It’s a mile before I find a spot to park, a small clearing in front of a gate with a NO TRESPASSING sign leading to who knows where. If Silas Baker passes this way, he’ll see my car but it’s a gamble I have to take. I pull the keys out of the ignition, shove them in my pocket and let myself out, hastily locking the doors. It’s already warm out, one of those days you can tell is going to end in air thick enough to choke on. I take a deep breath and then I run, I run the mile back to Silas’s turnoff. By the time I’m just about there, my shirt is soaked through with sweat and I can smell myself. I need a shower. I’ve needed one, but I’ll figure that out later. I creep up the lane, where the Mercedes is in the distance, parked next to the house. Silas isn’t in the driver’s side anymore. My heart beats warily. I don’t know what this is. It’s an easy path up to the house, but I stumble into the long grass and crouch there. Bugs hover at my face, arms and legs before landing on my skin and taking a bite. The grass tickles and scratches my shins. I start forward, my feet moving clumsily along ground that feels as dry as my throat. I keep my ear out for sounds of him, movement, a car starting, but there are none.
I move so slowly it’s an eternity before I’m at the house and the best word I could use to describe the place is rotten. It’s got be over fifty years old. It’s a two-story with a screened-in porch that’s ready to fall in on itself. The front door is barely hanging on its rusty hinges and most of the first-story windows have been covered in particle board, save for one that’s empty, offering a clear view in. The windows on the second story are all uncovered and broken. The house has long been tagged with beautiful and ugly graffiti. Joey loves Andy. A naked woman stretched across the space between two windows. Painted ivy along the bottom of the foundation climbing as far as it can reach. Satan and his forked tongue. A series of watchful eyes. Carrie hates Leanne. Cocksucker.
I reach the broken window and peer in. It’s worse inside than outside, giving way to nature, weeds poking through the floorboards. There’s a hint of a threshold to another room full of garbage creeping out. I don’t see Silas but if he comes through the front door, he’ll only have to turn his head to have a clear view of me.
I listen. Nothing. I move from the window and look for the best place to position myself. I strain my neck upward to the second story and realize that just because I can’t see Silas doesn’t mean he can’t see me. Shit. I shouldn’t stay in one place long.
I’m slowly making my way to the side of the house and I’m almost there when I hear the front door open. I lose all sense of self, safety, and throw myself around it, hear my body collide with the corner of the house at the same time the door falls back into place. I bite my lip, feeling the splintered wood siding dig into my shoulders. He’s there. I know he’s there. The heaviness of the pause that follows lets me know he knows he’s not alone. And then:
“Who’s there?”
His voice is deep, a cool authority running through it and I wait, my palms pressed against the ground. His footsteps sound into all this emptiness—one step, two steps, three steps—and I realize how alone I really am. That if Silas Baker found me here, he could make me scream and only the two of us would hear it.
Mattie, in that orchard, screaming.
A light breeze moves through the grass. It almost sounds like the ocean. If I closed my eyes I could see myself there. I won’t close my eyes.
“Hello?” he asks again. Quieter now.
The wind just—stops.
And then it’s too still.
Footsteps again. The soft crunch of his shoes … working their way toward his car. I don’t exhale until I hear the engine and I don’t move until long after I’m sure he’s gone to wherever it is he goes after this. I stand slowly, the blood rushing back to my numb joints. I lean against the house for a long moment before facing it.
What were you doing here, Silas?
I make my way to the front of the house and carefully climb onto the porch, sidestepping the most rotted-looking parts of it. I hesitate before gripping the door handle, imagining it still hot from his touch even though I know that won’t be the case. I pull it open and step into the house, startling as it rattles closed behind me. I press my fist to my chest, willing myself to calm down.
Only a little daylight manages to reach the first floor, from that one broken window I was looking through. The place is musty, dusty and smells of decay. I sneeze eight times in a row, which makes my eyes water more than I can see through. I wipe them and squint into the darkness and begin my trek from room to room, stepping around and through the garbage and debris, some of it recognizable, most of it not. I’m tense. The small noises I’m making seem too loud and I keep glancing over my shoulder, worried he’ll reappear. But he doesn’t.
So far.
I spot a Coke can that looks like it could’ve been from the eighties by the design. If not then, at least some time before mine. I float through the ghost of a kitchen, a dining room and a living room before I find myself in front of a mostly intact set of stairs leading to the second floor. Sunlight pours through the broken window at the top and highlights a palm print in the dust on the old wooden banister.
This way, it whispers.
The stairs have collapsed halfway up, leaving a gap wide enough it’ll be tricky getting across it. It was probably easy for a guy as tall as Silas, who looked to be over six feet. I stretch my right leg across the gap, get my foot on the closest remaining step and use the banister to hoist myself onto it. It shakes back and forth alarmingly and the small effort takes more out of me than it should, leaves me feeling nauseous and shaky. I better get a decent meal in me soon. I know what it’s like to be hungry and I’m better at it than most people, but I’m tapping into the last of my reserves. I’m not in the habit of making myself useless.
The stairs make disconcerting noises as I trudge up the last of them, finally getting two feet on the landing. It’s much smaller up here than it looks on the outside, and a little cleaner than downstairs. The collapsed stairway is too much of a deterrent to vandals, I guess.
I look around. I don’t know where Silas would have gone from here; there are no tells like the palm print. In one bedroom there’s an empty brass bedframe and moldy sheets, broken pieces of furniture. The other looks empty but for a wall where a small painting of a forest hangs. It’s somehow survived being in this place for who knows how long. In the bathroom, the sink has been ripped out of the wall and there’s shattered glass from the mirror of a broken medicine cabinet all over the floor. A stained, cracked porcelain tub with no feet holds a broken toilet inside it. The floor looks like it’s absorbed years of water damage. I’m afraid to step on it. I rub my sweaty forehead because it’s hot in here, stifling. I pull at my shirt collar.
Why the hell would someone like Silas Baker be out here?
The painting.
I go back to the empty bedroom and stand in front of it. It’s an oil painting, unsigned, and it looks wrong. It’s too … intentional. I press my finger against the canvas’s bumpy surface and then trace it along the frame’s immaculate edge.
It’s not even dusty.
I grab the picture by its corners and set it on the floor. Behind the picture, there’s a perfect hole dug out of the wall and in the hole, there’s a small metal box with a padlock on it. I reach inside and it surprises me, how light it is. I shake it and the rustling sound my ears are met with puts me in mind of money. Is that what this is?
Silas Baker, squirreling away cash … for what?
Does it matter?
I’d take his money. I always need that.
I leave the house with the box in my hands, making that perilous jump over the gap in the stairs and step outside. When I’m outside, I search for a rock to bust the lock with because anything is breakable if you put enough force behind it. I finally find a nice, gray, jagged one with some heft, curl my hand around it and give the box a good thwack. The rock hits the lock, then hits the ground. The impact tears the skin away from my knuckles and brings tears to my eyes. I clutch it against my chest and it takes everything not to cry out.
I try again.
And again.
And again.
The sun gets farther and farther up the sky. My stomach turns, sick from the heat. The heat makes my head feel foggy. My shirt dries of sweat and soaks itself through again. The lock never breaks, but the hinge holding the lock does, and when it happens, when it tears off, I don’t even realize it. I hit the metal box again and it flips on its side, its contents spilling out.
THE GIRLS
EPISODE 3
ANNOUNCER:
The Girls is brought to you by Macmillan Publishers.
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
Yeah, I saw her. She was blond, though.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: So … I think I might actually have a bead on this girl. I don’t know what exactly it’s going to lead me to—but it’s more than I started with.
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]: Don’t sound so excited.