"No. Of course not. We'd just walk around the farm here. I think the barn's about as far as we'd care to go."
"Good." He nodded, satisfied. "For it is a haunted place, strange with secrets."
Jan walked into the room then, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and I blew her a kiss across the table. She smiled and blew a kiss back. I turned again to my grandpa. "You said that before. What is it? Part of a poem?"
"What?"
" 'It is a haunted place, strange with secrets.'"
His face grew pale as I spoke the words, the color draining from his cheeks, and I felt my own flesh starting to creep as I saw his fear. I was immediately sorry I'd mentioned it. But there was no way to retract the question.
He looked from me to Jan; his eyes narrowed into unreadable slits. He took a sip of coffee, and I saw that his hands were shaking badly. "Wait here a minute," he said, standing up. "I'll be right back." Holding on to his bad leg, he limped across the room and out into the hall. He returned a few minutes later with a piece of folded brown paper which he tossed at me.
I unfolded the paper and read:
For He lives here with flies in shadow and dark
And He is happy here, at home
For it is a haunted place, strange with secrets
I handed the paper back to my grandpa, puzzled. "What is it?"
"I found it in your grandma's hand when she died. It's her handwriting, but I have no idea when she wrote it." He folded the paper and placed it carefully in the upper-right pocket of his overalls. "I don't think she ever wrote another poem in her life."
"Then why did she write this?"
He stared into his coffee. "I don't know."
Jan sat down at the table, pulling her chair next to mine. "How do you know she wrote it about the bathhouse?"
My grandpa looked up at her. It was a minute or so before he answered, and when he did his voice was low, almost
a whisper. "Because," he said, "that's where she died."
***
We did indeed go into town, and we had some great hamburgers at the lone diner: a dingy little hole-in-the-wall called Mac and Marg. After, we drove back to the farm and I gave Jan a guided tour of my childhood. I showed her the now-abandoned horse stalls where we used to lick the massive blocks of salt with Big Red and Pony; I showed her the old windmill; I showed her the spot where we once built a clubhouse. I showed her everything.
We ended up at the barn.
"You really used to play here?" she asked, looking up at the decaying building. "It looks so dangerous."
I smiled. "Well, it wasn't quite so bad off in those days. In fact, it was still being used." I walked up to the huge open doorway and looked in. Light now entered the once-dark building through several holes in the roof. "Hello!" I called, hoping for an echo. My voice died flatly, barely managing to scare two swallows who flew through one of the roof holes.
Jan walked up and stood beside me, looking in. "You used to play upstairs, too?"
I nodded. "We played everywhere. We knew every inch of this place."
She shivered and turned around. "I don't like it."
I followed her back out into the sunlight. The day was hot, almost unbearably so, and though I was wearing a T-shirt, cutoffs, and a pair of sandals, I was still sweating.
Jan, ahead of me by a few paces, stopped at the edge of the tall grass and stared toward the hillside, silent, thinking. I crept up behind her and gave her a quick poke in the side. She jumped, and I laughed. "Sorry," I said. "I just couldn't help it."
She smiled thinly, and her gaze returned to the small cluster of buildings. "It is scary, isn't it? Even in the daytime."
She was right. The bathhouse and the small shacks surrounding it dominated the scenery, though they were by no means the most prominant figures in the landscape. It was as if the whole area, the scattered farmhouses, the fields and the hills, were somehow focused in on that point. No matter where one stood in the valley, his or her eyes would be drawn inexorably to the bathhouse. There was something strange about the makeshift hut, something a little off, something entirely unrelated to my grandpa's story.
"Listen," Jan said, grabbing my arm. "Do you hear that?"
I listened. "No, I don't hear—"
"Shhh!" She put up her hand to silence me.
I stood perfectly still, cocking my ear toward the bathhouse, listening intently. Sure enough, a low buzzing was coming from that direction, growing louder or softer with the wafting of the hot breeze. "I hear it," I said.
"What do you think it is?"
"I don't know."
She stood still for a moment, listening. The buzzing maintained its even rhythm. "You know what it reminds me of?" she said. "That poem by Keats. The one where he talked about 'the murmurous haunt of flies.'"
The murmurous haunt of flies.
It seemed suddenly hotter, more humid, if that was possible. The wind, blowing from the direction of the bathhouse, felt hellishly, unnaturally heated. I put my arm around Jan and held her close. We stood like that for a few minutes.
"How far do you think that is?" she asked, gesturing toward the hill.
"Why?"
"I'd like to go over there. You know, just take a look."
I shook my head emphatically. I may not have fully believed my grandpa's story and his repeated warnings, but I had no desire to tempt the fates. "No way," I said. "Forget it."
"Why not? It's broad daylight. It's not even two o'clock yet. What could happen to us?"
I was sweating heavily by now, and I used my T-shirt to wipe the moisture off my face. "I don't know," I said. "I just don't want to take any chances."
She gave my hand a small squeeze and looked into my eyes. "It is scary, isn't it?"
That night, I had a nightmare. And it was Jan who woke me up and comforted me.
I had been walking through the tall grasses beyond the barn, the overgrown groundcover reaching above my head and causing me to lose my way. It was night, and the full moon shone brightly in a starless sky. I kept looking up as I walked, trying unsuccessfully to get my bearings by the moon, trying vainly to determine in which direction I was walking. Suddenly, I stepped through a wall of grass and found myself at the edge of a small clearing—face-to-face with the bathhouse.
The bathhouse looked smaller than I'd thought it would, and not as run-down. But that in no way diluted its evil. For it was evil. It was a forbidding and terrifying presence, almost alive, and the light of the moon played spectrally across its adobe facade, highlighting the empty darkened windows, spotlighting strange irregularities in construction. There was something definitely wrong with the building, something savage and perverse, and as I looked at the structure my muscles knotted in fear.
Then something caught my eye. I glanced over the front of the building once again and saw what I had noticed only peripherally before. I screamed. Peeking out of the blackened rectangular hole which served as a doorway were two shriveled feet wearing Jan's stockings.
I awoke in Jan's arms.
And she held me, softly, closely, her calm, sympathetic voice assuaging my fears, until again I fell asleep.
The other local farmers knew about the bathhouse as well, we learned. My grandpa had several of the neighboring ranchers over for a barbecue lunch the next day, and they discussed, in hushed whispers, the recent mutilation of several hogs. They all seemed to think the mutilations were connected with the bathhouse in some way.
"I went up there exactly once," said Old Man Crawford. "The first year we moved here. That was enough for me."
I was sitting next to Jan at the head of the table, keeping my ear on the conversation and my eye on the hamburgers. I turned toward Old Man Crawford. "What was it like?" I asked.
They stared at me then, six pairs of eyes widening as if in shock. The only sound was the sizzling of the meat dripping through the rusty grill onto the burning charcoal. No one said a word; it was as if they were waiting for me to retract my question. Jan's hand found mine and held it.