Читать книгу Spindle Lane - Mark Reefe - Страница 8

Chapter 2

It had been a rough night. Pumped up from my narrow escape, it took forever to fall asleep. When my eyes finally shut, a parade of nightmares quickly followed, marching through my head one after another. Funniest thing, I couldn’t remember a darn one of them come morning. That was a bit strange for me.

“Give me room for my legs!”

As if getting no sleep wasn’t bad enough, it appeared the chances of sneaking in a little mid-morning nap wasn’t in the cards either. On the opposite end of the couch from where I stretched in my semi-comatose state lay my six-year-old sister. With a button nose and chubby little cheeks, Katie could pass for cute when she wasn’t being a royal pain in the butt. People said she looked like me when I was her age, but I sure didn’t see it.

I stifled a yawn. “All right, stinky. Here, put your legs in front. I’ll tuck mine into the cushion behind you.”

“I’m not stinky!” she muttered while doing as instructed.

I closed my eyes, fading in and out only half-listening to Scooby’s All-Star Laff-A-Lympics on the television. I remained in that state until our rattling screen door brought me back to the land of the living.

Rolling off the couch, I flopped onto the shag carpet.

Another round of knocks at the door.

“I’m coming! I’m coming! Keep your shirt on, doofus!”

I wasn’t some crazy person cruising for a bruising for insulting one of our neighbors. It was ten-thirty. That meant Paul Perret was knocking on the door. Every Saturday for as far back as I could remember, Paul showed up on the porch between ten and ten-thirty, except for that one time he got explosive diarrhea from a stomach flu and the other when he was grounded for a week. My best bro was as reliable as the finest Swiss watch.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of him. My friend had a beach towel over his shoulders, goggles around his neck, and was sporting a bathing suit that ballooned way out below his belly button and extended down to a pair of knobby knees. “Either you’re shrinking or that suit is waaay too big for you.”

A grimace broke on Paul’s thin face, and his blue eyes grew wide. “Yeah, couldn’t find my trunks, so I borrowed one of Perry’s.”

“He let you?”

Paul’s smile spread, exposing a set of choppers Bugs Bunny would have been jealous of. “Nope, he was sleeping when I split.”

I pushed open the screen door. “Steve’s out too. Sometimes he hibernates until noon. So, won’t Perry pound you when he finds out you took his suit?”

Paul hunched his narrow shoulders as he entered. “Meh, he’ll pound me anyway, so I might as well give him a reason. Besides, I don’t want to get to the pool late; otherwise, all the chairs closest to the water will be taken. Now hurry up and suit up.”

“I wanna go too!”

In unison, Paul and I sighed and turned to Katie, who was now sitting upright on the couch beaming at us.

“We don’t have to take your sister, do we?”

I smiled at her and spoke in a voice only Paul could hear. “That’s a big nooo. Even if we somehow managed to lug her there, we’d be stuck splashing around in the shallow end all day. Gimme a sec.”

I spoke up. “Hey, Katie, Mom is going to the pool in a little while. It would be better if you went with her. See, you can’t ride a bike yet, and you’re too little to walk all the way there.”

Katie’s plump face scrunched up. “But I want to go with you! I don’t want to wait!”

This wasn’t working. When reasoning fell flat, experience taught me nothing worked better than a little bribe to help calm my sister. “Listen. If you wait for Mom, I promise to buy you some candy at the snack bar when you get there.”

The wrinkles disappeared, replaced with a pair of crescent-shaped dimples. “Can I get a candy necklace? That way I can wear it while I eat it.”

Messing up her Dutch-boy haircut, I said, “Whatever you want, stinky.”

I crept through the bedroom my brother and I shared so as not to disturb Sleeping Beauty while retrieving my suit. Stubbing my toe on the corner of my bed, I narrowly avoided face-planting into my brother’s backside and earning an immediate retaliatory butt whooping. After a quick wardrobe change, I was ready to roll. On the way out the door, I shouted, “Paul and I are going to the pool!”

I wasn’t sure if Mom heard because we didn’t wait for an answer. We were too pumped. It was the beginning of summer vacation and Belair Bath and Tennis—or BBT as it was known locally—was calling to us to spend the day in a chlorine-infused, water-up-the-nose frenzy of aquatic activities and associated mayhem. With five-feet-deep swimming lanes, a diving well plummeting to twelve, and a snack bar serving the best crinkle-cut fries around, it was the perfect refuge on a hot summer’s day in Prince George’s County. There was also the slimmest of chances we might spot Melissa Casey and her crew there. Just like Paul and me, Melissa was going to be a sophomore at Bowie High, but with her feathered Farrah Fawcett hair and tight designer jeans, she already acted and looked more like a senior. True, she was light years out of my league, but the last time we saw her at the pool I swore she was checking me out. Paul claims I was suffering from sunstroke.

“Morning, boys! Looks like you two are on a mission.”

It wasn’t unusual to see Edward Hutchinson in the neighborhood, but it was strange to hear him and even stranger to talk to him. He was always either pruning his rosebushes, watering his flowers, or sitting on his porch in his rocker and smoking his pipe. I’d probably only ever spoken to the old man three or four times in my life, and even then all I said was a simple hello or good morning. It’s not that he was mean or particularly creepy. He was just…distant, a background feature of the neighborhood, just like his roses or the streetlights. He reminded me of The Professor from Gilligan’s Island, but about thirty or so years older with silver hair and skin that looked like you could make a catcher’s mitt out of it.

“Yes, sir. On our way to the pool,” I answered.

Paul said nothing. He didn’t have to. I saw his thinly veiled look of disgust from the corner of my eye.

“Well, don’t let me slow you and your tongue-tied friend down.” Mr. Hutchison threw me a wink as he passed the two of us. “Remember, son, only that day dawns to which we are awake.”

Before I had a chance to think about the old man’s strange words, I felt an elbow to my ribcage along with Paul’s hushed voice. “You stoned? You know better than to talk to spooky Hutchinson. You get on his bad side and he’ll chop you up and shove you in his basement just like he did with his old lady.”

Mr. Hutchinson’s wife vanished without a trace ten years ago. From what our parents had told us, an investigation that stretched over a year offered no clues as to her fate. Some adults claimed Abigail Hutchinson left her husband of forty-plus years for another man. In those stories, the guy was usually a rich foreigner who whisked her away to his estate somewhere in South America or the Caribbean or someplace like that. Others believed she died of natural causes and that a grief-stricken Mr. Hutchinson took her body to a secret location where he buried it in a private ceremony. As for my friends, the general consensus was Mr. Hutchinson had murdered his wife in some berserk Texas Chainsaw Massacre rampage involving a wide assortment of power tools, masks made of human skin, and enough blood to make Stephen King queasy. It made for great storytelling, but I found it the least likely explanation based on the little I knew of the old timer. From what I’d been told, he loved his wife, and her death crushed him.

“I don’t know why you’re so mean to him. He seems nice to me. I feel kind of bad for the guy.”

“That’s how they get you. You feel all sorry for them, and that’s why you don’t see it coming until it’s too late.” Paul slid an index finger across his neck. “Then it’s good night, John-Boy, and you’re nothing but a three-piece skin suit for the old man.”

Having received my morning dose of crazy from Paul, I hopped on the Blue Beast and rode off. Looney Tunes followed close behind on his hand-me-down Huffy. We turned onto Spangler Lane as a summer breeze whipped up, stirring memories of the prior night’s events. I fell silent as the hungry shriek of the bike trail beast echoed in my mind. No way in hell a person could have made that sound…

“Ground control to Major Tom.”

I looked over at Paul. “Huh?”

“Dude, you’ve been riding for the past five minutes with that zombie-stare. I’m pretty sure you ate a bug and didn’t even notice.”

I shook my head to clear it of the bone-chilling cry. “You been over to White Marsh lately?”

“You mean the park? Nah, too far away. If I want to play baseball or soccer, I head to the churchyard.”

“How about just on the bike trail part of it?”

“Nope.”

We hung a right on Belair Drive and entered the tree tunnel. Fifty-foot beech trees soared to our left and right, reaching out to one another until they meshed into an emerald blanket above us. Picking up the pace, we skipped over the curb onto a dirt path that paralleled the right side of the road.

“Well, I was there last night, and I saw something pretty freaky.”

“What kind of freaky? Aliens freaky? Ghost freaky? Third nipple freaky?”

“Dude, what’s wrong with you? None of those. There was something in the bushes off the trail. It was hiding from me…I think.”

“Why would anyone hide from you?”

“Don’t know. I felt like maybe I caught it in the middle of something, something it didn’t want to be seen doing.”

“Like what, spanking its monkey?”

“No, goober. There were tracks in the dirt like something had been dragged off into the bushes.”

“Maybe a body?”

“Maybe…and there’s more.”

“Keep talking.”

“There was a puddle of blood on the ground. I didn’t know what it was at first. Thought it might have been water.”

Paul’s face squished to a frown. “Really? Then what happened?”

“Well, the thing in the bushes must have still been hungry because it came after me.”

“Then you did see it. What was it?”

“No. I booked it out of there as soon as I saw the bushes moving and never looked back. By the time I got home, I noticed the blood on my bike’s tires. Guess I must have driven through the puddle when I bailed.”

Paul’s monotone response was annoying. “Uh-huh. Sure.”

“What, that’s all you have to say? Don’t you believe me?”

My friend ignored the question and turned his attention back to the road. “Should be at BBT in a couple minutes. Wonder if Melissa will be there. Hope she’s wearing that pink bikini like she did that one time. That was hot.”

“Paul!”

He glanced back at me with a blank expression. “Look, it’s not that I think you’re lying to me. It’s just this sounds like another one of your stories is all.”

And there it was. The knife plunged deep in my gut as Paul twisted it and smiled. I guess I should have expected it by now, but the words still stung, especially because they were spilling out of my best friend’s mouth. I pointed to my front tire and went on the offensive. “Okay then. If you don’t believe me, look at the tire. I’ll bet you a slice of pizza there’s blood on it.”

Dust and leaves swirled around Paul’s ankles as he slammed on the brakes. I stopped beside him.

He flashed a toothy grin as he hopped off his bike. “Okay, sucka! Throw in a Coke and it’s a deal.”

Taking a knee by the wheel, I motioned for Paul to do the same. My hand glided over its dusty, diamond-patterned surface as I looked for the proof to shut my best friend up. “I’m sure it’s all dried now, but there should still be some left. See, look here.”

Paul leaned over my shoulder and squinted. “Where?”

“You blind or something? Right here. Don’t you see the red smudge?”

“Pfft, that could be anything. To be honest, it actually looks a little like a turd. Sure you didn’t just ride through a big pile of dookie some dog squeezed out on the trail?”

He was trying to be funny, except there was a time and place for jokes, and this wasn’t it. Sometimes I wondered if Paul really took his best bud responsibilities seriously. He was supposed to believe me and have my back when nobody else would. After all, if you can’t count on your best friend, who the heck can you count on? I felt my face getting warm. “It’s not crap; it’s blood. I know what I saw. Guess I should have known better than to think you’d believe me.” With nothing left to say, I jumped on the Blue Beast and sped off back down the tree tunnel.

We were exiting it by the time Paul caught up with me. “Hey, c’mon. I was just messing around with you. Be cool, dude.”

I didn’t feel like being cool. I was trying to be serious, and he was busy trying to be Richard Pryor. Why? I didn’t know. It’s not like he had an audience.

He finally took the hint. “All right, all right, sorry. It’s just you have to admit, you don’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to living in a place most of us call reality. Remember the time you thought Mr. Davis was a vampire?”

“That’s not fair. That was over a year ago, and I had evidence. The guy was pale as a ghost, and we never saw him during the day.”

“He was an albino, Chris. He didn’t go out in the daytime because he didn’t want to get sunburnt.”

An excellent point, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me. “Fine. But we didn’t know that at the time, now did we, Paaauul?”

My friend snorted. “You were all set to douse him in holy water you swiped from Saint Pius. I was the one that talked you out of it.”

“Yeah, so?”

We zipped past the arched entrance to the Belair Stables where generations of some of the greatest racing horses in American history were born and bred. Now the place was a dusty old museum, and the consensus of my friends was that it was definitely haunted.

Paul flashed his trademark goofball grin. “How do you think that would have gone down explaining to your parents? Gee, Mom, Dad, sorry I nearly drowned our albino neighbor in holy water I stole from church, but I thought he was actually a bloodsucking spawn of Satan.”

That actually was a little funny. He earned no points from me for his rational argument. Rational was boring. Rational was predictable. Rational was opposite of fun and exciting and, as such, should be considered the enemy. He did get points for his sense of humor though. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “Okay, maybe I owe you a solid on that one.”

“Damn right. And don’t think I didn’t notice the wooden stakes you had stowed in your closet too.”

I was positive I had those stashed under the carpeting in the back corner of the closet. If he found them, he may also have seen my stockpile of cherry bombs and the old bra ads from the Sears catalogue. “Yeah, well that would have been our last line of defense if Mr. Davis had turned out to be one of the undead. One of these days you’ll thank me for my keen instincts.”

“The day that I have to thank you for being nutso is the day we’re in a shitload of trouble.”

Paul wouldn’t have missed a golden opportunity to zing me if he found the other stuff in the closet. As my stomach slowly plopped back to its natural resting place, I decided to make a priority of relocating my incriminating contraband. Mom would have a heart attack if she found my stash.

“Could be,” I said. “But on that day you’ll be so thankful I saved your life that you’ll vow to be my servant for eternity. You’ll wash my socks, cook my dinner, and babysit for Melissa Dwyer and me.”

“Babysit for Melissa Dwyer and you?”

I smirked at him. “That’s right. We’re gonna get married after high school and have a family. Two boys and maybe a girl. You’ll babysit so I can take Melissa out on the weekends for dinner and to the movies.”

“Does Melissa know this yet?”

“Of course not, goober! First, we’ll date for a couple years and then we’ll go steady. For a classy girl like Melissa you have to take your time, spend some money.”

Paul snorted a laugh. “You do know you’ll actually have to talk to her for any of that to happen, right? Man, I wonder what it’s like to live on Planet Chris.”

“It’s cool. You should come visit sometime.”

We spent all day rotating between the pool, ping pong tables, and snack bar. When Mom and Katie showed up, I made good on my sugary bribe and even spent some time splashing around with the ankle biter—much to Paul’s annoyance. Despite the absence of Melissa and her pink bikini, we had a good time.

Soon enough the sun was dipping below the tree line, and a pale moon was already rising against a darkening sky. We were pruned, red-eyed, and ready to go home.