If you didn’t know where the bodies had been buried, it was difficult to put a guard on them.
***
Two transfers later and the 447 bus pulled in to the curb. The driver looked dubious as she leaned over to peer through the open doors at the Player and King stop as if she’d not seen it before.
“Here?” she said. “You sure, kid? It’s not the best area. Especially not at this time of night.”
Hill ignored her concern, and the “kid.” People always thought he was younger than twenty-four. He didn’t know why, but apparently one day he’d be grateful for it. The “when” on it was unclear too. It definitely wasn’t today, when he’d rather avoid any unnecessary attention.
“I’m meeting a friend,” he said. “Thanks.”
The driver turned her mouth down in an unhappy grimace, but didn’t try and argue the point. Hill stepped down onto the pavement, and the cold pinched at his ears. He pulled his hood up, hunched his shoulders, and stuck his hands in his pockets as he walked away.
He closed his left hand around the key he had in there and squeezed until the edges of it bit into his skin. It hurt, but he was used to it. Hill had carried the same key around for the last five years. It had taken him that long to work out where the lock it went with was situated.
145 Player Street.
Hill stopped on the sidewalk and looked up at the house.
There had been tenants there until a few days ago. Somehow the house still looked run-down and unloved. Maybe it was the lack of Christmas lights on the eaves. It was the only house in the street that wasn’t lit up.
The last tenants hadn’t wanted to leave this close to Christmas, but it had been unavoidable. Hill needed access to the basement and didn’t have the wherewithal to fake a gas leak.
He climbed the worn stone steps to the front door and tried the key in the lock.
It wasn’t his first visit, so heknewit would fit. Something in his chest still tightened, ready for the tumblers to lock or the mechanism to jam. It just turned smoothly, and when he turned the handle, the door swung open.
He stepped in, over the handful of pizza flyers and spam mail on the rug, and closed the door behind him. It didn’t feel any warmer inside than out. If anything, it might have even been colder, with wisps of Hill’s breath visible as he cleared his throat.
One theory had it that unconsecrated burials created “soft spots” between the worlds. Not weak enough to allow passage except at the right times of year and with the right invitation, butenough to allow leakage. Like a chill that lingered in the height of summer.
Or a smell in the basement like the one the Pollon family had lodged multiple complaints with the property management company about…for years before Hill ever got in touch with them.
It wouldn’t actually matter to Hill’s plans, but it did give weight to the theory.
Hill went into the kitchen. He’d turned the fridge on the last time he was here. The sound of the electricity humming through it was surprisingly loud in the otherwise silent house. He glanced at his watch to check the time—fifteen minutes until midnight—and then opened the door to lift out the double-bagged carcass he’d stashed in there. The plastic crinkled under his fingers as the bloodied beast in the bag shifted and sagged down as he moved it. He let it hang from one hand while he picked up the pot he’d left on the stove.
He didn’t actually know why he’d put it there. It could have been set anywhere. It had just seemed out of place anywhere else.
Everything else he’d left downstairs already.
He propped the pot on one hip as he opened the basement door. The smell that the Pollons had talked about wafted up to him. It was dank and vaguely green, like standing water…even though the property manager’s plumbers had never been able to find any issues with damp. Hill flicked the lights on and hesitated, one foot on the top step.
All he had to do was stop.
Hill tightened his grip on the edge of the pot as he stared down the narrow stairwell into the disorientingly mundane basement. There was a dryer and washing machine shoved into one corner, a cracked basketball backboard propped against a wall, and astack of stained, crumpled groundsheets that the Pollons hadn’t wanted to take with them.
It wasn’t too late to go back. Not yet. It would be soon, though.
That was one thing that the Church, folklore, and all the forums on Reddit and the dark web agreed on. Knock at Death’s door, and you had to complete the rite. No one knew exactly what happened if you tried to ding, dong, dash it, but the consensus was it wouldn’t stop just because you died.
So this was Hill’s last chance to change his mind.
This wasn’t what his dad would have wanted. Hill knew that; it was for the same reasons that Dad would have been a bad vengeful ghost. And up until three years ago he’d been happy enough. He’d never liked Greg, and Greg had never understood him, but mutual disinterest could work a lot like tolerance under the right conditions.
If he’d not found out…
Except he had, and he couldn’tunknowit. He’d never been good at pretending or playing along. The truth was…it justwas.
