The Street

by Garry Kilworth

Genres: Horror; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

The roads that made up the new Diamond Estate were all named after gems. There was Emerald Avenue, Ruby Close, Garnet Crescent . . . and Bloodstone Street. It started on the day the Peters family moved in. Patty was lying in the road and when her farther made her get up her body left a damp imprint on the asphalt."Look, Daddy," she said, "the street is crying." But within days the tarmac was bubbling with a malevolent will of its own, sucking at the feet of unwary pedestrians, chopping at the arms of maintenance workers and redirecting the wheels of speeding cars. The residents of Bloodstone Street had moved into open plan suburbia - only to find themselves trapped in a cul-de-sac of terror . . .

Release date: February 25, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 320

Sample

Dawn moved into the empty street, and its quiet houses, like a lazy grey beast, nuzzling out the shadows in the corners and frightening away the remnants of the darkness of the night. Feral cats, who had made this place their home during the recent building of the street, realized that things had begun to look a little too neat. The houses were clean now, and ready for occupancy. The lawns had been laid, though there were still gaps between the turves, which would soon close. Trees had been planted at regular intervals along the sidewalk. They looked dead, but this was merely the limp, sickly stage which occurred just after replanting. They would soon pull upright and begin to flourish.

The feral cats prepared to move on. They were bums. They didn’t like neatness. They liked empty cans and old cement bags in which to sleep. They liked piles of bricks and timber to hide in. They liked the small mammals that infest an area before humans moved in with their mouse-traps and poisons. It was time to go.

The first of the trucks carrying furniture and families arrived. It screeched to a halt outside one of the houses and a man named Jack Peters jumped from the cab and stood with his hands on his hips, staring at his new home. A car drew up behind the truck and his wife Alice and their three kids, Ben, Patty and Rex, climbed out and rushed to his side.

Jack put his arm around Alice.

‘Well, what do you think?’

‘It needs people,’ said Alice.

‘Sure it needs people – that’s our job,’ replied Jack, ‘but I know what you mean. It looks kind of damp and dingy without us inside, right?’

Another truck arrived, with children inside. Patty said, ‘Can I go say hello, pop?’

‘Sure, baby – and the name’s dad. I’ve told you before. Pop makes me sound like a hillbilly grandpa or something. I prefer dad.’

None of the children were listening. They had all run across the street to greet their new neighbours. The men began carrying the furniture inside the house. Jack started to help them until Alice said, ‘Remember your back.’

It took them most of the day to get settled, by which time their immediate neighbour, Mr Ray Lechfiler, a bachelor, had arrived. They all had coffee together in the Peters’ kitchen. The houses did not seem like homes yet. They still had an air of belonging to someone else about them. Ray said that would soon pass. Once they got the warmth of people into them, they would change.

‘Houses sort of mould themselves around people – take on personalities. Haven’t you noticed that? They start off being nondescript and they become almost people themselves.’

‘I’ll go along with that,’ said Alice, sipping her coffee. ‘I’ve never lived in a completely new street before, but I know what you mean. The whole street too – that takes on a persona of its own too, doesn’t it? You get dirty streets and clean streets …’

‘And drunken streets and sober streets,’ finished Jack.

‘Drunk?’

‘Yeah, sort of wiggly.’ He snaked an arm through the air.

They all laughed.

‘This is a sober street,’ he added. ‘Straight as an arrow.’

‘I hope so,’ said Ray. ‘I hate it when the road starts singing songs at three in the morning. You can’t get it to move on, because it’s fixed.’

‘Just one for the road,’ said Alice.

The two men groaned at the pun.

At that moment ten-year-old Ben came tumbling into the kitchen.

‘Patty’s lying on the street,’ he said.

Alice started, almost dropping her coffee.

‘What? Has she been hurt?’

‘Naw. She says she likes it there. Says it’s nice and soft and warm, like her bed.’

Jack marched to the door.

‘That child – what are we going to do with her?’

He went outside and saw his daughter stretched out on the shining new asphalt. She looked as though she was asleep. He strode over to her.

‘Patty?’

She opened her eyes and looked up at him.

She smiled. ‘Daddy?’

‘Get up, young lady. You’ll dirty your dress. What do you think you’re doing?’

‘But I like it here. It’s cosy.’

‘Up!’

‘Aw …’ She climbed reluctantly to her feet and stepped up on to the sidewalk. The place where she had been lying suddenly became damp. Small globules of water appeared and began to trickle down the camber to the gutter.

‘Look, daddy, the street’s crying,’ said the little girl.

Jack stared at the spot for a few moments.

Then he said, ‘Don’t be silly, Patty. Streets don’t cry. They can’t. They’re not alive.’

‘This one is.’

‘No – it’s just the asphalt sweating, or something. It’s a newly-laid road. It hasn’t dried out properly yet, that’s all. Now you go on inside. Mom’s got some lemonade for you.’

The little girl was convinced and went trotting up the path, singing, ‘Lemonade. Lemonade for Patty …’

Jack continued to stare at the shape of his daughter on the surface of the street. He could not have got a more perfect silhouette if he had drawn round her form in chalk. The dampness still continued to seep through, but just within the confines of her outline. The tears trickled away, into the gutter and down to the shiny new drain covers.

‘Damnedest thing,’ muttered Jack.

Later, the sky closed in, bearing down with the black form of night on its back. The lamps came on, all along the new road. Beneath their orange light, the street gleamed, its new coat of tar like a silken cloak covering what lay beneath. Suddenly, all the trees rustled madly, quivering and shaking their leaves like lions shaking their manes free of dust. There was no wind. All was still. The last feral cat stared bleakly at this phenomenon, and then turned, heading for the railroad yards on the east side.

Rafe Anderson leaned back in the wicker chair with a feeling of disgust creeping through his belly. All night long the bad poker hands had been finding their way into his cards and he wondered, not for the first time, whether he was being cheated. Then again, the bastards wouldn’t dare. All the other players around the table worked for him and he could throw any of them out of their jobs at any time. Rafe Anderson was head of the Sewage Department, Norristown, New Jersey. Yes, sir. The top man in that department. It wasn’t a job – the kind of job – he would have chosen for himself. He would have preferred something that sounded a bit cleaner, but at least he didn’t have to climb down the sewers himself and it was the best Fetter could do for him.

‘Gimme a few cards, for Christ sakes,’ he moaned at Bates, one of his supervisors. ‘Whaddya tryin’ to do? Clean me out of a year’s salary?’

Bates sniggered. ‘You can afford it, boss.’

‘The hell I can. You just keep your mitts where I can see them. You wanna deal under the table, or somethin’?’

Bates went red but kept his eyes on the cards in his own hands. Clearly he would have liked to shove one of those mitts into Anderson’s face.

Rafe rocked forward, scratching his beer gut through his open shirt. He felt some satisfaction at having got to Bates and enjoyed the uncomfortable atmosphere amongst the others. Let them all sweat, he thought. The bastards would kick me without thinking twice, if they were on top. He took a swig from his can of Bud.

More cards were dealt, some falling in the beer slops where Rafe’s can had stood, but that did not bother him. He planned on pulling out after the next hand anyway. The sweat from Gunter’s armpits was beginning to offend him. He would swear that Gunter absorbed the stink of the sewer, its moist, foetid atmosphere, into his skin – only to sweat it all out later, while in the company of others.

‘Christ,’ he said to Gunter. ‘You go for a swim down there, or what?’

‘Boss?’ asked the big man, his mild eyes on Anderson’s face.

‘Last night. You went to check out some of the drains on that new estate, right?’

‘Uhuh? Oh, yeah. Couldn’t clear the blockage though. It’s still swillin’ over, into the street. Got to have another look today.’

The cards were lousy. Anderson threw them into the middle of the table violently.

‘Shit. Can’t you guys do anythin’ without me holding your hand? I guess I’d do better go have a look myself, on my way home. Which street is it?’

‘Uh, Bloodstone. Yeah, Bloodstone Street.’

Anderson felt a trickle of apprehension at the words. He shifted in his seat, making the wickerwork creak under his hundred-and-seventy pounds. He began to button his sports shirt with his stubby fingers, glancing out of the window of Bates’ apartment as he did so.

‘Bloodstone, eh? Well, it’s gettin’ light. I gotta go. You guys make sure you’re at the depot on time.’

Although Rafe felt pleasantly light-headed, and somewhat horny, the way he always did after a night’s poker, he hated being unshaven and unwashed. It brought him too close to the other men around the table. He was an administrative man himself. He handled clean paperwork, not other people’s crap. He felt an urgent need to get cleaned up.

He left the apartment and made his way to his car, out in the street. The road was deserted, except for an old negro, staggering along the sidewalk. One or two pieces of yesterday’s newspapers were drifting along the surface of the road and the low sun glinted from dirty apartment windows, filling the morning with cheap gilt.

He climbed into his Oldsmobile and sat behind the wheel, thinking. Should he make a detour and check on that drain, or what? What was there to be concerned about? He would just be doing his job. Sure. Afterwards he could go home, get cleaned up, make a quick visit to Joe’s for breakfast and then start going through his IN tray. Once he had on a nice crisp clean white shirt that showed his red hair to advantage he would feel better. But first, that call …

At the time Rafe was gunning his engine and pulling away from the sidewalk outside Bates’ apartment, on his way to Bloodstone Street, one of the householders in that road was just preparing to leave for work. His name was Ray Lechfiler and he was a bachelor. Consequently, since he had a good job at a New York bank, he was able to afford expensive toys, one of which was his pride and joy: a Mertzorelli sports car. The Mertz was a wedge-shaped beauty, Fireball Red, with retracting headlamps, and it was one second, one whole second, faster in accelerating from nought to sixty than a Porsche.

God, he loved that car more than he could ever love a girl, be she the woman of his dreams or not. Every morning Ray would leap into the machine with its low-slung chassis, turn on his car radio full blast, while waiting for the automatic garage doors to open fully, then go hurtling out into the driveway like a red arrow. Lechfiler’s cheesecutter, the neighbours called his magnificent vehicle, but that did not bother Ray. Jealousy, it was jealousy. If they preferred to crawl into bed with a wife with sagging breasts, rather than owning a scarlet Mertz, they should learn to live with the choice.

He hummed away to himself as he shaved, his strident tones straining to drown the sound of the electric buzzing of the appliance. In the bedroom, the radio clock was still churning out a deejay’s drivel and the kettle was screaming for attention in the kitchen.

Ray finished shaving and put on his thick horn-rimmed glasses, to study his pockmarked face.

‘God, you’re an ugly son-of-a-bitch,’ he said, smiling at himself in the mirror. His teeth grinned back at him crookedly. ‘But you own a Mertz …’

One house removed from Ray Lechfiler’s place was another one-storey dwelling, almost identical in appearance. In fact, all the houses in Bloodstone Street shared their proportions and general dimensions with each other as well as with those in Emerald Avenue, Ruby Road, Topaz Street and the rest of the new estate. They differed only in the paintwork and the length of the grass on the front lawn.

The one-house-removed house was owned by Jack and Alice Peters, both schoolteachers, and their children, Patty, Ben and Rex. While Ray Lechfiler’s inner walls reverberated with contesting sounds, the Peters’ rooms were contrastingly quiet and peaceful, save for rhythmic breathing and the ticking of clocks. Jack Peters was standing at the front window, smoking a cigarette and watching the grey dawn creep above the rooftops. Patty’s Mickey Mouse clock on the windowsill said 5.30 A.M. but though Jack did not have to be awake so early, unlike Lechfiler who worked in New York, he had been unable to sleep. He was a troubled man.

He had to admit to himself that things were not going too well in his marriage and it was mainly his fault. He and Alice had recently moved into the new estate, after both obtaining posts at the estate school. Previously Jack had had to travel out of state, while Alice worked at the local high school, but this move had been intended to bring them closer together – to introduce a little stability into their previously erratic lives.

It had done just the opposite. At least, their lives were better organized, but shortly after the move Alice had been promoted to Head of the English Department and Jack found himself coming under his wife’s authority. Alice had been known by the school board since she had worked locally, while relatively little was known about Jack, who had come under a different board when he worked in New York State. Consequently the board had chosen the one they knew over the one they did not.

Although Jack was no chauvinist – at least, he didn’t think so – it was difficult, very difficult. He found that discussions begun at staff meetings carried on into arguments that were finished at home. Of course they did not totally agree on methods, and while they had been in different schools those disagreements had been the source of healthy controversy. But now they were head-to-head, full-blooded battles that disturbed the neighbours and worried the kids.

Jack sighed and pulled on the cigarette. It was his first and last of the day. Smoking was not, of course, permitted in the classrooms and he was not one to snatch a quick puff during recess. By the evening he usually felt he had gone long enough without one to keep clear of the things altogether. But he liked a dawn smoke. There was something a little primitive, a little pagan, about such a ritual.

As he stared out of the window, he saw a car pull up along the street and a large man get out and begin walking, head down, along the gutter. He seemed to be looking for something. The man stopped outside Ray Lechfiler’s driveway and stared down at the drainage grid.

* * *

Rafe Anderson was annoyed.

He had gone out of his way to look at the system in Bloodstone Street, yet he couldn’t see any problem with the drains.

‘That Gunter must have holes in his head,’ he said to himself.

Rafe looked up, along the length of the street. The tarred surface gleamed like a slick, black river in the early sunlight. No water, though. He couldn’t see anything overflowing. Place was dry as a bone.

Rafe felt uneasy. There was an atmosphere about this street he didn’t like. He felt moody and a little oppressed. There was good reason for his apprehension, but he still considered it weak to give in to such emotions. Only fairies and faggots worried about atmospheres. He had a job to do and he would goddamn well do it.

It was getting hot. The sun was creeping higher up into the sky by the minute. What was he going to do? He could wait until Gunter got there and bawl him out for setting a false trail, or he could go home and get a shower. Each had its attractions. He needed to vent his annoyance on someone, and he also needed to clean up. He decided to wait for a while. Maybe when the residents began to use their showers and bathrooms, the blocked drain would reveal itself.

He lit a cigarette and stared down at the drain below. Suddenly, something caught his eye. A glint of metal, or perhaps it was just water? Rafe got down on his hands and knees, trying to peer through the metal grid.

There was definitely something down there. Maybe it was a coin? Yet the gleaming looked too gold-coloured for that. He would bet it was a ring – something like that. A signet ring, fallen from someone’s finger. Whatever it was, it was just below the surface of the water.

He inspected the grid, intending to heave it up, out of the way, but he saw that someone had bent the bars of metal. It was possible to get his arm down there without lifting the heavy object from the ground.

He tried reaching down, from where he was kneeling, but the water seemed to recede from his grasp. The space was dim below the grid and he guessed it was an optical illusion: some trick of the light.

He lay flat down against the road surface and put his whole arm down.

Some instinct made him jerk back. Maybe the tar had been too hot on his cheek, or there was some movement in the surface? The effect was to retract his arm.

He managed to get it out as far as the elbow, before the grid bars snapped sharply against his flesh. His hand and forearm were still trapped beneath.

Rafe tugged. ‘What the hell …?’

He twisted his arm, trying to wriggle it free.

‘Goddamn!’ The sweat broke out on his face.

He managed to work it out another half inch before the grid tightened against his forearm. It began to get hotter, searing into his jacket and filling his nostrils with the stink of smouldering cloth. The pain arrived.

‘Shit!’ he yelled.

He wrenched hard.

The grid squeezed together, apparently being compressed by the road surface around it. The bars cut bluntly through the muscle on Rafe’s arm until they reached bone. Rafe screamed, shrilly, like a rabbit with a dog at its throat.

Then his whole arm went numb. There was a plopping sound, like a rat entering the water below. It was a couple of seconds before Rafe realized that his hand had been severed high above the wrist and had dropped into the sewers beneath.

‘Help me!’ he shrieked.

A door opened on the far side of the street.

Ray Lechfiler turned on his car radio full blast. King Rat were in the throes of high-pitched, ecstatic sound.

‘I love it, I lov. . .