Let me tell you a story about the first time I saw true terror.
I’m not talking about the time grasshoppers by the thousands invaded my childhood home like something out of a “when nature attacks” movie from the 70s. Not talking about the night the sheriff drove wildly down the country road, screaming about UFOs floating over the Tasty Freeze. Not talking about the day my friend Doug and I found a collection of carved bones—bones we were certain were human—in a crumbling old barn in the woods.
All true.
But the fear I experienced in those incidents was nothing but a shadow of what I saw on the dark night in question.
Now, if you’ve delved at all into the background and inspiration for DOOR TO DOOR, NIGHT BY NIGHT, you know that my dad—called simply “Bunn” by everyone, including his kids—ran a door-to-door fundraising operation for years. His primary fundraising focus was volunteer fire departments. In order to secure their buy-in for the program, he would travel to the fire station to make a sales pitch. Many times, my mom, younger brother, and I would accompany him. Every now and then, we’d go in with him. More often than not, though, we’d wait out in the car while he did his song and dance.
I don’t remember the town. Another small, southern town, quiet, almost abandoned in the night, under the weak glow of the street lamps. It must not have been too far from my own home town, because we had driven there. My mom, brother, and I were waiting in the family car outside the station while Bunn made his proposal to the folks inside. It was too dark to read comics or peruse Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks, which I’m sure I would have preferred, and so I just sat there, bored. I must have been eleven, maybe twelve. I remember my younger brother was the most annoying age of all time, whatever that might be.
The kid who ran screaming down the sidewalk, he was around my age.
We heard him before we saw him. Screaming. Shrieking. To this day, forty years later, I’ve heard anything so bone-chilling. When we spotted him, he was running down the the sidewalk in front of the station, tears running down his face.
His face.
Contorted into a mask of the most pure, nightmarish horror I’ve ever seen.
My mom, bless her soul, didn’t hesitate. She told my brother and I to stay put, jumped out of the car, and ran to the boy’s aid. As she approached, his screams started to coalesce into something almost human. From my position in the back seat of the car, I heard him tell my mother that two men in a large, black car had tried to grab him. He had pulled away from them, had escaped, but they were still there, waiting for him.
And where was the car?
Still sobbing, still on the verge of a scream, kid pointed frantically down the street. And there, at the end of the block, was the car, engine rumbling, headlights cutting through the dark. My mom looked toward it. I looked toward it. As we did, the driver hit the gas, and the car squealed off into the night.
My mom didn’t dare leave my brother and me all by ourselves, but she threw open the door to the fire station and called for help. Within seconds, Bunn and a half dozen firefighters spilled out into the night. Hearing the frightened boy’s story, several of the firefighters jumped into their cars and trucks and sped off in search of the would-be abductors.
As far as I know, they didn’t find it.
I can tell you where it went, though.
I never shared a word with the frightened boy. I never even got out of the car. But I studied his face, the look of terrible fear that lingered there. I’ve never seen anything like it since, though I think I’ve made a similar face under dissimilar circumstances.
Where did the black car go?
It cemented itself in that young boy’s mind. My guess? It remains there to this day. I mean, if I’ve never forgotten that moment, how could that boy who was no older than me at the time?
Even now, recounting these events, I feel a wave of anxiety and fear, more intense even than what I felt that night. I’m a dad myself now, and I’m probably an over-protective one at that. That boy’s face, his screams, will likely haunt my dreams from time to time until the day I die. The car, too, will always be with me. It was a moment of real fear that has influenced every horror tale I’ve written since.
No ghost behind the wheel. No monster from the grave. No elder thing.
People were in that car.
That car that prowled the streets in a town not too far from my own.
That car that, in some ways, still roams the streets of my mind.
DOOR TO DOOR NIGHT BY NIGHT #1
Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Sally Cantirino
Colorist: Dee Cunniffe
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Designer: Tim Daniel
Cover A: Sally Cantirino
Cover B: Brian Hurtt
On Sale: 11/16/2022
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