Bentley Little - The Burning

The two of them descended the stairs.

Once again, Jolene experienced a profound uneasiness upon entering the basement, and as she led Anna May to the trapdoor, goose bumps accompanied what appeared to her to be a significant drop in temperature. They were prepared to work hard and pull together on the small handle in order to open the door, but it must have had some type of spring hinge because it came up fairly easily, revealing a primitive ladder bolted to the edge of the opening and going down six feet or so to a hard dirt floor. They shone their lights into the darkness and saw what appeared to be a bookcase in the center of an otherwise empty chamber. There seemed to be no books on the shelves, only a series of small unidentifiable items.

Jolene had even more trepidation about going into this lower cellar than she'd had about entering the basement they were in. She was not just wary of the room; she was afraid of it. But Anna May had already pushed her flashlight into the waistband of her pants and had started down the ladder, and the only thing Jolene could do was follow.

The air smelled dirty and old, like someone had gone to the bathroom down here a long, long time ago.

Anna May stood in front of the bookcase. "What's this?" she asked, puzzled. She picked up a rounded brown leathery object and its identical twin.

They were ears.

Jolene shone her flashlight beam. On the shelf next to the ears were several fingers and what could only have been a penis. Hanging on hooks from the ceiling at an angle, not visible from above, were scalps: long black braids and ponytails that must have been Indian.

"Oh, my!" Anna May exclaimed, and the utterance was so incongruous that Jolene almost laughed.

Almost.

But the sight was so gruesome that it killed all thoughts of humor, overwhelming everything with its inexplicable horror. Neither of them said anything more but simply shone their lights on the other shelves, illuminating more ears and fingers, toes and genitals, a hand, a foot, even what looked like a black shrunken heart. Why were these here? Had Chester Williams saved these body parts as souvenirs?

From what? A war? Or had he been some sort of serial killer, hoarding portions of his victims in this concealed cellar?

She'd had a gut feeling when she'd first seen the trapdoor that nothing good could be behind a room so secret, buried so deep in the earth, and she'd been right.

"What is this?" she asked.

She meant all of it-the subbasement, the shelves, the scalps-but Anna May assumed that she meant the specific object she was prodding with her finger, and she turned guilelessly around. "I think it's a dick."

Again, Jolene thought, under other circumstances, she might have laughed.

But not here.

Not now.

"Look at this," Anna May said excitedly. She was crouching down and shining her beam on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. Reaching out, she drew forth an object that was instantly recognizable. A book of some sort, a bound volume with a filigreed cover.

Anna May opened the book to the first page, began turning subsequent pages slowly while Jolene shone her light on it. "It's a diary!" she said. "It's Chester Williams' diary!" She turned to the last page. "No. It can't be. It starts in 1874 and stops in 1876. He wasn't even born yet. The name on the overleaf is Chester Williams, though. ... It must have been his father's! Or grandfather's!" She looked up at Jolene with a triumphant smile on her face. "Didn't I tell you this was fascinating work?"

Jolene tried to smile back, but she was more frightened than fascinated, and for some reason she kept thinking of that terrible face she and Skylar had seen in their bedroom window. The brown wrinkled head would lit perfectly on one of these shelves next to the fingers and toes.

"Let's go back up," she said. "It's getting a little stuffy down here, and I have allergies."

"Fascinating," Anna May murmured, looking at the book.

"I have an idea. Why don't we switch? You stay down here and do inventory, and I'll go upstairs."

"No, no. We'll both go back up. There's a lot I still need to show you. But I'm definitely coming down here later. There's so much food for thought." She looked around the small dark room. "What do you suppose this was? And why are all of these body parts here?"

"I don't know," Jolene said honestly.

And she didn't want to know.

Skylar sat on a couch in front of the TV, flipping channels while Ms. Finch sat on another couch, flipping the pages of a magazine. His mom's friend was nice and all, but it was obvious she had no kids and didn't know what to do now that she'd been suckered into babysitting one. He felt sorry for her in a way, and for the first time he was glad that he'd be starting school soon. At least around other kids his own age he'd be able to relax and be himself and not worry so much about the adults around him.

He still didn't want to be here, though.

Last night, he'd had a dream that his dad had come to Bear Flats to kidnap him and take him back to Yuma. It was more of a nightmare than a dream, because he didn't want to go with his dad, and he could tell from the look in his old man's eyes that there was some serious craziness in store once the two of them were alone. But he did want to go back to Yuma, and that part of the dream was pretty cool.

If only his dad had taken off, and he and his mom had stayed in Arizona.

The phone rang, and Ms. Finch jumped up to get it like a person grateful to finally have something to do-which made Skylar feel even worse. She took the call in another room, so he wasn't able to eavesdrop, but she was back almost immediately.

"I'm sorry," Ms. Finch said, "but that was the restaurant. They need me. I have to go in for ten or fifteen minutes."

"Can I stay here?" Skylar asked.

"No. Not by yourself. But I'll make it quick. And you can have fries and a Coke while I work things out. How does that sound?"

"Can we walk instead of drive?" He couldn't believe what he was saying even as his mouth formed the words. The last thing he wanted to do was pass by that haunted grave site ... yet that was exactly what he was asking Ms. Finch to do.

"Sure," she told him. "Just let me put on my shoes."

Why had he suggested a stupid thing like that?

Because he'd been thinking about those graves- Mother Daughter -ever since they'd passed by them the other day.

And he wanted to see them again.

It was true. The grave site had never been far from his mind, and though just the idea of it frightened him, he was also intrigued by it. He supposed that was why he'd asked to walk by the spot.

Ms. Finch changed from sandals to her tennis shoes and grabbed her purse, and the two of them were out the door. They walked down the road, past the church, then turned into the woods and started up the trail. The path seemed darker this time, spookier, although that might have been because he now knew what lay ahead. Ms. Finch didn't seem to notice, though, and they talked on the way. The conversation was easy, casual, and he thought that maybe she wasn't as desperate to get rid of him as he'd thought she was. She told him about his mom as they walked, what she'd been like as a kid, and although it was weird to think about, it was also kind of nice. His mom didn't talk much about the past, he realized. He wondered why.

They reached the part where the trees grew bigger, thicker, closer together, and there, in the darkest part, exactly as he remembered, was the square of white picket fence. It was off to the side of the trail, and it was just as creepy as he remembered. He suddenly wished they hadn't walked, and at that moment he wanted nothing more than to hurry by and not look back. But, as before, his mouth betrayed him, and he blurted out, "Can I look at it?"