‘That’s half of it,’ he said.
‘The easy half,’ Hank answered. He looked up toward the Marsten House, which was dark and shuttered tonight. ‘I don’t like goin’ up there, and I ain’t afraid to say so. If there was ever a haunted house, that’s it. Those guys must be crazy, tryin’ to live there. Probably queer for each other anyway.’
‘Like those fag interior decorators,’ Royal agreed. ‘Probably trying to turn it into a showplace. Good for business.’
‘Well, if we got to do it, let’s get with it.’
They spared a last look for the crated sideboard leaning against the side of the U-Haul and then Hank pulled the back door down with a bang. He got in behind the wheel and they drove up Jointner Avenue onto the Brooks Road.
A minute later the Marsten House loomed ahead of them, dark and crepitating, and Royal felt the first thread of real fear worm its way into his belly.
‘Lordy, that’s a creepy place,’ Hank murmured. ‘Who’d want to live there?’
‘I don’t know. You see any lights on behind those shutters?’
‘No.’
The house seemed to lean toward them, as if awaiting their arrival, Hank wheeled the truck up the driveway and around to the back. Neither of them looked too closely at what the bouncing headlights might reveal in the rank grass of the back yard. Hank felt a strain of fear enter his heart that he had not even felt in Nam, although he had been scared most of his time there. That was a rational fear. Fear that you might step on a pongee stick and see your foot swell up like some noxious green balloon, fear that some kid in black p.j.’s whose name you couldn’t even fit in your mouth might blow your head off with a Russian rifle, fear that you might draw a Crazy Jake on patrol that might want you to blow up everyone in a village where the Cong had been a week before. But this fear was childlike, dreamy. There was no reference point to it. A house was a house-boards and hinges and nails and sills. There was no reason, really no reason, to feel that each splintered crack was exhaling its own chalky aroma of evil. That was just plain stupid thinking. Ghosts? He didn’t believe in ghosts. Not after Nam.
He had to fumble twice for reverse, and then backed the truck jerkily up to the bulkhead leading to the cellar. The rusted doors stood open, and in the red glow of the truck’s taillights, the shallow stone steps seemed to lead down into hell.
‘Man ‘, I don’t dig this at
‘Me either.’
They looked at each other in the wan dash lights, the fear heavy on both of them. But childhood was beyond them, and they were incapable of going back with the job undone because of irrational fear-how would they explain it in bright daylight? The job had to be done.
Hank killed the engine and they got out and walked around to the back of the truck. Royal climbed up, released the door catch, and thrust the door up on its tracks.
The box sat there, sawdust still clinging to it, squat and mute.
‘God, I don’t want to take that down there!’ Hank Peters choked out, and his voice was almost a sob.
‘Come on up,’ Royal said. ‘Let’s get rid of it.’
They dragged the box onto the lift and let it down with a hiss of escaping air. When it was at waist level, Hank let go of the lever and they gripped it.
‘Easy,’ Royal grunted, backing toward the steps. ‘Easy does it… easy… ’ In the red glow of the taillights his face was constricted and corded like the face of a man having a heart attack.
He backed down the stairs one at a time, and as the box tilted up against his chest, he felt its dreadful weight settle against him like a slab of stone. It was heavy, he would think later, but not that heavy. He and Hank had muscled bigger loads for Larry Crockett, both upstairs and down, but there was something about the atmosphere of this place that took the heart out of you and made you no good.
The steps were slimy-slick and twice he tottered on the precarious edge of balance, crying out miserably, ‘Hey! For Christ’s sake! Watch it!’
And then they were down. The ceiling was low above them and they carried the sideboard bent over like hags.
‘Set it here' Hank gasped. ‘I can’t carry it no further!’
They set it down with a thump and stepped away. They looked into each other’s eyes and saw that fear had been changed to near terror by some secret alchemy. The cellar seemed suddenly filled with secret rustling noises. Rats, perhaps, or perhaps something that didn’t even bear thinking of.
They bolted, Hank first and Royal Snow right behind him. They ran up the cellar steps and Royal slammed the bulkhead doors with backward sweeps of his arm.
They clambered into the cab of the U-Haul and Hank started it up and put it in gear. Royal grabbed his arm, and in the darkness his face seemed to be all eyes, huge and staring.
‘Hank, we never put on those locks.’
They both stared at the bundle of new padlocks on the truck’s dashboard, held together by a twist of baling wire. Hank grabbed at his jacket pocket and brought out a key ring with five new Yale keys on it, one which would fit the lock on the back door of the shop in town, four for out here. Each was neatly labeled.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he said. ‘Look, if we come back early tomorrow morning-’
Royal unclamped the flashlight under the dashboard. ‘That won’t work,’ he said, ‘and you know it.’
They got out of the cab, feeling the cool evening breeze strike the sweat on their foreheads. ‘Go do the back door,’ Royal said. ‘I’ll get the front door and the shed.’
