Archive of Our Own

Some people, he’d heard, were born with a kind of sixth sense—nothing as intense as what the creepy kid from the movie had, probably, but a sense nonetheless. Precognition; knowing something before you had any right knowing it. The internet was full of people making claims like that…things ranging from ‘I woke up with a bad feeling, called in sick to work, and then later in the day a coworker called saying there’d been a robbery’ to ‘I dreamed about a house for three years, then my parents moved into one just like it.’ And hey, maybe they were even telling the truth! Maybe that psychic shit really was, well, real.

If it was, well then boy howdy, Josh thought he needed to find his local chapter of the Premonition Psociety (that second p would, of course, be silent), because he was precogging all over the place tonight.

See, the second he’d seen Conrad’s smug fucking face, he’d known the party was going to suck. And what a shock—it had!

Ergo, psychic.

“No,” he said preemptively, turning his whole body away to try and put off the inevitable. Obviously it was no use…Conrad was a used car salesman minus the cars, a pyramid scheme CEO without anything to hawk. The guy was a walking, talking cult of personality whose most devoted follower was himself, and there was just no avoiding people like that. Especially not when they’d already decided there was something they wanted from you.

“Wash-ing-ton!” Conrad grinned, buddying up to him despite the cold shoulder. He made to pop him one on the arm only to pull the punch at the very last second, no doubt watching to see if he’d flinch. “Whaddya know, just the bottomfeeder I was hoping to run into tonight!”

Much to his own chagrin, Josh found he actually had to put up a fight against the slow smile threatening to take over. Nah. Nah, nah, nah…one didn’t encourage Conrad’s sleaze, just like one didn’t encourage Cochise’s shitty jokes. Both were lessons he’d learned the hard way, and both were mistakes he didn’t intend on making again. “Bet you say that to all the bottomfeeders.”

“Wow. Wow. You know what, I’m genuinely—hey, Wash?—genuinely hurt you’d make that assumption. I’ve only got eyes for you, baby.”

“Be still my heart. The Justin Timberlake wannabe finally noticed me.” The whole reason he’d ducked out to the deck in the first place was to have a smoke, and now that the moment was perfect and the pause pregnant, he rolled his eyes away from Conrad and lit his cigarette, the click of his lighter shutting the ideal dramatic beat. On his exhale, he cut to the chase. “A bottomfeeder I may be, but a moron I am not. What do you want?”

Conrad, as always, made a point to wave away any wisp of smoke Josh blew his way, more out of plain old antagonism than any actual health concern. Tonight he seemed real set on piling the act on thick—a fact that made perfect sense when one took into account the house-worth of people partying it up just on the other side of the deck’s sliding glass door. The guy loved an audience. “Man, why do you always jump to that? You make it sound like this relationship of ours—”

“Quote-unquote.”

“—is a transactional thing!”

“Because it is.”

Instead of arguing, Conrad shrugged a shoulder. “Well. Yeah. Okay, sure. Maybe. But it’s not purely transactional.”

“Oh no?”

“No way! We like each other. Enjoy each other’s company.”

Oh, he’d won the fight against his smile, but there was no stopping his eyebrows from doing what they wanted to do then. “…do we?”

“Sometimes.”

“Mmm.”

“Occasionally.”

“Eh.”

“Look, we haven’t killed each other yet—can you give me that much?”

Josh thought it over for a second, taking another pointed drag of his cigarette. “Know what? Since you stuck a ‘yet’ on there? Sure, I’ll give you that. I am nothing if not benevolent.”

His smirk was a barbed thing, made twice as dangerous, twice as deadly, by the dimples it revealed. “Don’t stop there, man…you’re humble, too. Don’t forget that! So humble. Clearly.”

“Clearly.” Behind them the party raged on, the planks of the deck vibrating with the muted bass thump of the stereo system inside. Still, Josh kept his sidelong gaze on Conrad and Conrad alone; they’d been through this song and dance countless times before, so he knew exactly what would come next.

What do you know—throwing just a little more proof into the ‘Definitely Psychic’ pot, the familiar weight of Conrad’s arm dropped across his shoulders then, the momentary silence they’d shared broken by an intake of breath that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in a sales pitch for a timeshare.

“So, hey.”

“Here we go.”

“What’s all this mess I’m hearing about Blackwood lately, huh?” he kept his voice light, almost to the point of sounding disinterested. Terrifying, that voice, absolutely fucking terrifying, because as a primo bullshitter himself, Josh recognized exactly how much time and effort and practice had gone into an act like that. “Word on the street’s that something real fucked up went down on that mountain of yours, and I thought to myself, well shit! I bet I know just the guy to give me all the grim and gory details!”

He didn’t shrug Conrad’s arm off his shoulders. Not yet, anyway. The time would present itself, and when it did? Then, and only then, when the drama was at its peak, would he make his move. “Pray tell, who might that be?”

“Dude, c’mon. My dad won’t tell me shit about it, and I’m dying over here! Here’s what I got, so feel free to stop me whenev and fill in the blanks as you see fit.” He hunched himself in closer to Josh, that Armani cologne of his just really getting up in his business, and began ticking away with the fingers of his free hand. “You and the Double Mint twins brought your buds up to the lodge for a weekend. I’m sure my invite got lost in the mail, so I’m not gonna hold it against you that I wasn’t there to experience it all firsthand.”

“The USPS is in shambles right now, my guy. Don’t know what to tell you. I bet they lost that thousand dollar check I sent your way last month just for being so damn charismatic, too. Shame.”

“Then, see, I got this biiig gap of absolutely jackshit…yadda yadda yadda, double homicide?!” His head craned around a bit so Josh had no choice but to meet his gaze. “The fuck, Wash? The fuck? You don’t slake this curiosity of mine, they’re gonna have to bump that up to triple!”

Ah.

Maybe he needed to take a chip out of the ‘Definitely Psychic’ pot, on second thought. He should’ve known from the get-go that this would be about the Blackwood bullshit.

“Don’t know what to tell you, Conman,” he sighed. “Not really a story beyond that.”

“Oh please.”

He almost shrugged his shoulder off that time, but then…well then he thought better of it. Now, if Conrad had been psychic, that would’ve been the moment he threw in the towel, because, hoo boy, that was the moment inspiration struck. Hard.

Tapping the ask from the end of his cigarette, Josh adopted a smirk of his own, narrowed his eyes with a kind of glee characteristic enough that Conrad groaned aloud, psychic shortcomings and all. “You know what? You’re right. I’m keeping a whale of a tale locked up tight in my chest, and if I don’t get it out, I might just pop. So how about this…story for a story.”

“This coming from the guy who was literally just bitching about the transactional nature of our friendship.”

“Quote-unquote.”

Conrad rolled his eyes. “Uh huh. Great. Still not sure I follow, Dr. Lecter.”

Oh, you follow, Josh thought to himself, but before he could put words to the mean little scheme floating through his head, the both of them turned towards the sound of the sliding door being opened. “Ah! Wouldya lookit that! Finally, a man of substance joins the conversation.”

The sounds of the party grew muffled again as Chris shut the door behind him. “Think you need to get your eyes checked, bro. No men of substance here—just me.” Without an actual greeting, he held his fist out towards Conrad, letting him bump it at his leisure. “What’s the holdup? I thought we were gonna—”

“Conrad here,” he interrupted, going so far as to sling his own arm around Conrad’s shoulders, the two of them suddenly looking like an awful yacht-club parody of The Little Rascals, “Well, he was just asking me to regale him with—”

“Didn’t say ‘regale.’ I have never used that word in my life.”

He caught Chris’s gaze and popped his eyebrows. “—the Tale of Blackwood Pines.”

A second, no more and no less, where Chris squinted in confusion; then, stopping just short of having a lightbulb physically materialize over his head, understanding jolted him back to life. “Oho! Well, my good man,” he joked, affecting the godawful approximation of a British accent he insisted on using when trying to act insidious, “You’re in for quite the story! The ups! The down! The…uh…” His voice cracked and the accent went with it. “Raccoons.”

Conrad blinked. “Raccoons,” he repeated. “Double homicide by way of raccoon. That’s what I’m hearing. That’s what you want me to believe.”

“I don’t want you to believe anything, golden child, I want you to tell me a story worth my time.” Josh brought him back to the matter at hand, knowing Chris would unquestionably go along with whatever crap he laid down, no ifs, ands, or buts. “Quick question, by the bye, you ever watch a little show called Are You Afraid of the Dark? when you were growing up?”

There were not words enough in the English language to describe the look Conrad shot him then.

Oh wait! Yes there were! Frustrated, for example…exasperated, impatient, resigned, annoyed, flummoxed…and that was just for starters.

“You know I did, you gremlin,” he sighed, most of the used car salesman shine having drained from his voice back when reinforcements had arrived. One-on-one, he and Josh could’ve gone back and forth for years, maybe even decades. Throw ol’ Cochise into the mix, thought? That was a battle no one was ready for. “You made me.”

“Saying I made you is a bit harsh.”

“But accurate.”

He brushed past that accusation. “So here’s the deal. That weekend? The one you’re so interested in? Yeah, well, a bit part of that gap you were talking about was filled with my best buddies and me going around the campfire telling some truly heinous stories, à la the Midnight Society—”

“Jesus Christ. That’s the kind of nerd shit I wouldn’t cop to under threat of death.”

“—so. I think it’s only fair, Conman, that if you want in on the nasty shit that went bump that night, you also gotta do some legwork. You gotta join the rest of us in scary story land.” There it was—the moment. He dropped his arm from Conrad’s shoulders and jerked out from under his as well, about-facing so he and Chris were a united front staring him down. “Get to it, champ.”

The fact he didn’t seen shocked by the ultimatum was perhaps the greatest testament to their friendship (again, quote-unquote) to exist. “Now?” Conrad asked. “Like right now?”

“Oooh!” Chris grinned. “Sounds like someone’s got stage fright! What’s the problem, man, can’t throw together a spooky story? I mean, shit, I did it! Didn’t even practice beforehand.”

“Didn’t even practice,” Josh repeated. Then, waving him on obnoxiously, he raised his eyebrows and sneered, “Look inside yourself and ask, Conman: How bad you want this hot goss?”

He seemed to think it over for a second, wetting his lips with a sliver of his tongue and running a hand back through his hair to smooth it out, surreptitiously glancing towards the sliding door to check whether anyone was watching them from the party. “…okay. Yeah. Yeah, okay. All right. Know what? Sure. I got a story.”

Without missing a beat, Chris piped in, “What’s it caaalled?”

“Doesn’t need a name, shut up.”

“Um…I’m pretty sure it needs a title, actually.”

“Yeah Conrad, where’s your Midnight Society spirit?”

“It’s 10:27 right now, shitstains. There’s no midnight in this society, hate to break it to you. Now shut it so I can—”

Josh cleared his throat before drawling, “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, this is the Tale of…”

Conrad pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “God…you have…such a rude awakening coming if you think you can out-obnoxious me, Wash.”

“The Tale of…?” Josh prompted him again, much more forcefully that time.

He sucked a breath through his teeth. “Man, I don’t…fine. The House.” His eyes bounced between the two of them, but those baby blues found no help, no pity. “…That Drips Blood.” Another pause as he searched for a sign, any sign at all, that it had been acceptable. “…On Alex.”

“Alex. Like…Alex-Alex?”

“Yeah.”

“Brad’s brother, Alex?”

“Uh…yeah?”

“Your sister’s boyfriend, Alex? That Alex?”

It was Conrad’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Is that gonna be a problem, gentleman?”

“Not even a little. Just tell me real quick…are you hoping to sell this to us as a true story, then? If it’s about an actual person attending the party we are literally standing about three feet away from?”

Conrad’s face remained perfectly impassive. “It’s a story.”

“A true story?”

“Definitely a story,” he nodded. “No question about that. Now for the last time, shut the fuck up and let me tell it.”

***

So Alex was in the market for a new place, right? He was sick and tired of living in his parents’ basement, and since he was going places in the world, making his way up the ladder and all that good stuff, he figured it was about time to strike out on his own.

But—and I don’t know if you guys knew this or not—the housing market is trash right now, properties are just flying off the shelves, people buying everything up sight unseen, so no matter how hard he looked, he just couldn’t find anything. Or if he did, it sold right out from under his feet before he could even make an offer.

Until, that it, he found a listing in the newspaper that—

***

“I-I’m sorry, hold up.” Chris held his hands up, forcing him to stop. “Who the hell still reads the newspaper?”

“Sophisticated guys who go to med school, Hartley. Keep up.”

“Well geez. Sorry for asking.”

***

Anyway. He finds this listing and it sounds pretty good, okay? It’s a townhouse not too far from where he goes to school—

***

“Which is…where, exactly?” Josh asked.

Conrad groaned but didn’t let it break his stride. “Here.”

“Here. Okay. And, uh, give us the address of this listing, maybe? Is it somewhere we’re familiar with? A street nearby, perhaps? One we could go and check out, should the mood strike us?”

The speed at which he was able to make shit up was, quite frankly, impressive. Scary, too, but like, mostly impressive. “3 Blood Street.”

“…uh huh…”

“Wait. Wait. I’m sorry, the house that, from your own title, we’re supposed to believe is going to, at some point, drip blood on Alex, is on Blood Street?” Hands out, palms open, Chris waited for an answer. “Seriously?”

Fortunately, Conrad was in the business of doling out answers just then. “Nah man, you’re saying it wrong: It’s not Blood Street, it’s Blood Street. There’s an umlaut in there somewhere.”

“An umlaut.”

“Somewhere.”

***

Now he finds this house on Blood Street, and yeah, the name’s creepy, but he figures it’s probably German or something, you know how it goes. He calls the landlord’s office, but no one picks up the phone, so he figures well, what’s the worst that could happen? And walks down to the office instead.

When he gets there, the landlord is so excited to see him. Like, too excited, you get me? It’s almost terrifying how totally jazzed this guy is to have Alex there in his office. The two of them sit down to talk about the house, but before Alex can even tell this guy his credit score, he reaches behind his desk and slides a handwritten deed over to him.

Obviously Alex is taken aback by that, right? He’s a smart guy, and as a smart guy, he knows that’s not typically how real estate works, so he asks the guy—he’s like, “Well, what are you saying? I can buy the house?”

And this guy, still so psyched, just like, boring holes into Alex with his eyes, goes “All you need to do is sign by the X and the house is yours!”

“That’s it?” Alex asks.

“That’s it! Just sign right there.”

So he knows something feels off, but what’s he going to do, just walk away from a free house? A free house. I don’t think so. He goes to sign it, but again this weirdo reaches behind the desk and pulls out a fucking quill pen. The feathery pen thing, y’know, real Lord of the Rings shit. He also pulls out a jar of something red. “Just sign with this,” he says, “Go on!”

And then Alex—

***

Chris jammed his hands together to signal for a time-out. “Nononononono…pause.”

“What now?”

“This…okay. Okay. Glazing over the whole free house thing, even though you explicitly told us the housing market is nuts…”

“And that your whole premise is everyone is buying shit before he can get to it, thereby forcing him onto Blood Street,” Josh added under his breath.

“Blood Street, guys, Blood. There’s an umlaut.”

“Even ignoring that shit, why a fucking quill? Why…why’s he using a fucking quill?”

Conrad threw his arms out to his sides. “I don’t know! Guy was spooky as fuck! Everyone knows spooky old guys always write with quills!”

“Everyone knows that, huh?”

“To Cochise’s point, you said he pulled out a quill and…” He paused, making a point to cluck his tongue. “A jar of something red.” He held Conrad’s eyes for a long moment. “So…ink?”

“Maybe.”

“May…wait, shit, is that your way of trying to say it was blood? Oh, I’m sorry—blood? Forgot the umlaut, silly me.”

At that, Chris leaned over, shielding his mouth with his hand. “Probably just ketchup, honestly.”

“If you two are finished.”

***

As I was saying.

The whole situation is bizarre, obviously, but at the end of the day, Alex is on his way to be a doctor, so he needs his own place. He needs somewhere quiet to study and concentrate, so he ignores the red flags and the red stuff he dips the landlord’s quill into, and he signs his name right by that X. The landlord snatches it up with this huge grin, laughing like a lunatic, and he’s like—

***

Conrad’s whole posture melted as Josh spoke up again, interrupting for the millionth time. “It occurs to me that you haven’t described this spooky landlord to us.”

“Good point, good point. I can’t picture him in my mind palace.”

He raked both hands through his hair, glaring up at the sky like it was the moon’s fault he’d gotten himself into this. “I don’t—okay. Sharp black suit, black tie, black everything. Big white teeth. You know, creepy!”

Stroking his chin in a pantomime of deep contemplation, Chris hummed. “But if you had to, say, liken him to a celebrity…?”

Josh pointed at Chris with the stub of his cigarette before putting it out and flicking it into the yard. “Like where you’re going with this, Cochise. Loving it, in fact. Who should we be imagining, here?”

He took a deep breath and let it out, regaining some of his impressive (if sleaze-driven) composure. “Joey Greco.”

“…who?”

“From Cheaters? The show? Joey Greco.”

“…no idea, man.”

“Joey Greco!” Conrad held his arms out in supplication. “C’mon, you know, Joey Greco!”

“Say it one more time,” Josh suggested. “See if that helps.”

Whether he was going to do it or not, there was no denying Conrad was on the verge of saying something when the sliding door squeaked open on its track a second time, but it was a something that disappeared almost as quickly as his grin sprang back to life. “Bradical!” he called, his relief so thick Josh could almost smell it.

“Conrad!...i…cal…?” It was a valiant effort, but ‘valiant’ didn’t always mean ‘good.’ Brad grimaced as he looked between them, his expression begging them all to just let it go, but…well, he was in the wrong place for that.

“Mmm, maybe not,” Conrad said.

Josh shook his head slowly. “I wouldn’t go with that one in the future, no.”

Even Chris winced, which really said something. “Can’t get behind that, man. Sorry.”

Brad—dear, sweet Brad—just nodded, casting his eyes downwards in a silent reprimand of himself. Unlike the three of them, he knew when to drop a failed bit. Dropped ‘em quick and clean, Brad did, setting fire to the remains. “What are you guys doing out here?” he asked. “We’ve been waiting for you to take your turns for close to ten mi—”

“Conrad’s telling us a story!”

Keeping his eyes on Conrad and his voice mockingly flat, Josh added, “About your brother.”

“…okay…?” He had the look of someone who knew damn well they were standing outside an inside joke, but didn’t much care to knock. Unfortunately for him, the wheels on that one were already in motion. “Wait, my brother?”

“Alex.”

“Why—yeah, thanks Chris, I’d forgotten my own brother’s name.” He turned to Conrad instead, obviously puzzled. “What’re you telling them about Alex?”

And yes, Conrad opened his mouth, but it was Josh who answered. He couldn’t have the golden boy wasting his voice on matters as trivial as this, after all, not when he still had so much story ahead of him! “Oh, it’s nothing major. He’s just been telling us about the house he bought. For free.”

“His…house?”

“The one on Blood Street?”

“I—wait, why are you saying blood like there’s an umlaut in it?” Brad looked between them all with that same concerned expression, the one that said boy oh boy he hoped they weren’t making fun of him somehow. “Alex doesn’t have a—”

“It’s fine,” Conrad said, waving him off. “Trust me on this one, B-Rad, I know what I’m talking about. Then, for good measure, “You weren’t there when this happened.”

“…but you were?”

Shit, Conrad must’ve really wanted to know about the Blackwood thing, because overt jeering be damned, he just…kept…going.

***

So moving day arrives and he brings all his stuff to the house. It—

***

“Hang on, where did Joey Greco go?”

“He’s gone! He doesn’t matter! Alex signed the deed and bought the house—that’s what matters!”

Brad’s confusion only deepened. “Who’s Joey Greco?”

“Either Alex’s landlord or the devil, I think,” Chris said. “Or maybe both? Not really sure. Hoping that plot hole gets resolved sometime soon.”

“What?”

***

He brings all his stuff to this house, and the first thing he sees is how old it is. It’s absolutely ancient, older than time itself, looks like. The exterior is crumbling and grimy, like it was white once upon a time but now it’s just bad. The porch us rickety and doesn’t seem all that strong, but he got it for free, so he tries to let it go for the time being.

One by one, he brings his boxes into the house and sets them down in the living room. He stops to take a break after a while, because carrying all those boxes is thirsty work, but lucky for him, that’s when I show up.

***

“How many boxes did he have? If you had to guess, I mean. Don’t get me wrong, I know it can be difficult to plumb the depths of your memory with any sort of accuracy after witnessing a trauma the likes of which I’m sure you’re about to thrill us with, but give it a try, huh?” Josh dropped himself into one of the nearby deck chairs, kicking his feet up onto the one beside it. “Not trying to backseat drive or anything, but little details like that can really bring a story to life, y’know?”

Had he been literally anyone else on Earth, that would’ve been the moment where he broke; the interruptions, the teasing, any other person would’ve thrown their hands up, shouted “FUCK YOU!” into the night, and then disappeared to get very, very drunk at the party. But Conrad was Conrad, and that simple fact made surrender impossible. He merely doubled down. “There were at least three.”

“Wow. Heavy lifting.”

“I said at least.”

“I stand corrected. You did say that.”

***

Anyway! As he’s taking his break, I show up to help, and I can tell right away he’s so glad to have me there. Not in the creepy Joey Greco landlord way, but between you and me? Pretty close! And who am I to blame the guy—a handsome son of a gun like me shows up with his sleeves rolled up, ready for work, a pizza party box in hand? You’re gonna get excited. So—

***

In the scant few seconds they’d let Conrad speak uninterrupted, Brad had sat himself in the second deck chair, leaning over to avoid Josh’s shoes. Making both him and Chris unspeakably proud, he joined them in their little game, cutting his story off without warning. “What do you mean by ‘a pizza party box?’”

“You know! A pizza party! In a box!”

“Are you…are you saying like you brought a bunch of pizzas?”

“No. It’s a pizza party in a box.”

“Surely you must’ve had a two-liter of something to drink,” Chris grinned.

“Okay, you guys are getting caught up on shit that just absolutely does not pertain to the horror at large here. So if you don’t mind…”

Josh sighed disinterestedly. “Were breadsticks involved?”

“You’re all dumbasses of the highest degree. The next one of you who talks over me is getting—”

“A pizza party in a box, I hope. I want to see if I can comprehend it with my puny human mind or if it’s some kind of non-Euclidean Lovecraftian concept that’ll melt my eyes in my skull.”

“Think it comes with garlic dipping sauce?”

***

I get a good look at him and I realize immediately that something’s off. At first I figure it’s just that I’m on edge because the house is so gross, right? But then he turns to get something out of one of the boxes and I realize what it is.

“Hey man,” I say. “Did you cut yourself on something? There’s blood all over your shirt.” I’m thinking this guy’s gonna end up being his own first patient, know what I mean? Gonna have to give himself a tetanus shot in the unfinished bathroom because there’s blood soaking into the whole top of his right shoulder, and I mean a lot of it.

Alex turns and he sees the blood, and for a second there he looks pretty freaked out…but then he pulls his collar up to check the skin underneath, and he’s like, “Nah, I think that’s just paint. The landlord probably put a fresh coat on since he knew I was gonna be moving in today.”

That fucking stank to me. Reeked. Number one, it was definitely blood and not paint, but number two, even if the landlord had painted shit—which he absolutely had not—nothing, and I mean nothing, in that house was red. Not even close. But when I oh-so-helpfully point that out to him, he gets all defensive and yells at me to stop talking and help him unpack. So I do, wanting to be a good friend and all.

***

“…that does sound like Alex…” Brad begrudgingly admitted, only to jump about a mile out of his skin when the sliding door slammed open. It didn’t slide open, it didn’t glide open, that sucker slammed.

Something about the way the light from the party haloed her from behind made Ashley’s worry twice as obvious as it usually was…and it was usually pretty goddamn obvious. “Is Zain out here?” she asked, sounding about five seconds away from full-blown panic.

There was a beat of silence as the four of them inexplicably surveyed the porch, as though maybe someone else had been hanging out with them all along and they just hadn’t noticed.

“Uh, unless he’s hiding up in the gutters,” Josh said when no one else spoke up, “I’m gonna have to say no, Ash. Why? What’s up?”

Her breath came out in a nervous rush, and it was only then that he noticed the phone in her hand. “His dad keeps calling! And texting! I think he’s, like, worried and trying to check in, but I have no idea where he went, so…”

From where he’d been leaning against the deck’s guardrail, Chris took one for the team and asked the obvious question: “Why are you suddenly the keeper of Zain’s phone?”

“Uh huh. See?” Stepping beside her to fill the open doorway, Taylor shook her head. “Told you. Not your responsibility. Just leave it—his dad’ll be fine. You ask me, that guy needs to cut the umbilical cord anyway…”

Ah, but Ashley Brown was a tough nut to crack. If anything, Taylor’s suggestion just made her dig her heels in deeper. “He got up to do…I don’t know, something once all you doofuses left! I...oh, hi Conrad. I wasn’t just gonna leave his phone! There are like, so many people here! What if one of them—oh no.” Her face paled. “He’s calling again.”

“Oh my G—if you’re so worried, why don’t you just answer it and—”

“Taylor! I can’t just answer someone else’s phone! That’s so rude!”

Another drop in the ‘Definitely Psychic’ pot—the instant it was out of Ashley’s mouth, Josh saw the next few seconds clear as day, unfolding in his mind like a beautifully handwoven tapestry. There was no surprise when Taylor reached over and tapped the accept call button, no shock; nor did any rise up when Ashley, wide-eyed and sputtering, plugged one ear with a finger and brought the phone up to the other. Nope, no surprise—just a whole lot of laughter.

“Hiii Mr. Othman…hi, yeah, it’s Ashley. Ashey Brown. Yeah, hello! Um, Zain’s fine, we’re all just—”

Without any need of trivial things like rehearsals or agreements or countdowns, the sheer spirit of troublemaking swooped down and tenderly touched each of their precious little heads as once. “SALIIIIIM!” the three of them cheered, putting their whole chests into it as though they were shouting at a football game. Brad jumped like he’d been slapped, Taylor narrowed her eyes in judgment, and Ashley shot them a look so withering it almost burned.

“—at the library. He went to go…grab some coffee, and—no, I…I don’t know why they’re yelling in the library either. No, it’s not a good idea. I hope we don’t get thrown out either. Um…I’ll, I’ll have Zain call you back as soon as I can f—I mean, as soon as he gets back. Okay. All right. No problem! You have a good night too. Bye!” She hung up and whirled on them like an adder. “What is wrong with you guys?!”

Josh shrugged. “I just really like Salim.”

“He’s such a cool dude,” Chris agreed.

“I wish he was my dad.”

“I think we all wish Salim was our dad.”

Just as quickly, she turned away from the guys and towards Taylor, her cheeks regaining some of their usual color. “Why would you do that?! That was mortifying!”

“Uh, so now you don’t have to worry about it anymore, duh?” She returned the look Ashley was giving her, then glanced to the rest of them. “So what’s all this?” she asked, gesturing to the deck. “We having secret time? No girls allowed?”

No girls allowed was the exact opposite of what Josh wanted, honestly—if Conrad was an ass in front of an audience, he was infinitely worse when even one member of said audience was of the female persuasion. Ladies had the unique ability to crank his bullshit-o-meter to eleven simply by existing. If his story sucked already (and God help them all, it did), there was no telling how much worse it would get if the girls stuck around.

So Josh did the only thing that made sense. He reached over to the door from where he sat, hooking his fingers around one of Ashley’s belt loops before yanking her out onto the deck with the rest of them.

“Hey!”

“Conrad,” he said, enunciating each syllable like a teacher scolding a student, “Is doing his damnedest to join the Midnight Society over here, Ash.”

All the fight went out of her immediately. “Oh God.”

“Wait,” Braid said. “Midnight Society? Like Are You Afraid of the Dark?”

“The fuck is Are You Afraid of the Dark?” Taylor asked.

“I promised him,” he continued in that same voice, telling her everything she needed to know without having to come right out and explain, “That if he told us a good story, I’d tell him all the juicy details about what happened up in the Pines.” Ashley started to say something and he quickly stopped her. “You remember what I’m talking about, right? So why don’t you two get cozy with the rest of us, and we can let him finish his story, huh? How’s that sound?”

“But…” A sigh was all that followed the word. His psychic ability told him what she was thinking, though; oh, it told him everything. “I mean…oookay. Take it away, Conrad. Wait, real quick, what’s the title of it?”

Josh was only too happy to tell her. “The Tale of the House That Drips Blood On Alex.”

Silence.

Then, sounding caught between and laugh and a groan, Taylor asked, “The fuck?”

***

Unpacking. Right. I help Alex unpack his stuff and—

***

“Wait. Alex, like—”

“Alex, like Brad’s brother Alex, yes, thanks, okay, moving on.”

“So is this, like…a true story?”

“It’s definitely a story!”

“But is it—”

“Moving on!”

***

—once we get more or less finished for the day, I can’t hold back anymore. I know it’s rude but I just have to ask.

“How’d you get this place for free?” I ask. “And so fast? My mom works the real estate gig and I know for a fact this is not how shit works, so what’s up with this place?”

Before he can answer, something drips down from the ceiling and onto his face. Blood. It’s obviously blood. He swears, totally freaked out, and both of us take a step back and look up to see what the hell that was all about, only…huh. There’s nothing on the ceiling. Not that I can see, anyway.

I say, “Holy shit, man, I think that’s blood!”

But he goes, “No, no, no, no way! There’s probably a leak in the roof or a burst pipe or something. It’s gotta just be rusty water, that’s all.”

To which I say, “Well, you’re the doctor, dude, I guess you’d know blood better than me, but still, don’t you think you should get your weird landlord over here to fix that shit?”

He goes, “Yeah, I guess that’s a good point,” but I can tell he’s hesitant, like he doesn’t really want to do it.

So, being the amazing friend that I am, I’m like, “Hey, know what? Like I said, my mom’s in the biz, and I know how these guys work. How about I go with you? Together I’m sure we can nip this thing in the bud—we’re two capable guys, after all.”

He seems cool with that idea, so I dip for the day and he goes upstairs to catch some Z’s after all that heavy lifting. We meet up again bright and early the next day, planning on just reaming this fucker out, only the building Alex stops in front of is clearly condemned, totally plastered over with Private Property and No Trespassing signs.

I figure he’s pulling some kind of prank on me, trying to razz me or whatever, right? Only when I press him on it and laugh about it, he gets really weird. Quiet, and almost angry. Not at me, just angry in general, like he can’t figure out what’s going on. When I ask him if maybe it’s the wrong building and he’s just confused, he’s like “No! I was just here and it was a completely different place! It was an office!”

So now I’m like…if he’s not playing a prank on me, maybe all that med school stress is finally getting to his head, right? But he seems super, super convinced that this is the spot, and I mean…it’s not outside the realm of possibility that these sketchier guys just up and leave without dropping a forwarding address, so I figure hey, look, let’s give Alex the benefit of the doubt, here—maybe this was the building he was at, but for whatever reason, his weirdass landlord is hiding from debt collectors or some shit.

I do what any redblooded American in my situation would do, IIIII turn the doorknob and I slip right on into that building. After checking that no one on the street was watching us, of course.

The interior of this place is even worse than the outside. It’s empty, it’s decrepit, it’s run down in that old, dusty way where you expect to find wadded up Cold War era newspapers lining the drywall, know what I mean? There’s dust and dirt so thick on the floor that it’s obvious no one’s been in there in a hot minute, so I turn to Alex sort of like…what do we do about this?

He’s starting to get real freaked out now, and he just keeps saying that this is it, this is where he signed the deed to get his free house, the desk was right over there, and he sat in a chair over there, and honestly? I can see that nothing he’s saying is making sense, but Alex is a guy with his head screwed on all the way, you know, so I want to believe him! He seems convinced this is the right place!

Still, I can’t help thinking that it’s all the stress from studying. I’m not saying he had a full-blown case of ‘All work and no play makes Alex a dull boy,’ but I am saying he was getting there.

***

“Okay, I’m sorry, just…just stop for a second.” Ashley had perched herself on the arm of Josh’s deck chair, and as she sat listening to Conrad’s tale of deeply existential terror, slowly but surely her knuckles had found their way up to her temples. He might’ve been having the time of his life, Josh, but this was unquestionably not the sort of story you wanted Ashley ‘Future Novelist’ Brown sitting in on. “I…I thought you said just a second ago that he got the house for free?”

“He did,” Conrad said, a whole new (read: patient) man now that girls were involved.

“In this market?” Brad muttered, only for Ashley to speak over him.

“Huh, okay. I just…okay. If he got the house for free, and he’s not paying rent, then…why does he need a landlord? I…wouldn’t it just be like, a person-to-person sale? There’s no need for a landlord if there’s no rent to pay, so I don’t…I guess I just don’t follow the reasoning.”

Chris raised a hand to draw her attention. “Ah, ah, ah! He’s a very important part of the story, Ash. We need the landlord because he looks like Joey Greco and he owns a quill, both of which, I’m sure Josh will agree, are extremely necessary parts of any horror story.”

“It’s true,” he nodded.

“Hang on.” Up until that precise moment, Taylor had been scrolling through her phone, but then she raised her head. “Joey Greco? Like, from Cheaters?”

“Yeah.”

“Why the hell’s Joey Greco from Cheaters got a quill? Why can’t he use a pen?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“Where’d he even get it?”

“If I had to guess? Uh…let’s say…family heirloom. That feels right to me.”

As the others chattered amongst themselves, Conrad standing in the middle of them all with a tight smile, Josh found he couldn’t help himself. He cleared his throat, and, when everyone else hushed, threw in his own two cents. “While we’re holding this Q&A Conman, I’d really, really like to revisit the pizza party in a box idea.”

Conrad ignored them. He ignored them all.

***

When we get back, I call up Jules, telling her about everything that’s gone down. Obviously she’s freaked out, worried that her boyfriend’s finally cracked under the pressure of higher education, and she jets over real quick to see what the deal is. When she saw the state of the place, though, she was just beside herself, almost on the verge of gagging, honestly.

“How can you stand to live here?” she asks. “Alex, this is so disgusting!”

“It’s only temporary,” he says, but we could tell he was having second thoughts by that point.

I start telling her about the whole blood dripping thing, and lo and behold, as we’re having that little heart-to-heart, another big glob of blood drops down onto Alex’s shirt from somewhere above us.

Jules obviously freaks the hell out. This is absolutely not her scene, she wants nooo part of this, but the thing is, she saw it happen! Now I know for a fact it’s not just my imagination, and Alex finally has to admit that it’s definitely blood and not just rusty drain runoff or whatever he was trying to convince him it was.

While she’s freaking out, she raises a good point: “Maybe there’s something up on the second floor that’s dripping.”

“Nope,” Alex says. “I slept on the second floor last night, and when I was moving stuff around I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

“Well, I mean, is there an attic?” she asks, and holy shit, neither of us thought of that!

So we go digging around all the shit we’d unpacked yesterday, looking for a flashlight, and when we find one, Alex and I start upstairs to try and find an attic. We check each of the rooms on the second floor, and aha! There, in the closet of the room he’d been using as his bedroom, we find a hatch that sure looks like it leads up to an attic.

Alex opens the hatch and then the two of us just stand there for a second looking at each other like, are we really about to do this? Because think about it…let’s say Jules was right, that there was something dead up there. What the hell are Alex and I going to do then? Are we just gonna poke at the dead animal? Are we gonna have to wrap it up in a Ziploc or something? And worse, what if it’s not an animal? What if we have a full-on murder scene up there? What do we do then?

But this is Alex’s new home, and so finally we decide we’re just gonna do it. We climb up into the attic and right away we can tell this is going to be more difficult than we expected. It’s dark up there. Unbelievably dark. Imagine the darkest room you’ve ever been in…twice that.

***

“OoOoOoOoOh…” Taylor snickered. “That’s so fuckin’ dark, dude. I’m so scared. I’m gonna have nightmares tonight.”

***

Alex gets the flashlight working and we start creeping through this place, but it’s slow goings. Whoever owned this dump before him, well they left just about everything they ever owned up in that attic. We’re bobbing and weaving through tons and tons of boxes, all of them piled nearly to the ceiling with old Christmas decorations, kitchen appliances, oven mitts…

***

Ashley opened her mouth, but gingerly (so gingerly), Josh laid a finger over her lips and shook his head.

***

Suddenly we’re going around a bend and we find ourselves in this big, open area. It must’ve been right over the living room, because it was just that huge. Almost the second we get there, we’re bowled over by this awful stink, just the worst thing you’ve ever smelled in your life.

And then, we see it.

Sprawled out on the attic floor, lit only by the shaky beam of the flashlight, is a body in a pool of blood. The blood, we realize, that’s been dripping on Alex.

Slowly, Alex moves the flashlight up the body, lighting up its legs, its torso, its arms, and then…it’s head. That’s when we see who it is. And that’s when it all comes together.

***

That time, it was Conrad who stopped the flow of the story, smirking out towards them, his adoring public. “So?” he asked. “Any guesses?”

The five of them exchanged puzzled glances. Under normal circumstances, money would’ve been on Ashley figuring it out—that was kind of her jam—but she and Taylor had only just come into this monstrosity, so while there weren’t many clues to find, they’d still missed most of them. Runner up in the competition was him, obviously, so Josh sighed, “I mean, it’s gotta be the landlord, right? Creepy Cheaters guy?” Around him, the others made sounds. Not of approval, not of understanding, not even necessarily of agreement, just…sounds. “Only person it can be, right?”

Conrad frowned. “What? No.”

The sounds stopped, and there was only silence out there on the deck. A lot of silence. So much silence. An inordinate amount of silence.

Still, Conrad wouldn’t—nay, couldn’t—be shaken. Proudly, he spread his hands out, giving the ending a flourish. “It was Alex!”

There was that silence again.

And then they all erupted.

“What? No, I…wait, what?”

“How is that even…hang on. That can’t…what?”

“If…wait, okay, if it was Alex, then like…why mention the landlord…at all? Again, he wasn’t paying rent, so why was he even—”

“Are you trying to tell me that Alex was a ghost the whole time? A ghost who kept getting blood dripped on him? I don’t…I don’t understand. Is there a moral to this story? Is the moral don’t go into your attic? Is the moral don’t live on Blood Street?”

“Wait, why are you saying blood like it has an umlaut?”

“Because it does, apparently! In Conrad’s mind, anyway.”

The picture of disappointment, Conrad dropped his hands to his sides. “You guys have got to be kidding me—imagine it was you! Imagine you go up into an attic and you see yourself dead on the floor! That’s spooky as hell!”

“It’s not.”

“It is! Your face all bloody? Flies buzzing everywhere? It’s sick shit, man!”

Chris narrowed his eyes, “You, sir, said nothing about flies!”

“Oookay, well, don’t get me wrong, I’m super glad I just wasted these precious minutes of my life, but I think I’m gonna get back to the party.” Taylor threw Conrad one last judgmental look, the likes of which lesser men had buckled beneath, and shook her head. “My advice? Avoid the English department at all costs. They’ll eat you alive.”

As she brushed past him, Ashley following close behind, Conrad narrowed his eyes. “I don’t even know you,” he muttered to himself. He sat with that thought for a moment before turning back to the guys—Josh more specifically. “Well?”

“…well? Well what? You want a grade? D. Minus. See me after class.” He chuckled at the glare he got for that, shrugging his shoulders. “Hey, know what? Hard to believe, but I do seem to remember accepting worse than that into the Midnight Society before, so…hey, welcome to the club.”

Chris pretended to clap. “We’re all very proud.”

If there’d been any question as to whether Conrad had been embarrassed by their reactions, it was gone. The guy was fine, back to beaming like the cat that’d gotten the cream. “Thank Christ. Now!” he grinned, clapping his hands together once for effect. “You gotta hold up your end of the bargain, Wash. What happened up there on the mountain?”

What he wanted to do was shoot another knowing look Chris’s way. He didn’t, though. No sir, he did not, because he knew (something something ‘Definitely Psychic’) that if he did, ewll, there just wouldn’t be any way to contain his laughter. Instead, he nodded sagely, adjusting himself in the deck chair to sit with his fingers steepled under his chin. “Okay. A deal’s a deal. So here’s what happened…

“As you already know, I, along with my beloved sisters and a few of our less infuriating friends went up to spend a weekend in the Pines. When night came and the sun set, we gathered up all of our best snacks, filled out bespoke thermoses with hot chocolate, and scampered out into the wild blue yonder to tell stories around a campfire. Stories not much different from the one you just told.

“I mean, they were way better, don’t get me wrong, but. You know. Stories.”

Conrad said nothing, just raised his eyebrows and kept listening.

“Anyway. As the night goes on, we keep hearing weird noises in the woods, but that’s not really too bizarre—that’s what happens in the woods, after all, weird noises—so we just kind of shrug them off. Eventually we run out of stories and snacks, so we go back into the lodge and slip into our jimmy-jams for a good old-fashioned slumber party, but then one of the girls starts screaming that she saw someone outside. Sammy goes to check it out, and wouldn’t you know it, someone left us a note telling us if we knew what was good for us, we’d stay inside.”

Once he trailed off, Conrad leaned in expectantly, waving his hands for him to continue. “And?!”

Josh shrugged. “And we did. Then the sun came up. When we went to leave, there was an abandoned cop car outside and part of an arm just chillin’ in the snow.”

Of course that was when Chris took the opportunity to slide in between the two of them, eyebrows waggling wildly. “I guess you could say the officers who came to check on our 911 call were really…disarmed by the whole situation.”

Conrad laid his hand flat against Chris’s face and pushed him off to the side. “Okay, and?!”

“What do you mean, and?” Josh asked, leaning back again. “That’s it. The end. Fini. We high-tailed it down the mountain, reported it to the cops, the cops are looking into it.” He punctuated the anticlimax with another halfhearted shrug. “But whoever was watching us all night? Well they were never found. So really, they could be anywhere right now…” He pointedly swept his eyes across the large yard, coming to rest on Conrad again. “Anywhere.”

“Like in an attic,” Chris suggested. “In a pool of their own blood. Dripping down onto them. You know. Scary shit.”

Finally, the injustice had been too much; Conrad seemed to deflate a bit. “That’s…that’s literally nothing I didn’t already know! That wasn’t a story at all!”

“Yeah, well, not for nothing,” Josh began, feeling his resolve begin to crumble as Chris started laughing beside them, “But, uh, neither was yours, man. And if I remember correctly…I think the deal was a story for a story, sooo…don’t know what to tell you, man. Them’s the breaks. Fair’s fair.”

“Wait, that’s what this was all about?” Brad asked, turning Conrad’s way. “Dude. All that stuff’s totally public knowledge—why didn’t you just Google it?”

“Yeah, Conrad,” Josh chimed in, “Why didn’t you just Google it?” And the argument could be made that he didn’t need to be a psychic to know Conrad was about to shove him clean off that deck chair, but neither did it hurt that he saw it coming.