Charnel House (23 page)

“Jesus Christ!” Tanner cried, his voice muffled by the hand he’d thrown over his mouth and nose to protect himself. He crawled awkwardly toward the exit, giddy giggles escaping between his fingers.

Joey sagged against the steel beam, laughing so hard he made no sound. Tears streamed down his cheeks, glistening in the weak light. Tears of a different sort—hot and stinging—burned Bobby’s eyes. He crawled after his cousin, his face aglow with shame, fervently praying that his pants wouldn’t show his accident. At the edge of the concrete drop, he saw Tanner sprawled on the dirt below, his sides heaving with mirth.

“Oh Jesus,” Tanner wheezed. “I wish you could’ve seen yourself. Like you thought Jeremiah himself was coming for you!”

Bobby worked up a faint grin and jumped down to the embankment. “You guys got me.”

“I think you got us better,
kemosabe
,” Joey intoned from the darkness in a cracking, shaking voice. “I’m choking back here.”

“Christ, Joey, he pissed himself like a little girl!” Tanner cawed, catching sight of the stain on the front of Bobby’s pants. “Oh, you scared him
good
.”

Fresh howls echoed in the hole under the road, and fresh heat burned Bobby’s cheeks. He turned away from his cousin, covering his crotch with a hand that still shook from the burst of adrenaline. An ember of anger sparked deep within him. So what if they’d scared him? It was a scary story. It wasn’t like he’d burst into tears.

“Did the widdle baby make a peepee in his pants? Did it make a stinky poo, too? It sure smells like it,” Joey mocked. He’d crawled to the ledge and now looked down at Bobby, a disdainful grin splitting his face. “Was it scared?”

Bobby wanted to punch the bigger boy, to just ball up his fist and let loose a jab into that grin and see if he could knock it away. He was smart enough not to. These lummoxes wouldn’t think twice about ganging up and kicking the snot out of him. Their type always worked in packs.

“Well, was it?” Tanner asked. He was catching his breath now, his cheeks flushed from the exertion of his fit.

“Yeah,” Bobby said, feeling the ember inside him growing. “I was. What of it? Haven’t you ever been scared?”

Tanner seemed to realize his cousin wasn’t having fun anymore. He held up his hands, placating. “C’mon, man, we were just messing around. We’ve all been scared.”

“Not so scared I pissed myself,” Joey sneered. He swung his legs over the edge of the concrete and dropped to the ground.

“You were plenty scared the first time I told you the story,” Tanner said matter-of-factly. “I think you were pretty close to pissing yourself that day. I know I almost did when Hink told me his version.”

Joey snorted. His eyes cut to the splotch on Bobby’s jeans. “Why are you taking up for him? He’s a little pussy.”

As if it had a mind all its own, Bobby’s hand began to draw into a fist. Maybe Tanner wouldn’t team up with Joey after all. Could he take the larger boy in a one-on-one fight? Probably not, but if he just landed one punch...

He thought the feeling of that smug face folding around his knuckles might be worth the pain of a butt-kicking, and maybe even getting stitches, if it came to that. He harbored no dreams of actually winning. Just one punch, that’s all he wanted to get in. Heck, a scar or two might even help him out once he was a detective. Show the bad guys he wasn’t someone to mess with. He took a step toward Joey, who was still glaring at Tanner in a kind of disbelief, his nostrils flaring with each breath.

“I’m not taking sides,” Tanner said. “I’m just saying we should lay off. We got a good laugh out of it, but hell, it’s over.
Everybody’s
scared the first time they hear about Jeremiah Barlowe, for good reason. It’s a damn scary story.”

Bobby had an idea then, one of such perfect beauty he almost swooned. He
could
beat Joey Garraty, and for that matter maybe his cousin too, without lifting a finger.

“Why don’t we go up and take a look at Jeremiah Barlowe’s house?” he said, flicking his eyes back and forth between the older boys. “See if that bloody handprint is really still there on the wall. Maybe we’ll even see Jeremiah himself.”

The grin on Tanner’s face faltered. “There’s not enough time.”

Why so quick with your answer, cousin?

“Sure there is,” Bobby said. He pressed the button on his watch and the red numerals lit up. “It’s barely ten-thirty. We don’t have to be back until noon. The hill didn’t look that far away.”

“My dad’s waiting on his smokes,” Joey said.

Bobby would have sworn the boy looked paler. He felt a grin trying to form on his face and clenched his fist a little harder, digging his nails into his palms. This was going better than he’d thought it would, but he was going to mess it up if he started giggling. Time to push them a little. “It’s okay. I understand if you’re scared.”

“I ain’t scared,” Joey said. He jammed his hands into his pockets and looked studiously out over the water. “Hell, I’d kind of like to see the place, myself.”

Sure you would.

“Me too,” Tanner added. Then, with unmistakable relief in his voice, “Maybe we can go next time you visit.”

“Yeah, next time,” Joey said. He seemed to sag a little, like all his muscles had been tensed.

“Like I said, it’s okay.” Again the smile threatened to creep onto Bobby’s face. He shrugged, feigning indifference. “I was even thinking we could go inside, but if you guys are... are
pussies
, we can just wait.”

He held his breath and nearly swooned, certain that the ground was going to open up and drop him directly into the arms of Satan himself to be dragged off to hell for using such a word. His ears felt like they were glowing the way Rudolph’s famed nose did. Was God up there in heaven erasing his name from the Book of Life right now? That’s what Brother Peavey said happened to sinners and backsliders.

“I ain’t no pussy,” Tanner said. “Take it back.”

“Chill,” Joey told him. To Bobby he said, “So you really want to go up there? See that handprint? Take a look around the place?”

Something was different in the other boy’s voice. Bobby heard it. “Sure,” he said.

“Then let’s go. You’re right; it’s not far. But if we do”—he stepped forward and jabbed a finger into Bobby’s chest—“you’re going inside.”

“Shit, man, we don’t—” Tanner began.

“Shut your face.” Joey’s eyes had taken on an empty, dull look Bobby didn’t like. They were the eyes of something not very nice. This wasn’t turning out the way he’d expected. “So what do you say?”

Bobby swallowed.
Should’ve stopped while I was ahead
.

“What about the smokes for your dad?” Tanner asked, hopefully.

“He can wait a little bit longer. I want to see the big shot here go inside the Barlowe place.”

A sneer curled one side of Joey’s mouth, and Bobby felt the ember of anger flicker to life inside him again. The world was full of people like Joey, big and slow and stupid, who thought that every problem could be solved with a fist. That’s just the way it was—even as a kid he already knew that. Joey’s dad was a bully, Joey was a bully, and if Joey ever found a woman dumb enough to make a baby with him, well, it would probably be a bully, too. And what was a bully at heart but a big, blustery chicken?

“Sure, I’ll go in,” Bobby said. “But when I do, I want you to admit you’re too chicken.”

There’s no such thing as ghosts. Except the Holy one, and it’s not scary.

Tanner jammed his hands in his pockets. “Let’s just go back to my house, guys.”

“You’re on,” Joey said, ignoring his friend. “But if you chicken out, you have to pay us. A buck apiece.”

“Deal,” Bobby said, because there was nothing else he
could
say. If he tried to back out now he’d look like a wuss—and might get his butt kicked for it. How hard could it be to go inside an old house in the middle of the day, anyway?

The sneer on Joey’s face spread into a smug smirk. “Let’s boogie. If we hurry, we’ll have time to stop by Crossen’s on the way back to spend our money.”

Bobby followed the older boys up the hillside, listening to his cousin wheeze like a rattly old locomotive. For a while he thought maybe Tanner wasn’t going to make it, that he’d simply collapse at one side of the winding road in a gasping heap, but Tanner seemed to have found a second wind somewhere. Maybe the free candy bar.

As they climbed, the dread in him grew. He didn’t
think
he believed in ghosts, but what if he was wrong? What if Jeremiah Barlowe—or some sort of spiritual remnant of him, anyway—was still up there, gliding through the empty rooms, waiting for some kid like him to come along to get eaten? He could almost see Brother Peavey delivering the eulogy at his funeral, telling the gathered mourners
I always thought Bobby was a little stupid but figured the boy would grow out of it. Pity he never will, but the Good Lord doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

“Just around the next curve,” Tanner said over his shoulder. Sweat darkened his shirt between his shoulder blades. It looked like a butterfly to Bobby.

Through gaps between the trees he saw the town of Belleville spread below them on the left, the tiny homes and businesses lined up in neat rows. Brilliant yellow leaves rustled in the breeze and chased one another to the ground. The sun beat down on the three boys, stretching their shadows up the road before them, and under different circumstances he thought it would have been a pleasant walk. The lead ball in his belly seemed to grow heavier with each step and he wanted to slow down to postpone the inevitable, but he knew he couldn’t. Not only did his reputation ride on this, now his wallet did too, and that seemed somehow more important.

Starsky and Hutch wouldn’t be scared.
Maybe not, he reasoned, but they were grownups. Grownups weren’t
supposed
to be scared. That wasn’t how the world worked. Besides, they had guns. If Jeremiah Barlowe tried anything on either of them, he’d find himself full of holes, blam blam blam.
If a gun would even stop a ghost
.

Bobby took a deep breath, then another, willing himself to calm down.
Think about something else. Something
happy. Like Amy Carmichael, who was in his Science and Social Studies classes at school and also went to the same church he did. Her blond hair shone like the sun itself, and when she smiled at him it felt like his heart was going to explode. She was an angel from heaven, Bobby thought, and even prettier than Farrah Fawcett. What he wouldn’t give to be her boyfriend, to sit with her at lunch every day and hold her hand during P.E., and maybe one day even kiss her! The morning seemed suddenly warmer and he pressed the backs of his hands to his face to cool it.

“Watch out, faggot!” Joey cried from right in front of him.

Bobby hitched guiltily, the beatific face of Amy Carmichael driven back into the recesses of his mind by the irritating voice, and caught himself just in time to keep from walking into the older boys, who had stopped and now looked up the hillside. He turned to follow their gaze, his heart—which just a moment before had seemed so light and buoyant—sinking down to somewhere in his gut. A faint path was visible among the trees.

“That’s the driveway,” Tanner said, pointing. “Almost there now.”

“Get your money ready, chickenshit,” Joey said with a grin, and stepped off the roadway. “I can practically taste my candy.”

Bobby followed the boys up the weedy path, the murmur of gravel underfoot the only conversation. The sun was higher now and the leaves looked like they were on fire, tiny flames dancing among the branches. From time to time, Bobby caught glimpses of the house between the hoary trunks as they climbed, a whitish-gray thing painted with splashes of light. The black ball of fear in his belly shrunk a little.
That doesn’t look so scary. Not in the daylight.

They rounded a bend and the driveway spread into a large cleared area that had once been a lawn but was now crazy with brown weeds. In the middle of it sat the faded house, slumped like a horse ready for the glue factory. The tin roof had gone to rust the color of ancient dried blood. A few behemoth trees grew up around the building, hickory and oak, and kept it mostly shaded.
Old-time air conditioning.
An ivied chimney stood at this end, splitting it down the middle, dark windows like blind eyes on either side of it.

“Looks like the front door’s this way,” Tanner said, striking out through the waist-high grass. It swirled around him like flowing water, rustling softly. Bits of chaff and downy seeds rose in a spray behind him and were pushed away by the breeze. He led them around the end of the house, giving the old building a wide berth.

With each step Bobby grew more bold. The house looked liked something from a postcard, not the terrible place his cousin had made it out to be. All it needed was a weathered sign with SEE ROCK CITY painted on it poking out of the grass to complete the picture. His mood lightened. Joey was going to have to admit to being a big chicken after all. Bobby could practically hear the
bawk-bawk-bawk
sounds in his head, and the thought brought a smile to his face. The scariest thing about this place was its reputation. He was starting to wonder how much of the Jeremiah Barlowe story was real and how much was legend, the tale passed around again and again until the version he heard bore little resemblance to the actual events. A real-life version of the game of post office, so to speak.

Tanner stopped and pointed. “You can go in up there.”

Joey snorted. “You still think he’s going to?”

His voice had the slightest waver to it.

Through a row of scraggly privet Bobby saw the front porch, faded and sagging, nestled in the corner formed by part of the house that jutted forward like an obstinate jaw. An old sign nailed to the door facing advised in washed-out letters that there was to be
NO TRESPASSING
. The peeling paint had gone the color of a weathered skull and revealed dark pitted wood underneath. The door itself stood half-open; shadows waited beyond.

Just a house.

Bobby looked over at Joey and saw that the sneer had slipped away, only to be replaced with a look more pensive. More
scared
. Good.

“Sure you guys aren’t coming? Last chance to show you’re not chickens.” He tucked his hands into his armpits and flapped a couple of times, grinning at them.

Almost before he registered the larger boy moving, Joey sprang forward and gave him a vicious shove toward the house. Bobby’s hands popped free and flailed wildly as he stumble-walked across the yard, trying to keep his balance. He stepped on a rock hidden in the tall grass, his foot rolling inward. Bright glassy pain flared in his ankle and he drew in a sharp hiss of breath.

“Quit fucking around and go!” Joey shouted. “We know you’re just stalling.”

Tanner snickered and Bobby felt his face grow hot. If he said anything about his ankle they wouldn’t believe him. They’d think he was trying to get out of the bet. He took a couple of tentative steps, testing. It hurt, and he limped a little, but it was manageable.

Nothing broken
, he thought.
To heck with those guys
. He’d show them who was chicken.

He turned and started toward the house, trying not to favor his injured foot too much. The building seemed to lean toward him as he approached, looming.
Hungering
. He shook this last thought off, pushed the dull pain in his ankle out of his mind, and instead pictured Amy Carmichael, looking at him through her sweet blue eyes as hazy sunlight shimmered in her hair. What would it feel like if he ran his fingers through it?

He stepped into the growth around the house, hands raised to protect his eyes from any poking branches. Dewberry brambles, their berries long gone, plucked at his shirt like greedy birds. He felt like he was making enough noise to wake the dead, har dee har har. The opening under the porch seemed to absorb light like a black hole, and he could make out nothing under there... not that he was looking too hard, in case there was actually something to make out.

Jeremiah Barlowe’s lunatic face, for example.

Bobby hobbled up the steps and across the pine planking, his footsteps booming hollowly, and then he was at the front door. He looked back for a moment. Joey and Tanner stood shoulder to shoulder about fifty feet away, eyes wide and faces pale. Joey’s hands were clasped in front of him, squeezed together so hard his knuckles had turned white.
One sound and I think they’d scream and jump into one another’s arms like a couple of girls.
Unwelcome laughter bubbled up and he bit his tongue to keep from guffawing. There’d be plenty of time to laugh at them later. Right now, he had to prove a point.

Plus, there was no sense alerting Jeremiah Barlowe’s ghost to his presence, if it was down there.

When he reached out and pushed the door all the way open with one hand, the ancient hinges squealed in low protest and the bang of the knob against the wall echoed through the empty rooms. A thick layer of dust coated the tongue-and-groove pine floor. No one had been up here in years, he thought. Maybe decades. The yellowed wallpaper hung in peeling tatters, but no graffiti decorated the walls and no trash littered the entryway. Beams of filtered sunlight fell through holes in the ceiling where leaks in the roof had rotted through the upstairs floor.

Bobby stepped through the doorway carefully, testing the floor. It looked solid enough, but if he went through it because he wasn’t paying attention he was pretty sure his ankle would be more than just a little sprained. Probably broken, and there was no telling how much trouble he’d get in if his mom found out he was up here traipsing through a tumbledown murder house when he was supposed to just be going for a walk.

It was cooler in the house, almost chilly. To his right and left were open doorways, and ahead a staircase climbed into the gloom. There was a third doorway beyond the stairs, leading into the depths of the house.
Into its belly
. He thought he’d save that one for last; there was no sense going any further into this place than necessary. That seemed like it would be tempting fate, or the devil.

Or Jeremiah Barlowe.

Bobby shivered. This wasn’t the time to think about such things. He needed to find the bloody handprint, if it even existed, and get the heck out of here. Tanner had said the mayor found the wife almost right away, lying on the floor under the handprint, so it seemed logical that she would be in one of the rooms to either side of him.
Left is for luck
, he thought, and walked through the doorway on that side.

The floor in the next room tilted crazily toward the interior wall, which had a wide arched opening through it, and looked like it had dropped almost a foot. Not surprising, as old as the place was. Bobby stepped into the room, mildly disoriented by the lean. It was like being in the funhouse at a carnival, in the part where all the walls and floors were slanted to throw off your balance. He started tentatively for the arched opening, and—

Something made a noise under the floor.

Bobby froze, and the fear that had been all but gone was back in an instant, filling him like a thick black syrup that made it hard to think. His heart triptrapped painfully behind his ribs, threatening to break through and flip-flop across the age-darkened pine.
It sounded like a whimper.

Just the kind of sound a child might make.

His mind told him to run, to simply turn around and truck on out of there and pretend there was nothing under the house making noise. Definitely not the ghost of one of Jeremiah Barlowe’s victims... or of old Jeremiah himself. He stood there for a moment, listening, straining to hear over the sound of his own racing pulse. Nothing.
Run
, the little voice in his head said again.

But Starsky and Hutch wouldn’t run, would they? Neither would Jupiter Jones, or Frank and Joe Hardy, Scooby and the gang, or any
real
detective. They would detect—and find out what made the noise because that’s what they did. They knew there was no such thing as ghosts.

Besides, running was what chickens like Joey and Tanner would do.

This realization did little to quell the gallop of his heart, but it did strengthen his resolve. Bobby limped across the room, acutely aware of how much noise he was making, to the spot where he thought the noise had come from. He licked his lips with a tongue that felt as dry as sandpaper and lowered himself to his knees, then bent forward and pressed his ear to the floor. The smooth wood was cool against his cheek. As he listened, he tried to summon up the visage of Amy Carmichael once more to calm his jangling nerves, but Amy was nowhere to be found. Just Jeremiah Barlowe, bursting up through the rotting boards like a malevolent jack-in-the-box to grab him and drag him down into his (
hidey-hole
) lair. Feeding time.

From the spot where he knelt he could see through the arched opening into the next room, which was the house’s kitchen. The pine flooring gave way to linoleum that was almost the same hideous shade of avocado as the washer and dryer back home. Along the back wall, dusty white cabinets hung askew, and the window over the sink was broken. Bobby could see a tree through the hole, blocking all the light, and wondered if it had even been there when Jeremiah Barlowe bought the place.