Hide and Seek

The Crouch place.

The subject came up early between us, and then I guess just hung there

unnoticed on the borders of her memory like a cobweb in an attic full

of old toys.

Wish to god I'd seen the spider.

We were sitting at the soda fountain at Harmon's General Store because

Steven had been bothering us for chocolate egg cream all day long, and

we finally got tired of his gritting his teeth and hissing at us as

though he had to go to the bathroom something awful and nobody would

let him, so we went to Harmon's and he explained the drink to Mrs.

Harmon. A hefty squirt of chocolate syrup, a little milk, and lots of

seltzer. Mrs. Harmon kept shaking her head. "No egg?"

As usual the conversation got around to bitching about how nothing ever

happened here and how there was nothing to do, so I happened to mention

the Crouch place and what happened when we were kids.

You may have read about the end of it if you get the Boston papers. I

know the Globe carried a story on it, because Rafferty and I both kept

our copies until they got yellow and dog-eared. Dead River gets so

little scandal. So we read the story over and over. How the police

and the ASPCA broke in, now that Ben and Mary were gone. Testimony

from Mr. Harmon and Chief Peters. For a while you'd get these wacky

types driving up especially, just to see the place, though there wasn't

much to see.

All they did see was an old, ramshackle two-story house on Winslow

Homer Avenue- a tiny dirt road on the outskirts of town that ran all

the way back to the sea. It sat on a three-acre plot of land, the

front yard and the forest beyond long since combined and climbing the

broken stairs to the gray, weathered front door. Vines and creepers

everywhere. Out back, a narrow slip of land sloped to the edge of a

cliff, below which was the ocean.

Never once did I see them as a boy. Ben and Mary Crouch had

disappeared into the dank interior of that house long before my time. I

heard rumors, though. We all did. Talk among our parents that led us

to think there was something "not right" about Ben and Mary. Beyond

that good parents wouldn't go, not with the kids around. But