The Homewreckers(17)

“You gonna just stand there?”

“Who, me? Do I look like a girl who wants to go hiking back in some godforsaken, snake-infested jungle like that there?”

Hattie shrugged. “Okay, I’ll go by myself.” She set off through the underbrush, kicking at morning glory vines creeping across the path and batting away low-hanging branches.

“Damn it,” she heard Cass mutter. “Hold on, okay? Let me just cut me a snake stick.”





8

This Property Condemned




Hattie picked up a snake stick of her own and the two women moved slowly through the thick tangles, using their sticks to push aside the greenery.

“There’s gotta be a house back here somewhere, right?” Hattie asked, brushing a cobweb from her face.

“I mean, unless Mom gave us the wrong address. Who knew a lot could be this deep?” Cass said.

When they were a hundred yards from where they’d parked the car, they emerged from the path into a clearing. The house, or what was left of it, loomed before them.

“Holy shit,” Hattie breathed.

The house had once been white, but over the years the wind, salt air, and time itself had wiped away all but the faintest traces of paint. It was two stories, as advertised, but the second-story roof was topped with a faded blue plastic tarp. A screened porch was wrapped around the second floor, but the screens were shredded and flapping in the mild afternoon breeze.

“It’s like that Edgar Allan Poe story they made us read in high school,” Cass said. “‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ I guess this is ‘The Fall of the House of Creedmore.’”

“Make that Creepmore,” Hattie said. She took a few steps toward the house and stopped in her tracks and pointed. “Uh-oh.”

A stout-looking two-by-four had been nailed across the rickety-looking steps to the front porch. Nailed to the board was a sign with black lettering on a yellow background.

NO TRESPASSING, CONDEMNED PROPERTY—POSTED, CITY OF TYBEE ISLAND.

Cass touched her arm. “Okay, that’s enough for me. This house isn’t a teardown, it’s a fall-down. Let’s go. I saw a gelato shop back there on Tybrisa. Seaside Sweets. My treat.”

Hattie stood her ground. “It has a certain kind of shabby charm to it. Don’t you think?”

“No,” Cass said. “Absolutely not. Shabby is not charming. We’ve already been down this road. Hello? Tattnall Street? Does that ring a bell with you?”

“That was different. We should have known better than to pour so much money into such a big house. I should have known better. This house is only about a quarter of the size of Tattnall Street. I mean, how bad could the place be?”

“How bad? Do you see that tarp on what’s left of the roof? Hell, there isn’t even a front door. God knows what kind of critters have taken up residence in there. Or people. Could be axe-murdering squatters.”

Hattie kept walking toward the house, but Cass stayed where she was.

“Do not go in that house, Harriet Kavanaugh,” Cass warned. “Do not. I am not following you inside that house of horrors. No, ma’am. Just stop where you are.”

Hattie was ducking under the two-by-four. “Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. Come on. It won’t hurt to just take a look around.”



* * *



The porch floorboards groaned with each halting step Hattie took. “Don’t collapse,” Hattie whispered. A sheet of plywood had been nailed across the spot where the front door should have been.

She peered through a salt-caked window to the left of the door and got a dim glimpse of a front room with a jumble of furniture.

Over her shoulder, she yelled to Cass, “I can’t hardly see anything from here. I’m gonna go around to the side of the house.”

Cass crept closer. Right up to the edge of the porch. “I don’t like this place.”

Hattie walked carefully around to the west side of the porch, stepping over the rusted skeleton of a bike.

On this side of the house a twisting green wisteria vine had breached the crumbling wooden railing and snaked across the floor and up the clapboard siding. Panicles of pale purple flowers dripped artistically down the wall.

“Wisteria. Ugh.” Hattie had seen the damage the invasive vine could wreak on trees and outbuildings in her own yard in Thunderbolt. She continued around to the back of the house, keeping her eyes focused on the sagging porch floorboards.

“Wonder what these foundation piers look like,” she muttered to herself. She glanced backward and saw Cass, clambering over the wisteria vine. “There you are. I thought maybe a snake got you.”

Cass shot her the middle finger. “What’s it look like back here? Can’t be any worse than the front of the house, right?”

“I think there’s definitely foundation issues,” Hattie said, pointing at the floor.

“The river’s back here somewhere,” Cass said, gesturing. But a thick screening of bamboo, palmetto, and scrub pine completely blocked out any view of the water.

Cass walked over to the far edge of the porch, testing each step with the toe of her sneaker, and stopped when she came to a doorway with a window.

“Hey,” she called, pressing her face to the dusty glass. “C’mere. If this doesn’t convince you this house is a loser, then I give up.”