By Justin Carter
The only time I ever went to Manny’s house, I thought someone was fucking with me. I was out with a couple of the guys and we were trying to find somewhere we could go to smoke some weed, and R.J. suggested Manny’s place. I didn’t really know Manny—he was one of R.J.’s friends out in Newell who he worked with. I’d only met him twice, both times out at this coffee shop that a lot of people frequented. But he had a house and didn’t live with his parents, so that was good enough for us.
Soon as we pulled into the driveway though, I knew we were making a mistake.
One of the front windows was shattered, part of it covered up with a blue tarp and the rest of it was just hanging open. The garage door was off its hinges. Half the driveway was just trash bags.
“Dude. What the fuck.”
R.J. was unfazed. “A place is a place.”
We walked right through the unlocked front door and found Manny inside watching the Home Shopping Network on mute and listening to Dragonforce on his phone. He looked at us, nodded, turned back to the television. We just kind of stood there for fifteen seconds.
Manny motioned to the screen. “Y’all ever try one of those air fryer things? Shit looks sweet.”
R.J. laughed and we made our way to the couch. The room was real sparse—a couch that looked like it’d been pulled out of a dumpster, a recliner that was in surprisingly good shape, a coffee table that I’m pretty sure Manny built himself, and then this huge television playing infomercials for cooking equipment. I mean, it was the nicest fucking television set and it was so out of place.
We got high, because that’s what we were there for. At some point Craig, the third guy, left. I guess he must have called someone for a ride. I dunno, he got up to go to the bathroom and never came back. I was too blitzed to really pay attention.
When I smoke too much weed, I do this thing where I just like to wander around, so I did that. Walked in and out of all of Manny’s rooms. And then I opened the door to this spare bedroom in the back of the house.
And Jesus, I immediately regretted that.
The whole room, every wall, window, even the ceiling, were covered in these sigils drawn with a Sharpie. I mean, there were hundreds of them, and then I looked down and saw this huge pentagram carved into the floor. Fuck. We had to get out of there.
I turned around and Manny was standing right behind me. I screamed. Didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it.
“Shit man,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” I just stood there. He pretty quickly realized what was up. “This shit was like this when I moved in.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“Yeah, I try to not come in here. It gives me the fucking heebies.”
He took a step toward me. At least I think he did.
“It’s…weird man,” I said.
“Bad vibes, for sure.”
I heard R.J. cough in the other room, but it didn’t sound like a weed cough. We’d shared enough joints for me to know what that sounded like. This one was different. Something was wrong with it, something was wrong with all of this. Manny took another step, or maybe I was the one taking the steps. R.J. coughed again. It sounded wet, like he was choking.
“Is he okay?,” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t he be?” Another step closer. I looked down and I was standing in the middle of the pentagram. Had I always been? There was one more cough. Another step from Manny. I want to say he was smiling but I was too scared to look at his face.
Justin Carter is the author of Brazos (Belle Point Press, 2024). His short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in BULL, HAD, Passages North, Rejection Letters, and other spaces. Originally from the Texas Gulf Coast, Justin currently lives in Iowa and works as a sports writer and editor.