The Gordon Place

by Isaac Thorne

  In the swath of light emanating from his left hip, Graham discovered that he could see the edge of a tread, now just inches above his head and hands. He had to force himself to not rush toward it, lest he lose his balance and have to start all over again at the bottom of the cellar. Have you ever been rock climbing? No, but I would if I were boulder. Left. Hey, what does a frog do for exercise? Jumping-jacks! Right. Knock knock. Who’s there? Left. Dewey. Dewey who? Right. Dewey have to keep telling these stupid jokes?

  He could see the edge of the top tread at his eye level now, which meant that he was high enough along the stringers to try to put his weight on the lowest remaining one. His feet were still slightly below that tread, but he could raise one boot high enough to test the load it might take without losing his grip on the stringers. He chose his right foot for the task, placing it lightly against tread where it met the stringer, then shifting more weight onto it as it refused to give way.

  The tread did not give at all. Good. Still gripping a stringer in each hand, Graham placed his left foot on the opposite edge of the same tread, balancing his weight on each side. He perceived no give. The tread held at the points where it fastened to each stringer. That meant it was time to stand up. Slowly. So as not to lose his balance and topple backward into the darkness. Graham steeled himself and let go first of the left stringer, then the right. He raised himself up into a position that was not quite standing erect and not quite the stoop of a fairy tale witch, but something in between, something to ensure that his top weight leaned toward the cellar door and not the compacted earth below him. A smile parted the puffy, blood-caked, and bruised remains of his lips.

  I did it! A relieved sigh escaped from between his teeth. I really did it!

  He tugged the Maglite free from its place in his belt and shone it on each of the three remaining treads that led up to the cellar door, to freedom. All three remained intact. He stepped a foot on each of them on his way to the top, careful again to neither hurry nor linger too long on them. The first thing he was going to do when he got back to his pickup was snatch up his phone and see what day it was. Next, he would call Patsy’s cell phone and tell her what had happened, and that he was going to take a few days off to have his injuries examined and recuperate a bit. He wouldn’t tell her about his dead father’s voice in his head, of course. He thought he might spend one of those off days searching online for a new counsellor for that. He wasn’t sure he trusted the old one anymore. When he reached the top tread, he swung the cellar door outward on its spring hinges and shone the light through the portal, which revealed a long, harrowed face staring back at him. The face was covered in patches of thick black fur. The eyes that bulged outward from it were brown, bloodshot, and sad.

  At first, he thought it was a dog, a smaller one like Butch, the English bulldog his father had murdered for peeing on the floor. This creature was squat like that breed and muscular. But from what Graham could see in the wan light of the old house, its midsection did not appear to have the large rolls of wrinkles that Butch sported. The thing’s coat was entirely black, without visible brown or white spots. It could have been a mutt, except...that face. Those eyes. They glared at him from the lighter brown, furless areas around their rims with human-like cognition. The nose was wrong, too. It wasn’t a muzzle, stubby or not. It was flat and open as if whatever nose it might have once had was sliced off, revealing the skeletal cavity for the nostril beneath. Its mouth was also decidedly not canine but was instead a wide gash spread across its oval face and bordered by Cupid’s bow lips, haunting human lips; a woman’s lips. Behind them sat large human teeth.

  Graham screamed and instinctively reeled backward. Gravity took over from there, yanking him back into the yawning darkness of the cellar. He stretched out his left hand as he plummeted and tried to grab hold of the lowest tread as he fell, but it was out of reach. Instead, he landed hard on his ass on the cellar floor. The wind fled his lungs on impact. He thought he heard something crack as he hit bottom. Pain exploded from his tailbone. He wailed without breath. The Maglite, which he’d miraculously managed to hold onto, slid out of his right hand and remained lit. Graham rolled onto his knees, reached both hands behind his back, and pressed hard against his tailbone. He felt it throbbing. The pain clouded his thoughts like a million little fireworks exploding in front of his eyes. But he could move. Kind of. Maybe he hadn’t broken anything else, but something in his lower back had begun to swell. He doubted he would be able to do the climb up the stringers a second time.

  When the sharpest points of agony, at last, began to subside, Graham retrieved the Maglite from the cellar floor in front of him and directed its beam to the door above. The creature, whatever it was, had stopped at the mouth of the cellar, where the staircase connected to the door frame, and was staring down at him with those fully sentient eyes. The cellar door had closed only part of the way because the thing’s body stood half over the transition, preventing it from being entirely shut. Sentient eyes aside, Graham couldn’t be sure that it didn’t intend to leap down into the cellar with him and gnaw off his aching limbs.

  He slid backward on his knees across the cellar floor (not without some effort), toward the staircase tread with the nail protruding from it, the only one that had been thrown any distance from the staircase when he’d fallen the first time. He located the tread easily enough. He swapped the Maglite from his right hand to his left and gripped the tread in his right. He mustered what he hoped was enough strength to chuck the tread the full distance. It flew upward with a vertical spin, arcing just enough to come down squarely against the creature’s missing nose. The thing yelped and ducked into the house. The cellar door slammed shut on its springs as the splintered tread fell back to the cellar floor, landing with its nail pointing up.

  Graham blew the remaining tension out of his body in an exasperated gust of air. He crumpled from his knees and lay down against the cool earth of the cellar floor, his gaze toward the ceiling. He watched motes of dust float through the beam of the Maglite above him for a few seconds before shutting it off. He might be here a while longer. Best to preserve the batteries in case he felt up to climbing the stringers again.

  DON’T LEARN MUCH, DO YOU BOY? the voice of his father boomed in his head. CAN’T EVEN STAND UP TO A BITCH, CAN YOU? JUST LET THAT LITTLE BLACK BITCH PUSH YOU RIGHT BACK IN THE HOLE. PATHETIC.

  Graham winced, but the pain in his head seemed lesser this time, at least when compared to the torment in his lower back. Or maybe he was only getting used to the voice of his father in his head. It was starting to feel like company for him in an otherwise empty space, and part of him was glad for that. Being completely alone for too long could drive a man insane. Given a choice between being chronically berated from beyond the grave and wondering whether he was sane versus being wholly alone in utter darkness and definitely losing it, the voice and uncertainty seemed like the more obvious choice.

  Somewhere in the distance, from outside the darkness of the cellar, he thought he heard a long squall. It sounded like tires on pavement during a hard brake and a skid. Kids, maybe? He’d come here to put a stop to the rumors and prevent them from using his old family home as a cure for boredom or place to get drunk and laid. Now part of him hoped that a group of teens would show up and ignore the truck he’d left parked at the road. They might make fun of the old man who fell down, but they could at least let someone know he was down here. Moments later, he thought he heard the sound of an engine vanishing into the distance. Despair gripped his heart.

  What kind of car does a crazy man drive? A loco-motive!

  What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck!

  Why couldn’t the bicycle stand up? Because it was two-tired.

  Ha!

  Ha ha ha ha!

  God, he thought. Oh my God. Somebody, please come to check on me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lost Hollow’s only bed and breakfast turned out to be an old Queen Anne-style home with two floors and robin�
�s egg blue fish scale siding Staff thought looked far too pristine to be original. It was out of place among the red brick and white clapboard siding that dotted the majority of the downtown landscape. He suspected the building’s owners, with whom only Afia had spoken so far, were probably out-of-towners themselves, or they were in the beginning. It was also evident that the little province had no historic preservation society or homeowner’s association looking out for its character because the public square through which they had driven on the way there was also an odd mishmash of old and new. An ancient bicycle shop with vintage signage painted in gold on its fragile picture window stood right beside a much more modern-looking vape shop that had erected a gaudy red, green, and blue glass tube sign in its own window. Diagonally across the square from these two businesses were a lawyer and the town administrator’s office, both of which sported facades of stately red brick, had painted white wooden doors without windows, and advertised their contents by using small black wall-mounted wooden plaques at eye level beside the entrance.

  What struck Staff most about the town center, though, was the full story-high obelisk that had been erected in the middle of it all. It was surrounded by a small concrete platform on which one might be able to stand and gaze at it but was otherwise not marked. No signs indicated its reason for being there. There was no historical marker anywhere in the square that reported an event of local significance that it might memorialize. It just stood there, a giant erect penis casting clock-hand shadows along the tiny one-way street that surrounded the square. He glanced sidelong at Afia—looking confident and professional in her crisp autumn-appropriate gold sweater over a white turtleneck, black pants, sensible flats—as she rang the bell at the door of the blue-gabled anachronism that was going to be their home for the weekend.

  “Glad to see your time here didn’t influence your taste,” he said. “I’ve taken a lot of pictures of a lot of places in a lot of towns in my time. I haven’t seen a mix of styles like this in...well, ever.”

  Afia grinned but maintained her focus on the door that still stood closed in front of them, her finger poised to ring the bell again. “You know that old saying, ‘You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy?’”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  The door swung open. Within stood a squat older woman with silver hair, into which was tucked the temples of an enormous pair of eyeglasses with thick round black frames. The way the lenses of those glasses magnified the gray eyes behind them made Staff think she looked surprised. She probably always looked that way. He had to stifle a chuckle because the way she had suddenly thrown back the door to greet them only heightened the effect.

  “You must be Afia Afton!” She stretched her hand over the threshold and grabbed Afia’s right hand in a queenly way. She jiggled it lightly up and down before allowing the reporter to pull it back. “From Channel 6 News? You look just like you do on TV! Channel 6 is the only news I watch.”

  Afia smiled pleasantly. “That’s me. And you are—”

  “Patsy. Patsy Blankenship, town administrator, bed and breakfast owner, and soon-to-be Lost Hollow’s first ghost tour guide. At your service.”

  Afia nodded and cocked a thumb at Staff. “This is my cameraman Joe Stafford.”

  “Everyone just calls me Staff.” He stuck out his own hand, which Patsy pumped twice enthusiastically.

  “Charmed.” It came out with a decidedly Georgian lilt, confirming that not only was Patsy not from Lost Hollow, but she was also not a native Tennessean. Her accent was missing the nasal quality of a native. “Well. Let me help you get your stuff settled and then we can sit down and talk about ghosts! There’s so much to tell you. I just know you’re going to love our little town and all its mysteries. Come on in.”

  She swept her hand across the threshold and bowed as she bade them entry, the way a butler might do for an unwary traveler in an old monster movie. Afia entered first, followed by Staff, who tried to restrain himself from rubbing his eyes as they met a jarring mixture of decor. The space included modern furniture, colorful art deco paintings above a colonial fireplace in the common area, and a decorative butter churn in the entryway that looked as if it had been pilfered straight from the set of Little House on the Prairie. Beside the fireplace stood a short metal stand supporting a frame that contained a letter-size sign. Printed on the sign in oversized Comic Sans were the words NO SMOKING.

  Staff cleared his throat. “How long have you been running this place?”

  “Oh, probably about fifteen years now. It was in the most awful mess when I got here. So was the town, honestly. It was pretty much a lot of nothing but old empty buildings and farmland that had been overtaken by scrub bushes. But I’m an entrepreneur, Mr. Staff. Where others see a hopeless mess, I see an opportunity. So I bought this place with some family money I’d wanted to invest and pulled together a few locals to form a town committee. What you see in the square and my place here is only what we’ve done so far. With a little more money, some luck, and some elbow grease, we can turn this place into a real tourist attraction.” She smiled at him. “That’s why it’s so good to have you here. You can make us look good for Halloween.”

  Staff glanced at Afia, whose brow furrowed. “Due respect, Ms. Blankenship, but I feel like I should point out that we’re not creating an advertisement for Lost Hollow. We’re doing a feature story. We’ll be asking questions and following leads that we hope will generate a fun spooky Halloween segment for the news. But we won’t be taking orders on what we are and are not allowed to cover. Of course, we’ll let viewers know where they can find you, but we’re not going to pimp you to them. If you want that, you’ll need to reach out to our sales department and buy a local spot with viewership that matches your demographic.” She knitted her fingers together in front of her hips. “I hope you understand.”

  Patsy’s cheeks turned pink. “Oh, I know that! I’m just so excited about what’s happening here in our little town. I don’t see any way that you’ll leave here without a wonderful story to tell.” She spun on her heels and motioned them toward a set of stairs. “Off to your rooms we go, then.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Ms. Blankenship,” Staff said. He glared at Afia after Patsy turned her back to them. She shrugged back at him. What? the gesture said. I’m tired, and it’s the truth. Yes. It was the truth, but Afia had been in the news game long enough to understand how to handle with some diplomacy those types who do not understand the difference between news and advertising. Staff wondered how much the memory of her father’s brutal murder might have had to do with her current mood, given that it had come up in their conversation over the drive and they had just come from the place in town where his body had been found. If it had been Staff’s family, he wouldn’t be particularly enthusiastic about giving the place free publicity either. “We’re not here to rain on your parade or anything. It’s just been a really long drive, and we’re tired. No offense.”

  Patsy waved her hand in the air as she led them up a set of cherry stained stairs to the second floor. “Oh, none taken. I can imagine such a long drive after a full Friday of work can be exhausting. I do hope you didn’t run into any problems along the way.”

  “Nothing more than a hungry stomach and restless legs. Unless you count that weird dog that ran out in front of us right when we got into town. I thought we were going to do a full three-sixty right off the shoulder and into the woods. Lucky for us Afia’s such a superb driver, for a lady.” She punched him in the bicep. “Ow!”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” Patsy replied. “Well, we do have more than our fair share of strays and wildlife out this way. Sometimes I think people bring their unwanted pets here, dump them, and leave. Then they go home and tell the kids that Fido ran away or Sheba probably just found another family she preferred to live with. Did you hit it with your car?”

  “We managed to avoid it,” Afia offered.

  “O
h, good. Well, what kind of dog was it? Maybe I can print up some signs after dinner tonight. We can put them up as we tour the town tomorrow, just in case it’s somebody’s pet that ran off. Folks around here are pretty good about helping their neighbors find the odd lost pup now and then.”

  Staff winced behind her back. He imagined a stack of inkjet-printed LOST DOG signs featuring the headline in red Papyrus—probably bolded, italicized, and underlined with a drop shadow—and the critter’s description along with a phone number printed below it in blue Comic Sans. “Honestly, I couldn’t tell you what kind of dog it was. We didn’t see that much of it. Afia saw it clearer than I did. To me, it was just a little black spot in the rearview mirror. Af?”

  She shot him a look. “Don’t call me ‘Af.’”

  “Sorry. Do you remember what kind of dog it was?”

  “I don’t know. Like you said, it was just kind of this black thing on four legs. It was a little dog, I think. Kind of stout looking. I might have been able to tell you the breed if I had been able to see any head details. It didn’t even really look like a dog’s head to me. It was just some creature going ninety miles an hour across SR-501. Maybe it wasn’t even a dog.”

  Patsy scaled the final tread and then stepped off the cherry staircase. She turned back to look at them both. Afia and Staff paused mid-step and looked up at her. Her mouth was hanging open, and her gray owl-like eyes had grown even more impossibly wide. She glanced from Afia to Staff and back again, her expression transforming from one of surprise to awe and then to joy.

  “You saw her!” she cried. “All these years and finally somebody sees her again! It would have to be someone from out of town, of course. Of course it would!”