House of Fear

by Joe R. Lansdale

  The side of the hill was covered in clumps of buffalo grass and the occasional yucca plant with leaves like razor-sharp tongues. Chicken George and Frank Just Frank hid behind them when they were ready to shoot. Flipper and Bach hid behind them when they were preparing to spear their enemy, which they did at the end of each battle. Even if they were shot a hundred times with the machine gun, they’d somehow manage to thrust the rattling ends of the lances into the cowboys’ chests.

  But when the sneeze came, it was no longer Cowboys against Apaches. It was now everyone against the sneeze.

  When it came again, they rushed the top of the hill, transformed from the mythology of Americana to a screaming host of berserker Vikings. They figured they’d come upon another kid hiding out, spying on them. They never guessed that they’d encounter the front end of what they’d learn later to be a 1961 Dodge Travco Recreational Vehicle. The radiator was long gone, leaving the fan blades sticking forward without a protective shield. They’d rusted to a stop in the position of a cross, and like any group of eleven-year-old boys, they’d yet to reach the point where the cross didn’t really matter, so the sight of it drew them up short. There was no rubber on the wheels. Nor was there any windshield. In fact, the RV was so rusted it had begun to turn green, with deep reds and ambers interspersed like it was a calico iron cat.

  “Get out of the way. Can’t you see I’m driving here?” came a girl’s voice.

  The boys glanced at each other and grinned.

  “You got to pay a toll first,” Flipper growled. He was the tallest and tried to peer into the cab of the RV, but the angle was all wrong.

  “I ain’t paying nothing. My daddy owns this property and he says I can go wherever I want.”

  Bach shared a conniving look with the others, then crouched low in the grass and began to circle the RV.

  Frank Just Frank trained both pistols on the vehicle.

  George couldn’t help but say, “Whatcha going to do, Frank, kill the RV? I think it’s already dead.”

  “My RV ain’t dead,” the girl piped back. “It’s just old, is all.”

  “Piece of shit is about to fall apart,” Frank Just Frank said.

  A fierce Indian cry went up. George and the others grinned madly. But their grins turned to dismay as the cry was cut short, followed by the sound of flesh meeting flesh, and then howling. Bach appeared from around the side of the RV with his hands on his face, blood gushing from his nose.

  A girl not even two-thirds the size of Frank Just Frank, who was the smallest of them, stepped out the side door and put her hands on her hips. Red pigtails sprung from the side of her head like devil horns. Her skin was tanned the color of cow hide. Freckles danced across her cheeks.

  “Which one of you is gonna be next?”

  Her name was Emory Lowenstein, but boys and their love of nicknames eventually turned Emory into Auntie Em. It was midsummer when they all met. The homes in their part of Cochise County resided on ten acre plots along dirt roads between the towns of Sierra Vista and Bisbee on the American side of the border and Naco on the Mexican side. Auntie Em had just moved to the area, but none of the boys lived there. They’d come to spend the summer with their grandparents. For Chicken George and Bach this was their first summer. Bach was from San Diego and Chicken George was from Tucson. Frank Just Frank and Flipper Gordon lived in Phoenix. Sometime around the end of May through the beginning of August the boys’ parents would send them all down to spend a carefree summer under the desert sky. More than a simple vacation, the parents enjoyed the grandparents’ ability to provide free babysitting. It was 1977, inflation was at eleven per cent, the cost of a gallon of gas was up ten cents in the last three years, and Jimmy Carter was the president. The parents had to work.

  On Friday of the week they met Auntie Em, all the boys were invited over to her house to eat barbeque chicken and to tell ghost stories. They were asked about their nicknames. Bach and Flipper Gordon’s were the easiest to clarify. Flipper even removed his shoes and showed everyone his webbed toes. Next came Frank, who was from a family of Franks, with Frank Seniors and Frank Juniors and a Frankie and a Franklin. Frank didn’t like all the additional qualifications to his name and had decided that he would just go by Frank, so he became Frank Just Frank, regardless of his desire to be merely Frank. Chicken George’s name was derived from the miniseries Roots, which everyone had watched the previous January. His real name was Henry Scoggins, but when there was a fight, he could be found dancing around the edges, egging the combatants on just like Chicken George had done in the series. Later that night, with the Milky Way spread above them and marshmallows roasting on the ends of mesquite branches, they sat around a fire pit on patio chairs while Em’s father, who was a professor at Cochise Community College, explained what the Apaches believed when they’d looked at the same wide sky.

  “The Apaches believe the Milky Way is a trail made of departing spirits who are on their way to the afterlife. Yolkai Nalin is the Apache goddess of death and what comes after; she controls the Milky Way and chooses those who are allowed to journey there.”

  Although he went on to explain the history of the Apache, the kids didn’t pay too much attention after that. Their minds were awhirl with all the new possibilities the Milky Way presented. No longer was it just a band of stars too difficult to conceptualize. It had become supernatural. It had become something they could relate to. The words goddess of death, departing spirits, and afterlife succeeded in inspiring ideas that would set them on a course the rest of the summer.

  The RV became their world. For as rusted and dilapidated as it was, sitting in the middle of a high plain of desert scrub, it was all theirs. No one wanted it. Auntie Em’s father had left it where he’d found it when he’d bought the property and had no plans to have it removed. The desert and its crawlies greeted them in all directions. The RV made them feel safe. And unlike when they were at home, they could be themselves. Because although they knew that they weren’t really grown up, without their parents and grandparents around to constantly remind them of that fact, they felt a little less like children.

  The metal skin of the RV had been stripped in places, leaving a hard metal skeleton. The roof was long gone, except for a cross-strut attached to the frame. The interior had been gutted and little remained of the original luxury. A metal bench along one side of the middle and a larger one across the back were all that was left of the couch and the bed that had once made this a travelling home. The place where the bathroom had been was nothing more than a hole. This, they stayed away from; although any evidence of its previous use was long since gone, the very idea of it was gross.

  When they weren’t playing around the RV, they were digging. Frank Just Frank and Bach brought shovels. Using the RV as the center, the five of them would march into the desert in straight lines, looking for ancient Indian burial sites. Whenever they spotted something like a mound of dirt or a scrap of cloth sticking from the ground, they’d dig. But try as they might, they never found any bones, much less ancient artefacts.

  Finally, when the month of July was about to melt into August and there was just two weeks left of summer before school started, they gathered around the RV. Auntie Em sat behind the wheel. The others lounged around inside, protected from the sun by a tarp they’d tied across the roof.

  Bach, who was as undeterred as a terrier after the rumor of a rat, arrived last. “What’s everyone doing? We have a two-mile hike ahead of us.”

  “And tomorrow another two-mile hike,” Chicken George said. He sat on the floor, his legs pulled up, his chin resting on his knees.

  “And then another the day after.” Frank Just Frank shook his head. He took a sip of water from an old Army canteen, then handed it across the seat to Em. “This is getting old. If you’d have told me that I’d spend my summer digging holes in the desert, I would have called you a liar.”

  “Now look who the liar is,” Em said, handing back the canteen.

  Frank Just Frank g
rinned. “No kidding.”

  Bach let his shovel fall to the dirt and climbed aboard. “Fine, then. What do you want to do instead?”

  Ever since that night in June when Em’s father had planted the seed in their minds, they’d done little besides look for Indian bones. Their repertoire of fun things to do had evaporated and no one had any better ideas.

  Except Flipper Gordon.

  “Boob sweat,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” Em asked.

  “I think we heard him,” Chicken George said laughing.

  It was no secret that Flipper Gordon’s sixteen year old cousin, Miranda, was staying at his grandparents’ house. She’d come two weeks ago and Flipper Gordon found it difficult to think of little else. At least once each day since she’d arrived, he’d waxed sophomorically about how much she’d filled out. That she was related meant little to his thirteen-year-old libido.

  “You talking about your cousin again?” Frank Just Frank asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe, hell. You know that it’s illegal to think what you’re thinking,” Em said.

  “Is not. This is America and I can think whatever I want.”

  “I doubt that the founding fathers ever considered boob sweat when they drafted the Bill of Rights,” Em countered.

  Chicken George, who’d been lying on his back in the bed of the RV, rolled over, propped himself on one elbow, and grinned. “What about Adrian Barbeau’s boob sweat?”

  Everyone was silent for awhile, Even Em. After the appropriate amount of reverence for the weekly appearance of Adrian Barbeau’s boobies on the television show Maude, it was Frank Just Frank who broke the silence.

  “So what about the boob sweat?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.

  “I wonder if it’s different than other sweat,” Flipper Gordon finally said. After receiving looks from the other four, he added, “Think about it. It has to be. The sweat under your arm stinks, but the sweat in other places doesn’t.”

  “Your butt sweat stinks,” Chicken George said, garnering laughter from the rest of the crew.

  Bach giggled.

  “Can’t you be serious for one moment?” Flipper Gordon shook his head in disgust.

  “And you’re being serious with boob sweat?” Em rolled her eyes.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Boob sweat is no different than any other sweat. I can tell you that,” she said.

  All four boys turned towards her. They looked her in the eyes for a long moment, then as if it were rehearsed, their gazes dropped a foot until they were fixated on her budding chest. They stared as if they’d just now noticed that they’d been there.

  “Hey!” Em brought both hands up to cover her chest.

  Everyone except Flipper Gordon averted their eyes and laughed self-consciously.

  “Flipper!”

  He started like he’d been jolted with electricity. He looked at her sheepishly. “Sorry.”

  Em rolled her eyes. “Jesus Christ on a Big Wheel. How would you like it if I stared at your penis?”

  They sat in the RV the rest of the day, joking and telling stories about when they were younger. Most of the stories they’d already heard before. But the heat made everyone laconic and they didn’t really care what was being said. They just liked the companionship.

  The next morning, Auntie Em was an hour late getting to the RV, but when she came, she was running, her face flush with excitement.

  “We have bones,” she said, breathlessly.

  When asked to explain, she went on to tell them about how her father had told her, the night before, that several students had found some bones while they were hiking near the border. The college was going to send a team to investigate, but they couldn’t break away from classes until tomorrow.

  “Which gives us today to find them,” Frank Just Frank said.

  The only problem was that the directions weren’t exact. After several calculations and referencing the survey map they’d been using to record their dig sites, they determined that the spot was ten miles away. Sitting in the shade of the RV was hot enough. Each of their excursions to dig a hole had been death-defying experiences and the farthest they’d ever travelled was two miles. Crossing ten miles of desert in the middle of the day might as well have been crossing the face of the sun. All the boys’ faces fell as they realized that they’d never be able to do it.

  “Then we do it at night,” Em said.

  They all looked at her. Flipper Gordon shook his head. “My grandma would kill me if she found out.”

  “Then don’t let her find out,” Frank Just Frank said, climbing on the bandwagon. “If we leave at midnight, that will give us six hours to get there, dig up the bones, and bring them back. Walking ten miles will take us about two hours. Counting two hours to get back, that leaves us two hours to dig up the bones. We can totally do this.”

  Everyone accepted his logic and began to make plans for the trip. Flipper Gordon, however, said that there was no way he could make it. Ever since his cousin had come to stay, his grandmother had been keeping a sharp eye out for boys and possible midnight trysts, and he’d never be able to leave undetected. It was decided that he’d arrange to have a sleepover with Chicken George, whose grandparents liked to drink beer and slept so deeply they couldn’t hear their own dog barking outside their window all night.

  They congregated around the RV at ten minutes after midnight. Frank Just Frank and Em had flashlights. Flipper Gordon and Chicken George carried shovels. Bach carried arguably the most important items: the map and the empty rucksack from his grandfather’s Korean War stash, which they’d use to retrieve the bones.

  “Don’t we need a compass?” Chicken George asked.

  “We don’t need one.” Frank Just Frank shone the light on the map and traced several roads. “All we have to do is walk straight across the desert and bisect these three roads here. When we see a windmill, which isn’t on the map but should be here,” he said, placing his finger in a spot seemingly in the middle of nowhere, “we’ll be almost there.”

  “How do you know so much?” Em asked.

  “Boy Scouts. I used to love maps until I quit.”

  “What made you quit?” Bach asked.

  Frank Just Frank was silent for a while, but finally answered. “I couldn’t make those fake Indian belts.”

  “Yeah, and the scout leader liked to give out special merit badges,” Flipper Gordon snickered, but no one joined him.

  Auntie Em and Bach exchanged a look, but said nothing.

  They headed out. Auntie Em and Frank Just Frank took the front, with the rest falling in line behind them. Thus began a stumbling, tripping affair through the desert. They soon discovered that although the ground might look flat, it rolled across hidden slopes and holes just large enough to capture and twist a foot. By the time they took their first rest at the first road, Chicken George was limping from a lightly sprained ankle and Bach was limping from being stuck in the leg by a yucca plant. Flipper Gordon had let his imagination run raw and was seeing giant tarantulas hiding in every dark shadow. It became apparent that their earlier estimation of the time it would take to get there had been highly optimistic. Still, no one wanted to quit yet.

  After a ten minute break for water, they took off again.

  By the time they reached the third road, Frank Just Frank snapped off the light and held up a hand for them to stop. The dirt road was higher than the surrounding desert.

  “Get down,” he said, flattening his face against the dirt slope.

  Then the night got brighter as headlights fired down the road. Soon they could hear the low rumble of an engine as a vehicle began to creep towards them. The suspension squeaked roughly as the tires crunched across the gravel.

  When it had been out of sight and earshot for roughly ten minutes, Frank Just Frank lifted his head. The quarter moon caught his grin. “That was a close one.”

  “Who was it? Are they after the bones too?” Flipper Gordon
asked.

  “Probably drug dealers. My grandpa says they’re thick as cockroaches on the border.” Chicken George stood and stared worriedly at the road.

  Frank Just Frank shook his head. “I don’t know who they are, but it can’t be good for us, whoever they are. Let’s just stay away from them.” He got up on one knee and checked both directions. “Come on.” He took off across the road.

  Soon the others joined him on the far side, where they sat panting more from fear than exertion. They’d never been out alone at this time of night. More importantly, they’d never been this close to the border at night. Each of their families had warned them that they could get stolen by Mexicans if they strayed too close, so the border, although an invisible line in the sand, took on a ponderous psychological weight.

  Above them the Milky Way spread out in a spiral of hot white lights. Away from the city and in the middle of the night it was breathtaking. Here, as they lay on their backs on the way to offer salvation to a pile of old bones, the idea that the Milky Way was a pathway to the afterlife didn’t seem so fabulous. Away from the conveniences of culture and the technology of society, it seemed like it might be real.

  Each of the kids secretly hoped it was so.

  Each of the kids also secretly hoped their plan wouldn’t work.

  “Mr. Gordon,” the judge began. “Your wife claims that reconciliation attempts have been fruitless. She asserts that you’ve done nothing that the court has asked of you, nor have you sought counseling on your own. Is this true?”

  Sam Gordon nodded.

  His lawyer added, “If it pleases the court, please record that my client nodded in the affirmative.”

  “Not so easy,” the Judge said. He leaned onto his bench. “Mr. Gordon, your wife claims that you haven’t been home for any extended period of time in the last three years. She says you’ve been spending all your time, especially time you should have been working, in a desert down in Cochise County. Tell me, sir, just for my edification, what is it down there that makes you want to throw away a life with a woman who still clearly loves you?”