I couldn’t stay up on the road out here, because there was no one else on it but him and me and he would have seen me easy. But there were a lot of weeds and things growing alongside of it, and I got off into them and kept going with my back bent even with the tops of them. When they weren’t close together I had to make a quick dive from one clump to the next.
Just before he got to where the trees started in, he kind of slowed down, like he wasn’t going very much further. I looked all around, but I couldn’t see anything, only some kind of old frame house standing way back off the road. It didn’t have any lights and didn’t look like anyone lived in it. Gee, it was a spooky kind of a place if there ever was one, and I sure hoped he wasn’t going anywhere near there.
But it looked like he was, only he didn’t go straight for it. First he looked both ways, up and down the road, and saw there was no one around — or thought there wasn’t. Then he twisted his head and listened, to make sure no car was coming just then. Then he took a quick jump that carried him off the road into the darkness. But I could still see him a little, because I knew where he’d gone in.
Then, when he’d gotten over to where this tumbledown house was, he went all around it first, very carefully, like he wanted to make sure there was no one hiding in it waiting to grab him. Luckily there were plenty of weeds and bushes growing all around, and it was easy to get up closer to him.
When he’d gotten back around to the front again, and decided there was no one in it — which I could have told him right from the start just by the looks of it — he finally got ready to go in. It had a crazy kind of a porch with a shed over it, sagging way down in the middle between the two posts that held it. He went in under that, and I could hardly see him any more, it was so dark. He was just a kind of black blot against the door.
I heard him fiddling around with something that sounded like a lock, and then the door wheezed, and scraped back. There was a white something on the porch and he picked it up and took it in with him.
He left the door open a crack behind him, like he was coming out again soon, so I knew enough not to sneak up on the porch and try to peep in. It would have squeaked under me, anyway. But I moved over a little further in the bushes, where I could get a better line on the door. A weak light came on, not a regular light, but a match that he must have lit there on the other side of the door. But I’ve got good eyes and it was enough to show me what he was doing. He was picking up a couple of letters that the postman must have shoved under the bottom of the door. He looked at them, and then he seemed to get sore. He rolled them up into a ball with one hand and pitched them way back inside the house. He hadn’t even opened them, just looked at the outside.
His match burned out, but he lit another, only this time way back inside some place where I couldn’t see him. Then that one went out too, and a minute later the door widened a little and he edged out again as quietly as he’d gone in. He put something down where he’d taken that white thing up from. Then he closed the door real careful after him, looked all around to make sure no one was in sight, and came down off the porch.
I was pretty far out in front of the door, further than I had been when he went in. But I had a big bush to cover me, and I tucked my head down between my knees and made a ball out of myself, to make myself as small as I could, and that was about the sixteenth time he’d missed seeing me. But I forgot about my hand, it was sticking out flat against the ground next to me, to help me balance myself.
He came by so close his pants leg almost brushed my cheek. Just then a car came by along the road, and he stepped quickly back so he wouldn’t be seen. His whole heel came down on two of my fingers.
All I could remember was that if I yelled I would be a goner. I don’t know how I kept from it. It felt like a butcher’s cleaver had chopped them off. My eyes got all full of water, mixed with stars. He stayed on it maybe half a minute, but it seemed like an hour. Luckily the car was going fast, and he moved forward again. I managed to hold out without moving until he got out to the road, where there wasn’t so much danger of him hearing me.
Then I rolled over on my face, buried it with both arms, and bawled good and hard, but without making any noise. By the time I got that out of my system, it didn’t hurt so much any more. I guess they weren’t busted, just skinned.
Then I sat up and thought things over, meanwhile blowing on my fingers to cool them. He’d gone back along the road toward the built-up part of town. I didn’t know whether to keep on following him or not. If he was only going back where he came from, there didn’t seem to be any sense to it, I knew where that was already. I knew he didn’t live here in this house, people don’t live in two places at once.
What did he want out here then? What had he come here for? He’d acted kind of sore, the way he looked over those letters and then balled them up and fired them down. Like they weren’t what he wanted, like he’d had the trouble of coming all the way out here for nothing. He must be waiting for a letter, a letter that hadn’t come yet. I decided to stick around and find out more about this house if I could.
Well I waited until I couldn’t hear him walking along the road any more, then I got up and sneaked up on the porch myself. That thing he had put down outside the door was only an empty milk bottle, like people leave for the milkman to take away with him when he brings the new milk. So that white thing he had picked up at first must have been the same bottle, but with the milk still in it. He must have just taken it in and emptied it out.
What did he want to do a thing like that for? He hadn’t been in there long enough to drink it. He just threw it out, and then brought the empty bottle outside again. That showed two things. If the milkman left milk here, then there was supposed to be somebody living here. But if this guy emptied the bottle out, that showed there wasn’t anyone living here any more, but he didn’t want the milkman or the mailman or anyone else to find out about it yet.
My heart started to pick up speed, and I got all gooseflesh and I whispered to myself: “Maybe he murdered the guy that lives here, and nobody’s found out about it yet! I bet that’s what it is! I bet this is where that eye came from!” The only catch was, why did he keep coming back here afterwards, if he did? The only thing I could figure out was he must want some letter that he knew was going to show up here, but it hadn’t come yet, and he kept coming back at nights to find out if it had been delivered. And maybe the whole time there was someone dead inside there...
I kept saying to myself, “I’m going in there and see if there is. I can get in there easy, even if the door is locked.” But for a long time I didn’t move. Well, if you got to know the truth, I was good and scared.
Finally I said to myself like this: “It’s only a house. What can a house do to you? Just shadows and emptiness can’t hurt you. And even if there is somebody lying dead in there, dead people can’t move any more. You’re not a kid any more, you’re twelve years and five months old, and besides your old man needs help. If you go in there you might find out something that’ll help him.” So I changed my belt over to the third slot, and whenever I do that I mean business.
I tried the door first, but like I’d thought, it was locked, so I couldn’t get in that way. Then I walked slowly all around the outside of the house trying all the windows one after the other. They were up higher than my head, but the clap-boards stuck out in lots of places and it was easy to get a toe-hold on them and hoist myself up. That wouldn’t work either. They were all latched or nailed down tight on the inside. I would have been willing to heave a rock and bust one of the panes so I could stick my arm in, but that wouldn’t have been any good either, because they had cross-pieces in them that made little squares out of the pane, and they weren’t big enough to squeeze through.