Shelter (4 page)

But if I did, man, this place had them all.

The place was so dilapidated it actually seemed to lean, like if you pushed too hard it might just crumble to the ground. There were loose boards. Some windows were gone, replaced with wooden planks. The ones that remained were fogged up as if the house just took a hot shower, which, judging by the dirt, wasn’t really possible.

If I hadn’t seen her with my own eyes, I would swear the house had been abandoned for years.

I approached again and knocked on the door. No answer. I put my ear close to the panel—not too close because I didn’t want to get a splinter—and listened. Nothing. Not a sound. I knocked some more. Still no answer.

So now what?

What could I really do here? Something. Anything. I decided to try the back door. I circled to the left because, like I said, the house tilted and if it suddenly collapsed, I didn’t want it to fall on me. I looked up. There was a widow’s peak way up high and for a moment I imagined the Bat Lady sitting up there in a rocking chair, still dressed in white, looking down at me.

I hurried my steps, wondering what I’d find in her backyard.

Nothing.

The house came right up against the woods. It was the strangest thing. It was as though the house was built half onto a plot of land, half in a forest, like it was emerging from the trees. From the street, it just looked as if maybe there were a ton of trees in her backyard. But it was all trees. The roots seemed to merge right into the foundation. Thick, ugly vines ran up the back walls. I don’t know if the house was originally built in the woods and then a clearing was made in the front, or if it was the opposite, if the woods behind it had sneaked up and started to swallow Bat Lady’s house whole.

“What are you doing?”

I bit back a scream and jumped high enough to dunk a basketball. The voice had come from behind me. I spun quickly, taking two steps back and banging into a tree.

It was Ema.

“Scared you, huh?” She laughed and lifted her arms into wings. “Did you think I was the Bat Lady coming to take you away?”

My voice was a whisper. “Knock it off.”

“Big tough guy.”

“What are you doing here anyway?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“Wait, were you following me?”

“Really, Mickey?” She put her hands on her hips. “Conceited much?”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“It was just . . .” Ema sighed. “You mentioned Bat Lady. And you came to my rescue, right, and then I guess I just got curious.”

“So you followed me here?”

Ema didn’t reply. She looked around as though she’d just realized that we were half in the woods, half leaning against the back of Bat Lady’s house. “So why are you here anyway? No luck with the fat chick, so you figured you’d try the old one?”

I just looked at her.

“I heard what they said. Buck and Troy. They’ve been on me for so long it’s hard to remember a time when they weren’t.” She turned away, bit her lower lip, and then faced me again. “I also heard they threatened you for defending me.”

I shrugged it off.

“So what are you doing here?”

I wondered how to explain it and went with the simple: “I want to talk to Bat Lady.”

Ema smiled. “No, seriously.”

“I am serious.”

“No, you’re not. Because, well, she’s not real. Bat Lady’s just a myth the big kids use to scare the little kids. I mean, I don’t know anyone who has ever seen her.”

“I’ve seen her,” I said.

“When?”

“This morning.” Then I added: “She told me that my father was still alive.”

Ema looked puzzled.

“He died in a car crash earlier this year,” I explained.

“Whoa,” Ema said, her eyes going wide. “I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“I just want to talk to her.”

“Okay, I get it. I saw you knock on her door. So what’s your plan now?”

“Try the back door.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” Ema said. She looked toward the woods and narrowed her eyes. “Look at that.”

She pointed into the woods and took a few steps in that direction. I didn’t see anything other than trees.

“There’s a road back there,” Ema said. “Maybe a building.” I still didn’t see it. She walked toward it. I followed her. A few steps later, I could see that she was right. There, maybe fifty yards behind Bat Lady’s house, was what might have been a garage, painted in a brown-green that worked as camouflage. There was a dirt road from somewhere in the woods leading up to it. You couldn’t see either one from the front of the house. Heck, you couldn’t even see them from the back door.

Ema bent down and touched the dirt. “Tire tracks for a car,” she said, like she was following someone in an old movie. “This must be how Bat Lady goes in and out—through this dirt road. She can park and go in and no one would ever see her.”

“Bat Lady drives?”

“What, you think she flies?”

I felt a chill. The garage was in better shape than the house but not by much. I tried the garage door. It too was locked. There were no windows, so I couldn’t see if there was a car inside.

I didn’t know what to make of all this. Probably nothing. An eccentric old woman lived here. She liked to go in and out through a private entrance. Big deal. There was no reason for me to be here.

Except, of course, she had known my name. And there was that bit about my father being alive . . .

Who says that to someone? Your father’s still alive? Who does that?

Enough. I spun around and headed to the back door. I knocked. No reply. I knocked harder. There were dirty windows on the door. I cupped my hands around my eyes to look inside, and while I did, I felt the door give way just a little. I looked down at the knob. Decay had eaten away at the doorjamb. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet. Ema was by my side now. I extracted a credit card, hiding the name on it from her.

“Whoa,” she said. “You know how to break in?”

“No, but I’ve seen it on TV. You just sort of slide the card.”

She frowned. “And you think that’ll work?”

“Normally no,” I said. “But look how old that lock is. It looks like it’ll break if I breathe on it too hard.”

“Okay, but think it through first.”

“Huh?”

“Suppose the door does open,” Ema said. “Then what?”

I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I jammed the credit card into the opening in the jamb. I slid it down. It met resistance. I slid a little harder. Nothing. I was about to give up when the door slowly opened with a creak noisy enough to echo into the woods.

“Whoa,” Ema said again.

I pushed the door the rest of the way open. The creak grew louder, causing birds to scatter. Ema put her hand on my forearm. I looked down and saw her fingernails were black. She had silver rings on every finger. One was a skull and crossbones.

“That’s breaking and entering,” she said.

“You going to call the cops?” I asked.

“You kidding?” Her eyes lit up. She looked younger now, sweeter, almost like a little kid. When I saw the hint of a smile, I arched an eyebrow and that, I guessed, scared it away. The sullen was back. “Whatever,” she said, trying to sound like she couldn’t care less. “It’s cool.”

No, not cool. I knew that this wasn’t the smartest move, but the need to do something here, anything, outweighed those personal concerns. Besides, really, what was the risk? An old woman had yelled out some crazy things to me in the morning. I came by to check on her. When there was no answer, I decided to make sure that she was okay. That would be my story. What were they going to do, lock me up for that?

“You might as well go home,” I said to her.

“Dream on.”

“I guess I could use a lookout.”

“I’d rather go in.”

I shook my head.

Ema sighed. “Fine. I’ll be the lookout.” She took out her cell phone. “What’s your number?”

I gave it to her.

“I’ll stand over there. If I see her flap her wings, I’ll text you. By the way, what are you going to do if she is inside, waiting in the dark to pounce on you?”

I didn’t bother replying, though in truth I hadn’t thought of that. What if Bat Lady was waiting for me and . . . and what? What was she going to do, jump on my back? I’m a six-footfour-inch teenager. She’s a tiny old woman. Get a grip.

I stepped into the kitchen. I didn’t close the door behind me. I wanted a quick escape in case . . . well, whatever.

The kitchen was from another era. I remember once watching a rerun of a black-and-white TV show called
The Honeymooners
with my dad. I didn’t really think it was very funny. A lot of the humor seemed to come from Ralph threatening to physically abuse his wife, Alice. Ralph and Alice had a refrigerator—if that’s what this was—like this one. Bat Lady’s linoleum floor was the dirty yellow of a smoker’s teeth. A cuckoo clock was stopped on the wrong time, the bird out of his little brown house. The cuckoo looked cold.

“Hello?” I called out. “Anyone home?”

Not a sound.

I should just leave. Really. What was I looking for?

Your father isn’t dead. He is very much alive.

On the one hand, I knew better. I had been in that car with my father. I saw him die. On the other hand . . . you just don’t say a thing like that and not expect a son to demand an explanation.

I tiptoed across the peeling tiles. I passed a checkerboard tablecloth like something you’d see at a pizza joint. There were salt and pepper shakers stuck to it, the contents hardened. I stepped out of the kitchen and stopped in front of a spiral staircase leading up to the second floor.

Where, no doubt, Bat Lady’s bedroom was.

“Hello?”

No reply.

I put one foot on the first step. Then those images—the ones of Bat Lady maybe getting dressed or showering—filled my head. I put my foot back down on the first floor. Uh-uh. I wasn’t going up. At least, not right now.

I entered the living room. It was dark. The key color: brown. Very little illumination made it through the dirt and wood covering the windows. There was a tall grandfather clock, also not working. I spotted an old-fashioned cabinet stereo. A hi-fi, I think they called it. It had a turntable on top. Vinyl albums were stacked to the side. I spotted
Pet Sounds
by the Beach Boys, the Beatles walking across Abbey Road, and
My Generation
by the Who.

I tried picturing Bat Lady blasting classic rock in this dark room. The image was simply too weird.

I stopped and listened again. Nothing. Across the room I spotted a giant fireplace. The mantel was bare except for one photograph. I began to move toward it when something made me pull up.

There was a record on the turntable.

I took another look. I knew this particular record well. This record—the one Bat Lady had most recently played—was called
Aspect of Juno
by a group called HorsePower. My parents listened to it a lot. Years ago, when Mom and Dad first met, my mother was friends with Gabriel Wire and Lex Ryder, the two guys who made up HorsePower. Sometimes, when Dad was traveling, I would find Mom listening to the music alone and crying.

I swallowed. A coincidence?

Of course it was. HorsePower was still a popular group. Lots of people owned their music. So it happened to be sitting on Bat Lady’s turntable—big deal, right?

Except it
was
a big deal. I just didn’t see how yet.

Keep moving, I thought.

I started again toward the photograph on the mantel. The fireplace itself was filled with soot and burnt, yellowed newspaper. I lifted the picture gently from the mantel, afraid that it might fall apart with a mere touch of my hands. It didn’t. The glass on the frame was so thick with dust that I tried to blow it clean. Dumb move. The dust flew into my eyes and up my nose. I sneezed. My eyes watered. When they stopped, I blinked my eyes open and looked down at the photograph in my hand.

Hippies.

There were five of them in the picture: three women, two men, and they were standing girl-boy-girl-boy-girl. All of them had long hair and bell-bottom jeans and love beads. The women all had flowers in their hair. The men had scruffy facial hair. The picture was old—I would guess that it’d been taken in the 1960s—and the five were probably college students or around that age. The image reminded me of stuff I’d seen in a Woodstock documentary.

The colors in the photograph had faded over the years, but you could tell that at one time they’d been bright. The five stood in front of a brick building and all smiled widely. They all wore the same tie-dyed T-shirts with a bizarre emblem on the chest. At first I thought it was some sort of peace sign. But no, that wasn’t it. I looked closer, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. The emblem looked like, I don’t know, a messed-up butterfly maybe. I read once about Rorschach blots, where different people see different things in the same vague images. It was a little like that, except the blots were black while this design had a host of colors. I looked again. Yes, I could clearly make out a butterfly. Near the bottom tips of the wings, there were two round . . . eyes, I guess. Animal eyes maybe. They seemed to glow.