They crept closer, breathing shallowly, careful of the sound of each footfall as they studied the house. It was a huge old three-story pile of a place that looked like something out of a Charles Addams drawing, with a pitched and shingled roof surrounded by a decorative wrought-iron railing and improbable gables that looked like they had been attached as an afterthought. A broad-aproned porch ran completely around the house, the rail overgrown with ivy. Beginning at the edge of what had probably once been a path leading from the front yard and into the woods where they now stood was a wall made from rough-cut blocks that were about a cubic foot each; the wall began in the front as a knee-high double layer of stone and climbed, layer upon layer, until it reached its full height equal with the bottom of the house’s rear windows. The effect was that the wooden part of the house looked like it had been fitted into a huge stone socket.
Ivy and wisteria climbed all over the stone and sent tendrils up the wooden planks all the way to the roof. Some kind of dense weed that looked like onion grass covered most of the visible parts of the roof, sprouting right up between the faded shingles. The wooden walls were brown with old paint and age, but they were still whole and looked strong. There were no holes in the walls, no crumbled sections of the wall, no evidence that any part of the roof might have collapsed. Except for the proliferation of the vegetation, the house might have been abandoned only a year ago, not three decades past.
“Are you sure this is the place?” Newton asked. “You said it’d be some kind of old hovel.”
As they moved closer Crow started shaking his head. “This can’t be right,” he said. “But—it has to be. The map I looked at only showed one house on this lot, and this whole parcel belonged to him.”
They moved closer, stopping again within twenty yards. There were thick sheets of plywood covering all of the windows on their side of the house. The side yard was a tangle of rowdy pumpkin vines, and all the pumpkins were obscenely swollen with disease. Crow squinted at the house, said nothing, but when he moved closer he drew the machete again. Newton followed him, holding his hiking stick at an angle across his chest as if it formed some kind of barrier between him and what he was feeling because of that house.
The house stood almost in a clearing except for four huge oaks that leaned so close to the house that their outstretched limbs and branches effectively kept the whole place in shadow. The first sunlight Crow and Newton had seen since entering the Hollow came no closer than the front yard and they glanced up to see that the whole sky was an almost solid mass of purple clouds except for a single hole up in the southern quadrant, beyond the tree line. A solitary ray angled down and its light glimmered on the brown tips of the grass like a promise of hope, but it was surrounded by despair, and it seemed badly overmatched by the gloom.
Careful not to make any noise, Crow and Newton drifted toward the patch of sunlight and stood in it as they examined the house. Weak as it was, the warmth of the sun and its golden light seemed to soak into their skin all the way to their bones like a shot of good brandy. Some of the oppressive weariness melted away under its heat, but the caution and apprehension they had both felt as they stared at the front of Griswold’s house obdurately remained. They lingered there and soaked up the warmth.
Now that they were closer to the house they could see that front porch had peeling whitewashed posts that held up a decrepit porch roof, which was the only part of the house that looked like it bore the ponderous weight of thirty years of disuse and neglect. The front windows were covered with plywood. Each sheet was larger than the window and appeared to be nailed right into the wooden front wall.
“Get your camera out,” said Crow. “I want some pictures. Get the whole house. All four sides.”
Newton pulled out his small Minolta digital, tucked his walking stick under his arm, and left the patch of sunlight to begin shooting. As he stepped out of the patch of sunlight he was amazed at the difference in temperature and humidity of the shadows clutched around the house. Crow headed to the left, prowling around the perimeter of the house, frowning at everything. When Newton reached the front of the house, he stopped, staring at the patch of sunlit ground where they had stood.
“You done?” Crow asked from right behind and Newton actually screamed. It wasn’t much of scream, more of a yelp, but he did jump inches into the air and landed in a crouch, spinning around. He hadn’t realized that Crow had circled the house and come up behind him from the other side.
“Don’t
“Oh?” Crow said with a snide grin. “Is this place getting to you?”
Newton flipped him the bird.
