“Hank, it is so perfect. So abso-fuckin’-lutely perfect. I can’t wait to see the basement, the downstairs, the bedrooms…all of it. But, while she’s out, let’s go out back and smoke a fat bowl,” Amy said with love in her voice as she wiped salty tears off of her cheeks. He thought nothing of it after she seemed to return to normal cognition. Amy did everything she could to seem normal, but something just wasn’t right. She felt faint and nauseous at once, but it subsided after a few deep breathes. She held Hank close and found solace in his embrace, not letting go until she was sure that dizziness had left her.
They went out the back door onto a back porch which was much smaller than the front. It was a typical mid twentieth century porch completely at odds with the rest of the house. As they made their way into the back yard it was apparent there were several other structures on the property. Two small shacks about fifty yards behind the house were angled forty five degrees to the rest of the property. They appeared much older than the house and harkened back to frontier times. Dilapidated and pathetic looking, they were quite an eye sore and stood apart from the house itself but shared something in common with the architecture of the town of Gravel Switch. They were truly old edifices and immediately the couple were both stricken with overwhelming curiosity. Hank pulled a glass pipe out of his pocket and Amy got a nugget of fine OG Kush (his favorite strain of marijuana) out of her purse and handed it to him. As he packed the bowl and lit it they began walking across the yard toward the buildings. Neither of the structures still had a door. Both had a single window and were otherwise totally empty. The walls were overgrown with weeds and vines on the inside but were mostly clear outside, as if they had been recently cleaned. The broken pieces of an ancient, rotting stool sat outside the front door of the shack furthest from the house. Nothing special, nothing important, yet even without speaking the two knew that these were indeed very cool buildings, full of history and significance, forgotten relics of a bygone age that had once been the castles of their occupants.
Hank passed the pipe to Amy and exhaled a thick cloud of peppery and sweet fruity smoke. She toked deep off of the bowl and the two began to relax. “Hank, these buildings…you think they were slave quarters?”
“I doubt it Amy. Slavery was done by the end of the Civil War, but the cornerstone said the house was built in 1893. I bet that those were tool sheds or maybe they hunted and kept their hunting dogs in those shacks. Seems like even for slaves that living in those would be cruel,” he spread his arms and used his span to measure the building. “I bet it is only seven feet by ten feet,” he was deliberately condescending to try to make her feel ignorant. It worked. He could tell by her body language. Being a dick came to Hank naturally and she knew he didn’t mean anything by it, that it was his main character flaw. She tried to let it roll off of her, but his cruelty did affect her sometimes. She buried it and regained composure immediately.
“I bet it would depend on how well they treated their slaves Hank,” she returned in a shitty tone and stuck out her tongue to let him know he did it again. He treated her like an ass for nothing. He shook his head in acknowledgement. She handed him back the pipe. He hit it twice before giving it back to her without any green left on top. She shrugged and they walked together over to the garage that was alongside the house and opposite the driveway. The garage was a modern structure made of cinder blocks with a plain door and a padlock on it. It looked to be fifteen feet by twenty feet and Hank immediately knew that if it came with the property rental then it was going to be his glass shop. He would set up his kilns and his torches in there. It was even more perfect for a glass shop than the house was for a grow house. This just kept getting better. Amy was thinking the same thing, he was sure. It couldn’t get any more perfect.
Just the thought of setting his shop back up got him excited.
As the two were soaking in their new surroundings and basking in the realization that they had found the place of their dreams Bernie showed back up, kicking up dirt and dust, in her rust brown Ford truck. As she parked next to the garage Hank fell to the ground violently, spasming and shaking. His hands contorted into claws of pure tension. Amy rushed to his side and motioned to Bernice in such a way as to let her know this wasn’t anything unusual. Amy held his hand for a few moments, until he regained normal composure as Bernice stared off over the fields, trying not to seem like she had seen Hank in such a compromised state.
“Well I guess now is as good a time as any to get this out of the way, but…I have epilepsy and suffer from grand mal seizures,” Hank said in such a way that let her know he was alright and clear headed. “I hope that isn’t a problem for you. It is why we want to move out here to the country. It is a lot less stressful and much more relaxing out here and that is really good for my health. I guess I was just stressing on if we were gonna get it and if we were gonna be able to afford it.”
“Well you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about Hank,” Bernice said back with a sly smile. “Mom and dad were just tickled pink at the thought of renting this old place out to a couple of young newly weds in love.”
Amy chimed in awkwardly, killing the mood Hank and Bernice had established. “How much is it? That’s my biggest worry. A place this big, I know it’s old, but…”
“Three hundred a month,” Bernie said coolly, as if it was non negotiable and she knew she was asking too much.
“Seriously? Three hundred? Our cable bill was almost that much last month in Lexington,” Amy said the words and realized that she had spoken too quickly.
“It’s a different economy out here. God knows I couldn’t’ve done shit on three hundred bucks when I was in college. But out here…I don’t know. Life is slower, everyone is more relaxed and it is pretty much just like it used to be when we were kids. A buck goes a lot farther than it does in the city. Plus mom and dad are just glad to rent the place…they know it ain’t in the best shape. It’s sat empty for about twenty years now. Only reason we ain’t tore it down and planted crops over it is the history of the place and how long it’s been in the family. Now, in winter it will cost you more than that to keep it warm, so don’t think it’s gonna be super affordable all year. With those huge Victorian windows the cold comes right through and winters out here…well you know. Ya’ll are from Lexington.”
They had become nearly exhausted just listening to her speak, were totally enamored and were both smiling ear to ear. As Bernice noticed how in her grasp they were she reached into the pocket of her Levi’s and pulled out what appeared to Hank and Amy to be at least an eighth ounce of marijuana and a pack of rolling papers. She casually started rolling a joint, which took her all of thirty seconds, and lit it. She took a deep drag off of it and passed it to Hank.
“How did you know we smoke?” Hank asked her with a juvenile innocence in his voice.
“My god, Hank, I could smell ya’ll as soon as I got out of the truck. I’m no spring chick and you might not know it from looking at me but I used to be a Deadhead. I did several tours, following Jerry and the boys around the country. The Grateful Dead was my life when I was in college. In fact, I even know who you are. I sold you a sheet of LSD in Miami, right before the cops came in and tear gassed us all,” she laughed as she recalled her Deadhead days and the moment she had met Hank nearly fifteen years prior.
“Oh…my…god…” Hank’s jaw dropped so hard Amy thought that it would hit the floor. “Amy this is the woman I was telling you about. The one who sold me the best acid I ever got in my life and gave me a ride to the next show after I had been tear gassed and Tony and Laina left me. Oh…my…god!” Hank gushed. He was always excited when random hippies from his past came back into his life. So many years after that scene ended the people of the Grateful Dead community were still who he considered family. At the same time he knew that Amy would never understand. She had never been there, had never seen the magic of the shows, the people. She had come along in the wake of the Dead. In the era of Phish and the post Jerry Garcia jam band
scene that had become such a blight on the hippie community in Hank’s eyes. Amy herself had three boyfriends who had died from various drug overdoses or drugs interacting badly with other drugs. All opiates and amphetamines. He had always secretly felt as if he had saved Amy from the hideous degradation of the hippie scene and showed her an older, kinder way where the community took care of each other and considered everyone in it to be family. He had neglected to tell her of his teens and early twenties as a street punk. Into hard core and crust he had been a gutter punk squatter, a train hopper and a general hobo and scumbag. The sort of people Amy regularly let him know she despised. Yet he had been that very thing for years, until he found the Dead family. Once the wolf put on the tie dyed sheep’s clothing he never took it off, yet occasionally he thought back to those days of hard living and hard drugs. Of living on the edge of death. Stealing and robbing, sleeping in laundromats and ditches. Fucking random girls whose names eluded him. He had a deep past that she knew little about and he intended to keep it that way. For all she knew he had always been a successful weed grower, one of the few kids in Lexington with the force of will strong enough to make his own path.
Bernice and Amy were both just staring at Hank, giving him silly looks, trying to get his attention. He finally noticed and realized that he had been spacing out, thinking weird thoughts that had begun to ramble through the back of his mind and into the forefront of consciousness. Hank realized he had never passed the joint and only a few seconds had passed. He gave the doobie over to Amy and laughed at himself.
The rest of the evening they sat on the porch drinking beer from Bernice’s cooler and matching her joint for joint. After smoking for a few hours they paid her their first month’s rent and another three hundred dollars as a security deposit. She gave them both a copy of the key and explained where their yard ended and the fields began. As she was getting in her truck to leave she turned and threw another key on a separate ring over to Hank with a strong overhand toss. He missed the key and laughed as it slid across the porch.
“What’s that one for?” he asked.
“The garage. You get the garage too. And both the slave quarters, but I doubt you’ll need those. Nobody’s used them in at least eighty years. My great grandmother had a tenant who used to kennel his dogs in them in the winter, but they’re kinda overgrown now,” she laughed to herself a little as she saw the looks on their faces.
“We were wondering what those buildings were,” Hank said. “But the cornerstone says the house was built in eighteen ninety three. That’s twenty eight years after the Civil War ended.”
“Yeah, the place was burnt to the ground by the damn yankees during the war. It was rebuilt in eighteen ninety three,” she said matter of factly as if delivering a history lesson to students. “Sorry. Accidentally put my history professor hat on. I used to teach American history at UK.”
She turned back towards her truck and opened the door to get in. Realizing she had one last agenda to address before retiring home she turned back to them and said, “Oh, one last thing. Don’t go upstairs until I come back by tomorrow to clean it out. It’s gonna take us a few weeks to clean everything out. You saw all the old furniture, so you know how much there is. We’ll keep your rent, you can stay through that time, but we won’t officially start charging you ’til next month. I’ll be by tomorrow to start loading stuff up. I’ll get the power turned on for you tomorrow too. Tonight you’ll have to use candles if you choose to stay. Alright ya’ll, have a good night.”
With that she got in her truck, waved goodbye and backed down the driveway. Hank and Amy opened the trunk of their car and got out an air mattress. They set it up in the living room and lit a few tea candles for light. They made love for hours and held each other after, talking of all their hopes and dreams for the future.
In the middle of the night Hank woke suddenly, sitting bolt upright with a start. He found he was sweating profusely and his heart was racing. The sound of a large thud upstairs had jolted him right out of his deep and pleasant dreams. He shook Amy until she awoke, annoyed, and demanded he go back to sleep.
“Its an old house Hank. They make noise, they settle. Its nothing. It may be an animal in the attic. Bernie will take care of it tomorrow.”
With that she exhaled loudly through her nostrils and rolled over. Her annoyed state was obvious, yet it left Hank confused. She was the superstitious one out of the two of them. As he rolled over on his side to hold her, he peered out the window and caught a glimpse of something bright red in the field that was his new front yard. He got out of bed, put his pants on and walked out the front door. He lit a cigarette and stood on the porch, looking around casually for the red blur he had seen. Was it a light? A Passing car, way out on the road? Maybe he was just high. As all of those thoughts were stricken down by his powers of deduction he looked out from the side of the porch, around the north side of the house and saw for the first time that he had a large black barn adjacent to his yard. He didn’t wonder how he failed to notice it when he first walked around the yard earlier that afternoon. He just stared. He drew deep off of his cigarette and stared at the barn. In the moonlight the dark planks that made it up shone a ghastly grey like very old black paint. The barn door was open and the portal stood out as much darker than the rest of the barn. A perfect square of pure black. He could feel something staring back at him. He fixated on the barn door and drew deeply off of his cigarette. As he exhaled a thick cloud of smoke he saw two red lights appear in the barn door. “Were they lights?” he thought. “No. They were reflecting the moon. Whatever they were they weren’t lights.” He took a step to the right and the two red things moved with him. He took a step back and then a step to the left and they moved with him again. He began to feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The air smelled strangely of ozone, like right before a thunderstorm. He closed his eyes slowly in a deep blink before deciding to go investigate but as he opened his eyes back up realized that the two red things he was perceiving were themselves eyes as they had blinked back at him. He felt cold and nauseous all at once and knew immediately that he was in danger of some unknown, eldritch sort the likes of which he had never imagined. He wondered if he was he going crazy? Surely he was. Yet no danger had ever felt so imminent.
In a panic he took an immediate step back, turned on his heel abruptly and ran the length of the porch back to the front door. He opened it in a frenzy and slammed it. When he got back to the living room where they had put out their air mattress he was shocked to find Amy fast asleep and undisturbed by his slamming of the door. He crawled into bed with her and put his arm around her. He held her close and kissed her neck.
“I love you Amy. But I think I’m going crazy,” he admitted as he lay awake, too afraid to close his eyes.
2
The Attic and the Doll
The days that followed were without much incident; mellow and calm for Amy and relaxing for Hank, save a few seizures. Bernice did not show up to clean out any of the furniture for a solid week, which they would soon come to understand was standard for country folk. A day was a week. A week a month. Everyone seemed to operate on a slower schedule than they said they would. The Hickmans had their farm hands around the property often, but they themselves remained unseen by Hank and Amy other than Bernice.
The day she did show up she came with a crew of men and several vehicles. A flat bed truck among them. They intended to take everything. Several couches, love seats, armoires, chests of drawers, a few beds and tables. Lamps, chandeliers, mirrors and all sorts of odds and ends. Trunks, chests and cabinets were going as well as all of the contents of the as yet unexplored and enigmatic attic. As the crew began to haul off the largest items Amy was haggling with Bernice about keeping a few things. She got the large mirror in the foyer, a nice oak four poster bed, an armoire, a silver tea service that looked like it was from the eighteenth century, several chests and trunks as well as some gardening tools from rakes and shovels to a wheel barrow and
even a lawn mower. Bernice told her to keep everything but Amy insisted she pay at least something, so they compromised with the decision that they would use the lawnmower to keep the three and a half acres of yard mowed for the first year of their occupancy. Amy agreed without talking to Hank and shrugged it off. She considered that if he didn’t want to do it then she could always do it herself. It would give her a bit of a chance to have some time to herself anyway. Just put on some headphones, crank up the music and space out while mowing. She actually looked forward to it. Lastly Bernice informed her that the upstairs was cleared out, except for one room which was full of antiques which had all belonged to the former tenants over the years.
“You feel free to use the room, but please leave everything up there where it’s at,” Bernie said. “Some of that stuff is over a hundred years old, believe it or not. And mom ’n dad want it to stay up there, but there’s also plenty of room. Honestly I’d probably grow myself a crop up there if I was ya’ll,” she concluded jovially. Amy shot her a sly smile and winked. It was perfect. The landlord had no problems with what they intended to use the house for. It was a one in a million payoff, or so it seemed to Amy in that moment.
The day after the big move Hank had three of his friends from Lexington come down to help him move his own things into the house. They brought a U-Haul filled with all of Hank’s stuff from his storage shed in Lexington. Amy’s mother came out the following day with another U-Haul. Within another day they were nearly set up, feeling in their own place, feeling at home.
As the weeks went by Hank set up his glass shop in the garage and began making glass pipes, paper weights, marbles and beads. He went into the upstairs one day to see what he could do as far as setting up a grow operation. There was the main room, which was essentially the master bedroom of the house. Off to the left, as he came up the tower stairs, was another large room which in turn had another room off of it. That was where he intended to put his grow. He set up his hydroponic tables over an afternoon and soon was on his way to producing a high quality crop of indoor cannabis. After setting up his grow tables he decided to explore the attic. There was another door off of the right side of the master bedroom and it was the only place left that the attic could be; the attic he had worked himself up so much about.
Gravel Switch: the black goat chronicles book 1: a Weird Tale of Extreme Horror Page 2