Solomon's Grave

What she said made sense, but troubled him. “Mom, the last thing I want is for you to stay away from the church because of me.”

“There were other reasons.” When she said this, her visual scan of the room began again in earnest. Nathan thought he could guess what at least one reason was.

“Dad?”

She nodded. “He was home last night, all night. It was wonderful, not that he’s much company. So depressed lately, and exhausted. I’ve stopped worrying that he’s drinking and started to wonder if he’s doing some kind of... drugs.” She whispered this last word. Nathan thought for a moment to tell her that his suspicions weren’t much different, but she was overwrought enough.

“Well, we’ll know soon enough what the big mystery is.” He rose from his seat and, grateful to be able to begin moving about the room again, his mother did likewise.

“Be careful, Nate. Art keeps saying there’s nothing bad about that group but I know there is. You’ve noticed it, too, haven’t you? And you’ve only been around a couple of weeks.”

“I never said I thought there was something bad.”

For a wonderful moment, Beverly looked at him with her full motherly stare, the one that said don’t try to kid me, Mister. I know better. “But there is something strange about them, and you have noticed it.” It wasn’t a question.

Nathan smiled. “Yes, I have. And I’m off to see what it is.” He hugged his mother, and her arms crushed him into her. She whispered into his ear, “You be careful. I’ll be praying for you.” He felt his mother’s tears land on his cheek.

“That’ll be the best thing you can do, Mom. More than you know.”

She finally relented and separated herself from her son. Straightening his shirt and wiping her tears off both their faces, she whispered, “I’m going to call Nadine, ask her to pray, too. Help your father, Nate. If you can.”

Nathan said he would try, and helped her clean up the table, against her vehement objections. Then he left. He had an eleven o’clock visit with a parishioner who’d broken both legs courtesy of a skiing weekend in Colorado. That gave him a two-hour window for his sojourn to the men’s club. The sooner he did it, the better. Not for the first time, he wondered what his father’s reaction would be when he found out Nathan had been checking up on the place. It wouldn’t be pretty, if their phone conversation the other day was any indication.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Nathan parked directly in front of the storefront’s glass door. He waited in the driver’s seat, tapping one finger absently on the wheel and looking for any activity inside. The only movement was someone entering Hair U Doing? next door. He got out of the car, his gaze always on the door as if afraid his father would burst outside in a rage. Nothing happened. After all, if his father was here his car would be, too. Nathan was relieved to see Josh’s Toyota outside of The Greedy Grocer. Maybe he’d swing by for a sanity check if there was time.

He walked up to the club’s soaped-over door. There was no name visible anywhere, not at first. When he reached for the metal door handle, he noticed a plain white sticker above it with the letters HMC drawn in orange marker. Nathan never considered knocking, no more than he would entering any other store. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

He had a sudden recollection of himself and Josh, thirteen years old, riding their bikes along Route 12. They’d ridden all the way to the neighboring town of West Boylston. Once there, they passed a row of nondescript but clean brick office buildings. The boys had parked their bikes in front of one and simply walked inside. The “apartments”, as the directory in the lobby called the various closed-off rooms inside, contained one boring company name after another. Nathan and Josh made it an adventure to walk among the silent halls, drinking from the water bubbler, using the rest rooms, sitting in the chairs lining the disinfectant-smelling hallway and reading outdated magazines. At last, someone from a small lawyer’s office told them they needed to leave.

They ran from the building with hearts racing, mouths and eyes laughing hysterically. Their “escape” was so frantic that they had gone two blocks before remembering they’d left their bikes behind. Laughing, they had to sneak back to get them.

A half hour, maybe forty-five minutes in the life of two bored kids. Now, stepping uninvited into the men’s club, Nathan recalled the smell of that long-forgotten place, dusty couches and stale air.

Letting the door of the Hillcrest Men’s Club close silently behind him, Nathan smelled the aging soap smeared along the inside of the windows and door, the lingering presence of beer.

The room measured roughly thirty by forty feet. It was devoid of people. At the back right-hand corner stood a small bar, a tall narrow thing one might get for a basement room. Atop it lay an empty Marlboro cigarette box and two beer bottles containing about an inch of old Budweiser. Bud and Marlboro, he thought, couldn’t get much more old-fashioned American. The sight of these items atop the bar offered some ironic relief. If the worse he had to deal with was a few beers and second-hand smoke, Art Dinneck might not be in such bad straits after all.

Nathan observed all this without moving any further than two steps into the room. He moved his head slowly, side to side, taking in the rest of the room’s innocuous details. Against the back wall, beside the bar, was a closed door, its green paint peeling near the upper hinge. It likely led to a back storage room. This had been a store once. Which one he couldn’t remember. Maybe a hobby shop, but he thought that might have been next door in what was now the carpet place. The furnishings—some cushioned and others simple folding chairs, most surrounding various-sized tables—were gathered in three groupings, not counting the bar and its two stools. One low-riding table had a telephone, its cord running under a section of carpet whose sole purpose, apparently, was to make the area trip-free. Three magazines adorned another table, the topmost being the required Sports Illustrated. Across the last table was scattered a discarded deck of playing cards.

The place didn’t look like what he’d imagined a “drug house” would look, or anything other than an abandoned storefront taken over by a bunch of guys drinking beer and playing cards. Not his father’s style, but not as bad as Nathan had feared, either. The “HMC” looked like the Little Rascals’ He-Man Women-Haters Club, but all grown up.

So unlike Art Dinneck.

There were some decorations on the wall, mostly stock paintings which he didn’t pay much attention to. Everything was so normal, he wondered why his father was so adamant about Nathan staying away.

He remembered the frightened, childish fear he felt the other morning when he’d sensed the tension between his parents. Maybe all of this wasn’t about Art and this club. Maybe it was always about Art and Beverly. The thought of his parents falling out of love was ludicrous. He shook his head involuntarily. That couldn’t be it.

Still, they were adults. He, the child. Their personal life was as much removed from him as his own was from them. More so. It was an ingrained habit of parents not to confide too much in children.

“Oh, Ma,” he whispered. Needing something to do, he walked across the floor, toward the bar and the closed storeroom door. He began to sweat. It happened so quickly and with such force he thought the overhead sprinklers had gone off. His arms and legs felt weak.

Run, run, run, run, his body suddenly screamed. He continued forward, trying to will away the sudden sense of... what was it? Like moments when he’d gone too long without eating, the sudden light-headed craving for food. More than that, though, almost flu-like in its intensity. A sudden, overwhelming terror. Blood rushing from his extremities, his body’s fight-or-flight reaction kicking into overdrive.

But the room was empty. It made no sense. When he finally stopped walking the room tilted. He turned back toward the door, had to find some way out of the place.

There! Run outside; hurry.

Nathan looked at the peeling green paint on the door at the back. Something was on the other side, out of sight but no less visible to the screaming part of his mind. Something... heavy, the word making no sense but fitting with a nightmare logic. Bad things here, a panicked voice in his head screamed. He smelled something, a stinging in his nostrils, incense mixed with paint thinner mixed with oranges. Heady, putrid, sour. He walked toward the back door, reaching for it.

RUN!!!