Hide and Seek

it was enough. Because later there were more rumors, which we

ourselves created.

How they ate children and lived inside huge cocoons spun from the flesh

of babies. How they were really living corpses, vampires, witches,

zombies.

The usual thing.

Once, when I was ten, three of us got up the nerve to run around to the

back of the house and peer into their garbage.

They lived completely out of cans.

There was not a piece of paper wrap or frozen-food box or ash red of

lettuce anywhere. Just cans. Canned fruit, canned peas, carrots,

onions. Canned meats and tuna from S. S. Pierce. And every can had

been wiped or washed so that it was spotless. I can't tell you why

that odd bit of cleanliness upset us so. But it did.

There was dog food- also canned- and lots of it. We counted five

separate bagfuls.

Everybody knew they kept dogs, though how many dogs was a matter of

conjecture. But it wasn't just two or three. The place had an

unmistakably doggy smell to it. The stink of unwashed fur and dog

shit. You could smell it yards away. But there were no neighbors

around to complain. Not for miles. Just a forest of scrub pine and

brambles out of which the house seemed to rise as though out of a

tangled green cloud, moving densely back to the sea.

We looked into the garbage and peeked through the basement window. It

was much too dark to see in there. But Jimmy Beard swore he saw

something sway and move in the darkness.

We did not argue. We ran. As though the stories we'd made up were

true. As though hell itself could come pouring out of there.

And I can feel my hackles rise as I write this, remembering how it felt

that day.

Because maybe, in a way, we were right.

Here's what made the papers:

I was thirteen I think when the police came and opened up the place.

It was a delivery boy from Harmon's who had called them after a month

went by with all the cans piling up unopened, untouched, on the porch

and no slip in the mailbox with his payment.

,