The Gordon Place

by Isaac Thorne

  Staff actually laughed out loud at that one. “He’s delirious. I guess if I had been trapped in a dark cellar for a day I might be randomly texting some groaners, too. There’s nothing like a bad dad joke to take the focus off your own physical pain and put it on someone else’s funny bone.”

  “Yeah,” Patsy said distantly. She sounded out the words as she tapped a reply on her iPhone’s keyboard. “Are you ok?”

  Another text arrived on Patsy’s iPhone then. She turned the screen so that Staff could read the response after she’d processed it herself. It was one word. “NO!”

  “I see,” Staff said. “Maybe we’d better get back there, then. I haven’t heard a peep out of Afia since we left. We haven’t even been gone thirty minutes. What could’ve gone wrong?”

  Staff unclipped his own iPhone from his hip and verified again that he’d received no messages. He briefly considered calling Afia, just to confirm that everything was still on the up-and-up out there, but then thought about the possible effects on his own coping skills if she didn’t answer. He still needed to drive himself and Patsy back to the scene, after all, and that would be much more difficult to do in a panicked state. Besides, there was no real reason to panic just yet. No news is good news, as the old saying went.

  He yanked one final time on each of the straps they’d used to tie the ladder to the topper, ensuring that they were tight and secure, then piled behind the wheel of the S-10. “Let’s go.” He motioned to Patsy, who was now staring at the screen of her iPhone as if she had been hypnotized by it. He tooted the horn, a short burst that broke her spell. Then she climbed into the pickup’s passenger seat.

  “I do hope everything’s all right,” she said after stowing the iPhone in her purse. She struggled a bit with the seat belt. The shoulder harness kept locking on her as she tried to drag it across her mid-section to meet the buckle.”

  “Let’s just get back there as fast as we can. The sooner we get him out of that hole, the sooner Afia and I can get on with our work here. You might want to give that Clara woman a call back, tell her it might be more of an emergency than we thought.”

  “Good idea.”

  Staff shifted the S-10 into Drive and made a right turn onto the street from the bed and breakfast. Over top of them, he heard the extension ladder rattle against the luggage rails when the pickup’s right rear tire hit the curb. He’d cut it too close. He checked the rearview mirrors and saw no sign of the ladder having tumbled off the roof. Satisfied, he mashed the accelerator and pushed the speedometer up to forty-five, ten miles over the speed limit for this part of town, and twenty miles over the limit for the section of it that encircled the town square. But it was a Saturday morning in this smallest of small towns and Staff just happened to know that the town constable was otherwise occupied at the moment. He occasionally glanced at his passenger who, after having updated her apparent dispatcher friend Clara on the situation, remained glued to the view in front of her, her eyes enormous even in profile and her hands clenched tightly at the seam of the seat into which she sank. He was scaring her. Probably badly. He hated that, but there was an undeniable urgency building within him to get back to Afia—to know that nothing terrible had happened to her—and, less urgently, to the trapped town constable Graham Gordon.

  There was no sign of the black bitch as they approached the old Gordon place. Staff only glanced at the shoulders of the road along the way, just enough to maintain a watch for any wildlife that might leap out at them and cause a delay. None did. He slowed the S-10 to a stop in the same location that it had previously rested behind Patsy’s Sonata. There was a part of him that wanted to go just a little farther than that, maybe “accidentally” push the car ahead of him into the shiny red truck that had today become somewhat of a landmark in their visit to Lost Hollow. Not only did the Tacoma, which shone a blazing Confederate red in the sun now that the dew had evaporated from it, represent that small town white man’s desire to remain part of his redneck pack while holding onto something of an individual identity, but it also served as a barrier to both Staff and Afia. They were here only to do their jobs and get paid for doing those jobs, not to rescue straight middle-aged white men from their own failings. And it was this Constable Gordon’s own failings that had gotten him into this mess, wasn’t it? Who in their right mind goes poking around a rotting and abandoned old house without a cell phone in hand? Staff reached for the key to switch off the S-10 and felt relief wash over the muscles in his right hand. He’d apparently been clenching the steering wheel. The knuckles on the hand that was still wrapped around it were bone white.

  Patsy had already exited the S-10 and was trundling her way up the overgrown driveway toward Afia, who as it happened was seated on the top step of the front porch, her elbows on her knees and her chin resting on her fists. She was watching her own feet. Staff was relieved to see her there. He climbed out of the pickup, dropped the keys into the right front pocket of his cargo shorts, and raised the door on the topper. From within, he removed the camera he’d earlier used to record the pawprints that he and Afia had found outside the house. With his other hand, he grabbed the tripod for that camera. He attached the tripod expertly to the port at the bottom of the camera and carried the entire assembly with him as he made his way toward the mouth of the old Gordon place.

  “Shouldn’t we get the ladder?” Patsy asked him when he was within earshot. She was kneeling behind Afia on the front porch, gliding a comforting hand across the other woman’s shoulders. Afia looked up at him when she said that. Staff could see that her cheeks were wet. She had been crying. He set the tripod down and glared at Patsy Blankenship.

  “What for? We have an ambulance on the way. They’ll probably want to see to him before we try to move him.” He nodded at Afia. “What did he do to her?” The two women only looked at him. “Tell me.”

  “He’s just another redneck from a small town,” Afia said finally. She waved a hand in the air as if batting away an insect. “There are a lot of old ghosts here for me. I guess being here and talking to him got to me. That’s all.”

  Staff eyed her skeptically. “Afia, if he said anything to you about what went on between your dad and his dad, anything at all, we need to drop the ladder here and let Patsy deal with him. We can go find our ghost stories somewhere else. I’ll tell Joanie that there was nothing of interest here for us.” Maybe she’ll be in a generous mood and not dock our pay, he thought about adding but didn’t.

  Afia shook her head. “No. It’s not that. Look, he said some shit that pissed me off and now there’s too much personal history between us. We’re not doing his interview. We have Jeremy Beard and Patsy, but I’m not going to talk to Graham anymore.”

  Staff sighed. “Fine, but I’m at least going to get his rescue on video when the ambulance arrives. We’ve wasted most of the morning on this guy already and have absolutely nothing to show for it. I’ll be damned if I’m going to go away from here without something to report on.”

  He hefted the camera onto his shoulder, grasping the tripod around its middle, and brushed past the two women. Inside the house, he saw both whole and broken beer bottles scattered about. Three whole but empty ones had been placed directly in front of a smallish door made out of three wooden slats. Only darkness emanated from within the door’s frame. That must be the cellar. Staff did not approach it. Instead, he spread the tripod’s legs out and stood the camera up on the creaky hardwood floor. He pointed the lens at the darkness in the center of the door frame but allowed enough width so that the door frame itself and some of the wall into which it had been set were visible in the viewfinder. Then he pressed the button to begin recording. This way, the good constable’s rescuers could conduct their work in full view of the entire world. They’d at least have something to take back to Joanie that she could air on Channel 6 News. It might not be a special Halloween segment, but it would give viewers someone to laugh at and talk about the next day at work. It was probably the least they could do for
Graham Gordon and Patsy Blankenship in return for what was looking more and more to Staff like a complete waste of a weekend.

  His view in place, Staff returned to the S-10 and retrieved two lithium-ion battery-powered LED light kits from the bed. These were the only relatively new tools the station had allowed him to carry along for this trip, and he’d had to use the production director’s ancient sign-in/sign-out sheet method to procure them. The LEDs provided lighting that was less warm than the traditional lamps, but they also spread the light more evenly throughout the frame, making the shot look less like it was lit by a manually adjusted spotlight, more natural. He placed the lights at a wide distance from each side of the camera and trained them toward the cellar door. Then he switched them on and returned to the camera to check the shot through the viewfinder. A little adjustment on the right side was required to smooth the scene’s lighting, but not much. He tapped the top of the right-side lamp with his finger, nudging the angle down a smidge. He rechecked the viewfinder and was satisfied that this was the light that would cast the fewest shadows on the good constable when he emerged through the cellar door. He pivoted on his heels, about to return to the S-10 and retrieve the extension ladder that he and Patsy had brought from the bed and breakfast so that it would be available for the first responders when they arrived. Then a broken, lisping voice rose up from the cellar below.

  “Hello?” the voice called. “Ith someone up there?”

  “Channel 6 News,” Staff grunted. “I’m setting up some equipment. Some people will be here with the ladder soon to get you out.” He peeked through the cellar door then. Below him stood a pumpkin spice muffin of a man: doughy in the middle, sandy brown on top, and sweet on its face. The man’s mouth, lit from below by the incandescent bulb of a flashlight, looked bulbous and blistered from Staff’s angle. His eyes were large and innocent, reminding Staff of the pitiful eyes that the Musketeering cat in the Shrek movies used to use as a manipulation superpower. They were effective. He felt a twinge of guilt about turning this stranger’s obviously embarrassing predicament into weekend news fodder. Then again, the man was technically a public figure after having been elected to law enforcement. Small town or not, if your local law enforcer falls down the stairs and gets trapped in a cellar somewhere, it’s newsworthy.

  “I don’t want thith on the newth.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Gordon. Just doing my job here.”

  He strode back outside and was about to step down from the front porch when Patsy stopped him. She was still seated by Afia on the top step of the front porch, her arm around the other woman’s shoulders. “Staff, I really don’t think this is a good idea. Mr. Gordon is not himself right now. He said some very ungentlemanly things to Ms. Afton while we were gone. I’ve assured her that what he said does not sound like the Graham Gordon I know. I don’t think it will be good for the people of Lost Hollow or anyone else nearby to see our constable in this, uhm, vulnerable state.”

  “What did he say?” Staff demanded.

  Afia looked up at him. “He called my mother a black bitch,” she said matter-of-factly. “Up to that point, we had only talked about the old days, when we were both kids in school here. He apologized for something that had happened on the playground a long, long time ago, something I had almost completely forgotten about. He’d tried to pull down my pants on the playground because his racist father had told him that black girls have tails. The school wasn’t going to do anything about it, but then my mother got wind of it, and Graham got called to the principal’s office. I’m guessing he probably got a pretty good beating from his father over that, too.

  “Maybe he got upset with me for calling his dad a racist. I didn’t make any bones about what a monster I thought he was, and I brought up the bad blood between my dad and his. Maybe he wanted to poke me back for that.”

  “I’m positive he didn’t mean it, dear,” Patsy interjected. She turned to Staff. “You saw the crazy text messages he sent me. I’m sure I can’t tell you how to do your job, but I just want to go on the record as not approving of this. Would you want all your missteps laid out all over the news for all the world to see?”

  “Probably not, but I’m not the town constable.”

  “Staff, we’re not doing that story.” Afia was looking at him solemnly.

  He threw up his hands. “Fine, but if Joanie chews on my ass for not coming back with enough footage for her goddamned Halloween special, I’m going to refer her to you.” He stormed off toward the S-10 and then turned back, eyeing Patsy. “You coming? They’re going to need this ladder if they’re going to get him out of that cellar.”

  Black bitch. It was about the billionth time he’d heard the phrase since the previous night. He didn’t know Graham Gordon the way Patsy Blankenship did. Hell, he didn’t even know Graham Gordon the way Afia, who hadn’t seen him in thirty-some-odd years, knew him. The fact that he’d chosen those words after not having seen Afia since they were kids—not to mention his pumpkin spice muffin look and his red Tacoma—was enough for Staff to feel confident about his first assessment of the man. He was just another small town straight white-boy racist and probably didn’t even deserve the attention that Staff’s video of his rescue would have given him. Fine, then. Fine. They’d do their good Samaritan bit, and be on their way. Fuck Lost Hollow and its administrator’s desire to make it a tourist destination. Fuck the weird dad jokes the deranged occupant of the Gordon cellar was sending to her. Fuck the black dog that had run out in front of them and nearly rolled their pickup as a result. It wasn’t worth another ounce of their energy.

  Staff pulled the release levers on each of the tie-down ratchets, creating enough slack in the straps to unhook them from the topper’s luggage rack. With Patsy’s assistance, he slid the aluminum extension ladder from where they had secured it and then heaved it into his arms, refusing Patsy’s offer to assist him with carrying it inside. He and the older woman had nearly made their way all the way back to the front porch when Afia, who had remained seated there waiting for them, suddenly stood up. Her eyes grew large, and her mouth fell open. She pointed past them, at something that had apparently emerged behind them.

  “Oh my God!” she shouted. “Look!”

  Staff and Patsy simultaneously turned their heads and looked in the direction that Afia was indicating. What they saw there caused Staff to let loose of the ladder. It slammed into the ground in front of him, barely missing his sneaker-clad toes. It landed first on its side and was then pulled over on its face by gravity. Standing in the shadow that lay between Patsy’s Sonata and the grill of the Channel 6 News S-10 was a squat and not quite dog-like creature. It stood on four stumpy legs. The front two were longer than the back, but bowed, creating a horseshoe shape about the thing’s breast. Staff thought it looked like a medium sized dog, an English bulldog, perhaps, except for its roundish head. Alas, the silhouette in front of them revealed precious little detail about that, at least at first.

  Instinctively, Staff stepped over the fallen extension ladder and then knelt on one knee in a spot of bare earth among the overgrown clumps of dead Kentucky fescue in what had once been the Gordon place’s driveway. He stretched out his right hand, palm up, and rubbed his thumb against the pads of his middle and index fingers on that hand as if he were offering the creature an invisible Milkbone. He made a repetitive kissing sound with his mouth as he did so, the intuitive “come here, I’m safe” sounds and gestures any human makes when confronted with a frightened small animal that might run away from an approach.

  “Staff!” Patsy admonished in a stage whisper through clenched lips. He shushed her with a sidelong glance and then turned his attention back to the thing that stood between the vehicles in front of them.

  He saw no sign of a wagging tail, but that could just be because the thing had a stub, like an English bulldog, or just about any other breed of bulldog he’d ever seen. There was also no apparent dangling tongue in that silhouette. Staff was about to give up and stand again when t
he thing took a single wary step forward, enough so that its face became partially lit by the late morning sun over the old Gordon place. Whatever it was, it could not have been an English bulldog. Its face was more of an oval shape. And although its body appeared to be covered in short black fur, the fur that hung from the head was longer and more hair-like, parted in the center of the head and falling down its sides in twin waterfalls. There were no visible ears, which meant that the thing either didn’t have ears or they were not canine ears and were covered by hair. The eyes, nose, and mouth were the most terrifying attributes of the thing that now stood before them. Cupid’s bow lips perched above a rounded chin curved upward toward a broad and destroyed human skull-like nose, all of which was covered in patchy black hair that allowed telling glimpses of the features that lay beneath it. Most astonishing were the creature’s eyes, though. They were warm, sentient eyes with brown irises and small black dots for pupils, all floating in the center of white orbs.

  They were sad eyes.

  They were human eyes.

  They were the eyes of a woman, perhaps even a mother.

  “It’s...” Patsy began.

  “The black bitch?” Afia finished for her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Staff rose to his feet, but slowly, remaining bent at the waist in a fashion he hoped the creature in front of him would interpret as non-threatening. He backed up a few paces to join Afia and Patsy. Both of the women had produced their iPhones and were apparently recording video of the encounter as they gaped unbelieving at the thing that had emerged from the shadows between the two vehicles. To his left, Patsy’s outstretched iPhone hand was quivering slightly. Was she panicking or merely excited that she’d finally laid eyes on the local legend of the black bitch? He glanced at her face and judged that it was probably excitement, which was better than panic but not as good as calm. Afia, on the other hand, appeared to be calm in that interested but professionally detached way television reporters have perfected. Staff felt soothed some by his coworker’s demeanor. The flight response that had been thrumming in his calves and thighs settled, allowing him to take a few hot breaths.