Ask the Dark Read online

But he didn’t turn, just flicked off the flashlight and put it away somewhere. Then he dumped them coats on top of that box, same one with the jewels in it, picked it all up with a heave, turned out the door and shut it.

  I didn’t breathe yet, and I waited a good long time till after I heard that front door shut and a car drive off ’fore I moved at all. Then I felt my pants leg and laughed, ’cause I’d pissed myself and not even known it.

  I went upstairs, though it scared me to death to do it, and went along to the room where I found the open window, and I went out onto the roof, quiet as anything, putting the plastic back up on them bent staples just like I’d found it, and closing that window just so.

  I come down the tree, went over the board fence, and come out Simon Hooper’s yard. Dodged through other yards, still so scared I could barely think to myself, and sometimes stayed in black shadows four/five minutes, just to be sure nobody saw.

  Took me an hour to get home, I moved so slow, and when I was finally back in my room I stood there breathing hard, still scared as shit.

  Then I felt round my back pocket and laughed out loud. I still had them mittens with me, and I pulled’m out’n threw’m crost the room, laughing at how dumb I was, going in a house and finding all them jewels, and coming out with just a pair of old mittens.

  Chapter Nine

  I dreamed all night about being in that house and that dark clump of a man crouched down just a yard from me, him on his knees and them jewels in ’s hands shining through even though there weren’t no light. Gave me the horrors like I never known. Marvin was right to worry ’bout me slippin’, and that’s what I’d done, slipped so bad I almost got caught, which with everything else going on right then really would have done me. ’Cause if I’d got caught, who gonna make the forty-eight thousand?

  So the next few weeks I mowed lawns every day just to keep my ass out’f trouble. Some days I went out on jobs with Richie Harrigan, hauling things, and I also went around with a boy I know, Sam Tate, who got a paper route and don’t mind if I take over for him now and again. Every day I was at houses asking for work, ’specially old houses and beat-up ones, and ones that ain’t never been cleaned or cleared, so’s when I come to the door I could say to who answered just what work I could do for’m. And what with also making deliveries with Marvin and driving round with Richie, I was all over the neighborhood, seeing every house around, more than any cop or even one’f them government agents they said was going door to door. But I weren’t making nobody nervous askin’ questions ’bout Tommy Evans and Tuckie Brenner, and getting’m all on edge like maybe they was suspected, ’cause I ain’t no cop, that’s for damn sure. I was just asking for work, but doing that every day I saw hundreds of houses, and also peeked around sly when nobody was looking, trying to see if there was anything extra around I might grab if the time was right, you get me?

  Another thing I done was keep my eye out where stores was, ’specially when I was out near downtown with Richie. I was lookin’ for places that might be good for settin’ up my daddy’s fruit stand, hopin’ if I could find a place good and cheap Daddy’d get excited and maybe start to plan it for real.

  But this all come to something else, too. ’Cause later on, when I really started trying to find out who took them boys, I thought about all them weeks I’d spent looking for work, and things that didn’t mean much then started risin’ up different and darker than I’d known when I first seen’m.

  Lookin’ for work was harder than you might think, ’cause a lot of them folks I asked thought I was foolin’, me being the same boy who maybe they caught a year back soapin’ their car or chuckin’ eggs, or thought maybe I’d lifted something off their porch or outta their garage, which sometimes was true and sometimes not. But I went ahead and asked all the same, ’cause I needed that money and didn’t care how embarrassed I got. Felt good keeping busy, some days going at it twelve hours, not stopping till I was fall-down tired. I didn’t think nothing ’bout what I seen that night in the dark house, days went by and it all slipped my mind, till even the scare went away.

  Then come a day when it all came back to me, even stranger than it was before.

  One house I knew needed work was the big old place down Church Lane, that dead end off Denton Avenue, and I went over there thinking that house ain’t had its gutters cleaned for years ’cause the lady living there never went out the house and had Marvin bring her drugs and groceries, both.

  End of Church Lane is where the woods begin and there’s that big hill behind the house all covered with scraggly bushes and busted trees like after a storm. House is the one that’s all gray, with them towers coming off the roof shaped like cones, and they’re black, and the shingles ain’t just flat and square but shaped in little round chips and sort of pretty, and the whole house would be pretty too and like something in a carnival at the beach if it was painted bright, but right now looks like nothing but a big old dead birthday cake, turned all black and gray.

  I knocked and she come to the screen, the old lady, all skinny as sticks and wearing sharp-shaped glasses under her scraggly old hair, it all in a bunch. After she got over being just scared of seeing me through the screen she gave in, mainly ’cause I warned’r how if she don’t clean’m now, gutters, I mean, the whole house gonna fall apart and be full of workers from the city who gonna put her out after crawling all around her house and spoiling her privacy.

  She looked hard at me, her eyes squinty behind her glasses, and her mouth all pinched up. Then she said, No, son. I don’t want any help from you. Now you go away! Her voice sounded all shrill like some nasty bird.

  But I weren’t hearing that, so I said, You gonna get an injunction from the city, ma’am. Neighbors round here’ll do it, and you gonna have cops all round and men stamping through your living room tearing it all apart, and then they gonna take the whole place and sell it out from under you and putchu in the old folks’ home, I know it.

  I sold it hard, making like I might put in the injunction myself if she don’t hire me, and you should’f seen her eyes go wide, ’specially with me talking so much ’bout the old folks’ home.

  She agreed to twenty dollars, whole job.

  Now, she a crazy lady and wouldn’t let me inside her house at all. So I went up the side, climbing first the porch posts and then doing this sort of jump-flip to get on the roof, and then damn near kicking myself seeing I could’f got up easier and safer just climbing one of them pine trees beside her house and jumping down.

  First level roof I cleared, using a bag, plastic one she handed to me out a shuttered window. I pulled ten years’ worth of twigs and leaves and pine cones out the gutters and stuffed’m in the bag, and when it was full I dropped it down to the yard. Roof shingles was old and cracked and covered with dirt and bird dookie, and some of’m busted under my tread making me slip, but I never did tell her.

  Next roof up I did use the pine tree to get there, tallest one. But for way up on top at the attic, the pinnacle up there where it’s round and got them diamond windows, I had to climb with my fingertips and shoe sides, and I tell you it was scary, half the time hanging all teeter-totter over the open space’f the lower roofs with nothing to hold on to but an old shutter clasp.

  Up there I filled bags and tossed’m down, holding’m in my teeth as they got all filled up. Near the windows I peeked inside, and what I saw was just dark clutter with blankets and dust and old brown wood, and stuff like framed pictures on the walls and right there in the middle of the floor a sort of woman-dummy like you see in department stores, just like a ghost standing in the murk, but with no head, and swathes of cloth hanging off’r from a dress that never got made. It was hard to see more, ’cause that diamond window glass was thick and warpy and inside the room was old and dark.

  Then I seen something else.

  First I could barely make it out, and it was just a feeling. But then something strange hit me and I looked hard.

  Right there inside was a few boxes, cardboard ones
stacked on the wall. And my mouth went dry.

  ’Cause I be damned if they ain’t the same boxes I seen in the dark house next to Simon Hooper’s, boxes with tomatoes printed on the sides.

  I hung on there thinking. I was damn curious. Maybe there was something worth getting in those boxes. Maybe those jewels was real. I seen’m in one house, and now I seen’m here, so somebody was taking care just what to do with’m. I figured the old lady downstairs maybe had done it. But it was a man who come in that house, and there weren’t ever no man around here. So unless she’d hired a man, I couldn’t say what happened. And then I think, Who’s the man to be going in that dark house, and coming in here?

  For a second I thought I might ask’r, ’bout both the man and the boxes. But then I figured it be better if I just had a look myself, ’cause why tell’r them boxes interested me at all? I mean have a look right then and there, with the old lady downstairs and nobody else around to see me. Yeah, after that night next to Hooper’s I’d sort’f sworn off bustin’ in houses. But I weren’t worried about that right now ’cause who was there to catch me? Just a little old lady, and if she caught me I’d just say some lie.

  So I tried.

  But them windows were tight, I tell you, all painted shut, and the glass had that church wire in it, heavy lead stuff you’d need a brick to break.

  So I figured I’d have me a look later on. Just had to think the best way and time, and I’d be on it.

  Hour later I was back down on the porch and had my twenty bucks and Miss Gurpy, that’s the old lady’s name, reached out and pinched my cheek to be nice, though it hurt me, and handed me a kind of sandwich through the gap in the old screen door, but walking away I tossed it ’cause to tell it true, it didn’t smell too fresh.

  Chapter Ten

  So there I was walking home, going down the street at curfew all ready to go cutting over yards when a car stops behind me and I hear a voice that says, Hey, Zeets, and I turn around.

  I can’t hardly see who’s driving ’cause the car’s all full of smoke, reefer smoke I smell ten foot off, but I know the car. ’S one of them old Fords you see around, sort of car that ain’t a sedan but looks like one on the front end, ’cept it got a pickup truck bed behind, called a Ranchero. Old car, blue paint all faded and the old chrome speckled with rust.

  Boy who called out to me is Skugger, neighborhood kid actually named Ryan Skuggs, but his friends, they call him Skugger for no reason I could understand, ’cause who the hell would want to be called that? But that’s their way, them rich boys. They got all them names, Tuckie and Skugger and Topher, and go round calling out to each other like they talking in a code, and wear the same sort of clothes their mothers buy’m, like them puffy jackets, and do all the same things, too, like they all in a club just for themselves with nobody else allowed, thank you.

  Anyway, Skugger, he’s sittin’ there on the passenger side with his head out the window. Hey, Zeets, he says, kind’f smiling at me, you wanna buy some weed? I’ve got some good shit, man, he says.

  I shake my head for no. Ain’t interested, I say, and I walk the other way. ’Cause this here Skugger is a boy who sells drugs to all the boys around, pot and pills mostly but worse stuff too, and he been caught at it plenty of times. Used to go to that private school with all them other boys once, but since gettin’ caught the last time, got kicked out. One thing I’ll say is he makes good money at it. But I never done no drugs and don’t care to sell’m, neither. And right now I figure the last thing I need is to get caught with pills in my pocket by some cop.

  He keeps leaning his chin on the doorjamb there on the car, watching me, window rolled down, and he says, You better look out, Zeets. Better watch your ass.

  I give him a stare.

  Why’s that? I ask.

  Jimmy Brest told me he’s looking for you.

  Now ole Skugger grins, sort’f nasty, like he’s onto something, like the secret is told.

  Let’m look, I say. Here I am. Ain’t afraid of’m.

  This time is gonna be different, Skugger says.

  Yeah, I says. ’Cause it’ll go the other way.

  He just laughs. Opens his mouth a big O for a big Ha-ha, though he ain’t really laughing.

  Look out for yourself, he says, sort’f friendly, and he turns and settles back in his seat puffing the last of some smoke out his mouth and pulling down over his head this hat he got on, knit hat that hangs off ’s head like a two-foot sock even though it’s summertime. Then the car slides forward, but at the last second with his hand still on the doorjamb, Skugger, he gives me one of them fuck-you fingers as he goes away.

  I cussed him good right then, you bet I did, screaming, Goddamn motherfucker kiss my ass, scuze my language. And the car, it jerked to a stop, tires screeched, like he’s gonna maybe get on out and do something about it. But do that fucker come back for me? Shit no. He didn’t want a busted lip that day.

  I still got a few blocks to cover, so I go through a yard and over a porch where there ain’t nothing but empty chairs and quiet toys and dust. Then I dodge down into an alley and go on walking slow over the concrete, garages on both sides.

  Then something funny come to me.

  When Skugger’d talked I’d watched that man in there driving the car, this sort’f hairy-looking man about Richie Harrigan’s age, ’cause I’d seen him round a few times over the years, last few years, and he and Skugger was always driving around together, as was lots of other boys who hung out with’m and liked to party. And even though I ain’t never met the man driving, right then I felt there was something real familiar about him, but I couldn’t say just what ’cause of all that smoke blowin’ round inside the car.

  Then just like that I hear feet running up behind me. I turned back quick and saw Jimmy Brest, tall and straight and coming fast.

  ZEETS! he yelled, his face looking on fire.

  I didn’t stay to hear more.

  I ran.

  I went through a gate into a yard, and knowing Brest was fast on his feet, I dodged right through the walk-in door on the side of a garage. I ducked just in time to see’m run past, the motherfucker running along with a big bag of chips in his hand, and his voice sounding funny yelling ’cause his mouth’s all full of chips.

  I figured I had maybe thirty seconds till he back­tracked. I stood still a second to slow my breath and listen. I wondered how the hell he’d found me, what with me just getting warned like I did. Then the thought come to me that Skugger’d prob’ly got pissed when I cussed him, called the fucker’n told him where I was.

  The big garage door was open, so I went straight back out in the alley. I heard Brest off in some yard yelling, Where are you, fucker? but I didn’t hang around.

  Across the alley was another garage, and I went in. Was the sort with a stairs to the rafters, wood stairs you get down by pulling on a rope, and I pulled. Keeping the rope in my hand I yanked the stairs back up once I got on the rafters, and just in time, too. Because a second later Brest came in below. I was sitting in the dark on a rafter and I heard’m, knocking things around, saying, Where the fuck are you? And me, I’m thinking, I hope the fucker starts up after me, ’cause there some paint cans up’ere gonna make friends with his head if he do, and I almost bust out laughin’ thinking that, the dumb fucker. But a second later he was out in the alley, running until his footscrapes faded away.

  Chapter Eleven

  When I got home it was after curfew. Sun was throwing shadows of trees all ’long the street. Leezie was there standing on the porch, house all dark behind her.

  Where’s Daddy?

  Took a bus ride, she says. Out all day.

  Job counselor?

  Don’t know, she said.

  I looked at her. She was wearing this pair of pants cut so short the pockets flapped out, and she had this sort of pearly paint on her toenails, red it was, and for a shirt she had the flimsiest thing, no different than being naked, looking through it you could see her whole shape, and that
black strappy underwear she got on underneath’t. Her face was made up too. Blue on the eyes right up to under the eyebrows, brown stuff on her cheeks like dark hollows, and mouth so red it looked like she’d split her lip. Wearin’ perfume too. Shit, I could smell’r ten foot off.

  Leezie, why you dressed like that? I said.

  She looked at me and winced. I ain’t dressed, she said. I’m getting dressed. Still ain’t put my shoes on!

  Do you know what some boys say about you?

  I don’t care. It ain’t true.

  I know that, I said. I know it. But you stand there all day looking like that, it won’t matter. People gonna think it’s true anyway. So why not dress regular? Why not go put a dress on like you used to and wash your face. Will you do it?

  Billy? she said.

  Yar? I said.

  Go to fuckin’ hell, she says. Then she turns around and goes inside, screen door smackin’ shut behind her.

  I went up my room. Was tired from all day working, but that didn’t matter, and when I lay down I could think of nothing but what the hell was going on with the coat and the house and the boxes, and who that damn man was who come in the room, who also got full rights to go in Miss Gurpy’s, if them boxes tell it right.

  I rolled over and was just about to shut my eyes when I stopped.

  Saw them mittens on the floor where I threw’m.

  I laughed, thinking ’bout how they could be jewels instead of mittens if I’d been smart enough.

  But I got an idea. Maybe these mittens is worth something, but I just don’t know what. So I sat up and reached over and took’m in my hands. I looked at’m for a while, a good five minutes, turning’m this way and that. I’m thinkin’ maybe I got’m, took’m, for a reason, and I sit there trying to figure it out.

  But I can’t. Too damn tired, for one thing.

  Then I hear something. A car. Out front. Big engine sound like a truck revving, just faster, and a radio real loud with some singer screeching like he’s falling off a cliff.