“It’s boring around here, man. It’s been a lot more fun since you got here, but…I thought we were just making stuff up.”
Peter stared. Dill tried again.
“This morning I said that you should forget the hobos, because we’d be lucky to make it through one day of school, right? Like we’d die, maybe – right?”
“Yeah.”
“I never believed we were gonna die,” Dill scoffed. “I mean, I knew we could get beat up, and things were gonna suck, but we weren’t gonna die. If I thought there were really killer hobos out in the woods, do you think I would even go to school? Man, I’d be out of here so fast it’d make your head spin. I’d hitch a ride to Hawaii and live there for the rest of my life.”
“I can’t believe you don’t believe me!” Peter fumed.
Dill shrugged. “I never saw them. I didn’t even see the one in the garden.”
“What about the handprint on my shirt? What about that?”
“I don’t know…I figured you put it there with your own hand, and you were just trying to scare the bejeezus outta me. But I’m kind of tired of it now, and I wanna go watch television.”
“Go out there with me,” Peter challenged him.
“Why?”
“Because it is real. Because I did see something.”
“If you did see something, why would we go out there in the first place?”
“If you don’t believe me, then what does it matter?”
Dill sighed. “All right. Fine. There’s nothing good on till five o’clock, anyway.”
23
The walk down to the forest was a silent one. Despite his anger at not being believed, Peter tried to put himself in Dill’s shoes. After all, if Peter told his Mom about the hobos, she wouldn’t believe him.
But she wouldn’t have said she believed him in the first place, either.
“You thought I was just making all this up?” Peter asked, breaking the silence.
“Well…yeah. I mean, I thought it was a game.”
“But do you believe me now when I tell you it’s not a game?”
Dill looked uncomfortable. “If it’s not a game, then either you’re crazy, or I live next to a bunch of killer hobos. Either way, I’m not exactly whoopin’ for joy.”
Peter nodded. “Okay, I can see that. It’s kind of like, do you want to get eaten by a lion or by a bear. Neither one’s a good choice.”
Dill looked at him sideways. “You don’t…think you’re a lion or a bear, do you?”
“Dill, I don’t EAT people! I’m not crazy!”
“That’s what all the crazy people say,” Dill muttered under his breath.
They reached the end of the fence. Peter looked desperately on the ground for footprints, but there was nothing. The weather was warm, and there hadn’t been rain for who knew how long. Any exposed soil was hard as cardboard.
Peter gazed into the woods. Things got dim rather quickly – he could see maybe fifty feet into the forest before it became a tangle of tree trunks and shadows.
“We gotta go in there,” Peter said.
“What, so you can kill me and I’ll never be seen again? I don’t think so.”
“Come on, Dill, you gotta believe me.”
“It’s almost five. Friends is gonna be on.”
Peter stared at Dill. “You watch that?!”
Dill kicked the ground. “I like Friends,” he said in a petulant little voice.
“They’ve been showing those reruns for 500 years. You’ve probably already seen whatever it is sixteen times already.”
“Well, I can go watch Friends, or I can get killed and eaten by a crazy kid in the woods. Hmmm, let me think about that.”
“You said yourself you could beat me up cause you’re older.”
Dill cocked his head. “Yeah…”
“You could walk in back of me so you can see everything I do.”
A few seconds passed before Dill made a counteroffer.
“If you put your arms inside your shirt, so you look like you don’t have any, I’ll go in the woods.”
“What?” Peter asked, confused. “Why do I have to pretend like I have no arms?”
“It’ll be harder to get your arms out to attack me with, and I can beat you up faster.”
Peter sighed. “Fine.”
He started to pull his right arm in through the shirtsleeve hole.
“And you gotta tuck in your shirt to make it even harder.”
“Fine.” Peter tucked in his shirt first, then started pulling his arms in again.
“And I’m gonna get a big stick and wallop you on the head if you start acting crazy.”
“Maybe I should be worried about going in the woods with you, you ever thought of that?”
“You want me to go in the woods with you? Tuck your arms in. And I’m gettin’ a stick.”
“Fine.”
“FINE,” Dill fired back.
Once Peter had his arms safely inside his shirt, he and Dill walked into the forest. True to his word, Dill found a nice-sized branch that would be perfect for smacking somebody in the head.
“You better not use that on me,” Peter warned.
“Just keep walkin’, armless boy.”
The trees were all different types. Peter didn’t know leaves by their shapes, but he recognized oaks and maples. Tons of pine trees, too – tall straight ones with spiky branches, and ones that looked more like Christmas trees. Leaves and pine needles formed a springy layer beneath their feet. There were lots of little saplings and tiny stalks, and brambles and patches of impenetrable vines, but Peter and Dill were able to make their way by going around whatever they couldn’t go through.
The striking thing was how dark it was. There were very few patches of sunlight shining through the tree tops. The forest looked like the sun was hiding away and dark clouds had taken over the sky. Except that back in the field, the sun had been shining happily.
It was like twilight, or early school mornings in the winter when the sun hadn’t risen all the way yet. Spooky.
Peter stumbled for the umpteenth time, but managed to keep his balance. “If I fall and put out my eye, I’m going to tell them it was your fault.”
Dill shrugged. “I’ll tell ‘em you went crazy and wanted to eat people. I ain’t gonna be your baby back ribs.”
A second passed, and Dill began to sing the song from the commercial, “I want my baby-back-baby-back-baby-back-baby-back…”
Peter stopped walking. “Hey, Dill…the birds quit chirping.”
Dill stopped, too, and looked all around. “Yeah?” Then he caught himself, stepped back, and raised his stick. “Hey, you better not be distractin’ me before you try to kill me.”
Peter was angry now. “Are you going to cut it out? It’s bad enough I gotta walk around like this, you could at least give me the benefit of the doubt.”
Dill looked at him, then lowered the stick. “Yeah, okay, no birds. No hobos, either.” Dill’s eyes suddenly got wide, and he raised the stick again like a samurai sword. “Which means you’re crazy.”
“This is getting really old,” Peter snapped. “I’m taking my arms out of my shirt, and you better not hit me with that thing because I really am going to kick your butt if you…Dill?”
Dill wasn’t listening. His eyes had focused past Peter, deep into the woods.
“What’s that?” he asked.
24
Peter turned around. Deeper in the woods sat a building of some sort. At this distance, dozens of trees almost completely obscured it.
“I don’t know,” Peter said.
Dill scampered off towards the new mystery. “Come on!”
Peter popped his arms out from his shirt and followed.
They stopped about thirty feet from the building, at the edge of a clearing where the treeline broke. In the middle of the clearing sat an old, old house. Or maybe it was a school. It seemed more stately than a home, more official.
Whatever it w
as, it was positively ancient. The thing was built on four pillars of rocks, one at each corner. Underneath it was hard to see much, but the floor was definitely about three feet off the ground. There appeared to be a tree growing up through the middle of the building, though, straight from the forest floor and into the house.
The boards that made up the outside walls were gray and weathered. The door dangled at an angle on rusted hinges, and the floorboards visible in the doorway looked rotten and crumbling. The roof had hole after hole poked in it, and one entire corner was caved in. There were windows, but no glass in any of the panes. Vines had overgrown the walls, covering it in ivy.
The boys hid behind a large oak tree and waited.
“What if the hobos are in there?” Peter whispered.
“I don’t see anything,” Dill whispered back.
They waited longer. There were no sounds at all.
“Let’s go over to the side and try to look in the window,” Dill suggested.
They circled around the building and looked for any sign of movement in the windows.
Nothing. Just darkness inside, with a few shafts of light poking through the roof and shining through the dusty air.
“What should we do?” Peter asked.
“Let’s go up to the door.”
They crept along the side of the building and made their way to the front steps, where they waited breathlessly for what seemed forever.
There wasn’t even the sound of a mouse skittering inside.
Dill put his foot on the first wooden step.
CREEEEEAAAAAK.
The step groaned under his weight like a vampire in its grave on a Sunday horror movie marathon.
Peter and Dill stood still as statues.
Nothing happened.
Peter looked into the building. It was hard to see much, but the pinpoints of light shining through the roof showed a little of the interior. There seemed to be benches inside, just like an old-time-movie schoolhouse.
Dill put more weight on the step, and it groaned louder. Then he took another step up…creeeeeeaaaaak.
Nothing from inside the building. No noise.
Dill walked up the rest of the stairs and through the doorway. Peter followed, his heart thudding in his throat.
25
The inside of the building was dark and filled with cobwebs. They drifted from the ceiling beams and filled ever corner. Dill poked at them with his stick to clear a path.
“This is really freaky,” he murmured.
Rough-hewn benches filled the room, about five on each side of a center aisle that divided the building in two. The aisle led directly to a tree trunk that jutted straight up out of the floor. It was cut off straight and level, although the surface was marred by jagged cuts and slashes. It was the same tree trunk they had seen outside. The floorboards had been built around it, so obviously it had been intentional.
Peter looked around. Dead flowers hung on the walls in bouquets – not just dead, but withered. Like they would collapse into dust at the lightest touch.
Dill walked down the center aisle to the tree trunk. Every step made the floor underneath him groan.
“It’s like a table, dude!” he called back to Peter. “Somebody made a table out of this tree!”
As Peter walked along the wall, there was a cracking sound, and his right sneaker dropped out from under him. He fell to his knees, then hurriedly got back up on his feet.
Dill looked around, spooked. “What was that? What happened?”
Peter rubbed his shin and looked at where one of the floorboards had given way beneath him. Three feet below, he could see the weed-choked forest floor under the old building.
“The floor cracked. Watch where you’re walking,” he warned.
Peter looked up again. Besides flowers on the wall, there were also small animal skulls hanging there. Tiny ones, maybe from squirrels or beavers. The largest might have been from a dog.
A shiver ran up and down his spine.
“This is awesome, man,” Dill said as he climbed up onto the tree trunk. “I gotta admit, it’s way better than Friends.”
Peter kept walking to the very back of the building. He now stood behind Dill, who was dancing like a fool on the tree trunk table.
Vines grew out of the rotting floorboards and covered the wall completely. But there was movement behind the vines, in the gaps between the individual strands of green.
Peter gasped and stood still.
The movement stopped. Except for something off to the right…
“Dill, stop,” Peter commanded without looking behind him.
Suddenly, the movement behind the vines ceased.
“What?” Dill whispered.
Peter looked back. Dill was frozen in a karate kid pose, his arms up and one leg cocked in the air, ready to kick somebody in the head.
Peter turned back and raised an arm to the vines, and the movement was reflected behind them. He took a handful of leaves and ripped them away.
There was a mirror on the wall.
He could see his hand reflected quite clearly. The mirror was dusty and dirty, but his hand was visible. Peter pulled more vines off and could see his own eyes.
“Come down here and help me,” Peter yelled.
Dill hopped off the tree trunk and helped him rip away the vines. “What do you think this place was?”
“I don’t know,” Peter said. “I was thinking maybe a school.”
“I’d go to a school like this,” Dill said. “Trees growing out of the floor? That’s a pretty freakin’ cool school.”
“I don’t what kind of a school has dead animal skulls on the walls, though.”
“Really?” Dill exclaimed, and looked around. “Awesome! I would SO go to school here!”
They cleared a good portion of the vines away and were able to make out their faces in the gap. Dill waved at himself.
“That’s a good-lookin’ dude there,” he nodded.
“Thank you,” Peter joked.
“I meant me.” Dill moved closer to the dusty, dirt-specked glass. “I seem to be standing next to a complete dork, though.”
Peter laughed. “I think you got the two mixed up.”
“Peter,” Dill hissed.
“Yeah?”
“P-Peter…look in the mirror…” Dill whimpered.
Peter frowned and peered closer. His face was fairly clear, despite the dirt and dust. There wasn’t anything unusual.
But then a shadow of movement caught his eye, and he focused on what lay behind him.
There were outlines of shoulders and heads.
Heads with hats.
26
Peter froze. Every hair on his neck raised.
The men…the men from the garden were behind them, seated on the benches.
That’s when it hit Peter: this wasn’t a school house.
It was a church.
Except there were no crosses here. But there were animal skulls…
It was like no church Peter had ever seen before, not even in the scariest movies he’d ever watched.
Peter stayed still, as though the hobos couldn’t see him.
They didn’t move, either. At least, their reflections didn’t move.
“You see them?” Dill whispered, almost crying.
“Yeah.”
“Is that them?”
“I think so.”
“How’d they get there?”
“I don’t know.”
“I didn’t hear them.”
“Neither did I.
“…what do we do?”
The hobos still weren’t moving.
“Run on three,” Peter whispered. “One…”
Dill shook his head. “Wait!”
“Two…”
“No,” Dill hissed.
“THREE!”
They turned, and the floor groaned beneath them.
The hobos were on their feet, covering the entire center aisle of the church.
Their black coats flapped as they moved.
Skinny black hands reached into the air.
Hollow eye sockets stared out of charred, wrinkled faces.
“OH CRAP!” Dill screamed.
There was no way out. The hobos were lumbering up the aisle.
Peter didn’t pause to count them, but there were at least ten. Probably thirteen.
He moved to the right – the floor creaked noisily beneath him –
The hobos on the right side followed his move, cutting him off from the wall.
No way out.
Peter looked up. The ceiling was too far out of reach.
He looked down…
Through the knotholes in the floorboards, he could see the ground below.
“JUMP!” he screamed at Dill.
“WHAT?” Dill screamed back.
“JUMP HIGH!” Peter bellowed. “NOW!”
Both boys launched themselves into the air at the same time.
They seemed to hang there forever, as the hobos reached the wooden tree trunk…
And then Peter and Dill were crashing down into the floor.
The boards gave way with a horrendous SNAP, and the boys slammed into the ground.
Pieces of dried, rotten wood showered them from all sides.
Peter started crawling, even though he had the air knocked out of him. As soon as it came back into his lungs, he roared, “GO, GO, GO!”
He bellied down against the ground.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
From up above him, black arms smashed through the floorboards and swung about wildly like nightmare plants trying to encircle their prey.
Peter dodged one that came within inches of his face.
“PETER!” Dill screamed. Peter looked over.
One of the arms had grabbed Dill’s shirt, and he couldn’t get away.
Peter crawled next to his friend and aimed his best kung fu kick right into the forearm of the grasping limb.
SNAP.
It was like doing a karate chop through a dry stick.
The upper arm disappeared into the hole in the floor above them. The hand still hung on to Dill’s shirt.
“GO!” Peter howled. Dill didn’t have to be told twice.
They got clear of the edge of the school building and struggled to their feet.
The hand was still holding on to Dill’s shirt. He screeched and squealed, and knocked it away like it was a wasp crawling up his jeans.
The hand hit the ground and spasmed, then tried to grab on to anything within its reach.
Around the corner of the scary church, a hobo appeared. Its face was a horrible mass of burned wrinkles, with blackened teeth jutting out of a lipless mouth.