December Park

by Ronald Malfi

  “We don’t know.” There was a surprising tremor in Peter’s voice. “We don’t know if anyone’s been in there at all.”

  “Except for the body,” I said.

  “Well, yeah,” Peter said. “Except for that.”

  “Where’s the body?” Adrian said.

  Peter said, “Come on,” and we all went to the window on the left side of the double doors. After wiping a streak of grime away from the glass, Peter looked in for several seconds without saying a word.

  Suddenly I was certain that the body would no longer be in there, that we had either imagined it or someone had reclaimed it. I thought about the noises Peter and I had heard in the surrounding woods, prompting our departure, and it seemed possible that the Piper had been watching us, and he had taken the body away with him in the night so it wouldn’t be here if we returned. This notion caused a chill to ripple through me.

  “There it is,” Peter said after what seemed like an eternity. “Come look.”

  They took turns—Scott first and seemingly quite anxious; Michael next, who said he didn’t see it but then cut himself off, muttering, “Holy crap”; and lastly, Adrian stood on his tiptoes and gazed through the filth-caked window. He remained there the longest, not speaking. His reflection in the muddied glass was of a terrified ghost staring out at us.

  “You see it?” Peter called to him.

  “Yes,” Adrian said in a small voice. So perhaps he was just taking his time and letting the reality sink in.

  Perhaps we all were.

  This isn’t really happening, is it? This can’t be real.

  “We need to go in there,” Adrian said, climbing down from the window. We stood in a rough circle in the gravel at the base of the building. I felt itchy, uncomfortable. “We need to pull back that sheet and see who it is.”

  I didn’t want to. The realization struck me like lightning. Whose body was under that sheet? How long had they been there?

  What would they look like?

  I don’t want to.

  Michael tittered nervously. “This thing just became real, huh?” Then, without prompting, he went over to the double doors and began fiddling with the combination lock.

  Adrian shucked off his backpack and opened it at his feet. “Looks pretty dark in there.” He pulled out two flashlights and handed one to Scott.

  “Quick,” I told Peter. “Give me a cigarette.” Then I was suddenly embarrassed by the urgency in my voice.

  If Peter noticed, he didn’t comment. He handed me a Camel, handed another one to Scott, then stuck one in his own mouth.

  “You got another?” Adrian asked.

  “For real?” Peter said, lighting his smoke. “I thought they caused cancer?”

  Adrian chewed on the inside of his cheek. “They do but I guess anyone can go anytime. For any reason.”

  Peter handed Adrian his lit cigarette, then stuck a fresh one in his own mouth. Adrian examined the glowing red ember at its tip before sticking it between his lips where it hung crookedly like a heavy stick jammed in mud.

  “You suck it,” I said, “and inhale it.”

  “Does it burn?”

  “No, not really. I mean, I guess it feels warm.”

  Adrian’s cheeks narrowed as he inhaled. An instant later he was sputtering and gagging in the reeds.

  We laughed, and Michael turned and watched us from over one shoulder while I clubbed Adrian a number of times on the back.

  “You okay?” I tried to stifle my laughter.

  Adrian tried to speak but only wound up coughing some more. He concluded by unleashing a trail of saliva from his mouth that spooled like spaghetti in the dirt. His face was red, and his eyes leaked tears from behind his thick glasses. “Jesus. You’d think that’d be an easy habit to quit.”

  Again, we laughed. It felt good. It was what we all needed.

  I watched Michael messing around with the combination lock and wished that he wouldn’t be able to get it open. Then we could just hop back on our bikes and maybe even leave an anonymous phone call for the police so they—

  The pop was loud enough to cause a flock of nearby blackbirds to take flight. Spinning around and executing a stately bow, Michael held out the lock in one hand.

  “Unbelievable,” Scott said. “I’ll never figure out how he does that.”

  Behind Michael, one of the double doors opened as if pushed by invisible hands, causing him to shriek and jump into the grass. The creaking of the door reminded me of the way the eaves of the house on Worth Street groaned during a particularly bad summer storm. When I was a young and impressionable kid, Charles said they were the sounds of the monsters Dad kept in the attic. I had believed him and imagined a platoon of grotesqueries shambling about in the dark space above my bedroom ceiling, fangs dripping and claws extending from scaly reptilian paws.

  Adrian clicked on his flashlight but didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to: that stupid beam of light said it all.

  It was now or never.

  There is a dead kid in there. We’ve found one of the missing.

  Adrian went in first. I wouldn’t have guessed him to lead the charge—Scott seemed much more eager in that regard—but he was the only one of us who didn’t seem bothered by the creepy goddamn building, not to mention what ultimately waited for us within.

  “Come on,” Peter said, shoving me forward. “You go next.”

  “Why me?”

  “Why not?”

  I staggered through the open door and was immediately overcome by the motionlessness of the place. This must be what it’s like for those explorers who enter Egyptian mausoleums. The air tasted like the inside of a fireplace and smelled like a cross between old moldy newspapers and dog shit. I could taste the dust motes at the back of my throat, thick as sawdust. Whereas the Werewolf House had a wetness about it, this building was as dry and soulless as the inside of an urn.

  The rest of the guys filed in behind me. Adrian moved on ahead, his flashlight’s beam playing along the walls and the floor. Scott clicked his flashlight on, too, and blasted me right in the eyes with its beam.

  I swiped at him with one hand. “Cut it out.”

  “Watch the floors,” Peter called to Adrian, who was moving farther ahead of us still. “If they’re weak, you could step right through ’em.”

  Adrian paused halfway to the sheet-covered body. He shined his light on the floor.

  “What is it?” Peter said, crossing over to him. Scott, Michael, and I followed.

  “Footprints,” Adrian said.

  Sure enough, the beam spotlighted a set of footprints. Adrian lifted the flashlight and followed the trail of prints across the floor. They seemed to go in a million different directions at once, leaving smudges in the thick dust.

  “How many sets?” Scott asked.

  Adrian shook his head. “I can’t tell if it’s one or twenty.”

  “Could they be old?” I asked.

  “They don’t look so old,” Adrian said.

  “Do you think they might be a match for the footprints the cops found down by the river?” Scott asked. This news hadn’t made it to the newspapers or the TV stations, but I had told them about what I’d overheard when my father was on the phone.

  “Beats me,” I said.

  Adrian finally settled his flashlight beam on the yellow sheet across the room. Scott brought his light up and shined it on the sheet as well. Even from this distance I could still make out the profile of a human being beneath it. I could see the vague little nubs of the protruding fingers, too.

  Like someone flipping a switch, my entire demeanor changed. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to rush over to that sheet and yank it away, revealing the prize beneath. Who was it? The Demorest boy? Bethany Frost? If it was Jason Hughes, the corpse would be a year old . . .

  I felt my feet move. It was less like walking and more like the floor shifting on its own, like a conveyor belt. When I reached the sheet I realized it was nothing more than an ancient w
hite bedsheet turned yellow with age, like the pages of an old newspaper or a paperback novel. The shape of a body beneath it was undeniable. The fingers—four of them—sticking up from beneath the death shroud were mere inches from the tip of my left sneaker. Had I wanted to, I could have tapped them with my toes.

  Both Scott and Adrian had their flashlights trained on the part of the covered body that was most assuredly the head.

  I took a deep breath, dropped to my knees, and grabbed a fistful of the sheet.

  “Jesus Christ,” someone whispered.

  “Do it,” said Peter.

  With a magician’s flourish, I whisked the sheet from the floor and quickly filled that part of the room with a cloud of ageless dust that swirled and seemed to glow a golden hue in the dual beams of light.

  It was a nude person, the skin seeming to slough in places like a reptile’s, gray in patches like rot, its face—

  No, not a person. Not a real person, anyway.

  The realization of what we were looking at took several moments to settle into each of us. I think Michael started to laugh first. Eventually, we all began to chuckle, though my heart was still racing, and I felt sweat rolling down my ribs and soaking my shirt.

  It was a fucking mannequin.

  “Holy shit,” Michael said, still laughing. Sweat beaded his forehead. He pointed at us. “You should see the looks on your faces. Ha!”

  “What about your face?” Peter scowled, still looking rattled. “Not to mention I think you shit your pants when that door swung open.”

  Adrian bent down beside me, and together we stared at the dummy.

  “I really thought we had something here.” I couldn’t hide the apologetic tone to my voice. Not five minutes ago I was praying Michael wouldn’t be able to get the lock open because I didn’t want to face whatever hideousness was beneath the sheet, and now I felt a sinking disappointment so great it was like a lead weight dragging me beneath the surface of the sea.

  Still laughing, Michael staggered backward and mopped tears from his eyes. “Holy shit, that was fun. You guys really had me going, you know that?”

  “We weren’t trying to trick you, idiot,” Peter said.

  “Well,” Scott said, looking up and playing the beam of his flashlight across the rafters in the exposed ceiling, “we’re in here now. We should look around.”

  There were two more flashlights in Adrian’s backpack. Peter and I grabbed one each and joined in the search, overturning items and peeking beneath benches shrouded in cobwebs. There were many loose boards propped up against the walls, covering a vast assortment of random junk—dented metal trash cans, a basketball backboard without the hoop, dust-covered whiskey bottles that looked like they had rolled off a pirate ship, and moldering cardboard hamburger containers.

  “Those don’t look so old,” I commented, resting my light on one of the cardboard food containers. The Quickman’s faded logo—a Greek god with feathers on his shoes—stood out on the top of the container.

  “Probably left here by some homeless guy,” Peter said.

  “Yeah, but how would he have gotten in?”

  Peter shrugged.

  Something creaked and both Peter and I froze, our flashlight beams crisscrossing each other like searchlights.

  “Did you—?” I began as the floor underneath one of Peter’s feet gave way.

  He cried out and dropped his flashlight, and I instinctively snatched his arm. He sank into the floor. Letting go of my flashlight, I dropped to both knees and grabbed him around the shoulder, though he had already ceased falling. The rent in the floorboards was only big enough to accommodate one of Peter’s legs; though he sank down to his thigh, he was in no danger of plummeting any farther. Unless, of course, the rest of the floor surrendered under his weight . . .

  The other guys hurried over, their footfalls like the galloping of horses on an old fishing pier. Peter gripped my arm, trying to hoist himself out of the hole. I attempted to lift him out, but he was too heavy.

  “What happened?” Scott said, shining a light on both of us. “Oh, wow.” His voice was like the ringing of a tiny bell.

  “I’m okay,” Peter grunted. “Just . . . stuck . . .”

  “Give me a hand,” I said, beckoning to the others.

  Michael and Adrian slipped their arms around Peter while Scott braced himself against me and grabbed one of Peter’s hands, which he had to pry off my shirt. We extricated him from the hole, the jagged teeth of the rotten floorboards scraping the exposed flesh of his leg. Blood streaked his calf and trickled down to his sock. None of the wounds were serious, but the blood looked a little overwhelming.

  “Does it hurt bad?” I asked.

  “Stings,” he said. He plucked splinters of wood from his leg.

  “This place hates you,” I told him, thinking of the splinter he’d gotten on our previous visit.

  I picked up my flashlight, leaned over, and shined my light down the hole. It was deep, and I was abruptly all too conscious—and distrusting—of the floorboards beneath us.

  Adrian bent down and broke some loose pieces of wood away from the hole; the pieces came away as angry-looking spears.

  Beside me, Scott crawled closer to the hole on his hands and knees. He looked down into it, too. “Man, that’s deep.”

  I realized that we were on the farthest end of Harting Farms and that beyond Farrington Road and the surrounding woods the town ended at a cliff overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. I recalled the holes and caverns I had glimpsed from the water when I was younger. The train depot had apparently been built over one of them. All of a sudden, it was as though my hearing intensified, and I was able to discern every creak and groan and tilt of not only the floorboards but the entire framework of the building.

  “We should probably get out of here before this whole place comes tumbling down around us,” I suggested.

  “Don’t be such a chickenshit,” Michael commented. “If we’re careful and watch where we’re—”

  His words were cut off as he backed into a stack of boards leaning against the wall. He lost his balance and toppled backward, splintering some of the boards through the middle and sending the rest down in a cascade on top of him where he lay slumped on the filthy floor.

  Now Peter laughed. “What were you saying about being more careful?”

  “Quit being a dumbass,” Michael groaned, kicking the boards off him, “and help me up.”

  Peter took one of Michael’s hands and yanked him to his feet while around them the cloud of dust continued to settle.

  Scott said, “Guys?”

  He shone his flashlight on the part of the wall that was revealed after Michael had knocked the boards away from it. The boards had been piled on top of a bench, some busted bits of plaster, chairs missing a few legs, and a toppled coatrack. But those items didn’t catch our attention. It was the bicycle. Its chrome finish dulled beneath a layer of gray dust, its tires flattened, it looked incongruous among the rest of the detritus inside the depot.

  Peter and Michael moved quickly away from the spot, as if proximity would bring about their own deaths.

  Scott’s flashlight beam shook as I approached the bike. It was a Mongoose, similar in style to Michael’s bike, with worn blue handgrips and a narrow plastic racing seat. There were uncountable stickers on the bike’s frame, mostly of rock bands and local sports teams. I bent closer to the bike, blowing the dust off one sticker in particular.

  Scott came up behind me, his flashlight beam steadying on the bike.

  The sticker that had attracted my attention was one I had seen countless times in the past, though now it held some sort of talismanic power over me. Glenrock Bulldogs was written in maroon on a gold background. Beneath the lettering was the droopy-cheeked face of an American bulldog, the mascot of Glenrock High School.

  “It’s Jason Hughes’s bike,” Scott said from over my shoulder, reading my mind.

  Adrian walked up beside me, his flashlight’s beam melding into
Scott’s and my own. He reached out to touch the bicycle—

  “Are you crazy?” Peter castigated. “Don’t touch it.”

  Adrian jerked his hand away as if burned.

  “That shit’s evidence,” Peter continued, lowering his voice.

  “That could be anyone’s bike,” said Michael. But the tone of his voice suggested he didn’t believe his own words.

  Adrian shifted his flashlight to the pile of boards and beams that Michael had knocked over. “It’s like they were set up to cover the spot.” Then his light locked onto a piece that looked like the unfinished leg of a wooden chair. Adrian picked it up. There were nails protruding from it. One-handed, he swung it like a mace.

  “Remember the busted-up chairs at the Werewolf House?” I said to Adrian. “The ones stacked up in a pile almost to the ceiling?” I nodded at the chair leg he was wielding like a cudgel. “That’s the same kind of leg.”

  Adrian stopped and looked down the length of the chair leg.

  “Put it down,” Peter said. “We shouldn’t touch any of this stuff. Seriously.”

  Adrian dropped the wooden leg and took two steps backward to rejoin our huddle.

  “Someone was killed here.” It was Scott, his voice low and shaky. “I can totally feel it.”

  Again, I thought about Charles telling me how places soak up badness like a sponge soaks up water. Looking at the discarded bicycle with the Glenrock Bulldogs sticker on it, I wondered what horrors this old run-down railway depot had seen. Perhaps the worst of its horrors had not been so long ago after all . . .

  “We need to tell the cops,” Peter said.

  “No way,” said Scott, turning his flashlight onto Peter’s face. “We found it. This is our investigation.”

  “You sound ridiculous. If this is Jason Hughes’s bike, then the cops need to know about it.”

  “It’s not his bike,” Michael said, still trying to convince himself along with the rest of us. “It can’t be.”

  “We’ve done enough,” Peter went on. “We tell the police what we found and let them take it from here. I mean, what if this bike leads them to the Piper? What if there’s, like, fingerprints on it or something? Do you really want to be responsible for keeping that information from them? It could save people’s lives.”