Family Skulls

by Luc Reid

  Seth froze. Should he help her? But the Larshes would come out in just a minute for sure—except the barn wasn’t right near the house, and even from where Seth was hidden the screams didn’t come through too loud.

  He was up before he could stop himself, running around to the side door the girl had used. What would the Larshes do when they found out he’d been spying on them? Would they curse his family some more, or just Seth himself?

  Or would they kill him outright? Would he end up one of the skulls on their shelf?

  It was dark in the barn, and even as his eyes began to adjust he couldn’t see through the dust billowing up from whatever had just collapsed. The girl’s screams weren’t at all hard to hear in here: they were piercing.

  “I’m coming!” shouted Seth. “I’m going to help you! Where are you?”

  “Help! Don’t let me fall! Please, please!” the girl shrieked. At least he could tell the general direction from her voice, through the dust cloud. He walked hesitantly through it, feeling ahead with his foot for places where the floor might be broken, stumbling on fallen beams and coughing in the dust. Then he saw her, on a tiny shelf of rotted wood two stories above him—a shelf that was all that remained of what must have been the floor up there. Even that bare remnant was tilted, and she was clutching a thick post and screaming, trying not to slide down it and fall down onto the old tractor and rusty farm implements that were piled up beneath her.

  A ladder was nailed to the wall about twenty feet from her, and it looked like it might still be strong enough to hold a person up. He’d have to climb it and make his way along the wall beams to her, then guide her back the same way. It didn’t look very safe, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it, but he couldn’t hope her perch would hold much longer.

  His stomach churning with fear, Seth ran outside and yelled at the top of his lungs: “Come quick! The barn floor collapsed! There’s a girl in there!” Then he ran back inside and clambered back over heaps of fallen wood to the ladder.

  Twice he had to jump over holes in the floor that led down into some dark place under the barn, probably a cellar. But he made it to the ladder, and once there he found at least the bottom rungs solid. He made his way up as carefully as he could considering that he was trying to climb quickly. “Hold on!” he called out to the girl between coughs. “I’ll be right there, and then you’ll be safe!”

  Another lie. The girl kept screaming.

  Despite a few broken rungs, the ladder got him up to a beam that ran along the wall toward her. It wasn’t wide: he had to use the beam as a toehold, inching along with his chest against the wall. The only workable handholds were gaps in the siding of the barn walls. In some places the beam was covered with old hay or rotted wood, and he had to kick it clear or step over for fear of slipping.

  He turned the corner: more than halfway there. The girl was watching him now, wide eyed, her face covered with brown dust except for the tear tracks and a drip from where the crying was making her nose run. He came to a small stretch of intact floor and moved carefully along it, sliding his feet along it instead of stepping. Then he was past it and sidling along the beam again.

  “Oh God!” cried a woman’s voice from below. Seth looked down and saw Mrs. Larsh at the door to the barn with her hands over her mouth. Next to her was the young man, and as Seth watched the young man ran to the ladder and started to climb. He was much heavier than Seth; the bottom rung broke under his foot. Seth tore his attention away and focused on the girl.

  Finally he reached her, and he held one hand out to her while grabbing a solid post with the other. She was panicked and refused to take his hand until the section of floor beneath her creaked and began to shift. Then she screamed again and scrambled toward him; he grabbed her arm as a board cracked under her foot, and he hauled her onto the beam with him. The floor she had been standing on broke away and tumbled down to bash against the tractor’s hood.

  “Look at me: just me,” he said. “We’re going back down, and there’s a ladder all ready for us. You want to stop and take a deep breath? Sometimes I do that when I’m feeling a little scared.”

  The girl nodded her head, wide-eyed, tears still streaming down her face. Then she took a deep breath. The dust had begun to settle a little, and it seemed to help her.

  “OK,” Seth said. “Now let’s do a little walking. We’re going to walk on our toes, like ballet dancers and mountain climbers do. You have to hold onto the wall. It’s very tricky, but I know you can do it if you try.”

  The girl nodded her head again. Maybe the ballet dancer thing had made sense to her; Seth didn’t know. But she crept along the beam with him, holding on for dear life. They reached the little section of intact floor and Seth put one foot on it.

  “Junie!” cried a man’s voice from below, and Seth looked down to see Jerry Larsh with a long aluminum ladder. Not paying attention to how he was settling his weight, he lost his footing as the floor broke and half-slid, half-fell down the wall. Junie screamed again, once. Seth found himself swinging above the pile of rusted tools, both hands on the dirty beam above, with no toeholds beneath his feet and no way to climb back up. Below, he heard Mr. Larsh hastily extending the ladder to climb up and rescue Junie.

  “Help!” he cried weakly, hopelessly, knowing that no one could help him. “Please, please help!”

  “Just hang on! I’ll have you down in a minute!” said Mr. Larsh. The words hit Seth like a bucket of ice water. Had Mr. Larsh had just offered to help? That was impossible. That was so impossible it was stupid to even have heard it.

  But as he looked, Mr. Larsh didn’t just set the ladder down on the far side of his daughter, where it would have been easiest to get to her, but rather brought it as close to Seth as he could manage, so close he nearly bumped Seth with it as the top of the ladder came telescoping up to just below Junie’s feet.

  “I’ve got it, son: just climb right down!” said Mr. Larsh.

  Seth stretched his leg out and hooked a rung of the aluminum ladder with his foot. He got a foothold and slowly eased his weight onto it, moving his handholds over bit by bit until he was solidly on the ladder. He looked up at the petrified girl and climbed up to her, guiding her feet onto the ladder and descending just behind her, holding on tight so that if she bumped him he wouldn’t lose his grip. She had stopped crying, but he could hear her ragged breath as they descended.

  The ladder stayed solid as rock; Mr. Larsh was holding it in place below, and the young man had come over to stand behind it and do the same. Seth could hear Mrs. Larsh crying in the background.

  His feet touched the floor, and he lifted the girl down to her waiting father, who was crying himself. She clung to him as though she was still going to fall and he was the only solid thing in sight.

  “I was so scared!” she said, crying. “I was so so scared, and I was going to fall!”

  “It’s all right, June Bug,” Mr. Larsh whispered. “It’s OK, our new friend helped you.”

  “He’s my guardian angel,” Junie said. “He appears and disappears, and he’s not even afraid of spiders on him.”

  “Yes, he’s your guardian angel,” Mr. Larsh said, squeezing his eyes shut. He blinked away a few tears of his own and held out one hand to Seth to shake. “I’m Jerry Larsh,” he said. “And I just can’t tell you how glad I am to meet you, whoever you are.”

  “I’m Seth … Johnson. Seth Johnson.”

  “Seth, could we have the honor of getting to know you over a little dinner?”

  “Or we could buy you a car, or put you through college or something!” shouted Mrs. Larsh, who was making her way as quickly as she could across the detritus to her daughter.

  What were they saying? Did they really expect him to believe that they had no idea who he was? The fake last name had been reflex, but he didn’t for a moment think they didn’t know who the Quitmans were. You can’t keep up a curse over someone if you don’t even know who they are: his mom had drilled all the details of curs
e keeping into his head long ago. Knowing how the curse worked was simple survival for Seth’s family.

  Maybe the Larshes had been so distracted by events that they didn’t recognize him. If that was the case he should leave immediately, even though it would look suspicious.

  But then, he’d probably never have as good a chance to spy on them as he did at that moment. How would they explain the skulls? Would they turn on him as soon as they got in the house? The safe thing was to walk away, but if Seth were worried about safety foremost he wouldn’t have been spying on them in the first place.

  “I have to be getting home pretty soon, but maybe I could come in and clean up. I mean, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  Mrs. Larsh finally reached the group and snatched Junie out of Mr. Larsh’s arms. Then she leaned over and kissed Seth on the cheek. “You can keep the bathtub if you like it,” she said.

  They headed to the house, Mr. and Mrs. Larsh in front, Junie looking over her mother’s shoulder directly at Seth, and the young man bringing up the rear. Seth looked back once and saw the young man looking at him with a thoughtful expression. Seth hastily turned his head forward again.

  And then they reached the front door, and for the second time in as many days Seth disappeared into the Larshes’ house.

  Chapter 6

  Junie went with her father to clean up. Mrs. Larsh—Tessa, as she told Seth to call her—opened the linen closet, closed it again as though she had forgotten what she was doing, and then walked away. So apparently she wasn’t able to help him, even if Jerry was. Junie certainly wasn’t: she had been fooled by the look-at-the-spider-on-me trick the day before.

  “Up here,” said the young man, climbing the stairs. When Seth hesitated, the young man turned, smiling, and motioned him to follow. Seth got some washcloths and a towel from the linen closet and went up after him.

  “I’m Grant,” the young man said, leading Seth up a hallway and down that to a bathroom. “Junie’s my half sister. It’s a lucky thing you saved her today. You have no idea.” Then he clapped Seth on the back and left him there.

  There wasn’t much cleaning up Seth could actually do. He washed his hands and face, then used one damp washcloth to get the worst of the dust and grime from the barn off his clothes. That would have to do until he got home. But he hadn’t come in to clean up anyway; he’d come to get a better look at the house and to try to find something he could use against the Larshes.

  That they were all being so welcoming disturbed him more than if they had been cruel. They acted as though they didn’t know who he was or that they were keeping a curse over him—but they were. Seth knew who had cast the curse in the first place, and it took a blood descendant to keep a curse once cast. And the blood descendent who was running the family these days was Jerry Larsh.

  So why were they all acting as though they were new friends instead of old enemies? The only thing Seth could think of was that they wanted something from him—not a comforting thought. But then, they might just be toying with him. Not that that was any better.

  Just to be thorough, he spent a few minutes looking all through the bathroom and out the window for anything he could use. Outside, the roof slanted down toward the back yard where the sugarhouse stood. Below him, Seth could see the roof of the tool shed. Nothing of interest there.

  The medicine cabinet held the usual medicines, cotton balls, tweezers, nail clippers, and miscellaneous band-aids, along with several wadded-up bandanas—which were empty. He couldn’t find anything interesting about the pipes, the radiator, the claw foot tub, the sink … it was just a bathroom. Well, what had he expected?

  Having done what he could, he threw the dirty washcloths and towel into a hamper in the corner of the bathroom and opened the door to look out into the hall.

  Across from him was Grant’s room, where Grant sat on the floor next to an open laptop computer, staring at papers that were scattered across the floor as he dangled something over them.

  Seth moved forward quietly, looking around the room. It didn’t seem like it could be where Grant really lived: it was neat and boring, with models on shelves and two old computers stacked in a corner. A single, large suitcase sat on a low dresser near the bed. The wall was decorated with evenly-spaced posters of science fiction movies that had come out when Seth was in junior high, and with half a dozen framed certificates. No TV, no books … it felt like a room someone had more or less moved out of. Maybe Grant was in college.

  He could make out the papers on the floor a little better now: they were covered with precisely-formatted words and numbers, some kind of computer programming language. Grant seemed to be reading through it, dangling his pendant or whatever it was idly as he scanned the pages.

  Seth couldn’t see anything he could use in that room. What he really should do was get a closer look at the skulls. In the mean time, he’d better keep up the friendly act. “What’re you doing?” he said finally.

  The young man jerked his head up and stuffed the pendant in a pocket of his jeans. “Looking for a bug in some code,” he said. He continued to watch Seth, but didn’t say anything more. Seth didn’t want to stay but thought it would seem rude to leave. The silence stretched out over faint background noises: plumbing running somewhere, and a few isolated thumps from the direction of the living room.

  “Well, good luck,” Seth said. Grant smiled at him and nodded, then turned back to study the code. Seth slipped out of the room and went downstairs.

  At the foot of the stairs he found himself next to the living room, the same place he had been the day before just before he saw the skulls. This time the door to the living room was closed, and he could hear hushed voices from behind it, barely. Glancing around first, Seth pressed his ear to the door.

  “We don’t have to move them,” Jerry was saying.

  “You’re going to spook him with your weird stuff,” said Tessa, sounding agitated.

  “I’ll just tell him—”

  “No! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it doesn’t belong there.”

  Jerry sighed. “What are you looking at?” he said, as though to someone else. Then Seth heard hollow sounds he couldn’t identify, and footsteps leaving the room.

  “You can go on in,” said a loud voice from the top of the stair. Seth started, looking up to see Grant watching him. He’d been stupid to stand out there, listening in plain sight: obviously Seth wasn’t the only one who could move quietly. Grant came down the stairs, directly toward him.

  “I—” said Seth, but Grant shook his head and smiled.

  “It’s a weird family,” he said. “I don’t blame you for listening in, but don’t let my dad catch you at it. He’d—well, never mind. Just be careful, huh?”

  Grant walked past, opening the door, and Seth followed. Tessa was folding up a newspaper while Junie sat on the couch with a little violin in her lap, quietly plucking at the strings. Seth forced himself not to immediately turn and look at the skulls, but the back of his neck prickled and he imagined the empty sockets staring at him.

  “Seth didn’t know whether or not to come in,” Grant said. “Were you guys arguing again?”

  Tessa gave Grant a searching look. “Well, we didn’t throw anything this time.”

  Junie rolled her eyes. “She’s exaggerating. They never throw things. She always exaggerates.”

  “New word, Junie?” said Grant.

  “I’ve known that word since I was a little baby,” Junie said.

  “Well, that’s certainly an exaggeration,” said Tessa.

  “It’s a good thing for Junie you were around,” said Grant. “How’d you happen to be out near the barn?”

  “What difference does that make?” said Tessa.

  Grant shrugged. “No difference: I was only wondering.”

  “I was just walking,” Seth said. “I like to hike through the woods all around here. Some places it’s pretty interesting.” At least that was half true. He did go walking in the woods sometim
es. Who didn’t?

  “I don’t care if you came to steal the car,” Tessa said. “As a matter of fact, after what you did out in the barn you’re welcome to have it if you wants it. Would you like it?” she said.

  Seth grinned. “No thanks; I’m good.”

  Jerry walked back in and looked around at all of them. “Seth! Can I give you the tencent tour?”

  “It’s your turn to make dinner tonight,” Tessa said. “Grant and Junie and I can give him the walk-through.”

  “Huh. Guess I can’t get out of it that way.”

  “Short leash, dad,” Grant said.

  Jerry let out a laugh that sounded like a bark. “Don’t show him the secret room though, OK? What am I making?”

  “I want cheese spaghetti with HUGE meatballs,” Junie said, setting the violin in an open case and hopping down from the couch. “And biscuits, and Jell-O for dessert with whipped cream. And no vegetables.”

  “I don’t think—” Tessa said, but she looked up and saw Jerry giving her a look and she shrugged. “OK, it’s been a rough day: you can choose the dinner. But we’re having some kind of vegetable. Come on, Seth.”

  As they left the room, Seth looked up at the bookcase where the skulls had been.

  It was empty.

  The house was so similar to other houses Seth had seen—including his own—that it almost seemed familiar. The floors were old pine, stained dark. They creaked as you walked down them. Originally there had been only two bedrooms, Tessa was telling him, but twenty or thirty years ago Jerry’s father had built a one-story addition onto the back, adding two bedrooms, a little storage room, and a back porch.

  When they got to the storage room, Junie threw the door open and announced what it was in officious tones. Boxes were stacked up among piles and drifts of miscellaneous things: old clothes, broken toys, space heaters. It was about ten feet by ten feet, with a linoleum floor and one small window.