Page 52 of Butcher & Blackbird
I stop at the edge of the yard. Rowan draws to a halt at my side. “Great curb appeal,” I whisper.
“So much better up close. The doll’s head really adds character,” he whispers back, nodding to the decapitated head of a 1950s-era Chatty Cathy doll staring back at us from the porch with soulless black eyes.
“I’ll take it if he throws in the…” I lean forward and squint at a patch of gray fur stuck beneath a shattered rocking chair. “…the…opossum?”
“I was going to go with ‘cat’, but sure.”
I straighten, turning to Rowan with my fist held between us.
“Sloane—”
“Rock–paper–scissors. Loser takes the front door,” I say with a dark grin.
Rowan regards me for a long moment before he shakes his head with a resigned sigh. His fist finally meets mine.
On a silent count of three, we make our choices, my scissors losing to Rowan’s rock. He frowns.
“Two out of three,” he hisses, grabbing my wrist when I start toward the steps.
“Forlosing? No way. Go to the back door and enjoy your advantage, weirdo.” I smile and crinkle my nose like it’s no big deal, even though Rowan can feel my pulse surging beneath his palm until I pull free.
I don’t look back as I focus on making it up the front steps alive. My chest burns to turn to Rowan, to stay with him and hunt by his side, but I don’t.
When I set a heel on the cracked planks of the stairs, I see Rowan in the periphery as he finally stalks toward the rear of the house.
With every silent step I take, I survey my chaotic surroundings, careful not to lose my balance or knock something over. There’s no sound from the house, no movement past the screen door, no menacing shadows illuminated by a flash of lightning. The first drops of rain hit the covered porch just as I reach the door, bouncing off tin cans and debris in a metallic melody.
I open the screen door just enough to slip inside, the quiet squeak of the rusted hinges absorbed by a crack of thunder that rattles the walls.
The scent of food and decay and mold blend in a nausea-inducing swirl as I start down a narrow hallway. A living room sits off to the left, with old furniture and original features covered in a film of dust. Flowered wallpaper peels from the walls and flutters in the breeze of the storm as it finds its way through open doors and broken windows. There’s a partially-mummified body sitting in an armchair next to the fireplace, her legs covered with a crocheted blanket and a Bible laying open in her skeletal hands. Her long, white hair lifts from her shoulders, a set of dentures still clinging to her slack jaws.
“Old Mama Mead, I presume,” I whisper to her as I take a few cautious steps into the room until I’m standing before her. “I bet you were a right bitch, weren’t you.”
Knowing that Harvey Mead follows the worn path of many other serial killers with a fixation on a controlling, overbearing, and likely abusive mother doesn’t make him any less dangerous.
But it certainly does give me some ideas…
I lean in close and grin at the leathery skin and hollow eyes of the woman in the armchair. “I’ll be seeing you soon, Mama Mead.”
With a wink, I firm my grip on my knife and leave the room, heading across the hall to the staircase that leads to the second floor.
The creaking steps are muffled by thunder and rain. It seems impossible that the house could be so devoid of human sounds after the brutal killing that just took place, but the only things I can hear are my heart and the storm.
When I arrive on the landing of the second story, the rain grows louder, the scent of it washing away the stench of the main floor. I wait for a moment, watching, listening. But nothing comes. No clues emerge about Harvey’s whereabouts as I pause before the mouth of a corridor.
I start inching forward.
First, I arrive at a bedroom filled with boxes. Magazines. Newspapers. Yellowed manuals for cars and tractors. Taking a turn in the room yields no worthwhile insights.
I re-enter the hallway and head to the next room, a bathroom with a cracked pedestal sink and a shower curtain clinging to the interior of a clawfoot tub, its formerly white plastic speckled in black mold. There’s no blood on the floor. No tracks. No unusual smells or sounds.
The next room I enter is the primary bedroom. Of all the rooms I’ve seen, this is the cleanest, though it would be a stretch to call it pristine. The window is filmed with dust and grime but it isn’t broken. The bed is a simple wrought iron frame, the sheets rumpled, a few clothes strewn across its surface and the floor. I check the room, but there’s no Harvey Mead here, so I don’t linger, deciding to go through his meager belongings once he’s dead.
I leave the room.
The next bedroom is across the hall. The sound of rain pelting metal containers dampens my footsteps as I step inside the small room. A hole in the ceiling gapes at the sky, cutting through the shattered beams of the attic. Lightning flashes overhead. Rain falls into the house to fill a series of metal pots and ceramic containers jammed against one another on a sheet of clear plastic that covers the floor. Surrounding the edge of the hole are bones that dangle from strings of wet yarn like wind chimes. Vertebrae twist and knock together in the breeze, rivulets of water streaming from their bleached bodies and wings.
I watch for a moment, pondering the psychopathy of the man who strung them here before I exit the room to head to the last door on the opposite side of the hall at the very end of the corridor.
