The Haunted Air Part 4

They used to make the bars together, pick up women together, do everything together. Now the only things that seemed to interest Charlie were reading his Bible and "witnessing."

Yet no matter what he did or didn't do, Charlie was still his brother and Lyle loved him. But he'd liked liked the old Charlie better. the old Charlie better.

"If that earthquake was the Lord's work and aimed at us, Charlie, he sure shook up a lot of people besides us."

"Maybe lots of people besides us need shaking up, yo."

"Amen to that. But what was with that scream? You've got to let me know when you're going to pull a new gag. The house shaking and the ground rumbling were bad enough, but then you throw in the scream from h.e.l.l and everyone was ready to run for the river."

"Didn't have nothing to do with no scream," Charlie said. "That was the fo' reals reals, bro."

"Real?" In his heart Lyle had known that, but he'd been hoping Charlie would tell him different. "Real what?"

"Real as in not something I cooked up. That sound didn't come from no speakers, Lyle. It come from the house house."

"I know. A bunch of these old beams shifting in the quake, right?"

Charlie stopped his pacing and stared at him. "You connin' me? You really gonna sit there and tell me that sounded like wood creaks to you? Betta recognize that was a scream, man. A human scream."

That was what it had sounded like to Lyle too, but it couldn't have been.

"Not human, Charlie, because the only humans here besides you and me were our uninvited guests, and they didn't do it. So it just sounded sounded human, but wasn't." human, but wasn't."

"Was." Charlie's pacing picked up speed. "Come from the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"How do you know that?"

"I standin' by the door when it went down."

"The bas.e.m.e.nt?" Lyle felt a chill ripple along his spine. He hated the bas.e.m.e.nt. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Didn't 'xactly have time. We had guests, remember?"

"They've been gone for a while now."

Charlie looked away. "I knew you'd wanna go check it out."

"d.a.m.n right, I do." He didn't, not really, but no way he was going to sleep tonight if he didn't. "And would you sit down or something? You're making me nervous."

"Can't. I'm too jumpy. Don't you feel it, Lyle? The house has changed, yo. Noticed it soon as we come back inside after the quake. I can't explain it, but it feels different... strange."

Lyle felt it too, but wouldn't say so. That would be akin to buying into the same sort of supernatural mumbo jumbo they sold to the fish. Which he refused to do. But he had to admit that the room lights didn't seem quite as bright as before the quake. Or was it that the shadows in the corners seemed a little deeper?

"We've had a nerve-jangling week and you're feeling the effects."

"No, Lyle. It's like it ain't just us in this house no more. Like something else moved in."

"Who? Beelzebub?"

"Don't you go crackin' on me. You know you feel it, dawg, don't tell me you don't!"

"I don't feel nothin'!"

Lyle stopped and shook his head at the double negative. He'd spent years erasing the street from his vocabulary, but every once in a while, like a weed, it popped through the Third World turf he'd been cultivating. Ifasen's accent said old Third World, his dreads said new Third World; Ifasen was an international man who recognized no barriers-not between races, not between nations, not even between life and death.

But Third World was key. The affluent, white, New Age yo-yos who made up the demographic Lyle was chasing believed that only primitive and ancient civilizations retained access to the eternal truths obscured by the technophilia of western post-industrial civilization. They'd accept just about anything an East African named Ifasen told them, but would brush off the same if it came from Lyle Kenton of Detroit's Westwood Park slums.

Lyle didn't mind the act; kind of liked it, in fact. But Charlie wouldn't make the effort, declining to become what he called an "oreo." So he became the silent partner in the act. At least he agreed to dress the part of Kehinde. Left on his own he'd be baggied out with a dukey rope, floppy fat sneaks, and a backward Tigers cap. A hip-hop Born-Again.

Lyle jumped and spilled some beer on his pants as the phone rang. Man, his nerves were jangled. He looked at the caller ID: Michigan. He picked up.

"Hey, sugar. I thought you'd be on the plane by now."

Kareena Hawkins's velvet voice slunk from the receiver. The sound gave Lyle a rush of l.u.s.t. "I wish I were. But tonight's promotion ran way over and the last plane out is gone."

He missed Kareena. She ran the PR department of a Dearborn rap station. At twenty-eight she was two years younger than Lyle. They'd been just about inseparable before he moved east, and had been carrying on a longdistance relationship the last ten months, the plan being for Kareena to move east and get a job with a New York station.

"So take a morning flight."

He heard her yawn. "I'm beat, Lyle. I think I'll just sleep in."

Lyle couldn't hide his disappointment. "Come on, Kareena. It's been three weeks."

"Next weekend'll be better. I'll call you tomorrow."

Lyle pressed his case awhile longer but to no avail. Finally they ended the call. He sat there a moment, staring at one of the crummy pictures on the wall and feeling morose.

Charlie said, "Kareena ain't gonna make it, I take it?"

"Nah. Too tired. That job of hers is-"

"Hate to say it, bro, but she playin' on you."

"No way. Don't talk like that."

Charlie shrugged and mimed zipping his lip.

Lyle didn't want to admit it but he'd begun suspecting the same thing. He'd gotten the growing impression that despite all her early enthusiasm for a career move, Kareena had cooled to the idea of leaving her comfy niche in Dearborn and challenging the New York market. And now she was cooling on him.

Only one thing to do: Take some time off next week and head west. Sit her down, talk to her, show her how important she was to him and how he couldn't lose her.

He looked at Charlie and said, "Let's go check the cellar."

Charlie only nodded.

Lyle led the way down to the first level, through the old-fashioned linoleum-floored kitchen, and down the cellar steps. He flipped the light on and stopped, staring.

"Jeees-" Realizing Charlie was right behind him, he stopped himself, then added, "-and crackers."

According to the real estate agent who'd sold them the place, the cellar had been finished by a previous owner, two prior to Lyle. Whoever he was, he'd had no taste. He'd put in a drop ceiling with fluorescent lights, tacky fake wood paneling in some blah shade of pecan on the walls, and painted the concrete floor orange. Orange! It looked like a rec room out of a bad movie from the sixties, or maybe the fifties. Whatever, it did not not belong in Menelaus Manor. belong in Menelaus Manor.

But now a huge crack split its orange floor.

"Peep this!" Charlie said as he brushed past Lyle and approached it.

The jagged crack ran the entire width of the floor, wall to wall, east to west, widening to a couple of inches near the center. Crack Crack was an understatement. The concrete slab of the floor had been broken in half. was an understatement. The concrete slab of the floor had been broken in half.

His brother was already crouched by the opening when Lyle arrived.

"Looks deep," Charlie said.

Lyle's heart stumbled over a beat as he saw his brother start to wriggle his fingers into the crack. He grabbed Charlie's wrist and s.n.a.t.c.hed it back.

"What kind of fool are you?" he shouted, angry and frightened. "What if that floor decides to shift back? What are you going to do with a right hand that's got no fingers?"

"Oh, right," Charlie said, cradling his fingers as if they'd been hurt. "Good point."

Lyle shook his head. Charlie was so bright in so many ways, but sometimes, when it came to common sense...

Lyle studied the crack, wondering how deep the ground was split beneath it. He leaned over and squinted into the opening. Nothing but featureless darkness beyond.

Wait... was that-?

Lyle snapped his head up, momentarily dizzy. For a moment there he thought he'd seen stars... as if he'd been looking at a night sky, but someone else's sky, like no night sky ever seen from earth... a yawning well of stars that threatened to drag him down through the opening.

He backed away, afraid to look again, and as he moved he thought he felt a puff of air against his face. He placed his hand over the opening. A feather-light breeze wafted against his palm.

d.a.m.n! Where was that coming from?

"Charlie, look in there and tell me what you see."

"Why?"

"Make like a Nike and just do it."

Charlie put his eye to the crack. "Nathan. Just black."

Lyle looked again and this time saw no stars, no strange sky. But what about a moment ago?

He straightened. "Bring me the toolbox, will you?"

"What wrong?"

"I'm not sure."

Charlie returned in less than a minute. Lyle opened the toolbox and found some two-inch nails. He pressed his ear to the crack and dropped one through. He listened for the clink of it hitting bottom, but it never came.

Lyle motioned his brother closer. "Get your ear down here and see if you hear anything."

A second try yielded the same nonresult for Lyle. He straightened and looked at Charlie. "Well?"

Charlie shook his head. "Could be soft dirt down there. Like sand."

"Maybe. But you'd think we'd hear something something."

"Got an idea!"

Charlie jumped up and ran back upstairs. He returned with a pitcher of water.

"This gotta work."

Lyle fitted his ear against the crack; Charlie did the same and then began to pour. The faint trickle of the water through the crack was all Lyle heard. No splash, not even a hint of one, from below.

Lyle straightened to sitting. "Just what we need: a bottomless pit under our house."

"What we do?" Charlie stared at him, obviously expecting an answer from big brother.

Lyle didn't have one. He definitely didn't want the city to know about this. They might condemn the place and boot him out. He hadn't come all the way from Michigan to get kicked out of the first home he'd ever owned.

No, he needed someone discreet who knew his way around construction and could tell him what was wrong and how to fix it. But he'd only been in town ten months and- "Dear Lord!" Charlie cried, jamming a hand over his nose and mouth. "What that that!"

Lyle didn't have to ask. He gagged as the odor hit him. It lifted him to his feet and sent him staggering toward the stairs. Charlie was right behind him as he pelted up to the first floor and shut the door.

Lyle stood in the kitchen, gasping as he stared at his brother. "We must be sitting over a sewer line or something."

Charlie stared back. "One that run through a graveyard. You ever smell anything stink so bad? Even close?"

Lyle shook his head. "Never." He'd never imagined anything could smell that foul. "What next? A meteor through the roof?"

"Tellin' you, Lyle, the Lord's puttin' us on notice."

"With a stink bomb? I don't think so."

Although the odor hadn't reached the kitchen, Lyle didn't want to take any chances. He and Charlie stuffed wet paper towels into the s.p.a.ces between the door and its molding.

When they'd finished, Lyle went to the fridge and pulled out a Heinie keg can. He could have done with a double deuce of Schlitz M-L right now, but that was way too street.

"You not gettin' bent, are you?" Charlie said.

He handed Charlie another Pepsi. "When was the last time I got bent?"

"When was the last time you had an earthquake open a bottomless pit under your house?"

"Good point." He took a long cold gulp from the can and changed the subject. "By the way, one of the guys with Moonie tried to pull a fast one tonight, and I don't mean Mr. Square Root."

"The bama-looking Joe?" Charlie said, resuming his pacing.

"Bama-looking Jack, if we're to believe the name he wrote. I knew he was trouble right from the start. Heard me calling you by your real name when we were evacuating and wanted to know why I yelled 'bomb' when the quake hit. I kept an eye on him after that. He didn't miss a trick. He watched your every move, then mine. Good thing I was onto him, otherwise I might have missed seeing him tear a corner off his billet."