Nowhere Blvd: A Horror Novel (6 page)

A sour cherry, his favorite.  He thought nothing had ever tasted so good, and swallowed it almost without chewing. 

Before he would allow himself any more he went to the front of the store as quiet as he could, to be sure he was really alone.  Finding that he was he went back to the storeroom and gorged himself on candy from the crates, so they wouldn’t notice it missing from the shelves.  It wasn’t long before he became very ill and had to throw up in the bathroom.  Then, once his stomach calmed down, he ate some more.  He was filled with a sugar high and happiness at his daring.  He grabbed a bag and took a bunch with him back into his hiding spot, even daring to explore the amusement park for a bit before going to sleep. 

In the morning he was hungrier than ever. 

After a couple weeks of candy, Spence didn’t need to be a nutritionist to know that there was a reason parents only let their kids have so much of it.  He was getting weaker, and was sick all the time.  He craved meat and bread and never wanted to see another sweet thing in all his life.  Worse yet, Jack and his Hollow Men were ferreting out his hiding spots.  They would do a circuit of all the ones they had found each night, and again in the day.  He’d seen them at it, having taken to spying on them whenever he could using an old brass and wooden telescope he’d found in the toy shop one night. 

Spencer imagined himself as an Indian Scout, collecting information on the enemy camp.  It wasn’t just Jack and the Hollow Men he watched, he explored as much as he could.  He watched the Perfects, who never ever left their houses at night.  Jack sometimes watched them play on the playground on days when no “real-world” kids were around. 

He watched in despair as the group he came with ran out (none became Perfects, and with Jack’s surgery techniques Spencer was surprised any of them ever had).  And even more despair as another group arrived a few days later.  Too heavily guarded now for him to even
hope
to warn them.  It was terrible, but watching it all through the telescope was a bit like watching it on TV.  Like it didn’t involve him, that it was all make-believe. 

There was no question of what happened to his brief friends that came over with him.  To his horror he’d seen the bodies carried from Jack’s lab to Nanny Gurdy’s house and into a cellar door on the outside, like in the old farm houses.  He wasn’t sure what Gurdy did with them, but he’d seen behind her house since that first visit.  Out past the tall hedges that blocked the view from her kitchen.  A bone pit, as big as a swimming pool and almost full.  He wondered if Nanny Gurdy had some beast in the basement she fed the children too.  Certainly they weren’t fed to Jack, although that was his first thought.  Jack never went down there, in fact he’d never seen Jack eat at all, or Mr. Buttons or even Nanny for that matter. 

Although Nanny certainly
looked
like she liked to eat.  Her generous mouth that opened so wide when she watched the children eating.  The way she smiled at the kids, didn’t take her eyes off them.  He remembered that strange habit she had of rubbing her hands together as she watched them fill up on pies and pastries.  At the time he had thought she looked silly, like a cartoon.  Now he thought that a lot of cartoon things would look horrible in real life. 

He’d thought about taking to the woods, knowing that the Hollow Men never searched there.  Jack didn’t either, though twice he’d seen Mr. Buttons go off into the woods alone, he didn’t know why. 

The problem was that whatever lies Nanny and Jack had told them, the warning about the woods was true.  There
were
monsters in them.  Spencer had seen them vaguely at night, shadows slinking around.  They didn’t move like men, and didn’t move like beasts.  No two seemed alike, even in the shadows.  But Jack hadn’t told the whole truth, because they didn’t come into town, not even at night.

Until one day he saw one in the light.   Jack and two Hollow Men were searching the edge of the woods behind Mr. Buttons’ shack, presumably for him.  Spencer watched them from a rooftop a ways away, trying to ignore the grumbling in his stomach as usual, loathing to eat any of the candy in his pocket.  Through the telescope he saw them look as a group to the north, maybe having heard something.  Jack sent the Hollow Men off alone, investigating something nearby.  Once they were out of sight the thing came for him.  A surprise attack from the trees. 

It had four arms, but only three seemed to work.  Naked and hairless, and strangely off balance.  Like the extra arms were attached wrong.  It didn’t look natural, except that it
did
kind of look human.  It
kind
of looked like a kid. 

Whatever it was, it clearly wanted Smiling Jack dead.  It had the jump on Jack, and knocked him off his feet.  It clawed at Jack’s face, tearing the fake face-mask to shreds.  Jack kept trying to get to his feet, but the thing kept knocking him off balance.  Spencer watched the silent battle of monsters in fascination, praying that the Hollow Men wouldn’t get back in time to save Jack.  But soon he saw it was in vain.  As savage as the attack was, the thing wasn’t doing any major harm to Jack.  Finally Jack did regain his footing.  The thing jumped at him and with an acrobats nimbleness Jack sidestepped it, grabbing it by a leg on the pass.  With incredible strength Jack swung the thing into a tree trunk.  Spencer heard the crack of its skull echo even from his hiding spot.  And the one after, and the one after that. 

There was no longer any question in Spencer’s mind of his ability to kill Jack through a surprise attack.  Jack was the king of the monsters here. 

*   *   *

As the week wore on back home with his parents, Spencer couldn’t shake the feeling that he was an unwelcome guest in the house.  He figured out after a while that both his parents still had jobs, jobs they weren’t going to because of him.  Baby Suzie apparently had a day care place to go to.  But him...well he just sat on the couch and watched TV all day.

They just can’t seem to figure out what the fuck to do with me
, he thought. 

Mother had suggested a party, for Spencer’s old friends to come over and see him.  Spencer was as surprised at the idea as he was horrified.  He’d never even
thought
about the fact that he had old friends still around.  Somehow in his mind it was like they had all died or disappeared or something.  The idea of seeing them again was so terrible that he considered talking just to tell her not to do it.  Fortunately he didn’t have to.  His father immediately put the kibosh on the idea.

“He’s just not ready,” said his father.  “We have to give him time.”

It didn’t take much to convince his mother this was the truth, though he didn’t think this was why his dad didn’t like the idea.  In truth they hadn’t had anyone over at all since Spencer got home, nor did they make him go to a psychologist like he had felt sure they would.  He remembered how it had been before with his father.  Spencer always had to be the perfect son.  Brave, tough, good at sports, good at school.  When Spencer didn’t live up to expectations, his dad always was angry about how it reflected on him. 

He saw how as the days wore on they looked at him with some kind of mix between confusion and disappointment in their eyes, like he was supposed to be something he wasn’t.  Looking in the mirror he wasn’t surprised.  He wasn’t entirely clear on what he had looked like before he left, but now he looked like one of the escaped mental patients he’d seen on an afternoon TV show.  Eyes red and sunken, cheeks hollow, hair wild.  There was a jagged scar on his forehead from the cave incident not so long ago, which had also left his nose crooked.  Not the image of the perfect son anymore, Spencer guessed he wouldn’t reflect very well on his father at all now.  His father was still the business mogul, and appearances were everything.  His father may have looked older, but Spencer guessed he was mostly still the same.  Except Spencer didn’t remember his father drinking near as much as he did now. 

They should at count themselves lucky I don’t smile at them, the way my teeth look now,
he thought as he grimaced into the mirror.

*   *   *

After weeks wandering the rooftops and back alleys of Nowhere Blvd, Spencer was getting as lonely as he was hungry.  He’d managed to supplement the candy with bits of food left in the parks and other areas that children had carried with them from Nanny Gurdy’s kitchen (if he could get to the scraps before the Hollow Men cleaned them, for in addition to their true job as enforcers, they really did do all the chores).  But watching people through the telescope wasn’t really like having friends, although he liked to pretend otherwise.  Most of all he liked to watch Perfect Girl Julie.  Even though they hadn't had the chance to be friends for very long, he would daydream of them escaping together.  If she couldn’t find
her
parents, he was sure he could convince his own parents to let her stay with them. 

For awhile he had thought that maybe the Perfects were in league with Jack.  But the more he watched, the more it didn’t seem like it.  They did what he said, and smiled and played when he came around, but they also avoided him when they could, he’d seen it.  They were afraid of him.  And besides, he had a sense, as all children did, that all adults were keeping secrets from all children. 

Surely Julie doesn’t
know
what Jack does with the kids that visit Nowhere Blvd
, he thought.
She must think that they leave the same way they came in.  She couldn’t just play with us and not warn us if she knew what Jack did.  She’s just a kid.  She’s my friend
. 

So he made up his mind.  He was going to sneak into her house during the day.  The Perfects all lived alone for reasons Spencer couldn’t guess, so he’d hide and wait till night to let her know he was there.  That way if she started screaming, at least he could sneak off in the dark. 

The plan was ruined in its first stages, but it didn’t matter.  He scouted first, using the telescope to chart the locations of all of Jack’s minions.  Nanny Gurdy in her house, Mr. Buttons in the woods, Jack likely still at home and the Hollow Men wandering about predictably in their search of his hiding places.  He made his way along his open course to Perfect Girl Julie’s house, hopped the fence into her back yard, opened her bedroom window, and climbed right in. 

Her bedroom didn’t look quite like he thought.  He expected pink frills and unicorns, in keeping with Jack’s childhood ideals that he seemed to decorate all the other buildings with.  Instead it was more muted, more “tasteful” as his mom might have said.  There were dollhouses and stuffed ponies, but at the same time there were old Victorian portraits on the wall rather than rainbows or butterflies like he had envisioned it. 

He shut the window and was preparing to see what food might be in the kitchen when she walked right into the bedroom.  His one forgotten detail was so glaring that he was shocked by the obviousness of it.  He had scouted the locations of everyone except her.  The emotions danced across her expressive face so fast it made him dizzy.  Fear, confusion, recognition, relief, excitement. 

You’re not supposed to be here
he was getting ready to say, when she interrupted him by running up and hugging him. 

“Spence, you’re alive!,” she said.  She was taller than him and his mouth was against her shoulder.  She smelled so
clean
.  Her skin, her sky blue dress.  She smelled like the real world.  He put his arms around her.  Tentatively at first, then holding on tight.  It had been so long since anyone had hugged him. 

“How did you escape,” she asked as she pulled away.

“I....I hid in the amusement park,” he said, knowing how lame that sounded but not being able to find the words for all that had happened to him.  Spence had figured out a while ago that he was better at doing things than saying things. 

“But, look at you!  You’re so dirty, and you smell bad,” she said crinkling her nose.  “And you’re so thin now, you look sick.”

He felt stupid standing there as she inspected him.  Stupid and lonely and little.  It was like he was waking up from a nightmare, waking up from having to be brave.

“I’m hungry,” he said.  “No one came for me.”  His face flushed hot and he felt tears spill from his eyes. 

“Oh, poor Spencer,” she said.  “I’ll take care of you.  You can hide here and live with me and I’ll bring you food.  No one will know.”

He nodded, not being able to talk for fear of sobbing.  As she took his hand and lead him to the kitchen, he was so relieved.  So relieved that he barely noticed one tiny little thing nagging at him.  Something about how she had said
you’re alive,
so surprised.  Whatever it was that bothered him, he pushed it away and didn’t think of it again.

*   *   *

That first day in Perfect Girl Julie’s house was a mix of happiness and nervousness and shy awkwardness.  He scarfed down the food she gave him, surprised at how little he enjoyed it compared to his fantasies.  He hadn’t known hunger could grow to the point of being unable to be satisfied.  He feared at any moment that Smiling Jack might burst in the door, a surprise visit trapping him without room to escape.  He asked her again and again if Jack ever came by, and again and again she said never.  She showed him around the tiny house and let him take a bath, promising to try and find him some clean boys clothes tomorrow.  The bath felt good, though he was nervous about her walking in one him and seeing him naked.  He’d never had a sleepover at a girls house and it was a lot more awkward than his male friends houses, in lots of ways.  Her house wasn’t really that big.  Kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom.  It had a fireplace for heat, though the temperature in Nowhere Blvd. never seemed to reach extremes in either direction.  The backdoor, at least, was real.  He tested it.  Leading out into a tiny yard with the high wood fence he had hopped.  Brilliant green grass that was (he realized much later) entirely plastic.