by Rick Hautala
“I don’t got proof for this, but I have no doubt the untcigahunk did this. Truth to tell, I might have been a little shit-faced when I first got here,” Watson said. “I’m feelin’ better now, thanks to you. But I’ll tell you one thing. You’re one lucky little boy that you weren’t sleeping out here last night...I’ll tell you that much.”
“Honest to God, you didn’t do this?” Kip asked. He could still imagine Watson—more than a little shit-faced—had found the campsite in the woods and for whatever reasons had freaked out about it and tore it to shreds.
Watson nodded. “Honest Injun,” he said, raising his hand like a Scout making a pledge. “But if it’s proof you want, I might be able to show you something. One thing I’ve been doin’ is keepin’ an eye on their exit points. There’s a bunch of ‘em around here.” He started down the slope toward the stream, talking as he went. “Come on.”
“Wait a second,” Kip called after him. “Shouldn’t we clean up this mess first?” He finally noticed the knife where it had dropped, and he bent to pick it up. His sneakers had long since dried, but he realized he was still sockless. His damp feet felt chaffed.
Watson stopped and took a second to look around at the wreckage. Then, glancing at the sun, he said, “I would, but it’s getting late. It’ll still be here tomorrow. You want to see what I have to show yah, follow me. If not, you can stay here. My only advice would be to get home before dark.”
“Just give me a second,” Kip said, fighting back the panic in his voice as his mind started to replay the images of swirling blackness and the figures that emerged. Now, they looked more real, somehow, more solid.
He got down on his hands and knees and started pawing through the shreds of what had been his tent. Most of the clothes he’d left at the campsite were so ripped up he couldn’t even tell what they had been. All of the food cans and boxes had been ripped open and emptied. Other pieces of gear were dented and twisted horribly out of shape. Kip knew that none of it was worth salvaging. Most of the goose down had blown away by now, but small clumps of it had drifted into sheltered places.
Finally, though, he found a pair of balled up socks and quickly kicked off his sneakers and pulled them on. After lacing his sneakers back up, he nodded to Watson, indicating he was ready. At least with a pair of clean socks and Marty’s hunting knife, it wasn’t a total loss.
He scurried around on hands and knees, raking the junk into a big pile beside the spot he had cleaned out for his campfire, but when he realized there was nothing to put all the junk into, he stood up and shook his head with sadness and disgust.
“We ain’t got all day, yah know,” Watson said. He stood with his arms folded across his chest.
What the hell? Kip thought. Watson was right. This would all be here tomorrow. He’d go and see whatever it was Watson wanted to show him, and he’d come back tomorrow with a trash bag or two so he could haul everything away.
“Take only memories, leave only footprints,” he whispered, and he almost laughed out loud...almost.
“Come on,” Watson called. He was already halfway to the stream, and he sounded just a bit edgy as he glanced up at the sky again. The sun was slanting downward, casting rippling blue shadows across the ground.
Gripping the knife firmly in one hand, Kip ran down the trail to join Watson, and then started walking a step or two behind him. Watson set a brisk pace as they passed the entrance to the Indian Caves and headed due south, around the base of Eagle Hill. They were striking out into a part of the woods where Kip and his friends usually didn’t play, so he wasn’t as familiar with it as he was with the woods between his house and around the caves.
“By the way,” Watson said, glancing at him over his shoulder, “to answer your question—I told you about this I guess ‘cause I kinda like yah. You’re not bad...for a pale face.”
“A pale face,” Kip echoed, and they both laughed.
3
They tramped through the woods for more than half an hour, but they didn’t get very far because Watson chose to go through some fairly thick brush rather than stick to the trails that uncoiled like snakes over and around Eagle Hill. Kip was relieved when they finally broke out onto the fire road, a double-wheel rutted track that supposedly was a railroad track back in the 1800s. He thought he’d get a break from following Watson’s stooped shoulders through brush and low-hanging branches, but they walked no more than fifty feet along the road before Watson dodged back into the woods.
Kip knew roughly that they were skirting the hill and moving gradually downward, toward Deerfield Swamp where the trees were thicker and moss-covered. The town was behind them to the right, but the intervening trees blocked any signs or sounds of civilization. It was just as well, Kip thought, that they steered away from town because as far as he was concerned, he still wanted to be “missing.”
All around them, the woods were peaceful, bursting with light and life. Only in the shadows, where the old trees had stood their ground for centuries were the greens a deep emerald that seemed somehow not “new,” even in early summer.
Eventually, Kip realized where they were heading, and when he thought about that, not even the explosion of spring life could lift the gloom that pressed down on him. He wanted to voice his concern to Watson, but the old man obviously knew where he was going, so Kip kept his mouth shut and waited, hoping they weren’t really heading out to—
“It’s not far now,” Watson said. When he spoke, he didn’t bother to turn and look back at Kip. His voice was so low Kip was surprised he actually heard him. The sound was oddly distorted, almost as if Watson had whispered close to his ear.
Kip swished some spit around in his mouth, trying to cut through the dryness. In his mind, he pictured his twisted drinking cup, lying on the ground, glistening with clear, mountain stream water. Even a tiny sip right now would feel like paradise, but instead, he swallowed the wad of spit before he spoke.
“Uh—exactly where are we going?” he asked in a voice that sounded like a toad croaking.
“Exit point,” Watson said, never breaking his stride even when he approached what looked like an impenetrable wall of foliage. Dodging and ducking, he moved silently through the woods as if he was without substance.
“You mean for the little brothers?” Kip asked. Watson grunted, and Kip took that to mean yes.
“How many are there? Exit points, I mean,” Kip asked after another minute or two of silent walking. They were still walking toward exactly where Kip feared they were going. His mind screamed at Watson to turn in his tracks and take him back up the hill, anywhere, as long as it was away from where they were headed.
“No way of knowin’,” Watson said. “They dig new ones every time they come up from underground. I’ve been keeping track of as many of ‘em as I find, but that’s damned near impossible. I can’t get around like I used to. But if what I think is right, you’ll see something that’ll make lemonade in your pants.”
“Great,” Kip said, bending low beneath a swaying pine bough. Pine pollen sifted down onto his head and arms like fine mustard powder.
“D’you know anythin’ ‘bout this land where your father’s buildin’ his house?” Watson asked.
Kip couldn’t tell if there really was a change in the tone of Watson’s voice, but he thought he detected a threatening undercurrent to it, like the low-throated sound of the wind during a winter storm. He shrugged, then quickly swatted at a mosquito that strafed his face. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“D’you remember when I saw you out there last week? Remember what I said?” Watson asked.
Kip chuckled, and for the first time, Watson paused and looked around. His eyebrows shot up with the unvoiced question... What’s so damned funny? Sunlight shattered by the leaves overhead made his face ripple with energy.
“You mean when you asked us who really owns the land? God, you scared the crap out of me.” Kip sniffed again with laughter. “I thought you were crazy and was gonna kill us both.”<
br />
Watson kept staring at Kip as though measuring him up against some yardstick Kip had no awareness of. The old man’s brow wrinkled with concentration, and his dark eyes had a hint of fire that made Kip wonder if he really might be insane.
“My—umm, my dad said you might be—not really dangerous, but—he said he thought you might have been drinking.”
A tight smile lifted the corners of Watson’s mouth. “You might say I’d had a drop or two that day.” He smacked his lips and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “‘N I have to admit, all this hikin’s giving me a bit of a thirst right now. But have yah thought any more ‘bout what I asked yah?”
Kip shrugged, shifting his feet nervously under Watson’s intense stare.
Watson smacked his lips. “Now d’yah have a little better idea what I was talkin’ about?”
“You mean the little brothers?” A strange, sinking feeling hit Kip’s stomach like he’d swallowed an ice cube whole. For a second, he thought he was going to throw up.
“Of course I mean the little brothers,” Watson said. “Your mother was killed when she was cleaning brush outta that old cellar hole.”
Waves of darkness nibbled at the edges of Kip’s mind, but by concentrating, by telling himself he knew—now—what was in that darkness, he was able to hold it back, if only just a little.
“See,” Watson said. “That was your father’s first mistake, decidin’ to build on the old cellar hole. You don’t know nothin’ ‘bout the house that was there before, do yah?”
Kip glanced at the ground. “Not really. I heard stories and stuff from around school.”
“Like what?”
Kip shrugged. “You know...the kind of stuff kids always talk about. Like the house belonged to a witch or something a long time ago, and that people from town burned it one night, and the witch was killed in the fire. Stuff like that.”
“Of course, you didn’t believe any of it, right?”
“I dunno,” Kip said, shrugging and shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “I mean, it’s just stories, but then after my mo—”
His voice choked off, and he looked away in embarrassment.
“After your mother was killed,” Watson said, continuing for him. “You started wondering how much of it might be true after all because of what you saw, right?”
Kip’s agitation was growing by the second. He brought his hand up to cover his mouth so he wouldn’t start screaming.
“What you saw that day made you think maybe those stories were true...maybe that place—that cellar hole—might really be haunted. Right?”
Kip nodded, a quick up-and-down jerking motion that hurt his neck.
“Do you think maybe you understand a little better what you might’ve seen that day?” Watson asked.
There was gentleness and concern in his voice that genuinely surprised and warmed Kip. When he looked at Watson, he saw him in an almost entirely different way. His craggy face and flinty eyes had softened, and what Kip had once seen as harsh indifference or detachment from the world now seemed to be touched by a warm caring that was so intense it was inexpressible.
“I don’t know what I saw,” Kip said, shaking his head. He was on the verge of tears, but the steadiness and strength he sensed in Watson helped bear him up.
“Well?” Watson said. “I can show you something in that cellar hole that’ll maybe make you realize them stories might not be so far off. You think you can handle it?”
Kip realized he was gnawing on his lower lip, pondering everything Watson said. The darkness in his mind was getting stronger...blacker.
“We ain’t got much time.” Watson glanced at the sky. Already the shadows under the trees were deepening. “Once the sun’s down, I don’t wanna be anywhere near this place.”
Kip shuddered as he took a deep breath and clenched his fists. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m ready.”
“Come on, then,” Watson said, and he started along the path again, ducking beneath low-hanging branches.
After a few minutes, they broke out of the woods at the house site at the same spot where Watson had emerged the day he had surprised Kip and his father. The sun threw their long, distorted shadows down the hill.
Kip’s eyes were drawn to the stakes his father had driven into the ground to mark the rough limits of the house and driveway. Nailed to the top of each stake were strips of orange surveyor’s tape that fluttered like pennants in the breeze. They looked somehow small and insignificant.
“This way,” Watson said, making directly for the cellar hole.
Kip couldn’t help but hang back, but slowly—step by step—he forced himself to move closer.
The edges of the cellar hole were weather-rounded and covered by weeds and small brush. A few scraggly saplings thrust their top branches up above ground level out of the hole. The hole itself was a dark rectangle in the ground. As he came closer, Kip kept telling himself that’s all it was, just a hole in the ground.
But Kip thought it looked more like a freshly dug grave of gigantic proportions, and he had the courage to get even this close only because Watson was leading the way. He stopped in his tracks when he got close enough so he could look down and see the hard-packed dirt floor.
“Come on,” Watson said. He was standing at the edge of the hole when he turned to look at Kip. Without waiting for Kip’s response, he flexed his knees and then jumped down into the hole. His head disappeared in a blink, and Kip’s first impression was that Watson had gone.
Vanished.
If he ever found the courage to go to the edge of the foundation hole and look down, he’d see...
Nothing.
Watson grunted loudly when he hit the ground, so Kip knew he was still there, just out of sight. Still, Kip had to fight back the panicked thought that before he could bring himself to the foundation edge, he would hear a throat-tearing scream, and sharp, yellowed claws would reach out of the darkness, and slash Watson to shreds.
“Com’on, boy. Get on down here!” Watson called out.
Feeling like his bladder was about to burst, Kip sidled up to the edge and looked down. Smiling widely, Watson looked up and waved him on down.
It had been five years ago...five years since he’d had the courage to come even this close, and now Watson—a drunken, old, crazy Indian—wanted him to get down inside there, into the hole where something had exploded out of the darkness, and—
In a flash, another memory came rushing back to him.
It was nothing anyone in his family ever spoke of, but he remembered now that his mother ’s funeral had been closed casket.
Had she really been torn apart so badly even the mortician’s magic couldn’t restore her well enough for anyone to see her, to look at her one last time?
“Right over here,” Watson called out, his voice slicing through to Kip’s awareness. “Get on down here!”
Watson walked to the far end of the cellar hole. “See how this part of the old cellar wall is built different here? Not like the other three walls. See how these stones are bigger and more rounded? And the mortar between ‘em is a different color.”
Kip nodded but still couldn’t screw up his courage enough to actually jump down. His eyes darted around as he tried to put all of his memories into some kind of rational order.
—Where was she standing when they got her?
—Where had he first seen her, lying on the ground, just a tangle of pink meat?
—Where had her blood splattered, and how many rains and snows had it taken to wash it all away?
—And when her shirt sleeve had flown through the air and landed at his feet...
“Oh, shit... No,” Kip whimpered as he looked around, frantic for help. “No!”
It hadn’t been just her shirt!his mind screamed.
He didn’t know if the sound he was making was loud enough to be heard or not.
Her arm... Her arm had still been in the shirt sleeve!
“This brush here, see? It’s cover
ing something.”
Watson seemed not the least bit aware of Kip’s rising panic as he walked over to the side of the wall and started to pull aside the branches that had grown up. After a few minutes work, Kip saw that he had exposed something that in the gathering gloom looked like a doorframe. A rough-cut timber lintel was set in the wall, and various rotting planks had been nailed across the front, sealing off the doorway.
“This is one of them exit points I was tellin’ yah about.” Watson kicked some more of the brush aside, then stood back from his work, panting as he wiped his forearm across his brow.
“That’s just the cellar door to the house that used to be here,” Kip said. His voice sounded an octave or two too high. He knelt on the edge of the cellar hole and cautiously started to lower himself down into it. His back scraped against the side, starting a minor avalanche of dirt and rocks, and he couldn’t help but think there might not be a cellar floor. Maybe—if he jumped—he would fall and never hit bottom. He’d just fall...and fall...and fall...forever.
But at last his feet hit solid ground, and weak-kneed, he started walking toward Watson.
“These timbers and this wall’ve been here for two hundred years at least,” Watson said as he ran his fingers along the edges of the gray-weathered boards nailed across the front. It looked to Kip as though several layers of boards sealed the doorway. Some of the exposed wood had rotted away, and Watson’s fingernails pried into it, removing small chunks as he probed.
“What are you doing?” Kip asked, struggling for control of his voice. He cast a longing look at the edge of the cellar hole above him. The sky seemed to be further away than it should. The trees, swaying in the wind high overhead, had that same weird sense of distance that Kip got whenever he viewed something through a telescope.
“I want you to see where this leads,” Watson said. He wiggled his fingers beneath one of the boards and, bracing himself, leaned back, pulling hard. At first, nothing happened. The board didn’t even budge. But with more effort, the loud, complaining sound of rusted nails yielding filled the cellar hole. It hurt Kip’s ears, making him wince.
