Michael Collings - The Slab

He glanced over his shoulder. The sun was gone. The sky still glowed, but now it was mostly an unhealthy yellow glow that was part cloud, part lights from the businesses cropping up like toadstools along the Ventura freeway, just like he figured they would when he started planning the Charter Oaks project five years ago.

Just like he figured.

He shivered and pulled his jacket tighter. After a couple of moments, he almost slid back into the Lincoln, was halfway crouched into the doorway when he stopped. A sound from the house startled him.

Craaack! Like breaking glass.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Kids again.”

He swept the yard with his eyes. The blood-red McCall/Sidney Realty “For Sale” sign was canting again-how the hell had he missed seeing that. He shook his head. “Gotta get a clean-up crew out here.”

This was a prime lot-probably the best view in all of Charter Oaks, perched as it was at the top of the rise. From the front yard, you could follow the downward sweep of Oleander Place across the northern half of the shallow valley. From the back yard, the southern half opened out, dropping abruptly-almost precipitously-to survey vista on vista as the valley lengthened, then wrinkled to become the foothills of the coastal range. The asking price was good, McCall knew-an easy five thousand below list.

But the “For Sale” sign remained staked steadfastly in the front yard, standing sentry over emptiness and darkness.

Client after client said they liked the deal. They liked the view. They liked the floor plan and the generously sized lot. They liked the quiet neighborhood, with its handy shopping centers a short drive down Bingham Boulevard, its handful of churches of varying denominations scattered nearby, and its three schools almost within walking distance. One after another, they sauntered through the place and hmmm — ed and maybe — ed approvingly.

But they didn’t buy.

The house at 1066 was the last of the original Charter Oaks subdivision. The only one that had never sold.

McCall shivered again. He listened intently, but the cracking sound wasn’t repeated. “Imagination,” he said to himself. “Too close to Halloween. Too much stress.”

He bent again to slide into the Lincoln. A slit of light, suddenly visible when his head turned to just the right angle, glimmered beneath the garage door. He straightened. As his head moved, the glimmer disappeared. He scowled. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone there. No one had shown the place for a month.

Irritated, he slammed the car door, fumbled in his pocket for a set of master keys, and walked to the side garage door. His feet crunched dried weeds that needled through his socks and prickled his ankles where his slacks pulled up from his shoes. He slid the key into the door, then stopped, listening.

Nothing.

Wait…what was that?

No, it was just the wind in the naked branches of an elm in the corner of the lot. Or the whisper of cars on the freeway.

Somewhere down the block, a woman’s voice wailed “Mikeeee,” and another voice, high-pitched and piercing, replied with a drawn-out “Commiiinnng Mommm.”

But the house at 1066 lay silent as a white-stucco sepulchre.

McCall’s hand trembled as it held the key. He steadied his fingers with his other hand and thrust the key home. The lock was stiff, tight. When he turned the key, the scrannel grating of metal on metal sent shivers coursing up his spine. The door creaked opened.

Welcoomme, to Inner Sanctumm.

“Gotta get a crew up here,” he said loudly, as if to push the creaking echo away. “The place is going to hell fast.”

The garage smelled musty in spite of the fact that it had never been used. No ground-in grease droppings from split gaskets stained the concrete, no spatters of paint, no stench of gasoline from leaky power mowers. But still the place smelled…bad.

There was no light visible now.

McCall paused. He glanced back at his car. He could just see the edge of the white front fender gleaming against the rapidly darkening sky. He thought about the flashlight he always carried in the trunk. But he didn’t go back for it because just then, craaaack!

The sound repeated somewhere inside and he stepped into the garage before he was aware he had and carefully shut the door behind him. It seemed important at the moment that the door be closed. Fatally important. He just didn’t know why.

The place was dark but not pitch black. A hazy light penetrated from somewhere. The kitchen door must be open. He shuffled across the garage. Even though he knew where everything was, including the as yet unused water heater hunkering in the corner to the left of the door, he instinctively held one hand out from his side, the other in front of him, as if he were afraid of running into something unexpected, something sharp that would jab his eyes or gut his stomach. His heart thumped. He smelled the rankness of his own sweat overlaying the stale air. He slid forward. The sound of leather against smooth concrete-a grating ssshhh, ssshhh, ssshhh — made him nervous. He almost wished to hear the sound of breaking glass again.

He stopped.

“What’s going on?” he said out loud, startling himself as the sound echoed from empty walls. “I’m no kid afraid of spooks. This is shit!”

He took a long stride, another. Two more and he would be at the kitchen door and he would…

His toe caught and he went down. He sprawled, stretched out on the concrete. His knee cracked on the smooth surface, then his chest, and then his chin. His teeth snapped together and he came this goddam close to losing half an inch of his tongue. The pain in his knee was sharp, burning, moist. For a long instant, he didn’t dare move.

Broken bones, fractures, sprains-all sorts of possibilities flickered through his imagination as he lay sprawled in the darkness. Something hot dripped along his chin. He raised his hand to touch it. It was sticky as well.

Blood.

Shit, he’d probably sliced his chin open. He rolled onto his side, ignoring pain like a shard of ragged glass slashing his elbow, and sat up. So far so good. He rubbed his knee. His fingers came away stained dark. The thin gabardine of his slacks was shredded along the knee. He flexed his leg and tried to stand. Wobbly but apparently all right, he made it to the doorway separating garage from house.

As he passed through the door way, he instinctively palmed the light switch just inside the kitchen, even though he knew in the back of his mind that he had had the power shut off weeks ago. One of his men had found signs that some bum had been camping out in the back bedroom. No lights, no water, no free hotel, McCall had figured.

With a spine-chilling snap, a light flickered on.

He threw his hands over his eyes, as much out of surprise as out of pain…then winced as the movement twisted his body and his knee threatened to give way.

“What the…?” he began. There shouldn’t be any lights.

There weren’t. The three bulbs in the ceiling fixture stared down, blank and dead. The same with the fixture in the ceiling of the dining area in front of the double windows that looked over the valley.

McCall breathed a tremulous sigh of relief. The pull-shade over the right-hand pane was up. It should have been down. McCall nodded. That explained the sharp snap and the sudden light-the remnants of daylight streaming through the window as the shade popped loose at the instant he touched the light switch. Coincidence, yes. Certainly nothing more.

He swiveled on his good leg and peered into the darkness of the garage. With his body between the jaundiced light and the garage, all he could see was his bulky, dark outline where it had bled across the concrete. He moved to one side.