He watched the little boy named Kazi Vrabec crawl up along the balcony, sidling along the slender ledge, over toward the open window into Harrow.
When the boy slipped through the window, the pane slammed shut behind him with such force that it cracked the glass.
PART THREE
THE MIND OF HARROW
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1
Kazi Vrabec glanced back at the windowpane. From inside the house, the glass looked filthy and was covered with what might’ve been dead flies that had been squished and left in place, pasted by their own mush. He looked back out the window, but the world beyond it looked fuzzy and blurry, and he couldn’t see much beyond the balcony directly to the left of the window. He looked along the edge of the lawn and the driveway for the man called Mr. Spider, but he couldn’t see him. Then Kazi turned to look at the room. It was nearly in darkness, except for the last bit of daylight outside, and three candles that were lit on a table near the door. The room was empty, it seemed, and it smelled like a toilet. The stink began to get to him, so he started breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t smell it.
“You have to help his wife,” he said aloud, hoping it made him sound a little braver than he was feeling. He stepped cautiously across the creaking floorboards, nearly tripping over a loose plank. As he reached the door, he looked over at the burning candles, and saw the source of the stink. It looked like a dead possum lying there. Beside it, two dead crows and tucked back next to the candles were several small dead rats and mice. He stood at the door, his hand nearly touching the knob.
He had stopped breathing through his mouth, and now felt the heaviness of the stench of these dead animals.
He took a deep breath and touched the doorknob, turning it. Opening the door, he looked at the dead animals rather than out into the hallway. He noticed that just behind the animals was torn wallpaper, and in the flickering candlelight he could see what looked like drawings of stick figure people doing awful things to each other.
He looked away and drew the door completely open. Beyond the doorway, he thought he heard someone wheezing. It reminded him too much of his grandmother when she was sick. That heavy inhaling and exhaling with the whistle of a balloon in it, too.
Kazi shot one more glance to the dead animals, then stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind him.
2
Votive candles in mason jars lined the hallway. Kazi glanced down one direction and saw what seemed to be an endless number of doors. At the very end of that hallway was a large, wide mirror with a golden frame and the indication of a stairway that went either up or down—he couldn’t tell. In the opposite direction, the hallway seemed to twist a little and end sooner—as if it turned a corner onto another area. Here, the wallpaper looked perfect and the smell was not so bad. It smelled like cabbage cooking from somewhere, and there was a scent of mild cheese in the air.
You should run downstairs and open the door for Mr. Spider. You should. You should.
And yet, once in the house, Kazi Vrabec did not want to see the man outside again.
You should go get him. He’ll be angry. He may hurt you.
“Hello?” he asked the hallway.
The wheezing sound had become so regular that he nearly had stopped hearing it. It was like a slow, steady thump, and then like moan and a murmur, and then it became a dry, raspy breath. Because he was a little worried about the light, in the house, he squatted down and grasped one of the mason jar candles, and then got up again, using both hands to hold the jar before him.
He didn’t realize that he trembled a little as he took step after step toward the big mirror. The air began to smell sweeter with each step he took, and when he reached the next door, he tucked the jar under his right arm, and pushed the door open without turning the knob.
The door flew back, slamming against the wall, and he looked in at a room that had a bare mattress in the far corner. The window was only partially boarded up. There was a table and a chair near the window. Regular electric lights were on—a bright overhead one and a small lamp next to the mattress—yet these did not fully light the far right side of the room.
Again, he got a whiff of that dead animal smell, and he didn’t want to look in the corners of the room at all. He didn’t want to have to step into the room to shut the door again, so he left it open.
In the hall, the wheezing sound continued. Kazi went to the next door. The door itself had been knocked in as if someone had kicked it over and over again from the hallway. He turned the knob, and it rattled a bit, but didn’t open.
He pushed at the door, but it didn’t budge. Because he wanted to make sure that the wife was not in this room, he got down on his hands and knees and looked through the holes that had been made when someone had kicked at the door or rammed at it with something. The holes were tiny, little more than pinpricks, but he put his right eye up to one of them.
He couldn’t see much, but again this room was fairly well lit, and he thought he saw a man’s legs not far from the door. They were horizontal, so the man must’ve fallen down. He wore no shoes and possibly no pants either, although Kazi only saw to the man’s kneecaps. A large bed was situated back beneath the window, which was shuttered, and it looked like someone lay sleeping in the bed.
Was this who he was supposed to help? Had someone gotten hurt and fallen? He tried the knob again, but the thing was definitely locked. Then he felt something cold on the back of his neck. He turned about, but no one was there. He counted the doors down the hall—at least twelve more doors to try.
He noticed that one door near the end of the hallway was now open, though it had been closed before. He stepped away from the door with the little holes in it, and decided to try that one next. He wanted to get out of the house quickly, and already was sure that he’d spent too much time in it. His mother would be furious with him for being late, and something even worse played through his mind: the fear about little boys who went missing. He knew about it, other kids his age knew about it, and it was on the news. Sometimes little boys just got lost and never turned up again.
Don’t be afraid. It’s only a house. It’s not like those scary stories kids tell. It’s just somebody’s home.
At the next door, he saw a little water on the floorboards in the hall, and he looked in the room. It was a fairly large bathroom with a light on over the mirror. Once through the doorway, the floor was made of white tile There was a sink and a claw-footed tub over in a corner. The water on the floor seemed to be coming from the sink, and Kazi wondered whether he should shut off the faucet. But when he stepped into the bathroom, he noticed that the source of the water was on the far side of the sink. As he took another step or two onto the water-soaked floor, he saw that the toilet had overflowed. He glanced around, half expecting someone to come up behind him, or even for someone to get out of the tub, but he was fairly sure nobody was around. His mother had always told him to use a plunger to stop the toilet from overflowing, or to turn a little knob to the side of the toilet that would shut off the water, but Kazi wasn’t sure if he should do that here or not. And he hated standing there with the toilet water under his shoes.
To the right, within the bathroom, there was a narrow, locked door that Kazi figured led to the room next to it.
He went back into the hall and shut the door behind him. He went to the next room. This one had a door that was off its hinges and leaned against the doorframe. Kazi pushed it back a little so that he could scrunch himself up and look in.
At first, he wasn’t sure what the piles of things in the room were. The smell was awful, even worse than the dead animals smelled. There were several lamps in this room turned up bright, and the room felt warm to him. But the piles of dark things—as he looked more carefully, he saw that they were ... poop. Somebody went to the bathroom in here. Over and over again.
On the wallpaper, which peeled so much that some of it was half off the wall, there were big blotchy yellow stains.
Kazi tried to
understand what he was seeing, and why someone had done this. Someone had gone into this room and ... done what they were supposed to do in the bathroom. He tried not to imagine the person who would do this Mr. Spider?
Kazi drew himself out of the narrow passage of door and doorway, and glanced about the hall again. The wheezing continued, and he began to wonder if he shouldn’t just find the stairs and run down and let Mr. Spider in. But something about doing that bothered him a little. He didn’t like being in the house, but he was afraid Mr. Spider would be waiting for him, downstairs, just standing at the front door to catch him before he could get out.
A contrary kind of curiosity had gotten the better of Kazi. He wanted to see these rooms now. It was almost a hunger that had grown in the little boy, as if just seeing the first room had made his heart beat a little faster and caused his imagination to go into some kind of overdrive. He went across the hall to look at that room. The door opened easily, and it seemed to be a large closet, but as he peered around it, he saw that it was a fairly deep room— perhaps bigger than the others. Within it were stacks of old dusty books, and more stacks of magazines—piled so high some of them seemed to rise above the door’s height. But stranger than the piles of books and magazines and even shoeboxes that bulged with papers, there were stacks of paper plates, and then another one of plastic forks and spoons, all in a pile. All with the remnants of food on them—a bit of sandwich sticking out of one, or some globs of gravy and potatoes. The smell in this room was a relief for him, as opposed to the shit-smell of the previous room, for while it had a mild stink to it, it mainly reminded Kazi of the smell of old boxes in an attic. He shut this door, then went to the next one.
Opening the door, the stench was unbearable. It was like sticking his face in someone’s underwear, only it wasn’t quite that—for the room was full of what looked at first like animal carcasses, but when he went into the room, he saw that they were half-eaten turkeys that had been roasted and were now rotting; a ham that looked as if someone had chewed at it a while and then had left it out; what must’ve been a pig had been roasted, and its face half-eaten and half of its body also torn, with blackened ribs sticking out, but melted in some way by the rot. There were flies in this room, buzzing around, and the only windows were high in the room, small windows that were too hard to reach, and had been kept closed. The room’s light came from three bulbs that hung down from nearly invisible wires.
To his left, Kazi saw what he assumed to be two large freezers that each looked big enough to hold a human body. Curiosity got the better of him, despite the thumping in his chest. He walked toward the freezers, around a pile of rotting pears and apples and wilted lettuce, stirring up some of the fruit flies and houseflies as he went. He reached the first freezer and tried to lift the lid, but could not. He went over to the other freezer, and this one had a latch, which he toggled back and forth until it clicked up. Then, huffing and puffing a bit, he managed to push the lid all the way up, causing him to lean over the freezer.
He wasn’t sure what he saw then—it didn’t register for him because he had been expecting something else. But quickly enough he realized what was in this freezer.
It was full of dead cats, their furry faces all frosted over.
He drew back quickly, and the freezer lid slammed shut, nearly taking with it his thumbs.
He stood there, taking deep breaths that hurt his ribs.
You have to get out. You have to get out.
But he said his wife needs help. She’s hurt. You can’t leave. You have to find her.
Mom? Where are you? Why aren’t you here? he thought. Then he remembered the kids at school who made fun of him, and he straightened up. You’ll be okay. Something’s wrong with Mr. Spider. That’s all. Maybe he’s like Grandfather before he died. Maybe that’s all it is. Maybe.
But still, as he stood in the room swatting at fruit flies that seemed to be everywhere, his throat went dry. If he had any pee in him, he was fairly sure it would’ve run down his leg yet again. He felt ice-cold, despite the fact that the room was fairly warm—even hot.
It’s some kind of sickness. It’s nothing bad. He’s just a sick man. But his wife needs help.
The worst thing for Kazi Vrabec was not his fear, or what he’d seen in these rooms. It was that his thoughts had begun jumbling like they did when he didn’t get enough sleep. He felt as if he had already started to accept something within this house. Something about it had begun to make sense to him.
The rooms, by themselves, had seemed creepy. But when he thought of all of them, it was like he could see inside somebody’s head and listen to their thoughts.
Someone who had lost his mind lived here. Someone who lived upside-down and backward.
Someone who embraced the nightmare.
Kazi, you see? You went into the looking glass. Just like Alice. And you’re here on the other side of it. But now you know the secret. The secret is that you’ve lived on the wrong side of things.
He tried to shake this voice out of his head and even held his breath for several seconds, thinking it would somehow make things right. But the voice was in his head, the voice of the someone who occupied these rooms. It all makes sense if you watch. Each room is a special place. Each room is sacred. Each room contains the holiest of relics.
“Stop it now,” Kazi said aloud, just as his mother would.
He walked as quickly and yet as quietly as he could out of the room of the freezers and the food and the flies, and when he made it to the hall again, he shut the door behind him.
Yet he could not keep from checking out the next room over.
3
This room was completely bare.
In place of lamps and lights were more of the mason jars with their squat little candles wavering with light. The windows of this room were made of stained glass, like a church, but the designs were of beautiful birds with long legs and long beaks, and of fish, and water lilies; and it was all bright blue and gold and pale green. He went to the center of the room. The floorboards all needed work— there were nails that had come up from some of them, and many of the boards were mismatched.
Someone had torn off all the wallpaper and had written words on the bare white walls. Some of them were scrawled so small it was hard for him to read, but some were enormous.
Kazi read it aloud. “Dear Luke, I love you. I hope we see each other again someday. You were one of the great joys of my life. I hope you knew that. And I hope you know that what I’m doing today is not about my feelings for you or your brother (hi, Cody! I love you, too). I talked to you once about all the bad things in our family. Unfortunately, I have at least one of those. No, not depression. Not insanity. Not even ordinary fucked-upedness.” Kazi giggled at this part, because while he knew that he could never say this word in real life, it sounded funny to say it in this room. As he read more of what was on the wall, he had the impression that a woman wrote this. Not just a woman, but a crazy bitch, Kazi. A crazy-as-fuck bitch wrote this, and when she ran out of ink, she used her own shit, and when she ran out of shit, well, she used her own blood.
The voice was back in his head. It sounded a lot like his own voice, only Kazi never talked like that.
He read more of the note, and did his best to quiet the voice in his head, and swallow the feeling of both fear and excitement as he discovered more and more about the person who had written this. She was somebody’s aunt, and she loved her nephew, and she was going to kill herself. Then she started writing about God and the devil and eternity and the infinite and portals and doorways and places that existed outside time and space and places that may never exist at all and might have other gods in them that nobody had yet worshipped. Some of her writing was a mass of squiggles and lines, and then she seemed to have written math equations on the wall, as well as drawings of people— but they looked almost like more squiggles and circles and lines, the kinds of drawing a four-year-old would make.
Some of the writing he couldn’t read,
and some of it was too high up on the wall. How did she reach it? he wondered. How had she written some of it on the ceiling?
As he turned around to read the bit about how someone named Luke should follow in her footsteps, Kazi noticed something in the room that he hadn’t when he’d first walked in.
Next to the doorway, but back behind the open door itself, was a large wardrobe. Kazi thought of one of his favorite books, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, but it also reminded him of one of his favorite pictures of his grandmother and grandfather, where they were standing in their bedroom, and in the background was a wardrobe just like this one—not too tall, but long and deep.
He opened one of the wardrobe doors. Inside it were some blankets and a pillow, and on a shelf just above this, a small desk lamp.
Someone slept here, Kazi. Someone. Maybe the woman who wrote on the walls. Maybe she spent her days sleeping in here, and her nights scribbling away, the crazy bitch.
4
He opened other doors, or looked through keyholes, as he went down the long hall. In one room, he saw what he thought were statues of animals—birds like the one he’d seen in the stained glass window, herons or egrets, and dogs and cats, and even some monkeys. The room was fairly dark—the window had been boarded up, and the only light that came in was from the hall and the mason jar candle in his hand. He wondered what the statues were really like, and as he went into the room he saw they were not statues at all. They were like mummies he’d seen on the National Geographic channel and the History channel. They were all dried up and covered with thin bandages and oozed a little with some kind of glue. He touched a mummified monkey’s head, then quickly brought his hand back, afraid of it. In the feeble light, he could only see a handful of these mummies, but he had the sense that there must be a hundred or more of them in the room.
The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Horror, Thriller, Supernatural) (The Harrow Haunting Series) Page 18