Author's note: Just a plot bunny I had for a few months over. Had to write it and I like how it came out, but currently I don't know if continuing it, since I don't have much of a plan for it—I have a sort of outline, but not really that much. It's also my first attempt at writing horror-suspense stuff, something I fucking love—especially horror literature (thanks Stephen King)—by the way. Hope y'all enjoy it!
Summary: Naoto reminisces about the past, the Devil's House across the street, and . . . The Boogeyman. Then, on the way, has an encounter with it.
Rating: M (Strong language and grotesque imagery).
The Boogeyman
1
It was unusually quiet when Naoto made his way home after another day of school. The kind of stillness that vanished from his life after he met Nagatoro and her friends, it'd been like this for at least a month now since they went on different school clubs and, to be honest, it felt sort of sour. After switching the big nerdy glasses with contact lenses and ignoring the big dumb bullies, the ones that won't hesitate when beating the living deadlights out of a lanky, bespectacled nerds like you four-eyes unlike Nagatoro even if she will tell him he was gross quiet often (it's the kind of thing that happens between friends, insults change and become affectionate quickly and he began to find it amusing too), became a second nature to him, things went quiet. Way quiet in fact.
Especially on that month. An unexpected windstorm fixed itself overhead their small town and the sky went grey for over a week. Nagatoro and the others complain about it, overcast days and cold weather aren't fun for them but to Naoto they're strangely soothing — promises of better days.
He stopped to look up at the jack-o-lanterns laying on the porches and gardens. Green paper witches rode their brooms on some doors, while others guarded by plastic white skeletons. He was startled by a jack'-o-lantern whose face looked particularly cartoonish; Naoto sighed and simply kicked the rotten thing away—sweet, sweet payback—it backwards, bumping into a rock. 'Fuck off,' he thought and it felt strangely cathartic.
Tomorrow was Halloween, of course. How he'd forgot it?
He didn't really care about holidays, if you'd ask him. Halloween wasn't any exception. He had bad experiences with Halloween, in fact, like that time some bullies from middle school would randomly jump at him, screeching like nutcases full of murderous spite while dressed as monsters from classic western horror films he never watched.
That boy was the worst bully Naoto ever had, and he had more than he'd like to remember. Most of them thought the occasional beating and demoralization were enough—not Akira though. Not Akira.
On the outside, he didn't warrant any sort of alarm like other bullies did, with their unbuttoned uniforms, dyed hair and dangerous-looking bulky physique. Akira looked normal, and that was the worrying thing — it did a wonderful job at keeping his fucked up inside neatly hidden.
He wouldn't even lift a finger to him, but when psychological torture was related — he was the toughest, because he was the cause of his nightmares as a kid.
The Boogeyman is coming, Nao-kun, have you heard of him? He loves kids. Scrawny asses like yours are his favorites dish, I heard!
L-Leave me alone . . .
He's gonna eat you, Nao, he's gonna fuckin' eat y' ass!
Shut up. That's just fairy tales.
Oh, really? Haven't y' heard? They say he appears to kids that won't believe in him, it pisses him off really bad, and what happens to them ain't pretty! Have ya heard of that girl on the Devil's House, the one that wound up on a pool of her own blood? She died because—
"—because she didn't believe in the Boogeyman," Naoto finished. The memory of that encounter, him carrying a pumpkin for Halloween coming back, Akira and other bullies taunting him, making him trip over it, and the pumpkin crushing under his weight, had just recurred to him.
He was only twelve when that faithful encounter took place. Twelve and wholly ignorant of the world around him, or the bloody history that his little community choose to forget in the darkest corners.
The Devil's House. He heard about it through comments and superstitious accounts from his classmates of the time.
The girl that didn't believe in the Boogeyman, of course. It brutalized her, fucking destroyed her, left her to meet her agonizing demise on a pool of her own blood. The imagery of a girl covered in her own blood, gnashes all over her body—especially the vitals—her breathing quickly becoming ragged while the searing pain would bring the tears made him feel uncomfortable.
Her aged would vary sometimes, depending on the mouth telling the story, but most of them decided The Boogeyman attacked her at seventeen. Seventeen — wasn't him the same age now?
Naoto didn't like to think about the Devil's House and The Boogeyman. It was bad enough the goddamn thing lay right across the street, so after hearing all the different accounts of the murderer carried out on Halloween night, he just couldn't shake-off the foreboding feeling of something evil, full of evil and murderous spite looking from across the hedges of the residence, even after his parents had told him many times over the residents went away years ago, even before he was born.
The house, the most average two story-building, itself looked straight out of one of Nagatoro's favorite horror films, that oldie, black and white flick about a haunted house and a woman that commits suicide in the end but, in real life, it looked even more grotesque and less gothic. It stuck like a rotten, maggot-filled, sore thumb on a neat neighborhood like his. Windows sealed with thick wooden planks, discolored walls, and the foulest stench one could concoct when passing by it—the stench of the putrid walls as they crumbled away with age. Pointy green blades of untrimmed grass spread across the yard.
Naoto stared at it, once he arrived home. The thing remained the same it was from day one. State agents could never sell it or even rent it to anyone after the previous owners left without taking anything. Maybe there were plans to demolish it at some point, yet they never came into fruition; it's as if the Devil's House carries with it some kind of curse—some bad juju, as they say. There's something wrong with that house, something putrid dwelling inside the walls and awaits.
He frowned.
Was that . . . a car?
He was pretty damn certain it was so. A van of sorts parked outside.
Naoto sighed and shook his head, smiling—
A typical Halloween trick of sorts, guys of his age always celebrated it by pulling this kind of crap. How amusing, hahaha . . .
—not out of amusement at just how absurd the prank came across as, but rather out of nervousness and a certain dread his brain wouldn't acknowledge. This was his way to cope with this kind of deal, just refuse to accept the most absurd scenario—
Oh, so was the house finally getting a makeover? About time. The stench felt unbearable to him!
It was foul.
Nauseating, in fact.
He felt it crawling down his nose.
The smell of bad things.
Rotten things.
Dead things.
Like the girl The Boogeyman murdered on that awful Halloween night, you remember it Nao, right?
They say it grabbed a knife from the kitchen, crept noiselessly upstairs (the boyfriend never noticed as The Boogeyman lives from the shadows of your room), and rained its fury down the poor girl. She shrieked, fought, but it was all for nothing—she was dying, dying—alone in her room, all she saw was The Boogeyman's eyes and they took her breath away—
It strode about with the diligent pace of a predator, prudently studying its habitat and the nearby preys. And that was when it became aware of his presence. Naoto could feel his heart about to burst out of his throat as it turned his attention to him, standing before the property like a guardian thereof.
It had the shape of a man, sporting a greasy, green mechanic's long-sleeved coveralls, but there was something horribly off-putting about it and he couldn't shake it off. Some sort of miasma radiating from whatever fucked up kind of latex mask he was wearing. It resembled a normal man's face with black hair combed back, but it was white as wax and devoid of any semblance of emotion any person had. One would think that was, indeed, his actual head and not a mask, it just felt like it belonged there.
The Shape stared at him down for a long, uninterrupted moment. It tilted his head with childish wonder which only made Naoto's legs feel weaker, what on earth would he be thinking? It did not do anything else, only stand there and watch, his limbs not betraying the gesture, like a statue—Naoto couldn't help but wonder if it was humanly possible to be this still?
His eyes twitched. Not the same kind of twitch Nagatoro would cause with her innocent teasing and laughs. Naoto's eyes were twitching with dread as his eyes met with those of the The Shape.
He made his way home with long, dread-filled strides, refusing to check if the masked man was following him with its eyes, he only wanted to hide in the house.
The mask darkened his eyes. They were pitch black.
The blackest eyes.
The devil's eyes.
He shut the door.
—The Boogeyman is coming.
No wonder they called it the Devil's House.