Serpent's Tooth. Michael R. Collings
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which I had barely noticed earlier that morning, had been white, while Greta’s were pink shaded with yellow, what used to be called Peace roses.
Otherwise the two places seemed almost identical.
When we approached closer, however, I could see signs that things were not quite the same. The clapboard panels on Greta’s house were beginning to peel and splinter, as if they had not been tended for some years. The house needed a new coat of paint and the windows were dusty, suggesting that they hadn’t been washed since the last rainstorm some time before.
The kitchen door was just as dilapidated as the rest of the house. Where Janet’s had opened silently, mute testimony to Carver’s carpentering skill and his resolute concern for keeping his mother’s house in good shape, Greta’s door squealed and balked. The noise grated on our ears, especially in the quiet of the early morning.
“I tried to come by when I could and take care of things,” Carver muttered as if in apology, “but I haven’t had much time lately.”
“Didn’t Eric...,” I began.
“Most people called him ‘Rick,’” Carver said. “Except for his grandmother. And Miz Sears. They always called him ‘Eric.’ And he wasn’t much...he didn’t....” Carver faltered.
“He was not much into manual labor,” Victoria completed. “Unless he was paid for it.” She glanced quickly around the place, taking in the shaggy grass, the scraggly appearance of the un-pruned roses. “Greta thought that he might learn to like working with his hands, but he never did.”
I had more questions but now didn’t seem like the right time.
The kitchen smelled.
It wasn’t rank or anything like that. There was just a trace of unpleasant odors—the garbage can by the door was covered and clean, but it smelled like it should have been taken out a day or two before. There were several pots and pans stacked on the counter, their contents crusted and dried. They should have been long since washed and put away.
And the place smelled old.
You know what I mean. It’s really nothing quite identifiable. Just an occasional whiff of something slightly medicinal, something nearly like talc or baby powder, mixed with the slightest suggestion of staleness.
Victoria’s house would never smell old, no matter how many more years she spent there.
Greta’s house had probably smelled that way for decades. Victoria had mentioned on the way over from Janet’s that Arnie Johansson, Greta’s husband, had died some years before of a particularly virulent cancer. First they had noted a few slight swellings in his armpits and groin. By the time the couple—then in their sixties—had finally overcome their fears sufficiently to visit a doctor, the only news they received was bad.
Mr. Johansson was given three to six months to live, a year at the absolute most.
He had lasted fewer than six weeks.
Basically, once he received the word, he had given up. He went home that day, Victoria said, sat down in an old bentwood rocker, and had barely moved again—had barely even spoken again—until Greta had made him a bed on the living room sofa.
There he had died.
The house still carried the lingering scent of death.
Or perhaps I just imagined it.
The living room was as disheveled-looking as the kitchen had been. A newspaper lay open on the carpet. A man’s T-shirt hung limply over the back of an armchair. An old-fashioned knitting bag crouched by the foot of the sofa, its balls of yarn tangled around a bit of half-completed work.
Everything looked as if Greta, like her husband before her, had faced something unpleasant and unwanted and had simply given up.
“He’s upstairs.”
Carver’s voice was startlingly loud. The only other sound was the hollow, solemn tick-tick-tick of a grandmother clock on the mantle. I glanced over.
It read half past three.
Greta had apparently been careful to keep it wound but had not cared enough to correct the time.
“Right, then,” Victoria said. She led the way through the living room toward a staircase in the far corner.
The stairs were as old and worn as the rest of the house. The treads were unpolished, uncarpeted, splintering along the leading edge. I would not have cared to go up or down them barefoot. There was only one rail and it was smooth, more from constant wear than from any particular care. It felt slightly greasy to the touch.
At the top of the stairs, Victoria paused and motioned for Carver to lead the way.
The first two doors were closed. Guest rooms perhaps, or simply bedrooms once intended to be filled with the playful offspring of the original builders—always assuming that the Johanssons hadn’t actually built the place themselves—but now empty and dusty, the air inside hot and musty and thick.
The third door was ajar.
Carver halted outside the door. His hand reached out as if to push it further open, then dropped to his side.
“That’s all right, dear,” Victoria said and she stepped past him into the room.
“Oh.”
That was all she said. But it was enough.
I looked through the doorway.
The room was a shambles, even discounting the still figure of the young man lying on the bed, the blood that had seeped from an unknown number of wounds both seen and unseen staining the yellowing sheet beneath the body and already beginning to crust. What had once—not that long ago—been startlingly red was now rusty-looking and brown.
The rest of the room looked as if it had been, as the police might have said, “tossed.”
Clothing lay everywhere, scattered on the single dingy orange dresser that looked as if it had to have been picked up in a moment of utmost need at some garage sale or second-hand flea market. Most of the drawers hung partially open, and the one that did not, fit badly into the frame, leaving thick lines of darkness surrounding the front. One pull was missing; the raw ends of a screw protruded an inch or so outward.
More clothing covered the single chair, a straight-backed, uncomfortable piece of furniture that looked as if it might serve more adequately as a repository for soiled underwear and filthy-soled socks than as a place to sit. I half believed that I could smell the dirty laundry from where I stood, clear across the room.
The closet door stood open, revealing a tangle of old-fashioned wire hangers jutting from the rod, as if whatever had been hanging there had been torn away, even violently torn away. A T-shirt—with the faded imprint “Go, Longhorns” visible on the back, hung from the top corner of the door. Most of the clothing that the closet was originally designed to hold was apparently piled pell-mell on the floor.
The carpet was almost invisible beneath a layer of cast-off jeans, several sweatshirts, at least a dozen shoes—all of them sneakers in various stages of disintegration—no two of which seemed like pairs, and a sprinkling of fast-food wrappers, stained pizza boxes, and assorted other detritus sprinkled like inedible condiments across the mess.
Only one piece of furniture looked untouched, although even there the top was laden with unidentifiable lumps and piles. On the four shelves beneath, rows of books stood, to all appearances untouched, certainly unread.
The room stank of dirty socks and old pizza...and, faintly, of urine and something worse.
“What happened here?” I think my voice must have communicated how stunned I was. “Was he robbed, do you think?”
“No, ma’am. It always looked like this. Sometimes when I would come by and his grandmother was already up, I would hear her screaming at him to clean up after himself. But he never would.”
“Nor