Night Relics

by James P. Blaylock

  “Hello!” Bobby yelled after a moment, but there was nothing but an answering silence. Stepping completely into the room, he tried again. “I know you’re there.”

  Again there was nothing but silence. Then, with a wild gust, the wind threw the door open wider, and it banged off the side wall of the porch and slammed shut with enough force to shake the old house. Bobby spun around, grabbing the rusty doorknob, and turned it. A rush of leaves and paper blew up from the floor, whirling around the walls of the room and clinging to his clothes and hair, and right then the doorknob twisted off in his hand, scattering a shower of rust flakes onto his shoes. He dropped the knob and looked at his open hand, stained the color of dried blood with the rust.

  He was trapped. He knew there was a back door, but finding it meant going through the rest of the deserted house. He looked over his shoulder. Opposite the front door was another door into the back—maybe the kitchen. It was open about an inch and revealed a vertical line of shadow. He stepped toward it, trying to see through. If he had a stick or something he could push it open without getting too close.

  There was nothing around to use, and when he reached out a hand toward the dirty white panel, the door swung partway open by itself, revealing boarded-up windows beyond, sunlight slanting through the gaps between the boards and more vines growing through into the dim room and curling down onto an old wooden countertop littered with yellow leaves. Then the door creaked entirely open, and a boy stepped slowly out from the shadows behind it and stood looking silently at Bobby, his gaunt face a shade of pale white like the color of a moth.

  17

  POMEROY WAS OUT OF SIGHT OF ANY OF THE HOUSES AT the back of Rose Canyon. The wind swept through the grasses, making the landscape doubly lonesome and alien, and he stopped for a moment and looked behind him at the perfectly empty hills. Overhead a vulture circled slowly. He might have been the last man alive in the world. The thought thrilled him and horrified him both.

  Hurrying now, he set out through the grass again. He didn’t have the luxury of daydreaming. There wasn’t time. Beth might return at any moment, and Klein along with her. Pomeroy wasn’t afraid of Klein, except in the sense that you’d be a fool not to be afraid, say, of a rattlesnake or a cocked gun. A man like Klein was liable to go off without warning, and so you had to be certain you were in control when dealing with him.

  Sweating, he climbed to the top of a hill, glanced over his shoulder again, and jogged down into the little valley beyond. Dust rose around him, and he wiped his face with the back of his hand, then tried unsuccessfully to flatten his hair back down. A dry creek bed ran between the hills, edged by willow scrub. He pushed his way through it, the soles of his shoes scrunching in the crusted sand of the creek. Flies rose from a muddy little pool, swarming for a moment around his face, and he broke into an uphill run, fanning himself with both hands.

  From the next hill he could see another barbed wire fence off to the left, stretched along a windbreak of eucalyptus. It had to be the back of one of the little streets running off Parker, probably just north of the steak house. He angled west, climbing along a cattle trail that edged a thicket of greasewood and castor bean. The shrubbery shook stiffly in the wind, hiding him from the eyes of people in backyards. Another couple hundred yards to go, maybe less.

  The trail abruptly cut upward, rising steeply toward the ridge in exactly the wrong direction. He pushed his way into the scrub, crouching down and peering through the dry foliage. He could see Klein’s backyard now, the poolhouse and the blue rectangle of water enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. There’s where he’d have to watch himself. He couldn’t allow himself to be seen. That would introduce a hell of an awkward variable.

  When he was sure the yard was deserted, he stepped boldly out through the bushes, half running and half sliding down the hillside toward the redwood fence that marked the perimeter of Beth’s yard. And then, just when he was entirely exposed, striding through the dead, knee-high grass, he saw something move off to the west, among the trees beyond Klein’s place.

  He dropped flat onto his stomach and lay there breathing hard. Cautiously he pushed his head up and peered over the waving grass. The wind poured down off the ridge now, making a weird thrashing noise in the eucalyptus trees at the edge of the field. It was a woman that he’d seen. She stood near the fence now at the back of Klein’s yard. She was dressed in a flowing black gown of some sort, although it seemed at least as likely that she stood in some kind of dark and inexplicable shadow. Even from that distance the skin of her face looked as pale as milk. He realized that she wasn’t in the yard after all, and neither was anybody else. Like him, she had come down out of the hills.

  But what the hell for? Dressed like that, she must be some kind of local hippie or something. What did Klein have going here? Pomeroy watched her carefully. Slowly he became certain that she didn’t pose any kind of threat to him. She was dressed too strangely, and she looked through the black wrought iron as if she were utterly lost and only half recognized the place, perhaps as somewhere she’d once been. Abruptly she turned around and walked toward the hills again, lifting the hem of her dress above the windblown grass. When she reached the shadows of a stand of sycamores she disappeared utterly from view. He waited another moment, but she didn’t reappear. Apparently she’d gone on up toward the ridge.

  He stood up and ran toward the fence behind Beth’s house. It had been twenty minutes since he’d checked her driveway. Maybe she was home already. Time suddenly seemed desperately short, but he couldn’t quit now, not after having come so close to his goal. One quick look over the fence and that would be it. He would satisfy his curiosity and then go.

  But at the rear of the yard, just at where Klein’s wrought iron tied into the redwood corner post of Beth’s fence, there was a huge avocado tree. A heavy limb reached over the fence boards there, arching down nearly to shoulder level. The fence had been built with the rails facing out; that was a mistake. A fence like that was easy to climb, an invitation to any passing burglar or child. Pomeroy stepped onto the bottom rail and peered over.

  Nothing. No sign of anyone home. He could see straight across her yard to where the driveway ran into the detached garage. If she had gotten home, she’d parked the bus near the street instead of pulling it up. Only she hadn’t gotten home. He could feel it. The house was quiet and closed up tight.

  He grabbed the big limb with both hands, pulling and kicking his way into the foliage until he stepped onto the top of the fence. Crouching, he looked out along the side of the Kleins’ house. There was the tail end of Lorna’s Jaguar in the drive. Klein’s truck was still gone.

  Without waiting another moment he dropped to the ground and straightened his clothes, then tried to brush off the dust and foxtails he’d picked up crawling around out in the field. With a shaking hand he smoothed his hair, abruptly wishing he had his toiletries bag with him. He wanted to look his best in a situation like this, not disheveled like some kind of tramp.

  Keeping low, he loped across to the back of the house. Without giving an instant’s thought to what he was doing, he pulled his shirt out of his pants, wrapped his hand in it, and grasped the doorknob. The knob turned. He pushed on it, but the door held fast. Bolted! One good kick … He rejected the idea, letting go of the knob and turning away, heading toward a pair of windows that looked out onto the backyard. Beyond them was a rectangular bay, probably a bedroom closet, and beyond that lay the window he’d peered into last night. There was no way he was going around the corner of the house, not in broad daylight.

  He had three shots at it, and that’s all. There would be no breaking windows, no evidence that anyone had been there. The lawn ran all the way up to the foundation of the house, so he wouldn’t leave footprints, and he was careful this time to keep his hands off the dusty siding. The first window was clearly latched. He didn’t bother to touch it, but moved on quickly to the second window. It didn’t have any latch at all.

  He looked throug
h it, into what must have been the living room or dining room. A door on the left led into Beth’s bedroom. Hesitating for one last moment, he let his mind spin, waiting for something to appear—some warning, some sign, some reminder of the absolute desperation of what he was doing.

  Instead he pictured what lay on the other side of that inner door—things that were a part of Beth’s secret world, things that Lance Klein could only imagine. Real intimacy, that was what he and Beth would share….

  Quickly he thrust the palm of his hand against the top of the lower half of the window. It slid open easily. He pulled off his shirt, laid it across the sill, and boosted himself through, careful of his bandaged hand. He lowered himself to the floor on the other side, touching nothing but the carpet. It was then that he saw the power screwdriver lying on a small table that someone had graciously pulled out of the way for him.

  Klein again. It had to be him. He had been there tinkering around, trying to make sure that the house was safe from prowlers. Pomeroy smiled. “Thanks, Lance,” he said out loud, but the sound of his own voice in the empty house startled him.

  He pushed the window closed with his shirt, and then put the shirt back on, tucking it in haphazardly. Forcing himself to breathe evenly and deeply, he stepped across the carpet and shouldered open the door to Beth’s bedroom.

  18

  BOBBY WHEELED AROUND, READY TO RUN BACK INTO THE front room.

  “Wait,” the boy said. “I want to show you a thing that I have.”

  Bobby stared at him. He wasn’t very big. His clothes were weird, as if he was poor and couldn’t afford anything better, or maybe was religious. Leaves swirled up around his black leather shoes, which looked tight and uncomfortable, and he wore suspenders and a shirt with sleeves like a pirate might wear. His voice was thin and frail, sounding almost as if he’d been hurt or had been sick for a long time.

  “I saw you in the woods,” Bobby said to him. “I thought maybe you wanted to have an acorn fight.”

  “I saw you, too.”

  “My friend Peter’s coming in a couple of minutes. I’ve only got till two.” He checked his watch.

  “Me, too,” the boy said. “I’ve only got till two.” He smiled, showing uneven teeth. There was something in his voice, almost a buzzing sound like a voice out of a machine or as if he were talking through a swarm of bees.

  “So you threw the acorns?”

  “I threw the acorns,” the boy said.

  “Don’t copy me. I don’t like copying.”

  The boy said nothing, so Bobby said, “You were the one at the day-care center yesterday, weren’t you? The one that threw the deer head over the fence.” He suddenly knew it was true, even though he hadn’t been there at the time.

  He shook his head slowly. “That was my brother. I didn’t throw dead things.”

  “You’ve got a brother?”

  “Sometimes I pretend to be him.”

  “Where is he now?” Bobby asked, looking past him into the kitchen. This sounded like a lie.

  “He’s lost. He can’t play. Ever.”

  “Then how did he throw the deer head over the fence if he’s lost?”

  “He threw a deer head over the fence.”

  “I guess I better go,” Bobby said. “Peter and my mom will be out looking for me. Probably they’re right outside now.”

  For a moment the boy said nothing, and then, as if he suddenly remembered to speak, he asked, “Do you want some Oreos and Kool-Aid?”

  “Sure,” Bobby said. “If you really have any.”

  “It’s what I always have. Do you want to see my treasure?” He turned around without waiting for an answer and headed back into the kitchen. Bobby followed him out through the back door and into the windy sunlight.

  “It’s down here,” the boy said, leading him around the side of the house where it was partly sheltered from the wind. A profusion of wild grape grew against the wall, the vines curling into the eaves of the house and spreading out along the ground, half covering the plank door of a storm cellar that sat in a raised frame of rotten-looking boards. A rusty hasp and stick held the door shut, and the boy tugged the stick out and dropped it into the weeds alongside the frame. Bobby helped him pull the door back to where it leaned open, resting against the mass of vines.

  A shower of yellow grape leaves drifted down onto a set of wooden stairs illuminated by a rectangle of sunlight. There was a room beyond the bottom of the stairs, and a cool wind drifted up out of it, carrying on it the earthy, musty smell of closed-up places. Bobby could just make out dusty wooden shelves against a far wall. Beneath them on the dirt floor lay a scattering of broken glass and a couple of rusty lids, as if long ago someone had stored food down there.

  “I’ll go first,” the boy said, almost eagerly, and stepping down the wooden stairs, he disappeared into the shadows toward the far end of the room.

  Bobby hesitated before following. He waited on the second step, trying to see. If he had a flashlight it wouldn’t be so bad. “Just bring the Oreos up here,” he called down into the room, but there was no answer. He heard a scraping then, as if the boy were pulling a box across the floor, and he stepped onto the next stair and bent down to see. There was just enough sunlight so that he could make out shapes—the boy at the far end of the room and a box of some sort at his feet.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see that the opposite side of the small room opened onto a low crawl space under the rest of the house. He could make out the exposed wooden substructure of the house itself, sitting on concrete piers in the dirt, and a couple of little patches of sunlight shining in the distance, maybe through broken places where the old front porch had fallen.

  Just then someone called outside, a woman’s voice from some distance away, barely audible above the wind. The wind stirred the chalky dust beneath the house, moving strings of cobwebs that drooped from the floor joists.

  “Hurry,” the boy said. “This is only one of my treasures. I’ve got them hidden around. Sometime I’ll show you the rest.”

  “Where’s the Oreos?” Bobby asked, stepping down to the floor, but for some reason still not eager to look into the box. He was almost certain the kid was lying.

  There was the sound of the woman calling again, closer now. It might be his mother, although she didn’t usually sound as creepy as that. He looked at his watch. He was only late by a couple of minutes….

  “I’ll only show you if you promise you won’t tell,” the boy said.

  “Course I promise,” Bobby said, just as the calling started up again, the voice closer now. She was hollering somebody’s name, half moaning and half crying. It sure wasn’t his mother.

  “Don’t take anything,” the boy said suddenly, pulling open two of the flaps of the cardboard box.

  “I wouldn’t,” Bobby said. “I don’t steal things. I thought you said there was Oreos and Kool-Aid.”

  The boy started crying then. He stepped away from the box, brushing past Bobby to the base of the stairs where he stood for a moment and listened. “Green Kool-Aid,” he said, trying to catch his breath and speaking out into the wind and sunlight. “We call it bug juice.”

  “Is that your mom out there?” Bobby asked. “Are you in trouble for being down here?”

  Suddenly crying out loud, the boy stepped past Bobby and up the half dozen wooden stairs, stopping at the top and looking back down into the room. He looked wildly around himself, as if he couldn’t make up his mind to stay or go, and then abruptly turned and stepped completely outside, disappearing past the edge of the tilted-open door.

  “Wait,” Bobby said. “I’m coming, too.” Hurriedly he took a step closer to the half-closed box, bending over to look inside, just to get a glimpse of what was in there. The cardboard flaps hid most of the interior, and he could just make out a scattering of things pushed against the far corner: a couple of glass things and a dog collar and what looked like some kind of weird flute. A plastic-covered square of cardboard lay b
eneath the flute, and on the cardboard were the words “Spud Gun” and a picture of three boys shooting at each other with red plastic guns just like the ones Peter had bought, just like the one stolen that morning out of Peter’s car….

  “Hey!” Bobby shouted. No wonder the kid didn’t want his mother to find him down there. He’d been stealing stuff from people and hiding it under here. He pulled the flaps of the box open all the way and reached for the potato gun, but then suddenly stopped and drew his hand back slowly.

  A cat lay curled inside, up against the wall of the box. It might have been asleep, except that its head was pushed down at a funny angle and its cream-colored fir was streaked with blood. A gust of wind blew down into the cellar, scattering dead leaves across the packed earth. Just then the door swung inward, falling in a rush. Bobby turned and scrabbled toward the wooden stairs as the sunlight blinked out and the door banged heavily into its frame. He threw himself against it, pushing as hard as he could push and at the same time hearing the sound of the stick scraping into the iron ring of the hasp. Then there was nothing but darkness around him and the sound of dry vines skittering and scraping across the wooden planks overhead.

  19

  KLEIN LET HIMSELF INTO BETH’S HOUSE AGAIN AT THE back door without going home first to let Lorna know he was back. Probably she would have heard him pull in anyway, unless she was still hiding out in the bedroom. He had decided to tell her the truth, or at least that part of it that she could deal with: that he had made a mistake hiring a man like Pomeroy, and that he was going to let him go with some sort of commission for the work he had already done—a one-time commission based on setting up the sales of five houses. That was it for now, just what Klein owed him. If everything clicked, and the cabins eventually resold at a good profit, and they all made their percentage, then there’d be more in it for Pomeroy. But in the meantime, if there were any more phone calls, any harassment, any trouble at all, then Klein would go to the police.