He had to fumble twice for reverse, and then backed the truck jerkily up to the bulkhead leading to the cellar. The rusted doors stood open, and in the red glow of the truck’s taillights, the shallow stone steps seemed to lead down into hell.

“Man, I don’t dig this at all,” Hank said. He tried to smile and it became a grimace.

“Me either.”

They looked at each other in the wan dash lights, the fear heavy on both of them. But childhood was beyond them, and they were incapable of going back with the job undone because of irrational fear—how would they explain it in bright daylight? The job had to be done.

Hank killed the engine and they got out and walked around to the back of the truck. Royal climbed up, released the door catch, and thrust the door up on its tracks.

The box sat there, sawdust still clinging to it, squat and mute.

“God, I don’t want to take that down there!” Hank Peters choked out, and his voice was almost a sob.

“Come on up,” Royal said. “Let’s get rid of it.”

They dragged the box onto the lift and let it down with a hiss of escaping air. When it was at waist level, Hank let go of the lever and they gripped it.

“Easy,” Royal grunted, backing toward the steps. “Easy does it…easy…” In the red glow of the taillights his face was constricted and corded like the face of a man having a heart attack.

He backed down the stairs one at a time, and as the box tilted up against his chest, he felt its dreadful weight settle against him like a slab of stone. It was heavy, he would think later, but not that heavy. He and Hank had muscled bigger loads for Larry Crockett, both upstairs and down, but there was something about the atmosphere of this place that took the heart out of you and made you no good.

The steps were slimy-slick and twice he tottered on the precarious edge of balance, crying out miserably, “Hey! For Christ’s sake! Watch it!”

And then they were down. The ceiling was low above them and they carried the sideboard bent over like hags.

“Set it here!” Hank gasped. “I can’t carry it no further!”

They set it down with a thump and stepped away. They looked into each other’s eyes and saw that fear had been changed to near terror by some secret alchemy. The cellar seemed suddenly filled with secret rustling noises. Rats, perhaps, or perhaps something that didn’t even bear thinking of.

They bolted, Hank first and Royal Snow right behind him. They ran up the cellar steps and Royal slammed the bulkhead doors with backward sweeps of his arm.

They clambered into the cab of the U-Haul and Hank started it up and put it in gear. Royal grabbed his arm, and in the darkness his face seemed to be all eyes, huge and staring.

“Hank, we never put on those locks.”

They both stared at the bundle of new padlocks on the truck’s dashboard, held together by a twist of baling wire. Hank grabbed at his jacket pocket and brought out a key ring with five new Yale keys on it, one which would fit the lock on the back door of the shop in town, four for out here. Each was neatly labeled.

“Oh, Christ,” he said. “Look, if we come back early tomorrow morning—”

Royal unclamped the flashlight under the dashboard. “That won’t work,” he said, “and you know it.”

They got out of the cab, feeling the cool evening breeze strike the sweat on their foreheads. “Go do the back door,” Royal said. “I’ll get the front door and the shed.”

They separated. Hank went to the back door, his heart thudding heavily in his chest. He had to fumble twice to thread the locking arm through the hasp. This close to the house, the smell of age and wood rot was palpable. All those stories about Hubie Marsten that they had laughed about as kids began to recur, and the chant they had chased the girls with: Watch out, watch out, watch out! Hubie’ll get you if you don’t…watch…OUT—

“Hank?”

He drew in breath sharply, and the other lock dropped out of his hands. He picked it up. “You oughtta know better than to creep up on a person like that. Did you…?”

“Yeah. Hank, who’s gonna go down in that cellar again and put the key ring on the table?”

“I dunno,” Hank Peters said. “I dunno.”

“Think we better flip for it?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s best.”

Royal took out a quarter. “Call it in the air.” He flicked it.

“Heads.”

Royal caught it, slapped it on his forearm, and exposed it. The eagle gleamed at them dully.

“Jesus,” Hank said miserably. But he took the key ring and the flashlight and opened the bulkhead doors again.

He forced his legs to carry him down the steps, and when he had cleared the roof overhang he shone his light across the visible cellar, which took an L-turn thirty feet further up and went off God knew where. The flashlight beam picked out the table, with a dusty checked tablecloth on it. A rat sat on the table, a huge one, and it did not move when the beam of light struck it. It sat up on its plump haunches and almost seemed to grin.

He walked past the box toward the table. “Hsst! Rat!”

The rat jumped down and trotted off toward the elbow-bend further up. Hank’s hand was trembling now, and the flashlight beam slipped jerkily from place to place, now picking out a dusty barrel, now a decades-old bureau that had been loaded down here, now a stack of old newspapers, now—

He jerked the flashlight beam back toward the newspapers and sucked in breath as the light fell on something to the left side of them.

A shirt…was that a shirt? Bundled up like an old rag. Something behind it that might have been blue jeans. And something that looked like…

Something snapped behind him.

He panicked, threw the keys wildly on the table, and turned away, shambling into a run. As he passed the box, he saw what had made the noise. One of the aluminum bands had let go, and now pointed jaggedly toward the low roof, like a finger.

He stumbled up the stairs, slammed the bulkhead behind him (his whole body had crawled into goose flesh; he would not be aware of it until later), snapped the lock on the catch, and ran to the cab of the truck. He was breathing in small, whistling gasps like a hurt dog. He dimly heard Royal asking him what had happened, what was going on down there, and then he threw the truck into drive and screamed out, roaring around the corner of the house on two wheels, digging at the soft earth. He did not slow down until the truck was back on the Brooks Road, speeding toward Lawrence Crockett’s office in town. And then he began to shake so badly he was afraid he would have to pull over.

“What was down there?” Royal asked. “What did you see?”

“Nothin’,” Hank Peters said, and the word came out in sections divided by his clicking teeth. “I didn’t see nothin’ and I never want to see it again.”

 

SIX

 

Larry Crockett was getting ready to shut up shop and go home when there was a perfunctory tap on the door and Hank Peters stepped back in. He still looked scared.

“Forget somethin’, Hank?” Larry asked. When they had come back from the Marsten House, both looking like somebody had given their nuts a healthy tweak, he had given them each an extra ten dollars and two six-packs of Black Label and had allowed as how maybe it would be best if none of them said too much about the evening’s outing.

“I got to tell you,” Hank said now. “I can’t help it, Larry. I got to.”

“Sure you do,” Larry said. He opened the bottom desk drawer, took out a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and poured them each a knock in a couple of Dixie cups. “What’s on your mind?”

Hank took a mouthful, grimaced, and swallowed it.

“When I took those keys down to put ’em on the table, I seen something. Clothes, it looked like. A shirt and maybe some dungarees. And a sneaker. I think it was a sneaker, Larry.”

Larry shrugged and smiled. “So?” It seemed to him that a large lump of ice was resting in his chest.