by Smith, Bryan
Luke opened the door and stepped outside. He leaned back in to shield his face from the swirling snow and said, “I said I’ll cover it. Got a fat roll of bills burning a hole in my pocket. Might as well put it to some use. Now how much should I tell the clerk you’re putting in?”
Greg tucked his cash away with obvious reluctance and returned the wallet to his rear pocket. “Twenty dollars unleaded should suffice for now. Since you’re feeling generous, grab some chips and shit. Feeling a bit famished.”
“No problem.”
Luke shut the door and headed for the entrance to the brightly-lit store, walking hunched over with his head down and his hands shoved deep inside the pockets of the red overcoat. The freezing wind was so fiercely cold it felt like it was on the verge of sheering away the top layer of skin from his face. He shuddered and groaned loudly in relief as he pushed through the door into the store’s much warmer interior.
After stamping his feet on the floor mat just inside the door to dislodge some snow from his boots, he headed for the counter, where he took out his wallet and handed the clerk on duty a bill. “Twenty dollars unleaded on pump number one.”
The clerk nodded and rang up the purchase.
Luke trudged off to the rear of the store and the beer coolers that lined the back wall. Opening one of the coolers, he took out a case of Bud and a case of Pabst. On his way back to the register, he walked down an aisle devoted to automotive products. Plastic bottles of motor oil and deicers, window scrapers, fuel injector mixtures, that sort of thing.
On the bottom shelf were some gas cans.
He stopped in his tracks and stared at the cans for several moments as an idea flared to life in his head. That the notion was completely insane given the current conditions outside was something he instantly recognized. Knowing it was crazy, however, made the idea no less compelling. A deep frown creased his face as he turned away from the display and glanced outside.
The snow hadn’t slackened at all, but he could just make out Greg’s shadowy form near the pump. Luke tried to imagine how his friend would react to the idea. Not with enthusiasm, probably. But maybe he could frame it in a way that would appeal to Greg’s adventurous side. Along with the rest of their old crew, they’d had some wild times in the past. They’d even done a few things that were arguably just as crazy as what he had in mind now, things most often fueled by a large consumption of alcohol.
And, well, Luke and his old buddy had both been hitting the sauce pretty hard tonight. Sure, they were older than they’d been in those risk-taking days, and Greg definitely seemed more level-headed now. But maybe if he saw the idea as Luke’s final act of defiance against his tragic past—as a kind of exorcism, really—maybe, just maybe, he could be convinced to go along with it.
Letting out a breath, Luke made up his mind.
The hell with it, he thought. Let’s give it a shot.
He carried the cases of beer to the counter.
And then he went back down the automotive aisle and grabbed two gas cans.
7.
Simone stopped at the second floor landing and aimed the beam of light down a hallway. The weak illumination made it difficult to tell for sure, but she sensed the hallway was a longish one. There was something about that darkness beyond the edge of the lighted area that suggested significant depth. As she stood there and contemplated the darkness, she began to perceive other qualities within it, sinister things. She told herself it was just regular darkness, a mundane absence of light, nothing more. The sense that it pulsed with a malign supernatural intelligence was just her fear sparking paranoid delusions.
Terry joined her on the landing and said, “See anything?”
Simone jumped at the sound of his voice. “Jesus! You scared me.”
“Sorry.”
Simone sighed. “It’s okay.”
It really wasn’t. Her heart was still slamming in her chest from the fright he’d given her. But she knew he hadn’t startled her on purpose and so chose not to rebuke him again. Besides, she was too creeped out by this house and the mystery of her missing friends to risk upsetting him. If she’d said anything too mean, he might have elected to head back out to the SUV and leave her up here alone. And now that she was up here, she wasn’t sure she could face down that deep darkness without someone with her.
A silent moment elapsed as they stood there and stared down the dark hallway.
Terry cleared his throat. “So…are we just gonna stand here all night?”
Simone didn’t answer right away. Her fear was not abating in the least as the seconds rolled by and turned into minutes. To the contrary, it was intensifying. She felt sweat in her armpits despite the cold suffusing the old house. The trepidation she felt at venturing farther down the hallway was such that she briefly considered passing the phone back to Terry and asking him to lead the way. She liked the idea of having a buffer between herself and any potential threat lurking up here on the second floor. It was a selfish, mercenary impulse and she felt bad about it, a little, but not so deep down inside she knew she wasn’t above allowing someone else to step into harm’s way in her place.
In the end, though, her fear of relinquishing control over their only light source was even greater than her fear of being attacked by monsters or ghosts or whatever. Besides, she still suspected the truth of the situation was that Spence and the others were pulling some kind of lame prank. Right now they were probably hiding away in one of these rooms and keeping quiet, waiting for just the right moment to jump out at them and scream boo!
And if that happens, Simone promised herself, I’ll kick Spence in the balls so hard they’ll fucking explode.
“Stay close,” she said, glancing at Terry.
He smiled. “No problem.”
It was all Simone could do not to roll her eyes at that smile. Of course he didn’t have a problem with that. Being close to her was his favorite thing in the world. She again felt a little tingle of pleasure at knowing what kind of power she held over him. He could be her little puppet, if she wanted. She could make him dance and act the fool. It would be funny.
But, no, she wasn’t that shallow. Wasn’t that mean.
Not quite.
She held the light as far in front of her as she could manage and started down the hallway again. The creak of the floorboards beneath their feet was louder than it had been downstairs. She aimed the light down and studied the floor a moment. A lot of the wood was badly warped. Gaps had appeared between some of the boards, inch-wide fissures that deepened her concerns regarding the structural integrity of the house. A few of the boards sank a little too precipitously beneath the tread of her feet.
About a dozen feet down the hallway, her next step forward resulted in a splintering sound loud enough to dissuade her from proceeding any farther. Maybe Spence and the others really were lurking in one of the rooms up here, but the conditions were too dangerous to continue playing along with their game. The smart thing to do would be to head back downstairs and resume calling out for them. If there was no response after a reasonable amount of time, she would bite the bullet and call 911. It might mean getting into some serious trouble with her parents and the police, but so be it. Trouble of that sort would be temporary. A serious injury caused by falling through a rotten and perhaps termite-infested floor? Not so much.
She was about to inform Terry of her decision when she saw something at the edge of the field of light ahead of her. What she saw was so unexpected—so seemingly incongruous—her brain required an additional moment or two to properly process it.
Those are toes, she thought, her brain finally kicking back into gear. A girl’s painted toes.
As far as she knew, the only other girl in the house was Karen Hogan, but Karen was wearing her Uggs, thick, sheepskin-lined winter boots. The inside of the house felt like a meat freezer. Bare feet on this floor would be intolerable. Unless she had somehow taken complete leave of her senses over the last twenty-some minutes, Karen would not hav
e removed those boots, she was sure of it.
Pretty sure, anyway.
And yet those were unquestionably a young woman’s bare feet just up ahead of her in the hallway. The toenails were painted a bright shade of red. It was the same shade Karen used on her fingernails. Simone could make sense of it on no level, except that maybe it was another part of an elaborate prank.
“Karen, is that you?”
Terry stepped up close behind her. “What’s happening?”
Ignoring him, Simone moved another couple steps down the hallway. Each tread of her feet resulted in another of those loud splintering sounds, but she was too captivated by this new layer of mystery to care. The woman standing in the hallway ahead of her did not move as she advanced. As the field of light pushed back more of the darkness, she was able to discern more details. The unmoving woman wasn’t just barefoot, she was entirely nude. Her head was hanging forward, long dark hair partly obscuring her face.
Simone stopped in her tracks. "Karen? Are you okay?”
It had to be Karen. Crazy as it seemed, this person looked too much like her to be anyone else.
Terry sharply inhaled. “Is that…blood?”
Simone was initially confused by this comment, but she took a few steps forward and gasped as the light more clearly delineated the splashes of red on Karen’s legs and torso. She heard the floor creak behind her as Terry took a few instinctive backward steps.
Her mind again went back to the idea of a prank. On the surface, it seemed ridiculous, but was it really? Her first thought was that there hadn’t been time enough for Spence and the others to stage something this elaborate, but maybe she was thinking about it the wrong way. Perhaps it wasn’t a spontaneous thing at all and had been planned out well in advance. A part of her wanted to believe this was the case. She would be pissed about it, but at least a prank was something rooted in the real world. It was an infinitely preferable scenario to dealing with some sort of genuine supernatural phenomenon.
She took yet another step forward, squinting and peering more intently at the splashes of red on Karen’s body. The substance, whatever it actually was, was still wet. A thin line of crimson was slowly trailing down a smooth inner thigh.
There was another loud creak behind her, but something about it was different than what she had heard previously. It went on longer and was followed by a heavy thump. Before Simone could turn about to investigate, Karen lifted her head and spoke in a voice that was low and grating, utterly unlike her regular speaking voice.
“He’s here.”
Simone whirled about and aimed the light at the other end of the hallway.
Terry was several feet away now and still backtracking. Behind him a door was swinging open. Its long-unoiled hinges were the source of the higher-pitched squeaking sound. As Simone watched with her mouth hanging open in astounded horror, a man in a Santa suit emerged from a room. The suit looked like it had been salvaged from a Dumpster. Its formerly white fringe was filthy and there were numerous rips in the fabric. What she could see of the portion of the man’s face visible beneath the limp-looking red hat made her breath quicken. She was building toward a scream, but couldn’t quite manage it, not yet.
The man in the Santa suit was a ghoul, a walking corpse with black eyes and rotted zombie flesh. Clutched in his red-gloved hands was a large, heavy-bladed axe. Terry was just beginning to turn around when the Santa-ghoul raised the axe above his shoulders and began to swing it.
Now Simone was able to scream. The sound was loud and piercing, but not quite loud enough to obscure Karen’s girlish giggling. Light from the phone glinted on the blade of the axe as it sliced through the air. Terry stood immobile in the middle of the hallway, either too overwhelmed by blind terror to get out of the way or simply incapable of comprehending what he was seeing.
The blade of the axe bit into the side of his neck and chopped all the way through it with shocking ease. His head went flying as blood pumped from the stump of his neck. Simone screamed again as the severed head hit the floor and came tumbling toward her.
Terry’s headless body stood erect a moment longer before it wobbled and toppled over. The Santa-ghoul looked at Simone and grinned. Then the creature stepped over the corpse and started in her direction, once again hefting the heavy axe above its shoulders.
Screaming yet again, Simone backed up and grabbed Karen by a wrist, dragging her down to the far end of the hallway. Karen allowed herself to be pulled along, still giggling in that demented way all the while. At the end of the hallway was an open door.
There was nowhere else to go.
Simone shoved Karen through the opening and followed her into the pitch-black room. The phone had slipped from her fingers during the flight down the hallway. She regretted its loss, but there was no chance of retrieving it. She closed the door and turned the lock, hoping it would hold until she could get it properly barricaded. Her heart pounding, she began casting about in the dark, searching for furniture she could drag over to block the door.
But before she could find anything, she tripped over something on the floor. Unable to keep her balance, she pitched forward, falling until the side of her head smacked against the corner of something hard and unyielding.
As consciousness dimmed, she heard Karen giggle again.
And then she again spoke in that low, grating voice. “Now you’re here with us. Forever.”
8.
The Wrangler sat parked at the bottom of the long, narrow drive that led up to the house at the top of Crandall Hill. Even with the jeep’s high beams on and the wipers swooping back and forth at their fastest setting, visibility was poor. Enough snow had fallen over the last hour that even with the vehicle’s four-wheel-drive, the journey up the winding drive was sure to have its treacherous moments. On their own, these considerations were more than sufficient to render the prospect a hopelessly daunting one. Add in the fact that the blood alcohol level of the man behind the wheel of the Wrangler was almost certainly well above the legally allowable limit for operating a motor vehicle and what you had was a recipe for almost certain disaster.
Greg Lancaster drummed his thumbs on the rim of the steering wheel and squinted out at the sheeting snow. “Hand me another of those beers, would ya?”
An open carton of Budweiser cans sat on the floor between Luke’s feet. He dug one out and passed it over to Greg. “Look, now that we’re here, I’ve got a deeper appreciation for just how dumbass this idea is. Let’s just call this off and head back to your place while the roads are still passable.”
There was a fizzy hiss as Greg popped the tab on the fresh can of Bud. “Nothing dumbass about it. Unfavorable weather conditions aside, that is.” He gulped deeply from the can, burped softly, and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. “Place should have been razed to the ground years ago. You inherited everything in your father’s estate, right? How come you never had it knocked down?”
Luke took a contemplative sip of beer before answering. “I reckon mostly because I didn’t want to even think about the place. Out of sight, out of mind, basically. My daddy owned the house free and clear for years before he…well, before he did what he did. Once a year I get a notice to pay the property taxes. I mail in the check and never think about it again.”
“So it does still belong to you? Despite the law taking it on themselves to board it up?”
“It does.”
A line formed in the middle of Greg’s brow. “Huh. In that case, I suppose the sensible thing to do would be to call off this foolishness and hire a demolition company after the holidays.”
Luke nodded. “I could do that, sure.”
A silent beat elapsed.
Greg took a sip of beer. “Gasoline’s a lot cheaper, though.”
“Yep. There’s that.”
“And it wouldn’t feel bad to watch the fucking place burn.”
“Nope.”
Greg chugged down the rest of the beer Luke had just passed him. He crushed the can
and tossed it in the back. “Fuck it, man. Let’s do this.”
He worked the Wrangler’s gearshift, applied light pressure to the gas pedal, and snow beneath the vehicle crunched audibly as it began to roll forward.
Luke pulled on his seatbelt. “This is a really bad idea.”
There was the slightest tinge of ruefulness in Greg’s soft laughter. “Already a well-established fact, pardner. We’re doin’ it anyway.”
“Because we’re crazy. And drunk.”
Greg laughed again. “A glorious combination, if you ask me. Many of the most momentous events in history were the result of foolhardy deeds perpetrated by drunken, crazy lunatics.”
Luke tossed his latest empty in the back. He looked askance at his friend as he dug another can out of the carton. “Is that so?”
Greg nodded. “Documented fact. Case in point, the Boston Tea Party. Those revolutionaries were loaded out of their fucking minds when they tossed all that tea in the harbor. Just one example among many. You can look it up.”
Luke gulped beer. “So what you’re saying is that by doing this we’re actually honoring the memory of fallen heroes?”
“I’m not sure how many of those boys later died in battle, but, sure, something like that. Why not?”
Luke shrugged. “Works for me.”
The winding private drive to the top of Crandall Hill was about a quarter mile long. Luke had vivid memories of whipping his Camaro around its sharp curves in the old days. His father used to chastise him for this, saying it was a good way to get himself—or someone else—hurt or even killed. This expression of concern for his safety was no anomaly. Until that terrible night, he had seemed no different from any other loving father. As far as anyone had known, Silas Herzinger cherished his family and was especially proud of the grandchildren Luke’s older siblings had given him. But that outward goodness had been a hideous lie, a mask hiding the monster lurking inside. He had only ever pretended to love Luke and the rest of the family. He was just a madman going through the motions of a normal life until he could finally take it no longer.