Between the Living and the Dead

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes got his Kel-Tec PF-9 and ankle holster out of the gun safe in the room where Yancey was sleeping. Yancey didn’t bother to wake up again. The PF-9 was a lightweight pistol with a polymer body that carried seven 9 mm cartridges. Rhodes figured it would provide enough firepower to take down any ghosts he was likely to encounter.

  Rhodes left the house by the front door. He didn’t want to go through the back and wake up Speedo, who might start barking and arouse the neighbors, who wouldn’t be pleased.

  The county car was in the driveway. Rhodes got in and backed into the street. Turning north, he saw heavy black clouds banked in the sky, blocking the stars. A late-spring norther was on the way, and he hoped it would bring some rain. It seemed as if it hardly ever rained anymore.

  A flash of lightning ran down the clouds, and a few seconds later Rhodes heard a dim rumble of thunder. Just the right kind of weather for investigating strange doings at a haunted house.

  Rhodes supposed that nearly every small town had a haunted house. There was one in the nearby town of Obert, and Rhodes had experienced a little trouble there a few years back. Not from ghosts, however, and he wasn’t expecting to run into any ghosts tonight, either. Or this morning. The clock on the dashboard said it was a little after midnight.

  Clearview’s haunted house was only a couple of blocks from the local cemetery, which was probably one reason it was considered to be the home of ghosts. Another reason was that it had been abandoned for forty years or more. It had belonged to a high school teacher named Ralph Moore, who had died one evening of a sudden heart attack. Because he’d died on the weekend and had few friends, his body hadn’t been discovered until he failed to show up for school on Monday morning. A good many rumors had circulated afterward, all of them gruesome and all of them untrue, as far as Rhodes knew. One story said that the teacher hadn’t had a heart attack but that he’d been killed and mutilated with an ax. Another said that his pet dog had eaten part of his body to avoid starvation.

  The stories were magnified in some cases because Moore had died on a Halloween weekend, and trick-or-treaters had horrified each other for years afterward with tales of how they’d stood on Moore’s front porch ringing the doorbell while the dog had been munching on his body parts inside the house.

  Another thing that added spice to the stories was the fact that Moore was supposedly an unpleasant character. In an era when teachers felt free to deal out corporal punishment, Moore, at least according to rumors, had dealt out more than his share and enjoyed doing it. He’d been known to sit on his porch with a pellet gun and shoot at dogs and cats that wandered into his yard. And even at the occasional youngster who happened by.

  There were other stories, but Rhodes didn’t remember them. Once, not long after he’d first been elected sheriff, he’d looked into the musty old reports on Moore’s death, just out of curiosity. There hadn’t been much of an investigation, but the sheriff at the time hadn’t thought there needed to be one. As it happened, Moore didn’t even have a pet dog. He had a small aquarium with a few fish, but they hadn’t escaped to feed on him. He hadn’t been mutilated, either. The only marks on the body were a few bruises that had probably resulted from Moore’s having fallen when he had the heart attack.

  Not that anybody would believe the facts. The rumors were a lot more fun.

  As for the stories about his pellet gun and his doling out of spankings at school, no record of those things remained.

  Moore’s only kin had lived in some other state. Rhodes couldn’t remember which one. Colorado, maybe. Or Wyoming. Somewhere out west, anyway. They hadn’t wanted the house, but they hadn’t wanted to sell it, either. They’d never come to see it or remove any of Moore’s things. The half block of property it sat on had little value to them or to anyone, but as far as Rhodes knew someone was still paying the taxes on it to keep it from being sold at auction on the courthouse steps. So the old house had stood there, surrounded by its wrought-iron fence, deserted, while people speculated about it and told stories of strange noises and spectral faces at the windows or lights moving past them.

  Over the years the stories had become fewer and less often told, until now the house just crumbled away on a lot that was so overgrown with trees and weeds that most people who drove past it probably didn’t give it a glance. Some of them might not even have known the house was there, but every now and then someone would notice something amiss, and the sheriff’s office would get a call.

  Like the one tonight. Hack hadn’t been too clear about what the problem was, and Rhodes wasn’t sure whether that was because of Hack’s typical behavior or because Ruth Grady hadn’t known exactly what it was and hadn’t been able to tell him. “Disturbance” was all the information Rhodes had been able to get out of Hack. Rhodes was a little suspicious because of Ruth’s involvement with Seepy Benton, and the old Moore house was clearly the kind of place that Benton would like to prowl through in his new capacity as a paranormal investigator. If there was anywhere in Clearview that was likely to have a few ghosts, the Moore house was the place.

  Rhodes saw Ruth’s county car from several blocks away. It was parked at the curb in front of the Moore house, its light bar flashing. Rhodes pulled to a stop behind it, turned on his own light bar, and got out.

  The house sat well back from the street. The lot took up most of the block, so no other houses were very close. Across the street was the city water tower, and it had the entire block to itself. The other houses Rhodes could see down the street were all dark. The people inside were getting a good night’s sleep.

  Rhodes saw the entrance to the cemetery a couple of blocks away. He’d had an adventure or two there, but he hoped that wouldn’t be the case this time.

  Although the thick clouds were still some distance away, a few drops of rain hit Rhodes in the face. Ruth Grady got out of her car and met him. She was short and stocky, and she was wearing a hat. This was one of the times Rhodes wished that he didn’t look so silly in a hat. It would at least keep the rain out of his face. It would also cover up the spot on the back of his head where his hair had thinned, but that didn’t matter so much in the rain.

  Ruth held a big tactical LED flashlight in one hand, but she hadn’t turned it on.

  “What do we have here?” Rhodes asked her.

  “I’m not sure,” Ruth said. “Somebody who was driving by called it in to Hack. The number was blocked, so he doesn’t know who it was. The caller said there were flashing lights in the house, and some gunshots.”

  “Hack said there was a disturbance,” Rhodes told her.

  “People get disturbed by gunshots.”

  Lightning lit up the sky to the north and gave the clouds a momentary glow.

  “People are suggestible, too,” Rhodes said. “Haunted house, thunder, lightning reflecting off the window glass.”

  “What window glass?” Ruth asked.

  Rhodes looked at the house. It was old, nearly a hundred years old, he thought. Two stories tall, with a covered porch on both floors, at least on the front. Rhodes couldn’t see any window glass. The wrought-iron fence was covered with vines and bushes, and trees grew around most of the house, concealing some of the windows. The ones that Rhodes could see all had screens over them. The screens must have been rusted, but Rhodes couldn’t tell that in the darkness.

  “Your friend Seepy Benton isn’t in there, is he?” Rhodes asked.

  “So you’ve heard about his new job,” Ruth said.

  “I have. You think he’s in there?”

  “He hasn’t started looking for ghosts yet,” Ruth said.

  She sounded doubtful, but Rhodes decided to let it pass. “Have you heard any gunshots since you got here? Seen any flashes of light?”

  “No. It’s been quiet. Except for the thunder.”

  As she said that, thunder crashed practically overhead, and lightning crackled. The wind started to blow, whipping the trees around the house. An aluminum can bounced and clattered along the street.
<
br />   “Littering,” Ruth said. “Class C misdemeanor.”

  “Probably not for just a can,” Rhodes said. “I’ll go pick it up.”

  As he started for the can, rain began to fall in big drops.

  “Forget the can,” Rhodes said, changing direction. “We need to get under cover.”

  At one time the gate in the wrought-iron fence had been chained and locked, but both chain and lock had long since disappeared. The gate gave a shrill skreeek when Rhodes pushed it open, and he was reminded of an old movie he’d once seen on late-night TV, back in the days when they still showed old movies at odd hours. Cry of the Banshee was the title, and it had starred Vincent Price, which would surprise absolutely no one who’d watched a lot of those old movies. As Rhodes remembered it, things hadn’t ended well for Price.

  Rhodes had to break several vines to get the gate open. If there was anyone in the house, they had to find another way in.

  The sidewalk was overgrown with grass, with only a few patches of concrete to be seen. Rhodes jogged to the porch and up the three steps to get under the roof. Ruth was right behind him. She had drawn her service revolver and held it in her right hand. The flashlight was in her left. The wind blew rain onto the porch, and they moved closer to the door. Soggy leaves tumbled around their feet.

  “Better watch your step,” Rhodes said. “Some of the flooring could be rotten.”

  Ruth turned on her flashlight and shined the beam over the porch floor.

  “Looks pretty solid,” she said. “They used good wood in these old houses.”

  “Be careful anyway,” Rhodes said. “Check the door.”

  Ruth turned the light on the door. There was no screen. The top third of the door had three windows. Two of them still had glass in them. On the bottom of the door, the white paint was flaked and peeling. There was no doorknob. Old doorknobs were collectible, and someone had removed it.

  Rhodes reached out and gave the door a push. It didn’t move. He pushed harder. The glass rattled in the panes, but the door still didn’t move.

  “Stuck,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think anyone got into the house this way, at least not tonight. We’ll have to check the back.”

  “I’ll go,” Ruth said. “I have the flashlight.”

  Rhodes was pretty sure that “I have the flashlight” meant “You’re too old and decrepit to be wandering around in the dark because you might get hurt.” Or maybe it meant “If you hadn’t been in such a hurry to get under cover, you’d have gotten your own flashlight out of your car.”

  It wasn’t something Rhodes wanted to think about too much. Anyway, Ruth was better equipped than he was to enter a house where gunshots might have been fired. She had her revolver, and her duty belt held a collapsible baton, pepper spray, and handcuffs. All Rhodes had was his pistol. He bent over and removed it from the ankle holster.

  He straightened, glad that he could do it without his bones creaking, and said, “We’ll both go. You don’t want to go in the house without backup.”

  “What if someone comes out the front door?” Ruth asked.

  Rhodes touched the door. “It would take a while to get this thing open. If anybody’s in there, we’ll get them before they can get out. As much noise as we’ve made out here, I’d be surprised if anybody was still in there.”

  Ruth didn’t say anything. Rhodes listened for sounds inside, but all he could hear was the wind in the trees and the pattering of the rain against the house.

  “Rain’s slowing down,” Rhodes said.

  “Okay,” Ruth said. “Let’s go.”

  “You first,” Rhodes said.

  Ruth was already on her way down the steps, the flashlight beam floating over the drenched weeds as she made her way around the house. Rhodes followed, the cold rain soaking his already wet shirt and getting through his shoes to soak his socks as well.

  The back of the house was different from the front. The fence was still standing, but the wide gate was off its hinges and lying in the weeds. An old rusted-out Dodge pickup stood there as if it were planted, sunk into the ground almost up to the wheel hubs. The tires, practically indestructible, still clung to the rims, and they’d be around for a long time to come. The truck’s hood was up, and Rhodes suspected that the engine was gone. The skinny hackberry tree growing up through the engine compartment was a clue.

  The tracks through the crushed weeds were a clue to something else.

  “Somebody’s been here and gone,” Ruth said, shining the light along the tracks. “Not too long ago, either.”

  So maybe there had been someone in the house after all, and even though it was clear that a vehicle had left the backyard, they couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t someone still inside.

  The back door was missing a top hinge, and it hung open at a slant. Ruth directed the flashlight beam into the interior. Rhodes couldn’t see anything other than what appeared to be an empty room. They approached it with caution, keeping well apart from each other. When they were closer, Ruth was able to illuminate more of the room. It was small, probably an enclosed porch.

  Ruth went up the steps, stood at the top, and let the beam roam over the inside, which looked completely bare. She glanced at Rhodes, who nodded. He was pretty sure that anybody who’d been inside was long gone, if not before he and Ruth had arrived, then shortly after the squealing of the gate and the pushing on the front door. It wouldn’t to do take chances, however.

  Ruth stepped inside the doorway and walked through the small room to stand on one side of a door leading into another room. Rhodes followed and stood on the opposite side of the door, all too aware of the way his clammy clothing stuck to his body.

  “Me first,” Rhodes whispered. “Put the light on the ceiling.”

  Ruth turned the flashlight up toward the ceiling of the larger room, giving it some partial illumination. Rhodes went through the door with his pistol at the ready. He saw no one, and no one shot him, so he told Ruth to come on through.

  She did and moved the light around the room, which had obviously been a kitchen. The old cabinet doors were all open, and some of them had fallen into the floor. So had a couple of drawers. The cabinets and drawers were empty except for some scraps of browned newspaper that had been used as shelf liner. The stove and sink were gone. The refrigerator was still there, being too old for anyone to steal. Its door was missing. It could have been removed as a safety measure, or maybe someone had thought of a use for it and taken it. Spiderwebs hung from the cabinet doors and in the windows.

  The floor was covered with cracked and buckling linoleum. The linoleum was covered with dirt and littered with trash: a few fast-food sacks, soft drink cups and cans, and a couple of candy wrappers. Transients might have spent a night in the house from time to time. Or maybe someone else had. The story about the house being haunted was usually enough to keep people away.

  The place had the musty smell that all old deserted houses did, but Rhodes detected another odor in the air, too.

  “You smell that?” he whispered.

  Ruth nodded. “Gunpowder.”

  Just as she spoke, one of the fast-food bags rustled and something scampered across the floor, rustling through other bags as it ran. Ruth didn’t move, but Rhodes twitched. He thought it was a testimony to his own iron nerves that he didn’t blast away at it with the Kel-Tec.

  “Mouse,” he said.

  “I know,” Ruth said. “Probably a lot of them in here.”

  “Beats staying outside in the rain,” Rhodes said, thinking that the mouse didn’t know how lucky it was not to have been blown away by a volley of 9 mm slugs.

  Three doorways led out of the kitchen, one to the front of the house and to what Rhodes supposed had been the sitting room, one on the left to what must have been a dining room, and the other to what had probably been a bedroom.

  Rhodes inclined his head to his left and said, “Door number one?” He nodded toward the one that opened into the sitting room and said, “Or door number two
? Or,” nodding to his right, “door number three?”

  Ruth moved toward door number two, which was the one the mouse had fled through. Rhodes thought that was a less than excellent choice, but maybe the mouse had moved on. Ruth waited on one side of the door until Rhodes had positioned himself on the other side.

  They stood there and listened. Rhodes heard the trees brushing against the sides of the house and the wind rattling the windowpanes and whining through cracks in the walls. The rain had stoppped.

  Rhodes didn’t think anyone was in the house with them. He hadn’t heard the sounds of anyone moving, and nobody had tried a shot at the flashlight. Or at the mouse. They had to follow procedure, though.

  “Let’s do it the same way,” he said, and Ruth directed the flashlight beam upward again.

  Rhodes slipped around the door and into the dark room, sweeping his pistol side to side, but there was no one to shoot at, and the mouse was either gone or in hiding. The room was empty of furniture, but something lay in the middle of the floor. Rhodes had a bad feeling that he knew what it was.

  “Come on in,” he said, and Ruth entered the room, shining the flashlight around. The beam stopped when it came to the lump in the floor, which wasn’t a lump at all.

  It was a man. He was quite still, and Rhodes was sure he was dead. Ruth turned the light on the man’s face, and Rhodes sighed.

  “You know who he is?” Ruth asked.

  “Yeah,” Rhodes said. “I do.”

  “You don’t seem surprised to find him like this.”

  “I’m not,” Rhodes said.

  Chapter 3

  Rhodes used his cell phone to call Hack and request an ambulance and the justice of the peace. Hack was naturally curious, but Rhodes didn’t give him a chance to ask any questions. The cell phone was fully charged, but the battery held only so much juice.