They moved closer, stopping again within twenty yards. There were thick sheets of plywood covering all of the windows on their side of the house. The side yard was a tangle of rowdy pumpkin vines, and all the pumpkins were obscenely swollen with disease. Crow squinted at the house, said nothing, but when he moved closer he drew the machete again. Newton followed him, holding his hiking stick at an angle across his chest as if it formed some kind of barrier between him and what he was feeling because of that house.
The house stood almost in a clearing except for four huge oaks that leaned so close to the house that their outstretched limbs and branches effectively kept the whole place in shadow. The first sunlight Crow and Newton had seen since entering the Hollow came no closer than the front yard and they glanced up to see that the whole sky was an almost solid mass of purple clouds except for a single hole up in the southern quadrant, beyond the tree line. A solitary ray angled down and its light glimmered on the brown tips of the grass like a promise of hope, but it was surrounded by despair, and it seemed badly overmatched by the gloom.
Careful not to make any noise, Crow and Newton drifted toward the patch of sunlight and stood in it as they examined the house. Weak as it was, the warmth of the sun and its golden light seemed to soak into their skin all the way to their bones like a shot of good brandy. Some of the oppressive weariness melted away under its heat, but the caution and apprehension they had both felt as they stared at the front of Griswold’s house obdurately remained. They lingered there and soaked up the warmth.
Now that they were closer to the house they could see that front porch had peeling whitewashed posts that held up a decrepit porch roof, which was the only part of the house that looked like it bore the ponderous weight of thirty years of disuse and neglect. The front windows were covered with plywood. Each sheet was larger than the window and appeared to be nailed right into the wooden front wall.
“Get your camera out,” said Crow. “I want some pictures. Get the whole house. All four sides.”
Newton pulled out his small Minolta digital, tucked his walking stick under his arm, and left the patch of sunlight to begin shooting. As he stepped out of the patch of sunlight he was amazed at the difference in temperature and humidity of the shadows clutched around the house. Crow headed to the left, prowling around the perimeter of the house, frowning at everything. When Newton reached the front of the house, he stopped, staring at the patch of sunlit ground where they had stood.
“You done?” Crow asked from right behind and Newton actually screamed. It wasn’t much of scream, more of a yelp, but he did jump inches into the air and landed in a crouch, spinning around. He hadn’t realized that Crow had circled the house and come up behind him from the other side.
“Don’t do that! You about scared the piss out of me!”
“Oh?” Crow said with a snide grin. “Is this place getting to you?”
Newton flipped him the bird.
Crow moved past him and squatted down on the bottom step so that his line of vision was just above that of the porch floor. “Newt…don’t put your camera away just yet. Take a look at this.”
“What is it?” Newton climbed up onto the porch to where Crow stood in front of the boarded-up window to the left of the door.
Crow pointed with his machete. “Looks like footprints in the dust there on the porch. Can’t tell how old they are, though. There’s been a lot of rain…” his voice trailed off and he rose to his feet, brow furrowed in perplexity. “Oh…shit.”
“What?”
Crow stepped onto the porch and used his blade to tap the wood covering the window to the left of the door. “What’s your read on this?”
“Yes. Plywood. I have seen it before. Very impressive.”
“Okay, smartass, you’re a hotshot reporter. You’re supposed to be a good observer, so observe. Tell me what’s wrong with this picture.”
Newton stepped closer, peering at the four-by-eight sheet of heavy three-quarter plywood. It had been securely affixed to the wall with at least fifty heavy-duty sixteen-penny nails. The nail heads were neatly spaced and hammered flush. Professionally done, no owl-eyes, no miss-strokes. There was a pale-blue stencil inked onto the surface of the wood sheet, repeated twice in the high left and lower right corners. The lettering read BILDMOR LUMBER—CRESTVILLE. “Well,” he said, “I can say with some confidence that this, indeed, is plywood.”
Crow made a disgusted noise. “No shit, Sherlock. Don’t you think there’s anything a little odd about it?”
“Um. No. Not really.”
“Christ on the cross,” Crow snapped. “Newt, this place has been deserted for thirty years. We know nobody owns it because I checked the deed yesterday. Look at the plywood, for God’s sake. It’s still green!”
Newton did look at it and his mouth slowly opened. “Oh,” he said.
“Look at the nail heads. Shiny bright. They’re brand-new.”
“Oh…shit.”
“I’ll bet this hasn’t been up for more than a couple of weeks. All of the windows are the same. I checked. All the lumber is new, all the nails are new.”
“Oh,” Newton said, “shit.”
“Uh huh,” Crow said and his eyes were bright and even a little wild, “but there’s more, kid, and this is the kicker. This is the cat’s ass.” He pointed to the double front doors. They were heavy and ornate, and once had long glass panels, but the panes were covered over with neatly sawn strips of plywood as green as what covered the windows. But what Crow was indicating was the chain that held the doors closed. One hole had been drilled through each door and a heavy length of brand-new steel welded chain was laced through, effectively chaining the doors shut. Crow lifted the slack and gave it a shake to show how solidly the doors were held fast. The links were as thick as Crow’s thumb.
“Damn,” Newton observed, bending close to examine the chain. “We’ll never break that.”
“No shit. It’s the same on the backdoor.”
“What do you think? Caretaker?”
Crow felt like punching the man. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Newton, are you friggin’ blind?”
“What? I can see the chain. I can see that it’s as new as the plywood.”
“Newt,” Crow said with as much patience as he could muster. “Where’s the lock?”
“The, er, lock?” Newton looked blank, then he got it. The loop of chain emerged from one drilled hole and reentered the house through the hole on the other door. What Crow held in his hand was an uninterrupted length of slack. “Oh, shit,” Newton said again, with greater emphasis.
“Yeah.”
The chain was padlocked on the inside of Griswold’s house.
“Back door?”
“The same?”
“Cellar door?”
“Uh huh.”
“Crow…whoever slung those chains—”
“—is inside that house,” Crow said and then gave Newton a ghastly smile. “Inside with all the windows all boarded up.”
“So no sunlight can get in,” Newton said softly. Even more softly he said, “Uh oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Crow, trite as may be to say it, I have a very bad feeling about this.”
“Yeah. I’ve had a bad feeling since we came out of the woods. The place is in too good a shape, and that bothers the hell out of me.” Licking his lips nervously, Crow stepped closer to the door and reached out with one tentative hand to touch the wood. The plywood was cool and felt slightly damp. “That’s weird.”
“Put your hand on the wood.”
“I really don’t want to.”
Crow said nothing, but continued to touch the door. There was a faint tremble and he couldn’t tell if it was coming through the wood or was the shaking of his own hand. He closed his eyes to try to focus his sense of touch and instantly the trembling became more pronounced, and it wasn’t just in the wood. He could feel it rippling in waves up his arm as if the whole house was vibrating. Then, in the deepest part of his brain, the place where his fears lived, where those last words of Ruger echoed without end, he heard a voice whisper to him.