The Face of Midnight

by Dan Padavona

  The last thing we needed was a murder on our hands.

  A break-in, a robbery, and now a dead body. The police wouldn’t sleep until they hunted us down.

  The air had a tension to it. It was as if a bomb was about to explode.

  Then the footsteps trailed off to our left and went deeper into the forest. After a while, I couldn’t hear him anymore.

  I could finally breathe again.

  “We should get out of here while we can,” she said.

  I wondered where we were and if I could find my way out. We’d ridden blindly through the forest to get to this spot.

  “Okay. I’ll do my best.”

  Pine needles scraped down my neck as I crawled out from under the branches. Although the forest was dark, it seemed positively bright compared to the black that was our hiding place. Tree shapes were discernible for a greater distance now. I turned in a circle, trying to find the exit.

  “How do you want to do this?”

  Becca was referring to finding our way back to the road. She looked past our hiding place and slightly off to the left. That’s where I believed the road to be, and I took comfort knowing she’d come to the same conclusion. Of course, maybe both of us were wrong.

  “Maybe we’re better off staying put until first light.”

  No. The junkie had almost found us once. It was only a matter of time before he retraced his steps and came back.

  I parted the boughs and pulled my bike from the clump of pines. Weed overgrowth stuck through the spokes, and I had to yank hard to free the bike. I was making too much noise.

  While Becca climbed onto the seat, I checked the forest one last time.

  I felt eyes watching.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  The junkie?

  No. Something else.

  Something worse than the junkie.

  I walked a few steps toward where our stalker had disappeared. Shriveled ferns leaned out of a bed of needles and dry leaves. Pines towered to the moonless sky, everywhere their scent.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I climbed onto the bike and grabbed hold of the handlebars.

  A scream tore out of the trees.

  My stomach dropped out from under me. Becca’s hands wrapped around my chest and dug in with her nails. I could feel her twisting her head around, peering back into the dark.

  I thought about those deep gorges and how easy they were to fall into at night.

  I wanted to believe the junkie had fallen to his death.

  Yet there was something in his cry which warned something far worse than a plunge into the gorge had befallen him. It was the sort of scream I imagined a swimmer made when the Great White bit into his belly and split him in half.

  I couldn’t move. With trembling legs, I held the bike steady until the night swallowed the echoing scream.

  It was quiet again.

  And to my eyes, quite a bit darker.

  “Get us out of here, Steve.”

  I stomped down on the pedals and raced back through the trees. At that moment I didn’t care if the road was ahead. All I wanted was to put as much distance between us and that scream as I could.

  Our intuitions were correct. It didn’t take long to find the road. Our path into the forest was fresh enough to recognize, and I was surprised to find our supplies splayed between two leafless bushes. I threw my backpack on, each of us grabbing a food sack.

  When we made it back to the ditch, we skipped the heroics this time and walked the bike through the stream.

  Once we were up and out of the weedy overgrowth, I checked my phone. It was fifteen minutes past midnight, and a missed call from Riley topped my log of messages. No voice mail, but he’d left a text message.

  Riley: Where are you? Please tell me you didn’t have anything to do with it.

  I knew what he meant. Jenkins.

  I felt a momentary flare of guilt over thinking Riley had put Jenkins in the hospital. Guilt quickly switched to anger. Who was he to accuse me? As innocuous as his message was, it pissed me off that he’d sent it. The police wouldn’t have much difficulty figuring out what “it” was.

  I deleted the message.

  I shut down the phone and stuffed it into my pocket as Becca jumped onto the bike seat.

  “What do you think happened back there?” she asked.

  I wanted to tell her about gorges and the dangers of hiking in the dark. I knew she’d hear the lie in my voice, so I just shook my head and started to pedal.

  The cold chewed holes into me while we rode. I kept thinking how much warmer it was from the Carolinas down to Florida. I didn’t think I’d miss lake effect snow storms and wind chill warnings.

  After riding for a half hour, I took a right onto an unmarked dirt road as the paved county road continued into darkness. All around us towered wild grass, brown and dead until next spring. The growth blotted out the meadow beyond.

  Potholes riddled the road. More than once my heart leaped into my throat when a hole clawed at the bike tires. Somehow I kept the bike upright.

  Nobody lived here. A dilapidated and abandoned barn, barely noticeable in the gloom, leaned in the meadow, a fossil which proved someone had once called this lonely strip of nothingness home. It was nearly one in the morning, and we were the only living people for miles.

  A few minutes later, I spotted the signpost for Myers Road growing out of a clump of weeds. Tendrils wrapped around the post, choking the pole and pulling it back to the dirt.

  The gravel road undulated with the terrain and ascended. The foreclosure house, still invisible from the intersection, sat on the other side of the hill crest. I knew my way around the back roads, knew Myers Road could take me into the Finger Lakes. A scattering of residences existed on Myers Road, growing more numerous closer to the lakes. Until then, the foreclosure house was the only residence.

  The clouds parted to let through a sliver of moonlight. Halfway up the incline I pulled a large tree limb out of the road and threw it into the brush. It made a sound like snakes hissing as it rolled down the hill. The road was too rutted for the bike, so we walked the rest of the way.

  “You’re sure the house is up here?” she asked, hands cupping elbows to hold off the cold.

  “Positive. Once we clear the hill we’ll see it.”

  Something rustled the bushes. I looked into the night and saw glowing eyes staring back at me. Probably just a fox. In the dead of night, it was hard not to believe in werewolves and mummies and all of the made-up monsters we used to frighten ourselves over when we were kids.

  “I hope that’s not a coyote,” she said.

  “Just as long as he doesn’t have friends.”

  “Might be a raccoon.”

  “Or a crocodile.”

  She punched me in the shoulder.

  The eyes blinked off-and-on. Then the animal scurried down the hill and out of sight. If it was a werewolf, it was more scared of us than we were of it.

  We didn’t need to clear the hill before seeing the house. The black outline of its steeply-pitched roof grew up from the horizon as we neared the crest.

  Then we reached the peak, and the downgrade steepened down the other side. We half-walked, half-stumbled through the loose stone. The house seemed to have its own gravitational pull, and we were caught in it. Along the sides of the road lay mud strips of scoured earth where rains had washed the gravel and weeds away.

  I told you I’d seen the foreclosed property from the road before. But never at night, and never from the brush. That season I’d seen dozens of houses outfitted for Halloween. None looked half as haunted as the decrepit two-story jutting bone-like out of the earth. I swore it leaned toward us as we approached, as though it might grow claws and snatch us up when we got close. A part of me wanted to grab Becca and ride the hell out of there. I might have done so had I not been so damn cold.

  Once the house had been painted white. Now it was blotchy gray, peeling
and warped. It was too dark to see the terrain below the hill. I had the impression of standing atop a mountain growing out of a black and rising sea. We couldn’t have been more isolated. I wasn’t sure if this was a good or a bad thing.

  “Who would live way out here?” Becca asked.

  I wondered that, myself. The hill was too steep for farmland, and there were no decent roads to take us into town.

  The vista appeared stilted and weeping, scoured by generations of wind and storm.

  Whoever once lived here had abandoned the house, just as the barren land around it had been abandoned by civilization. A dirt driveway ran around the other side of the house. There was no sidewalk, only a beaten path of brown leading from the driveway to the porch steps. Nor was there a garage or carport.

  “What do you think?”

  “Even with a car, it’s fifteen minutes to Barton Falls,” she said.

  “It’s even more isolated than I thought.”

  “Let’s give it a closer look.”

  A roofed porch stretched along the front of the house, the sort you’d expect to find attached to a bungalow. A weathered rocking chair groaned and moved whenever the wind gusted. I could see the tattered strip of foreclosure notice affixed to the front door. Little pieces of the notice blew back and forth across the porch.

  Grass grew high enough to cover the basement windows. A monstrous spiderweb stretched from the porch roof to a dead shrub at the corner of the house. Something lay cocooned in the web, twitching and wiggling with no hope for escape.

  The windows were shuttered on the first and second floors. Somebody had boarded one of the upstairs windows.

  As I climbed the steps I expected them to squeal like they did in haunted house stories. They didn’t. The stairs were sturdy, solid. The porch planks were dirty yet strong, making me think this addition was only a few years old.

  “Welcome home,” I said.

  I kept looking over my shoulder. I was about to break into a house, my second in less than a week. The cops had to be looking for us by now. We couldn’t steal our way into another residence without someone noticing, even if we were in the middle of nowhere.

  I opened the storm door. What remained of the foreclosure notice ripped off and flew into the night like a fleeing bat. I knew the main door would be locked, but I tested the knob anyway. It was an older door and lock set, nothing that would trouble Becca and her tools of the trade.

  She must have known what I was thinking because she said, “Let’s check around back first.”

  Becca led as I wheeled the bike around the back of the house. A brick barbecue pit stood several feet back in the yard. The residual scents of burned chicken and hamburger had long since departed, but I could smell the charcoal. I leaned the bike against the bricks and walked back to where she stood in the dark of the yard.

  Another scent colored the night air, a sharp, sweet smell like Benzene.

  Next to a flimsy-looking door stood a dark, rectangular bulk.

  “You think it’s okay to use the flashlight back here?”

  She glanced around and nodded. The beam painted a large gasoline generator. That explained the scent.

  “Turn it off.”

  “What?”

  “Something isn’t right.”

  I turned off the flashlight. The yard looked darker than before.

  The wind blew Becca’s hair around. She stood back from the house and watched, studying intently. Leaning close to me, she whispered.

  “Normally, I like to spend a day watching a house just to be sure. Between the notice on the front door and your friend’s testimony, I guess it’s safe to say this house is uninhabited, but I want to check things out first. Just to be sure.”

  I followed her back into the overgrown grass. It was up to our knees and dew-laden, clinging to my jeans and soaking through.

  If anyone was inside, it was too dark to see into the house. I couldn’t fathom how Becca could see anything inside, but who was I to question her? She’d stayed alive doing this for three years and knew what to look for. For long moments she was an invisible statue in the gloom, patient and observant. Her eyes moved from window-to-window, then back to where the shadow of the generator butted up against the house. I could almost see Becca piecing the puzzle together in her head.

  Next, we circled to the makeshift driveway and studied one side of the house. The windows caught a sliver of moonlight and turned a silvery cobalt. We spent several minutes here, then a similar length of time watching the front and opposite side of the house. All the while the cold poured through my clothing and sent my teeth to chattering.

  I began to worry she didn’t trust the house, that we’d freeze to death in the long October night. Finally, we looped back behind the house and she reluctantly nodded.

  “There’s no one in there,” she said.

  “You think it’s safe?”

  “I never said that.” Before I could ask what she meant, she started walking toward the door. “Turn on the flashlight. Let’s see what we’re up against.”

  I aimed the light at two windows and saw a rustic kitchen behind the glass. Not thinking I’d have any better luck opening the windows than I’d had with the door, I tested them nonetheless and came away with a splinter and gray-colored fingers.

  “No dice,” I said.

  “Time for the ole failsafe.”

  She jimmied the lock set with her pick. The locking mechanism snapped. It happened so fast I thought she’d broken the pick. She gave the door a shove, and it emitted a bullfrog’s groan as it swung open.

  Placing a finger to her lips to shush me, she took the flashlight.

  The macho, chivalrous side of me wanted to go in first and keep her safe.

  Better to let her lead the way. I was the amateur, she the professional.

  My anxiety kicked up inside the kitchen, the same as when I’d first entered Ji Lin’s house. I’d broken the law again. It was easy to imagine myself in a small room with Officer Jenkins staring bullets into me, grilling me over why I was inside a foreclosed property with a runaway vagrant.

  What did you do to Harry Jenkins?

  While she swept the beam across the tiled floor, a voice whispered warnings into my ear. According to Riley, the foreclosure notice had been affixed to the door for about a year. I expected the floor to be dusty, yet it looked clean. Did the bank periodically send a crew to tidy things up for prospective buyers? I had no idea how the process worked.

  The light pulled cherry wood cabinets out of the dark, their reds dulled by age. Laminate counters bordered a long antique farmhouse sink with double basins.

  The counters ended at a gas stove with four burners. Bloody leaks trekked out from under a hulking refrigerator in the opposite corner.

  “This is the house you think we should stay in?” she asked.

  Fear weighted her words.

  A black rotary phone hung over the counter. I put the receiver to my ear and jiggled the hang-up. It had a dial tone, but when I tried to dial the number to my cell phone, all I got was an annoying beeping.

  “Tone, but no service,” I said.

  “Is that normal?”

  “It is. The phone company allows limited service to inactive lines. I could call 9-1-1 in an emergency, but I couldn’t call a friend.”

  “I never knew that.”

  Across the room stood an unpainted, weathered door with gouges cut into the wood, as though something with claws had gone at it.

  The cellar.

  If the door was any indication of the cellar’s condition, I hoped to hell Becca wouldn’t insist on sleeping in the basement again. I thought about the huge spiderweb off the porch and what was crawling around in the cellar.

  I started to worry when Becca pulled on the door.

  Locked.

  “Who locks a basement?” I asked.

  “Someone who doesn’t expect a prowler with a lock pick.” She patted her pocket. “We’ll check it out later.”

&
nbsp; “I’m not sleeping down there.”

  She shot me an ironic smile.

  “I may be careful, but I don’t sleep in filth. I’d sooner freeze in the forest than sleep in that basement.”

  A small den with 1970s-style wood paneling stood off the kitchen. A corner door gave entry to a dirty half bath. I found a brown couch with stuffing worming out through cushion holes. Scratching came from inside the wall, probably the same rats that chewed those holes.

  A small television sat on a desk across from the sofa. A DVD player was attached to the television, and disks were stacked on the desk. I figured the previous owner had left in haste. What else had he left behind?

  I thumbed my way through the DVDs, counting them as I went. I write this because it’s important, though I didn’t know it at the time. I counted twelve DVDs in the stack. Twelve, not an unlucky thirteen. I’m a fallible human who makes mistakes, and maybe I miscounted. But I don’t think I did. I’m superstitious and would have noticed if the stack contained exactly thirteen unlabeled DVDs.

  I hoped I’d recognize a movie and give myself an escape from the reality of always being on the run. It’s amazing how binding total freedom can be.

  “Cool. Maybe we can watch a movie tomorrow night.”

  When I turned around, Becca was gone.

  I saw the light sweeping down the hall. I rushed to catch up to her.

  A long living room fronted the home. The room was unfurnished, and much like the kitchen, it wasn’t as dirty as I’d anticipated. The floor was bare, slatted hardwood.

  A drafty picture frame window did little to hold back the chill. The wind rattled the glass, a sound like bones tumbling into a grave.

  There was a fireplace across the room with two unburned logs on the grates. I would have searched for matches had I thought we could burn a fire without attracting attention. From this high up, the smoke plume would be visible for miles.

  “I’ll check upstairs,” she said.

  “Not without me, you won’t.”

  I might have said it because I wanted to keep her safe. The truth was the old house unsettled me. I didn’t wish to be alone any more than I wanted her venturing into the dark by herself.