Mitch wondered about that first kiss Dolly had told him about. He wondered if the boy had been Tuck. “Exactly where in the house did it happen?”
“Upstairs,” she replied, her voice hollow and distant. “I found them in bed together, dead. It was… quite awful.” Abruptly, Dolly climbed to her feet, her eyes avoiding his now. “If you wish to leave, Mitch, I’ll understand. But I sincerely hope you will not.”
And with that she marched back to her house with her jar of pimientos.
Mitch went inside and hung his horseshoe over the door.
He liked it here. He wanted to stay. He was going to stay. This was home now.
The only real problem with the little house was the strong, persistent smell of mildew downstairs. Mitch had a detailed online chat with his newspaper’s home repairs columnist on the subject. She felt his trouble was poor air circulation down in the crawl space, and recommended two courses of action. Mitch rolled up his sleeves and got to work.
First, he located the air vents in the little house’s foundation. There were four of them, each approximately one-foot square. Sure enough, they’d been boarded shut to keep cold air and small animals out. Mitch pried the boards out with a pry bar-instantly unleashing a dank, dungeony odor-and installed breathable wire mesh in their place.
The next step was to roll out a vapor barrier of 6-mil plastic over the moist, exposed earth down in that dark crawl space. Since there was only about eighteen inches of clearance down there, this meant Mitch had to spend most of a day slithering around on his belly with a flashlight in what he quickly discovered was the preferred habitat of mice, black snakes and large, curious spiders. In some areas, such as over by the fireplace, the space was so shallow that his head would whack into the floor joists if he tried to raise his nose up out of the dirt. Mitch was not especially claustrophobic-he was not, say, Charles Bronson in The Great Escape. But it was not pleasant to be facedown in that confined, filthy space, rolling out the plastic, cutting it to fit, securing it in place with rocks and bricks. It was not pleasant to have a living rodent scurry over him, lose its footing on his head and scrabble around in his hair, screeching. It was not comforting to know that his only way in and out of there, the kitchen trap door, was a good twenty-foot slither away. It was slow, tedious work. But Mitch did have nearly half of the house done when he heard footsteps outside on the gravel path, coming toward the house.
They entered the house, clomping slowly and heavily on the wood flooring directly over Mitch’s head.
“I’m down here!” he called out. “The crawl space! Hello…?!”
The footsteps moved over toward the kitchen, more determinedly now. And Mitch heard a sharp noise. Something slamming shut-the trap door.
Instantly, it got even darker down there.
“Hey, what’s going on!?” he cried out as the footsteps rapidly retreated, running from the house on the gravel path. “Hey, come back!”
Mitch wriggled his way furiously back around the main water lines to the trap door and tested it. No good. The brass transom catch was like an old refrigerator door-self-locking. And the mechanism was topside. So were the hinges. All that faced him was the door itself. He tried prying the door open with his scissors. He shoved at it with all of his might. No use. It was good and locked.
His next response was to slither his way over to the nearest of the air vents, thinking maybe he could kick out the wire mesh and escape that way. No use either. The air vent was way too small for him to squeeze through.
Now the realization hit Mitch-he was trapped down there. Briefly, panic seized him. His pulse quickened. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. But he steadied himself. Breathed in and out slowly and deeply, reciting the words: I must not panic. I cannot panic.
He recalled that he could see Dolly’s garage from one of the vents. He would call to her from there. That’s what he’d do. He slithered his way across the length of the house toward it, the beam from his flashlight growing feebler by the minute, only to discover that her car was gone. She was out. Damn. The other houses? They were too far away to be within earshot over the steady rippling of the receding tide.
He determined this by screaming “HELP!” at the top of his lungs until he was hoarse.
He finally gave up. Lay there on his stomach, enraged. Why had someone done this to him? What manner of asshole would find this funny? He would like to meet and strangle said asshole.
Mitch stayed there by the air vent. He remained calm. There was nothing to be afraid of. When the black snake slithered its way over toward him and coiled itself between his legs, he did not freak out. Black snakes were not poisonous. He knew this from Camp Tacaloma. Still, he lay there tensed and motionless, until finally it decided to move on.
He had been locked in down there for more than three hours when at last he heard the rattle of Dolly’s Mercedes diesel drawing near. He had never been so glad to hear an engine in his life. She pulled into her garage with a splatter of gravel and shut it off. He raised his face to the wire mesh and called out to her.
She was removing shopping bags from the trunk. She turned around at the sound of his voice, smiling. And then frowning. Clearly, she was baffled to discover she could not see him. He called out “Crawl space!” to her several times before she finally started her way toward the carriage house, her face a mask of confusion.
“Good heavens!” she cried out when she located his semi-contorted face pressed up against the wire. “What are you doing down there, you silly man?”
“I’m locked in, Dolly.”
“You most certainly are not,” she said, with utter conviction.
“I assure you I am.”
“Why, how absurd!”
“I could not agree more. Will you please let me out?”
She came in at once and unlatched the trap door, bathing the area under the kitchen in light.
“It must have blown shut,” she called to him as he slithered his way toward her.
“Not a chance,” he groaned as he climbed back up into the kitchen, his muscles aching, his face and hair caked with earth. Spiders and a host of other insects fell from his clothes. “Someone deliberately did it.”
“Who?”
“Someone with a sick sense of humor. I couldn’t tell you who.”
“How do you know this?”
“I heard footsteps.”
Dolly immediately froze, all color draining from her face. Briefly, Mitch thought she might faint. “Y-You heard what?” she gasped, her voice scarcely more than a whisper.
“I heard footsteps,” Mitch repeated, watching her curiously.
“No, you didn’t!” she snapped with sudden vehemence. “That can’t be. It must have been your imagination. It must.” And with that Dolly Seymour turned on her heel and darted out the door to her own house, leaving him utterly confused.
It was not his imagination. Someone had purposely locked him in down there. He’d heard the footsteps. This was a fact. But who, some kid? There were no kids on Big Sister. So who, then-Tuck Weems? Was this his way of telling Mitch he wasn’t happy to have him living there? Why had Dolly gotten so upset when he mentioned hearing footsteps? What was up with that?
Mitch didn’t know. But he did have his first nightmare that night.
He dreamt that he was down there in the crawl space, only now it felt as if the whole weight of the carriage house was pressing down on his chest. Pressing down on him so hard that he could barely breathe. He was all wet, too. Water was seeping down through the floorboards onto him. Only when he tried to wipe it from his eyes he discovered it wasn’t water. It was the blood of Roy and Louisa Weems. And it was all over him. In his mouth. In his nose. In his…
He awoke with a yelp, heart racing, his body drenched with sweat. As he lay there, panting, Mitch heard something-the crunch of footsteps outside on the gravel path. And he wasn’t dreaming now. This was real. Someone was out there… Mitch tiptoed over to the staircase. Slowly, he descended into his moonlit living room. He paused, listening. Hearing the blood rushing in his ears. Hearing the waters of the Sound lap against the rocks. Hearing more footsteps. There was an outdoor light over the front door. He flicked it on. He threw open the door…
And he came face to face with two deer who were munching on the azaleas planted next to the house.
