Evil Behind That Door (2 page)
But every now and then I remember to use my brain. It works a little different from most folks', and it makes people laugh, but it comes up with a good idea now and again. Okay, maybe not that gas-powered scarecrow or the robot feed dispenser, but inventors learn from each mistake. And somedayâ¦
Anyway, now I looked at the door and realized it pulled outward instead of pushing inward. With the crowbar's help, I levered it slowly open until I could stick the bar through the crack and give it a good yank. The door squawked open six inches. Cold dead air rushed out. Air that had been in there for probably thirty years. A couple more yanks and I had it open far enough to look in.
Inside it was dark as pitch. Silent as a grave. I shivered. I didn't want to think what was in there, lurking in the corner or coiled on the ground. Sometimes imagination is not a good thing. I shone the flashlight inside. I was surprised to see just a small empty room with a dirt floor, stone block walls and a low, sagging ceiling of rough lumber and beams.
I squeezed my way inside for a closer look. The walls were lined with shelves of mason jars. They were so dusty and black I barely recognized them. Mouse droppings and cobwebs covered everything. On the floor were some wooden bins half full of weird round things. I reached through the cobwebs to pick one up. It was hard and shriveled, like a black walnut shell. An apple? Potato? I sniffed but could smell no decay, no sweet ferment. Nothing but stale, musty air.
I squatted in the middle of the room, disappointed. No secret passage, no time capsule, no magic kingdom. Just a root cellar where Barry's mother stored her harvest crops. Long ago, when she still cared.
I flashed the beam into the corners one last time, hoping to see the outline of a secret door. Maybe I was being silly but something about this room felt spooky. In the bright light, I could see the walls were scratched and chipped, and the earth dug up. Like an animal had been trying to dig its way out.
I shook my head to get rid of that idea. When I jerked the light away, something pale caught its glare. Against the far wall, almost hidden behind the bins, was a bunch of brown sticks. I moved closer, hunching over because the ceiling was too low to stand. My flashlight played over the sticks. There were different sizes and shapes scattered about. In the middle something curved like a backbone. An animal? Small bits of cloth were spread underneath, as if the animal had built a nest. Trying to get warm? Trying to comfort itself ? I swallowed. In the silence of the room, my breath sounded loud.
I picked up a piece of thin cloth. Most of it fell apart in my hands but a scrap remained, dark and rotten but still showing a plaid pattern. I felt sorry for the little animal that had tried so hard to escape and, finally, to keep itself warm. I felt like I was disturbing its soul.
I was just about to lay the cloth back down when I saw something else lying behind the bin. It was round and smooth. Heart pounding, I picked it up and held it under the light. I recognized the shape right away. The lower jaw was gone and the eyehole on one side was cracked. But there was no doubt it was a skull.
Something had been trapped in here and had curled up to die.
I looked at the bits of cloth in my hand and then at the skull. It was larger than the skull of a groundhog. Larger even than that of a skunk or raccoon. It was about the size of the skull of a yearling lamb or a dog.
Or a small child.
I
wanted to drop the skull and get out of there as fast as I could, but I forced myself to slow down. Carefully I set the skull and cloth back where they had been. I pushed the door shut and shoved the spike back in. I couldn't do anything about the mess the crowbar had made of the door, but at least it wasn't obvious it had been opened. As long as you didn't look too hard. I was hoping Barry wouldn't look too hard.
My heart was pounding loud and fast. As emergency transportation, my dirt bike gets the job done, but it has its problems. It only starts at a dead run, and only if it feels like it. I prayed it would cooperate as I raced it down Barry's laneway. I kept one eye out for potholes and the other watching the turnoff ahead. I was afraid Barry would show up and ask questions before I could make my getaway. Lunch at the Lion's Head, even with a long liquid dessert added in, only takes so long.
But the road was empty. Once the engine sputtered to life, I leaped aboard and gunned it. I raced away from the Mitchells' farm as fast as the cranky old machine would go.
I've lived on my farm outside Lake Madrid all my life. But my mother broke all the family rules by getting pregnant and taking the secret of my father's identity to her grave. So I don't have a huge supply of friendly relatives. Normally that suits me just fine. I'm not so good at small talk or remembering birthdays or kissing babies. But when it comes to getting advice, I don't have a lot of choices. Only one, in fact.
I aimed my bike down the highway toward Aunt Penny's grocery store on the edge of town. Even when Mom was alive, Aunt Penny was the one with the answers. You had to put up with a lot of questions and tongue-lashings before she got to the answer, but usually it was worth it. You just had to brace yourself.
I have no idea how old Aunt Penny is. She's actually my mother's aunt, and she's had steel-gray hair and wrinkles as long as I can remember. Aunt Penny was the only one who tried to give my mother advice, till even she realized it was a waste of time.
From the front window of her corner store, she's like a soldier at the gates to town. Nothing gets by her, and if anyone knows the secrets of the Mitchell family, it's Aunt Penny. All the locals stop by her store. They might only buy a thing or two, but if it's news or gossip they want, the lineup at the cash is the place to get it. I had to wait while Aunt Penny talked to Gerry Ripley about spring flooding and to Nancy Weeks about Bud's latest chemo.
Finally the crowds cleared out and she turned her sights on me.
“Aren't you on a job?” she demanded. How she knew things like that is always a mystery. I guess since real jobs don't come my way all that often, they stick in her mind.
“Yeah. But⦔ I glanced around the shop. Quiet for once. I knew I'd better talk fast. “I was just wondering. The Mitchellsâdid they only have one kid?”
She gave me that look. The Aunt Penny what's-the-real-story look. I'm not really good at explaining myself, and that look never helps. I shrugged. “I mean it's a big house. Lot of bedrooms. I just wondered, you know, if there were other kids. Before Barry's time, maybe.”
I thought I'd covered up pretty well, but this time Aunt Penny gave me the eyebrow too.
“Why? Has Barry said something?”
I shook my head quickly. Then I had a stroke of genius.
“That's the thing. I thought I saw signs of another kid, but I don't want to upset him by asking. You know Barry.”
The frown disappeared. She sighed and leaned across the counter, like she was sharing a secret.
“Poor Pete and Connie have had more tragedy than any family should have a right to, and ending the way they didâ¦it's just so sad.” She bowed her head. “Sad, sad. There were supposed to be other children, Ricky. Connie wanted a whole house full. But the good Lord had other ideas.”
It wasn't often Aunt Penny brought up the good Lord. She figured if he was running things, he wasn't doing that good a job and she was better off doing it herself. But sometimes people are funny when it comes to life and death.
“What happened?”
“Started years ago, when Connie lost her first child. Girl, stillborn.” She stopped and looked at me. Like she was trying to decide how much to say. “Pete loved Connie, don't get me wrong. But it's no secret he was a drinker, even back then. I'm not saying he caused it. Might have been just the stress of all his yelling, but anyway, the birth was rough. Wrecked up Connie's insides so the doctors weren't sure she'd ever have another. Then along came two boys, Barry and his younger brother, I forget his name. Cute little boy, Connie's favorite. Blond like her, where Barry's burly and dark like his dad. Things were looking up. Connie was never strong, but in those years I remember she came out of herself.”
I was holding my breath, like it would stop the awful thought running through my head. There was no younger brother when Barry and I were at school. Aunt Penny looked sad. Ed Higgins from the bank came in. She didn't laugh at any of his jokes and waited for him to go before she sank back on her stool. She rubbed her arms as if they were sore.
“The little boy got leukemia. It came out of the blue. They took him to the hospital in the city and Connie stayed there with him for weeks. Pete had to be here with Barry, but it was hard on everyone. Back then there wasn't much you could do. I was surprised she ever came back. She was like a ghost. All they had left of him was a little copper urn.”
“How old was he?”
“I don't remember. Barry and you were in kindergarten, I remember that. She was never the same after that.”
Neither was Barry, I thought. Doors punched in, chairs thrown across classrooms. Fight after fight. By the time he got sent away, no kids were allowed to play with him.
T
he bell over the shop door rang and I turned just as two cops came in. Sergeant Hurley, the commander of the local unit, and behind him Constable Swan. My pulse spiked.
Hurley slapped me on the back. For some reason he was always trying to take me under his wing. Give me advice, like he was my father.
“Well, O'Toole, keeping out of trouble?”
Beneath her cap, Constable Swan's blue eyes twinkled at me. My face burned. Before I could untangle my words, Aunt Penny piped up.
“Ricky's working for Barry Mitchell. Fixing up the old place for sale.”
“Oh yeah?” Hurley said. His grin faded, and I saw a frown cross Swan's face.
“You guys still looking at him?” Aunt Penny asked.
Hurley hitched his pants over his gut. He wasn't a big guy, but he managed to look like a bear in his cop gear.
“Aunt Penny, you know I can't comment on an ongoing investigation. But yeah, we're sending the canine unit out there today, and until we know what happened to them⦔
Constable Swan was watching me. Her blue eyes were serious now. She wasn't from around here, so she didn't know all the local gossip, but she caught on fast. It would be so easy to blurt out that I'd found some bones. But the thought of Barry held me back. He'd be freaked out enough already with the police bringing dogs to nose around.
So I ducked my head and made for the door. I felt Swan's hand on my arm as I brushed past. Her voice was a whisper.
“Be careful, eh?”
I walked out of Aunt Penny's in a daze. My skin felt hot where Jessica Swan had touched it. She'd never in a million years be interested in a scrawny, dirt-poor handyman like me, but it was nice to know she worried. My mind spun as I tried to make sense of what I'd learned. Not just from the cops, but also from Aunt Penny about Barry's brother. I couldn't ask Barry about him. There were too many walls in that family, too many walls in his mind. I needed more answers before I could figure out what to think.
The Mitchell family was another that didn't put much stock in God. Sunday mornings Pete would still be at home sleeping it off, and I'd never seen Connie in town without him. But if she'd brought back an urn, it should be buried someplace.
I knew it wasn't in the cemetery where my mother was buried, because I knew every tombstone in the place. So I headed to the Protestant church in town, the old one down by the creek. It was a peaceful kind of place, if that's important to you.
In April the trees were still bare, but their branches were beginning to turn green. Some little blue flowers were already out and the grass was full of daffodils. At the bottom of the slope, the creek brimmed over its banks.
I searched the tombstones, looking at dates. Close to the church, the stones were over a hundred years old. Farther out near the parking lot, they were polished and new. Faded plastic flowers leaned against some of them. I hate walking in graveyards, imagining the dead bodies under my feet. When the cops took me to identify my mother, the car windshield had pretty much wiped out her face. But there was enough of her left that I can't forget.
I shivered. I was about to give up when I stumbled upon a bunch of small plaques down by the creek. They were spaced only a few feet apart, just big enough for an urn. As I pushed aside the wild rosebushes with my foot, I read the names. Familiar village namesâBud's father, Ripley's brother. Then a plain little stone on the ground.
Louie Mitchell, beloved son.
January 4, 1979âApril 20, 1982
Three years old, I thought. About the size of a yearling lamb.
I
lay awake half the night, imagining the sound of a little boy screaming in the dark.
By morning I'd decided I was never going back to the Mitchell house. I knew Aunt Penny would kill me for quitting a real job, but I didn't need the money that bad. Spring was here. Spring meant cottagers looking for handymen to fix their decks or leaky roofs, or to get rid of the mice that had moved in over the winter.
It also meant the snow had melted off all the stuff in my yard. Aunt Penny called it junk. I called it supplies. I'm an inventor. A broken lawn mower could have a new life as a winch or a scarecrow. Even a three-legged chair was good for something. I knew everyone in the village laughed, but what inventor hasn't had lean times before he made his big discovery?
It was a sunny day. I sat on my front porch with my dog and my coffee and wondered where to begin. I had six and a half cars and trucks sitting in the mud by the back barn and quite a few junked appliances too. That didn't count the fourteen lawn mowers in my back field. The snow hadn't done them any good. I needed another shed. That's what I'd do today.