Cold Hands

Upstairs

Jerry's funeral was Saturday morning, and I didn't go, not in the least because of the sleepless night before, although that definitely was a contributing factor.

I just felt kind of like it wasn't my place, because I didn't really know him. I'd only seen the guy three times, and one of them was when he was dead. I knew the whole town was probably going to show up, and I wasn't about to go be that one stranger in the middle of a crowded room full of old people who had known him his entire life. Especially when I knew most of them would be watching me and my mom with narrowed eyes and suspicious whispers.

Because, I realized, we were just like Miss Steeley now. Me a little more so than my mom, because she was the preacher and people mostly seemed to like her. But I was the creepy guy that people were afraid to get to know because I lived in a creepy house and there was something wrong with me, and that made me mysterious. And it wasn't just because somebody died, either. People would have eventually found some reason or other to be suspicious anyway. People talk, because that's what people do. I was starting to feel bad for being so spooked by Miss Steeley at first. Perhaps we weren't so different after all.

I stayed home from the funeral so I wouldn't have to deal with that. I stayed because I didn't really want to see that casket and think about what the body inside looked like. Most of all, I stayed because I was going to get answers.

Don't go poking around too much in that house. That was what Miles Herbert had told me.

I wasn't really the poking type. At least, not like I used to be. When I was little, I poked around all the time. My dad called me Super Snooper. I went all over the place with my cheap toy magnifying glass and a notepad, hiding in cupboards, eavesdropping on conversations, solving the mysteries that I invented in my little world around me and pretending I was Scooby Doo. One time my neighbor's cat got run over by the garbage truck, and I became convinced it was a hit job. I collected clues like paw prints I drew in marker on leaves outside and suspicious cat hairs from the shower drain. My adventure came to an abrupt end when I got caught crawling into the neighbor's house through the cat flap to investigate the crime scene and got in big trouble.

I had grown up a lot since them. I had long since learned that if I minded my own business, it was a lot less likely that I would get myself into a big mess.

Don't go poking around.

I didn't go poking around anymore. Until now.

Because this wasn't really somebody else's business now. It was mine. This was the house I lived in. Whatever its secrets were, it was my right to find out. Because now I was afraid that whatever this house was hiding could kill me.

I had never believed in ghosts until last night. I had wanted to, of course, when my dad died. Doesn't everybody want to believe in ghosts when somebody they love is taken from them? I had wanted him to float right through my wall when I was crying at night and stroke my hair and tell me it was going to be okay, tell me he wasn't really gone, tell me I would be able to walk again someday. He never did. The dead stay dead.

And yet, somebody had been in my house last night. Somebody had moved that book. Somebody had left footprints on the floor. Somebody had made a ruckus upstairs.

It went back further, little things I hadn't been willing to even acknowledge were wrong until now. Somebody had been slamming doors and blowing open windows when there was no breeze. Somebody had been the creaking footsteps in empty rooms. Little creepy things that I had refused to dwell on that all suddenly had a more sinister significance.

As far as I was concerned, there were only two possible explanations. Either there was someone alive hiding in this house, or there was someone long dead. I wasn't sure which one terrified me more.