Hide and Seek (3 page)

All they did see was an old, ramshackle two-story house on Winslow Homer Avenue-a tiny dirt road on the outskirts of town that ran all the way back to the sea. It sat on a three-acre plot of land, the front yard and the forest beyond long since combined and climbing the broken stairs to the gray, weathered front door. Vines and creepers everywhere. Out back, a narrow slip of land sloped to the edge of a cliff, below which was the ocean.

Never once did I see them as a boy. Ben and Mary Crouch had disappeared into the dank interior of that house long before my time. I heard rumors, though. We all did. Talk among our parents that led us to think there was something "not right" about Ben and Mary. Beyond that good parents wouldn't go, not with the kids around. But

it was enough. Because later there were more rumors, which we ourselves created.

How they ate children and lived inside huge cocoons spun from the flesh of babies. How they were really living corpses, vampires, witches, zombies.

The usual thing.

Once, when I was ten, three of us got up the nerve to run around to the back of the house and peer into their garbage.

They lived completely out of cans.

There was not a piece of paper wrap or frozen-food box or ash red of lettuce anywhere. Just cans. Canned fruit, canned peas, carrots, onions. Canned meats and tuna from S. S. Pierce. And every can had been wiped or washed so that it was spotless. I can't tell you why that odd bit of cleanliness upset us so. But it did.

There was dog food-also canned-and lots of it. We counted five separate bagfuls.

Everybody knew they kept dogs, though how many dogs was a matter of conjecture. But it wasn't just two or three. The place had an unmistakably doggy smell to it. The stink of unwashed fur and dog shit. You could smell it yards away. But there were no neighbors around to complain. Not for miles. Just a forest of scrub pine and brambles out of which the house seemed to rise as though out of a tangled green cloud, moving densely back to the sea.

We looked into the garbage and peeked through the basement window. It was much too dark to see in there. But Jimmy Beard swore he saw something sway and move in the darkness.

We did not argue. We ran. As though the stories we'd made up were true. As though hell itself could come pouring out of there.

And I can feel my hackles rise as I write this, remembering how it felt that day.

Because maybe, in a way, we were right.

Here's what made the papers:

I was thirteen I think when the police came and opened up the place.

It was a delivery boy from Harmon's who had called them after a month went by with all the cans piling up unopened, untouched, on the porch and no slip in the mailbox with his payment.

,

the delivery boy, and one of the cops came very close to losing his hand. Because behind the door there were twenty-three dogs. And all of them were starving.

They sealed the house up again and called in troops. The next day half the town was out there, me and Rafferty included. It was quite as how Six policemen and Jack Gardener, the sad old drunk who was our dog warden, and six or seven guys in white lab jackets from the ASPCA in Machias dumping whole sackfuls of dog food into the house through a punched-in hole in the front kitchen window, then settling back, waiting, while the snapping sounds and the growling and howling and eating sounds wore away at everybody's nerves.

Then when it was quiet again they moved in with nets and stun-pistols.

And I had my first look inside the place.

I couldn't see how they'd lived there. Once the house had been somebody's pride. I remember being told it was a hundred years old or more. There were hand-hewn beams in the ceiling, and the wood on the doors and moldings where it wasn't stained and smeared with god knows what was still good high-quality cedar and oak. But the rest was incredible. Filthy. Foul. Floors caked with dog shit, reeking of urine. Old newspapers stacked everywhere, almost reaching the ceiling in some places, damp and yellow. A couch and an overstuffed chair torn to shreds, pieces of them scattered everywhere. The refrigerator door hung open, empty. Cabinets and doors were chewed and clawed to splinters.

A few of us kids stood at the front door, making twisted faces at the stink. We watched them as they brought out the dogs one by one and locked them into the ASPCA van. Many had to be carried out, they were so weak. And all. of them were pretty docile after the feeding. I wondered if they'd dropped some drugs in there too. I remember a lot of them looked sort of bewildered, dazed. They were pathetically thin.

I stopped looking when they found the bodies.

There were four of them. One was just a puppy. One was a Doberman.

The other two had been medium-sized mutts.

Obviously the other dogs had eaten them.

pretty angry. He pulled me into the car and then just sat torting, shaking his head, his face getting redder and redder. I knew he wanted to hit me, and I knew how hard it was for him not to.

1 guessed I'd disappointed him again.

So I told them all this over two rounds of egg creams. I had them wide-eyed.

"Ben and Mary they never found, by the way."

"Never?" Steven had this habit of pointing his index finger at you when he asked a question as though he were accusing you of lying. He would also dip his head a little and look at you up from under those dark eyebrows. I think he was practicing for the law. It was very astute-looking.

"Never. We got some clues, though, about a week later. At least you could figure why they'd disappeared. All of a sudden the big word around town was that the bank had evicted them the month before for nonpayment of their mortgage. So it looked like they just ignored the notices for a while, and then, when Ben Murphy went out there to tell them face-to-face that they'd have to leave, they just listened and nodded and then when he was gone, they just cleared out."

"Awful thing to do to all those dogs, though." Kimberley slurped the bottom of her glass through the long striped straw. "So cruel. How could you care for all those animals and then be so rotten to them?"

"People do it all the time," said Steven.

Casey leaned toward me. "Did they look for them? Ben and whatsername, Mary, I mean?"

"Sure they did. I don't know how hard, though. The eviction business seemed to explain things well enough, so I don't know how hard anybody worried about it, really.

"About the dogs, though. See, there was a lot of talk after that. My mom and dad, for one thing, were a lot more free about discussing it in front of me. And I remember being shocked at the time to hear a friend of my mother's say that Ben and Mary were brother and sister, and only in their thirties. We'd always pictured them as

withered ancients, you know and married. The evil old man and his witchy wife. Not so.

"But here's the important part. They'd been raised, b< them, in the bughouse. Literally. At Augusta Mental. Till they w< in their teens.

The schizo son and daughter of a crazy Boston combat-zone stripper, alky too I guess. So you have to wonder what kind of shape they were in to worry about a pack of dogs, you know

"Geez."

"Good story," said Casey.

And it was. Good enough, certainly, to wile away an hour o\ sodas at Harmon's. But it still left us with nothing to do. Workt had stripped the Crouch place and refinished it, and for a coupl< years a retired doctor and his wife had lived there, civilize presumably, tamed it. So that now, even though the old man was longer there and the house lay empty, it was just another house the woods. Nothing you'd want to visit.

It had amused us, though, back then when we were kids, the next few years Dead River had its very own haunted hoi Somewhere to go to scare yourself on Halloween. That was befc the doctor came in.

Teenage folklore being what it is, our stories about Ben and Mary

They were really dead, for one thing. Their ghosts had frightened workmen cleaning up the basement. They could be heard calling dogs on foggy, rainy nights. Some of these yarns I started myself, before I outgrew them.

My favorite turned on the disappearance itself.

According to this one the eviction never happened. The truth was that the dogs had turned on Ben and Mary and eaten them. Every scrap.

Bones and all. I liked that story. I think Rafferty made it up. I kept remembering all those lost, dazed eyes.

I thought the dogs deserved their revenge.

I think I told them about Ben and Mary two or three days after we met, no more. By then Casey and I were thinking about becoming lovers.

That first afternoon in the bar I had all I could do to keep small talk running and keep my hands off her. I'm not stupid. There are girls you push and girls you don't. And there are some who only want you if they can see no particular need in you, who want to know you're calm enough and tough enough to live with or without them. Girls like Casey want calm and confidence. You did not have to be a genius to see that rushing her would mean a long walk home alone.

So I sat on my hands and tried to keep it nice and easy, willing but not eager. I walked home alone anyway.

I was coming back from the diner on the corner that same night when I saw them drive by in the white Chevy. All three of them waved at me, laughing. But the car didn't stop.

I figured that was that.

The conversation in the bar had been innocuous, probably too innocuous, and now I was the local horse's ass.

Not so.

They stopped by the lumberyard at lunchtime the next day.

around for another set of chocks, I damn near took her head off with the lift blades. If the manager had seen her there that close to me I'd have lostthejobthen and there, (turned thethingoff and climbed off it.

"They fire you for disemboweling a customer."

"What customer? I'm your cousin from New Paltz. Your aunt my mother-is over at the house and probably she's dying. Her last wish is to see her sister and her favorite nephew. You've got the day off. It's all fixed. I didn't even have to ask for it."

"Huh?"

"He said I could tell you just to go home for the day."

"You assume a lot, you know that?"

"Sure I do. You mad at me?"

The way she asked me, it was a serious question, nothing coy about it.

If I thought she'd gone too far, then she wanted to know. I liked that. Even though I had the feeling that my answer was not going to make or break her afternoon either way.

"I'm not mad. It's too hot for this stuff anyway. Let's go."

We walked through the store and I said thanks to Mr. McGregor, and I was glad he was with a customer just then, because I could see Kim and Steven right out front sitting in the Chevy, waiting for us with the top down. A suspicious-looking bunch of New Paltz cousins.

"Clan Thomas, Steven Lynch and Kimberley Palmer."

"Kimberley."

She wiped her hand on her shorts, a nervous, birdlike movement. Then she held it out to me and I took it. It was tiny and delicate, and very smooth and dry.

Steven smiled at me and nodded and gave me a slightly too-firm handshake. We got into the car. It was a tight squeeze. I glanced back over my shoulder at Mr. McGregor.

"Could we get out of here, please? Fast?"

"Sure thing."

He floored it. I couldn't help wincing. I pictured Mr. McGregor rushing to the window, watching four kids in an antique convertible fishtailing out of his parking lot. Already I was wondering what sort

You had to yell over the howl of the wind.

"Where to?" I asked them.

Casey's breath was warm in my ear. "The beach. But first we want to stop at Shop "N' Save. Pick up a few things."

"Fine."

Steven switched the radio on and turned up the volume, and after that there was no possibility of talking at all. His long slim fingers beat time against the steering wheel. I could smell Casey's perfume in sudden gusts, a clean smell, with nothing sweet or musky about it. Kim looked back at us from the front seat and smiled. The smile was crooked, but the teeth were white and dazzling.

We pulled into the Shop "N' Save lot, and all of us piled out. Casey reached under the driver's seat and pulled out a green book bag with a long strap and slung it over her shoulder.

"Get us a couple six-packs, will you, Clan? Steve, see if you can find some decent crackers this time, okay?"

Steven held the door for us, smiling, then flinched at the blast of cold air. I was the only one dressed for the air-conditioning. They always overdo it in these chain stores. You could keep corpses back there and they'd never decompose. Both girls were wearing shorts and halters, and Steve had on what I came to know as his usual gaudy Hawaiian-type short-sleeve shirt. With the thin white linen slacks he looked prosperous and trendy and very cold.

I went for the beer.

I had to do some digging for the Heineken dark, so by the time I had that and the two six-packs of Bud to the checkout stand, Steve was already there ahead of me, paying for two boxes of crackers. "See you outside," he said, shivering.

I paid for the beer, and as the girl was packing it up for me I saw Kim step into line in back of the woman behind me. She had a large loaf of french bread under her arm and some butter and was smiling at me in a strange, uncomfortable kind of way. Then I saw her eyes move along, following something behind me. I turned around.