“Right there. The money was sticking out and I grabbed it, went straight home. There could be a bazillion dollars here, Mike.”
Mike put his palm out. “Quiet down, fool. We don’t need nobody seein’ us out here. Let’s get this shit done.” He pointed toward the side of the house. “I’m gonna hit the back, you check the front,” he said. “And stay quiet.”
James nodded, trained his flashlight on the ground and squinted. Mike made his way around the side of the house.
Keep him safe, Mike.
Mike knew Mama would have killed him if she knew he had brought James to that house. It was the last place in the world she would have wanted her children spending time, but Mike didn’t know what else to do. They were already struggling as it was, but now they were back at square one, and getting a job was out of the question. Mike had tried that route before and it had led to nowhere. His hopelessness spoke louder than his fear, louder than Mama’s voice.
For James to have a chance, Mike knew they had to escape the Oak. But it seemed impossible. He saved money every chance he could, but it just wasn’t enough, would never be enough.
Sorry, Mama, he thought. Just one night. One night, and we’ll be out.
Just as the thought crept into his mind, the house groaned. Mike was beside it, almost to the back yard, and he jumped back, stared up at the looming wooden beast. Breathing. It sounded like a rattling breath, almost a cough.
And buzzing. He knew he heard buzzing.
He stood there, listened. His hand went to the handle of his pistol.
Nothing.
He looked back toward the front, saw the faint glow of James’s flashlight sweeping over the dirt and weeds.
He shook his head, chuckled at himself. He’d heard so many stories about this place, actually being in the presence of the legendary house was fucking with him. No matter how tough he tried to convince himself to be, his bones still rattled. He couldn’t stop glancing at the house as he rounded it, as if at any moment it would reach down and get him, swallow him whole into the hell of its stomach.
As he entered the yard, he stopped for a moment, pulled out his flashlight, and took in the scene. Even blacker than the front, the yard was a cemetery of children’s memories. A swingset sat there like the skeleton of some giant animal, the metal brown and orange. A single shoe lay beside it, caked in mud, the shoelaces still tied. Candy wrappers decorated the dirt, multi-colored lesions on the brown surface.
Mike wondered how any of that could still be there. Mama told him the man had died when she was a child, over thirty years ago. He guessed he and James weren’t the first to come snooping around the place. Generations of kids must have been curious, maybe dared each other to sit in the shadow of the house, maybe on Halloween, eating candy and trying not to run away.
Still, Mike was tempted to flee, scoop up his brother and never look back.
But then he saw it. Sticking out of the soil just in front of him. Bending down, he clawed at the dirt with his fingertips, pulled the wad of money out. When he blew on the bills and revealed Ben Franklin’s face, he nearly shouted.
How much fuckin’ money is out here? he thought. Why is it out here?
He pocketed the cash. The candy wrappers crinkled under his feet as he crept across the yard, looking for any objects emerging from the dirt.
His sneaker hit something and he nearly lost his footing. He examined it, couldn’t figure out what the hell it was. Kicked it a few times, but it stayed buried. Kneeling, he scooped away some of the surrounding dirt. It looked furry, thick. A bag of some kind maybe? He grabbed hold of it, yanked, put his back into it. It came loose with a tearing sound and Mike fell backward onto his ass.
A teddy bear, its flattened fur dread-locked and matted with dirt and…something moving.
“Shit.” Mike tossed the maggot covered bear away, wiped his hands on his shirt. The writhing white bodies exploded from the bear as it made contact with the ground like pale fireworks, and scurried across the dark dirt in all directions.
A cold, tight grip took his arm, and he screamed, turned with a raised fist.
“It’s me, it’s me,” James said. His hands out in surrender, he smiled up at Mike.
“Don’t fuckin’ sneak up on me. Shit.”
“Sorry,” James said. “You find anything?”
Mike pulled out the money, waved it in front of James’s face. “How 'bout you?”
“No.” He kicked the dirt, shoved his hands into his pockets. “I just found garbage, lots of old-looking candy and stuff.” He looked around the backyard. “Where did all this come from?”
“Don’t know. Probably kids fuckin’ around,” he said. “Look, we could be out here all night, for weeks lookin’ for buried money.”
“But you found some. You wanna give up already?”
Mike swung his flashlight toward the teddy bear. “You see that? Who knows what other nasty shit is buried out here.”
“We can’t give up. We can’t,” James said. He stomped his feet; the whites of his eyes looked neon in the blackness of the night. “There’s got to be more somewhere, there has to be. I’m not leaving, Mike.”
“Relax, fool,” Mike said. He stepped toward his brother, grabbed hold of the back of his neck, squeezed gently. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
“We’re not?”
Keep him safe.
“We’re goin’ inside.”
Mike stood at the locked back door, kicked it. The rotted wood caved in and his foot disappeared into it. He yanked it back out, his shoe and jeans covered in warped splinters; the door swung open. He peered into the house, saw nothing but a cavernous void.
“Why, Mike?” James said. He tugged on Mike’s shirt. “Why do we have to go inside? There’s money out here.”
Mike grabbed James’s wrist, pulled his shirt from the small fingers. “I told you. We can’t spend all fuckin’ night out there diggin’ shit up,” he said. “Just think of what might be inside this place. Be a lot easier to search the house than to dig in the fuckin’ dirt.”
“But I don’t wanna go in there.” His voice was whiny, almost feminine.
“It won’t be long. If there’s nothin’ in there, we leave, come back tomorrow with shovels. Okay?” Mike didn’t want to go into the house any more than James did, but he sucked it up.
James stuck out his lips and crossed his arms. The moonlight twinkled off the crooked wet lines running down his cheeks.
Mike could hear Mama’s furious cries inside his head, begging him to leave, to take his little brother home where it was safe. Where the devil couldn’t get them.
But Mike was sick of it. Where it was safe? It was never safe in the Oak, on their street, in their tiny house barely big enough for the three of them, infested with rats and cockroaches, ready to crumble in on itself at any given moment. Crackheads and prostitutes roamed around the streets like the living dead.
Safe? He knew it was only a matter of time before things got worse, and he didn’t want to be around when that happened. James deserved better, deserved a chance. He knew he had to do something drastic, had to make a move, even if it didn’t seem like the right move at the time.
The devil lives there.
Mike told himself he didn’t believe any of that shit. That they were just ghost stories, told throughout the years, embellished by every passing generation like a game of telephone. This was his chance, he could feel it. This was their ride out of town.
You’ll see, Mama. I won’t let anything happen to him.
“Get your flashlight ready,” Mike said. “We’ll make this quick.”
James wiped his face with the collar of his shirt, nodded. He clicked on the light and got behind Mike.
Mike crept inside, his brother’s hands clutch-ing at his shirt again. The pistol was out and he pointed it into the house as they entered. He was more worried about crackheads than ghosts and devils at the moment.
As they entered the house, the air became thic
k, like trying to breathe yogurt. The smell was a mixture of rotting wood and old news-paper… and something else. Something dead. Sweat beaded over Mike’s body, rolled down his skin.
James coughed. “I can’t breathe in here.”
Mike turned, shone his light onto James’s face. “Be quiet. You—”
Buzzing. It vibrated the air from somewhere behind him. Mike turned toward the vast darkness, pointed his flashlight and gun into it.
“What?”
“Shh.” Mike aimed the light at the ceiling, saw only cracked paint and swollen wood. The sound ceased, faded away into nothing. Mike swung the flashlight back in front of him.
A face floated in the blackness, pale as corpse flesh. Its mouth opened, wider than should be possible, and hundreds of tiny black bodies scurried and zigzagged out, blacking out the face, blending it back into the darkness.
And then it was gone.
Mike dropped the flashlight, nearly fired a bullet. He back pedaled, stepped on James’s foot.
“Ah, watch out.” James wrapped his arms around Mike’s waist, but it only tangled them up worse, and they fell to the floor in a knot of limbs. “Get off me, you’re hurting me.”
“D-did you see that?” Mike rubbed his eyes, squinted into the house. His sight finally began adjusting and the blackness melted away, revealed the misshapen walls and floor. There was nothing there, only emptiness.
“See what?” James grabbed Mike, squeezed. “Stop messing around, Mike.”
“I’m not… I thought I saw…” He shook his head, exhaled. Climbing to his feet, he yanked James up by the hand. “It was nothing. Let’s get this shit over with.”
James swung his flashlight like a sword and sliced open the darkness in ragged slashes. “No, what did you see? Tell me,” he said. “A… a ghost?”
Just hearing the word made Mike’s stomach plummet. He snorted. “Don’t be stupid.”
Looking around, Mike realized they were standing in the middle of what used to be a kitchen. The tile was broken, missing in some places. There were holes in the walls here and there, open wounds in the aged, crumbling sheetrock. There was no refrigerator or stove, but gaping holes where they should have been, the niches stained a dark brown, made even sicklier in the yellow glow of their flashlights.
“It stinks, Mike. I wanna go home.”
A slight movement in his peripheral. From one of the holes in the wall. Mike shone his light toward it, took careful steps in that direction.
“Mike?”
“Oh, shit.” Money. Another wad of folded cash, bigger than the last, waved at him from the rotting crevice. He pulled it out of the wall, showed it to James as he did a small dance. “I told you, man. I fuckin’ told you.”
James smiled, reached for the money. Mike let him take it, rubbed the boy’s unkempt hair.
“Are we gonna be rich? Can I get a Playstation?”
Mike laughed. “You crazy, fool. We get enough cash, we’ll get two of those mother-fuckers.”
“Cool!” James jumped up and down, dropped his flashlight. The beam reached across the floor, splashed light onto the far wall.
Flies. So many flies. Crawling over each other on the wall, vibrating, buzzing and scuttling. Beneath them on the floor was a writhing sheet of maggots, pulsating, making a wet clicking sound that mixed with the hum of the flies.
“Goddamn.” Mike added the light from his flashlight, and when it hit the flies, they burst into the air. The moving mass of multi-colored bodies shattered like a plate of glass, and the flies were everywhere at once. Blue, green, and black zooming all around them, all with orange or red eyes.
“Ahhh… get them… get them off me.” James swung at the air, spat and snorted.
Mike did the same, tried to keep his eyes and mouth shut as the flies collided with his face, crawled over his skin. The buzzing was all around them, like a revving chainsaw.
“Mike!”
And then they were gone. A few stray flies still crawled on them, on the walls and floor, but the dark cloud dissipated, moved off deeper into the house somewhere.
Mike swatted at the last of the bugs, shook the chill from his spine. “Fuck, man.”
James danced in place, wiping at his arms, chest, and stomach. His buck teeth bared, he breathed in and out like he was having an asthma attack.
Mike grabbed him by the shoulders, held him there until he calmed. “Chill, fool. They gone.”
“Why were there so many? I’ve never seen so many flies before.”
Mike shrugged. “This place is old. Probably worse things than flies up in here.” The floating white face flashed in his mind’s eye, sent a hot tremor over his body, a spasm up his spine.
James pointed toward the widening puddle of maggots, all retreating toward the darkness of the house, but slowly making their way across the floor. “You mean like those?”
Mike reached down, grabbed James’s flashlight from the floor. A couple of maggots inched up the handle and he blew them off, held the flashlight out for James to take. “Let’s do this thing. Quicker we fill these backpacks, quicker we can get the fuck outta here.”
“I don’t wanna touch that. It had those worms on it.” James put a fist to his mouth, wrinkled his nose, then burped.
“Just take it. Follow me.” Mike thrust the light into his brother’s hand, turned toward the dining room. Where the layer of flies had been, multiple holes decorated the wall. And the sparkle of what could only be diamonds shone from within them.
“You see that?” James said.
“Yep… I sho do.” Mike ignored the crunching and squishing of the maggots’ bodies under his sneakers as he approached with an outstretched hand and wide eyes. “You right, fool.”
“What?”
“We gonna be rich.” He pulled the necklace from the hole, found even more jewelry beneath it. Rings and bracelets and watches, all encrusted with diamonds. He peeled the backpack from his shoulders, pulled it open with both hands, tossed the treasure in. “Check all the holes in the walls.” His voice came out squeaky and his hands shook. Excitement swirled in his chest like hurricane winds.
James stuffed the folded money into his backpack, made his way to the opposite wall in the dining room.
Mike stuffed his hand into another hole; his knuckles collided with something cold and hard. He grabbed a handful of it, pulled it out for inspection. Gold coins. Each one flawless, covered in markings he didn’t understand. “James, you got anything over there?”
“Money! Lots of money.” He giggled and Mike heard him unzip his backpack. “Is this real?”
As Mike let the coins roll from his palms into the backpack, he wondered the same thing. Too good to be true? But it was true, his bag was getting heavy with riches. He wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t happening, but it was. “Just keep packing it up, man. Don’t stop.”
“I did good, didn’t I? I made you proud, right?”
Mike chuckled, moved to the next opening in the wall. He reached in blindly, looked toward James and nodded with a wide grin. “You did fuckin’ gr…”
His hand plunged elbow deep in an ocean of writhing, squishy bodies. He gasped, dropped his flashlight, and when he tried to yank his hand away, he took part of the wall off with it, the wood soft like moist cake.
A waterfall of maggots poured out, rushed over his sneakers. They shimmied up his arm, danced on his skin. “Shit!” He brushed them off and backed away. They scooted across the floor at him, as if they wanted to taste more of him, devour his flesh.
Then James screamed. High-pitched and deafening.
Mike spun away from the approaching larvae and pulled out his pistol at the same time. He expected to see an emaciated squatter or something, clawing at his brother with boney fingers.
James held the hand of a corpse, rotted down to the bone, its body alive with the movement of more maggots. The body was small, smaller than James. As the boy tried to shake it off, sheets of the wriggling larvae poured forth, splashed
onto the floor. James fell backward onto his rear, kicked at the bones until finally breaking free.
“Mike, Mike get me outta here!” He jumped up and ran to Mike, wrapped his arms around his waist and buried his face in his stomach. His body jerked with his weeping and he wailed.
Without hesitation, Mike pointed his gun at the corpse. He expected it to stand, reach out for them as it skated across the layer of maggots. But it just lay there, motionless but for the wiggling of its inhabitants. The gash in the wall where the aged bones must have come from oozed more squirming paleness, and flies crawled out. Spread across the wall like a disease, some launching into the air.
“It’s dead. You’re okay, you’re fine.” Mike massaged the back of James’s neck.
“I don’t care… take me home. Let’s go, please let’s go.” He kept his face buried in Mike’s abdomen as he spoke, sniffled between words.
Fuck it, Mike thought. We probably got more than enough to start a new life. The weight of the backpack made his shoulders ache.
“All right. Okay… let’s go.” He knew he should probably call the cops, let them know there were human remains in the house. But he wouldn’t. He’d never called the cops for anything, knew it was pointless. Especially in the Oak. They only showed themselves to drag people to jail, meet their quotas. Never to help anybody.
But the cops were here, he thought. Mama said they found the man’s body here, with the bodies of children. How could they miss this?
Worthless fucking pigs.
And as fast as it took to blink, the house went dark. It was already dark, incredibly dark, but now, it was as if they stood in a void, in some endless limbo where nothing existed except each other. And Mike only knew James was there because the boy never let go of him, squeezed tighter, whimpered.
His grip tightened even more when the voice whispered into their ears. Guttural and thick as if coated in mucus. Each word accentuated with an insectual buzz.
“Sweet little kiddies.”
“No… No!” James shook his head, smeared snot and tears onto Mike’s shirt. Mike shut his eyes and held on to his brother.
Infinity House Page 2
