Ask the Dark (17 page)

I don’t know how long it took. When I got to it, it was behind my back, and it was hell getting that nail on the rope, which was nylon cord and hard to cut.

I scraped at the nail, gouging at it, and it was hard goin’ ’cause that rope was so tight I couldn’t feel my hands. But I felt the strands breaking. I kept yanking, and after maybe five minutes, they were off.

My hands were blue’n cut to shreds and I had to rub’m together for a long while before I could get the cord off my legs. All the while I kept saying,
Come on, fucker, come on, fucker,
’cause it made me feel bold. And then I was on my feet, rope off me, and the tape off my mouth.

I was thinking how to get out when like from nowhere I look at the boy on the bed. There he was, on his back. Like I said, his hand was poking out of the blanket. Funny thing was, where most times a blanket rises up over your chest, on this boy, the blanket sunk low. I didn’t know what to make of that. And without thinking I went over and pulled it back.

I been sayin’ I was scared. Ain’t true. Whatever I’d felt earlier was nothing.

All I’m gonna say is the boy was dead. But what had been done to him I ain’t never seen before, even in a butcher shop.

I tossed the blanket back and turned away fast. I was shaking and mumbling, and in my head I was saying,
The window the window the window,
’cause there was that covered window about eight foot away. And looking at it I grabbed up a piece of that chair, and using the chair leg and the nylon cord, I busted down the wood on the window, which was nothing but a sheet of Masonite, the thick kind.

It took me another minute to bash out the glass. Then I bashed out the frame. And then I was out that window and sitting on the roof under an eave, looking down into Simon Hooper’s backyard.

But I didn’t go nowhere, just sat.

I was so beat to shit I was ’fraid to climb down. I knew I might fall. So I was sitting. And it was still light out there, looked about six or seven, sun was starting to go down, maybe, and I could see the woods far over the tops of the houses, and next door was Simon Hooper’s like I said, and everything was quiet. Breeze was blowing over me, and I heard birds.

What happened to that boy was the worst I’d ever seen, even worse than Tommy Evans, and that was bad enough. And even though my head was beat so bad I was dopey, I knew there was other boys in the house. Dead or alive, they was there.

And what could I do?

I could maybe climb down. Maybe get a neighbor or a cop. But they all knew me, knew me the same as Dryker did, and I couldn’t say if they’d believe me, even beat up like I was. None of’m liked me or trusted me one bit, ’cept maybe to steal what they got on their porches.

But anyway, that weren’t even it. What mattered most was the motherfucker.

Hodsworth, I mean.

’Cause he went out.

And when he came back and didn’t find me, and knew I’d seen the dead boy, who was the boy they later learned was from Georgia ’cause I ain’t never seen him before, well, when the motherfucker saw that, what would he do?

He’d kill’m all. That is, kill’m if they was still alive.

I felt scared now with what I was thinking, ’cause I was scared to go back in there and look for the boys, and I knew I couldn’t do it, didn’t have the heart, and I cried.

Then I turned around and got on my knees and pulled out a piece of wood from the window, piece of frame ’bout ten inches long, and stuck with broken glass caulked in tight that didn’t bust out when I’d hit it with the chair leg. Figured it might hold.

I knew the door inside was locked with a bolt so I had to pick another window that would let me into a different room. That was easy, just a slide over the roof. Before going I made the sign of the cross, while I was looking in at the dead boy.

Then I slid on over.

Window was locked, one of them swivel locks screwed to the top of the lower frame, in there behind the glass. So what I done was take that frame piece and poke out a little glass in front of that swivel lock, and it broke pretty clean and quiet.

Then I reached my fingers in, turned the swivel, raised the sash, and went inside.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Where I was weren’t a room but a stairway, and I was at the top on the landing looking down the stairs, which was narrow and had no carpet on’m and led steep down to a shut door. I held that piece of frame up and out, pointed like a dagger, sharp glass on it rising up sort’f like a fish fin, and I went down.

Door down there was unlocked and I swung it slow and even, but it still creaked. Every step I took cracked and echoed ’cause there weren’t no carpet and no furniture anywhere to muffle nothing. Every little sound seemed loud enough to shake the house, but I went on, so scared I was damn near falling on my face.

I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was just looking for boys, and didn’t know where they was. I moved real slow, bobbing my legs up and down, same as how my daddy used to walk coming home late from the bars. So with that frame piece raised high like a butcher knife, there I was creeping, my face all bumpy-blue and bloody, and I must’f looked crazy.

I went through halls and saw nothing, ’cept here and there a cardboard box of junk in an empty room or a chest of drawers with no drawers in it prob’ly drug in from an alley nearby, but nothing nowhere else. Food wrappers on the floor, and beer cans. I did see a mattress with no sheets and no blanket in one room, front room, prob’ly also drug from an alley. But there weren’t no lights inside, just what come in the windows in some of the rooms, and most of the windows was covered, so it was everywhere dark.

Then a new room come up I looked in, and in there was a box and I looked in it.

I saw vials.

Lots of’m, like maybe two/three hundred. Medicine vials, I mean, like Doc Shatze hands out, orange with white caps. It was all I found. But that made sense to me, ’cause I knew the motherfucker sold’m to the kids, so’s here’s his stash, I figured.

It felt like hours was going by and I was crazy scared and I was going on, knowing I was losing time. I heard sometimes a car outside come by slow and I froze waiting to hear it pull up but one never did, and I breathed again. And I started thinking I was wrong comin’ back in and there was no one in here, and it was like my ass started itchin’ and my legs got all trembly just wanting to run the hell out.

But then I stopped.

I thought of something.

I was down on the first floor then, I’d been all through the third and second.

What did Richie say?

The basement. The cellar. He’d worked on it. Shored up wherever leaks was with concrete, places water might get in, ’cause Miss Gurpy said she was ’fraid of floods. And he’d done it, so he said, till his gear all got took, including that bag of concrete we found at Miss Gurpy’s.

So that was it.

Down there.

If a boy was here, that had to be the place, ’cause it’d be all solid with concrete over everything, and like a prison.

I went back through a hall and into the kitchen, and there on the wall was a door. It had a big bolt, a slider. That’s all. No padlock, and nothing needing a key. But on it there was a key ring on a nail, and I figured it was prob’ly for doors down there, doors that needed keys. So I took it, the key ring. And then I pulled the slider and opened the door.

I ain’t gonna tell you ’bout the smell that come up ’cept to say you don’t want to smell it. That was the first thing I saw, I mean noticed. It was all dark down there, but here’s a thing. There was one of them utility lights hanging from the ceiling by a cord, hanging right there over the stairs, kind’f light with a plastic cage over the bulb, yellow plastic. So I unhooked it. Had to hop up to do that. And now I got it in my hand. I flicked it, and on it went. I put the frame piece under my arm, careful not to cut myself, and I held my nose. And taking the steps one at a time, went down slow.

Basement weren’t like upstairs, there was lots of stuff in it. Lots of boxes. A big table was there, old one, and another table upended on top’f it, and between the legs there was lots more boxes. I didn’t look’n the boxes. Some sawhorses was around too, I remember that. Against the wall, stone wall, all painted white and made’f big lumpy stones with mortar churning out’f’m, was a washer and a dryer still with the exhaust tube coming up out the back and fixed to a window. The window was painted white, or nailed over in white board, it was too dark to tell which. But I knew the washer and dryer was busted, ’cause the doors was gone on both of’m, and inside where the clothes go was full’f trash. Otherwise I seen the ceiling was covered with lots of rusty metal pipes for water and such, and there was posts made of the same lumpy stones holding up the ceiling, and I seen all this with that utility light I was holding, and the back door, too, which had boxes scattered near it on the floor, maybe ready to be took outside.

But none of that was what I wanted to find. I was looking for locks, and when I got to the back of the basement there was an old door made’f heavy planks and big heavy iron cross brackets fixed with rivets, and on it was three big padlocks, and I stopped. I didn’t want to move, and the smell was so bad there it made my eyes water.

I flashed the light on the locks and seen they was all bright silver and new, and they was all made by the same company. So I flashed the light on the key ring and found the three new keys with the same name.

This room I was looking at, it was where you might put your lawn tools, your mower and such. That’s what the room was.

I stood there another minute because I couldn’t open it up yet. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see that boy on the bed, or nothing like’m.

But when that minute was done I took the keys and one by one opened the locks and unhitched’m, and tossed’m down. Then I held my breath and swung the door wide and put the light in, and there was Jimmy Brest sitting a yard away, tied to a widow’s chair, staring at me.

He was alive.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I ain’t gonna tell you nothing about how he looked, or if he was wearing anything, or most’f what he said. If you wanna know so bad go ask’m yourself, or go read what the police made me tell’m. What I will say is when he first saw me he didn’t have no idea who I was, or how the hell I could be there, but when I told’m, and I had to tell’m six/seven times ’cause that’s where he was at, he started calling me names again.

Can you believe that fucking shit?

All he could manage was a mumble, and his mouth weren’t taped over ’cause he could yell his head off in there and not get heard. And mumbling like he did, his head lolling low and his chin on his chest, arms tied behind him, he was cussing me like I said.

At first I just thought he’d gone crazy, and I ignored him ’cept to say I had to cut the ropes. But then something came into my head and I understood. So I knelt right beside him and I put my mouth right up to his ear and I said, Jimmy, I ain’t with Hodsworth. You get me? I ain’t here for’m. You see my face, he beat me, too. I’m here to get you out, boy. So quit cussin’ me.

I had to say that maybe ten times. And when he finally got it he looked at me. And long as I live I will never forget the look he had. I’m standing here trying to tell you how it was, but I can’t. A human being don’t get that look. Sometimes a dog does. I mean a dog at the pound when it knows what’s coming, and if I ever see’t again I’ll die.

I told him I had something to cut the ropes with and I did, setting the light on the floor so it aimed up and using the glass best I could not to cut him, ’cause the rope was so tight his hands and feet was black and purple. When I got the ropes out, ’cause they was stuck in ’s skin, I had to rub his wrists and ankles a good five minutes afore he had feeling in’m.

All this time he ain’t saying nothing. His head hangs low and spit comes out his mouth, and he sort’f moans a little, but he can’t talk. And when I got the ropes off he don’t get up but just pitches forward real sudden on the floor. And then when I try to get him on his feet I gotta heft him on my shoulder ’cause he can’t stand up. That weren’t hard for me, ’cause I figured he weighed maybe thirty/forty pounds less than when I last seen’m, and was skinnier’n me now.

Jimmy, I says, you gotta help me. You gotta think.

I’m walking along here, his arm over my shoulder, and I left the light in the room ’cause I couldn’t carry it, and my frame piece too, ’cause I forgot it. So I couldn’t see that good ’cause the light was going away, blocked by all the junk on the tables. I wanted to get’m to the stairs, ’cause the back door looked too hard to get at with them boxes on the floor, ’specially in the dark.

We slogged along, and then I leaned over for balance. But when he looked up and saw the stairs he started yelling. I mean yelling, even though he had no strength to yell so it come out his mouth all busted, and he was looking up the stairway like it was hell and he tore his arms off me and grabbed the railings, and stood there froze.

Christ Almighty! You gotta quit it! I said, and I stuffed my hands over his mouth, and by getting my face right up in his, and staring at him without blinking, I got him to simmer down, though his eyes still was filled with terror. What it was he was afraid of upstairs I couldn’t say, but if it was anything like that boy I seen on the bed I understood why he wouldn’t go up.

I said, Okay, we ain’t going there. We gonna go out the back. But you be quiet, now. He ain’t here. But we can’t let’m hear us if he comes back. Now come with me.

It took maybe five more minutes to get’m to the back door because I was tired now and he fell twice and I had to pick’m up. I was dizzy, too, and sick from the air down there, and I was feeling afraid ’cause I was getting weak, too weak to move. Coming to the door I had to lean Jimmy against the wall so’s I could push aside the boxes scattered on the floor. And after I done that, I felt even worse, because I seen that door was locked from outside.

Not just locked, but had this thing on it I seen in hardware stores, a sort of slide lock made of steel bars, vault lock, that go all crost the door on gears and needs a special key.