Having paid for his purchases, he carried the shotgun out to the van and laid it on the backseat. For some reason he felt different now that he was a gun owner. Stronger. More in control. As he headed for home, he almost hoped that someone would break into the house again.
He looked back at the box lying on the seat behind him and smiled. "Have I got a surprise for you."
24
Holly watched Mike pull out of the driveway and start down Sawmill Road
, before turning away from the front window. She was alone in a house that now seemed terribly sinister, even in the daylight. Knowing her husband wouldn't be back for several hours, she looked around for something to occupy her time and keep her mind off of troubling thoughts. She thought about cleaning, but she had done enough cleaning in the past week to last a lifetime. Instead, she turned her attention to the vast collection of books lining the shelves in the library.
She wanted something to read that would put her in a better frame of mind; something light, a romantic comedy maybe. But the shelves were crowded with the novels her husband had written, which she had already read and which were anything but cheery and light. There were also the countless reference books Mike had used to research his novels, many of which were as scary as the fiction he wrote. Even the books Mike's grandmother had collected were not the type to be read while alone in a house where shadows slithered about, and faces appeared on the kitchen floor. Most of those were books of witchcraft, myths, legends, and folklore.
About to give up in her quest for something interesting to read, Holly discovered an old scrapbook that had belonged to Mike's grandmother. Glued to several pages of the scrapbook were newspaper articles about a local sawmill burning to the ground. The articles got her interest, because she knew a sawmill had once been located on the very property they now owned.
Carrying the scrapbook into the kitchen, she made herself a cup on instant coffee and sat down at the table to read the articles. The articles, yellowed with age, were clipped from the July 14, 1938, issues of the Braddock Tribune.
According to the newspaper, a fire had broken out in the sawmill shortly after sunset on the night of July 12. The flames had spread quickly, igniting several large piles of sawdust and wood shavings. The flames from those fires had been so intense they had consumed four storage buildings, three sheds, the foreman's office, and all the cut wood stored on the property.
Flames had shot high into the night sky, visible as far as ten miles away. The glow from the flames had been seen in the town of Braddock, and the fire department had dispatched several units to fight the blaze. Unfortunately, by the time the fire department had arrived, it was already too late. Everything had been lost in the fire, but luckily no one had been killed.
Holly sipped her coffee and read the second article, trying to imagine a fire of such magnitude raging across the property they now owned. As far as she knew there was no evidence left that the sawmill had ever existed. There might have been the foundation of a building or two, hidden somewhere beneath the weeds and tall grass, but if there was, she had not seen it.
Accompanying the second article were three grainy photos of men who had worked in the sawmill prior to its burning to the ground. In the photos nearly all of the men posed with rifles.
Holly studied the pictures, wondering why on earth the men had elected to pose with rifles. For that matter, why had they brought the rifles to work with them? She wasn't all that familiar with the job requirements of a sawmill worker, but she didn't think it was necessary to carry a firearm.
So why the guns? Did the workers spend their lunch hour and break times shooting at targets and old tin cans? Was the sawmill so infested with rodents that it was necessary to shoot as many as possible to keep them under control? Or was the surrounding countryside filled with dangerous animals: wolves, bears, packs of mongrel dogs? Back in those days a lot more people walked to and from work. The sawmill was out in the country, so maybe the rifles were necessary to ensure the safety of the workers.
Another thought popped into her head. Maybe the threat wasn't form animals but from men. Maybe robbers waited along the deserted roads to hijack any unsuspecting victim that might happen by. She didn't know much about the history of the area, but maybe the men who worked at the sawmill had lived in dangerous times. She wondered if a fight between union and nonunion workers had anything to do with the need for guns, but only for a moment. It was doubtful if a union had had much influence over workers in rural Missouri. If unions even existed back then.
Holly leaned closer and studied the pictures. Even though the photos were quite old, she couldn't help but notice the haunted looks in the eyes of the men. The looks could have been because they had just fought off a tremendous fire, had just risked their lives. They could also have been because, without the sawmill, the men were now out of a job and faced an uncertain future for themselves and their families.
Still the fire was completely out by the time the photos were taken, the men had survived, and for that they should have been grateful. Most people at such a time would not have given much thought to their sudden unemployment; they would have been happy just to be alive. While it was definitely not a time to pass around a champagne bottle, there should have been at least a smile or two on the faces of the men in the photos.
But there wasn't a smile. Not a one. All of the men were solemn, staring straight at the cameraman. And they all looked afraid. Each and every one of them.
What were they afraid of? The danger had passed.
The next dozen or so pages in the scrapbook were blank, but there were a couple more articles about the sawmill fire on the page after that. Holly read the first of those articles, finding it pretty much a repeat of what she had already read. But what was said halfway into the next article stopped her cold, causing her to go back and reread the article again from the beginning.
In the last newspaper article, an unnamed source was quoted as saying the fire had been deliberately set by employees to defend against a horde of mysterious creatures that had attacked them shortly after sunset. The creatures were not described very well, other than that “they were darker than night around them, and about the size of a large housecat.”
Deliberately set? Creatures darker than the night?
The owners of the sawmill contradicted the unnamed source, denying that the fire had been deliberately set. They said the fire was the result of a spark landing in a pile of sawdust. They also denied the existence of any mysterious creatures, claiming such reports were only local legends and folklore and nothing more.
Holly flipped back to the pictures, staring at the men in the photos. Six years ago she had been commissioned to do a painting for a VA hospital in New Jersey. As part of the research that went into the painting, she had studied hundreds of photographs of soldiers taken before, during, and after combat. She wanted to capture the essence of what it was like to be a soldier during times of war. From her research she learned what pain and sorrow looked like; she also learned the face of fear. The soldiers whose pictures she had studied had stared at the camera with tight-jawed expressions and glassy eyes.
That same expression of fear adorned the faces of the men in the pictures she now looked upon. No matter what the owners of the sawmill said, the men in the photos had encountered something which had literally scared the hell out of them. Holly doubted if the fear was due to the fire, because apparently the workers had not set aside their guns to battle the blaze. Fire could not be fought with loaded rifles, but maybe they believed something else could.
She turned back to the last article and reread it once more. The reporter who had written it finished the article by referring to local legends dating back hundreds of years, to the time of the first white settlers in the area, stories about hobgoblins and boogers.
Boogers.
Holly's mouth dropped open in surprise. She remembered the lines from the poem the children on the bus had sung about Vivian Martin — the poem they
had used to tease Megan and Tommy:
Old lady Martin has gray hair
Claims to see them everywhere
Boogers in the attic, boogers in the walls
Boogers under the bed nine feet tall...
Apparently, Mike's grandmother had been terrified of boogers in her house. The house sat on the same spot of land where the sawmill had once stood. Vivian Martin had been scared of boogers — so had the sawmill workers.
Creatures darker than the night... about the size of a large housecat. Darker than the night. Creatures. Shadows.
A chill suddenly passed through her body. Megan had seen something in the hallway, and in the library. She described it as a shadow darker than the rest of the darkness. Tommy had seen something in the forest, two of them. They had chased him into the orchard. Two creatures the size of a small dog. He had described them as shadows and nothing more.
She herself had seen them. They had attempted to sneak up on her, patches of blackness that glided over the ground like ebony water, moving from one apple tree to the other, hiding in the shadows beneath the trees, blending in with the darkness. She had seen them, yet what she saw was only two swiftly moving patches of darkness, about the size of a groundhog... about the size of a large housecat. She had seen them clearly, yet there was nothing to be seen. Not really. Just shadows.
"Boogers." She said the word aloud, as if sounding it might help her to understand what she and the children had seen.
Despite being someone who wrote imaginative works of fiction, often drawing from elements of the supernatural and the occult, Mike remained quite a skeptic when it came to things which could not be explained in a logical manner. He had dismissed what she and the children had seen as nothing more than the mistaken identity of common forest creatures, or an overactive imagination. He would not even consider, not even for a moment, that they had encountered something supernatural.
The skin at her temples pulled tight. According to the unnamed source in the newspaper article, the workers at the sawmill had been attacked by mysterious creatures. They had been unable to fend off the attack, so they had set fire to the place.
Unable to fend off the creatures, and the workers all had rifles!
That was another thing. The workers must have been under threat of attack for some time or they would not have been carrying rifles. If one worker saw a booger, then nothing would have been said. It would have been dismissed as a trick of the eyes, or a figment of the imagination. A couple more sightings would have led to a few whispered words, maybe a couple of chuckles. More sightings would have led to rumors, maybe late night discussions over beers. Still that would not have been enough to warrant carrying guns, not unless someone had gotten hurt. Even then the supervisors and owners would not have let the employees carry guns to work unless they too had seen the shadows and felt there was a need to arm themselves.
They must have known. They must have all known. The situation must have gotten so bad that every man working the sawmill knew about the boogers, and felt there was a need to carry a gun while at work. The fire had been the final result. They had torched the sawmill in an attempt to defend themselves. It must have worked, because no one had been killed or injured that night. Nor had any more reports of boogers been filed.
Not until Vivian Martin built her house on the original site of the sawmill. She knew about the boogers, must have been fighting them off for years. The poor old woman had tried to get help from the sheriff's office, but no one would believe her. They considered her mentally unbalanced. A nutcase. Their solution to her problem was to come out and paint everything a hideous dark green. Paint over the faces.
Again a chill seeped through Holly's body. She scooted her chair back from the table and looked down at the floor beneath her feet. The mysterious faces stared up at her from the yellow tiles. Like the creatures that had attacked the sawmill workers, the faces could not be explained. But Holly now knew she was gazing on the faces of hobgoblins, the faces of boogers.
They're coming up through the floor.
Up through the kitchen floor, and through the walls, and out of the woods. Maybe even through the ceiling. The same demons that had plagued the men who worked the sawmill so may years ago, had plagued Mike's grandmother, were now plaguing Holly and her family.
"We've got to get out of here."
Holly stood up and started to leave the kitchen, but stopped and sat back down. She and Tommy had encountered the creatures during the daylight, but they had avoided the direct daylight by moving from shadow to shadow. That meant the creatures were probably nocturnal, and there was no need to worry about them until it got dark.
She wondered how Vivian Martin had survived so many years facing something so dangerous. What did the old woman know about the boogers that no one else did? Holly thought about the vast collection of books on the supernatural Mike's grandmother had acquired. Had she found a spell, or a charm, something that would work against the creatures? Apparently she had, otherwise she would have probably been driven from her home years ago.
She had started to go into the library to search through Vivian Martin's collection of books, when her gaze swept across the names of the men in one of the photos. The name of the young man standing to the far right seemed vaguely familiar. Holly was certain she had heard it somewhere before, but just couldn’t remember where. She thought about it for a moment, and suddenly she remembered.
The name of the man in the photo was Sam Tochi. It was also the name of the crazy old Indian who had approached her in the parking lot outside the grocery store. Were they the same man?
If it was the same man, then how had he gotten so mentally unbalanced? Was it something he had seen at the sawmill that had made him crazy? Had his encounter with mysterious, shadowy creatures pushed him over the edge?
As Holly stared at the photo, she remembered the brief but bizarre conversation she had with the old man:
“What do I want? What do I want?” the old man repeated, mocking her. “The question is what do they want?”
“Who?” Holly asked.
“The boogers, that's who,” he answered. “What do they want? What do they always want? That's the question. It is. It is.”
“You'll see. You'll see,” he said. “You'll find out the question, but not the answer. Just ask Sam Tochi. He knows. Sam knows all about the boogers, but they won't believe me. Nope. Nope. But you'll see. You will. You have their house.”
"I have their house," Holly said quietly.
Holly felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The old Indian had been trying to warn her, but she dismissed it as nothing more than the mad ravings of a nutcase. He knew about the boogers, knew she and her family had just moved into a house where the sawmill had once stood. He was trying to warn her, but she had failed to grasp the message. But maybe it wasn't too late to do something about it.
Crossing the room, she grabbed the phone book off of the counter and began flipping through the residential listings. She didn't expect to find what she was looking for, but it was there. Sam Tochi's name, address, and phone number were listed in the book.
She grabbed the telephone and started to dial the number, but changed her mind and hung up. She hadn't been too cordial to Mr. Tochi the first time they met, threatening him with a cucumber, so it would probably be best to go see him in person. She didn't think the old man was dangerous, just a little unbalanced. Besides, what she had to ask him was best done face to face rather than over the phone.
But what about Mike? He'd have a fit if she told him she was going to talk to a crazy old man about hobgoblins and boogers. He'd absolutely forbid her to go. She didn't even want to tell him about what she had just read in the newspaper articles. Not yet anyway.
"So, I'll tell him I went shopping."
Her mind made up, Holly carefully removed one of the articles about the fire from the scrapbook and placed it on her purse. She then looked through the phone book to see if there was a taxi company i
n the town of Braddock. There was. She dialed the number listed and requested a taxi to take her to Braddock and back. The dispatcher took her name and address, and promised he would have a car pick her up in the next twenty minutes. She thanked the dispatcher and hung up the phone.
Grabbing her purse and house keys, Holly went out on the front porch to wait for her ride. Her next stop was the home of a crazy man.
25
Sam Tochi lived in a weather-beaten, faded green house a few blocks south of the grocery store. The house sat at the end of Clara Avenue
, fronted by a yard overgrown with weeds and cluttered with the rusting remains of several lawn mowers and an old pickup truck.
The taxi pulled to a stop in front of the house, the driver turning around to give Holly a questioning look. "Lady, are you sure you have the right address?"
Holly nodded. "702 Clara Avenue
. That's what it said in the phone book. This is the place."
"But old Sam lives here."
Again Holly nodded. "Sam Tochi. That's who I came to see."
The driver's look went from questioning to that of surprise. "You came to see Sam? You're kidding. Right? That old Indian is crazy."
She favored the driver with a smile, then opened the door. "Maybe he's not as crazy as everyone thinks. Please wait for me; this shouldn’t take long."
The driver nodded. "Anything you say. It's your money."
Holly followed a cobblestone walk up to the front door. She pushed the doorbell's button, but she didn't hear any sound from the inside and figured the bell wasn't working. Resorting to knocking, she rapped several times on the wooden door then stepped back to see if anyone was home. A few moments later the door opened a few inches and Sam Tochi eyed her suspiciously.
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