P. Parrish - South Of Hell

Plus Margi had something else that was going to keep her around for a while longer. A workers comp settlement from when she slid on some corn syrup and broke her leg at the Spangler Candy Factory down in Ohio. Seventeen thousand dollars, compliments of the Dum Dum Suckers folks. Damn lawyer didn’t know when they’d get it, though.

“Look,” he said, making his voice sound a little nicer. “Just shut your mouth and drive, okay?”

“Where we going?”

Brandt sighed. “I told you, we’re going to Hell. It’s a real place. I got property up there. A real farm. We’ll stay there for a while.”

“A farm?” Margi asked. “I never been to a farm. Do you have animals there, like cows?”

“The only cow that will be there is you, Margi,” Brandt said. “Now drive.”

Louis left Joe at the gate again. As he walked toward the side door of the house, he looked back at her. He had been telling himself all morning that his sour mood was just the hangover and that tomorrow, when he felt better, things would be back to normal.

But in the fifteen miles of stiff silence as they drove to the Brandt farm, he had come to a different conclusion. It wasn’t just the constant pounding in his head. It was something he could not have imagined feeling a few days ago.

He didn’t want Joe here with him.

He jumped the fence and went up onto the side porch. The boards he had pounded back across the door on his first visit were still in place. So was the rusty hammer he had set on the railing. As he reached for it, his ears picked up a small tinkling sound.

He turned quickly, scanning the yard for something that could have made the noise — a hook banging softly against a metal structure, a dangling chain, or maybe even old wind chimes. Nothing.

The sound came again.

A piano. From inside the house.

He quickly but quietly pried the nails from the wood and tried to ease open the door. The screech of the door against the linoleum floor sounded loud in the still, cold air.

The tinkle of the piano stopped.

Louis hurried through the kitchen and down the hall to the parlor. The room was latticed with sunlight coming through the old lace curtains, but nothing seemed disturbed. Except the piano stool. It was pushed back slightly from the piano, the wood seat wiped clean of dust.

“Hello?” he called.

For a second, he heard only the echo of his own voice. Then he caught the sound of footsteps, soft and quick across the planked floor, moving toward the back of the house.

He followed the sound, opening doors to empty rooms and small closets. He paused at the base of the stairs to the second floor, holding his breath and trying to pick up a creak of wood or a door closing.

“Hello!” he hollered. “Hello!”

He heard a furious rattling above his head, like someone desperately trying to open a locked door. He darted up the stairs, drawn by instinct to a small rear bedroom that overlooked the barn and the fields. Before he reached the doorway, the rattling of the doorknob stopped, replaced by fast footfalls that seemed to drift without direction through the house.

“Please stop running!” Louis called. “I won’t hurt you.”

From below came the scrape of a door. He hurried down the stairs, out of breath by the time he reached the kitchen. The outside door was wide open, the room icy with cold air.

Damn it.

He went to the porch and looked first toward the Bronco. Joe was standing against the passenger door, arms crossed. If someone had run in that direction, she would have seen the person and already been in pursuit.

Louis spun toward the backyard, his hope waning as he scanned the other buildings. Nothing. He went back inside the house and stood in the center of the kitchen, his head tripping with questions beyond who had been in here. Whoever it was knew this place. Knew it well enough to move stealthily and quickly through the maze of rooms.

Some neighbor kid who liked exploring? Or some bum using the abandoned place as a refuge? No. Neither would stop to play a piano.

Had the intruder been a woman? Had it been Jean?

He started back out to the porch, thinking he could at least search the buildings. But there was something strange right here, in this kitchen. He turned a circle, stopping as he came to face the west wall. The first time he had been here, all the cupboards had been thrown open. Now, the door of the middle lower cupboard was closed.

He moved closer.

The exterior was slatted wood, painted a dull, dark brown. A few of the narrow boards in the front were missing, giving it the look of a makeshift wooden crate.

He bent and listened for a noise from inside. When he heard nothing, he braced himself for the possibility that someone might bolt at him, then jerked the door open.

A child was huddled inside.

No, not a child. A young girl.

Thin arms clutching her knees, tangled brown hair the same color as the cupboard doors. And her brown eyes beneath the shaggy bangs — terrified, almost feral.

“She’s dead,” the girl whispered.

Joe wandered along the edge of the road, kicking at rocks to vent her irritation. At Louis, for coming back so drunk last night he couldn’t talk and then this morning because he wouldn’t talk. And at herself for taking it from him.

You could always go home.

Why hadn’t she?

“Joe!”

She turned at the sound of his voice. He was leaning out the side door of the house, waving at her.

“Joe!” he hollered. “Come in here!”

She walked to the fence and stopped. He knew she couldn’t come onto the property.

“I need your help!” he called again. “Please.”

He suddenly looked back inside the house and disappeared. Joe gave him a few seconds to come back to the porch. When he didn’t, she stuck a boot toe in the fence and climbed over. Halfway across the yellowed grass, a bad feeling in her gut, she broke into a trot.

Louis was standing in the center of the kitchen when she walked in. The kitchen registered only as a brown blur, the moldy smell pricking her nose.

“What is it?” she asked.

Louis pointed to the bottom row of cupboards. An open door blocked her view, and she stepped around it to look inside. A young girl stared back at her.

“Oh, my God,” Joe said softly. “Who is she?”

“I don’t know,” Louis said. “She won’t say anything except ‘She’s dead.’”

“Who’s dead?”

“I don’t know. That’s all she said.”

Joe dropped to her knees. The girl’s brown eyes sharpened with an unexpected alertness — assessing Joe and her ability to hurt her.

“Who are you?” Joe asked.

The girl took a slow peek up at Louis, then her gaze came back to Joe, studying her as if she were trying to make a connection that kept getting interrupted.

“My name is Joe. Tell me yours.”

The girl’s eyes brightened. “That’s my name, too,” she whispered. “Amy Jo Brandt.”

Joe looked quickly at Louis, then back at the girl.

“Will you come out of the cupboard for me?” Joe asked.

Amy looked again at Louis and gave an almost indiscernible shake of her head. Joe motioned to Louis to back away. He did, taking a position against the far wall.

Joe extended a hand, and Amy took it, allowing herself to be drawn from the cupboard. When she rose to her feet, she pulled away from Joe, pressing herself against the cupboard, a small hand raised to keep Joe from touching her. Her dirty fingers were trembling.

Joe took a long look at her.

Amy was small, barely reaching Joe’s chest. A T-shirt, faded blue and a size too small, pulled tight across her small, budding breasts. She wore ragged jeans on narrow hips. Her face was smudged with dirt, her hair a long tangle.