Let me address this first: I couldn't decide what to do with the
phone. I read every comment from the last thread (except the weird
political tangent). Some folks thought I should leave well enough alone
and preserve the memory of my brother, while many others begged me to
indulge their curiosity.
A precious handful of comments were actually concerned about...
Whatever was happening on Jake's end of the call. You guys are saints
for that, but...
I know this sounds selfish, but I just don't know if I have the
stomach to root through it. Whatever George was into, he was still my
brother. He asked me so many times to just toss his phone that I'm
starting to think it was an honest request framed as a joke he repeated
to keep the idea fresh in my head.
That's not to say I don't have anything new for you.
It was Friday when I posted the first thread, so I assumed Jake and
his brother, Kevin, were going back to whatever it was they did with
George in the old days. Curiosity got the better of me and I may have
conducted a bit of sleuthing. See, I really only speak to them at
Christmas, so I didn't have any excuse to come over. That also means
they haven't seen me driving the ancient Stratus I bought in March, so
they wouldn't recognize my wheels if I played the detective and set up a
little stake-out like in the movies.
So I called in to work and drove my car the seven miles to their
house. I parked a little down the street, poised myself to dive behind
the dashboard if somebody glanced my way, and I waited.
And I waited... And I waited...
I must have spent at least four hours staring at Jake's old junker
pickup. It wasn't until about eight when the front door finally opened
and the man himself walked out and sat down on his porch.
Jake's a lean, scruffy-looking dude. He was the only kid I knew with
facial hair in the ninth grade, and by graduation he'd abused his gift
by growing the kind of filthy, ragged beard you'd expect from a man who
wrote manifestos in a cave somewhere. He wore a dirty band shirt and
dark, almost black jeans. It looked like the kind of stuff you'd wear to
paint a house.
And, at that exact moment, he looked like he was about to break down crying.
I wasn't sure what I expected. After our brief "chat" on the phone, I
had convinced myself he was up to something terrible. But I had trouble
believing a lack of empathy from the look on Jake's face just then.
Between his wrinkled clothes, the twisted mane of hair on his head, and
his red, sleepless eyes, he gave the impression of a man used up and
spat out.
So there he sat, the villain who had scared the shit out of me a
couple weeks ago, drained of what little color he ever had and simply
waiting for the end with his head in his hands. It actually kind of
reminded me of my brother's... You know. Anyway...
George's phone sat in my pocket, and I have to admit: I seriously
considered just calling Jake to feign a coincidental interest in his
well-being right there. Maybe I'm being naive. Maybe it'll be the death
of me.
Either way, I never had the chance. Jake only sat a moment or two
before Kevin stepped out of the house behind him and helped him to his
feet. The two of them made their way to Jake's pickup, equally exhausted
in appearance, and they climbed inside and began to drive off in the
opposite direction without so much as a glance down the street.
If they really were up to no good, I was starting to wonder if their
participation was involuntary. The biggest roadblock to following up on
the call (aside from honoring my brother's wishes) was the slim and
still unbelievable chance that my cousins would turn out to be some kind
of murderous gangsters or something. The notion they might be victims
themselves compelled my curiosity and...
And I followed them.
I feel like movies actually taught me something here. We drove for
almost an hour, looping around sharp turns and over hills, passing
through those bushy country-road intersections where you can't tell
who's coming from the cross street until you're caught in the middle. I
lost sight of their truck several times, and I had to make a few lucky
guesses when I picked a direction. Twice I came around a corner to find
them stopped too close ahead to avoid notice, but, as I'm starting to
realize is actually pretty common in life, my cousins weren't really
paying enough attention to the world outside their heads to realize they
had a tail.
They pulled off the road entirely almost an hour out of town, driving
straight down a pair of neat tire tracks crushed into the grass like
they were retracing steps they'd driven again and again for years. The
land rose up ahead of them, and at the very top stood a derelict
farmhouse looming like a Jenga tower just before the final turn.
I figured this was the end of the line, so I let the road carry me
further ahead to avoid suspicion before turning around and doubling
back. Sure enough, the old pickup sat empty at the base of the hill. I
parked my Stratus about a five minute hike away because, again, I've
seen some movies, and I began my journey to the house by swallowing
about a gallon of terrifying emotions I wouldn't admit to under oath.
The trees clustered around the road didn't grow up the hill, so the
record summer heat had already beaten the long, unsheltered grass
growing on the slope into a crunchy, straw-colored death. I stepped as
carefully as I could, but the rise ran so steep I was more concerned
with my footing than the noise my sneakers made.
Nobody survives a spooky story with a sprained ankle, after all.
Summer spent a lot of wrath on the house too, stripping off most of
the baby blue paint and punching holes through the boarded windows and
roof with that old Ohio windstorm fury. I circled the house a few times
with what probably looked like an interpretative dance, crouch-walking
and pressing myself to the walls and corners like a cartoon cat burglar.
After my third pass without any sign of activity and no other obvious
point of entry, I laid my hand on the handle and watched the whole
screen door pop off the battered hinges and smack into the concrete
porch with a loud thud.
I froze where I stood and screwed my eyes shut, waiting for some
heavy boots to come pounding down the hall and... Nothing happened.
I gently leaned the screen door against the wall and turned the knob
on the proper door beneath, only to discover it was locked solid. As in,
the door didn't even have enough space to wiggle in its frame. It felt
as though something heavy had been pushed up against the other side,
and, as I stood up on my tiptoes to try to angle a view through the tiny
window set into the top, a shape pulled around the far corner of the
hall inside.
Kevin glanced up and met my eyes.
I barely had time to process what was happening before my legs took
over and sent me barreling down the slope. At one point my feet made
contact with a pair of large wooden planks like cellar doors hidden in
the grass, rattling beneath my weight and threatening to break open. I'm
lucky I didn't trip and roll all the way down into the road, but I
managed to make it back to my car and back on the path home before I
took another conscious breath.
My heart nearly beat its way out of my chest as I tried to parse what
I'd seen. Kevin was wearing some kind of yellow poncho, which I've have
never seen anybody wear in real life regardless of the weather. Brown
liquid like rust dripped off it, and it looked like he was just glancing
up from some long piece of gleaming metal in his hands when I bolted.
I wish I could pretend he didn't see me. I tried to convince myself
he might have played it off as his imagination or a squirrel crawling
across the door but...
Well, at around four the next morning, as I was finally starting to
drift to sleep after tossing and turning and throwing up three times
from anxiety, a tinny song blasted across my bedroom and woke me. It was
the Overwatch theme, buzzing from the surface of my dresser.
George's phone was ringing. And it rang again the night after that and the next night after that, at the same exact time.
I still haven't answered.
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