This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental.

Benny Rose, the Cannibal King Copyright © 2020 Unnerving

Benny Rose, the Cannibal King Copyright © 2020 Hailey Piper

BENNY ROSE, THE CANNIBAL KING

Hailey Piper

“Hailey Piper is a major new voice in the horror genre, and Benny Rose, the Cannibal King is the perfect place to start with her work. A short and magnificent shock to the system, this one has got everything: great characters, fantastic vintage horror vibes, and a terrifying urban legend at the center of it all. Keep an eye on Hailey’s work; she is seriously going places.”

—Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens

“A good urban legend has a way of seeping into your bones and refusing to crawl out; Hailey Piper’s Cannibal King is certainly one of those that will be creeping into my mind, late at night and unbidden, for a long time to come. Benny Rose is an unforgettable terror, rivaled only by the gutsy teens who dare to go up against him.”

—Claire Holland, author of I Am Not Your Final Girl

“I see your slumber party massacre and raise you a taste of human tragedy, a funhouse ride of plot twists, and a heaping side of gore. Hailey Piper has the audacity to write teenage mean girls as thinking, feeling, bad-ass human beings.”

—Joanna Koch, author of The Couvade

“Sometimes when we tell ourselves stories, we unwittingly awaken and summon the very monster we thought only lived in our minds…. Witness a brilliant cast of characters take a chomping bite out of a local folk story that proves itself all too real. With haunted hearts and burning teeth, Piper’s sharp prose delivers a whirlwind tale; here, we peel back the layers of our strong, female leads and root for them to conquer the night.”

—Sara Tantlinger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil’s Dreamland

BENNY ROSE, THE CANNIBAL KING

On Halloween night, 1953, Blackwood Mercy Hospital burned to the ground. The building collapsed long before the fire was put out, and by end of the rescue team’s tireless search, forty-one bodies were recovered from the smoking ruin.

Six were not. Five children, one adult.

Town council said the hospital fire was a freak accident, an open and shut case, but the kids of Blackwood know better.

They say Benny Rose did it.

One: Halloween 1986

Sticky pine limbs dragged at Chase’s arms as he picked through the woods. He was glad for the cover of his old school Dracula costume, but the black sleeves had to look like someone had been sick on them by now.

That might happen before night’s end, the way Donnie sounded behind him. They hadn’t watched each other’s intake at Rachel’s Halloween party like they planned, and they couldn’t exactly complain about it. Neither was older than seventeen.

Every few steps, Donnie stumbled against Chase’s back. “I think your shortcut’s kind of a long cut.”

“I think you’re drunk.”

“Could be both of us are drunk.”

Chase didn’t feel drunk, but if they were late to meet their ride, he’d probably be called that and worse. Cutting through the woods seemed like a good idea to make sure they weren’t late, especially when no one would drive them from Monterrey Court. They were out-of-towners, and that seemed to matter in Blackwood.

But the town’s back end was practically Vermont wilderness. Crickets owned these woods.

The trees weren’t so thick that Chase couldn’t see the stars, but those lights were tiny, twinkling dots, and the moon was hardly a hairline suggestion lost in the sky. It was easy to lose direction. “This isn’t right. Supposed to be at Gleason.”

“No, Loveland.” Donnie stumbled into Chase yet again and leaned a hand between his shoulders. “Why’s this town shaped like two ugly pretzels had an uglier pretzel baby?”

Because it was grown piecemeal, not planned like some places, but Chase didn’t say that. Donnie wouldn’t remember by morning anyway.

He let off Chase’s back and began patting at his costume. “Did I leave my movies at Rachel’s?”

“She’ll get them to you at Christmas. Focus on your feet.” Chase reached back to steady Donnie, whose bare arms stuck from a short-sleeved, white, ninja costume. Pine needles clung to his skin and hair. Chase held on anyway. What else were friends for? “One foot in front of the other. Yeah, like that. On you go.”

On Donnie went, and then down he went on hands and knees. His costume was probably a mess, but Chase could only see it by the faint glow that breached the trees ahead. Still holding on, he pulled Donnie to his feet and led him somewhere to rest.

“I think I see light.” And evidence of civilization, too. The trees here had been tamed, their lower limbs sawed off to look prettier. Chase drew Donnie to sitting and set his back against one of the trimmed trunks. “I’ll check it out. You sit tight.”

Donnie swung his head up and down. “I like that. You go, I stay.”

Chase gave him an encouraging shoulder clap and pushed past a row of pines. They had to be near something if there was light. Too weak to be a streetlight. He hoped it was something other than a vacant roadside. That wouldn’t be much better than wilderness unless it was the exact right spot on Gleason Street, or Loveland Way, to meet their ride.

Past another row of pines, he made out the source of the light. Two backyards stretched from the trees, their lawns neat and trim. White fences bordered two-story colonial houses, keeping the property lines firm and creating an avenue of grass to the sidewalk, where a sad little lamppost tried to light the street. Only blackness stretched past that.

Behind Chase, the cricket orchestra quieted so that Donnie could wretch in peace. Good, he might be more helpful now.

Chase took a step back, his heel crunching pine needles. “This can’t be Gleason, unless we’re pretty far south.” He turned toward Donnie. “Not Loveland, either, but maybe somebody knows where the—”

Back through the pines, Donnie’s tree trunk stood empty.

“Donnie?” Chase looked to the light again and then back to the tree. Donnie’s white costume should’ve stuck out even in the dim. “Not funny, buddy. I don’t feel like being scared right now.”

Nearby crickets remained quiet. Chase’s gut turned, as if facing the houses again and urging the rest of his body to turn, too. Turn and get out of here.

He swallowed and felt cold in his throat. “Where you at, man?”

He compromised with his gut, didn’t step forward or back, but strafed to one side so he could get a better look around the tree. Donnie might have crawled to the other side, to puke in privacy.

One white pant leg stretched back from behind the tree, flat on the ground.

Chase’s heart said everything was fine, he’d been nervous for nothing, but his gut still said to go. “Donnie?”

The leg quivered, kicking at needles, and then twisted to one side. Dark fluid ran across the ground. Donnie might have pissed himself, but Chase didn’t think so. The fluid was too slow, too thick. It seemed like blood.

He turned around and started toward the houses. Pine needles crackled beneath his shoes. Not too fast, not enough to show his lungs were losing it, not enough to show he was scared in case Donnie was now sober enough to pull a prank. He crossed into the soft grass between yards.

A footstep crunched needles behind him, easy to hear now that he wasn’t crunching them himself. And then a second footstep, a third, one after another. They weren’t Donnie’s staggering feet, too sure of themselves, and no one called out to Chase. Whoever walked behind him was quiet.

He couldn’t help walking faster. Trying to run, he realized just how unsteady he was, how the drinks had loosened his muscles. His balance wasn’t as bad as Donnie’s, but he wasn’t fast.

The footsteps behind him didn’t run, but they were certain, evenly-paced steps, and getting closer.

Chase gulped cold air, drying his mouth and throat for the sake of greedy lungs. He slipped between the houses. Toothy fences rippled to either side, both homes saying they wanted no part in his trouble. They didn’t have their outside lights on. The neighborhood was asleep. His tongue a dry sponge, he couldn’t get his voice to leap past his lips and wake everyone up.

He almost hit the far corners of the houses, where one fence curled around a front yard and the other paused at a driveway, but he skidded to a stop twenty feet from the sidewalk. There was no road here, only an open circle of pavement. Lampposts dotted the sidewalk of the circle’s rim, but they were all weak.

Across the circle, a billowing white shape floated through the consuming darkness. It kept its distance from lampposts and weaved as if carried on wind. Was that what got Donnie?

No, it was a white shirt on someone wearing all black otherwise. The floating was only the trick of a bicycle in the dark, its orange reflectors stealing bits of lamppost light. Chase kept on toward the sidewalk and licked his lips, about to call to this kid. Maybe they knew a way out.

His voice started up his throat when a swift, white shape slid up on his left and dug into and across his neck. Hot fluid ran down his chest.

It didn’t make sense, this opening at his throat. Blood was supposed to stay inside, not run across his fingers when he tried to collect it. Was it always this warm? Something soft but hot scraped his face, burning his eyelids. He was falling, didn’t know where until the ground slammed his front. Sharp, hot points tore up his spine. The pain, heat, and coppery stink reminded him of a schoolbook about the food industry, where animals were hung on slaughterhouse hooks.

He tried to speak, but nothing came out, and there was nothing to see.

But he could hear. The crickets were loud again in every direction, no longer disturbed by what they’d seen. Under their song, a footstep came down on his left, and then another ahead of him, the same slow pace as whoever had followed him, approaching the sidewalk. That wasn’t fair; that’s where he’d meant to go.

From the paved circle came a metal grinding, the sound of a bicycle’s pedals and gears as it turned around. The kid was leaving.

Take me, Chase tried to say. No words came up, only blood.

And then the footsteps returned. One, two, past his side. A hand caught his ankle, lifted his leg, and dragged him back toward the pines. Blades of grass cut at his open throat, and then pine needles stabbed. When the hand finally set him down, sharp pain hit his back again, and he realized that was no slaughterhouse hook. Those were teeth.

Two: October 27, 1987

Desiree St. Fleur slapped her tray onto a lunchroom table opposite the new girl. They were both juniors, and new kid status shouldn’t have been anything special at their age, but Blackwood was a pothole of a town. New things were rare.

The new girl’s eyes widened. Desiree had heard the phrase “deer in headlights” before, but had never seen it on a human being. From her lengthy pale face to the tan of her long hair, everything about the new girl screamed trembling doe. She must have been nervous over the lunchroom’s dull roar, or its curious sour milk odor. Not over Desiree. No way.

“Got a minute?” Desiree stuck a hand across the table and introduced herself.

The new girl licked her lips and offered her hand in return. “Gabrielle Walker.”

“You look anxious.” Desiree prodded the plastic grilled cheese on her tray. Tuesdays were always grilled cheese, and for some reason the sandwiches never came out right anymore.

Gabrielle’s eyes stayed wide, like she expected Desiree to lunge over the table any minute and claw them out. What town did Gabrielle come from that made such timid people? Surely towns couldn’t get tinier than Blackwood.

“Did Mrs. Hatcher tell you to stay away from me?” Desiree asked.

“No one’s sat with me.” That made sense. Gabrielle had been eating alone since her first day and probably expected to spend the school year that way.

Desiree went on poking her sandwich. If she dropped it on the floor, she imagined it would bounce like a rubber ball. “Where you from?”

“New York. Not the city. Feels like I have to say that to everyone.”

“Rumor has it you live on Glade Street.”

“Yeah, with my grandma. It’s kind of a weird place.” Gabrielle’s eyes settled. She was all smiles now.

Desiree flashed white teeth between rich black cheeks. “Any plans for Halloween?”

“I don’t know anyone.”

“You can’t hang out with Grandma on the biggest night in Blackwood.”

“Grandma’s friends had free tickets, so they’re taking her to Atlantic City.”

Likely Gabrielle came from somewhere big, even if not so big as New York City. She’d only been in town for a couple weeks and hadn’t grasped the hopelessness of her situation or how Halloween was its only escape. Blackwood had no mall, no movie theater. Kids milled around town square on nice days and anywhere else they could on others. If they drove, they drove someplace else, because in Blackwood there was little to see and only the woods to hear.

Halloween was different.

Blackwood had one thing that no other town had in the world.

Benny Rose, the Cannibal King, and all the stories that came with him.

Gabrielle was oblivious. An idea slid into Desiree’s thoughts. She saw it clear as if she had painted it in her bedroom. Jack-o-lanterns, and horrors, and Gabrielle’s frightened doe face.

“I was going to invite you someplace,” Desiree said. “But maybe you could invite us to yours instead.”

“Us?”

“No one’s parents live in the old folk’s neighborhood. We could have a little get-together, stay up late, eat pizza. It’ll be nice. Nobody would bother us there.”

“Like, a party?”

“Nothing that big. Just me and a couple friends who might be into it. Halloween’s a big deal in Blackwood.”

“Not on Glade Street. No one’s even decorated.”

Desiree knew that, had seen it herself last year, but didn’t want to think about that night right now. This was different. “Then you’re not getting the full experience. When it comes to Halloween in Blackwood, go big or go home.”

“I have nowhere else to go.” Gabrielle seemed forlorn, the way Desiree liked to think she herself looked while staring into space.

An air of majestic sadness, she thought, an idea too pretentious to repeat aloud.

“All I’m saying is, everyone loves Halloween here. Getting into the spirit is a—” Desiree almost said hazing, but didn’t want to sound too scary.

Gabrielle rescued her. “A rite of passage?”

“Exactly. Show my friends you’re cool, make them your friends. It’s a win/win.”

“I don’t know.”

“You said you don’t know anyone. Wouldn’t you like to?”

Gabrielle prodded her grilled cheese, mimicking Desiree, except half hers had been eaten. Timid or not, they made strong stomachs in New York. “It’d be nice to hang out.”

“Then it’s a date. Let me know which house and we’ll come over Saturday.” Desiree pried her tray off the table. “And, you probably know, but don’t tell Grandma.”

Gabrielle offered a shy, tight-lipped smile.

Desiree chucked her lunch in the trash and headed back to her friends. Sierra Jacques and Jesse Sanderson sat side by side at the end of one lengthy table, isolated from the lunchroom’s busy crowd. Sierra’s boyfriend would’ve come bothering them, but he was a senior and had a different lunch period this year.

Jesse traded disgusted looks between her rubbery lunch and an open paperback of The Catcher in the Rye propped between russet fingers. Her face seemed sucked into the book, ringlets of hair dangling against the pages. Sierra’s dark curls circled her darling brown sourpuss. Every part of her tense body held statue stiff except her burning eyes, darting up and down at distant, oblivious Gabrielle.

“A picture would last longer,” Desiree said, dropping into Sierra’s way.

Sierra’s hot glare fell on her. “You two got pretty chummy.”

“Getting jealous on my account, too?”

“No. Paul’s enough. She’ll find out.”

“It’s not her fault he said she’s pretty.” Had it been only once, Sierra might have let it go. But Paul said it every time he caught Gabrielle out of the corner of his eye, at least when around the girls. Like he was determined to make Sierra jealous.

It worked. “He won’t be saying that when the school hears how many of his football buddies she’s slept with already.”

Desiree pictured that sweet doe face covered in tears, eyes wide with betrayal once Gabrielle realized it was Desiree’s best friend who started the rumors. A few weeks in Blackwood and already a school pariah. The rumors would never die, even when other girls pointed the finger at Sierra and her friends as the source. There would be trouble. And then there would be Mom to deal with.

Desiree leaned over the table and pouted. “But princess, I thought you liked my plan.”

Sierra’s glare softened. She hadn’t told her lies yet. “Yeah, yeah. Is she coming?”

“I got a better idea. A Halloween slumber party at her place while Granny’s out of town.”

Jesse closed her book in an exhausted slap and shoved it away with her lunch. “Weird, her living in that neighborhood. I thought you had to be old to move there.”

As if summoned by the word old, Mrs. Hatcher slowed in passing their table. Her gaze fixed on Desiree from a face carved in Paleolithic limestone. “Ms. St. Fleur, girls are supposed to love James Dean, not dress like him. We’ve talked about this.”

Desiree didn’t recall that. She recalled standing in silence while Mrs. Hatcher criticized her leather jacket and cloudy black curls, wondering if Mrs. Hatcher taught history because she’d lived it. Desiree didn’t see a resemblance to a dead movie star in her clothes.

She nodded anyway as if yes, this time it would sink in, and Mrs. Hatcher passed by to chastise someone else.

“She wishes she had your style,” Sierra said, making Desiree and Jesse laugh. “I don’t see why she gives shit to you when you don’t give it to anyone.” Her eyes narrowed. “So, what’s the new plan for Snow White?”

Desiree told them. Jesse flashed a nervous smirk.

Sierra grinned ear to ear. “Maybe Mrs. Hatcher should watch out. There’s a cunning mean streak inside you.”

Desiree didn’t really agree. If all went as planned, Sierra’s jealous itch would be scratched, Paul would drop his fixation, and Desiree would’ve spared Gabrielle a nasty junior year.

And all it would take was tricking her into thinking they were friends, and then stabbing her in the back.

Three: Halloween 1987

Desiree almost made it out in peace. She had her shoes on, night bag packed with pajamas, toothbrush, and cassettes of Thriller, Whitney, and Self Control. Later she realized she had not asked if Gabrielle had a tape player.

She was halfway down the stairs when her mother reared up behind her. “And what are you up to?”

Desiree froze. She had been too quiet, which made Mom suspicious. Her foot slid to the next step and from there it was easier to descend. If she could get out of the house without responding, then she was good as gone.

Mom stamped the floor. “Why are you dressed like you’re going out?”

Had a zombie eaten her brain? Desiree turned back, wearing a black leather jacket and matching tank top and jeans. No pirate costume mistakes on Glade Street this year. If anything happened, she could drift into the dark, where clothes, skin, and hair alike would blend with the night.

“I’m dressed like I’m going out because I’m going out. It’s Halloween.” Dammit, she’d spoken, been slowed down.

Mom was reeling her in. She wiped a hand down her tired face, lighter than Desiree’s and deep with worry lines. She was five years Dad’s senior, and since he left, she seemed to have aged another ten. “After what happened last year, you expect me to let you go rampaging out of here?”

When Desiree didn’t answer, Mom stormed into Desiree’s room, muttering under her breath. Glass smashed against the floor—paintbrush jar?—and then came a snap, the sound of canvas being cracked across one knee. Mom had probably grabbed the nearest painting. And Desiree had been working so hard on that dancing elephant watercolor.

That wouldn’t stop her. She hit the bottom of the stairs and walked briskly to the front door. She could get away if there was no back and forth, all the shouting one-sided. Mom wouldn’t chase. To chase would make her look silly, and she’d be damned before she looked silly.

“I’m your mother. You are a teenager. I have a say in these things so long as you’re under my roof.”

Not one more word, Desiree told herself. She grabbed the cold doorknob.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

It was a dirty trap. Desiree almost didn’t twist the knob. Tricking her into an apologetic reply would be like throwing a lasso around her waist. Every extra word meant another tug. Mom would keep her home that way, shouting until Desiree was too exhausted to go anywhere. If she was going, it had to be now.

No matter how hurt Mom pretended to be.

She twisted the knob and whipped the door open. Her bike awaited by the mailbox at the end of the gravel driveway where she’d left it. Mom shouted something about how she was never supposed to do this alone, but the wind snatched the exact words away. Desiree walked her bike onto Magnolia Court and made a right at the maple trees that bordered the yard.

Good as gone.

Her mother never hit her. She criticized Desiree for dressing how she did, but never raised a hand over it. She seemed to think that qualified her for sainthood.

But over the past year, on days like this, she broke Desiree’s things. At first they were small things. A cassette tape unspooled, a favorite cup smashed on the floor. More often now, she was likely to break a treasured painting to pieces or throw a sketchbook in the mud.

And on days like this, Desiree would’ve rather been hit.

She didn’t realize she was crying until she heard the jingle of another bike’s bell. Sierra knew if Desiree’s bike wasn’t at the mailbox, she wouldn’t be at home. She didn’t ask about Desiree’s tear-stained cheeks. They dropped to walking their bikes, slow as Desiree needed. She loved Sierra for that. Once they hit the end of Magnolia Court, they turned onto School Bus Road and hopped back on their bikes. Autumn wind rushed across their faces and slipped cool fingers through Desiree’s hair. Her tearstains faded from windswept cheeks.

Sierra’s curls were bound up in a red bandana, the knot twitching behind her head. She wore the same baggy white shirt and black pants pirate costume as last Halloween. Her night bag and purse bounced at her back, bound to her by cord, as she turned from School Bus Road onto Main Street. “Either you need to get a car or I do.”

Jesse had a car and agreed to meet them at Loveland Way. She wouldn’t go farther north unless that was their destination. Her father had filled her with terror at adding unnecessary miles to what was already an old car.

Main Street was the quickest route across Blackwood, and the busiest. Dormant streetlights hung with plastic bones, dimpled by fake bite marks. Jack-o-lanterns clustered every storefront. Local businesses put up mannequins or cardboard figure effigies of Benny Rose, sometimes in a brown coat, other times covered in bandages and burns, always a pale face with coal black eyes. Down a ways in Blackwood Square, the middle-schoolers were putting together their costume contest with the help of town council members, setting up folding chairs and sweeping leaves off the pavilion. Cardboard bats, ghosts, and Benny Rose faces plastered the wooden walls.

“Remember doing this stuff?” Desiree asked. “Feels like forever ago.”

“We’ve been on these bikes since forever ago.” Sierra had taken to bumming rides since Paul and Jesse got their licenses and access to cars. “I’m not used to this shit anymore.”

“They say you never forget how to ride.”

“Tell it to the cramp in my thigh.” Sierra leaned her chin over the handlebars. The remains of rainbow streamers poked out of their ends. She had cut them off with scissors at the end of sixth grade, like they were such grown-ups already.

“We can always call Paul.”

“If we call Paul, that’ll ruin the surprise.” Sierra started huffing and puffing. “Pedal through the pain, baby.” She passed Desiree by a few feet.

Desiree didn’t see the need to rush. They left Main Street and rolled onto Loveland Way. Jesse would find them soon.

Eastwater Park stretched to the left, its lawn covered in red and brown leaves. To the right, a row of small houses lined Loveland Way, where a herd of trick-or-treaters marched down the sidewalk. The leader was a Bride of Frankenstein, maybe eight years old, the only one trying to be scary. The others were smaller. They dressed as baseball players, dancers, and Star Wars characters. Urging them on from behind was an adult. A Freddy Krueger claw poked from his right sleeve, but no costume, make-up, or mask. Maybe his wife told him that would be too scary for little kids. Or maybe this was his version of Benny Rose. The Cannibal King ate not only people, but stories that didn’t belong to him.

Desiree remembered being that young right after moving to Blackwood when she would take off with Sierra and girls long forgotten, and later with Jesse once she befriended them. Back then even Desiree’s mother would’ve scoffed at chaperoning them on Halloween. Her father never made a fuss about it either while he still lived in Blackwood.

Nowadays, when he called from Danby, he always asked if she was being careful. The words “stranger danger” had seeped into Blackwood. She’d heard that phrase on the news before, but it was a city thing, nothing to do with their little town. In the past couple years, it had become the law of the land here, too. Benny Rose’s infamy had been co-opted by neighborhood watch groups. A monster doesn’t have to look like a monster to be one, the paper flyers said. He could be anybody.

A car horn tooted behind the bikes and then rode alongside them. Jesse beckoned from her rusted red sedan—the only thing she could afford. “Going my way?”

“Thank Christ.” Sierra glared at her, sweat sliding between her eyes. “Can’t you come get us for once?”

“Can you pass a driver’s test?”

“Stop the damn car and let us in.”

Jesse braked in the middle of Loveland and helped the girls stuff their bikes into the meager trunk, their front wheels jutting out its open mouth and the lid bound by a bungee cord. It would squeak around the bikes once the car got moving. Desiree hoped not to need hers anymore, but Blackwood had few jobs to go around unless you knew someone.

They piled into Jesse’s car, Sierra calling shotgun. “Are you Benny Rose?”

Jesse wore a brown raincoat that opened over a blue sweater and jeans. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”

Desiree leaned from the back seat. “Sierra, don’t judge. You’re wearing last year’s pirate costume.”

“It was last minute.” Sierra patted the fluffy white shirt. “And you’re not even wearing a costume.”

“Sure I am. I’m=[]that guy from the beginning of Friday the 13th: Part V.”

The girls were quiet, and then Sierra asked, “The guy who died in the outhouse?”

Desiree had forgotten that. They had only seen the movie once when someone at last year’s Halloween party put on the LaserDisc. She could’ve named any rebellious figure in a leather jacket, but her brain had settled for that one. She started laughing and the others joined her. Mom was forgotten.

Loveland curled around Eastwater Park and straightened out where a slender wooden bridge crossed Lemon Fair River. The surface churned just beneath the wood, the river having swelled since autumn began thanks to a stormy early October.

Jesse’s car thumped over the bridge’s wooden planks. Last Halloween, they had ridden their bikes downriver to the party on Monterrey Court. They were three pirates then, Sierra and Desiree dressed the same as Sierra now, and Jesse wearing a blue captain’s coat with a fake parrot glued to the shoulder. They hadn’t been invited and kicked themselves out before anyone noticed, but it was a fun night until later. Gray skies hung overhead now, still a ways until evening, but in the dark, it was hard to tell where the water’s noise was coming from. Even a longtime Blackwood girl could get lost.

Sierra began to sing Jessie’s Girl as they reached the far side of the bridge, which made Jesse giggle. Desiree caught her smile in the rearview mirror. It was past time to put on her good mood. She would need it here.

Pontiac Drive slipped between Lemon Fair River and rows of pine trees that pretended at being a forest. A little north of the bridge, gray-green hedges half-hid a wide oaken plaque embossed with enormous golden lettering. It read, Glade Street Retirement Community, and then in smaller letters, est. 1963.

The car turned left at the sign and started up a paved slope that breached the rows of pine trees. Glade Street curved. At first Desiree could only see a couple small houses to either side surrounded by green, but after coming around the bend, the rest of the neighborhood opened.

It was too round to call a dead-end, but wider than any cul-de-sac she had seen before. If there was another proper word for the street’s shape, she didn’t know it. Most of the two-tier colonial houses surrounded this paved circle, facing each other and the featureless, dormant fountain between them. Pine needles floated in its stagnant water.

Desiree hadn’t come as far as Gabrielle’s house a year ago. She didn’t think her friends had ever come here at all. In the light and at the center of it, she felt old age breathing from all sides, draining her. People died faster in places like this. No kids around, the trees cutting them off from the world, Desiree pictured an outdoor crypt.

“This place bums me out,” Sierra said.

Jesse hugged the car to the right-side curb and worked counter-clockwise toward Gabrielle’s house: 13 Glade Street. “It just needs some love.”

“Its personality needs a colonoscopy. We’ll be doing new girl a favor, scaring her. No wonder she didn’t know Halloween is Blackwood’s thing.”

Not one porch was decorated for Halloween. Not even a jack-o-lantern. The glut of pine trees that surrounded the neighborhood in green felt out of season. Glade Street had no autumn leaves to rake.

The houses were stark, near featureless, and cut from common cloth. Each was painted canary yellow or sky blue, the shingles reddish-brown or blue-black. Green, trimmed lawns hid behind white fences that pointed up like mean under bites. The fences hugged the fronts and sides of their houses to keep them from the sidewalk and each other. All driveways were empty except two houses up from Gabrielle’s, where a gray-haired, stiff-shouldered man squatted with a plastic red jug, gassing up his push lawnmower.

Gabrielle’s house had the only driveway with a bicycle outside the shuttered garage. Desiree wouldn’t put it past the neighbors to complain over the eyesore. No fun allowed. Jesse parked in the driveway just past the white fence and they carried their bags up the stone walkway. Sierra knocked on the front door.

The lawnmower’s rumble dragged across Desiree’s nerves. She glanced over her shoulder at the man down the cul-de-sac as he steered the mower toward the lawn for one last trim before winter. Was he looking at them out of the corner of his eye? She must have imagined it. He couldn’t be the same man from last Halloween.

But she felt cold anyway.

The front door creaked open and Desiree turned to Gabrielle’s beaming face.

She coughed out a laugh. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. I mean, welcome! Happy Halloween.”

Sierra put on a grin, hugged Gabrielle, and asked to come in. Jesse smiled sheepishly and followed.

Gabrielle leaned toward Desiree. “What’s wrong? Do you need water?”

Without looking back, Desiree cocked her head over one shoulder. “Who is that?”

Gabrielle craned to one side. “That’s the HOA guy, Arthur Donovan. His wife is out of town with Grandma.” She leaned past Desiree, swung her arm overhead, and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Hi, Mr. Donovan!”

Why did she do that? Desiree looked over and offered a pursed smile. Arthur Donovan probably hadn’t heard Gabrielle, but he saw her arm, lifted a hand in a half-hearted return wave, and went back to mowing.

Not Wallace Shaw then. Desiree’s nerves tried to settle as she followed Gabrielle inside.

The door opened on the foyer, where ahead climbed a stairway. A shut door on the left probably led to the garage, and a narrow hall stretched past the stairs to a dark kitchen. To the right, the living room opened where Sierra and Jesse looked for a place to drop their bags. Gray sunlight peeked through a gap in the picture window curtains and slanted across their bodies. The furniture had been pushed to the walls. A small Panasonic television haunted one far corner and the door to a half-bath hung open at the other.

The house smelled musty, like old people. Desiree wasn’t surprised.

“I figured we’d set up in the living room,” Gabrielle said, stepping toward Sierra. “There’s space for sleeping bags, or someone can use the couch if they want. Grandma’s chair reclines, but it’s kind of worn. I got popcorn. We can order pizza. You can put your coats anywhere.”

Jesse slipped off her brown raincoat and draped it over the sofa.

Desiree tightened her jacket. “Thanks, but it’s chilly.”

Gabrielle looked alarmed. “Oh, I can turn on the fireplace if we move the couch.”

Sierra giggled. “You’re way too high-strung, Gabs. There’s no parents, no trick-or-treaters. Just be cool. Deep breaths.”

Gabrielle sucked in air and then blew it out. Jesse patted her arm.

Desiree approached the picture window and pressed the curtains open. Each house could see the others across the cul-de-sac, but other picture windows were already smothered in closed curtains. Sparse lampposts dotted the sidewalk, one every two or three houses. Stronger light would’ve disturbed the elderly residents, Desiree supposed. Arthur Donovan’s yard was empty.

At the circle’s opening, Glade Street curled around the pines from where the girls had come. That was where Paul would probably wait long past dark.

Sierra’s hand clapped Desiree’s back and made her jump. “You’re high-strung, too. What’s up with you?”

Desiree looked over her shoulder, where Gabrielle was leading Jesse to the kitchen. “You still want this?”

Sierra screwed up her face. “Of course I do. Where’s your bite?”

Desiree gnashed her teeth and grinned.

“There’s my girl. When this over, we might be friends. But she’ll have to earn it first.”

Four: And Now, the Weather

Black clouds loomed over Paul Boyle as he drove his yellow ‘83 Toyota Corolla along Loveland Way. He wouldn’t have noticed had Adrian Olsen not pointed them out. Now, he couldn’t unsee them. The boys had been having a good time. They had a costume and a plan, WBWR was taking a break from Whitney Houston to pound out some Bruce Springsteen, and Paul was going to see Sierra.

And now there might be a storm.

A little rain wouldn’t hurt anyone. A lot would crash the festivities at Blackwood Square, send the kids home early, his parents, too. They were volunteering at the festivities this year. No clear skies meant no festivities, which meant no reason to stay out. Tired from volunteering, they wouldn’t have noticed his breaking curfew tonight, but if they came home early, he’d be in trouble later.

And then there was the beer he’d stolen. He and Adrian each had one in their hands.

An empty can rolled on the floor between Adrian’s shoes. “Should we head back?”

Paul took a sip. “Don’t pussy out on me.”

“Me? I’m not the one who’s pussy-whipped by a junior. Only reason we’re out here is ‘cause Sierra keeps your nuts in a box of Cracker Jacks.”

“You don’t think we’ll have fun spooking a few girls at a slumber party?”

“It’s fun for you. If we’re stuck out there when Sierra’s done being scared, she’ll want to spend the night snuggling up with you. What do I get?”

“It’s four girls. Two for me, two for you.” Paul elbowed Adrian’s arm.

“Pretty sure the Fonzie impersonator ain’t up for that.”

“Then Sierra gets me and Fonzie while you snuggle up with Jesse and the new girl, and everybody gets a Happy Halloween.”

Adrian turned to the road, grinning. “This new girl’s never heard of Benny Rose?”

Paul shrugged. “They don’t have him in other towns.” The car turned right at the bridge and rumbled across.

Adrian glanced out the passenger window. “River’s looking mean.”

Paul tried not to look but couldn’t help it. Lemon Fair River churned away from him, its surface white and frothy.

“Might already be raining up north. Maybe this isn’t such a smart idea.”

Paul stopped the car at the edge of the bridge. “I’m trying to have fun with you, man, maybe even get you laid tonight, but you want out? Then go.”

Adrian stared at him. He was a big guy, bigger than Paul, liked his football just the same, but he had limits. If there was one kind of bullshit Paul could not stand, it was small town bullshit. Never living anywhere besides Blackwood seemed to weaken the nerves. He moved from Jersey when he was ten and right away he could tell the people here were cowards. Even the ones he liked.

Cautious Man faded from the radio and a nasally voice filled the car. “And now, Tyler Cavanaugh with the weather.”

“This is going to be one atmospheric Halloween, kiddies. We’re talking thunderstorms up and down the east coast. The good news? For us, it’s all noise. We should stay dry on our side of Vermont and have a beautiful if tempestuous Halloween in Blackwood. So if you hear howling in the trees, that’s not Benny Rose coming to get you. It’s only the wind.”

The mention of Blackwood’s boogeyman felt like a blessing. I Wanna Dance with Somebody popped on the radio next, and for once, Paul didn’t mind.

He smirked at Adrian. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

Adrian stared a moment longer and then clapped the dashboard. “Let’s roll out then. How long do we have to wait?”

“A couple hours. Depends on Sierra.” The car continued over the bridge, up Pontiac Drive, and onto Glade Street.

Adrian finished his second beer.

“Slow down. We’ll need a place to piss.”

Adrian waved at the pine trees crawling past the windows. “Nature’s bounty surrounds us.” They snickered.

The car came to rest where Glade Street opened. Paul thought he saw someone peek from behind the curtains at the nearest house, but far as anyone here knew, he and Adrian weren’t doing anything wrong. He forgot about it when he cracked open another beer.

—

Tyler Cavanaugh has been WBWR’s weatherman and nighttime disc jockey for thirteen years. His weather predictions are close to true more often than not, and he has meteorological reasons to believe everything he says.

But this Halloween night, he is dead wrong. The cold front will shift inland, the storm will slam across the Appalachians, and no one will know how bad it is until Blackwood is already drowned in thunder and rain.

Five: Ghost Stories

The sleepover had been uneventful so far. Gabrielle ordered pizza and made popcorn on the stovetop while Channel 11 played monster movies. Thunder rumbled while she and Sierra were watching something with zombies in it. Then a black and white movie about giant ants replaced the zombies. Each time Gabrielle seemed ready to drift from the TV, Sierra egged her back, priming her for the big scare later.

Desiree hovered at the kitchen’s edge, polishing off one last slice of pepperoni pizza. Jesse paced between counters behind her, stirring a coffee mug full of Pepsi like it was a glass of rum. Ice clinked and thunder growled, closer.

“It’s not a big deal,” Desiree said. She wasn’t sure whom she was talking to.

Jesse gulped her Pepsi and placed the cup on the table.

“We’re grown now,” Desiree went on. “This is what we do, right? Give each other a hard time, pull pranks. Gabrielle said it herself. It’s a Blackwood rite of passage. This is how she becomes one of us.” Desiree considered her pizza slice. “I’m never having kids.”

“Why not?” Jesse asked.

“Where do I start?”

Jesse smirked. “It’s okay. My aunt and her friend don’t have kids, either.”

Desiree offered a bright-eyed smirk and then took it away. “Having kids changes you. Giving birth, adoption, it doesn’t matter. If they’re with you, you’re a parent, and you don’t stay the same. And if I’m the reason my mom is the way she is? I don’t want to turn out like her.”

“I don’t think you have to. Maybe you don’t hate your mother. Maybe you just hate the way she makes you feel.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Donahue. Are you going into television or do you want to be a mom after high school?”

Jesse shrugged. “I mean, I want to get married. Kids, I guess? But I’ll never make them miserable with school sports and things like that. Afternoons are for cartoons, books, and potato chips. They’ll be the laziest little brats in the world.”

That didn’t sound so bad. Desiree put one arm around Jesse’s hip and hugged her side.

Sierra tapped a flashlight on the kitchen doorframe, snapping them to attention. “You two ready?”

Desiree wasn’t, but she finished her pizza slice and followed Sierra to the living room. Jesse trailed after them.

Sierra started flicking off lights. “Time to pay the piper. It’s Halloween, babies.”

Giant ants made whoop-whoop-whoop noises from the TV. “It’s only Halloween until midnight,” Gabrielle said, shutting it off.

“Not in Blackwood. Witches ride all the way to dawn.”

Jesse giggled. “First star to the right, and then straight on ‘til morning.” Sierra gave her the stink eye.

Desiree looked out the picture window—soft, near silent rain fell across Glade Street—haunted by her reflection. She shut the curtains against even the frail light of the sidewalk lampposts and darkness covered the living room.

Sierra switched on the flashlight, sat with it against her black pirate pants, and gathered the girls into a circle on the floor. “It’s not a real Halloween sleepover without Benny Rose stories. Not a real Halloween at all.”

“Who’s Benny Rose?” Gabrielle asked. Desiree envied her ignorance.

“What a weird question in Blackwood,” Jesse mused.

“Who’s Benny Rose, huh?” Sierra tapped the flashlight’s head against the carpet. “Just who is Benny Rose? They say this used to be an ordinary town. Some still think it is. They’re not scared of the Blackwood Devil.” Her voice flattened. “Not like they should be. Not like they were when he was their neighbor.”

Sudden thunder made all the girls jump. Sierra had to be grinning in her head, but she kept a straight face in front of Gabrielle. Rain drummed the roof and rattled the gutters.

Sierra drew the flashlight under her chin, round cheeks casting deep shadows around her eyes. “Back in the fifties, Blackwood wasn’t such a nice place to live. Kids went missing. Their bodies would turn up weeks, sometimes months later with chunks of flesh chomped off, their exposed bones gnawed. The police and newspaper started getting notes, all the letters cut out of magazines and pasted onto paper. It was the killer telling how he ate his victims. Grilled, baked, chopped in a stew, but most of the time, he said he ate the kids raw. And every note was signed, the Cannibal King.

“This went on for months. Nobody knows how many victims, not even today. They only know how many were found, and his letters hinted there were many, many more. Well, having sent a bunch of notes, it was only a matter of time before he got sloppy and left fingerprints for the police to check. They found the Cannibal King. His name was Benny Rose, and he worked in the morgue of Blackwood Mercy Hospital. You’d think he’d have enough to eat down there, but dead people couldn’t entice the appetite of Benny Rose. He liked to eat them alive. Have you seen the hospital, Gabs?”

Desiree felt Gabrielle’s hair swoosh back and forth from her shaking head.

Sierra must have seen. “That’s because it’s gone. When Benny heard the cops were in the hospital, coming to arrest him, he lit up an oxygen tank, and the explosion set the hospital on fire. There was no getting out, but he decided if he had to die, he wasn’t dying alone. Over forty people were lost when the blaze brought the hospital crashing down on their heads. Afterward, combing the rubble, firemen found a severed hand that didn’t belong to any of the other bodies. The fingerprints matched the ones from the notes—Benny Rose’s left hand. They figured the rest of him was burned or crushed in the rubble. Blackwood PD said the case was closed and everyone tried to move on.

“But some people still see him. Now he’s got a mean meat hook sticking out of his left wrist. He guts people in the front and then hangs them up by the spine. Kids still go missing to this day. They say we never find the pieces anymore because Benny got smarter. He doesn’t let anything go to waste. He eats everything—meat, bones, and soul.”

Thunder rang again, as if it had been waiting for Sierra to finish. She let the living room fill with the percussion of light rain.

Jesse swallowed. “That wasn’t scary.”

Sierra’s eyes burned over the flashlight.

“I mean, it’s scary the first time, but we’ve all heard that one a hundred times.”

Desiree bit her cheeks not to laugh. It had been one of the most typical stories. Sometimes Benny was a janitor or a doctor, sometimes he was a cop or an orderly. Other stories were wilder, where he stalked the streets like a vampire. Others said he never ate anybody, that he made up the cannibal gig to hide his selling kids’ organs on the black market. If the teller made it gory enough, it would stick.

Doubtful he ever did those things. Desiree’s mother said the whole incident was blown out of proportion, that far as she knew someone named Benny had been suspected of killing five kids a long time ago and died before anyone found out. That maybe Blackwood would be better off if everyone minded their own business. Five kids, hardly notable enough to earn the monikers of Blackwood Devil and Cannibal King.

Mom didn’t understand. Blackwood was never going to be better than a small town. It would cling to what little history it had until the end.

Faint light prodded the edge of the room. Sierra was at the curtain, looking out at the thickening rain. “What’s wrong?” Desiree asked.

“Thought I heard something.”

“Oh, hardy-har,” Gabrielle said, and then laughed.

Sierra didn’t laugh, but didn’t antagonize either. She only glanced at Desiree and threw up impatient hands. Paul wasn’t here or wasn’t ready, maybe hadn’t seen Sierra’s signal. She drifted back to the circle and passed the flashlight to Jesse. “Your turn.”

“Oh, I’m not good at telling them,” she said.

“You sure love listening to them, freeloader.”

“I always forget something important and have to go back. Mine are never scary.”

Sierra snatched the flashlight and held it across the circle. “Desi, please, save this slumber party. You know some good ones.”

Desiree’s hand closed around Sierra’s fingers and the flashlight. She could take it and tell any of the old stories she had stashed away. They were all new to Gabrielle anyway.

But another story wanted out. It was a spider in her mouth, its legs creeping past her lips. She could crunch it in her teeth, swallow it, but it was going to come back again someday. Best to let it out, even if it scared her worse than it would scare her friends.

She drew the flashlight to her chest. “I have one in mind. And it’s special because it really happened to me.”

Jesse snickered. “Bologna.”

Sierra scoffed. “We’re by ourselves, nerd. You can say bullshit.”

“It’s not bologna or bullshit.” Desiree leaned over the flashlight. She hoped it glowed in her teeth. “Why do you think my mom’s been so bad this year?”

“Because she’s a cranky bitch.”

“Why do you think she flipped out last Halloween? This Halloween?” The girls were quiet. “I went somewhere she told me never to go. I saw Benny Rose one year ago, on this very night, in this very neighborhood.”

Gabrielle stiffened. Jesse pressed her shoes together and curled her legs against her chest.

“We were with you that whole night,” Sierra said.

“Not the whole night. Remember, we split off since you were sleeping over at Jesse’s. I had to bike home by myself.”

“And you came here?”

“Not because I wanted to. It was so dark that night, I didn’t know I’d turned onto Pontiac. The river was running, but I couldn’t even tell which side I was on, so of course I couldn’t see the Glade Street sign. You know how it is. The dark plays tricks, especially on Halloween.”

Sierra nodded, the flashlight reflecting in her eyes. Her pirate costume was scarcely visible in the living room, a ghostly reminder of their outfits that night.

“So I was riding my bike uphill, and it didn’t take me long to realize I’d gone the wrong way. I didn’t turn right around though. Maybe I was still confused, and no one’s house lights were on. It was late. You know these old people, going to bed early. The only lights were those weak lamps. That’s when I saw a man in the dark with me.”

Jesse curled up tighter.

“What did he look like?” Gabrielle asked.

“That’s what threw me at first. He was naked and even whiter than you. I thought he was some old guy with a mental problem who wandered out of his house with no clothes on. And that got me a little on edge anyway. You never know what they’re going to do, do you?”

Sierra’s mouth lost its smirk.

“But then he turned to me.” The menace drifted out of Desiree’s voice. She was there again, not far from the mouth of the cul-de-sac, exactly a year ago and moments before she spotted the naked man.

The neighborhood had no definition in the dark. The few lampposts offered pale, frail light, and the houses were little more than bulky suggestions beyond their manicured lawns and stern fences. Desiree couldn’t name the feeling in the air. She only knew there was a welcoming presence and a gut feeling that she did not want to be welcomed here.

Her bike stopped. One foot leaned past the pedal and onto the pavement, and it might as well have stepped into a bear trap. She froze in the middle of Glade Street, as if her stillness might keep the neighborhood from knowing she was there. She was afraid to turn around. There might be something behind her. If she was lucky, she would only find one of the residents, who might tell her indignantly that she wasn’t welcome here after all.

But the welcoming atmosphere wouldn’t leave. It insisted.

She couldn’t be sure whether she actually saw something ahead of her in the dark or whether her brain fed her imagination enough to get her moving. She often imagined things. Later, the encounter did not seem real.

The man stepped from between two houses, so pale she at first mistook him for a tall stretch of white fencing, and crept to the edge of the grass. Each step was graceful and deliberate, and his black eyes reflected the nearest lamppost. She thought that maybe he didn’t see her, that her hair, skin, and jacket blended enough with the night that she was a barely visible wraith in the street. Then she remembered her pirate costume’s white shirt and the orange-yellow reflectors that lit her bike under car headlights.

Those eyes could see her. They were watching.

“Desi?”

Thunder crashed, shaking Desiree out of memory. She was in Gabrielle’s house on a different Halloween with three anxious girls who sat around her.

Sierra waved a hand, interrupting the flashlight beam. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Of course.” Desiree forced a laugh. “Scared me so much, I kind of sank into it. I got quiet back then, too. I didn’t scream, but only because I couldn’t, like my lungs were screaming but it wouldn’t come up my throat. The whole time he walked toward me, I was frozen stiff, like he was turning me to stone.

“Then he smiled at me. That’s when my body came alive again and I swung around and pedaled the hell out of there. Didn’t look back. If I looked back and saw him chasing me, I don’t know what I’d have done. If I fell or froze again, he might’ve had me. Funny thing is, I wasn’t lost when I got back to Pontiac. I have no idea how I ended up there after we split. But I knew the way home and went as fast as I could. That was the last I saw of him.”

Desiree lowered the flashlight. The room took on an eerie chill.

Jesse shivered. “I’m glad you told one. That was way better than what I would’ve told.”

“And you think that was Benny Rose?” Gabrielle asked.

“Mom said it was one of the old people, Wallace Shaw, who had dementia. But I don’t believe her. Yeah, that was Benny Rose. And if I hadn’t pedaled like crazy to get out, I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you three about it.”

Desiree kept to herself that her mother was worried, that she had shouted Desiree to tears before she could explain. She promised she wouldn’t break curfew again, but not because of her tears. It was the man who watched her on Glade Street. Mom could say his name was Wallace Shaw, but that wasn’t the name Desiree thought when she remembered the pale figure in the dark.

The name she thought was Benny Rose. It had been only natural to tell the story tonight.

Sierra was at the window again. She returned to the circle in a huff.

“You can stop pretending there’s something out there,” Gabrielle said. “I’m plenty spooked, I promise. Especially since there’s no Wallace Shaw here.”

Desiree didn’t like that. “Are you messing with me?”

“Grandma introduced me to everyone when I moved in. There’s no one with that name.”

“Maybe he died,” Jesse said, sounding hopeful. “Or, you know, moved away.”

Both were possible. Desiree didn’t want the flashlight anymore and passed it across the circle.

Sierra slipped it to Gabrielle. “Okay, you want to creep everyone out? You tell one.”

Gabrielle accepted the flashlight, less like she wanted it, more like she was predisposed to take things that were handed to her. “Is every ghost story in Blackwood about Benny Rose? This has to be the least haunted town in the world if there’s only one ghost.”

“When I was little, I didn’t even know there could be other ghosts,” Jesse said. “It’s a local quirk. We make them up all the time.”

Or stole them. Benny had been applied to every urban legend Blackwood kids could get their hands on. The couple on lovers’ lane who hear of an escaped mental patient on the radio, the babysitter who gets a call from inside the house, the murderous hitchhiker. Only in Blackwood, the killer was always Benny Rose.

Gabrielle looked thoughtfully at the flashlight. “We didn’t have Benny Rose in New York.”

“Then any scary story.” Sierra nudged her knee. “Come on, you got to know at least one ghost story.”

“I guess I know one. Kind of like Desiree’s though, it happened to me.”

Sierra propped her chin on her palm, enthralled. Desiree and Jesse waited.

Gabrielle didn’t set the flashlight under her jaw. Its beam aimed off to one side, brightening one half of her face and leaving the other in shadow. “It was on a stormy night like this. A couple and their kid were on the Jersey Turnpike, and everyone was driving way, way too fast. They couldn’t slow down, that was too dangerous with all the traffic, so they kept speeding. And the rain got worse. But the thing about rain is—”

Thunder rumbled. The storm unleashed a shower of tiny hammers, drowning the room in its harsh drumming song.

“Rain sounds one way when you’re outside, but another from the inside. Even in a car. Everything got still and heavy, like it was realer than it had ever been. And somehow, the kid knew what was going to happen. She had a bad feeling seconds before the tires skidded and the car flipped off-road. When a rescue unit came, they found the couple dead, but their kid was still alive. Her relatives told her it would be okay, that her mom and dad were in a better place. She thought she’d never see them again.

“But she was wrong. Their ghosts came to her at night and asked why she didn’t say anything before the accident. She knew what was going to happen, so why didn’t she tell them? And every night she saw them, it felt like she was the one who was supposed to die. The dad used to say that if a mother bear is starving she’ll eat her cub, because if she dies, the cub will die anyway, but if she lives, she can always have another cub. That’s how it was for the girl. If her parents had lived, they could’ve had another kid, but she lived and can’t have more parents. Now there’s just her and the ghosts.”

Gabrielle lowered the flashlight and handed it back to Sierra, who cradled it in her lap. Desiree couldn’t see anything, but thought she heard Jesse swallow. The rain was too loud to be sure.

“Sorry,” Gabrielle said. “That wasn’t the right kind of ghost story.”

The flashlight slid toward Jesse. “Your turn,” Sierra said, her voice shaky.

“I need to use the restroom, but don’t start without me.” Gabrielle left the circle and opened the door in the living room’s corner. The light went on after it shut, leaving a narrow yellow line beneath.

Desiree reclined across the floor. This was a bad idea, she realized, but didn’t want to be the one to say it. Who then? Jesse followed Sierra’s lead, and sad story or not, Sierra had an axe to grind. A petty, jealous axe. This was Desiree’s idea; she had to rein it in. If Sierra wouldn’t call it off, somehow, Desiree would have to spoil it. At the least she would give Sierra the chance after Jesse’s turn.

But then, any Benny Rose ghost story would seem trite after Gabrielle’s honest reflection. Sierra didn’t understand. In too many ways, she was still a kid. If Jesse passed the buck again, and Paul still didn’t show up, Sierra would try one-upping Desiree. Her next story wouldn’t just take place on this street, but in this house. The walls would be painted black, a common meeting spot for the servants of the Blackwood Devil. Hadn’t they heard about Satanists in the news? Not in Blackwood. Here, Benny Rose took the crown from even the King of Hell. Where Gabrielle’s stairs now climbed, there once towered a great gray mountain of fleshless scalps and hollow sockets. Decayed, each piece was the small skull of a child. A pale, naked fiend had piled them on top of each other, piled them until they climbed past the blackened ceiling, the house itself dwarfed by this morbid geography.

More than five skulls. Too many skulls to count.

And atop the mountain, there sat the Cannibal King himself. He was too high up to make out his features, but his black eyes broke up his white shape and shined down on Desiree. He was not a ghost, but alive. He had to be. If he was dead, then there was no afterlife defined by justice. What did it say about the universe if a man like him ever found happiness?

“Desiree?”

The flashlight lit her face. She knocked it away and struggled off the floor.

“Did you really zonk out twice?” Sierra asked. Jesse snickered beside her.

Desiree hadn’t meant to. “I was bored imagining the next lame story you’ll tell.”

“Whatever, Bride of Benny Rose.”

Desiree glanced at the bathroom, still occupied. Paul wasn’t here yet. She lowered her voice and leaned toward Sierra. “Call it off.”

Sierra sneered. “Will you ever stop being so fucking contrary? You want to be like this with everyone else, I get it, but do you have to do it with us?”

“I set this up for you, princess. Please.”

Sierra waved at the curtains. “I can’t even call it on. Paul hasn’t flashed his headlights. That was his side of the signal.”

“So there was nothing out there.”

“His car. I was trying to keep Gabrielle creeped out, but like you said, it’ll get lame. I can’t keep this up forever.”

Desiree listened to thunder pretend it could take the neighborhood apart. Lightning flickered behind the curtains. They would think up something else to scratch Sierra’s itch, but not tonight. This was for the best.

But why would Paul park his car out there and not show up?

Gabrielle emerged from the bathroom, casting brief light across the living room before she snuffed it out. “Is it still Jesse’s turn?”

“Maybe that’s enough for tonight,” Jesse said.

Something scraped the window. A tree branch? No, the pines were nowhere close to the picture window. Sierra was up first, pushing the curtain aside. Rain muddied their view of Glade Street.

It had better not be Paul. Desiree was too tired for this shit.

Gabrielle sat on the couch close to where Desiree stood. “What is it?”

Sierra shook her head. “It’s coming down so thick, I can’t even see the sidewalk.”

But it could be Paul. “Gabrielle, listen,” Desiree said. “When we invited ourselves over, it wasn’t just for telling stories. It was—”

The front door creaked open. A blue flash lit the foyer, broken by a black shadow, and when it died, footsteps stamped up to the living room doorway. Sierra aimed the flashlight.

A broad figure blocked the doorway, his brown coat billowing. A vicious meat hook curled from his left sleeve and gleamed in the flashlight beam. His right hand dragged something dripping and bulky beside him. The light crossed its head.

It was Paul, hanging limp from the figure’s thick fingers. Blood smeared his face and bubbled out of his mouth. “Sierra?” He lifted his head. “Help me.”

They forgot how to scream. Gabrielle’s gasp stuttered into her lungs, and Desiree imagined her widening eyes in the dark. The blood on Paul’s face slithered with rainwater. It was pinker than Desiree thought it should be.

Sierra punched the wall beside the window. “Jesus, Paul.”

He grinned through the watery make-up. “Hey, babe.”

“Is that Adrian?” Sierra hit the wall switch, lighting up the living room.

Adrian pulled the hood off his brown raincoat, his expression smug. In the light, his meat hook was clearly plastic. He let go of Paul, who clambered to his feet and wiped fake blood off his chin. Adrian hadn’t been part of Desiree’s plan. It was supposed to be Paul dressed as Benny Rose, alone and on-time.

“Meatheads,” Jesse hissed, stepping behind Sierra.

Sierra pointed at the boys’ shoes. “You’re getting water all over Gabrielle’s carpet.”

“It wasn’t supposed to storm,” Paul said.

Sierra looked to Gabrielle. “Tell them to get the hell out.”

Gabrielle glanced at the carpet and then the boys, wringing her hands in front of her jeans. “If you could go in the kitchen, Grandma would appreciate it.”

The boys slipped back into the foyer. It hadn’t been fun enough for them to scare the new girl. Paul had wanted to scare Sierra, too. If he’d stuck to the plan, the scare would’ve happened right after Sierra’s story, before Gabrielle brought down the mood. Now Desiree didn’t know if they owed her an apology.

She leaned toward Gabrielle’s face. “Are you okay?”

Gabrielle nodded yes, but was it a lie? Desiree didn’t know her well enough to tell.

Sierra pointed into the dark beyond the foyer. “The kitchen. Now.”

Adrian started toward it. Paul lingered. “It was a joke. Sometimes you got to take one to make one.”

“No, you don’t pull that shit on me unless they clear it first.”

“You don’t pull that shit without warning on a bunch of girls alone in a house at night,” Desiree said. “It matters.”

Adrian hesitated at the edge of the living room’s light and turned around. “You’re not alone now. You got big strong dudes to protect you.”

Desiree rolled her eyes.

Adrian shrugged at her. “Oh, right, Daddy left, so boys suck, huh? Not our fault.”

Desiree supposed she should flinch but didn’t. It was nothing she hadn’t heard before. She wasn’t even sure how to feel about it after Gabrielle’s story.

Sierra stamped her heel. “Get in the kitchen, caveman.”

Adrian stifled a belch. “Hey, ask the new girl if there’s any beer. We ran out.”

“Old ladies don’t drink beer.”

“Tell that to my Great Aunt Harriet.” Adrian backed up toward the kitchen’s darkness. “She used to let me—”

White hands reached out of that darkness and grabbed his shoulders with thin, bony fingers. He pulled against them, but he was clumsy. Half in the light, half in the dark, he teetered on one leg.

A pale face followed the hands like a skull rising from tar. Its mouth opened wide, drinking the darkness, and clamped its teeth onto Adrian’s neck. Hot, thick blood bubbled up from his torn, blistering skin. He shrieked, high-pitched and gurgling. His arms flailed, punching the darkness and dragging the meat hook across something behind him, but it was only plastic and whatever grabbed him was real.

The white face tore the flesh from Adrian’s neck. He dropped the hook with a clack on the tile floor, stopped punching, and groped lazily at the wound. Blood seeped down his hands. The white face hung over the red river as if breathing it in while chewing Adrian’s flesh.

Chewing, and at the same time smiling.

Six: The Cul-De-Sac

Paul scrambled toward the front door, shoes slipping on damp tiles. Sierra and Jesse chased him, screaming their heads off. Desiree tried to scream too, but nothing came out. It was like last Halloween, the sound trapped inside her.

Adrian might have screamed, but he didn’t have a throat anymore. The face that had eaten it now raked its lower teeth up his cheek, ripping away a chunky strip and carving new recesses into his skull. It made no sound but the squishing flesh between its teeth and the splash of blood across the floor. A burning stink filled the air.

Gabrielle shoved Desiree from behind. She hadn’t realized she wasn’t moving, transfixed by the horror show at the kitchen’s edge. Trying to escape brought them closer to those black eyes.

“It’s looking at me,” Desiree whispered, crossing the foyer. Lightning flashed through the kitchen windows and its open back door. Adrian sank in the blue glow and vanished when the girls turned their backs on him.

Gabrielle kept shoving until Desiree was out the front door and then slammed it behind them. Rain splattered their hair and clothes and stung Desiree’s eyes. Her hairdo fell in a soppy mess across her forehead. She made out Sierra on the street with Paul, jogging down the sidewalk. Jesse was far ahead. They were passing her car, but Desiree didn’t know why, and there wasn’t time to stop and figure it out.

Sierra punched Paul’s arm. Her bandana had slipped off, letting the rain pound her hair flat. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded stunned.

“We didn’t plan that!”

“Neither did I.”

“What about Adrian?”

“I don’t know!”

Sierra punched him again. “What the hell do you know?”

Gabrielle’s front door whipped open behind them and banged inside the foyer. Desiree spun around.

A naked, maggot-white man stalked into the rain, where frail lamppost light shined off his wet hide. Desiree saw him clearer than she wanted, even shrouded in the downpour. Hairless skin squeezed his bones, a skeleton with only the barest layer of flesh. A distended gut, like that of a starving man, spilled around pronounced hips. His genitals hung limp underneath.

She hoped he might move like a zombie in the movie Sierra and Gabrielle had been watching, arms extended, his gait shambling and clumsy.

But his steps were deliberate, a pacing predator at the edge of hunting grounds. With his shoulders hunched, he became a cougar ready to pounce. He first sneered at Gabrielle and then he caught Desiree’s gaze and smiled again. This was no mindless zombie. This thing knew exactly what he was doing.

He was familiar. “Benny Rose?”

She couldn’t look away until Gabrielle shoved her again. They ran through the deepening puddle that was once the cul-de-sac, its fountain overflowing.

The white thing followed, not running, but not slow.

They caught up with Sierra. “Where are we going?” Gabrielle asked.

Sierra pointed at Paul’s car at the mouth of the cul-de-sac. Through the downpour, it was more a vague, car-shaped impression that faced them with round glass eyes. Jesse was already at the front passenger’s seat, yanking the door open. Paul ran to the driver’s side and hopped in. Sierra raced to the back, hauled open a door, and waved Desiree and Gabrielle inside before following. Thunder shouted for them to hurry. The doors clapped shut.

Sierra locked the back. “Drive, dammit.”

Paul turned the key.

This was the point in horror movies where the car should stall. Desiree expected it to happen here if stories were coming to life tonight, but the engine growled alive.

Paul switched the headlights on as the bony thing reached the hood. The glare defined every crease of his ghastly pale skin. He looked to either headlight and then started toward the passenger’s side.

“Drive!” Sierra screeched.

Paul floored the gas and pushed forward. The hood’s corner hit the thing that killed Adrian. The figure crumpled on impact, vanished from sight, and the car lurched over it. They made a harsh, slippery turn, and then slid toward the mouth of the cul-de-sac where pine trees braced the narrow street.

Jesse slapped the dashboard, urging the car faster. Paul was laughing like he hadn’t just lost a friend.

Desiree twisted in her seat to look through the back window. Streaking rain washed the glass and the car was heading farther every moment from Glade Street’s lampposts. The world had been swallowed in the storm. Still, when lightning flashed, there was no mistaking what she saw.

Their hunter stood from the flooding pavement. Like they hadn’t run him over.

Seven: Lemon Fair River

The car slipped briskly along Glade Street’s curve toward Pontiac. Trees raced past the windows, their needled branches scraping where rainwater weighed them down. Sierra shouted while Paul drove, his backseat driver. Desiree clawed at her knees and thought about clawing out her eyes, but that wouldn’t change what she’d seen.

“You said Benny Rose?” Gabrielle’s eyes looked no wider than when Desiree approached her on Tuesday at lunch. Wasn’t she scared right now? Or was she always scared?

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Desiree said.

“I thought he wore a big coat and had a hook for a hand.”

Desiree shook her head, not in denial. She used to imagine a man charred everywhere but his face until last Halloween in Glade Street. If that had been Benny then and this was Benny now, he was a white worm grown to the shape of a person.

“He’s whatever the storyteller wants him to be,” she said.

“I want him gone.”

Desiree felt she’d brought this on them by suggesting a Benny Rose-themed prank in the first place. You reap what you sow, Mom sometimes said, but that couldn’t be true, real life didn’t work that way. Still, her poison flowed into Desiree’s brain. Their joke had summoned Benny Rose.

The car jolted to a stop midway down Glade Street’s slope to Pontiac, where the sign reminded readers that the neighborhood had been established in 1963. Pine trees blocked most of the cul-de-sac’s light.

Sierra punched the back of Paul’s seat. “What’s the problem?”

“The water,” he said.

Thunder growled, but it wasn’t alone. Angry water surged past the hood of the car, the headlights shining on a frothing current. Lemon Tree River had overflowed. In the dark, with sheets of rain and pine needles coating the windshield, there was no telling how deep the flood went.

“It’s the elevation,” Jesse said. “The whole neighborhood would be like this otherwise. We’re stuck.”

“We’re not staying here.” Sierra grabbed Paul’s shoulder and made Desiree think of fingers on Adrian. “Drive.”

Paul reversed the car a few feet and then charged into the water. The hood splashed hard against the unwelcoming surface, splattering the windshield. Its wipers swept back and forth, but there was no clearing the surge. Freshwater spray struck the driver’s side windows.

Through the back window, Desiree couldn’t distinguish dark pines from stormy sky. She would have to wait for lightning to tell her if Benny followed.

Paul reversed the car again, as if gearing for a running jump, and then plowed down Glade Street’s dip a second time. The headlights crested a choppy surface. They were making headway.

“It’s too deep,” Jesse said.

“Couldn’t we use your car?” Desiree asked.

“I had the keys when we ran.” Jesse looked down, shamefaced. “But I dropped them outside. They might be on the lawn. I’m sorry.”

“Your car wouldn’t do any better,” Sierra snapped. “Be quiet so I can think.”

Floodwater chopped at the windshield’s edges. Unless the current subsided, they weren’t going to make it down Pontiac Drive, let alone across the bridge to escape Lemon Fair River. The floodwater was rising even now.

Lightning lit the sky. Desiree looked back so fast it made her neck twinge, but she only caught the final blue flicker. Was there something white walking between the trees? She couldn’t be sure.

The car hood leaned slightly south. Paul turned the wheel against it and the tires squealed. South was the way they wanted to go, but it was too early. They hadn’t cleared the pines.

“Now what?” Sierra shook Paul’s shoulder. “Hey, what’s happening?”

He smacked the steering wheel. “What do you think’s happening? It’s flooding.”

“We’re flooding, too,” Gabrielle said, dragging her feet onto the back seat. She was the only one without shoes.

Water pooled on the car floor around their soles. It was only a little now, but there would be a lot of if the car kept pushing.

Something scratched past Desiree’s window. She flinched away. Benny was coming for her. She pressed into Gabrielle, who shoved against Sierra.

“Will you two knock it off?” Sierra shoved them back.

Another scratch at the glass. Lightning flickered silently across a pine branch that had caught on the rear passenger door. It swept past as thunder followed the lightning. Another branch thumped against the trunk, while more brushed past the sides. Desiree knew a tree might have come down, or several branches had been torn off different trunks, but each scratch felt like thin fingers around her.

“We have to get back to land.” It sounded strange, something she might have said as a joke in last year’s pirate costume. The water inside the car was halfway up her shoes.

“How?” Jesse asked. “If the water can pull the car—”

“If we don’t go now, it’s going to pull the car with us in it.”

“But I can’t swim. If we went—” Jesse cut herself off and looked left and right for solutions. When she found none, her trembling hand cracked the car door open. Floodwater rushed across her lap.

“Shut that thing!” Paul shouted, reaching for her.

Past the passenger seat, Desiree couldn’t see whether Jesse hopped into the water or the water tugged her out, but she slipped from the door and let it hang open while water spilled through the car. Sierra shrieked orders. Jesse answered in a choked scream that dug into Desiree’s nerves. She didn’t think about what she was doing, only grabbed her door’s crank and rolled down the window. Rain swept inside.

Gabrielle turned to her. So, her eyes could get wider.

“Are you nuts?” Sierra reached past Gabrielle.

Another lightning bolt cut the sky, but there was no need to look back this time. Movement in the rearview mirror—something white dipping into the floodwater. Then the lightning faded, and there was only Jesse in the current, clinging to the door for dear life.

Desiree slid out the open window. The girls made what are you doing? faces at her, and she beckoned them to follow. Didn’t they get it? The car was doomed, and if the flood pulled them away, they would be lost to the river. It wouldn’t matter that Jesse was the only one who didn’t know how to swim. Everyone would drown.

Desiree mounted the car roof. Wind spat rain in her face and tried to shove her off the car’s slippery hide. Behind its trunk hung a haze of blackness, the world swallowed by Benny Rose. Was he back there? She scooted toward the front windshield. Paul blasted the horn. He was shouting something, but between the windshield wipers, rushing water, and thunder, he might as well have been a mime.

Jesse seemed a hundred miles away, a piece of nighttime that flailed against the current. Desiree slid onto her belly and stretched an arm across the open door. She couldn’t reach. The car roof thumped behind her, taking on the weight of first Gabrielle, then Sierra as they scrambled out the window.

“Hold my legs!” Desiree shouted.

They skidded, Gabrielle almost slipping off the side and into the floodwater with Jesse, but they grabbed onto Desiree’s legs. Paul clambered out his window, a big man fighting through a small hole.

Desiree leaned far over the side of the car, her waist flying free. Thin fingers had her by the ankles, and she thought of Benny Rose. “Jesse, grab on!”

A hand shot from the dark current, found Desiree’s forearm, and held on tight. She began to pull Jesse against the car. Sierra and Gabrielle felt the extra weight and tugged. Paul might have been helping. Desiree couldn’t tell. Her skin was numb with cold.

Together, they hauled Jesse onto the hood and then up the windshield, coughing and sputtering, but alive.

The car lurched, and Desiree skidded toward the passenger side. Soon the flood would float them away. It had places to go and wanted them to come, too.

Desiree waved everyone toward the trunk. Gabrielle understood and slid down the back window, where she hopped into waist-high water. Desiree and Sierra pressed Jesse behind her and then Desiree followed. Paul and Sierra were last. The current dragged again, but they held hands and kept the chain strong as they trudged up Glade Street’s slope. Lightning flickered across the pine trees, turning their black mass into individual standing sentinels.

The chain yanked back where Sierra froze behind the others. Gabrielle looked over her shoulder from the front. “What’s wrong?”

“Watch your step for branches!” Sierra shouted.

Desiree didn’t feel any branches underfoot. Each needle-filled piece of tree floated on the water’s surface. Jesse glanced back, mouth hanging open. Even weakened from her ordeal, she realized at the same time that the branches wouldn’t sink. They pressed harder to reach less-flooded land.

It was too late. Desiree should have realized where the white shape went when it disappeared and didn’t reappear.

Benny was under the car.

His tall, wet shape thrust out of the water behind Sierra, bony body dripping. Desiree screamed a warning, but thunder drowned her out.

Benny’s arms snapped cobra-like at Sierra’s shoulders and yanked her back toward the car. His teeth crunched into her shoulder. Her mouth opened, silenced by thunder and cast red by the car’s taillights. She let go of Paul’s hand and slapped at the fingers on her shoulders and the face that chewed toward her neck.

Paul let go of Desiree, grabbed Sierra’s arms, and tore her away from Benny. There was blood everywhere. Desiree couldn’t see it, couldn’t distinguish it from the water that soaked every inch of her, but she felt it in her bones somehow. This was Sierra, her best friend. This couldn’t be happening.

There was no such thing as Benny Rose.

Paul hauled Sierra out of the water and against his chest, cradled in his muscled arms. “I got you! Don’t be scared!”

Gabrielle tugged, but the chain was split. With only one hand held, Desiree felt lost, moments away from freefalling into the current. Jesse turned her head like she didn’t know what happened to Sierra, why Paul wasn’t with them. Hadn’t she seen the skeleton man?

Desiree pressed ahead and helped Gabrielle tug Jesse out of the water. Slippery hands slid through her fingers, but she squeezed them tighter. They came to the edge of the flood and dragged themselves onto what had become the shore, their sopping clothes weighing them down.

Desiree let go of Jesse and swirled around. There was Gabrielle. Sierra in Paul’s arms. The car, its taillights illuminating nothing, not even the dark trees around them.

Where was Benny?

Paul set Sierra onto what passed for land. Her injury became obvious this close to the neighborhood’s first lampposts. A tear opened her shirt above the right sleeve, where raw, red tissue peeked through blistered skin from shoulder to chest. Blood spread down the once-white fabric.

Desiree reached out and took her hand, the skin tough like it had been left too long in the sun. She needed a doctor, burn cream—where to start? They had nothing to bind the wound. “Paul, she needs to be carried.”

“Just a minute,” Paul said, coughing. His hands were on his knees.

“We can’t stay here!”

He started to stand. Water splashed behind him as white hands clambered up his back, shoulders, onto his face, dragging him backward.

Sierra spun around. “Paul?”

He skidded down the slope into ankle-deep water. If he was screaming, the storm ate his voice. The way he thrashed, he should’ve shouted for help. Why wasn’t he screaming? Why weren’t they helping?

Benny’s legs swung around Paul’s waist and gripped his torso. It made Paul jerk back, putting his face to lamppost light where Benny had touched him, and it was clear then why he was so quiet while all the girls shrieked.

Blisters blotted his forehead, erasing one eyebrow and leaving the socket below as raw as Sierra’s shoulder. Scalded tissue rippled down his cheek, had eaten away part of his nose, and fused his cheeks and lips into one mass of burned flesh. He couldn’t scream. Whatever muffled noises he might have made died under rainfall and the girls’ panic. One wild eye pleaded at them.

Sierra thrust herself past Desiree and reached for him. “Paul!”

Benny twisted Paul’s head around and bit into his skull like an apple. Skin sizzled under a white, wormy tongue. Paul crumpled to hands and knees, where water lapped at his hips and elbows.

Desiree’s arms circled Sierra’s waist to stop her. Jesse grabbed her, too, and they hauled her toward the lampposts. “It’s too late!” Desiree shouted.

Sierra went back to high-pitched screaming. She couldn’t fight the girls, too weak from her injured shoulder. Her feet stumbled, sliding up the narrow stretch of Glade Street. “Someone help Paul!”

Eight: Windows

Gabrielle led them back to the cul-de-sac. The falling rain had to sting Sierra’s wound, but they didn’t have anything to cover her with. She didn’t seem to notice, kept moaning for Paul under her breath.

“We need to get somewhere dry,” Jesse said, dancing from foot to foot like she thought that could shake the water off. “Somewhere he can’t get us. Go through a backyard, the trees?”

“If Pontiac’s flooded, so are the woods where they dip behind the neighborhood,” Desiree said. Glade Street’s development was now a fortress with a treacherous moat. The cul-de-sac wasn’t immune, either. The street seemed alive with raindrops making ripples in pooling water.

“We have to go back,” Sierra murmured. “Paul’s alive.”

Desiree tried to put Paul out of mind, to not picture his limbs and face stripped to bone, being eaten alive.

She looked around. There were houses everywhere. The girls didn’t have to be alone in this. She touched Gabrielle’s arm. “Which neighbors do you know best? Who’s home? We need somewhere to hole up.”

Gabrielle shoved wet hair out of her face. “Grandma’s friends went with her to Atlantic City. We can try Mr. Donovan’s house.” She hugged the sidewalk and started clockwise around the cul-de-sac. Desiree helped Jesse pull Sierra along.

The rain fell harder. If Benny was already here, he was probably watching them from where the winding part of Glade Street met the cul-de-sac. Desiree glanced back every few steps, but saw no one. She was in the light; he was in the dark. He could see everything.

A flicker danced at one side of the cul-de-sac’s mouth. Someone’s picture window curtain had just opened and shut. It was another option if Arthur Donovan didn’t open his door, but it would mean heading back toward the entrance. Benny liked an ambush. It was in his smile, the smile of someone who knew exactly what he was doing and enjoyed it. What had Sierra said this past week when they cooked up tonight’s dumb plan? Cunning. He had a cunning smile.

Gabrielle slipped around Arthur’s white fence, up the driveway, and along the paved walkway to his front door. “Mr. Donovan, are you up?” Her knock was gentle, even polite. “We need help.”

Desiree pressed Sierra into Jesse’s arms and joined Gabrielle at the door. “A little more aggressive.” She rammed her fists against the wood, stinging her knuckles.

Sierra bucked against Jesse and turned toward the mouth of the cul-de-sac. “Paul, come back!”

“Quiet her down.” Desiree raised both fists and pounded, one-two, one-two. Gabrielle mimicked her. No one answered.

“Paul!”

“Shut up,” Jesse snapped. “You’re going to get us killed.”

“But Paul!”

Desiree heard a sharp crack and turned her head. Sierra clutched her shoulder with one hand, her cheek with the other.

Jesse lowered a trembling open palm. “Sorry. That’s what they do in movies.”

Gabrielle gave the door a departing kick and retreated down the walkway. “He has to be asleep.”

You know these old people, Desiree’s story echoed. They go to bed early.

But not all of them. She looked to the house beside the cul-de-sac entrance where an eye of light had opened and closed. The curtain didn’t part again, but only a couple minutes had passed. Whoever had glanced through their picture window would still be awake.

“Someone’s in that house,” she said, pointing.

“I forget whose house that is,” Gabrielle said, but she led the girls down Arthur’s driveway.

Desiree helped guide Sierra. She trembled under Desiree’s touch. Jesse trembled, too.

Benny didn’t have to linger at the narrow part of Glade Street. He could appear from any backyard. Desiree would’ve felt better to see him, at least know where he was.

Halfway down the sidewalk from Arthur’s house toward the cul-de-sac entrance, another curtain slid aside and then shut. Desiree left Sierra to Jesse and rushed ahead of Gabrielle. “Did you see?”

Gabrielle shook her head. Raindrops dribbled off the end of her nose.

“Someone’s awake here.” Desiree darted up the driveway and slapped her palms on the picture window. “We need help!” Tapping the window reminded her of how the rain sounded while they were inside Gabrielle’s house, telling ghost stories. Could these old people distinguish fists from rain?

Gabrielle darted up the slick stone walkway to the front door of 5 Glade Street and slammed her body against the wood. “Help us!” Again, no answer. Gabrielle retreated. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“And I didn’t imagine them.”

“Then I don’t get it.”

Desiree punched the window and turned to the driveway. Sierra’s sobs were loud at the sidewalk, where she and Jesse quivered beneath a lamppost. They looked so lost, Sierra about to collapse, Jesse struggling to hold her. Rainwater seeped into Sierra’s wound.

“Next door.” Desiree led them clockwise again, back in the direction of Arthur’s house. The greater distance they put between themselves and the cul-de-sac entrance, the safer it felt, even if Benny had moved on.

Glade Street’s houses were similar in evening sunlight, but now they lost all definition, their meager differences dissolved by darkness and rain. The girls were trapped in a neighborhood of identical sullen houses.

Across the cul-de-sac, near Gabrielle’s house, an upstairs curtain parted and a head’s silhouette peeked out at the rain. The curtain stayed open longer than that of the picture windows, but still shut after a few seconds. Next door to Gabrielle’s house, another window lit up and then darkened. And another, closer to the entrance. Islands of light flickered in and out of the rain. Everyone wanted a glimpse.

Desiree stalled at 6 Glade Street’s fence. “They’re watching us.”

Gabrielle stared out at the cul-de-sac, where the fountain drooled over the pavement. Another window glowed orange and then darkened. “Why won’t they help?”

Sierra sank against the nearest fence. Her shoulder left a red-brown smear down its white paint. She had been rendered useless, her attitude gone. Jesse tensed her jaw, making it look like her head was about to burst. Gabrielle’s breath hissed in and out and made clouds in the air. Everything they were an hour ago had fallen apart.

Desiree reached for Sierra’s arms and pulled her up. It probably hurt, but she couldn’t squat here. “Gabrielle, take her with us. Jesse, this way.”

Desiree headed up the driveway of 6 Glade Street and took a sharp turn onto the lawn. Her shoes squelched in spongy soil around the corners of the house, toward the lightless backyard. A stunted stoop led to a flimsy-looking door, and if the houses were as similar as they seemed, Desiree expected it led to the kitchen. She pulled open the screeching screen door as Jesse came around the corner, followed by Gabrielle and stumbling Sierra.

Desiree planted the sole of one shoe against the door. Jesse followed her lead. “On three. One. Two—” They kicked.

The back door flew open under the second kick. No wonder Benny had crept into Gabrielle’s house. He might have waited for thunder to cover the noise, but nothing much stood in his way. Desiree ushered Jesse inside, then Sierra and Gabrielle, and followed them. She shut the door behind, but had no idea know how to keep it shut if Benny came looking.

Nine: 6 Glade Street

Their shoes squeaked across kitchen tiles and left puddles from the door through the foyer. Here, the interior differed a little from Gabrielle’s house, the stairs being on the opposite side and a half-bath hanging open by the front door, but the foyer still led to the living room. The place smelled the same. A standing lamp cast furniture shadows through the doorway and across the girls.

Desiree heard an old woman yelp from the living room.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Carmine,” Gabrielle said. “We’ve been banging on doors and no one answered, but we need a place to hide. Our friend’s hurt.”

Desiree stopped behind the others. They wouldn’t enter the living room, as if needing an invitation from Ms. Carmine after breaking into her home.

She was a stocky, grey-haired woman who had been watching TV from a rocking chair. Her eyes darted over cauliflower cheeks. “I don’t understand.” Her voice crooned more like an old lady in a cartoon than a legitimate human being.

“There’s somebody after us,” Desiree said. “We’re staying here.”

Sierra collapsed dripping wet on the living room carpet. Her shirt rubbed a red-brown stain down the living room doorframe. “We have to call nine-one-one. They have to help Paul.” Jesse hauled her off the floor.

Ms. Carmine chewed her lower lip. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t set my hearing aid until right now.” She eased out of her rocking chair and waddled toward the doorway. “I’ll fetch some towels. Come in and warm up.”

Jesse thanked her and drew Sierra toward the couch where she could soak the cushions. Desiree stood aside to let Ms. Carmine pass. A wire dangled from her ear, but Desiree had a feeling it had been set since before they came by. It was simply too much trouble to answer the door. Ms. Carmine, and probably most people on Glade Street, wanted to watch TV and pretend there was no trouble outside their homes.

Jesse began to pace between the picture window and the gas fireplace where a small fire crackled. Its flames made her shadow dance. The TV show was black and white. Desiree didn’t recognize it.

Gabrielle drifted to the lamp’s corner, where a yellow rotary phone sat on an end table. “Do you think she’d mind if I used her phone? I want to call Grandma.”

“Your grandmother can’t help,” Jesse said. “We need an ambulance.”

“And tell them what?” Desiree asked. “That Benny Rose is after us? Oh, thanks, girls. That’s only the hundredth time tonight. It’s pointless.”

“A naked psycho bit our friend. There’s nothing else to tell.” Jesse wasn’t convincing.

Gabrielle already had the phone to her ear and was asking information for a Marriot in New Jersey.

“They have to help Paul,” Sierra muttered.

Jesse stamped her foot, making the fireplace flames twitch. “I’m begging you, stop saying that. I keep seeing his face.” She looked at Desiree. Raindrops clung to her jaw. “What did it do to his face?”

“I think Benny’s touch burned him.” Desiree pointed to Sierra’s shoulder. “Benny burned her, too.” And chewed chunks of Adrian’s flesh, but Desiree kept that to herself. They had already forgotten him, it seemed. None of them had seen how far Benny ate through the boys. It might have gotten worse.

“Paul.”

Desiree sat on the couch beside Sierra, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her head into a hug. Wet hair slithered across Desiree’s shirt, but it didn’t matter.

“We have to do something about that bite,” Jesse said. “Is she going to be like him? A zombie or something like that?

Silly as Jesse sounded, Desiree studied the area around the bite. Blisters rippled, but Sierra’s skin stayed a healthy brown. She wasn’t turning into the bone-white, sickly thing that had bitten her.

Gabrielle hung up the phone. “Grandma’s not answering.” She drifted to the fireplace and knelt on the floor. Firelight flickered in her eyes, wet with tears.

Jesse approached the phone and traced one finger across the holes where numbers stared. She looked to Desiree. “Do you really think it’s Benny Rose?”

Desiree stroked Sierra’s head. The thing outside looked like the man she’d envisioned atop the mountain of skulls. He looked like the man from last Halloween, too. That was no Wallace Shaw with dementia who chewed Adrian’s neck and burned Paul’s face. She had believed that man a year ago could be Benny Rose while telling stories. And now?

She gave Jesse a quick nod. Thunder crackled, the rain hitting louder and then softening as if a window or door had been opened and then promptly shut.

Jesse started pacing again. “Some stories, he’s alive. Others, he’s a ghost.”

“He came through Gabrielle’s back door. That thing has a body.” A body with organs; a stomach filled with burned flesh. “He’s hungry.”

“And he ate them.” Jesse swallowed. “He fucking ate them.”

Desiree couldn’t remember ever hearing Jesse say that word. It felt unnatural.

Sierra’s breath rattled out. “Tell the ambulance where to find Paul.”

Desiree held her tight. “Even if they wanted to help us—hell, even if we told them it’s Benny Rose and they believed us? They’re on the wrong side of the river. This storm’s flooded Blackwood. We’re stuck on Glade.” Sierra began to sob in her arms.

Jesse approached the fireplace and spread her hands over Gabrielle. “Where did he even come from? Stories don’t just pop to life.”

“Maybe we did it.” Desiree turned to Gabrielle, who still watched the fire. “We shouldn’t have tried to scare each other. The prank with Paul was like a summoning, you know, like they talk about in the news? Satanists summon demons. We were asking for trouble. We should’ve had a Halloween with no Benny Rose, no ghosts. Gabrielle shouldn’t have had to tell about her parents.”

Gabrielle blinked, her stony face a gargoyle come to life. Desiree wasn’t sure what to make of her anymore. She wasn’t sure what to make of any of them. This was beyond them. Mom was right. They should never have come to Glade Street, should’ve stayed home with their parents this Halloween.

Except Gabrielle couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Desiree said. “About the prank. And him.”

Gabrielle brushed tears across her forearm, but only smeared more rainwater over her face. “I actually thought there was a reason they died. Like, I already survived the worst thing that’ll happen to me. If I can handle that, I can handle anything. But then tonight happened.”

The rain grew loud again, like they were back outside, and then muffled. Had Ms. Carmine opened a door?

Gabrielle looked to Desiree. “Don’t feel bad. You didn’t do anything wrong. If you all weren’t here, I would’ve been asleep in my room when he—” Her voice died in her throat, and her eyes widened at something behind Desiree.

Ms. Carmine padded from the foyer into the living room doorway. She did not carry towels. Raindrops slid around her wrinkled cheeks. Desiree felt the bad thing happening before she saw it, as if this damp, elderly woman was an omen for what crept out of the storm.

Benny Rose slid naked from the darkness behind Ms. Carmine. Shadows danced up his face, cast by the living room fireplace, and stretched his smile up the sides of his hairless head.

Ms. Carmine glared into Desiree and spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Well, what are you waiting for? Get ‘em, Benny! Get ‘em!”

Ten: The Blackwood Devil

Sierra tore screaming out of Desiree’s arms and scrambled on hands and knees toward the TV corner. Desiree grabbed the couch edge closest to the fireplace and shoved it across the living room as a barrier. She meant to push it all the way to the doorway, but that would’ve been too close to Benny’s gaze. She stumbled back, passing the picture window where Jesse and Gabrielle retreated.

Benny lurched past Ms. Carmine. He hardly looked at her. His foot planted on the central couch cushion and lifted his head toward the ceiling, where his eyes reflected the TV’s black and white light. He was choosing a target.

He wanted Desiree. She could feel it as she backed into the far wall across from the doorway. There were no other exits. Sierra cowered against the TV stand. Gabrielle stood in front of her, expression frantic, and Jesse had her back to the wall.

Benny slid one leg over the back of the couch. He was coming, one step at a time. He didn’t have to hurry when his prey was trapped.

Desiree grabbed Ms. Carmine’s rocking chair to heave at him, but it wouldn’t do any good. Paul had run Benny down with a car and yet he stood seconds later like nothing had touched him.

Lightning flickered in the foyer behind Benny and under the living room curtains.

Desiree hauled the chair past Gabrielle. “Jesse, the curtains!”

Jesse snapped the curtains open, her gaze glued to Benny. Desiree swung the rocking chair against the window. The glass chipped.

In the reflection, Benny hit the carpet and dragged his other leg over the top of the couch, landing him in front of the fireplace. His sagging gut and genitals hung black against the fire.

Desiree swung again. Glass exploded into the rain. Benny’s reflection burst with it, but she felt him approaching, still smiling. If he had breath, it was on her. She had to get away. She scraped the chair across the bottom of the window, clearing away the largest glass teeth, and then swirled around to throw the chair at Benny. It banged against him and hit the floor somewhere; she didn’t watch. She clambered over the windowsill and dropped onto the wet lawn.

Jesse and Gabrielle followed together. Gabrielle fell shrieking into the grass beside Desiree. A chunk of glass had sliced her palm open. Rain washed the blood down her forearm.

The window was empty behind them.

Desiree staggered to her feet and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Sierra!” No one had taken the time to usher her along.

Her hand grasped the sill and pulled the rest of her up. She was a frail, unsteady blotch against the living room’s light.

“Hurry up!” Desiree reached for Sierra’s hand to drag her over.

Benny’s face loomed above her. She didn’t seem to realize it as she slid her knees onto the sill. He didn’t get her attention until he grabbed her from behind and plowed his face into her lower back, where his teeth ripped at skin, muscle, and spine.

Her scream blasted like a siren. Desiree grabbed Sierra’s arm and wouldn’t let go, even with Gabrielle’s hands on her shoulders trying to pull her back. Paul had been hopeless when they abandoned him, but this was different. That wasn’t Paul. This was Sierra.

Desiree tugged her from Benny’s grip. Skin and cloth slid from under his fingers and muscly flesh stretched away from his teeth. Sierra snapped free and fell over the windowsill onto Desiree.

Desiree rolled Sierra over and stood. “Get up. We have to go.”

Sierra couldn’t talk anymore, only screech and sob. Her back was a ragged red cavern where Benny had bitten away tissue and nerve. Desiree tried not to look.

Benny chewed, but didn’t wait, his white fingers already grasping the sill to follow. Glass crunched underneath them. Flesh vanished in a bulge down his narrow throat as he leaned out the window.

“Get up!”

One of Sierra’s legs started to stand and then gave out. Fine, Desiree would drag her. She tucked her hands under Sierra’s arms, hefted her bloody back against drenched chest, and began to drag her across the lawn. Her legs left muddy trails in the grass. She was dead weight, alive but unwieldy.

“Don’t pass out on me. You have to kick. Help me, Sierra.”

No response. She didn’t even cry or scream anymore.

“He’s coming!” Jesse shouted. She and Gabrielle were already at the sidewalk and drifting into the wider circle of the cul-de-sac.

Benny landed in the grass. Sweeping rain washed the blood off his smile. He strode after Sierra’s limp legs, making deliberate, calm steps between their muddy strips.

Dragging her put an ache in Desiree’s back, but she couldn’t stop. “Pedal through the pain,” she said. “Remember, Sierra?” The question wasn’t fair. Sierra said that back on Main Street when Benny Rose was nothing but a silly face in store windows and plastic bones tied to streetlights.

Now the real thing reached for her leg.

“Get off!” Desiree dragged harder, lifted higher, but she couldn’t go any faster than this. She was already lagging.

Benny’s head recoiled in a disgusted sneer. His eyes never leaving Desiree, he swiped at the ground, where his fingers scraped Sierra’s shoe.

“No!”

He swiped again and caught Sierra’s ankle, gave it a tug.

“Let her go!” Desiree yanked Sierra back.

Her ankle slithered out of Benny’s hand and flopped on the grass. His smile was back. He faked grabbing her again, let Desiree shriek. His lips peeled back, and lightning flickered across his teeth where bits of flesh dangled.

Sierra started to slip from Desiree’s grasp. Their limbs were wet again in the merciless rain, and every step sank Desiree’s shoes deeper into the mud. She had almost reached the sidewalk herself when Jesse and Gabrielle rushed to her sides and helped pull Sierra into the street.

Benny followed, but he was in no rush. Behind him, Ms. Carmine watched from her broken window. Her expression was lost in the storm.

Desiree’s limbs sagged. None of the girls were all that strong, but they couldn’t leave Sierra. Tonight had been for her pleasure, and pettiness, and pride.

Benny came up on Sierra’s leg. His fingertips dragged along her shin, protected from his touch by thin costume fabric.

Desiree’s shoes slipped on the flooded pavement and threw her splashing onto her back. Sierra fell across her legs. Jesse and Gabrielle grabbed Desiree around the middle, pulled her out from under, and tried to cushion Sierra’s head. Her eyes were closed, all limbs limp. She hadn’t made a sound since before Benny dropped from Ms. Carmine’s window.

He strode around her side and reached for Jesse, who scrambled back into Gabrielle. Both of them darted away from his touch. He lunged at Desiree next and sent her slipping back in an awkward crabwalk. Her splashing palms scraped rough pavement.

He had isolated Sierra. His smile dared them to come closer. When no one did, he crouched over her and clasped his hands around her head.

Gabrielle scrabbled up from the cul-de-sac puddle. She took Jesse’s hand and reached for Desiree’s.

They were letting this happen. How could they let this happen? Sierra wasn’t even conscious; she couldn’t fight back. Desiree wanted to charge Benny, slam him off Sierra, pick her up strong as Paul, and run like never before. Benny was still smiling as he leaned closer to her head.

Desiree grasped Gabrielle’s bleeding hand and let herself be hauled off the ground. “Don’t look,” Gabrielle squeaked.

They ran. Desiree didn’t know where they were headed. Up the sidewalk, between two houses, out of sight from the lampposts. Somewhere Benny couldn’t see them. Somewhere they couldn’t see what he was doing to Sierra.

Eleven: The Weak One

They darted through—how many backyards? Desiree lost track. Gabrielle let go of hands to open gates and usher Desiree and Jesse through, a mother deer herding fawns away from a wolf. She stopped behind them to close each gate—it seemed pointless. No fence would stop Benny Rose.

Desiree couldn’t say that. She had to keep one hand over her mouth to muffle sobs. There wasn’t time to stop and cry for Sierra any more than for Paul.

But didn’t Sierra deserve the time?

“What do we do?” Jesse whispered. “We should kill it, right? Crack its stupid head open?”

Gabrielle nodded like this was a plan. Her hair was matted to her scalp again and slopped down her shoulders.

Desiree lowered her hand from her lips. “He isn’t stupid. He could’ve tried harder to get Sierra, but he let us exhaust ourselves, trip over our own feet. He was—” She swallowed a sob.

“He was having fun,” Gabrielle said flatly. She had only realized this minute exactly what they were dealing with.

“Okay then.” Jesse passed through another gate. “How do we use that? How do we make it not fun for him?”

Gabrielle lowered her head. “Die?”

They slowed behind one house and tucked against its dark rear. Thunder blasted the sky, but lightning was taking a break. Jesse was a pair of white eyes in the dark, wider than Gabrielle’s had ever been. If there were tears on her cheeks, they mixed with the rain. Desiree always thought Jesse was the weak one, but maybe it had been Sierra all along. She’d fooled everyone with her fiery attitude and spite, but it was camouflage. Benny might have liked her for that.

Now someone else had to be weak one. Maybe Jesse. Or it could be Gabrielle.

Or maybe it’s me, Desiree thought.

Jesse shivered again. “He’ll catch us. He’s going to eat us one by one. Why’s he doing this to us? How do we make him stop?” She so badly wanted someone to tell her what to do, but Sierra wasn’t here anymore.

Desiree covered her eyes. “I shouldn’t have left her.”

“She was out,” Gabrielle said. “She would’ve told us to go.”

“I wouldn’t have listened.”

“Why there?” Jesse asked. “Why’d you have to pick the house where someone loved this thing?”

Desiree bit her tongue. There were no words. It was easier to be angry than to mourn.

“She’s probably the witch who summoned him. Like you said in her house. Satanists popping up everywhere, summoning demons. Our town has people like that. We have the Blackwood Devil.”

“It was the closest house.” Desiree’s teeth chattered and she clenched them. Benny might hear.

“There were people looking out their windows all around us. We had our pick.”

“They wouldn’t open their doors.”

“They’re probably scared of him, too.”

“But why would they be?” Gabrielle asked. She started toward the next gate, another backyard. “She told him to get us, but he was doing that anyway. He only wants us. Isn’t that like Sierra’s story? Benny Rose doesn’t eat just anyone. He eats kids.”

As they passed between houses, Desiree glanced down the gap toward the cul-de-sac. No curtains parted, but people watched, she felt it. Glade Street’s residents were still keeping tabs on the girls who ran from Benny Rose.

“It’s all of them.”

Gabrielle and Jesse stopped at the gate and looked back at her.

“They’re all on his side.” There were warnings all the way to Glade Street that they should stay away. The river flooded. The sign that read Glade Street Retirement Community hid behind hedges. No decorations, no life, only that ugly feeling of decay and the sense last Halloween that Desiree was welcome in the way that a predator welcomes prey. This was the only neighborhood in Blackwood that was guaranteed to have no kids.

Until Gabrielle.

Desiree wiped rain out of her eyes and followed the girls into the shadow of the next house. Her chest ached, her breath heaving in and out. “They don’t want kids in their neighborhood. They want us dead. They’re on his side!”

Jesse grabbed her hand. “Not so loud, Desi.”

“We’re just kids!” Desiree clamped her free hand back over her mouth. “Sierra’s just a kid.” It was her turn to be the weak one. Benny would have her next. He’d had his eyes on her since he bit Adrian and was disappointed—no, since last Halloween. The longer they stayed out in the open, the sooner it would happen.

They stalled at another back door. Gabrielle pulled her socked feet onto the stone stoop. “We can go back to my house, hide and get my shoes, but he might be there. He might be anywhere.”

Desiree approached the back door and pulled open the screen. No, she refused to be the weak one. Someone else could have her turn.

She planted a muddy shoe against the door, looked at Jesse, and cocked her head to one side. “When it thunders.”

Jesse planted her shoe beside Desiree’s. When the sky shouted again, they kicked. This time the door flew open in one blow. Jesse ducked through first. The inside smelled the same as the last two houses, an unsettling elderly odor. Desiree wanted to know what these people bought that made their houses smell like this so she could avoid it for the rest of her life.

“And what about whoever’s in there?” Gabrielle asked. She squinted through the rain, but the roof was not familiar. “From the back, I don’t even know whose house this is.”

Desiree ducked behind Jesse and waved Gabrielle inside. “It’s our house now. Benny won’t hurt them, but we’re not like him.” She closed the screen door gently so Benny wouldn’t hear.

As in Ms. Carmine’s house, their shoes squeaked across the kitchen floor and into the foyer. Gabrielle’s socks made squish-squish noises behind them. There wasn’t time for stealth. If someone was home, they’d probably already heard the door crash open despite the thunder.

There were doorways to either side of the stairs that led to the living room and garage, but the lights were off. The girls hurried upstairs, where a line of light cut across the second floor hallway from beneath a shut door. It was all Desiree could see, but she heard someone brushing their teeth. Rain pounded worse up here, echoing through the roof.

She slipped past Jesse and led away from the light toward a dark doorway, where she found a light switch on the wall. Grotesque lime wallpaper gave the bedroom a sickly character. A king-size bed took up the room’s center and a vanity and mirror stood across from the footboard. Beyond that, two dressers hugged the far wall beside a closet door, where a fire extinguisher sat on the floor. Desiree ran to grab it, leaving muddy footprints on the bedroom carpet.

The toothbrush swishing sound stopped. Footsteps made the hallway floor creak. “Who’s out there?” a man asked.

Desiree flicked off the light and darted past Jesse and Gabrielle. The opening bathroom door lit up the hall, but it would be too late for the man to see her. He was in the light; she was in the dark. His silhouette wore an outline of flannel pajamas and spectacles, lenses reflecting light. She was only sorry to break the spectacles when she swung the extinguisher at his head.

“Sorry, Mr. Donovan,” Gabrielle said as if she was caught gossiping in class.

He collided with the wall and slumped to the floor.

Jesse flipped on the bedroom light. With the bathroom light, they could see that a bruise formed on Arthur Donovan’s temple, beneath wispy gray locks.

“Did you kill him?” Jesse asked.

“We need to tie him up,” Desiree said. “I didn’t hit him that hard.”

Twelve: Silver Bullet

They dragged a chair upstairs from the dining room. Arthur was heavier, but they got him seated and bound him with sheets from the linen closet across the hall from his bedroom. They dried off with his towels as best they could. Gabrielle used one to wipe the mud off the back door. Benny would have no reason to pick this house over any other.

Not trusting their knots, Desiree went to the garage to find tape. Instead, she found things that would help start a fire. At first that made her think of using the living room fireplace to dry their clothes, but if Benny found them, they wouldn’t have time to get dressed. She didn’t even want the downstairs lit. Still, she brought those things upstairs and stuffed them in the linen closet in case Benny came up looking. She didn’t share that with Jesse and Gabrielle. They were frightened enough.

When all downstairs business was done, they shattered a few of Arthur’s drinking glasses into a plastic pail and scattered the shards up the stairs.

“Will that stop him?” Gabrielle asked, wrapping a bandage roll from under the bathroom sink around her wounded hand. She had left her muddied socks there and swapped on a pair that belonged to Arthur’s wife. If only they could find shoes that fit.

Desiree finished emptying the pail at the top of the stairs. “It might slow him down.”

Jesse stretched across the floor beside Arthur’s bed. Gabrielle sat beside her, back against the footboard. They didn’t sleep, but they didn’t seem entirely awake either.

Resting sounded nice, if only Desiree could. She paced in front of the bedroom window that faced the cul-de-sac, now and then parting the curtains to catch prying eyes. The neighborhood was quiet except for the rain. If anyone saw brief light in Arthur’s window, they would assume it was him.

These goddamned dinosaurs. Did Gabrielle’s grandmother know her neighbors had summoned this thing? If not, did they warn her? No, Desiree didn’t think so. The Glade Street Retirement Community was founded over twenty years ago. Benny Rose was the status quo. What was a dead granddaughter to the Glade Street Homeowners Association? They had a legacy to uphold. When they first conjured him, had there been an ordinary neighborhood in this place? And after Benny was awake, what did town council do?

Desiree imagined them seated in a makeshift meeting room in town hall. It wouldn’t do to be anywhere that official meetings took place. This was off the books. They slung their expensive jackets over the backs of chairs, loosened their ties, and drank coffee or lemonade, or whatever. A creaky oscillating fan did little good to ventilate the stuffy room. They were sweating, she could smell it, but that wasn’t from heat alone.

They were nervous. Grown men having to gather and decide what to do about a haunted neighborhood, where an undead, hungry thing had been summoned to eat children. The first to speak had to admit that, and no one wanted to be it.

At last, one of them folded his hands on the table with a sigh and said, “Well, what are we going to do?”

They went over disappearances, deaths, and so on. No one wrote notes. There could be no record of town council acknowledging the supernatural. What genius suggested rezoning the neighborhood to a retirement community? Someone who wanted to live there. It might have been HOA guy and captive Arthur Donovan himself. The town must have spent a fortune buying homes from normal families who hadn’t already moved away and then selling them at a loss to the elderly.

It was a perfect con. Now they had a neighborhood with no kids and the means to keep it that way.

Muffled crying tore Desiree from her thoughts. Jesse was against the footboard with Gabrielle now, hands covering her face while Gabrielle rubbed her shoulder. Their clothes were slowly drying.

Jesse’s fingertips scrubbed her cheeks, leaving them a redder brown. “You know what you were saying earlier?”

“I don’t remember,” Desiree said. Earlier felt like a hallucination.

“About never having kids. Sierra didn’t want to, either. It would’ve been nice for her to talk about it, like we did. But I guess it wasn’t going to matter for any of us.”

“It matters.” Desiree took another peek around the curtain—nothing out there—and joined Jesse and Gabrielle on the floor. “What are you going to do when you’re older? Get married, have lazy kids, and that’s it?”

Jesse looked off to the side, almost embarrassed. “A veterinarian. I think that’d be cool.”

“And you?”

Gabrielle leaned her head against the footboard. “I don’t think I’ll live that long.”

Desiree snapped her fingers in Gabrielle’s face. “No, what are you going to do? Marry a rich guy? Have cats? Be a movie star? Tell me.”

“Nursing. I want to be a nurse.” Gabrielle lowered her head. “I did, at least. I don’t know anymore.”

“What about you, Desi?” Jesse asked. “What do you want?”

“I’ll teach.”

Jesse burst out laughing. “You want to be Mrs. Hatcher?”

“I’ll be an art teacher. It’s different. I’ll be cool and live with cool, weird people, and sometimes we’ll paint up the sides of buildings. And I’ll listen to all the kids. The other teachers will hate me, but everyone else will love me.” Desiree placed her hands on their knees. “So, we all know we’re getting out of here. We all have something to do someday.”

Gabrielle looked incredulous, but nodded. Jesse smiled again. Desiree stepped away from them. Good, they both believed her.

If only she could be that easy to convince.

She went back to the window and pressed the curtain aside, was about to let it drop back in place, but caught it for another look.

There were people in the cul-de-sac. Three of them, their fat umbrellas blooming over their heads. Two stood beneath a lamppost near the narrow part of Glade Street. The third walked the fence of Gabrielle’s house, approached Jesse’s car, and then turned around and went back the way they came. Curtains parted in another window, revealing a lit living room.

Desiree ducked back and let the curtain hang. “They’re looking for us.”

She expected the girls to stiffen, maybe cry again, but they only stared at the vanity.

“That reminds me of another Benny Rose story,” Jesse said.

“No more,” Gabrielle said. “Please.”

“This one’s different.” Jesse looked up at the vanity mirror, reflecting the windows that faced Arthur’s neighbor. “People like to think he walked out of the darkness and into Blackwood like that was his whole story. Nobody wants to remember that they had to have accepted him, even liked him, for him to get away with what he did as long as he did. They didn’t suspect this nice man from the hospital was eating their children. He acted like any one of them. He’d read the newspaper, get a cup of coffee, and then he’d go sit on a park bench. Feed the birds. Watch the children play.

“And that’s why Blackwood can’t let it go. He’s not just Benny Rose, the Blackwood Devil, the Cannibal King. He’s Blackwood’s shame. And he’s made it so everybody, no matter how much fun they’re having together, is a little bit afraid of each other. You never know who anyone really is.” Jesse wiped her eyes. “Sierra wouldn’t have liked that one. God, I wish I hadn’t slapped her.”

Desiree glanced at the curtain, but didn’t touch it. All those people out there, Arthur in here, Ms. Carmine who sicced Benny on them, had all probably seemed like nice people before tonight. And tomorrow, they would go back to seeming like nice people. No one in Blackwood would know any different.

“There has to be a way to stop him,” Jesse said. “What’s his silver bullet?”

“His what?” Gabrielle asked.

“Silver bullet.” Jesse stood and approached the vanity. A rotary phone, jewelry boxes, and containers of make-up covered the space beneath the mirror. Her fingers sifted through them, found a pair of steel scissors, and held them up to the light. “A silver bullet is the only thing that kills a werewolf. Or for vampires, a stake in the heart, sunlight.” The scissors stretched open and snipped closed. “How do we kill Benny Rose?”

“What do the stories say?”

“They don’t stop him in the stories,” Desiree said. “He always gets you in the end. Even when it seems like you got away.” Last Halloween had seemed like a close call, but tonight it turned out to be a warning.

“Sometimes the storyteller changes it, makes Benny lose.” Jesse set the scissors down and turned from the vanity empty-handed. Arthur’s wife must not have owned any silver. “But those aren’t the ones that stay. Only the best ones get retold—the more gruesome, the better.”

Desiree grew impatient. “Who cares about the stories? We’re dealing with the real thing.”

“All stories matter. They tell us truths about things that never happened. Maybe we’ll learn something from one of them.”

“We won’t. They’re made up by kids who don’t know anything, to scare other kids who don’t know anything.” Desiree glanced out the window again. There were more people outside, but still far away. “Like us.”

Jesse made a pleading gesture. “We’ve hardly tried anything.”

“Who says it takes something special to stop him?” Desiree kept the underside of that question to herself. Who said even something special could stop him? For all they knew, what was already dead couldn’t be killed. Getting run over by a car should’ve broken bones and left Benny a crumpled mess, but he still came for Sierra and Paul.

“In the older stories, the ones about the hospital, he burned to death,” Jesse went on. “We could burn him. Chop off his left hand.”

“We could eat him,” Gabrielle said, snickering.

A dry chuckle joined them, sending chills through Desiree’s bones. She and the others turned to the chair in the corner.

“You can’t stop him.” Arthur’s head hung over his chest, but now an open-mouthed smile split his face. The bruise on his temple shined purple. “He’s out tonight, and he won’t stop. He’s Benny Rose and Halloween is his holy night. You Blackwood youngsters know that. You’ve known it all your lives.”

Thirteen: Established 1963

Desiree crept from the window. Her fingers plucked up the scissors as she crossed the vanity and approached side of the chair in case Arthur felt like kicking. His slippers had come off, revealing scaly feet that scraped the carpet. He didn’t look like much for being head of the neighborhood; just an old man tied up in his pajamas, but twenty or thirty years ago, he would’ve been stronger. And how strong did anyone have to be to summon a demon?

It was time to find out. “What did you do?”

He looked at her, uncomprehending, but she hadn’t hit him that hard.

She held up the steel scissors. Jesse and Gabrielle slunk behind her. “What did you geriatric shits do? How’d you summon Benny Rose?”

“Oh, that. Witchcraft, little girl. Don’t you know? Our community’s a little congregation for the fallen one. It’s not only Halloween. It’s the solstices, the equinoxes, all the Sabbaths of the Devil that take place when the veil is thin between our world and Hell.”

Desiree gaped at him. Was he being real with her? She couldn’t be sure what was genuine in the wake of Benny Rose being more than a story. The look in Arthur’s eyes sang smug mischief. She pointed the scissors at his hand, bound to the armrest. “Why’s Benny Rose trying to kill us?”

His eyes fell on Gabrielle. “You already know.”

Gabrielle glanced at Desiree as if asking permission to speak. “Does Mrs. Donovan know?”

Arthur cackled, dry and mean. “Come on, Gabby. You’re not really interested in what Marian knows. Ask me about Judy.”

Gabrielle eyed her bandaged hand. “Does Grandma know?”

“Why do you think she let Marian and Mable take her to Atlantic City when she had you newly arrived? And so soon after she lost her son and daughter-in-law.”

“Because they had free tickets.”

“Free tickets to what, Gabby? The car they drove there? The casinos? Do hotels take tickets now? In my day, they taught kids real things.”

“But she could’ve stayed. If she was with me—”

“Judy knows what’ll happen to you. I expect she doesn’t know what’ll happen to her, how she’ll feel. Nothing in life comes free. She’ll find out the cost when she comes home, and then get over it. She’ll have a whole neighborhood of shoulders to cry on.”

Gabrielle’s eyes went wide. She darted past the chair and out of the room, her face beat red.

Desiree almost followed. “Don’t talk to her. Talk to me.”

“Nothing I say is going to help you,” Arthur said.

She blinked and, briefly, he became the negative of her mother, contrasted in appearance but both specimens of the same manipulative species. He wasn’t going to be intimidated by being tied here, not even by scissors. They were only teenage girls. What could they do?

Fine, he could be obstinate all he liked, but he had no idea what he was in for. Desiree slid the scissors into her jacket pocket and headed for the hall to fetch the things she’d found in the garage.

Gabrielle leaned beside the linen closet, her fingernails scraping the wallpaper. Tears glistened on her cheeks. “She could’ve said so.” She swallowed hard. “Grandma could’ve just said she didn’t want me. I don’t have anywhere else to go, but I could’ve run. People do that, don’t they?”

Desiree didn’t have an answer. It wasn’t something she’d thought about any more than she ran from her mother on a daily basis. But this was something else. Gabrielle’s grandmother wanted to live alone bad enough to feed her own flesh and blood to Benny Rose.

Sniffling, Gabrielle drifted toward the bathroom and ran the tap.

Desiree watched her go and then opened the linen closet and picked up the things she’d brought from the garage. “There was another girl with us,” she said, loud enough for Arthur to hear. “Her name was Sierra. And we loved her like you can’t know, did things for her we didn’t like. That’s how much we loved her. And she didn’t take anyone’s shit. She dished it out. Sometimes even when the person didn’t deserve it. So think of this like she’s here with us.”

She returned to the bedroom with a small white matchbook and a red jug of gasoline, big as Arthur’s head. He hadn’t needed to keep matches and gasoline locked away. There weren’t supposed to be troublemakers on Glade Street to find them.

“But I have a feeling you deserve it. You killed my best friend.”

Arthur wasn’t smiling now. “You won’t.”

Desiree sloshed the jerry can in his direction and set it between bed and chair. “Don’t tell me what I won’t do. Don’t even think I won’t.”

He gritted his teeth and looked to Jesse, who turned away. Then he looked to the doorway, where Gabrielle reappeared, still red in the face. He would have no friends here. At last, he turned back to Desiree, the fight having drained from his eyes.

“How did you summon Benny Rose? I don’t care if you think it’ll help us. Tell me.”

“Oh, that? That was easy. To get Benny Rose here, we had to do—” Arthur leaned as close to her as his binds allowed. “Nothing. We did nothing. He’s been here since before we knew we could use him.”

“Since Blackwood was founded?”

“Not that far back, no. Since the hospital burned down.” Arthur’s smile returned. It reminded Desiree too much of Benny. She thought of taking the gasoline jug and smacking the amusement off his face. “You know that story, don’t you, girls? Blackwood Mercy Hospital.” He nodded at the window. “It was here.”

That explained the strange shape of the neighborhood. The cul-de-sac used to be a parking lot, the hospital a wide, rounded structure to one side. Desiree could imagine. She could even see it burning. “And after, you knew there was something here.”

“There was no Cannibal King before the hospital burned. Don’t you know anything?”

Desiree gritted her teeth. Arthur wasn’t making complete sense, but she couldn’t let him know that or he’d have her twisted around his finger. If he was smart enough to trick Blackwood town council decades ago, he could try tricking three high school girls.

“What’s out there then?” she asked. “A ghost?”

“How should I know? What’s a ghost anyway?” Arthur rested his head against the back of the chair. His neck was a stretch of wobbly skin. “You step in mud and the footprint washes away, but step in cement and it doesn’t. An ordinary day is like mud, but when something really bad happens, it sticks around. Forty-seven people died in the hospital fire, but only forty-one were found right after it collapsed. They hushed up whatever else went on with that. The town built a new residential subdivision and called the case closed, except for the stories.”

“But town council knew about him. They had to know or they wouldn’t have given you the neighborhood.”

Arthur raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t expected Desiree to figure that out, had he? “Town council had a problem. We had a simple solution. If there’s a neighborhood with a thing in it that eats kids, don’t let kids live in that neighborhood. So, they gave it to us. Problem solved.” He looked over Desiree with gray, apathetic eyes. “Benny keeps things safe for us. Nice and quiet. Any riffraff come on Halloween night, they won’t come back. And everyone knows. It spreads, like roots from a tree. Hasn’t anyone in your life told you not to come here? They don’t know why, but kids should stay away.”

Last Halloween, Benny Rose had stood in the middle of Glade Street, knowing Desiree was there, hungering for her. Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of Blackwood’s young. Not every kid was so lucky to get spooked and pedal away. Some kids came to Glade Street on foot, with friends or alone, and that was the end of them.

Mom was so angry last Halloween. She’d been a firecracker since Desiree’s father left, but this past year ticked it up a notch. Had she even known why?

Desiree glanced at Gabrielle. She looked so innocent, the nicest resident of Glade Street, though that bar was much lower than anyone in Blackwood knew. “And what about her? It isn’t her choice.”

“Gabby’s case is unfortunate, but we can’t have her upending the neighborhood. It’d be inconvenient. You’d understand if you got older, wanting to keep things the way they’re supposed to be. Not the way everyone keeps changing things to be.”

Desiree dug her nails against the matchbook. “How many kids?”

Arthur flashed a big-teethed, shit-eating grin and shrugged against the knotted sheets. “Youngsters never respect the rules, but scary stories? Those, you’ll take to heart.”

Desiree leaned close to his head. Her breath tickled wisps of gray hair around his ear. “I think my friend would want me to hurt you now.”

The glee died in his face. “Hang on. Maybe there’s a way.”

Jesse stepped closer, and Gabrielle leaned from the doorway.

“There’s a hole behind Mable’s house. You know hers, don’t you, Gabby? Two houses down, between yours and mine. Every Halloween, the hole opens and he crawls out. On November first, when he sleeps, we close it. And then a year later, he opens it again. Can’t say it’ll help you, but who knows? Might be worth a gander. It’s the grave of Benny Rose, after all.”

Desiree stuffed the matchbook into her back pocket and headed for the hall. “We’ll be right back.”

Jesse and Gabrielle glanced at each other and followed. Desiree closed the door and led them up the hall toward the bathroom where they couldn’t be heard. Rain pounded harder on the roof. Thunder sounded distant, on its way out of Blackwood. That should have been a comfort, but she had a feeling that most of the neighborhood would be searching if the storm couldn’t keep them indoors.

“It’s way past midnight,” she said. “Halloween’s over. Benny should be back in his hole.” If Arthur was telling the truth.

“Remember what Sierra said?” Gabrielle asked. “In Blackwood, Halloween goes to dawn. Could we hide here until then?”

“We won’t make it to morning. They’re already looking for us. Soon they’ll be opening their doors to let Benny hunt. They’ll talk to each other, too. Eventually someone will realize Arthur’s AWOL, or Benny’s going to come to the house that doesn’t open. And then he’s going to get in.” Desiree rubbed her aching eyes with the heels of her hands. She’d pulled all-nighters before, but never on the run. “Like I said, he’s not stupid.”

“Then we can’t stay,” Jesse said. “But the story’s true. And this is the site of Blackwood Mercy Hospital. If we get out of here, he shouldn’t be able to follow, right? These are his hunting grounds.”

“We could try to forge the flood again. Maybe someone has an inflatable raft?” It sounded ridiculous as it left Desiree’s mouth. “If we go, we’ll drown. If we stay, he’ll eat us.”

“What was Mr. Donovan saying about the hospital?” Gabrielle asked. “Forty-seven dead, but only forty-one found? I don’t get it.”

He could have been trying to give them an unsolvable puzzle. He had every reason to stall for time, let the neighbors realize his absence. Benny would come. Grave. Hole. “I’ve never heard a Benny Rose story about the hospital and a hole.”

“A lost Benny Rose story,” Jesse said, transfixed as if she’d found a map to buried treasure. “The lost Benny Rose story. The one that’s real. If we check it out, we could find something to stop him. Like, putting a ghost to rest? Or a vampire going back to his coffin by dawn?”

“Silver bullet.” Desiree didn’t want to hope, but Jesse did, and that meant it mattered. “And do we think Arthur’s on the level?”

Jesse and Gabrielle shook their heads.

“Me neither. He’s hoping Benny will spot us and follow us there. If we went down a hole, we’d be trapped. Why don’t the neighbors up and shoot us and feed him our bodies?”

“They might not have guns,” Jesse said, and then, her voice flattening, “He might not like to eat the dead. Like in the stories.”

Desiree shuddered. If the only answers were in that hole, what choice did they have? “We’ll check it out.”

“What about him?” Gabrielle asked, thumbing at the bedroom down the hall.

“He could get loose. None of us are too good at tying knots. Someone should stay and guard him while the other two sneak over to the hole.” Desiree opened the linen closet and drew out another few sheets. “Help me tie these together. Whoever stays behind might have to escape out the window.”

“It should be me,” Jesse said. “Gabrielle knows which house we want and you shouldn’t be alone with him.”

Desiree scowled. “Why not?”

“Because I’m upset about Sierra, but you’re heartbroken and mad like I’ve never seen you.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“You should be. But I don’t want to see this place go up in flames like the hospital after he says one wrong word.”

That wasn’t fair. Desiree was angry, but she hadn’t really done anything. She never got to do anything. Every semblance of misbehavior was blown so wildly out of proportion by her mother that she hardly talked anymore. Jesse would’ve had better reason to worry about Gabrielle. Or Sierra.

Except Sierra was gone.

Downstairs, a phone jangled. A split-second later, another phone rang from inside the bedroom. The girls looked at each other, uncertain. Both phones rang again.

Arthur called from behind the door. “That would be my neighbors. If I don’t answer, they’ll know something’s wrong.”

The girls held still, as if the phones could hear them move. Another twin ring.

“They’ll know you’re here. Better let me talk to them.”

“Who has the deepest voice?” Gabrielle whispered. “To pretend we’re him.”

The downstairs phone rang. The upstairs phone started to, and then cut off mid-ring. Desiree dropped her sheet rope and opened the bedroom door. The chair hadn’t moved an inch. Arthur’s fingers drummed the armrests. He looked pleased the way Desiree expected she’d look if she was about to be rescued. She darted toward the front-facing window and pushed the curtain aside.

The neighbors remained distant, dark figures in slightly thinner rain. At Arthur’s driveway, a bone-white, naked shape crept out of the lamplight toward the front door.

Desiree charged back into the hall. “He’s here!” She grabbed the fire extinguisher off the floor where she’d dropped it and chucked it downstairs. It hit the foyer’s tile floor, where it cracked open at the top and swirled toward the living room, spraying white mist. However Benny hunted, she hoped the noisy cloud would throw him off.

Wood cracked downstairs. The girls carried the bound sheets into the bedroom, where Gabrielle shut the door and turned the lock. Desiree helped Jesse drag Arthur’s chair toward the door.

“You might as well let me go,” he said.

The front door banged open. Desiree heard Benny prowling below. He would figure out where they were in no time.

She threw open one of the windows that faced the house next door. Crystalline pellets now scattered the sill, the rain mixing with hail into sleet. “Quick, the sheets.” She took the end of the makeshift rope from Jesse and snaked it out the window. Jesse fed her the rest until one end neared the ground, and Gabrielle tied the other end around Arthur’s bedpost.

Glass crunched and then something clunked up the stairs.

“He’s on the walls.” Gabrielle spread her hands to each side as if bracing herself between two surfaces.

The doorknob jiggled and then the door shuddered.

Desiree grabbed the gasoline jug, tossed it out the window and hoped it landed in better shape than the fire extinguisher. Then she clambered after it. The narrow opening squeezed her back and hips, but she made it through. Her shoes squeaked against the house’s slippery side. Jesse came next, slid through easier, and scrambled after Desiree. She was about halfway down when Gabrielle started through the window.

Something banged behind her, and Arthur cried out. He’d probably been thrown to the floor.

Desiree hit the ground. “Get down here!”

Jesse landed beside Desiree. Gabrielle squeezed through the gap and started down the sheet, but she had trouble gripping with her bandaged hand. A white arm lashed out the window and yanked the makeshift rope.

“You have to jump!”

The ascending sheet dragged Gabrielle to the glass, where Benny’s hand grabbed her hair. Her socks slid against the house, giving no perch to stop to fight him. At last, she let go of the sheet rope. Hair tore loose in Benny’s fingers.

Desiree and Jesse cushioned the fall, but they couldn’t keep Gabrielle’s weight. Her leg hit the ground at an odd angle. Her teeth sank into her lower lip, muffling a pained shriek. There wasn’t time to let her absorb the blow. Desiree had to hope the leg wasn’t broken as she grabbed Gabrielle’s arm and pulled her to standing. With her free hand, she snatched the gasoline jug. It looked in better shape than Gabrielle sounded. Desiree took one arm around her neck, Jesse took the other, and between them they propped Gabrielle up and helped her limp one-legged between backyards. Her left leg buckled, forcing her to lean.

Sleet soaked their clothes all over again. They ducked into the shadow of the house next door. Benny had to be coming downstairs by now.

“Desi?” It was the first time Gabrielle had called Desiree that. “If important people like the town council knew about him, why didn’t they stop him?”

Desiree reached around Gabrielle and unlatched the back gate. She didn’t bother closing it after she and Jesse helped Gabrielle limp through. “Maybe they couldn’t find a way to stop him.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“We just have to make it through the night. Like you said.”

“Until next Halloween.”

Desiree studied her face, barely visible through the icy rain.

“I have nowhere else to go. Grandma will come back on Monday, expecting me dead, and whether I am or not—look, if you make it out, never come back, okay? Never come back to Glade Street.” Gabrielle pressed her good foot into the ground. “Leave me.”

Jesse gaped. “What?”

“I’m dead weight. He’ll be busy. It’ll buy you both time. We couldn’t move Sierra. Cut me loose.”

“We didn’t leave Sierra by choice.”

“It’s not Sierra’s fault you were here. It’s mine.”

How far up the cul-de-sac was this, 10 Glade, 11? Rows of pines hugged the backyards and water rushed beyond. There was no escape through there, especially with Gabrielle’s leg, but could they hide? Desiree looked down at her clothes, her hand, and recalled her plan to blend with the night. It wouldn’t work anymore. Benny was too smart, and she hated herself for letting it cross her mind.

She slipped from under Gabrielle’s arm. “Having nowhere to go is better than being here. Every time he shows up, we run. Every time we run, he gets someone. Maybe we should stop running.” It made an insane sort of sense. Her hand brushed Gabrielle’s shoulder. “Don’t let anything happen to Jesse.”

Gabrielle cocked her head to one side, confused.

Desiree pressed her forehead to Jesse’s, eyes closed and thinking of Sierra. Thinking how she had fallen apart, become the weakest of the group, and then Benny isolated her. Thinking how Gabrielle would follow in Sierra’s footsteps if they didn’t change their way. And then Jesse.

“Keep each other safe.” Desiree tore off between houses, gasoline jug sloshing beside her.

“Desi, don’t!” Jesse shouted.

But Desiree couldn’t answer. She was too busy singing Jessie’s Girl and running fast as she could.

Fourteen: Arthur

Those little bitches.

Arthur tugged his arm loose from the fallen chair. Hitting the floor had sprained his right wrist, but messed up one of the girl’s pathetic knots. That wasn’t their fault. Boys learned outdoorsman skills like ropes; girls learned to take care of the home, same as their mothers. But what kinds of mothers did these girls have? Gabrielle’s was dead and the other two, who could say? That was the problem.

He clawed out of the chair and sheets and then tore off his pajamas. Not easy to do with his wrist aching, soon to be swollen, but he needed to be outside. He was expected.

He didn’t blame Benny for hurting him. Benny was single-minded. That’s what made him so dependable, but even Benny needed help sometimes. Dressed in sweater and jeans, Arthur started down the stairs. He had only hit the second step when glass crunched under his bare sole.

Pint-sized cunts, all three of them.

He hoped Marian, Mable, and Judy were getting a good night’s sleep in Atlantic City while he pulled glass out of his foot. Hadn’t he warned Marian? She wondered if they couldn’t arrange Halloween sleepovers elsewhere for Gabrielle until she moved away or aged out of Benny’s predation. What was the harm in letting one kid stay?

To think Marian had almost made him feel sorry about it until he saw that car roll up to Judy’s house.

One teenage girl wasn’t too many on her own, but it was never only one. Even the shyest kids weren’t alone these days, like the schools forced other students to befriend them. Let one kid onto Glade Street and she’d bring more. And more. Give it a year, and there would be a drug-filled, music-blasting party in their once quiet neighborhood. And if that party happened on Halloween? Kids disappearing into Benny’s guts here and there kept the neighborhood peaceful, but they couldn’t allow an outright slaughter. Town council would never live it down.

Really, Arthur was saving lives. These kids had to die so that others wouldn’t come.

He bandaged his foot and bound his wrist in cloth. Then he stuck on a pair of old snow boots that had been cramped into the corner of the bedroom closet and stomped downstairs.

That little freak had snuck up on him. Girls were supposed to dress like girls, but probably no one had ever told her that. She could give a hit; he’d see how she took one. He opened the inside door to the garage and found his thick raincoat, among other things. Things the girls fortunately hadn’t found when they stole his lawnmower gasoline.

Sharp things. Blunt things.

When he was a kid, it wasn’t like this, girls running rough, probably hiding piercings in their bellies and tattoos on their thighs. Boys used to be better, too. Everything was. Where were the youngsters with a passion for baseball? Well, how could they have any passion when there were no more heroes in the outfield? He missed the old teams and dime store soda parlors and riding around in the bed of his dad’s pickup truck. Sinatra used to sing on the radio. Even the bad stuff made his heart ache for the familiar. War rations, bomb scares, Ed Sullivan on the television. Black and white, not like the fat, color TVs they had now.

These kids didn’t know how good they had it and they squandered that prosperity on crap at every turn. Running with bad crowds, putting spikes on their coats, worshipping the Devil. What was a church organ to kids who listened to electric keyboards? Bunch of screeching and nonsense. And the garbage they filled their heads with at the cinema wasn’t helping. Blood and guts and sex. They didn’t make movies like Singin’ in the Rain anymore.

And these girls didn’t seem to care how they’d find a husband someday, trading their dresses for jeans and leather, spiking up their hair like godforsaken dinosaur spines. Of course they couldn’t stick to their studies and stick to their own. Had these girls done that, only Gabrielle would’ve died tonight, no one else.

It wasn’t his job to fix any of that. He was only one man. Still, he didn’t want it in his neighborhood.

He could’ve seen better had that freak not broken his specs. When he stepped outside, ready to take on the night, he found Glade Street brighter than he’d left it, but at first he couldn’t tell why. Had someone turned up all the lights where Greg and Prudence lived? No, this light was flickering and inconstant.

Someone had lit his neighbor’s house on fire. He had a pretty good idea who it was.

There, down the sidewalk.

Fifteen: Desi’s Girl

Seconds after darting out from between houses, Desiree regretted leaving the others. It was one thing to do the brave deed and another to be friendless and alone at the edge of the cul-de-sac. She was afraid she might spot Sierra’s remains, but there was no sign of her. Images flashed of Benny breaking and sucking down bones, of unhinging his jaw like a snake to swallow a fleshy skeleton whole. Desiree pushed those thoughts away. She didn’t want to know what had happened to the body. Her friend was gone.

On her own, and not really alone. Benny Rose lurked somewhere near. Doors stood everywhere, but no one who opened them would help her. Figures drifted into the street, bent and stiff, hidden beneath umbrellas and slickers. They noticed her now. While she watched, they wouldn’t walk beyond the lampposts and driveways, but each time she turned away and looked back, she found they’d treaded a little closer. One step at a time, they formed a tighter net.

She had to make it count each time she looked away.

She changed the lyrics of her song to Desi’s Girl and carried the jerry can to the house next to Arthur’s. Fumes overpowered the rain’s damp smell as gasoline spilled onto the doorstep and under the front door. The first match sputtered out. The second lit the door and spread dancing fire into the home.

Benny caught her eye. As she glanced at the wider cul-de-sac, freezing the neighbors again, she spotted his vague white shape between 5 Glade Street and 6 at the edge of lamppost light. He saw her too, but wouldn’t pursue yet. To chase might make him look silly, and a thing with a face like his refused to look silly.

His eyes shined until he sank back into the darkness between houses. They were still watching her even if she couldn’t see them.

She moved on to 11 Glade. Here the door had rubber lining she wasn’t sure would let gasoline through, so she tossed a rock at the picture window and poured gasoline over the sill. In moments, the living room was ablaze.

On the street, the residents stepped closer, their creased faces made ashen by cold and rain. Arthur’s crap about witchcraft almost seemed real. The old folk looked like an ancient coven, tucked away in a quiet Vermont town where no one would interrupt their Sabbaths and spells.

“Any requests?” Desiree asked. It felt nice to sound cocky. That had to be why Sierra used to pretend at it. Probably felt even nicer to believe it, to not be terrified. “Something from when you were kids? What were the top hits of Eighteen-Twelve?”

They were stern-faced, unflinching. Waiting for something to happen, not yet ready to make it happen themselves.

Where was Benny? He had probably doubled back along the cul-de-sac’s entrance, through the pine trees, moving counter-clockwise so he could surprise Desiree. That narrow stretch of Glade Street was a trap. Ducking into the pines risked zigzagging over rough terrain where Benny knew all the best paths. She had to keep an eye out. The street was getting louder and she wouldn’t hear him coming. The sound of sleet now mixed with roaring fires.

At 12 Glade, her jug was running low. One house after this would do it, the most important house, and just in time, too. She was starting to tire. Singing gave way to humming as she chucked a match at 12 Glade and started toward 13.

When it burned, Gabrielle really would have nowhere. She’d have to find someplace else.

A firm hand grabbed Desiree’s arm and spun her around, shaking the matchbook from her fingers. She was already shrieking, expecting teeth, but this hand was thick with pockmarked flesh, poking from the end of an old coat.

Arthur Donovan glowered over her. His neighbors slipped closer. “Enough,” he growled.

Desiree tugged at his arm. She was like Sierra now, isolated. She reeled back the jug and swung, but it ricocheted harmless against his side and clattered on the sidewalk. She pulled out the scissors. His free arm swung overhead, where a damp strip of cloth bound his wrist. In his fingers, he clutched a hammer.

It crashed across Desiree’s left bicep. She screamed again, louder. The scissors flew out of her fingers and splashed into the street.

“I said, enough!” Arthur let go of her arm and shoved her to the ground. One boot kicked her in the ribs. “Benny, she’s here!”

Desiree cradled her arm. She hadn’t heard a crack, but something felt out of place and burned beneath her skin.

The old folk became one with the darkness around her, cutting off her escape.

She groped at 12 Glade’s fence and struggled to her feet. Arthur loomed with his hammer. Behind him, flames ate through his neighbors’ houses, casting his twisting shadow across the sidewalk. The sleet was softening, too weak to put the fires out.

“I tried calling the police and fire department,” Ms. Carmine said. “All I get is a message saying every operator’s busy. Typical.”

“They couldn’t get through anyway,” a man said, someone hidden behind the others. “Whole way in and out’s still flooded.” They started talking all at once, a dry cacophony of surly voices eager to out-shout the storm, fires, and each other.

“But maybe tomorrow.”

“She set my house on fire. What does the HOA say about that?”

“We should try to collect the family photos, at least.”

“For Mable’s sake, yes.”

“What do we do, Arthur?”

“Kill her, Artie.”

The elderly circle went silent. Desiree eyed them for whoever made that last suggestion. Though she could see their ghostly faces, she couldn’t tell them apart.

Arthur turned to them. “Benny has to do it, Prudence. If we do it, there’s a body.”

“But if it’s only this one time,” Prudence said, a graven-faced woman who hugged herself. A sullen man beside her held an umbrella over her hunched shoulders. “Look what she’s done.”

Desiree bared her teeth at them. “Because of you. You’re killers.” They weren’t listening. It was as if they did not see her as a person.

Arthur glanced at the fire. The blaze made his face glow orange and softened the layer of icy droplets across his skin. He was already shivering. “If we kill her ourselves, it doesn’t work.”

Desire lunged at him, her hand clawed, nails out and hungry for his face. He shoved her chest, and she dropped on her back again. Before she could get her bearings straight, the hammer slammed her right knee. Stinging pain shot down her leg.

“In the head, Artie,” Prudence said. “She set our god-blessed house on fire.”

Arthur turned on the crowd again. “Prudence, enough.”

“Yeah, shut up, you ugly-ass hag!” Desiree shouted.

Arthur beat the hammer against the same knee as before. This time she heard a crunch before she screamed and rolled onto her belly to protect her miserable kneecap. The cul-de-sac’s flooding soaked into her shirt and jacket. Rain pattered in puddles and drummed on nearby plastic. On the sidewalk, in arm’s reach, lay the red jug of gasoline, close enough to empty that it didn’t spill though it was sideways.

“He won’t do it if she’s dead before he gets her,” Arthur said. “That’s his way.”

“But he’s not here,” a man said.

“He’s here. He can’t be anywhere else.” Arthur paced the sidewalk, looking around. “He’s probably on the prowl for Gabby and the other one.”

Desiree outstretched her good arm, grasped the handle of the jerry can, and tugged it close. Some of what gasoline remained had poured into the street. There wasn’t much. She cupped her good hand into the nozzle.

A boot stamped the back of her injured leg and ground its heel. She screeched, tears in her eyes.

“What are you thinking? Pour it on my shoes? Light me up?” Arthur let off her leg and plucked up the soaked matchbook. “With what?” He chucked the wet cardboard at her face and leaned close. “This is what I’m talking about. They don’t teach you kids anything real these days.”

He leaned so close she felt his foggy breath through the sleet. So close she could slam her skull into his forehead and hurt them both. But she only wanted to hurt him.

Her good arm slammed her cupped hand into his face, splashing gasoline in his eyes.

He reeled back shrieking, one hand wiping furiously. The other swung his hammer, but it missed Desiree’s head by inches. She grabbed his jeans and pulled herself up by his belt, his shirt. Her knee hated her, but there was no time to stop. He was right, she didn’t learn anything real in school, knew nothing about how long gasoline might hurt him or how fast sleet would wash it out of his eyes. Pedal through the pain.

Her hand closed around the hammer’s shaft. He pulled it, but she wouldn’t let go, so she hung from his arm off the ground. Her left hand grabbed the hammer’s head, arm hating her, right knee hating her, everything screaming. The old folk shouted from the street. Her good hand let go of the hammer and beat at Arthur’s bandaged wrist. His fingers loosened.

The hammer popped free. She passed it from one hand to the other. He groped blindly after it, caught Desiree’s ear, and tugged hard. Her good arm reeled back. She swung the hammer at his skull, at the purple patch where she’d struck him with the fire extinguisher. She struck him harder this time, crunching his temple into the socket below. He let go of her ear and staggered back, his face slack and stunned.

She swung the hammer again, now at the side of his head.

He collapsed sideways against the fence, one leg under him, the other sticking out. She didn’t waste time with limbs. She wasn’t like him, trying to keep her enemy alive for a cannibal’s late night snack. Her next blow hit the side of his head, the same spot. The hammer sank deeper. He fell on his back, one knee poking up. His eyes were open and red.

Around them, the neighbors stopped shouting. Desiree felt them leaning in, poised to intervene. They wanted her dead. She couldn’t make Arthur’s mistake of dragging this out. Go big or go home. And hadn’t the neighbors said the road was still flooded?

She could not go home.

She stumbled over Arthur’s knee, fell across him, and righted herself on his chest. His arm lazily shoved at her. She lifted the hammer overhead and swung it crashing down on his scalp in a wet crack. He twitched beneath her, but didn’t fight back. She raised the hammer again. Had he feared this moment when he waved at her in the early evening, thinking he knew how tonight would go? No, they were only teenage girls. What could they do? He couldn’t have foreseen what teenage girls could become.

Teenage girls could be demons.

The hammer’s head slammed through Arthur’s skull, caving skin, tissue, and bones in a thunderous crunch. Blood slopped into his gray hair, down to the pavement, and slid off the sidewalk into the cul-de-sac’s larger puddle, where sleet diluted the red. The elderly circle slipped back together as if afraid the touch of blood might curse them. They had never seen anything like this before, had they?

Neither had Desiree, but she wasn’t going anywhere. She lifted the hammer, its head painted with gore, and swung it in their direction. “You’re next!” she shouted. “You’re all fucking next!”

They shuffled off the street. Some turned from her right away; others backpedaled until they were sure she wouldn’t rush up behind them with Arthur’s hammer. Back to their homes, or neighbors’ homes if theirs were ablaze. The bottom floors were alight in the second and third houses Desiree had torched. At the first, fire had reached the upstairs and set the curtains alight.

She slid off Arthur’s body and stood shakily, left leg strong, right leg folding under her weight. Switching the hammer to her other hand, she grasped the fence and pulled herself up. Red stains coated the white paint where Arthur’s blood had splattered. Somehow that felt worse than what the hammer had done to his head. Desiree turned away. The fence helped her hobble along, but she didn’t need to look at it.

The old folk were distant now, slinking past lampposts. A couple still watched across the cul-de-sac, maybe Prudence and her husband with nowhere to go. The rest hid indoors. They would go back to peeking from behind curtains where they felt safe.

The air grew chillier. Desiree needed to get closer to the fire or get indoors. Something wet ran through her hair and down her neck, but if it was Arthur’s blood, it would soon be washed away. She kept along the fence.

Her injured arm tugged behind her. She stumbled back with it and spun around on one heel.

Benny’s black eyes glowed with firelight.

She hadn’t been this close to him before, and the moment crept across her eyes. His skin stretched taut as his jaw slid open. His wet lips, so thin they were almost non-existent, popped open. Raindrops slithered down his nose and curled around his spreading teeth. He tugged her bad arm, twisted it at the elbow, and plunged his mouth against her forearm. Teeth closed around skin and yanked back, stretching tissue from muscle. The pain was worse than any anything Arthur had done. His hammer thudded on the sidewalk.

Desiree’s mouth twisted open, screaming again. Without thinking, she yanked her injured arm toward her chest and clamped her teeth onto Benny. Blisters boiled across her lips. Her tongue was on fire. Bloodless flesh of his arm snapped away in her teeth and left tarry bone behind.

He wrenched off her, his face wrinkled in a sneer. Like he was offended.

Desiree spat the pale lump at the sidewalk and shambled between two fiery houses. The fence helped keep her upright despite her pulsing limbs. Finger-shaped white burns blemished her dark skin where blood seeped down her arm. Her lips, tongue, and gums—she would rather have felt nothing ever again than live with these burns. There was no blood in her mouth, only a charcoal taste. Benny didn’t bleed. She couldn’t say the same.

But he hadn’t taken a chunk out of her.

Mud sucked at her shoes. To her right, the last house she’d set alight smoked from an open window. To her left, orange light shined through every crevice. Which way? Benny was strong. It would take nothing to grab her again, pin her in the mud and grass, and clamp his teeth into her neck.

She could practically feel him. She glanced back.

Benny wasn’t following. He paced the sidewalk, feet splashing in puddles, looking to her and then to his arm where a chunk of wet white flesh was missing above the elbow. A predator prowled here, patient only in the sense that he hadn’t struck yet, but brimming with furious indignation that anything bit back. The pressure in the air rippled as grass would around a pacing hyena, but even that analogy handed Benny too much dignity. Desiree couldn’t picture a proper comparison. He was a sickly scavenger, so weak and diseased that he could only ever prey on children.

What was he waiting for?

She veered left into the backyard behind a burning house. She needed a cane or stick. The fence led her toward where pine trees crept onto the lawn, but they wouldn’t keep her upright. Hiding would be better than running. Benny wasn’t omniscient. He couldn’t smell her out through the rain.

Could he?

Fingers grasped her ankle. She almost screamed before spotting Jesse’s face in the ground.

“Down here!” she hissed, hands beckoning.

No time to think. Desiree sat shakily into the mud, and Jesse helped pull her into a hole in the ground.

Sixteen: The Grave

The hole had ragged edges. Desiree thought it might collapse while she descended on her back through mud, but it held. Water had washed inside and eroded soil, uncovering hints of sheet metal underneath, a skeleton to the slanted tunnel.

She landed clumsily against Jesse at the pitch-black bottom. “Where?” Her voice came out in a grating croak. It hurt to speak.

“In the hole that Mr. Donovan told us about,” Gabrielle’s voice said, not far away. “Only one way in or out.”

Story of this whole night. Desiree tried to answer, but her lips stung.

“We did what you told us,” Jesse said. “I think this was the spirit of it.”

Desiree splayed the palm of her usable arm against a grimy wall and slumped to the cold concrete floor. The space, whatever its size, filled with the tap-tap-tap of water dripping into puddles.

“We smelled the fire,” Gabrielle said. “And we heard you scream.”

“What did they do to you?” Jesse asked.

Desiree needed a drink. Or maybe a new throat. “Light?”

“Give it a minute, your eyes will adjust.”

She forced herself to blink. Each time her eyes closed, she didn’t want to open them. If she slept, the pain in her arm, leg, and mouth might go away. She pictured this underground place staying pitch-black forever, never gaining form, never becoming real. It was the easiest thing she’d ever imagined.

Flickering light poked down the tunnel, where outside a house burned bright. After a minute, Jesse’s floating voice took on a kneeling silhouette in front of Desiree’s face. A moment later, Gabrielle was a dim shape seated on the floor across the room. There was junk everywhere, all sorts of mysterious black contours.

Desiree’s injured arm rested across her lap. She covered her mouth with the other hand and shook her head.

“You can’t talk?” Jesse asked. “Why?”

“Hurt.” Jesse’s fingertip touched Desiree’s cheek and traced toward her blistered lips. Desiree shoved it away with a grunt.

“Sorry.” Jesse stood. “We’ve been sitting in the dark, listening. I didn’t barricade the entrance since it was all our light and we were hoping you’d come. Not in this shape, but you know.” There was a squeak in her voice. “I didn’t want you to be like Sierra.”

Desiree swallowed. Even that hurt. Crying hurt, too, so she tried not to. She couldn’t tell the others that she had run to buy them time, that she burned houses to get Benny’s attention. It was supposed to stall and confuse him. They were things she would’ve done for Sierra if she could. Things that didn’t work out anyway. There was no telling them how sorry she was to have blown it.

Jesse drifted into greater darkness, toward the back of the room. The ceiling sloped there, sagging so close to the floor that she had to crawl. “I think this was part of Blackwood Mercy Hospital. There’s a metal gurney, all rusted, and a cabinet with some old glass syringes, medical tape. Crazy, right? The hospital burned down over thirty years back.”

Desiree listened to Gabrielle’s breath between Jesse’s sentences, the tap-tap-tap, metal scraping concrete. She thought of Arthur’s analogy about mud and wet concrete and footprints, a supposed recipe for a ghost, or whatever Benny Rose had become.

“I think someone was trapped down here.” Jesse crawled to one side and stuck her hand against an indiscernible wall. “There are little notches up and down, one after another. Someone was trying to dig their way out, but not doing too good a job.”

Tap-tap-tap. Desiree wondered if Benny heard that tapping while he slept the year away, his belly full of children.

He had probably heard it while alive, but it wouldn’t have sounded like water’s drip. Probably debris instead. This was a basement. If Blackwood Mercy Hospital once burned overhead, its elevator might have gone first, and the stairway could’ve been blocked. When the building came down, who would’ve thought to look below? This place was used to people shuffling around in its darkness.

Jesse dragged her hand down the wall in a dry scrape. “I don’t think Benny died in the fire.” Her shoe plopped across a shallow puddle. “I think he starved.”

“Is that why he’s like this?” Gabrielle asked. “Could we feed him? Make him stop?”

We are feeding him, Desiree thought. She rubbed the blistered tooth marks on her arm and was glad to be in too much pain to say it aloud.

Something metal crashed against a wall. Jesse was digging. “There has to be something, right? Unfinished business, bones to give burial. That man, Mr. Donovan, said they didn’t recover everyone who went missing.”

Not right away, but that implied they had been recovered. If Benny was one of them, someone had eventually found this room, pulled him out, and taken care of his remains. The man was gone. The footprint in concrete remained.

But what about the others?

Desiree forced herself to crawl after Jesse into the deep darkness, her hand propped against the wall. If she found crutches, she’d count that as a miracle. Instead, her palm scraped the same patch of wall that Jesse was talking about and found the notches. Each was about two inches long, little deeper than a scratch. No one dug their way out of this place by etching lines in a row. Desiree started to count them. Four, five, six.

Glass crunched on the floor. “An old clock. And I think these are called forceps.” The cabinet creaked open under Jesse’s hand. “There has to be something.”

No, there didn’t, but she needed to believe there was. Eight, nine. Had there been water pooling when Benny was trapped, enough to drink that he stayed alive this long? Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. The notches stopped where the wall had eroded, but even if there were only this many, fourteen days without food and water? Impossible. He’d had water. And food.

What had Arthur said? Forty-one people recovered right away?

“This feels like a hacksaw,” Jesse said. “Do you think this was the morgue? Did he eat people’s bodies?”

Desiree leaned heavy against the wall. Understanding seeped into her and she was glad again to be made silent. Let Jesse and Gabrielle keep shuffling around in the dark. Let them never see what reared up in Desiree’s imagination.

At the center of his bullshit, Arthur had been telling the truth. The people of Glade Street didn’t summon Benny. He was already here, had been here since Blackwood Mercy Hospital burned down when he was trapped underneath.

And he wasn’t trapped alone. Not adults, but five kids, down here for reasons unknown when the fire ripped through the upper floors. He wasn’t a monster back then, was he?

There was no Cannibal King before the hospital burned.

Those cannibal crimes, the campfire tales, all stories with their events mixed up, articles from before and after the hospital burning remembered out of order and twisted into the fantastic.

The real Benny might have worked at the hospital the day it caught fire, someone trapped underground with five kids. Maybe it was an unused wing, forgotten during the recovery. Desiree could imagine Benny and the children cowering in pitch-blackness, no light, no hope but patience. Enough air for a time. The underground might have been bigger then, the ceiling not sagging so badly.

Tap-tap-tap. Water must have spilled out of a burst pipe and puddled on the floor, where rainfall gathered now. They did not go thirsty. And food for Benny and five kids? They might have held out for a while, but in the end, they found a way. An awful, hard way, but a way.

Benny might have been merciful with the first and killed him outright with a chunk of debris. They ate together, ate him raw.

And maybe it was Desiree’s morbidity after the night she’d had, but after the first, with less food per kid, it would’ve been smarter to cut pieces off someone still alive to make the supply last longer. One by one, cut apart, eaten, and died, eventually. And was Benny supposed to starve before a child? Not likely. They might have come after him in his sleep, even bit a few pieces off, but he got the better of them. He was the biggest, the only adult. And what had Gabrielle said? A mother bear would eat her cub to survive so she could have more cubs. An adult could always have more kids.

But adults seemed to forget that dead kids couldn’t grow into new adults.

Desiree smelled copper in the air. Down in the dark, rendered silent, her imagination could flex its muscles. Did she smell her blood right now, or the children’s blood from over thirty years ago? She couldn’t say. It was all the same. Blood in the dark in the grave of Benny Rose.

Cradle of the Cannibal King.

“Nothing,” she croaked.

Jesse stopped rummaging. “What are you saying?”

Desiree waved an arm across the room. “Nothing.”

Jesse looked over the dark, hopeless shapes strewn throughout the underground. Her shoulders sagged. “But the silver bullet.”

“There is no silver bullet.” Saying an entire sentence was too much like nails shredding their way up Desiree’s throat.

She grasped the gurney and shook it. Jesse grabbed the other side and dragged it against the wall where it halfway blocked the hole. The flickering light thinned. Desiree wanted to help, but her leg was a mess, her arm even worse. Gabrielle limped deeper into the room to rummage inside the medical cabinet.

“Do you think he’s coming?” Jesse asked.

Desiree was certain. If he wasn’t ready to follow her down soon and find everyone he’d been looking for, he would descend by morning when was ready to sleep.

She didn’t think he’d wait that long. Likely he had passed the yard above, gone looking amid the pine trees, and then maybe Arthur’s house, but he would come doubling back soon. She could see him against the fire, realizing his mistake, that he had missed his own grave, but that was okay. He was on his way. Not in a rush, because the girls weren’t going anywhere, but coming at his own pace and coming with a smile.

A gangly shape distorted the firelight. They weren’t ready.

What else did they have to block the way? Jesse scrabbled across the floor, picking up and lobbing debris toward the gurney. The pieces were practically powder. Desiree pressed the shoe of her good leg against the gurney’s underside, but it wasn’t heavy and she had nothing to brace her back against. Soil dropped, first in pebbles, and then with a heavy, displaced thump.

A spidery shadow crawled face-first down the hole. The gap left at the mouth was slender enough to give Benny trouble, but not to stop him. One pale arm reached over the gurney, grasping for Desiree’s leg.

Jesse slid across the floor and jammed her shoulder against the frail barricade. If only they had something heavier. Metal clinked from behind. Desiree glanced over her shoulder, where grunting Gabrielle stood on her good leg and tried to tip over the medical cabinet.

Benny’s hand latched onto the rusted underside of the gurney and yanked his upper half through the opening. His head appeared, teeth parted. Every nerve in Desiree’s body shouted for her to scramble back, but her body hadn’t been listening to her when she split from the girls before. Every time they ran, someone died. She wasn’t running. She raised her good hand and swept her nails across Benny’s face, scalding her fingertips.

He didn’t care. His teeth sank into the soft flesh where Jesse’s shoulder met her neck and squeezed out a scream. White fingers pawed at the gurney’s underside, looking to grab another part of her.

Desiree grabbed first and yanked back. Her good leg braced the floor and shoved off toward the dark side of the underground. Jesse snagged, caught between Benny and Desiree, until her sweater and flesh in his teeth tore off her body. She fell on the floor beside Desiree, screaming and crying. One hand pressed at the raw strip where skin used to be.

The same place Benny first bit Sierra. Desiree couldn’t let this happen again.

Benny swatted the gurney to one side and lingered in the mouth of the hole, chewing a piece of Jesse. Faint light brought his smile to life.

He’s still having fun, Desiree thought. She dragged herself back as best she could with only one decent arm and leg. Jesse crawled alongside her, past where Gabrielle fussed with the standing cabinet. The darkness swallowed them and made Benny all the brighter when Desiree looked back.

Shrieking, Gabrielle put her weight on her bad leg and slammed her shoulder against the cabinet. It tipped over and landed where the ceiling began to dip, between the girls and the hole.

There wasn’t anywhere to run. Even if they could get around Benny, escaping the hole meant climbing, and Desiree couldn’t do that without help. She couldn’t even stand anymore. The ceiling pressed down on her and Jesse. Gabrielle followed, first hunching, and then crawling in a hobble on hands and one knee, the other leg dragging behind her.

Benny finished chewing the flesh from Jesse’s shoulder and crept back into the room. He was in no hurry. This place was home. He crawled toward the fallen cabinet.

Still sobbing, Jesse grabbed the cabinet’s edge and tugged it backward. Desiree grabbed the edge, too, but Jesse was the only one with four uninjured limbs. She was trying to pull the cabinet so deep into the room that it could jam between the floor and ceiling, leaving Benny nowhere to squeeze through. It screeched at every inch.

His arm snapped over the top, halting its progress. A raw patch darkened his white skin where blackened bones poked through. As they had aboveground when Desiree tore the flesh from his arm.

Maybe there was no silver bullet to kill him, but this place mattered. The man had died in this underground where the monster was born.

He’d been right here decades ago, eating kids. He’d been right here when they tried to eat him back. And how could anyone know who ate who in the end? Sure, Benny might’ve finished off the kids, or the remaining kids might have finished him and then starved before they would eat each other. Who could say? The room had to keep some secrets to itself.

Gabrielle made herself small as she could. Jesse sat frozen beside Desiree.

Benny dragged the cabinet back. It rotated, still screeching against the floor as he twisted it out of his way. He was strong, but the cabinet was clumsy, not shaped for dragging across concrete. When he finished, nothing would stand in his way.

Nowhere to go. Desiree was tired of that.

While his hands were busy, she scrambled across the floor, injured arm and leg screaming at her, and sank her teeth into the side of Benny’s neck. Her body forgot the pain in her limbs. This was much worse, fire burning against her lips and gums.

Benny wrenched free. His skin stretched between his neck and her mouth until it snapped off, leaving another exposed wound underneath. He had that shocked look on his face again. Stunned, the way Arthur had looked when she first struck him with the hammer.

Devouring kids didn’t make Benny special. He was just another old man on Glade Street. The difference between the man who hurt her and the man she could hurt was who swung the hammer.

She spat his skin on the floor and lunged again. He raised an arm to stop her, but her teeth dug into it and tore flesh away with a sound like tape yanked off a roll, revealing tarry bones. There was no blood, little tissue. He didn’t work like any living thing in the world.

His face curled into a sneer and then his black maw opened. She threw up her bad arm as he lunged and let him clamp down where he first bit her outside the burning houses. Let him finish what he started, chewing from wrist to elbow. She dove for his neck again. Tears rained down her face. She hoped enough nerves would burn away that she could stop feeling his touch, but the pain wouldn’t end.

He finished mangling her bad arm, reared back, and hissed, startling her. It was the first noise he’d made all night. He pounced while she was thrown off and knocked her on her back. She started to sit up, but his white hand slammed her chest. Her teeth couldn’t reach his fingers.

His eyes glared down on her. She couldn’t see them, but like his smile, she knew they were there. She scratched at his chest, kicked at his legs and genitals, but there was no feeling in him. His teeth snapped open and descended toward her face. He was going to start with her eyes and work his way down. Blood seeped across her blistering temple.

Someone plowed face-first into the side of his head, biting and tearing off an ear. Jesse gave a muffled shriek. She hadn’t expected how much it hurt to touch him.

His mouth turned from Desiree, his free arm groping for Jesse.

Another shadow swept over Desiree and went for Benny’s face. Gabrielle bit and screamed at once, her mouth full of pale, burning flesh. She didn’t tear away strips, but kept chewing, face buried in his infernal skin.

Hot fluid poured onto Desiree’s shoulder. Benny didn’t bleed, but Gabrielle’s lower jaw had hooked beneath his temple and burst one black eye. Her muffled scream faded, her throat burning too hot to make a sound.

Benny’s hand loosened the pressure from Desiree’s chest.

She shot up beneath him and clamped her teeth onto the underside of his neck. She couldn’t see Jesse or Gabrielle anymore, only felt them moving around her, and Benny swatting and snapping as they bit him. She didn’t need to know what they were doing. All that mattered was that she wasn’t alone. He only had one mouth against three, biting him from all sides.

The closest they had to silver bullets were teeth.

Desiree pulled back hard as she could and the flesh in her teeth went with her. His throat tore open, a gaping hole between lower jaw and collarbone. Nothing he swallowed would make its way to that distended stomach. His white hands patted at ragged, pale flesh. His remaining eye widened. He looked like Gabrielle when Desiree first sat across from her in the lunchroom, when they cowered in the car trying to escape, and every other time she’d been scared tonight. Did he remember this feeling when he slept? Did he remember the children he’d eaten down here who came to eat him? Their tiny teeth. Their hunger, no different than his. Everyone who ended up in this underground wanted to live.

But Benny Rose was already dead.

Gabrielle fell quivering beside Desiree. She couldn’t stop to help. If she stopped, Benny would become the predator again. She wouldn’t hand him the hammer. “Get up!” she tried to scream. Some kind of sound came out before her teeth sank into Benny’s lower jaw and tore the flesh upward, exposing his cheekbone.

He grasped at her face and his fingers scratched a trail of blisters down her cheek. He was trying to fuse her mouth shut, like he’d done to Paul. She ducked, his flesh still in her teeth. She didn’t think about what it would do inside her, only swallowed and dove after him again. He tried to stand, but the ceiling was too close, the space cramped so that his height and reach meant nothing.

Jesse tore into his face, teeth cutting open his cheeks and nose. He snapped after one of her limbs, but catching her wouldn’t stop the biting. Gabrielle crawled on her belly, chomped into his middle, and tore open his gut. They would die tearing him apart. Three more bodies for Benny’s grave when the old folk came to bury their mess in the morning.

No, someone had to get out of here alive. They couldn’t let it be Benny.

Desiree grabbed his head in both hands, every finger burning, and scraped her teeth under his socket, where she ripped out his remaining black eye. It came rough but gelatinous, a lump of fiery jelly hotter than any other part of him. She spat it on the floor.

He was getting softer, messier. She went for one of his arms; the other already hung limp. Half the pieces she spat out, half she swallowed. They didn’t do her throat any good, but they were headed where they belonged. To let him go entirely undigested might mean handing him the hammer. She wouldn’t chance it.

He tried crawling backward toward the light. She kept after him, hurting her hands every time she grabbed him. A barren patch revealed part of his ribs and sternum. Most of his face was gone. Jesse slid behind him and chewed down the back of his neck. Gabrielle was on all fours, still tearing at his abdomen.

After enough eating, he was no longer a threat. Soon, he stopped struggling altogether.

They didn’t touch his lower half except to keep his legs from helping him out of the hole. He trembled, more bones than flesh, his maggot-white skin lying in tatters around him. He didn’t hiss again. There was no throat, no tongue. The only sounds were his scuffling feet on the concrete, the girls’ heavy breathing, and their snapping jaws.

Lastly, Desiree clenched her teeth around his lips. He wasn’t smiling anymore. She made sure he never smiled again.

Seventeen: Day of the Dead

Jesse crawled first from the hole. Blisters ran down her lips and jaw, and her tongue was a burned dead thing in her mouth. Blood crawled from the bite below her neck. One shoulder and wrist were ripped raw to the muscle. Shoes bracing the sides of the hole, her stronger arm reached inside and pulled Gabrielle to the surface.

Most of her face was scalded red except where her mouth had been charred black. One eye squeezed shut where Benny got her as good as she gave, and fluid seeped down her blistered cheek. Breath rasped in and out. She might have swallowed his eye. She fell to one side of the hole on her back while Jesse reached inside again and pulled Desiree onto the wet lawn.

The fires were dying down and sleet had turned to white flakes, the first snow of the season. That might have helped cool Desiree’s wounds, but she couldn’t feel much of anything. One forearm was a ragged suggestion of flesh around bone, and the upper arm was broken halfway between elbow and shoulder. Her leg was no worse than Arthur had left it, but it hurt like hell. Her mouth was a slit inside twisted burn tissue, her palms scorched. Her throat and lungs burned with every breath.

No one spoke. None of them could.

Gabrielle quivered on her back, remaining eye glazed over, while Jesse crumpled to one side and curled into a fetal pose. Desiree fell on the lawn between them, one ankle dangling over the hole. Pieces of Benny Rose fought her stomach acid for dominance. Either they were burning her apart or they were being taken apart to become her cells.

If she was dying, if all of them were, at least they weren’t dying down there.

Snowflakes fell on their faces, and morning ebbed into the gray sky. The sound of rushing water eased behind the trees. Soon they could cross out of Glade Street anywhere they liked if they found the strength. Desiree didn’t think they would.

She wondered if her friends knew what was coming. Probably not. They hadn’t been up here when Glade Street’s residents called for the girls’ execution. Even if they guessed, they couldn’t picture it like Desiree. She wanted to sleep, let everything that was about to happen wash over her.

First there would be sirens. Red and blue flashing lights would forge the shriveling floodwater, at last returning to where it belonged below the banks of Lemon Fair River. The lights would cross the bridge, pull up Pontiac Drive, and make a left at the sign that said Glade Street Retirement Community. The police would only see that the neighborhood was established in 1963. They wouldn’t know what graves it had been built upon.

They would pass Paul’s car. There would be nothing left of Paul, same as there was nothing left of Sierra. One unlucky car would have to stop and inspect, but the rest would hurtle into the cul-de-sac. The old folk would have screamed bloody murder when they finally got through to Blackwood PD, and in this case, they were right. No sign of Sierra, Paul, or Adrian, but past the potholes and puddles, bloodthirsty Prudence would lead the police to Arthur’s corpse.

They would comb the yards next. Desiree could almost hear their shoes sink into the earth, hear firemen blast the smoldering ruins she’d left for them. They had plenty of water after last night. It wouldn’t take long to find the girls.

If they promised to let her sleep, she would bite the bullet, even a silver bullet, and take the blame for everything. Only, her hands were too numb to sign a confession.

Her fingers crept across wet grass toward Jesse’s mud-caked thigh, pawed blindly, and found her hand. She answered in a gentle squeeze. At Desiree’s other side, she found Gabrielle’s bandaged hand, which was limp. Lucky her. She was asleep already, so soundly that her breath was silent. Desiree held her hand anyway.

She wanted to tell them things. They should know how brave they were, how much it mattered that they tore that thing apart with their teeth. She wanted Jesse to feel at peace over Sierra, having made sure no one else would die here. She wanted Gabrielle to look forward to next Halloween, whatever strange shape it took in Blackwood without Benny Rose, somewhere far from her horrid grandmother. She wanted them to know they were strong.

They should know that, far as she was concerned, they had never been more beautiful.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Soon they would be deafening. Desiree pressed the back of her head into the grass and mud and shut her eyes. Sirens be damned, she didn’t have to think about them. She could picture anything she wanted.

Wasn’t Glade Street already prettier now that Halloween was over? Didn’t it smell fresher, as if aired out for the first time since Blackwood Mercy Hospital burned down thirty-four years ago? Not Glade Street alone, but the town. A diseased presence had slipped away.

Blackwood had no mall, no movie theater. Kids milled around town square on nice days and anywhere else they could on others. If they drove, they drove someplace else, because in Blackwood there was little to see and only the woods to hear.

The town’s one glorious night each year was Halloween, because Blackwood had one thing that no other town had in the world.

Benny Rose, the Cannibal King, and all the stories that came with him.

But not anymore.

Glade Street’s old folk shouted at police officers, telling them lies about what they had seen last night. Old folk who weren’t going to like living here anymore. Old folk who didn’t know what it felt like to be eaten. Desiree wanted them to learn.

She wanted them gone, the houses vanished, Glade Street returned to autumn’s red and gold that it had not seen since before Blackwood Mercy Hospital was built. Kids would cross Lemon Fair River and come here to run loose, outside their parents’ grasp. They would play hide-and-seek through the pine woods or tag in the wide open space. Sometimes they would just lie on the grass, like the girls right now, and stare at the clouds in the day and the stars at night.

And on Halloween, they would tell stories. Not about Benny Rose—he was old news. They would tell about new ghosts. Blackwood needed new ghosts. New things were rare. Kids would tell about the Happy Halloween Fires that swallowed homes in big jack-o-lantern grins. They would whisper about Mad Desi who stalked dark streets with nothing but a hammer and a hate-on.

They would make up stories about the Silent Sisters who crept into old folk’s homes and ate their flesh. Those would be the most popular of all Blackwood’s ghost stories. The more gruesome, the better. They were about all the awful things monsters did to children, but in the end the dead kids got their revenge, with open mouths and merciless teeth.

REWIND OR DIE

Midnight Exhibit Vol. 1

Infested - Carol Gore

Benny Rose: The Cannibal King - Hailey Piper - Jan. 23

Cirque Berserk - Jessica Guess - Feb. 20

Hairspray and Switchblades - V. Castro - Feb. 20

Sole Survivor - Zachary Ashford - Mar. 26

Food Fright - Nico Bell - Mar. 26

Hell’s Bells - Lisa Quigley - May 28

The Kelping - Jan Stinchcomb - May 28

Trampled Crown - Kirby Kellogg - Jun. 25

Dead and Breakfast - Gary Buller - Jun. 25

Blood Lake Monster - Renee Miller - Jul. 23

The Catcatcher - Kevin Lewis - Jul. 23

All You Need is Love and a Strong Electric Current - Mackenzie Kiera - Aug. 27

Tales From the Meat Wagon - Eddie Generous - Aug. 27

Hooker - M. Lopes da Silva - Oct. 29

Offstage Offerings - Priya Sridhar - Oct. 29

Dead Eyes - EV Knight - Nov. 26

Dancing on the Edge of a Blade - Todd Rigney - Dec. 12

Midnight Exhibit Vol. 2 - Dec. 12

www.UNNERVINGMAGAZINE.com

Table of Contents

One: Halloween 1986

Two: October 27, 1987

Three: Halloween 1987

Four: And Now, the Weather

Five: Ghost Stories

Six: The Cul-De-Sac

Seven: Lemon Fair River

Eight: Windows

Nine: 6 Glade Street

Ten: The Blackwood Devil

Eleven: The Weak One

Twelve: Silver Bullet

Thirteen: Established 1963

Fourteen: Arthur

Fifteen: Desi’s Girl

Sixteen: The Grave

Seventeen: Day of the Dead