The Third Floor

by The Third Floor (epub)

  He looked up at the flight looming above him. The stairs, the third floor, the unknown voice in his house.

  No, he decided, he would leave this alone and go back to his playing. Maybe his dad would be home soon and they would all go out. That would be nice.

  But the further away he moved from the voice upstairs, the louder it got in his head, whispering over and over the phrase Joey didn't understand, but one that worried him anyway.

  "Forgive me--pant pant--forgive me. Forgive me--pant pant--forgive me."

  He picked up the Power Ranger and carried it over to the window, staring down to the street, trying to will his father to come home. Then he heard someone coming down the steps, that voice in his head nearly screaming its whispered phrase at him.

  "Forgive me--pant pant--forgive me. Forgive me--pant pant--forgive me."

  With his eyes on the street, Joey felt the presence creep toward him, could tell it was reaching out for him, knew its fingers were inches from his skin. He tensed, felt the chill on his shoulder, and leapt in his sleep, on to waking, as Liz shook him awake.

  Jack called Liz before he left work and said he and Charley were going out for a bit first.

  “Says he wants to show me something,” Jack said.

  “I’ll bet he does,” Liz said. “Just remember to use the ones, okay?”

  “What?”

  “The one-dollar bills,” she said. “For the strippers. If you’re gonna tip them, use the ones, not the fives and definitely not the tens or twenties.”

  “Gotcha,” he said. “I’ll be home soon.”

  He and Charley clocked out and got into the Kitch Jeep. They pulled out of the Fett Tech parking lot as Charley told Jack where to go, but he wouldn’t tell him where they were going to end up.

  “Come on, man,” Jack said. “What’s so important we got to do this now? Where are we going?”

  “I just want to show you a couple things,” Charley said. “You’re so sure everything around here is normal as can be, I want you to see a few things and then you can decide. Turn left up here.”

  Jack followed his directions and within fifteen minutes he was pulling up outside an apartment building.

  “My bother is the manager here,” Charley said. “I’m gonna have him show you something.”

  “I already have a place to live,” Jack said.

  “Funny. Come on.”

  Jack followed him inside and to the manager’s office where he met Charley’s brother, Ron, who was sitting at a desk, rolling a tennis ball back and forth. They traded handshakes and Jack asked, “So what’s the big mystery here? The basement infested with giant killer rats or something?”

  Charley and Ron exchanged a look, then Ron grabbed a key off his desk and said, “Alright, then. Come on.”

  They followed him upstairs and he stopped outside a door marked B11. He slid the key into the lock and looked at his brother.

  “Ready?”

  Charley nodded. “How long?”

  “A minute, at the most.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Jack said, hands raised. “A minute for what? What’s in here? We’re not stepping into a murder scene, are we? 'Cause I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.”

  “No, nothing like that,” Ron Clark said. “You’ll see. Just be careful, and stay close to the door.”

  He turned the key, unlocked the door, opened it, and they stepped inside.

  Jack wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but an empty apartment was not it. He looked around, still wondering what was so special about this place. It was small. One, two rooms. He saw a kitchen off the back of the place, but couldn’t tell how big, so it might only qualify as a room and a half. The closed door must be the bathroom.

  He took a step into the room and Charley grabbed his arm.

  “Stay by the door.”

  “What for?”

  Ron knelt in front of them and put his tennis ball on the floor.

  “Here it goes,” he said. His fingers came off the ball and it rolled immediately to the center of the room.

  Charley and Ron looked at Jack. Jack looked back and shrugged.

  “So what? Come on, man, I’m hungry, I gotta get home.”

  “You say ‘So what?’” Charley said. “Didn’t you see that?”

  “Yeah, he rolled a ball to the center of the room. Wow, you’re right, that’s pretty amazing, now let’s go.”

  “I didn’t roll it,” Ron said, getting back to his feet.

  “Well, it didn’t roll itself.”

  “Sure it did.”

  “What?”

  He produced another tennis ball. Jack wasn’t sure from where.

  “You wanna try it?” he asked, offering the ball to Jack.

  “What for?” He turned to Charley. “Seriously, come on, this was great, but pointless.”

  “Here,” Ron said, still holding out the ball for Jack.

  Jack sighed and took it.

  “Fine,” he said, “but there’s no way it’s going to get as close to the middle of the room as yours. I’ll overshoot, I can tell you that.”

  “Just let it go,” Charley said.

  “Just put it on the floor, and take your fingers off it,” Ron said. “Don’t push at all. Just let go.”

  Jack shook his head but went to his knees anyway.

  “Anything to get the hell out of here already,” he said. He’d only just noticed it, but his head was pounding.

  He put the ball on the floor in front of him, looked up at the ball Ron had rolled and . . . saw it was in the middle of the room, spinning.

  Now that’s a cool trick, he thought. What Charley didn’t tell me is his brother does stage tricks, too. Apparently.

  Jack aimed the ball, then went a little off center, and pulled his fingers off.

  The ball shot off for the center of the room, veering off the crooked course Jack had put it on, and joined the first ball in the middle of the room. The two collided. Then they began to spin around each other.

  They rotated like a planet and moon.

  “That’s a cool one,” Jack had to admit. “You got any aspirin or something?” he asked. “My head, man . . .”

  “Shit,” Ron said. “Too long, come on, we got to get back out.”

  They all three quickly ducked back into the hallway and Ron had a little trouble pulling the door closed all the way before turning the key in the lock again. When he let go, the door jerked once, rattled in the frame, then stopped. He put the key in his pocket and shook his head, then rubbed his temples.

  “That’s a harsh one,” Charley said, rubbing his head.

  “Yeah. And it doesn’t get any easier.”

  “Wonder if it’s bad for you. You know? Is it harmful?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. It’s just weird is all.”

  “So I can go home now?” Jack asked.

  They turned to him and Charley said, “That was pretty cool, huh?”

  “Yeah, it was alright, but so what? You got a dip in the floor so the balls roll together. Probably got metal inside them and magnets under the floor, that’s not a hard one to pull off. Was there a point to this?”

  “Couple months ago,” Ron said, leading them back to the office, “this guy moves in. He’s got all his stuff moved in and he’s been here maybe a day, no more than two. Somebody drops by to visit him, but he doesn’t answer. Few days later, they come back, and he still isn’t home. Now I sat in here for a week and watched people come and go and knock on his door and not once did he answer. I watched the guy move in, so I know he’s gotta show up sooner or later. Another week goes by, nothing. Then the exterminator, he’s making the rounds, you know, I mean we don’t have a problem, but that’s because we do this regular to make sure no problems start 'cause once the bugs get in you can’t get ‘em back out. So anyway, the exterminator knocks on the door and the guy don’t answer, so he knocks again, and still the guy don’t answer. He’s got passkeys, though, th
e tenants, they know we do this every six weeks and they don’t mind as long as we’re not going through their stuff, right? So he opens the door, and the place is empty. This guy, he’d paid the full first month, and I watched him carrying boxes into the building and up those stairs, and not once, after that first day, did I see him leave this building, let alone move his stuff back out again. He’s just gone. Like that. And all his stuff with him.”

  Jack shook his head, shrugged his shoulders. “So what?”

  “So what,” Ron repeated. “So you saw what happened in there, and you felt it to,” he pointed to Jack’s head. “That’s so what. You open this door in twenty minutes, those balls are gonna be gone, that’s so what. You spend more than five full minutes in there, you’re head starts pounding. Another five minutes, you’re throwing up all over yourself. Another five and you’re shitting blood for a week. That’s so what.”

  Jack looked at Charley.

  “Is this guy for real?” he asked.

  Charley shrugged and said, “I’m just showing you one of the unexplained mysteries of Angel Hill, one of the things you’re so certain can be easily explained. So go ahead and explain it.”

  “I told you, slanted floor and magnets.”

  “If it were true, but it’s not. And that doesn’t explain where the guy went and what happened to his stuff. And how come the physical effects on people when they stay in there too long?”

  “The guy bailed with all his stuff, probably decided he couldn’t afford the place and moved back in with his parents. The headache, hell, maybe you got something being pumped into the room. You can do that, you know.”

  “Yeah,” Charley said. “I’m that desperate to prove you wrong, I’m gonna go to that trouble. Just realize it, man, there’s something in there and we can’t explain it.”

  “Maybe not you,” Jack said, “but personally, I’m not worried about it. I told you what I think and that’s good enough for me.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “Can I go home now?”

  “Almost,” Charley said. “One more thing.”

  Jack groaned. He shook Ron’s hand and he and Charley went outside.

  “You know, we can drive around all night,” Jack said. “The only thing it’s going to prove is that you’ll believe anything.”

  “Then it’s a good thing the next place is within walking distance. Come on,” Charley said. “Right over here.”

  He led Jack over two blocks to an abandoned building. The painted sign across the facade, faded from years of Angel Hill weather, read Four Brothers Paper Mill. The building hadn’t been used for paper milling in decades, Jack guessed.

  “So what’s this?” he asked. “The Haunted Paper Mill of Angel Hill?”

  “Cute. But no,” Charley said.

  “Then what?”

  Charley started toward the back of the building.

  “Follow me.”

  Jack did. Charley led him to a loading dock around back.

  “You’re not gonna mug me back here, are you?” Jack joked.

  “Over here,” Charley said.

  Behind the building a little way was an undeveloped area of woods. Charley was walking into them and waving Jack to follow.

  “Naw, I saw this movie,” Jack said. “I follow you in there, and you come back out alone. In thirty years, while you’re on your deathbed, you finally lead the cops to my body. No thanks.”

  “Just come on,” Charley said. Jack followed him.

  They walked about two hundred feet into the woods when they came up on a large concrete slab. That’s a weird place for something like that, Jack thought. As they approached it, he could see the thing was just what it looked like, a big concrete block. There were no seams, no holes. Just the block.

  “What’s this, your altar?” Jack asked.

  “This is the cover to The Pit.”

  “Alright, then,” Jack said.

  “About twenty years ago, some friends and I were playing here in these woods. Like kids do, you know, regular kid games. My friend Doug Parker and I were running through here one day and all of the sudden . . . he was just gone. I mean, I glanced over and there’s no Doug. Strange thing was, there was nowhere he could have gone. I figured he’d taken off another direction, and when he didn’t jump out at me, well, he must have gone home.”

  Jack started to take a seat on the slab.

  “Don’t sit there,” Charley warned him. Jack stood up and moved instead to lean against a tree.

  “So anyway,” Charley continued, “I figured he went home, and the other guys we’d been hanging out with, Steve and Vernon Scotia, they’d left earlier, so I went home, too. Next day, Doug never showed up. Must be busy with his family, right? It happens. So me and the Scotias, we hung out, played in the woods or something that day. When I got home, my dad told me to call Doug’s house. Well, it was late, I’ll talk to him tomorrow, I figured, right? They called me the next morning asking if I knew where Doug was. They hadn’t seen him in two days. Neither had I. I told them we’d been playing in the woods behind the paper mill, and that I thought he’d gone home.”

  Jack slapped a mosquito on his arm and wiped it away. Charley didn’t seem to be bothered by them. In fact, he didn’t seem to even notice Jack was there anymore, other than the fact he was talking to him. Or maybe he was talking to himself. Jack thought that’s the look on his face, like he’s telling himself this story.

  “So Doug went missing. And over that summer so did a few other kids. When the police learned the last place they’d been seen was in these woods, right here, in fact, they started searching for stuff. Hair, clothes, blood, anything that might lead them to the kids, or to whoever took them. One day one of the cops came up missing.”

  Charley took a deep breath, let it out in a long, heavy sigh.

  “There were four officers here that day, all working around this area. Two of them right here.” He motioned to the slab. “One of them just happened to turn around and see this hole in the ground closing up. His partner was gone. The one that was left about lost his mind, but he was able to tell people what happened. This slab was put here that day.”

  He stopped and turned around, looked out into the woods, squinted at the sun. He was obviously finished.

  “So that’s it?” Jack asked.

  “That’s it,” Charley said, shrugging. “You can think that--” he motioned in the direction of the apartment building, “--was set up all you want, but this right here, this is documented fact, and you can look it up. It was in the paper.”

  “But if just the one guy saw it . . . hell, he could have been the one responsible for the disappearances in the first place and just made up the stupid story about a disappearing hole in the ground. What I really can’t believe is that anyone bought it.”

  “It’s Angel Hill, man. We know stuff happens here--.”

  “Yeah, and that makes it easier to get away with. Someone gives you all a story like this--Oh, I don’t know, officer, I turned around and he was gone and this great big hole in the ground is closing around him--you people buy it without question just because you’ve all allowed this reputation to build over the years. Come on, man, it’s just a town. Tell me, after this,” he indicated the concrete block, “did anyone search anymore for those kids or that missing cop?”

  “No,” Charley said, shaking his head. “They didn’t.”

  “There you go, problem solved. He gets away with a few kids and a cop--who was probably just about to dig up something the other guy didn’t want found--and gives you a stupid story, everyone believes it, he gets away clean.”

  “Not exactly. I told you, that guy about lost his mind. He got moved to the Fairfield State Institute not long after that. He was there until they closed it down. Don’t know where he is now, but it ain’t on the Angel Hill Police force.”

  “Still,” Jack said. “Come on, man. Think about that one for a minute, huh? Whether your story is true or not, or whether my explanation is
right or not, you have to admit, mine does make a little more sense than ‘a hole opened up in the ground and swallowed them.’”

  Charley looked at his watch.

  “Come on,” he said. “You can go home now, just drop me off to get my car.”

  Jack followed him out of the woods and drove him back to Fett Tech.

  After an hour, Liz had put the book out of her mind. By the time Jack got home that night, she'd forgotten it completely.

  “You wouldn’t believe the stuff Charley tried to tell me today,” he said, taking off his boots. He told her about the apartment building and the balls, and said, “And now that I think about it, that ball I had did feel kind of heavy. Probably the metal they put in it for the magnets in the floor. Can’t believe they tried that on me. And then he shows me this cement block in the woods, saying some hole opened up and swallowed a bunch of people twenty years ago. That guy is desperate to get me to buy all this Haunted Angel Hill stuff.”

  Liz shrugged, and raised her eyebrows, a What’reyagonnado? gesture.

  He kissed her on the head, then went into the kitchen to heat up the meatloaf.

  Liz remembered the book again as she climbed into bed a couple hours later. By that time, it didn't seem as important as it had. Maybe she'd ask him tomorrow about it. She huddled to him, felt his arm moving down her side, his kisses on her cheek, her jaw, and she knew Joey was asleep, so she wrapped a leg over his and kissed him back.

  When Jack had dozed off afterward, Liz felt herself drifting off just as a crash came booming through the ceiling. She leapt up, gasping. She looked at the ceiling, then down at Jack. Why hadn't he heard? Why was he still asleep?

  The crash came again. She jumped again.

  The piano--(We don't even have a piano, Liz thought)--sounded its out-of-tune notes.

  She pulled on a pair of shorts from the floor, a tank top over her head, and she was in the hall, on the steps, ascending slowly.

  Rounding the landing, she saw nothing. On the second floor, the darkness stood fast.

  Then someone appeared out of the night, small and dull in the middle of the room. This wasn’t the little boy she’d seen in the shower, this person was older, maybe ten.