So what was it?
It wasn’t a pipe at all, something wrapped in fabric. He tore at the plaster, tossing the broken bits aside, until he could make out some kind of shape, and when he did he backed up quickly, scampering away from the sight and stifling a scream before it could work itself out of his throat.
“Holy shit,” he said, staring at the body he’d uncovered. The sledgehammer had broken through the skull and what poured from the wall was the person’s rotten brains. He fought the urge to vomit, having to go to the doorway and turn away for some fresh air and to get the vision out of his sight.
It didn’t help, the picture was burned into his retinas now.
Who was it? Why were they in the wall? Obviously someone wanted to cover up a murder, he thought.
This is fucked up.
He went back into the room but stood away from the wall, his back nearly pressed to the opposite one. The black ooze still spilled from the hole in the wall. Whatever face had been there before was a crushed mess of decayed flesh and shattered bone dust now. He wanted to pull away more plaster to free the body, but another voice inside said to leave it, let the police deal with it, this was obviously a crime scene now.
It was also a bust, he thought, because there was no way in hell now they were going to be able to sell this place. It was one thing to buy a place where someone had died; people die all the time, sometimes at home. But no one was going to buy the house where the body was found inside the wall.
They’d get plenty of gawkers coming through here during an open house, but no serious offers except from freaks and emos. The whole point of this had been to start a serious business with big potential, something to set them all up for life while also raising some property values around town. Mike had envisioned media coverage over their success and the way they were bringing new people into Angel Hill by turning out such beautiful homes at such reasonable prices, and Mike would say “It’s not about the money--we want to be able to live and pay our bills too, sure, but it’s really about the community and making this the place where people want to live.”
All that was gone now. He felt the panic rising and tried to fight it, tried to reason his way out of this situation, but no matter which route he pictured, they all ended in the same place: he and his best friends were stuck with a dump they would never be able to sell, and without the profit from this place, they would never be able to afford another. He’d just screwed his best friends into the worst business deal of their lives.
Hey, he thought, I didn’t know about this. This isn’t my fault. They can’t blame me for something like this, I didn’t put the body there.
No, but you found the house, you found the body, and now you’re gonna have to eat the money.
Fuck.
Get rid of it, he thought. Get it out of the wall, wrap it up, take it out the back door, stash it in the garage, come back later after everyone’s gone home. Doesn’t matter where you put it, dump it in the park for all it matters.
No, he countered. If they discover who it is, and you just dumped it in the park across the street, that’s not going to take Batman to figure it out. The body can never be found, there can’t be anything to bring the wrong kind of attention to the house.
He would figure out what to do with it later, first he had to get it out of here.
He went upstairs and grabbed a few large trash bags from the back porch where Gary, his thick glasses magnifying his eyes to bug-eyed proportions, was cutting boards with a circular saw.
“Just gonna try to make carrying this plaster and stuff easier to bring up,” Mike said. Gary nodded and said, “Good thinking.”
Mike went back downstairs, but stopped outside the room. Touching the body was the last thing he wanted to do. No, he realized, telling his friends he had lost them almost twenty grand each was the last thing he wanted to do. So to avoid that, he had to go in there and haul that body out of the wall.
“God really fucking hates me,” he muttered.
He turned the corner, intent on getting the job done quickly, before he had time to think twice or even comprehend what his hands were touching.
But the body was gone. In fact, the plaster was gone. It was there, of course, but it was all on the floor, as if Mike hadn’t spent the last ten minutes freaking out over finding a body in the wall, but had instead done as he’d intended and had pulled it all down. He stood looking at it, mouth hanging open, eyes locked on the spot where the body had been, and his stomach feeling like he’d been sucker punched by a giant.
He peered around the room, some instinct telling him the body hadn’t been dead, that who- or whatever it was had climbed out of the wall itself and was lying in wait somewhere for him. But unless it was hiding under the pile of plaster and dust, and he could see that it wasn’t, it wasn’t here.
Maybe in one of the other rooms, he wondered. The laundry room was small and dark. He looked, turned on the light even, but there was nothing there. He even looked in the dark space near the back porch, but, still, there was no body.
There never was, he thought. But I saw it.
No you didn’t. It’s not here, so you didn’t see it.
A ghost?
He shrugged. Was there a better explanation? Maybe something had happened in this house. If it had, and he wasn’t told, he was going to be pretty pissed. But if that were the case, he could at least rest easy knowing his business venture hadn’t been ruined. If Lynette had sold them a tainted house without telling him, maybe he’d been wrong about the disclosure thing in the first place. Or maybe she hadn’t known.
He couldn’t stand not knowing, so he decided to ask her later. He still had her card, he would call her when he finished here for the day.
He took another walk around the basement, slowly, making sure he really was alone down here. Maybe it was hunger, or exhaustion. He hadn’t worked this hard in a long time, he realized, and it might be weighing on him.
“I dozed off for a second,” he told himself. He used to do it at the restaurant when they were shorthanded. They tried to keep four managers on hand at all times, but for a few weeks after Bob had quit and Violet was on maternity leave, Mike and Tammy’d had to split the shifts. There were a lot of times over those few weeks he’d had to close one night and open the next day, and more often than not, especially after the lunch rush when he was in the office doing paperwork, he would doze off and have incredibly vivid and weird dreams in the span of only a few seconds.
Was this one of those times? He could see himself zoning out to the point of falling asleep on his feet while his subconscious mind controlled his body and took out the rest of the plaster.
It certainly made him feel more comfortable with what had happened than the idea there was a body inside the wall and it was now gone.
He realized then that if that was the truth, if his body was that worn out, maybe using tools wasn’t the wisest move and maybe he should rest first. He had been driving himself pretty hard these past couple of days.
He could call Keith, see if he could take over here while Mike went home, spent the day taking a much needed break, and he could come back tomorrow, recharged. Not that he felt Kevin and his crew couldn’t, or wouldn’t, work without the supervision, but they were still early enough in this venture that Mike wanted there to be someone here at all times, at least when there was work going on, in case there were questions or issues.
Keith answered after a few rings and Mike asked, “What’s up?”
“Was just taking a shit,” Keith answered.
“Awesome.”
“I think I lost twenty pounds.”
“Even better. Hey, you doing anything the rest of the day?’
“I was gonna head over to this party for a little bit.”
“Is that set in stone?”
“Not really,” Keith said. “What you need?”
“I’m here at the house. We’ve got the bathroom and kitchen demo’d but I need to take off for a bit, I was
gonna see if you’d want to come up and keep an eye on things?”
“No problem,” Keith said, “I’ll just call Beaver and tell him I’ll catch him later.”
“Cool, thanks man.”
He pocketed his phone and looked at the torn up bits of plaster on the floor again, kicking through it with his foot to make sure there really wasn’t a body under there. When he was finally satisfied that what he’d had was a waking dream, he went upstairs to look for Kevin. He found him outside measuring for the covered porch.
He told him he was leaving in a minute, but that his partner was on the way if they needed anything and Kevin said ok and Mike got in his car.
He hadn’t started the engine yet when he glanced over at the park and there was the homeless man, sitting on the bench at the far end, watching him.
“Motherfucker,” Mike grunted, slipping the key from the ignition. He got out of the car, pocketed the keys, and strode into the park, down the hill, making a beeline for the bench. The old man saw him, Mike knew he did. He’d told him to stay away but this guy had balls for sure. And right now Mike wanted to kick those balls up into the guy’s throat if he didn’t stop stalking the house.
“What the fuck, man!” Mike yelled when he was within earshot.
The man didn’t reply, didn’t even move.
“I told you not to come around here!”
“It’s a free park, man,” the bum said. “You can’t keep me from the park.”
“I can call the cops if I think you’re casing my house,” Mike said. “I can get a restraining order.”
“For what?” the bum asked. “Because I come to the park across the street from a particular house? I haven’t done anything to you, to your house or anything else. I’m just sitting here.”
“Yeah, sitting here stalking me.”
“I don’t even know who you are. Why would I stalk you?”
“You’re sure as hell stalking my house,” Mike said. He was nearly screaming now. “Get the fuck out of here and leave me and my business alone!”
“You don’t know anything about your business,” the man said. He stood up from the bench and Mike took a step back as if he thought the man might jump him and he wanted to be out of the guy’s reach. The man noticed him move back and he chuckled. “I wish I could say I hope you don’t find out what you’ve gotten yourself into, but you went inside. It’s already too late.”
He stepped back himself, moving so the bench was between him and Mike, then took a few steps backward before turning and heading for The Slant.
Too late, Mike wondered. Too late for what? What the hell was this dude talking about was too late? What did he know?
Mike wanted the old guy gone from within sight of his property, but maybe he really did know something.
He thought about the black sludge of brain oozing from the hole in the wall and told himself it had been a dream, nothing more. But if this guy was watching the house now, how long had he been doing so? What had he seen? If Mike asked Lynette and she didn’t know, or didn’t want to tell him, he’d be no better off. And that could be the case, he thought. If she was supposed to disclose something and didn’t, she could probably get in trouble for not telling them. So why should he expect her to tell him anything now?
He’d ask this guy instead.
He took off after him, calling out, “Hang on, what are you talking about? What do you know about my house?”
The guy was on the sidewalk outside the park, waiting to cross The Slant over to River Road when Mike caught up to him. Traffic was always busy on 169 and Mike knew it could be a while before the guy found a break in the cars long enough to cross, unless he walked up to the Vogul intersection, which he didn’t seem interested in doing.
Mike stood behind him and said, “What the hell do you know about my house?”
“Enough,” the man mumbled. He said something else Mike couldn’t hear because the guy’s back was to him, so he moved up next to him.
“What did you say?”
“I said, enough to know you can’t be saved.” He turned to face Mike now and continued. “You could sell it, you could abandon it, you could burn it down, but it’s too late. You went inside. The EMTs went inside. They’re dead. My friend Matt, he was in there, and he died.”
The man shook his head as if there were simply no other words that would suffice. He clutched the bundle in his arms tighter and Mike noticed it for the first time. He recalled the guy had been holding it the last time he saw him, too. It was a book, but like a photo album or scrapbook or something.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You’ll see what it means,” he said.
“Is that a threat?”
“Look at me.” He shrugged his weak shoulders, showed his dead, haggard looking face, and said, “Do you really think I’m in a position to threaten anyone? I got nothing left, man.”
“Then why do you keep sitting there watching my house? If you think I’m kidding about calling the cops, trying to scare you off just because you’re homeless or whatever, you can try me, I’d love for you to.”
“You’re so worried I’m gonna do something to that house, man. Shit,” he laughed, and it was a hollow, hopeless sound, “if I wanted to do something to it, I could have years ago when I owned it.”
Mike felt knocked back. This guy had owned his house? For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to say. For some reason he felt as if he’d stolen the house from the guy, and he wanted to apologize, then he realized he bought it from the realtor, and if this guy had lost his house before Mike had ever seen it, that wasn’t Mike fault, and not his problem.
He must have noticed the look on Mike’s face because he said, “Don’t worry, I’m not mad you bought it, I pity you for that. I don’t want it back.”
“You’re talking shit. You don’t know anything.”
“It’ll wait until it’s done with you, then you’ll meet some unfortunate end, just like everyone else.”
Mike’s mind was a mix of equal parts frustration and confusion and if this guy didn’t say something soon that made sense, he wanted to push him into traffic just to get him out of his sight.
“I was going to propose that night,” he said. “And that fucking house killed her.”
“No one’s died in that house, the realtor would have said something.” He hoped he was right.
“I never said she died in the house. She had a stroke and died in the hospital three days later.”
Mike was silent.
“It killed the first responders that took her away. Not right away, but over a couple of weeks everyone who came into the house the night she had her fit, they were all dead. Car wreck, murder, heart attack. My best friend and his girlfriend. Their car was hit by a train. A fucking train, man! When it’s done with you . . .”
“You seem to still be kicking,” Mike pointed out.
The man shrugged again and stepped off the sidewalk, ready to cross The Slant, but he never made two steps before a white van with the name of a local electrician slammed into him, throwing him thirty feet. He came down, bounced, rolled, then skidded to a stop on his face across the asphalt.
His book landed open, pages down, splayed and flapping in the wind. Some of them blew away, dancing across the highway on the breeze.
Mike yelled, “Shit!” and leapt back from the street. The driver of the van lost control as he slammed on the brakes and the van skidded, slid sideways, ran up onto the sidewalk, into the park, then hit a tree and stopped.
Mike ran to the man in the street, sure he was dead, but he couldn’t just leave him there. He was pulling his phone from his pocket as he ran, dialing 911, then kneeling next to the man as traffic flew around them, no one willing to stop and help.
Mike told the dispatcher who answered that he needed an ambulance, then told her what had happened. She said someone was on the way and told Mike to stay there until they arrived.
He said ok, then hung up and put the phone away.
Should have called for a hearse instead, he thought, but then he saw the guy’s right eye rolling around in its socket, searching. Mike moved forward so the guy could see him, then cringed at the sight.
The street had torn the left side of his face nearly off, bits of gravel embedded in his skin, blood pumping from gouges in his forehead. His left eye socket had been ground to mush. The left eyeball was like a ruined mess of red in his skull. His left cheek had been torn open and Mike gagged at the sight of the glistening, exposed muscle. His limbs weren’t just broken or twisted, they were shattered. He lay on his left arm and that part that extended out from under his body looked like a sock filled with rice.
“Ambulance is coming,” he said. “Hang on.”
He could already hear the sirens wailing.
“Hear them?” he said.
“I told you,” the man croaked.
“Quiet down,” Mike said. “I’m not gonna lie, man, you’re in rough shape. Just take it easy. They’ll be here and they’ll help you.”
“No point,” he said.
“Just hang on, dude. They’re almost here.”
They came, as Mike promised, but the guy was dead by the time they showed. The police came and he told them what happened. The driver had a broken collarbone and a gash in his head. He was loaded into a second ambulance and taken away, while a tow truck came for his van.
Mike stood in Upper Hill Park and watched, feeling numb, exhausted, and utterly drained. He didn’t believe what the guy had said, why would he, but he couldn’t get the notion out of his head that there was something about this house he didn’t know, something he should find out.
He wondered again if there had been any deaths in it. The guy had said there hadn’t, but he’d also said the house gave his girlfriend a stroke, so there wasn’t much substance, as far as Mike was concerned, to that.
Now that the adrenaline rush had worn off, he felt half asleep on his feet again and he trudged back up the hill to his car. Keith was outside, watching the lights drive away across the park. He came down the yard, across the street to Mike’s car where he waited until his friend came up.
The Flip (An Angel Hill novel) Page 14