Not by any stretch of the imagination could the one-story structure that occupied the plot of land staring back at them be called a house. No, by any definition, it was a shack, top to bottom. To refer to it as “rundown” was generous. The stripped wooden frame was not just weathered, but beaten to a point of imminent collapse. It wobbled and leaned off its center like a skiff with a sumo wrestler parked on one side. If the walls could have talked, they would have pleaded to be put out of their misery. The rickety roof appeared more patched than whole, and the chimney was surrounded by more chipped brick fragments than remained standing.
The yard that fronted the dwelling was a quarter acre of compacted dirt gashed by deep, treaded wheel ruts scattered throughout. A hodgepodge of junk cluttered the entire area. Assorted chunks of scrap metal were strewn about at random, from piles of coiled wire to a mattress bedspring. Sundry used-car parts, like radiators and mufflers, were bunched between stacks of bald tires. The shell of a stove leaned against a discarded refrigerator on its side with the door half torn off. Rotted wood furniture pieces were splattered with bird guano. A rusted plow and tractor, long abandoned, were submerged a foot into the ground. It was, plain and simple, a dump.
The light that beckoned the Letter 13 team was a bare bulb located beneath the porch overhang that covered the entrance, and the lone indication that the shack might still be occupied. Otherwise, the windows were dark, and the absence of any sounds from inside suggested that the property owner was away from the premises. The group stood silent as they surveyed the situation and took particular note of a faded WARNING KEEP OUT sign painted with crooked letters that was nailed to a nearby tree trunk. Club Med it wasn’t, and no one except Stan seemed very motivated at that moment to explore even a foot further.
“Uh, maybe we should take our chances with the bears,” Bryce suggested, only half-joking.
“Leave?” Stan asked, with an incredulous tone in his voice, as though the mere mention of wandering through the woods again was the epitome of sheer lunacy.
Bryce responded as though Stan’s desire to stick around even a minute longer in this creepy environment was the real lunacy. “Well, duh. Can’t you read?” He pointed to the ominous sign. “And besides, nobody’s home.”
Stan, however, had other notions. This was his chance—maybe his last—to make amends for steering his troops off course. At least he could try—they couldn’t fault him for that—and with any luck might even earn him back some of the respect the vexing troubles of the past twelve hours had pared away from him. Sometimes a director just had to display his backbone and man-up in the face of adversity. Stan was convinced this was one of those times.
“How do you know that? You psychic, Bryce? Maybe you have X-ray vision and can see right through the walls? Huh?”
“It’s rather obvious,” Bryce sniffed.
Stan flicked his right arm and forefinger toward Bryce. “No, I’ll tell you what’s obvious. You’re too chicken to go near the place, that’s what’s obvious!”
Bryce hemmed and hawed as Stan broke from the pack, strode several yards forward, and turned. He sounded as determined as an old west sheriff recruiting a posse to go after the gang of banditos that had just ripped off the town bank for the third time. “I say we march right up there and knock on the door. Who’s with me?”
Stan’s ardent request went unanswered. In fact, Dana and Bryce diverted their eyes to the ground and surveyed it as though they might find a response to his question written in the dirt beneath their feet. Stan wasn’t surprised at their lack of support and even expected it. He glanced over at Irv and Keisha, hopeful that one or both would join him. Truth be told, Stan wasn’t too keen on this undertaking turning into a solo performance—he’d feel a heckuva lot braver with some company by his side. “Keisha, how about you?”
Keisha swallowed a deep breath and exhaled. “I don’t know. I’ve got a bad vibe about this place, Stan. Maybe we should just keep walking. The campground is close by right? You said so.”
Stan did say so. Two hours ago. And that was the problem. Because right then and there, he couldn’t look Keisha straight in the eyes and tell her that was still the case. So he didn’t. Instead, Stan headed for Irv and feigned a couple of playful punches in his direction, like a couple of buddies just hanging out on a Saturday night.
“Hey man, you coming? Let’s roll!” Stan backed off a couple of steps toward the shack and waited for Irv to follow.
But Irv didn’t follow. Instead, he rolled his tongue around the inside of his cheeks and considered the proposition for a half minute before he spoke. “I grew up not too far from here. There were stories I heard back when I was a kid about all the whackos living in these mountains. Kooky types, ya know? Outcasts from society.”
“So?” Stan asked, as though the type of person Irv described was a neighborhood staple on his upper-middle-class block.
“So, I’m thinking it might be best if we don’t go poking around someplace where we’re not wanted.”
“At last some sanity!” Bryce interjected. Dana’s head bounced up and down in agreement with such brio that she looked like a bobblehead doll riding a mechanical bull.
Stan was stunned. Not because Irv hadn’t made a valid point. As usual, his reasoning was solid, and bypassing the shack and a potential encounter with some nutty recluse made perfect sense. Why stir up any more hassles than they’d already brought upon themselves? The most rational decision was without question to take a circuitous route around this property and plot a course toward the campground—wherever that was. No, Stan was numbed by the realization that the moment had arrived when he either had to fess up and admit they were lost or go it alone and take one final stab at redemption. The choice, he concluded, was obvious.
“Fine. Wait here.” He made an abrupt about face and began to walk in the direction of the shack.
“Where you going?” Dana yelled out with a rare hint of concern.
Stan didn’t bother to turn around. “Where do you think? Since nobody’s home, nothing to worry about, right?”
Bryce watched as Stan receded further from the group and closed in on the foreboding destination. “This is not good,” he muttered.
As he plodded forward, Stan felt a knot the size of a ham hock churning in the pit of his abdomen. It was the same feeling he had in high school just before he asked Connie Hubler to be his date for the prom. Lucky for him she’d said “no thanks, but you’re a very sweet boy, Stanley.” He was off the hook and floated away more relieved than rejected, seeing as he wouldn’t have to display his dance moves, which were stiffer than the spastic twitches of a marionette. This time, however, he couldn’t rely on Connie Cuticle (a nickname inspired by the legendary length of her fake fingernails) to bail him out. There was no going back. He had to demonstrate to his cast and crew that Stanley Evan Heberling was a man of his word…that they could rely on him to follow through on his commitments. With every step, though, he began to regret his rash decision more and more. What have I gotten myself into? Next time, he reminded himself, he would leave the heroic stuff to someone else.
He was extra cautious as he climbed onto the porch. The loose floorboard slats creaked beneath his weight as he tiptoed ahead to one of the two front windows. The glass panes were filthy and some cracked, with cobwebs crawling along the frame and up into the corners. He peeked inside, but there was nothing to see in the total blackness of the interior. Stan turned and shrugged to his team staring back at him from fifty yards away. He slid with his back hugging the exterior commando-style past the front door to the other window and ducked his head around the edge, but again, it was impossible to spot anything in the sea of darkness on the other side of the grimy glass. Stan glanced back and shook his head as he approached the door, finally able to dredge up enough saliva in his parched mouth to swallow. His heartbeat began to slow and the pangs of trepidation faded as the prospects of finding anyone home diminished. This isn’t so bad.
With an injection of renewed
confidence, he didn’t so much knock on the door as he bashed it. In the hush of this secluded location, it sounded as if someone fired off a couple of mortar rounds. He pounded the door again with both fists and jiggled the doorknob, but to no avail—not a creature was stirring, and if there was a mouse, it wasn’t talking.
Stan turned to his compatriots. “Dead,” he declared, with a cocksure smile. That’s when he felt the sharp jab of cold metal in the back of his skull. How the door was unlocked and opened without him hearing didn’t matter at that moment. All he knew for sure was that whoever it was attached to whatever was jammed against the rear of his noggin was not somebody that was tickled pink to find Stan snooping around on the porch. The cast and crew swam before his eyes in a haze, their faces stricken with alarm. A cold dread gripped him. Think, darn it, think! But he couldn’t. His mind was worse than blank. It was scrambled. Wires were crossed. Messages were muddled. His brain was as calm as a bag of popcorn in the microwave, his thoughts as jumbled as ratatouille. His body was rigid, but he could feel his knees shiver and arms quake. He wasn’t very religious—with the exception of his devotion to the New York Mets—but he prayed that if this was to be the demise of Stan Heberling, he could at least depart with his dignity intact. In a sudden flash he saw a glimpse of himself on a slab at the county morgue as some dour medical examiner removed his soiled boxer briefs (a recent upgrade from his long-preferred tighty whiteys) and howling with laughter as he held them up to his oily assistant and crowed, “Poo-poo pants! Poo-poo pants!” Weird what poops, er, pops into your head when you’re about to die. That humiliating scenario was enough to snap Stan out his stupor. Or maybe it was the whiff of the foul odor he smelled wafting from behind him.
“Uh, g-g-g-good evening. Are you the l-l-l-lady of the house?” Stan sputtered.
Out of the shadows, a burly, unkempt man emerged through the door with a twelve-gauge double-barrel shotgun in his hands. “Nope,” he snarled.
Stan winced. “Oopsie, my bad.” Lady of the house? Sheesh, Stan. “Uh, must have the wrong address. Well, I’ll just be running along then.”
Before he could complete a step, the man reached out, snatched him by his jacket collar, and spun him around.
“Not yet you won’t. State your business,” he growled and poked Stan in his chest with the shotgun.
Stan gulped hard as he caught his first glimpse of the intimidating presence hovering over him. He was gargantuan, not just well over six feet in height, but big-rig wide and fleshy, with a belly that flopped over the side of his hips. An oversized, bulbous head sat on his slab of a neck like a globe atop a tree stump. The prominent forehead, protruding jaws, hooded, pewter-colored eyes, and a flattened, blunt nose gave the impression of an offspring from a family tree with a missing link on the evolutionary chart. A scraggly beard lined his ruddy, leathery face, and the stringy, thinning hair flecked with gray that fell to his shoulders suggested a man of about fifty years old. He was dressed in denim bib overalls that covered a wife-beater shirt stained with gravy and bits of an orange-brown sauce not dissimilar to the type found in cans of baked beans. Rubber galoshes covered his feet, and tattoos of mermaids stretched up and down each of his forearms. Stan likened himself to an explorer who had just discovered the last surviving member of a megalithic tribe of cave dwellers.
“Well, sir, my name’s Stan and—’’
“That’s your problem.” He pointed at Stan’s colleagues, who shrank back when he motioned in their direction. “Who they?”
Stan turned and referred to his team as if they were strangers who had just wandered by that very instant and had yet to be introduced to him. “They?”
“Get ’em over here,” the man ordered.
“Uh, now?”
The man leaned down next to Stan’s ear. “You got a better time, sonny?” Stan inhaled the man’s rancid breath and wretched. “Somethin’ wrong?
Stan squeezed the lump from his throat, shook his head, and gestured to Irv, Keisha, Bryce, and Dana with all the enthusiasm of someone who just stepped in a pile of fresh cow manure. “Come on up, you guys.”
They hesitated. Each waited for the other to take the first step, but no one did. The man nuzzled the barrel of the shotgun against Stan’s neck. “I suggest you try harder.”
Stan stiffened and shouted, “I really think you need to come up here NOW!”
“Unlessin’ you all wanna be cleanin’ up a mess,” the man chirped, as if the prospect of mopping up Stan’s brain goop was an enticing option worthy of consideration.
The foursome stirred and exchanged apprehensive glances. Irv made the initial move and broke from the pack. Keisha took hold of the handle on her side of the chest, but Bryce and Dana held their ground.
Keisha glared at him. “Come on, Bryce,” she urged. “What are you waiting for?”
Bryce relented and seized the box handle with a look of annoyance, like his game of croquet had just been disrupted as they all scrambled to catch up with Irv. The quartet began a vigilant advance across the yard, sidestepping the mishmash of scrap along the way.
The man lowered the shotgun. “Now, you was sayin’?”
“I was?” Stan had no clue where the conversation left off.
He smacked Stan on top of his head. “Your business here, boy!”
“Oh, yeah, I was.” Stan started to babble in a single rat-a-tat burst. “Well, we’re making a movie and Keisha and Bryce are the actors and Irv and Dana are the production crew and I’m the director and the writer and producer and it’s called Letter 13 and—”
The man cupped his hand over Stan’s mouth to stop the verbal avalanche. “And you’re on private land.”
As the anxious cast and crew gathered in front of the porch, Stan tried to respond, but his words were garbled until the man pulled his hand away. “Oh, sorry. We seem to have made a wrong turn and—”
“That’s trespassin’.”
“Yes sir, yes it is. However, if you could tell us where the nearest campground is, we’ll be on our way in a jiff.”
“Campground?” The man snickered. “Closest is ten miles west of here.”
Bryce flung his arms up in exasperation and kicked some pebbles across the dirt. “Great, just great! Ten miles! I told you we were lost, Stan, but nooooo. You had to be Mr. Bigshot, wouldn’t listen to anyone and now we’re stuck in the middle of the boonies—”
KAPOW!
The blast shattered the quiet of the night. A tree limb crackled in the distance from the impact of a shell. Nobody dared move or even so much as blinked as they watched the man lower the shotgun’s aim from somewhere just north of their heads.
“SHUDDUP!” the man ordered as he glared at Bryce, who ducked down, curled up his body, and buried his face behind his arms as if they were a bulletproof shield. “Yes, sir,” he said, his previous bluster reduced to a meek whimper.
“Who’s the suit boy?” the man asked Stan, a tinge of loathing in his voice.
“Oh, that’s Bryce.”
“No, it’s not,” Bryce interjected. “My name is Howie.”
“Well, which is it?” the man demanded.
“Uh, he sort of goes by both, I guess,” Stan explained, irked that Bryce had decided to choose this dicey moment to embrace the character name he despised.
“Well from now on, he’s ‘whiner’, plain and simple,” the man stated. “We clear ’bout that?”
“Whiner?” Bryce protested.
Stan was livid. “Just go with it, Bryce!”
“Best listen to your boss, whiner.” He turned to Stan. “Who else you brung with ya?”
“Next to…whiner…is Keisha, then Irv and Dana.”
Each member of the trio made feeble attempts to smile and wave. The man took particular note of Dana and pointed her way. “That thing on?”
She yanked the camera away from her face as Stan rushed to block any response by his sister. Now was not the time for Dana to open her incendiary, wisenheimer mouth with such a powder k
eg in close proximity.
“Oh, no, no, no, don’t worry about that,” Stan assured him. “Uh, look, maybe if we could just use your phone and—”
“Phone?” The man snickered as he once again interrupted Stan. “Sure thing, got me a forty-inch plasma screen and a hot tub inside, too!”
Bryce remained in a crouched, defensive position just in case another shotgun shell headed his way. “My good man, if you could possibly summon us a taxi, we’ll be on our way.”
The man smiled. What remained of his decayed, tarred teeth had more gaps between them than a jack-o-lantern. “You bet, whiner. I’ll get right on that. In fact, how ’bout a nice stretch limo? Would that suit ya?”
Stan, Irv, Keisha, and Dana glared at Bryce like he’d just asked Attila the Hun to lend them a couple of horses.
Bryce was oblivious to the sarcastic remark and shrugged at them as though he had made similar requests a thousand times before. “What?”
“Well, come to think of it, I s’pose all the fancy limos are booked up around here anyhow, being that it’s the weekend,” the man said, stroking his beard as though he was seriously pondering the availability of luxury transportation in the vicinity. “Best bet for you kiddies is to head that way.” He made a quick, vague gesture with his hand as if flicking away a fly. “Out there yonder’s a road. Might get lucky and catch a ride.”
“How far?” Keisha inquired.
“You’ll find that out when you get there, sweet potato,” he replied, his nebulous answer as about as helpful to Keisha as a map of Siberia.
Much to Stan’s consternation, Dana’s arm shot upward. “Yoo-hoo, sir, can I use your bathroom?”
“Ha! Go ahead. You’re standing in it, girlie!” he chortled.
Dana cringed as the rest of the Letter 13 team gazed around the yard in disgust.
Once the man’s titillation subsided, his mood turned malevolent again. “Now git your sorry behinds on out of here!”
The man nudged Stan with the barrel of his shotgun dug into the small of his back. “Go on, move it, director boy.” He stumbled a bit on the porch steps as he scurried to join the others. “And by the way. Letter 13? Stupid title for a movie.”
Bryce stood up and whispered to Stan. “Told you!”
As the group rushed away under the man’s calculating gaze, a peeved Stan gave Bryce a shove. It was one thing for his title to be maligned by some trigger-happy troglodyte, quite another to hear it from Bryce. Strange enough, however, at that moment he was even more upset with himself. He had just made an ill-advised move that backfired with near disastrous results, and he felt like an idiot. Any director worth his salt at the very least kept his troops out of harm’s way and protected his assets. Then again, he rationalized, this wasn’t another Little Big Horn and he wasn’t General Custer. Everyone was still alive, right? Nobody even got hurt. In fact, nothing happened of any real consequence, just an unfortunate run-in with some deranged, crotchety codger spawned from a shallow gene pool that they’d never encounter again in their lifetimes. Someday they’d look back and have themselves a fine laugh over the incident. Maybe exaggerate it a bit, too, when they spun the tale into a spellbinding whopper in the company of friends. Stan began to think that sharing this close brush with danger was a good thing, a bonding experience that would bring the group closer together with renewed esprit de corps and boost morale.
The production team closed in on the edge of the woods, freedom just a few yards away, when the familiar gruff voice bellowed out behind them.
“Hold it there! Git on back here!”
They hit the brakes like puppies being leash trained and glanced back and forth at each other. Uh-oh.
“So what are we waiting for? Let’s beat it!” Bryce urged.
Stan and Irv pivoted and spotted the man on the porch, his shotgun raised and taking dead aim on their position.
“Can you outrun buckshot, Bryce?” Irv asked.
“Huh?” Bryce turned, as did Dana and Keisha. A single glance at the weapon leveled their way and it was as clear as the man’s gnarled finger curled around the trigger that their lone option was to reverse course. Looking like they just found out the governor’s pardon was a clerical error and their execution had been rescheduled, the Letter 13 cast and crew straggled back toward their original places in front of the porch, in no hurry to learn the reason the surly man had beckoned them to return.
He took in the entire group, one by one, perused them not unlike a fussy restaurant patron deciding which lobster to select out of the tank lobby for his dinner. Then he honed in on Bryce and Keisha and pointed at the chest that sat at their feet. “What’s that?” he queried.
Stan again assumed the role of group spokesman. “What’s what?”
The man ignored Stan as he climbed down from the porch and pushed him aside like a bulldozer in a corn field. He strode past Irv, Dana, and Keisha, stopped opposite Bryce, and buried the barrel of the shotgun into his gut.
“What’s in the box, whiner?”
Bryce squeezed his eyes shut. He started to hyperventilate and dribbled his words between gasps for air. “I don’t know. Honest. We just found it down by the river.” Bryce collapsed to his knees, but the man snagged him by the lapel of his jacket and jerked him back to his feet.
“It’s a buried treasure!” Dana cried out.
Stan gritted his teeth and made a beeline for her. “Shut your trap, Dana!” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and squeezed—hard. “Uh, sorry about that, mister. My sister here doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Do, too!” Dana shouted. “And let me go!” She wriggled out of his grasp.
The man eyeballed Stan, who forced a chuckle and dismissed Dana’s reaction as just some family tomfoolery. “That’s my sis for you, always exaggerating!” He tapped on the box with his foot. “Actually, this old thing’s just a prop for our movie.”
The man stared at the chest and then Stan. “A prop, huh?”
“Exactly. See, in Letter 13, Howie the alien and Zoe—”
Once again, the man clamped his hand across Stan’s mouth. This time, he also raised a finger to his lips. “Sssssssshhhhhh.” Stan nodded that he would comply.
He backed away from Stan, turned to Irv, and looked him over like a meat inspector in a slaughterhouse. “What have you got to say for yourself, string bean?”
“Not much.” Irv’s flat, unemotional response implied he wasn’t offended by the comparison of his body frame to a vegetable.
The man smirked. “Hmph. Smartest one of the bunch.”
Keisha caught his eye next. “Well, looky here.” He licked his chops like a starving man in a buffet line and circled her, a complete three-sixty. “You know, a man can get mighty lonely up here without companionship,” he said, leering at her, drawing closer.
As the man sniffed at the nape of Keisha’s neck, she tried to edge away, but to little avail. “I think I can help you with that,” she hinted with a suggestive glance.
The man smiled, his wicked grin signaling less-than-honorable intentions. “Oh, yeah? Well whatcha got in mind, darlin’?”
Keisha cupped her hands next to his ear and yelled. “GET A DOG!”
The man jumped back, startled, and slapped his head with the heel of his hand like a wasp was stuck inside. He stared at Keisha in a confused daze, as if struggling to assess if she was serious or joking, similar to what one might do after having a cream pie mashed in the face. The rest of the crew studied his reaction, their mouths agape, and exchanged worried glances as they feared for Keisha’s safety. She maintained a defiant posture and braced for whatever retaliation the man dished out. It was not to be. After several tense seconds, the man burst into laughter and tweaked Keisha’s chin as if charmed by the audacity of a precocious five-year old.
“Sassy thing, ain’t ya? I like that!”
He held up his arm to high-five her. Keisha balked at first, but relented after she spotted Stan urging her to comply and touched
the man’s outstretched hand with about as much enthusiasm as a claustrophobic hypochondriac stepping into a crowded elevator. He appeared satisfied as he nestled the barrel of the shotgun against his shoulder and climbed back on to the porch. With all the gravity of a Puritan minister, he gripped the loose railing like it was a pulpit and he was about to deliver a sermon to his flock of worshipers.
“Now listen up if you know what’s good for ya. It’s mighty dangerous roamin’ these parts at night,” he warned. “Never know what you’ll run into. A lot of strange creature sightings been reported. So, bein’ the generous, kindly fella that I am, you all are invited to bunk down here with me tonight. It ain’t much, but it’s home sweet home. Whadya say?”
The man’s words were met with silence and considerable trepidation as the Letter 13 team processed the offer of accommodations for the evening. Stan assumed that no one—and that included himself—wanted to spend even another nanosecond with this demented nutball, let alone an entire night inside his decrepit hut. Nope, their best option was to part ways and scram ASAP, put as much distance between him and them as possible. Stan was bothered by one thing, though: What the heck did this guy mean about “strange creature sightings?” He was just as quick to dismiss the concern, however, as the mumbo jumbo prattle of a loony. At least the decision at hand was a no-brainer: turn him down and get out of Dodge—pronto.
Stan unclogged his throat with a couple of hacks and conjured up his most polite voice. “Uh, well, sir, thank-you, but—”
“Then it’s settled!” the man exclaimed with delight. “Come on in—you’re just in time for dinner!”
Bryce fidgeted. “Do something, Stan,” he muttered, trying to evade detection by keeping his lips as still as possible. It didn’t work.
“What was that, whiner?” the man called out.
“Oh, nothing,” Stan said, in the cordial manner of a chum chatting over tea and scones. “He was just saying that we really don’t want to intrude and—”
Before Stan could finish, the man lifted his shotgun and slammed the butt of the walnut stock down on top of the railing with such brute force that it splintered. “Me and my partner here would be deeply disappointed if you refused our hospitality.”
Stan’s eyes widened. “On second thought, we don’t want to be rude, right everybody?” he asked the others, who nodded their agreement as if they’d just volunteered to tidy up the reactor core after a nuclear plant accident.
The man moved to the door frame and made a grand sweeping motion with his arm. “Well, get on in here then!” the man urged, welcoming them to his humble abode like a patriarch hosting a family reunion.
Stan, Irv, and Dana filed past the man and into the shack in a solemn procession befitting of pallbearers at a funeral as Bryce and Keisha lagged behind hauling the chest. Before they entered, Bryce paused, causing Keisha to stop short on the opposite side of him. He looked up at the man and examined him with the curiosity of a scientist getting his first close-up glimpse of a species long presumed extinct.
“Excuse me, kind sir, I didn’t catch your name,” Bryce asked with the obsequious manner of a guest hoping to ingratiate himself with the innkeeper and weasel an upgrade to a suite.
“It’s Munyon.”
“My good fellow,” he chortled, “I meant your first name.”
“Munyon.”
Bryce was perplexed by the man’s terse responses and continued to stare at him like an unknown lab specimen until Keisha tugged on her side of the box and dragged him inside. Munyon gazed around his property, waited and listened, as if for signs of any stragglers late to arrive. With the contented look of a cattleman who just corralled all his loose strays, he turned into the house and slammed the door shut.
Chapter 9
Dead As Dutch Page 14
