Five Nights in Suburbia
Night 1
Evan couldn’t remember the last time he had slept alone. He felt free, but more so an unfamiliar sense of isolation and dread. The sultry air drifted through the open bedroom door and out into the hallway as he gator rolled his body against the springs of the unframed mattress. He continued searching for a comfortable resting position while making quick glances though the doorway. The hallway was pitch black. His imagination was starting to get the best of him.
Evan pictured all of the serial killers and murderous creatures that could be stalking him from the far end of the hall. As a six-foot-five, 220 pound man with silvering hair and the early stages of an old man beer belly, he couldn’t help but feel a little stupid for still being afraid of the dark. It wasn’t the same level of fear that he felt as a kid the first time his parents made him sleep without a night light, but being so close to the unknown, even in his own home, was enough to make his back sweat and his hands clammy.
He took a deep breath, forced his eyes shut, and turned his thoughts to fond memories of his girls, Nicole and Rosie. He thought about his honeymoon with Nicole in Italy. He remembered the salty smell in the air and that revealing, two-piece bikini that she had bought just to spice up the trip. He hadn’t seen that bikini in years. Then he pictured that miserable day in December. The one where the snow laid knee-high and his fingertips burned whenever stepping outside. Rosie was born that day. He missed her warmth more than anything.
Thinking about the girls reminded him why he was sleeping alone in a decrepit fixer-upper of a home in the first place. It was all for them. A few days of painting and installing new kitchen cupboards, and they could all move into their first real home together. The one-bedroom apartment back in Manhattan would not be missed. They were ready to leave behind the big city smells, the noises, the vitriol and chaos that you loved in your twenties but started to despise in your thirties. The days of warehouse raves, designer drugs, and 2:00 am falafel runs were long gone. It was time for a fresh start, if that kind of thing ever really existed.
The night’s cool breeze whistled its way in from outside the bedroom window and tossed flakes of dust underneath the moonlight. An orchestra of crickets played a familiar tune from all around the backyard and a cat groaned from somewhere beyond the picket fence. Evan could feel his irrational thoughts slipping away as the delightful sounds of the suburbs gently lulled him into a deep and tranquil slumber that he hadn’t experienced in a long time.
The eyes at the end of the hallway watched him until the sun came up.
Night 2
Evan laid petrified in bed, caught in the foggy place that sits between the dream world and your first seconds of consciousness. He squinted hard, then opened his eyes intensely, trying to figure out if the thing at the foot of his bed was real or a figment of his imagination. Its glowing eyes watched him while its thorny tongue ran itself up the arch of his foot.
“What the fuck!?”
He kicked the creature and heard it tumble against the hardwood floor. He leapt to his feet and scurried to the corner of the room, desperately feeling his way to the floor lamp’s power switch. He clicked the button and the room was engulfed in a sharp white light. After a few seconds of blindness, he could see the intruder.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Evan grabbed the orange cat by the collar and read the dangling tag:
Mr. Bixby
1503 Chauncey Rd, Ithaca NY
Return to Mrs. Bramhall
The real estate agent, Amanda, had warned Evan about the neighborhood cat lady who had disappeared last year. None of the neighbors had ever met Mrs. Bramhall’s late husband, Arthur, but they were intimately familiar with the growing throng of felines that congregated in and around the widow’s home. Apparently the unsightliness of it all was enough to get everyone to move out of the cul-de-sac. For now, the block belonged to Evan, the cats, and the remains of Mrs. Bramhall’s estate.
Last spring, one of the neighbors noticed that Mrs. B had stopped collecting news papers from her front lawn. The smells that began to ruminate around the house were enough probable cause for the police to force their way in. Evan could only imagine the horrors that were found inside because the home was immediately condemned and set for demolition.
Mrs. Bramhall was listed as a missing person by Ithaca PD, but the search didn’t last very long — after all, she was pushing 97 years old at the time and had no immediate family. IPD kept her listed as a missing person, but most of them figured that she had already turned into worm food. Unfortunately, the horde of neighborhood cats didn’t get the memo and even with bi-weekly animal control visits, more and more hung around the rotting carcass of the Bramhall residence. Evan wasn’t exactly excited to share a fence with a boarded up home filled with cat piss and rodent remains, but the price was too good to pass up.
He scooped up Mr. Bixby into his arms and carried him downstairs to the front door. He removed the chain door guard and twisted the lock before pulling it open and using his elbow to push the screen door. Evan shooed the cat back to what was left of his home and watched the critter make a B-line for the front steps of the Bramhall residence. The orange ball of fur waddled across the lawn and leapt over the shared fence in an uncharacteristically athletic way.
Out of morbid curiosity, Evan stepped outside to get a better look at the Bramhall home. The house looked warped and soggy, like it had been sitting in water for too long. Most of the windows were smashed in, the others were boarded up and marked with shitty graffiti tags. He watched Mr. Bixby slither his way up the house’s front steps, effortlessly maneuvering around the wood splinters and jutting nails. There was a narrow opening at the bottom of the plywood board the covered the front door. The orange tabby squeezed his way in like a cephalopod and disappeared into the darkness.
“That crazy little bastard is actually going to sleep in there. Fucking cats,” Evan thought out loud. He turned to head back inside, but noticed someone out of the corner of his eye. He looked back at the Bramhall residence and saw an old woman standing in the vacant space of the second-story window. At first he thought the lighting was playing tricks on him, but the emaciated figure smiled back at him and raised slowly raised her hand as if to say “hello.” Evan blinked and she was gone.
He stood motionless, watching the window for what felt like half an hour before stepping back inside and locking the door behind him. He made his way back up to his bedroom, unsure of what he saw and why he was feeling so unsettled. That night, he closed the window and locked the door to the dark hallway. The air was unbearably stuffy and his body permeated with a musky layer of itchy sweat. Eventually, he slept.
Night 3
It was the meowing that woke him up. Evan wasn’t concerned by how many cats he could hear, but more so by the guttural nature of their cries. He tapped his phone to check the time:
3:21am.
He jumped out of bed in his boxers and tank top and looked out into the backyard from his bedroom window. Glancing over to Mrs. Bramhall’s yard, he was shocked to see the glow of a bonfire. Probably some stupid teens or junkies, he thought. He considered calling the cops, but he didn’t want to be that guy. He liked being “manly” and handling things on his own — that’s what he told himself anyway. He threw on his night robe and shower shoes, walked downstairs to the kitchen, and slipped out into the backyard to get a closer look at the action.
The wet grass rubbed against his ankles as he crept closer to the wooden fence he shared with Mrs. Bramhall’s backyard. With each step, the meowing grew louder and more visceral. It sounded like something in between a cat orgy and a feeding frenzy. The shrieks and cries were enough to make him instinctually cover his ears when he finally reached 8-foot-tall fence. He looked for holes or chips in the wooden planks to get a better look at whatever the hell was going on next door, but the slats were solid all around. Evan looked around and spotted an old lawn chair that the previous owners had left behind. He quietly picked it up, dumped out the water that had settled in the seat, and set it against the fence. He took a deep breath and stepped up on to the chair. In that moment, he thought of Nicole and Rosie.
Hundreds of cats paraded around the bonfire, some whining in heat, some caterwauling, and some eating the other felines. Evan looked around the yard for squatters, but there was no one there. No hipster kids, no sketchy drug addicts, just deranged cats. Then, he saw it.
He locked eyes with a large creature that sat underneath the shadows of Mrs. Bramhall’s hedges. It’s yellow eyes reflected the radiant glow of the bonfire.
Without turning away, it slowly crept towards Evan and into the fire’s flickering light. To his surprise, its appendages were anemic and hairless. It’s skin was coated in blue veins and dark sores. Evan watched as its spine twisted and turned its way out of the shadows and into the amber light. The pockets of darkness covered all of its face except for the yellow eyes that still hadn’t turned away. It reared on its hind legs, finally revealing its mandible in its entirety. The small cats stopped their madness and watched in complete silence.
Mrs. Bramhall stared at Evan, her smile stretching from one ear to another. It was the last thing that he remembered before waking up at sunrise.
Night 4
The day was a complete blur. Evan spent most of it trying to figure out what exactly had happened the night before. When he regained consciousness in bed at around 6:00am, he got up in a panic, threw some clothes on, and ran back to the lawn chair against his backyard fence. He stepped on to get another look at Mrs. Bramhall’s backyard, but there were no signs of the previous night’s events. No half-eaten cats, no ashes from the bonfire, no batshit crazy old woman. It all felt too real to be a dream, but after two embarrassing phone conversations — one with Nicole and one with Amanda the real estate agent, Evan decided that it had to be just that: a really fucked up dream. There was no other explanation.
He thought about climbing over the fence and further examining Mrs. Bramhall’s backyard. For a moment, he even felt brave enough to explore the inside the condemned home. But his courage faded as quickly as the sunlight, and before he knew it, it was night once again.
At some point during the cool twilight hours, Evan dozed off and dreamt about his honeymoon with Nicole. They were lying on a beautiful beach on the Amalfi coast, passionately making love. The waves of the Tyrrhenian sea were crashing against the black, volcanic sand, pushing the smell of salt and summer romance all around them. In the dream, the beach was completely empty, unlike it had actually been a few years back.
Evan could feel the sand slipping in and around his toes as he and Nicole intertwined their bodies on the beach towel. The taste of her lips and the warmth of her body was divine, but the sand at his feet had begun to sting. He tried rubbing his legs together to assuage the irritation, but his skin radiated with pain. He reached down with his hand to scratch more vigorously, his lips still locked with Nicole’s, but his legs started to burn with agonizing pain. He pulled his mouth away from Nicole’s and realized that he was kissing someone else. The old lady looked up to him with a passionate smile.
Evan woke up in a panic, feeling a thorny tongue against his foot once again. “God dammit cat, how’d you get in here again?” He pulled his foot away and the creature purred as he jumped out of bed and flipped on the lamp’s switch. Before his eyes could adjust to the light, a hand reached out and grabbed his wrist. Mrs. Bramhall was bare-skinned and perched on his bed, purring joyfully while licking his hand with her thorn-covered tongue. Evan screamed in a way he never had before; then he woke up.
He dove to flip the switch on the corner lamp again and he scanned the room in a panic. There was nobody there. He wanted to drive back to the city that night — back to their perfectly crappy apartment. The 800 square foot one with cockroaches and brown sink water. Instead, he locked the bedroom door, pushed a dresser up against it and sat silently in the corner, waiting for the sun to come up.
Night 5
Evan spent the next morning trying to explain to Nicole how crazy his dreams had been, and how much sleep he’d lost in the few nights he’d spent in their fresh start. He told her that something was wrong with the house, the neighborhood, all of it. She wasn’t having it. Disappearing bonfires? Cat massacres/orgies? A naked, promiscuous, and possibly dead cat woman prowling around at night? Evan knew that he sounded like a lunatic. Anyway, Rosie was already enrolled to start the first grade at her new school the following week. The move was happening. Period.
After a long and ugly argument, Evan hung up on Nicole and chucked his phone at the drywall. It chipped the paint, then skipped across the hardwood floors. The rest of the day was a blur, sleep deprivation was hitting hard. In what felt like a blink of an eye, the sun fell, and the moon rose once again.
The floor was wet. The room was dark unfamiliar. Evan tried to figure out where he was while gagging on the putrid stench that filled the air. A pale ray of moonlight shined through what appeared to be a basement window. It illuminated a light switch that rested above an ascending staircase. Barefoot and in just his boxers, Evan walked towards the switch, cringing at the wet sloshes and crunches that filled the gaps in between his toes. He reached out to flip the switch, but just before he did, a frail voice spoke to him from the far corner of the room.
“Nine lives,” she muttered. “Nine lives…nine lives…nine lives.”
Evan turned on the light and saw Mrs. Bramhall, sprawled out on the floor in and vast sea of cat parts and and thick blood. She rolled and writhed wildly while gnawing at the scattered pieces of flesh. It wasn’t until she stood on her hind legs and hissed that Evan remembered how to move his legs and scale the basement stairs.
The door at the top was locked, but he used his imposing frame to bust into the Bramhall living room. The pockets of moonlight that shined through the windows revealed countless cats— dead and living, their bodies tangled in the crooks of the plastic-wrapped furniture around him. Behind him, Mrs. Bramhall was rapidly clawing her way up the stairs, the cat blood bubbling at her lips. Evan quickly turned around and slammed what was left of the basement door on the feral woman’s face and watched her as she tumbled down the stairs.
At once, the hoard of cats leapt at Evan, digging their claws into his skin and tearing away at his soft flesh. He flailed his arms wildly to throw them off as he busted down the board covering Mrs. Bramhall’s front door frame and rolled into her front yard. The cats ran back inside and he stumbled his way over to his own front door — kicking it in on the first try. He grabbed his car keys off the kitchen counter and sped off into the night.
Manhattan was less than four hours away.
Night 6
Ithaca PD investigated Mrs. Bramhall’s home the following morning but they didn’t find a carcass filled basement, pools of blood, or the “feral ghost
Mrs. Bramhall” as Evan so eloquently put it. They told him on the phone that he’d get a ticket the next time he pranked called them and then they hung up. That morning, He had came home at 7:00am, bug-eyed and covered in nothing but claw marks, blood, and his boxers. It was enough to convince Nicole that they needed to sell their new home, no matter how much they had to lower the price.
Rosie was excited when she found out that she’d be returning to the same school next year and Evan was relieved that he would never have to spend another night alone. That evening, the three of them packed themselves tightly beneath the sheets of their queen bed and Evan quickly drifted his way towards the best night of sleep he had had all week.
The Draytons were stomping around upstairs, having their routine 12am argument. The pipes in the walls screeched and rattled every time the neighbors flushed. Subwoofers, exhaust pipes, and expletives blared from the streets down below. It was a peaceful night in the city.
