The End of the World (7 page)

“What?” I say. “Did I do something wrong?”

“What did you mean—get me out of that house?”

“I didn’t say you. I said us. Get
us
out of that house.”

“First you said you. As in,
me
.”

“Slip of the tongue. I have them often.”

I’ve been shaking my head for almost as long as I stared at that grass, so I force myself to stop. Her slits that barely pass for eyes do not open up, however.

“You know,” I say, “we can keep standing here—in partial view of the house, mind you—for a few more minutes. Or you can show me tools. I’m okay with either one, just so you know. But one of these days Mr. Bowden is going to want me to mow, and I’d hate to tell him that I have no idea where the lawn mower is because you never showed me.”

The storm brewing behind her eyes takes a moment longer to clear, but it finally goes away.

“Fine. Follow me.”

She takes off walking again, and I have no choice except to follow her. She still holds all the power in this non-existent relationship. Even by default, I still feel like a kid.

“But just so you know, I don’t need anyone defending me. And even more than that, I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. If I want to leave the house, I’ll just walk out the front door. End of story.”

“Cool. Maybe tomorrow we can catch a movie then.” I hope I’m the only one who hears the sarcasm in my voice.

She sighs. “I don’t have a car.”

“Kind of makes the
I’ll just drive away
statement a little less powerful, then.” And now we’re swinging our shared bent towards sarcasm back and forth between us like a toddler.

I’m pretty sure I’m enjoying our little game a little more than Shaye. With a sigh, she opens the door to the shed and takes a step inside.

“Shut up, Cameron,” she says over her shoulder. “Just look at the tools and hurry up about it.”

Shaye

W
e’ve been in
here five minutes, and I started sweating four-and-a-half minutes ago. It started under my arms like it always does, but now it’s traveled to my hairline, my upper lip, even my feet. It will only be a matter of seconds before my sweat glands open up, throw their hands to the heavens, and break into the Hallelujah Chorus, but there’s nothing I can do about it except thank God Cameron hasn’t noticed. Then again, it’s dark. As soon as we step into the daylight he’ll be asking all sorts of questions.

“What’s the matter with you?” he says.

I guess he’s the sort that notices everything, even when half blind inside a dust-filled, torture chamber.

“Nothing. Why do you ask?”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “You look like you just stepped out of the shower, and it’s below freezing in here. Plus, something smells weird—”

“I don’t smell weird!” It takes everything in me not to sniff inside my shirt.

“I didn’t say it was you. It’s probably…” he looks around. “…this router saw here.” He picks it up and studies it. But he’s lying. I’m wet and sweaty and gross and what he smells is fear. My fear. It’s hanging thick in the air…so thick I could reach out and touch it if I wanted to. I keep my hands in my pockets to keep myself from being tempted.

I can’t tell him that I hate this place. I can’t tell him that some of my worst memories originated in this very room, or that the rest of my bad memories took place in full view of it.

When I was little, I used to watch my father work for hours in a shed that looked a lot like this one. It smelled of sawdust and earth and paint thinner, still scents that usher in a wave of memories every time I breathe them in. He built things: custom chairs, tables, beds and more for people in our town and towns in neighboring states. He had a reputation for quality, and people were willing to pay for his work. We lived in a nice house with nice furniture—I slept in an oak canopy bed with little acorn-shaped spindles that came together in a group of four at the top. I can still remember lying in that bed at night, looking at those acorns, imagining I was Snow White, thinking at any minute a group of squirrels would descend on my room to have a snack, and then help me clean it.

That was before my father died and took my mother and sister with him. That was before I discovered Snow White was nothing but a fairy tale that would never come true for a girl like me. That was before I knew that sheds weren’t just used for creating beautiful things.

That was before I knew they were also used to destroy.

“Does this belong to Mr. Bowden?” Cameron says. He’s still holding the saw, examining it and turning it in his hand like it’s a long lost friend.

“I think it was here when they bought the house, if I remember the story right,” I say, working to eliminate the shake from my voice.

A pick ax sits discarded on the shed floor; I pick it up and grip the handle, fingering the pointed blades and flicking some leftover dirt off one tip. It’s weird that I feel comfortable holding this, but suddenly I feel calm. Like I could eliminate most of my problems with one swift swing and release.

Aside from the sweat still pooling at my lower back, everything inside me has settled a bit.

“So many things were left behind from the contractors, hence the crane still sitting on the side of the house.”

Cameron lowers the saw and looks at me. “What’s up with that thing, anyway? It looks like it’s been sitting in that same spot forever. It’s…creepy, if you want my opinion.”

I can’t help the short laugh that climbs up my throat and does a cannonball off my tongue. If he only knew.

“It is creepy.” For now, it’s the only concession I’ll allow myself to give. “But it’s been there so long I’m not even sure how they would move it. Too much foliage has grown up around it now. I’m fully expecting to see a tree sprout through the middle one of these days.”

I don’t say that one of these days can go ahead and happen without me. I won’t be here one second past my eighteenth birthday, and my hourglass has been flipped over with sand slowly running through for months now. I’m moving out when the last grain lands on the bottom.

“So what’s the deal with this place? It’s huge. Obviously it would have been an impressive place to live at one time, but now it seems almost run down. What’s the story?”

I blink. No one has asked me this question before. True, I live here with three children under the age of five who wouldn’t notice rotting wood if they stepped on a strip of it and termites crawled across their feet, but even my social worker hasn’t brought up the subject.

Which makes him either clueless or just so ready to get rid of me that my safety isn’t much of a concern. Or maybe both.

I set the pick ax on the ground and face Cameron.

“Carl and Tami bought the house five years ago. It was built twenty years before that, but the original owners never finished it…”

And so I launch into a story that I’ve thought about a few dozen times in the years I’ve lived here but never mentioned out loud. The words feel weird rolling off my tongue even though they’ve been rehearsed and re-rehearsed so much I could probably perform a monologue on Broadway and title it
My Life In The House That No One Wanted
—a clever little metaphor that also applies to me.

The story is boring. A little bland. But also unusual because who abandons a house this large—a showplace so impressive that a young Donald Trump could have moved in two decades earlier and had something brag-worthy to show his friends—and leaves it littered with heavy machinery and hand tools? It’s so odd, I’m fully expecting those people to return one day and demand our eviction from their home, blaming the absence on an extended trip abroad or a stint in rehab that lasted a few years longer than expected. It hasn’t happened yet, so I guess for now we’re safe.

I breathe my own little ironic laugh.

“What’s funny?” Cameron asks. “That story freaks me out. Have you ever thought the original owners left behind more than just tools and unpaid bills?” He moves away from the saw and picks up a hammer.

“Like what?” I don’t need another reason to be stressed.

“I don’t know. A string of dead bodies? An animal graveyard?” He picks up a rusty hatchet and swings it in a figure eight toward me. I try not to react, work to slow my breathing down. In a far corner, there’s an old wasp’s nest in view over Cameron’s right shoulder that’s hung vacant and unused for the last two summers. I stare at it, envisioning a hundred bugs climbing in and out, in and out, contemplating whether or not to leave their cozy home in search of something to sting.

I hate wasps. I hate this conversation more.

“There are no dead bodies lying around here. And as for animals, Carl and Tami hate them. They’ve never even had a pet fish—”

“That you know of. Maybe they’re all buried somewhere at the edge of the property. Along with a few small children and old people.”

“Would you stop?” I try to sound threatening, but the small twitch that turns up the corner of his mouth has me allowing a nervous laugh. “That isn’t funny, Cameron.”

It is. Sort of. But you won’t find me encouraging this type of behavior from a kid who’s only been here a few weeks. He can’t know that every creaking floorboard that groans in the middle of the night…every gust of wind that travels through my room in spite of tightly shut windows…every whispered word that floats like a menacing warning from the darkened hallways to my hand-covered ears, has me thinking this very thing.

As silly as it is, I believe in ghosts.

I know from experience that they also believe in me.

“Let’s look,” Cameron says.

He taps the hammer against the wall, jolting me out of my thoughts and back into this dusty shed where cobwebs and skittering mice are multiplying by the second. A nail is barely pressed into the wood, so he taps against it, setting it flush against the grain. I stare at his face lined with hopeful anticipation, an eagerness to have an adventure and overturn things that might reveal the long-buried secrets of this place. But I don’t look back at him with the same fervor. I can’t. Because I don’t want to look. I want to do the opposite of look. I want to hide from the mysteries buried here.

I already know too many of them lying right out in the open.

“Cameron, it’s probably not a good idea to—”

“Shaye!” A faraway voice slices through me like a dagger plunging into my skin on a hunt for my most vital organs. “Shaye, where the heck are you? Get inside right now!” The dagger finds my heart and slashes away until it’s divided into six small parts and barely beating at all.

“I’m coming,” I call back. I take a few steps before Cameron speaks behind me.

“I’ll wait here for you. Come back when you’re done, okay?”

I can’t look at him; I won’t. All I can think is that I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to go inside the house. I want to adventure. I want to look for mysteries and riddles and puzzles and dead bodies as long as Cameron wants to. Even if it takes all day and we both come up empty-handed.

Carl calls my name again. I just give a single nod toward the ground, not letting myself look at him and I slowly walk away. Sometimes spending time unearthing secrets is way better than keeping them.

*

Cameron

She’s been gone
forty-five minutes. So long that I’ve started to build something for her out of a few scraps of wood, some rusty nails I found underneath an old workbench in the corner, and the hammer I’ve been holding onto since she left. It isn’t much, definitely not personal, but I’m bored and I want her to come back and if I’m telling the truth here, I’m a little scared. I’m scared of the mouse I saw scurrying in front of my foot when I moved an old bicycle out of the way earlier. I’m scared of being out here alone even though in my life I’ve been by myself more than I’ve been in the presence of other people. And I’m scared of the noises I keep hearing outside this rickety old front door. If you can even call it a door. It’s more like three pieces of mismatched wood nailed together and secured with brackets, then set inside a metal track meant to make opening and closing easy. It isn’t easy. I’ve tried to work it twice in an effort to make sure nothing is attempting to sneak up on me, and both times I’ve wound up out of breath.

I keep trying to tell myself that the sounds of rushing wind and flapping birds are normal things that go bump in the late afternoon. I’m not entirely convinced.

Finally done with Shaye’s little gift, I return the hammer to a peg on the far wall and gather up the ten remaining nails, depositing them onto the workbench but leaving them in a visible pile in case I want to return to them later. I’d rather not search around this place. Despite my claims to be interested in all things secret and decaying, the reality of stumbling across anything sinister has me moving a little faster to get out of here.

Shaye isn’t coming back. I’ve finally come to grips with the idea that I’ll be walking back to the house alone. I pick up the pace and head for the door.

It isn’t until I’ve rounded the corner of the shed that I hear it.

Water. Or what sounds like water slapping against something, giving itself a high-five every time it comes into contact with the object it’s crashing into. I follow the sound, wondering where it’s coming from while at the same time surprised I’ve never heard it before. Then again, I’ve never been this far away from the house. There’s no telling what lurks on this property. In that way, I wasn’t kidding when I mentioned it to Shaye earlier. Not that I necessarily believe dead bodies are involved, but there are definitely secrets buried here. And I for one would like to find out what they are.