Pardon me, sir, but is your homicidal son by any chance hiding in the attic? The imposing house seemed to glare down at her. Don’t you think I should check, sir? She coasted the jeep into the driveway and just sat, gazing into the early twilight and wondering what she’d say to whomever answered her knock. And by any chance could you explain that weird office you keep in town? Yes, sir, I did break in. No, sir, I don’t have a warrant. Or an attorney. Across the paved road, only one other home faced her. Farther down the lane, another house peeked above a slight rise. The lawns looked brown and dead, and a frozen unfriendliness seemed to emanate even from the height of the evergreen hedges.
When she cracked the jeep door, the chill washed in. Maybe I had better call the state cops. Gravel crunched underfoot as she started up the walk. Or at least wait to talk to Barry.
The lawn had grayed with frost in wide swathes, and close to the house, the corpses of flowers lay brown and rigid. Small pines bristled, and sharp yellow leaves flared among the curled rhododendrons that screened the porch.
Her shoes drummed up the stairs, and desiccated fronds rattled in a breeze. Along the wall, dead plants cleaved to clay pots, and yellowed circulars littered the porch floor.
The heavy drapes appeared tightly drawn. She checked her reflection in the glass of the storm door. So I look nervous. So what? She pressed the bell. Nothing happened. When she opened the outer door, a small avalanche of catalogs and circulars tumbled and slid. No one has been here in quite a while. She stacked them on the floor before trying the brass knocker. Finally, she pounded with her fist. And now? When she let go of it, the storm door hissed shut.
She regarded the row of evergreens. Maybe the neighbors can tell me something. As she moved to the stairs, wood throbbed faintly behind her.
Someone is in there. She waited until she heard it again. Don’t look around. Faintly, a hinge creaked. Someone is watching. Go down the walk. Pretend to leave.
Between the house and the hedge lay a crude path of worn earth. The tiny pines had gone dry, dead at the marrow, and brittle needles lanced her hands as she inched along the wall. She ducked as she passed a draped window, almost crawled. Flickering shade mottled the hard earth, and the bushes rattled like beetles.
Behind the house, a yard stretched in perfect flatness, as devoid of any semblance of occupancy as the rear of a movie set. No trellised vines. No covered pool. No sailboat beneath a tarp. Nothing.
The back door gaped brokenly, glass dangling in shards from the frame. He’s here. She touched her jacket, felt the gun beneath. I should call for backup. As she pried the door open farther, a fragment of pane dropped. I should call. She stepped up. On the single concrete step, a layer of dust coated the points of glass.
Unzipping her jacket, she reached for the holster. With a soft rush of air, dim sunlight swung in with her, and she panned the revolver across a large kitchen. A thick stench of spoiled meat hung in the air, making her grateful for the draft. Her heel scraped sharply on the tile. Blinking rapidly, she scanned every corner. Copper pots and utensils glinted on hooks beneath white cabinets and above a white counter. One drawer stood open.
Edging forward, she looked inside. Carving knives nestled in a rack. One empty slot. A large one.
Go back out to the jeep and call. Her heart tripped raggedly. Do it now.
Her gaze swung toward the next room. Beyond the doorway, the light held a viscous quality, stained blue through thick draperies. But who would come? She inched forward, steadying the gun. The chief? Wouldn’t he just call the state cops? In the next room, a floorboard creaked, muffled by carpet.
Right. Talons of panic tore her. This is it. She edged along the kitchen wall. Now! As she launched herself through the doorway, something thudded near her head.
“Kit!”
“Barry!” The gun shook. “I almost shot you!”
“Lord, you scared me.”
“I almost…!” Her voice quavered.
“Quit pointing that thing at me.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Same as you probably.”
“You tried to…” She couldn’t look away from the deep wedge that splintered from the door frame.
“Don’t be an idiot.” He hefted a crowbar. “I thought you were him.”
She blinked. “This is breaking and entering. I should run you in.”
A pine branch rasped against the window.
Trembling, she holstered the gun. “Couldn’t you see it was me?” she demanded. She had a hard time forcing her fist to unclench, then a wave of relief pounded through each aching finger, sweeping up her arm in a numbing current.
“…didn’t break in. I swear it. The door already…” He looked down at the crowbar. “Okay, I’ll admit I came here intending to do whatever I had to. But somebody beat me to it.”
She opened her mouth to object but fell silent, remembering the dust on the broken glass.
He flexed his arms. “Anyway, before you arrest me, wouldn’t you like to know what smells like that?”
“Isn’t it…?” She gestured back at the kitchen.
“No, that refrigerator’s empty. And take a look at this.”
“Where are you going?” Whispering fiercely, she followed him through a dining room lined with glass shelves. “Come back here.” Chairs were lined up at the table with military precision.
“Relax. The electricity’s off. Nobody’s here. May as well check it out.”
“We shouldn’t be here either. If anyone…”
“Relax, I said. Nobody saw—those bushes outside were planted to keep anybody from seeing the house.” A heap of mail had mounded beneath the slot in the front door. “This is what I tripped over when I heard you at the door. Except I didn’t know it was you.” Light that filtered through turquoise curtains sank into an azure carpet. “There’s a family room sort of thing down that way, big circular fireplace and a wet bar. But no bottles. No glasses even. Then a bathroom and a door to the garage through there.”
The miasma of rotten meat seemed to permeate the walls of the parlor, clinging to drapes stiff with dust. She stepped farther in, feeling that she didn’t walk through the subaqueous gloom so much as float. Her gaze veered about wildly—transparent vinyl encased bulky aqua loveseats grouped around a teal sofa. Sectional pieces hemmed a glass coffee table. “What makes this room so…odd? Besides the colors, I mean.” Everything increased her edginess. She turned completely around, her gaze shifting across plastic flowers in a ceramic vase, across throw pillows and a framed clown print. She found herself unable to imagine people who would have chosen this combination of items for their home. “It’s not…not…”
“Convincing?”
“Right. Why is that?”
“Don’t know,” he answered softly. “But I had the same feeling in the other room. No books. No magazines. No television set. Like nobody really lives here.”
“The kitchen looks the same way.” She nodded. “Like a store display.” Her words trailed away. “The blue room in the photos. This must be it.” She edged closer to him. The vinyl runner on the floor made a shuffling crack, and air hissed beneath it.
She stood close enough to see a vein throb in his neck, then followed his intent gaze to the stairs. Dark matter had lumped and dribbled down two of the steps, and the same crust swirled thinly on the vinyl.
“What is that? Barry?”
“Did you hear something just then?”
“What?”
Ignoring her, he peered upward into the gloom, and a tic began to tremble his right eyelid.
“No. I didn’t hear anything. Barry? Don’t do anything. Please. We need help.” She moved away to pick up a baby blue phone. “Dead. Of course.”
Behind her, a stair squeaked.
“Please, Barry,” she spoke without turning. “Don’t go up there.” It felt like the beginning of an old, familiar nightmare. They would go upstairs, she knew. Nothing could stop them now. And nothing would ever be
the same.
Barely aware of what she was doing, she followed him. Her feet moved, and the stairs croaked sluggishly. Her damp palm squealed on the banister, a thin treble.
“There’s more of it.” He gestured with the back of his hand, indicating a dark patch on the baseboard. The plastic runner ended at the top; so did the faint light. He stepped soundlessly onto thick carpeting.
She followed, straining her eyes in the dimness. Closed doors lined the hall. She swung her service revolver around like a flashlight.
“Stay behind me,” he whispered, brandishing the crowbar.
At the end of the hall, he swung open a door, and hinges shrilled. She followed him in, then paused, amazed.
Skirted dolls ranged along a window seat, and ashen light soaked through the curtains, turning the whole room a deep pink that matched the ruffled bed canopy. He yanked open the closet door, then knelt to peer under the bed. “Watch your back,” he told her.
He pushed past her back into the hall and paused at the next door as though steeling himself, then jerked it open. Hanging from the ceiling, a model plane tilted in the sudden breeze. Squeezing in behind him, she saw pennants on the walls, a neat stack of baseball cards on a shelf above a small desk. Again, she watched him give the room a cursory search. “It’s trying too hard,” she prompted. “Same as the others. Like somebody’s idea of how a boy’s room should look.”
“I said, watch your back. This isn’t a game.”
She gritted her teeth and followed as he returned to the hall.
Faint illumination from the two open doorways fought back the shadows. In the huge bathroom, she glimpsed a glass-walled shower and a double sink, the floor padded with thick carpeting even here. As he checked the shower, she twisted a knob on one of the sinks, and the faucet hissed to silence. “Water’s off too,” she muttered. “I don’t get the feeling anyone’s ever planning on coming back here. Do you? Barry?” She wandered back into the hall. “Where’d you go?”
He stood at the next door, his shoulder pressed against the wood, and he pounded with his fist against the top of the frame.
“What is it? I can’t make it out. Oh.” Metal spikes angled deep into the wood. “Why would anyone nail a door shut?” In the shadows, she could barely see his face. “Barry?”
At the end of the hall, the remaining door sank in deepening murk.
“What time is it now?” Her voice broke. “I think we should leave.” She caught his sleeve as he moved toward it. “Look.” At their feet, smears on the carpet broadened and disappeared beneath the door. “You know what happened here, don’t you? Answer me.”
As he twisted the doorknob, he looked down to find her hand on his arm, small but surprisingly strong.
Fiercely, she whispered up at him. “Why won’t you tell me?”
The door swung open. Within lay madness. A dim blue glow suffused the room, but in the corners, shadows spread like mold. The massive headboard lay in splinters, strewn with hunks of mattress. A shattered bureau—drawers tilting crazily—oozed clotted garments across the carpet. Crusted palm prints splayed desperately up the speckled wallpaper, and she blinked at the brown imprints of spread fingers. A stain spread across the ceiling, and she stared up at the blur until she seemed to discern a shape.
“Worse than I thought.” His voice had become a hoarse creak.
She kept staring upward.
“Further along than I realized,” he continued. “There’ll be no collecting him. Have to be put down.”
“The shape.” She kept shaking her head and pointing at the ceiling. “It must be because the light’s so bad, right? I mean, nothing could throw someone to the ceiling like that, could it? Not even an ape or something, right?”
“Don’t look at it.” Taking her by the shoulder, he marched her out of the room, slamming the door behind them.
Even in the dark hallway, she could see that his face had gone terribly white. “Tell me what’s going on.” She held on to his jacket.
“I want you to go outside and wait in the jeep. Do you understand?” His eyes tracked to the nailed door. “There’s not much light left. I have to check that last room. If he comes back…”
“No.”
“I want you to…”
“No.” She broke away from him. “Whatever it is, you do it while I’m here.”
He only paused a moment. “It’s getting late.” Now almost no light filtered through the open doors at the end of the hall.
She watched him. The hollow blows echoed. Grunting, he struggled with the crowbar. A nail squealed out, plopped softly to the carpet, then another, and at last he hurled his weight against the frame. With a splintering crash, it burst.
“Wait! It’s too dark in there! Where are you?” Her footsteps clicked loudly as she followed him. “How can it be so black?” Gradually, she made out a mattress in the middle of a bare wooden floor. “Barry? Look—the windows are boarded up. And I think the glass is painted over.”
Across the room, a flashlight clicked on, and light rushed along the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Rafters had been crudely exposed, the wood blotched with plaster, and large hooks protruded from the beams. Near the mattress, clothing spilled out of a cardboard carton.
By the light of the flashlight, he examined the contents of a tight closet, and she watched him paw through huge sweatshirts and pants so broad in the seat as to appear comical.
Completely rigid, he stared at something on the back of the closet door.
“What is it?”
A worn-looking leather belt swayed on a nail. When she reached past him for it, he caught her wrist. She pulled her hand away but didn’t try to touch the strap again. Alongside it dangled four pieces of rough cord.
“Hold this,” he said. Passing her the flashlight, he unhooked a piece of the rawhide cord and tested its strength.
“Barry?”
He knelt by the mattress.
She moved the beam. Even in this dimness, she could see the stains…and the metal hook in the floor. She realized that other hooks had been screwed into the boards. The two at the bottom of the mattress had an extension cord twisted around them.
“This is the only room in the house that’s honest, isn’t it?” she asked him softly. The light played across a complicated knot.
The piece of rawhide still dangled from his hand. Abruptly, he wrapped it around one of the hooks and yanked.
“What are you doing?” Sudden perspiration crawled coldly at the roots of her hair.
He tugged harder. With a groan, he strained against the cord, the muscles of his arm and neck bulging visibly.
“Please? You’re scaring me.”
When he let go of the cord, it raveled harmlessly on the floor.
“What is it?” She trained the beam on his face. His flesh had gone a leaden gray, and moisture stood out like pellets on his forehead. “Have you been here before?” She let the light slide past him and play along the wall. On the crude shelves of raw pine, objects had been spaced evenly—a candle, oddly molded at the base, a long-necked wine bottle, smeared with something oily, a box of fireplace matches, a length of rope—the spacing and arrangement seemed strangely formal, almost ritualistic.
“This room.” His voice startled her. “I know…what it…I’ve seen…”
A miserable heat suffused him, and she felt it radiate from his face, from his glittering stare. She watched him stumble away to grip the door frame, and the light flitted after him. The bones of his knuckles stood out white, and she saw a tensing shock tremble through him. After a moment, he turned to her.
“You don’t have to tell me now.” She reached out, stalling his tremor with a brush of her hand. “Come on, we’re leaving.” She pulled him toward the door. “Here, hold the flashlight.” She led him into the hall. “What?”
His lips writhed silently.
“Tell me later,” she said. “Take it. Hold the light steady.” She guided him down the creaking stairs.
Shadow
s blanketed the walls now, enfolding the parlor in sliding layers that overlapped and deepened on the floor. “No, not the front,” she said. “Let’s go back out the way we came in.” The light moved ahead of them, uselessly picking out the dust on the glass coffee table, the fur of grime on the petals of the plastic blossoms.
“Listen,” he hissed.
They stopped moving, and the sound filtered to her—a softly grating slither. It came from beneath their feet.
“The basement,” she whispered. The damp noise rasped like broken glass against her flesh. “We never checked the basement.”
He touched her wrist. Though he moved as cautiously as a soldier in a minefield, a floorboard groaned beneath him.
She couldn’t make her feet move, and she held one hand across her mouth as he drifted away from her. The room seemed to stir, and the rustling noise drifted up from beneath her feet with a soft rush. Finally, she lurched forward.
“Kit!” He caught at her as she pushed past him into the kitchen.
Gloom had settled through the jagged glass, and the basement door stood in the deepest corner. She gripped the revolver with both hands now.
He kept one hand on her shoulder. “We don’t mean to hurt you.”
Her spine went rigid. For a terrible moment, she thought he spoke to her; then she realized the soft clamor below had ceased.
“We want to help.” He called through the basement door. “Do you understand? I know what you are.”
“Jesus.” Suddenly, the revolver weighed too much for her to hold it steady.
“We saw the room upstairs.” In front of her now, he edged closer to the door. “Can you hear me? I know what they did to you, and I understand why.” Gently, he pressed the palm of his hand to the wood. “Let me help you.” His voice splintered, went ragged. “Let it be over. There’s a place I can take you.”
Behind them, wind hissed through broken glass.
“Don’t open that door, Barry.”
“Can you hear me?”
“I’m warning you. I’ll shoot anything that moves.”
“Do you understand me?” As he twisted the doorknob, a scrambling noise receded. “I’m coming down now.”
The Shore Page 14
