The Home

by Judith Sonnet

“They put letters in math? Like what? A plus B equals C?” “That’s it.” “Ridiculous.”

honestly same

It was Ol’ Man Fincher who was to blame for everything that happened in the summer of nineteen sixty-one. It was his fault I met Orville and Eunice . . . Everything bad and beautiful about that year began . . . because I wanted to go cruising, and an old man trusted me with his car.

Mr. Friendlyman . . . He’s not dead . . . He was never real . . . Mr. Friendlyman . . . Gonna getcha . . . Mr. Friendlyman . . .

But there’s the rub: Mr. Friendlyman doesn’t target those who believe. He sets out to get the kids that don’t!

Mr. Friendlyman’s been around since even I was a boy, Fincher had said. Our version of it, he was a white man who stole Black babies from their cribs and ate them. Same name, different monster. Maybe we thought of it first and y’all took it. You have a tendency to do that, you know?

I’m dying . . . because Mr. Friendlyman found me . . . Later, he’d realize that Mr. Friendlyman didn’t have to look far. Griffin had never left his hometown.

Orville squinted so hard his vision blurred. He wanted to reach over and turn on the light on his nightstand, but he also didn’t want to see the laugher. He had a feeling that seeing him would give him a heart attack. “Who is that? Answer me!” Orville snarled. “Don’t you recognize me?”

“Mr. Friendlyman?” he asked. In the darkness, white teeth flashed in a gruesome smile. It was there and gone before he’d even had a chance to grapple with the reality of what he’d seen.

Oh, God. Dear God. It was HIM. He’s back . . . Orville heard screaming. Long, high-pitched, wailing agony . . . coming from inside The Old Folks’ Home.

“Hey, if anyone is givin’ you a hard time here, you lemme know, yeah?” Rufus crossed his arms over his chest and spoke in a stern tone: “That shit don’t fly at The Video Vault!” Ocean couldn’t help it. She giggled, then laughed. Rufus flushed red. “Hey, I’m a badass, ya know? I’ve been in my fair share of scraps!” “I believe you!” Ocean chortled. “Two hits. I hit him . . . he hits the road!”

Frozen with fear, unable to comprehend both what she could see and what she couldn’t, Ocean felt her throat tighten. A fist held her heart, threatening to crush it. “You . . .” the man said. “Are . . .” the darkness behind him said. “Going . . .” The man. “To . . .” The darkness. “Hurt . . .” “So . . .” “Beautifully!” He was sobbing. He was laughing. He was here, and he was somewhere else.

he was laughing, and his laughter was shrieking, it was the sound of suffering girls, oh God, and she could hear herself joining the choir, wanting to scream but laughing instead, and the hurt was there . . . it was there inside her . . . the hurting was present and past and future, and the hurting was God Himself.

He was only tangible so long as he was in The Home . . . where he and Mr. Friendlyman had become one. So his psychic threats to Griffin were empty. He could not leave The Home and go after the old man . . . but he knew there would be no way the codger could resist Mr. Friendlyman’s call. He’d be here soon . . . and they would finish what they had started. So long ago . . .

Everyone will talk about this. It’s all we’ll be remembered for. Not that we were a loving, happy family . . . but that my husband was sodomized with a fire poker.

“I’m sorry. Do I know you?” Griffin asked. The man frowned. “Sorry. I’ve grown up some. I’m Anton.” “Anton?” “Anton Degrassi.” A look of extreme pity crossed over the young man’s handsome face. “I’m sorry. You’re probably feeling a bit disoriented. Your daughter, Eloise, and I used to date.” “You did?” “Yes.” “And I didn’t kill ya when you broke her heart?” Anton laughed happily. “No, Mister Chalks . . . she broke mine!” Griffin tried to smile. “That’s my girl.”

654 . . . The Devil’s House. The Home.

Mr. Friendlyman Loves All God’s Little Children.

Mr. Friendlyman . . . that’s what they call the thing that lives in that house. Don’t stay out too late . . . or Mr. Friendlyman will get you. Don’t tell any lies . . . or Mr. Friendlyman will get you. He talks real nice. Tells you he means no harm, that you can trust him. But then, when he’s lured you into The Home . . . he gets you!

When he was a child, Orville thought the worst thing that could happen was having a monster “get” you. But he’d had no concept of what “getting” meant. Now that he was growing up, he knew what people were capable of. They didn’t need to be supernatural, ghostly monsters to put a person through undeserved hell.

This was good, Robbie. It was good. But you’re destined for great things. Children. All the little children. Innocent little children. You must do this to children. The voice in his head didn’t sound like his. It switched tone and tempo, going from high-pitched to baritone between words. Tensely, Robbie rubbed his sticky hands together. “Who are you?” Robbie asked the empty room. There was no answer.

“I died in The Home. You know what happens to people who die in The Home, Griffin? We become a part of him. Of Mr. Friendlyman. We are ourselves, but we are also him. Does that make sense?”

“I don’t know. I spent a while trying to forget . . . then I spent too long trying to remember . . . then I tried to forget all over again.”

lol, same.

“It’s old. It’s always hungry. And it calls itself Mr. Friendlyman.” “Why?” Flint spat out the window. “It’s very friendly to folks who bring it victims. I’d know. I was its friend for a while. Eventually, I didn’t even care if my victims were Black or white. I brought him little girls. He likes children a lot. He never showed himself to me again, but he did speak to me. Hell, he speaks to me to this day.

“When I was feeding Mr. Friendlyman, he fed me as well. I’ve eaten my fill, and this is all he asks of me. This is my final debt, and I’m paying it. And when you kill me, Robbie, I’ll go to Hell. I won’t be a part of him the way my victims are. And that, my son, will make Hell as good as Heaven.”

“I am The Hive. I am The Beast of Hungry Teeth. I am The Core. I am—”

“I am The Eater of Ghosts. Come . . . let me show you.”

Mr. Friendlyman . . . I know a surefire way to summon ghosts . . . God can’t help us now . . . We can only help ourselves . . . And we’ll start in the cemetery . . . That will feel like the worst part . . . But it only gets worse from there . . .

“You can’t be both!” the woman said. “Both?” “Both a friend and a stranger. It’s one or the other!” Robbie grinned. “What if I’m a friendly stranger.”

“Say them. Say your prayers. Say them now!” Our Father, Orville thought, who art in Heaven— A deep, growling voice penetrated the darkness. “Howling be thy name—” Orville began to weep with fear. “And burning be thy tongue, you hungry thing—”

It looked like a human head that had been hollowed out. The skin hung off the skull like a hat dangling from a rack. The mouth drooped like laundry on a clothesline, exposing the emptiness behind it. The eyes were wide, obsidian pools.

“Do you really know how to summon ghosts?” Flint Jacobs/Robbie Miller winked. “Stick around and you’ll find out.”

“Yes. Mr. Friendlyman himself is a ghost eater. The ritual . . . would give us his powers.” He sat upright. “Orville, Eunice is saying that we need to eat him if we want to be rid of him.”

The Ghost Eater has a name . . . and it’s Mr. Friendlyman. That old urban legend our parents used to tell us about not accepting any invitations from “Mr. Friendlyman,” they were talking about The Ghost Eater—about that thing in The Home!

It ate more than human ghosts . . . It ate the ghosts of . . . old things . . . It ate the ghosts of the things that crawled on Earth before man could walk. Before man was even a seedling or a sprout. It consumed the ghosts of gods. ANCIENT TERRIBLE AWFUL GODS WITH CHOMPING MOUTHS AND MILLIONS OF HUNGRY EYES AND—

She heard their voices, and they boomed louder than thunder . . . louder, even, than Mr. Friendlyman. And she knew now that that wasn’t his real name.

It did not cater to the restraints of the human tongue. His name was the sound of a galaxy dying, of stars clashing, of millions braying in agony. His name was a shriek that pierced through the heavens and corrupted even the ears of God. “I am . . . I was . . . I shall be . . . And you . . . you will serve . . . you will worship—” “No!” Eunice cried. “No! Please, GOD!”

She realized who was speaking to her. That man, who now lived in a lighthouse in the Netherworld of its own construction, was the being that spoke to her now. That worm, which called itself The Core . . . The Hive . . . The Beast of Hungry Teeth . . . That amalgamation of spirits which was known as Mr. Friendlyman. The boogeyman of Sycamore Lane.

“It was a man once. But before that, it was a worm. A parasite that chewed on the corpse of an ancient god. The man was hired by the founders of Starch to purify the land. He didn’t know what he was eating when he picked up the ghost of the parasite and consumed it . . .”

In every house on Sycamore Lane, the residents began to kill each other and themselves.

Lloyd Wilkers took his seventy-year-old wife, Andrea, to the backyard and strangled her with the garden hose. She didn’t even beg for her life because she’d been in a trancelike state ever since the lights turned back on in The Home. After she’d died, he shoved the garden hose down his throat and turned the faucet on.

Eighteen-year-old Vickie Holmes went from room to room until all four of her siblings were dead. She used a kitchen knife to cut their throats. When she came into her parents’ room, she was disappointed to see her mother already dead. Her father had forced her jaw so far open that her head was split in two like a Pez dispenser. Smiling at Vickie, her father said, “Cut my throat and I’ll cut yours.”

Pete Ballinger had lived by his lonesome ever since his husband died in a car accident in 2010. At fifty-five, he was sure that killing himself was the right idea. The method, he only realized too late, was the problem. After all, no one he knew had ever killed themselves by dragging their lawnmower into the living room, turning it over, starting it, then leaning face-first into the rotating blades.

Tammy Thompson poisoned her husband. She gave him a late-night glass of tea laced with rat poison. He drank it gladly. After he was done, Tammy broke the bathroom mirror and began to swallow the shards like they were potato chips.

It was as if God had forgotten his promise and was prepared to flood the world all over again.

Ghosts. My life is made of ghosts.

“He’s . . . feeding . . .” Robbie took a jaunty step forward. “He’s older . . . than . . . God . . . and . . . he’s . . . always . . . hungry!”

“We went through hell back in sixty-one. Then life evened out. Sometimes, I was even able to forget about this shit. Then, I started having visions . . . and right when Mr. Friendlyman reached out to me . . . so did you.” Eunice shook her head. “I want to stop him, Orville.” “Then what did he choose you for?”

“Oh God,” Griffin said. “I figured it out.” Eunice’s eyes widened. “Bringing Ed and Catherine here was part of it because . . . we aren’t performing a new ritual,” Griffin stated. “Griffin—” Eunice started. “We’re finishing the old one!”

“What happens if it does work?” Griffin asked. “Will the world end? Will Mr. Friendlyman kill all our friends and family? What does the ritual do, Eunice?” “I told you already . . . we’re going to kill Mr. Friendlyman. We’re going to become ghost eaters . . . and we’re going to eat him.”

“I want you to know, our son died painlessly.” “Eunice, I—” “When I brought him here, he was so calm. Even with all the noise. It’s like he knew what he was becoming a part of.” “Eunice—”