Urban Gothic Read online

  “That’s it,” Leo urged. “We ain’t gonna hurt you. What happened earlier was just a misunderstanding. It’s all gonna be okay now.”

  Through the steel barrier came the hissing and spitting sound of the cutting torch. Within minutes, the smell of scorched metal filled the air. Then they heard something else. Footsteps.

  From inside the house.

  A lot of them, judging by the sound.

  “Oh, shit,” Leo yelled. “Hurry up, y’all! We got company!”

  “Quiet,” Mr. Watkins said. “They’ll hear you.”

  “They’ll hear us anyway,” Leo countered. “You telling me they ain’t gonna hear the others outside or smell that blowtorch?”

  “Coming in,” Dookie called. “Just hang on!”

  There was a great commotion as the men outside on the porch grunted and jostled and shouted orders to one another. Then, slowly, the metal door was hauled away, revealing dozens of faces peering in at them in shock and concern. Dookie stood at the front of the crowd, arms crossed over his chest defiantly.

  “Told you I could do this shit,” he said, grinning. Leo and Mr. Watkins hurried forward. The bloody girl limped along between them. They hovered in the doorway, shrugging off the multitude of hands that reached for them.

  “Damn,” Leo said. “The whole neighborhood is here.”

  “Seems that way,” Mr. Watkins agreed, grinning as he spotted his wife amidst the throng.

  Dookie’s eyes widened when he saw the bloodstained girl. “Are her friends still in there?”

  “We don’t know,” Leo said. “She ain’t talking. I think she’s in shock or something. Way she’s acting though, I’m betting that they’re all dead.”

  Behind them, the pounding footsteps thundered closer, seeming to come from all directions and behind every door. The walls and floorboards vibrated with the sound. Dust drifted down from overhead. The lights swayed.

  Mr. Watkins snapped his fingers in front of the girl’s eyes and got her attention. She stared at him blankly.

  “Are the rest of your friends alive?”

  She blinked at him. Mr. Watkins glanced at Leo, frowned, and then looked back at the girl.

  “Listen to me, girl! Are any of your friends still in there?”

  She shrugged almost imperceptibly and whimpered, low and mournful.

  Mr. Watkins turned to Leo. “Take her outside and get her some help.”

  Leo flinched. “What are you gonna do?”

  “I’m gonna do what somebody should have done years ago. I’m gonna finish this place once and for all.”

  “Are you crazy? They’re coming.”

  “Do as I say, now, Leo. Get her to safety. It’s time to start cleaning this neighborhood up.”

  The crowd parted, allowing Leo and the injured girl to get through. People gasped when they saw her condition. Most of the assembled throng followed along behind them, shouting questions. Perry shook hands with Angel, the chop shop owner.

  “Thanks. Glad you brought that cutting torch along.”

  “Don’t mention it. What the fuck is going on, Mr. Watkins?”

  “Can I bum a smoke off you first?”

  Sirens wailed in the distance. The mechanic fumbled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and handed one to Perry. He popped it into his mouth, unlit. The sirens drew closer. So did the commotion from inside the house. The hurried footsteps were accompanied by a chorus of howls and grunts now. Perry saw Dookie shudder at the sound.

  “The police finally decided to show up?” Perry asked him.

  The teen nodded nervously, his eyes flicking over Perry’s shoulder. “Yeah, they said they were on the way. We’d best go, Mr. Watkins. Don’t you think?”

  Angel frowned at the increasingly louder noises coming from inside the house. “What the hell is that?”

  “Call 911.” Perry took the blowtorch from the chop shop owner’s hands and stepped back into the house. “Tell them we’re gonna need the fire department, too.”

  Perry adjusted the flame so that it was low, and lit his cigarette with it. He closed his eyes and inhaled.

  “Ah, that’s good.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Dookie shouted. “Get the fuck out of there, Mr. Watkins.”

  Perry ignored him. “Go do what I said. Call 911 now. Get some fire trucks down here.”

  Without another word, he turned the sputtering blue flame up high and touched it to the walls. As he’d suspected, they went up quickly, despite the pervasive dampness. Perry tried not to think about the other missing kids. Judging from the girl’s condition, they were probably dead. Most likely they’d been slaughtered the same way Markus, Chris, and Jamal had been.

  “They’ve got to be dead,” he whispered around the cigarette. “They’ve just got to be.”

  He repeated it to himself over and over again, trying to assuage his conscience. This had to be done. How many years had this place been a blight on the neighborhood, spreading its poisonous roots through concrete and steel? How many people had gone missing in here over the years? It had to end. If the kids were alive—and he doubted very much that was the case—then they’d be the last victims the house ever claimed.

  Perry bent over and applied the torch to the carpet and floor, feeling a serene sense of peace as the bloodstained floorboards blackened and smoked, then erupted into flame. Thick smoke curled toward him. The fire grew louder, drowning out the footsteps and growls. Perry caught a glimpse of something on the upstairs landing—a diminutive, naked figure, horribly deformed. Then the smoke obscured it. He stepped back and ran the blowtorch all around the front door’s splintered frame. Then, finished, he handed the torch back to Angel and Dookie and hurried them down the porch.

  “Thought I told you to go call the fire department. I guess it doesn’t matter, though. Maybe we should just let it burn down into the ground first. Then we’ll call.”

  Angel stared, dumfounded. Dookie shook his head and grinned.

  “You are one badass motherfucker, Mr. Watkins.”

  “Thank you. And watch your mouth, son. No need to talk about my mother.”

  Only when they’d reached the street and he was holding Lawanda in his arms did Perry turn around. The open doorway was choked with thick, black and white smoke, and already the blaze was flickering higher, touching the roof overhanging the porch and climbing toward the second story. Within minutes, he expected the entire structure would be engulfed in flames. He thought he saw several deformed shadows in the doorway, dim against the swirling clouds of smoke, but when he looked again, they were gone.

  Perry guided Lawanda and Dookie through the crowd, refusing to answer anyone’s questions, including his wife’s. When they reached Leo and the girl, the five of them looked back at the inferno.

  “You set it on fire?” Leo asked. “Ain’t the cops gonna know it was you, Mr. Watkins? All these people saw you do it.”

  “Maybe,” Perry said, smiling sadly. “But I suspect they’ll keep it to themselves. That’s the way things are down here.”

  “True that,” Dookie agreed. “And besides, ain’t nobody here gonna be sad to see that place gone.”

  “If they ask,” Perry said, “I’ll just tell them that I don’t know who started the fire. We’ll blame it on one of the killers. After all, the place was old and rotten. A real firetrap.”

  “Yeah,” Leo said. “That’s true.”

  “You know what they say,” Dookie chuckled. “Shit happens.”

  Then the girl standing next to Leo stiffened and began to scream.

  She was still shrieking when the police and paramedics arrived.

  BRIAN KEENE is the author of over twenty-five books, including Darkness on the Edge of Town, Urban Gothic, Castaways, Kill Whitey, Dark Hollow, Dead Sea, Ghoul and The Rising. He also writes comic books such as The Last Zombie, Doom Patrol and Dead of Night: Devil Slayer. His work has been translated into German, Spanish, Polish, Italian, French and Taiwanese. Several of his novels and stories have b
een optioned for film, one of which, The Ties That Bind, premiered on DVD in 2009 as a critically-acclaimed independent short. Keene’s work has been praised in such diverse places as The New York Times, The History Channel, The Howard Stern Show, CNN.com, Publisher’s Weekly, Fangoria Magazine, and Rue Morgue Magazine. Keene lives in Central Pennsylvania. You can communicate with him online at www.briankeene.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Brian-Keene/189077221397

  or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrianKeene

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  “Zombies and Shit” Carlton Mellick III - Battle Royale meets Return of the Living Dead in this post-apocalyptic action adventure. Twenty people wake to find themselves in a boarded-up building in the middle of the zombie wasteland. They soon realize they have been chosen as contestants on a popular reality show called Zombie Survival. Each contestant is given a backpack of supplies and a unique weapon. Their goal: be the first to make it through the zombie-plagued city to the pick-up zone alive. A campy, trashy, punk rock gore fest.

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  “Apeshit” Carlton Mellick III - Friday the 13th meets Visitor Q. Six hipster teens go to a cabin in the woods inhabited by a deformed killer. An incredibly fucked-up parody of B-horror movies with a bizarro slant

  “The new gold standard in unstoppable fetus-fucking killfreakomania . . . Genuine all-meat hardcore horror meets unadulterated Bizarro brainwarp strangeness. The results are beyond jaw-dropping, and fill me with pure, unforgivable joy.” - John Skipp

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  “Super Fetus” Adam Pepper - Try to abort this fetus and he’ll kick your ass!

  “The story of a self-aware fetus whose morally bankrupt mother is desperately trying to abort him. This darkly humorous novella will surely appall and upset a sizable percentage of people who read it . . . In-your-face, allegorical social commentary.”

  - BarnesandNoble.com

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  “The Book of a Thousand Sins” Wrath James White - Welcome to a world of Zombie nymphomaniacs, psychopathic deities, voodoo surgery, and murderous priests. Where mutilation sex clubs are in vogue and torture machines are sex toys. No one makes it out alive – not even God himself.

  “If Wrath James White doesn’t make you cringe, you must be riding in the wrong end of a hearse.”

  -Jack Ketchum

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  “The Haunter of the Threshold” Edward Lee - There is something very wrong with this backwater town. Suicide notes, magic gems, and haunted cabins await her. Plus the woods are filled with monsters, both human and otherworldly. And then there are the horrible tentacles . . . Soon Hazel is thrown into a battle for her life that will test her sanity and sex drive. The sequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark is Edward Lee’s most pornographic novel to date!

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  “Bullet Through Your Face” Edward Lee - No writer is more extreme, perverted, or gross than Edward Lee. His world is one of psychopathic redneck rapists, sex addicted demons, and semen stealing aliens. Brace yourself, the king of splatterspunk is guaranteed to shock, offend, and make you laugh until you vomit.

  “Lee pulls no punches.”

  - Fangoria

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  “Slaughterhouse High” Robert Devereaux - It’s prom night in the Demented States of America. A place where schools are built with secret passageways, rebellious teens get zippers installed in their mouths and genitals, and once a year one couple is slaughtered and the bits of their bodies are kept as souvenirs. But something’s gone terribly wrong when the secret killer starts claiming a far higher body count than usual . . .

  “A major talent!” - Poppy Z. Brite

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  “The Vegan Revolution . . . with Zombies” David Agranoff - Thanks to a new miracle drug the cute little pig no longer feels a thing as she is led to the slaughter. The only problem? Once the drug enters the food supply anyone who eats it is infected. From fast food burgers to free-range organic eggs, eating animal products turns people into shambling brain-dead zombies – not even vegetarians are safe!

  “A perfect blend of horror, humor and animal activism.”

  - Gina Ranalli

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  “Brain Cheese Buffet” Edward Lee - collecting nine of Lee’s most sought after tales of violence and body fluids. Featuring the Stoker nominated “Mr. Torso,” the legendary gross-out piece “The Dritiphilist,” the notorious “The McCrath Model SS40-C, Series S,” and six more stories to test your gag reflex.

  “Edward Lee’s writing is fast and mean as a chain saw revved to full-tilt boogie.”

  - Jack Ketchum

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  “Dead Bitch Army” Andre Duza - Step into a world filled with racist teenagers, masked assassins, cannibals, a telekinetic hitman, 100 warped Uncle Sams, automobiles with razor-sharp teeth, living graffiti, cartoons that walk and talk, a steroid-addicted pro-athlete, an angry black chic, a washed-up Barbara Walters clone, the threat of a war to end all wars, and a pissed-off zombie bitch out for revenge.

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  “Clickers” J. F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams- They are the Clickers, giant venomous blood-thirsty crabs from the depths of the sea. The only warning to their rampage of dismemberment and death is the terrible clicking of their claws. But these monsters aren’t merely here to ravage and pillage. They are being driven onto land by fear. Something is hunting the Clickers. Something ancient and without mercy. Clickers is J. F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams’ gore-soaked cult classic tribute to the giant monster B-movies of yesteryear.

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  “Jack’s Magic Beans” Brian Keene - It happens in a split-second. One moment, customers are happily shopping in the Save-A-Lot grocery store. The next instant, they are transformed into bloodthirsty psychotics, interested only in slaughtering one another and committing unimaginably atrocious and frenzied acts of violent depravity. Deadite Press is proud to bring one of Brian Keene’s bleakest and most violent novellas back into print once more. This edition also includes four bonus short stories: Without You, I am An Exit, This Is Not An Exit, and The King, in: YELLOW.

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  “The Innswich Horror” Edward Lee - In July, 1939, antiquarian and H.P. Lovecraft aficionado, Foster Morley, takes a scenic bus tour through northern Massachusetts and finds Innswich Point. There far too many similarities between this fishing village and the fictional town of Lovecraft’s masterpiece, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Join splatter king Edward Lee for a private tour of Innswich Point - a town founded on perversion, torture, and abominations from the sea.

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  “Clickers II” J. F. Gonzalez and Brian Keene- Thousands of Clickers swarm across the entire nation and march inland, slaughtering anyone and anything they come across. But this time the Clickers aren’t blindly rushing onto land - they are being led by an intelligence older than civilization itself. A force that wants to take dry land away from the mammals. Those left alive soon realize that they must do everything and anything they can to protect humanity – no matter the cost. This isn’t war, this is extermination.

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  “Population Zero” Wrath James White - An intense sadistic tale of how one man will save the world through sterilization. Population Zero is the story of an environmental activist named Todd Hammerstein who is on a mission to save the planet. In just 50 years the population of the planet is expected to double. But not if Todd can help it. From Wrath James White, the celebrated master of sex and splatter, comes a tale of environmentalism, drugs, and genital mutilation.

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  “Trolley No. 1852” Edward Lee - In 1934, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft is invited to write a story for a subversive underground magazine, all on the condition that a pseudonym will be used. T
he pay is lofty, and God knows, Lovecraft needs the money. There’s just one catch. It has to be a pornographic story . . . The 1852 Club is a bordello unlike any other. Its women are the most beautiful and they will do anything. But there is something else going on at this sex club. In the back rooms monsters are performing vile acts on each other and doors to other dimensions are opening . . .

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  “Jesus Freaks” Andre Duza - For God so loved the world that he gave his only two begotten sons… and a few million zombies. Thugs, pushers, gangsters, rapists, murderers; Detective Philip Makane thought he’d seen it all until he awoke on the morning of Easter Sunday 2015, to a world filled with bleeding rain, ravenous zombies, a homicidal ghost, and the sudden arrival of two men with extraordinary powers who both claim to be Jesus Christ in the flesh.

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  “Whargoul” Dave Brockie - It is a beast born in bullets and shrapnel, feeding off of pain, misery, and hard drugs. Cursed to wander the Earth without the hope of death, it is reborn again and again to spread the gospel of hate, abuse, and genocide. But what if it’s not the only monster out there? What if there’s something worse? From Dave Brockie, the twisted genius behind GWAR, comes a novel about the darkest days of the twentieth century.