Something Old (Haunted Series)

by Alexie Aaron

  “Susan was saying what a wonderful big puppy you have. Better have your Ted make that barrier strong and high enough,” Deb counseled.

  “My worry is that I’m not going to be able to scale it. When Ted gets building something, sometimes he gets a bit carried away.”

  “He’s quite a catch with all those patents. So he gets a bit out of control. Mia, give him enough rope…”

  “And he’ll hang himself?” Mia asked, not knowing where the middle-aged woman was going with her statement.

  “No, silly, he’ll build a bridge.”

  “Deb, you need to work on your metaphors.”

  They had reached the springs. Mia chose two sets of long springs not knowing exactly what Ted had in mind. “Can I bring a set back?”

  “As long as you have your receipt. Or I’m here. I’ll remember.”

  They walked through the store, and Mia stopped at the paint chip display. “Wow, someone’s cleared up this mess.”

  “You have a good eye. One of my protégés, Rory Kline, did that. I think the boy may have an artistic eye.”

  Mia stood back from the display and encouraged Deb to follow her. “Look at it now. What do you see?”

  Deb studied the display and shook her head. “All I see is a color gradient.”

  “Squint your eyes,” Mia instructed.

  Deb did so, and as she lost her clear focus, she saw the landscape Rory had painted with the chips of paint. Blue and white varieties gave the sky clouds. The greens of varying hues brought out trees, and the other colors worked their way through the picture giving Deb the feeling of meadow and a purple pink pond with a beige sandy beach. She opened her eyes wide and could still see it. “It’s beautiful. Honestly, I don’t think he knows he did it. He’s a, or rather was, a jock. No artistic leanings I know of.”

  “He’s the boy that got hurt in the playoffs last year?” Mia said, remembering Dr. Walters talking about it.

  “He separated his shoulder, and if it wasn’t for being in great condition, they think that he would have broken his back. It’s too bad; I think he had the potential to be a pro running back if he got his grades up for college.”

  “You would know. How’s the husband handling being a football widower?”

  Deb laughed. “Oh, Bill and I made peace with my obsession years ago. I don’t comment on the hours of NASCAR he watches, and he leaves the Bears alone. How are the wedding plans going?”

  “I leave that to my godfather. If it were left to me, I’d speak my vows at the courthouse, and that would be that.”

  “Good thing he is then. I’ve bought a new ensemble. I’m praying it will be warm enough to be outside, Mia. That way I’ll get to show off my new Sunday coat.”

  “Just don’t show up the bride. Ralph with have a fit,” Mia warned.

  This sent Deb into a fit of giggles. “Come on, I better get back up front. The boss is giving me the evil eye.”

  Mia looked around and didn’t see anyone.

  “The walls have eyes,” Deb said, pointing to the cameras.

  “Oh.”

  Mia followed her up to the cash wrap.

  “I didn’t think the cameras were necessary, but corporate doesn’t believe that Big Bear Lake Ace Hardware isn’t a target for shoplifters.”

  “Times are changing. I hear that we have a group of artists decorating water towers, barns and semi-truck trailers.”

  “That’s boys. They’ll catch up with them. Last year it was toilet paper tossed everywhere, until the market refused to sell more than a four pack to any teenagers. This year it’s ballers too big for their britches. Our Tom will sort them out soon enough.”

  “Tom has certainly come to my aid, and I’m not talking puppy sitting.”

  “I think we’ll be calling him Sheriff in the future. Just as soon as Ryan makes up his mind and retires. He’s driving the missus nuts with his waffling.”

  “I like John Ryan,” Mia admitted. “He makes me feel safe.”

  “Not to mention, he ain’t bad looking for an old cuss,” Deb said as she rung up Mia’s purchase.

  Mia waved the need for the bag, accepted the receipt and grabbed the springs. “I wouldn’t call him an old cuss to his face,” Mia advised.

  “He’s a big boy, he can take it,” Deb said.

  Mia shook her finger at Deb and said, “Remember he’s male.”

  “You’re right. Their egos can’t take the truth, especially about age. Now get out of here so I don’t get fired.”

  Mia couldn’t help laughing as she exited the building. The manager would never fire Deb; she was the store. Without her, everyone would travel to the big box stores. Most people came in just to see what Deb Booker would say next.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Saturday morning dawned and with it came a warm front. Friday night’s rain had left the woods smelling fresh but the footing tricky. Wet leaves over moss and clay created areas that rivaled the Slip and Slides that Rory played on as a kid. He followed Keith into the woods, running the baller lingo he googled through his mind. A gun was a marker. Baller, not paint baller, was the correct term. Anything that wasn’t covered on the forum, Rory would assume was regional, perhaps buying him a pass.

  Keith had picked Rory up at the high school parking lot. As instructed, Rory carried blue pellets and was dressed in camouflage fatigues. In his case, they were spirited away from his dad’s closet. They were authentic but seemed shabby compared to the crisp new set that Keith recently purchased from an army-navy store online.

  Rory left his cell phone in the car along with his wallet, following Keith’s example. “We don’t want to have to spend all day hunting for our crap if we lose it,” Keith explained.

  The marker had passed Keith’s inspection. “It doesn’t look like it’s had too much action, but who has the time these days,” he said as he handed the gun back to Rory.

  Rory - whose eight hour practice session Friday in the woods behind his house firing at cans and trees - mentally screamed that the gun had seen a lot of action, but he said, “Who has time? I’m always working.” It wasn’t a lie exactly, so Rory was confident he would pass muster when interrogated by the elder Summerfield. They approached the group who had assembled in the woods. Rory didn’t know the other four boys. He had seen them in school, but they were enrolled in the college prep courses and kept mostly to themselves. When he was in football, he didn’t bother with talking to non-jocks, so he gave the snobby upper crust teens a break.

  “It’s about time you showed up, Keith. You get lost?” Blair asked.

  “Mom called. I had to cover for you, bro.”

  “What she want?”

  “She’s under the impression that you’re going to escort Candace Livingston to the autumn soirée at the club.”

  “She and Candace are delusional,” Keith said. He walked over and patted one of the ballers on the back. “Ethan here has volunteered to take the bimbo off my hands.”

  Ethan looked over at Rory a moment before replying, “She may be a double bagger, but old Candace makes for an interesting evening.”

  Rory, having no clue who this Candace was, wisely kept his mouth shut. Ethan looked back at Rory again as if to size him up. Rory got the feeling that the other boys were doing the same thing. He was used to this type of scrutiny during football from the opposing team on the field. It wasn’t furtive looks but direct glares that were used to communicate the defense’s intention to hit Rory hard enough to make him cough up the ball.

  He assumed that the ballers would soon split up and wage war in the woods. His team members, perhaps, were evaluating what an asset to their side he was. The others were sizing up the competition. Rory figured he would be on the blue team, hence the instruction to bring like-color pellets.

  “Come on, let’s get to ground zero,” Blair ordered. “We can split into units then.”

  Rory followed the group. He didn’t recognize the area. “Where are we anyway?”

  “This is Se
ntinel Woods. Reputed to be haunted or some such nonsense,” Keith explained. “Its reputation gives us a hundred acres of people-free land in which to hunt.”

  Hunt? Rory mused over this. Wouldn’t the correct term be play, battle or even war? He felt uneasy but pushed it down as first time jitters.

  They had crossed a small stream via a fallen tree when Keith grabbed Rory from behind. “Watch it! See that sandy area with no vegetation on top?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quicksand. Stay away from that. And if you see mud all by itself, take another route. It will suck you up faster than Candace after a shot of Jägermeister.”

  Rory nodded. Sweat ran down his back as Keith showed him more and more hazards of Sentinel Woods.

  “If it’s so dangerous here, why do you come?” Rory asked.

  “You’ll see,” Keith promised before he ran to catch up with the rest of the pack.

  Rory climbed the rise behind the boys and saw that the trees were thinning out. When he joined the others, Keith stepped aside saying, “This is why we come here to play.”

  Rory looked beyond the teen into the valley below. There were abandoned houses in various degrees of decomposition nestled amongst large sinkholes. “Are those…”

  “Sinkholes. Happened fifty years ago according to our gardener,” Blair said. “Old Paul told me a company bought this tract of land and started building houses. It wasn’t long before the ground swallowed a few up.”

  “Don’t worry though. We’ve been playing here since last summer, and the holes haven’t expanded, much.”

  Rory didn’t like much, but since it didn’t bother the other guys, he just shrugged it off.

  “I’ll take you down and give you a tour before we begin,” Blair offered. “This way you’ll be aware of all the pitfalls.”

  “Thanks, dude,” Rory said.

  “I’m not your dude,” Blair spat. “I’m Sir or Captain, got that?”

  Rory, taken aback by the venom in Blair’s voice, muttered, “Sorry.”

  Blair’s face changed. He lost the irritation and became calm and explained, “Remember we are a fighting unit, no dudes, just men. I’m your officer.”

  Rory wasn’t sure if he was relieved that he apparently was on Blair’s team or not. Blair was an asshole and treated his brother like shit. He worried that he would be worse with strangers. Rory would watch out for Blair but wouldn’t let him get in the way of enjoying this day with the new group of guys.

  “You used to be a pretty good running back, I heard,” Blair said. “Why aren’t you giving your all on the field?”

  “Almost broke my back. My parents and the school insurers took me off the team,” he explained.

  “Can you still run?”

  “Yes, but the bod’s not going to bear any tackles anytime soon.”

  Blair nodded.

  They had reached the bottom of the hill and began moving in and out of the abandoned houses. Paint blobs of orange and purple ran down the old weathered clapboards. Windows, not busted by time, suffered paint blotches and cracks caused by the pellets as they impacted with the old glass.

  Blair, following Rory’s gaze, mentioned, “Don’t make glass like that anymore. If I was to hit our patio door with a pellet, it would break into thousands of pebbles. This stuff, you have to be pretty close to break.”

  They rounded the corner of a surviving brick and mortar ranch house. Rory was surprised to see life-sized plywood targets of men propped up behind the building.

  The paint-spattered surfaces bore witness to the hours of target practice the boys seemed to have gone through. Rory walked up to examine one of the targets.

  “Five points for an extremity hit, ten for a trunk hit and fifty for a headshot.”

  “Headshots? But you guys don’t have helmets.”

  Blair tapped the goggles on top of his head. “Wear these, and maybe you won’t lose an eye.”

  “You guys play this game at an extreme level,” Rory said frowning. “It hurts like hell to be hit with one of these pellets even at normal velocity. Why shoot for the head?”

  “Because it’s available,” Blair said drolly. “We’re not playing here. We’re hunting.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me, but I don’t understand. I was under the impression that we were getting together to wage war between two teams.”

  “Whatever gave you that impression?”

  “Keith said to bring blue pellets. I assumed I’d be on the blue team.”

  Blair stared at Rory a moment. “You were told to bring blue pellets, so we could identify that you shot at one of us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Come on, don’t you jocks have brains? How many guys are here beside you?”

  “Six.”

  “If we were splitting up into teams, it leaves one team short a man, and that wouldn’t be fair. So we’ve changed the rules. We’re going to hunt you down, Hardware Man. It’s every guy for himself. First guy to land a shot, takes a shot,” Blair pulled out a flask. “We’ll hunt you until you can’t run anymore.”

  “This is insane!”

  “Didn’t you agree to come and play with us?”

  “Keith didn’t say anything about me being the target,” Rory argued.

  “You’ll have to forgive my brother. He’s lousy at the details.”

  “Well then, you’ll understand that I’m withdrawing from your little game as the prey.”

  “Alas, I fear you have no say in the matter. What you do have is five minutes. We will begin hunting you in five minutes… nope, that’s four minutes thirty seconds… and counting.” Blair turned around and walked away, calling after him, “Four minutes ten seconds.”

  Rory pushed the panic he was feeling down and let his anger take over. He plowed through the brush at the edge of the development and sought out cover. He moved steadily until he heard the eerie sound of a siren from above the valley, followed by the teens yelling obscenities at each other as they ran down the hillside.

  He burrowed under the rotting leaves, willing himself to breath shallowly, and waited.

  ~

  “Hold still!” Ralph admonished Mia. “I can’t believe it’s too big! How did you lose weight with all you eat?”

  Mia squirmed as Ralph continued to tighten the waistline of the dress. She looked over at Audrey for help.

  “Don’t look at me,” Audrey warned. “I gain a pound if I walk by the Baskin Robbins in the mall. Ralph, it was you that banned baked beans, barbecue and beef from Mia’s diet until the wedding. She needs to eat, otherwise her metabolism will reduce her to skin and bones.”

  “So if I let her abandon her diet, then I won’t have to have Betty Jean take in the seams?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” Audrey said.

  “Hello, I’m here, talk to me. Damn it, this must be how Murphy feels.”

  Audrey and Ralph looked at Mia and dismissed her just as quickly.

  “She needs to continue eating normally… what’s normal for her,” Audrey advised.

  “I really hate you, Mia,” Ralph said, yanking out the pins. “I can’t eat normally or even lightly if I’m going to be able to fit into those pants.”

  “Why did you make them so tight in the first place?” Mia asked.

  She received a glare from her godfather. “It’s the way they’re worn,” he argued.

  “You’re going to be wearing a jacket over them. Who’s going to know if you’re wearing size 34 pants?”

  “Size 32, missy,” Ralph said, moving her away from the mirror to survey his tight backside.

  “Now I have something to wash from my memory. Audrey, call Angelo, have him take me back and…”

  “Mia Cooper! Don’t you even tease. Do you know the heartache you caused disappearing like that…”

  “Hello, it wasn’t like I had a choice in the matter,” Mia said.

  “Ladies, ladies,” Bernard called, entering the room. “The seamstress is packing up her t
hings as we speak. Ralph, you better calm her down. Betty Jean refuses to work with a zilla.”

  “You mean bridezilla,” Ralph corrected, leaving the room to seek out the temperamental tailor.

  “In this case, it’s a Man of Honorzilla,” Bernard whispered. “I promise to take you all shopping after lunch if you put up with all this a few minutes longer.” Bernard looked at Mia standing there in her lace gown and white leather corset and sighed. “You are beautiful. I know when I first heard the theme Ralph was intending for this wedding, I was taken aback, but it suits you, Mia. He turned and looked at the robust curly-haired woman flanking the other side of Ralph’s three way mirror and admired the green plaid, full skirt topped with an elegant tan suede jacket. “Audrey, if you haven’t caught Mr. Hicks yet, that ensemble will.”

  Audrey blushed a deep red and turned around.

  “They were caught kissing,” Mia tattled. “I think that Burt is all but hogtied for the Audrey barbecue. Speaking of barbecue…”

  “No, I think we have to go somewhere that Ralph can get a salad,” Bernard said. “You eat barbecue out of the sight of your Man of Honor if you have any compassion left after all this pinning.” Bernard winced as he saw how many sharp pins Mia would have to navigate as she took off her gown.

  “Have you seen the boys’ suits?” Mia asked.

  “Yes, and I’m not to tell you anything about them but to say that they look handsome and functional. Ralph believes both the bride and the groom should not view each other’s garments before the wedding,” he explained to Audrey.

  Ralph came bustling in with a proprietary hand on Betty Jean’s arm. “Mia, get out of that dress. You still have your outfit for leaving the reception to try on.”

  “Two dresses?” Mia questioned. “Who needs two dresses?”