Free Deadlocked 8 by A.R. Wise Page A

birds that were enjoying the current
hint of a coming spring. “All right, I think we’re clear.”
    “Good,” said Harrison. “Let’s get this dog
outside before he starts farting it up in here.” He opened his door
and let Stubs jump down. The little dog was quick to relieve
himself on the pavement.
    Ben and I decided to inspect the house, and
left Harrison outside with Stubs. The front door was decorative,
although the white paint had begun to crack and flake away and the
knocker was missing, leaving three bored holes staring back at us.
An odd contraption clung to the handle, appearing similar to a
padlock except in place of a dial there were a series of buttons
that each bore a number.
    “What’s this?” I asked as I fingered the boxy
contraption.
    “Lockbox,” said Ben. “This house must’ve been
up for sale. There’ll be a key inside that.”
    “How do we open it?”
    “You have to know the code,” said Ben as he
took a silver key out of his pocket that was affixed with a rubber
stopper near the base. “Luckily, we’ve got a key already.”
    “You do?” I was confused and skeptical.
    “Bump key,” he said as he fit the standard
key into the deadbolt and then took out a metal bar that he tapped
on the base of the key. “Locksmiths used to have them. They’ll get
you into just about any house. And it’ll keep you from destroying
the lock, as long as you’re not using it over and over again.” He
used his left hand to turn the key while hitting the base with the
metal rod. Within a few seconds, he’d unlocked the door, and then
opened it for me. “After you,” he said as he offered the home to me
with a sweeping gesture.
    “Impressive,” I said as I admired his
skeleton key. “I’ll have to get one of those. I usually just break
in and board up the door or window from the inside.”
    I clicked on my flashlight and shined it
inside, piercing the dark that hid the corners from the daylight
that snuck through the windows. It was clean within, or as clean as
a home that hasn’t been entered in twenty years can be. I sniffed,
expecting to smell the familiar odor of feces and urine that
dominated most homes, or the musky stench of an animal’s den, but
this house was free of it.
    “Looks clean,” I said as I stepped inside.
The front door opened into the living room. There was a couch with
its back to my right, and a large screen television mounted to the
stone fireplace that jutted forth from the far wall. Tall, plastic
plants stood in the corners, creating a symmetry that disquieted
me, a stale precision that the Red world seemed to favor, but that
I found claustrophobic and stifling. The coffee table featured
several magazines, fanned out as if on display. “Too clean,” I said
as I stepped across the white carpet, leaving my muddy footprints
behind.
    “It wasn’t being lived in,” said Ben as he
walked past me and over to the fireplace.
    “What do you mean?” I asked as I watched him
approach the obscenely large flat screen television.
    He pinched the edge of the television and
pulled it down. My heart leapt in fear that it was about to
collapse and shatter, creating enough noise to alert anyone nearby
of our invasion. Instead, the television wavered in his hand, as if
it were as light as a feather.
    “It’s cardboard. This was a model home, or
the realtor had set it up with fake furniture to help it sell.”
    I was confounded, and unaware that such a
thing had occurred in that lost age. “Realtor?”
    “Yeah, the person that was in charge of
selling the place. They were called realtors.”
    “How do you know about that?” I asked. “I
thought you were a kid back when the world went to hell.”
    “I was.” He said as he went across the living
room and into the adjoined kitchen. He walked back behind the
granite-topped island, running his hand across its dusty length.
“On my way out to Colorado I slept in a realtor’s office one night.
I read one of their handbooks. I