Aaaiiieee by Jeffrey Thomas Read Free Book Online

early 1950 Phillips became a feared and hated celebrity again as the rumors spread. One man whom Phillips had raged at in the pub claimed that Phillips had alluded to “experiments in human longevity,” and suggested that he had kidnapped the two old-timers to use as human guinea pigs, figuring they wouldn’t be missed much. Others quickly took up this belief. Finally it was brought to the attention of the town chief of police, Richard McGee. He found the rumors ridiculous and groundless, and Edwin Phillips was never officially questioned about the disappearances. But Greg Hitchings and Frankie Allen were never heard from again, and even McGee couldn’t offer a plausible explanation.
    And now the funny story. In May of 1950 a boy of about twelve was found wandering around the sand-pits across from the reservoir. He seemed dazed, maybe deaf and dumb (he didn’t respond to questioning), his over-sized clothes were in tatters and he was seriously under-fed and dehydrated. In police custody, he died of cardiac arrest no more than two hours after he’d been picked up. The “Mystery Boy” was photographed and his picture run in the papers, but he was never identified and was ultimately buried in the potter’s field corner of Pine Grove.
    The thing was, the pitiful Mystery Boy had a large pink C-shaped scar on his temple near his right eyebrow. I’m looking at it now, quite distinct, in a copy of that yellowed old newspaper my grandmother had fortunately saved all those years (zealous child lover, gossip lover and collector that she had been).
    Frankie Allen, fifty-eight at the time of his disappearance, had had a large pink C-shaped scar near his right eyebrow, from a time when he’d fallen down drunk and bashed his head a good one on the curb.
    And that was how the Yellow House got so famous. And to top it all off, Crazy Ed Phillips himself vanished sometime in the summer of 1957, a few months before I was born. He hadn’t packed, either, and no trace of him ever turned up. Some now say a serial killer had claimed Greg Hitchings and old Frankie (maybe had something to do with that boy, too)…then came back and got old Crazy Ed. In any case, his house stood empty a long thirteen years, for whatever legal reasons, until 1970. I mean to look into that oddly lengthy delay.
    When I came back to live here this past spring, I went out of my way one day to walk down to the Yellow House with my fiancé, to point it out to her and tell her the stories. She had to know them if she were to become an official resident of this town. She acted disgusted and irritated by the whole thing…that’s how I could tell she was becoming afraid. I ate it up; I’ve always loved a good nasty mystery.
    “The Mystery Boy was old Frankie Allen!”I told Pammy.
    “Oh grow up,” she said, hugging her arms and anxious to go. But as we walked on, her curiosity wouldn’t let up, and she meekly asked me, “So what did he look like; have you seen an old picture?”
    “What, of Frankie Allen? No.”
    “No, of Ed Phillips. What did he look like? Creepy? Like a mad scientist?”
    “Of course. I don’t have a picture, but my mother told me he had sunken suspicious-looking eyes and wild uncombed red hair, and he was always unshaven.”
    “How old was he when he disappeared?”
    “In his fifties, I guess.”
    “So he could conceivably still be alive today.”
    “Yeah, he’s got a cabin in Tibet with Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa. The guy would be—what—ninety almost, now.”
    “So?”
    *     *     *
    Of course Halloween has always been my big day, and so it was natural and inevitable that on this first Halloween back in my old home town I should want to walk to the Ed Phillips place. It was this impulse that has led to my current investigation of what went on in Crazy Ed’s “kennel.”
    I couldn’t convince Pammy to go with me…she thought it was immature and stupid, and she was irritated and disgusted (afraid). So I told her fine, I’ll