Hobbled (29 page)

So that’s what he did. And while he was doing it, he was trying not to drown in the rain. They were positioned directly under a break in the rain gutter two floors up on the eave of the house. It was a little like standing under Angel Falls in South America without a fucking umbrella.

Luke tried to listen. Were there any noises coming from inside the house? Then he realized he was being ridiculous. In the first place, if Dinkens had heard them at the trapdoor, he would be here by now raising hell. Then Luke realized the man could be in there with a jack hammer digging a trap for them in the concrete floor of the basement, and they probably wouldn’t be able to hear it.

Dinkens must be in some other part of the house. Luke wasn’t sure why Dinkens would leave a light burning in the basement if he wasn’t going to be down there, but then he thought,
Yes, maybe I do
. And that thought made a shiver go up his spine.

“Stay behind me,” Luke said to the boys, and their nerves were so jangled by now they did what Luke asked without even making faces about it.

Luke could feel one of the boys, he thought maybe it was DeVon, holding onto the tail of his shirt as he bent over one more time and lifted the trapdoor far enough for them to sneak underneath it. When they were all three hunkered down on the concrete steps, five feet below ground level, Luke eased the trapdoor closed over their heads.

They were in the house. And it smelled terrible.

Chapter 15

D
ANNY
squinted through the rain and saw a light blink on in an upstairs window of Dinkens’s house. Just as quickly, it blinked back off again. Maybe Dinkens had fetched something from upstairs.

Danny figured it would be getting light soon. It must be four thirty in the morning. It looked like it was going to be one of those days when the rain never stops. He was surprised Bradley or DeVon’s folks hadn’t called out the National Guard by now, trying to find their two recalcitrant offspring and drag them home to have their heinies tanned. Danny supposed the kids had simply hoodwinked their parents into thinking they were all innocent and cuddly, sleeping over at their best friend’s house, safely tucked away in their best friend’s bed. God, parents are dim.

Danny’s leg was hurting so badly now, he simply had to sit his ass down in the cold, wet grass and stick the cast straight out in front of him. It didn’t help much, but it did ease the pain a bit. The problem was, from here he couldn’t see over the hedge.

He wormed his way into a place where the hedge was sparse and sidled up to the picket fence. He was freezing, and his ass was in the mud, but it did keep a little of the rain off his head, being buried in the hedge like he was. An added bonus was that now he could stick his face up to the slats in the fence and look out over Dinkens’s shithole of a lawn without any danger of being seen.

Granger squeezed in alongside him and laid himself out across Danny’s lap, as if Danny wasn’t uncomfortable enough.

Still, it was good to have a little company.

He stroked Granger’s wet coat and twiddled his wet ears and wondered what Luke was doing while Granger washed Danny’s face with a friendly tongue.

He and Granger both flinched when a really close crash of lightning scared the bejesus out of them.

“Come on, Luke. Come on, come on, come on.”

Danny closed his eyes, suffered the rain, barely tolerated the lightning, and waited, glad Granger was there beside him. But wishing it was Luke instead.

And praying to God that Luke was still safe.

L
UKE
and the two boys cowered on the concrete steps with the big old trapdoor looming over their heads. The trapdoor shut out some of the racket from the storm pummeling the world outside, but not all of it. They could still hear the water gushing from the broken rain gutter two stories up at the top of the house, and they still cringed at the occasional boom of thunder rattling across the heavens. At least they were out of the rain and wind. Or most of it. A few drops of ice-cold drizzle still dribbled through the cracks in the door, landing on their heads. Luke decided Dinkens’s house needed a hell of a lot more than weather stripping to get it up to snuff. It needed some major renovation. The place was a wreck.

Luke shook himself off as best he could and looked around.

A few steps down was a doorway, which presumably led into the basement. And it was exactly that. A doorway. An opening. There was no door in it. There was a glow of ambient light coming from somewhere inside. It illuminated a carpet of dirt and leaves and twigs which coated the stairs going down, all the detritus that had sifted through the ratty trapdoors over the years and come to rest on the concrete steps beneath.

Luke held his finger to his lips to let everyone know to be quiet, as if that was really necessary. He slowly descended the steps with DeVon and Bradley scrunched up behind him, trying to see over his shoulders. They both had hold of his shirttail now. Luke felt like a mother possum lugging her offspring around on her back.

Before stepping through the doorway, Luke peeked around in both directions. Satisfied there were no murderers waiting to jump him just inside, he stepped on through. He was so tense he had to remind himself to breathe.

There was just enough light to navigate by.

The basement looked like a million other basements. Concrete floor, unfinished brick walls, little rectangular windows high on the walls, unglassed but screened over, letting the cold air inside. Crap was stacked everywhere. Boxes, furniture, old bicycles, trunks, cedar chests, clothing simply thrown in jumbled, mildewy piles. There were enough cobwebs hanging from the ceiling to knit a couple of sweaters.

The place smelled musty and fetid, like damp soil and mouse droppings and food left out to rot. It was an unwholesome reek that made Luke’s toes curl. A stench, really. Luke found himself breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t have to smell it. The air was cold too. Those little open windows high in the wall, and the concrete floor and brick walls, made the place feel like a dungeon in some old Errol Flynn movie: a place where screams might be heard at all times of the day and night, and tortured souls were offered up to Jesus on a regular basis. A bad place. A place where nobody in their right mind would ever want to spend any time.

In one corner of the dank, dim basement, an ancient furnace stood guard. It was silent and dead. A mute, looming presence, like a stone stele in a forgotten Mayan temple, unseen by man for hundreds of years but still spooky as hell. Luke got the impression the furnace had been turned off a long time ago and the pilot light never relit. He wondered what Dinkens used for heat. Space heaters, he supposed. He also wondered how many rats were using the furnace for a condo. Dozens, probably.

The area around the furnace was the only floor space that wasn’t buried in trash and piled high with junk. It looked as if someone had tried to keep the area clear. Looking closer, Luke saw the dust on the floor had been disturbed, as if a thousand footsteps had wandered through it in the very same spot. It reminded him of a path. Or a game trail. And the moment Luke thought
those
words, another shiver shot up his spine.

Game trail.

The light that dimly illuminated the broad, sprawling basement was shining from somewhere behind the ancient furnace. And the moment Luke realized that, he also heard the moan.

That, too, came from behind the furnace. He suddenly found his heart stuck up in his throat like a rag in a tailpipe. He could barely breathe. And oddly enough, there was also a tiny tingle of exhilaration strumming away at his nerve endings. My God, he thought, maybe we’ve really done it. Maybe we’ve really found the poor blond guy who was snatched from a supermarket parking lot and never seen again by anyone who meant to do him any good. My God. Maybe they were actually going to succeed in saving the life of a young man named Charles Strickland. They’d be heroes.

If they survived.

“Wait here,” Luke whispered to the boys, his voice little more than a croak.

“Fuck that,” both boys whispered right back.

So the three of them headed for the furnace on stealthy feet, not sure what they would find on the other side, but each and every one of them had an idea of what they
might
find. And they were not looking forward to the discovery. Or maybe they were.

Halfway there, Bradley tugged on Luke’s shirt to make him stop. When he did, Luke saw what Bradley was pointing at. There was a staircase climbing the wall to the right, way off in the shadows at the other end of the basement. It was obviously the way to the upper part of the house. If Dinkens were to catch them down here, that was the way he would have to come.

“Keep your eyes on it,” Luke whispered.

The boys nodded. Words unnecessary.

Again, they approached the old furnace. The closer they came to it, the brighter grew the ambient light behind it. And the stronger the stench of rot and filth grew as well.

Whatever they were about to discover behind that damn furnace, it wouldn’t be good. They all knew that as well as they knew their own names.

They took another step forward. Luke was just about to reach out and steady himself on the side of the cold furnace before walking around to see what was behind it, when DeVon gave a gasp that almost scared Luke to death. Bradley suddenly flung his arms around Luke’s waist and held on for dear life. Whatever had startled DeVon had startled the crap out of Bradley too.

Luke turned. “What is it?” His voice was a mere breath of sound in the dusty old basement. He couldn’t have spoken any louder if he wanted to. Fear seemed to be holding his vocal cords in a tight little fist, letting nothing out of his mouth but an occasional squeak. “
What is it?”
he hissed again.

DeVon and Bradley both pointed to something huddled by the wall off to their left. Whatever it was, it was dumped inside an old metal bathtub, the oblong kind. There was a frayed and mildewed bath towel, filled with holes, flung over the top of the pile, but it seemed to have slipped to the side, exposing what was underneath.

It took Luke about two seconds to realize this was where the majority of the stench emanated from.

Without his glasses on, Luke had to step closer to see what it was.

He fumbled for his glasses in his pocket, and no sooner had he slipped them over his nose than Bradley went apeshit.

His voice was more high-pitched than Luke had ever heard it. The kid sounded like a rat squealing in terror. “Holy shit, it’s her! It’s her! Mrs. Dinkens! It’s her!
”

The kid was trying to run back the way they had just come, but Luke held onto him. He was more afraid of what might happen to Bradley off on his own in this creepy damn house than he was afraid of whatever it was that was staring him in the face from that rusty old washtub.

DeVon was strangely quiet. Luke looked down at him. The kid was gripping Luke’s arm and his eyeballs were as big as dinner plates. He was staring at whatever was piled up under that bath towel like he had locked eyes with Medusa. He couldn’t have looked away if he wanted to.

Luke decided since both kids seemed to know what this pile of mysterious crap was, or
who
it was, then maybe he should figure it out too. So he leaned in close. When his eyes focused, he sucked in a great gulp of air and stumbled backward.

It
was
a woman. An obese woman. She was sitting nude in rolls of fat, squeezed into that old tub like three pounds of butter in a one-pound container. She had a sprinkling of snow or sugar or flour sprinkled all over her that looked kind of silly at first. Then Luke realized what it was. And it wasn’t a raggedy bath towel over her head and shoulders.

It was lime. A coating of lime.

She was being decomposed. Set there to rot and disappear forever.

DeVon’s words seemed to come crawling out of his mouth unbidden. Luke had never seen a more stunned look on a human face before in his life.

“It
is
Mrs. Dinkens. She used to make us cookies.” And after a moment of silence when Luke could hear nothing but his own heart clamoring around inside his chest, DeVon added softly, “He’s killed her too.”

Luke felt bile crawl up into his throat, and now it was his turn to fight the urge to run, but before he could form a rational enough thought to battle the urge, a trembling voice spoke out from behind the furnace. The voice was barely audible. A male voice. It was how Luke imagined a voice would sound if it had screamed the very vocal cords out of its throat after hours, days, weeks, of torture and pain.

The voice spoke two simple words.

“Help me.”

Now Luke
had
to grab the side of the furnace just to prevent himself from toppling over. His legs were jelly. The power of gravity seemed to have suddenly increased because the two boys had such a grip on him it felt like they were dragging him down through a hole in the floor, never to be seen again.

When Luke was just beginning to think maybe it was a good idea for the three of them to run after all, a rattling cough stayed Luke’s feet. It came from behind the furnace. The cough was so filled with pain, so infused with
horror,
that it made Luke’s eyes water in sympathy just to hear it. It also rooted him to the floor where he stood.