“Let’s see … I know. The Kingman place. You’ll like the Kingman place. You been there yet?”
“What’s the Kingman place?” Colin asked.
“It’s one of the oldest houses in town.”
“I’m not much interested in landmarks.”
“It’s that big house at the end of Hawk Drive.”
“The spooky old place on top of the hill?”
“Yeah. Nobody’s lived there for twenty years.”
“What’s so interesting about an abandoned house?”
Roy leaned close and cackled like a fiend, twisted his face grotesquely, rolled his eyes, and whispered dramatically: “It’s haunted!”
“What’s the joke?”
“No joke. They say it’s haunted.”
“Who says?”
“Everyone.” Roy rolled his eyes again and tried to imitate Boris Karloff. “People have seen exceedingly strange things at the Kingman place.”
“Such as?”
“Not now,” Roy said, dropping the Karloff voice. “I’ll tell you all about it when we get there.”
As Roy lifted his bicycle away from the wall, Colin said, “Wait a minute. I think you’re serious. You mean this house is really haunted?”
“I guess it depends on whether or not you believe in that sort of thing.”
“People have seen ghosts there?”
“People say they’ve seen and heard all kinds of crazy things at that house ever since the Kingman family died up there.”
“Died?”
“They were killed.”
“The whole family?”
“All seven of them.”
“When was this?”
“Twenty years ago.”
“Who did it?”
“The father.”
“Mr. Kingman?”
“He went crazy one night and chopped up everyone while they were sleeping.”
Colin swallowed hard. “Chopped them up?”
“With an ax.”
Axes again! Colin thought.
For a moment his stomach seemed to be not a part of him but a separate entity alive within him, for it slipped and slid and twisted wetly back and forth, as if trying to crawl out of him.
“I’ll tell you all about it when we get there,” Roy said. “Come on.”
“Wait a minute,” Colin said nervously, stalling for time. “My glasses are dirty.”
He took off his glasses, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and carefully polished the thick lenses. He could still see Roy fairly well, but everything farther than five feet was blurry.
“Hurry up, Colin.”
“Maybe we should wait for tomorrow.”
“Is it going to take you that long to clean your goddamned glasses?”
“I mean, in daylight we’ll be able to see more of the Kingman place.”
“Seems to me it’s more fun to look at a haunted house at night.”
“But you can’t see much at night.”
Roy regarded him silently for a few seconds. Then: “Are you scared?”
“Of what?”
“Ghosts.”
“Of course not.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Well … it does seem kind of foolish to go poking around a place like that in the dark, in the dead of night, you know.”
“No. I don’t know.”
“I’m not talking about ghosts. I mean, one of us is bound to get hurt if we mess around in an old broken-down house in the middle of the night.”
“You are scared.”
“Like hell.”
“Prove you’re not.”
“Why should I prove anything?”
“Want your blood brother to think you’re a coward ?”
Colin was silent. He fidgeted.
“Come on!” Roy said.
Roy mounted his bike and pedaled out of the deserted service station, heading north on Broadway. He did not glance back.
Colin stood at the soda machine. Alone. He didn’t like being alone. Especially at night.
Roy was a block away and still moving.
“Damn!” Colin said. He shouted, “Wait for me,” and clambered onto his bicycle.
10
They walked the bikes up the last steep block toward the dilapidated house that crouched above them. With each step, Colin’s trepidation grew.
It sure looks haunted, he thought.
The Kingman place was well within the Santa Leona city limits, yet it was separated from the rest of the town, as if everyone were afraid to build nearby. It stood on top of a hill and held dominion over five or six acres. At least half of that land had once been well-tended, formal gardens, but long ago it had gone badly to seed. The north leg of Hawk Drive dead-ended in a wide turnaround in front of the Kingman property; and the lampposts did not go all the way to the end of the street, so that the old mansion and its weed-choked grounds were shrouded in blackest shadows, highlighted only by the moon. On the lower two thirds of the hill, on both sides of the road, modem California-style ranch houses clung precariously to the slopes, waiting with amazing patience for a mudslide or the next shock wave from the San Andreas Fault. Only the Kingman place occupied the upper third of the hill, and it appeared to be waiting for something far more terrifying, something a great deal more malevolent than an earthquake.
The house faced the center of town, which lay below it, and the sea, which was not visible at night, except in the negative as a vast expanse of lightlessness. The house was a huge, rambling wreck, ersatz Victorian, with too many fancy chimneys and too many gables, and with twice as much ginger-bread around the eaves and windows and railing as true Victorian demanded. Storms had ripped shingles from the roof. Some of the ornate trim was broken, and in a few spots it had fallen down altogether. Where shutters still survived, they often hung at a slant, by a single mounting. The white paint had been weathered away. The boards were silver-gray, bleached by the sun and the constant sea wind, waterstained. The front-porch steps sagged, and there were gaps in the railing. Half of the windows were haphazardly boarded shut, but the others were without protection, thus shattered; moonlight revealed jagged shards of glass like transparent teeth biting at the empty blackness where stones had been pitched through. In spite of its shabby condition, however, the Kingman place did not have the air of a ruin; it did not give rise to sadness in the hearts of those who looked upon it, as did many once-noble but now decrepit buildings; somehow it seemed vital, alive… even frighteningly alive. If a house could be said to have a human attitude, an emotional aspect, then this house was angry, very angry. Furious.
They parked their bicycles by the front gate. It was a big rusted iron grill with a sunburst design in the center.
“Some place, huh?” Roy said.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go.”
“Inside?”
“Sure.”
“We don’t have a flashlight.”
“Well, at least let’s go up on the porch.”
“Why?” Colin asked shakily.,
“We can look in the windows.”
Roy walked through the open gate and started up the broken flagstone walk, through the tangled weeds, toward the house.
Colin followed him for a few steps, then stopped and said, “Wait. Roy, wait a sec.”
Roy turned back. “What is it?”
“You been here before?”
“Of course.”
“You been inside?”
“Once.”
“Did you see any ghosts?”
“Nah. I don’t believe in ‘em.”
“But you said people see things here.”
“Other people. Not me.”
“You said it was haunted.”
“I told you other people said it was haunted. I think they’re full of shit. But I knew you’d enjoy the place, what with you being such a big horror-movie fan and everything.”
Roy began to walk along the path again.