Property Condemned (pine deep)

by Jonathan Maberry

  “That’s stupid.”

  It wasn’t until Stick turned to him and asked what he was talking about that Crow realized he’d spoken the words aloud.

  He looked at the others and all of them, even Val, were stiff with apprehension. The Croft house scared them. Really scared them.

  Because they believed there was something in there.

  They all paused there in the yard, closer to their bikes and the road than they were to that porch.

  They believed.

  Crow wanted to shout and he wanted to laugh.

  “Well,” said Val, “let’s go.”

  The Four Horseman, unhorsed, approached the porch.

  -5-

  The steps creaked.

  Of course they did. Crow would have been disappointed if they hadn’t. He suppressed a smile. The front door was going to creak, too; those old hinges were going to screech like a cat. It was how it was all supposed to be.

  It’s real, he told himself. There’s a ghost in there. There’s something in there.

  It was the second of those two thoughts that felt correct. Not right exactly — but correct. There was something in that house. If they went inside, they’d find it.

  No, whispered a voice from deeper inside his mind, if we go inside, it will find us.

  “Good,” murmured Crow. This time he said it so softly that none of the others heard him.

  He wanted it to find them.

  Please let it find us.

  They crossed the yard in silence. The weeds were high and brown, as if they could draw no moisture at all from the hard ground. Crow saw bits of debris there, half-hidden by the weeds. A baseball whose hide had turned a sickly yellow and whose seams had split like torn surgical sutures. Beyond that was a woman’s dress shoe; just the one. There was a Triple-A road map of Pennsylvania, but the wind and rain had faded the details so that the whole state appeared to be under a heavy fog. Beyond that was an orange plastic pill bottle with its label peeled halfway back. Crow picked it up and read the label and was surprised to see that the pharmacy where this prescription had been filled was in Poland. The drug was called Klozapol, but Crow had no idea what that was or what it was used for. The bottle was empty but it looked pretty new. Crow let it drop and he touched the lucky stone in his pocket to reassure himself that it was still safe.

  Still his.

  The yard was filled with junk. An empty wallet, a ring of rusted keys, a soiled diaper, the buckle from a seat belt, a full box of graham crackers that was completely covered with ants. Stuff like that. Disconnected things. Like junk washed up on a beach.

  Val knelt and picked up something that flashed silver in the sunlight.

  “What’s that?” asked Terry.

  She held it up. It was an old Morgan silver dollar. Val spit on her thumb and rubbed the dirt away to reveal the profile of Lady Liberty. She squinted to read the date.

  “Eighteen-ninety-five,” she said.

  “Are you kidding me?” demanded Terry, bending close to study it. He was the only one of them who collected coins. “Dang, Val… that’s worth a lot of money.”

  “Really?” asked Val, Crow and Stick at the same time.

  “Yeah. A lot of money. I got some books at home we can look it up in. I’ll bet it’s worth a couple of thousand bucks.”

  Crow goggled at him. Unlike the other three, Crow’s family was dirt poor. Even Stick, whose parents owned a tiny TV repair shop in town, had more money. Crow’s mom was dead and his father worked part-time at Shanahan’s Garage, then drank most of what he earned. Crow was wearing the same jeans this year that he wore all last season. Same sneakers, too. He and his brother Billy had learned how to sew well enough to keep their clothes from falling apart.

  So he stared at the coin that might be worth a few thousand dollars.

  Val turned the coin over. The other side had a carving of an eagle with its wings outstretched. The words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA arched over it and ONE DOLLAR looped below it. But above the eagle where IN GOD WE TRUST should have been, someone had gouged deep into the metal, totally obscuring the phrase.

  Terry gasped as if he was in actual physical pain.

  “Bet it ain’t worth as much like that,” said Stick with a nasty grin.

  Val shrugged and shoved the coin into her jeans pocket. “Whatever. Come on.”

  It was a high porch, and they climbed four steep steps to the deck. Each step was littered with dried leaves and withered locust husks. Crow wondered where the leaves had come from; it was the height of summer. Except for the willows, everything everywhere was alive, and those willows looked like they’d been dead for years. Besides, these were dogwood leaves. He looked around for the source of the leaves, but there were no dogwoods in the yard. None anywhere he could see.

  He grunted.

  “What?” asked Val, but Crow didn’t reply. It wasn’t the sort of observation that was going to encourage anyone.

  “The door’s probably locked,” said Terry. “This is a waste of time.”

  “Don’t even,” warned Val.

  The floorboards creaked, each with a different note of agonized wood.

  As they passed one of the big shuttered windows, Stick paused and frowned at it. Terry and Val kept walking, but Crow slowed and lingered a few paces away. As he watched, the frown on Stick’s mouth melted away and his friend stood there with no expression at all on his face.

  “Stick…?”

  Stick didn’t answer. He didn’t even twitch.

  “Yo… Stick.”

  This time Stick jumped as if Crow had pinched him. He whirled and looked at Crow with eyes that were wide but unfocused.

  “What did you say?” he asked, his voice a little slurred. Like Dad’s when he was starting to tie one on.

  “I didn’t say anything. I just called your name.”

  “No,” said Stick, shaking his head. “You called me ‘daddy.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Crow laughed. “You’re hearing things, man.”

  Stick whipped his ball-cap off his head and slapped Crow’s shoulder. “Hey… I heard you.”

  Terry heard this and he gave Stick a quizzical smile, waiting for the punch-line. “What’s up?”

  Stick wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and stared down as if expecting there to be something other than a faint sheen of spit. He touched the corner of his mouth and looked at his fingers. His hands were shaking as he pulled his ball-cap on and snugged it down low.

  “What are you doing?” asked Terry, his smile flickering.

  Stick froze. “Why? Do I have something on my face?”

  “Yeah,” said Terry.

  Stick’s face blanched white and he jabbed at his skin. The look in his eyes was so wild and desperate that it made Crow’s heart hurt. He’d seen a look like that once when a rabbit was tangled up in some barbed wire by the Carby place. The little animal was covered in blood and its eyes were huge, filled with so much terror that it couldn’t even blink. Even as Crow and Val tried to free it, the rabbit shuddered and died.

  Scared to death.

  For just a moment, Stick looked like that, and the sight of that expression drove a cold sliver of ice into Crow’s stomach. He could feel his scrotum contract into a wrinkled little walnut.

  Stick pawed at his face. “What is it?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Terry, “it’s just a dose of the uglies, but you had that when you woke up this morning.”

  Terry laughed like a donkey.

  No one else did.

  Stick glared at him and his nervous fingers tightened into fists. Crow was sure that he was going to smash Terry in the mouth. But then Val joined them.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  Her stern tone broke the spell of the moment.

  “Nothing,” said Stick as he abruptly pushed past Terry and stalked across the porch, his balled fists at his sides. The others gaped at him.

  “What—?” began Terry, but he had nowh
ere to go with it. After a moment he followed Stick.

  Val and Crow lingered for a moment.

  “Did they have a fight or something?” Val asked quietly.

  “I don’t know what that was,” admitted Crow. He told her exactly what happened. Val snorted.

  “Boys,” she said, leaving it there. She walked across the porch and stood in front of the door.

  Crow lingered for a moment, trying to understand what just happened. Part of him wanted to believe that Stick just saw a ghost. He wanted that very badly. The rest of him—most of him — suddenly wanted to turn around, jump on the bike that was nicely positioned for a quick escape, and never come back here. The look in Stick’s eyes had torn all the fun out of this.

  “Let’s get this over with,” said Val, and that trapped all of them in the moment. The three boys looked at her, but none of them looked at each other. Not for a whole handful of brittle seconds. Val, however, studied each of them. “Boys,” she said again.

  Under the lash of her scorn, they followed her.

  The doors were shut, but even before Val touched the handle, Crow knew that these doors wouldn’t be locked.

  It wants us to come in.

  Terry licked his lips and said, “What do you suppose is in there?”

  Val shook her head, and Crow noted that she was no longer saying that this was just a house.

  Terry nudged Crow with his elbow. “You ever talk to anybody’s been in here?”

  “No.”

  “You ever know anyone who knows anyone who’s been in here?”

  Crow thought about it. “Not really.”

  “Then how do you know it’s even haunted?” asked Val.

  “I don’t.”

  It was a lie and Crow knew that everyone read it that way. No one called him on it, though. Maybe they would have when they were still in the yard, but not now. There was a line somewhere and Crow knew — they all knew — they’d crossed it.

  Maybe it was when Stick looked at the shuttered windows and freaked out.

  Maybe it was when they came up on the porch.

  Maybe, maybe…

  Val took a breath, set her jaw, gripped the rusted and pitted brass knob, and turned it.

  The lock clicked open.

  A soft sound. Not at all threatening.

  It wants us to come in, Crow thought again, knowing it to be true.

  Then there was another sound, and Crow was sure only he heard it. Not the lock, not the hinges; it was like the small intake of breath you hear around the dinner table when the knife is poised to make the first cut into a Thanksgiving turkey. The blade gleams, the turkey steams, mouths water, and each of the ravenous diners takes in a small hiss of breath as the naked reality of hunger is undisguised.

  Val gave the door a little push and let go of the knob.

  The hinges creaked like they were supposed to. It was a real creak, too. Not another hungry hiss. If the other sound had been one of expectation then the creak was the plunge of the knife.

  Crow knew this even if he wasn’t old enough yet to form the thoughts as cogently as he would in later years. Right now those impressions floated in his brain, more like colors or smells than structured thoughts. Even so, he understood them on a visceral level.

  As the door swung open, Crow understood something else, too; two things, really.

  The first was that, after today, he would never again need proof of anything in the unseen world.

  And the second was that going into the Croft house was a mistake.

  -6-

  They went in anyway.

  -7-

  The door opened into a vestibule that was paneled in rotting oak. The broken globe light fixture on the ceiling above them was filled with dead bugs. There were no cobwebs, though, and no rat droppings on the floor.

  In the back of Crow’s mind he knew that he should have been worried about that. By the time the thought came to the front of his mind, it was too late.

  The air inside was curiously moist, and it stank. It wasn’t the smell of dust, or the stench of rotting meat. That’s what Crow had expected; this was different. It was a stale, acidic smell that reminded him more of his father’s breath after he came home from the bar. Crow knew that smell from all of the times his father bent over him, shouting at him while he whipped his belt up and down, up and down. The words his father shouted seldom made any sense. The stink of his breath was what Crow remembered. It was what he forced his mind to concentrate on so that he didn’t feel the burning slap of the belt. Crow had gotten good at that over the years. He still felt the pain — in the moment and in the days following each beating — but he was able to pull his mind out of his body with greater ease each time as long as he focused on something else. How or why that distraction had become his father’s pickled breath was something Crow never understood.

  And now, as they moved from the vestibule into the living room, Crow felt as if the house itself was breathing at him with that same stink.

  Crow never told his friends about the beatings. They all knew — Crow was almost always bruised somewhere — but this was small-town Pennsylvania in 1974 and nobody ever talked about stuff like that. Not even his teachers. Just as Stick never talked about the fact that both of his sisters had haunted looks in their eyes and never—ever—let themselves be alone with their father. Not if they could avoid it. Janie and Kim had run away a couple of times each, but they never said why. You just didn’t talk about some things. Nobody did.

  Nobody.

  Certainly not Crow.

  So he had no point of reference for discussing the stink of this house. To mention it to his friends would require that he explain what else it smelled like. That was impossible. He’d rather die.

  The house wanted us to come in, he thought, and now we’re in.

  Crow looked at the others. Stick hung back, almost crouching inside the vestibule and the wild look was back on his face. Terry stood with his hands in his pockets, but from the knuckley lumps under the denim Crow knew that he had his fists balled tight. Val had her arms wrapped around her chest as if she stood in a cold wind. No one was looking at him.

  No one was looking at each other. Except for Crow.

  Now we’re inside.

  Crow knew what would happen. He’d seen every movie about haunted houses, read every book. He had all the Warren Eerie and Creepy comics. He even had some of the old E.C. comics. He knew.

  The house is going to fool us. It’ll separate us. It’ll kill us, one by one.

  That’s the way it always was. The ghost — or ghosts — would pull them apart, lead them into darkened cellars or hidden passages. They’d be left alone, and alone each one of them would die. Knives in the dark, missing stairs in a lightless hall, trapdoors, hands reaching out of shadows. They’d all die in here. Apart and alone. That was the way it always happened.

  Except…

  Except that it did not happen that way.

  Crow saw something out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see a big mirror mounted on the wall. Dusty, cracked, the glass fogged.

  He saw himself in the mirror.

  Himself and not himself.

  Crow stepped closer.

  The reflection stepped closer, too.

  Crow and Crow stared at each other. The boy with bruises, and a man who looked like his father. But it wasn’t his father. It was Crow’s own face, grown up, grown older. Pale, haggard, the jaws shadowy with a week’s worth of unshaved whiskers, vomit stains drying on the shirt. A uniform shirt. A police uniform. Wrinkled and stained, like Kurt Bernhardt’s. Even though it was a reflection, Crow could smell the vomit. The piss. The rank stink of exhaled booze and unbrushed teeth.

  “Fuck you, you little shit,” he said. At first Crow thought the cop was growling at him, but then Crow turned and saw Val and Terry. Only they were different. Everything was different, and even though the mirror was still there, nothing else was the same. This was outside, at night, in town. And the Val and Ter
ry the cop was cursing at quietly were all grown up. They weren’t reflections; they were real, they were here. Wherever and whenever here was.

  Val was tall and beautiful, with long black hair and eyes that were filled with laughter. And she was laughing — laughing at something Terry said. There were even laugh lines around her mouth. They walked arm-in-arm past the shop windows on Corn Hill. She wore a dress and Terry was in a suit. Terry was huge, massive and muscular, but the suit he wore was expensive and perfectly tailored. He whispered to Val, and she laughed again. Then at the corner of Corn Hill and Baker Lane, they stopped to kiss. Val had to fight her laughs in order to kiss, and even then the kiss disintegrated into more laughs. Terry cracked up, too, and then they turned and continued walking along the street. They strolled comfortably. Like people who were walking home.

  Home. Not home as kids on bikes, but to some place where they lived together as adults. Maybe as husband and wife.

  Val and Terry.

  Crow turned back to the mirror, which stood beside the cop — the only part of the Croft house that still existed in this world. The cop — the older Crow — stood in the shadows under and elm tree and watched Val and Terry. Tears ran like lines of mercury down his cheeks. Snot glistened on his upper lip. He sank down against the trunk of the tree, toppling the last few inches as his balance collapsed. He didn’t even try to stop his fall, but instead lay with his cheek against the dirt. Some loose coins and a small stone fell out of the man’s pocket.

  Crow patted his own pocket. The lucky stone was there.

  Still there.

  Still his.

  The moment stretched into a minute and then longer as Crow watched the drunken man weep in wretched silence. He wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t. Not because the image was so compelling, but because when Crow actually tried to turn… he simply could not make his body move. He was frozen into that scene.

  Locked.

  Trapped.

  The cop kept crying.

  “Stop it,” said Crow. He meant to say it kindly, but the words banged out of him, as harsh as a pair of slaps.