Poe Page 5

  Maddy gives one last, tremendously impossible leap.

  I say last, because next I hear a splintering crash, and Maddy disappears through the floor entirely.

  Relief. Silence. I tentatively blink. Dust rises from the gaping hole in the floor, but the pain is gone, as is the roar in my ears. I’m able to push myself up to a sitting position, and the floor only tilts slightly. Something soft is holding my arm.

  I look to see that something is Lisa’s hand. She’s so close that I can feel her gentle breath, and her warm brown eyes are beautiful, amazing—there are small gold flecks that catch the fading light.

  “Dimitri, are you okay?” she whispers.

  And in that moment, I am.

  “Can you please say something? Because you’re really freaking me out right now,” she says, her eyebrows furrowed.

  “Something?”

  Lisa sighs and then sits back, tucking her hair back behind her ears. “Well, I can see you’re only partially brain damaged now.”

  “No more than usual.”

  The shadows in the room are lengthening, but the hole in the floor is a completely dark abyss. There’s no sound from below.

  “Do you have a flashlight?”

  “Flashlight. No clue what I was thinking, but no, I didn’t bring one.”

  We both turn to Nate, who, to even my amazement, is still rolling tape. The large, battery-operated lamp still sits by his feet.

  “Do you mind if I borrow that?” asks Lisa.

  “Knock yourself out, babe.”

  He pushes the light over with his foot, obviously not wanting to lose his shot. Lisa inhales deeply, like she’s considering whether she wants to preemptively knock him over the head with it, and flips it on. Immediately it’s like a supernova exploded—I think I can actually feel my retinas burning.

  “Pretty monstrous, right?” snickers Nate. “Four thousand one hundred lumens. Should be illegal.”

  “Christ, Nate,” I say irritably. “Couldn’t you have given us a heads up?”

  He chuckles. “You should have seen the look on your faces—like two deer in the headlights.”

  Lisa turns to me. “How have you not killed him before this?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I have an aversion to penitentiaries. Weak coffee. No donuts.”

  “Right,” she says. “I could always smuggle some in.”

  We turn to Nate, who is slurping a beer.

  “I’ll give it some serious consideration,” I say.

  Lisa starts toward the gaping hole, but I put a hand on her arm to stop her. “It’s not safe.”

  “We need to know if she’s…”

  Dead. An uneasy shudder runs down my spine.

  “I’m light,” she continues. “And I know where the bad floorboards are.”

  “Lisa, you’re not—”

  “I’ll be fine.” And there’s something final about the way she says it that makes me realize it’s pointless to argue.

  “Be careful.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” she says with a half smile. Bravely she approaches the gaping hole where Maddy disappeared, testing the floor as she goes. When she finally gets to the edge, she holds the blinding light over it and calls, “Maddy, can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  Shit. I mentally start to pack my suitcase, because there’s no way Myrna will do anything other than make my life a living hell after I’ve gone and killed her sister.

  Then there’s the sound of something stirring. “Ahhhh,” moans Maddy.

  “Are you okay?” calls Lisa.

  “For Christ’s sake, I just fell through the goddamn floor. Of course I’m not okay.”

  Apparently unpossessed, Maddy is back.

  “Can you move?”

  A loud hacking cough is the immediate response. “Christ, I need a cigarette. But no, hon, I’m pretty sure my ankle’s broke. Maybe your hunky friends could carry me out. Or your one hunky friend—that skinny Ruskki doesn’t look like he could lift my poodle.”

  “Don’t look at me; I got back issues,” says Nate.

  “You’re always talking about lifting weights,” I protest.

  “Exactly. Weights. Not stinky fat women. Did you get a whiff? Smells like she stuck her head in a bathtub of Aqua Net.”

  “All right, don’t move,” Lisa calls down to Maddy. “We’ll figure out what to do.”

  “I don’t think I’m gonna be doing much moving with a broken ankle, hon.”

  Carefully, Lisa makes her way back to us—every creaking step makes me catch my breath, but she has the athletic confidence of a gymnast. She plops the lamp on the floor, puts her hands on her hips, and thinks for a minute, all business. Very sexy. “Who’s got a phone?”

  I pull mine from my back pocket. It’s dead, even though I charged it in the car on the way over. “Not working.”

  Nate keeps his eye on his camera but searches his front pocket and pulls out an iPhone. “Mine’s dead too,” he says.

  “So it’s getting dark fast, we have no phone, and one battery-operated light,” says Lisa. “One of us could take the light, walk to their car, and go get help. But that would leave the rest of us here in the dark.”

  “My camera’s got night vision,” says Nate.

  That’s only what, the third time he’s mentioned that?

  “That could actually be useful. Nate, you can use the camera to go to your car and then call for help. There’s a drugstore that’s open all night a couple of miles off the highway; they’ll have a pay phone. Me and Dimitri will go down to the basement and stay with Maddy. You got anything else in that pack we could use?”

  The idea of trekking down to the basement is not very appealing. “What if there are more bad floorboards?” I say. “Wouldn’t it be wiser to stay up here?”

  “Chicken,” says Nate. “Shakespeare’s afraid of the ghosties.”

  I turn to Lisa and try, but fail, to keep a defensive tone from my voice. “I’m just thinking practically.”

  “Well,” says Lisa, “she might go into shock. We need to keep her warm, maybe give her what’s left of your coffee. That should keep her conscious.”

  I nod, but my head starts to buzz just at the idea. I suppress the urge to grab the light and run from the house, screaming girlishly.

  “Let’s see what else we got here,” says Nate as he digs through his pack. “Extra batteries, road flares, glow sticks, hand-crank emergency radio, Mylar blanket, leg splint.”

  “The Mylar blanket and leg splint would be good. Just leave everything with us.”

  “Plus I got some bandages.” As he pulls them out, a condom drops to the floor. He grins and slips it into his back pocket. “A real man’s prepared for anything.”

  Lisa looks over her shoulder and asks innocently, “Oh, is there a real man here? Did I miss him?”

  “Ouch.” Nate clutches his hands theatrically over his heart. “That really hurt.” He pulls out his car keys from his back jeans pocket, twirls them around his finger, and then swings his pack in my general direction, hitting me so hard that it knocks me a few steps backward.

  “You two kids don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Not that Shakespeare here would really try anything; I was totally kidding about the bet. He’s a little rusty, if you know what I mean.”

  “Not everyone’s a manwhore, Nate,” I say.

  Nate gives me a wave with a middle finger as he exits.

  “Don’t get lost!” I call after him, hoping he does.

  For a moment Lisa and I both stand in front of a broken window, watching him head down the overgrown driveway. The sound of crunching gravel echoes in the still night air, and the red light of Nate’s camera floats away into the quiet darkness, then disappears. A cold wind blows through a nearby tree, which taps, taps, taps against the slate roof.

  “Well, this has been an interesting night so far,” says Lisa with a brightness she can’t possibly mean.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “This wasn’t exactly what I
had in mind. For meeting you.”

  “You had something in mind? You were sure taking your time.”

  “I was working up to it,” I say defensively. “And I was thinking of something more along the lines of dinner and a movie. Like a regular-people date.”

  Lisa laughs. It’s a good laugh. “Dimitri, that would have been so, well, boring.”

  “Second option was bungee jumping off the New Goshen Bridge. Blindfolded.”

  “Been there, done that,” says Lisa, entering the gloom of the foyer.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I say.

  She doesn’t answer. And despite my erratically beating heart, which is caused by either fear, Lisa, or the life-threatening dose of caffeine in my coffee, I follow after.

  In the kitchen it’s easy to see where the fire spread from the basement to the walls and ceiling—the path is charred black. The back part of the roof caved in a long time ago and is now a rotting pile of debris, leaving part of the room open to the dark sky above. A lone, perfectly preserved teacup glistens in the twilight.

  Some coarse and weathered plywood has been crudely nailed to the floor, creating a path to a wooden door decorated with a spray-painted skull and crossbones. Underneath are the words “This way to hell.”

  Why do I have the bad feeling that’s where we’re going?

  “It’s the only door to the basement,” Lisa says. “I’ve never been down there, so no clue what the stairs are like. We should be careful.”

  “Careful. Right.” Personally my concept of careful would be waiting outside for professional paramedics.

  “You okay? You’re looking a little pale.”

  “Me? I’m fine. Never better.” And to prove it I bravely cross the dubious planks and reach for the knob. It burns my hand.

  “Shit, oh shit!”

  “What, what’s wrong?” says Lisa.

  The pain is searing. “Oh God, I think I’ve got a third-degree burn.”

  “What? Let me see.”

  Gingerly I turn my palm over, expecting to see red bubbling flesh. But in the beam of the supernova light there’s nothing wrong. My skin is perfectly normal. Damn, I thought the freaky stuff was over.

  Lisa whacks me on the arm with the lamp—hard.

  “What? What’d I do?”

  “Payback. I told you not to mess with me.” She reaches for the knob.

  “Wait Lisa, don’t…”

  But before I can stop her, she’s already gripped it, and the door opens with a mild creak of protest. “This really isn’t the time for asinine behavior,” she says, barely containing the irritation in her voice.

  “I’m innocent, I say. Innocent.” In fact my hand still stings.

  Lisa snorts and starts down the stairs. I swallow and reach for the railing, which has a disturbing amount of give for something made of wood.

  Now if you’re going to die, fire’s not the way you want to go. It’s no stretch to think that if you burn to death, the spirit part of you is going to be so pissed that you’ll hang around to take out some of that anger on anyone you can. Completely understandable. I pause at the top step and reach out to the wall; part of it crumbles in my fingers, releasing a dark cloud of smoky dust. Anyone who died down here went the hard way.

  “The stairs are fine,” calls out Lisa, and I see she’s already at the bottom.

  “Great. That’s really great news.”

  She stands in her halo of supernova light, like some kind of hipster girl angel, looking at me expectantly. I give what I hope looks like a hey, I’m totally cool with this smile and reluctantly head down the creaking steps to join her.

  And that’s when the sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh hits, something I’m familiar with because my slumlord is too cheap to hire an exterminator, and every few months a rat dies in the wall by the dishwasher. My stomach heaves and I cover my mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Lisa.

  “That stench—it’s unbearable.”

  “I don’t smell anything,” says Lisa. “Am I going to have to hit you again?”

  “No, no,” I say. “I’m… sensitive to mold.” Guess it’s just me again—maybe I’m having a psychotic break. It would explain a lot.

  Finally I reach the bottom of the stairs, trying hard to focus on the curve of Lisa’s Roman nose, which looks so kissable. The basement turns out to be one long, dark, and empty space that must lie under the entire width and breadth of the mansion. The ceiling is low, so I have to stoop slightly.

  “Ewww,” says Lisa.

  She holds the light over two distressed and sagging mattresses. There are candles melted in the base of several cheap wine bottles, and a lone pair of women’s underwear.

  “Classy,” I say.

  “I so don’t even want to know.”

  “You sure dinner and a movie wouldn’t be better?” I tease.

  “Yes,” says Lisa. “But I have to admit I’m finally creeped out. Hand?”

  She holds out hers and I grasp it firmly. It actually makes me feel a little more upright myself. “Maddy?” I call.

  “Over here!” Maddy shouts from what sounds like the far end of the basement. “Sometime today would be nice.”

  “How come you never came down here before?” I ask Lisa as we head in Maddy’s general direction. Hard to tell exactly where she is—there’s something about the basement that sucks the bright light into its murky depths like some kind of black hole, and I can’t see more than a few feet in front of me.

  Lisa raises her eyebrows. “Are you seriously asking me that?”

  I swallow. “Let me rephrase. Have you ever heard of any reason why the basement would be especially dangerous?”

  “Well,” she says, “besides the dead hippy guy, people who fried, and the obvious threats to one’s chastity”—she nods at the mattress—“there were rumors.”

  “Rumors. Perfect. Nothing like unsubstantiated rumors for a newspaper,” I say.

  Lisa studies me closely. “You know, you don’t look like what I’d imagined.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “You’re a little Jimmy Gneccoish,” she says. “Ours is a seriously underrated band, don’t you think?”

  I haven’t the slightest clue what she’s talking about, but I hope there might be a compliment in there somewhere. I’ll have to Google this Jimmy later, but right now I just change the subject. “So, the rumors…”

  Lisa shrugs. “You know, scary demons, portal to hell. The usual stuff guys use to creep girls out and get laid. Is it just me or is it particularly freezing down here?”

  It is remarkably colder—my nose and lips are becoming numb. Must be because we’re below ground. Below ground. Like the bodies of my parents. For the first time I think about how cold it must be to lie in a coffin six feet under, the frigid iciness of it. Suddenly I can’t breathe; I feel as if I’m being buried alive or am drowning—the air’s taken on the quality of water, pressing in on my lungs.

  “Dimitri, you don’t look so good again,” says Lisa. Concern clouds her eyes.

  “Fine,” I manage to gasp. “Allergies.” Calm down, Dimitri. Not the time or place to freak out. Gradually I hear the thump of my heart rebooting.

  “See?” I finally manage to say in a passably normal tone of voice. “I’m fine.” To prove it I drop her hand and take a bold step forward beyond the sphere of light.

  Bad idea.

  My feet feel something softly wooden beneath them that bends, sags, and gives way—Where did the cement floor go?—and then I’m falling, falling, falling down into a deep, black abyss. My head knocks against something impossibly hard, then crash—I’m in arctic-cold water that’s fetid and choking. It pushes into my nostrils, fills my mouth. Water that’s colder than a witch’s tit, Mac would say. My body registers the shock, my ears ring, and I instinctively reach out, feeling cold and slimy stones, but I can’t stop my descent, until finally my feet hit something muddy but solid that yields and sucks at my boots. I kick. I need air�
��all the breath was knocked out when I hit the water—but there is nothing to see, no way to know which is up or down. I can hear my panicking heart thudding against my ribs, but there is something strangely comforting too about the darkness now that it’s come and I don’t have to think about it ever again. I release a weight I never knew I was carrying—I can actually feel it drift from my mouth—a small black spot that’s heavy as sin, and even as my lungs burn, I feel lighter, happier. For a moment I have a lingering thought about Lisa—Damn, just when things were starting to get interesting—and then I think about my novel—Thank God that’s over with—then I think about the five boxes in my closet—It’s all trash now anyway. Something reflects against the slime, and I look to where up might be, and there’s a dim light in the brackish water. It seems to be at the end of a long, thin tunnel, so maybe I’m dead already. But if I were dead, there probably wouldn’t be bubbles, which I can now see rising from my nostrils. So that is up, but it might as well be the moon—too late, game over. Still, I weakly try to push my way there. I don’t want Lisa to feel guilty. I know that feeling all too well.

  But something grips my leg and pulls me back down, a burning cold hand like a vise, with nails that dig into my numb flesh. I look down. Two eyes, glittering like ice, stare back at me.

  My last thought:

  OBITUARY WRITER DIES IN HAUNTED HOUSE.

  NO ONE MOURNS.

  CHAPTER FOUR: AWAKE

  Squeak, squeak, squeak. The room is moving. No, wait—it’s me that’s moving. My right hand begins to shake—I feel the neurons trembling, filaments that are jumpy, nervous, like a radio with bad reception. I want to reach behind my head and see if it’s still there, but my arms won’t cooperate. In fact, I can’t feel them at all, which is strange—what was I dreaming again? I was on a slab in a morgue and there was a flayed corpse and a nurse in bloody scrubs, the stink of formaldehyde. Was that a nightmare? Some kind of hallucinogenic flashback? And then the deeper dream, the woman in the water. My leg burns where she gripped me—impossible.

  “Is he conscious?”

  Am I? My eyes flit open. Guess so. The ceiling is covered by cheap beige panels, which pass by in a blur. My head jiggles to the right. Two men in light blue scrubs; one has a cheesy seventies mustache and hobo-style stubble (did the Village People recently lose a band member?), and the other is Nordic and blond, like he just stepped out of a J. Crew catalog. They clutch the side of the gurney, faces beaded with nervous sweat, and there’s a frantic edge to the way they look at me. I want to reassure them, but my mouth won’t cooperate, so instead I just lie there. It’s comforting somehow, not being able to do anything, handing it all over.