Careful not to make any noise, Crow and Newton drifted toward the patch of sunlight and stood in it as they examined the house. Weak as it was, the warmth of the sun and its golden light seemed to soak into their skin all the way to their bones like a shot of good brandy. Some of the oppressive weariness melted away under its heat, but the caution and apprehension they had both felt as they stared at the front of Griswold’s house obdurately remained. They lingered there and soaked up the warmth.
Now that they were closer to the house they could see that front porch had peeling whitewashed posts that held up a decrepit porch roof, which was the only part of the house that looked like it bore the ponderous weight of thirty years of disuse and neglect. The front windows were covered with plywood. Each sheet was larger than the window and appeared to be nailed right into the wooden front wall.
“Get your camera out,” said Crow. “I want some pictures. Get the whole house. All four sides.”
Newton pulled out his small Minolta digital, tucked his walking stick under his arm, and left the patch of sunlight to begin shooting. As he stepped out of the patch of sunlight he was amazed at the difference in temperature and humidity of the shadows clutched around the house. Crow headed to the left, prowling around the perimeter of the house, frowning at everything. When Newton reached the front of the house, he stopped, staring at the patch of sunlit ground where they had stood.
“You done?” Crow asked from right behind and Newton actually screamed. It wasn’t much of scream, more of a yelp, but he did jump inches into the air and landed in a crouch, spinning around. He hadn’t realized that Crow had circled the house and come up behind him from the other side.
“Don’t do that! You about scared the piss out of me!”
“Oh?” Crow said with a snide grin. “Is this place getting to you?”
Newton flipped him the bird.
Crow moved past him and squatted down on the bottom step so that his line of vision was just above that of the porch floor. “Newt…don’t put your camera away just yet. Take a look at this.”
“What is it?” Newton climbed up onto the porch to where Crow stood in front of the boarded-up window to the left of the door.
Crow pointed with his machete. “Looks like footprints in the dust there on the porch. Can’t tell how old they are, though. There’s been a lot of rain…” his voice trailed off and he rose to his feet, brow furrowed in perplexity. “Oh…shit.”
“What?”
Crow stepped onto the porch and used his blade to tap the wood covering the window to the left of the door. “What’s your read on this?”
“Yes. Plywood. I have seen it before. Very impressive.”
“Okay, smartass, you’re a hotshot reporter. You’re supposed to be a good observer, so observe. Tell me what’s wrong with this picture.”
Newton stepped closer, peering at the four-by-eight sheet of heavy three-quarter plywood. It had been securely affixed to the wall with at least fifty heavy-duty sixteen-penny nails. The nail heads were neatly spaced and hammered flush. Professionally done, no owl-eyes, no miss-strokes. There was a pale-blue stencil inked onto the surface of the wood sheet, repeated twice in the high left and lower right corners. The lettering read BILDMOR LUMBER—CRESTVILLE. “Well,” he said, “I can say with some confidence that this, indeed, is plywood.”
Crow made a disgusted noise. “No shit, Sherlock. Don’t you think there’s anything a little odd about it?”
“Um. No. Not really.”
“Christ on the cross,” Crow snapped. “Newt, this place has been deserted for thirty years. We know nobody owns it because I checked the deed yesterday. Look at the plywood, for God’s sake. It’s still green!”
Newton did look at it and his mouth slowly opened. “Oh,” he said.
“Look at the nail heads. Shiny bright. They’re brand-new.”
“Oh…shit.”
“I’ll bet this hasn’t been up for more than a couple of weeks. All of the windows are the same. I checked. All the lumber is new, all the nails are new.”
“Oh,” Newton said, “shit.”
“Uh huh,” Crow said and his eyes were bright and even a little wild, “but there’s more, kid, and this is the kicker. This is the cat’s ass.” He pointed to the double front doors. They were heavy and ornate, and once had long glass panels, but the panes were covered over with neatly sawn strips of plywood as green as what covered the windows. But what Crow was indicating was the chain that held the doors closed. One hole had been drilled through each door and a heavy length of brand-new steel welded chain was laced through, effectively chaining the doors shut. Crow lifted the slack and gave it a shake to show how solidly the doors were held fast. The links were as thick as Crow’s thumb.
“Damn,” Newton observed, bending close to examine the chain. “We’ll never break that.”
“No shit. It’s the same on the backdoor.”
“What do you think? Caretaker?”
Crow felt like punching the man. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Newton, are you friggin’ blind?”
“What? I can see the chain. I can see that it’s as new as the plywood.”
“Newt,” Crow said with as much patience as he could muster. “Where’s the lock?”“The, er, lock?” Newton looked blank, then he got it. The loop of chain emerged from one drilled hole and reentered the house through the hole on the other door. What Crow held in his hand was an uninterrupted length of slack. “Oh, shit,” Newton said again, with greater emphasis.
“Yeah.”
The chain was padlocked on the inside of Griswold’s house.
“Back door?”
“The same?”
“Cellar door?”
“Uh huh.”
“Crow…whoever slung those chains—”
“—is inside that house,” Crow said and then gave Newton a ghastly smile. “Inside with all the windows all boarded up.”
“So no sunlight can get in,” Newton said softly. Even more softly he said, “Uh oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Crow, trite as may be to say it, I have a very bad feeling about this.”
“Yeah. I’ve had a bad feeling since we came out of the woods. The place is in too good a shape, and that bothers the hell out of me.” Licking his lips nervously, Crow stepped closer to the door and reached out with one tentative hand to touch the wood. The plywood was cool and felt slightly damp. “That’s weird.”
“Put your hand on the wood.”
“I really don’t want to.”
Crow said nothing, but continued to touch the door. There was a faint tremble and he couldn’t tell if it was coming through the wood or was the shaking of his own hand. He closed his eyes to try to focus his sense of touch and instantly the trembling became more pronounced, and it wasn’t just in the wood. He could feel it rippling in waves up his arm as if the whole house was vibrating. Then, in the deepest part of his brain, the place where his fears lived, where those last words of Ruger echoed without end, he heard a voice whisper to him.
She is going to die and there is nothing you can do to save her. Nothing!
It was so deep, so tangled up with his own fears that he almost didn’t hear it, but then the vibration in the wood spiked and he cried out and staggered back as if the wood had sent a shock through his skin.
Newton looked at him. “What’s wrong with you?”
Crow just shook his head, looking pale and shaken.
“Why’d you call out like that? Why’d you call her name?”
Crow frowned at him. “What?”
“Just now. You yelped like you’d been burned and then said ‘Val!’ real loud. What’s the deal?”
“I…don’t know,” Crow said. “I don’t think I said that…did I?” He looked down at his hand and his palm was an angry red. In his mind the words replayed in a nasty whisper: She is going to die and there is nothing you can do to save her. Nothing! “Jesus Christ,” he said slowly, “I wanted to come here, you know, to ease my fears, to put this shit to rest. I didn’t come here for this shit.”
“No argument.”
“I think we should get the fuck out of here and I mean now!”
Newton only nodded and together they backed off the porch, lingering at the top step just long enough for Newton to take a picture of the front door, but as he did so he dropped the walking stick that he’d tucked under his arm. He bent down to pick it up and instantly there was a tremendous CRACK! and the entire center section of the sagging porch tore free from the age-weakened supports and plummeted downward. Newton heard the sound and looked up but he was shocked into immobility, absolutely frozen to the spot; then something hit him in the side hard enough to drive all the air out of his lungs and he was swept off the porch and went tumbling down into the yard, banging elbows and knees as he went. Crow, who had tackled him, rolled over and over with him until they both lay sprawled in the weeds two yards from the porch. The sound of a ton of wood and plaster crashing down onto the tired boards of the porch floor was like a slow thunderclap that chased them down into the yard and washed over them to echo off the stone wall and the distant line of trees.
Sprawled among the weeds in a tangle of too many arms and legs, chests heaving with shock, hearts hammering like fists against the insides of their sternums, mouths dry with dust and terror, they looked up to where the bare porch should have been, but what they saw was a mass of jagged spikes of wood, torn plaster, ripped shingle, and splintered lath. A cloud of gray dust hung over everything like smog.
“My…God!”
Crow struggled to a sitting position and spit grit onto the ground between his shoes. “You almost met your God.”
“That was…the roof?”
“Used to be,” Crow said and winced as weeks-old aches flared up again. The wrist Ruger had nearly crushed was throbbing badly, and his palm felt burned.