The Devil's Cook

10

Later that same Sunday morning — the second day after the disappearance of Terry Miles — two boys were discussing seriously a problem of importance. They were in a sparsely settled neighborhood on the eastern edge of a city that was growing westward. No new construction had gone on there for a long time. The houses, all of aging vintage, were for the most part separated by one or more vacant lots; there was plenty of open space for the antics of boys. A short distance eastward the plumbing ended and the open country began. There were no suburbs here. The planners, speculators, and builders of the city of Handclasp concentrated their interests and investments on the other side of town.

The two boys, crossing a vacant lot, had stopped to settle their problem between them, the problem being what to do. They had lately escaped the horror of Sunday school; now, after changing into appropriate clothes, they were determined to salvage what was left of the day. Being of the age that both remembers toys and has premonitions of girls, they earnestly sought an adventure that would include the excitement of the one and the apprehension of the other. As they examined and discarded a number of possibilities, their breath escaped between them in frosty clouds. They were bundled against the cold morning in heavy jackets. Whatever they were called by their peers, they were soon to enter certain official records as Charles and Vernon — names which do not have, among small boys, a greatly used sound.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Charles.

“What?” said Vernon.

“Let’s go explore the old Skully place.”

“We can’t do that. People live in it.”

“Not now, they don’t. Nobody’s lived in it for over a month.”

“Somebody will, though. Some real estate company downtown rents it.”

“What difference does that make? Nobody’s living in it right now. That’s what counts.”

“What do you want to explore the old Skully place for?”

“Wait’ll I tell you what I saw there the other night.”

“What?”

“I saw a light in an upstairs window.”

“You’re just making that up.”

“I am not. It was a little light, like a flashlight. It kept moving around.”

“What night was it? What time did you see it? Come on, make it good.”

“It was Friday night. Real late. It must’ve been one o’clock, maybe more.”

“What were you doing at the old Skully place that late?”

“I was coming home in the car with Mother and Dad. We’d been downtown to a late movie. I just happened to look up and saw the light in the window as we went past. I told Dad about it, but he said I was imagining things.”

“You were.”

“I wasn’t. I bet you I wasn’t.”

Faced with such conviction Vernon, the skeptic, began to waver.

“Who do you think it was?” he asked in an awed tone.

“How should I know? I’ll bet he didn’t have any business being there, though. Are you game to have a look?”

His courage challenged, Vernon agreed, beginning to share Charles’s excitement. Even if they didn’t actually come across anything, the old and empty house would inflame the imagination to any boy’s satisfaction. As they traveled the long two blocks to the house, they convinced each other that they were performing a necessary — and dangerous — service to the community.

The Skully house, named for its orignal owner — a widower who had died there harassed by the unfounded suspicions of other imaginative youngsters like the pair now approaching through unkempt grass from the rear — was two stories tall, but so narrow in construction that it seemed taller. It had a high screened back porch; small windows in the foundation indicated the presence of a basement. Although old and ugly, it was kept in repair by the real estate agency that owned and rented it.

The two young trespassers, after crossing the back porch and finding the rear door locked, retreated and found a basement window that wasn’t. Charles first and Vernon behind him, they scrambled through and dropped.

The basement reeked of mustiness and junk and dust and rats and spiders. There was a coal bin, and a storage room for home-canned fruits and vegetables, its shelves still holding a supply of dusty Mason jars and a litter of rusted lids. Near the ancient furnace stood a workbench with a vise attached; a flight of ladder-like steps ascended to the kitchen door. Charles and Vernon, still in that order, climbed the steps and tried the door. It was unlocked, and they entered and crossed the kitchen, unconsciously walking — for no reason except the cold menace of the silent house — on tiptoes.

The first floor revealed no ghastly secrets; nor did their intrusion invoke old Skully’s ghost, which was said to loiter about the place. Relieved and disappointed, they went up a narrow stairway to the upper floor, now side by side for company. There were two doors on each side of a hall, and a fifth at the end. They walked straight back to the end door and found that it opened into a bathroom; the high old-fashioned tub had feet shaped like eagle claws clutching round balls. Reversing themselves, they began to open the other doors on empty rooms. Not speaking for fear of affronting the silence, they communicated with each other through a system of gestures and grimaces.

Now Charles conveyed to Vernon the information that the last room, deliberately withheld for the purpose of climax, was the one in which he had seen the mysterious moving light.

Crossing to this door, he pushed it inward....