They Do Bad Things
11:09PM
You are standing in the center of a darkened room. The air is warm and thick, and the stench nearly overwhelming. The muted sunlight seeping past the edges of a plywood covered window reveals a bedframe with no mattress and a dresser with its missing drawers scattered across the floor. Beneath the smell of piss and spray-paint is a sour, burnt odor that claws at the back of your throat and brings tears to your eyes.
Something went wrong, very wrong. You have never been here before in your life, not even in nightmares.
To your left is the shadowy interior of a closet with what were once mirror-covered doors now smashed and hanging crookedly in their frames. The bottoms of your shoes scrape against the glass strewn floor as you turn to look behind you. The door to the room is closed.
When you reach for the knob, someone asks, “Who are you?”
Your hand recoils as you spin toward the sound. A little girl, maybe five or six years old, is standing in front of the battered closet looking up at you.
“I didn’t,” you start to say, and then have to catch your breath, “see you there.”
“You can, can’t you,” she replies, speaking slowly, the hint of a smile on her pale lips. “Not everybody can.”
You can only blink back at her. “Oh.”
She is dressed in a colorless nightgown with ruffles around the neck and on the ends of her sleeves. There is nothing on her feet.
“Where are your parents?”
Her expression grows serious as she shifts her doe-eyed gaze from you to the closed door and back again, but does not answer.
She can’t be here alone, you think, wherever here is. Unless she’s a runaway, or lost, or worse… “Were you hiding?”
The wispy ends of her shoulder-length hair sway limply side to side as she shakes her head, no.
You slip your hands into the front pockets of your jeans, the least threatening gesture you can think of. “My name is Matthew. What is yours?”
She opens her mouth as if to speak, but doesn’t. Her eyes seem to search the air for an answer and then abruptly resume their focus on you. “Jennifer,” she says. “My name is Jennifer.”
“Nice to meet you, Jennifer.”
She smiles, lowering her eyes bashfully.
“My little sister has a nightgown just like that,” you say, and she looks up again with obvious interest.
“You have a sis—” she begins, but something in the direction of the covered window catches her attention and she cocks her head, bird-like, toward it.
Then you hear it too, the throaty growl of a car engine, distant, but getting louder.
“People come here,” she says. “They make a lot of noise. They do things, bad things.”
“Don’t be afraid,” you say, and you mean it, imagining one of your own sisters alone in a place like this. “Not while I’m here.” You step up to the boarded window and press your face against one of the sunlit seams in the plywood. Nothing but blue sky.
The engine, which had been steadily growing louder, suddenly stops.
You slide your hands along the edge of the panel where it has been nailed to the window frame until you find a gap large enough to work your fingers beneath. With a single, forceful tug, you manage to pull the board several inches from the wall. Sunlight wedges itself into the corner of the room, and when you peer through the opening, cool, breathable air caresses your face.
The first thing you discover is that this room is on the second floor. The next is the dark brown Firebird Trans Am sitting in the driveway with its golden namesake spread across the hood. If there was ever grass on the front lawn it is long gone now, and there are no other houses in sight, just sand, brushy weeds, and half buried piles of garbage. There is a graffitied brick wall in the distance and the tops of citrus trees beyond that.
The car doors open and two jocks you recognize from school get out. You don’t know the passenger’s name, but the driver is Tony Rodriguez, a senior who according to the newspaper has already signed with the major leagues and is just waiting to graduate. A girl in a striped blouse with matching red pants climbs out of the back seat. You know her. Her name is Joanne. She was one of your brother’s friends, maybe even his girl-friend for a while. Then a second girl with dark, curly hair, wearing jeans and a yellow blouse appears. It’s Ruth, the girl from first period you were talking to after class this morning. Is school already over, you wonder? Most likely they are ditching, you decide. An abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, where better to hide out?
When a fifth person emerges from the back seat, as if she shares your view, Jennifer makes a surprised sound, a sudden inhalation of breath.
It’s a boy with light brown hair in a long sleeve, blue plaid shirt, cradling a case of Budweiser in his arms. He gives the box to Tony’s friend, who tears it open and hands everyone in the group a beer, which you, with your head back and eyes squeezed shut, along with the rest of them, proceed to chug.
You don’t know what to think. Nothing about any of this makes sense. What could have possibly happened between now and fourth period this morning that has you ditching school and getting drunk with these four?
What does become suddenly clear though is that whatever led to this, however unlikely, is about to lead to your death.
You step away from the window and turn to find Jennifer staring wide-eyed back at you. “Come on,” you say, reaching for her hand. “They can help us. They have to.”
The moment you grasp her cold little fingers, the room is transformed. The graffiti covered walls, the smashed furniture and broken glass, the smell of paint and piss, smoke and rot, are all gone. The room is whole again, and pink, very pink, with rose-colored walls and matching Strawberry Shortcake bedspread and curtains. Even the shade on the floor lamp in the corner casts a pinkish hue. The air is clean and cool and smells like fabric softener and new sheets. Jennifer seems to glow with life. Her hand is no longer cold in yours and there is color in her cheeks.
“What is happening?” you ask.
“He’s coming,” she says, eyes on the door. “He’ll be here soon.”
“Who?” You see through the window that it’s dark outside. “Who is coming?”
There are voices resonating from somewhere in the house, downstairs maybe, a man and a woman’s. It sounds like they are arguing.
“First, they fight,” she says, “and then…”
“And then?” They are yelling now. You can’t make out what is being said, but there is violence in his shouts, fear in hers. “And then what?”
There is a loud bang from below, another, and then silence.
“Fuck,” you gasp, heart hammering in your chest. “That was a gun.”
Jennifer though, does not even flinch. Instead, she slips her hand out of yours and moves toward her bed. “It’s time for me to go to sleep,” she says, drawing back the comforter and climbing in.
“Wait, what?” You try to reach for her. “No, we have to get out of here.”
There is a third gunshot, much closer this time.
The window! you think. Maybe there’s a ledge. Maybe it leads onto the roof. Shove the dresser in front of the door to buy some time! Lower her with a bedsheet if you have to, then jump yourself!
None of this happens because you remain exactly where Jennifer left you, standing in the middle of the room unable to move.
“Close your eyes,” she says as she rolls onto her side to face the wall. “Don’t open them, no matter what.”
You’re not sure whether she’s speaking to you or herself. “No, Jennifer, we—”
Behind you, the knob clicks, but your head will not turn. The door squeals softly inward on its hinge.
Someone enters the room. You feel him standing behind you, hear his breathing quick and shallow, smell the gunpowder and the stink of sweat on his skin.
He remains there a moment without moving and then he slowly walks past you to the edge of Jennifer’s bed. The hand behind his back is holding a gun.
“No!” you shout, but there is no reaction. “Stop! No!”
He moves the revolver around in front of him, points it at Jennifer’s head.
“No, don’t do it!” You are completely frantic. “You can’t! You can’t!”
You squeeze your eyelids shut, clench your teeth, and brace for the gunshot … but there is nothing but drawn-out silence, interrupted at last by the moan of rusty hinges, and the scrape and crunch of footsteps on broken glass.
When you open your eyes, he is standing in the middle of the demolished bedroom glaring back at you with his mouth half open. “Matthew!” you say, not sure he can hear you, or that you are even here at all. “What the fuck, man?”
He staggers backwards, stumbles, and falls on top of one of the empty drawers, crushing it beneath him.
You rush toward him. “Matthew, listen to me!”
He tries to get to his feet, but the broken pieces of drawer slide sideways beneath his hands and he falls again, the back of his head slamming against the empty dresser frame.
You have him by the front of the shirt now, fists twisting into the fabric, arms shaking with the trapped violence of this room, with your own helplessness, with a stolen memory that can never be returned.
You pull him up to you. “Pretty soon,” you say, your face pressed to his. “You’re going to have to run, Matthew.”
He cries out and tries to tear your hands from his chest. You release him and he rushes into the hall.
“Do you hear me?” you call as you follow him out of the room “It’s your only choice!”
At the top of the stairs, he turns to look back, his eyes wide with terror.
“Run, Matthew,” you say, remembering the dying boy crawling toward you through the dirt. Fear may be his … your … only hope.
“Close your eyes,” you hear her say. “Don’t open them, no matter what.”
But when you do, he is waiting there in the glow of that pink room. This time he pulls the trigger and everything goes dark.
Back in the Datsun, you wake to silence. You are lying on your side facing the door with your knees drawn up and your hands tucked beneath your chin. There is a stillness, a vacancy in the air, that tells you even before you roll over that you are alone in the car.
THE MISADVENTURES OF MATTHEW VAN DER BOOT is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental … no matter how many times you ask.