Read Online lost boy lost girl by Peter Straub - Free Book Online Page B

the skateboard’s deck flew up into his waiting hand. Jimbo rumbled up beside him and braked to a halt by planting one foot on the ground.
    “Stellar,” Jimbo said. “So why did you stop, yo?”
    Mark said nothing.
    “What’re you looking at?”
    “That house up there.” Mark pointed.
    “What about it?”
    “You ever seen that place before? I mean, really
seen
it?”
    “It hasn’t gone anywhere, dude,” Jimbo said. He took a few steps forward, and Mark followed. “Yeah, I’ve seen it. So have you. We run past that stupid place every time we come down this street.”
    “I swear to you, I have never, ever seen that house before. In my whole life.”
    “Bullshit.” Jimbo stalked about fifteen feet ahead, then turned around and feigned boredom and weariness.
    Irritated, Mark flared out at him. “Why would I bullshit you about something like this? Fuck you, Jimbo.”
    “Fuck you, too, Marky-Mark.”
    “Don’t call me that.”
    “Then stop bullshitting me. It’s stupid, anyhow. I suppose you never saw that cement wall behind it either, huh?”
    “Cement wall?” Mark trudged up beside his friend.
    “The one behind your house. On the other side of the alley from your sorry-ass back fence.”
    The wooden fence Philip Underhill had years ago nailed into place around a latched gate at the far end of their little backyard sagged so far over that it nearly touched the ground.
    “Oh, yeah,” Mark said. “The wall thing, with the barbed wire on top. What about it?”
    “It’s in back of this place, dummy. That’s the house right behind yours.”
    “Oh, yeah,” Mark said. “Right you are.” He squinted uphill. “Does that place have numbers on it?”
    Rust-brown holes pocked the discolored strip of the frame where the numerals had been.
    “Somebody pried ’em off. Doesn’t matter. Check out the numbers on the other side. What are they?”
    Mark glanced at the house closest to him. “Thirty-three twenty-one.” He looked at Jimbo, then carried his skateboard up the low hill until he was standing in front of the abandoned building and read off the numbered address of the next house in line. “Thirty-three twenty-five.”
    “So what’s the address of this one?”
    “Thirty-three twenty-three,” Mark said. “Really, I never saw this place before.” He began to giggle at the sheer absurdity of what he had said.
    Jimbo grinned and shook his head. “Now we got that out of the way—”
    “They had a fire,” Mark said. “Check out the porch.”
    “Huh,” Jimbo said. The wooden floor of the porch and the four feet of brick below the right front window had been scorched black. These signs of an old fire resembled a fading bruise, not a wound. The place had assimilated the dead fire into its being.
    “Looks like someone tried to burn it down,” Jimbo said.
    Mark could see the flames traveling along the porch, running up the bricks, then subsiding, growing fainter, dying. “Place wouldn’t burn,” he said. “You can see that, can’t you? The fire just went out.” He stepped forward, but not far enough to place a foot on the first rectangular stone of the walkway. There was a bemused, abstracted expression on his face. “It’s empty, right? Nobody lives there.”
    “Duh,” said Jimbo.
    “You don’t think that’s a little unusual?”
    “I think you’re a little unusual.”
    “Come on, think about it. Do you see any other empty houses around Sherman Park? Have you ever heard of one?”
    “No, but I’ve seen this one. Unlike you.”
    “But why is it empty? These houses must be a pretty good deal, if you’re not completely racist, like my dad.”
    “Don’t leave Jackie out,” Jimbo said. “He’d be insulted.”
    A well-known foe of skateboards, Skip, old Omar Hillyard’s even more ancient, big-nosed dog, pushed itself to its feet and uttered a sonorous bark completely empty of threat.
    “I mean,” Jimbo went on, “it’s not one of those places with whaddyacallems, parapets,