The Guardians(85)

I don’t mess with snakes but nor am I deathly afraid of them. Frankie, however, is, and he pulls out the Glock.

“Don’t shoot,” I say above the din. We freeze and keep the snake in our beams for a long time as our shirts begin to cling to our backs and we breathe even heavier. Slowly, it slithers under the rug and we can’t see it anymore.

The rain slackens and we collect ourselves. “How do you feel about spiders?” I ask over my shoulder.

“Shut your mouth!”

“Be careful, because they are everywhere.”

As we backtrack out of the room, still scanning the floor for the snake or others, a ferocious clap of lightning hits nearby, and in that instant I know that if I don’t die at the hands of an evil spirit or venomous animal, I’m certain to die of cardiac arrest. Sweat drips from my eyebrows. Our shirts are completely soaked. In the other bedroom, there is a small cot with what looks like an old green army blanket bunched on it. No other furniture or furnishings. Wallpaper sags from the walls. I glance out the window, and through the sheets of rain I can barely make out the image of Riley and Wendell sitting in the truck, riding out the storm, watching the house as wipers sweep the windshield, no doubt with the doors locked to protect them from spirits.

We kick junk out of the way to check for snakes, then turn our attention to the ceiling. Again, there is no sign of an opening to an attic above. I suppose it’s possible that Kenny Taft hid his boxes up there and sealed them off for good, or at least until he one day returned for them. How the hell am I supposed to know what he did?

Frankie notices a ceramic knob to a smaller door, probably a closet. He points at it, calling it to my attention, but obviously prefers that I open it. I grab it, jiggle it, yank it hard, and as it flies open I am suddenly face-to-face with a human skeleton. Frankie feels faint and falls to one knee. I step away and begin vomiting, finally.

A squall line batters the house even harder, and for a long time we listen to the sounds of the storm. I do feel somewhat better after purging my system of spring rolls, beer, wine, brandy, and everything else. Frankie pulls himself together and we slowly return our lights to the closet. The skeleton is hanging from a plastic cord of some sort, and its toes barely touch the floor. Below it is a puddle of black, oily goo. Probably what’s left of the blood and organs after many years of decay. It doesn’t appear to be a hanging. The cord is around the chest and under the arms, as opposed to the neck, so that the skull lists to the left and the vacant eye sockets are cast downward, as if permanently ignoring all interlopers.

Just what Ruiz County needs—another cold case. What better place to hide your victim than a house so haunted its owners are too afraid to enter. Or, perhaps it could have been a suicide. This is a case we will happily hand over to Sheriff Castle and his boys. It’s someone else’s problem.

I close the door and turn the knob as firmly as possible.

So we have two choices. We can go to work in the bedroom with the live snake, or stay here with the quite dead human in the closet. We take the second one. Frankie manages to reach a ceiling board with the end of his crowbar and rips it down. Our lease does not give us the right to damage the house, but does anyone really care? Two of its owners are sitting out there in a truck too terrified to step through the front door. We have a job to do and I’m already tired. As Frankie begins ripping down another board, I carefully thread my way down the stairs and reopen the front door. I nod at Riley and Wendell though the rain is too thick for eye contact. I grab the ladder and take it upstairs.

When Frankie yanks down the fourth board, a box of old fruit jars comes crashing down and shatters around our feet. “Beautiful!” I yell. “There is storage up there.” Inspired, Frankie rips boards with a fury and before long a third of the bedroom ceiling has been reduced to debris, which I toss in a corner. We’re not coming back and I don’t care how we leave the place.

I position the ladder and gingerly climb through the gap in the ceiling. When I’m waist-high in the attic I scan it with my light. It’s windowless, pitch-black, cramped and musty, no more than four feet in height. For an old attic, it is surprisingly uncluttered, evidence that its owners were not consumers; evidence too that Kenny may have sealed it off over twenty years ago.

It’s impossible to stand, so Frankie and I slowly crawl on all fours. The rain is pounding the tin roof just inches above our heads. We have to scream at each other. He goes one way, I go the other, very slowly. Crawling, we fight our way through thick spiderwebs and watch every square inch for another snake. I pass a neat stack of one-by-six pine planks, probably left over from construction a hundred years ago. There is a pile of old newspapers, the top one dated March of 1965.

Frankie yells and I scurry over like a rat, the dust already caked on the knees of my jeans.

He has pulled back a shredded blanket enough to reveal three identical cardboard boxes. He points his light at a label on one and I lean in to within inches. The faded ink is handwritten, but the info is clear: Ruiz County Sheriff’s Department—Evidence File QM 14. All three boxes are sealed with a thick brown packing tape.

With my cell phone I take a dozen dark photos of the three boxes before they are moved an inch. To protect them, Kenny was smart enough to place them across three two-by-four planks to keep them off the floor in the event of rain leakage. The attic, though, seems remarkably sealed, and if it can stay dry in a deluge like this, the roof is working fine.