by Jack Ketchum
"That's probably it," I told them. "I didn't notice." We went into the kitchen. The door was built into the internal wall off to the left opposite the back door to the house, so that the steps ran under the stairwell. I saw why I hadn't noticed it at first.
Standing at the window you were blind to it. The door was tiny-only about four-and-a-half feet tall. It looked more like a storage closet.
It was locked.
Casey dug into her book bag. "Try this," she said and handed me a screwdriver.
"You're very resourceful."
"This is news to you?"
The fit between the door and the molding was uneven, so it was easy to slip the screwdriver between them and pry, and I guess the groove was worn away pretty badly, because it gave almost immediately.
"There you go."
"Our hero," said Kim. There was nervous laughter.
The door fell open. Our flashlights played over the old rotten stairs.
There was a rough railing constructed of two-by-four pine reinforced with irregular lengths of cheap planking, dark and weathered, as though it had been pulled off some barn and tacked hastily in place. Off to the left you could see the stained, rusted hulk of a boiler.
It was hard to see the rest through the cobwebs.
"I think they're growing 'em big down there," said Steve.
Kim put her hand on Casey's arm. "Do we really have to bother?"
"Of course. It's hideous. Come on."
I offered her the flashlight Steven had appropriated hers when she'd gone digging for the screwdriver. She gave me an ironic look and took it from me and stepped carefully down the stairs. Halfway down she turned around. The three of us stood there like passengers waiting for a train. I was leaning against the doorframe, a little hunched over, scratching my chin. Kim stood behind me with her arms folded over her chest. Steven wasstaringatthe ceiling, tapping his foot impatiently.
We imagined the view from where she stood and broke out laughing.
"You guys," she said.
I turned to Kimberley, ignoring her.
"You hear anything?"
"Nah. Nothing but spiders down there."
"I must have heard spiders, then."
"Big, imperious ones."
"I'm giving you five seconds," said Casey, "the three of you, and then I start screaming
"Coming, Mother," said Kim. "Don't scream.
"Jesus, no," said Steve. "You'll wake the spiders!"
We started down the stairs. Casey held her light for me so wouldn't go crashing into her. Suddenly, with four pairs of feet on the staircase, things got very noisy.
It's funny how when you're a little scared noise helps.
Maybe you figure that if you announce yourself, the goblins cut and run.
We looked around.
"Gross," said Steven.
It had been a kind of workshop once; you could see that much. Beyond the boiler, against the wall to the far left, was a long, broad wooden table covered with dust and grime, warped and rotting away in places, cluttered with debris from the broken shelves above it. Spilled boxes of nails, broken mason jars that had probably held screws and fittings.
A rusted wood plane and a broken rusted hacksaw. The spiderwebs were thick here. I wondered if the doctor
There was a strange thick smell in the air. I guessed it was mold and mildew, some of it wafting up from a greasy, almost liquid-looking pile of rags off to the far right corner, and some of it from the piles of wood shavings that surrounded the table like gray-yellow anthills. Some of them were near three feet high.
I could also smell paint or varnish, but I couldn't find its source at first. Then Kim brought her flashlight around beneath the table and I could see cans and cans of them, tumbled and spilling all over, their contents freezing them together like some crazy sculpture.
There was another smell too, but I couldn't figure that one.
Kim straightened up. "I take it they weren't big on housekeeping."
"Guess not."
The area toward the back of the house was worse. It looked like the debris of generations there. There was a big grandfather clock, its face broken as though someone had smashed it with a
Jsledgehammer, its works spilling out over the cabinet ledge to the floor. The double cabinets themselves looked dusty but in pretty fair condition. Propped up beside it was an old tin washtub big enough to bathe in, its underside rusted clean away.
Here, too, were all the old accoutrements of farm life. I guessed there hadn't been much lost when the barn burned down. Most everything was in here. A small plow with a broken handle, hoes, rakes, a couple of pitchforks with splayed and broken tines. In one corner a mound of scrap reached halfway up the wall-shovels, an old harness, horseshoes, buckets filled with nails and keys and doorknobs, a currycomb, locks, window fittings, a dog's studded collar, pots and pans, a gunstock, rimless wheels, a pair of flatirons, a whip, buckles, belts, work gloves, knives, a dull pitted axe. We stood back and looked. You didn't want to get too close to it at all.
"This place is crawling with antiques," said Kim.
"Junk," said Steve.
"No, there are some good things here. Funny nobody's gone through the stuff."
"Probably the stink drove' em out."
He was right about that. The smell was much worse over here.
He headed for the stairs. I followed him. I'd seen enough. We got to the top and went to the window and filled our lungs with clean night air.
The cellar would be a good place to hide, I thought, if you could stand it long enough. I wasn't sure I'd want to. Maybe there would be something better-and cleaner-on the second floor.
Kim and Casey followed us up. Kim brushed nervously at the cobwebs on her shirt. Casey looked happy as a clam.
"Well, that much has character, anyway."
Steven looked at her sourly. "What it has is stink."
"Let's try the second floor."
"Nuts," I said.
"What's that?"
"I wanted to look for that plaster job I told you about. In the wall.
Forgot a bout it."
"You can look later. Let's see the upstairs first."
HOnce there had been pictures hanging along the stairwell. You could see the brighter areas marking their placement on the cream-colored walls, empty windows to nothing.
At the top of the stairs, a few paces down the hall, there was a square trapdoor in the ceiling. I pointed it out to them.
"Attic. It'll be hard to reach."
"I'm not going up there," said Kim.
Casey thought about it.
"We'd need a chair or something."
There was a straight-back in the living room that would do, but I didn't remind her of it.
"Okay. The attic's out of bounds, then."
"Fine."
We walked the short narrow corridor to the front of the house. Kim opened the door on the right-hand side.
We went in. There was an old stained box spring on the floor and a cheap wood frame stacked in pieces neatly behind it. A ceramic table lamp, its shade missing, stood next to it in front of the window. The room was long, running the entire length of the house. The master bedroom. Steve pulled open the closet door.
A mouse scuttled around in confusion and disappeared through a hole in the baseboard.
There was nothing else but a dozen wire hangers and a rolled-up bolt of wallpaper, the same ugly stuff that papered the kitchen.
I glanced out the window, wondering if you could see where we'd parked the car from here. You couldn't. In the moonlight the overgrown field was gray and the trees were a solid craggy wall of black. You couldn't have found a tank back there.
It gave me a funny feeling.
Like we were cut off somehow.
There was another window to the rear of the house and a door, and I knew that behind the door was where the widow's walk would be. But I didn't have a chance to look for it. Casey was in a hurry. She and Kim had already moved
into the room opposite this one. I followed them.
Another bedroom, but smaller.
IDE AND SEEK
In this one the bed was standing, in a knock-kneed sort of way. You wouldn't have wanted to sit on it, though, even if it hadn't been completely filthy. There was a deep impression in the center, as though whoever had slept there was a pretty good size. We bent down and looked underneath. A lot of the springs were missing. There was nothing underneath but huge balls of dust, so thick you could hardly see the floorboards.
There was a thin faded throw rug bunched up in one corner. A night table with a built-in mirror and a chair. The mirror was broken, but there was no trace of glass. Otherwise the table looked salvageable, if you cleaned it up considerably. An empty picture frame lay facedown on the table, a comb and a brush and two old nylon stockings moldering beside it.
We opened the drawers. Empty.
Steven pointed to the stockings. "Hers," he muttered.
He opened the closet. There were more wire hangers.
"No mouse."
We walked down the hall past the stairwell to the back of the house.
There was a door dead ahead and one to the right.
To the right was yet another bedroom, completely empty. No bed, no mattress. Not even a telltale item of junk on the floor or in the closet.
It was the other door that interested me. The widow's walk.
While the others checked the closet I went out into the hall, found that the door was open, and walked outside.
They weren't far behind me, but there was a moment at least when I was out there alone, breathing the tangy sea air, which was so good after the closed-up, musty smell of the place. The view was really fine.
Only a couple of yards from where I stood the property ended in a spectacular drop to the sea. Between the drop and the elevation of the house, you got the feeling of immense height. Far below was the moonlit sea, ashifting mask of darks and lights. There was no wind, but there was still the impression of movement underfoot-the sea. You felt as though you were standing aboard a huge tall raft, just drifting there, alone.
"Pretty good."
Steven moved through the door behind me. Kim and Casey were behind him. There was something about it that made you want to whisper.
"Gee," said Kim. "I can see why they'd fight for the place."
I shook my head. "It wasn't this. It was the house, the land. Their home. And they didn't fight, did they? They just resisted thinking about it, probably, until they couldn't manage that anymore. Then they left.
"I don't know. Can an idiot enjoy something like this? I'm not sure they can."
"Ask Casey," said Steven. She ignored him. We stood silently for a while, and the raft feeling continued for me. Stars and sea and drift.
I began to feel a little dizzy.
We walked back through the hall and she led the way downstairs. At the foot of the stairs she stopped and turned and told us to have a seat.
Steve and Kim sat on the third step together with me perched two steps above them. Casey turned off her flashlight and Steve and Kim followed her lead. We sat in the dark.
For the first time the heavy silence of the house settled around us. In the darkness you tended to forget how ordinary it was inside and how empty. The dark had its own fullness. You started remembering all the dumb stories again and seeing the place as you had coming through the forest-not a very normal little house at all, but something grimmer, fatal, with its cruel history.
"In my bag," said Casey. "/ have lengths of nylon rope."
We waited for her to continue. Her voice had a somber edge to it, commanding and disquieting. I looked for Steve and Kim just two steps away from me and couldn't make them out.
I sighed. The Spock show had begun.
"Hide and seek, that's the game. I've thought up some rules. See if you agree.
"I've got four lengths of rope. One of them is short. We'lldraw, and whoever gets the short one will be it."
It. I've rarely heard a word sound so silly. Even Casey had to
"That's right, laugh. In this house that might not be as foolish as it sounds. Am I right?"
We stopped laughing. One for Casey.
"Okay, then. Whoever's it will count to one hundred, then come after us. The starting point might just as well be here. The idea is to find us in the dark. No flashlights to be used at any time. All right so far?
"Now. When we used to play this as kids, the first one to be found was it again, and the whole thing started over. But that way it could go on forever. I'm assuming we don't want to bother with that. Nobody intends to spend the whole night here, right? On the other hand, with a little good luck, one of us could get found in two minutes, which doesn't make for much of a game. So I thought of a compromise.
"Whoever's it will take the ropes along. As soon as he or she finds someone, he'll tie that person up as securely as possible and then come looking for the others. When he or she finds the second person, same thing. Bind 'em and then go looking for the third.
"So that the game only ends when everybody's found. That way there's only one round. And two people have the good or bad luck depending on your point of view-to be tied up hand and foot in an old dark house, waiting for the game to end.
"How does that sound?"
Nobody responded for a minute or two. We just looked at her.
Steven looked astonished.
"Ropes? Why not chains, handcuffs? What is this, The Story of 0? Till Eulenspiegel? I didn't know you were into kinky shit, Case. I thought you were just nuts."
"Can you think of a better way to make somebody stay put?"
"I can think of a better way to spend a Saturday night, if you really want to know the truth."
"The car's waiting."
"Aw, Jesus, Case. Come on."
Personally I had to give it to her. You know the saying about somebody's walking over my grave? Well, I had whole troops marching over mine, making the hackles rise. You could imagine it so easily, that sense of helplessness in the dark. Waiting, while the old house creaked and trembled. Still kids' stuff but with an added fillip of tension. That extra risk she'd promised us.
"I like it," said Kim.
"I think you're both very sick," said Steve.
"You playing or aren't you?"
"Listen to yourself, Case! "You playing or aren't you?" What are we, twelve?"
"What's bothering you, Steven? Kink or dignity. Or maybe you're just sea red."
"Shit." He thought about it, though. In a minute he started to smile.
We all did. "Dignity," he said. "Okay, let 'er rip. Let's have
"For this we'll need a light."
She flicked hers on. She drew four rope ends out of the green book bag. Nylon climbers' rope. Thin, pliant and very sturdy. I asked her, "How short's the short one?" She grinned. "You'll know it when you see it. Patience."
Kim was looking at her. "You think you've been pretty cute a bout all this, doncha."
"I dated an egomaniac once. We'd go to bed together. I knew he was an egomaniac, see, because when he was coming, he'd scream his own name."
"Very funny."
"I think I need a beer," said Steven.
"Later."
"How much later?"
"After you draw."
"In that case I'll go first."
He tugged one up out of the bag. It was four feet long. Hesmiled.
"Can I have that beer now?"
I Co*
She was very intent, playing it to the hilt and enjoying every moment.
Four-foot lengths? I asked her. . She nodded.
"Two for each person. Four of them total, since only two of us will need to get tied. The other ones' in the bottom of the bag here."
"That should do it."
"I'd hoped so. You ready, Kim?"
Kim had her right hand over her left breast, cupping it in pure unconscious anxiety. She realized what she was doing and the hand fluttered away. I caught her gl
ance. It was shy and full of pleasure, like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. I nodded toward the bag.
"You first."
She closed her eyes and reached for it. The line came up long. That left Casey and me.