Hollow House

by Greg Chapman

  He frowned. “And what exactly would Doctor Beck be able to do about my dreams? He’s got plenty of pills for my heart and my water works, but I doubt he’s got any wonder drugs for nightmares.”

  The kettle bubbled as Margaret poured herself a tea. “Well, if you keep missing sleep, Richard Markham, your old heart might not last much longer.” Her slippers scuffed the carpet as she walked to join him at the table.

  “I’d get plenty of sleep then.”

  “And you’d leave me all alone, would you?”

  “I’d not be a burden.”

  “Richard…”

  When he saw his wife’s lips begin to tremble, he squeezed her hand. “Why do you put up with me, Margie?”

  “It’s called love, you old fool.” She took a sip of her tea and grimaced. “Oh, that’s awful.”

  “What is?”

  She put the cup down and pushed it away. “The tea; I don’t know… it just tastes… foul.”

  Richard wasn’t a tea drinker; he preferred coffee, and the coffee he’d had when he rose at 4:20 a.m. had tasted fine. The Kemper House crossed his mind once more. “Margie, do you smell something in the air?” He watched his wife’s nostrils flare ever so gently.

  “Now that you mention it, there is a smell. Like garbage.”

  Richard swallowed. He’d hoped he’d imagined it, despite his nightmares feeling all too real.

  Did you forget to put out the trash?”

  “No, no, no—it’s not coming from our house; I think it might be coming from that house on the corner.”

  Margaret’s lips made the perfect O. “The Kemper House?”

  Richard stood and walked to the front window. Outside, the morning sun was slowly painting Willow Street in golden light. The occupants of the neighbouring houses were still rising, going about their morning ablutions, their quaint cottages and dual storey facades greeting the dawn. The old man craned his neck to get a better look up his side of the street. He could just make out the roof of the Kemper House, the tiles blackened by the elements.

  “I’ve always hated that house,” his wife said.

  “Have you ever seen anyone come out of that house?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve never taken much notice of that place.”

  Richard recalled seeing the postman visiting the house occasionally to deliver the mail, but he couldn’t recall ever seeing anyone emerge to collect it. “Do you think anyone lives there?”

  “I have no idea,” Margaret said. “Can we talk about something else please? I don’t want to talk about that house.”

  He nodded and was about to close the curtains when he saw a police cruiser drive up the street. Quickly, he returned to peer through the glass and saw the car pull up outside Number 72. For a moment Richard dreaded that his nightmares were a sign of worse things to come.

  Chapter Two

  Zac left without waiting for his brother. He climbed on his BMX bicycle, left the backyard, and rolled along the narrow lane behind Willow Street. He kept his eye on the rear of the Kemper House, the three back windows on the top floor watching him as he passed by. Thick vines from an overgrown bush obscured most of the backyard. The tendrils wrapped tightly around the chain link fence that surrounded the property, but there was no way the barrier was going to stop him from satisfying his curiosity. All he had to do was scale the fence and get a look through one of the windows. He pulled up alongside and peered through. The smell was even stronger at this proximity to the house and Zac was glad he’d skipped breakfast because at that moment, his guts were roiling. He was certain there was a dead body inside, and he needed to be the first person in the street to know about it.

  He scanned the lane for people, but all he saw was a grey cat watching him from behind a trash can. He found its yellow gaze unnerving. He looked back to the fence and found a gap between the vines. It was about eight feet high, but still looked like an easy climb. He slipped the tip of his shoe into one of the holes in the chain link and pulled himself up. The fence rocked beneath his weight and the vines rustled. Zac cursed at how loud the rustling was, but he was now committed to get over the top. Straining, he climbed, the skin of his fingers burning from the exertion. His shoes kept getting caught in the holes, but at least his grip was solid. He reached over the top of the fence and looked across at his house. When he was certain he hadn’t been seen, he threw his right leg over and jumped down into his neighbour’s yard. His shoes slammed into the ground, stirring up a plume of dust and weeds.

  The smell was so pungent Zac had to pull his shirt collar over his nose. His knees twinged from the jump, but he willed them to take him across the yard to the back door. He took in the view; he’d never dreamed he’d be this close to it. The exterior was devoid of paint, which allowed the dark, weather-beaten timber to show through. The rough texture of the wood looked like the inside of old bones.

  The windows on the ground floor were grimy, cracked and framed with webs left by spiders long dead. He craned his neck to look at the roof. Many of the tiles were missing or broken and the spire on top was bent. The entire house was devoid of colour, as if lacquered with the night itself.

  The boy turned his eyes straight ahead and, as he stepped closer, they fixed on the back door. It was closed, but his thrumming heart feared it could open at any moment. Although his shirt filtered some of the stench, he wished he had something for his eyes, which began to water. Ignoring his bodily reactions, Zac reached out and turned the doorknob, only to find it locked. He thought about walking to a window to try and look inside when he realised there was a crawlspace beneath the building. With a wry smile, he held his breath and got on all fours to climb into the belly of the Kemper House.

  ~

  The neighbours were right to call.

  Officers Dawes and Lawson knew the scent when they smelled it; it was imprinted on their brains. The two officers shared a knowing look, that it was indeed death emanating from 72 Willow Street.

  “Looks like we’re gonna be here for the long haul,” Lawson said from the passenger seat.

  Dawes examined the house from the comfort of the driver’s seat. Parts of the structure of Number 72 were merely dilapidated, while other sections appeared burned. To the officers the stench was as powerful as smoke, yet unseen.

  “Hmm…” was all Dawes could say. He hated when these types of call-outs turned out to be right. Dozens of corpses flashed across his mind in a strobe-light effect. He knew Death’s aroma and he knew what happened to a dead body when neglected. Seeing a former human reduced to the sum of their parts was the worst part of the job. “C’mon,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s get started.”

  Dawes and Lawson stepped out of the cruiser and walked towards the house. Dawes took short, sharp breaths as he studied the property. “That mail looks months old,” he said to Lawson, as he noted the piles of junk mail scattered about the base of the mailbox.

  His partner frowned at the sight. “Then, why does everything about this place smell so fresh?”

  Dawes agreed the newness of the smell was odd, but then so was the house in general. The building was falling apart, almost decaying before their eyes, and for a fleeting moment he considered whether it was the actual house giving off the stench. “You ready?”

  His partner dropped his hand to the gun holstered at his hip.

  Dawes retrieved the heavy flashlight from his own belt and reached out with his other hand to try the door handle. He called out, “Police!” He pressed his ear to the door. There was only silence.

  Lawson leaned in to try and see through one of the filth-caked windows. The boards creaked beneath his shoes. Dawes feared they might both fall through rotten wood. He tapped on the door. “Police. Is there anyone at home?” After another minute of silence, Dawes gave his partner a nod and reached for his radio. “52-60, hold the air for minute. Me and 52-70 are gonna force entry.”

  The dispatcher’s female voice crackled down the line. “Ten-four, 52-60. All units hold the air
.”

  Dawes took a step back, bent his knee and kicked at the front door. The door frame crumbled and cracked, flying inwards to release a great waft of air into the officers’ faces. Dawes pressed the inside of his left forearm to his nose, while holding the flashlight in his right. He examined the darkened interior through watery eyes, aggravated by dust and odour. Behind him he heard Lawson coughing, but the noise of his expectorations was drowned out by the buzzing of a multitude of flies.

  The officers began their search of the house on auto-pilot. Dawes’ flashlight illuminated millions of dust motes, stirred up by their forced entry. The dust covered everything; the lounge suite with its cracked leather covering, the tattered rug on the floor, the stone-cold fireplace. Dawes stepped quickly, exiting the living room to venture deeper into the building. As he entered the kitchen, the fragrance of putrefaction intensified in waves like a macabre metal-detector. Dawes wanted desperately to take in a lung full of clean air, but he had to go on.

  The corpse was splayed out on the kitchen table. There were so many flies and maggots crawling on it that the body seemed to shimmer, a moving feast. The chest cavity had been opened, the angle of the ribcage reminding Dawes of a Venus fly-trap. He gasped and sucked in a heady dose of the rotten scent. He wanted to close his eyes, but they were locked on the knife clamped in the dead man’s hand.

  “In the kitchen!”

  As he heard Lawson bound down the stairs, Dawes gingerly reached for his radio once more. “52-60, advise 52-100 we’ve got a DOA. I’m gonna need Homicide and CSI out here.”

  The dispatcher’s voice pulled him out of his gruesome reverie.

  “Ten-four 52-60. 52-100, you copy?”

  The officer’s supervisor called back. “52-100, ten-four. Show me on the way.”

  Lawson came to Dawes’ side, panting for breath. “Holy shit. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “You and me both.”

  Lawson coughed again. “All the other rooms in the house are empty.”

  “Well, it’s Homicide’s party now.” Dawes finally found the will to walk away from the body. “Check the rooms again and secure the scene. I’ll take a look outside.” He almost ran out the door, silently praying that he’d never have to step inside that house ever again.

  ~

  Zac lay flat on the ground beneath the Kemper House and watched the police officers walk around the perimeter, and then back to their car. Fear froze him to the spot, and he realised that scoping out the house had been a bad idea—despite the fact that his assumptions had been right all along.

  There was an actual dead body inside the house!

  Although the officers’ conversations had been muffled, Zac had heard the subsequent radio transmissions well enough. He knew what “Homicide” meant. He watched the two officers get back inside their cruiser and close the doors, probably to get away from the smell. The fact they weren’t leaving told Zac things were about to get a lot busier in Willow Street and he’d be best be getting himself gone.

  Crawling on his belly through the dirt, he started to make his way back to the rear of the house. His clothes were coated in filth, but he didn’t care. He just had to get back home before the police found him. His foot snagged on something and he looked over his shoulder at what was slowing him down. The tip of his sneaker was wedged under something long and flat with a hard edge. Zac pulled his leg muscles taut and the object lifted out of the dirt for a moment before falling once more. Curiosity burning, he turned about to get a closer look at what he had unearthed. Using his hands, he brushed away the loose soil.

  The object was a long piece of rotting wood. Zac brushed more dirt away. The piece of timber seemed to be as long as he was. It was barely holding together, and had many markings etched into its surface. They almost looked like words, and despite the wood’s obvious age, he believed the markings had been carved by careful hands.

  With most of the dirt removed, Zac saw the piece was cut into a particular shape, with a long rectangular half and a shorter, more angular top. He realised he was looking at some sort of lid.

  Thoughts raced through his head. Not only had he been one of the first to confirm there was a dead body in the Kemper House, but he’d also possibly stumbled upon a chest of hidden treasure.

  Licking his lips eagerly, Zac plunged his fingers under the edge of the lid and lifted. But the lid only rose so far before coming to an abrupt halt. Frowning, he craned his neck and saw there was a large, rusted padlock holding down the lid. At first he thought about giving up on it, until his father’s voice emerged in his head.

  If it’s rusted, then it’s weak.

  His enthusiasm renewed, Zac scraped away the dirt to expose the lock. He saw it was tethered to the side of the chest, and to his dismay, the rust only appeared to be superficial. And yet, the wood it was bolted to was as soft as the earth around it. Gritting his teeth, he pulled on the lock and its fastener came free with a crack like a branch being wrenched from a tree. The boy’s smile widened as he opened the box.

  Strangely, the chest was filled only with darkness.

  He crawled closer, hopeful that it wasn’t empty. He bent over the lip of the chest to peer within and stretched his right arm inside, desperate to feel anything. All his fingers touched was more dirt.

  Zac moaned in frustration and began to claw at the dirt, shoving it aside like a dog with a scent. The exertion drew him farther into the chest and before he could stop himself, he fell inside. The lid came down with a thud, and every skerrick of light vanished in an instant. He let out a cry of fright and reached to push it open—only to discover the lid was no longer there.

  Confused, he strained his arms in every direction, searching for the walls of the box, but they too were gone. Even the soil beneath him was lost. He seemed to float in a sea of darkness. The boy screamed for help—for the two police officers, for his parents—but his voice no longer carried any weight. Heart pounding fiercely in the black vacuum, Zac tried to move, but it was as if his entire body and all his senses, were totally paralysed.

  All but one.

  He was granted back his hearing just in time for the screams. They rose softly at first, like the rush of air from the end of a distant tunnel. With each thrum of Zac’s terrified heart, the shrieks intensified, octave after octave until the boy’s ears—and his very skull—vibrated. Inside the box, Zac’s body became a tuning fork until the screams became a message from the centre of Hell itself.

  Chapter Three

  Voices woke Ben Traynor first, but the reek that assailed his senses as soon as he opened his eyes was like a scream in the dark.

  Ben threw back the covers, screwed up his nose at the stench and glanced at the bedside clock on the dresser, next to his dozing wife. The sound of people talking and doors slamming at 7 a.m. was unwelcome to say the least. Then again, he and Megan had only moved into 69 Willow Street two weeks before, and hardly paid notice to anything outside, so it was still too early to judge what could be classed as too noisy. Still, there was no denying the air was rank, and Ben struggled to shake the effluvia from his nostrils as he walked to the window and parted the curtains to see what all the commotion was.

  Across the street, he saw half a dozen police vehicles surrounding the house at number 72. He counted the same number of uniformed officers, and long yellow lines of crime scene tape around the property. Other men, dressed in blue overalls and facemasks, carried large plastic containers from the back of an unmarked van. Even a first-day journalist would have known those men were crime scene investigators.

  “Jesus! There’s a goddamn crime scene across the street.”

  His wife Megan stirred, her hand pushing a coil of brown hair from her eyes. “What?”

  Ben ignored her and returned his attention to the window. Number 72 was just an old house, a ramshackle place he wouldn’t give a second glance, but now it was a hotbed of activity. Ben wondered if the smell was coming from inside the rotting walls of the house. The s
mell—albeit a gut-wrenching one—was good news for any reporter. Where there was death, there was always the chance of a great story.

  Megan appeared at his side. “Is it the police? What are they doing here?”

  “Look at the tape. It’s a crime scene.”

  “Oh, God, do you… do you think someone’s died?”

  “Well, it certainly explains the smell.”

  His wife flared her nostrils, before promptly covering her nose with the back of her hand. “Oh, that’s disgusting, and must you be so foul?”

  Ben slipped away from her to retrieve his cell phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m calling Jacob to let him know what’s going on.”

  Megan folded her arms across her chest. “You’re supposed to be on vacation.”

  “The news never stops.” Ben put the phone to his ear, already ignoring her. “The news never stops,” he said.

  “So why should you, right?” Megan stormed off, leaving him alone.

  “The day’s already off to a great start,” Ben said to himself.

  The bathroom door slammed. He hated it when Megan chastised him for doing his job. The phone finally picked up at the other end after the sixth ring.

  “Jacob, it’s Ben.”

  “Traynor? Aren’t you on vacation?”

  Ben smirked and turned back to the circus outside his window. From his vantage point he could just make out a crime scene officer, through a window on the top floor of the old house, taking photographs. “Yeah, well I can’t ignore the news when it’s going on right outside my front door.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Right now, across the street. I’ve got about a dozen cops and CSI guys going through my neighbour’s house. And there’s a ripe stink in the air.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Check your police scanner. There’s a dead body here in Willow Street, Parkside, and I’m about to walk across the road and get an exclusive.”

  “No, wait, I’ll send a crew to check it out.”