by Jim Grimsley
“You’re full of shit,” Randy says.
They look around at the somber setting. They stand in the remains of the front yard now, thick with poplars and privet; they are facing the house, within the broad curve of the carriageway, behind wildly overgrown hedges that border the approach to the main doors. The facade of the house has graceful lines, and there is something hospitable, inviting, about the spacious porches and broad doors, even given the present state of decay. It seems less like a mansion than some pleasant farmhouse that grew larger than expected. If it is haunted, the afternoon sun reveals nothing of its ghosts. But even so, the boys accept the facts as Roy presents them, that he has an Uncle Heben who once saw a picture of this house. That a headless ghost is said to roam the grounds, in a story famous enough to have been published in a book. They will sleep tonight in sight of a haunted place.
Burke gazes at the house with an expression of serenity, a peaceful emptiness.
They set up camp within sight of the main doors, near the creek, and sunset strikes a kind of bronze glow from the decay. As if the grass were burning. Amid the late-afternoon changes of light and shadow, they set up tents. Roy finds rocks for the fire circle. Nathan heads off to gather wood and Randy follows. The two work quietly in the diminishing light, mindful of their noise as if they are in church, or in the library at school. Because of Randy’s size, he has a hard time with the wood, the sticks and branches digging into the softness of his belly. He works without complaint, sweating as if it is summer, humming softly, Just as I am without one plea. Nathan finds himself humming too. The soft sound connects the two boys. Randy’s air of gentleness makes Nathan feel welcome in his presence, though they hardly speak. They return to the campsite with armloads of kindling and branches, the driest wood they can find.
Burke splits the wood with a short ax, and the late sun falls over him from the west, flashes of warmth along his shoulders and back. He stacks the split wood, and Randy helps, till soon they have plenty for the night’s fire. Most of it is dry enough to burn, Burke says, and wipes the sweat from his forehead. He winks at Nathan over Roy’s head.
They eat supper early, with the sun setting at their backs. After cleanup, deep into dusk, they go exploring in the grounds behind the big house. In the overgrown yard beyond what was once a kitchen garden, they find a stone barn, doors hanging off the hinges, flaked with what remains of a deep blue paint. Inside the shell of the house, grass has overtaken the dirt floor, and the lofts have collapsed along the walls. Bats and swallows live in the rafters, darting in and out of a gaping hole in the roof. Behind the barn is a dairy and another long, low building near the wreck of a paddock fence. They recognize this as a stable by the layout of horse stalls and the remains of a wagon wheel, spokes rotted inside the iron rim. Nathan finds a bit of leather harness in the grass near one of the stalls, the soft leather coming to pieces in his hand.
Beyond the stable, down a just discernible path, stands a row of shacks. Most are still intact, though the roofs have rotted away, but one or two have collapsed to heaps of gray clapboard. Eerie, the street of some deserted town. Roy says these were the slave houses, a notion that sobers Nathan.
Out past the shacks lie the once cleared fields of the farm, long since overgrown. One day even the house, even the stone barn, will be reclaimed by the forest. Amber light floods the grounds, almost horizontal, like a tide. Among the long shadows of trees and the burning of color against sun bleached wooden walls they wander. The silence of the place draws them close together, and by sunset they are walking almost shoulder to shoulder in the purpled light. They halt at the edge of a grove of cedars, outside of a low iron fence that bounds a patch of high grass. “My Uncle Heben said this was where they buried the slaves, right here. They buried the family somewhere else.” Nathan finds the gate and steps through it. The grass is waist high, and he picks his way forward carefully. He is well within the fence before he realizes he has come exploring alone; the others are gaping at him from the last of twilight. He stands in the murk under the trees.
Nathan has spent so much time, lately, among the dead Kennicutts, he feels almost at home here among their chattel. But he finds not even a single gravestone to read; he finds no sign of graves here at all. He stares down at the grass as if waiting for a hand to reach upward, or for a voice to call out from the ground. He wonders how they marked the graves, if they did. Maybe with wooden crosses, as in Western movies. Maybe the evidence is here, unseen, beneath the grass. He waits. The others are watching, holding their breath.
Retreating carefully, he joins them. He is acutely aware of his feet. He has a feeling the graves are crowded together and one must be careful. Though he is aware of no fear, he is relieved when he clears the fence and stands with the others again. They are gaping at him as if he has done something extraordinary. “There’s nothing in there, you can’t tell where the graves are.”
“They were slaves,” Roy says.
“But there’s a fence. Why would they put up a fence if they wouldn’t even mark the graves?”
“This is creepy.” Randy looks around the dark grove of trees as if waiting for one of the shadows to begin to move.
“It’s getting pretty dark.” Burke reaches for his flask again. It is almost too dark to watch him drink.
“A ghost will haunt you in the day time just like it will at night,” Randy says, “that’s what my Aunt Ida told me one time. She says it’s a superstition that a ghost will only get you at night. A ghost will get you in the daytime just as quick. If it’s a real ghost.” He pauses. “But I still don’t want to stand around here.”
They study their whereabouts carefully, for any signs of suspicious movement. But the graves are still, and the air is still, and the leaves on the branches of the trees are still. The evening weighs down on them. They move reverently away, and no one says anything at all until they reach the stone barn.
“I bet this place is haunted too,” Burke says. No one asks why he thinks so. He sips from the narrow bottle again, this time offering to no one.
Dusk passes to twilight. The ruin of the farmyard looks different now. Vast as the shadow of a mountain, the mansion exudes an air of vigilance, as if there are eyes at every window, peering through the shutters. To reach their campsite they will have to dare a walk through inky darkness close to the house, through high grass where they cannot be certain where they are stepping. Amid the wild cries of cicadas, bats, distant owls, they drift forward uncertainly.
“I wish we had a flashlight,” Randy says.
“I brought one but I left it in my pack,” Roy answers.
“You guys ain’t scared, are you?”
“No, I just wish I could see what I’m stepping on.” But a slight tremor in Randy’s voice betrays him.
They fall silent. The night’s harsh chorus rises. Nathan steps toward the shadow. It is safe, in the darkness, to pause near Roy, to inhale his familiar smells. They are close, for a moment, in the overgrown yard; they are almost touching, and no one can see.
“Let me know if you get scared, Nathan.” Burke’s voice is full of scorn.
Nathan steps past Roy, into the shadow of the big house. He refuses to turn. The others can follow, or not. He vanishes into the blackest shadow of his life.
The cool darkness lends his motion a feeling of gliding. He is a fish slipping through water, he remains very calm. Soon he can hear the others following, and he smiles to think he has gone first, even ahead of Roy. Breathtaking, to walk so close the house, to slide through air as if it were water, headed toward vague light that is more and more like mist or cloud. To step past tangled branches, to lift them aside. Who knows how many eyes are there, watching from the black space around him? He listens, and it seems to him the silence of the house engulfs the sound of the others; now he can only hear the ringing emptiness of the house beside him. The emptiness beckons him, as clearly as if it is calling his name. Again comes the sensation that the passage of time has been slowed or
stopped. That he will never leave this darkness. He is hardly aware of walking anymore. The house breathes beside him. His heart is pounding.
When he bursts into the twilight of the yard and can see again, he finds himself surprised, as if he had expected to be blind like that for a much longer time. He is gasping; he has been holding his breath. He moves forward, taking gulps of air. Overhead, stars slash and burn in a fiery sky, early night. The other boys emerge behind him. They are breathless, too, as they rush toward the creek. The bulk of the house waits, silent and cold beneath a crown of stars.
The three close on Nathan, and there is something brotherly in their buffets of affection. “That was great,” Randy says. “Jesus.”
“I could swear something was touching me,” Roy says.
“Me too.”
“It was like there was something in the house looking at us. I could feel it.”
“We should go in there,” Burke says. “We should go in the house.”
Silence.
“We should.” He sets his jaw and looks at Roy. They cannot meet each other’s eyes. Burke is breathing hard.
“What’s the matter? You don’t think there’s a real ghost in there.”
“I ain’t scared even if there is a ghost.” Roy speaks calmly.
“How about you?”
“I’m not scared, I just don’t want to go in there,” says Randy.
“Chicken shit.”
“You damn right I’m chicken shit.” But he stares at the house, fascinated. He licks his lip. “You think it would be all right? You think we can get in?”
Burke laughs. He eyes Nathan up and down. “What about you?”
Nathan faces the house, tracing its shadow against the sky. “Going inside is fine with me.”
Roy faces Burke belligerently. “See, asshole? Nobody’s scared. The only thing I’m thinking about is we’d have to be careful. That house is liable to come down around your head if you step in the wrong place. It’s dark and we won’t be able to see. It’s dangerous.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I say you’re scared. That’s what it looks like to me.”
They glare at each other. Roy holds his place, quiet and determined. He is a match for Burke, Nathan thinks. But Burke carries himself more aggressively, his chin juts toward Roy and trembles. His face flushes with emotion.
Nathan still faces the house. “It’s a full moon. If we wait a little bit, there’ll be plenty of light.”
Roy is watching him, Nathan can feel it. But Nathan holds fast to the house, faces that direction, and breathes the scent of late blooming jasmine.
Roy studies the sky. He leans close, a warm presence. “You really want to do this?”
“That’s what he said.”
“I’m asking him.” Waiting then.
“Why does he get to decide?”
But still Roy is silent. The moment is rich. Nathan can taste each fluttering of Roy’s pulse, each rise of scent from his body. “It would be fun.”
Roy scratches behind one ear. When he begins to smile, the tension eases. “Well, I know I don’t want to go in that front door. We’ll never get it open.”
Burke and Randy laugh. “All right,” Burke says, “we won’t go in that way.”
Randy, generously, adds, “You know the house, Roy. How do we get inside?”
Secure in his leadership, Roy studies the problem. The rising moon brings soft light to the lawn, illuminating the overgrown azaleas along the sweep of what was once a front yard. Eerie white glaze obscures the windows and washes the facade. “There’s a door at the side. And there’s broken windows. And there’s doors at the back, too. Me and Uncle Heben tried a door back there. But we couldn’t open it.”
“Did you get in?”
“We could of climbed in a window. But Uncle Heben changed his mind.”
“He probably got scared, too,” Randy says.
“Maybe. It was a long time ago. I don’t remember.”
They all stare at the house somberly. Burke walks toward it a few steps. This time he passes the flask to the others, and everyone drinks but Nathan. The moment has come. Roy finds his flashlight. “Just in case we need it,” he explains. They trot across the yard in the moonlight, Roy leading. They are all following in no order, but Nathan runs close to Roy.
Beyond the layers of trees, white as anything, a full moon blazes. The ivory face threatens to make day, even glimpsed in pieces through branches. Nathan sees a woman in the glittering, the face of a woman staring into a high wind of whiteness, and soon she will be clearing the trees and rising into a sky filled with stars.
They travel in the shadow of the house. The size of the place surprises Nathan again as they approach. How could people need so much room? In the darkness the shuttered windows are like lidded eyes. It is a different feeling, to approach with the knowledge that they are going inside. The darkness seems darker, the sense of invisible presences more acute. They halt a moment at the foot of the stone steps leading to the main porch. Roy checks the windows nearby, slipping fearlessly up the steps and along the porch, sliding his hands along the shutters. Nathan’s heart is pounding, but he keeps his eyes on Roy. From shadow to shadow he moves, and the others move parallel to him along the side of the house. He returns further along and whispers, as if they are all concealing themselves from something inside, “Everything’s nailed shut. Like I remembered.”
They reach the place where the tree has fallen against the house, and once there they climb onto the porch and review the wreckage. Roy clambers over the old tree trunk, peers at the splintered wood of the porch above their heads, the one that circles the second floor of the house. The bulk of the tree rests there. “The tree’s leaning on the house,” Roy whispers, “It didn’t bust through.”
“The windows?” Burke asks. “I bet it knocked some loose.”
“Looks like it could have.”
“You want to try up there?”
Roy considers. His face lost in the shadows of the tree. “Not yet. We can come back if we don’t find something better.”
Beyond the tree, they enter a fenced garden that runs the length of the house, adjoining the place where the house swells out and the porches stop.
Through the shadows of the trees they can see the stone barn and some of the outbuildings. The trees thin near that part of the house and the moonlight falls through in showers of whiteness, clear and clean. The whole farmyard is etched, as if a portrait of itself, a study of wreckage of what was once inhabited. They pick their way through the garden, where the night carries a thousand smells. Nathan is mindful of snakes underfoot, though not quite sure what to do if he steps on one. Roy keeps them to a path that he seems to know, at the same time scanning the house carefully.
“We can’t get to these windows, they’re too high,” he says. “Too bad. Half of them are broke.”
“This is weird,” Randy says. “Look at this place. What kind of garden was this?”
“You still want to go inside?”
“Oh yeah.” But he studies the shadowy garden nevertheless.
“Do you?” Burke asks Roy.
“You bet.” By now they are crossing the back of the house, in full moonlight, through waist-high grass.
The stark outline of the house leaves Nathan breathless. The upper floor swims out of darkness into stark clarity, so well illuminated he can count the cracks in the outer boards. A porch encircles the kitchen building and then crosses by means of a short gallery to the main house. Roy tests the porch, finds it will hold them. They follow him.
Now they are close to the house, sliding along the walls, near the shuttered windows. Roy still leads, though now Burke has claimed the place beside him. Randy and Nathan follow. It occurs to Nathan that with the windows shuttered the fact of moonlight will make no difference inside, the house will be very dark. But he says nothing. They cross the gallery to what must have been a door for kitchen servants.
“This is the door me and Uncle Heben tried.”
Roy’s tone is quite soft, though not a whisper. “Now it’s boarded up.”
They follow along the porch, their footsteps ringing. They walk more quietly, each without prompting. They find stairs and Roy tests them. One is broken but the next is sound. They climb to the second-story porch now, and with each step they sink into the quiet shroud of the house.
The porch is solid in most places, and they move with confidence. They cross the front of the house again, then along the side gallery, where the windows are also shuttered. At places the porch protests their weight and they space themselves by the sounding of the floorboards. The floor holds despite its protests. Roy has brought a flashlight but uses it sparingly.
They pause to study the darkness in the direction of their camp. Not even ghost embers of their campfire can be seen.
On the other side of the house, where the tree has fallen, they find a window with shutters that have been partially loosened. It takes both Burke and Roy to pry the shutter open. Roy makes the first attempt, alone, and then Burke tries, alone. They are watching each other, each hoping the other will not succeed. Nathan is near enough to admire the moonlight along Roy’s straining arms, the snake-play of muscle along Burke’s back. Their separate efforts fail, and they position themselves to work together. Roy, affecting that he will dirty his tee shirt, takes it off. But instead of looping it through his belt, he hands it to Nathan.
Nathan takes the shirt. Roy stretches his shoulders a little. The moment is small and passes easily beneath the awareness of the others. Burke and Roy pry the shutter free of its remaining nails and swing it slowly on its hinges. The wooden frame is still solid and the shutter soon lies flat against the house as it used to do.
Roy shines the flashlight and carefully brushes away the remains of old glass from the windowsill. His bare back drains a streak of moon down the spine. Burke, near him, drinks from the flask again, offers to Randy, offers to Roy. Roy straightens from the windowsill, takes the bottle and flashes a warm grin to Nathan. He lifts the bottle. He is beautiful to Nathan, he is clearly aware of the fact. The swallow of liquor becomes a performance. He wipes his mouth and hands the bottle to Burke. Then he leaps through the window.
