The Dead Boys (9 page)

Once his mom went to bed that night, Teddy snuck out the front door with a backpack full of equipment for his journey into the A-house.

Mulligan's knife was still in his pocket, while his pack held the hatchet and weed killer from the garage and a crowbar to pry his way into the A-house. He packed a portable 500-watt halogen light capable of illuminating entire rooms in the dark home, and, to be safe, a smaller flashlight. A compass and a cell phone seemed like good ideas too, as did a few granola bars. Finally, Teddy threw in a long rope— he hadn't forgotten his harrowing fall from the tall tree.

Before he left, he pinned a note to his pillow for his mom. It said not to worry and that he'd be back “later.”

Feeling prepared, Teddy looked across the fence at the front door of the abandoned A-house. The dirty glass of the rusty fixture above the door was glowing yellowish-white as though the light had been turned on to welcome a visitor.

Weird
, Teddy thought.
The bulb must be sixty years old, and the place can't possibly have electricity
.

He took a deep breath. He would rather have waited until morning, but he felt like time was running out. So he crept across the A-house yard, circling around the tree as far from the trunk as possible, and stepped up to the front door.

He knew he'd have to be careful not to leave signs of a break-in, whether he found more answers or not, so he covered his hand with his T-shirt to avoid leaving fingerprints and checked the knob. He was a little surprised to find it unlocked, yet relieved—at least he wouldn't have to use the crowbar.

Teddy pulled against the drift of sand on the porch and eased the door open. It was dark inside the boarded-up home, so he removed the halogen lamp from his pack. The lamp had a heavy battery, which Teddy detached and put in his pack so he could hold the light more easily. A cord plugged into the handle kept the battery connected.

But before he could flip the power switch, the light in the hall ahead of him came on with a quiet
click
. At the same time, the porch light winked off behind him.

It wants me to visit
, he remembered thinking the day he'd arrived and come to the A-house porch.

The instinct to flee was strong—to run home, tuck himself in his bed and bury his fear under the safety of his comforter. Teddy looked back at his own house.

But isn't that exactly what the tree would have me do?
he thought.
Is it guarding the A-house's secrets?
He reminded himself that he would never know if he ran, so he stepped inside.

Moving across the foyer, he found himself in a furnished living room containing an ancient scroll-armed couch that had collapsed in the middle and a dull, insect-eaten coffee table. Through an archway he saw a rusty dinette set with green chairs whose plastic upholstery had dried and split with age.

It seemed to Teddy that the owners had abandoned the place in a hurry, leaving all of their furniture, and that no one had set foot inside since. The air smelled stale, like the corpse of the cat he'd once found in an old shed long after it had withered to leather.

He continued down the main hall, each footstep leaving a print in the decades of dust on the floor. Despite the decay, the lights overhead turned on ahead of him and off behind him as he passed, leading him to a door with a couple of faded old baseball cards thumb-tacked to it.

The players were unfamiliar—Dixie Walker and Elmer Riddle of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Teddy unpinned one and turned it over—the season was listed as 1948, a year when Sloot would have been alive.

There will be secrets and clues inside this room
, Teddy thought. But it took a moment to bring himself to turn the knob, and when he did, his hand shook. Finally, he pushed the door open. It squeaked as if to announce his arrival.

A night lamp blinked on beside a small bed as the light in the hall abandoned him. In its glow, Teddy could see a dusty jar of marbles on the dresser. A mildew-stained wooden toy tank aimed up at him from the floor, and an old tabletop hockey game with worn metal players sat on the shelf.

Teddy crossed to the closet and peeked inside. It was full of crumbling, moth-eaten clothes sized for a kid his age. A pair of black and white Chuck Taylors sat decaying on a shelf, and two rusted metal baseball cleats hung from a hook near the top of the wall.

It was then that Teddy saw the small trapdoor in the ceiling. At first he almost ignored it, but then he noticed it was slightly open.

Just as the sycamore tree had invited him to climb it, Teddy now felt himself strangely drawn to the little door, as though it was open for a reason. People kept secrets in attics—
look up here
, it seemed to say.

He climbed up on the shelf and lifted the trapdoor enough to poke his head through. The attic was dark, so Teddy clicked on his light and swung the halogen's beam across the room.

The attic seemed to run the length of the house. There was no proper floor—only rows of beams nailed on top of the ceiling below. Teddy lifted himself completely into the room for a closer look.

Then he saw the branches.

They wove between the beams in the rafters, crisscrossing and filling the attic like a huge, tangled vine. Shining the light along the walls, Teddy saw that they'd come in through the broken window at the end of the room, then spread throughout the entire attic.

The sprawling limbs told him that he'd come to the right place. The tree was here, and it was protecting something. He stepped out onto the beam, but he was still staring ahead, and that's when his foot slipped off.

As Teddy fell, his shorts ripped, and he felt something sharp tear into his leg. He landed hard, straddling the beams and grabbed his thigh. Warm stickiness ran through his fingers.

He turned the light on his leg. There was
a lot
of blood. It ran over his knee in a steady stream so that his upper leg looked like someone had painted it solid red. Jammed into the torn flesh of his wound was the sharp point of a thick branch.

It suddenly felt stiflingly hot in the attic. Teddy swayed and sucked for breath, his head swimming. He turned on his stomach to crawl for the trapdoor, but it was too late. Before he could reach it, he passed out.

Teddy awoke groggily to the sound of a window squealing open in the room below him. He retrieved the halogen lamp and shined it ahead, pulling himself to the trapdoor, where he scrambled through and dropped back into the closet.

When he landed, he remembered that his leg was injured. But when he looked down, he saw that it was no longer bleeding. Frantically, he pulled his shorts aside—there was now no wound at all.

He frowned, wondering if he'd just imagined the ill-fated trip to the attic the same way he might have imagined the scrub-brush park and the construction site. But if he had, his imagination was still at work, for the bedroom now appeared completely different than it had before.

The clothes hanging around him in the closet were no longer old and decayed but neat and pressed. Across the room, the cat-eye marbles were clean and sparkled in their jar, and the hockey game looked shiny new, as though waiting to be played with. In fact, the room appeared just as it might have in 1950.

Cautiously, Teddy stepped out of the closet and walked over to the bed. He felt the kid-sized indentation in the sheets on the bed and was surprised to find it warm. Someone had just gotten out of bed.

As Teddy stood by the bed, a hand reached through the open window by the headboard and pushed the drapes aside. Teddy turned to see a familiar face appear in the window frame.

“Sloot!” Teddy exclaimed. “I found you!”

“I was about to say the same thing, bucko.” Sloot grinned back at him.

“Okay,” Teddy said, “let's get you in here.”

“No, let's get
you
in
here
,” Sloot shot back. “If my dad catches you in my room . . . well, he's a bit of a hothead, I'll tell ya. I ain't supposed to have friends over at night. C'mon, let's scram. We can hole up in the tree.” Sloot motioned for Teddy to come to the window, then ducked out of view.

“Wait,” Teddy called. He stepped to the window frame and stuck his head through. The swirling darkness outside made it impossible to see. He was just about to point the halogen lamp out the window when a half-dozen hands grabbed him and yanked him through.

Teddy fell to the ground. He could only see vague shapes in the dark, and a strong wind was blowing sand in his eyes. He felt flailing limbs and bodies around him, wrestling him to the ground. He thrashed and struck out in all directions with his fists and feet. He felt one punch connect with something solid—flesh and bone. Then a body leaped on him and pinned him down.

“Sloot! Help!” he yelled. But no help came. Sloot had left the window moments before the hands pulled Teddy through, but now he was gone.

It occurred to Teddy that perhaps the police had come and they were the ones holding him down. Maybe they'd grabbed Sloot too, or he'd run away from them. Then he had a scarier thought—it might be Henry Mulligan and his hoodlum friends.

Teddy felt himself being lifted and carried. He still couldn't make out the figures, and he couldn't keep track of which way they were taking him. Not that it really mattered—he'd lost all sense of direction in the struggle.

Don't panic
, he told himself.

With great effort, he stopped himself from squirming and tried to think. By the number of hands on him, he judged that there were three, maybe four of them. Police would have identified themselves, he thought, so it probably wasn't cops. But whoever had him wasn't talking, so he'd have to wait to figure anything else out.

He didn't have to wait long. They were half dragging him now, and the halogen lamp was dangling by its cord behind him. The lamp caught on something in the dark, and it jerked the battery in Teddy's backpack, which tightened the straps on his shoulders and yanked him free of their grasp.

Teddy fell to the ground and immediately scrambled away from the group. He heard their footsteps shuffling around in confusion, and he desperately fumbled along the ground in the dark for the light. He found the halogen and, holding it out like a shield, he flicked on the switch.

Five hundred watts of light suddenly blew the darkness back. The glare hurt his eyes, and he was blinded for a moment. He heard eerie squeals of pain, commotion, and panicked footsteps. When his eyes adjusted, whoever had attacked him had retreated beyond the lamp's range into the darkness and dust. But he knew they were still out there beyond the dim edge of the light's reach.

“Teddy, wait!” It was Sloot's voice.

“Sloot!” Teddy called out. “Over here! Quick. They're all around us.” He swung the light back and forth, expecting Henry Mulligan to leap out and grab him at any second.

“Lower the lamp,” Sloot called. “It burns our peepers, pal.”

“Our?” Teddy turned the lamp toward the ground so that it cast only a faint circle of light, enough to see by, but not so bright.

Two pale eyes appeared in the blackness. Sloot melted from the shadows and eased toward him, squinting. “This is a dim place,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“What does that mean?” Teddy asked. But before Sloot could answer, he heard footsteps to his left. “Watch out!” he warned, and he raised the light.

Sloot stepped to him, squinting in the halogen's blinding beam, and pushed the light back down toward the ground. “Stop, Teddy,” he pleaded. “It's us.”

Sloot motioned to the darkness, beckoning forward his unseen companions. A second boy crept from the shadows, then a third. They were pale and hollow-eyed. The third one had a bloody nose. They were about Teddy's age, and he was relieved to see that none were Henry Mulligan or from his gang.