Ask the Dark by Henry Turner Read Free Book Online

noise at all, and I went on.
    I gone through three/four rooms, stopping every couple feet to listen, but never heard a thing. Couldn’t see nothing. Every window in there was covered with that black plastic. House was empty. Somebody’d been around, sure, ’cause here and there I walked over trash and cans I felt crush under my feet, beer cans, and I smelled old stale cigarettes and reefers’n such. Whole place stunk bad with never getting aired, lemme tell you.
    Ever once in a while wind would move through the rooms and them bags on the windows would sort’f puff out, I mean inflate a little, and it spooked me, seeming like the whole house was breathing.
    I come downstairs’n went around and saw the kitchen. In there on the stove was a frying pan. Somebody’d had a bite to eat, I could see that, because the pan weren’t washed but dirty with grease, prob’ly just warmed some takeout. A little clock dial on the stove was lit and that was the only electric I seen on in there. Course I never tried no light switches.
    Next I come in the room I’d looked in when I was at Hooper’s. Like I said, the plastic on the window there had come away one side where it was stapled, and that let a little light in, just the faintest.
    First thing I done was check out the clothes I seen earlier. What I found was a dark flannel thing, more like a shirt than a coat, same sort lumberjacks wear. I stooped and grabbed it. Close to my face I could just see it was green plaid, with black boxy lines on it. Nothing in the pockets, so I tossed it down. There was a few other coats lying there too, prob’ly put in here for summer storage. I picked one up.
    That flannel shirt was sized for a man, but this coat was a boy’s and would’f fit me if I’d tried it. I held it out and seen it was a winter coat, one’f them puffy ones all filled with feathers some boys wear, with a pair of mittens fixed to the sleeve. I felt around’n unclipped some sort of buckle, and they came loose. So’s not to drop’m I stuffed’m in my back pocket, mittens, I mean. Pockets was empty on the coat, and I was gonna toss it but I seen something wrote on the collar and I was curious. I wished I had me some sort’f light, ’cause I could see it was initials, wrote in Magic Marker, way a boy’s mother writes when she don’t want him to lose his coat at school. But try all I could, I couldn’t make them letters out, ’cause they was too faded.
    And then I just shook my head, thinking what a dumbass I was to’f busted in a house to find something worth taking and now was trying to read letters on some boy’s coat, so I tossed’t to the floor, disgusted.
    Now I seen them boxes. I opened one of’m, and what I found first was just junk. I don’t mean trash, but just stuff like can openers and cups and saucers, sort’f things you might use if you was maybe camping out in a house but not really living there.
    I closed it good so nobody’d know it been touched, and I went ahead and opened the next one, just to see. It was the same. Old cups and plates and knives and forks, and I cussed under my breath at the luck of it.
    I was gonna give up when my finger went under a lip of cardboard and I lifted it. It was there making the box have two layers, a top one with the cups and such on it, and another underneath. I didn’t want to pull it up and knock all the cups out ’cause’f the noise, so what I done was just feel around, and my little finger caught on something sharp, so I pulled it up and out.
    It came up slow, ’cause it was snagged on other stuff down there. But when I got it out I held it close to my face, and even in the dimmest light I seen it was a necklace stuck with hard little jewels.
    I didn’t say nothing out loud. But inside my voice was whooping. What I done next was stoop down, and real careful not to make no noise I pulled up the rest of that cardboard piece, all the cups on top sliding over.
    I couldn’t see it all, but it was full, and