Charnel House Read online

  Finally he could avoid the inevitable no longer and played the light over the shape lying before him. Oh, the kid was deader than shit, that was for sure. He was a mess, all twisted and beaten and broken, laying there like a forgotten rag doll someone had pitched into the corner. The boy was facing Garraty—part of him was, anyway—his dull green eyes half-open and turned toward the Prius like he was trying to figure out what the hell had happened to him. His head had an odd shape to it, elongated and soft like a deflated balloon, and the brown hair now shone wet and red. A crevasse creased his skull from front to back. Something pale and pinkish-gray bulged out at Garraty through the gaping split, glistening in the fall of light from the Mag. There was a muddied zig-zag design tattooed into the cheek facing the sky. Tire tracks.

  One of the boy’s hands had been ground into hamburger, that elbow snapped backwards underneath his torso. The other arm was in the shape of the letter Z. A shard of bone jutted through the skin near the wrist, pointing accusingly at Garraty. Christ, there’s so much blood!

  The body had been kinked at the waist, wrenched around as if given a tweak by the hand of a giant, and the boy’s lower half lay front down in the bloody grass like he was sprawled out to read a book. One foot was bare, the other clad in a sneaker stained maroon from blood and Alabama clay.

  “You okay, kid?” Garraty asked in a weak, wavering voice, even though he knew the kid was a long fucking way from okay. He didn’t know what else to say or do.

  The kid didn’t answer, didn’t move, didn’t anything. He just lay there quietly, staring into the elsewhere through those half-lidded green eyes. Fuck.

  Garraty squatted next to the boy and shone the Maglite directly in his eyes. No reaction. The patient’s eyes are fixed and dilated, Dr. Garraty. This close, he caught a faint whiff of offal, ripe and pungent and fresh. Knocked the shit out of him, my man.

  He was dangerously close to laughing, and if he started he didn’t know that he’d be able to stop.

  Garraty straightened up and dug in his pocket for his phone. If he ditched the rest of the beer up in the woods—someplace he could find again tomorrow, because dead kid or no dead kid that was money he could ill afford to throw away—and did a few calisthenics or ran in place to clear his head, he might get out of this. There was a pack of Certs or TicTacs or some such thing somewhere in the car, he’d bet his life on it. Tina loved that breath shit almost as much as she loved the twins (and probably more than she loved him, at least now, he thought) and left half-consumed packages in a trail behind her the way a bunny will leave piles of little black pellets. It would take the cops and paramedics a good twenty minutes to get up here. Plenty of time for him to get his shit together.

  He could handle this.

  4

  The phone’s screen came to life when Garraty pressed the button on the side to wake it up, and he swiped his finger across to unlock it. In the notification bar he saw Searching for service in small black letters.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked the night, or God, or maybe even the dead kid. He didn’t know or care. None of them were going to answer.

  Fucking Walmart phones. That’s what he got for carrying the cheapest service there was. No wonder it only cost him a few bucks a month. How could the damn thing not find a tower up here over the town? There had to be at least three or four within sight of this spot on a clear day. He hit the phone button on the screen and brought up the dial pad, dialed 9-1-1, and pressed send anyway. It couldn’t hurt to try. The phone was silent for a couple of seconds, then beeped reproachfully at him as if offended he didn’t believe it when it said there was no service. He almost hurled the thing into the void over the town out of spite.

  There was nothing else to do. He was going to have to leave the kid here and go for help. This just kept getting better and better. Couldn’t he even catch one little fucking break? The cops were going to smell the booze on his breath even if he did find some of Tina’s forgotten mints and that would be all she wrote, because God or karma or the universe hated him and wanted to crush him. That was the only rational explanation. Lock me up and throw away the key, ossifer, because I’m one drunk son of a bitch, he could say when he burst into the police station. And that’s exactly what they’d do. He’d be frog-marched down the courthouse steps in front of reporters from as far away as Montgomery during the trial, and afterward his picture would end up on the front page of every newspaper in the state with the words CHILD KILLER under it in letters two inches tall. All because this little fucker couldn’t be bothered to look both ways before bolting into the road.

  Calm down. You’ll be fucked for sure if you don’t keep your shit together.

  Once again he considered running. The shit on TV was probably exaggerated, right? Hell, the real life CSI folks couldn’t even figure out if that Anthony woman in Orlando killed her little girl or not and that was just a couple of years ago. He could just go, simply get in his car and motorvate right on home cool as a cat. As far as anyone knew right now, the boy was still alive and Joe Garraty had gone straight to his trailer with his beer from the Piggly Wiggly.

  But what if someone spotted the boy before he got far enough away? Hell, someone could be coming right now. Garraty clicked off the Maglite, suddenly certain he would see twin spears of light piercing the gloom just over the hill, but the darkness was complete. The only sounds were the dripping trees and the occasional whirring chirp of a lone cricket. Maybe he could move the kid off the side of the road, just drag him a little ways back into the trees so he wasn’t so visible, so obvious, and—

  The house.

  Of course.

  No one ever went up there anymore. Hell, almost no one had gone up there when he was a kid, and that was what, thirty-five years ago? It was the kind of place where something hidden would stay that way. There was a better than even chance the damn thing wasn’t even standing any longer, but if it was he needed to get his ass in gear before someone came along and proved him wrong... and before he chickened out and changed his mind. There was nothing that could help the kid now; he was just a bag of bones. The only one who could be helped here was Garraty himself, by avoiding prison and taking another shot at life. Cut back on the drinking, get a new—better—job, and maybe even work on making things right with Tina again, if that was possible. All that stood between him and happiness was this one little bit of unpleasantness.

  He turned off the Maglite and trot-staggered up the road to the Prius. Keeping the lights off, he started the engine and backed down the incline to the body. He shone the Mag down into the emergency kit. Tina had said something about a poncho when she gave it to him. That ought to help keep the carpet clean. Instead of the poncho, however, he found something even better—a Mylar emergency heat blanket. She really thought of everything. The packet said the thing was seven feet by five feet. More than big enough to protect the interior of the car. Marveling at the weight of the flimsy plastic—the package couldn’t have weighed more than a couple of ounces—he got out of the car and went to the tail end.

  Pinpoints of pale yellow from the trunk bulb shone in the dead boy’s eyes when Garraty raised the lift gate, giving them the appearance of life. He tried to ignore the feeling of being watched as he tore open the plastic packaging of the emergency blanket and unfolded it. God, but it was loud! The crinkle of the Mylar as he spread the silver sheet over the floor of the trunk filled the night, and seemed to echo off the hillside. When he stooped to pick the body up off the wet pavement he got a snootful of the stench rolling off the kid and nearly gagged. Gonna need to fumigate the trunk when I clean it. The boy’s head rolled loosely when Garraty stood, and the body sagged in his arms and tried to slip through them. The kid was still warm. That bothered Garraty more than the gore, more than the stink.

  He held the boy like a groom carrying his new bride across the threshold and walked to the waiting trunk. When he bent to lower the body into the opening, it pitched forward and flipped from his grip, folding
itself into the tight space with a sickening fluidity of movement. The Mylar crackled gleefully as the body tumbled onto it. Garraty lunged to catch the kid and the jagged splinter of bone poking out of his arm jabbed him just below his left nipple. He grunted from the pain and jerked back. The boy’s head fetched up against one of the Mylar-covered wheel wells, cocked at an obscene angle to his shoulders, so that he seemed to stare up at Garraty through his half-open eyes. Smears of blood and mud marred the beige plastic across the back of the car where he slithered across it, and his shattered arm hung limply over the bumper.

  Garraty squeezed his eyes shut against the tableau and thought about his new life. The one where he wasn’t wearing an orange jumpsuit with a number on it. He pushed the kid’s arm back into the trunk, then used the Maglite to find the missing sneaker. It was laying in the tall grass lining the side of the road. The CSI guys would have had a field day with that, my man, he thought, pitching the shoe into the back of the Prius. He shut the lift gate. The sound seemed as loud as a gunshot in the night.

  The first thing Garraty did when he got behind the wheel and started the car was lower the windows to clear the outhouse smell. Jesus, it was bad. He put the vehicle in gear and turned around on the narrow road, so that he was pointed back down the hill, then crept along the edge of the asphalt looking for the gap in the trees that would mark the old driveway. After he’d gone a hundred feet he stopped, certain that he’d missed it. That, or his memory had gone the way of his job. He turned the wheel to the left so he could pull a U and cruise back up, and as the headlights swept across the forest he saw the space he’d been looking for. The weeds were tall and the briars thick, but the path looked clear enough. The real question was going to be the mud, and whether he’d be able to make it up to the house or end up stuck on the side of the hill with the body of some kid in his trunk. He didn’t want to think about that particular call to AAA.

  Gravel crunched under the tires as the Prius left the road, and undergrowth scraped at the bottom of the car like fingers reaching up from a grave. Each time the tires found a dip or bump the Mylar crinkled and crackled behind him as the body shifted. The old driveway had been well laid over seventy years before, and the car did not slide as it climbed. Gradually the incline flattened into a plateau and the trees thinned. High clouds fled to the northeast, chasing the rain, and wan moonlight bathed the top of the hill. As the ground leveled out, the driveway hooked to the right and when Garraty rounded the curve, he got his first look at the house.

  5

  Sheltered from most of the glare of the headlights by the grove of trees that had grown up around it, the L-shaped house stood just as tall as it had when Garraty was a boy. All he could see from here was one gabled end, the crumbling spire of a chimney bisecting its central axis. The shiplap siding shone dull gray through the green leaves, and the rusted roof looked black in the light. As Garraty looked up into the two obsidian rectangular windows that flanked the chimney like eyes, absently rubbing the spot on his chest where the broken bone had poked him, he couldn’t help but feel like the house was looking back down at him. He shivered. This had not been one of his better ideas.

  He pulled the car closer to the house and shut the engine off, acutely aware that if anyone had been looking up here from below, they might have seen the lights climbing the drive if the fog had thinned enough in town. Probably no one was stupid enough to come up here and investigate—nearly every kid who grew up in Belleville knew the stories about what happened to the Barlowe family and those three little kids in the forties—but if someone called the cops, well, they might just pay a visit. They were paid to do shit like that. The sooner he got out of here, the better.

  Garraty opened the car door and stepped out. Before he’d gone ten steps he stumbled over a something hidden in the grass and almost fell. Jesus. A broken ankle was just what he needed right now. An image rose in his mind of him lying on the ground screaming, one foot dangling as loosely as the boy’s hand had. Sure, he might be able to crawl back to the car, might even be able to drive over to the hospital in Decatur without further injury, but then what? A couple of hours in the ER waiting for them to set the broken bone while the boy lay out there in plain sight, staring up at the lift gate with those flat dull eyes? Say, doc, could you send one of those orderlies out to my car to pick up a little biohazard trash for your incinerator? Better make him a burly one, it’s a real dead weight.

  Again he felt the urge to bray laughter, and again he bit it back.

  Garraty picked his way back to the Prius and got the Maglite and thumbed it on. Much better. He played the beam around where he’d tripped and spotted a rusted bike frame, its tires long rotted to crumbles. Jesus, I really was lucky I didn’t break an ankle. Nothing else to see but the weeds, nearly waist high already and the hot weather still a few weeks away. He began to pick a path to the house, mindful of the pieces of lumber that lay scattered here and there, blown off the house by storms long since past. It wouldn’t do to step on a nail, either.

  The lower floor of the house was hidden behind an impenetrable hedge of privet, small trees, and brambles. Light glinted off jagged pieces of glass that remained in the windows, barely visible through the thicket. Garraty played the beam from one corner to the other, looking for a break in the greenery so he could get closer and find the best way in. It looked like there was a gap between the growth and the exterior walls of the house.

  He rounded the end of the house and started up the back side. There was some trash back here: bald tires faded with age; the tattered remains of what he thought was a mattress; a rusted car frame resting under one of the mighty hickories; various pieces of detritus. Everything looked old as shit, pummeled by the elements year after year. Good. Garraty continued his search.

  A slight breeze from the north rustled the grass, and the leaves murmured to one another overhead. He found himself wishing once more for a jacket. Midway down the length of the house he found a sheet of stained tin resting atop a circular brick structure about two feet tall. A couple of basketball-sized pieces of limestone held the metal in place. He knew what this was.

  Perfect.

  Garraty tucked the Maglite under one arm and removed the rocks from the metal. Taking one edge gingerly—the stuff looked sharp enough to take a finger off if he wasn’t careful—he pulled the rusted tin back. The harsh grating sound seemed preternaturally loud in the quiet night, and set his teeth on edge. As the metal slid aside to uncover the yawning hole in the earth, a fetid, moldy smell boiled up into his face and he turned away, stomach clenching. After a few gulps of the fresh night air his innards settled and he turned back to the old well.

  The bricks lined the walls of the hole all the way to the bottom of the well some twenty feet below. A litter of glass shards sparkled up at him from down there, diamonds in the dirt. Damn. A dry well was useless for his purposes. Even with the sheet of metal over the top, when June rolled around in a couple of weeks it would stink to high heaven up here. Garraty thought the chances were better than even that no one would pay a visit, but if some stupid kids came up here on a dare, he couldn’t risk the body being found. Not while there was still a chance for some of that CSI magic.

  Why couldn’t the damn thing have had water in it? Hell, it was just raining, and it was practically dry as a bone down there. A little water, he could have weighted the body down and rolled it in. No worries about the smell at all.

  Though it would probably have a funny taste if you tried to drink it.

  Garraty wrestled the section of roofing back onto the wellhead and repositioned the chunks of limestone. Just like with everything, this was going to be as hard as it possibly could. Maybe looking for a place up here to stash the boy’s body hadn’t been such a great idea after all. The river wasn’t too far from here, and the channel was deep. That could work. Let the catfish and turtles take care of things for him. The only problem with the river bridge was the traffic. Someone was always on the causeway going into D
ecatur. If he was out there for more than a minute, he’d be spotted. Too bad he didn’t have a boat, even a crappy old aluminum one like his daddy had. He’d be set. The inlets and nooks along the banks of the backwaters surrounding Belleville provided innumerable places where he could dump the kid. Hell, some of those coves sat atop a network of caves and were practically bottomless.

  Garraty worked his way around the far end of the house—the base of the L—continuing his search for a good hiding place. As he rounded the corner that brought him to the front, he spotted an opening in the growth and ducked through it. Behind the wall of greenery he found the gap he thought he’d seen, about eighteen inches between the house and the hedge, as if the plants didn’t dare touch it. If half the stories he’d heard about Jeremiah Barlowe as a kid were true, he couldn’t blame them.

  The shiplap siding had grayed and bowed, beaten into submission by decades of Alabama weather. Barely a hint of white paint remained, and several of the boards had fallen away, exposing the backside of the tongue-and-groove pine interior wall. Mildew splotched the old wood like cancerous lesions. When the light danced across these gaps Garraty heard the scratch of tiny claws on wood as mice fled the brightness.

  He moved along the jutting front edge of the house—unconsciously keeping as far from the weathered wood as he could—until he came to a window. Holding the Maglite over his head, he shone it into the room. The knotty pine floor was warped and buckled, and several pieces had sprung loose from the subfloor. There was a distinct cant toward the central wall, where the main support beam had bowed in deference to gravity. Most of the old wallpaper hung in tatters, revealing the age-darkened pine walls underneath, but there was a relatively whole section on the far wall with a rusty handprint stamped on it. It looked like blood to Garraty, but wasn’t that just his imagination, steeped in a childhood ghost story? It wasn’t like there would still be remnants of the night they found Jeremiah Barlowe’s family seventy years ago, when—