Free Charnel House by Fred Anderson Page A

through the lightless space the same way the tin had his hand. He’d seen every bit of the crawlspace then, except for some of the knells between the joists, and there was no way for something to be there unless it could disobey gravity and cling to the subfloor like a vampire in a bad horror movie. The place had been empty. But then he’d heard the voice whisper his name, and when he looked again hadn’t he seen—if only for the briefest instant—something peering back at him?
    You saw a rat.
    Yes... eventually. What he saw at first was much larger than a rat, despite the way it slumped. Barlowe-sized, you might say.
    Imagination. No such thing as ghoulies, ghosties, or long-leggity beasties, except the ones present between your ears. Killing a kid will do that to a man, haunted house or no.
    He could go on like this all night. Problem was, he didn’t think there was a whole lot of night left. The phone was in his left pocket, but trying to get it out with his injured hand while simultaneously keeping the metal pressed firmly over the doorway would be more than he could handle, he thought. And if he was going to let the roofing go, it would be on his terms, not because he was trying to do something stupid like check the time. The exact hour didn’t matter. What did matter was that it was going to be daylight soon and while that might be comforting to his overworked imagination, it dramatically increased the odds of a car passing by as he left the house in the Prius. Hello, sheriff? I saw the strangest thing on the way to work this morning. Some wild-eyed man in a dented and blood-spattered car was pulling out of the woods by the old Barlowe place. Had a guilty look about him. Maybe you should check it out. The way his luck had been going, the sheriff’s office wouldn’t write the call off but actually send someone up here to discover his handiwork, and his good friends the CSI guys would be close behind, ready to identify him in a matter of hours.
    How about a little paranoia to go with those hallucinations, Joe?
    Garraty took a deep breath, checked his grip on the tire iron, then launched himself away from the sheet of tin covering the entrance to the crawlspace. He burst from beneath the front porch and spun, bringing the weapon up like a club, ready to swing if something was coming for him—even though the part of his brain that had manufactured the slumped thing with hollow eyes whispered that if something did come for him, he wouldn’t be able to kill it with the tire iron because it was already dead. He pointed the Maglite under the porch.
    The piece of roofing leaned against the ancient siding, unmoved.
    Garraty stood crouched in a defensive position for several moments watching the section of metal, which did nothing but shine without luster in the dim glow. Pain throbbed in his left hand with every beat of his racing heart. Gradually his breathing slowed, and his heart rate approached something close to normal. Nothing came through the doorway to the crawlspace. Not that he had expected it to. Well, not the rational part of him, anyway.
    He played the light around in the cavity one last time, checking for obvious signs of his visit, and found none. Tucking the flashlight under his arm, he patted his pants for his phone and keys, then touched his back pocket to make sure his wallet was still there. Too many people were done in by silly little things like that. There were stories about dumb criminals—and that’s what Joe Garraty was now, yes indeed—on the news almost every night. Hell, there’d just been one on channel 48 a couple of weeks ago about some idiot in Huntsville who tried to rob a credit union with a deposit slip he’d filled out with his real name and account number.
    Stars twinkled merrily overhead, and it looked like the sky might be a little lighter than when he went in. Dawn would be here before too long, he thought. Garraty was beginning to feel a little foolish now that he was no