Even a cursory glance showed that 1066 differed from the rest. It was dark, for one thing, inside and out. No lights gleamed warmly through draped windows or reflected on a tidy, well-tended lawn. Its shadowed stucco was scarred and pitted in half a dozen places from peltings with rocks and sticks. A necklace of broken glass circled the foundations where hot-rodders had tossed their beer bottles on Saturday nights. The lawn was a lawn in name only-instead of grass, dusky grey-green weeds that looked jaundiced in the fading light clustered in harsh knots and hillocks. Even the weeds were scrawny and half-dead from lack of care.
1066 Oleander Place.
McCall angled the Lincoln into the driveway, fully intending just to turn around and get the hell away from the place. With everything else he had on his mind, the last thing he needed was to start thinking about 1066. He closed his eyes. His forehead furrowed as if he had just felt the first hammering assault of a mind-shattering migraine. He shook his head and stared ahead. He refused to let those memories through.
But the next thing he knew, his hand rested on the key dangling from the ignition. In spite of his better judgment, he twisted it and throttled the engine into silence. He opened the door and stood, an angular silhouette with one foot propped on the Lincoln’s glossy frame and the other crushing a straggling weedy morning glory that had wandered halfway across the drive.
He glanced over his shoulder. The sun was gone. The sky still glowed, but now it was mostly an unhealthy yellow glow that was part cloud, part lights from the businesses cropping up like toadstools along the Ventura freeway, just like he figured they would when he started planning the Charter Oaks project five years ago.
Just like he figured.
He shivered and pulled his jacket tighter. After a couple of moments, he almost slid back into the Lincoln, was halfway crouched into the doorway when he stopped. A sound from the house startled him.
Craaack! Like breaking glass.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Kids again.”
He swept the yard with his eyes. The blood-red McCall/Sidney Realty “For Sale” sign was canting again-how the hell had he missed seeing that. He shook his head. “Gotta get a clean-up crew out here.”
This was a prime lot-probably the best view in all of Charter Oaks, perched as it was at the top of the rise. From the front yard, you could follow the downward sweep of Oleander Place across the northern half of the shallow valley. From the back yard, the southern half opened out, dropping abruptly-almost precipitously-to survey vista on vista as the valley lengthened, then wrinkled to become the foothills of the coastal range. The asking price was good, McCall knew-an easy five thousand below list.
But the “For Sale” sign remained staked steadfastly in the front yard, standing sentry over emptiness and darkness.
Client after client said they liked the deal. They liked the view. They liked the floor plan and the generously sized lot. They liked the quiet neighborhood, with its handy shopping centers a short drive down Bingham Boulevard, its handful of churches of varying denominations scattered nearby, and its three schools almost within walking distance. One after another, they sauntered through the place and hmmm — ed and maybe — ed approvingly.
But they didn’t buy.
The house at 1066 was the last of the original Charter Oaks subdivision. The only one that had never sold.
McCall shivered again. He listened intently, but the cracking sound wasn’t repeated. “Imagination,” he said to himself. “Too close to Halloween. Too much stress.”
He bent again to slide into the Lincoln. A slit of light, suddenly visible when his head turned to just the right angle, glimmered beneath the garage door. He straightened. As his head moved, the glimmer disappeared. He scowled. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone there. No one had shown the place for a month.
Irritated, he slammed the car door, fumbled in his pocket for a set of master keys, and walked to the side garage door. His feet crunched dried weeds that needled through his socks and prickled his ankles where his slacks pulled up from his shoes. He slid the key into the door, then stopped, listening.
Nothing.
Wait…what was that?
No, it was just the wind in the naked branches of an elm in the corner of the lot. Or the whisper of cars on the freeway.
Somewhere down the block, a woman’s voice wailed “Mikeeee,” and another voice, high-pitched and piercing, replied with a drawn-out “Commiiinnng Mommm.”
But the house at 1066 lay silent as a white-stucco sepulchre.