Charnel House

by Anderson, Fred

  A moment later, he was through the privet and crossing the yard to where Tanner and Joey waited. They still looked scared, he thought. Ready to bolt at the slightest sign of a ghostly presence. Good. It served them right, for being such jerks earlier.

  “Who’s the chicken?” he crowed, unable to wipe the gloating grin off his face. He deserved it.

  Joey hung his head. “You win.”

  “Say it.”

  Tanner stepped between them. “He said you won.”

  “He has to admit he’s a chicken,” Bobby said. “That was the bet.”

  Joey mumbled something.

  “What’s that?”

  “He said it,” Tanner said. “Now let’s just drop it and get back home. We’re going to be late.”

  “I didn’t hear it,” Bobby said. “I did what I said I would. It’s only fair that he keep his end of the deal.”

  “I said you win. I’m a chicken,” Joey said. His eyes flashed with sudden anger. “But at least I didn’t piss my pants over a story.”

  “There’s still time for you to go inside,” Bobby said. “If a pants-pisser like me can do it, it shouldn’t be any problem for you.”

  “Jesus Christ, Bobby, give it a rest,” his cousin said. “You’re acting like you stood up to the devil himself instead of just going into an old house in the middle of the day.”

  “A house you two are too chicken to go into.”

  “If you’re such a hot shit, squirt,” Joey said, raising his hand to point behind Bobby, “why don’t you go in there?”

  Bobby turned, his heart dropping down to somewhere near his knees, because he knew what Joey was pointing at even before he laid eyes on the dark open maw under the porch. Jeremiah Barlowe’s feeding spot.

  Bringing ’em down here was the only way I could make it stop.

  His guts felt loose and watery, like he was about to let go with a burbling flood of diarrhea in his pants. Talk about your wet stains. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? All the spit fled his mouth.

  “I’m good,” he said. His voice sounded weak to him. Girlish.

  “What’s the matter, big man?” Joey taunted. “Not so tough now, are you? Maybe your name should be Baby instead of Bobby.”

  “We need to get going,” Tanner said. “We’re going to be late.”

  “Oooh, I know,” Joey said, chuckling. “Barbie Frank. It has a ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  Tanner mustered up a half-smile. “Yeah, yeah, funny stuff. Can we go now?”

  Dimly, Bobby was aware that his cousin was trying to help him out by changing the subject. Maybe there was some truth to that old saying about blood being thicker than water. Joey seemed to loom over him now, the same way the house had earlier. Something glittered in his eyes, some inner light that hadn’t been there before. Crazy. He looks as crazy as an outhouse rat.

  “We’re not going anywhere just yet. Not until he”—Joey poked Bobby in the chest, hard enough to hurt this time—“goes under there.” He pointed once more at the opening under the front porch.

  “C’mon, man, knock it off,” Tanner said. “He went in the house, you said you were chicken. It’s over.”

  “Ain’t over yet. I’m tired of him strutting around here like some little banty rooster, thinking he’s smarter than you and me.”

  But I am smarter than you. Braver, too.

  And being smart, Bobby kept his mouth shut.

  “This is over when he goes in there where they found Jeremiah Barlowe, and brings something back out for me.” The glittery gaze fell on Bobby again and Joey grinned, hard and humorless. “Maybe you’ll even find a bone from one of those little kids.”

  Bobby’s stomach rolled over in a lazy flop, and he wondered if he was going to throw up at the same time he filled his pants. “Let’s just call it even and—”

  “I’ll make his easy for you,” Joey said. “You go under there and bring me back a souvenir, or I’m going to stomp the shit out of you. Clear enough?”

  How had things gone south so quickly? Sure, Joey had taken their bet a little too seriously earlier, but now he’d gone off the deep end. Bobby harbored no doubt that Joey was as good as his word in the matter of stomping the snot out of him; the look in his eyes said that not only would he do it, he’d have a gay-o time of it. Maybe Joey was just as possessed as old Jeremiah Barlowe had been.

  Bringing ’em down here was the only way I could make it stop.

  Tanner put hand on Joey’s shoulder and opened his mouth to say something—knock it off, buddy, and let’s get out of here, maybe—but before he uttered a word Joey spun and shoved him away. Tanner stumbled backwards, his arms pinwheeling, and tripped over his own feet. He dropped into the tall grass, rolling onto his back, and when he sprang back up there was high color in his cheeks.

  But, just like Bobby had, he kept his mouth shut. Perhaps the blood wasn’t that thick.

  Joey turned his attention back to Bobby. “I said, is that clear enough?”

  Could I take him in a fight?

  The older boy was bigger and heavier and stronger, but he was also slower. Bobby was sure of it. The problem was, Bobby hadn’t ever been in a real fight—one two-minute shoving match in the fifth grade over a piece of peppermint candy had been his only experience—and didn’t know what he should do. If he threw a punch and missed or didn’t knock the fight out of Joey, it would all be over. He really would get the snot stomped out of him.

  If you stand up to a bully, they’ll back down. That’s what Brother Peavey had said one morning when he was guest-teaching Sunday School. He had done a whole lesson on bullying, and the way the devil tried to bully Christians. That’s just a modern version of the word of God, he had told them. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

  But Bobby wondered if Brother Peavey had ever dealt with someone like Joey Garraty.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “There’s nothing under there that can hurt me.”

  If only he believed that. Not five minutes ago he’d been down on the floor in the house, one ear pressed to the wood, listening for something he’d heard in that creepy crawlspace. And now he was about to go in there. You don’t know if you really heard anything. Even if you did, it was probably an animal. Brother Peavey always said that the Bible taught that it was appointed for man to die once, and then came the judgment of God. That meant things like ghosts didn’t exist. Couldn’t exist, not if you believed the Bible, and Bobby sure did. God wasn’t a liar. If you went straight to judgment and then heaven or hell, there wasn’t any time to hang around under an old house trying to scare people.

  So why was he so scared?

  With one last look at his cousin—Tanner seemed smaller somehow, like the shove from Joey had deflated him—Bobby traipsed back through the weeds to the privet and pushed his way through. The opening under the porch waited for him, staring like a blind eye the same way the upstairs windows had. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. He crouched and crawled under the peeling structure.

  The air was cold there, almost frigid, and a thick layer of leaves covered the ground. They crackled as he crept over them, and he nervously watched the opening to see if all the noise would draw anything (Jeremiah Barlowe) out. There were bricks scattered under the leaves, with sharp corners that poked his knees and shins. He tried not to think about how many spiders he must be stirring up. Black widows especially liked to live underneath things like bricks and rocks. He’d seen plenty of them while turning over rocks in search of crickets to fish with. Maybe it was too cold for them under here.

  A boy could hope.

  There was a piece of rusted tin propped against the wall to his left. He wondered if it had been used to cover the hole to keep people out after Jeremiah was found under there, and if so who—or what, the infernal voice in his head wondered—had moved it. Stop it. You’re just going to spook yourself. If that happened he was liable to chicken out... and he didn’t think he’d be able to outrun Joey if he tried. Sports had never been his th
ing. Neither had getting the snot stomped out of him, now that he considered it.

  He looked through the opening and saw that it wasn’t as dark in the crawlspace as he’d thought. Here and there, thin bright beams of sunlight speared through gaps in the floor above, courtesy of Mother Nature’s efforts to tear the house down over all the years. Dust swam in the white light. The air in there was colder still, like a freezer, and carried an ancient, mildewy odor. Bobby wrinkled his nose. Would that smell get into his clothes?

  He looked around the dim expanse nervously. Where had Jeremiah Barlowe been? If the bloody handprint had survived untouched for thirty-five years, was the dirt down here still stained with the blood of the children he killed? Bobby wrinkled his nose at the thought of slithering through a dead kid’s dried blood.

  “All the way in!” Joey yelled. “I can still see your ass.”

  What Bobby wouldn’t give to have a gun right now, like the Ruger his dad kept in his nightstand. He’d march back out there, point it in Joey’s face, and make him crawl under the house. But first, maybe he’d shoot him in the foot to make up for the twisted ankle. That would take the bullying right out of him. Probably bawl like a baby. Bobby found that his anger quelled his fear, and eased himself into the crawlspace, taking care to stay low. No telling what was up in between the joists. Swarms of cave crickets at the very least, horrid little brown things that jumped three feet straight up and looked more like spiders than crickets. He hated them.

  Dust rose around him in a powdery haze, tickling his nose. He pulled his shirt up over the lower half of his face to block the worst of it, his eyes scanning the area for something to placate Joey. Squat. It was like someone had sifted through the dirt down here and removed everything larger than a grain of sand. He crawled forward a few more feet. The joists were a little closer now, not even two feet overhead. If he didn’t find something soon he was turning around. Maybe he could get one of the brick pieces under the porch and pass it off as part of one of the supports.

  There.

  Something lay not too much further in, just outside one of the bright splashes of light. He couldn’t make out details, only that it was about a foot long and thin, not as dark as the dirt. Probably a stick. But maybe a leg bone. It didn’t matter. Joey was getting it, no matter what it was, and if he wasn’t happy, so be it. After today, Bobby would never have to see him again. He crept closer to the thing, mindful of the joists dipping ever closer.

  It wasn’t a stick after all, but a section of copper pipe turned the sickly green of dried snot. Antique plumbing. Joey would complain, but if he didn’t like it he was free to come under here himself and look for something else. Bobby picked the old metal up and as he was tucking it into the hip pocket of his jeans caught sight of something else toward the rear corner of the house, where it was even more cramped.

  A worn mattress sprawled in the depths of the crawlspace like a dead thing, stained and full of holes leaking stuffing. Trash littered the dirt around it, empty bottles and cellophane wrappers and tin cans. A dirty blanket lay in a tangle at the foot of the mattress next to a pile of magazines and coverless paperbacks. At the head, a nub of candle stuck out of a Coke bottle. A rainbow of colored waxes in frozen dribbles down the glass spoke of many past candles.

  There was a symmetry about the collection of things, something ordered. This wasn’t just garbage tossed into the crawlspace by someone trying to get rid of it, and this wasn’t the sort of place teenagers would come to make out.

  It looked like a nest.

  Bobby remembered the sound he had heard earlier, when he was upstairs in the room where the bloody handprint decorated the wall. What if someone had been down here then, listening to him walk around? A shiver wracked his body. He tried to shake it off. That was crazy, just his fear of the house and the story of Jeremiah Barlowe trying to give him the willies. Maybe someone—a bum off one of the numerous trains that passed close by here every day, for example—stayed in here from time to time, but live here? No way. Not without electricity or running water or toilets or any number of things. And certainly not in such a gruesome place on such an icky mattress.

  “What are you doing in here, kid?”

  The voice that floated out of the darkness behind him was gruff, as rusty as an old iron gate, and Bobby yelped before he could help himself. He spun in place with eyes wide, the nest forgotten. Dust boiled up around him, making it hard to see anything, and he tried in vain to fan it away. His inner voice chanted one thing in a repetitive litany.

  Jeremiah Barlowe Jeremiah Barlowe Jeremiah Barlowe.

  There was a man hunkered between him and the exit, glowering at him through rheumy yellowed eyes. Graying hair poked up from his scalp in greasy tufts. Deep channels carved lines down his grizzled face, and oozing sores covered his thin lips. His nose was a glistening cratered ruin. In one hand he clutched a brown paper bag, holding it close to his chest like he was afraid Bobby might try to take it from him. The ratty suit draped on his thin frame looked like it had come from the dump. Smelled like it too, Bobby thought, as a ripe mix of booze, sweat, and waste washed over him. How had he missed this guy—this smell—when he first looked in? The hobo (because that’s what he was, even if he didn’t have a bindle slung over one thin shoulder, Bobby realized) must have seen something in the boy’s expression that amused him, because his gaze softened and he grinned, revealing blackening teeth.

  “Whatsamatter, kid? Old Norman scare you?” The man chuckled wetly, coughed, then hawked up and spat a thick glob of phlegm into the dirt. He gave it a baleful glare. “Coulda saved that one for a snack.”

  Bobby scooted back a little, further under the house, and bumped the top of his head on one of the joists. Blood roared in his ears, and it seemed like the air had gotten thicker because it was hard to breathe. His eyes darted to either side, looking for a way out, but there was only the single exit. Trapped. His parents had always told him not to talk to strangers, and there wasn’t much stranger than a hobo living in the crawlspace of the county’s most notorious haunted house. Should he scream for Joey and Tanner? What if he did, and it set the guy off? Anyone who would willingly live in a place like this couldn’t be right in the head. He kept his mouth shut and watched the man, ready to scuttle backwards if he made a move.

  “Jesus, son. Relax, I ain’t gonna hurt you.” The man reached into the bag and withdrew a small bottle of brown liquid, which he offered to Bobby with a shaking hand. A finger of sunlight speared the bottle and scattered reddish diamonds across the bare earth. “Want a toot? It ain’t Glenlivet, but it gets the job done. Stuff’ll put a little hair on your chest. Looks like you could use some.”

  “No thanks,” Bobby said. His voice wavered. The thought of putting his lips where the hobo’s scabby ones had been made his stomach lurch queasily, and the smell baking off the guy wasn’t helping things on the vomit front, either. He tried to take shallow breaths. “I need to get going, mister. My friends are waiting for me.”

  Norman made no move to get out of the way. He spun the metal cap off the bottle and took a long pull. When he was done, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, burped, and fixed Bobby with a watering gimlet eye. “Friends, huh? They didn’t sound much like friends to me.”

  Bobby wondered how much the old guy had heard. Probably everything. That just means he knows Joey is a jerk, too. He didn’t say anything, but looked longingly past the man at the rectangle of sunlight. The guy wasn’t old old, but he wasn’t young either, and he didn’t look fast. Not with the shakes. Maybe Bobby could get around him and escape. This was going to make one heck of a story, once he was back in the sun, safe.

  “Gimme a dollar, kid,” the hobo said, holding out his trembling, dirt-crusted hand. His fetid breath filled the space between them, carrying on it a mixture of cheap whiskey, sardines, and the rotten-egg smell of his dead teeth. “Need to buy me a bus ticket to Memphis.”

  “I don’t have any money, mister.” Bobby hoped God would for
give him for lying, but even if he had a million dollars, he wouldn’t give a penny of it to the bum before him. That would mean getting closer to him. “Let me by now, I need to get on home.”

  The hobo inched forward. His hooded eyes seemed to gleam in the false gloaming. “C’mon, kid. Whaddaya say? I’ll suck your dick for that dollar. Suck it gooood, let you come in my mouth and swallow every drop. You old enough to come yet? I bet you are.”

  The man’s tongue snaked out and slid across his scabbed lips in an obscene parody of lasciviousness. Bobby only had a rudimentary idea of what the guy was talking about. A bad thing. A sex thing. He scooted back in the sandy dirt, deeper into the darkness. Something had changed in the hobo’s face, and not for the better. His eyes had narrowed, the way a cat’s do when it catches sight of a mouse. It would be better if there was a little more space between them.

  His hand landed on something slick and he looked down. It was a magazine, opened to a full-page picture of a naked woman on her back, her legs spread so far apart they were nearly behind her head. She looked up at him through dead eyes. Something hazy and white crusted the page in a dried splatter, nearly covering her forced smile. Her sex was just a dark blur with a hint of color in the middle.

  In his nest. I’m in his nest.

  Bobby drew his hand back like it had been burned and ducked under a sagging joist to get away from the (hidey-hole) hobo’s belongings. He tried to skirt around Norman, but the man moved with him, a predatory smile splitting his rotted face. His eyes gleamed with avarice. With need. He moved a little closer.

  “What’s wrong, kid? Old Norman’s mouth ain’t good enough for you? Can’t get a decent blowjob for a buck anywhere. Gimme two and I’ll lick your asshole.”

  Bobby tried to roll under the next joist, but it had sagged low and his shoulder banged against it. He squirmed under, hands grabbing at the dirt to pull himself forward, but the man lunged at him, spider fast, and caught his ankle in an iron grip with one dirty hand.