by Brian Harmon
Kevin turned the Jeep around and headed back toward the city limits. He was considerably burlier than his father. It came as no surprise to anyone who looked at him that he was attending college on a football scholarship. He was perfectly built for the sport…which was good, since there seemed to be little else he wanted to do with his life.
“You want me to take you to the hospital?”
“Can’t. No time.”
“What’s so freakin’ important?”
“It’s a long story.”
Kevin glanced over at him, an eyebrow raised. “Long story, huh? Like the one last year about how Dad ended up locked in an empty cabin at an abandoned nudist resort almost two hundred miles north of where I dropped him off?”
Eric didn’t look back at him. He was cleaning the blood off his face with a disinfectant pad. “A lot like that story, yeah. It’s kind of weird.”
Kevin shook his head. “My family’s messed up, man.”
“Not your whole family,” Eric corrected him. “Just your uncle. Your dad, too. A little bit. But mostly your uncle.”
“Right. So where are we going?”
“You’re going to drop me off on Hosler Avenue. I’ve got something to do over there.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Of course you don’t.”
Eric wadded up the soiled disinfectant wipe and then dabbed at the gash in front of his ear with a clean gauze. “I’m sorry.”
“Everyone’s always sorry, but no one wants to tell me what’s going on.”
He was a bright kid. He always had been. Eric knew he couldn’t accept the answers they’d given him. There were too many things that just didn’t add up. He’d seen too much of it. He knew there were pictures of creatures that shouldn’t exist. He knew his father and uncle had traveled impossible distances on foot in very short periods of time. He knew that Eric had gone somewhere incredible. Yet no one wanted to talk about these undeniably profound experiences.
And now he was picking up his physically battered uncle on the side of the road.
He fixed a bandage over the gash and then began dabbing at the injury on the top of his head. “If I told you the whole story, you wouldn’t believe it. You’d think I’d gone crazy.”
“I already think you’ve gone crazy. I think everyone’s gone crazy.”
Eric couldn’t honestly say he thought that was unfair. “Okay,” he said, turning to look at him. “I’ll tell you the truth.”
Kevin looked at him. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay. Then tell me.”
“You ready?”
“I am.”
“I’m Batman.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Your dad’s Robin.”
“Asshole.”
Eric kept a straight face. “Think about it. You wouldn’t know it, but your dad really does have the legs to pull off those little short-shorts.”
“Oh god!” Kevin made an awful face. “That’s just wrong!”
Now Eric laughed.
“I hate you guys.”
Eric went back to tending to the cut on his head as Kevin turned onto Main Street. “The truth is,” he said, serious now, “there’s something on Hosler Avenue. Some kind of vengeful spirit. It almost cut me to pieces this morning, but I have to go back. It’s important.”
Kevin shook his head. “Asshole,” he said again.
Eric turned in his seat and lifted his tee shirt, showing Kevin his bandaged back.
“Holy shit!”
“This is important. Someone’s life may be at stake.”
“A ghost did that?”
“It did.”
“No shit?”
“None.”
Kevin stared through the windshield. He looked like he was having trouble digesting all of this information.
“What happened last year,” Eric told him. “It was really crazy. We didn’t want you thinking your uncle had gone completely nuts.”
“You drove way out into the country and abandoned your car,” he replied. “You sent us pictures of a bunch of monsters. I had to drive for hours to pick up Dad. I already thought you’d gone nuts. The truth might’ve helped.”
“The truth was that if the wrong people learned what I found last year, they might kill us all.”
Kevin stared at him. “Really?”
“Very really.”
They turned onto Hosler Avenue.
“I could keep passing off what happened last year as some crazy, unexplainable fluke, but this is pushing it, even for me. When this is all done, I’ll tell you everything.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. As long as you promise to never tell another soul.”
Kevin nodded. “What about Damien?”
Damien Glowstern was Kevin’s best friend. He was practically a member of the family. He was also along for the ride last year. Kevin had needed him to drive when he picked up Paul’s truck. He knew as much as Kevin did.
“Not unless we have to. The less people that know about all this, the better.”
“Okay then. I promise.”
“Good. Now park right there.”
Kevin pulled over and parked. The overgrown lot was right in front of them, but Eric could tell he didn’t see it. He was looking at the neatly trimmed lawns, wondering what they were here for, but his eyes never came to rest where the sidewalk was in need of repairs.
“I’m going to get out and start walking. In just a minute I’m going to disappear.”
“What?”
“Just listen. When I disappear, you drive off. If I need you, I’ll call you. But don’t stick around. There’re some bad people in town today.”
Kevin looked concerned. “You sure you don’t need me to come with you?”
“Positive. I’ll see you later.” Hopefully.
Eric stepped out of the Jeep and closed the door. Then he walked forward. As soon as he reached the property, he stepped off the sidewalk and into the tall grass.
When he looked back, Kevin was bent over the steering wheel, his eyes wide open, searching. As expected, he’d just watched his uncle vanish into thin air.
“Go,” he said.
At the same moment, Kevin looked down and fumbled with something. A second later he lifted his cell phone into view. Isabelle just sent him a text, relaying the message.
Kevin hesitated, but he put the Jeep in gear and drove away.
Alone again, Eric turned and faced the weed-choked lot.
Something was hidden here, something that Glen called “the key to the secret.” The question was, would that old woman let him walk away with it even if he found it?
I’M WITH YOU
Eric smiled. “Thanks.”
GOOD LUCK
He braced himself for the worst and began walking toward the ruins of the old house.
Chapter Thirty-Four
It was calm here. Even the wind seemed to have died down. Eric’s eyes were wide open, searching every shadow, every bush, for something dark and sleek that watched with hungry and empty eyes. But nothing stirred.
The light was different now. The sun was sinking westward, the shadows deeper. It looked creepier now than it did before.
Perhaps it was only his imagination. Last time he was here, he received a considerable fright, after all. And he had no reason to believe that the creepy old woman had stepped out to run some errands.
What the hell was he doing here? What was he thinking? This was madness. Every sensible part of his brain was screaming at him to run away. He didn’t know what he was doing. He had no idea how to protect himself against an angry, vengeful spirit.
He ducked under the low, sprawling branches of the overgrown lilac tree and stared into the dark doorway of the ruined house.
The key to the secret lies in ruins. That was the message Glen left behind in his journals.
It couldn’t have been “the key t
o the secret lies near the ruins,” or “the key to the secret lies behind the ruins.” The key to the secret had to be in the ruins. Inside that scary-ass, deathtrap pile of rotting bricks and lumber.
Eric knew this was the place, not merely because this was the only place he’d been today that could be called “ruins,” but because he knew, deep down, that this was the only place someone like Glen would have believed was safe enough to hide something as important as a key to a profound secret of the universe.
It’s where I would’ve hidden something like that, if I had to.
But how Glen managed to hide it here without getting flayed alive by the claw lady, he had no idea.
His eyes swept the property. There was still no sign of the violent black creatures, but they had to be here somewhere.
“Do you feel anything?”
IT’S THE SAME AS BEFORE. I FEEL THE UNSEEN ENERGY. AND I FEEL SOMETHING DARK AND ANGRY
Dark and angry. That didn’t seem like a good combination.
I’LL LET YOU KNOW IF ANYTHING CHANGES
“Thanks.”
He approached the apple tree. He’d dropped his phone around here somewhere, but it was gone now, carried off by some crazy old man who kept calling him and shouting the number sixteen at him and telling him to fix a clock (or some such nonsense).
A breeze passed through the trees, rustling the leaves, and he lifted his gaze upward, sure for a moment that the creatures had taught themselves to climb after he left and were now waiting for him in those high branches, ready to pounce as he passed beneath them.
Don’t lose your head, he told himself.
He kept walking, moving ever closer to the remains of the old house, and glanced back over his shoulder. Nothing was creeping up behind him.
Those black creatures seemed to be gone now. Had they moved on?
His heart was racing. It was difficult to hear the sounds of approaching paws in the grass with his pulse thundering in his ears and his breath rasping. The pain in his aching head didn’t help, either. He felt like his skull was going to explode under the pressure.
“Aiden…” he sighed, willing himself to calm down. “You have to save Aiden…”
Aiden didn’t deserve any of this. He was just a kid dealing with a rotten home life who happened upon a way out. Eric couldn’t even blame him for taking the mysterious doorway in the gas station. He was young. The thing he found was extraordinary.
I would’ve done the same thing, probably, he thought. Even though he’d had a perfectly normal childhood, he wasn’t sure he could have resisted the lure of an invisible place that only he could see.
Forcing himself to breathe normally, he crept toward the doorway, ever closer to that deep, dark space behind it.
Why was it so dark in there? The roof was in shambles. There was nothing keeping the light from shining there.
Swallowing hard, he stepped onto the old, concrete step and peered inside.
No white eyes looked back at him. No kitchen knife claws glinted in the darkness.
There was nothing.
He stepped into the doorway and peered inside.
The ground was hard, bare except for a handful of sickly, straggling weeds. The skeleton-like trusses jutted into the air at odd angles in here, creating a spider’s web of tangled shadows that overlapped and intermingled in the mottled sunlight that fell through the branches of the trees above.
It was colder here than it should have been.
Nothing about this place felt right.
Desperate to leave this place as soon as possible, he scanned the room, looking for anything that might be what he came here for. In a perfect world, it would be lying right inside the door, requiring him only to bend over and pick it up before turning and running away. But of course the world was not that forgiving. He saw nothing within reach of the doorway. In fact, the only thing even remotely out of place was a glass jar sitting in the far corner, behind a collapsed portion of the roof.
Was that what he came here for? It looked like an ordinary Mason jar, the kind his mother used to use to can the tomatoes from her garden.
Taking several deep breaths, Eric stepped into the unnaturally cold lair of the terrifying old woman and began moving toward the jar.
“Okay, Lady,” he whispered. “I’m not here to bother you. Please don’t stab me with your freaky claws.”
The building was quite small, and yet it felt like that jar was impossibly far away.
“I’m just going to see what’s in this jar and then hopefully I’ll be on my way…”
The lady didn’t appear. She didn’t stab him. But he felt eyes on him, as if someone were watching him closely, studying him, measuring him up. Was it only his imagination? Was it the cowboy, peering at him through the molten gold of his aura plasma? Or did something sinister lurk here, waiting to carve out his heart?
There were days when he really regretted having such a vivid imagination.
He reached the collapsed trusses and knelt in front of them. He was going to have to reach through these to retrieve the jar.
He glanced over his shoulder one last time to make sure he was still alone and then slipped his hand between the rotten beams. If this structure chose this moment to collapse, it would probably break his arm and pin him to the floor. And with no one able to actually see this place, he’d probably lie here screaming until the old woman returned and put him out of his misery.
He’d ask himself what the odds were of that happening right at this exact point in time, but after the day he’d had, he decided he was better off not thinking about it.
He seized the Mason jar and removed it from its strange, shadowy prison, only to find that it was empty.
He resisted the urge to curse, just in case the ghost who haunted the remnants of this old house was easily offended.
Now what?
But as he rose to his feet, he heard something rattle around inside the jar.
Looking more closely, he saw that there was a single shard of glass in the bottom, almost invisible in the gloom.
“You don’t look much like a key to a profound secret.”
He looked around the room again, but there was nothing more here. If this wasn’t what he was looking for, then he didn’t know what else it could be.
He pried open the rusty lid and shook the shard of glass into his hand. It was roughly diamond-shaped, a little bigger than a quarter, longer than it was wide. He held it up to the sky and saw that it was a light shade of blue.
It was pretty, but it wasn’t a key. And yet, there was something odd about it. Why was it in a Mason jar, inside the ruins of a haunted, unseen building?
Still looking through the glass, he drew it closer to his face. The glass was clean and clear. Looking through it turned the whole world a peaceful shade of blue. The result was…calming…
He held it up to his eye and looked out over the ruins. It was a pretty color. But he still didn’t think this could be what he came here for.
He turned and looked at the crumbling walls around him. When his eyes fell on the corner, just a few short feet away, he found a hideous, rotten face staring back at him.
Eric jumped and backed away, dropping the Mason jar into the dirt and holding both hands in front of him. But the frightening form was gone.
He stood frozen for a moment, trying to understand what had happened. He must have imagined it.
He was jumpy. That was all.
And yet, his eyes dropped again to the strange, blue shard.
He scanned the room in front of him. There was still nothing.
He lifted the shard of glass and peered through it.
That face was now hovering directly in front of him, only inches from his nose, its dead eyes glaring at him.
With a shriek that might have been almost worthy of a young, Hollywood scream queen, Eric fled the ruined house without another second’s delay and sprinted across the overgrown yard.
But he came to a skidding halt as he fo
und himself staring down the barrel of the cowboy’s shotgun.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Are you freaking kidding me?
Eric met the cowboy’s puffy, bloodshot eyes over the glinting metal of the gun barrel. Black, angry bruises had spread around them and down one cheek. His nose was entirely hidden beneath a thick pile of blood-soaked gauze and tape. A large, purple lump stood prominently out on his forehead. His remaining hair was still wild and uncombed. It blew about his shining, bald scalp in the breeze, revealing the painful abrasion where he and Aiden dropped him down the tavern’s hidden stairwell. His western shirt was soaked with blood.
He looked terrible.
Eric found without much surprise that he didn’t feel remotely sympathetic.
He turned and looked behind him. The open doorway remained empty. And yet the strange, blue shard of glass had revealed a horrible figure lurking within.
“Give it to me,” growled the cowboy, his voice thick from his blood-clogged nasal passages.
Eric faced him again. “Give what to you?”
The cowboy shoved the gun at him. He stepped back to avoid being struck with the barrel. And he stepped sideways to avoid being pushed closer to the ruined house.
“Don’t, boy. Just don’t.”
“Fine. I won’t.” He stood with both hands clenched at his sides. He could feel the sharp edges of the glass shard digging into his palm.
Again, the cowboy jabbed the gun at him. Again, Eric stepped back and to the side. “I’ve had it with your bullshit, boy. I’ve had it as much as I’m going to have it.”
Eric wasn’t sure he’d ever seen someone look so mad. And yet, he didn’t fail to notice that he was neither shooting him nor beating the snot out of him with the butt of the weapon. Clearly, he had a purpose for being here.
And it was no mystery what that purpose was.
He was here for the glass shard.
