Текст книги "A Feast of Flesh"

Автор книги: Aaron Polson

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 5 страниц)

When Ben caught up to him, he understood why. The man’s clothes hung about him in jagged tatters and loose strips, filthy with mud and spatters of something darker, likely dried blood. Tiny cuts criss-crossed his face, making a network of red lines like the burnt image of a net. He wore at least a week’s worth of beard, short and patchy, with plenty of smudges on his exposed skin. As he struggled, he let out a few raw grunts.

“Don’t just stand there—” His wild eyes circled to Barry and Ben. “I need some help, Goddamnit—”

Barry didn’t move. Ben took another step forward. The man’s mouth clenched in a half-grimace, half-smile as his arms seemed to be stuck below the surface of the prairie.

“Huh…” The man’s arms flopped to one side then dropped on the packed dirt of the trail. His eyes rolled into his head and closed.

Ben and Barry exchanged a look.

“Hey, buddy…are you okay?” Ben leaned forward, resting his left knee on the ground with the injured ankle behind him. From that distance, Ben received a face full of the stranger’s body odor, an ammonia stench which indicated he hadn’t washed in days.

“Unnnnh,” the man groaned. “Just lost my balance—fell into some of that devil grass.”

“We’ve got a car—”

The man’s arm shot out and snatched the hiking pole from Ben’s hand. Before Barry could move, the stranger knocked Ben to the ground and perched on his chest, holding the aluminum bar across Ben’s throat while his knees pinned Ben’s arms to the ground on the trail.

“Who the hell are you?” White, foamy spittle trailed out of the stranger’s mouth.

Barry stepped away with his hands in front, palms forward. “Hey—I don’t want any trouble.” Ben’s face swelled red like a steamed beet. He kicked his legs and tried to free his arms from under the stranger’s weight.

“Who the hell are you?” the man repeated.

Hoarse, choking sounds eked out of Ben’s mouth.

“Just a couple of hikers…checking out the trails…” Barry’s eyes darted between the stranger’s face and Ben’s. “You’re killing him.”

“Fucked.” The stranger leaned back, releasing the pressure from Ben’s throat. “You bastards are fucked, too.”

Now free, Ben rolled away, grasping at his neck. He coughed, and the color of his face gradually returned to normal. “What…the…hell…was…that about?” he rasped.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t be too careful.” He scratched his beard. “Out here.”

“Look man, we’re just tying to get back to the car, get Ben here some help.” Barry knelt next to Ben and helped his friend to his feet. “Sprained his ankle.”

“Huh. That’s how it got Andrea.”

“Who?” Ben asked, leaning on his knees as he panted for breath.

“My girlfriend. Six days ago.” The stranger stood, glancing to his left and right. “It got her ankle, then…she tried to cut across a open patch…get back to the car faster…” His chest shuddered and he covered his face with one hand. “God. God…it took her.”

“Took her?”

“The grass.” He reached out and grabbed the lose collar of Barry’s shirt and tugged him closer. “It devoured her. Smothered her.” The stranger looked at his hand, then Barry’s shirt and face, and released his grip. “The birds got what was left. Sorry…sorry…oh God. Do you have some water? I’m dying…”

Barry slipped off his pack and rummaged around until he found an aluminum bottle. He passed it to the stranger.

“What’s your name?” Ben asked.

“Nick. My name’s Nick. Andrea and I…we were just gone for an afternoon.” Nick tilted his head back and poured the water into his open mouth; droplets meandered through his stubble to the tip of his chin. He swallowed, and pulled back one shirtsleeve. “I know you think I’m nuts. I’d think I was fucking crazy, too, but look.” His voice shook as he extended his arm toward the others. Tiny scars marred his flesh, each puffed and pink.

“How’d you get all those cuts?”

Nick glared at Barry. “It’s hungry again.”

Ben shifted the hiking pole to his other hand, allowing his weight to shift. “We better get to the car.”

Nick wheeled, his eyes blazing. His tongue seeped out of his mouth, past chapped and peeling lips. “That’s just it, isn’t it? There is no more car. When are you—” He broke off, eyes open and alert. “Listen.”

The grass answered with a swish-swish.

“That sound?” Ben turned and looked behind him. “What is it?”

The waist high blades to the south bent toward them. The swishing grew louder. Closer.

“It’s coming again. For fuck’s sake, run!” Nick pushed Barry out of the way, and the big man tumbled into the grass toward the oncoming mystery, dropping his heavy pack next to the trail.

Ben lifted the pole in his fist, raising it above his head like a club despite the pain in his left ankle. The action was instinctual, without thought. He limped toward the matted grass where Barry went down. Barry howled and groaned. Green-gold stems folded across his body.

“Barry?”

Barry shot up, shaking like a seizure, with fresh wounds oozing on his face and one arm. He roared and flung his arms. The grass waved in the distance, a game of pantomime working against the breeze. “Jesus,” he cried. “It fucking cut me. Bit me.” He stumbled backward, found the path, and turned to follow Nick’s flight up the hill toward the highway.

Pole held aloft, Ben watched in disbelief as the stand of Switch Grass near the path stretched toward him. Barry’s staggering footfalls sounded up the hill, but the sound of whispering blades swallowed the world. The grass moved. Swish-swish. Its roots wove into the dark soil of the trail. The sun caught a glint from the aluminum pole as Ben swung like a reaper with a scythe, striking at the advancing blades. The pole whooshed through the grass, but still the roots crept toward him.

Ben turned and started toward the hill, staggering as well as he could against the incline. Ahead, Barry and Nick squatted near a rocky outcropping, both facing away from the trail.

“What the hell was that—what’s going on?” Ben felt the fear in his stomach, cold and heavy.

“The grass. It’s alive,” Nick muttered. “And hungry.”

Ben rubbed his face with his free hand. “Bullshit…grass doesn’t eat people.” He said it aloud as much to cool his own fear as he did because he believed it to be true.

“God, Ben. What got me?” Barry’s face was ashen, drawn. He lifted his right arm, blood oozing from fresh wounds, and pointed toward in the direction of the road, only there wasn’t a road. “Something fucking cut me. And…and we’re lost.”

Nick coughed and spat a dark mix of blood and mucus on the ground. “You aren’t lost…you’re trapped.”

Ben shook his head. “Bullshit. Barry, try your phone again.”

A moment passed in which none of the men moved. The air sagged around them, humid and thick, the sun waiting directly overhead. Barry slowly pushed his hand into a pocket and fished out the phone. He flipped it open.

“Nothing. Still nothing.”

“It’ll come back, you know.” Nick nodded in the direction they’d fled. “It will keep coming until we’re all dead.”

Ben turned and started down the opposite slope. He did so without a word, without warning, with only the broken rhythm of his shuffling gait in his ears. There was something in the valley below, something dark, shaped like a car, obscured by a mound of grass.

“Wait!”

Ben stopped and turned to see Barry waving his arms above his head.

Barry cupped his hand to the side of his mouth. “I’ll come with you. I have to grab my pack. I dropped it. I’ll run. Make it quick.” His voice trembled as he spoke. He vanished over the crest of the hill. Nick melted into a black lump at the top of the ridge.

“Jesus, Barry,” Ben muttered, and forced himself back toward the rocks. Clouds, fluffy like stretched bits of poly-fill from a torn teddy bear, encroached on the western horizon. Ben allowed his eyes to circle the rim of the sky in all directions. Nothing but hills, grass, and the distant dark blot of a cluster of trees. He pulled in a breath of hot air. Barry was below, jogging down the slope along the path.

“You coming with me, too?” Ben asked Nick.

“Strength in numbers?”

Ben shook his head. “No, to get out of here.”

“I told you, man. There isn’t any ‘getting out’. It’s a trap.”

The word trap resonated in Ben’s ears as he watched the scene unfold in the valley below. A breeze sent the waves rippling from the southwest, but a large cluster of prairie grass—defied the wind. Ben’s throat tightened.

“It’s coming for him…the tops of the hills are the safest bet…too rocky up here for it to have a good foothold.”

As they watched, the grass swallowed the trail. Barry shouted, his words muffled and indistinct. Lithe shadows crossed overhead, swooping down toward the path.

“Vultures…” Ben clenched the hiking pole and shifted his weight to climb down the hill.

Nick’s hand wrapped Ben’s left arm. “Don’t. He’s done. They always stay near the grass…the thicker grass down below. They know how to get an easy meal.” Another howl of pain echoed from below.

Ben wheeled on Nick, striking him with the pole across the left shoulder. He swung a second time, this blow cracking against ribs after Nick raised his hand in defense.

“Shit…uhff.” Nick tumbled backwards, landing on his bottom.

“That’s my God-damned friend down there.”

“He’s…dead,” Nick panted. “That’s how it got Andrea…”

Ben drew the pole back a third time, but hesitated. “But you were down there when we found you—you were fighting. You got out.” The pole lowered.

Nick’s head shook back and forth. “I…don’t know how... the grass is a monster.” He sank to all fours. “Too late for us all…only a matter of time.” His chest began to heave, laughs and sobs coming together. “You’ll either starve or…”

With the pole still clenched in one fist, Ben turned. He took a tentative, limping step down the slope toward his friend, but his friend was gone. The trail was empty. The grass waved in the wind, long, sweeping ripples like waves cresting across the ocean. “Barry?” He leaned his weight on the pole and cupped a hand to his mouth. “Barry!”

The vultures flapped their great dark wings and alighted near the path.

“Jesus…”

Nick, still on his hands and knees behind Ben, coughed. “You…and me…trapped. It likes to toy with you…fuck with you.”

Turning away from the trail, Ben limped past the prostrate man and started down the other side. “I saw a car earlier. In the distance. I think it was a car. It couldn’t be ours, but…” He staggered down the slope, pain still radiating from the ruined ankle. His head throbbed, his eyes blurred with tears, his mouth dry and hot in the sun. Nick cried out, but Ben was deaf, focused, driven despite the burning pain.

As he approached the meter-high Bluestem, Ben slowed. He glanced back toward the top of the hill. No sign of Nick. His eyes circled around front again, eyes that must have lied. There, nearly buried in the thick grass, was a car. A silver Honda—just like Barry’s, but wrong. The front windshield spider-webbed from several punctures and scratches marred the paint.

He ignored the pain, and half-ran in a limping, ungainly fashion, closing the distance to the car, sure to stay on what path was left. Nick’s warning, trapped, echoed in his head. He peered into the window, found his cell phone lying on the console, snapped in two. The steering wheel was pulled from the column, wires hanging loose like a disemboweled pig. Dirt and glass fragments littered the seats and dash.

“Fuck,” he pounded a fist against the door with a hollow thunk. The impact shot through his arm. “Barry’s car…it’s Barry’s car…” His mutterings faded past a whisper as the grass rattled in the distance. It was coming, heading toward him, bringing blades like sharp, biting teeth. The roots scratched a foothold on the open path. He tightened his grip on the metal pole and pressed his back against the car.

Trapped.

Bona Fide King of His Realm

Uncle Rego is a giant earthworm. I’ve known for a little while, even though most of the family might think I’m bona fide crazy if I said anything about it. It’s not just the clammy touch of his skin, or the color, or the way his breath always smells like the nice, black dirt they put in Styrofoam cups for the night crawlers down at Jenkin’s Bait and Tackle. No, I’ve seen the pictures that prove Uncle Rego’s an earthworm, and what happened to my aunt is only what some folks might call “icing on the cake.”

I don’t know much about icing, but those pictures do a nice job of putting the chill on my spine. I’ve got them tucked away in the old Converse box under my bed for later. I made the mistake of talking about Uncle Rego to Pa once, and he gave me the back of his hand. Hell of a lot harder than his palm, even with the calluses. When I tell one of my folks about Aunt Tessie, it won’t be Pa.

I figure Mama listens pretty good most of the time.

See, Rego is Mama’s brother—her only kin left on that level since Uncle Garth got killed under his motorcycle last October. Mama doesn’t talk about her childhood often, but when she does, I see the pale-as-potato-grub look on her face at the suggestion of Rego.

“Rather not mention that son-of-a-bitch,” she’ll say, or, “I don’t talk about that dirty bastard.” Once, when she and Pa were having one of their “heated debates”, he said something I didn’t quite understand about Mama and Rego doing “unnatural” things. Mama cried and cried and put that debate fire right out with her tears. When they were cooled off, Mama explained that she was just a little girl and Rego was so strong and he’d gotten into Grandad’s whiskey and she ran off to the river that night with a bar of Ivory Soap and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin glowed like mercury and even bled in a couple places. At least I remember she said something about blood.

Sometimes I try to shut off my ears because I don’t really want a piece of what they’re talking about.

Still, if I’m going to tell anyone the truth about Uncle Rego and Aunt Tessie, it’ll be Mama. Besides, she’s the one who sent me across town to Uncle Rego and Aunt Tessie’s trailer that afternoon.

I rode my bike because that’s what I always do, and sure enough, I nosed the awful dirt smell when I got there. Rego didn’t have his disguise on at all. I could see the pale-brown slickness of his naked earthworm skin through a window. And, being curious like I am, I made my way right to the sill and peeked in.

Like I mentioned about those photos—ice all over my spine. Felt like I might vomit, too. There he was, curled up on that bed of theirs, pinkish-tan and slimy, and Aunt Tessie reduced to a pile of dirt. Her undergarments poked out of the black-brown lump, so I knew it had to be her. What was left of her. No lesson from biology class will ever stick as well as the one about earthworms and what Mr. Block calls “the ecosystem.” Used to make me kind of sad, thinking about my old dog Max and how the worms must have had at him when he died. Now, I just feel like I want to throw up—either that or get the biggest spade I can and slice old Rego in half and watch him squirm until he dies.

But I don’t have that much courage. Not to face a big, king-of-the-realm worm like that.

Of course, Aunt Tessie just turned up missing. Uncle Rego put on his human skin again and called the police, moaning and bitching about his wife, then getting all frightened like he feared he’d never see her again. Lies and deceit, like Grandma Shoemaker used to say. Lies and deceit.

If—when—I get around to telling Mama, I’m going to dig out those old photos, especially the one from when she’s a little girl and Uncle Rego’s touching her shoulder. I’d swear on Max’s grave, it’s not a hand at all, but his earthworm tail poking through. Mama must’ve known it, too, by the awful, sour-milk look on her black and white face.

Down There

We’d been talking about basements. Joking really, telling silly stories about how basements were the focus of so much childhood trauma and fodder for hackneyed horror stories. Travis, Jerry, and I sat with Heather in her tiny rented house, our heads clouded with a few rounds of microbrew after parent-teacher conferences. Outside, the October wind knocked against the siding and kicked dead leaves down the street.

“The truth is, nothing scary ever came out of a basement. Except for a little mold. Or a couple rats, and that’s only if you’re a massive chickenshit,” Travis said. He was the prototypical history teacher/football coach hybrid whose body hinted a fit childhood but now carried a sizable gut. “It’s you artsy-fartsy types—all that Poe shit Aaron makes the kids read.”

“Poe practically invented the short horror story,” I said.

“So high school kids have to read that shit?”

“At least they willread it.”

Jerry leaned forward, his lean body somewhat angular and awkward. “Look, basements are creepy, one way or the other. You don’t have to believe in ghosts to get a little spooked. Many ancient civilizations respected the underworld—something I thought a fellow history teacher could appreciate. People have always had a healthy fear of what lies beneath.”

“Yeah, ‘The dead reign there alone,’” I said.

“What was that?” Heather asked.

“From ‘Thanatopsis’,” I said. “A poem by William Cullen Bryant. ‘Thanatopsis’…a way of seeing the dead.”

“You’re a morbid fucker,” Travis said. “Too many scary stories for you.”

Jerry paced to the other side of the room, pulling his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. He stopped, and looked at the doorway to Heather’s kitchen. “When I was a kid—”

“Let me guess: you wet the bed?” Travis snickered.

“No. I was just thinking about the crawlspace under the house. Unfinished crawlspace. Like a pit of dirt. My mother always threatened to make us go down there when the tornado sirens went off. She never did, though.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Spiders. Cobwebs. She was scared of them.”

“I’d take a few spiders over a tornado,” Travis said. “Part of living in Kansas, my friends.”

Heather worked Jerry over with her dark brown eyes. “I’ve got a crawlspace under this place. I don’t go down there.”

Travis climbed out of his chair. “What are we waiting for? You up for it Jerry? Mr. Underworld?”

“I don’t go down there.” Heather’s tone dropped into the room like a stone in deep water.

A moment passed, thick and suddenly uncomfortable. We were all tired. I looked at the paintings on the walls of the tiny living room, canvases stretched over twisted, strange frames, organic shapes with large curves, paintings in three dimensions. Bright abstractions covered each canvas. They were Heather’s work she’d done while in school, and I found something feminine in her paintings, plump but shapely, just like her body. Something full of life and thoroughly out of place in any discussion of death. She was young, mid twenties at most, and had lived in the same house in college. She’d taught with us for only three years, and this was her first job. I don’t know why I looked at the paintings. I don’t know why I tried not to think about the basement. The beer swirled my thoughts in a tired jumble and stirred the quiet attraction I felt for her into something a little more sinister until Jerry interrupted.

“Okay. Fine, I’ll check it out.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’ll go,” he said in a clear, bold voice.

“It’s in the back, a little trapdoor just inside the rear entry.”

Travis chuckled. I threw a pillow at him.

We followed Jerry through the kitchen and bathroom and into the alcove inside the back door. Heather’s coats hung from a makeshift rack, and she brushed these aside. A rectangular line broke the hardwood floor, and, at the near end, a slot had been cut through for a handle. The wooden floor creaked throughout the house, uneven and worn in the kitchen and living room. But the area around the door in the floor was in great condition.

“I don’t go down there,” Heather said again.

“Yeah. Yeah, we know.” Travis raised his beer. “Bon voyage, Jerry.”

Jerry knelt, pulled up the door, and averted his face, eyes pinched shut, as he did so. “A little stale down there. How deep? Is there a ladder or stairs?”

Heather handed him a flashlight. “A few stairs. It can’t be deep, but I’ve never gone down.”

Travis stifled a laugh.

“Of course.” Jerry nodded. He took the light, clicked the switch, and frowned. A few good slaps with the palm of his hand, and the bulb flickered to life. He pointed the yellow beam downward. “Here goes nothing.”

I’d begun to sober and felt a nagging urge to move, to get out of the cramped hallway. Restless. Uneasy. I was tired, too. I looked at Heather, lost for a minute imagining the line of her neck as it traced toward her chest and her round breasts. These weren’t thoughts I wanted to have about a colleague, but as we stood close in the darkness waiting for Jerry’s little expedition—his ridiculous, childish trip into the dark—these were the thoughts which circled my brain. The whole event seemed suddenly so silly. So juvenile.

The flashlight winked out just then, and Jerry cried out.

“What is it?” I leaned over, squinting into the opening.

“Nothing. Nothing really. Just hit my head.”

A sound of scuffling and patting packed earth came from the crawl space. As I knelt closer to the hole, I noticed how foul the air was, sour and stale and whispering of cobwebs and dirt and mold. I had the sudden urge to vomit. The yellow light blinked and came back, and I staggered to my feet.

I held out a hand and helped hoist him the last few steps. Jerry’s head was wet with blood when he emerged from the basement. His hands were filthy with dirt, with plenty of dark soil packed under his fingernails. I only noticed because I held his wrist, and once he was on steady ground he pulled away.

“I need to clean this cut,” he said.

“Shit, Jerry. What the hell happened?” Travis asked.

Jerry shook his head. “Dunno. Hit a pipe, I guess. I stood up pretty fast.”

He washed his wound, a tiny scratch of about an inch long, but it bled a good deal as head wounds will. The sight of blood, no matter how innocuous, killed the mood, and saying our goodbyes to Heather, I helped Jerry to my car and drove him home. Travis stumbled to his own car, humming the school fight song in a drunken warble. When I pulled in front of Jerry’s place, a wood frame house with limestone foundation like many other older houses in Lawrence, he looked at me, and I suppose I should have seen something in his eyes. It’s no use blaming myself, I suppose, but now, knowing what happened, I feel uneasy about it. Like I should have known. Like I should have asked him to stay with me that night.

“There was a mound down there…like something’s buried,” he said.

“Down there? Heather’s basement?”

“Yes. Buried,” he said.

I glanced at his hands. A little dirt clung under his fingernails even though he washed them while tending his head wound. “Buried?”

“I dunno. I think—I think Heather’s place survived the raid. Quantrill’s raid during the Civil War.” His shoulders rose and fell. A sigh slipped out of his mouth and he nodded, waving a hand toward his house. “Kind of like this old relic I rent. My penchant for history runs deep.” He pulled at his lip for a moment. “Look…I have something I want you to have. Wait here.”

“Sure.” I drummed my thumbs against the steering wheel as he vanished into his house. The purr of the car’s engine nearly lulled me to sleep, and he had to tap the window to get my attention.

“Here,” he said, holding out a black folder, a faux leather portfolio. “It’s some stuff I want to keep safe.”

I took the folder.

“Have a good night, all right? Thanks for the ride and everything.”

“Call me tomorrow,” I said.

He waved and slammed the door.

I woke around three that night. Cotton filled my mouth, at the awful, dehydrated feeling I’d never gotten used to after a night of drinking. I shuffled through the apartment, poured a glass from the kitchen tap, and drank a full twelve ounces. Then I looked at my fingernails. An image of Jerry’s dirty hands flitted through my brain, enough to cause a chill and keep me up surfing late night television for another thirty minutes. I settled on a segment of The Longest Day, the bit where French resistance fighters take on the Germans from a bombed-out nunnery. It’s funny to recall the details, to go through the paces in my memory. I imagined Jerry’s death happened somewhere right around three, when I woke. The coroner couldn’t pinpoint as much, of course, but placed Jerry’s final breath in the vague, no-man’s land after one and before dawn. Jerry had left one cryptic text shortly after I dropped him off.

they want to be whole

Nothing more.

But I didn’t find out until Monday. None of us did. Jerry didn’t show for school. The secretary called. The principal called. No answer from anyone. He hadn’t phoned on Saturday, the day after our drinking binge at Heather’s, but we were adults. The police had to force his door because his landlord was on vacation.

At the end of the week, Travis and I drove to Chapman, Jerry’s hometown. It was a two gas station town, maybe two thousand residents, and the total included about three hundred spares from the local cemetery. I felt a chill as we drove by the cold, grey stones. The dead reign there alone. Jerry’s mother still lived in Chapman and insisted on burying him nearby. Travis came because Jerry was in his department; Jerry’s mother asked me to be a pall bearer because I was Jerry’s closest friend on the faculty.

Grey clouds clotted the sky during the service, but the rain held off. After the funeral, after the brief but intimate graveside service, after we put my colleague and friend in the earth, we shared bland potluck fare in the nearby church basement with Jerry’s extended family.

His mother approached me, clasped my arm, and said, “Thank you, Aaron. Jerry always spoke fondly of your friendship. He has a few things at the house…I thought you might like to have. He told me once you both collected old LPs.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Please stop by, after the dinner.”

Jerry’s childhood home rested at the end of a quiet street in a quiet town, another ranch style house with half brick façade in the front, but with one distinction which marked it different. The house was recessed, with the first floor sitting two or three feet below ground level. I didn’t notice when we came to the front door, but realized as we descended a small staircase to the left. Jerry’s mother led me to his room while Travis phoned an assistant coach.

A small collection of LPs, most in near mint condition and some still in plastic cellophane, lay arranged on the bed in Jerry’s room. A series of posters lined the wall, bands and movies popular fifteen years ago, and I suspected the room hadn’t seen much redecorating since Jerry had been in high school.

“Feel free to take anything you want.” She hesitated at the door, her blue eyes misting with tears. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me. I’m…well, I’m tired.”

I pulled a few albums from the assortment, including Neil Young’s Harvestand an older, rather rare copy of Kind of Bluemastered in stereo, and was just about to return downstairs when I noticed a small bookcase. As a lover of books, I couldn’t help perusing Jerry’s old collection, even though it was mostly what one would expect—Twain, Bradbury, Dickens, standard high school fare—but I found a black, three-ring binder which reminded me of the folder he’d given me on the night he died. I laid it on his desk, opened it, and found pages of clippings from newspaper articles, some photocopies, and a few glossy magazine cuttings. None of the material was about Jerry, or even from the local paper. Jerry had collected articles about strange archeological findings, especially burial sites, around the world, and he’d filled the margins with scribbled notes. I surmised his love for history started early, and made nothing else of it at the time.

Travis called up the stairs as I was engrossed in a piece about funerary mounds on an island south of Sumatra. I glanced at the stack of LPs I’d collected, buried the folder inside the pile, and left Jerry’s room with my contraband in hand. We said our goodbyes to his mother, but I stopped before climbing into Travis’s car.

“Mrs. Larson?”

“Yes?”

“I notice your house is sort of recessed. Do you have a basement?”

She scratched the side of her face. “Well…we have a crawl space. Just dirt and enough room to crouch down.”

“Can I see it?”

“What the hell are you doing?” Travis whispered.

“It would mean a lot. Jerry talked about it—he said I should take a look if I ever had the chance. Said it was like something out of one of the stories I teach the kids at school.”

She nodded, slowly. “I…I suppose so.”

The trip under Jerry’s childhood home lasted all of two minutes—dust and the overwhelming staleness of the air kept me from deeper investigation. At the time, I wasn’t sure what possessed me or what I was looking for, exactly. Perhaps a mound of dirt, like Jerry described under Heather’s place. A burial mound, maybe, thinking of the folder I’d taken almost unconsciously from his bedroom. I found nothing, but didn’t stay long enough for a thorough investigation. The air was heavy down there, heavy and thick as though it was alive.

The dead reign there alone.

Riding home, I ruminated a little on Jerry’s odd collection of article clippings, and started to feel more uncomfortable about his death. Not just sad. Uneasy. Healthy thirty-year-olds just don’t die.

The uneasiness began to eat away at the edges of my consciousness, to nibble on my imagination, even at school, over the next few days. For the first time, I opened the folder he’d given me the night he died and found more article clippings, similar to the folder I’d taken from his house, but the articles were more recent, some printed from the internet. At night, I found myself poring over Jerry’s scrapbooks, searching, I suppose for an answer to a question I didn’t know. Several long gone civilizations, a veritable who’s who of buried cities—Çatal Hüyük, Skara Brae, Copan, Chichen Itza—with references to human sacrifices, rituals in which victim’s bodies were mutilated and eviscerated, entrails offered to the gods. Jerry left notes about how each civilization disposed of their dead. The ancient residents of Çatal Hüyük left their loved ones on the roofs of their homes until the vultures pecked away the flesh, and then they buried the bones under their floors. Mass pits of suspected human sacrifices were found in China…Italy…elsewhere. This was the stuff of nightmares, dark speculations of ancient religions. From the article dates in the folder I found in his room, Jerry had been collecting them since he was nine or ten years old.