You really want to hear about this? You sure?

Okay, here goes. It was hot as a whore’s underwear that summer. Might have been 1946 or maybe ’47, I’m not sure any more. I was maybe sixteen years old. My mother had just died of fever. Me and my latest “Daddy,” a bad drunk named Bobby Lee Gifford, drove a cherry red 1940 Ford up from Reno to the high desert town of Dry Wells, Nevada. We went to look over a house Bobby Lee’s brother-in-law, killed in that war in Europe, had up and left him. Bobby Lee was a big man, rough as a cob and mean as a snake. He did his service in the Marines, up against the Japanese. Probably fucked him up.

He drank the whole damn way.

“You close to this fellow Tim?” I say. I’m just trying to make conversation.

“Hell no,” Bobby Lee says. “Tim was a pervert. He knocked my sister up when she was underage, and I beat the crap out of him. I made him marry the bitch before he went off and got killed by the Krauts. Truth be told, we hated each other.”

“But then why did he leave you the…”

“Beats me,” Bobby Lee said. “Now shut up.”

So I did. Bobby Lee was tall, and so weather-beaten he creaked like saddle leather. You had a brain you didn’t fuck with him. Excuse my French.

Nevada? You ain’t never been up in those parts, the road just goes on forever. You got bits of brush here and there, and then some mountains and then more nothing. To get to Dry Wells you go through this pass, and suddenly everything opens up again. It’s high desert, beautiful and strange. Way hot days and freezing cold nights. It’s like a really bad woman, and it gets under your skin the same kind of way.

This house was a piece of shit with shingles. It stood maybe two, three hundred yards away from the tore-up railroad tracks on the outskirts of a town that hadn’t been much to begin with. We pulled up in that red Ford near dusk, and the big ass-end spun around and raised a cloud of gravel and dust. Bobby Lee had already put away the better part of a six pack. He jumped out, spat in the sand and shook his head.

He said: “She’s a sorry bitch,” or words to that effect.

I didn’t talk much back then. You might find that hard to believe now, but I didn’t. You see, I had a Mom who took to booze and selling herself. Mom, she hooked up with a series of so-called Step Daddy’s that all beat hell out of me. I learned to walk slow, look at the ground, mumble “yes, sir” and “no, sir” and to curl up when somebody started in whomping my ass. Bobby Lee said he was gonna pay me two dollars to help him out. I thought two bucks was a fortune, and I meant to run off with it, maybe to Dallas.

The key broke off in the front door, so Bobby Lee put a shoulder to it. The damned thing flew of the hinges and half way across the living room in a cloud of dust.

“Damn.”

I waited outside, not wanting to tick him off, and listened as he went from room to room swearing.

“Leroy!”

“Sir?”

“Get in here, goddamn it!”

The living room had some old furniture in it, dusty and tattered stuff, not worth very much. It smelled like a couple of Tom cats had snuck in through the window and marked the territory. I sneezed. Bobby Lee was standing in the bathroom, shaking his big head. “Toilet don’t work either,” he said. “We got to use the outhouse.”

“What you want me to do?” I said softly. “Straighten up in the living room maybe?”

Bobby Lee shook his head. “Whole thing looks like a waste of time,” he said. “Place ain’t worth a tinker’s damn. Wasn’t worth the gasoline took coming up here.”

I didn’t want him driving back, condition he was in and with a mad on. “Must be something around her worth money,” I said. “Want me to look?”

Bobby Lee opened the last beer and went out to sit on the porch to get hammered and watch the sunset.

“Be my guest,” he said. “Jesus, what a dump.”

I went into the first bedroom. It was painted a kind of pale blue. The box springs had sprung, meaning there were big holes and no sheets. I could smell a bad stink again, too. The bathroom was so foul I couldn’t walk in. The other bedroom had some cardboard boxes and magazines in it. I sat on the floor and started going through them. I think I saw Saturday Evening Post and Readers Digest, harmless stuff like that, all issues out before the start of the war.

I pushed them away. It crossed my mind the man maybe had a safe or something, else why would he even bother leaving this place to somebody. Especially somebody he didn’t like too much. I wanted to find something worthwhile, so that Bobby Lee would still pay me. So I could run.

I poked around the closet and tapped the walls, but the wood sounded solid enough. I peeled back some faded wallpaper, but nothing seemed out of place. There were so books up on the closet shelf. I liked books. I looked them over. A few classics, I remember, like some Edgar Allen Poe and some short stories by Ambrose Bierce. A couple of books struck me odd, because they were on witchcraft and the Salem trials. Stuff like that. Couple of those books looked old, and I mean really old, you know? Old enough a book collector might pay for them. I put them to one side.

By now the sun was going down. Bobby Lee, he was pretty thrashed. He got to pacing back and forth on the porch. He had found a couple of old lanterns and fired them up. I was afraid to go out and tell him about the books. Good news or bad news, it seemed certain he would beat me to within an inch of my life. Still, I needed one of those lanterns if I was going to keep looking around. I kind of slid down the wall, and while he was whizzing off the edge of the wooden porch, I took one back inside.

I tell you, I was just about to give up when I tripped. My boot caught just the edge of a loose floorboard. I knelt down and pulled. I heard nails groaning. I moved the lantern back. I can’t describe how weird the lighting was. Flickering yellow waves and dark, dancing shadows. The smell of cat pee and the dust everywhere.

I pulled harder and the board came up, rusty nails screeching. There was a hole down below, dug a long time ago in hard, unforgiving desert ground. A hole like a foul-smelling mouth.

And there was something in that hole.

It looked kind of like an old treasure chest, you know? With the wooden slats along the sides? What was weird was the size of the padlock. It was big enough for a chest five times as large, and it had been fastened to a long length of thick chain. The chain was all rusty, but the lock must have been stainless steel. I blew some dust off and it gleamed in the light of the lantern. I bent over and pulled and was amazed at how heavy it was.

“Bobby Lee!”

“What, damn it?”

“Come in here a minute. I think I found something. Maybe a treasure chest, Bobby Lee!”

“The hell you say!”

He came stumbling in to the blackened stench, his own lantern instantly doubling the light. He shoved me out of the way. I was a skinny kid, and I went flying into the stack of magazines. My face bounced off the wall and I fought back tears. When I touched my fingers to my hairline, they came away red. A scalp wound tends to bleed.

BLAAAAAM!

I swear I never heard anything so loud in my life. Bobby Lee, he had pulled his revolver and put a bullet right through the pad lock. I shook my head, trying to clear my ears, and splattered bloody drops everywhere. I was curious as hell, too, so I leaned forward over the edge of the hole.

Bobby Lee yanked the chain away and opened that box. Then time just kind of stood still.

I thought it was an animal at first.

It was small, and the leg and arm bones had been broken so it would all fit in the chest. The skull was grinning up like that cat in Alice In Wonderland. There were two black and empty eye sockets, and they seemed to lock right in on me. What knocked my socks off was the hair. That skull still had long, blonde hair with a bright pink ribbon right in the middle of it.

“Jesus!” Bobby Lee said.

He jerked backwards and slammed into me. I fell face first into the hole in the floor. I ended up kissing the skull of that dead child. I tell you, I can still taste her chilly teeth.

I think she liked it.

I pulled up and away in horror, and saw that I had left a long, drooling streak of fresh blood behind. It touched her mouth.

Something crashed into the side of my head and I went ass over teakettle into the darkness. “What freaking treasure?” Bobby Lee screamed. “You got me in here for this?”

Like I said, I had been getting my ass kicked regular by a series of drunks since I was knee-high to a tadpole. I knew I was in a world of hurt, because now Bobby Lee had a real mad going. He started pacing in circles, kicking boxes and screaming to beat the band.

“A lousy body! Now what? Get the goddamn cops into my life? I can’t have that, you little wimp!”

Another kick to the ribs. I curled up patiently.

“I knew that sonofabitch was a pervert,” Bobby Lee shrieked. “A baby killer! Guy leaves me a house, and turns out he’s a psycho! Look what you got me into now, you little bastard! What the hell were you thinking?”

I knew I’d best not answer.

Of a sudden he got out of breath and bent way over, holding his stomach. Up came a couple of cans of beer and most of the beef jerky he’d had a couple of hours ago. Worshipping Ralph slowed him down some, so it got quiet in there. I considered trying to crawl back onto the porch, but I wasn’t sure I’d make it. A rib was burning pretty bad.

So there we are in this stinky, empty, darkened house with a couple of kerosene lanterns on low and blood splattered everywhere. There ain’t nothing outside but open desert and that dying town a few hundred yards away. Just then a couple of coyotes started howling at the full moon.

And I heard something.

Something down in that hole…moved.

Bobby Lee didn’t catch it, he was still spitting out the taste of warm beer and puke. I knew he’d get his wind shortly and come at me again. I also knew there was a fair chance I’d end up in that hole with the kid, kissing her piano-key teeth forever. So I started trying to crawl away.

I think that’s the sound Bobby Lee heard, and he got to his feet. He was still plenty pissed off, and I was the nearest target. He started to step over that little hole in the floor, one boot went up and got ready to smash my kidneys, and everything just sort of stopped.

I don’t know how to explain it, really. Except maybe it was kind of like when you’re in a bad car accident? The world seemed to slow down and run sideways for a couple of minutes. I felt like I had all the time in the world to observe things, even take notes. In reality, it probably only took a couple of seconds.

A big SNAP sound, like a board cracking.

Bobby Lee’s leg broke in two, just like that. He shrieked high, like a girl on the playground and his reddened eyes got all big and bulging, but for some reason he just stayed there, kind of hanging in the air like that, and then SNAP the other leg broke. It just jackknifed right up there, like the first one.

Bobby Lee screamed again. I think I screamed too.

I ain’t ashamed to tell you I wet my pants at the sight of him hanging in thin air, those two big, muscular legs bent all unnaturally up and over. That face...I started crawling like beetle, making for the living room. I could see the cool night air and the black sky speckled with stars. Somehow I knew if I made it out there I’d be okay.

He kept on screaming and crying. Oh, it was a terrible sound. This was a man who had seen combat in the Pacific and here he was weeping and wailing. What it was is, I think it broke every bone he had, one by one. Fingers, arms, elbows, shoulders, on and on and on. And it somehow it managed to keep him alive until the very end. Alive.

I got out on the porch and looked back. I know you ain’t gonna believe me about any of this, but here’s what I saw: A little, squashed bundle of broken bones and shredded, bloody gristle. It was just hanging there in the light of the lanterns like something on a thin, black thread. It still had some of Bobby Lee’s face, not much, and as I watch the rest of those facial bones collapsed inward. Silence, and the whole gory mess just dropped into the floor with a splaaaat.

I was hoping he’d left the keys in the car, and he had. I fired that old red Ford up and started to clear the driveway. One of the lanterns was out, and the other was beginning to fail. Suddenly the floorboards snapped back where they had been, flat like before I’d moved them. The old papers and magazines and boxes all flew up into the air, spun around like in a silent wind, and settled back down.

          Then the second lantern flickered out.

          It was like nobody had ever been there.

     I drove all night and into the next day. I didn’t stop until I was somewhere in California. I sold that red Ford to a shady dealer near Fresno and got on a bus. I never looked back. I ain’t never let anyone beat on me since, neither. After what I saw that night, nothing scares me. I saw combat in Korea, and I’ll tell you something: Nothing ever scared me so much as whatever it was got Bobby Lee Gifford that night.

Part of me knows it’s still there, waiting for someone to drop by with a couple of drops of blood and a man that needs killing.

And that’s it. You believe it or not, it don’t matter to me.

But that’s why I don’t want nothing to do with you and what you’re offering. You give the damned thing to charity, or let the government take it for back taxes. I don’t care. I don’t know how you found me, but please just lose me again. And I don’t care who left the place to me, or even that somebody discovered oil on that property. I don’t want to know what it’s worth.

Give that house in Dry Wells to somebody else.

And them bones.

 © 2009 Harry Shannon, all rights reserved