Charnel House (25 page)

So why was he so scared?

With one last look at his cousin—Tanner seemed smaller somehow, like the shove from Joey had deflated him—Bobby traipsed back through the weeds to the privet and pushed his way through. The opening under the porch waited for him, staring like a blind eye the same way the upstairs windows had.
Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly
. He crouched and crawled under the peeling structure.

The air was cold there, almost frigid, and a thick layer of leaves covered the ground. They crackled as he crept over them, and he nervously watched the opening to see if all the noise would draw anything (
Jeremiah Barlowe
) out. There were bricks scattered under the leaves, with sharp corners that poked his knees and shins. He tried not to think about how many spiders he must be stirring up. Black widows especially liked to live underneath things like bricks and rocks. He’d seen plenty of them while turning over rocks in search of crickets to fish with. Maybe it was too cold for them under here.

A boy could hope.

There was a piece of rusted tin propped against the wall to his left. He wondered if it had been used to cover the hole to keep people out after Jeremiah was found under there, and if so who—or
what
, the infernal voice in his head wondered—had moved it.
Stop it. You’re just going to spook yourself
. If that happened he was liable to chicken out... and he didn’t think he’d be able to outrun Joey if he tried. Sports had never been his thing. Neither had getting the snot stomped out of him, now that he considered it.

He looked through the opening and saw that it wasn’t as dark in the crawlspace as he’d thought. Here and there, thin bright beams of sunlight speared through gaps in the floor above, courtesy of Mother Nature’s efforts to tear the house down over all the years. Dust swam in the white light. The air in there was colder still, like a freezer, and carried an ancient, mildewy odor. Bobby wrinkled his nose. Would that smell get into his clothes?

He looked around the dim expanse nervously. Where had Jeremiah Barlowe been? If the bloody handprint had survived untouched for thirty-five years, was the dirt down here still stained with the blood of the children he killed? Bobby wrinkled his nose at the thought of slithering through a dead kid’s dried blood.

“All the way in!” Joey yelled. “I can still see your ass.”

What Bobby wouldn’t give to have a gun right now, like the Ruger his dad kept in his nightstand. He’d march back out there, point it in Joey’s face, and make
him
crawl under the house. But first, maybe he’d shoot him in the foot to make up for the twisted ankle. That would take the bullying right out of him. Probably bawl like a baby. Bobby found that his anger quelled his fear, and eased himself into the crawlspace, taking care to stay low. No telling what was up in between the joists. Swarms of cave crickets at the very least, horrid little brown things that jumped three feet straight up and looked more like spiders than crickets. He hated them.

Dust rose around him in a powdery haze, tickling his nose. He pulled his shirt up over the lower half of his face to block the worst of it, his eyes scanning the area for something to placate Joey. Squat. It was like someone had sifted through the dirt down here and removed everything larger than a grain of sand. He crawled forward a few more feet. The joists were a little closer now, not even two feet overhead. If he didn’t find something soon he was turning around. Maybe he could get one of the brick pieces under the porch and pass it off as part of one of the supports.

There
.

Something lay not too much further in, just outside one of the bright splashes of light. He couldn’t make out details, only that it was about a foot long and thin, not as dark as the dirt. Probably a stick.
But maybe a leg bone
. It didn’t matter. Joey was getting it, no matter what it was, and if he wasn’t happy, so be it. After today, Bobby would never have to see him again. He crept closer to the thing, mindful of the joists dipping ever closer.

It wasn’t a stick after all, but a section of copper pipe turned the sickly green of dried snot. Antique plumbing. Joey would complain, but if he didn’t like it he was free to come under here himself and look for something else. Bobby picked the old metal up and as he was tucking it into the hip pocket of his jeans caught sight of something else toward the rear corner of the house, where it was even more cramped.

A worn mattress sprawled in the depths of the crawlspace like a dead thing, stained and full of holes leaking stuffing. Trash littered the dirt around it, empty bottles and cellophane wrappers and tin cans. A dirty blanket lay in a tangle at the foot of the mattress next to a pile of magazines and coverless paperbacks. At the head, a nub of candle stuck out of a Coke bottle. A rainbow of colored waxes in frozen dribbles down the glass spoke of many past candles.

There was a symmetry about the collection of things, something ordered. This wasn’t just garbage tossed into the crawlspace by someone trying to get rid of it, and this wasn’t the sort of place teenagers would come to make out.

It looked like a nest.

Bobby remembered the sound he had heard earlier, when he was upstairs in the room where the bloody handprint decorated the wall. What if someone had been down here then, listening to him walk around? A shiver wracked his body. He tried to shake it off. That was crazy, just his fear of the house and the story of Jeremiah Barlowe trying to give him the willies. Maybe someone—a bum off one of the numerous trains that passed close by here every day, for example—stayed in here from time to time, but
live
here? No way. Not without electricity or running water or toilets or any number of things. And certainly not in such a gruesome place on such an icky mattress.

“What are you doing in here, kid?”

The voice that floated out of the darkness behind him was gruff, as rusty as an old iron gate, and Bobby yelped before he could help himself. He spun in place with eyes wide, the nest forgotten. Dust boiled up around him, making it hard to see anything, and he tried in vain to fan it away. His inner voice chanted one thing in a repetitive litany.

Jeremiah Barlowe Jeremiah Barlowe Jeremiah Barlowe.

There was a man hunkered between him and the exit, glowering at him through rheumy yellowed eyes. Graying hair poked up from his scalp in greasy tufts. Deep channels carved lines down his grizzled face, and oozing sores covered his thin lips. His nose was a glistening cratered ruin. In one hand he clutched a brown paper bag, holding it close to his chest like he was afraid Bobby might try to take it from him. The ratty suit draped on his thin frame looked like it had come from the dump. Smelled like it too, Bobby thought, as a ripe mix of booze, sweat, and waste washed over him. How had he missed this guy—this
smell—
when he first looked in? The hobo (because that’s what he was, even if he didn’t have a bindle slung over one thin shoulder, Bobby realized) must have seen something in the boy’s expression that amused him, because his gaze softened and he grinned, revealing blackening teeth.

“Whatsamatter, kid? Old Norman scare you?” The man chuckled wetly, coughed, then hawked up and spat a thick glob of phlegm into the dirt. He gave it a baleful glare. “Coulda saved that one for a snack.”

Bobby scooted back a little, further under the house, and bumped the top of his head on one of the joists. Blood roared in his ears, and it seemed like the air had gotten thicker because it was hard to breathe. His eyes darted to either side, looking for a way out, but there was only the single exit.
Trapped.
His parents had always told him not to talk to strangers, and there wasn’t much stranger than a hobo living in the crawlspace of the county’s most notorious haunted house. Should he scream for Joey and Tanner? What if he did, and it set the guy off? Anyone who would willingly live in a place like this couldn’t be right in the head. He kept his mouth shut and watched the man, ready to scuttle backwards if he made a move.

“Jesus, son. Relax, I ain’t gonna hurt you.” The man reached into the bag and withdrew a small bottle of brown liquid, which he offered to Bobby with a shaking hand. A finger of sunlight speared the bottle and scattered reddish diamonds across the bare earth. “Want a toot? It ain’t Glenlivet, but it gets the job done. Stuff’ll put a little hair on your chest. Looks like you could use some.”

“No thanks,” Bobby said. His voice wavered. The thought of putting his lips where the hobo’s scabby ones had been made his stomach lurch queasily, and the smell baking off the guy wasn’t helping things on the vomit front, either. He tried to take shallow breaths. “I need to get going, mister. My friends are waiting for me.”

Norman made no move to get out of the way. He spun the metal cap off the bottle and took a long pull. When he was done, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, burped, and fixed Bobby with a watering gimlet eye. “Friends, huh? They didn’t sound much like friends to me.”

Bobby wondered how much the old guy had heard. Probably everything.
That just means he knows Joey is a jerk, too
. He didn’t say anything, but looked longingly past the man at the rectangle of sunlight. The guy wasn’t
old
old, but he wasn’t young either, and he didn’t look fast. Not with the shakes. Maybe Bobby could get around him and escape. This was going to make one heck of a story, once he was back in the sun, safe.

“Gimme a dollar, kid,” the hobo said, holding out his trembling, dirt-crusted hand. His fetid breath filled the space between them, carrying on it a mixture of cheap whiskey, sardines, and the rotten-egg smell of his dead teeth. “Need to buy me a bus ticket to Memphis.”

“I don’t have any money, mister.” Bobby hoped God would forgive him for lying, but even if he had a
million
dollars, he wouldn
’
t give a penny of it to the bum before him. That would mean getting closer to him.
“Let me by now, I need to get on home.”

The hobo inched forward. His hooded eyes seemed to gleam in the false gloaming. “C’mon, kid. Whaddaya say? I’ll suck your dick for that dollar. Suck it
gooood
, let you come in my mouth and swallow every drop. You old enough to come yet? I bet you are.”

The man’s tongue snaked out and slid across his scabbed lips in an obscene parody of lasciviousness. Bobby only had a rudimentary idea of what the guy was talking about. A bad thing. A
sex
thing. He
scooted back in the sandy dirt, deeper into the darkness.
Something had changed in the hobo’s face, and not for the better. His eyes had narrowed, the way a cat’s do when it catches sight of a mouse. It would be better if there was a little more space between them.

His hand landed on something slick and he looked down. It was a magazine, opened to a full-page picture of a naked woman on her back, her legs spread so far apart they were nearly behind her head. She looked up at him through dead eyes. Something hazy and white crusted the page in a dried splatter, nearly covering her forced smile. Her sex was just a dark blur with a hint of color in the middle.

In his nest. I’m in his nest.

Bobby drew his hand back like it had been burned and ducked under a sagging joist to get away from the (
hidey-hole)
hobo’s belongings. He tried to skirt around Norman, but the man moved with him, a predatory smile splitting his rotted face. His eyes gleamed with avarice. With
need
. He moved a little closer.

“What’s wrong, kid? Old Norman’s mouth ain’t good enough for you?
Can’t get a decent blowjob for a buck
anywhere
. Gimme two and I’ll lick your asshole.
”

Bobby tried to roll under the next joist, but it had sagged low and his shoulder banged against it. He squirmed under, hands grabbing at the dirt to pull himself forward, but the man lunged at him, spider fast, and caught his ankle in an iron grip with one dirty hand.

Bobby screamed.

The hobo pulled Bobby to him, going hand over hand up the boy’s legs like he was climbing a rope, and then his rough fingers were unsnapping Bobby’s jeans and plucking at the elastic around his waist. Bobby screamed again, kicking out in a vain effort to get away, his voice cracking from the terror.

“That’s right, kid. Scream for help. It just makes it better,” the hobo wheezed. He clambered on top of Bobby’s legs to hold them down, and withdrew his hand from the boy’s underwear to fumble at his own waist, tugging at his belt buckle. “I want to show you something. You’re gonna like it.”

Bobby tried to scream again, but it was hard to draw a good breath and what came out of him was nothing more than a thin squeal. The smell baking off the hobo felt like something living, crawling down his throat and making him retch. He bit the vomit back, because if he puked on the guy he thought that would probably be the end of him.

“Get him, Jeremiah!” Joey yelled from out in the overgrown yard, and Bobby heard the high tinkle of their laughter over the rushing blood in his ears. “Kick his ass!”

“Look here, boy,” the hobo said. He’d gotten his belt undone and now reached into the front of his trousers and withdrew something soft and black and covered with watery blisters. He twitched his fingers and waggled it at Bobby, and in a kind of crazed delirium Bobby saw several of the blisters pop under the man’s touch. T
hin streamers of clotted pus ran over his hand.
Stringy white worms wriggled blindly in the mess. “Ain’t it a beaut? Why don’t you give it a little kiss?”