The Family Plot by Cherie Priest
The growing scrap heap by the door was covered by one of the flapping blue tarps. As Dahlia passed it, she checked to make sure it was tied down all right, secure enough against the rain.
Encouraged by her idle nostalgia, Bobby said, “We could’ve spent a week, poking around the grounds.”
“We’re going to spend a week, poking around the grounds.”
“But now it’s a job. Back then, it would’ve been an adventure—a real one. Not like that cave on Aunt Edna’s farm. Not like the empty dry-goods store, before they tore it down. And it’s way cooler than that duplex on Vine Street.”
“Way bigger, too. Best of all, there are no dead mummy cats. So far.”
He fell into step beside her, and helped with the sagging wood door they’d shut before leaving. “Bigger, older. It even smells better; never mind the rat shit. You remember the magazines? They’d all turned into sticky bricks, from the floor to the ceiling. You remember?”
“Yeah, Bobby. I remember.”
The old man on Vine Street had been a hoarder. When he died, the fire department had to cut a hole through the side of the house and pull out debris with a bulldozer in order to reach his body. All the neighborhood kids had sat on the curb, enraptured, as the scene unfolded. Some of them came back later.
She and Bobby had snuck out of their respective houses after the body was gone, and climbed inside through the hole the bulldozer had left. They’d brought dinky plastic flashlights, and a disposable film camera. None of the pictures ever came out. Even with the flash turned on, there was nothing to see but dirty junk and the occasional white orb reflected off a mirror or a window, bleaching even the junk away.
Dahlia nodded. “I remember the garbage. The Tupperware containers Mr. Hunt had labeled with masking tape and a marker … all of them full of mold and black slime.”
“You remember the plants?”
She finished pushing the door far enough open to let Gabe inside with the ladder. She could hear him closing up the truck, so he’d be along shortly. “They’d been dead for so long, they looked like statues made out of sticks.”
“You wouldn’t let us steal anything, you goody two-shoes.”
“There was nothing worth stealing, you thug. I still have trouble breathing, just thinking about that place.” The mold. The mildew. The dander of animals long since rendered as ghostly as the potted plants.
Gabe announced himself with the jostle and clank of the aluminum ladder knocking against the scrap heap, the doorframe, and then the edge of the door itself. He strolled past his father and Dahlia, and set it up firmly beneath the big square hole in the ceiling. “Wow—I left you alone for two whole minutes, and you didn’t bite each other’s heads off.”
“Dahlia’s not your mother,” Bobby shot back. “She gives me a fighting chance.”
Dahlia coughed to mask a laugh. She followed Gabe, and pressed on the ladder’s braces to double-check that they were set, and set firmly. Everything looked good. “All right, kid. You toted the equipment, so you get first gander, if you want it.”
He was halfway up the ladder before the last word was out of her mouth. It made her smile. Bobby was in it for the money, such as it was … but Gabe had been well and truly bitten by the bug. His head and shoulders disappeared through the hole, followed by his arm, holding a light aloft.
“What do you see?” his father asked.
“Y’all hang on. It’s dark up here.”
“I know. That’s what the light’s for.”
Gabe sighed, and took another step up on the ladder. “Thanks for the tip. There’s a lot of space, all right? It’s all cluttered. It’s hard to see anything.” He pulled one knee up onto the landing. “It’s just walls and walls of stuff, like, closing in on you, almost.”
Dahlia winced to hear a timber groan beneath his weight. “Gabe, baby—be careful.”
“I am.”
The other knee came up too, and the beam moaned, but did not crack. He bounced gently. “I think it’ll hold me.”
“You think?” his father demanded.
“It looks more solid over here. This part, it’s rotted out. There’s…” He huffed, and puffed, and pulled himself off the ladder altogether, bringing his whole body onto the second floor. “There’s a hole in the ceiling. Water’s gotten inside, but only right here. Right over the hatch.”
“So that’s why there’s no ladder left behind,” Dahlia observed. “It must’ve rotted out.” But a glance around the floor didn’t reveal any hints of an old ladder, wooden or otherwise. Whoever had last used the place for storage must’ve taken it with him.
It was a small detail, but it bothered her all the same. She couldn’t shake the idea that someone had thought they shouldn’t look up there, like there was something they shouldn’t see, or something that wasn’t safe.
She should’ve gone first. She shouldn’t have let the biggest member of her crew climb up in an uncertain space. She regretted it with every noisy footfall overhead. “Gabe, I’m coming up behind you.”
“And I’ll be right behind her,” Bobby declared.
But she stopped him. “Wait,” she begged. “Just wait a minute. Listen, you heard the floor, didn’t you? It’s no good up there. Let me check it out first. If one of us falls through or gets stuck, we’ll need you to help us out.”
“You’re trying to hog my kid again.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You like him better than you like me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve known you twice as long; but between the two of you, he’s the most loyal.” Any idle goodwill Bobby’d mustered with his trip down memory lane fizzled right out. “I’m trying to look out for him, that’s all.”
“That’s my job.”
“It’s also your job to do what I tell you, at least while we’re here.” Before he could wind up to a dying duck fit, she held up a finger and lowered her voice. “You outweigh me by fifty pounds. Let me test the floor up there. If it’s safe, I’ll holler, and you can come on up. Your kid is happy we haven’t killed each other yet. Throw us all a curveball for once, and don’t let him down.”
Without waiting for a retort, she slipped the lantern’s hanging loop down around her wrist and started to climb. “Gabe?” she called out. “You’re being awful quiet. Did you find something?”
At the top of the ladder, she was greeted with a drop of water to the eyeball. It wasn’t raining again, but Gabe was right: The roof had a hole in it. On the other side, she could see lacy black clouds just a half-shade lighter than the sky itself—pierced here and there by only the most determined stars, and a smudged gray shadow that showed where the moon ought to be.
She wiped her eye and cheek with the back of one arm, and took the lantern by its handle again.
The second floor, or the loft, or the attic, or whatever it was … it wasn’t packed to the rafters like the first floor used to be, but it was plenty cluttered. At a hasty glance she saw furniture, paneled doors, milk crates—or maybe peach crates, or some other kind of crates—and more horse tack. She picked out a set of oars that maybe went with the rowboat that had fallen apart downstairs.
She didn’t see Gabe.
“Gabe? Where’d you go?” Dahlia climbed off the ladder, testing the floor with every step to see if it would hold. It squeaked, creaked, and once she got past the loft entrance, it held just fine—even when she rocked back and forth on her feet, and stomped a couple of times. “Gabe?”
“Over here.” He breathed it in a whisper so soft, she barely heard it over the faint patter of drizzle on the copper roof.
She followed the whisper around a pair of French doors with the glass all shattered out. Her feet crunched across the broken pieces, and her footsteps were far too loud in her own ears.
Why hadn’t she heard Gabe moving around up there? He was twice her size, easy, and none too light on his feet at the best of times. Why wasn’t there a ladder under the loft entrance until they brought one? Why was h
Ahead she saw the glow of his lantern, reassuring in the cave-like loft.
He was on the far side of a set of fin de siècle screens, moth-eaten and ravaged by rats, mold, and anything else that will ruin fine silk on a balsa frame. A scene was painted upon them, or embroidered onto them, Dahlia couldn’t tell. She saw the ragged outlines of trees, mountains, and water. The rest was too badly damaged to make out.
Gabe’s body showed through the holes. His shadow was large against the rest of it. He was hunkered over something, or crouching down.
Dahlia rounded the screens with her light and saw him, knees bent, his hands clasping the edges of an open trunk. He was pale, even when she considered the vivid, stark white produced by the lanterns. He clutched the trunk like it was a toilet and he needed to vomit.
Slowly, she set her own light down and crouched beside him. “What have you got there?”
“Just an old trunk,” he whispered.
“That’s … that’s what it looks like.” Inside she saw folded items, discolored fabric. Scattered dominos that were yellowed and cracked, and a single shoe that was sized for a baby, or a large doll. “So … what’s wrong?”
With a rasp, he said, “Nothing.”
“You’re a liar—and a shitty one, at that. What’d you find?” She leaned past him and put her hands in the trunk, sifting through its contents with her fingers. The other shoe turned up, as well as some vintage children’s books, their cardboard backs gone soft from the years of damp. “It’s just a bunch of kid’s stuff.”
The temperature had fallen ten degrees in the last hour, but Gabe was sweating. “No creepy dolls, or anything.” He sniffled and rubbed at his nose to keep from sneezing. “I don’t know what’s in here. I don’t know what he…”
“He?”
Gabe looked over his shoulder, and held still long enough to listen for footsteps—on the ladder, or across the rickety attic floor. “The kid. This is his stuff, I guess. He wanted to show me something.”
“There was a kid up here? No, don’t you tell me that; I won’t believe it for a second, and whoever this trunk belonged to…” Her fingers crawled through the blankets, the nightshirts, the toys as fragile as bird bones. “He’s been dead since before you were born.”
She was rambling, and she knew it. She was rambling because she already knew what Gabe meant, before he could say it outright. Her hand knocked against something solid, something that crackled between her fingers. She lifted it up into the light: a book with tattered black pages, loosely bound. The pages were flaking, shedding like leaves.
Gabe nodded earnestly, but said nothing. Now they heard feet on the ladder, and a way-too-loud voice rising up into the eerie space.
“Where the hell are you two? Hey! Is it … is it safe up there? Is it…” Bobby gave up on an answer and threw himself over the lip anyway. Dahlia heard him land with a thud, hard enough to send splinters raining down below, tinkling as light as confetti and ash. “I see your light. I’m coming your way.”
“We’re over here, Dad,” Gabe called out, but his eyes were still locked to Dahlia’s. His pupils were the size of the acorns that were scattered all over the porch, clogging up the gutters.
She wanted to ask him what he’d seen. No, she didn’t want to ask him what he’d seen.
Nothing felt like the right thing to do, so she looked down at the book she’d found instead. Its covers were leather, and the metal rings that held its pages together had rusted away to powder. Down in the trunk, a lacy baptism dress had red, round stains left behind by the book. Another crumpled wad of fabric was stashed beneath it. She began to unfold it, smooth it, touch the long lines of lace that were stitched down the front, but Bobby crashed the scene—moving heavy and hard, like the climb up the ladder had winded him.
“What the hell, Gabe? I expect her to ignore me, but you?”
“I didn’t ignore you. I told you I was over here.”
“Not until I was already up the ladder. Jesus Christ,” he swore. He put his hands on his hips and glared down at them both.
Dahlia dusted off the book with the back of her hand. She muttered, “No, he said something before that. So did I. Must be a trick with the acoustics in here. I couldn’t hear him either, not at first.”
“Really? You want to blame the acoustics?”
“See? You heard me fine, this time. It’s something weird about all the junk, and the metal roof, and the rain. Don’t make a mountain out of it. Hey, look at this, huh? Looks like something we would’ve found on Vine Street.”
He was on the verge of toppling into a full-on grown-man sulk, but he held it at bay long enough to ask, “What is it?”
“A family album. Photos, and…” She flipped it open. It fell open to a page with a birth certificate so faded that the lantern blanched it beyond all reading. “Papers, and the like.”
“Nothing we can sell,” he said, still teetering on that edge. “Nothing valuable.”
“Not to us, no. But Augusta Withrow might want it. And it’s … interesting, don’t you think? I bet there’s pictures of the house in here, before it looked like … like it does now. Pictures of the family, and all that. Gabe found it,” she said, trying to pull him back around again. For his son’s sake. Sometimes if you could just get him talking, or listening, and you did it fast enough—he’d forget whatever had pissed him off. “He found this trunk. Some of these toys might be worth something, and the dominos … the dominos are a nice set. Maybe we’ll find the tin they came in. They might even be real ivory.”
“But we can’t sell real ivory,” he argued without conviction.
“There are laws about it, but there are exceptions for antiques. I don’t know all the ins and outs. Brad probably does. Dad definitely does.”
Bobby took a deep breath, and let out a sigh that deflated the worst of his irritation. He put his hands on his hips, letting the LED lantern dangle against his thigh, so the light hit both Dahlia and Gabe square in the face. They squinted hard at him when he said, “Ivory’s good, then. That’s something.”
Behind him, beyond the pattering pings of small droplets hitting the roof, a low grumble of thunder rolled over the mountain. No one saw the lightning that preceded it, but another faint, brief, violent glow was followed by a rumble some five or six seconds later.
Dahlia said, “Might get worse out there, before it gets better.”
“Good thing we’re all set up for camping,” Gabe said.
“And it’s mostly dry in here,” his dad added.
“Yeah, but … I don’t want to stay.” The kid stood up and dusted his hands on his sweater, then his pants. He closed the trunk lid. “We ought to come back tomorrow, when the sun’s up. Even if it’s still storming, it’ll be easier to see. It’s hard, with just these stupid lanterns.”
“We’ll still need the lanterns tomorrow.”
“I know, Dad. But you know what I mean.”
“What’s the matter with you, all of a sudden? You were all gung ho to come kicking around up here, and now you’re itching to leave? When did you get so chickenshit about working in the dark?”
Dahlia jumped in again, hoping it wasn’t too late. “He’s right. It’s hard to see anything up here with just the LEDs. Everything’s either too bright or too dark. Makes the whole place look…” She almost didn’t say it. “… haunted.”
Bobby waved his hands like Bela Lugosi. “Oooh. There it is. You two are scared of ghosts.”
Dahlia shrugged, stuffed the photo album under her arm, and started walking back to the ladder. “Put away the jazz hands, dumbass. I’m not too scared of ghosts, but I have a healthy respect for them. That’s just common sense, right there. If you see dead people running around and you’re all, ‘Whatever,’ then there is something seriously wrong with you.”
Gabe scrambled to his feet, and fell into step behind her. “Who said anything about ghosts?”
&
Dahlia reached the ladder, turned around, and descended, one echoing metal rung at a time. “Oh God, don’t tell him that story about the Walmart.”
“I will tell him the story about the Walmart, if I damn well please.”
“Can it wait until we’re back in the house?” Gabe paused until Dahlia reached the floor, then climbed down behind her.
She laughed so faintly that it came out her nose like a sigh. “Don’t worry, kid. You won’t need all the lights on. It’s a dumb story, and it’s not scary.”
“Unless you believe it,” Bobby insisted from the loft.
“You won’t believe it,” she assured Gabe.
But the look on his face said maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was in the mood to believe all kinds of dumb stories, bless his heart. She guessed that made two of them.
5
THEY CLOSED UP the carriage house and sprinted back to the big house, arriving at the porch damp, but none the worse for wear. Brad had fallen asleep, as promised, but he awakened with a start when they tumbled inside and shut the door against the weather. The big chandelier (no, it was a pendant) was lit above him, and the dusty bulbs cast a warm yellow light that wasn’t as bright as the lanterns, but was much more comforting. Dahlia liked the old-fashioned feel of it, how it was almost as flattering as candlelight … to people and derelict houses, and everything else.
It was also nearly as hot as candlelight.
“What’s that smell?” Gabe asked with a wrinkled nose.
“The lights,” she told him. “The bulbs got hot, and now they’re burning off the dust.” And dead bugs, and termite shit, and everything else. It was a sour smell, with a top note of old ashes and scorched feathers.
“Will it start a fire?”
“I doubt it. Hey, Brad?”
He saluted from his nest of sleeping bags. “Yes ma’am?”
“You all right?”
“I’m even more sore than I was an hour ago, but I’ll survive. Did y’all find anything cool?” He rose to a seated position, and rested his forearms atop his knees.