Charnel House Read Free

blushed. “As a matter of fact,” he said, embarrassed, “I’ve always been pretty interested in spirit manifestations. It kind of runs in the family.”
    â€œA hard-boiled scientist like you?”
    â€œNow, come on,” said Dan, “it’s not as nutty as it seems, all this spirit-world stuff. There have been some pretty astounding cases. And anyway, my aunt used to say that the ghost of Buffalo Bill Cody came and sat by her bedside every night to tell her stories of the Old West.”
    â€œBuffalo Bill?”
    Dan pulled a self-deprecating face. “That’s what she said. Maybe I shouldn’t have believed her.”
    I sat back my chair. There was a friendly hubbub of chatter in the bar, and they were bringing out pieces of fried chicken and spare ribs, which reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
    â€œYou think I should go up there?” I asked Dan, eyeing a girl in a tight white T-shirt with “Oldsmobile Rocket” printed across her breasts.
    â€œWell, let’s put it this way, I’d go. In fact, maybe we should go up there together. I’d love to hear a house that breathes.”
    â€œYou would, huh? Okay, if you want to split the taxi fare, we’ll go. But don’t think I can guarantee this guy. He’s very old, and he may be just hallucinating.”
    â€œAn hallucination is a trick of the eyes.”
    â€œI’m beginning to think that girl in the T-shirt is a trick of the eyes.”
    Dan turned around, and the girl caught his eye, and he blushed a deep shade of red. “You always do that,” he complained irritably. “They must think I’m some kind of sex maniac in here.”
    We finished up our beers and caught a taxi up to Pilarcitos Street. It was one of those short sloping streets where you park your car when you’re visiting a Japanese restaurant on the main drag, and which, queasy on too much tempura and sake, you can never find again afterward. The houses were old and silent, with turrets and gables and shadowy porches, and considering that Mission Street was only a few yards away, they seemed to be strangely brooding and out of touch with time. Dan and I stood outside 1551 in the warm evening breeze, looking up at the Gothic tower and the carved balcony, and the grayish paint that flaked off it like the scales from a dead fish.
    â€œYou don’t believe a house like this could breathe?” he asked me, sniffing.
    â€œI don’t believe any house can breathe. But it smells like he needs his drains checked.”
    â€œFor Christ’s sake,” Dan complained. “No shop talk after hours. You think I go round cocktail parties looking through my guests’ hair for lice?”
    â€œI wouldn’t put it past you.”
    There was a rusted wrought-iron gate, and then five angled steps that led up to the porch. I pushed the gate open, and it groaned like a dying dog. Then we went up the steps and searched around in the gloom of the porch for the front doorbell. All the downstairs windows overlooking the street were shuttered and locked, and so there didn’t seem much point in whistling or calling out. Down the hill, a police car sped past with its siren warbling, and a girl was laughing as she pranced along the street with two young boys. All this was happening within sight and earshot, and yet up here in the entrance of 1551, there was nothing but shadowy silence, and a feeling that lost years were eddying past us, leaking out of the letter box and from under the elaborate front door like sand seeping out of a bucket.
    â€œThere’s a knocker here,” Dan said. “Maybe I should give it a couple of raps.”
    I peered into the darkness. “As long as you don’t quote ‘Nevermore’ at the same time.”
    â€œJesus,” said Dan. “Even the knocker’s creepy.”
    I stepped forward and took a look at it. It was a huge old knocker,