Hopper House (The Jenkins Cycle Book 3) (9 page)

S
tanding
stark naked with hair all around me, I must have been a sight. Whereas the man on the sofa chair seemed perfectly normal. He was a young guy of Asian descent, slender and good looking, dressed in a buttoned-down shirt with muted colors.

“Sorry to scare you,” he said in a vanilla Midwest accent. “I think there’s a vacuum in one of the closets.”

If he was one of the party animals the landlord liked to rent to, he sure didn’t look that wild.

“You okay, man?” the guy said. “You wanna have some sex?”

On second thought, yeah, he was definitely one of the party people. I wondered if the landlord’s business was legal. Probably, I figured. Well, except for the drugs.

“No thanks,” I said, and scooped up as much hair as possible.

“But I’m offering you carnal knowledge,” he said, pouting.

I shook my head sadly. “And I only like veggie knowledge.”

Before he could reply, I went to the kitchen and emptied my clippings into the trashcan, careful not to make another mess. After that, I dropped the towel in a basket in the laundry room. I hoped there were spare clothes like at the house in Georgia, or I’d have to wash Trevor’s and wait in a sheet with a sex-happy party guy in the house.

The TV was on when I came back, and it was showing hardcore pornography.

None of my business.

As I passed by, the man turned the sound up. Grunts, slaps, and affected oohing followed me into the room with the security bar.

A quick search of the bureau next to the window turned up a variety of shorts, shirts, and underwear for both sexes, as well as socks and bras. The walk-in closet had nondescript pants, more shirts, and assorted shoes—again for both sexes.

After selecting a T-shirt and a pair of pants, I poked through the shoes for anything that fit my size. Several of them did. Now I had a pair of used sneakers.

It was sort of weird, all this clothing everywhere. I wondered how much of what Rose had told me about the landlord and his properties was true. Were there really that many extreme health clubs?

If I could have made friends with the landlord years ago, my rides would have been so much easier. Then again, if I’d chosen the easy way and slipped off to stay somewhere other than my rides’ homes, a lot of good people would have suffered. Being in the thick of a ride’s life is the only way to find out what he’s done. In fact, now that I thought about it, I felt guilty ditching the homeless life for the warmth of this party house. Maybe I was supposed to deal with Chancy and his hammer. Maybe that nice old man, Max, was in danger.

Nothing I could do about it now—even if I had a car and wanted to leave. I’d only just gotten here, and it was too late. If the guy in the living room had a car, I’d ask him for a lift tomorrow.

When I returned to the living room, he had his pants down and was masturbating to the images on the TV.

“Of all the…” I said, shaking my head. “Hey—would you please stop that?”

The man paused, mid-stroke. “Why? Change your mind?”

“
No,
I didn’t change my mind,” I said, looking away. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Call me Jack.”

I heard him get up, followed by the sound of pants being buckled.

“All clear,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Dan. Can you turn that off? Or, uh, change the channel?”

He blinked once, opened his mouth like he had a question, then stopped. Then he said, “You mean with women in it?”

I shook my head. “Just something normal.”

The guy peered at me, lips pursed as if solving a complicated puzzle. Then he leveled a finger and said, “I get it now. You’re a
prude
.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly it. A huge prude. Biggest prude ever. Is Jack your real name?”

He laughed. “No, it’s Stephen. Pretty funny though. Jack. Because I was—”

“I get jokes, Stephen,” I said and tried not to smile. It
had
been sort of a good joke. “Are there more of you coming? Some kind of club?”

His expression grew puzzled. “Club? What do you mean
club
?”

Pointing around me, I said, “Here at the party house. That’s why you’re here, right?”

Stephen’s eyes widened and he barked a laugh. “How did you get here, mate?”

Mate?
That was an odd expression for an American.

Not wanting to give away too much information, I said, “I got a ride. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“You were in the shower. I didn’t want to waltz in and presume. I’m a gentleman.”

“How did
you
get in?”

“This is a hopper house,” he said. “If you’re here, you already know. Or should. Wait … is this your first time?” He clapped his hands excitedly. “I remember when the first one opened forty years ago. Before then, everything was confused. How long have you been hopping?”

Forty years ago? Hopper house?

“Oh no,” I said, shaking my head. “You’ve got to be
kidding
me.”

“What?”

How could I be so stupid? All those clues and I’d missed them. Rose’s so-called “party animals” were other hoppers. This guy Stephen—
he
was a hopper. Why hadn’t she told me? She’d led me to believe the landlord was a
real
landlord—with rent and bills and fees and all that. She hadn’t even given me the phone number to call for a ride. The landlord did that, after she’d killed herself.

“Of course,” I said.

“
What?
” Stephen said, stamping his foot.

On her call with the landlord, Rose had said,
He’s not like the others.

I’d wondered what she meant by that. Now—staring at Swingin’ Stephen—I thought I knew. She’d sensed I wasn’t like
him
. Or herself, for that matter. Clearly, she hadn’t wanted me to come here.

“So you’re a hopper?” I said.

“Fortunately.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise,” he whispered, leaning close, “I’d still be …
DEAD!
”

I flinched and raised my hands in defense, then lowered them when he laughed.

“Great,” I said. “A nutcase.”

Stephen’s eyes widened. “You keep them in a
case
? My my. Now let’s see…” He sized me up, head to toe. “Homeless. Am I right?”

“How did you know?”

“Fingernails,” he said, as if checking it off a list.

I looked at my nails—way too long, and still caked with dirt even after the shower.

“And you need to brush your teeth, too,” he said. “And do something better with your hair. Now, if I could break you of that prudishness, we might actually have a good time. There’s lots of movies here—have a look. If you’re not into men, we could turn off the lights. Or is it Asians you don’t like?” He made a dismissive gesture. “We’ll figure it out. With the lights off, it all feels the same.”

“What about hopping,” I said, ignoring all that. “You’re really one of them?”

“One of
us
. A little over a hundred years, now.”

I stared at him in shock. He couldn’t have been dead that long. Could he? That’d put his birth back near World War I.

“I’ve met a few older ones,” Stephen said. “Some of them … hmm … they’re a bit
loony
. I’ve been loony before. Lucky for you I’m going through a steady phase right now. The trick is not to be too … um …
choosy
. In your pleasures.” He grinned at me, eyes half closed. “I noticed you’re circumcised. I am too.”

Also ignoring that, I said, “The landlord said he has houses in every state. What’s in it for him?”

“Work, work, work,” Stephen said, rolling his eyes. “Okay, fine. I’m going to tell you five addresses, so pay attention.”

He rattled off five P.O. boxes in various states. I forgot them almost as soon as he finished. Which was fine. When I died or got kicked, they’d be in my head forever. Which, of course, he knew.

“Are those more houses?” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “How many houses have P.O. Boxes? Now listen, because this is important: if you come into a lot of money, you’re to send it to one of those addresses. That’s how we pay for taxis and drivers and the Internet and all that. Anything good you find that isn’t money, just leave it here in the donation box. Keep the police away, don’t die in the house, and don’t get kicked out while you’re here. If you can do all that and not burn the place down or hurt the other hoppers, you’re free to stay here as often as you want. But please,
do
try to clean up after yourself.” This last with pointed look at the little bits of hair still on the ground.

“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”

Another hopper. I couldn’t believe it.

A hundred years…

Stephen stepped around me on the way to the kitchen, and I went looking for the vacuum. I found it in one of the closets, just like he’d said. A minute later, the floor was clean.

He certainly was strange, but in the span of five minutes he’d told me more than Rose had in almost three weeks.

I put the vacuum away and went to join Stephen in the kitchen—and gasped at the sight of him wearing an oven mitt and pressing a spoon against the stove’s glowing hotplate.

“Hey,” I said. “Before you do whatever drug that is, I have a few more questions. You’re the second person I’ve found like me. For the longest time, I thought I was the only one. So you can imagine how I have a lot of—”

“Hold that thought,” Stephen said, pulling the spoon off and dropping a pinch of cotton into it. He uncapped a disposable syringe and gazed at it lovingly. “Questions … right. A hopper named Ashley started a private forum about ten years ago—almost got her house privileges revoked when
he
found out. Likes us drugged, dumb, and happy, he does. Prefer it that way myself, to tell you the truth. Remind me later and I’ll get her to add you. Then you can ask all the questions you want.”

Stephen carefully siphoned the drug and did the little flicky thing to get the bubbles out. He tied off with his belt, one-handed, and popped in the needle like someone who’d been doing it a hundred years.

“If I die…” he slurred a few seconds later, “call the landlord … the body … just flop it off the pier out back.”

Before I could ask what the hell that meant, Stephen lurched back to the couch—dropping the syringe along the way—and slumped down with a tortured smile on his face.

“Can you hear me?” I shouted, snapping my fingers in his face. “You okay, man?”

Stephen’s eyes fluttered briefly. A thin line of drool oozed from his mouth, but he was still breathing.

I wondered if his ride used drugs regularly or if he was like District Attorney Rachael Anderson, the non-smoker. What would a hit of heroin do to someone who didn’t normally use it? Was Stephen’s ride a bad guy or a good guy? Between him and Rose, nothing I’d seen gave any indication they cared one way or the other.

An afterlife without moral relevance. What a novel concept.

C
ompared
to the other sex-maniac junkies I’d met, Stephen didn’t seem all that reliable. Which, in a way, made him very reliable. The information he’d given me didn’t seem crafted to trick me into or out of anything. More like he was just doing a job, providing me the basic information needed to orient me to the rules. Now I knew how the landlord made his money—we were supposed to empty our bank accounts and send it to him. The landlord had turned life after death into just another scam.

I considered Stephen, perhaps fatally high in the living room. He seemed nice enough on the surface, but he was also a threat. The security bars on the bedroom doors suggested that yes, in fact, at least some of these hoppers were the kind you wanted to bolt your door against while you slept.

After ensuring one last time that Stephen wouldn’t die on me, I found his wallet, took out his driver’s license, and learned his ride’s name: James Park, of Washington State. A quick check outside showed the driveway occupied by a white sedan. When I turned around to head back to the living room, I stopped and considered the video camera pointing at the front door.

The camera at Rose’s house had barely aroused my curiosity. Didn’t most businesses have cameras these days? Sure, it was odd for a rental property, what with privacy concerns and all, but I hadn’t given it much thought. Rose and I had mostly used the back door, because we couldn’t go anywhere in the car.

A wire ran from the camera to a plate in the wall. I wondered where it terminated, and went to find out.

The laundry room had an empty clothes rack, fabric softener, detergent, a washer and dryer, a toolbox, and nothing more. Briefly, I marveled at the sad fact that I’d never used a fabric softener even once in my life, nor on any ride.

There was a closet off the living room between two of the three bedrooms, but all it had were bath towels and cleaning supplies.

Scratching my chin, I looked around the living room. My gaze fell on Stephen, now fast asleep.

“Hoppers,” I said, shaking my head. I was a rider, not a hopper.

A careful check of the ceiling revealed a white three-by-five square of framed plywood next to a return vent. An attic entrance. I tugged the handle and the section came down with a twang of springs, revealing a folding aluminum stepladder.

Taking the steps slowly, wincing at every creak, I poked my head up for a look. Gloomy and dark, with blinking lights near the front of the house. When I leaned forward for a better look, something hideous touched my face with a long, slimy tentacle. Desperately I thrashed around and almost slipped down the ladder. My hand closed around the horrid thing and yanked—and a light bulb turned on, momentarily blinding me. The tentacle creature turned out to be a pull string for the light, now dead and limp and hanging defeated in my white-knuckled grip. I’d snapped it free from the fixture. Now there was no way to turn the light off, short of unscrewing the bulb.

Most of the attic looked empty, with nothing to see except exposed insulation between the rafters. A path of wobbly planking led over to the blinking lights. One misstep and my leg would crash through the ceiling, and I had to stoop to avoid bumping my head.

A computer sat on the floor directly over where the camera hung in the foyer. There were wires coming out of it running to different locations in the attic. It looked like several of them went to the various bedrooms, but I knew those rooms were camera-free. One wire ran above the computer to a camera pointing right at my face. Same model as the one in the foyer. For lack of an appropriate reaction, I smiled and waved.

Seconds later, a phone rang downstairs.

Careful where I stepped, I quickly made my way to the attic door and navigated the creaky metal steps.

I found the house phone over the kitchen sink and answered it.

“Hello?” I said.

“You’re a nosey little hopper, Mr. Jenkins of Allentown Pennsylvania, dead from suicide two decades ago.”

“What?” I said, beyond shocked at hearing the landlord repeat back pieces of my past. “What makes you think I’m…”

He chuckled. “When Rose refused to give you the number for the hotline, I was understandably upset. She only has one job, and she demands too much. Luckily, I monitor all Internet communication in and out of each house, or I never would have learned about your fascinating past.”

The Internet? But how would … Oh.

“You read my story, after I downloaded it for Rose.”

“Got it in one,” he said. “Interesting tale. Tell me something: do you like Rose?”

“You tell me. You’re the one with the cameras everywhere.”

The landlord sighed. “Not in the Georgia house. That’s one of the problems with Rose—she’s not that pliable. Every time I put cameras and fun-fun toys in the bedrooms, she rips them out and throws them away. And she won’t allow security bars, either. I like my hoppers pliable, Mr. Jenkins, and you strike me as exceedingly pliable.”

“Yeah, how’s that?” I said.

“Rose holds you in high regard. I’ll bet you feel the same way about her. If you do, you know how much that house means to her. She often says it’s her childhood home, but it isn’t. She was born a little ways down the road and grew up quite poor. Despite her feelings, I’ve just about decided to relocate the Georgia presence closer to Atlanta. What do you think of that?”

He’d laid a trap for me is what I thought. If I said I didn’t care, Rose could lose her house. If I said I hated the idea, he’d have leverage on me. The question was: why?

“What if you did nothing?”

“That’s one possibility,” he said. “Leave things as they are, not tear it down and sell off the land. Would that make Rose happy?”

Rose was right, this guy was a real putz.

“What do I care about some crummy old house?” I said.

The landlord chuckled. “Spare me your subterfuge. Now here’s what I want: tomorrow, you’ll go with Stephen on a money-making expedition. He’s a fun fellow, you’ll like him. I take it he’s given you the money drop addresses? Of course he has. Pick one and send me half of whatever you get. Take the other half and do what you want with it. Follow my instructions and Rose keeps her house. Even better: you’ll have access to one of my properties in every state. How does that sound?”

“Well,” I said, mulling it over, “I just can’t believe it.”

“What can’t you believe?”

“You actually used the word
subterfuge
in a sentence—just blurted it out like you do it all the time. You know what? That takes guts. Now, if I could only find someone to call me a nincompoop my life would be complete. Go fuck yourself.”

Before he could hurl any supercilious invectives at me, I ended the call. That’d teach him to mess with Jackrabbit Jenkins, the most waskily hopper that ever lived.

It creeped me out that he’d read my story. Now that I thought about it, Rose’s story had also been printed off that computer, so maybe he knew hers too.

Given all the kinky rubber devices, I’d just assumed the wall and ceiling mirrors were there to heighten the experience. Now, after the talk about bedroom cameras, and after seeing the wires in the attic, I thought of another reason.

A quick check showed the wall mirrors were sealed tightly in place and not hung there like paintings. I grabbed the hammer from the toolbox in the laundry room and a towel from the bathroom. Back in the bedroom, I laid the towel beneath one of the mirrors. Then I hit it with the hammer. The mirror cracked, but stayed stuck to the wall. I smashed it again in a different spot, closer to the middle and down a little, and it caved right in. Where there should have been drywall was a small camera pointing at the bed.

The phone rang again. I went to the kitchen, put down the hammer, and answered it.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Jenkins,” the landlord said in a weary tone, “you’re beginning to disappoint me. I’ll ignore the foul language because I understand you’re not used to being squeezed. I’d feel the same way in your shoes. But I don’t appreciate the damage to my property. Now I have to send someone to make repairs, and that’s always a headache. Unless, of course, you feel up to the task?”

“Why do you have all those cameras everywhere?”

“Not everywhere,” he said with a hint of impatience. “Just the bedrooms. All common areas are strictly private.”

“But why?” I said.

“Like any business, I try to maximize my assets. Assets like you. Sometimes those assets hop into the rich and famous. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does…” He chuckled darkly. “Let’s just say it pays for a lot of broken mirrors.”

Finally, I understood. “Blackmail.”

“Fun for you, lucrative for me.”

I wondered what the Great Whomever thought of all this—mortals messing with his helpers and blackmailing people.

“How is it you can do this stuff?” I said. “What about God? You know there’s an afterlife. Aren’t you worried?”

Laughter on the other end. “Is that what you think? That you’ve been blessed by God with eternal life?”

“Well, if it’s not God, who is it?”

The landlord paused briefly. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Maybe I would. I really want to know.”

I
did
really want to know. Anything but aliens or demons.

“Cosmic radiation,” he said at last.

Anything but that.

“Not just any type,” he added. His voice took on an intense quality, almost fanatical. “These are special rays, blasted from the origin of the universe across billions of light years, then funneled into you through a strange disturbance in the Earth’s magnetosphere. Energy and matter cannot be destroyed, Mr. Jenkins. They can only be transformed. You are the living embodiment of that fact. You and the other hoppers. Your energy field is like a magnet to cosmic radiation, preserving your life force beyond death.”

“So
that’s
how hoppers get made.”

“In the most basic of layman’s terms, yes.”

“Huh,” I said. “And here I was thinking it was gluten.”

The landlord heaved a tired sigh.

“Go ahead and laugh. But I contend you were hit with one of these rays—a special type from another reality so strong it burst into this one at the moment of the Big Bang. The money you raise tomorrow with Stephen will be used to fund further research into the phenomenon. If I can reproduce the effect … why, just think of the possibilities.”

I glanced over at Stephen: passed out on the couch, drooling onto his shirt but still breathing. Must have been those cosmic rays keeping him going.

“Mr. Jenkins? Daniel?”

“Dan,” I said. “Look, I’m sort of tired. I’m not getting you any money, and I’m not fixing your mirror. Also, you can quit with the threats about Rose’s house. Level the place, for all I care.”

I hung up before he could call my bluff.