The Bad House on Nagle
by Sterling Gates
Everyone in the neighborhood knew the rundown house at the far end of Nagle Street was bad. Including Josie’s five-year-old daughter, Amanda.
“Why are we stopping here, Mommy?” Amanda asked from her car seat. Josie put her Volvo in Park and looked at her child in the rearview mirror, debating which lie would best serve her. She settled on a version of the truth.
“Mommy’s just gonna pick up something from a friend, pumpkin,” Josie said. “A treat.”
“Like a snack?” asked the little girl.
“Yes, exactly. But just for adults,” Josie replied.
“Oh, fuzz nuts,” Amanda swore. Josie laughed. Her husband Eddie had taught their daughter that mock curse after he heard Amanda say a four-letter word to the family dog one day. He’d presented “fuzz nuts” as an alternative, and it had quickly become the family’s curse of choice.
“I need you to wait in the car, baby. I’ll be back in two and then we’ll get you to school.”
Josie pulled four twenties from her purse. Probably enough, she thought, stuffing them into her jeans. Josie smiled reassuringly at her daughter, then stepped out of her car. She locked the Volvo with a VEET-DEET and put the keys in her back pocket, then turned back to the house. The bad house.
Josie hadn’t really seen the house before, usually paying it only a cursory glance as she drove past or muttering at it as she navigated around the cop cars that often lined its curb. Parents in the neighborhood ignored the bad house, hoping one day someone would buy it and tear it down and build something better. Or that something really bad would happen inside and the city would be forced to remove its occupants for good.
The house’s flaking paint and spider-webbed windows loomed at her, the clichés of every haunted house creaking into her mind.
Women shouldn’t go into scary houses alone, she thought. But after Drake’s party… what we had was just so… so delicious. I need this. Need to feel that again. I need it bad.
Josie ran her palms across her jeans, the sweat leaving a faint line on the denim. She opened the broken gate and followed the bad house’s walkway, cement cracked and uneven. Her keychain dangled from her back pocket, jingling with every step as she went up the porch stairs and approached the door.
She wasn’t sure what to do. Knock? Say a secret code word?
As Josie neared the front door, it opened. A man came out. Josie avoided eye contact with him, trying to just brush past him and get inside. He put his arm out, barring her from entering.
“Hey,” he said. “C’n I get a ride?”
She looked up. All she could see were his black teeth, stained with years of addiction. “N-no,” she whispered.
“Then fuck you,” he said, his rot breath hot against her cheek. Black Tooth bumped her to one side and walked down the bad house’s steps, quietly calling her a four-letter word that Josie hoped her daughter would never say.
Another man appeared in the doorway. “Can I help you?”
Josie eyed his friendly smile. A shark seeing a new meal, she thought. She steadied her nerves and straightened up. “Drake sent me.”
The shark smiled bigger. “I know‘im. Whatcha looking for?”
“Crystal.” Josie tried to say it like someone who’d bought meth before.
“We got that.”
Josie smiled, the past two days of want suddenly draining from her body.
“We got whatever you and your boyfriend need.”
Josie frowned. “My boyfriend?”
KA-DEET.
Josie heard the car unlock and instinctively reached for her keys.
But they weren’t in her back pocket anymore, the keychain was no longer hanging from her jeans, her keys were in Black Tooth’s hand. And Black Tooth was crawling into her driver’s side door. Josie was down the steps and halfway down the walk when the car started, her hand inches from the back door when the Volvo started to roll. Josie ran after the car, her car, as it picked up speed. She saw Amanda’s face in the window, eyes wide, heard her daughter cry out “MOMMYYY!” as the car disappeared around the corner.
Josie fell to her knees in the middle of Nagle Street and screamed.
The bad house loomed.
Sterling Gates is an award-winning filmmaker, a New York Times best-selling comic book creator, and a newly-minted fiction writer. He's also a proud Eagle Scout. His previous short story, “The Night I Caught A Bullet,” was published in Abrams Books’s YA superhero anthology, Generation Wonder: The New Age of Heroes (2022). Gates lives in Los Angeles, CA. To find out more about his work, visit www.sterlinggates.com.