Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

Hunter said nothing. He was still staring at the screen, trying to figure it all out.

‘He was fucking with us, wasn’t he?’ Taylor chuckled those words. ‘Even if this house does exist, which I now doubt, it could take us a couple of days to find it, maybe more. He sent us on a wild goose chase, Robert. He’s playing games.’ She took a moment to think about it. ‘I’m sure he’s been here before. Maybe even lived here for a while. He knows Murphy is surrounded by woodland. That’s why he sent us here with that crazy riddle. We could spend days here, and never come across this. . fantasy house.’

Hunter spent a few more seconds analyzing the map before shaking his head. ‘No, this is wrong. This isn’t what he meant.’

Taylor’s eyebrows arched. ‘What do you mean? That’s exactly what he said: “ The house is at the end of a wood’s edge. ” Unless you’ve got this riddle wrong, and we came to the wrong place.’

‘I didn’t,’ Hunter assured her. ‘We came to the right place.’

‘OK then, so Lucien is playing games. Just look at that map, Robert.’ She nodded at her laptop. ‘“ The house is at the end of a wood’s edge ,”’ she repeated. ‘Those were his words. I’ve got the recording here with me if you want to listen to it again.’

‘I don’t have to,’ Hunter replied, turning the laptop to face him. ‘Because that’s not exactly what he said.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘He said that the house was at the end of the wood’s edge, not a wood’s edge. And there’s a big difference. Can you get us a searchable map of Murphy? Locations, street names, things like that?’

‘Yeah, sure.’

A few keystrokes later and the bird’s-eye-view map on the screen was substituted by an up-to-date satellite street map of the city of Murphy.

‘Here we go,’ she said, passing the laptop over to Hunter, who quickly typed something into the search feature. The map panned out, rotated left, and then zoomed in on a narrow dirt road located between two woodland hills on the south side of the city. The road’s name was — Woods Edge.

Even Hunter was a little surprised. He was expecting that perhaps one of the woodlands, or maybe even a park, carried the name “Woods Edge”, but not a road.

‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ he said.

‘I’ll be damned,’ Taylor breathed out.

The road seemed to carry on for about half a mile. There was nothing on either side of it, except woodland, until the very end, where a single house stood — the house at the end of the Woods Edge.

Taylor took the wheel, and the drive from the airport to the south side of Murphy took her just under twenty-five minutes. The entire journey was punctuated by hills, fields and woodlands. As they approached the city of Murphy, a few small ranches sprang up by the side of the road, with horses and cattle moving lazily around the yard. The typical smell of farm manure coated the air, but neither Hunter nor Taylor complained. Hunter, for one, couldn’t remember ever being in a place where everywhere he looked was painted by trees and green fields. It was striking scenery, they both had to admit.

As Taylor exited Creek Road and veered right into Woods Edge, the road got bumpier by the yard, forcing Taylor to slow down to almost a snail’s crawl.

‘Jesus, there’s absolutely nothing here,’ she said, looking around. ‘Did you notice that we haven’t seen a lamppost for way over a mile?’

Hunter nodded.

‘I’m glad we still have daylight to guide us,’ Taylor commented. ‘There’s no doubt Lucien was hiding from something, or someone. Who in their sane mind would want to live down here?’

She tried her best to avoid the larger potholes and bumps, but no matter how carefully she swerved, or how slowly she drove, it still felt as if they were driving through a warzone.

‘This is like a minefield,’ she said. ‘Car companies should bring their vehicles down here for a suspension test.’

A couple of slow and very bouncy minutes later, they finally reached the house at the end of the Woods Edge.

The place looked like a single-story ranch house, but on a much smaller scale. A low wooden fence, in desperate need of repair and a new paint job, surrounded the front of the property. The grass beyond the fence looked like it hadn’t been cropped in months. Most of the cement slabs that made up the crooked pathway that led from the gates to the house were cracked, with weed growing through the cracks and all around the slabs. An old and full-of-holes Stars and Stripes fluttered from a rusty flagpole on the right. The house was once white fronted, with pale blue windows and doors, but the colors had faded drastically, and the paint was peeling off from just about everywhere. The hipped roof also looked like it could do with a few new tiles.

Hunter and Taylor stepped out of the car. A cool breeze started blowing from the west, bringing with it the smell of damp soil. Hunter looked up and saw a couple of darker clouds starting to close in.

‘He certainly didn’t take very good care of this place,’ Taylor said, closing the car door behind her. ‘Not really the best of tenants.’

Hunter checked the dirt road around him and all the way up to the wooden fence. Except for their own, there were no other tire tracks. The house had no car garage, so Hunter looked for a place where a car could park by the house. In places like this, people tend to always park in the same spot. That would’ve undoubtedly left some sort of lasting impression on the ground, maybe even some oil marks or residues. He saw none. If Lucien Folter really lived here, it didn’t look like he owned a car.

Hunter also checked the postbox by the fence. Empty.

As they both moved toward the house, Hunter paused a second, allowing Taylor to take the lead. As it had been pointed out to him more than once, this wasn’t his investigation.

The single wooden step that led up to the porch creaked liked a warning signal under Taylor’s weight. Hunter, who was right behind her, decided to skip it, stepping straight up onto the porch instead.

They checked the windows on both sides of the front door. They were all locked, with their curtains drawn shut. The heavy door on the right of the house that led to its backyard was also locked. The wall above it was high enough to dissuade anyone who might’ve been thinking about climbing over.

‘OK, let’s try these,’ Taylor said.

Lucien’s keychain could’ve belonged to a building supervisor — a single, thick metal loop, packed with similar-looking keys. There were seventeen in total.

Taylor pulled open the mesh-screen door and tried the first key. It didn’t even go into the lock. The second, third, fourth and fifth keys all slid in easily, but none of them turned. Taylor just kept on calmly going through them.

The smell of damp soil became stronger and the air cooler as the first drops of rain came down. Taylor paused a second and looked up, wondering how many holes would reveal themselves on the porch’s roof once the rain got stronger.

Keys number six and seven were a repeat of the first one — wrong fit. Key number eight, on the other hand, slid into the lock with tremendous ease, and as Taylor turned it, the lock came undone with a muffled clunk.

‘Bingo,’ she said. ‘I wonder what all these other keys are for.’

Hunter said nothing.

Taylor turned the handle and pushed the door open. Surprisingly, there was no creaking or squeaking noise, as if the hinges had been well oiled recently.

Even before stepping into the house, they were both hit by a disinfectant, mothball sort of smell that came from inside. Instinctively, Taylor brought a hand to her nose.