Wicked They Come When Miriam first heard that noise the walls vibrated and a sound like howling wind roared briefly and then cut off quick like someone slammed the window shut on it. It came from the empty flat above her basement room. When Miriam ran upstairs to see what it was. Mr. Menkin was already in the front hall and several other people had run out of their tenement rooms. The landlady, Mrs. Waters, lived in the other first-floor flat right across the hall from the empty room. Even so, she was the last to appear. "What's the problem?" she demanded. "Something's in there, Mrs. Waters," said Mr. Menkin. "It shook the whole building. You didn't notice it?" "No, I didn't," she said sharply. Miriam didn't believe her. "Something caused that caterwalling, Mrs. Waters," said Miriam. "If you would be so kind as to unlock that door." Mrs. Waters looked angry, but she was old and bitter and nearly always looked angry about something. She took out her ring of keys and unlocked the door. Mr. Nickolas had died in there a few years ago, after of lifetime of meanness, petty cruelty and probably petty crime as well, though nobody could ever prove it. Mrs. Waters found him one morning stiff and cold, his eyes staring and his face drawn back in a rictus of terror. Mr. Menkin confided to Miriam later that he thought Mr. Nickolas must have seen the devil coming for him. Since the death of Mr. Nickolas no one had lived there more than a day or two and Mrs. Waters finally stopped offering it to let. It was a small room just like Miriam's. A narrow bed, an equally narrow wardrobe, a washstand, a table, a tiny cookstove and a little bin for coal. In Miriam's apartment the table was pushed against the wall to make room for the washtubs. Everyone knew her man was dead and she must take in laundry and mending to survive. When the door swung open, Miriam could see nothing out of place. The only odd thing was the distinct odor of a struck match. The noise seemed to bring bad luck to the whole building. Mrs. McCardle declared that the noise was a banshee and that someone was about to die. Mrs. Moretti thought it was the ghost of old Mr. Nickolas and would make the sign against evil every time she walked by it. Miriam couldn't believe people still thought such foolishness three years into the twentieth century. That is, Miriam thought it was foolishness until it happened again. This time the vibration was so bad, Mr. Menkin fell and broke his ankle. He had to hobble to the cotton mill on a homemade crutch borrowed from Mr. McCardle. As she saw him limp off down the street among the carriages and motorcars she wondered if maybe the women were right. Two hours later he returned and told everyone he'd been fired. He couldn't do his job with just one good foot. Mr. Menkin had a wife and six children. Losing his job at the cotton mill was a very great evil indeed. Two days later, the vibration and the noise started again just as Miriam lifted a simmering bucket of water off the stove and dumped it into the washtub. When the howl started she jumped and splashed hot water on her foot. She kicked off her shoe and put her foot in the cold water bucket before it blistered. The walls of the tenement trembled and the howl again cut off abruptly. Miriam took her foot out of the water, dried it on the hem of her skirt and slipped her foot back into her shoe. She took up the lye soap and the scrub board and worked for a while, thinking about the noise. Someone needed to get to the bottom of it and Mrs. Waters wasn't going to do anything. She had come from a wealthy family many decades ago, but now she seemed to spend her days nursing her misery at being reduced to owning a tenement in the slums. Miriam had been astonished when she discovered that Mrs. Waters didn't think she lived in comfort. Miriam finished the shirts and had started on the underpants and handkerchiefs when the walls began again to tremble. When the noise started she threw down the red long-handles that she'd been scrubbing and dried her hands on her apron. This time the howling seemed to last a long time before it rose into a shriek and abruptly shut off. She had sold almost all of Oliver's clothes and personal things, but she kept his skeleton key against the day she might need such a thing. Tonight she would use it to get into the empty flat. After the washing and hours of ironing until her arms ached from lifting the sadiron, she sat and mended by lamplight until the tenement was quiet. Then she slipped Oliver's skeleton key into her apron pocket, kicked off her shoes and taking up her small oil lamp, tiptoed barefoot up the stairs. She listened at Mrs. Waters's door for a moment. All was silent. Then she went across to the empty flat and turned the key in the lock. The lamplight revealed an empty room. The narrow bed was bare of covering, just a mattress and springs. When she stepped into the room something happened. She wasn't sure what. The hair rose on the back of her neck. She peered under the bed and opened the door of the wardrobe. Nothing. She stood in the center turning slowly around looking for anything at all out of place. Then, suddenly the room shimmered, as if for an instant she was looking at it through rippling water. She turned toward the door, but it had disappeared and only gaping darkness yawned where it had been. Miriam gasped and stood gripping her small lamp, transfixed, trembling, hoping the door would somehow reappear. She blew out the lamp and looked around for escape. Then she had an inspiration. She dropped to the floor and rolled under the bed, dragging the lamp after her. She pressed against the wall with her knees hugged to her chest and waited, but not for long. The room shook like a rattle in the fist of a giant baby and slowly filled with an eerie red light. A low moan rose gradually as always to a bone-chilling shriek choked off abruptly. The red light softened but remained. The smell of sulphur was overwhelming. "Finally!" said a voice. "I was beginning to think we weren't going to get through," said the other. "Well, when the old man left he took his wanting with him. But here we are, and just smell that!" The other one took a deep breath. "Ah! People!" "Ripe for the picking." They laughed. Their voices were odd. They didn't sound like men, exactly, almost like children, but . . . not. She wriggled forward to get a look at them, but forgot about the lamp until she knocked it over with a sickening crash of glass. One of the strangers exclaimed something and babbled a few incomprehensible words. Then a hand snaked under the bed and pulled Miriam out. "What have we here?" he said. The two creatures were dressed like dandies, sporting black silk waistcoats and black bowler hats. They were small, though, and looked like fat children except that their round faces were flat and their mean little eyes bore expressions she had never seen in the eyes of children. The one that held her was the taller of the two, his hair close-cropped and a narrow goatee on his chin. The other was darker, fatter and seemed younger. "Let me go!" Miriam struggled but the hand was like iron. She noticed that his dirty fingernails were long and clawlike. "Let her go, Knack," said the other one. "There's nowhere she can run." Knack let her go. She whirled, meaning to run out the door, but it was still obscured or had been obliterated by the dark void, which seemed to pulsate slowly. The soft red light emanated from it without softening the darkness. "Who are you people," said Miriam. "And what do you want?" Her voice trembled. She was cold and remembered that she was barefoot. "As you now know, I am called Knack," said the taller of the two. "This is my associate Belly." Belly tipped his bowler and bowed, creasing his paunch a bit. "As for what we want? What is it that we don't want, eh, Belly?" He elbowed his associate's padded ribs and they laughed together as if sharing a huge joke. Their teeth had been filed to points or perhaps they were like that naturally. "We're sent to open this gate," said Belly. "Been workin' on it for weeks." "The other one is gettin' crowded." They chuckled. Their laughter was mean and mirthless and made Miriam want to cover her ears. "Let me go. Please," she said hopelessly. "Nah," said Belly. "You seen us. You'll tell. Folks here abouts have to be kept in the dark until it's too late." "Too late?" she echoed faintly. "Till there's too many of us to stop," said Knack. "You got a right pretty world here, full of ripe flesh to eat, lots of sun and fresh air. Don't worry, when it's all used up, we'll move on. Lots of worlds out there!" He leered and gestured up at the cracked the ceiling. "This is our world," said Miriam breathlessly, astonished that she could speak at all. "You can't have it." They broke into gales of their ugly laughter. "They all say that," said Knack. "But we can't come unless you wants us." "Nobody would want you here!" "You'd be surprised," said Belly. "Three of you wanted us in Cleveland. That's why that gate was so easy to open. Here it was only one. For a while there was two, but one of 'em kicked the bucket." "Who wanted you to come here?" asked Miriam incredulous. "Me," said a voice behind her. Miriam turned. Mrs. Waters stood there with a lamp. The dark gate seemed to suck light out of the coal oil flame. "You? But why? These . . . these things eat people! They want to consume the world!" Mrs. Waters wasn't a little monster, she was a human woman and Miriam nurtured a little hope that she could be persuaded. "And good riddance, I say," said Mrs. Waters scowling. "They can have this miserable planet. I have suffered here enough. They are going to let me go to their world where I can live like a queen. They sent a man from Ohio to talk to me about it. He even showed me pictures!" Miriam stared at Mrs. Waters with open disbelief. The landlady wore a dress of good wool edged with yards of lavender lace. Her shoulders were wrapped in a shawl of lace dyed to match. She lived in a large, fine apartment and every Sunday her two sons brought their families for dinner. Mr. Menkin's children sometimes went to bed hungry and they were not the only ones in the building to do so. "You have so much," said Miriam. "You have everything any mortal woman could want." Her anger rose, driving away fear. "You want to throw away the whole world to get more?" Mrs. Waters's face twisted in an ugly sneer. "I would have been gone long ago," she said. "But when Old Nickolas saw the gate start to open, he up and croaked. Couldn't take it." Miriam almost didn't hear Mrs. Waters's reply. "You have money. Family, comfort, beautiful things . . ." said Miriam, the flames of anger blowing through her. "And yet it's not enough." "This hell hole? It's not enough for any decent person. Every year I have despised my miserable life, until this year I thought I would kill myself from hating it. Then I heard the noise from this room and I knew I had hated it enough." She smiled, but it was not good thing to see. Miriam's hands shook so hard she clasped them together to quiet them. She wished she could just sit down and cry, but she knew that she was looking at the face of evil and had to do something about it. Then she had an idea. It burst on her like a light from some far land, like a sunrise seen from a mountaintop. "Well, then, go." said Miriam softly. "What are you waiting for? Your proper life is not here in this unhappy world. It is through that gate." She gestured to the menacing dark that loomed behind Mrs. Waters. The landlady turned and looked at the deep blackness, still pulsing redly. "No!" exclaimed Knack. Until that moment the two little creatures had been watching silently. Miriam had ignored them. They were merely bad. Mrs. Waters was more than that. "Mrs. Waters!" said Belly. "You can't go through just yet. Remember our agreement? You have to wait until there are enough of us." The landlady hesitated and turned back. "What are you waiting for Mrs. Waters?" said Miriam, her voice getting stronger. "You don't care about the people in this building, your sons or your grandchildren. You don't care about President Roosevelt or the King of Siam. Why would you care what these creatures say?" Mrs. Waters smiled a thin, nasty smile. "They are ugly little spuds, aren't they?" she said. She set her lamp down on the floor, lifted her skirts a little and prepared to step into the gate. "No!" bellowed Knack. Somehow his voice seemed bigger. His desperation made him seem to grow. He brushed past Miriam, reaching for Mrs. Waters. Miriam jumped after him and pulled him back. Belly's hard clawed hands grasped her arm, nearly pulling it out if its socket. He couldn't break her grip on Knack, though, and they all fell in a heap on the floor. The creatures' bodies were unpleasantly soft, but unnaturally strong. Mrs. Waters watched, amused, almost happy. "Go Mrs. Waters!" said Miriam, desperately struggling with her captors. "Go to your reward!" Then the landlady turned and walked into the looming darkness. Before she had taken more than a few steps she became indistinct. The walls began to shudder and the gate emitted a low moan slowly rising in intensity until it became the familiar howl, which slowly rose in pitch until it almost screamed like a woman voicing the deepest terror. And then, silence. Knack and Belly both squealed and abandoned Miriam, running toward the gate. But the gate faded and they ran into the wall, instead. They turned on Miriam like a couple of ravening dogs, reaching for her with their long dirty fingernails, saliva dripping from their shapeless mouths. Knack had lost his bowler when he hit the wall. Belly's waistcoat was torn. Miriam jumped to her feet. "Get out!" she shouted at them. They hesitated. Belly shot a quick glance at Knack. "Get out!" Miriam shouted at the top of her lungs. "Nobody wants you here!" Belly took a step back. "Your gate is gone. There will be no more of you. You have no more power over any of us," Miriam said. "Now get out! NOBODY WANTS YOU HERE!" Knack took a step back. Then to her astonishment, they seemed to shrink and she realized she was much taller than they. She stamped her bare foot. "Get out!" They got out. She helped Belly along with a kick in the backside, picked up Knack's bowler and threw it after him as they ran out into the night. Suddenly weak in the knees, Miriam sat down hard on the floor. She pulled her feet under her skirts to warm them. When she felt a bit more collected she stood and left the cold room, carefully locking the door after her. At first she meant to go back down stairs, but she saw the door to Mrs. Waters's flat stood open a few inches. She thought to close it, but had another idea and went inside. * * * The next morning, Miriam packed her few things in a carpetbag borrowed from Mrs. Waters's flat. She put on her only coat and her tattered old hat and briefly said good-bye to her flat, with its cold memories and its empty washtubs. Then she climbed the stairs and knocked on Mr. Menkin's door. He seemed surprised to see her. "Good Morning, Mrs. Michaels," he said, leaning uncomfortably on his homemade crutch. "Please come in and have some tea." "Good morning," said Miriam. "I can only stay a moment. Mrs. Waters asked me to give you this letter." Mr. Menkin went pale. "She couldn't deliver an eviction notice herself?" "Oh, it's not that!" said Miriam. "She was called away suddenly. She's going to be traveling for a good long while. She asks if you would be so kind as to collect the rents while she is gone. For a percentage, of course." "Me? Not one of her sons?" His was incredulous. It was too good to be true and therefore it couldn't be true. "She wrote them letters explaining everything," said Miriam. "She will also want you and your family to move into her flat so as to take care of her things. She said it was too dangerous to allow it to stand empty." "Of course," said Mr. Menkin, clearly stunned. "Things could get stolen." "Of course. Well, it's all explained in the letter and I must be going," said Miriam. "Good day and good luck to you." She turned to go. "Wait up Mrs. Michaels! Are you going away?" She turned back. "Yes, I am," she said smiling. "I'm going to Cleveland."
Copyright © 2004 Susan Brassfield Cogan |