Suckers - Jack Kilborn [25]
Then I waved the flashlight beam all over the living room, trying to catch a glimpse of Jarvis Taywood or his ghost. Nothing. Rationally, I knew that the best course of action was to rush outside and tell Becky’s mom to call the police, but I also knew that Roger could be in immediate danger. I headed into the kitchen.
Nothing there, either. No place to hide except the pantry.
Inside the pantry, something fell. I let out a rather embarrassing yelp.
I held up the flashlight at a suitable angle for bashing somebody’s head if the need arose, then threw open the pantry door and quickly stepped back.
It was empty. A can of spinach rolled against my feet.
Could a ghost topple spinach? Would it have any reason to?
And then, with a barely audible creak, the inside wall of the pantry slowly began to swing open, like a door.
I pulled it open all the way, revealing another room slightly smaller than the pantry, containing nothing but a ladder leading down into a hole in the dirt floor.
“Whoa,” was the best I could think to whisper to myself, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even pronounce it correctly.
This was definitely the time to call the police.
Roger screamed from down below.
There was definitely not time to call the police.
I peered down into the hole, but while there was a definite flickering below, I couldn’t see anything else. I didn’t dare shine my flashlight down there, or even climb down the ladder, not if I wanted to take the old man by surprise. Instead I turned around, praying that this meant I’d be facing the right direction when I landed, stepped backward, and dropped down into the darkness.
I wasn’t sure how far I fell. It was far enough that I dropped to my knees with a jolt of pain, but not far enough to shatter any bones.
When I looked up, the first thing that caught my attention was the old man rushing at me with a meat cleaver.
I jumped to my feet and swung the flashlight, bashing him across the face. The old man was knocked to the side, the weapon still in his grasp. He struck the wall and began stumbling back toward me, so I gave him another solid bash with the flashlight and he hit the floor. He didn’t move.
We were in what looked exactly like a mobile home with reinforced walls. It probably was a mobile home with reinforced walls. There was a large shelf of canned goods, as well as a shelf of books. The place was lit by a couple of candles and a kerosene lamp.
Roger lay on a bed, his arms over his head and his wrists handcuffed to the metal bedposts. “The guy’s crazy!” he shrieked. “He’s a total lunatic! A total complete lunatic! Crazy! I’m not kidding, he’s crazy! Oh my God he’s crazy!”
“I sort of got that from the meat cleaver,” I said, walking over to the bed. “Do you know where the keys to the handcuffs are?”
“They’re in his pocket! He’s crazy! He was going to eat me!”
I frowned. “He was going to eat you?”
“Yes! He was going to eat my freakin’ leg! Have you ever had some crazy guy say he’s gonna eat your leg? It’s disturbing! It’s really disturbing!”
So in the course of about a minute I’d gone from exploring a haunted house to dealing with a meat-cleaver wielding cannibal. Life is quaint sometimes.
“Just calm down,” I said. “I’m not going to let him eat your leg. I’m going to go over there, get the keys, set you free, and then we’ll go back upstairs where nobody ever gets eaten.”
“Are you sure he’s unconscious?”
“No. That’s why I’m going to drop a can of…” I picked a can off the shelf, “…yams on his head.”
“Maybe a book would work better,” Roger suggested.
I looked over at the other wall. “They’re all paperback.”
“No, I saw a hardcover one.”
I surveyed the bookshelf, and there was indeed a thick hardcover novel. I pulled it off the shelf. “The Stand! Perfect! He’ll be out for hours!”
“Maybe you should drop the can of yams too, just to be sure,” said Roger.
“Good thinking.”
I turned around and saw that while I’d been trying to find a suitable object for dropping on his