The White And Blue House

When the neighbors across the street act suspiciously, Gregory tries to warn his daughter away from them, but does she heed his advice?

The White And Blue House

  Gregory looked out the little window at the top of his door, watching the neighbors across the street. His daughter sat on the couch adjacent, thoroughly engrossed in a book. 
  “That black guy is back.” Gregory announced, his powerful voice cutting through the quiet pattering of the rain outside. The sky was grey and dreary but still the sun’s illumination cut through, brightening any houses that dared to open their blinds. 
  “Mmm.” Mindy grunted, her disinterest palpable. 
  “He’s walking up to the house now,” Gregory reported, watching, narrating the stranger’s actions. The short, stocky fellow of African descent meandered slowly, almost as if struggling to walk in a straight line towards the little house. He wore a big black hoody, dark jeans and black boots. Combined with his black car with tinted windows, the man was very dark indeed. Quite the contrast to the bright white house with sky-blue trim and soft grey-shingled roof. The normally bright and colorful flower garden that encompassed the walls of the house, at least in the front, was dead and barren at this frigid time of year, though that didn’t detract anything from the overall pleasantness the building exuded. 
  “There’s something in the door,” Gregory observed as the man got closer to the structure. “Between the glass door and the wood one.” He squinted. “Looks like a bag.”
  “Mm.”
  Gregory watched suspiciously as the black man stepped onto the cheerful white porch with a decorative blue carpet finish. He opened the glass door and retrieved the black bag. Gregory couldn’t help but note how everything was dark with this guy. His clothes, his car, even his expression was dark and foul. 
  The man opened the bag and looked inside. Even from that distance, Gregory could see the man’s face brighten maliciously, gleefully as he inspected the bag’s contents. 
  “He’s going back to his car now. What the hell is going on?” Gregory wondered aloud, tilting his head slightly as he continued to spy on their neighbors. 
  “Willy says those guys are just house-sitting until the real owners get here,” Mindy reminded her father, glancing up from her book. “He talked to them, remember?”
  “Willy Smith can barely tell his a*s from a hole in the ground,” Gregory commented with a snort. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was high when he talked to them.”
  “Willy doesn’t do drugs, Dad,” Mindy said, tilting her head with disapproval, laying the open book down on her lap. “He’s got problems with his brain.”
  “He’s damn weird, is what he is,” Gregory retorted, continuing to watch the neighbor. Mindy rolled her eyes and went back to her book. 
  Moments after their conversation ended, another car pulled up in front of the pretty white and blue house. It was also black with tinted windows and it stopped dead in the middle of the street. 
  “That looks like a Mazarati,” Gregory observed. “Expensive. Looks new, too.”
  “Mr Kennedy has some real nice cars,” Mindy muttered, trying hard to ignore her dad’s nosy peeping. “Doesn’t mean anything.”
  “He’s just sitting there!” Gregory proclaimed, pointing absently through the door. “Right in the middle of the street. What an a*s.”
  The black man jumped out of his car and quickly into this new vehicle, bringing the bag with him. But the car didn’t move. It stayed, lingering in the center of the admittedly empty street. It was Sunday during church hours; most folks weren’t home or out on the roads. Still, Gregory couldn't help but fume at the audacity of the obscured driver and his shady passenger. 
  “What the hell are they doing?” he muttered to himself, watching, watching, watching. 
  A few minutes passed and the shiny Mazarati finally moved, pulling into the driveway of the house. The old Jefferson’s place sat on a steep hill; the driveway went down that hill and around the back to a partially below-ground garage, very fancy for the neighborhood. The expensive car slowly pulled in and crept down that hill, as if the car itself was nervous about the sharp decline. The car and passengers disappeared behind the hill and the house without so much as a whisper. 
  “They’re definitely doing somethin’,” Gregory proclaimed. “Probably got a meth lab back there.”
  “Meth is extremely toxic,” Mindy said. “They wouldn’t do it in a nice neighborhood like ours.” She glanced up at him, her piercing green eyes boring holes into his skull. “Too many nosy neighbors.”
  Gregory huffed and turned away, his interest flattened by lack of action across the street. 

  A few hours later that same day, the nice Italian family that lived directly across the street from Gregory’s house returned home from church. They lived next to the old Jefferson’s place; the Bellagambas were situated snuggly between a corner house with a nasty older woman and the recent center of suspicious activity. 
  Seeing that they were home and that Mr Bellagamba was outside, fiddling with something in his truck, Gregory decided it would be… prudent to discuss the goings-on in the neighborhood. 
  He walked cross the street, holding his hood up on his coat against the persistent but thin rainfall. 
  “Barry!” Gregory called out cheerfully, his voice booming. “How’s it goin’, Brother?”
  “Hey!” Barry Bellagamba greeted back, his warm and friendly demeanor totally unaffected by the cold and depressing weather. “How’s it hanging, dude?” 
  “Pretty good, pretty good,” Gregory replied, reaching his friend. “Work’s still murder but otherwise, everything is fine. You?”
  “Same old, same old,” Barry said, nodding. “What’s up? You look a little tense.”
  “It’s just those guys,” Gregory said with a gesture at the white and blue house. “They’re really suspicious.”
  “I’ll say,” Barry scoffed, hands on hips. “They’re awake and moving around at three in the morning. Always coming and going.”
  “Yeah, I noticed that, too.”
  “That guy, the black guy,” Barry said. “He sits in his car for hours, talking to his pals and smoking weed.” He shook his head irritably. “Sarah can’t even go out on the deck most of the time; the smell and the smoke, it’s hard on her lungs. And Timmy’s wondering why there’s always a skunk around. Sarah won’t let me tell him what he’s smelling. Says he’s too young.”
  “Nothing wrong with knowing,” Gregory said with a shrug. “Just be sure he knows he can’t have any yet. Make it like booze, y’know? ‘You can have it when you’re older’, right?”
  “I guess.” Barry said with a shrug. “Sarah’s sorta weird about drugs.”
  “Can’t blame her,” Gregory said. “Not with… y’know.”
  “Yeah,” Barry said, nodding, a flash of shame and regret flickered along his face like the shadow of a candle flame. “That’s what’s got me really nervous.”
  “You think?” Gregory inquired, surmising his friend’s worries. 
  “Yup,” Barry replied, popping the end of the word. “I know the type, their habits. He fits the bill.”
  “S**t.” Gregory rolled his head with dread. “This same s**t happened to my brother, down in Florida. Bunch o’ Haitians moved into his neighborhood, brought their drugs and their s**t. Ruined the whole damn place.”
  “I don’t know about all that,” Barry said, trying to steer Gregory away from his long-taught hatred. “But they’re definitely up to something. I already told Sarah to stay away from them. It’s not safe, y’know? Especially if they're using. They get real desperate, kinda insane. I don’t want her or Timmy anywhere near them.”
  “Yeah, I’ll be telling Mindy the same,” Gregory nodded, sticking his hands in his pockets. “She doesn’t seem to care. Says Willy told her that they’re just house-sitting.”
  “Pft!” Barry scoffed. “Yeah, sure, ‘house-sitting’. I dunno what they’re doing, but it ain’t just house-sitting.”
  “How many have you seen?” Gregory asked, his mind having finally caught Barry’s use of the plural pronoun. 
  “Two distinctly,” Barry said. “I see the black guy all the time. Smell him, too. But there’s another guy, a tall, middle-aged white guy. He’s balding, with that hair… hair ring? Y’know, that thing where they hang onto the hair right here?” Barry pointed at his head, tilting it down to expose the top, circling his cranium from ear to ear around the back. He straightened. “That s**t.”
  “So a black guy and a white guy?” Gregory asked, grinning. “Sounds like the start to a joke.”
  “Yeah, a bad one,” Barry snickered. 
  “You think we should call the cops on them or something?” Gregory asked.
  “Mmmm, I dunno. Not yet,” Barry said. “Maybe if they get worse.”
  Gregory nodded. 
  The two men talked a while longer, just chatting about things, life, work, their families. Eventually, though, Sarah Bellagamba poked her head out of the front door to call Barry inside. She waved pleasantly at Gregory, invited him in for lunch. Gregory shrugged and agreed, following Barry inside. They exchanged a knowing glance to each other, silently agreeing to discuss the neighbors no further. 

  A few days passed without much happening across the street. Gregory kept his eyes on the suspicious characters, noting that the white man drove a black car, but not the Mazarati. The white man drove a simple van, unremarkable and utilitarian. 
  So who drove the shiny, sporty car? 
  “You be sure to stay away from them, okay?” Gregory told Mindy firmly. His 23-year-old daughter looked up at him dismissively, her eyes full of irritation and mild loathing, as if she didn’t approve of her father’s incessant desire to pry into other’s lives. 
  “Don’t be racist,” she admonished. 
  “I’m not being racist,” Gregory argued, walking past her in the kitchen. He retrieved a glass and ran it under the tap. “I was talking to Barry the other day he thinks they’re druggies, too.”
  Mindy sighed. She couldn’t ignore Barry’s expertise in this matter. It was one thing for her father to be judgmental and suspicious, but it was another entirely coming from Barry. 
  “So what did he say?” She asked him, her voice sounding heavy and bored. 
  “He says the black guy hangs out in his car for hours on end, smoking dope and talking to his nig�"” He halted at her angered glare. She didn’t like that word, nor how flagrantly he tended to use it. “His trashy friends.” he amended venomously, irritated that she insist he change his ways for her comfort. It was the perfect word to describe them, after all. Not all of them, naturally, just the worse ones. Like the ones at the Warehouse he worked in, like the one that was invading their neighborhood. 
  “And?” Mindy asked. “It’s legal to smoke that crap now. That’s not really a problem, outside of the smell. But cigarettes are just as bad. Worse, even.”
  “That’s not the point,” Gregory argued, sipping his water as Mindy stirred the contents of the bubbling pot. “There’s something weird about them. Something… wrong.”
  “I dunno, Dad,” she said, sighing, the conversation both bored and exacerbated her already lousy mood. “And I really don’t care. Just leave them alone. If something bad happens, then we’ll call the cops, okay? It’s just not important right now.”
  “Not important?” Gregory said, his temper flaring audibly. “Mindy, this is serious! They could be criminals! There’s kids in this neighborhood, for God’s sake!”
  “Not nearly enough kids to turn a profit,” she retaliated logically. “And even so, every other person on our street watches their windows. Why do we need to be worrying about it? I’ve got plenty of other things to think about, okay?”
  Gregory took a deep breath.
  “Just promise me you’ll stay away from them,” he said finally, his voice tense and heavy with repressed emotion. Mindy turned and looked him in his green eyes, her own emerald orbs full of uncertainty and exhaustion. 
  “Okay, Dad, I won’t go anywhere near them,” she assured him. “Not like I ever go out anyway.” she muttered under her breath. Gregory sighed with relief. 
  “Okay, now that that’s settled, what’s for dinner?”

  Mindy sat on the couch by the big bay windows. It was another dark and dreary March day. Perfect for reading. She snuggled up under a blanket, put on some music, and began to read from her newest book. It wasn’t long, however, before the sound of rain began to drown out the music. She looked outside. It was pelting down rain and sleet, huge globs of slushy ice slammed against the windows, the brick walls, the roof, pounding and cascading in a cacophony of ceaseless drumming. The world had suddenly turned significantly more grey and frightening and Mindy found her eyes drawn out the window and across the street to the little white house with blue trim. She saw the black man’s car outside, which wasn’t unusual. However, all his windows were down and the sleet and rain was coming in at a sharp angle now, most certainly flooding his car with dampness and future rot. 
  Without thinking much about it, Mindy put the bookmark back between the crisp pages, slipped on some shoes and a light hoodie and went outside. The sleet and rain pounded against her little body, slapping and stinging without remorse. She pulled the hood down low over her head as she sprinted across the street to the white and blue house. 
  She glanced in at the open windows, confirming that there was indeed a thickening layer of moisture on the inner furnishing of the remarkably clean car. She hopped over the curb and quickly sprinted up the sidewalk to the safety of the front porch, her clothes now damp and icy. 
  Mindy pressed the doorbell but heard no sound from within. She tried again. Still no sound. Forgetting her father’s warning, the young woman opened the glass door and reached in to knock on the polished wooden door. Her knuckles made a firm contact; a musical note echoed in the empty house. But with the second knock, the door gave way beneath her hand, creaking silently on greased hinges inward. 
  “Huh.” she mused. She chalked it up to whoever was inside having a bad day. She often forgot things when she was having a rough day. She pushed the door open further and peered inside. The house, which was once richly furnished with years and years of possessions and memories, lay vacant, the former occupants having been moved into a care facility closer to their adult children. Mrs Jefferson had been loosing her mind, last Mindy recalled, and Mr Jefferson’s skin was disintegrating, or so she had been told. They were an ancient couple, one of the first in the neighborhood. Nonagenarians, the both of them. It had been a sad day when they saw the For Sale sign in their yard. 
  Mindy mustered up the courage to call into the eerily empty house.
  “Hello?” she said, her voice echoing off the bare walls. The outlines of where there had hung treasured photographs remained on the wallpaper, the color inside the various rectangles a more vibrant version of the exterior. 
  “Hello?” she called again. “You left your windows down! It’s raining really hard out here!” 
  Something drew Mindy into the building, be it the unsettling quiet or perhaps the warm nostalgia of long-gone memories, she didn’t know. She remembered once, when she was very little, coming into the Jefferson’s place to say Merry Christmas. The place was so warm and inviting, dark but that only made the colorful lights more intense. She stepped in further, remembering the big table just there, next to the door, and all the little tiny people that decorated the incredibly detailed hill that sat atop the table. The people were all looking up at the top of the hill where a mighty Christmas tree stood, tall and proud, tiny lights strung on it’s branches, miniature tinsel lined the boughs and an exceptionally ornate star was perched at the top. Mindy was so small back then, she couldn't even see the rest of the painstaking detail Mr Jefferson had put into the scene; the stalls where vendors sold popcorn and candles and tasty treats to anyone with a nickel or a penny to spare, the big crowd of people on the other side of the hill that sat, staring up into the sky and talking, laughing with mirth. 
  Mindy turned her head. There, against that wall, Mrs Jefferson had a loveseat with a gaudy flower print and too many pillows. Just adjacent, in the corner by an arch that led to the kitchen, which led to the dining room and then back out into the living room in a big circle,  that was where Mr Jefferson had sat in a cozy brown recliner, rocking back and forth, smiling as Mindy had stared around in wonder at all his miniatures. A train, she recalled, there was a train that ran all through the house, first around the living room, to the kitchen, the dining room, then back further to the bathroom and bedrooms, then it came back out again. It made all the right sounds of a train, it even let out little puffs of steam. She remembered the smell, a sort of… electrical burning scent of the antique toy trains. 
  She smiled. She still had the beginner train and tracks Mr Jefferson had given her. She set it up every year at Christmas. 
  “Hello?” She called again, remembering what she was doing here in the first place. “Hey, you're windows are down! It’s raining, your windows�"”
  She stopped, hearing a strange sound. It was a grumbling noise, like an upset stomach, only much louder. Mindy froze. Suddenly the house didn’t seem so warm and cozy anymore, she suddenly realized how empty and silent it had been. 
  The noise again. The gurgling, churning sound made her feel queazy. She poked her own stomach, wondering, hoping it was responsible. But no, the sound echoed again, and her brain told her it was coming from the hallway. 
  Despite every single cell in her body pushing, yearning, screaming for her to turn away and run, Mindy didn’t. She didn’t run. She found herself wondering why she wasn’t running, why she was slowly moving toward the sound. She wasn’t a very adventurous woman, not hardly. 
  She took a step.
  She took another step. 
  The gurgling grew louder as she stepped closer. 
  Another step… another step… another step…
  Mindy turned the corner to the hallway. She could swear she smelled something… something foul. But it wasn’t offensively foul, like rotting meat or human waste. It was… an organic smell, natural, but not horrid. Not yet. 
  Step, step, stepping further in, Mindy listened as the sound changed, grew, new layers were added to what she could hear. The gurgling churning sound was now accompanied by a squelching, a wet slapping, and slurping. She felt her heart racing, her body trembled as she got closer to the source. It was the last bedroom, across from the bathroom. She’d never been in this part of the house. It gave her the feeling of walking around unfamiliar woods at night with no moon. Even her photosensitive eyes couldn’t see in such darkness. This was the sensation that crawled up her back as she watched her hand reach out to turn the knob. 
  Why am I doing this? she thought, pulling the door open. I should've listened to Dad.
  She stared into the dark room. The single window had been covered in thick black cloth stapled to the window frame and there were no light sources to speak of. Her eyes slowly grew accustomed to the dark and she began to see that the room was nearly empty, save a filthy mattress in one corner and a couple of buckets. One bucket, she saw, had what looked like dog food inside, filled halfway with pieces scattered around the base of the container. Another bucket had what she believed to be dirty water, based on the particles floating in it. And the third, largest bucket… the contents were unknown and she preferred to keep it that way. 
  Her eyes shifted to what was making all the noise. 
  It looked to be a man, though she hesitated to use that word. He was laying on the floor, his legs spread out behind him, moving occasionally like a baby’s might; random and aimlessly. He was very busy, it seemed, shoving things into his mouth, slurping and crunching and gurgling with pleasure. His whole face was covered in a dark liquid, his hands and chest were similarly decorated. He was leaning on his elbows, propping up his uppermost portion, though he consistently leaned back down to viciously bite, rip, and tear at what he was eating. 
  The man was stark naked, filthy, and rather gaunt, with messy, matted hair and a very thin physique. It was hard to see in this level of light, but Mindy strained to figure out what exactly he was eating. 
  The gentle clinking of a chain caught her attention. Mindy turned and saw the black man was beside her, scowling. He held a very thick chain in one hand, the links clinking musically like a deadly wind chime. 
  “Move,” was all he said. Mindy did just that, stepping back, pushing the door open further as she did. The black man hefted the chain in his hand and the creature on the floor looked up, his big luminous amber orbs glowed with terror. He let out a little shriek as the black man hit him with the chain, the contact making a sickening thud noise. The beastly creature jumped to his feet and scurried back on all fours, cowering on the dirty mattress as the black man pursued. Mindy felt her heart sink at the beastly, frightened cries the creature emitted as he covered his large head with his thin arms, yelping in pain at each blow landed. 
  The beating felt like it went on forever and Mindy just stood there, as if in a dream. She listened as the creature whimpered and sobbed as the black man stopped whipping, turning instead to admonishing the creature’s actions in a language Mindy had never heard before. The creature stayed on the mattress, cowering, his boney back now covered in dark mottling bruises and open wounds. 
  The black man turned, glancing at the remarkably still present and aware Mindy. He draped the chain around his neck and went over to the dark mass on the floor. He grunted irritably, bending down and picking up a chunk of it. He dragged the thing out into the hallway, much to the dismay of the creature, whose glowing amber eyes peered out at them from the crook of his elbow. 
  It was here that Mindy realized that the thing the creature had been so delightfully eating was in fact, the white man her father had described. The creature had done quite the number on him, she couldn’t be sure the carcass being dragged away was even human at all, just a bloody mass of broken bones and mangled meat. 
  “F*****g neighborhood,” the black man muttered, dragging the body into the kitchen. “F*****g Mark. Goddammit.”
  He muttered angrily as he retrieved a roll of garbage bags. Mindy watched, her heart hollow and her soul miles from this grizzly scene as the black man proceeded to put the remains of his presumed business partner into the garbage bags. 
  “Watch the f****r, it’ll be easy,” he grumbled, shoving chunks of what was once human into the bags. “He eats dog food. Don’t worry, he’s not dangerous. Just be sure to keep him in his place.” 
  Mindy stared, morbidly curious. She saw a few organs she recognized, but it looked as though the creature had eaten most of the valuables to be found in a human body. The black man continued to complain to himself as Mindy continued to stand idly, holding the door open with her presence. She heard a noise at her side and saw the man-beast on the ground, crouched like a lemur, staring up at her inquisitively. She stared back at him, too shocked to feel anything even close to fear. The creature was angular, with a strong jaw, lipless mouth, hooked nose and deep-set eyes. He had european features, oddly enough.  
  The creature blinked at her. He leaned forward, moving like an ape might, resting his weight on his knuckles. Mindy looked down at his blood-covered hands. He had very large hands. And very large feet. Perhaps it was because the rest of him was so skinny, or perhaps he really did have big hands, feet, and cranium? He moved towards her, slowly, carefully, a look of frightened timidity in his inhuman eyes. She watched him back, feeling nothing at all, except a mild curiosity tingling at the back of her eyes. 
  The creature hopped over the threshold, landing silently, gracefully at Mindy’s feet. He looked up at her, his head tilted to one side like a dog hearing his favorite words. Now in more light, Mindy could see how very strange a beast this man was. Everything about his body was just a little off. It wasn’t a concrete thing, something she could easily identify and explain, it was just… off. Perhaps it was the way his bones seemed to lay just below the skin, or maybe it was the way she could see every muscle and tendon flexing, operating when he moved. Or could it be his coloring? He was both deathly pale and yet very colorful, the thin blue streaks spiderwebbing all over his delicate body gave him a very intricate and interesting pattern. She could swear she saw his heart and lungs operating through his skin. 
  “HEY!” The black man yelled, startled. The creature turned suddenly, moving with inhuman speed and agility at the offending voice. The black man never stood a chance as the beast traversed the distance in seconds�" no, less than one second. He pounced on the black man, sunk his teeth into the man’s neck and with a grunt, ripped the man’s throat open. The beast stuck his fingers into the open blood-gushing wound and with a horrifying, sickening sound, ripped the black man’s neck completely asunder, nearly severing the spinal cord in the act. 
  The black man was dead instantly. The beast howled excitedly, pounding his large fists against the fresh corpse, pummeling it into a mound of grotesque indulgence, the sight of which finally brought Mindy back to her senses.
  Without a sound or a second thought, the young woman shot out of the house, careening like a bolt of lightning toward her home. The sleeting rain was harder now, pounding down against her back with vengeful wrath, as if to punish her for her folly.
  She burst into the sturdy brick building with a flurry of movement, whirling around on her heel to slam the heavy wooden door shut behind her, locking it breathlessly. She immediately went to the back door and locked it, too. 
  “Dad!” she practically shrieked, her head whipping from side to side. “Dad?!” she shouted again. It was five o’clock, he ought to be home by now. Where the hell was he? 
  She ran into his bedroom, the bathroom, the basement, even the attic, her feet pounding so loud it threatened to drown out the sound of the accursed rain. 
  “Dad!” she wailed, finding him nowhere. 
  Her heart stopped. 
  The garage. 
  Overcome with fear and grief, Mindy launched down the attic steps, grabbing one of her dad’s old baseball bats from where it hung decoratively on the living room wall. She ran to the back door, fumbled frantically, her heart pump, pump, pumping so fast it threatened to explode. She yanked the door open and flew out the portal, back into the angry rain. 
  “Dad!” she wailed again, running the short distance to the garage. She slipped on the pavement, landing hard on her arms, the bat clattering noisily against the concrete. She gasped; it felt as though she had popped her shoulder from it’s socket. She grit her teeth, found her footing, and switched the bat to the other hand. 
  Mindy threw open the garage door. 
  “Dad?” 
  She stood just inside the doorway, the wind whipping around behind her, threatening to knock her over. She could feel her heart thumping, her lungs burning from the unfamiliar activity, her shoulder aching intolerably from the fall. 
  “Dad?”
  His car was there, in the garage. The old beaten up pickup truck he was always tinkering with. But no Gregory. Hesitantly, Mindy walked forward, a trickling water trail followed behind her. She held her breath before turning to look behind the truck. Still no father, still no trace. 
  She clutched the bat tightly as she bent her knees, lowering herself down to peer under the vehicle. She let out a sharp exhale. Still no Gregory. Lastly, she peeked into the truck’s bed. Nothing at all. 
  Mindy’s heart slowed a bit as she thought about it. Where could her dad be?
  The Bellagambas! Mindy whirled around, fully intent on sprinting back across the street to her neighbors, wanting to warn them, to warn her dad. 
  She froze. There was a person in the doorway. It was a man in silhouette, the dim light of the remaining day illuminated nothing but his eyes. A pair of glowing amber eyes. 


END.