by Isaac Thorne
The membrane in front of Graham’s metaphysical eyes seemed thinner now. The world beyond it just a little more defined than it had looked only a short time ago. Was the durability of the bubble somehow tied to his father’s energy? If so, maybe it would get even thinner, easier to puncture the more the old man exerted himself. Meanwhile, Graham would have to store up his own energy, keep himself strong and at the ready for a moment when he could force his father into a bubble prison of his own. Without so much as a thought radiating outside the bubble for his father to overhear, Graham Gordon curled his consciousness into the smallest cloud he could summon. He had seen the little video that Patsy Blankenship had sent to his phone. He had heard his father call out for help in using the device, but he had not answered. If what his father thought he saw in the video was true, maybe the odds of taking back his body were improving.
Graham Gordon hid inside his bubble prison.
And waited.
***
From there, things got easier. There were no close-quartered mounds of earth left in front of Lee to scrape his back as he slithered toward his destination. There were no more bones of dead women poking up from the dust as he collected it on the elbows, knees, and belly of his son’s bullshit constable uniform. The sparks of a new plan were kindled in his mind as he crawled.
It was possible that the black bitch knew about him. It was likely, even, given all the years she’d spent sniffing around the edges of his house. And, yes, she might be able to lead the nosey old woman and Grace Afton’s daughter to the access. But it was just as likely that the creature did not know that he had taken over the body of his kid. If he crawled his way to the access before they found their way into it, and was able to slide it open, he could tell them that he’d found the crawl space entirely by accident. He could say that the light from his flashlight had hit upon the cracks in the cinder block wall, and he’d suddenly noticed that they were uniform cracks, on-purpose cracks that formed a square. He’d crawled in and tried to find his own way out because his rescuers seemed to be taking their own sweet time about it.
He hadn’t decided yet, but maybe he would even tell them about the mouse standing on the bones within the crawl space. He could say that he’d heard the mouse scuffling about the crawl space and shined his flashlight at it to try to frighten it away. When he did, he discovered what looked like human bones. He could tell them that he needed to contact the sheriff’s department to investigate. When they put the pieces together, they might even discover the identities of the three dead women, although Lee suspected that that was unlikely, not unless that DNA testing process they were talking about on the news back before his son murdered him had come a very long way. Those bones had been down here maybe decades now. What would be left to test?
Even if they were somehow able to identify the bodies, it was not the end of the world for Lee Gordon because no one except his boy Graham knew that he was Lee Gordon. As far as the world was concerned, Lee had fallen down the stairs of his cellar and died in the 1990s. As angry as he was with Graham for murdering him in the first place, Lee could continue to protect that little piece of information from prying eyes. If no one knew he was Lee, not Graham, then he had still gotten away with murder even if he was eventually identified as the murderer of Anna Gordon, of Darek Afton, of Grace Afton, and of that big-titted whore from Bombshell’s. Graham’s only crime other than shoving his father to his death down the stairs was being a pushover who accidentally got himself elected town constable. That was something Lee himself could fix in his new life, provided it was him and him alone in charge of his son’s body from now on. The truth it was to be, then. To a point. The truth would set him free, at least as far as the bodies he’d stowed in the crawl space.
Just as he reached the exterior access door, Lee Gordon’s thoughts were interrupted by the breaking of the light that shone through the mortarless joints. The space went dark, and then was lit, then dark again, as if someone was walking around on the other side of the wall, casting shadows. Lee pulled himself up close to the cinder block barrier and pressed his shoulder against it, ensuring that none of his son’s overly broad body lay in the light from the gaps. If something or someone attempted to peek through the open joints or the mouse door-shaped hole in the corner of the access, they’d most likely see only dirt.
“What the hell happened?” Lee heard the older woman—Patsy—say. “Did you two see what I think I saw?”
All three of the busybodies were there, then, blocking his way out of the access. Had they peeked in while he was crawling around? He supposed it was too late to matter now. He was already there, and so were they. Should he go ahead and shove the access door out, reveal himself to them? Or should he wait and see if they try to get in? Pretend that he had arrived at it just as they discovered it? Which would be most likely to appear to them as if he’d been fumbling his way around the crawl space for some time instead of making a direct beeline for the exit when he’d departed the cellar?
“She just disappeared,” he heard the black bitch’s daughter say, “right into thin air. What do you think spooked her?”
What were they talking about? The old bat with the big eyes had sent him a picture of the dog creature. Was it gone now? If so, then good. What he was about to reveal to them—the secret exit and a crawl space full of human bones—was bound to distract them from pursuing the dog thing any longer. And it might even prevent the dog thing from coming back period, if all it wanted was for the world to know what had happened, what he as Lee Gordon in the 1990s had done, then all its problems were about to be solved.
Another voice, this one male, spoke up from outside the crawl space. “Has to be something about the crawl space is the obvious guess. Maybe it’s time we had ourselves a look-see?”
This was it, then. It was time. Lee heard movement on the ground just outside his custom access barrier. There was the scraping of fabric against the rough surface of the cinder block. The skinny man with the lights and camera was probably on his knees, perhaps about to peek into the mouse hole. That little feature hadn’t been there when he’d first made the door. He wondered if the little rodent who’d spooked him along the crawl toward the access was to blame for it.
“While you do that, I’m going to go back inside and tell Graham what’s going on,” he heard Patsy say. “I need to make sure he’s all right, anyway. I’m sure he probably thinks we’ve forgotten all about him. Honestly, I thought we would’ve seen that ambulance pull up by now. Wonder what’s keeping them?”
They’d called a fucking ambulance?
A new, larger swath of white light appeared through the mouse hole in the block, just in front of Lee Gordon’s face. The skinny man spoke up again. It sounded as if he was speaking right into Lee’s ear now.
“Yeah, you go ahead and do that. We’ll be along right behind you. I don’t see much in this crawl space except for some mounds of dirt, a few stacks of cinder blocks, some plumbing, and—”
Lee Gordon shoved his left hand through the mouse hole. He grabbed what felt like the skinny man’s wrist and squeezed. The skinny man screamed. Lee thought it sounded like the scream of a little girl who’d just seen a spider. He heard the thunk of something solid hitting the ground. Then he smashed his right shoulder into the access barrier with all his might and grinned broadly when he felt it give against him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Staff was still screaming as he tore his wrist away from the filthy, crimson-streaked hand that had latched onto him when it emerged from within the Gordon house’s crawl space. It left a smear of wet dirt and grime across the flesh of his arm when he broke loose from its grip, but a quick check of himself revealed no open wounds or flowing blood of his own. He bounced off his knees and landed on his feet in front of the mouse hole, keeping enough distance to prevent his ankles from falling within the hand’s grasp. One second of courage and a desire to protect his property enabled him to swing his right foot briefly into the hand’s range and k
ick his iPhone away. He chased it, snatched it from the ground, and aimed it toward the hole just as the entire square of cinder block that was not mortared to the house’s foundation thudded face-first to the ground, raising a cloud of brown dust in its wake.
At his periphery, Staff heard the clomp of Patsy’s wedge heels approaching from the corner of the house. “What happened?”
Afia was in sight on his right side, her own iPhone intently aimed at the action. From inside the crawl space access, the arm that was attached to the hand that had grabbed him emerged up to its elbow. It was followed by a second hand—the right one this time—that was just as blood-caked and filthy but held against its palm what looked like an old school heavy duty flashlight, the kind that Staff and his parents had taken on camping trips when he was a lad. As the trio watched, the two hands positioned themselves on top of the fallen cinder block, allowing the flashlight to roll away and drop to the ground beside the structure. Then, with a single push-up, the rest of the arms, a head, and a torso emerged from the newly revealed hole in the wall. The body collapsed on top of the fallen block, eyes closed and damaged mouth hanging open.
“Graham!” Patsy shouted from Staff’s left. “Oh my God! Graham!” She ran up to him and went down on her knees. Placing a comforting hand on his back, the older woman leaned into his face. “Just hold still. Some help is on the way. Hold still.” Without a glance at either Staff or Afia, she leaped to her feet and ran around the corner of the Gordon house. To check up on the progress of the ambulance, Staff assumed, although she could have done that from where she’d knelt.
***
Somewhere along SR-501, between Lost Hollow’s square and the mouth of Hollow Creek Road, Brandi Wakefield’s older brother Jake was standing on the front bumper of the one ambulance Hollow County Medical Center kept stationed in Lost Hollow. His baby blue shirt sleeves were rolled up past his elbows. His thick fingers, wrists, and forearms were covered in engine grime as he pressed on hoses and checked all the connections under the hood. Sweat rolled from his forehead and down his face in spite of the coolness of this particular Saturday in October. He wiped his brow with his right forearm, smearing a swath of grease and dirt across it as he did.
“Try it now.”
Inside the ambulance, Jake’s co-worker Alan Potts turned the key in the ignition of the circa-1995 Type II ambulance to the On position. The indicator lights in the dash lit up, but barely. He completed the turn to start the engine. There was a click. The lights in the dashboard dimmed. Then nothing. Whatever juice was left in the wagon’s battery might be enough to squeeze some light out of the dash, but it wasn’t enough to turn the engine over.
“No go,” Alan shouted out the driver’s side window.
“I know,” Jake shouted back. “I’m under the hood. I’m sure I’d be aware of it if it the engine had started.” He hopped off the bumper, released the hood prop and snapped it back into its clip, then allowed gravity to bring the hood down on its latch. “Try the radio again.”
Alan keyed the mic. “Hollow Medical, this is HC-LH-1. We’re 10-14 on SR-501 en-route to a Code 1. We’re gonna need a 10-26 because this rusty piece of crap quit on us, which means we’re currently SOL.”
Jake had stepped around to the driver’s window as Alan made the call and was now glaring at him.
“What?” Alan said innocently. “They can’t hear me. It still ain’t working. I told you that alternator was probably going. Ain’t no coming back from that. We’ll have to get a tow to get her back to the station. Bet she’ll be out of commission until the bean counters get back on Monday and approve a repair.”
He tossed Jake a bottle of hand sanitizer and a shop rag from inside the cab. Jake applied a liberal amount of the stuff to his hands and forearms, wiping as much of the grime off himself as he could without soap and water.
“Any service on your cell yet?”
Alan checked. “Nope. No bars.”
“What about mine?”
Alan grabbed Jake’s cell phone from the shotgun seat. He tapped the screen, waited, and tapped it again. “Yours is dead, bro. No batt.”
“Well, that’s just fucking great, huh? We’re stranded out here with a busted wagon, no radio, and no bars. Guess it’s a good thing you swerved to miss that old dog or whatever it was that ran out in front of us, right? Maybe if you’d just run over it we wouldn’t have had to stop and the engine wouldn’t have died.”
Alan scoffed. “If stopping for that dog killed the wagon, what do you think would’ve happened when we got to the scene and had to put the brakes on there? Hope whatever it is doesn’t turn out to be an emergency. We ain’t going nowhere.”
Jake did not answer. He was angry, and anger made you say stupid things sometimes. But he didn’t want to admit that to Alan. Instead, he looked down at the shoulder of SR-501 and kicked a loose piece of gravel in the direction they’d seen the weird little black dog run. Jesus, he thought. It’s like that thing just sucked all the juice out of everything as it ran by.
“Probably just chasing a damn rabbit or something,” he mumbled. “Stupid mutt.” For a second, he thought he saw a furry face staring at him from the spot where his rock had tumbled from the pavement and into the overgrown dead grass along at the edge of it.
Then it was gone.
***
Afia and Staff glanced at each other. She shrugged and, iPhone still aimed at the fallen fellow before them, knelt down in front of him. Staff kept his distance. His heart was racing from being grabbed by a hand from the darkness of the crawl space, even though he now knew that the hand was attached to the man they’d been there to rescue in the first place. He’d ended up saving himself, which meant that Afia and Staff could now consider themselves no longer a direct part of the story they’d be reporting for Channel 6 News that night. So much the better.
The man lying prone on the cinder blocks by the house raised his head from them only a little, just enough to scrape the tip of his nose against their rough surface as he turned to look at the two figures who stood over him. The seeping gash on the back of his head glistened in the autumn sunlight. To Staff, the injuries to the man’s face and head from his apparent fall into the cellar looked even more ghastly in the light of day than they had in the glow from the flashlight and broadcast LEDs in the house. There were substantial purplish-green bags under each of his eyes, though it was difficult to tell whether they were from exhaustion, dehydration, or the fall. One of them sported a small grub worm-like scar. It did not look recent. Staff thought maybe it was a souvenir from the man’s youth, the days when he was living with his abusive father. More evident was the bruised and broken mouth below them. Graham Gordon’s bottom lip was swollen several times the size of the upper and showed a rather significant crease in it where the swelling had surrounded, but not inflamed, a small cut he had there. The whole thing looked a little like those long balloons that kid’s entertainers use to make animal shapes when they were first twisted in the middle. Although he was pretty beaten up from his time in the cellar, Staff found the expression on the man’s face a positive indicator of his mood. Graham Gordon looked both haunted and angry.
“I was trapped,” he shouted. Saliva sprayed from his mouth when he did, spattering the back of Afia’s iPhone. Staff watched her swap the device to her left hand, then wipe the knuckles of her right against her hip. He had a travel size container of hand sanitizer in the console of the Channel 6 News S-10. He’d have to remember to offer it to her the next time they climbed in. The professional journalist’s detached expression on her face never wavered.
“Mr. Gordon, why did you call my mother a black bitch?”
The constable sighed, frustrated.
“For fuckth sake leave me alone! Where’s Pathy?”
“Right here,” the older woman said, rounding the corner of the house. Her iPhone was still pressed to her ear. “An ambulance was on its way. Clara is kind of surprised that it hasn’t gotten here yet. She’s sending some sh
eriff’s deputies out to check on it. They haven’t heard anything from the EMTs since they left. I guess I should have called them sooner.”
“You were just suppothed to bring a ladder!” he shouted at her. “That’s all I wanted was a ladder!”
Staff had begun to feel annoyed by the man who was lying on the cinder blocks in front of them. He’d made no moves to climb back to his feet after his apparent crawl through the belly of the Gordon house and displayed no gratitude for Patsy Blankenship’s attempts to help him. He looked like a giant forty-something toddler who was throwing a tantrum after being told by his mom and dad that they wouldn’t be going for ice cream on the way home after all. Yet he’d been elected town constable. With that attitude, maybe he’d one day be president.
“Well,” Staff said, unable to disguise the sarcasm in his voice, “in our defense, we actually did bring you a ladder. Then you started texting a bunch of stupid kid’s jokes to Patsy and you called Afia’s missing mother a black bitch. So, you know, we thought you might need some medical attention.”
Patsy shot him a look, then her eyes flew open wide behind her Coke-bottle lenses, making her look owlish and surprised. “Oh, dear, Graham!” she said. “Did you see the video clip I sent you? I texted it to you. We finally saw her! All three of us! We actually honest-to-God-in-his-holy-temple have a video-documented sighting of the black bitch! That’s what was taking us so long. We recorded her. I sent you the video clip so you could see what was happening and, I guess, so you’d know we hadn’t forgotten about you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the constable replied, although Staff thought he saw some kind of recognition in the man’s bloated and sleep-deprived eyes.
Graham Gordon crawled up on his knees and knuckles on the fallen cinder block. He still looked angry, Staff thought, and he shot daggers at the iPhone that Afia was holding. She was holding the device much too close to his face to get a decent clear shot. From this angle, it looked antagonistic, provocative. He could suddenly understand why celebrities get angry and throw punches at the amateur videographers who grab paparazzo-style footage for TMZ. But in his mind, that did not excuse what happened next. The man on the ground batted the device from her hand, and stood to his full height, his busted chin thrust out in front of him, and his work boots planted firmly on top of the fallen wall like a soldier who had just conquered a particularly valuable hilltop. “Get that outta my face,” he shouted. Afia, who was very obviously taken by surprise, recoiled at first. She glared back at him and then bent to retrieve her iPhone from the ground. Staff stepped forward, meaning to either yell at the constable or fatten the other side of his lip, but Patsy beat him to it.
