79
: It was the house they saw first.
What was left of the house.
Porter and Sarah stopped in the driveway, the beams of their flashlights playing over the vine- and weed-covered boards.
There had been a fire, no mistaking that. The roof was gone, and what remained of the walls was charred and black. Most of the structure had collapsed, either with the fire or sometime later.
Porter took out the camera and handed it to Sarah. “You’re in charge of pictures.”
“Anything in particular?”
“That thing stores a thousand shots, so don’t hold back. I want to capture everything. We don’t know what might be important.”
Sarah held up the camera, looking through the viewfinder at the structure.
The house had been small.
Porter could tell that much from the footprint. Maybe eight or nine hundred square feet, at the most. As in the diary, there was a porch but not what Porter expected. When he read the book, his mind’s eye drew a large wrap-around porch surrounding a fairly large home. This place was neither of those things. The porch was only about six feet wide and four feet deep, balanced precariously on old cinder blocks. There were two wooden steps, but he didn’t trust either under his weight. Rot had taken them long ago.
“I thought the house would be bigger,” Sarah said beside him. “The way the diary described the place.”
The camera made a tiny click whenever Sarah snapped a picture. Funny how people hold on to the past, Porter thought. There was no need for a digital camera to make any noise, yet someone took the time to build in the sound.
“The eyes of a child, I suppose. Everything looks a little larger through a kid’s eyes.”
“I guess.”
Porter put a tentative foot on the porch, stepping over the damaged boards. The beam of his flashlight found the place where the front door had once stood, now just a gaping hole.
“You’re not going in there?” Sarah said.
“I need to see the basement.”
Sarah’s flashlight bounced off the two remaining outer walls and the open space where the roof should have been, finally landing on what was left of the floor. “That can’t possibly be safe to walk on.”
Porter took another step forward. The boards protested beneath him, groaning and aching.
“If you fall through, you could get seriously hurt. We’re in the middle of nowhere out here.”
Porter’s flashlight landed on what was left of an old refrigerator and stove about twelve feet deep into the mess. A rusty padlock dangled from the refrigerator door.
Promptly at nine, she would latch the refrigerator closed and fasten the door tight with a shiny new Stanley padlock. It would remain locked until lunchtime, and the process would repeat again for supper. While I was perfectly capable of fasting until the noon hour, something told me a little sustenance in my belly would help with the lingering effects of the previous night’s bender and possibly set me right for the remainder of the day.
Partial two-by-four walls stuck up in random places like large, blackened toothpicks growing from the floor. An old bathtub was buried under rubble toward the back.
Porter took another careful step and kneeled down at a large hole in the floor where the living room had probably been. The flashlight picked across debris that had fallen through to the lower level long ago, impossible to make much of anything out. For a second he thought he’d found the metal stack pipe the Carters had been handcuffed to but realized it was a tree that had somehow taken root in the cracked concrete floor and grown almost tall enough to reach outside for light.
“Do you see anything?” Sarah asked.
“We’ll have to excavate the entire site. This place has been falling apart for years.”
“No bodies, though, right?”
“They would have been hauled out of here a long time ago.” Porter told himself that was true, yet his mind had no trouble seeing them, dozens of dead bodies wrapped in the tattered remains of this house, flesh burned and black. The place reeked of death.
“Hey, can you toss me the camera? Don’t get too close—I don’t want you walking out here.”
Sarah hesitated, took a practice swing, and lobbed the camera to him underhanded.
Porter caught it with the tips of his fingers. “Thanks.”
Careful not to drop the camera, he lowered it down into the hole, his finger on the shutter button. He snapped about a dozen shots, sweeping back and forth, the bright flash illuminating every corner.
“Hey, I found a car!” Sarah called out from somewhere behind him.
Porter took one last look at what remained of the basement and retraced his steps until he was back on solid ground. Sarah stood about twenty feet from the house, her flashlight pointing into a tangled mess of weeds.
He didn’t see the car at first, not until he was almost standing on top of it. Sarah was busy stomping down the tall grass. “I think it’s a Volkswagen. Hard to tell.”
“A Volkswagen? That doesn’t make sense.” Porter saw the rusted pile of metal then, the cracked windows. The interior had become the home of some woodland creature, the seats covered in matted grass. He walked around the car, carefully inspecting the frame. When the beam of his flashlight landed on the rear bumper, he paused, leaned in closer. “I’ll be damned.”
“What?”
When Sarah knelt down beside him, he pointed at the bumper sticker, faded, barely legible. She read aloud, “POOR MAN’S PORSCHE.”
Father drove a 1969 Porsche. It was a marvelous machine. A work of art with a throaty growl that rumbled forth with the turn of the key and grew louder still as it eased out onto the road and lapped up the pavement with hungry delight.
Oh, how Father loved that car.
“It’s a Volkswagen Bug. I think this was Bishop’s father’s car.” Porter stood up and ran the beam of his flashlight over the visible parts of the vehicle. “See how the hood and trunk are both open? The smashed windows and lights? All the damage is consistent with the diary, it’s just not a Porsche.”
“A poor man’s Porsche.”
“Yeah.”
Porter rounded the back and took a picture of the dirty license plate: expired in October of 1995.
Sarah stood up and pointed off to the right. “There’s another house.”
Porter followed her gaze, then took a few steps forward. “That’s not a house, it’s a trailer.”
He handed the camera back to her.
“I believe the politically correct term is ‘mobile home,’ ” Sarah said.
He pushed his way through the tall weeds, crossing what was once the Bishop front yard, and Sarah followed. When he reached the trailer, he turned in a slow circle, his flashlight illuminating the surroundings. When he was once again facing the small structure, he stood still, his mind racing. “This must be where the Carters lived. There’s nothing else out here.”
The screen door at the back of the Carters’ house had been left open. The wind owned it now, banging it against the white-paint-flaked frame. I reached for the handle and held it still for Mrs. Carter. She walked past me into the dark kitchen. She hadn’t said a word the entire walk back, Neither of us had. If it hadn’t been for the sound of her sniffling, I wouldn’t have known she was behind me.
Sarah climbed the concrete steps and tried the door, one hinge cracked and separated from the metal frame. “It’s open.”
The windows, at least the two facing the front, were gone. Frail curtains swayed in the wind, fluttering against the dark interior.
“Let me go first,” Porter told her, stepping past. “Stay close.”
He moved through the doorway into a small kitchen—a tiny Formica table and bench built into the wall on one side and rusted appliances on the other. The floor was covered in mud, the elements having taken their toll. The refrigerator door was open, shelves bare. Most of the cabinet doors were missing. All the windows in the room were either busted out or standing open, air whistling in. Immediately following the kitchen was a tiny living space with a couch, the material so faded and eaten by rot there was no way to determine what it once looked like. Graffiti covered every flat surface, brightly colored images and shapes interspersed with blocks of text, random names, and various tags.
“Can you get pictures of all this? We’ll review them later.”
“Must be some kind of hangout for the local kids,” Sarah said, raising the camera. “Every teenager needs a respectable place to put away their alcohol and get laid in peace.”
Porter moved past the small living space and kitchen, past a tiny bathroom with a dry, stained toilet and a shower curtain balled up in the corner of the bathtub. As his flashlight traveled over the cracked mirror, Porter saw his own face staring back at him. His mind returned to the diary, to a little boy taking this same walk down the narrow hallway.
I began down the hall, with my knife hand pressed against my chest, the blade facing forward. Father taught me this particular grip. If necessary, I would launch the knife forward with the full strength of my arm muscles and the accuracy of a loaded gun. Unlike an overhand thrust, a jab would be difficult to block. This hold also allowed me to go directly for the heart or the stomach, with either an upward or downward motion, respectively. With an upper-hand grip, coming from above, you could only strike down—such an attack was more likely to glance off your victim than penetrate deeply.
Father was very skilled.
He could see Bishop behind him, feel his eyes on the back of his neck. When was the last time he was here? When he was a boy? All those years ago? Or had he returned? Had he returned and walked this same hall again?
“Two doors at the back. Must be the bedrooms,” Sarah said from behind him.
Both doors were closed.
Father once told me if you sneak up on someone, you have a second or more to attack before they are able to react. The human brain processes this activity slowly; your victim freezes for a moment as they try to comprehend the fact that you’re standing there, particularly in a room where they believe they are alone. He said some victims will continue to freeze, just watching you as if they were watching a television program. They stand there, waiting to see what happens next. Sometimes, not knowing what comes next is better.
Porter wished he had his gun. Why didn’t he buy a shotgun locally? No waiting period on those.
His hand went to his pocket, wrapped around the hilt of Bishop’s knife.
He reached for the doorknob on the left.
Behind him, Sarah screamed.