Amrita

  Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses,

  for they must often dream.

  Weirdo Boy stood there looking stupid and scared for a long second, and then his shoulders relaxed just the tiniest bit as he recognized her. He didn’t bother answering – rude – and he charged past her, grabbing at her hoodie as he passed.

  “We gotta get out.”

  She snatched her arm back from him. It wasn’t hard. “What the hell, man? I just got here.”

  “I’m serious, come on!” He sounded well and truly freaked out, and he had to fumble with the fancy old brass doorknob before he was able to yank the door open and run out. He didn’t check to see if she was following.

  Amrita caught up with him halfway across the gross, dead old lawn, squinting in the afternoon sunlight. She was feeling a little pissed that this wasn’t going the way she’d thought, and when she snagged his elbow, she pulled hard, hauling him to a stop.

  “You don’t understand,” Weirdo said, straining against her. “There’s something down there!” He pried at her fingers, but five years of pull-ups was really good for hand strength.

  “There’s probably a bunch of stuff down there,” she said, mustering more patience than she felt. “Enough to start a good fire, I bet.”

  He actually heard her this time, and it was funny to watch him freeze like a deer in headlights and then try to hide that he’d done it. He straightened up in her grip, straining to project casualness and confusion. He couldn’t have been more than five foot six, his floppy brown hair kept falling in his eyes, and every piece of him was a bad liar.

  “That’s… a weird thing to say.” His eyes kept darting between her face and the front door over her shoulder.

  “It’s also a weird thing to show up to school with a bag full of lighter fluid and metal tools.”

  That got his attention, and he really looked at her for the first time. “You’re in my biology class.”

  “And my name is…?”

  Again with the nervous looks at the door. “Sorry, I don’t pay very good attention most of the time.”

  Amrita knew he wouldn’t know – hardly anyone did – but she still felt something that made her want to punch him. “Whatever. Why do you keep staring at the door?”

  “I heard something downstairs. It sounded like footsteps or something.”

  She shook her head. “Nerves. The place is creepy, I get it, but there’s nobody in there. You sat here for like an hour before you went in.”

  He blinked. “You followed me here?”

  She hadn’t meant to give that away, but she shrugged it off. “Eh, I have PE right now, and Goldfarb makes the girls shower. She’s a perv. I swear the mirror in there’s a two-way.”

  “I… have heard people say that.”

  “I can’t blame her. It’s pretty hard to resist all of this,” she drawled, gesturing at her worn clothes and the skinny, ropy self underneath. He glanced down at her and then away very quickly. His pale skin reddened around the ears and neck, and Amrita felt a surge of unreasoned satisfaction.

  “Uh, um… yeah, “ he stammered. “I’ve got English right now. Lame.”

  A flicker of motion caught her eye, and she saw an old, rusted-out pickup trundle through the intersection at the corner of Gambon and Henderson a few hundred feet away. It was headed away from them, but she felt suddenly exposed. “We should head back in.”

  He stared. “Did you not hear what I said?”

  “I did, but I guess you can’t say the same, because I’m telling you it’s just a nothing freak-out.” She walked back to the door.

  “I heard something,” he insisted.

  She leaned against the doorway. “How long have you scoped this place out?”

  He looked away and dug his toe in the dead grass. “Two months.”

  “There’s no way somebody’s been living in the basement that long without ever leaving.”

  He nodded despite himself. “I watched at night a few times too.”

  “It could have been anything,” she said, trying not to sound like she was pleading. She swung the door open. “Old houses make noise. It’s fine.”

  He looked past her into the darkness, swallowing hard. “I guess.”

  “We shouldn’t stay out here anyway. Somebody will drive by, and if anybody wants to look in your bag, you’re busted.”

  He grimaced, flexed his fists, and marched up the stairs to the stoop. “Yeah. Okay.”

  They ducked in together and shut the door. The boy flicked on his flashlight.

  “You don’t know my name either,” he said.

  “Do too. You’re Weirdo Boy.”

  He stared at her, mouth turning down in dismay. “Do people call me that?”

  “No, just me. I wouldn’t sweat it – I call most everybody else Dickhead.”

  He huffed a nervous little laugh. “Thanks, I guess.”

  “And by the way, I could hear sloshing when you picked up your bag today. The smell was obvious even from three seats back. I think one of your cans has a leak.”

  He reached behind himself and patted the underside of his bag with one hand, bringing it back to smell. A crinkling of his little-boy nose told her she was right. “Nuts. I’ll have to air it out.”

  “Why do you want to burn the place down?”

  The boy drifted to one side, his flashlight trained on a door set in the side of the grand staircase. “It’s the whole ‘broken windows’ idea.”

  “Uhh…” Amrita thought back to the front of the house. “This place doesn’t have any of those. And that’s a shit reason to torch a place.”

  “No, it’s a sociological thing. Crime theory. Abandoned buildings are magnets for drug use and violent crime. Get rid of the house, get rid of the problem. I’ll get the whole block eventually.”

  She peered at him. “Sounds like a convenient excuse for a firebug.”

  “I mean it,” he insisted, not looking away from that one door across the room. “This town sucks, but adding a meth house won’t help, and in a few more years, that’s what this will likely be.”

  “So this is you doing your civic duty, huh?”

  He gave a half-shrug, looking embarrassed. “Sounds stupid.”

  “I didn’t say it.”

  “I think about these things, though. Employment has fallen twenty-two percent in Olmstead in the last ten years. How many kids have gone meth-head and just – poof – lately? It’s only a matter of time before this place is a criminal hotbed, and somebody’s got to do something.”

  “What are you, Batman?” She shook her head. “I seriously gave you the right name.”

  “I would so rather be weird than whatever it is everybody else is around here.” He’d gotten closer to the door, but he looked stuck about ten feet away.

  “Blank,” Amrita said softly. She looked down and found herself standing right over some messed-up octopus tile-thing in the floor. “They’re all blank.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you going to open that door or what?”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He turned to her. “So why do you want to burn the place?”

  Amrita opened her mouth and closed it again as a welter of confused explanations caught in her throat. “Maybe I’m just a firebug.”

  “You can’t tell anyone.”

  “Dude, look at me.” She gestured to herself. “I’m the brown girl from Edgewood trailer park. I could scream about it and nobody would care.”

  He nodded slowly. “Don’t, though.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not a total moron. Besides, I’m hoping you’ll let me strike the match.”

  He bit his lip, took a tiny brass key out of his pocket, and inserted it into the old-timey keyhole like the door was a snake that might strike at any moment. The flashlight beam bounced off the door and shone on sweat beading his forehead. It made little strands of his bangs stick and curl. His hand hovered over the doorknob. Amrita realized she was tensing in response like an overtightened wire.

  “Oh, for god’s sake,” she said, breaking the silence. She strode forward, knocking his hand away and jerking the door open. She snatched the heavy flashlight out of his hand and shone it down. Steep, narrow stairs descended in an enclosed stairwell that was a little too short overhead. “Yup, that’s creepy,” she said, and stomped down as loudly as she could.

  “Wait,” he said weakly behind her.

  “And your name’s Oliver. I heard Mauer say it in class weeks ago.” What if he really did hear someone down here? No way she could back off now. “If somebody kills me down here, it’s your fault.”

  Hesitant steps sounded behind her on the stairs, but she was focused ahead. She reached the landing, a bare stone wall in front of her, the basement opening out to her side. Nothing jumped out to eat her, so she shone the flashlight around the room.

  “Huh,” she said, ignoring her own relief. She kicked a loose shard of rock, sending it skittering across the cavernous space. “Gonna be hard to light a fire down here.” The place looked like a smashed tomb, all stone, brick, and marble that had been thoroughly destroyed. The sledgehammer that had done it was still propped up against a low altar in the middle of the room. The ceiling was low, but the room was every bit as broad and deep as the foyer upstairs.

  The boy hurried down after her, looking past her shoulder. “I don’t understand. I heard it. Footsteps. Squishy ones.”

  “Kinda hard to squish on stone, buddy,” she said. “Nerves.”

  He forgot his fear, taking the flashlight back and advancing into the room. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Right? Not exactly a movie room down here.”

  He shone his light on every surface, eyes rapt. “This was never something like that.”

  “Well, it’s not a storage closet, and it’s too sterile for a torture chamber or a sex dungeon.”

  He stopped. “A what?”

  “Rich people, bro. You never know.”

  “No, I…” he shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. The Ambroses built this place in eighty-four. This is older. Way older.”

  “So you cased the place and researched it?”

  He shrugged, drifting around the room. “Public records, town hall. They have to show you if you ask. But the parts that aren’t broken are all, like, weathered. Pitted. This is old. Did they build on top of it? And these carvings… that’s not Victorian style. It’s not even classical, like some hidden Hellenistic shrine or something, and why would you even do that? The lines,” he said, tracing a carved groove past a shattered section of divots and hammer gouges to where it met up with another, “I dunno, the geometries are weird. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Are you Batman or Indiana Jones?” she said. “Make up your mind.”

  He hunched, self-conscious. “Architecture is kind of my thing. City planning. Utopias. I’ve read a bunch.”

  “Big hit with the ladies.”

  That got a real laugh. “Right.” He had a good smile.

  She kicked a broken chunk of masonry at him. “So we gonna burn this down or what?”

  He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I thought this would be a storage room or something, boxes and stuff to pile together. I wanted to start in the basement to make sure it burnt all the way down. But all this rock and brick is no good. We’ll have to go back upstairs and hope for the best.”

  “Well, while we’re here, we might as well break some shit,” she said, reaching for the sledgehammer. The handle was as long as her leg, the iron head as big as both fists together. “Be a waste not to.”

  “Be my guest,” he said. “Not like it isn’t ruined already. Somebody had a serious fit down here.”

  “Yeah, they can hold my beer,” Amrita grunted, lifting the sledge overhead. The pitted altar drew her eye. The corners had been knocked off already, and some kind of dried slime glittered across its surface like the world’s biggest snail had crawled across it a long time ago. Under that spidery sparkle lay traces of brown and black in the grooves. Is that blood?

  Then the sledgehammer crashed down and it was gone. Rock groaned and clacked, the sounds echoing on all sides. The top of the altar caved in and the sides crumbled, sending dust everywhere. Amrita stumbled forward, surprised by the collapse. She’d expected it to be solid – she thought the hammer would bounce off. Instead she went to her knees amid the rubble, dropping the hammer and catching herself with her hands.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Shit. I cut my hand.”

  “Let me see.”

  He crouched beside her, shining the light on her hands. There was a deep gouge in the crease of her left palm welling blood.

  “I caught myself on that shard. I got blood on it.”

  “Hang on.” Oliver rummaged in his bag and came out with some gauze.

  “Are you serious with this? Do you have like a whole house in there?”

  “Do you want me to help or not? It’s dry. No lighter fluid got on it.”

  She held out her hand, and he folded the gauze into a square and pressed it into her palm. The blood soaked up immediately.

  “Hold it there,” he said.

  She did, and he pulled out white cloth tape, his nimble, slender fingers wrapping it deftly around her hand in two bands, holding the makeshift bandage in place.

  “Good?”

  “It stings, but yeah. Thanks.”

  “Had enough fun?”

  “Hard to swing a hammer with a cut hand.”

  He stood and held out a hand. “Upstairs, then.”

  She took his hand and hauled herself up. A glint in the broken rubble of the hollow altar caught her eye. “Holy shit.”

  She bent down and sifted the thing out of the rubble with her good hand.

  “What is it?”

  “You tell me, Dr. Jones.” She handed the thing over. It was hand-sized, but heavy. Dense.

  He shone his light on the find, and Amrita’s breath caught. It was a figurine in the darkest jade she’d ever seen, veins of black twining through deepest green. The head was broken off, but it was recognizably a humanish body – short, stout, and powerful. The feet ended in elephant-foot stumps and the hands in broad, stubby fingers, a few of which were broken. It was rough-hewn, with deep carving marks and an unfinished feel about it. Her stomach wormed. The thing made her uneasy… but she also wanted to hold it.

  “I have no idea what this is,” he admitted. “But it’s awesome.”

  “Maybe the head’s in there.” She squatted down, throwing chunks of rubble aside. Oliver pocketed the statuette and bent down to help her. She gnawed her lip and thought about asking him to give the thing back to her, but she wanted to find its head even more. Rocks clattered loudly on all sides as they worked.

  “Hey, look!” he said.

  “Did you find it?”

  “No, but there’s something carved on the rock. Must have been on the inside.”

  He held up a broken chunk of marble a good six inches across. There, carved onto one side with the same careful crudeness of the statue, stood a word. FHTAGN.

  “How do you even say that?”

  He opened his mouth, and a sound interrupted him almost as if it were answering her question. It was a fluting warble, like a whippoorwill the size of a gorilla was singing underwater. It echoed through the room, faint but unmistakable. The color drained from Oliver’s face, and he whipped around to the corner of the room where the sound came from. There, half-hidden by a fallen column and the broken detritus of the room, his light fell on a scratch-tunneled opening near the floor. It was big enough for a large dog to squeeze through, and fresh black slime coated its edges. The sound came again, a little louder.

  “Time to go,” Amrita decided, hauling him by the arm to the stairs. They barreled up the narrow steps, tripping over each other and barking shins as they went.

  “The key, the key!” Oliver cried as they tumbled over each other into the foyer. A huge rat was pacing the room and charged at them, hissing. Amrita booted it into the wall, feeling bones snap as her heavy steel toe connected with its ribs.

  “What the hell is up with this place?” she yelled, turning back to the basement door that Oliver had fallen against. He’d locked the door, leaving the little key in place, and was in the process of hyperventilating. She went to him and tore the bag off his back, rummaging in its depths.

  “Here,” she said, shoving two tin canisters of lighter fluid into his hands and fishing out the other two for herself. “This’ll make you feel better.”

  The basement stair creaked. They moved.

  Amrita squirted the grand stairway carpet and rotten wood banisters with the clear, stinking kerosene as Oliver ran the circuit of the foyer, spraying covered furniture and cracked paneling as he went. A wet thump sounded at the locked basement door.

  “I’m out!” she cried, charging down the stairs. “Let’s do this!”

  With determination painted on his face, Oliver approached the shaking basement door and sprayed the last of his fuel right on it. He snatched up his fallen bag and fished out a box of strike anywhere matches. Rhythmic blows shuddered against the door, and the wood began to splinter.

  “What is that thing?” Amrita whispered.

  Oliver was right there, pressing the matches into her hand.

  “We don’t want to find out,” he said. “Light it up.”

  She took a match in shaking fingers and struck it against the scratch pad. It flared to life, a pinpoint of light against the oppressive gloom of this insane house.

  She lit it up.

  The kerosene caught instantly, a trail of fire racing up the stairs and forking out to catch the banisters and work its way down the side rails. Oliver lit another and threw it at the wall. Blue flame guttered against the paneling and spread quickly, following the trail of his spray all the way around the room.

  Then a dark fist broke through the locked door, fingers reaching out blindly, and they raced as one out into the failing afternoon light.