by Dan Poblocki
Moving closer, following the others, Cassidy could see that the crack was wider than she’d first thought. Maybe a couple feet. She hadn’t been able to tell because in the dark she hadn’t seen the garbage that had been shoved inside. From about ten feet back, Joey’s light illuminated trash bags, crumpled boxes, papers, clothes, a doll, even a small chair. All of it filled every inch of the gap, from the bottom to top.
So the cleaning crew hadn’t gotten all of it after all, Cassidy thought.
“What is this?” Ping asked.
“Could be the opening to some sort of passage,” said Joey. “But it’s been plugged up.”
“If it is a cave, or a tunnel or something,” said Cassidy, shivering in the cool darkness, “Ursula mustn’t have wanted anyone to go digging around inside.” Joey seemed to take this as an invitation. He reached out and poked one of the torn trash bags with the tip of his light.
“Can we leave?” Cassidy asked. “Please? I’m scared.”
“We heard something down here.” Joey was disappointed. “Where did it go, if not in there?”
Ping pushed at his shoulder. “You think your dead dog crawled into that crack in the wall, then pulled piles of garbage in after himself?”
“I dunno! All I know is what I heard.”
One of the bags fell from the crack and tumbled to their feet. Cassidy was too shocked to scream. More pieces of detritus began to shift, spill forth, and roll toward them, as if something inside the space was moving around. The three scurried back, watching the wall in wonder, the glare from the flashlight reflected like from a giant eye.
After a moment, the movement stopped. Dust stirred, floating on invisible currents, illuminated by the white glow of Joey’s light. “Lucky?” Joey whispered again. “Boy?”
A human hand burst forth from the crevice. Pale-purple fingers pushed through the rest of the garbage, opening and closing, searching for something or someone to hold on to.
THERE WAS NO TIME to think. The three of them moved as a unit, turning toward the staircase. They dashed together with a singular purpose: to get the heck out.
Ping reached the stairs first, followed by Cassidy and Joey. Before taking the first step, Cassidy briefly turned back toward the crack in the wall. Joey had done the same, shining his light at the spot where the garbage was now spilling far out onto the floor. Someone was crawling on his hands and knees out from the crack and into the basement, crunching debris as he went.
Cassidy meant to continue up the steps behind Ping, but her body wasn’t listening to her brain. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The man glanced up at them from across the room. Cassidy screamed as his milky eyes reflected Joey’s light.
“Mr. Chase?” Joey asked, as if expecting a response. Oh, hi there, kids. A little help?
The man hissed at them, a phlegmy sound that escaped from deep in his chest. He struggled to kneel, his body jerking spasmodically, before he grunted, rising almost accidentally to his feet. There was more movement at the wall behind him. Another pair of hands appeared and clutched at the edges of the crack; another person was trying to pull itself out from whatever space was inside.
Joey swung the light away, and Cassidy yelped again.
“Go!” shouted Joey, pushing her spine with the tip of the flashlight. Ping was at the top of the stairs already. She waved them forward frantically. Cassidy nearly tripped as she took two stairs at a time. Darkness nipped at her heels.
She and Joey burst through the doorway, falling to the floor at Ping’s feet. In the hall, the flashlight rolled against the wall, stopping near the padlock they’d seen earlier.
Noises echoed up from the basement. Slithering. Scraping. Shuffling. Cassidy took Ping’s hand and leapt up. Joey grabbed at the doorknob, lifted himself, then swung the heavy door shut. From downstairs, a bark rang out, and Joey groaned. “Lucky!” he cried, reaching for the knob again.
“No!” Ping swatted his hand away. “He’s one of them.” Cassidy and Joey didn’t know exactly what she meant by that, but they began to work it out, listening as the barking grew louder, frenzied.
“The dead,” Cassidy said to herself. “Mr. Chase. And I think that was Mrs. Moriarty behind him. They’re here. In the basement. But how?”
A tap-tap-tap of claws raced across the concrete floor below and up the stairs. Something heavy slammed against the door, rattling the old wood on its hinges. What sounded like an animal whined and scratched desperately to reach them.
“Apparently they walked!” Ping squeaked.
“Lucky!” Joey cried out, louder this time. His gaze fluttered between the two girls, desperate. “What if he’s only trying to escape? Like us?”
“You know that’s not true anymore,” said Cassidy. “This is more messed up than we could’ve imagined.”
Ping bent down and picked up the padlock. She grappled with the loose hardware that was screwed into the wood just above the knob, swinging the hasp over the staple, then looping the open lock through. She pressed the padlock down, and it clicked into place. And when next the door shuddered, even though some of its screws had become loose, the hasp held steady. Ping said nothing before turning down the hall, sprinting toward the daylight that was shining from the front door.
Cassidy picked up the flashlight, then took Joey’s hand. He continued to stare at the shuddering door, as if something wonderful might be waiting for him just behind it. She yanked his arm, pulling him out of his head. “We’ve got to go!” It seemed like such an obvious idea, but Joey still looked surprised.
Together, they ran, following Ping’s path, but before they turned the corner toward the front door, they were halted by another scream. Ping’s voice was eardrum piercing — full of honest, no-holds-barred, throat-scraping terror.
Someone was blocking the way out.
PING HAD MADE IT HALFWAY through the small foyer and was now quickly backing away. When she bumped into Cassidy and Joey, she screamed again.
“Who is that?” Cassidy asked, but Ping didn’t answer.
The group drew closer into a panicked huddle, and when Cassidy got a better look at the figure in the doorway, she understood Ping’s reaction. It was a woman, another corpse, who might have stood about five and a half feet tall, except that she was missing her head.
The three clutched one another, watching as the headless woman appeared to watch them back. At the end of the dark hall behind them, the banging at the padlocked door grew louder, as though the dog had been joined by the dead people who had crawled out of the hole in the wall.
They couldn’t stay here, but they couldn’t move.
“Hold on,” said Joey, his voice suddenly calmer. “It’s just a dummy. Wheels on the bottom of a wooden stand. My grandmother kept one of those in her sewing room.” He sighed. “A mannequin. It’s nothing.”
“Nothing,” said Ping, “except that it wasn’t there ten minutes ago.”
“Wait here,” he said, stepping forward.
The girls glanced at each other and rolled their eyes. They followed instead. As Joey approached the door, hands out, ready to push the dummy out of the way, another figure stepped out from the side of the door and clasped the mannequin’s shoulders. Cassidy raised the flashlight to illuminate the face. When the three saw who was now barring their exit, they fell over themselves trying to turn around and landed in a heap on the floor.
The face belonged to Hal Nance. His usually pale skin was bruised all over. One of his eyes was entirely red, filled with blood. He was dressed in a ratty gray T-shirt and dingy gym shorts. He moved like the dead had done downstairs — slowly, jittery, stiff. Was it possible that he had just now walked from the morgue to join the others in their new trash-strewn home in the basement?
Hal wheeled the dummy across the threshold, limping and groaning as the wheels squealed.
“Leave us alone!” Cassidy cried out, hating the hopeless sound in her voice.
“We’ll hurt you,” Ping hissed.
Jo
ey sat on the floor, unmoving, staring at his old neighbor. Cassidy worried that he might have broken something: a bone, his mind. She tried to help him stand up, to pull him away as the Hal-thing stepped closer to them.
“Joey?” The thing’s voice was raw, as if it hadn’t been used in a while. It glanced among the three of them. “I heard screaming. I hid. I thought …” Its eyes rolled as its mind seemed to hiccup. “I don’t know what I thought. What are you guys doing here?”
“Please,” Joey whispered. “Don’t hurt us.”
The Hal-thing flinched. “Why on earth would I hurt you?”
“Because that’s what dead things do?”
“Dead things? What dead things?”
The pounding at the door down the hall shook the whole house. Who knew how much longer the latch would hold.
“Those dead things,” said Joey, glancing over his shoulder. “And you.”
Hal looked confused. “I was in an accident last night. The doctors thought I had a concussion. I got out of the hospital this morning and knew that I had to bring this stupid mannequin back here,” he said quietly, as if he couldn’t hear or couldn’t comprehend the sounds from the basement, “before it tries to kill me again.” He shoved the dummy forward. It toppled to the floor just inside the door.
Cassidy tried to make sense of what he’d just said, but nothing in her brain was computing. She had to concentrate to breathe.
“Wait a second,” said Ping. “You’re alive?”
“Barely,” said Hal.
A cracking sound erupted from the doorway by the stairs, wood splintering.
“Well … good!” said Ping. “Then you need to follow us. Now.” She pushed past him and stepped out onto the porch, waving for the group to join her. With a grim look, she added, “I suggest we run.”
THEY RACED DOWN the gravel driveway, no pausing this time to avoid poisonous plants or sharp sticks — there are worse things in the world than rashes and scrapes. The light-filled opening at the end of the dark driveway grew as they trampled weeds and the scattered items that had once belonged to Ursula Chambers.
When the three friends exploded forth from the shadowed path and onto the cracked asphalt of their own street, Cassidy was flooded with such relief, she actually started laughing.
And she couldn’t stop, not even when, seconds later, Hal Nance half limped, half skipped out of the forest in their wake. In fact, the sight of him only made her laugh harder. She knew it was wrong. Nothing about this was funny. But it was like something inside wouldn’t allow her to feel real emotion, the correct emotion.
Shaking with giggles, she pulled the straps of her backpack tight, then strolled over to the curb in front of the Tremonts’ house, where she sat, trembling, snot running out of her nose, tears making everything blurry. Ping and Joey followed. They stared at her, worried. Hal stood in the middle of the cul-de-sac, peering back up the driveway, as if he expected something else to leap out of the woods after him.
“This doesn’t feel safe,” he called to them over his shoulder. “We need to get away from this place.”
Joey glanced up at his own house. “We can’t go inside. Too close. Plus, if my mom sees you, she’s going to start asking questions that I don’t know if any of us can answer.”
“Same with my mom,” said Ping, glancing next door. “And if my little brothers learn that there are freaking zombies in the basement of the Chambers house, nothing will stop them from wanting to see for themselves.”
Cassidy thought about her tiny apartment in Brooklyn, a place she’d never truly considered safe, and even that seemed like a better option than hiding two doors down from the Hermit’s. Too bad they had no way of getting there.
“We’ll go to mine,” said Hal, pointing down the street. “I’d offer to drive, but well, I don’t have a car anymore.”
The Nances lived around the bend, on the street that led directly to the main road. Their home was a big brick box with an attached three-car garage — a model that resembled many others in the neighborhood. Mr. Chase had only offered four options when his company had developed the land, none of which were anything like his own grand mansion.
“My parents are at work,” Hal said, leading them to a kitchen that opened onto a living room with a high ceiling just like the Tremonts’ house. “They told me they’d check in, see if I was still alive.” He smiled a halfhearted grin. “Make yourselves at home, if you can. How about some water?”
“We’re happy you’re alive,” said Ping, her voice so earnest, it sounded as if it might shatter. “My parents saw the wreck and assumed the worst.”
Cassidy sat on the edge of the wide couch, shivering as if it were winter. She couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d seen in Ursula’s house. Forget the bizarre map carved into the bedroom floor; what they’d found in the basement would haunt her for years, if not the rest of her life. The whole incident had already started to feel as if it had been a dream. Dead Mr. Chase had crawled out of a crevice in the concrete wall, pushing his way through piles of garbage. Mrs. Moriarty had followed her son-in-law. Presumably, Lucky’s corpse had done the same. And if the pattern fit, then Ursula herself might have been down there too, dressed in her funeral gown. But was the Ursula who had walked home from the funeral parlor the same Ursula who had pulled Cassidy out of bed to invite her into her home? Had the dream been a trap, meant to lure them into the house, to meet the dead in the dark of the cellar?
Cassidy held a cold glass of water, her knees pulled close together, her backpack still hanging from her hunched shoulders. Hal had handed the water to her without her noticing. She shuddered as she realized that the others were talking — had been talking for some time. She listened to Ping, who was sitting beside her, finish telling Hal what had happened in the house. She assumed that Ping had already mentioned what had brought them there in the first place. On the other side of the sofa, Joey sat, staring into space, lost in his head just like Cassidy had been.
“Joey?” Cassidy interrupted. “You okay?”
Joey blinked, then seemed to notice that he wasn’t the only person in the room. “Yeah. Sorry. I couldn’t stop thinking …” Ping and Hal waited for him to finish.
“About the house?” Cassidy added. “Me too.” Her voice felt tiny. It was a struggle just to speak.
“And Lucky,” Joey said. “I’m just … confused. I know all of it should tie together somehow. But right now, it all feels like a nightmare. Nonsense. You’re not where you thought you were anymore, not who you thought you were.”
Hal sighed. “I haven’t told you about what happened to me yet,” he said. “I’m not sure if this’ll help make things clearer, or only more complicated.”
“Only one way to find out,” said Ping, trying to sound as resilient as ever.
HAL DIDN’T REMEMBER the accident. He told them how he’d woken up in the field having, by some miracle, been thrown from the vehicle before it collided with the tree.
Another driver had seen the crash.
There were flashing lights and sirens, intermittently illuminating the field, the stretcher, the ambulance, the crushed metal thing that had once been his car.
He remembered begging EMT workers to search for the dummy, to bring it with them, to stop off at Ursula’s house before they went on to the hospital. They’d watched him like he had a serious brain injury, but the tests showed that he did not. And there had been many tests before they released him into the care of his father, who’d driven him home in silence.
That morning, by the time he’d walked back to the scene of the accident, the wreck had already been towed away. About twenty yards past the tree, the dummy lay on its side in the dirt. In the morning light, it seemed harmless — just another piece of junk that someone wanted to be rid of.
Hal fit the stand back inside the mannequin where it had separated the night before. One of the wheels was stuck, broken, but he managed to get the thing over to the curb. He pushed it up the road, limping into
Chase Estates, through the labyrinth of streets, to the uppermost point of the development. To the cul-de-sac.
That was where he’d heard the screaming.
“You were right,” said Joey flatly. “That didn’t help at all.”
Ping nudged his arm. “Of course it helps. You can’t solve a puzzle without all of the pieces. And I’d say we have plenty more now. We can finally see the bigger picture.”
“Oh, I can tell you what the bigger picture is,” said Joey. “Don’t need puzzle pieces for that.”
“And?” Hal asked.
“We’re all totally screwed.”
PING IGNORED HIM. “Let’s start with what we know. According to the diagram we found carved into the bedroom floor, the Chambers house sits on a vortex. Those lines and stars and circles coincide with info from my magazines and Joey’s map of Whitechapel.”
“Yes,” Joey said, sitting forward, “but what does it mean?”
“Getting to that. We know that a vortex acts like a whirlpool. Or like a black hole in outer space. A place where energy spins, creates force. Like gravity. What do we know about black holes?”
Late morning light spilled through the windows at the front of the Nance house. The air conditioner hummed outside. After a moment, Hal raised his hand as if the den were a classroom. “They drag objects into them, crush them. Keep them there.”
Ping nodded. “So if a ley-lines vortex is like a mini black hole, it may act in the same way. It wants to pull objects close to it. Keep them there.”
Cassidy sat up straight, even as she sank deeper into the couch cushions. “Is that why Ursula never threw anything away?”
“The house wouldn’t let her,” Joey added.
“Maybe,” said Ping. “I mean, lots of people all over the world hoard junk.”
“My aunt, Jeanne, has this illness called OCD,” said Hal. “Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hoarding is a symptom. Jeanne takes medicine to control her compulsions, and she’s doing just fine.”