Саманта Сильвер - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

When we finally got to Pine Road, Sprinkles began to sniff in front of Andrea’s old place. I stopped to let him do what he wanted; after all, this used to be his home.

“You ok, Sprinkles?” I asked him as he moved along the fence at about half a mile an hour.

“Yes, sorry, I was just trying to remember what life was like here.”

“Ok, take your time. We’re not in a rush Sprinkles, so you take all the time you need here.”

“Thank you, Angela,” he replied. I let the leash slack and gazed around the street. Pine Road was such a rural part of town, and by Willow Bay standards, that definitely meant something. A squirrel scampered across the road with a pinecone in his mouth, and I could hear a few robins whistling their songs in the trees in the forest on the other side of the road. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a couple deer popping out of the forest, it was just that kind of place.

Suddenly, I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye, like there was some dry lightning or something. But no, that was impossible. And if I wasn’t mistaken, the flash came from the abandoned creepy house across the street.

No, that had to be wrong. That place was abandoned. It had been abandoned for as long as I could remember. But as I stared hard at the boarded up windows, I couldn’t help but feel like I should go and have a look. My witch’s intuition was almost always correct. There was something weird about that house, and I had to go see what it was.

“Hey Sprinkles,”I asked him. “What do you know about the house across the street?”

“Andrea says it is a bad house. A very bad house.”

“Anything more specific than that?”

“No. Just that it’s a bad house.”

I nodded. “Ok. I want to go check it out for a minute, if you don’t mind.”

“Ok, but be careful. Andrea says it’s a bad house.”

Trepidation filled me as I got closer and closer to the ‘bad house’. Suddenly, I began to wonder if maybe this was a bad idea. What if the house was haunted after all? Or cursed? No, if it was either of those things Lisa would have mentioned it. Right?

I took a deep breath as I reached the picket fence at the front that had once been white, but had now long since fallen into disrepair. Covered in mould and lichen, it could now kindly be described as a mixture of beige and puke green.

Touching as little of the latch as possible, while thinking that maybe I should go to the doctor and make sure I got a tetanus shot, I pushed the door in the fence forward. It squeaked so loudly I knew it must have been years and years since anyone had oiled it. Sprinkles resisted coming in for a split second, but a light tug on the leash and he followed.

It felt like the light level had just dropped about four levels. It no longer felt like evening; now it was well and truly night time.

“What is wrong with you? You’re afraid of the dark or something?” I asked, muttering to myself. For goodness sake, I was twenty seven years old. My days of being afraid of the dark were supposed to be over.

My resolve steeling after my self-talk, I walked forward towards the house. As I reached the front steps, I realized I had no idea what I was going to do. All the windows were boarded up, and had been for years. Surely the front door was going to be locked. I supposed I could use the spell to unlock it; there were no occupied houses in view, and the street looked deserted.

It was upon that realization, that if anything happened I was well and truly on my own, that my heart really began to pound. As I got closer to the front door, I could tell Sprinkles next to me was scared as well. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

I was about to turn back and head home, wrap myself under a blanket and try to sleep without having nightmares when the front door began to open.

My mouth dropped open as the old oak door squeaked open, and I found myself standing face to face with Gareth Sims, owner of Boss the German Shepherd. He was holding a gun, and had it pointed towards me. I dropped Sprinkles’ leash in surprise, and as soon as the dog saw Gareth he let out a whimper like someone had hit him, and ran off as fast as he could.

“Gareth?” I asked, barely believing what I was seeing. Why was he in this house? Why did he have a gun?

“Angela. Please, come in,” he said. My mind whirled with a thousand thoughts. Was Sprinkles going to be ok? Poor thing had run off again. How could I contact Sophie? Did anyone know I was here? No. They just knew I’d gone for a walk towards Pine Street. Oh God, this man had a gun trailed on me and there was no one coming to save me.

My heart plummeted to the bottom of my stomach. I was definitely in trouble here. But still, I had no choice. After all, Gareth had a gun. I followed him into the house, which was dark. There were no lights on at the front. He nudged me towards the living room at the back of the house, however, and there the lights were on.

What I saw stopped me in my tracks. There was no furniture in the room at all, except for a cheap plastic chair in one corner. But in the middle of the room was what I immediately recognized from years of watching bad action movies as bricks of cocaine. Boss was sitting in the corner, and he growled at me, but one look from Gareth and he stopped and sat down.

Oh boy. This was not good. Suddenly, everything started to make sense. Sprinkles calling it a ‘bad house’. Andrea living right across the street.

“She found out about your drug den, didn’t she?” I ventured to ask, trying not to look at the gun Gareth was holding. He nodded, and put it in the back of his pants. Evidently he didn’t think I was much of a threat in here, especially not with Boss around. And as much as I hated to admit it, he was right. Gareth was a strong, young guy. He could easily overpower me, not to mention the dog.

“Nosy old lady. We were so careful, too. For six months we’ve been here, and no one has been the wiser. There wasn’t a single person in town who’d even guessed that we were running drugs through here.”

I thought about Jason Black and what he said about his source in the police department.

“That’s not true,” I replied. “The cops know. They don’t know where you are, but they know you’re here.”

Gareth scoffed. “Well what good is knowing we’re around if they can’t find us? That’s the beauty of Willow Bay. Everyone said I was a moron for doing this, but it’s perfect. No one suspects a dumb little tourist village, so far from the interstates, to house a drug running operation. After all, it’s a small town. Everyone knows everyone, right? Someone would notice, right?”

I nodded. “How come no one has noticed, except for Andrea? I mean, this house is rural, but its’ not that rural. There are two other houses on the street that aren’t Andrea’s, and a few others on the nearby streets. If you’re on Birch, the quickest way downtown is to pass through Pine. Why hasn’t the extra traffic been noticed?”

Gareth smiled at me, a cold smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Obviously that would be too conspicuous. No, we’ve done much better than that. You might see a small hole behind Boss, that leads into the crawl space under the house. We’ve built a tunnel there that leads into the forest. All we have to do is park our trucks on the side of the road, move the goods to the other end of the tunnel and load them up. No one drives on the roads around here at 3am, it’s such a deserted part of the world. Plus our trucks can pull off far enough that they’re almost impossible to see from the road. That way no one knows we’re here.”

“How long did it take? Building the tunnel, I mean.” A part of me was genuinely curious, but to be honest, I really just wanted to keep Gareth talking. I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like anyone knew I was here to rescue me. It would take at least another hour before Charlotte began to get worried, and then even if she did, what reason could she possibly have to think I was in the creepy house?