The Slab

by Michael R Collings

  “Here, Mommy,” he said slowly, in his most solemn, precise, toddler-almost-a-little-boy voice. “This will make you feel better.”

  From a yard away, Willard could smell the stench of the thing; his stomach roiled with a sharp, nauseated twist that cut like a dagger thrust. No matter how often Catherine washed it, it always smelled like a dishrag wadded in a corner and left to ripen for a week. He shuddered at the image as much as at the smell. But Catherine only smiled, a weak smile to be sure, but it was a smile.

  “Thanks, Sams,” she said, accepting the outstretched blanket just as solemnly as the boy had offered it. She took it and laid it, satin edging out, against her cheek. “Thanks, Sams,” she repeated. “I’m sure this will help.”

  From the Tamarind Valley Times, 15 November 1989:

  DISAPPEARING VALLEY BUSINESSMAN STILL A MYSTERY

  A spokesman for the TVPD confirmed today that, in spite of every effort, investigators have no new leads in the disappearance of Tamarind Valley realtor Bryan Sidney, 47, who disappeared over two weeks ago. The TVPD source did reveal that Sidney’s partner, Andrew McCall is no longer considered a person of interest in the case.

  According to the spokesman, “Sidney may have panicked at the prospect of facing…”

  Chapter Four

  Halloween 1991-June 1992

  The House in Waiting

  1

  “Chicken!”

  “Am not!”

  “Chicken!”

  “Am not!”

  “Chicken…shit.”

  With that single syllable, Brady Wilton crossed the invisible line that defined the boundary of off-handed squabbling and escalated the stakes immeasurably. There was no backing out now. Kyle knew it and stood ready to face the consequences.

  “Chickenshit,” Brady repeated slowly, his tongue savoring each syllable as if he were trying to infuse as much authority into his boyish treble as his big brother Frank had in his sometimes warbly, mostly teen-age bass when he used that word.

  “Chickenshit.”

  “Am not!” Kyle Jantzen yelled, painfully aware of how lame that retort was next to Brady’s sudden explosion into near-adult near-obscenity. Of course, Kyle could easily have spiced his own phrasing up-he heard the F-word often enough from his Dad to know that nothing, nothing could top that one. But he also knew what his mother thought of the F-word, and the fatal sounds choked in his throat when he tried to slip them in between the two words. (He knew from close scientific observation of his father’s speech patterns that the F-word worked best like that, slipped in between two other words that weren’t that bad at all).

  “Am f… — am not!”

  “Then ya gotta do it.” Kyle glanced up the long stretch of street bordered by glowing porch lights and dotted at irregular intervals by an assortment of juvenile ghosties and ghoulies shouting ear-splitting choruses of “Trick or Treat” at each open doorway.

  He let his gaze wander further upward, finally stopping at the dark house outlined in the evening light. Then he turned his attention back to Brady, at this point in his short life bravely disguised as a gory mummy trailing shrouds of ragged, dusty, pukey mummy-stuff (otherwise known as one of Mrs. Wilton’s old white sheets ripped into long strands and stained with mud and ground-in ketchup that Kyle could smell a dozen feet away-the odor threatened to break the illusion but somehow he didn’t care).

  “Now?” Kyle’s voice took on a whining pitch that contrasted with his All-American-hero’s black and silver cowboy outfit, complete with hat, holster, and twin silver six-shooters.

  Brady nodded. “Now…or you’re a chickenshit for life.”

  Kyle nodded in return. That was the way it would be. Once branded, always branded. It didn’t matter that Brady was Kyle’s best friend in the world, or that they had lived their entire nine years side-by-side in two of the dozen or so homes that had dotted this part of the valley before new houses started cropping up all over, covering favorite fields with asphalt and concrete and boringly tame lawns, enclosing wild bike trails and impromptu baseball fields with faceless slump stone fences, appropriating for faceless new people the scattered oak trees just made for small boys to climb on lazy, sunny, summer afternoons. Kyle and Brady lived across Bingham Boulevard from the Charter Oaks, and even though Kyle would have died for Brady and Brady would have died for Kyle-they had actually promised in blood to die for each other-Kyle knew that if he chickened out now, Brady would be honor-bound tell all the guys at school on Monday. That was the way the world went.

  “Kyle wouldn’t do it,” Brady would stage-whisper to Bobby Marx or Jimmy Sanderson or one of the other kids. “He was too chicken.”

  Out of deference to the decorum of school-or more likely, out of fear of Miss Robinson’s sharp hearing, capable (as most of the boys knew to their sorrow) of penetrating like radar to even the farthest corners of the schoolyard-Brady would probably leave off the offending shit, but what was left would be enough to make life a living torment for Kyle. So in spite of his hesitation, he was already dismally aware that he really had no choice at all.

  2

  In fact, Kyle knew that had already used up his quota of choices for the night when Brady suggested that they cut short their Trick-or-Treating.

  “This stuff’s for babies,” Brady announced after only ten minutes of raiding outstretched bowls filled with little squares of Dubble-Bubble gum and glittering, cellophane-shrouded lollipops. “And besides, I found out where Mom hid our stuff this year.” He reached into his mummy-bindings, fumbled in a hidden jeans pocket, and pulled out a handful of paper-wrapped candies. “I got lots more in my room.”

  Kyle really wanted to Trick or Treat some more. His white pillowcase was nowhere near full-in fact, he could still see part of the bottom seam when he angled the impromptu cloth bag just so. And, unlike Brady, he had never quite been able to figure out where his mother hid the small packets of Sugar Babies she was handing out this year. He knew from past experience that the piddling collection of sweets he had garnered wouldn’t last until tomorrow night. Kyle wanted to keep on. He wanted to find a group of little kids and tag behind them, gleaning the rich benefits when all the adults would gush “Oh, how cute” or “Isn’t she an angel” at one of the kids and then hand out double helpings to all the other Trick-or-Treaters at the door as well. He had tumbled onto that trick the year before and was eager to try it out again.

  But no, Brady had decided otherwise. Brady had bigger ideas, Brady was the one who made the rules, and who was Kyle to argue?

  3

  “Let’s check out the haunted house,” Brady said abruptly as the boys finished the fifth house on Oleander Place.

  It was just past sunset, with enough light to see the grey-white gleam of sidewalks sandwiched between swathes of green-black lawn and the darker asphalt.

  “There isn’t one.”

  “Sure there is.” He pointed up the road at the new houses. “We can Trick-or-Treat until we get to the top.” He lowered his voice to what he hoped was a menacing tone. “To the haunted house.”

  “It’s not haunted, just empty,” Kyle said, knowing as he did so that the truth wouldn’t faze Brady’s imagination.

  Brady shot Kyle a withering glance and Kyle felt his head nodding, distantly, as if it were someone else’s head nodding yes to someone else’s best friend’s question.

  “Okay,” the fearless cowboy sighed. “Let’s go.”

  That was it. The decision was final.

  For a couple more houses, Brady went through the motions of little-kid Trick-or-Treating. He even grinned outrageously when one old guy pretended to be horrified by Brady’s mummy costume and acted like he was going to barf in Brady’s candy bag, hunching his shoulders over the opened bag and whoop- ing like he was about to spew his guts up. But Kyle could tell that Brady’s heart was somewhere else, and he waited apprehensively for the moment when Brady would look at him and say, “Come on, let’s ditch this stuff.”

  And all too s
oon, Brady did.

  So, without really knowing why, certainly without wanting to, a lone black-and-silver suited cowboy trudged up the hill behind a tattered, shambling mummy. His head bowed, his feet dragging, Kyle was the only kid on the street no longer excited by Halloween.

  4

  The empty house stood dark and ragged-looking in the end lot. The yard angled away on either side to form a truncated wedge, like a piece of pie with the house in the center and the point nibbled away by the sidewalk. The houses on either side were lit with yellow porch lights and haphazardly carved Jack o’ Lanterns grimacing wickedly along the walkways. But the house at the end seemed to swallow, not reflect, the light. In spite of the brightness and the activity along the rest of Oleander, it remained aloof, distant, coldly unaffected.

  Kyle stood in front of the house and looked at it. The two windows visible from that angle stared blankly and blackly at him.

  Eyes, Kyle thought, unaware of how stereotyped the image was. Eyes glaring at me, waiting to open, wanting to open and get me. He shivered.

  “Hey, Brady,” he began, but just then a troupe of clowns and fairy princesses cut from the house on the left across to the house on the right. Kyle noticed that the kids avoided the dark stretch of sidewalk in front of 1066 and dashed straight across the road instead. As they passed a dozen feet away, silhouetted by the house lights from below, Brady grabbed Kyle’s arm and pulled him into the shadow of a huge tree on the corner of the lot.

  From there, the house looked even worse, more sinister. It swelled up at the crest of the hill, seeming to grow larger and larger as Kyle stared at it. A long, white car stood in the driveway, a ghostly hearse waiting patiently for whatever haunted inside the house.

  “Come on,” Brady whispered. “The coast is clear.”

  Kyle risked a quick glance down the street. Amazingly enough, Brady was right. There wasn’t a kid in sight for three or four houses on either side. The group that had just crossed Oleander was hidden behind the swelling bulk of a garage, and even though Kyle could clearly hear their happy laughter and the ringing echoes of “Trick-or-Treat,” he couldn’t see them.

  “Now’s our chance,” Brady said. He slipped from the shadow of the tree, crossed the weed-infested yard, and crouched by the darkened left headlight of the long, white car.

  “Hurry.”

  Kyle hurried. Bent over as if he were running against a strong headwind, he followed Brady’s trail until he too crouched on one knee in front of the car. The silvery-gleaming grill loomed over his shoulder like a tooth-filled mouth, and Kyle suddenly wanted to join the clowns and the fairy princesses and hold his pillowcase out for packets of Milk Duds and maybe even some of those little Mars bars that he considered the ultimate pay-off of the evening. But Brady was moving again, running low, dodging invisible shadows and phantom enemies as he skirted the corner of the garage and disappeared. Kyle swallowed hard and followed. He was running so hard as he rounded the garage that he almost rammed into Brady.

  “Look,” Brady whispered, his finger pointing toward the side of the house. In the faint light, his skin seemed dead-white, his finger more bone than flesh. The mummy wrappings seemed distressingly real, and even the rank smell of old ketchup seemed to have disappeared, replaced by something heavier and hotter and darker.

  Kyle looked.

  The side garage door hung open.

  “Cool,” Brady said. “Come on.”

  “Hey…uh, I mean…”

  Brady turned and looked coldly at Kyle. “Chickenshit?”

  “Uh, no, I…” But there was nothing to say. Brady shook his head. The message was clear. Come with me and be my friend, or stay out here in the dark and you’re on your own.

  Kyle wasn’t too familiar with the term blackmail, but at that moment he understood the panic and terror of its victims. Brady was blackmailing him. At stake was a lifetime’s friendship. He didn’t want to go into that house. He would have been willing to do almost anything rather than go into that house. Go to bed at six o’clock for a month straight. Eat lima beans and spinach. Study his spelling words for hours on end. Do dishes. Wash windows. Clean toilet bowls.

  Anything.

  But given the way Brady was acting, given the stakes Brady had established, Kyle had no choice. He followed Brady into the darkness.

  5

  The garage was pitch-black, but Kyle had expected that. Everything about the old house was dark and grim and gruesome

  “Wait a minute,” he said softly. He dug in his back pocket and pulled out a small red and silver metal flashlight. When he depressed the switch, the bulb flickered. It was only a penlight bulb, and the batteries were obviously weakening, but it gave out enough light for the boys’ shadows to dance grotesquely behind them as they moved. And enough for Brady to whisper, “Watch out. There’s a big crack here.”

  Kyle stepped cautiously, letting the light play for a moment on the ragged edge of concrete. It looked like a miniature cliff when the dim yellow light spilled across it. Brady knelt by the crack and touched a dark spot with his fingertips.

  “Blood,” he intoned in his best Bella-Lugosi-as-Dracula voice. “ Blooood!”

  “Stop it,” Kyle said. “It’s not blood. It’s probably just…just oil or dirt or something.”

  “Aw, come on,” Brady answered, punching Kyle lightly on the shoulder. “Get into it. This is a Haunted House, see, and this is the blood of a crazed axe murderer who slices his victims’ throats with a rusty knife and drinks their blood. Only he got nervous and spilled some. And I’ll bet if we looked around we’d see the white, blood-drained bodies hanging on great big hooks on the walls.”

  “Don’t,” Kyle began, but almost instinctively he swung the tiny beam of the penlight in a wide arc.

  Both boys screamed.

  The penlight clattered to the floor, blinked twice, and died.

  The boys screamed again, Kyle’s voice higher and sharper than Brady’s. Something filmy, cob-webby, and slightly sticky flickered against his cheek. He yelped and slapped at the thing with his free hand.

  “Oww!” Brady yelled as Kyle’s open hand caught him on the shoulder, right where a long strip of mummy wrappings had become unraveled and flapped back and forth. “Oww! That’s me.”

  He grabbed Kyle’s arm. Kyle let out a small screech, then a whimper before he understood that it was Brady. Only Brady.

  “I…I saw…something,” Kyle said finally, his breath still catching in his throat. There was a moment of silence. Something rustled in the dark. Brady’s feet, Kyle decided.

  Hoped.

  “Yeah,” Brady admitted, his voice echoing hollow and frail. “Yeah. I did too.”

  “What was it?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Should we…”

  “Where’s the light?” Brady’s whisper had dropped almost to inaudibility.

  “I…dropped it.”

  “Shit.” There was another long moment. Nothing moved in the garage. There was no sound.

  Maybe, Kyle thought frantically, maybe if we don’t move, it won’t know we’re here. We’ll be safe. Something shuffled to his right. “Brady!” He grabbed out and found Brady’s arm-or what he hoped was Brady’s arm. It was swathed in stiff bits of cloth that in the dark depths of Kyle’s imagination hung fetid with mold and clotted with long-rancid mummy-sweat.

  “Here. I’m trying to find…just a sec.”

  The arm wrenched away and Kyle was left alone in the darkness. He scrunched his eyelids so tightly closed that blue lightning streaked across the darkness. He concentrated on every sound. A small scrape. A smaller flick. And Brady’s laugh, harsh and hollow.

  “Gotcha.”

  Kyle jerked his eyes open. He was staring into the pale yellow eye of his own penlight. He held his hand over his eyes. Even the dim glow seemed too bright. The light disappeared. As his eyes adjusted to the near darkness, Kyle saw Brady sweep the closest wall with the beam. There was so little illumination that he could make
out no details-just a broad stretch of yellow-grey drywall. And a hint of white. He drew in his breath with an audible hiss.

  Brady laughed again and walked toward the thing apparently hanging in the corner. As the light spread across its smooth surface, even Kyle felt a flood of relief.

  It was not a blood-drained corpse after all. It was only a water heater. Brady touched the slick enamel surface with his free hand. The mummy wrappings hung like dead moss from his arm.

  “Cold,” he announced, as if he had discovered an important clue. He bend over and peered into the darkness under the heater.

  Kyle’s arms shot out, as if to grab Brady and pull him back, away from there, away from the darkness that might hold…rats, snakes, spiders, anything at all.

  “No pilot,” Brady said. He straightened up and turned the penlight toward Kyle. For the second time in moments, Kyle’s eyes took the full force of the light and he blinked against it

  “Come on,” Brady said, motioning with the light. Their shadows bounced crazily from the ceiling and the walls and the shiny white water heater. For an instant, Kyle felt dizzy and sick. But there was no time to worry about shadows. Brady was already through an open door-open? — and playing the light across dark wood cabinets.

  The kitchen.

  Kyle shuddered and followed.

  6

  He caught up to Brady and put his hand on Brady’s shrouded arm.

  “We been inside, okay. Now let’s go.”

  Brady flicked the penlight off for an instant. When he turned it on again, he was holding it against his chin, the light spilling upward across his face, half swathed with wrappings, the other half scarred and shadowed with his mother’s best lipstick and eye shadow.