A Place So Wicked Read online

  “That’s the dirt?” she said, confused.

  “I guess. It looks like someone painted the grass.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  Toby stood. “I’m not sure. I know they do that in places like California to hide the dead grass because it’s all hot and what-not there, so there’s lots of dead grass. But…this is New York. I don’t know why you’d need that here.”

  “Is the whole yard like that?”

  He wasn’t sure. Maybe they’d just run over a patch of dead grass or something. He walked about ten feet away and crouched to pull another tuft of grass from the ground. He held it up and saw the brown at the base and scratched at the blades.

  Green came off.

  He shook his head. “Same over here.”

  “Here, too,” she said, standing near the edge of the yard with grass in her hand.

  If he was guessing correctly, the entire front yard was made up of painted dead grass. He looked down, at the black soil. He wasn’t sure which part unnerved him more, the dead grass or the black dirt.

  “Should we finish the yard?” Paisley asked.

  Toby shrugged. He wasn’t really sure if the painted yard was even that big of a deal. Maybe even his dad already knew about it. If he did, Toby wished his father would have mentioned that bit of information before they started mowing.

  “I guess so,” Toby said.

  He walked back to the mower and grabbed hold of the pully. He gave it a yank, but the mower only sputtered. He pulled again. It revved and groaned, but it didn’t start. Toby was no lawnmower mechanic, but something was obviously wrong with it.

  Maybe Paisley had missed a stick. Maybe he accidently ran it over and somehow hadn’t noticed. He tipped it over on its side to check the blades. He heard Paisley gasp before he even saw what she was looking at.

  It was the bottom of the mower that made her gasp. It was completely smothered in green paint. What had once been an old, faded maroon was now the same color as the grass. A few tufts of grass were lodged here and there, but nothing that would have caused the machine not to work. But the paint stuff, that was everywhere.

  He tipped the mower back upright and gave the pully one last tug. It revved, and it sputtered, but it didn’t start. It was dead.

  7

  Richard and Robbie pulled up to a dollar store. He recognized the area a bit and knew that the realtor’s office was only a few blocks away. Richard asked Robbie if he could run inside and get a box of bulbs, a whole box in case other lights were fried, while he phoned the realtor.

  After the door was closed behind Robbie, Richard found the realtor’s number and gave it a call. The ringing sounded over the speakers; the phone’s audio connected to the car via Bluetooth. It rang for thirty seconds before it went to the voicemail.

  Richard groaned and hit the redial button. It rang again, for almost the whole thirty seconds, but just before Richard expected it to hit the voicemail, a man picked up on the other side.

  “Hello, this is David Masterson of Black Falls Realty.”

  “Hi, this is Richard Harrington, from over on 23 Ripley Avenue. I just moved in.”

  “Ah, yes.” Recognition dawned. “What is it that I can do for you?”

  “Well, you remember that room in the basement, the one that was locked? You said you had the key for it somewhere and that you would find it for me.”

  There was a silence at the other end of the line. Richard was staring off into the distance as a family filled up a van in a parking spot in the next lane.

  “Well, have you?”

  “Found it?” The man seemed to stutter a little. “No, not yet. I’m still looking.”

  Richard sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “All right. You mind if I stop by? Maybe I could help you have a look around.”

  “No!”

  “Ummm, all right?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I’m not at the office right now. I’m sure it’s around there somewhere. Things have just been very busy lately. I’ve been showing people houses all day. This old town seems to be a hotspot these days.” He chuckled, but the laugh didn’t sound genuine to Richard.

  “Right…” Richard said, looking around the parking lot still, as if hoping to find the key there. “Well, there’s a weird smell coming from down there. Like something died. We were wondering if maybe an animal found its way into the room and croaked. We’d like to remove it.”

  “I see. I see,” David said. “Yeah, that’s not good at all.”

  There was another pause. Richard expected the guy to show some concern, to maybe say he would hurry back and find the key. But he didn’t.

  “Well, I better be going. Lots of things to do. But I’ll give you a call when I find that key. Have a good day.”

  The line went dead. Robbie was coming across the lot. He rounded the car and opened the passenger door, startling Richard.

  “You okay?” Robbie asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. The realtor said he hasn’t found the key yet.”

  “Well, that’s some bullshit. He’s had a couple weeks.”

  Richard nodded his head absentmindedly. He grabbed the keys from the cupholder and started the vehicle’s engine. He had a funny suspicion he needed to check out.

  When they pulled out, Robbie noticed Richard turn in the wrong direction, away from the house.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see,” Richard said, pulling onto the road.

  They came to a light and stopped. Robbie looked at him quizzically. Richard pretended not to notice. There was just something about that guy, the realtor, David, that didn’t seem right, even dishonest. But why would he be lying about the key to a room in his basement? That didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

  They drove a few blocks in silence. Robbie had never been to the realtor’s office, so he had no idea where they were going, but Richard, on the other hand, was focused. They rounded a corner. Up ahead stood a one-story brick building. Out front was a sign that read Black Falls Realty.

  Richard slowed as they approached. In the lot was a clean, black sedan, one he immediately recognized as belonging to David Masterson.

  “Mother fucker,” Richard said as they passed by.

  “What?” Robbie asked.

  “When I asked about the key to the door in the basement, the realtor said he wasn’t at the office but would look later.” Richard pointed at the black car. “That’s his car right there.”

  “Maybe he’s just busy.”

  Richard scoffed. That didn’t mean he had to lie. He could have just as easily said he hadn’t found it yet and that he was busy. It sucked, but at least it would have been the truth. He was incredibly annoyed, but at least they had gotten the new light bulbs.

  As they pulled into the driveway, Richard noticed the tipped over lawnmower and frowned. First the realtor lies to him then his kids leave his mower laying there like that? He tried not to be too angry, knowing he should see what was going on first, but the frustration was beginning to boil up within him.

  As he reached the sidewalk, he noticed that the lawn was only half mowed, which added to the building anger.

  “They must have quit early,” Robbie said as if reading Richard’s mind. “Slackers.”

  Richard twisted the door’s handle, ready to give his kids a stern talking to. He paid for the house, moved most of the things inside, kept a damned roof over their heads; the least they could do was mow the lawn for him.

  He called his kids’ names before the door was even shut behind him. He heard something from upstairs and was about to charge up there when Lisa suddenly came around the corner from the kitchen.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Toby and Trevor only mowed half the lawn and left the mower tipped over like some piece of garbage.”

  “No. Trevor is upstairs. He’s sick. He was just puking. And Toby says there’s something up with the mower and the lawn.”

  “W
hat do you mean?” he asked, his frustration morphing into curiosity and concern. “And is Trevor okay?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Trevor will probably be okay. Toby said he has been feeling off as well. He thinks maybe there was something up with the pizza.”

  Richard nodded his head, trying to think back on whether or not he had felt sick at all since eating the pizza and didn’t think he had.

  “And as for the lawn, I don’t know. I was just about to go out and look.”

  Toby, Paisley, and Trevor all came walking around the corner upstairs, from in the direction of the bathroom and the twin’s bedrooms. Toby looked excited upon seeing his dad and uncle. This made Richard feel bad for misdirecting his frustrations at them so quickly.

  “Hey, Dad, glad you’re here,” Toby said. “Something strange is going on with the lawn.”

  “You okay, Trevor?” Richard asked.

  “I’ll live. Just a little food poisoning or something probably.”

  Richard nodded. “What’s this about the yard?”

  The kids worked their way around the adults. “It’s painted or something,” Toby said as he opened the door.

  “Painted?”

  Everybody followed Toby out. He jumped right in, explaining how the coloring of the grass came off on the blades of the mower, clogging them up. And then how the grass looked brown and dead under the paint, which he showed by pulling up some grass and scraping off the green in front of them. He ended it by mentioning how the soil was strangely black, though his dad seemed far less interested in that bit of information than the fact that his mower wasn’t working.

  “Well, that’s weird,” Robbie started, staring down at his phone, drawing everybody’s attention. “Says here lawn paint only takes a couple hours to dry. Nobody has been here to paint the yard since we arrived, right?” he asked rhetorically.

  The kids shook their heads like they were being interrogated and weren’t sure yet if they were going to jail or if the police were there as a joke.

  “Why would the lawn be dead?” Richard asked.

  He looked across the road, wondering if everybody else’s lawns were dead, too, and painted over. But that was insane. They shouldn’t be. Neither should his. He looked up, at the clear sky, polluted only by a few clouds here and there. It was warm, but it definitely wasn’t hot enough to kill off the grass.

  It was all so bizarre. And as Robbie had said, if it were painted, which it obviously was as he stared at the bottom of the mower, at the coat of green paint that coated the blades, it should have been well dry by then. The realtor, or whoever would be in charge of something like that, would have had to have had painted the yard days, maybe even weeks, ago. He thought back to when he visited the house pre-purchase and didn’t recall there being anything off about the yard.

  Then Richard got an idea. He wasn’t sure what it would accomplish. Hell, it might even make things worse. He told everybody to hold on a minute then walked around to the garage. He disappeared inside for a few minutes and then reemerged with a hose in hand. He let it unravel as he went, leaving it snaking at one end back in through the open garage door.

  Without a word, he gave the nozzle a twist, and water started squirting out, slowly at first but quickly turning to a high-pressured blast. He blasted the grass without mercy, rapidly puddling the yard. But to Toby’s and everyone else’s amazement, the grass started to come clean, the green paint joining the black puddles in a horrible swampy mixture. Remaining in the hoses wake was brown, faded grass that looked more like the hay left behind in cropping fields after the season was over than someone’s front yard. Toby realized then that he had never really seen dead grass, at least not on this scale.

  By the time his father was done, the entire front yard looked like a grassy wasteland. Thankfully, when he had aimed the hose at the mower blades, that, too, came right off like it had only just been applied.

  But his father wasn’t done. As they all gaped at what had become of the front yard, he told them all to meet him out back. They did as commanded and went around the house. When they reached the backyard, Richard out the back door, hose in hand, having snaked it all the way through the house.

  Richard aimed the hose upward and opened fire across the entire reachable yard. The water rained down like a storm, drenching the dirt and grass. It didn’t take long for the paint to start washing away. Richard stepped forward, pulling the hose further. Toby wasn’t sure how much length the thing had left.

  His dad made it rain all across the yard until the back started to look identical to the front, short, brown blades sticking up from the blackened ground. Toby could hardly believe his eyes as it all washed away. He could see the dread and awe in his mother’s eyes, the same feeling reflecting in everyone else’s.

  Then something even stranger happened. Toby stepped forward, unsure if what he was seeing was real or some sort of mirage like when you were lost in a desert. It was. The grass, where the water was showering down, was no long changing from green to brown. The color was holding strong against the water. His dad must have noticed as well because he turned the hose off.

  As soon as his dad set the hose on the ground, Toby raced forward through the sloppy, wet grass. He wanted to see what was going on firsthand. Part of him felt like this was his mystery, since he was the one that discovered the whole thing, and he wanted to be on the frontline of the investigation.

  Toby and his dad hurried over to where the grass was still green. Toby reached down and plucked up a handful of grass. He rubbed his finger against its waxy surface. The grass in the front did not feel waxy like this at all. It felt rugged, like it was ready to crumble into nothing if enough pressure was applied.

  He looked at his dad, who was staring at the grass in his own hand, probably thinking the same thing. This was grass, normal grass, how all of it should have been. Toby looked down at his feet, to where the grass turned from brown to green. He had to step back, to take it all in.

  The brown ended in a sort of crescent wave, like someone had actually spilled brown paint and where he had been staring was where the paint had run out. The line separating the green from the brown was smooth and continuous, almost perfect.

  “I’m going to keep spraying,” he said in a near whisper.

  Toby walked back over to the others, and Richard returned to the hose. He cranked it up and aimed it along where the colors separated. Like magic, one half of his water beam uncovered brown while the other half seemed to have no effect. This continued all the way across the yard until a clear area of separation was established. But Richard didn’t stop there; he continued hosing down the grass within the barrier, uncovering all the brown across the yard. He didn’t stop until water had touched almost every inch of the back yard.

  Everybody looked on in fascination. The brown began by the house and stretched across the yard, stopping just beyond the halfway point where it sputtered off in a distinct half-circle shape. Toby had no idea what to make of it, and neither did the others.

  Everyone remained in silence for a long minute until Richard started winding the hose back up.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said.

  8

  Toby had been upstairs for a little while, setting up what little he had brought to the new house, when a combination of boredom and a delicious aroma eventually dragged him downstairs. He followed it to the kitchen, where he found chicken cooking slowly in a crockpot. He licked his lips involuntarily. His stomach, which had been subdued and out of mind just a minute prior, was now groaning and rumbling, demanding he find something to eat soon or it was going to get angry.

  He wondered what exactly the chicken was going to be used to make, but when he looked around for his mom to ask, he didn’t see her. He peeked into the living room and didn’t see her there, either, or his dad for that matter. Robbie and Paisley were there, though, watching something on the television. Trevor was absent. Perhaps Trevor was gone somewhere with their mom and dad.

  “Anybo
dy know where Mom and Dad are?” he asked.

  Paisley looked at him, just now noticing him standing there. She pondered the question for a moment and was just opening her mouth to answer when Robbie beat her to it.

  “Out front, I think. Maybe taking care of the lawnmower or something.”

  He should have done that. Even though his dad had told him and the others to go inside, he should have stayed out there and taken care of the mower really quick. It was he who had gotten it out, after all, and his dad seemed stressed enough.

  When he went outside, his mother and father stopped talking like he had interrupted something. The look on his dad’s face told him he was probably just about to get sent back inside.

  “I should get back inside,” his mom said.

  His dad simply nodded like he had other things on his mind.

  “It smells great in there,” Toby said.

  “Well, it’s going to smell even better when it’s chicken noodle soup.”

  The idea of his mother’s chicken soup sent Toby’s taste buds into a pleasure spiral. His mom’s soups were legendary, especially the chicken. The last she made it, she had made an entire gigantic pot full that lasted them days, and he wondered if she would be doing the same this time.

  She walked past him and into the house. His dad looked down at the mower like there was still something wrong with it. Maybe cleaning it off had not done the trick.

  “Everything okay?” Toby asked.

  His dad scratched his head and sighed. He was about to lie and say everything was just fine when he stopped himself. Toby was growing up. He was sixteen now. While he wasn’t an adult, maybe he was old enough to be treated like someone who could handle some mildly sensitive information.

  “Honestly, I’m not really sure.”

  Toby remained quiet, and his dad continued on.

  “We paid a pretty decent lump of money for this place, and I don’t like the direction things are headed. The lawn is dead. The soil, like you said, is weird and black. Might have to have that checked out. And the basement smells like shit.”