'll be downstairs by now.” Her mind too began to reel, blurring into murky fantasy. She remembered the party emptying, of every person descending a large spiral staircase into the bowels of the earth.

Coming to, Nancy found herself surrounded by candles, eyes peering at her from the darkness. Turning to her left with woozy, tired eyes, she saw that Mike was sat beside her, his arms duct taped to a chair. He was naked, blindfolded and clearly passed out. In the darkness she heard the voices of the neighbours, chanting the number of their house. “Se – ven – teen, se – ven – teen, “ they began to cry, stamping their feet. Looking up above her, Nancy could now see she was in a basement with a strangely high ceiling, lit by candles and weirdly placed floodlights. The man she had once seen outside her house, the man with the straw hat, emerged from the darkness and stood before her, his naked body covered in gold paint. “The old white house has given us two more young, beautiful offerings. Hail to the old white house!” All the others chanted in unison, some clinking glasses. “And now, we will be in full attendance with the White God himself. Thank you, Nancy, for your body.” She sobbed, scared, terrified, unable to articulate words. Mike murmured, his head beginning to twitch; she prayed he'd wake up.

Quickly, the mob seemed to move toward the edges of the basement, lining themselves up against the walls. Soon they had hushed to total silence, only the sound of water droplets resounding around the room. “Help me,” Nancy pleaded, pulling at the duct tape with her wrists, “I'm-- I'm so sorry, I don't understand where I am--” She was cut off by the sound of something groaning, the sound of an animal dying. The floodlights blinked off, leaving only candlelight to illuminate the gloom. The chanting began again, as a hushed whisper, the sound of metal chains clanking and dragging across the ground. Nancy peered into the pitch dark, panting heavily, red hair clinging to the sweat of her forehead; she looked on, following the sound, waiting for something to emerge.

And there it was, an impossible vision; a gnarled, long arm, so long that it snapped and bent, vibrating with thin blue veins. The arm ended in a finger-nailed, gigantic hand, its fingers spindly and thin. Soon its arm was met with a body: a large, bulbous tumour attached to an open ribcage, other arms and vestigal limbs coming out of it, each snapping and long. It wheezed and groaned like a human, the candlelight reflecting of its thin, transluscent flesh – but it could not be human, unless it was many giants born together at once, connected by spines and warped bulges. The matted hair covered them, a white pus leaking from the gaping wound of its mouth. Mike gasped, the sound of Nancy's screams running through his ears. Looking toward her, he himself began to shout; he could not see it, but he could hear it - the things fingers were running along her body, the sharp fingernails cutting through the skin of her neck.

Mike tumbled down in his chair, throwing himself against the abomination; it seemed to squeal and recoil, its lung-like orifice expanding and deflating, its bones twisting impossibly. Kicking over a candle, a tableclothed counter began to set aflame, ashes and sparks falling onto the creature. It shouted and screamed, the rug of the basement partially on fire. While a neighbour threw himself into the fires, rolling about to put out the element, the creature vibrated madly, tearing up a whole row of its followers. The naked, painted worshippers bowed down before it, allowing the creature to
digest them from the neck down. The floodlights were switched on but the bulbs exploded, blood and fire spilling out across the carpet: the golden man began to free Nancy, cutting her binds with his hand. He shuvved the knife in her face, ushering her toward the throbbing mouth of the creature; “You must offer yourself, before it is too late.” Swiftly Mike had freed himself on a jagged, rusty nail, choking the golden man with both his hands. Soon the neighbours were screaming, crying, some laughing and dancing, while the twisted beast ate and ate, intestines and limbs tearing and gushing into the dark pit of the basement. Mike threw the man to the ground, seizing a flaming torch from an elderly woman and thrusting it upon Nancy: “Take it,” he said, the door above the stairwell lit with candles, “Find a way out!” Nancy barely had time to turn around before the neighbours had attacked him, pulling him toward the jaws of the beast; she wriggled away, sobbing with her torch, ascending the stairwell as fast as she could. Finding the door open, she ran from the sounds of chanting and screaming, her body covered in blood and viscera, tumbling down the street of Burdoch. The cold Autumn air met her skin and the streetlight flickered to a standstill, a moth beating its wings against the glass of the bulb.