The Smashed Man of Dread End Page 6

  “Who’s this, Noe? Are you going to introduce me?” Mom walked to the door, her hand holding Len’s as Len jumped up and down like she was testing gravity.

  “This is Crystal. She lives in the neighborhood.”

  “Hi,” said Crystal.

  “Good to meet you, Crystal.” Mom looked at both girls. “So are we still going to the library?”

  “I need a banana!” screamed Len as if she had just realized that bananas were a thing.

  “All right. Calm down. I’ll get you one.” Mom led Len into the kitchen, leaving Noe and Crystal facing each other across the doorway like reflections in a mirror.

  “You won’t find anything about the Smashed Man at the library,” said Crystal, still staring at her notebook. “We’ve all looked. The internet, the library, the newspaper archives. Erica even tracked down some adults who grew up here. They didn’t remember the Smashed Man.”

  “Why are you here?” asked Noe.

  “Why did you run away yesterday?”

  Mom returned, leading Len, who was already two bites into the leopard-spotted banana in her hand.

  “I changed my mind on the library. Is it okay if I just hang with Crystal?” Noe asked.

  Mom turned her head in the direction of the kitchen, where her cleaning supplies littered the countertops and floor like a closet had exploded. “Sure.” She turned to Len. “You still want to go to the library, honey?”

  “Yes!” shouted Len, holding up her banana like a sword.

  “You two have fun,” Mom said to Noe and Crystal as she scooted Len out the door. As Len passed, the little girl stared at the older girls with intense eyes, slowly chewing a mouthful of soft yellow like she distrusted them together.

  After the door shut, Noe said, “Mom’s really going to hear it when they get five minutes down the road and Len realizes she forgot to bring one of her stuffed animals. She’s obsessed with stuffed animals. The weirder the animal, the better.” Crystal nodded at the information. “You want to see my room?” asked Noe.

  Crystal paused for a moment, blowing air into her cheeks before replying, “I kind of want to see your basement.”

  “My basement?”

  “I haven’t been down there since before . . . whatever happened to Erica . . . happened.”

  Noe didn’t want to go into the basement even in the daytime, so she just stood there, paralyzed, while Crystal fiddled with the leather cord at her neck, the stone at the end hidden under her blouse.

  “Those rocks you guys wear,” said Noe. “What are they?”

  “Witch stones,” said Crystal, pulling hers out and holding it so that Noe could get a good look. “They’re for protection. Erica told us about them. You find them in streams, smoothed and with a hole worn through by the water. They’re rare. It took us forever to find three in the stream out in Old Man Woods.” She stuffed it back into her dress. “We never found a fourth one for Erica.”

  “Do they work?” asked Noe.

  “Nah,” said Crystal. “It’s kind of stupid. But what else can we do? We’ve tried crucifixes and hamsas and sage. It gives us something to do. It’s better than nothing.” She looked around what she could see of Noe’s house. “The basement?”

  Noe led Crystal to the black door in the kitchen. After opening it and flicking on the light switch, they both gazed down into the monster’s lair/laundry room.

  “Are you sure you want to go down there?” asked Noe.

  “Yes.” Crystal took off down the steps. When they both hit dirt, Crystal turned to Noe and said, “Of all the basements I’ve seen on Dread End, yours is the spookiest.”

  “Thanks,” said Noe, looking around at the stone walls and dirt floor. Her eyes were pulled to the parts of the large crack that she could see on the other side of the water heater. She couldn’t make herself believe that the Smashed Man wasn’t coming through any second.

  “They found her here on the floor, in a coma,” said Crystal.

  “What happened?”

  “Nobody knows.” Crystal looked over at the nook with the washer and dryer in it. “Erica was braver than the rest of us. Once we learned nobody could help us, not our parents, not the internet, not any other adults, we gave up. Just dealt with the fact that a monster in our basement would . . . do something . . . to us if we ever stayed too long down there at night. Erica, though, she thought we could beat it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t think she knew. It was just a hope. She used to read a lot, on top of the dryer right there.”

  “What? Here?”

  “Yeah, she said she liked the noise of the machines while she read. She’d run them even without clothes inside. She only did that in the daytime, but I have no idea how she even did that. My days in my basement are torture.”

  “Why do you spend your days in your basement?”

  Crystal paused again, playing with the corner of the yellow notebook. “I’m homeschooled.”

  That explained the comments from Ruthy and Radiah during the walk to Rune Rock. There was a time after the incident with Abby that Noe had wished that she was homeschooled. That she didn’t have to show up where everybody was talking about her. “What does that have to do with your basement?”

  “My mom thinks that having a part of the house dedicated to just school helps us—or just me now, I guess—focus.”

  “Oh no.” Noe looked at her in horror.

  “Yeah. My schoolroom is the basement,” said Crystal. Noe didn’t like being in this basement for the five minutes they’d been in it, but to have to go down every day, for hours a day, seemed like torment. “I have to look at the crack in the plaster every day. Or try not to look at it. It makes me crazy. I fake sick a lot. One time I tried to cover all the cracks with putty. It didn’t work.”

  “Does it always come through the same crack?” Noe cast a worried look at the large crack on the far wall.

  “Seems to.” Crystal had been looking at the dryer the whole time they had been talking. Finally she turned to Noe and asked, “Why did you run screaming from us?”

  Noe had almost forgotten. She took two steps back from Crystal. “Your eyes. They turned purple. All three of you. Like my parents’ eyes did. Like . . . his eyes.” She glanced over at the crack.

  Crystal raised her hand to her mouth, her own eyes darting to the crack. “Are you sure?” The question was muffled through her fingers.

  “Yeah. I turned around, and . . . I thought it meant that the Smashed Man was there.” His name. She had said his name. Not ten feet from the crack, she had said his name.

  Crystal chewed her lip. “That is what it means. But it doesn’t happen to kids. And as far as we know, he’s still in the basement walls.” She shrugged. “We didn’t see anything after you left and nothing happened to us, so maybe your own eyes tricked you.”

  Noe was pretty sure about what she had seen but decided not to push it.

  “Erica did that once,” said Crystal.

  “Did what?”

  “Screamed and ran away from us.” Crystal looked down at the notebook in her hands. “It happened in Radiah’s front yard. She told us afterward that she spooked herself. Kind of happens in this neighborhood.”

  “What’s the notebook for?” asked Noe, looking for any excuse to stop talking about the Smashed Man. And purple eyes.

  “It’s my book about the Smashed Man.”

  Great, thought Noe. “Your book?”

  “There’s no record of the Smashed Man anywhere. Not that we can find. So I started my own record. There’s not much in it, but I thought you’d like to see it.” She held it out tentatively, like she was afraid Noe would dash it from her hands.

  Noe took it from her and flipped through at random. It was all words, no pictures. There were descriptions of the Smashed Man. Descriptions of each basement and the cracks that he came through. Descriptions of the Dread Enders themselves.

  One page at the end was a numbered list. The same list that Noe had gone ove
r in her head last night. Above the list was the phrase Every Monster Has Rules.

  “I added that page last night because of what you said at Rune Rock,” said Crystal.

  Noe didn’t know if Crystal expected her to read the whole thing in front of her, so she continued to flip through the notebook. But then she hit a page that she did read completely. One that was marked with a bookmark made of gray paper shaped like a man. The page was a poem written in careful letters.

  What can the Smashed Man do?

  He’s flat. Must be easy to escape.

  Run upstairs.

  But the Smashed Man can slither up a staircase

  Like a snake.

  What can the Smashed Man do?

  He’s flat. Must be weak.

  Run to your bedroom and shut the door.

  But the Smashed Man can squeeze underneath the door

  Like smoke in a house fire.

  What can the Smashed Man do?

  He’s flat. Must be slow.

  Stay out of reach in your room.

  But the Smashed Man can slip behind your headboard

  Like a shadow.

  What can the Smashed Man do?

  He’s flat. Must be powerless.

  Dive into bed and cover your head.

  But the Smashed Man can smother you in your sleep

  Like a deadly, grinning blanket.

  That’s exactly what the Smashed Man can do.

  Noe closed the notebook and stared at the yellow cover until Crystal took it out of her hands like it had been a mistake to show her. “I should probably go,” Crystal said. “Thanks for showing me your basement.” She went upstairs, and Noe heard the front door open and shut.

  Noe didn’t like being in the basement, and certainly not alone, but all she could think about was Erica sitting on that dryer, reading.

  Noe walked over to the big white machine. Who was this girl who had lived here before her? Who had been so fearless despite living above this monster? It felt like Noe was taking her place. In her house. With her friends. She wondered if she had even taken her bedroom. They did have one major difference . . . Noe was the opposite of fearless.

  Noe climbed up on the dryer and sat down, her legs dangling over the front. The metal was hard and uncomfortable, but it did give her a good view of the giant crack across the room.

  Then something caught her eye between the dryer and the wall. It looked like a book had fallen down and gotten wedged in there.

  She crammed her hand into the crevice and, after spending a few seconds trying to get her fingers on it, finally pulled it out, scratching the cover and her knuckles on the rough rock wall. It was bound in mint-green cloth and had a gold sun on the cover. Not a book. A diary.

  Noe opened it to the inside cover. There, in the upper left-hand corner in sparkly black letters, it read:

  Erica Bays

  Age: 13

  6 Totter Court, Osshua, NH

  Noe turned to the first page. On it were only two lines of text.

  To Radiah, Crystal, and Ruthy:

  If you are reading this, the Smashed Man got me.

  Ten

  Noe dashed through her new nightly routine in her new house. First, check on Len. Make sure she was tucked in bed. Next, check the baby gate. Make sure it was fastened to the wall and the door clicked shut. After that, slip into her own bed. Normally, she would then open her laptop and search the internet for any clues about the Smashed Man before reaching for the black scrunchie she hid under her pillow to tie her wrist to the bedframe. Every morning, she woke with a dead arm and had to get through the excruciating pain of all the blood rushing back into it. The sensation was like a thousand needles being jammed into her arm, but it was worth it. The scrunchie was almost comforting. She needed that wrist manacle as much as she needed a pillow to fall asleep.

  However, this time she shut her door, which she usually left open in case Len started sleepwalking. Then, instead of pulling out her laptop, she pulled out Erica’s diary. Noe had wanted to sit down and read it from the moment she had found it. But Dad had returned home moments after Crystal left, and when he learned that Mom and Len were at the library, he decided he and Noe should go out and meet them to have dinner. Noe had hidden the diary under her pillow with her scrunchie until bedtime.

  Noe leaned against the headboard and opened the diary to that strange introduction: “If you are reading this, the Smashed Man got me.” She was about to turn the page when the sound of her door opening almost made her throw the book across the room. Dad stood there, punching away at his phone, like he needed GPS directions to find his own bedroom. It was too late to hide the book under her pillow, so she just let it drop to her lap, like it was any other book she would read before bed.

  “You’re supposed to knock,” said Noe.

  “Sorry,” said Dad, lifting his nonphone hand and rapping on the wall beside the door. “You seemed distracted at the restaurant, and I wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.” He continued to look at his phone for a few more seconds before looking up at her. His eyebrows lowered as he saw the book in her lap.

  Noe tried to distract him. “Is there a key to the basement door?” She’d been thinking about that question since she’d first seen the Smashed Man.

  Dad tilted his head. “You know what? I don’t think so. But we don’t need one. It’s got one of those old-fashioned keyholes shaped like a chess pawn. There’s no way we could accidentally lock it.”

  “What if we wanted to lock it? Can we put a padlock on it?”

  “A padlock? Why in the world would we do that?”

  “I’m afraid Len might fall down the stairs when she sleepwalks.” Noe couldn’t tell him the real reason.

  “I don’t think Mom would let me. An ugly old padlock right in the kitchen? Besides, that would make it really hard to do the laundry.”

  “What about one of those small sliding bolts, like hotel rooms have?”

  Dad shook his head. “Too dangerous. What if somebody got locked in down there?” Noe actually shivered at the thought. That was too dangerous. “Besides, Noe, Nore will be fine.”

  “Len,” Noe said automatically.

  “Are you worried about yourself sleepwalking? Is that what this is about?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m worried about Len.” That was true, at least.

  Dad nodded his head and sat down at the foot of her bed. “Well, how about this . . . I mean, it’s just a thought I had, but maybe if I say it out loud it will motivate me to get it done. I was thinking about turning the basement into a playroom for you and Len. Throw down a floor, throw up a ceiling, cover the walls and paint them, add some more light down there. You could have a couch, a TV, video games, anything you wanted. We’d never bother you down there. Except to do laundry, of course.”

  “What?” The word came out high-pitched and shrill. She immediately thought of Crystal and her homeschool room. She drew the blanket up close to her chin. “I don’t want to play in a basement.”

  “It won’t feel like a basement. It will feel more like your own private apartment.”

  “I don’t want my own private apartment.”

  Dad laughed. “We’ll see. What are you reading?”

  The question was so abrupt, Noe didn’t know how to answer it. She stuttered and managed a garbled “I don’t know” before Dad picked up the book off her lap. He looked at it for a few seconds, turned a few pages, and then looked back at her.

  Noe gasped.

  Dad’s eyes were an iridescent purple.

  She jerked back from her father, hitting her head on the headboard with a skull thud and kicking out with her foot, knocking the diary out of Dad’s hands and onto the floor.

  Then she realized that if Dad’s eyes were purple, the threat was actually in the direction he was looking. Behind her.

  The image of the Smashed Man rising behind her headboard, like in Crystal’s poem, shot through her rattled brain. She screamed and threw her body away from t
he headboard and into Dad’s arms.

  But there was nothing there. No mutilated face leering at her from over the top of the headboard. She quickly scanned the room and saw no sign of the Smashed Man. Instead, she saw the slats in her closet door. The big dresser against the wall. Her own bed, which had a good twelve inches of space under it. All places that a flat monster could hide.

  “Noe, what’s the matter?”

  Noe looked up at Dad, who was holding her with both arms like he was afraid she’d disappear. His eyes had returned to their default brown. “I’m sorry,” said Noe. “I don’t know why . . . I startled myself somehow . . . I don’t know. I think I just remembered one of my night terrors.”

  The concern in Dad’s eyes was as obvious as the purple had been. “What was it?”

  She moved over on the bed and waved the question away. “Nothing. It doesn’t feel scary now. Stupid actually.”

  Dad looked at her for a moment before finally saying, “Okay. But, sorry, I thought it was just a book. I didn’t realize it was a diary. I shouldn’t have looked at it. At least you hadn’t started writing in it yet. A brand-new diary for a brand-new house. I like that. One of my regrets is that I never kept a diary when I was growing up. I miss that kid.” He stood up from the bed and picked the diary off the floor. He handed it to her and walked to the door, placing his hand on the doorknob. “Open or shut?”

  Noe looked at the open doorway and then at the space under the door itself. “Doesn’t matter,” she said.

  He nodded and left it open. “Please don’t tie yourself to your bed tonight?” Noe didn’t promise anything. Just cozied up in bed.

  As soon as she heard the click of the baby gate, Noe opened the diary. It wasn’t blank. Almost every page was filled with words and sketches. Why had Dad said it was new? She looked around the room again. No Smashed Man sliding out of a crevice to attack her. So why had Dad’s eyes gone purple? She flipped to the beginning of the diary.