“Oh sweet titty-fucking Christ on a cracker, girl,” Candy gasped and dropped her bags by the door, hurrying in to sit beside me. “‘But’ what? Don’t you go word-shy on me now, bitch; not you! No! Start talking! Spill the beans, girl!”
And I did. I told her everything. I watched Candy’s expressions go from pure excitement to worry then back to excitement. The look on Candy’s face seemed to perfectly represent everything that I was feeling. As I finished the story, I could just see that Candy had been waiting to interject.
“First off: he sounds awesome. Does he have a brother?” Candy grinned teasingly. “Secondly, did you agree to go with him tomorrow? You better have!”
I nodded slowly and then bit my lip. “He’s picking me up at three…but do you really think this is a good idea though?”
“Honey, he’s a hot, honest guy who obviously likes you and can look past the whole prostitute-thing,” she said, grinning ear-to-ear. “As your whore-ttorny in this case I have to insist that you marry him right away!”
“Whore-ttorny?” I asked.
Candy nodded. “Mm-hmm, like one part ‘whore,’ one part ‘attorney.’ Whore-ttorny. C’mon, I thought you was good with this speaking shit and such.”
Enough to hate everything about that sentence, I thought, then said, “Look, there’s definitely something between us, but…”
“No ‘but’s ‘cept the one you’re letting your Prince Charming fuck, got it? Now get to bed! You need your beauty rest for tomorrow! Git! GIT!”
“Alright, Mom,” I said and grinned, pulling myself to my feet.
She grinned back and waved me away. “Get outta here before I decide to smack you for that.”
I smiled at that, heading into my room and crawled onto the mattress.
Lying on my back, I thought of the night with Jace and smiled. I was so excited for tomorrow that I wondered if I’d even get any rest. As I closed my eyes, the memory of my confession about my brother and the house played through my mind.
****
Malcolm could always talk me into anything. My brother was dumb—“born dumb, grown dumb, no doubt gonna die dumb, too,” my father always said—but, for whatever reason, he was an absolute genius when it came to getting me to go along with whatever dumb idea he had. It wasn’t just the simple, “I was too young to know better”-moments, either, like when I was four and he marched me off to the woods for a game of “Show Me Yours; I’ll Show You Mine.” No, even as I got older and the antics got dumber I still managed to let myself get pulled into the messes.
Blowing up Missus Fernhager’s mailbox? I got my bottom paddled for being the one to “borrow” Daddy’s lighter to start the fuse on the cherry bomb.
Sending a stray cat on a “river rapids ride” down a stream? I got pneumonia for my trouble after feeling guilty and jumping into the October-chilled waters to save it.
Kissing the small, wrinkled scrotum of Malcom’s friend, Adam, on a dare? Everyone called me “sack breath” until Tina O’Reily went off and got herself pregnant and made herself a new target for all the slut-shamers in our school.
But all of those things felt sort of casual in a way. Though I was too young or too woven in the immediate moments to truly have a scope of them in the grand view of everything, I never really felt that my life was good-and-truly ruined by any of them. I never felt that Malcolm—still a few years from graduating to the “Mack” I’d go on to loathe with every fiber of my being—had talked me into absolute ruination.
Then I found myself in the Creely House’s cellar.
Everyone knew it was abandoned. One day it had been occupied, car in the driveway, lights on in the windows, and radiating with a general air of “somebody lives here,” then, the next day, all of that was just gone. Nobody thought anything of it at first. Nobody said a thing. At first, everyone just figured the old Creely couple had decided to take a drive down South like they were known to talk about to anybody who was willing to listen. Sometimes people went places, and what business was it of their neighbors.
Then the grass kept on growing; the weeds went on claiming what Missus Creely had worked so hard before that to keep unclaimed. Then the second step to the front porch, old and rundown as it was, succumbed to a particularly cruel summer storm, and Mister Creely wasn’t out there the next day to mend it. Then, seeming to test the hushed rumors that had begun to float around, somebody dared to throw a rock through one of the Creely’s front windows. And when not a single holler was uttered from within, hushed rumors turned to whispered certainties. And when, on the days that followed, nobody was called into questioning by the Sherriff, whom everyone was certain an outraged Mister Creely would have phoned to report the act, those whispers grew louder.
It was the kids of the town that came to know that the house was abandoned long before the grown-ups, who still had no reason to suspect anything but an extended vacation. If nothing else, they’d look at the Creely’s increasingly rundown home and think, “They’re gonna have a hell of a time dealing with that when they get back.” And so things went on as they normally would with the grown-up run town, but the kids—the only people who mattered, as far as they were concerned—upgraded the property to the “Creely House.” With this upgrade came a set of dual functions in the eyes of those who mattered: as a hangout for the older kids to smoke dope and diddle one another and as a test of courage for the younger kids.
At fourteen, I was balanced on a fencepost that divided the former from the latter. Most of the kids didn’t even remember the days of “sack breath,” and the whole ordeal with Adam and his raisin-like scrotum had put me off from wanting much to do with boys and the bizarre bundles of flesh that clung to their midsections. It’d be a year-or-so still before I’d have any interest in diddling anybody but myself, and by that time the secret of the Creely House would be discovered by all—grown-ups and kids alike—and the dual functions it once served would mean nothing to anybody. Even still, though I wasn’t up to pairing up with the older kids for their “upstairs” antics, I was certain that I was too old to be lumped with the younger kids. I wasn’t a baby, after all, and I wasn’t about to go getting scared by an abandoned house that was only deemed “creepy” because the last people living there decided to up-and-go.
“An overgrown lawn and a dusty, dark interior did not a haunted house make,” I’d boasted, proud of myself for constructing such an adult-sounding sentence.
Malcolm, who was nearly seventeen and most certainly fell into the group of kids who saw the Creely House as a site for adult rites, saw this as a chance to talk his little sister into something stupid. Whether it was his own curiosity that had motivated it or if he was just a typical A-hole older brother looking to get a cheap scare on his younger sibling would forever remain a mystery, a dumb idea—the dumb idea—had come to Malcolm Chobavich. Then, like all of Malcolm Chobavich’s dumb ideas, I found myself talked into it. That night, armed with an overloaded sense of confidence and an underserved sense of pride, I stole away into the night beside my brother, who’d gone armed with a set of bolt cutters, a couple of pilfered beers from their father’s private refrigerator in the garage, and a brunette with a comical overbite and a lazy eye who Malcolm generously referred to as his “girlfriend.”
I didn’t bother to ask what had happened to the “girlfriend” with the one crooked knee that always bowed sideways when she walked. Near as I could tell and as far as I was concerned, my brother was no different than the weird guy who looted the city dump: snatching up broken things and calling them “mine.” It hadn’t occurred to me then that there was a big difference between collecting broken things and collecting broken people and that there was an even bigger difference when it came to the nature of calling them “mine.” Both of these lessons, however, would come to me in time.
At that moment, I was blissfully unaware of such notions. Malcolm was off to the Creely House to drink their father’s beer and, by his own words, “make smelly fingers,” and I was tagg
ing along to make, by my own words, “history.”
Nobody had ever dared to go into the Creely House’s cellar. This, to be fair, was partly because it was locked with a very large, very sturdy, and very official-looking silver padlock. It was one of the expensive ones, not one of the ones that kids at school used for their lockers or even the sort that our father used on the lockbox he kept on top of his private refrigerator in the garage. No, this was the sort of thing that I could see Mister Creely buying with a credit card rather than just cash. And, with that sort of thing securing the door to the basement, there was a very good, very solid, and very inarguable reason not to go down there.
Until that moment.
Because Malcolm, with his bolt cutters glimmering under each street light that we crossed beneath, had a dumb idea. And because I, with all the spankings and pneumonias and chants of “sack breath,” hadn’t learned a single lesson from past dumb ideas.
A funny thought occurred to me as I crossed the threshold, stepping from one place of darkness to another one. So often with houses, I realized, there was a sort of bizarre metamorphosis that underwent those that served as homes and those that did not. Before the Creely couple had left, I was certain that anybody would have called the subterranean space I was daring to go down into a “basement.” So many houses had basements. It wasn’t uncommon to hear one member of a household announcing to another that they had to run down to the basement, or perhaps they’d ask another to fetch something from the basement. And there may have been some apprehension in those instances—a basement, no matter how often frequented, always seemed to hold at least a sliver of the unknown. But the Creely’s old house, abandoned and since upgraded to the “Creely House,” no longer had a basement. Because places like the Creely House abandoned their “basements” when they became places like the Creely House; places like the Creely House had cellars.
And while a basement might hold a sliver of the unknown, cellars were the places where dead things waited.**HERE
I watched in morbid fascination as my brother brought the gleaming blades of the bolt cutters down on the padlock. Within a few seconds, the expensive-looking padlock fell to the ground, its use destroyed in less than thirty seconds by my brother. I took a deep breath, watching as Malcolm pulled the doors to the cellar open and looked at me, telling me how I’d be the “bravest girl in school” if I went first. I knew I shouldn’t have listened, should’ve bolted right out of there then and there. But I didn’t. As dumb as Malcolm was, I was no smarter and I hated myself for just falling right into his clutches.
Finding the nerve to move, I stepped forward towards the dark entrance. The darkness seemed to crawl out the cellar and I felt the flutter in my stomach as every part of me screamed to turn and run. At Malcolm’s challenging stare, I was able to hold it together and move down the first step.
Then another.
Then another.
When I was halfway down the stairs, I dared to look back and frowned at the sight I was greeted with. Malcolm’s grinning face as waved to me, telling me to have fun, as the doors to the cellar came crashing down, leaving me in almost complete darkness on the stairs. I could already feel the wave of tears beginning to fall down my face. I didn’t want to feel this weak from my brother.
I hated him!
Moving up, I screamed out for him to open the doors. Instead of saying anything, I could hear him moved the padlock back on the door and knew even trying to leave through those doors would do no good. Gulping, I turned back and once again began my descent. I silently thanked the small windows that allowed a fraction of light through them.
I wouldn’t thank those windows for long.
As I finally made my way off the stairs, I remembered the hatch I’d seen when following Malcolm around the house. I recognized it like the one we had at our place and remembered that while you couldn’t access it from outside, it did have a latch on this inside. If I could find the hatch, I’d be home-free. I grinned, thinking about the face Malcolm would give when he saw that I had gotten out all on my own.
That thought alone gave me enough courage to begin to walk through the room. That’s when the smell hit me. It was awful, reminding me of the time my mother had left a package of meat on the counter overnight. It had been an awful summer and the meat didn’t stand a chance against the heat. The smell we woke up to that morning was a fraction of the intense smell I was encountering now. I clenched my eyes shut for a moment as my mind raced on just what kind of thing could make that smell.
Nothing pleasant.
As I continued through the dark room, I tried to keep my gaze focused in front of me. Tried to ignore the waft that was growing evermore stronger as I made my way through the room. I imagined that if I looked to right, I’d be able to see exactly what was producing this stink.
I didn’t want to.
I tried to stop myself.
But, they did say that curiosity killed the cat.
And there certainly was a death.
I looked over and spotted Missus Creely’s body lying on the ground. I gasped, part of me wondering if maybe she had just fallen asleep downstairs. The other part of me knew. The part of me that was too logical for its own good. I could see that there was a dark stain that had formed under body and I could all but imagine the pool of blood it had once been. Missus Creely’s head was tilted upward and I realized I was looking into her eyes. Her dead, cold lifeless eyes. Something small moved past her parted lips and I swallowed back the scream that threatened to spill past my own lips.
I keeled over, my stomach rolling as I let loose a hard dry heave. Luckily I hadn’t eaten much that day and my body hadn’t found enough substance to throw up. I looked back, realizing that those were maggots. My mind went back to the meat, remembering the mass of maggots that had begun to claim the rotted meat as their own.
This was too much.
I had to get out!
I scrambled away from where I’d been standing, turning my back and fighting with the image of Missus Creely rising and shambling after me. Too many zombie movies for my own good. I silently cursed Romero’s name for the new fear I was feeling. A beacon of light shone ahead of me and I saw the window that was right about the hatch. Moving forward, I unlocked the hatch and pushed out, falling forward and landing face-first in the grass in the process.
I was out.
I was free.
I needed to get out of there.
So I ran. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. My tears continued to fall and I hadn’t even realized I’d been screaming. Everything had been so hazy.
Everything had been so wrong.
And it was all Malcolm’s fault.
****
It was all Malcolm’s fault!
ALL MALCOM’S—
I woke up, crying out in rage and sadness and realized I was sitting up. I blinked a bit, calming myself and fighting the part of me that accepted to see Missus Creely’s body if I looked beside me. A bang on the wall made me realize that I had been screaming and I wondered how long I’d been doing it for.
Candy called from the other room, “You okay, Mia?”
“I’m fine, Candy,” I bit my lip in embarrassment. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve all had our moments,” Candy’s voice was muffled and I realized she was probably already falling back asleep.
Screaming was normal here and a part of me hated that that was the case. The other part of me, still stuck in the dream, it seemed, screamed to run. It screamed for me to run and never look back. When I was able to calm both sides, I moved to lie down once more.
It was such bullshit when people said talking about the past helped to heal. It only seemed to reopen old wounds for me.
I closed my eyes, thinking back on my night with Jace, not thinking about telling him my history with my brother. I smiled, thinking about tomorrow and the calm excitement that filled me was enough to get me back to sleep.
I couldn’t wait for tomorro
w.
PART 3
Crazy in Love
ELEVEN
~JACE~
I couldn’t believe it
I honestly couldn’t believe it!
A date?
Me? On a date?
It seemed so surreal. It seemed so impossible. It seemed so…
It seemed so right?
I ran my hand through my hair for the quite possibly hundredth time that day and glanced down at my watch. I had about twenty minutes before I had to leave. How had I managed to kill nearly an hour just fucking with my hair? How…
Chill out, Jason. Just chill.
And so I did.
I chilled.
For roughly forty-five minutes.
The night before had been different—I’d felt right, felt good, and everything had just seemed to fit; Mia wasn’t like any girl, like any person, I’d ever known—and I needed that back. But, then again, that was what had me so flustered. Part of me was even terrified to go through with this because it had seemed so right; so different.
Was this wrong? What would Anne…
Anne is dead!
I ran my hand through my hair (again) and took a deep breath, trying to settle my nerves.
It didn’t help at all.
Glancing over at my dead (wife) stereo, I found myself wishing I could get her to sing me some Doors; sing me anything at that point. So many records…
Water, water everywhere…
And my wife is dead.
Groaning, I rested a hand on the old (girl) thing. (She) It had been with me through so much. I bit my lip, remembering Danny telling me he’d do what he could to fix (her) it. Unless there was no fixing (her) it. Then he’d said…
“Then we’ll see ‘bout getting’ ya a new one; a better one!”
I felt something in me snap—a sting in the back of my head, flooding my vision with red—and I screamed, either in pain or anger, and fell to my knees as a wave of memories jolted me. I shook my head, clenching my forehead, trying to drown out the visions.
CROWS MC SET-TO LOAD Page 18
