Porch Pirate

“Hi guys, we’re here with our friend Daniel and today, we’re going to be catching ourselves some port—some porch pirates. Port pirates. Porch pira—"

Allie finally looked up from her phone and saw me watching her. She burst into laughter while trying to wave me away.

“Stop it! I’m just practicing.”

“Didn’t realise you took it so seriously!” I said.

“Oh I’m a very serious person,” she answered with a smile. “Everything I do is serious. Dead serious.”

“Is that why he’s wearing a Halloween mask?”

The skull beside me snapped up from the camera feed. His name was Justin and he’d spent the evening at mine rigging up all sorts of hidden cameras. When I’d asked my friend for a favour humiliating some local thieves, I didn’t expect her to turn up with a camera guy.

“Don’t mock the skull dude,” he said.

“It’s because he doesn’t want his face on the video,” Allie pointed out. “Doesn’t tow the company line.”

“Just because everyone else wants to end up on camera doesn’t mean I have to.”

“You’re much better off-screen,” I joked.

Allie laughed and the skull scoffed at me before returning to the camera feed. He was clearly excited for the big moment.

“Can’t wait to get these fuckers,” he said. “My parents are always having stuff stolen off their doorstep.”

“What time do they usually come?” Allie asked me.

“Well, definitely before I get home from work at midnight. I’d guess they’d probably wait after it gets dark.”

We could see the sun starting to set through my kitchen window and Allie replied: “That makes sense. I guess now is when we need to start being quiet.”

She made a good point, and the two of us fell silent. Justin barely changed from where he’d sat with his back to the wall, but Allie and I moved over to join him so were just out of sight of the porch and drive. Now and again we’d whisper a few hushed words—she thanked me for letting her do this, saying it was a great idea for a video and hopefully it’d get her noticed by her boss—but for the most part we were silent and still. I always thought stakeouts looked fun on TV but this was mind-numbingly boring. The only thing even slightly interesting was that a storm kicked up, and sometimes I’d catch Allie counting mississipies after each flash of lightning. It was cute but by the time half-ten rolled around I wondered if I would have been better off just working up the courage to ask her out on a date.

“Ah shit,” Justin grumbled, pulling off his mask with a frustrated yank. “Fucking cameras cut out.”

“What?” Allie cried. “No! Is it serious?”

“Probably that douchebag Craig not charging the batteries.” Justin pushed himself with a look of discomfort. He grumbled the entire way to the door. “Jesus Christ this shit is why one day I’m going to take that boom mic of his and shove it right—”

The door closed behind him. Allie was doing her best to not laugh.

“Oh my God,” she mouthed silently. “I think I forgot!”

We both sat there giggling hysterically at this, although I’m not sure I was laughing all that hard at her joke. I just liked the company. After a while, she slumped back beside me and we fell quiet. She let out a contented sigh and her head fell onto my shoulder. Her breathing changed. It became gentle, rhythmic, different. I knew she was asleep and I think I stayed there for a long time. I didn’t dare move a muscle. Instead I closed my eyes remained awake but disinterested in the world. There was only the warmth of her head and the soft touch of her hair.

I was starting to feel pretty sure that she liked me as well. It was the only reason I’d accepted her offer to film at my house. I’d never really understood her job, something to do with social media. But I was glad this night had happened. The only issue was that it’d be ruined when Justin returned

“Where’s Justin?” I said, not intending to speak the question aloud, but the thought had taken me by surprise. Allie stirred a little but she didn’t wake. I wasn’t sure if this was normal. All that I knew was that it felt wrong and that feeling of wrongness got worse with every second that passed.

“Allie,” I whispered after a while, gently nudging her with my shoulder.

She lifted her head with a long tired groan. “Shit,” she said, stealthily wiping a trickle of drool away. “Did I sleep on you? Oh God. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Why’s Justin taking so long?”

Allie frowned and sat upright before taking her phone out to check the time.

“He shouldn’t be taking this long,” she said.

The wind blew so hard a far-off window rattled. For a moment it felt like the whole house was shaking and both Allie and I laughed nervously at the storm before turning around to check the front window.

I quickly joined her and looked but there was just my porch, the wooden deck brightly lit. Justin must have turned the light on but there was no sign of him. Behind the empty porch, the dark loomed large, like my house had been picked up and dropped on a cliff overlooking a stormy sea. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was something out there staring right at me and without knowing why, I ducked down out of sight.

I faced the kitchen—my kitchen—but it looked different somehow. I didn’t know if it was just the fear or what, but it reminded me more of a tomb than a home. I felt like I was an intruder and the more I told myself it was my home, my safe space, the more something in my mind rebelled against that idea. The hallway leading to my living looked cold and sterile, the stairs unnaturally large.

“It’s so quiet,” Allie whispered.

“Wait, didn’t he set some kind of trap?” I asked. “Something like a piece of string on an airhorn?”

“Oh shit yeah,” Allie said. “We would have heard anyone coming up the driveway.”

“Justin’s probably just gone back to the car to look for equipment,” I said. “For all we know the storm’s broken something and the sight of Justin scared off the thieves before they got anywhere near the tripwire.”

Allie looked relieved and started to laugh. She placed one hand on her chest as if to calm herself. She’d painted her nails an aquatic teal and the colour made me think of swimming pools in summer.

“We’re like kids hiding under the covers,” she cried.

“Well…” I paused, wondering if this was a good time. “You make me feel like I’m just a kid again. It’s… it’s nice.”

For just a second she smiled and looked at me with this unreadable expression. She was getting ready to speak when something flew into the window with a terrible thump. Whatever was on her mind was lost in the sudden fright and she screamed so loud it left a ringing in my ears. She fell to the floor where she paused and then burst into laughter.

“Oh my God,” she cried. “I’m so sorry! I just didn’t expect that.”

“It’s just the storm,” I said, turning to face the window: “Throwing all sorts of—"

I didn’t finish my sentence. The glass had been painted in an explosion red. At first I thought it had been a bird. When I was a kid I’d once woken up and watched a crow fly so hard into our window it made a great big read smear. My old man was too busy to ever bother cleaning it. He left it to the rain. So for days I slept with this winged outline of dried gore smeared over the window. I always remember the feathers, but this time there was only blood.

“Is that… is that what I think it is?” Allie asked. She was gripping the window frame so hard her fingers turned white. I pulled myself up. Lying on the porch was a hand with the cuff of a man’s shirt still attached.

“Justin…” I mumbled.

“We need to call the police!” Allie cried, tears running down her face. She was shaking as she dialled the emergency number and I waited with held breath while it rang. And rang. And rang.

And rang.

“They’re not answering!” she yelled.

“They have to answer!” I said, my voice verging on a yell.

“Well you fucking try!” she snapped. “It won’t stop ringing!” Quietly I swallowed my nerves and waited while the phone continued to ring. After what felt like an eternity Allie gave up and threw her phone in rage. “Fuck this!” she cried. “This is just… this is just some kind of joke. Some fucked up person is messing with us, probably Justin!”

She was up and moving before I had time to think. In seconds she was through the door and standing outside, arms hugging her chest while her hair flickered in the wind.

“We should go back in,” I said, gently pulling at her elbow.

“I think I can hear him,” she said. “Listen.” I stopped dead but all I could hear was the wind. “Justin!” she cried suddenly, snatching her arm away before running into the dark. I followed, fumbling to use my smartphone as a light. But by the time I turned it on and my feet hit the gravel of my driveway, Allie had already disappeared from sight. It was like the night had swallowed her whole.

“Help.”

The words were mewed, not shouted, and I turned to look for the source but all I could see was the colourless disk of my torch lighting up stones and grass. It felt like the sky itself had fallen down and was smothering the light.

“Help.”

“Allie!” I screamed, but the wind ate my words. “Justin! Allie!?”

“Help.”

I turned back to my house. The door was swinging wildly from where it had been left open and the only light was the one in the kitchen. It was so bright against the night it looked like a portal into another world. We’d been so visible standing there. Even from where I stood I could clearly see Allie’s hands gripping the window sill, as plain as—

“Allie!” I screamed, suddenly realising what I was looking at. Somehow she must have run back in without me noticing. I’d heard the door banging but I hadn’t even thought of it. The relief I felt reached right from my chest all the way down to my toes and I ran towards the door crying out her name.

“Oh my God,” I cried, bursting through the door with a shiver and a laugh. “Holy shit I lost you it was so fu—”

She wasn’t there. Nothing was. There was no hand. There was only her phone lying on the floor where she’d thrown it. I couldn’t figure this out, any of it. I was so confused I ran back out into the dark and began to scream,

“Allie!” over and over.

“Help.”

God that voice sounded so close that time. I stepped out onto the porch in the hope I’d hear it better.

“Help.”

Slowly, I looked down at my feet. Something moved between the wooden slats. I ran off the porch immediately and threw myself down onto the grass. I shone my light into the dark and saw Allie staring back at me from under the house, her eyes wide and her face pale.

“Allie?” I said. “Allie come on!” I dragged myself into the darkness and kept calling but she didn’t make a sound. All around me were dozens and dozens of cardboard boxes, smashed and pulped into a barely recognisable shape. Something wet squelched beneath me as I got further in and I realised it was cardboard that had been shredded and soaked in something thick and viscous. The stench down there was unbearable but I didn’t give it a moment’s thought. Allie needed my help and I crawled onwards into that filth until at last, her porcelain face was looking back at me, framed by darkness and small mounds of trash.

“Allie!” I cried, reaching my hand behind her head to pull her closer. If I could just grab a wrist or a shoulder, I knew I had the strength to drag her out and get her back inside.

But it all went wrong. I pulled and found almost no resistance. I watched with mounting horror as she leaned face-first into the dirt and somehow, her head just kept going. By the time my brain pieced together the anatomical truth, her severed head had rolled to my position I was left staring at the brutalised stump of her neck. For a brief moment the world narrowed into a tunnel of white static. I was so afraid I could feel my balls shrivel up while the warmth of my own piss pooling beneath me.

I had to get out. I looked around and for the first time the actual meaning of what I was seeing got through to me. Here were my packages. They’d never been stolen away. They were here the whole time, all of it, twisted and soaked and warped into… into…

“A nest,” I whispered.

Something moved. I shone my light around me and saw a box topple seemingly by itself. My whole nervous system felt like it had turned into air-raid siren. A thought burned itself into my head, dropped into the stew of panicked thoughts like ice in a glass.

You are not alone down here.

I flashed my light left-to-right and caught something a fleeting glimpse of motion. But when I swung my light back everything was still. I squinted hard trying to pierce the darkness. There was something amidst all that trash, something small and black and glassy—two somethings actually—buried amongst a confusing mess of soggy folds and corrugated pulp.

It exploded towards me in a frenetic alien crawl. Those glistening black shapes had been eyes in a face made of confusing parts that moved and clicked with aggressive hunger. Something quivered in the light, some kind of shell perhaps? I couldn’t say. It moved so strangely I still don’t know what its outline looked like. But what little I’d seen was enough and I started to frantically crawl backwards. I was so scared I made a mess of everything in my desperate scramble. Boxes fell over, my fist burst through random mounds of filth but found no purchase, and the rain-slick mud beneath me started to churn. I think I was screaming something in fear. Like I said, I don’t really know. I do remember that my skin started to burn, and I remember looking down and seeing my hands knees disappear into a quagmire of blood-spotted bile.

I also remember the feeling of something covered in thick bristles stabbing into my ankle, right through the space between tendon and muscle. I was saved only because the low ceiling stopped that thing from climbing on top of me. At one point it bucked wild in a kind of rage and I swear that the house above rattled and shook. Whatever it was, it was huge, and it didn’t have an easy time getting to me. The few times I looked back it looked like a tree root had grown my flesh, or maybe a spider’s leg. I remember wondering what it wanted when it yanked my leg to the side and something wet started to tighten around my foot. It was unbearably strong, and bone gave way in a series of powerful convulsions. By the time I realised it was biting me, it closed whatever it had for a mouth around my knee joint and tore the leg apart.

After that I was free to finally escape, although the threat of blood loss loomed large. I know at one point I fell unconscious on the lawn because the next thing I remember is being licked. A neighbour’s dog had gotten loose in the storm and found me, and the neighbour wasn’t far behind. I’m happy to say that everything that followed was a blur, right up until I awoke a few days later covered in skin grafts. It was six months before I managed to get out of a hospital bed.

I think the official line is animal attack. Maybe that’s all it was. I know the police have treated me a little oddly, but they never really interrogated me. Maybe I moved into a house that technically had one other occupant, and as long as it had been free to raid my trash and take my stuff it never saw fit to do anything about it. Thing is, that doesn’t really explain why I came home the other day to find a cardboard box waiting for me. It looked normal enough, from a distance. Up close it was a different story. It was sopping wet, dripping God-knows-what all over my parents’ doorstep. I hadn’t ordered anything but I knew it was for me. And sure enough, it was.

The only thing inside had been my shoe. The one I had last seen on my right foot, just before it disappeared into toothy shadow.