He glanced back out the window. The gate was even larger than before, each bar as thick as his arm, and there were shadows moving in the woods beyond.
“Del, did you hear me?”
The boy turned with a start at his older brother’s voice. Half brother, actually. Their mother had been married, and widowed, twice. That’s why they looked so little alike. Bart was tall for sixteen and wiry like a runner, and his flame-red hair went in every direction. Del, on the other hand, was small and stocky and wore his dark hair short and parted on the side like Mom wanted. He looked like his father that way, she insisted. Back before the cancer.
“This is your last chance, Cap,” Bart repeated, ignoring the snickers and ghost sounds from the front seat. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We can take you on home.”
“Hey,” Baugh muttered, “that wasn’t part of the bet.”
“Screw the bet,” snapped Bart without looking at them. “It’s up to you, Cap. You can pull out if you want.”
A sigh of relief almost escaped the boy’s lips but he held it in check. Bart was giving, him an out—he did know Del was scared. Was it that obvious? No, probably not. Bart was just being Bart, covering all the bases. But which was he doing, trying to save him from the bet or trying to get rid of him, to get this scared little kid out from under his feet?
Easy out, said his conscience or his common sense or whatever that little voice was that always turned pussy and pragmatic at the first sign of trouble. Have them take you home. You’re a little kid, you don’t have to prove anything. Not to these jokers, certainly not to Bart. He won’t think any less of you.
Will he?
“C’mon, let’s take the baby home,” Hovi sneered, “it’s probably time for his bottle.”
“Shut up, lard-ass,” Bart said in a soft but steel-edged voice. Despite Hovi’s being a year older at seventeen and half-again Bart’s weight, the taunting stopped.
Del’s temper flared as well, making his decision for him. “I’m sticking,” he snapped, flipping Hovi the bird. Bart grinned.
“Get your stuff, Cap. It’s time to go.”
Everyone piled out of the T-Bird, with Tommy opening the trunk to extract their supplies. Bart took their sleeping bags and tossed them over the wrought iron fence, then strapped a knapsack across his back and secured a Mag-Lite to one of the shoulder straps. Del zipped his down jacket and hugged the warmth of a thermos bottle close to his body. It’s the cold that’s making you shiver, he told himself. Yeah, that’s it. The cold.
“Just remember, Miller,” Baugh harped from his perch on the car fender. “You stay in the house—not on the grounds, not in the woods, not even on the stoop. And you bring something out with you to prove it, or the bet’s off.”
“You just have the money on you in the morning,” Bart said over his shoulder as he clambered up the ivy-covered fence to the right of the gate. The creeping vegetation gave purchase to his hands and feet and in just a few movements he was at the top and leaning over into darkness. He dropped to his feet on the other side with hardly a sound. “Your turn, Delbert.”
The boy leaned his face between the bars. “I don’t know if I can make it over, Bart.”
“Oh, come on,” the older Miller scoffed. “I’ve seen you go up trees like a squirrel.”
“It’s kinda high—”
“Look, you little shit,” Bart growled, barely keeping his voice to a whisper. “I gave you a chance to cut out but you said no, so get your ass over the fence. Or go home.”
Del started to pout but caught himself. Mom wasn’t here to give in, and Bart would only get angrier and the others would taunt him and call him a little baby. Straighten up, he cautioned himself, turning his anger inward. He went to the wall without another word and scrambled up the vines like a monkey, then over the top and into the trees. Bart halfway caught him as he tumbled to the other side.
Tommy ran up to the gate and pressed his face against the bars and in a deep voice said, “Good night . . . boys,” and gave them a gibbering, maniacal laugh. Doug and Larry joined in, as the three piled back into the Thunderbird and gunned the engine. It lurched forward with a spray of dirt and gravel, and the Miller boys watched after them, until even their taillights blinked out of sight.
Del listened to the quiet for a moment. “How come I’ve suddenly got this feeling we’re in deep shit?”
“We’re gonna be fine.”
“Are you serious?” He looked at the shadowy woods around them and whispered, “You know the Danner stories—”
“Forward and backward,” Bart finished, “and that’s just what they are. Stories. And if you’d read more of the paper than the funnies you’d know that already. It was on the front page this morning, with tonight supposed to be the anniversary of the murders. The Herald did some research and found out it’s all a bunch of hogshit. Sebastian Danner never chopped up his wife and brother—least there’s no proof of it. No police report. No investigation, no search of the grounds. Nothing. The article said the Danners probably just moved to Europe or outta state.”
“Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Del said skeptically, “just that nobody ever found out about it.”
“You beat everything, you know that? You’d almost think you were trying to scare yourself.”
“I wouldn’t have to work at that,” the boy replied with an involuntary shudder.
“Look, there’s nothing in these woods, least nothing that ain’t alive—a dog, something like that. And if it’s alive, I can knock its goddamn head off.” He reached under his jacket and pulled the nunchaku free with a flourish, spinning it in a figure eight and over his shoulder and back under where he trapped it in his armpit. He’d been practicing with the chucks since he was ten and saw his first Bruce Lee movie. Del felt safer at the sight of them; it was the next best thing to having a gun. The redhead replaced the sticks in his belt and unhooked the Mag-Lite from his shoulder strap. It was one of those official police flashlights, a gift from Charlie Bean when he’d dated their mother. “Now,” he sighed, picking up his sleeping bag. “Can we get going?”
He flicked the little rubberized switch on the flashlight and adjusted it to wide beam. It illuminated a cobblestone drive that over the decades had been reclaimed by the forest, conquered by an army of crabgrass and wildweed and creeping brambles. With the heavy foliage and the stones well hidden beneath it, the only suggestion that a drive had ever existed lay in the relatively tree-clear path that wound through the otherwise dense woods. Sometimes even that appeared to be in transition; young saplings were bursting through the drive a little further along, growing tall and strong with flat stones still embedded in their exposed roots.
Del found some good-sized sticks nearby, just like he did when Mom took them mushroom hunting years back, and they used these to brush aside the stickers as they walked and to prod the bushes for late-in-the-year snakes. The cobblestones underfoot were a good guide. Whenever their tennis shoes sank into soft mud they knew they were off the track, and had only to seek solid footing once again.
Del looked back over his shoulder two or three times, and each glance showed the gate, their doorway back to the real world, getting smaller and smaller. Deep shit, he repeated to himself. We’re in deep shit.
“Okay so far?” Bart asked.
“No problem,” he lied.
A few more minutes of walking and Del had already grown to hate the flashlight. It showed the way but that was all it showed. The beam’s radius only reached so far on either side of the trail, and the rest of the woods seemed darker because of it. Trees were looming shapes in the blackness, arthritic scarecrows that might not have been trees at all, that might move at any minute. And if something touched his foot in the tall grass or tugged at his pantleg, he wouldn’t kick at it or even look to see what it was. He would only quicken his pace and hurry on.
There were sounds around them.
It’s nothing. Just normal forest sounds. You’ve heard them every time you’ve gone camping. See, Bart isn’t scared. Why should you be? He wagered himself: he should be able to identify any sounds they heard out there. He was a country boy, after all. If he just concentrated, and listened . . . There. That was the slap-slap of dewdrops falling from the trees to the fat leaves below. And the groan of an old tree limb. And that call in the distance may have sounded like a woman screaming, but he knew an owl when he heard one. There was the swish-swish of Bart’s corduroys rubbing as he walked, and the light clatter of things in his pack, and the sound of still-dry leaves crunching underfoot.
He reached out for Bart’s back pocket and pulled him to a stop. He motioned for him to be quiet and put his hand to his ear. Listen.
The patter of falling dew. Creaking trees. Birds in the distance.
Bart had humored him long enough. “What the hell am I listening for?”
“I heard footsteps in the leaves.”
The older boy just shook his head. “We’re walking in leaves, Cap.”
“No, it wasn’t us. It was out there.” He pointed away into the dark.
Bart swung the flashlight around and swept the area in question. Nothing. “Did you ever think of animals, Delbert? They’ve been known to hang out in wooded areas, you know.”
“Very funny. What I heard wasn’t an animal.”
“You’re that sure,” Bart sighed. Impatience had edged into his voice. “Now, if you don’t mind, can we get on with this?” He headed back up the drive, towing the boy behind him with a hand still locked on his back pocket.
Putz. Pansy. That was probably what Bart thought of him by now. Quit acting like a baby. What do you want him to do, hold your hand or something? Grow up. It’s just . . .
A voice giggled in the dark.
. . . your imagination. That’s all.
Someone whispered behind him.
Imagination.
A high, tittering laugh.
Gulp.
His throat was suddenly too dry to swallow. No voices, he said to himself, over and over so it filled his ears and drowned out the sounds around him. He could see movement from the corner of his eyes, dark figures with capering white faces, peeking from behind the trees that lined the path.
There’s no one there, no one . . .
He closed his eyes and lowered his head and trudged along behind his brother, waiting in dread for the whistle of Sebastian Danner’s descending ax or the cackle of the mad and the dead. And waiting. And still waiting.
Bart pulled to a stop. “Hey, Cap,” he said, “we’re almost there. Look.”
Del peeked past him and saw the trees ahead thinning, becoming an overgrown thicket. Past that the drive swung to the right as far as they could tell and circled around a front lawn nearly an acre in size that hadn’t seen a mower in years. And beyond the waist-high grass they could make out Danner house, framed by wisps of groundfog that all but glowed in the moonlight. Bart trotted on through the thicket for a better look, breaking the boy’s grip on his pocket and leaving him temporarily behind.
Del stared at the house in the distance and actually felt his spirits sag. It wasn’t nearly as foreboding as he’d been led to believe; too many Vincent Price movies had colored his image of haunted houses. Everyone knew they had to be built on a craggy bluff or a steep hill, with a small base and at least four or five floors like the Bates Motel or the House on Haunted Hill. Plenty of upper floor windows were mandatory for figures to dance in or lights to flash from, as well as a spiderweb of winding stairs that creaked when you stepped on them and sometimes when you didn’t. But this—this was just a big sprawling old house, and not even the eeriest fog could help it. What a dog!
With his disappointment, all the sounds of the forest disappeared; the screams, the moans, the specters of Sebastian Danner he’d expected, almost wanted to see. Legends die hard, it seemed. Bart had been right. Just a house. Just a crummy . . .
There was movement off to the right. He caught it from the corner of his eye; not a leaf swaying or a stray beam of moonlight through the trees. Something else.
A figure was moving through the bushes ten or fifteen yards away, but it wasn’t the leering ghost he’d expected a few minutes before. This was a man, very old, bent by the years till he leaned on a stick for support. His silvery white hair and beard and his pasty complexion made him look like a negative image against the pitch black of the woods. He wore dungarees and a tattered coat with the collar up, and stopped every few steps to catch his breath and lean heavily on his stick.
No ghosts, Del assured himself. Just some old hobo.
The old man went suddenly rigid, as if the boy’s thoughts had been spoken aloud. He turned and looked directly at Del and the boy froze.
His eyes . . .
There was something in that gaze, an intensity that couldn’t be readily identified or described. Fear. Or hatred.
Or madness.
The old man stared at the boy and his mouth moved as if he were trying to speak. Then he started to move crookedly through the brush toward him, forgoing the support of his stick, which he shifted to a two-hand carry.
Except it really wasn’t a stick at all. Now Del could see that he’d been leaning on a thick handle, and at the far end, by now caked with soil (and blood?) was the slim, funny-looking head of an ax.
The thermos and sleeping bag slipped from numb fingers and were forgotten. Del backpedaled, fell once, scrambled to his feet, and ran full out through the thicket.
Bart was just coming back to get him when they collided. He caught a meaty shoulder in the gut as the younger boy’s momentum spilled them over in a tangle of arms and legs and camping supplies. Bart wrestled his brother aside and immediately slipped his pack off and began sifting through its contents, muttering, “I’ll bet that mashed the sandwiches just surer’n shit. What the hell’s wrong with you, anyway?!”
“There’s a man!” Del whispered urgently, his voice shrill and choked with fright. “An old man, after me! Back there!”
Bart’s brow furrowed. He looked from his brother to the woods and back, and there wasn’t any doubt in his eyes. He set his jaw and slipped off his jacket and pulled the nunchaku from his belt. “Stay here,” he said as he stalked back into the darkened forest.
“Be careful, Bart.”
There was a long silence, save for the crickets. Del began to fidget and thought about going back after him but then leaves crunched underfoot, approaching, and a familiar red head peeked out of the shadows. Bart’s sticks were back in his belt and he was carrying Del’s discarded sleeping bag and thermos, unscrewing the latter to make sure the seal wasn’t broken. Del was incredulous. “Didn’t you see him?”
“Nope,” he answered, securing the thermos into his already bulging backpack. “Are you sure you saw something, Cap?”
“Yes, I saw something Cap,” the boy spat defensively. “It was an old man with a long beard, kinda bent over, and he carried this skinny, funny looking ax, and . . .”
He didn’t have to go on. At the mention of the ax his brother sighed and rolled his eyes behind closed lids just like Mom. “So it was old Danner chasing you through the woods,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Why did I let you come along? I should have my head examined.”
“I’ll go home now,” whispered the boy. “Let’s just call it off. Okay, Bart? Okay? I don’t like it out here.”
“Well, that’s just tough,” Bart snapped, waving a finger in his face. “You had your chance. Now get moving toward that house or I’ll kick your butt all the way there!” He threw the boy’s bag in his face, then shouldered his own pack and waited. Hesitantly Del moved out, slowly at first, but faster once he realized that at least he’d be leaving those damned woods behind. He waded into the hip deep grass of the
front lawn, and his brother followed close behind.
Even from the field they could see that Danner House was still in good shape despite the years, a mute testament to the construction materials and craftsmanship of the late nineteenth century. In the pale moonlight one could readily imagine the opulence this place must have enjoyed. It looked like some misplaced southern plantation house; two floors of red brick and elaborate wood trimming, a frontal parapet with four massive limestone columns, all elaborately carved on closer inspection. Unfortunately, a closer look showed the scars of time as well. The stone was splotched and discolored from years of acidic rainfall. Paint was peeling from the wood in large chips and showing termite infestation beneath. But the most insidious damage had been planned, for ghost stories had not deterred everyone. The mark of the vandal was emblazoned everywhere in red spray paint, on the columns and across the limestone porch and all along the facade. This was no urban artistry, just squiggles and serpents and crudely drawn pictures with grossly inaccurate anatomies. On one column, Perry loves Tracy was encased in a heart, while another declared, Ozzie Osbourne is king. Some imaginative soul had scrawled Helter Skelter on one of the large double doors, while the other read, Toby Morton is a fag and a half. There were more names written in paint and ink along the bleached stone and upon the flaking white of the doorjamb and trim, some even readable in the dim cast of the moon or with the help of the Mag-Lite, but neither Del nor Bart recognized any of them. Probably out-of-towners. Few Woodies ever came out here. The Danner legend was still viable locally, but that didn’t stop the inquisitive and the daring from as far off as Bedford and Seymour and even Bloomington. If anything, the stories attracted them. The Danner legend was a novelty, something to check out instead of cruising the square or bumming beer off someone’s older brother.
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