by Isaac Thorne
“Happy to help,” Staff replied. “Just let me stow the camera.” He eyed the pickup, noting the rails that had been installed along the roof of the topper. “I think we have some tie-downs in the back. We can probably just strap your ladder to the roof if it doesn’t fit with our other stuff. The camera equipment is fragile so it might be safer that way.”
“That works for me. We should get going, then. I told the constable we’d be right back to help him. I hate to leave him down there all alone while we’re gone. I suppose I could text or call him, but that didn’t work last night. I was so surprised by what happened that I didn’t even think to ask him where his phone is.”
Afia spoke up then. “I’ll stay. It shouldn’t take three of us to strap a ladder to the top of the truck. I can keep him company. Maybe I can ask him a few questions, too. Get the ball rolling for our feature.”
Relief washed over Patsy’s face. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
“Good! Good, good, good. Well, let’s get going, then.” The trio strode the distance to the Channel 6 News S-10 together. “I’m sorry to take up so much time from your story with all this, but—”
“Shit happens,” Staff finished for her as he opened the S-10’s topper door and set the camera inside. He shut the door with a bang and twisted the handle to secure it.
Patsy blushed but laughed out loud. “Yes. Yes, it does! Shit does happen.” She glanced at Graham’s Tacoma. Its cab and the rails of its bed were dew-soaked and sparkling in the morning sun that dappled through the trees surrounding the old Gordon place. “Looks like the constable left his windows down when he went inside. I hope nothing’s been stolen. There aren’t many people out here, but kids like Jeremy Beard have been coming out here quite a bit lately.”
Staff stepped over to the passenger side of Graham’s pickup and peered inside. “Stereo and everything else looks intact.” He reached inside and plucked a palm-fitting rectangular device from the seat in front of him. “I think I found his phone, though.”
The iPhone’s lock screen appeared when Staff turned it over in his hand so that he could see the face of it. The screen was a simple plain black background with white text that read PRESS HOME TO UNLOCK at the bottom. There was also a seemingly endless quantity of text and phone call notifications. Staff did not scroll through them, but he did notice that the most recent was a missed telephone call notification from one Patsy Blankenship earlier that morning. It was immediately preceded by a new voicemail notification.
“Yep. This is his phone all right.” He handed it to Patsy, who gave it to Afia.
“You can take it to him when you go in. The cellar door is to the right toward the back of the entryway. It’s a little slat door with a hook latch. You can’t miss it. Don’t try to go down there, though! The stairs are broken.”
Afia accepted the device, depositing it into the side pocket of the wine-colored blazer she wore over a white cotton babydoll T-shirt. “Yeah,” she said. “You told us.”
“So I did. So I did.” Patsy turned to Staff. “Are we ready, then?”
Staff nodded. “I think we’re ready.” He climbed into the driver’s seat and buckled up while Afia helped boost Patsy into the shotgun seat. Had he indeed been a strapping young gentleman, he thought, he probably should have been the one to do that. Or maybe that would have been considered sexist since he was a man. Or perhaps not, since he was a gay man. Or maybe it all just depended on the woman who was being boosted. Whatever. When she was secure in the shotgun seat, and the door had been closed, Staff started the S-10 and shifted it into Reverse. He raised a two-finger wave to Afia as they pulled away. She waved back, and then turned toward the Gordon house, presumably to introduce herself to its currently incapacitated sole occupant.
“Quite a morning we’ve had so far, huh?” Staff said as he pivoted the wheel and made a reverse U-turn in the middle of Hollow Creek Road. When Patsy didn’t answer him, he glanced at her. She had her head cocked to the right, cell phone pressed to her ear and was holding up a hand to shush him.
“Clara?” she said. “It’s Patsy. Listen, I think Constable Gordon might be hurt. He was doing some work out at his old family place and left his phone in his truck. I’m on my way to the B&B to get a ladder. The cellar stairs broke on him and—don’t laugh—he’s stuck down there. No way out. Yes, I know. Anyway, do you think we can find some funds to send an ambulance out to the old Gordon place? Just in case he’s hurt worse than he thinks? Uh-huh. Well, it doesn’t seem to be an emergency right now. Just as soon as you can spare one, I think. Thank you. Will do. Bye.
“She didn’t sound too happy,” Patsy said to the windshield after she’d ended the call.
“Well, it was the right thing to do,” Staff replied. “Don’t feel bad about it. I mean, he might need the help, after all.”
Staff swung a right onto SR-501 from Hollow Creek Road. He pointed through the windshield ahead of them. “Right there,” he said. “That’s where that dog or black bitch or whatever it was ran out in front of us yesterday. You can see the skid marks on the road where we nearly spun all the way around. We’re probably lucky we didn’t break any of the equipment in the process.”
“Or your necks,” Patsy offered.
“Yeah, or our necks.”
Staff glanced in the driver’s side rear view mirror to verify that he hadn’t accidentally cut someone off. He couldn’t remember whether he’d looked before making his turn. No one was there. He supposed they would have heard a horn blatting behind them if he’d hurt someone’s ego. He was just about to divert his attention back to the drive ahead when he thought he saw a small black spot appear from the grassy shoulder of the road that was rapidly disappearing behind them. He blinked, and it was gone.
“Deja vu,” he said.
“Hmmm?” Patsy was currently entranced by the glow of the screen from her cell phone.
“Oh, nothing, I guess. Just thought I saw something coming out of the grass behind us. Afia and I saw pawprints in the front yard at the Gordon place. We traced them to the front of the house and then around the corner. It looked like something had been digging at this little hole in the foundation.”
Patsy dropped the phone to her lap and looked at him, large eyes wide. “Do you think it might have been the black bitch again?”
“I don’t know. Do you want to go back and see for yourself?”
She appeared to think it over. “No. No, we really shouldn’t. Poor Mr. Gordon’s been trapped in that cellar for a long while now. Maybe when we get him out, we can go have another look at those pawprints. See if we can find some along the shoulder where you saw whatever it was.” She grinned, stretched out her left hand and patted him twice on the knee. “This is exciting!”
“Yeah,” Staff said. He supposed it probably was exciting for Patsy, but for him and Afia, the morning had grown far too long and unproductive already. Time was running out for them to get the Halloween feature they needed for Channel 6, and now they—a news team—were stuck helping a small town law enforcement official get out of a situation he shouldn’t have been able to get himself into in the first place. Who leaves their phone in the car? He didn’t think Channel 6 would fire them for not coming back with much more than an interview with some old lady and her cosplayer friend for the Halloween segment. It’s not like they were dropping the ball on a hard news story like a murder or a car chase or a political sex scandal. But Joanie was a penny pincher. She might not reimburse them the cost of the trip.
“Yeah. Exciting.”
CHAPTER TEN
The footsteps above him sounded different this time. Lee Gordon sat against the cinder block wall at the bottom of the staircase stringers, waiting. Just waiting. He had not expected to hear footfalls through his old house so soon after the woman named Patsy’s departure. The flaky old bat was supposed to have gone somewhere to get a ladder so he could climb out of this spot. Unless that somewhere had been built somewhere on his
land sometime in the years after his death, he didn’t think she could have made it all the way back to him so quickly. Also, the footsteps sounded softer and more deliberate, like someone walking through a place where they knew they had no business being.
When the cellar door creaked open, Lee switched on the Maglite he had been toying with in his right hand and shone it up at the figure that appeared in the frame just above the demolished staircase. For a single horrifying instant, he thought he saw a face he recognized peering down at him from the main floor of his own house. It was the face of Grace Afton, that black bastard Darek’s wife, whom he’d long ago slaughtered, and whose body he had stowed in the crawl space along with the dead stripper and, unfortunately, his own wife after she’d caught up to what he’d been doing.
He blinked, and the illusion vanished. It wasn’t the black woman. This woman was black all right, but skinnier than the Afton bitch. She had the same slightly almond-shaped eyes and full lips, but she was missing the curves around her hips, at least as far as Lee Gordon could see from his vantage point at the bottom of the cellar. She was dressed a little funny for a black woman, too, he thought. She sported a blazer that made her look like she might be some kind of professional; a real estate agent, maybe. Or a teacher. She must have been new in town. He doubted that she had grown up anywhere near Lost Hollow, or even Hollow County.
“How-do?” he called, tipping the brim of an invisible hat to her. “Don’t thwy to come down. Stairs are broken.” The stupid lisp created by his kid’s swollen tongue and busted face was starting to irritate him. It hurt his throat to shout up at her, but he also wasn’t keen on having another black woman end up dead down here if she fell. Not after he’d won his corporeal life back from his fuck-up of a son. Even an accidental death might bring the sheriff’s department, and they might want to look around the cellar this time. Plus, Lee needed time to get his bearings in a new era as well as figure out how to get the brat out of his head. He was successful at pushing him down in the stream of consciousness for now, but it didn’t seem to be drowning him.
“Oh, I know,” the woman said and smiled at him. “Don’t worry. Patsy warned me about the stairs. I’m just here to keep you company while she goes back to the B&B to get an extension ladder. I guess by the look on your face that you don’t remember me, huh? My name is Afia. Afia Afton. We went to elementary school together.”
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Well, at least now he knew why his dumbass son’s eyes had fooled him at first glance. She was Grace Afton’s daughter. The daughter resembled her uppity mother in the face, if nowhere else. Of all people to think they’re coming to his boy’s rescue, there could have been none worse. Lee Gordon looked down at his hands, forced a smile to spread over his son’s face, and then looked up again at the woman standing over him.
“Athia,” he said. “Of course. I remember you.”
She chuckled. Was she laughing at him? “It sounds like you’ve done a number on yourself. I won’t make you talk too much while we wait. Patsy just didn’t want to leave you here all by yourself while she went to get the ladder. They should be back pretty soon.”
“They?”
“Oh, yeah. My cameraman went with her. I’m a reporter for Channel 6 News now. Staff—my cameraman, Joe Stafford—and I are staying at Patsy’s this weekend. We’re trying to get some good Lost Hollow ghost stories for a Halloween feature segment we’re doing this year.”
“Halloween,” Lee Gordon repeated, mostly to himself.
“Right. Patsy was trying to call you this morning to ask if you would give us a tour of this old place you have here, but you didn’t have your cell phone with you. We found it in your truck just now.” She plucked a rectangular object from the pocket of her blazer and held it up so that he could see. The front of it illuminated when she held it up, sort of like the light from a black screen on a television. There was some kind of blue rectangles on the black screen, but he couldn’t make out anything about them from this distance. “If we’re careful, I can probably toss it down to you. Looks like you’ve got a nice Otterbox case on it, so it should survive an impact if you miss the catch. It might give you something else to do while we wait.”
Lee shrugged. He placed the Maglite on the cellar floor so that its beam shined straight up at the ceiling, and stood up. He stretched out his hands, cupping them for the catch. “Ok. Toth it.”
With both hands cradling the device, Afia tossed it at a slight arc just above the cellar door. The phone dropped straight down into the cellar. Lee had to take one step forward, but it was enough. The thing came to rest against the palms of both his hands. He grabbed it with his left and held it at arm’s length, hoping that he looked as if he knew what he was doing.
The screen illuminated again when he raised the device to a vertical position in front of his face. He could see the blue rectangles on it close up now. One of them said something about a missed call. Across the bottom was a message that read PRESS HOME TO UNLOCK. Lee had no idea what that meant. Before he could try anything, the screen dimmed to black again. He was tempted to shake the thing to...what?...wake it up again? Then he thought it might look to the black woman above him like he didn’t know what he was doing.
BOY! he shouted into the stream of consciousness he now shared with his son. BOY! WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS THING? I DON’T KNOW WHO TO CALL ON IT NOR EVEN HOW TO MAKE IT WORK IF I DID!
There was no answer from his son. Lee Gordon relaxed his psychic grip on the boy. He could feel him down there, somewhere under the waves and ripples in the stream. Graham was still alive. He knew that. Maybe he really was unconscious right now. Or maybe he was just petulant, as useless to his old man now as he had been as a child. Lee shoved the device into the front pocket of Graham’s uniform pants, then bent and retrieved the flashlight from the floor. He shined it in Afia’s direction but made sure to prevent the beam from illuminating her face too much.
“I’ll look at it later.”
“Suit yourself.” She crouched at the mouth of the cellar, planting her feet against the door frame, and hugged her knees to her chest. “I don’t know how long it will take them to get the ladder and get back out here, but I’m sure they’ll be as quick as they can about it. Staff’s become pretty good at loading and unloading heavy equipment.”
Lee nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Is there anything I can get for you? Do you have any food or water or anything out in your truck? I could text Staff and ask him to bring you back something if not.”
“Un-uh. Not hungry.”
“Ok, then. Let me know if you change your mind.”
Lee heard her yawn. He could also hear and see her tapping the soles of her shoes against the cellar door frame. She was bored with him, maybe. Good. Maybe she would go back outside. The sound of those tapping feet was maddening.
“So Patsy says you’re planning to do some restoration work on this old place,” Afia said after a while. “Any ideas yet what you’re going to do with it? She thinks it might make a good haunted tour attraction. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’d have to say I agree with her.”
Lee scoffed. He hadn’t known for sure that the boy was planning to do anything to the house, but he certainly did not approve of turning it into some kind of small-town tourist trap like the ones that used to litter Route 66 back in the day. Nice places to visit. Wouldn’t want to live in one.
“I don’t know yet,” he managed.
“Well, I’ll give you my card so you can give me a call if you’re going to turn it into a business or a museum. Maybe we can do a separate story on that sometime.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Afia swiped her palms against her knees and stood up. “Well, if you don’t need anything, I think I’m going to step outside and text Staff, see how long he thinks they’ll be.” She reached into her blazer pocket and removed what looked like a business card. She tossed it into the cellar. It fluttered to the floor before Lee could cat
ch it. “My cell number is on the card there. If you need me for anything before they get here, just call or text. I’ll be right outside.”
Lee bent and plucked the card from the floor. He shoved it into the pocket of Graham’s uniform pants along with the “phone” device that looked to him more like a tiny television. He did not bother to look at the card. “Ok,” he said. “But I’m fine. I just need a ladder.”
“I know you’ve had a problem with kids drinking in here,” the woman added. “There are some old beer bottles scattered along the floor. I might be able to use one to prop this cellar door open for you. That will at least let a little bit of light in from up here. You won’t have to rely so much on that flashlight you have there.”
He nodded at her. “Ok. Soundth good.” Now just go away already.
The cellar door slammed shut when she stepped back from it. Lee could hear the clacking of her feet above him. It was not a straight march to the door, more like a few steps with pauses in-between. She must be gathering those beer bottles, he thought. He was about to fling himself on the floor against the cinder block wall again while he waited when his head suddenly exploded with pain. The sound of crashing waves inside his ears drowned out everything else, including Afia’s footsteps from above. He plugged his ears with his index fingers and rooted around inside the canals, trying to physically locate the source. Lee had let down his guard for too long, and Graham had taken the opportunity to surface from their shared stream of consciousness. He thought he could feel the boy’s presence, clawing its way down the brain stem, out through the nerves, toward the vocal organs and the hands.
***
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To prove to the opossum that it could be done.
Graham Gordon could hardly believe his own body’s eyes when he had seen Afia Afton’s face standing over him. She was all grown up now, and said that she’s a reporter for Channel 6 news. In her face he could see the Afia that he’d known as a child, the girl he had liked. The girl his father had dismissed along with her entire race as being a freak of evolution. The girl whose pants he had tried to pull down at the see-saw on the playground because he’d told the other boys what his dad had said and they had goaded him about it, demanded that he prove it. It was an act Graham had nearly forgotten until his father’s memories had brought it surging forward again. Like most childhood mistakes, he had once been able to chalk it up to youthful stupidity. Now he truly felt bad about it. He had been manipulated by a racist, had allowed himself to be manipulated by a racist father steeped in the racist culture of a racist small town. Now he knew better. He had evolved. But that couldn’t fix what he had done before. Nothing could.