Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 10/01/12

by Dell Magazines

  "Aw, mom. There's this mad dog—"

  "What?" She froze with her fork in the air. "It could have rabies."

  "Oh, mom!"

  She knitted her brows, trying to work it out. "I hope you mean it's on TV tonight. Is that it? You want to go to Robert's house?"

  She had thrown me a lifeline. "That's it." Robert was the only guy I knew whose folks owned a television. His dad, in spite of his drinking, held down a switchman's job at the CPR rail yards.

  "You've got exams coming up. You should stay in and study."

  "I study every morning." It was true. I did. But I didn't let it get around. That sort of thing could mark you in the neighborhood where I grew up. But my mom knew it. And we both knew her real reason for putting up an argument was because of the vanishing boys. Three local ones, by that time.

  "Robert lives just down the street," I reminded her.

  She gave an exasperated sigh. "All right," she said finally, and there was that strained note again. "But don't go anywhere else. And don't talk to strangers. And don't go near any real mad dog."

  "Listen to your mother!"

  My father's voice boomed from the sofa so unexpectedly, we both jumped.

  God had spoken.

  Eddy came striding up the street, and I burst out our front door and fell in step with him. Half a block down, Robert joined us. "Did you tell your mom you were heading over to my house?" Robert asked, reading the look on my face. I nodded, and he added, "I said I was going to yours." We both grinned. Eddy, who enjoyed great freedom, glanced at the two of us and rolled his eyes, as if to say, "Poor slobs!"

  We continued along the street to Bannatyne, then turned east four blocks to Weston Road. At that time this is where civilization stopped. At least for us it did. Just past that point was the CPR mainline south, then the creek, then a sprawling uncharted and undeveloped wilderness of alder scrub and waist-high thistles. If you followed the train tracks, you reached the city dump, and down below it the moldering pile that was Eagle Oils.

  Which is what we did.

  "So where's the dog?" Robert said when we got there. We stared at the dump. Begun a hundred years ago by Red River's first citizens, it was now a hundred feet high and half a mile long. There was a meadowlark singing somewhere in the rushes near the creek, and a steady drone of cicadas from the slopes.

  Ed got huffy. "What? You think it's nailed to the ground? It moves around, you know. It's got legs. But this is where I saw it. Right here."

  "Where?"

  "Right here." He gestured vaguely. "It chased these kids down the slope there, and right around the back of the building."

  "It must have been an awful slow dog," I said, "if it didn't catch them quicker than that."

  "No kidding," Robert said. "Slow as molasses."

  We suddenly realized Eddy had made the whole thing up. Personally, I was relieved. I didn't really want to find a mad dog. Robert, trying to act disappointed, said, "I think you just told us that to get us to come out here tonight."

  "Yeah, well," Eddy admitted, "so what. If I hadn't, you wouldn't have come, would you? You guys never get to go anywhere anymore."

  "It's that kidnapper."

  "Yeah, yeah. The kidnapper. You're not going to see any kidnappers hanging around here."

  "How do you know?"

  "Well, look around, for crying out loud. No kids."

  "We're kids," Robert said.

  That statement kind of floated on the air a minute, then Eddy turned on his heel.

  "Look. We're here, aren't we? So we might as well check things out."

  We fell in behind him.

  Eagle Oils was an ancient abandoned factory, sprawling, decrepit and rat infested. And we loved it. It was built of wood—no bricks and mortar squandered here—and it had once housed the equipment and workers of a major food oils manufacturer. That, of course, was in a bygone age. Now the wild oats and thistles grew waist high around it, and to reach it we walked along a rusted spur line, then crossed a rubble-strewn lot. This brought us close to a small, sagging outbuilding. I called it the shed, Robert called it the garage, and Eddy called it the old shack. "Look," Eddy pointed out, "they've been at it again."

  We peered in the door. The last couple of times we'd been here, we'd seen evidence of someone trying to burn the place. The traces were still there. A splintered pallet and hunks of tarpaper lying half charred on the floor.

  "Dumb kids," Robert said.

  "They weren't trying very hard," Eddy said. "I could start this place burning in ten seconds."

  "That'd be arson," Robert reminded him. "You could go to prison—and get raped."

  Rape was something we understood, and so appalling a notion that we didn't talk about it.

  The factory slumped at one end. Its few windows were boarded over or smashed. We crossed to the loading dock, ducked under it, then waddled with bowed heads to the underpinnings of the place. Here, set at intervals in the foundation wall, were heavily meshed openings that vented the crawlspace. One of these could be pried open. We passed through it and dropped inside.

  The air was musty and smelled of cat droppings. And something else. We stared around in the dismal light.

  "It stinks," I said.

  "It always stinks," Robert said.

  "Anybody bring a light?"

  Since Robert and I had come to see the dog, we had brought no such thing. But Eddy was equipped, of course. He was already pulling a small torch from his pocket and switching it on. He played the beam around, and shadows bobbled and weaved. Recalling that scene now, I don't know what the attraction was. With dry-rotted floor joists grazing our heads, and dank earth under our feet, it wasn't the most inviting place. In fact it was downright creepy. Anything could have been lurking there. Maybe even Eddy's dog.

  "Somebody's been here," Robert said. "Look at that." He seized Eddy's hand holding the flashlight and directed it at a short-handled spade lying flat in the dirt.

  "I told you guys the last time that I thought somebody had been poking around," I said in a voice that came out tighter than I wanted it to.

  "Yeah, well this time we believe you," Eddy said.

  Weeks had passed since that visit, and even then the place hadn't seemed quite right to me, though I couldn't have said exactly why. Now it was obvious, with the abandoned spade before us. The spade had damp earth clinging to it. I was about to mention the fact, and suggest we look to see where the hole was, when something happened that concentrated our minds. A door slammed loudly above us, followed by the heavy tread of feet crossing the floor.

  "Let's get out of here," Robert whispered, instantly panicking.

  "Hang on," Eddy said, "this is our place. We need to see who's up there."

  "Are you crazy?" Robert's eyes bugged out.

  There was a trap a few feet away. We often used it. Eddy started to move toward it, but I pulled him back. "No," I said. "Better go the other way."

  There was another trapdoor into the building but we rarely used it. It opened into some sort of equipment room filled with old boilers that had leaked dark brown sludge, probably toxic waste, that had rotted out the floor in places. You had to watch where you stepped.

  "I'm not going up there," Robert said.

  "You don't have to," I told him. I wasn't crazy about the idea either, but I couldn't let Eddy do it alone. "You stay here and watch our escape route." Robert calmed down, and I glanced at the shovel. "Maybe while we're gone you can look around and see what this is all about."

  Robert bobbed his head. "What about the light?"

  "You keep it," Eddy said, handing it over.

  Robert took it and almost kissed Eddy's hand. I can still see the relief in his eyes.

  Eddy and I duck-walked away into the smelly shadows, knees bent, heads bowed, to what I think was most probably the north end of the old building. There, just visible in the gray light that filtered through the mesh, lay a slab of ancient, spalled concrete, rocked at an angle, settling into the earth.
Above it was the other trap. Shut tight. I remember praying it would stay that way, that it would be too swollen with damp to move.

  But no such luck. It opened easily enough. When Eddy gave it a push, it popped loose right away. The stench of the sludge immediately flooded down on us, and I gagged; I had almost forgotten how bad it was. But there was light up there in the room above. A thin, colorless light that we knew seeped in through small windows set up high in one wall. Eddy put his head up above the sill for a quick reconnoiter, then grabbed hold to hoist himself up, but I pulled him aside. I wanted the bragging rights. Dumb. I can say that now.

  "Don't make any noise," Eddy warned, giving way.

  I went up through that hole like a cat.

  The room was small, or maybe only seemed that way, crowded with leaking boilers and a bewilderment of grungy pipes. I took one step and my foot nearly went through the floor. "Quiet!" Eddy whispered. A moment later he was beside me, jabbing his elbow into my ribs. He pointed to the disturbance we had made in the dust the last time we were here, and we followed our own trail amongst the boilers to the door, a warped, sagging slab. It stood ajar an inch or two, and through the opening we could distinctly hear the faint sound of voices. Adult male voices. We crept along the corridor to where it joined the main factory floor.

  There was some sort of cabinet, or bench, at the hall's end, and we crouched behind it and peeped cautiously over it.

  The room had been crammed with machinery at one time; you could trace the outlines of it in the grime on the floor, and see its bolt-holes everywhere you looked. But what we noticed were the three men. Two of them about as old as our fathers, and the third much younger, maybe still in his teens. One of the older men, a full-gutted guy in bib overalls, was doing introductions and smiling a lot.

  "This here's Hank, Charlie." He pointed out the other older man. "My partner, you might say. Been kicking around together for quite some time." Bib-Overalls sounded pleasant enough, but didn't look it. He was in rough shape. He had one drooping eye. He was unshaven and needed a haircut, and there was an egg-white pallor to his skin. His partner Hank looked even worse, practically skin and bone; a living cadaver with a balding death's-head and mottled skin stretched tightly over it. He seemed lost in his clothes—a shapeless plaid shirt over several other shirts, and a pair of stained, raggedy cotton trousers, bagged at the knees and unraveling at the cuffs. His belt was far too long, the tongue drooping almost to his knees and swaying when he moved.

  Eddy nudged me. "Couple ole rubby-dubs," he mouthed with a smirk.

  Charlie, the younger of the three, was pretty shabby himself; but even at a distance his grime looked superficial, not ground in the way it was with the other two. He gripped a small suitcase, and I remember thinking that he must have been on his way somewhere when he had met up with Overalls. And he looked to be having second thoughts.

  "Charlie plans to stay a day or two, Hank," Overalls said. "We met at the depot. Seen him getting down off the bus, I did, and I said to myself, now there's a young fella could do with some Christian charity."

  Hank's little eyes shifted.

  Bib-Overalls, still smiling, reached for Charlie's bag. "I'll just find a place to put this so's you can sit down and get more comfortable."

  Just where he expected Charlie to sit wasn't clear. On the floor, apparently. There was no furniture, only a couple of filthy bedrolls.

  But the young man wasn't handing over anything. It was clear from the expression on his face that he knew he had made a bad mistake. "Ah, no," he said. "I guess I won't stay after all. I'm running out of time. I got to get to the West Coast."

  Overalls narrowed his good eye until he was squinting through a malevolent slit.

  "But you said your bus ride ended here."

  "Well, that's right. It's all I could afford. What I'll do from here, I'll thumb a ride, I guess —"

  "Good plan," Overalls agreed. "But if I was you, I'd stick around till morning. Nobody'll pick you up at this hour."

  "Oh, somebody will," Charlie said. He blinked. "Or I can stay at my cousin's place."

  Bib-Overalls faked astonishment. "Your cousin's place? That's funny. You never mentioned any cousin before."

  Charlie had already backed away several steps, and was turning and moving to the door. As if at a signal, Hank the death's-head darted forward and smacked the back of Charlie's head with a stick of wood, the arm of an old wooden chair.

  I think I gasped. I know Eddy did. The attack had been so sudden and brutal, neither one of us had seen it coming. Charlie let out a grunt and went down on one knee, tried to stand but his leg folded under him. He had a bewildered look on his face.

  Eddy and I scrunched down even lower.

  "What'd he do that for?" I hissed in Eddy's ear.

  "What do you think?" Eddy whispered back. "These guys got a system. They get chummy with a guy, get on his good side, then bring him back here and mug him."

  "Jeez!" I said.

  "Look," Eddy said. "We better scram. Let's go grab Robert and get the hell out of here."

  But I had to look again. I couldn't stop myself.

  Charlie was dazed but not down. Hank and Bib-Overalls hovered over him. They were like predatory animals gloating over an antelope. Then Overalls produced handcuffs, snicked one end to Charlie's wrist and the other to a pipe sticking out of the wall. "I think," Overalls said, "you should stay. That's my advice. There's no telling what might happen to a young fella like you at night."

  He stroked Charlie's face with the back of his hand, his grin showing two yellow canines. Meanwhile, Hank was tearing into the suitcase.

  I glanced back over my shoulder at Eddy; he was already halfway down the hall. But still I seemed to be rooted in place, mesmerized, paralyzed, I don't know what. The young fellow, Charlie, was gaping around in a stunned, wide-eyed kind of way, as if too dazed to see anything, but suddenly his eyes locked onto mine. I ducked, but not before Bib-Overalls noticed, spun around and spotted me.

  "Hey!" he shouted, and made a lunge.

  It unstuck me. I turned and ran. In the boiler room, Eddy was at the trap, standing over it and holding it open for me. I was impressed by that. Still am. I dropped through, and then the unthinkable happened: The death's-head suddenly materialized and grabbed a handful of Eddy's hair as he hopped down after me. I'd describe how Eddy screamed but he wouldn't like that, so I'll just say he hollered. Man, did he holler! It was the most tortured, traumatized wail I'd ever heard in my entire life.

  That might have been it for us—at least for Eddy. But at that moment we caught a break. The death's-head tried to yank Eddy back through the hole, and his foot—in fact his whole leg—suddenly burst through the floor right in front of me. And he screamed, you'd better believe he did. Splintered boards chewed into his flesh, digging deeper as he tried to pull free. But he still had hold of Eddy, and I had to do something about that. I had no weapon, not even a stick, so I did the only thing I could. I kicked that dangling leg. I booted it square in the kneecap, and above the trap there was a roar like a buffalo. Eddy pulled free, and we beat it back under the floor.

  We had no plan. We just wanted to run. Grab hold of Robert and keep on going. But Robert wasn't where we'd left him, and he wasn't scouting around with the flashlight either. Instead he was huddled under the loading dock, shivering and quaking with his knees drawn up under his chin. He looked like an old man. I swear there were lines in his face. We tried to scoop him up but he shied from us.

  "I found—I found a grave," he whispered.

  "What?" Eddy's voice was harsh. "What are you talking about? We got to get out of here. There's these men— Where's my flashlight?"

  "Flashlight?" Robert blinked. "I must've dropped it. I just ran."

  "Well that's great." Eddy let out a few choice cuss words. "It's my mom's. She'll skin me alive. I'm going back for it."

  "Eddy," I said, trying to reason with him, "those men. They know where we are. We've got to get out of here now."


  "I'm not leaving without that flashlight."

  He ducked back through the mesh. I clapped Robert on the knee. "Wait," I told him. "We'll just be a second."

  I didn't know if he understood, or even if he'd heard. He wouldn't look at me and his jaw was quivering.

  I ducked back under the building and went after Eddy. I knew we only had a minute or two. Outside the sun was going down, red-orange rays striking in horizontally through the mesh, lighting things up. I found Eddy crawling around in the dirt, groping for his flashlight. "A grave," Eddy grumbled. "Rob's freaking out."

  But even as he said it, my hand touched something, and I knew exactly what Robert was talking about. In revulsion, I threw myself backwards, and my head grazed a floor joist, sending a bright sheet of pain through my skull.

  "I just touched a body!" I hissed through clenched teeth, writhing and cradling the back of my head. "There's a body right here in front of us!"

  Eddy had recovered the flashlight, and now he switched it on and skipped its beam around. Then he steadied it. We looked and saw a dry, bony hand—a whole arm!—sticking out of the earth.

  "Ah, jeez," Eddy moaned, and made a hawking noise.

  The setting sun was dying fast, and the beam of the flashlight cast every lump and mound in stark relief. There wasn't one grave. There were several. Here a jutting knee, there a foot, and when we saw an eyeless face staring back at us—the rats had been busy with it—we both screamed.

  We were back with Robert in seconds. "There is a grave back there," Eddy said. "In fact, there's a whole freaking cemetery. Come on, Rob. We got to—"

  Then he saw the expression on my face. "What?"

  "That guy up there," I said. "That Charlie guy. They're not going to let him go, are they?"

  Eddy took a shaky breath. He sank down on his haunches. "Yeah. I mean no."

  "We can't leave him," I said. "That'd be murder."

  "Hey. They're the murderers. Not us."

  "But if we don't help . . ."

  Part of me was screaming "Run!" But still we sat there. We wanted to help the guy. But how could we do it? We couldn't go back upstairs. Eddy's mad dog, growling and slavering, couldn't drive me back inside that place.