SAFELY BURIED Chapter 18: From Attic to Cellar

As the car bounced and rattled on the washboard lane, the long leaves of corn seemed to reach out to grab me. Ahead of the car, the high green walls parted continuously, while in the rearview mirror they closed behind me.

The house slid into view around the last bend. I plowed into the overgrown lawn. Faded and peeling, the house looked as if it had been empty for years, but in the thin, gray twilight it stood out boldly, like a stark symbol of fearlessness in the face of the dying light. There was no car around, but recent tracks in the weeds showed where someone had parked and turned around. I wondered who had been there. Sightseers wouldn’t have bothered to replace the roadblock. Perhaps the Garths’ relatives had come to get some of their things.

I climbed out of the car and waded through the weeds to the porch. The window that Paula had smashed was now covered with plywood. On the off chance that someone was inside, I knocked on the door. No answer. I twisted the doorknob. Locked. I peered through the front windows. Nothing but a dark reflection of myself.

As long as I’m here, I thought, I might as well check out the rest of the place. I went around back, but everything still looked the same. The back door was locked. In the trees on the hillside, the locusts were tuning up.

I did not see the horses in the pasture. They could be lying down, so I crossed the field to get a closer look and check on their hay supply. As it became clear that the pasture was empty, I felt a selfish disappointment. I had not done a thing to help them, yet I was sorry they were gone. The fence was not broken, so they had not escaped. Someone must have taken them away—rustlers maybe.

My next stop was the barn, where I discovered that the rusty lock and chain on the door had been removed. It gave me a chance to get my first look inside. The big door squealed like a pig as I pushed it to the side. A Ticonderoga RV was parked in the middle of the floor, surrounded by old farm equipment and stacks of straw. I opened the RV’s door and looked inside. Like my first encounter with the house, the RV reeked. At least no corpses were lying around. The smell this time was more like a mixture of dirty bedding and old mold. I scrapped the idea that Paula had used the RV for a hiding place, but maybe she had slept on the straw in the barn.

I shut the barn door and followed a little path that meandered past the creek at the base of the hill. About twenty yards from the house, the ground felt spongy. Then it got squishy and wet. It had not rained since Sunday, so how could the ground be this wet? A few feet away, a rivulet of black water seeped out of the ground and trickled toward the dry creek. I caught a whiff of sewage and realized I was standing in the drainage field for a septic tank. Wastewater oozed out of the ground around my shoes. . . .

Someone was in the house.

From where I stood I could see one side and the back of the house. All the windows were dark. I walked fast, nearly running to the front of the house. Even though it was enveloped in the shadow of the hill, not a single light was on inside. I wondered if the electricity had been turned off. But what about the solar panels on the roof? Obviously they would not work in the dark, but wasn’t the energy that they captured stored in batteries? There should be some light in the house if someone was there.

I began to have doubts. Was it possible that something other than a toilet or sink or bathtub was responsible for the soggy ground in the field? A sump pump maybe. But a sump pump would not empty into the septic tank, and it wouldn’t smell like wastewater. No, it had to be someone in the house.

I went to the front porch and pounded on the door. “Hallo!” I shouted. “Anybody home? Hallo in there.”

I went back down the steps and looked up at the second-floor windows. Was it Paula in the house? Was she playing games with me again? No, it couldn’t be Paula. It made no sense. More likely it was relatives of the Garths. Maybe they were afraid to open the door. They might be thinking I was the killer.

“Hey! Yo! I know you’re in there,” I yelled. “I just want to talk. I’m from the local paper. Look—” I took my press card out of my wallet and held it up. “See. . . . I’m with the Campbellsville Gleaner. I just want to talk to you.”

Still, no one answered.

The sky was now deep blue. The sun would soon disappear behind the hill. On this side it was already getting dark.

I had to do something. I couldn’t just turn my back and walk away. I had to find out who was in there. But what if the killer was inside? That was crazy—he, she, or they would have no reason to come back here now, would they? In the weeks that had passed before the bodies were discovered, there had been plenty of time to search the house.

I ran to my car and dug the jack handle out of the trunk. One end of it was a lug-nut wrench for unbolting the wheels, and the other end was a small pry bar. I ran back to the house and pounded on the door again—one last chance for whoever was in there to open up. When no one did, I jimmied the bar under the plywood that now covered the upper part of the door. The board nearly fell off when I touched it. Only a handful of small nails held it in place. Most of them had been hammered flat. I reached inside and unlocked the door. Then I reattached the plywood as it had been.

I opened the door slowly. This was breaking and entering again, but at least I hadn’t damaged anything. And I wasn’t the first person who had removed the piece of plywood.

I had my jack handle ready in case someone was behind the door. I felt for the light switch. Shadows flew up the stairs.

The living room had been straightened up, slightly. The newspaper sections and beer bottles no longer littered the floor, but the shaggy green rug was still streaked with mud. The Grateful Dead, unsmiling, aloof, stared down at me from the wall. The big-screen TV was gone.

“Anybody home?” I called again, mainly to make my presence known. Belatedly it occurred to me that whoever was there might be a cop. “My name is Phil Larrison,” I shouted. “I’m a newspaper reporter. If you’re one of Sheriff Eggemann’s deputies, I’m not a crook. I’m not here to steal anything. I just want to know who’s here.” The sound of my voice seemed to twist and turn through the rooms and passageways.

I went from the entrance hall to the dining room to the kitchen, turning on the lights room by room. There was a glass in the sink, a Bedford Times-Mail on the table. Beyond the kitchen was a room I had not seen last week, a fairly large laundry room with a washer and dryer, a wooden kitchen table, and an antique pie safe that contained not pies but a jug of Cheer and other laundry products. A brass bird cage with three stained-glass ornaments hanging inside stood in front of a window to catch the light. A plastic basket with a few pairs of panties and bras sat on the table.

The laundry room had two more doorways. One of these opened to the living room, which struck me as odd, but I figured the laundry room must have been used for something else in years past. I expected the other door to be a closet, but instead I found myself staring into a black hole. I twisted the knob of an ancient light switch, and after a brief delay, an incongruous fluorescent bulb lit up above my head and revealed a steep flight of crude wooden steps. It was little more than a ladder, which began right inside the door and led to the cellar. The steps were flimsy and uneven. I was in no hurry to go down there—maybe later, if I didn’t find anyone in the rest of the house. Besides, whoever was in the house could get away if I went in the cellar, so it would be a mistake to go down there now.

I took the shortcut I had just discovered and went through the living room back to the front hall. I turned on the lights and started upstairs. Halfway up, I stopped and listened. The house was silent except for the sound of my breath. I had an eerie feeling that someone was behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, but no one was there.

As I neared the top of the stairs, I half expected a psycho with a butcher knife to come rushing out of a bedroom at me. My hand squeezed the tire wrench.

The yellow, crinkly glow that filled the second-floor hall made the walls look like flypaper. I looked in the bathroom first. Less than a week ago, two decaying corpses were lying there. Now it was empty and clean. I wondered if Paula had cleaned it.

The faint odor of urine hung in the air, or at least I thought it did. Maybe it was the lingering smell of death, or the general mustiness of the room. But the tub and sink were dry. Trust your gut, I said to myself. You smelled urine. That means someone used the toilet a few minutes ago.

It was cool in the house, but a clammy sweat broke out on my chest.

I crossed the hall to a bedroom and switched on the light. The room had been used as an office and mail room. A desk and chair stood next to a front window. There was a metal file cabinet, an old sofa, an oak bookcase, and a large dining-room table with Bubble Wrap and other packing materials on top. Priority-mail boxes of different sizes were stacked against the walls. The top of the desk was bare, except for a lamp, a mousepad, a stapler, and a pile of catalogs. The computer and printer that most likely had been there were now gone.

The next room must have been the master bedroom. A king-size bed filled half the floor space. A night table with a red gooseneck lamp stood at the far end of the bed. A chest of drawers and a small armchair completed the furnishings. The closet was crammed with men’s and women’s clothing on metal and plastic hangers.

I moved on to the room across the hall. Cylindrical stacks of old-fashioned hat boxes nearly touched the ceiling. It looked like a collection. I opened some of them, and a dry, musty odor escaped. They contained either nothing or a few large sheets of colored tissue. I wondered if the boxes were worth something. Perhaps the Garths had sold them on eBay.

The closet in this room was empty, except for a ladder to the attic. There was no way Paula could have climbed it with her leg in a cast. So she couldn’t have hidden up there. And the police would have searched the attic. They would have found her . . . unless she had a very good place to hide.

I knew I might get my head knocked off if I poked it up there, but I had to take the chance. This house was going to get searched from top to bottom. No loose ends. I wasn’t leaving until I found out who was haunting it.

I went up the ladder and used my jack handle to raise the trapdoor. “Anybody here?” I called through the square hole. “I’m coming up. I just want to talk.”

It was hot at the ceiling. I climbed the next two rungs, and as my head cleared the floor, the attic erupted in a blizzard of bats. Hundreds of them flapped and swirled past my head. I lowered the trapdoor until it was barely open an inch. The bats streamed toward the vents at two sides of the house.

As I hung on the ladder, a small brown bat landed on the edge of the trapdoor and stared at me. It hung upside down with its face inches from mine and made a series of rapid clicks. I knew the critters were considered an endangered species, but evidently they were safe in Blind Horse Hollow. I held the door up with one hand and touched the bat with the wrench. He made several angry clicks and took off.

After a minute or so, the flapping died down and I poked my head into the attic again. I expected to see cobwebby boxes and old pieces of furniture, but the attic was empty. It occurred to me that there should be wires from the solar panels on the roof, along with some electrical equipment, but there was nothing of the kind. If the solar panels were hooked up, the wires had probably been run down the outside of the house to the cellar.

I happened to brush the floor with the side of my hand, and then I knew why the attic was empty, except for the bats. Their droppings coated the floor. How could the Garths have put up with it? Why didn’t they get rid of the bats and sterilize the place?

A possible explanation came to me. It had not bothered them that hundreds of bats shared their home. They had laid out a welcome mat for the bats. They had tried to help them survive.

I went to the bathroom to wash my hands. A pink towel hung next to the sink. When I pulled it off the rack, it felt damp. For a moment it seemed to prove that someone was in the house with me, but whoever had used the towel may have left by the back door while I was coming in the front. Even so, I pressed on. I looked in the bedrooms again—there were four in all—to make sure no one had slipped into a room after I had searched it. All were still empty.

I started downstairs, and for a moment a faint breeze touched my face. It was as if a door had opened and closed just long enough to let a puff of wind inside. But I didn’t hear a door or window open and close. There was no sound of any kind. I ran down the stairs and went from window to window, but I didn’t see anyone outside. I hurried back to the laundry room. Everything there was exactly as I had left it.

I opened the cellar door again and peered down the steps. They were old and warped, bowed in the middle. I turned on the light. Jagged shadows pointed the way to a dirt floor.

I wondered if the steps would hold my weight. There was no banister, only a rough clay wall on the left and a post that supported the steps on the right. Just do it, I said to myself, and I started down.

As I took my third step, a pair of hands grabbed my left ankle and pulled it backward between the boards. My right foot was not planted, and I fell forward. The tire wrench that I had carried for protection hit the post and ricocheted against my breastbone. The side of my face scraped the wall as I fell, and my head cracked against the bottom steps.

Flashing circles exploded like stars. Thick leaden slabs moved toward me. Then everything went black.