Charnel House (17 page)

Frank had no smartass comment, for once. Nothing but silence came from the space behind him. Perhaps Garraty wasn’t the only one the place was getting to. He lowered his forehead to his dry arm and closed his eyes, willing the dizziness away. Wondering how the hell he had puked up beer when he hadn’t had anything to drink in
weeks.
After a few seconds he felt a little better, except for his stomach, which rolled in the heavy sea of stench coming off the corpse. He rubbed his glistening hand in the dirt to clean off as much of the boy as he could, nearly frantic.

“Christ, kid,” he said weakly. “You stink.”

Garraty picked up the flashlight and shined it down into the grave.
Jesus.
For moment, he thought he was going to upchuck again, spew out another jet of beer that had no way of being in his stomach. Gradually, the feeling passed. Viscous black ichor pooled in the bottom of the grave, oozing from the hole where his hand had penetrated the dead boy’s side.
Up from the ground come a bubblin’ crude,
his mind chortled, and Garraty tittered. He reached in and—carefully avoiding the wetness—brushed the dirt away from the boy’s mottled face. His blood-filled eyes were still half-open, Garraty saw, sunken in like deflated balloons, the corneas gone milky white.

But despite his churning stomach, despite the knowledge he was signing his own death warrant, he was filled with a dark and savage glee because that cocksucker investigator was
wrong
, and the proof was in the hole in front of him.
So you can just kiss my ass.

“Come on over here,
Bobby
,” he said over his shoulder, and my God, didn’t it feel
good
to be right? “I’ve got something to show you. I think you’re gonna want to see it.”

An image rose in his mind, of his father holding out the newspaper that trumpeted
BOY STOPS CHILD PREDATOR
. Garraty guessed Bobby Frank was going to have his day in the sun for stopping another one.

The investigator didn’t reply. Garraty chuckled. In the dim recesses of his mind a second image: little Bobby Frank screaming and screaming under the house, then blowing past he and Tanner like a bat out of hell. He was probably back there scared silly right now, bathing in the memories of whatever had happened to him the last time he was in the crawlspace. He might have
said
it was a snake, but Garraty knew better. He’d been under the house, too. It had a way of getting to you. He thought he had a pretty good idea of what Bobby Frank had encountered under the old Barlowe house. You bet. And now it had him in its grip again, and the poor man-boy was scared stiff.

Unless he didn
’
t answer because he was never back there in the first place
, the small voice in his head whispered.

But that was crazy thinking. Dr. Redman thinking. Of course Frank had been back there; Garraty had felt the barrel of the gun poking him, felt the spit land on his cheek when the other man was goading him. For God’s sake, the sheriff and deputy had talked to him!

So turn around and look. See if he
’
s there.

Had
they talked to him? Suddenly Garraty wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t remember a single instance of Langston or Mullins speaking directly to Bobby Frank. More importantly, despite all the shit-talking Frank did to Garraty, the sheriff never called him out on it. No man whose job depended on getting votes would let an underling talk to a voter the way Frank had, even if he thought the voter was batshit crazy, would he?

Was Frank as imaginary as everyone claimed the dead boy was?

Was
he
as crazy as everyone seemed to think he was?

You were at the house with him thirty-five years ago. What are the chances you
’
d run into him again now—now that you
’
ve come back?

All he had to do was turn around and look.

But that was the problem. He didn’t
want
to turn around and look, because he was afraid the voice might be right. And if Frank really wasn’t back there...

Garraty squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the palm of his hand against one temple. This goddamn place was doing it to him again. Nothing made sense, and he thought maybe that was just what the house wanted.

Or something else, not part of the house at all.

He forgot about the body moldering in the hole before him, forgot about Bobby Frank and the questions about his own sanity. The hair on his neck rose to attention, and his old friends the butterflies spread their delicate wings in his gut. The house seemed to be bearing down on him again, crushing him the way it had when he was under there with the boy the last time. With the boy and the other thing.

Garraty could barely take a breath. The
other
was in here with him—with
them
, he told himself, but did he
really
believe Bobby Frank was back there anymore?—right now, watching him (
them
) through those great black hollows. He could practically feel its gaze skittering around on his flesh like a cockroach.

Playing the light across the cramped expanse, Garraty saw nothing looking back at him. Not even any rats.
Don’t let your imagination get away from you.
He wriggled on his belly to turn around, letting the flashlight beam lead the way. It was time to settle this thing once and—

Garraty’s eyes widened with recognition and disbelief as the dagger of light fell not on Investigator Frank but on the living boy, crouched just this side of the sagging beam, his green eyes full of hate. He was completely whole now, as if he’d never been tumbled under the Prius like so much detritus and stowed down in Jeremiah Barlowe’s hidey-hole. Even the missing shoe was on his foot.

“I knew you couldn’t stay away from me,” Garraty said, his voice filled with resignation.

But what say we let bygones be bygones and pretend nothing ever happened between us?

The boy didn’t reply. Instead, he skittered forward on all fours, lips peeled back in feral fury. Sparks of light chased one another on the joists and subfloor, reflected off the shiny steel clutched in one of the boy’s hands. Almost before Garraty registered the movement the boy was on him, sliding the paring knife between two of his ribs slick as butter.

This isn’t my time!

A runaway train of pain roared through him. Garraty screamed and flopped away from the boy like a speared fish, his breath bubbling wetly through the fresh hole. The knife jabbed at him again but this time he got an arm up and it carved through the meaty flesh of his triceps instead of plunging into his chest. Hot blood sprayed in a fan, and the arm went limp and useless.
Jesus, so fast!
The flashlight rolled away from them, knocking up puffs of dust.

“What did you do to me?” the boy demanded, and lunged at him a third time. The smell of fresh shit washed over Garraty, pungent and outhouse-thick, as the blade sunk to the handle in his throat and gagged him on a sudden glut of blood that filled his mouth. He tried to scream again but only succeeded in coughing up a red mist that glistened in the backwash of light.

Garraty scrabbled away, but he was slow. Fading. The ground behind him was hard and dry—though it would be muddy soon enough, he thought—and dragging across it sent jangles of pain through him.
The grave is
gone
, the voice in his head registered, dimly.
Gone because he’s out here now.
Nothing made sense anymore, but confusing things was what the house did best, wasn’t it? The house specialty, you might say. The boy glowered at him, limned by the glow from the flashlight.

Not my time
.

Jesus, he was getting weak. It felt like a little more life leaked out of him with every beat of his slowing heart. He got one leg under himself and pushed back.
So slow!
He found himself thinking of Tina and the kids, how good he’d had it, wishing life had do overs. Where had his gone so wrong? Another bright blossom of pain as the blade effortlessly slipped into his thigh. He bleated and kicked away, bringing up his good hand so he could ward off the next jab. With every bit of strength he had, Garraty shoved himself deeper into the crawlspace, almost to the far corner. The boy slithered after him, never looking away.
So this is it.

“You ruined me,” the boy whispered.

I’m sorry, kid. You didn’t deserve any of this.
That’s what he wanted to say, but his body didn’t want to obey.
Garraty
’
s head lolled in the dust. He could see the golden rectangle of light beyond the boy, tantalizingly out of reach. God, what he would give to see the sunlight one last time!
Real
sunlight, not just the muted facsimile he was looking at, shaded by growth and the damnable porch.

And blocked by the goddamned
house
.

But he thought his days of real sunshine were past, and the glowing rectangle was all he had left. He was all out of time. Garraty stretched out his good arm, reaching for the brightness he longed to touch. Wishing he could undo all the things he’d done to the boy.

Thinking about his family, and longing to see them one last time.

Out of time.

He was smiling when the knife thrust forward again.

Screeeeee.

The sound sliced through the black fog where Garraty drifted, waking him.
Bones and bricks
, the voice in his head muttered in a dreamy drawl, but he didn
’
t know why. He opened his eyes slowly. The wan light spread in a fan from the flashlight, barely making it ten feet before the darkness swallowed it.
Mostly dead. Just like me.

Of the boy there was no sign. In the distance, far beyond the support beam that bowed downward like it wanted to kiss the spoiled earth, the rectangular opening to the porch had gone the purple of midnight, the faintest lessening of darkness in the crawlspace. He was alone.
Why did they all leave me?
The blood coating his hand and arm was dried into a maroon crust, cracked like the crazed glazing on an old piece of china.

But he was alive.

Garraty tried to raise his head and discovered that he couldn
’
t. The goddamn thing felt like a lead bowling ball attached to his neck. His cheek pressed into the powdery soil, and each rattling breath that eased out of him stirred up tiny rolling clouds of dust. Every part of him felt like it was on fire.

Screeeeee.
The chitinous sound of fingernails scraping on masonry widened his eyes and sent tendrils of fear twining down his back
.

“Who
’
s there?” he wheezed, and hated the tremble he heard in his voice.

Some sallow slumped thing crept out of the blackness into the weak spill of light from the dying flashlight. It regarded him—
God, but doesn
’
t the thing almost look
amused? the fading voice in his head said—through great hollows where eyes had once been. Garraty wanted to scream, but his throat wouldn
’
t work right and nothing escaped him but a thin croak. The thing crossed the yawn of space between them in a blink.

Stay away from me!
he cried, but only silence reached his ears. Sudden wet heat spread between his thighs.

“Joseph,” the slumped thing whispered, and stretched out a thin bony finger to stroke his burning cheek. “I know your sins.”

And as the darkness closed in around him, Garraty found that he welcomed its touch.

As the seasons march forward, the house on Hickory Hill waits. Summers bring a blanket of heat that swells its aged joints, and at night it pops and creaks, speaking the secret language of old dry wood; winters bring cool days and cold nights and the same dark mutterings; the seasons between bring the tornadoes, which the house has managed to survive so far, not for lack of trying by the weather. Times change, and as they do, the people change with them. They grow forgetful and confident.

And eventually, they come to the house.

In the late spring of 1978, when a man named Henry “Hink” Blaylock sat in a tired wicker-seated chair in front of an unlit woodstove in a country store named Crossen’s Crossing, regaling a Belleville boy with the story of Jeremiah Barlowe and the taste he developed for small children, he was eighty-one and still almost as hale as he’d been in 1943, when he’d seen Barlowe’s handiwork up close and personal at forty-six. The boy was a newly minted thirteen, sent to the store for a pack of spaghetti noodles and lured into the tale as surely as if he were a hungry bear and it a honeypot. When he got home, an hour later than expected, his father was waiting for him with his belt curled loosely around one hand. All things considered, the boy thought the stinging welts on the backs of his legs were worth it.

Hink had no trouble recalling the details of the Barlowe tragedy, but despite his good health a few old memories had slipped through the cracks, as old memories in old men tend to do. Before Jeremiah Barlowe the people talked about Norman Peabody, a blacksmith who went missing from Hickory Home—which it was called in those days, before Jeremiah Barlowe’s purchase branded it with a new name—in 1908. While he lived in the house, Norman developed his own taste for children, but it was one of a different sort than Jeremiah Barlowe.

After his wife died of the flu in the spring of that year his son, who was twelve and the object of Norman’s affections, gutted him while he slept, then rolled up the body in bedclothes and buried it under the house. Back inside, he went to the kitchen and cooked himself three fried eggs and a slab of salt-pork and ate it at the table, thinking of the way his father had looked at him through great dark eyes when he slipped between the sheets at night, and how thin and bony his fingers felt on his flesh. He rode his horse down into town to report Norman missing later that day and was eventually made a ward of the state of Alabama. He lived to be seventy-seven and never returned to Belleville. But of course the boy in 1978 heard not a word of this. Hink Blaylock never told him, because time is a raging river that sweeps both good and bad memories away like litter and by then Hink had spent more than his fair share of years buffeted by its flow.

The house is not frail like men, and stands strong in this river, resisting it. Before Norman Peabody, a carpetbagger named Hiram Walton moved to Belleville in 1869 to cash in on reconstruction efforts, only to hang himself from the rafters of the master bedroom four years later... but not before taking a hatchet to his sixteen-year-old wife and infant son, then dragging them into the crawlspace to feed the starving ground. Hickory Hill had been known as Walton’s Mountain in those days, a fact that would have surely brought a smile to the face of the enthralled boy had he known it. Like the river of time, the darkness that has spoiled the ground where the house stands has no beginning, no middle, and no ending. Hiram Walton and family were not the first to die, nor will Joe Garraty be the last, because as long as the house stands, it will hunger.