The Road Trip

I looked over at my grandfather as we drove along Route 10,  his fingers tracing a pattern in the coin in his lap, his attention directed at the passing trees, only glancing down at his pocket watch every 10 minutes or so.

I had a ton of questions to ask him, like why he insisted now, at the ripe old age of 80 to be driven back to his hometown of Claver, Kentucky. And why he had liquidated his assets and I only found out then that he had over five hundred thousand dollars in his bank account.  And why I wasn’t allowed to tell my wife where we were going. 

I really wanted to know where that money came from.  I knew that my grandpa had worked his way through college at a local firm while delivering sandwiches from a local deli. I knew that at the time, he was taking care of my great grandmother and later my grandma and my father.  But, I didn’t know that he had that kind of money saved up.

My grandfather had always been described as a simple man who had come from simple beginnings, or so I thought.  I was always told that at 17, he graduated from high school and packed whatever he thought him and my great-grandma, his mother needed and moved to New York where he attended college, became an accountant and earned a comfortable life for the two of them, and later, my grandmother. 

But a few days ago he called me from his retirement community on Long Island and asked me to do him a big favor. I could sense the urgency in his voice and this automatically put me at guard.  I owed my grandfather for more than I could say, so if there was something threatening him, it was my threat too.  Also, our conversation was kind of rushed, and if there was one thing he did, it was take it easy.  I rarely saw him lose his temper and I could never even remember him being hurried.

“I’m dying Will.” He had began, his voice clear and resolute. “And I made a promise a long time ago that I was going to die someplace in particular, and that sure wasn’t here in this godforsaken place.”

“I thought you liked the home grandpa.  You chose it remember?  Carol and I wanted you to stay with us, but you said no.”  I reminded him gently.  I loved my grandfather more than anyone could ever love anybody.  My parents died when I was only 2, so I was raised by him, my grandmother having died before I was born. He was always gentle with me, teaching me to appreciate life and to love something with all your heart.  I took those lessons and did well with them, thanks to him. 

“Will, you know what I’ve always told you; a man is only as good as his word.  I gave my word a long time ago Will, and just because I’m old doesn’t mean I don’t have to keep my word.” 

“I know Grandpa, this is just sudden.  I mean, the three of us had lunch just last week and you seemed fine.”

“I am fine.  Now all I’m asking for is one last ride with my grandson. I don’t need a kidney or anything. Is one last ride too much to ask?”

I sighed, knowing then that he wouldn’t let up, and that I didn’t expect him to. He prided himself on being a man of his word. If he said that he wasn’t going to do something, then he was going to do it. I knew then that whatever he asked of me, I would do it as well, because as far as I was concerned, I owed him at least that much.

“Can I at least know why Grandpa?” I had asked after a long silence, resigned to do my grandson duties, no matter how strange they were.

“It’s high time you knew anyway.  I’ll tell you on the way.  Come here tomorrow to pick me up. And don’t tell Carol.”

I had woken up at 7:30 that morning, the same as I always did; only this time my heart was heavy with dread.  Pine Oaks Retirement Community was a nice place to spend your Golden Years if you didn’t have anyone, but he did. I didn’t want him going there, and Carol loved Grandpa, so she didn’t mind his company, but he insisted on giving the newlyweds some peace.  I walked into his private room to find him sealing up an envelope with my name on it and quickly sliding it into his inside pocket.

Grandpa gave me a tired smile and pulled on his old tattered bowler’s hat and motioned for me to follow him out the door. He didn’t say much of anything except to ‘let him collect his thoughts before I bombarded him with questions’.

The first hour or so on the road I tried to engage him in conversation, hoping he’d open up or relax.  He had been withdrawn the second we climbed into the car and I hated to see him like that.  So preoccupied with thoughts that were visibly causing him strain.  So I stopped at a gas station and bought us the regular road trip goodies; soda, chips, slim jims candy bars the works.

5 hours later, we were well on our way to what he described as a ‘hillbilly wasteland’.  I didn’t want to prod him, knowing from experience that he wouldn’t budge until he was ready, but I was itching to know what the hell was going on.  My grandfather didn’t usually keep secrets from me, honesty being one of his main creeds to live by, but it seemed that he had kept some secrets, and for a while. 

It was no secret however that he abhorred his hometown.  He barely spoke of the place, apparently shutting it and his past from his mind.  The few times that he did talk about it, he spoke with disdain and an unusual amount of venom laced with his words.

Just when I thought that I’d explode from anticipation, Grandpa looked at me, his usually clear, jovial grey eyes darkened slightly.  It was then that I noticed his hands trembling slightly, his gold coin slipping from his fingers and landing with a dull thud on the carpet of the car.

“Will, everything I taught you about being a man, I believed.  I still believe.  Men are supposed to be honest and forthright, strong, and yet, still loving, for their families.  No matter how important you think being a success in the business world is, never put that ahead of family.  Your loved ones should always come first.

That being said, I glossed over my life before I met your grandmother.  I did live in Claver and I did graduate and get your great-grams and myself the hell out of there.”

He paused for a second as we passed a field with grazing cows and looked down at his hands. 

“Claver is nothing like New York or probably any damn city in the whole continental U.S.  It’s a desolate place.  The town itself is like a black hole, sucking away life and hope and everything good until all that remains of a person is a shell, a hollowed out piece of nothing that walks around doing what it must to survive. 

I had seen the town suck the life from my father and two brothers.  Unlike them, I didn’t want to work in the saw mill or lumber yard.  I wanted to go to college, but of course, we couldn’t afford that.  Most of our foods came from what we grew and canned ourselves.  We kept chickens for eggs and one cow for milk.  It was like living in the old west, without the benefits of the old west. 

When I was 12, my father hurt his leg in one of the machines at the saw mill.  I remember it like it was yesterday. My mom and I were in the garden, she was pulling up weeds while I did the hoeing when my older brother Drayton came running up to the house, out of breath and looking terrified. He told us that dad had been clowning with one of his friends, a guy who was getting married and he fell under a machine, crushing his leg. I never saw the wound, but he did, and it bothered him terribly.  I did however see what it did to him.”

“You mean besides being disabled?”

“I tried to understand what he was going through, being all broken down, depending on everyone for everything else when he had always been so strong and independent.  It turned him into an insane drunk.  He took to drinking and when he was drinking, he hated himself more because my mother had to work.  So he took to beating on her. Aint nothing worse than a disappointed, depressed alcoholic. I hated that damn town and everything about it.  I had a friend, a degenerate do-nothing like that dumb ass friend of yours, Wayne Trowley.  Remember him?”

I laughed quietly, thinking of Wayne then for the first time in at least 5 years.  Wayne was an idiot, no doubt, and he was the one person who I can say in my lifetime that my grandfather absolutely did not like.  Wayne used to keep me into all kinds of trouble, from lying to our teachers, to stealing and cheating on tests, anything that you can think of unsavory to do, Wayne did it.

I remember one summer evening Wayne had come by when Grandpa was out with his bowling league with two leggy blondes and a six pack of some bitter German beer his father always gave him so he would stay away from the good stuff.

He was already feeling the spirits, swaying on his feet and talking as loud as any one person could.  I didn’t drink, but one of those blondes caught my eye and we struck up a conversation that lasted all night, or least up until my grandfather came home and found Wayne sprawled across the foyer and his date passed out in the downstairs bathroom.

It’s funny now, that I’m older and married to the same leggy blonde grandpa caught me talking the night away with,  but that night, he yelled so loud that the neighbors called the police, especially when a half naked girl came running, stumbling from our house.  Later on Grandpa told me that if he had been arrested, he would beat Wayne senseless when he was released.

I nodded my affirmation of Wayne, prompting Grandpa to continue.  “Well my Wayne’s name was Jesse.  Jesse Blake.  He came from a long line of do nothings who succeeded best at procreating and getting drunk. He was a bad apple, and not just because of where he came from, but because he was smart enough to know and do better, he just chose not to. Anyway, Jesse comes to me one day while I was tilling the ground and showed me something that changed my life.  A gold coin.  Not the one that I have, but a different one.  He said that he knew where we could get our hands on more, if I was willing. 

Now, I’m not a criminal or anything, but at the time, I was two months away from graduating, and all I could think about was getting my mom and me out of Claver.  I knew that we didn’t have any money saved, so college was out of the question.  But that one gold coin he had, it was dated pre-colonial, a very old and rare coin.  That one coin was worth 750 dollars.  And I knew Jesse too.  While he was an ass, he wasn’t one of those ‘let’s go rob a bank, shoot a nun, and kick a puppy’ kind of guys.  I knew that the gold couldn’t have come from a bank because he didn’t have the balls to rob one.  He was a petty criminal.

So I imagined all the possibilities that that gold could hold for me, the things that I could do, for me and for mama.  My daddy had died when I was 16, got hit by a car after wandering into the street from the local bar.  My brother had left town after the funeral to live with his girlfriend, so it was just me and mama, and she was getting too sick and old to work.

So that night he took me back to where he had found it, and like a fool, I went.  The second he told me where it was, I should have said no.  Turned my old Ford around and went on back home.  But all I could think about was that that one coin was worth 750 dollars and I didn’t make that much in a month.”

“Where did he find it Grandpa?” I asked quietly, noticing the way his tone changed with that last sentence. 

“In this old man’s house.  This old wart we called Old Man Jane.  He was mean as a snake, but as mean as he was, he was mysterious times two.  We had always been warned as kids to stay away from his house for one reason or another, but since we hadn’t been given a definitive reason why, we didn’t. 

My brother told me some old cock-and –bull story when I was younger about the old man eating kids, and later, in high school, our teacher swore on a stack of bibles that he was from Louisiana and practiced voodoo. Somebody even said once that he was a Satanist.

He lived in this big old Victorian house on the highest hill in town.  It was an eyesore, probably held together by tape, spit and shit.  Or magic.  For as long as I lived in that dead town, he had been there, in his dilapidated house on that hill of overgrown weeds.  I saw him once, when I was younger and delivered food for the local market.”

“Was he like a hermit? Always hiding from the world like our neighbor Mrs. Reed?”

“I think he hid for other reasons, but I’ll explain that later.  When I saw him, he looked like he was no more than 40 years old, but I knew he was older than that because he was there when my grandfather was there.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that that town was built around him.

Anyway, Jesse and I walked up the hill, and I swear that now, looking back, I could feel something.  Something foreboding or ominous looming over us that night. It was like some force was pressing down on me, not wanting me to climb that hill. Jesse had his cousin, Nate keeping watch on the old man’s window upstairs, to be sure that he didn’t go into the bottom of the house. 

Nate was just as bad as Jesse, only worse because everything rotten he did he did to impress Jesse.  I don’t think anybody had the heart to tell him that Jesse looked at him like he was a joke, so all that meanness was wasted. 

Well, Nate motioned for us to be quiet and led us to a cellar window that he had propped open and slid right on through.  Then Jesse, and finally myself, but I had to force myself in that window because every little alarm I had in my body was going off, like sensors everywhere, telling my NOT to go in that house.   

It was damp and dank, musty, like any old cellar, but the presence, the air felt heavy or something because the second my feet hit that dirt floor, I wanted out.  But Jesse, he pulled a gun on me. Told me that now I knew where the old man’s stash was hidden, and if I wasn’t gonna take anything, that was my fault, but I wasn’t about to leave them down there either. 

They went to this door, built in the floor of the cellar and pulled till it gave away, and just right there, in arm’s reach was 3 or 4 burlap sacks, full of gold, rubies, diamonds, everything you can think of that a man wants to achieve in his lifetime.”

I realized then that I had been holding my breath and let it all in a giant whoosh.  Grandpa took a sip of water and looked at me carefully. “You okay?”  He asked, his eyes now resembling the ones I knew, crinkled and concerned.

“Yes.  Is that where your five hundred thousand came from?  What did you and Jesse do with the treasure?”

“Well, Jesse and Nate were blinded by the glittering nonsense that we found, so they didn’t hear the humming noise until it was too late.  But I heard it and backed up against the far wall, as far away from those damnable jewels as I could get. If it weren’t for Jesse and that damn gun, I would have climbed up and out of that window. 

It started as a low humming, kind of like the whole cellar was vibrating, and then there was this creaking. I noticed it and looked to where the steps where, leading to the first floor of the house.  And there was Old Man Jane. I tried to tell them, warn them, but my tongue was thick and I couldn’t have told you my name right then if anybody asked me.  Jesse and Nate finally had stopped stuffing there pockets and looked up to see Old Man Jane standing at the bottom of the cellar stairs with this weird smile on his face.

Jesse and Nate tried to bully him at first, threatening to tie him up and leave him in the cellar until they got to Mexico, which was where they were going.  And when he just stood there, looking at them, they tried to bargain with him.”

I let out a short bark of laughter, trying to imagine the scene; my grandfather, shrunk back against a dirty cellar wall, the scruffy Blake cousins, hemming and hawing and the weird old man, probably amused that these delinquents saw fit to rob him, the strange old man of Claver.

“What the hell kind of bargaining chip did they think they had?”  I asked, glancing at my grandfather who had gone back to gazing out of the window.

“I don’t rightly know Will.  But I do know that the second I saw that old man, my heart stopped.  It had been years since I had seen him last, but he still looked exactly the same. And he had a lantern, and this lantern was really lighting up that cellar, and there were picture after picture of him, in different clothing suited to different eras, but he looked the same in them all.

Jesse and Nate were telling him that all they wanted was enough to move away from Claver, and then he’d never see them again, but Old Man Jane said something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”

“What?”

“He said, he hadn’t planned on anybody ever seeing them again, and he thanked them!”  Grandpa replied, in an incredulous voice. “He actually thanked them for coming in to rob him, saying that he hadn’t had any visitors for awhile.  He said…he said that his last visitor was Jesse’s father.”

Now this made Jesse mad, I mean spitting mad, because Jesse’s father had supposedly left for some cigarettes 5 years earlier and had never come home.  We all just assumed that he had abandoned his family.  I mean, he was a Blake after all.

I can remember Jesse and Nate looking at each other as all three of us thought the same thing; this old man is bonkers. It was then that I found out that Nate had a gun too because he pulled it on the old man and threatened to shoot him if he didn’t move aside and let us pass. But then, I think we all understood that Old Man Jane wasn’t what he appeared to be. The humming got louder and there was a new sound, like one of us was hungry and his belly was growling; only this was a big damn belly to be growling like that.

But quick as lightning, Old Man Jane reached out and he pulled that trapdoor open further, and there, beneath the bags of gold was the most monstrous thing we’d ever seen.  It had the shape of a person, only it wasn’t.  It had these, glowing red eyes and row after row of teeth.  Sharp teeth that were catching the light from the lantern and glinting. It was gray and apparently hungry because it reached up this long arm and claw and pulled Nate in first, and well, not a day goes by that I don’t thank god that I was too far away to see what it did to him, because I sure cant shake the image of the spray of blood that flew from that door and coated Jesse.  He just screamed and backed up firing rounds into the cavern that used to be the trapdoor.  He looks over at Old Man Jane and orders him to close the door, but the old man just laughed and held up his hands, like he had nothing to do with it.

It was then that I started to talk, pulling Jesse against the wall where I was hiding and begging the old man to call of his beast.  Jesse pumped round after round into that thing, but it just swallowed them in it’s massive body, which by then we could see was of a gel-like consistency. Then it reached out one of those claws and snatched Jesse too.  The last thing I remembered before passing out from sheer terror was Jesse screaming, ‘It ate my daddy, it ate my dad-‘.

I had stopped driving and was now looking at my grandfather, my eyes bulging and stomach churning.  If it had been anyone else telling me this tale, I would have laughed it off.  But it wasn’t anyone else, it was my grandfather, and above all he did not lie.

“You passed out?”  I squeaked in a whisper, to which he just nodded, taking another swig of water from his bottle.

“I woke up in the old man’s study, soiled from the waste down.  He was sitting in an old leather back chair in front of me, smoking a pipe.  I asked him if I was dead, and he just laughed and said that he didn’t remember his company being that awful.  So I excused myself and asked him flat out, did what just happened real, or was I lying in the garden back at home.

He told me that it was real, and that those Blake boys were going to meet their end soon anyway and to trust him, that it was better for the world this way.

I asked him why it hadn’t killed me too, because I had broken in as well, even if I really didn’t want to. And he told me that I wasn’t like them.  He knew it because he could see my soul. He said that he knew they wanted the money for drugs and women, selfish reasons, he said, but that he knew I needed it.

And then he explained to me how he came to be in Claver.

He told me that his punishments for his sins in his past life lead him there, to keep watch over the creature in that floor.  He told me that the creature was of his doing. It was a physical manifestation of his sin, and that as pittance; he had to supply it with other people who were as evil as he used to be.

You see, he had been one of the cruelest SS guards for the Nazi’s.  His real name was Jan Reinhold; he just changed to Jane when he came here, to avoid suspicion. He had promised a gypsy king that he wouldn’t let him or his family get taken to the death camps, for a payment of course, and then sent them there himself so that he could acquire their entire wealth. The gypsy king, with his last breath cursed Old Man Jane and the fortune he had killed the whole family for.  So there he was, in Claver.  Feeding an old curse until the spirits of that murdered family felt he had had enough. He said it even sent him to different times, which explained the pictures of him in all those old get-ups, but he didn’t feel right letting the creature kill me because Jesse had held me there against my will, but that I couldn’t live a full life because I knew it was down there. It was his secret to keep, and if he didn’t feed the beast, it would break free and kill innocent people, and after finding himself reformed, his conscience couldn’t deal with that.”

Grandpa leaned over and picked the gold coin off of the carpeted floor and looked at it sadly.  “He gave me this one gold coin, promising that it would get me and mama out and get me through college, but that I had to come back to Claver to die, at the hands of the beast in the floor and I had to bring this back with me.”

My heart lunged into my throat, the horror of his words sinking in.  “Grandpa, I’m not letting you go back there to die! Besides, that old man has to be dead.”

“He’s not dead, he called me last week. He said that my time on this Earth was limited, and it was time to pay my dues. But do you know what hurts me most?”  He asked, looking at me finally, tears staining his face.

I shook my head dumbly; unaware of anything that could hurt him more than being devoured by some monster, my own tears blurring his face.

“I made my own success, without this damn coin.  I went home that night and sold everything we owned and drove to New York all night. I enrolled in a small high school in Brooklyn and got accepted into NYU on a full academic scholarship.  They even helped me and mama find an apartment and found me a job.  When he said I wouldn’t live a full life, that was him taking everything I loved.  Mama, my Suzanne, your parents, and now I have to go before I can meet your son.

That’s why I always tried to so hard to give you a happy life.  I had cursed my own son before he was even born the second I climbed into that cellar. It’s my fault you had to grow up with an old man instead of your father and mother, and for that I am deeply sorry. I never told you this, but you were named after me, and I protested it fully.  Not because I didn’t love you, but because I didn’t know if this curse would carry over to you.” 

And with that Grandpa climbed out of the car and pocketed the coin, smiling sadly at me and gesturing to the side of the road.  I had, unwittingly, stopped right outside of Claver. I hadn’t even known we were that close, having stopped some time ago because the story had left me breathless and unable to trust my driving. And that’s saying a lot, my being from New York. It was like the town yearned for him, knew he was close, and guided us there, whether we wanted to be there or not.

  He came around the car and hugged me strongly, ignoring my pleas for him to stay and making me promise to turn right around and leave, never sitting foot in the town of his youth.  He pressed the envelope that had taken from his room earlier into my hand, glancing over his shoulder before shaking my hand.

“I don’t know what’ll happen.  But I promise you, Old Man Jane and that thing locked in his basement is the reason this town is the way it is,  dead and always hungry for life.  His being here transformed the whole place, and it’s doomed right along with every poor soul in it.

Just promise me one thing Will.” He said, holding onto my hand tightly, his grip as strong as I ever remembered.

“Yes?”

“Live your life.  Don’t take anything for granted, and don’t try to take no shortcuts.  Make sure you tell your children how much your old Granddad loved you, and don’t you ever, ever come back here.”

I nodded slowly, wishing that I could think of something to say other than I love you. I watched as he walked towards the town, whistling and flipping that damned coin.  He wasn’t afraid of the old man, the house or the monster.  He only wanted me away, so that whatever hold the town had on its citizens couldn’t take over me as well. 

It was then that I saw it.  The house on the hill.  It was standing majestically against the sunset, the purple and orange sky masking its true terror. It also looked just as Grandpa had described it, falling to pieces and barely standing. Surrounded by weeds, almost beckoning death.  And in the far corner, I could see a lone figure standing at a window, waving.

Whether it was waving at me or Grandpa, I’ll never know because I did as Grandpa instructed and turned the car around right there, even backing up first to be sure that the car didn’t cross into the city limits.  I wanted to watch him walk for as long as I could stand, but lost sight of him only minutes later and settled instead for watching the town grow smaller in the rearview mirror.  I almost expected it to get bigger and swallow me, since I now knew one of its biggest secrets.  I guess now I’ll just wait.  Wait to see if I get any phone calls from Old Man Jane, telling me that I now knew of the beast too, and was required to die there as well.  Wait to see if I find any gold coins or hear humming or a growling stomach.  I know that he told me all of these things to curb any desire I would ever have for tracing my roots, but now, all I can think of is that house and what lies in the cellar.

I think I’ll just wait.