"Holy fuck!" Dicky yelled, gagging at the stench.
It slammed Balls in the face like tear gas. "Smells worse than a pile'a dead buzzards in there—"
The first thing they noticed was a woman's leg right by the door. Balls grabbed it, expecting to pull out a dead woman.
Instead, all he pulled out was a leg.
They he pulled out two severed arms and another leg. All of the limbs were beginning to decompose.
"That there's some fucked up shit, Balls!" Dicky exclaimed.
"Ya gots ta be shittin' me... "
Then Dicky gulped. He shined his light into the back of the haul. "Balls. Ain't just arms'n legs in there."
"Huh?"
"Looks like three bodies too."
Balls shined his own light in and made the same observation. Two women and a man, it appeared, all bound and gagged. Balls took a breath against the stench and hauled the first woman out by the ankles.
"Fuck."
The body flopped to the ground. A brunette in her twenties apparently, cut-off shorts and a halter. She would've been a looker... if she hadn't been dead for several hours. Her skin had turned to the hue of spoiled cream, while the undersides of her arms and legs were a disturbing purple-black.
"That there's a waste'a prime splittail," Balls related. He pulled the corpse's top up to gander the breasts and blue nipples, just for good measure. "But I'se wonder what the fuck's this all about."
"Looks like we picked the wrong U-Haul ta rip off," Dicky offered. "Shee-it, I thought it'd be full'a old junk or something. Instead, it's full'a dead bodies."
"Not quite dead," a muffled voice floated out from the dark compartment.
Dicky and Balls nearly keeled over.
"The fuck!" Dicky yelled.
Balls hauled the next body out onto the ground.
FLUMP!
A man in a white shirt and glasses sluggishly churned on the ground, wrists and ankles twisting against rope bonds. He'd managed to half-remove his gag by the force of his tongue. Balls whipped out his Buck knife and cut the gag fully off.
"Thank God!" the man wheezed.
"You look familiar," Dicky remarked.
"Yeah," Balls added. "Shee-it, you're that dude hangs out at the Crossroads. Barkeep tolt me you was a Writer."
The Writer nodded, face smudged. "That's me, and thank you for rescuing us."
"Us?"
"There's another woman inside. I think she's still alive."
Balls yanked out the third occupant of the U-Haul.
FLUMP!
"Dang!" Dicky railed. "It's that bar ‘ho—"
"Cora!" Balls finished.
All ninety pounds of her squirmed in the dirt. Her eyes bugged above her gag, which Balls, too, cut off.
"Balls! Dicky! Ya saved us from that awful man!" Her voice shrilled. Balls, Dicky, and the Writer as well all flinched at the tenor of her voice. Nails across slate would've been less annoying.
"What man?" Balls asked.
"Some old philosophical psychopath named ‘Lud," the Writer said. "He conked us both out behind the bar, then tossed us inside. But... when this happened, the U-Haul was hooked up to a red pickup truck."
"It was until we stolt it," Dicky said.
The Writer peered. "Why... would you steal it?"
Balls was wholly aggravated by this new monkey wrench. "We stolt it ta clean out that house," he pointed upward. "But lookin' at the dump now, I doubt there's anything inside to steal."
The Writer took a long look at the Crafter house. "Interesting."
"What's that, Writer?" Balls snapped.
"Well, did you ever read ‘The Purloined Letter' by Edgar Allan Poe?"
"No."
The Writer frowned. "The moral of the story is that things of the most value can be effectively hidden in plain sight. That house, for instance."
"What about it, Writer?" Dicky urged.
"From the outside, indeed, it appears to be an abandoned dump. But aren't the windows curious? They look brand-new. Why install brand-new windows in an uninhabitable hulk?"
Balls and Dicky peered. Then they cut the bonds at the Writer's and Cora's ankles, hoisted them up, and they all approached the leaning house.
"Damn if he ain't got good eyes," Dicky said, studying a bow window with his flashlight. "It does look brand-new." He squinted at the corner. "Some winder company named Lexan."
The Writer laughed. "It's not a company, it's a composite material—bullet-proof glass, in other words. It's indestructible, which proves even more curious. Lexan windows are as effective as iron bars, and very expensive. The owner of this property obviously wants people to think it's not worth breaking into, yet he installs Lexan to insure that they don't."
Balls muttered, "Indestructer-able?" and then the Writer jumped back and Cora shrieked when Balls pulled the big Webley pistol from his belt. "Ain't nothin' indestructer-able if'n I say it ain't!"
BAM!
Everyone jumped an inch, and Cora shrieked even more annoyingly loud. When the smoke cleared...
"Dang," Dicky muttered, scratching at the window pane. The big bullet barely scuffed the surface.
"Looks like the Writer's right," Balls admitted.
Then Cora shrieked again.
"Shut up, girl!" Balls yelled.
"L-look! There's a face lookin' at us in the next winder!"
They walked over, if a bit cautiously. Balls shined his light.
"Ain't no face. It's a—"
"A bust," the Writer said.
"Bust?" Dicky scoffed. "Ya mean like titties?"
"No, no... "
The curtains of every window in the house had been drawn but this one sported an overlooked gap, and in the gap, indeed, a face peered out. A marble face.
"Think of it as a statue head," the Writer said. "It's propped up behind the window, for decoration." When he looked closer, he went "Hmmm... "
"What'choo, hmmin' about?" Balls demanded.
"It appears to be Italian marble. Very expensive."
"Well hot dog!" Balls hooted. "Tooler weren't lyin'!"
The Writer said, "But even more curious is the brass plate beneath the bust. It says Phillipe Marquand, 1674-1728. Marquand, if I remember correctly, was a famous French medium who is said to have been able to communicate with the dead."
Balls, Dicky, and Cora all gaped at him.
"And this, over here," and the Writer led them up the front steps onto the ruined porch. "I almost didn't notice it, due to the torn screens. Shine your light up there, sir."
Balls did, and almost gasped.
Above the front door was a half-circle composed of ornate stained glass.
"It's called a tympanum. See the face?"
They all squinted further.
"Well, dang if'n he ain't right," Cora said.
"Don't that beat all?" Dicky added.
The mosaic formed a face below which ornate letters read ALEXANDER SETON.
"Who the fuck's he?" Balls asked.
"The most notorious of all alchemists," the Writer explained. "In 1604, Seton is said to have turned lead into gold."
"Bullshit," Balls scoffed, but after another moment of staring at the puzzle-piece face, he turned away.