by Guy Riessen
"'Butterscotch pine.' That's the tree that walloped the left side of the house," Derrick said, pointing.
"Uh ... OK."
"No, it's cool, man. I read about the butterscotch pines in the Flora and Fauna of North America that Mary gave me last year. I recognize the bark from the pictures, but supposedly, they smell like butterscotch."
"What does?"
"The trees."
"No way. Trees that smell like butterscotch? Now you're just shitting me, D."
"Nah, man. That's what the book said." Derrick's eidetic memory allowed him to remember pretty much anything he came across.
Derrick glanced at the map, shook it out and looked closer. "You sure this is the right place? There's supposed to be mountains over there," Derrick said, pointing to the right of the building.
"Yeah, the mountains have been visible for the last half hour while we drove in, Rip Van Winkle. You just can’t see them now because of the clouds. Which I might add, someone on navigation duty would have noticed."
They climbed out of the van and walked to the passenger-side sliding door. Under the flat beige coating of dust, the van was blue and green. The side was painted with a smattering of red flowers, like a small, stupid version of the Mystery Machine. Above the flowers, in bubbly letters, was written “Summer of Lovecraft.” That was Sarah’s idea, and the only thing Derrick even remotely liked about that bus. He grabbed the handle and slid the door open.
Howard hopped up and crouched inside, flipping open a lockbox bolted to the floor behind the driver’s seat. He started pulling out hand guns while Derrick was fiddling with something at the door itself.
“What the hell are you doing, D?” Howard said, pausing to look over his shoulder.
“Opening the awning. I need a little dry space to get the electronics set up,” Derrick said.
“Awning?”
“Yeah, what’d you think was in this tube.”
“Never noticed it before.”
“And to think you get paid for observational research.”
“Says the guy who stumbles over the same crack in the concrete in front of the Physics building every day.”
“Consistency and repeated experimentation are hallmarks of a great researcher,” Derrick said, placing a hand over his heart and standing up straighter.
“Uh-huh.” Howard looked back at the assault rifles locked in a metal rack behind the driver’s seat.
Howard unlocked the rack and pulled off two of the M4A1 assault rifles. He snapped flashlights onto the metal slide-racks underneath the barrel of each. To his own, he also added a laser sight which stuck out from the side, and his usual one-point-five magnification sight on the top. You could always tell Howard’s rifle because it was custom painted in a black, white, and gray urban camo scheme that looked like random cracks in concrete.
Derrick pulled the awning out from the tube over the sliding door, and pushed the support poles through the sparse gravel and into the moist dirt. Tugging over a couple go-bags lying loose on the floor, he rummaged around inside them and pulled out various electronics and small metal boxes. He stuffed them into the pockets of his black fatigue pants.
Howard looked over and said, “Don’t forget your soldering iron, D.”
“Yep, I got it,” Derrick said, patting his jacket pocket, “thanks.”
“That was supposed to be a joke, but OK.”
“One does not simply walk into Mordor and joke about soldering irons, man.”
“So, you want standard ammo?”
“Uh ... yes? Why, what’re you loading?”
“Standard ammo. Regardless of the cool sky effects,” Howard waved his hand in the general direction of the house, “chances are, all we’ll find here is people. And in this part of the Trinity Alps it’s most likely pot growers. Might be some well-armed gardeners.”
Howard pushed the flower-patterned curtains that hung in the rear aside, peered out through one of the small rectangular windows of the VW and said, “Although, if the crazy weather is any indication, it’s possible something might have damaged the Veil here. Either way, human or Mythos, they’re both usually allergic to supersonic lead.”
Derrick knew Howard could fire a bullet and have a solid chance of slotting another round right through the same hole—like a modern-day Robin Hood. Similar to his own freakish memory, it was a trait that set Howard apart from the normal Miskatonic University Mythos researcher ... if there was such a thing as a normal MU researcher. Derrick, on the other hand, was having a great day at the shooting range if he hit the same paper target more than once. When he first joined the team, he asked Sarah if it was wise to be giving him guns. She shrugged and said, “Don’t use them unless you’ve exhausted every other option, Derrick ... and if you get to that point, just remember to point at the bad guys first, then squeeze.”
“Standard ammo will do me fine, H. You know me ... I always do my best to avoid shooting—saves me the whole trouble of cleaning and oiling the gun afterwards.”
“You got it.” Howard slapped a magazine into the assault rifle and laid it on the floor within Derrick’s reach. He set a few more of the black metal magazines next to it.
Howard flipped open another box bolted to the van’s wall. He waved Derrick over to look at the belts folded inside.
Derrick leaned in to grab the one on top, then strapped the utility belt around his waist. It had several pouches around it. He put the extra standard-load assault rifle magazines in a couple. In the others, he put some metal boxes he pulled from the go-bags. Howard handed him a 9mm pistol and Derrick snapped it into his quick-release holster.
Derrick pulled out a ball cap and a small black GoPro camera that he snapped onto a receiver on the top of the cap. Checking the Bluetooth-link light that showed a solid wireless connection with the small SSD drive in one of his utility pockets, he pulled the cap onto his head and turned toward Howard. He grinned and nodded, then pointed toward the letters on the hat, hoping he might distract Howard from making rude comments about the camera that bobbled on top.
Looking at the cap, Howard frowned as he read the letters across the front, “FBN? I thought it was supposed to be FBI ... what the hell is FBN?”
“Federal Bureau of Nerds. I’m rockin’ this like a boss, H. It’s the age of the nerd, man.”
Howard shook his head and loaded his own belt with a 9mm pistol at each hip and extra 9mm clips. He strapped a combat knife to his thigh and slung his rifle over one shoulder. He moved over toward the door where Derrick was retrieving his own rifle from the floor of the van where Howard had set it.
Howard said, “We ready?”
“Almost, buddy. Here. Straight from Derrick’s House of Ear Protection.” Derrick tossed Howard a small plastic box, then opened one himself. Inside were two beige earplugs. They inserted them into their ears.
Howard spoke in low tones, testing the acoustics of the built-in microphone, “You got the mics working?”
“Darn tootin’” Derrick whispered back.
“Sounds great, dude.”
“You know it, and my latest active-filtering algorithms means gunfire won’t give us three days of ‘concert’ ear.”
“Speaking of concerts, you ready to rock?”
Derrick felt the familiar rush of adrenaline. He tossed Howard a thumbs-up and said, “Like Bonn Scott.”
Howard laughed, and they bumped fists.
“Let’s do it,” Howard said, jumping down from inside the VW. His black combat boots crunched into the gravel.
The pine branches that swayed in the wind from the incoming storm as they’d pulled up were now dead still. Derrick rolled the awning back into its tube and slid the van’s door shut with a crash that echoed through the woods like thunder taunting the rain to step up its game.
There was a taut tension that was palpable to Derrick, as if the air were holding its breath. Like a claw on a casket lid, heavy drops of rain tapped intermittently on the VW bus roof. As they moved across the ope
n space to the house’s front porch, the sound flattened to a dull hiss against the dry pine-needle-covered ground.
CHAPTER THREE
“WHOA ... AH DAMN!” Howard said as his boot splintered through the wood of the first step up to the porch. He pulled his foot back up through the hole, breaking more rotting wood on the way out. “Watch your step. The wood’s rotted to hell.”
Derrick stepped up, pulled an unmarked bright metal box from one of his pockets, flipped it over twice then stuffed it back into a different pocket. He fished another metal box out, nodded, then slid his thumb across a flat-black sensor-pad on the metal top. The small black screen on the side facing him lit up, cycling colors then settling to a light blue.
The box was a titanium case with cold-stamped X’s on each flat surface, like the gasoline jerry cans on the back of the Miskatonic Research Department jeep. Functionally the X’s did nothing beyond making them look cool, but Derrick liked few things more than looking cool.
“Military Spec, man!” Derrick said every time he showed off another device he’d built in the Mechanical Engineering or Electrical Engineering labs. Of course, to the rest of the team, the devices looked like any other of the myriad small metal boxes Derrick carried to their weekly meetings in the Basement, the secure room beneath the Physical Sciences Department building.
“Hang on a sec, H,” Derrick said, twisting the single knob that stuck out from the left side of the box.
There was a high-pitched whine, then he showed the small screen embedded in the front to Howard. The display was mostly blue but for a small patch of yellow and a tiny red circle. “You win the booby prize. The whole porch is blue except where you stepped. The blue is solid, yellow shows damaged or rotten or just thin wood.”
“And the red?”
“That’s where you stuck your foot in it, man ... so to speak.”
“Nice. May I make a suggestion?”
Derrick waved his hand for Howard to continue.
“Next time run your gizmo before I step in it.”
“Batdar,” Derrick said, looking down at the display and adjusting the knob.
“What?”
“Batdar. It’s basically just an ultrasonic sonar, but I can tune it to pick up various things depending on the materials being scanned. In this case, it’s indicating the relative reflectivity of the sound. That can correlate to how thick the wood is, or how water-damaged ... or how rotten, based on how little or how much sound is reflected back and how scattered it is when it reaches the sensor.”
Derrick tucked his rifle under his arm and waved the metal box back and forth, watching the small screen.
“Walls are pretty sturdy. Porch is solid, like I said. Door frame has some rot, but ... Hey, that’s weird.”
“What?” Howard stopped moving across the porch and looked back at Derrick.
“The door itself is super solid ... Like it’s fresh from Home Depot.”
“Lock,” Howard said as he moved closer to the door.
“The lock? What do you think? The lock is sturdy ... metal doesn’t rot, man. It’s scanning so blue it’s almost black.”
“No,” Howard said, “I mean look at the lock.”
Derrick looked up from the display. The lock shone a bright gold in the diffuse light filtering through the thick gray low clouds.
They both turned at a sudden sound of clinking metal to their right.
The only thing there was a collapsed porch swing. Apart from a few links still attached to the roof, the chains that suspended the swing from the two white-painted hooks on the porch roof lay pooled on each side of the broken wood seat slats jumbled on the porch floor.
There was no wind at all, yet the broken length of chain hanging from the porch roof swung slowly back and forth. The air felt thick and heavy like pancake batter slopped onto a hot griddle.
The chain was more red rust than metal. An eye-bolt attached the chain to the roof where the paint was cracked and peeling. The dingy paint had bubbled on the walls, half-walls, and porch roof supports. It looked like thick worms had burrowed under the skin of the house and left thick lumpy deposits of eggs along the way.
There were rings of black mold, and every crack and bump was awash in gray dirt. The porch floor had been white, like the walls, in the past, but now was mostly dark chalky gray wood with old white paint filling the cracks.
They both shrugged and looked back at the door knob and lock.
“Well now. I do believe that lock and knob is a recent upgrade, like the door itself,” Derrick said.
“Exactly what I was thinking. That means we’re probably dealing with human pot farmers,” Howard said. “If they’re drying or storing here, there could be a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of product. They might be overeager to defend that kind of scratch.” He started to lean back on his left foot, getting ready to deliver a frame-cracking kick.
“Woah! Hold up!”
“What?” Howard asked.
“Pot growers love trip wire booby traps. I saw it on Weeds. Like the kind of trap that’d go off if your rival decides to kick open your front door.”
“What? Weeds, the TV show?” Howard asked.
“Yeah, it’s good. I binge-watched it last year. You should check it out.” Derrick reached into his front pocket and pulled out a small leather case. Flipping it open, he revealed a set of brass keys. He looked closely at the lock then pulled one key out and a small black tool with a knob on one end.
“What’s the key for?” Howard asked.
Holding up the brass key so Howard could see it had uniform low ridges instead of the usual ridges and cutouts on a normal key. Derrick said, “Watch this.”
He slid the key into the lock and turned it slightly, just holding on to the bottom. Then he smacked the knob of a black metal tool against the top of the key. Derrick turned the key the rest of the way and the door clicked open.
“Woah, D. You can pick locks?”
“Well, it’s a bump key ... real amateur lock-picking stuff. Been working on learning it off of YouTube. Concept is simple, just takes a bit of practice,” Derrick said. With a huge grin stretched across his face he turned and looked at Howard. “Pretty dang cool though, right?”
“Hells yeah, buddy!” Howard stepped up and pulled out a tiny penlight, shining it up and down the dark slit of the opening. Sure enough, a thin filament of fishing line was lit in the beam of light. “There’s a trip wire right there.” Howard pulled a pair of wire snips from his own utility belt pocket.
“Probably looped through a grenade pin, or shotgun trigger, or something. Still, back up a bit just in case,” Howard said.
Derrick backed up and nodded.
Howard reached the wire cutters through the thin crack.
Derrick’s hands slicked with sweat. He could see Howard’s eyes wince as he squeezed the handles together.
Snip.
Howard let out the breath he was holding. He shined the light up and down through the crack again. Stepping to the side, he reached over and gave the door a gentle push. It swung open.
“Where’s the haunted house hinge-squeal?” Derrick asked.
“Recently oiled—makes the trap easy to set off.”
Derrick nodded and moved up alongside Howard. He flicked on the flashlight on his rifle. Howard did the same, slipping the penlight back into his pocket.
Casting a look back over his shoulder at the rusted chain slowly swinging despite the lack of wind, Derrick followed Howard through the door and into the dim interior.
CHAPTER FOUR
PLAYING THEIR LIGHTS around the inside of the room, they both stepped through the open door. It looked like something straight out of a cheap horror movie. The furniture was all covered in yellow-stained sheets. Dust covered the entire floor except for a well-worn path that led through the room. Derrick’s nose immediately started to itch as the mere visuals jacked his allergies.
The flat late afternoon light dipped under the clouds and penetrat
ed the sheets of rain filtering through the windowpanes and around the butterscotch pine tree lodged in the wall. Spider webs hung from the ceiling in great drooping masses that swayed gently in the slight air currents from their movement in the room.
Howard turned his light back toward the front door. “Check it out, D. Doesn’t look like it’s a booby trap.” He moved over to a small white box on the wall next to the front door. The fishing line drooped out of it and curled on the floor.
Derrick walked over. “No, don’t think it’s a weapon.” He pulled a flat head screwdriver from one pocket and pushed it into a notch on the side. Twisting the screwdriver, the plastic top of the box popped off. Derrick shined his light inside.
“Hmm,” Derrick said, “oh my ...”
“Aw shit! What is it, D? Did we trigger it?” Howard swallowed hard.
“Oh dear ... it’s a ...”
“What?” Howard’s voice was tense with strain as he tried to keep his voice low.
“Doorbell,” Derrick said.
Howard swung a slap at Derrick’s head, but Derrick danced back out of reach. Then with his flashlight, he traced a wire around the inside of the box, then followed it as it exited the box and ran up twelve feet to the ceiling. The wire ran around the edge of the ceiling and disappeared into a hole. “Good you disabled it though—looks like the bell may ring somewhere else in the house.”
As they stared up at the ceiling, a distant, high-pitched screech of rusty hinges shattered the stillness. They turned to face the lone hallway that exited on the north side of the room.
“Dang, now that’s a real haunted house door!” Derrick whispered, his voice oddly loud in the heavy air.
“Let’s go,” Howard said, moving forward along the path through the dust. The barrel of his rifle and the light racked on it roamed across and around the walls, floor, and ceiling. They moved through the room and entered the hallway. The wallpaper was yellowed and streaked with dirt and water stains that stretched from the high ceiling to the floor.
