Creep Street (17 page)

omehow you make yourself turn around. It's not easy. There's so much sweat pouring down your body that the ground's getting muddy. But, with the same kind of courage that you showed on the Grade One camp when you owned up to being the Phantom Pisser, you make the big move.

And there before you is a horrible sight. A gruesome disgusting foul revolting sight. It's some kind of corpse, and it's standing there looking at you. Well, as much as anyone can look when they don't have any eyes. Instead of eyes this figure has bony sockets in its face. Instead of a nose it has a hole. Instead of clothes it has mouldy rags hanging off its filthy rotten body. You can see shreds of flesh through the holes in the clothes. As you stand there, frozen in horror, it slowly opens its mouth. Out comes a long dark fat worm. It's about a metre long. It drops to the ground and squirms away, wriggling and writhing. Then the corpse advances on you. You're completely helpless. You open your mouth to scream, and that's the last sound you ever make. The cold slimy fingers of the corpse close around your throat and slowly squeeze the life out of you. Everything goes black and you die. A few days later they have your funeral, and then you're cremated and your ashes scattered to the four winds.

There's only one question left to answer. If you're dead, how come you're managing to read this story right now?

he clock strikes for the twelfth time. At that moment you see a sight so horrifying that you feel you're floating into the air. The only thing that keeps you on the ground is Stacey's arm, gripping yours so tightly that she leaves bruises. You don't even notice that. Your skin is prickling all over, like you've got ants covering every inch of you. You want to scream but there's a lump in your throat so big that not even ice-cream could squeeze past it.

It's the graves, of course; that's where it's happening. One grave in particular: the middle one. The ground over it is bulging like it's pregnant. You can actually see the dirt sliding off it and the grass slowly uprooting. A split appears down the middle of it. A weird white light is shining out of the earth: a soft light, glowing around the edges. You think Stacey's making some kind of noise but you can't hear it exactly. It sounds like a wombat trying to snore with a peg on its nose. You don't dare look at Stacey, though. All you can look at is the earth bulging and rising and opening like a big dark mouth. You know something's going to come out of there, you don't want to know what it is, but there's no way in the world you can look away. And then it comes . . . the worst sight in the world. A hand slithers out of the hole, not a skeletal bony hand but a pink fleshy one, warm and alive, slithering across the ground like a disgusting family of worms. And out comes another one. And neither of them is attached to an arm. Or to anything.

‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.'

Half of that is you, half is Stacey. The hands are coming slowly across the ground towards you. You just have time to notice that a finger is completely missing from one hand before you turn and run, screaming, back towards the house. Stacey is stuck to you like a Siamese twin. You arrive at the house together, in a time you later calculate as 1.8 seconds for a distance of 80 metres. You cross the verandah, throw the kitchen door open, and fall into the house, still stuck to Stacey. You slam the door behind you, lock it, rip out the key, and rush round the room, checking the windows. Stacey is pulling tables and chairs against the door. For hours, the two of you huddle there in a state of terror. Every time there's a noise outside, you clutch each other like you're a librarian and she's a book. When dawn finally appears you can hardly believe you've survived the night. Maybe your life will actually run on for a few more days yet.

It's amazing but no-one upstairs seems to have heard you. Before they get up and start asking embarrassing questions you and Stacey put the kitchen back in order.

Then you look at her and say: ‘Well, do you want to go check it out?'

She says: ‘I think we'd better.'

ou climb faster and faster. The bell's ringing so loudly now, so close to you, that it's deafening. You wonder if you'll ever be able to hear anything again. You try to remember: is that how the Hunchback of Notre Dame went deaf? But there's no time to think about that. Stacey and her father are still right behind you. Then suddenly the noise stops. You realise why: it's because you're so close to the bell that you're not swinging the rope now. So, you don't hear the ringing any more, but you don't hear anything else either. Your head feels numb.

You jump off the rope onto a little platform that runs around the belltower. From it you can see the roofs of the houses far below. You don't like heights at the best of times, and this is the worst of times. You run around the platform, getting as far away from Stacey and her dad as possible. But that's not going to save you. Already Stacey's father is getting off the rope. Now he's coming towards you. His eyes are red and shining, his face is glistening with sweat, his mouth is open and his white pointy teeth are glinting and flashing. This is the most desperate situation you've ever been in, worse even than when you tried to stuff your baby brother down the toilet. This time you're the one down the toilet.

‘Stop!' you yell at Stacey's father. At least you think that's what you yell. You're so deaf that you're not sure what you said. And Stacey's dad must be the same, because he shows no signs of having heard you. He's reaching out for you, his long hairy arms aiming straight at your face. ‘I hope this is a dream,' you think, but you know it's not. Then he grabs you. You struggle as hard as you can, but he's just too strong. You feel those pointy fangs biting hard into your neck, and a strange shaky feeling comes over you. It's like your insides are being rearranged. Your blood seems to be getting hotter and hotter. Then you faint.

Well, that was a long time ago. A few thousand years, give or take a century or two. Life's pretty good these days. You live in a castle in Transylvania with a group of friends—Stacey and her father, for example. Every so often you go out for another meal. If you're tired, you call the Blood Bank and have them come to you—they have a free home delivery service.

Yes, it's a good life. There's only one problem. You just wish you could get rid of the ringing noise in your head that you've had for the last three thousand years.

ou refuse Stacey's kind invitation and hurry away, trying to ignore her contemptuous stare.

That night you pull the wardrobe over in front of the door. You check the windows and windowsill, then lock the window. Then you get under the bed with your doona and pillow and put on your Walkman as loud as the batteries will let you, so that you can't hear anything that happens outside. You lie there all night, shivering with fear. It's a stormy night, and often the windows shake and the glass rattles with the strength of the wind. Every time it happens you think your life is about to end. You expect to see a group of ghostly figures come drifting in through the walls to surround the bed, dragging you out and hugging you with their cold clammy bony arms, inviting you to join them, deep in the dark earth . . . AAAAGGHHH! What was that? Oh. Just your teddy bear falling off the bed. You forget that you're way too old for teddy bears and you clutch it like you're drowning and it's a lifesaver.

In the morning you crawl out from under the bed feeling a little sore and cramped, and also feeling a little silly. How could you have believed all that rubbish Stacey told you? Ghosts, phooey! The room's pretty stuffy because you didn't let any fresh air in during the night. So you go over to the window to open it.

And that's when you see it.

On the outside of the glass are scratch marks. What could have caused them? Surely not . . . human hands? Surely not . . . someone trying to get in? With your own hands shaking, you pull up the window. And there on the sill, old and yellowed and cracked where it was caught under the window sash, is something that definitely wasn't there the night before: a single solitary human fingernail.