If those times had ever really existed.
Once the boys were out of sight and quiet returned to the street, I climbed out of the car. Just in case anyone was watching, I strolled across the property like a prospective buyer then circled around to the fence that ran along the side yard. As in winter, the lawn was dead again, only now it was burned and matted down from sun and grubs. I opened the gate and stepped through, closing it quietly behind me. I looked up to the circle of trees just beyond the backyard as I had the last time I’d come here, but on this occasion no birds welcomed or warned me. Only silence.
Even more windows had been broken from thrown stones, and additional graffiti had been added, spray-painted along the back wall of the house, including a crude pentagram, a parade of profanity and the scribbled names of a few rock bands I recognized. I could see how in a town like Potter’s Cove, where teenagers had little to do, a house like this could quickly become a late night retreat, the neighborhood spooky house, abandoned and easily accessible for hanging out, drinking beer, smoking pot—whatever.
I crossed to the cement patio in back. The chaise lounge, lawn furniture and plastic garbage bags that had been there before were gone. Cigarette butts and a few spent beer and liquor bottles littered the area instead.
It was then that I noticed the sliders off the patio.
A section of glass near the bottom was missing, kicked in from the looks, and while the sliding door was closed, the wooden rod that fit into the track and held it that way was gone.
That same uncompromising feeling that I was being watched returned. I looked back at the yard and trees. Nothing. Not even a breeze. Just heat and sky and silence.
I tried the slider. It quietly slid open, and a waft of musty air met me, a dank, mildew smell that intensified once it mingled with the humid air outside. I fanned the initial blast away with my hands then stepped through the open slider and into the kitchen.
Vivid memories still lived here for me.
I could almost see Bernard’s mother flitting around on a hot summer day just like this one, dressed in high-heeled slippers and a terrycloth waist-length cover-up that did little to cover much of anything, especially the bikini beneath. I remembered her pouring us lemonade and dancing her way back to the refrigerator while music played from a radio on the counter, Tommy, Rick, Donald, Bernard and me—just kids—huddled around the table, sweaty and out of breath from playing, gulping our lemonade and laughing, reliving adventures we’d had earlier in the day.
It occurred to me then just how long it had been since I’d set foot in this house. Although Bernard continued to live here as an adult, he had preferred instead to come to our houses or to meet us at some other neutral point—and strangely enough that had been fine with us. The last time I could remember being inside the house was a few weeks before his mother was hospitalized with cancer. A few years now, I thought. Odd.
The memories receded, leaving behind a dirty, dilapidated kitchen and a musty stink. There was an uncomfortable stillness to the house, the walls and those windows still intact providing an unnatural quiet, a buffer to the world outside that seemed different somehow, more intense and final. Though the windows that were not broken were filthy and smudged, I was careful to avoid them anyway.
The floor was dirty and littered with dirt tracked in from outside and what appeared to be small rodent droppings. I crossed the kitchen and slipped through the doorway into a living room. There had once been wall-to-wall carpeting here, but that had been ripped up for some reason to reveal old wooden flooring beneath. Void of furniture, and stripped bear of everything else, the room looked larger than I remembered. The wallpaper was cracked and hanging in places, and more graffiti had been spray-painted across the walls and even on the floor. I stepped around a pile of trash and debris and continued on to the foyer just inside the front door. To my left was the staircase leading to the second floor. Beyond it was a short hallway that led to a bathroom.
I stood at the base of the stairs and looked up. Darkness waited at the top in more ways than one. I wiped sweat from my hands onto my pants and slowly climbed the staircase. The carpeting remained and cushioned my steps, but the banister was gouged and scarred, as if someone had been at it with a knife. The destruction kids had caused in the time the house had been unattended was surprising. All those years before, when we’d been kids ourselves, I could never have imagined this result for a house where I spent so much time, where I had so many memories, good and bad. But here it was, a dead shell, a decaying monument to nothing.
When I reached the top I hesitated, hand still on the banister. It wasn’t quite dark but due to the low ceiling and location of the landing in relation to any of the upstairs windows, light was limited. The musty smell wasn’t as bad here, but there was another odor I hadn’t detected previously. It smelled like sulfur, recently lit matches. I took the final step, and once on the landing at the top of the stairs, saw a bedroom directly ahead. Linda’s bedroom. Further down the hallway was Bernard’s old room, so I lowered my eyes and fled to it, hoping to escape the other if even for a short while longer.
The light increased as I neared Bernard’s room. There had once been a door there but it was now removed and leaned against the wall next to the doorway. It had been kicked and broken in places. The room itself was empty. I walked in as I had so many times over the years, but now it was as impersonal and barren as an open grave. In my mind I could still see his bed, his desk, his record player, and the posters that had once covered his walls. I ventured deeper into the room. His closet stood to my right. I opened it, swinging the door wide. But for a string dangling from a light bulb fixture on the ceiling, it too was empty.
A soft scratching sound stopped me cold. Movement. Scurrying movement within the wall, as if Bernard had been sealed away behind it and was now clawing his way out.
Mice, I told myself. It’s only mice.
Familiar laughter from the past echoed through the empty hallway, each echo reverberating one atop another until it sounded like a group laughing, the dead amused by the living. But the laughter was Bernard’s, duplicated again and again.
Even in death he was abandoned, hidden in shadow and deceit.
My mind calmed a bit, absorbed the laughter and quieted it. I slowly scoped out the room, found only a rather lethargic wasp slinking across one of the cracked windowpanes facing the street. For now, we were alone.
I forced myself back into the hallway, back toward the other bedroom at the top of the stairs. I felt like that sleepy and disoriented wasp, just another creature that had taken a wrong turn and become lost within these dying walls, destined to spend its final hours sharing space with all the secrets trapped here.
What secrets, Alan? What secrets live here?
Secrets. Memories. Lies. Nervous smiles and downcast eyes replaced all that had existed prior, as comfort turned to dread. Forgotten, pushed down—deep down—pretending that not believing in the Devil was enough, that it would disarm him and protect you from him, when all the while disbelief only made him stronger.
All the good and clear memories were before—before we were teenagers—before the changes in us, in our bodies and minds and in the way we saw the world, the way we experienced it—before Bernard had been introduced and brought into a realm he did not yet know was his legacy. What had been a regular hangout and a safe haven—Bernard’s house—ceased to exist as such once those changes happened because it had become too difficult, too strange. The memories turned from good, carefree and innocent to bad, dark and shameful, and we needed to stay away—we all needed to stay away—or we might remember. And we did not want to remember. I did not want to remember.