Goddamnit.
“No, son, that’s not quite right,” the old guy said. Cord began looking for a reason to kick the man the hell out of his haunted house. He assessed his paying customers, who were all looking at the tall old guy with his air of dignified authority and ‘I lived next door’ attitude. No one looked at Cord. His stomach tightened.
“I heard the whole thing,” the man said. “In fact, I’m the one who called the police that night.” The “oohs” turned to “whoas,” and Cord’s hands turned to fists. “It was hot that Thursday, but not so hot Cecilia—that was his wife—Cecilia had the air conditioning on. She was a bit of a penny pincher.” He paused for a second, whether for tension’s sake or if the guy just forgot where he was going with this, Cord couldn’t tell.
“Well, what did he say?” a woman in nurse’s scrubs asked.
The old guy chewed his lip before his eyes widened. “Straightened. Yes, Delbert screamed, ‘This is why I never got your teeth straightened.’ Then he hacked poor Tommy to bits in the hallway.”
Cord relaxed, a muffled sigh slowing escaped his lips. Time to take back control. Your show’s over. “Thank you, Mr.?”
“Wanker,” the man said.
Damn straight.
“So, after Delbert Sanderson screamed, ‘This is why I never got your teeth straightened,’ he chased Thomas Sanderson into this very hallway,” Cord said, then took a step forward into the hall, pretending to concentrate on the meter again, even though without his ace-in-the-hole EMF-blasting stereo playing Iron Maiden in complete silence, all he would get was a normal background reading. He waved at his tour group to follow him anyway; it was all part of the show.
The sixty-watt bulb in the ceiling fixture didn’t shed a lot of light, but it showed all Cord wanted it to. Although the house had been cleaned and spit polished more times than he cared to count (the house had seemed to be always on the market before Cord realized what gold mine potential it had), there were stains in the hallway’s hardwood floor. There weren’t any stains when Cord bought the place two years ago, he just thought the suggestion of decades-old samurai sword murder blood helped with the ambiance.
Cord stepped over the carefully applied splatter of cherry wood finish stain ($8.49 per quart and damn well worth it) and stopped. “This is where it happened.”
Silence. A heavy oppression sank into the hallway, like everyone had just seen a made-for-TLC movie. And the smell. What was that? Is somebody using Febreze? He looked from face to face. Everyone’s eyes were wide, their mouths agape.
“Didn’t you say the red light flashing was bad?” the hot girl asked, her voice shaky, her shoulder pressed into vampire-boy’s chest.
Red light? Cord looked at the EMF meter, the red indicator flashed like a bulb had gone bad on a cheap string of Christmas lights. The numbers on the readout changed so quickly they became a blur.
“Oh, shit,” he whispered. This hadn’t happened. This never happened. The meter only changed when Cord wanted it to change. He didn’t think the house was haunted, not really. A scream split the hallway. Cord would have been satisfied to know it came from the hot girl’s boyfriend, but everything happened too fast.
A man—who hadn’t even paid admission—popped into existence about two feet off the floor, a look of shock on his bloody-nosed face. He fell like he’d been shoved and hit the floor with an “oof.”
“What the hell?” came from someone, but Cord didn’t look to see who. His eyes were on the man in the white shirt and gray Dockers who smelled like cheap beer and ozone. For a second, only a second, Cord thought he heard dance music. The guy tried to suck air into his lungs and failed the first couple of tries but was soon breathing again.
Something between a gut punch and the first drop on a roller coaster grabbed Cord’s insides in a fist. This was a ghost. A real ghost. No chains, no floating and no Scooby-Doo “whooooos,” but still, a ghost had appeared in Cord’s haunted house. Cord stared at it because his eyes refused to do anything else.
But the ghost didn’t look like a ghost. The white oxford shirt was wrong, and so was the blood coming from his nose. If Delbert Sanderson had sliced up his boy Tommy with a samurai sword, why did the splatter on the man come from a bloody nose?
Cord reached out his right index finger and poked the Amazing Appearing Man in the leg just to make sure. The leg was solid.
The man glared at him, confused. “Where’s Skid?” he asked before, pop, he vanished again, Cord’s meter flashing and spinning like he’d just hit a jackpot at a casino. Maybe he had.
Skid? nearly squeaked out, but Cord clamped down on that momentum-spoiler fast.
“Was that Tommy Sanderson?” the nurse asked. Not to Cord, to the old man.
The old guy adjusted his glasses and frowned.
Oh, please. Oh, please. Oh, please don’t ruin this for me you Wanker.
“Well, I wish I’d gotten a longer look at him,” the former neighbor said. Cord didn’t realize it, but he was holding his breath. “But, Tommy Sanderson? It looked like him. Yeah, it looked just like him.”
The breath whooshed from Cord and he sucked in another one, a big one, through a smile. “If anyone in the group is still skeptical about the paranormal,” he said. “Please get your disbelief out now.” Cord raised his hand to his ear in a bit of stage play overacting and waited one beat, two, three. This is the best night of my life. “All righty then. Would anyone like to upgrade their tour tickets to overnight tickets?”
Hands shot up faster than dandelions. Oh, yeah, the best.
Cord had no idea what had happened, and he didn’t care. As he pocketed the extra $1,500 on top of the $828 he’d already made off this group, he silently thanked the Amazing Appearing Man. Cord didn’t realize until morning he hadn’t even gotten the hot girl’s name.
To hell with it. He had a haunted house to run.
3
Brick leaned against the back wall of Slap Happy’s Dance Club next to a sign that that read “Hookers and Johns” and tried not to stand out. But Brick always stood out. Growing up, it was his job on field trips to stand in the parking lot so his classmates would know where to gather. And he wasn’t just tall, he was big, professional-wrestler big. This made him seem intimidating even when he told people in a soft voice that he baked muffins for a living.
He checked his phone. Beverly had been in the bathroom twenty minutes. At least a dozen women had come and gone through that door in twenty minutes. Did she come out and I missed her? But he knew that was more wish than reality. He scanned the club. It was full of people dancing to loud music hoping to hook up. He didn’t want that; he’d just met Beverly, sure, but he kind of liked her.
Beverly seemed like a nice girl when she walked up to him at their mutually-decided first date meeting spot—in the bar area at Il Palazzo Bianco. “Oh, you just have to be Chauncey,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound like it could ever get on his nerves.
“Yep,” he said. “Chauncey Hall.” He almost followed that with, “My friends call me Brick,” but stopped before the words came out. Being a Chauncey was enough of a burden. He didn’t want to explain Brick.
Beverly smiled and looked like her profile picture; she even talked about the things she’d listed:
BEVERLY GIBSON
Likes: Journalism, “Lord of the Rings” (books and movies!), old-fashioned gentlemen and muffins. I love muffins.
Dislikes: Bad grammar, the color Alabaster (It’s called white, people!) and shoes.
Quote: “I’m happy with who I am.”
Looking for: A nice guy.
Brick decided she was the one he liked out of the four girls whose profiles matched his best. He was happy Beverly liked Lord of the Rings, which were his favorite books. Maybe she likes Dungeons and Dragons, he thought, then stopped as the words of his mother poured through his head. Don’t tell girls you still play Dungeons and Dragons, Chaunc
e. It’s like telling them you have leprosy.
During their date, Beverly smiled at him over her wine glass and didn’t once talk about eating her sister’s placenta like last week’s H. P. Lovecraft date Jayna. After dinner, Beverly wanted to stop in across the street at Slap Happy’s, then she disappeared into the bathroom.
He pushed open the door to the hallway a crack. A red, glowing EXIT sign hovered over a metal-reinforced door at the far end just past the entrances to “Hookers” and “Johns.” She’d had an escape plan. A rock sank in his stomach.
“Not again,” he mumbled.
Then the door to “Johns” slammed open and a man spilled into the hallway, slapping into the far wall.
“Hey,” Brick said, stepping forward, the spring-operated door to the dance floor snapped shut behind him.
The man leaned against the wall, his white button-down shirt stained yellowish-brown, his face streaked with filth. From the smell, Brick guessed it was hydraulic fluid, but there was another smell mingled in. He sniffed. Ozone? Yeah, ozone, like someone had turned on a room freshener. A crust of dried blood stained the skin under the man’s nose.
“That was some dump, huh?” Brick said.
The man craned his neck to stare up at Brick and a light of recognition popped on. He pushed himself from the wall and lurched forward, the smell of hydraulic fluid grew stronger.
“Brick?” the man wheezed. “Are you Brick?”
Brick stepped away from him, studying the oily face.
This oily man took another step, planting his weight on his left foot and nearly dropping to the chipped tile floor.
“Oh, no,” he whispered. Blood stained the left leg of the Oilyman’s gray Dockers he’d apparently tried to bandage with a rag. “What happened to you?”
The man forced himself upward and grabbed Brick by his shirt, hydraulic fluid soaking into the material.
“Watch her, Brick,” the man wheezed. “Watch out for Skid. She’s not what she seems.”
Skid? Brick looked down at the man, trying to place that face. Was he from high school? The gym? A customer?
“I don’t know you, but you need a doctor.” He started to reach into his pocket for his cell phone, but Oilyman pulled hard on his shirt.
“Skid’s going to kill us all,” he said, his voice as close to a shout as he could muster.
“Who’s Sk—”
The door to the hallway opened and three drunk girls bounced against the far wall and laughed before righting themselves and stumbling into the bathroom marked “Hookers.” The dance music, loud only for a moment, was muted again by the closed door. When Brick turned back, the man was gone.
“Hey.”
Bloody, oily prints from flat-soled shoes were all that remained in a trail from the bathroom that ended at Brick. He swung around, but he was alone.
“Hey, buddy,” Brick said into the empty hall. Nobody responded. He has to be somewhere. But the man hadn’t gone out into the bar or out the back. That left only one place. He pushed open the door to “Johns.”
Oilyman’s bloody footprints started in the middle of the floor, facing the hallway like he’d simply appeared there. A smell filled the bathroom, hospital sanitizer. Brick let the door swing shut and walked back into the bar.
“People don’t just disappear,” Brick muttered, standing just off the dance floor. The Oilyman had gone, of that much Brick was certain. But he couldn’t have gotten far on that leg. He leaned against the wall, his eyes roaming the room.
“No way.”
A pretty brunette in a T-shirt looked toward him, then turned away. The man next to her said something the woman probably heard but saw no reason to answer. Her eyes met Brick’s, and she frowned. His gut clenched. He turned his head. No, it can’t be. Brick counted to five, then glanced back. He didn’t care about the woman; his attention went to man. It was the man from the bathroom, but it wasn’t. This man’s hair was combed, his white shirt clean. And his leg? No wound. But it was the same guy.
The brunette’s face grew grim, and she pulled the bartender’s knife from the cutting board.
“Hey,” Brick saw the bartender mouth as she lifted behind her ear.
“Oh, no,” Brick whispered and stepped away from the wall, the door crashing open behind him, but he didn’t turn to see what happened. Probably the drunk girls. He started to launch himself through the crowded dance floor, but he was too late. The woman threw the knife like she knew what she was doing. It impaled the model in a beer poster.
Two seconds later the man at the bar said something, and the woman punched him in the nose. He fell under a sea of dancers who didn’t have a clue what had just happened.
4
Skid stood with fists clenched staring at the spot where Bud Light Dave disappeared two feet above the floor. A few people clapped. One man patted her on the back and pushed something into her grip. Not a smart thing to do until Skid realized it was $20. “It was worth it,” he shouted over the music, escorting a woman toward the dance floor. “You’ve got talent.”
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Bud Light Dave had vanished. Not in a blizzard of fuzzy 1960s special effects, and not like D. B. Cooper. Vanished, vanished. Like Harry Potter.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
She had to run. Skid pivoted, pointing herself toward the door when the bartender stopped her, “Hey!”
She spun again. “Yes?”
“Your boyfriend didn’t pay for that last round.”
“What? Here,” she fumbled the $20 across the bar, nodded and walked straight into a red flannel wall. Brawny Man. Hipster Dan Haggerty. He was huge.
“Back off, Grizzly Adams,” she said.
The man shoved his hands in his pockets awkwardly like he didn’t know what else to do with them. “What happened to him?” he asked, his voice surprisingly soft and kind for someone who looked like he could cut down trees by flexing at them.
“What?” Skid said, the word squeaking like air out of a balloon.
“The guy at the bar,” the big man said. “He had on a white shirt and gray slacks. Where did he go? I have to talk to him.”
Skid stopped and looked up at him; his eyes were clear, but his expression was confused. The man looked, well, he looked nice.
“I don’t know where he is,” Skid said, the shock starting to wear off. “He disappeared.”
The man frowned under his neatly trimmed beard. “What do you mean disappeared?”
“The guy went all Frodo Baggins on me.” Then she flared her fingers for effect. “Poof. Disappeared.”
“Damn it,” he hissed, one meat hook absentmindedly pulling at his chin. “He did the same thing to me. We gotta find him.”
Hipster Dan Haggerty turned to scan the dance floor. When he turned back, Skid had gone for Beverly’s Plan B.
“Well, crap,” he whispered.
Chapter Two
September 2
1
Sweat trickled down Skid’s back, soaking her T-shirt. It was nearly 8 a.m.; she’d left her apartment for a run at 6, hours before the nice Thai family that operated The Dumpling King below her began prepping for lunch by screaming at each other. Not that she ever got up that early, but seeing a man vanish into nothingness will do that to a person. Last night was pinned to her mind, no matter how much she tried to ignore it.
She turned left onto Gerry Avenue, a residential area, mostly because the traffic light on Baltimore and Gerry had turned red and she hated it when runners stopped at the light and jogged in place until it turned green. Showoffs. The houses here were big, nicely kept for the most part, and apparently not good enough for joggers who stopped at red lights, because Skid was the only one out.
Bud Light Dave. Damn it. He’d gotten into her head, and she didn’t like it. Not one bit. A man, any man, had no place in her life. At least not right now. But that lab Bud Light
Dave said he worked for, she had heard of it. She just couldn’t remember the name.
Skid slowed as she approached an intersection without a light. A black Ford Escape with a magnetic sticker that read NEWS on the door turned onto Gerry. For what? A crime, probably. That was the only time the wonks came out of their newsrooms. Unless maybe it was for a feature story, but it was about 7:45 a.m. on a Saturday.
Skid jogged across the street. She didn’t run this route often, just when the light on Baltimore was red, but the number of cars compared to the houses was wrong. Some cars had Kansas license plates and one was from Nebraska. It was like someone had a party last night and no one went home.
The news car stopped a block ahead of her. A woman in a blue skirt and yellow blouse stepped from the passenger side. She held what looked like an iPhone and a reporter’s notebook. Another woman slid from the driver’s side and walked to the back of the vehicle, popping the hatch. By the time the driver had pulled out a camera bag and started taking photographs of the exterior of a two-story house probably built in the early 1900s, Skid realized why they were there, at least superficially. The news people were at the Sanderson Murder House.
Skid hadn’t been born when the Sanderson man slaughtered his family in that house and wouldn’t have heard about the killings if she had. Her father had left the science life and taken over the family business in the early 1980s. The Roe Bros. circus made the circuit from Washington state across the northern US to Pennsylvania from May to September, moving down the East Coast and swinging from Georgia through the Southern states to winter in Prescott, Arizona. Roe Bros. never touched the interior parts of the country and never would have heard the news. That’s why Skid had picked Kansas City, Missouri, to settle in; she didn’t have to worry about running into family. She knew of the murder house by the tacky blood-splattered sign in the front yard.
A man rushed from the Sanderson house to greet the journalists as Skid jogged by, shooting her a glance and a grin even as he extended a hand toward the first reporter.
So You Had to Build a Time Machine Page 2