Black Creek Crossing

Chapter 5

ETH BAKER GAZED AT THE HOUSE THAT HAD STOOD at Black Creek Crossing for more than three hundred years, his eyes fixed on the second story window that had shown up blurred in the photograph he’d taken only a few hours ago. But now, in the fading light of the early evening, it looked perfectly normal; just an ordinary window in a house that, though one of the oldest in Roundtree, didn’t look that much different from any of its neighbors.

Not that it had many neighbors. Even though the actual address was 122 Black Creek Road, there weren’t many other houses this far out. Everyone in town merely called this one the house at Black Creek Crossing because it was supposed to be the house where the man who ran the ferry lived back when the stream was wide enough and deep enough that horses and wagons couldn’t just ford it. An overgrown path behind it still led through the forest to the old crossing spot, and there were even a few rotting timbers near the stream that could have been the remains of an old ferry landing.

Black Creek Road itself was a narrow lane that had never been completely developed, even after more than three centuries, which was one reason it had always been one of Seth Baker’s favorite places. There was natural beauty to the area, with the dense forest and the meandering stream that ran through it. But even more important to Seth was that few people lived in the area and there were no families at all with children his age. When he was playing along the banks of the stream, or exploring the thick undergrowth of the maple forest, he didn’t feel lonely. Ever since kindergarten — maybe even longer — Seth had always felt like he wasn’t part of the crowd, that somehow he was set apart from the rest of the kids.

It hadn’t helped that he’d always been so shy he could barely bring himself to talk to anyone who didn’t speak to him first.

Or that he’d always been small — even most of the girls in his class were taller than he was.

Or that he’d hated sports.

So while the rest of the boys played soccer, softball, football, and hockey, first in the Pee Wee League, then Little League, then on school teams, he had played alone. During the winter months, he lost himself in the books in the old Carnegie Library, which had dominated the north side of the town commons for more than a hundred years; when the weather was good, he’d explore the woods that surrounded the little town.

But no matter how much exploring he did, he always found himself coming back to Black Creek and the Crossing. He knew almost every inch of the area — where the best swimming hole was, in which pools trout were most likely to be lurking, which rocks were the turtles’ favorites for sunning on summer days. He’d caught turtles and frogs and polliwogs, and every variety of fish that lived in the stream, and taken them home to put in aquariums and terrariums. Once, he’d taken an old enamel bowl and put it in the backyard, filled it with stream water and grasses he’d pulled from the stream bed, then stocked it with polliwogs and waited for them to metamorphose into frogs. He hadn’t thought it would take long, since they’d already been sprouting legs when he caught them, but two months later, as summer was fading into fall, they hadn’t changed at all, and deciding the bowl was just too small for them, he took them back to the stream.

Of course, he knew about the murder that had occurred in the old house at the Crossing — everyone in town did. He’d heard the stories about why the man had killed his wife and child, but he knew they were just stories. When Chad Jackson had first told him that the man had gone crazy and killed his wife, and that everybody who ever lived in that house afterward went crazy too, Seth had asked his mother about it.

She’d laughed when he repeated Chad’s tale, and told Seth that people had been telling stories about that house for as long as anyone could remember, and he should just ignore them.

Instead, he’d gone out Black Creek Road the next day and stood exactly where he was now, gazing at the house across the street.

Though the lot it stood on wasn’t particularly large — maybe half an acre — there weren’t any houses on the lots next to it, or the lots next to those. Nor were there any houses at all on the side of the street where he stood. In fact, there weren’t more than five houses on the whole stretch of Black Creek Road that lay between there and town.

All of them were old, but Seth knew the one at the Crossing was the oldest. It was small, and practically square, and had no front porch — only a stoop with an ugly metal awning over it. There were shutters at the windows, but they were all sagging and didn’t look like they’d close even if anyone wanted them to. There was nothing particularly special about it. It was just an old house, lacking even the smallest interesting design detail. Not like the wonderful big Colonial, Georgian, and Victorian mansions strung along Prospect Street, or the smaller versions with the same kind of architecture that filled Roundtree’s side streets.

But this house — and what had happened within its walls — held a strange fascination for Seth, and time after time, year after year, he found himself coming back to gaze at the nondescript building as if something in the structure might explain the terrible events that had taken place inside. It was as if the house itself didn’t look very happy — if a house could look happy — and now, with the For Sale sign stuck in the unkempt front yard yet again, Seth thought it actually looked sad.

Sad, but no different than it looked earlier in the day.

And there was nothing unusual about the second story window. Nothing except the killing of the little girl who had once lived behind it.

Taking his camera out of the pocket of his jacket, he took a few more shots in the fading light. In one of them, a glimmer of the setting sun found its way through the branches of the maple forest and caught the second story window perfectly. If he’d caught the moment, and the picture came out right, the upper window should contain at least a partial reflection of the setting sun.

As dusk began to settle, Seth finally started back toward the center of town, silently praying that his father wouldn’t notice that he hadn’t tried to join Chad Jackson’s softball game.

As he approached the pizza parlor, he saw Zack Fletcher and some of his friends crowded around one of the outside tables, and he crossed the street before any of them saw him.

Better to turn away and pretend they didn’t see him than walk right by and have them pretend they didn’t see him.

Two blocks later he turned on Church Street, and a couple of minutes after that he was in front of his own house. He was about to climb the steps to the front porch when he looked up at the house and cocked his head. Then, instead of going in, he crossed the street and turned around to look at it from farther away.

If he pretended the houses next door weren’t there, and the big oak tree in the front yard was gone, and took away the front porch, his house looked almost like the one out on Black Creek Road.

His was bigger — much bigger — and newer, and its shutters weren’t sagging, and it had a front porch instead of just three steps to a stoop, but otherwise they didn’t seem much different.

Maybe that was why he’d always been so intrigued by the house near the stream, he thought. It looked like a smaller, worn-out version of his own home.

The last light of evening faded away, and as darkness gathered around him, Seth hurried back across the street.

That night, just before he went to bed, Seth slid the memory card from the camera into his computer and opened the file containing the pictures he’d taken that afternoon. A moment later the monitor was filled with the image of the house at Black Creek Crossing, with the reflection of the setting sun caught in the second story window.

Except that in the picture, it didn’t look like the setting sun at all.

Nor did it look like a flame was coming from the window.

Instead, it looked exactly as if the entire house were on fire, its upper floor engulfed in flames.