Lucretia and the Kroons

3

Louis was only twenty-two but already going bald. He kept his hair cut very low to try to disguise the fact, a style that emphasized the perfect roundness of his skull. That round head was one of Loochie’s favorite things about him. When she was younger, like three or four, he would walk her around on his shoulders and she slapped the top of that big old head and he didn’t mind at all. Even now, at twelve, when she saw her brother she still had the urge to give him a smack or two right on the noggin but she wouldn’t dare to do it because they didn’t know each other like they used to. Sometimes she really missed him. One of the reasons she’d taped the Mets pennant to her bedroom door was so that Louis would know, if he passed it, that it was important to her. That he was still important to her. So she felt quietly pleased that Louis wanted to sit and talk a little while he waited for their mother. Before they sat down Loochie rolled up the blanket and pillow she’d laid out for Sunny.

“You know who put that bike together?” he said, pointing at it where it stood, kickstand out, right under the living room windows.

“You did,” she said, rolling her eyes. She knew this because he’d told her on Christmas Eve, when her mother had wheeled it out. Then he told her again on Christmas Day, in case she’d somehow forgotten overnight.

“That’s right,” Louis said. He scratched behind one ear, then looked over his shoulder. “So why don’t you tell me where Mom is taking me today.”

Loochie grinned, giving nothing away. “To lunch,” she said.

Louis scratched his chin. “I don’t believe it.” He looked at her directly. He had small, intelligent eyes. When they were younger he could basically stare at her until she admitted to a lie. He tried to do it now but his power over her had diminished now that she was twelve.

“Lunch,” she said again, and nothing more.

Louis nodded once, as if he understood this plan was fruitless. But then Loochie saw a new quality in his eyes. They flashed brightly. “Mom says you and Sunny are going to be here alone for the afternoon.”

Loochie crossed her arms. Where was Sunny anyway? It seemed like it had been more than a couple of minutes already.

“We’re old enough,” Loochie said quickly, just in case Louis wanted to cause trouble by convincing their mother the two girls shouldn’t be left by themselves. What better way to get out of his suspicious lunch date than to convince their mom that Loochie and Sunny needed a chaperone?

Louis put up one open hand. “Relax,” he said. “I’m not trying to spoil your party.”

She almost believed him. She waited to see what he’d say next.

He looked past her now, out the window. “I’m just impressed that you guys aren’t worried.”

“About what?” Loochie asked a bit defensively. She’d been allowed to stay in the apartment alone since she was seven. Since Louis moved out and Mom didn’t get home from work until six o’clock, Loochie was in the apartment by herself all the time and she’d yet to get herself killed.

“The Kroons,” Louis said quietly. “I’m impressed you’re not worried about them.”

“What is a Kroons?” she asked.

Louis grinned and immediately Loochie regretted asking. The glee on her brother’s face suggested that Louis was about to enjoy himself at her expense.

“You’re too young to remember what the eighties were like,” Louis began.

This was true, considering that Loochie hadn’t been born until 1992.

“They called it the Crack Era. You know what crack is?”

“A drug?” she said, and wished she hadn’t posed it as a question.

Louis shook his big round head. “Weed is a drug,” he said. “Tobacco is a drug.”

Loochie’s eyes went wide and she looked down at her pocket. “It is?”

But Louis wasn’t listening. “Crack was a plague,” he said. “The whole country got hit by it in the eighties. Queens was no exception.” Louis looked at the ceiling as if he were watching images of the era scroll by up there.

“The people who smoked crack, the addicts, they were called crackheads. Man were they rough. Crackheads didn’t care about eating or sleeping, they didn’t wash, and they didn’t change their clothes. Hell, they barely had any clothes because they were too busy selling everything they had just to buy more crack.”

“So they were naked?” Loochie asked. She imagined the sidewalk below, the streets of Flushing, overrun by naked, unwashed men and women. In her imagination they tackled any normal person who walked by and tore away everything, purses, jewelry, cell phones. Did they have cell phones back then? Loochie didn’t know enough ancient history to be sure.

“They were monsters,” Louis said with some satisfaction. He spoke like a veteran recalling war. “We had a family of crackheads in this building,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant because he seemed to know that would only scare her more.

“In our building?” Loochie asked.

“Not just in our building,” he said. “Right above us.”

Loochie reeled back with open horror. “In Sunny’s place?”

Louis chuckled, satisfied with the reaction. “On the sixth floor: 6D. Why do you think everyone is so afraid of that place? The Kroons. That was the family name. Mother, father, five sons, and a daughter. Every single one was a crackhead. I never took the elevator when I was young because one or two of those Kroons would ride the elevator, day and night, just looking for a kid to get on the elevator alone. They’d rob him for whatever he had. Sometimes they did worse.”

Now Louis looked at Loochie directly. Loochie looked over his shoulder, for her mother. She wished her mother would appear and make Louis shut up, but she wouldn’t let herself call out for the help. She’d feel too much like a baby if she did. So she sat quietly.

Louis looked across the living room, at the television, which was off. He was reflected in the dark screen but the image was warped. His head was even bigger and lopsided and grotesque. Loochie could almost imagine that he was a Kroon now, a creature that had snuck into their living room.

“A whole family. Can you believe that? Every single one of them was smoked out. It was crazy. I’d see them in the hallways or the lobby and they had sores on their bodies, on their faces, because the crack made them so sick. They didn’t eat or drink. They smoked so much crack it was like their bodies started rotting. I remember one brother, the oldest brother, he had a dent in his head. Like a basketball without enough air in it. And that dent kept getting deeper, year after year. One time I saw him, I was going up the stairs and he was coming down, and half his skull was just gone. It was like a pit with some skin over it. I didn’t know how he could even be alive. He tried to grab me.”

Loochie leaned forward. “What did you do?”

“I was on the second-floor landing of the stairs. I opened the stairwell door and ran out and went over to my friend Todd’s place, 2B. I still remember. I stayed there until mom got home from work. I wouldn’t even leave Todd’s place. Mom had to come get me. I was just a little younger than you. The early eighties was a weird time. I remember kids started disappearing, all over the country. The news and parents said kids were getting snatched by guys in vans, but that wasn’t it. Not in this neighborhood. It was the Kroons. Stealing children up to their apartment. And once they get you in there, that’s it. Nobody leaves 6D.”

“Why?” Loochie whispered.

“They just … Well, I don’t know what they did to kids up there, but the smells were so bad. They must’ve been burning the bodies.”

“Why?” Loochie asked. “For what?”

“I don’t know why things like that have to happen to children,” Louis said quietly. “But being young doesn’t protect you. Horrors come for kids, too.”

At that moment Louis stared into the distance and seemed truly sad for having to reveal a truth like that to his little sister.

“But they’re gone now,” Loochie said softly. “I’ve never seen them.”

Louis lost the sad look and returned to something more gleeful. He shook his head. “The parents died, I remember that. But the others didn’t. The super locked that apartment up tight one day. But the brothers, and the sister, are still in there. Why do you think nobody’s ever moved into 6D? They can’t. That place still belongs to those things. The super was hoping to just starve them out but it hasn’t worked. The Kroons won’t die.”

“But if they’re just stuck in there it doesn’t matter, right? They’re stuck.”

“The super closed off the door. But they can still get out.”

“How?”

“Same as I used to do. Same as you probably still do.” Louis watched her to see if she’d figure it out.

“The window?” Loochie asked.

“The window,” Louis confirmed.

Just then their mom walked into the living room and Louis got up from the couch. Loochie’s mother said, “We have to go or we’ll miss our appointment.”

“Appointment?” Louis asked.

“Reservation,” their mother quickly corrected.

This whole time Loochie was stiff on the couch, her body locked with fear.

“Tell Sunny I said hello,” her mother said. “I hoped I’d get to see her before we left.”

“Sunny’s missing?” Louis said, but the way he grinned showed that he was being theatrical.

Their mother looked closely at Louis, then at Loochie, who hadn’t moved from her spot on the couch. “What have you been saying to her?”

Louis shrugged. “We’ve just been talking about the good old days.”

Their mother looked at her watch. “Loochie,” she said, but got no response. “Lucretia.”

Finally Loochie turned her head.

“We’re leaving,” she said. “You’re on your own.”