Hellhole Read online

  “Outside!” Lore’s voice finally rose above the din. Through his writhing, he could see that she’d opened the back door and was gesturing for him to run through it. A motion-activated spotlight illuminated the patio as they spilled into the open air, but Max could still feel the roaches crawling on his skin, under his clothes, in his hair—

  Lore was just as grossed out. She grabbed his hand and dragged him onto the wooden dock jutting out over the water. “Jump!”

  “With our clothes on?”

  “Sorry, didn’t realize you were wearing your Armani.”

  Max got one last look at the moonlight reflecting on the glassy surface of the water before Lore shoved him in.

  The water enveloped him, a freezing rush that threatened to force the air out of his lungs and drag him by the weight of his saturated clothes down to the bottom. Max thrashed about wildly, kicking for what he hoped was the surface. Finally he burst out and took a huge gulp of the warm, humid air.

  “Nice jump,” Lore said. “Not quite a swan dive. More like a ‘baby robin falls out of its nest’ dive.”

  Max wheezed, swallowing a gallon of lake water. “Are they out of my hair?” he screeched.

  “Yes. God, you’re worse than a little girl.”

  “This could have been really dangerous, by the way,” he said as they treaded water. “What if this water was inhabited by a harmful algae? Or a school of piranhas accidentally released into the lake by a rogue, embittered exotic fish importer who didn’t play by the rules? Did you even stop to think about that?”

  Lore didn’t dignify this with a response. She paddled a little more, then stopped. “Come this way. You can touch the bottom.”

  Max followed her until his soggy, gross-feeling sneakers hit mud. “Weird,” he said. “My feet are freezing, but the rest of me isn’t.”

  “That’s because this is a meromictic lake.”

  Max blinked at her. “A what?”

  “It means that the water doesn’t cycle or turn over like it does in most lakes. The water on the bottom always stays on the bottom, and the water on the top always stays on the top. They’re really rare. Only a few in the world. Most are old quarries, like this one.”

  “How . . . do you know all this?”

  “Why don’t you know all this? Isn’t the old granite quarry the only thing this boring-ass town is known for?”

  “Um, excuse me. We also have a really good hospital. And an Ugly Hill. Why focus merely on our water features?”

  Lore pushed some hair out of her face. “I like water,” she said softly.

  She looked so graceful. And wet, he thought, and hot—

  No. Graceful.

  But now she was looking at him, too. In a way that could be construed as . . . saucy. He thought about reaching out to hold her hand, but his was so wrinkly from sweat and now lake water that she’d probably think it was an eel. At least the water had deflated his hair brim, making it less baseball cap and more floppy sun hat.

  But before he could make a move or even point out how much he resembled a beach-going flapper, she started to splash back to shore. “Come on,” she said, paddling toward a small muddy alcove. “We can start fresh tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, I gotta go home and make sure Burg hasn’t impaled my mom with a—” He broke off as something in the woods caught his eye. His skin tingled into goosebumps. “Lore, wait a sec. Come here.”

  She swam back to where Max was floating, squinting as droplets of water bounced up into her eyes.

  “Look.” He pointed to a massive wooden structure half hidden by trees. Its peaked roof poked out over the canopy, and moonlit reflections from its windows glinted through the leaves.

  “Is that a house?” Lore asked.

  “Looks kind of rundown,” Max said, fumbling for his flashlight—which was waterproof, naturally, as a true scientist always came prepared. He still couldn’t see much, but he was at a slightly better angle now. “See, there’s a canoe with grass grown up all around it. And I think one of the windows is broken.”

  Lore squinted. “Hard to tell. It looks like a log cabin. One of those rustic dealys. Rustic things always look dilapidated no matter what.”

  “But still—you think it could be abandoned?”

  Lore frowned. “It certainly looks abandoned.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out the sopping-wet map, and unfolded it carefully so it wouldn’t tear. Max clicked on his flashlight as Lore oriented the map to face in the right direction. “Oh, that place. Public records said it belonged to some guy named . . . O’Cooper? O’Connor?”

  “O’Connell?” Max said, going pale. “As in the O’Connell Quarry? And the O’Connell wing at the hospital? And O’Connell Stadium?”

  Lore paused. “What’s that?”

  “Our football field.”

  She stared at him.

  “At school. Where our football team plays.”

  “Oh. Never been.”

  “It’s kind of nice, if you ignore the game—”

  “I don’t care. What’s your point?”

  Max gave his head a firm shake. “If it’s the O’Connell estate, we can’t break in there, even if it is abandoned. Everything in this town is built with his family’s money. He’s a legend. The biggest cheese there is. I’m talking, like, a giant honkin’ wheel of Gouda.”

  “Excellent.”

  “No, not excellent. He still lives there! I think.”

  “You think?”

  “I mean, he’d be like ninety years old, but . . .” Max tried to remember what he’d heard about the guy. “I only ever heard rumors. Something about his son betraying him and refusing to take over the company. Once the son left, he turned into a hermit and hasn’t been seen since.”

  “A hermit?” Lore’s eyes lit up. “Well, there you go. He’s probably dead.”

  Max’s neck started to sweat again. “I don’t want to break into a dead guy’s house!”

  “Why not? It’s the best kind of house to break into.”

  “What if he’s”—Max made a face—“still in there? Like, his body?”

  “Then we’ll just ignore it. Or Burg can make it into a rug. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that there is a big, juicy house up there for the taking. What’s the harm in doing a little more research?”

  Max hesitated. This was too messy. Even if O’Connell was dead, this wasn’t like breaking into some shoddy trailer. This was a Big Deal.

  “You know,” Lore said in a singsong voice, “a giant honkin’ wheel of Gouda probably has a hot tub.”

  Max gritted his teeth. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “But what does Russell think?”

  She held up the crowbar. It nodded, googly eyes googling.

  Lore’s smirk got bigger. “Russell thinks it’s worth a shot.”

  Kerfuffles

  MAX’S SHOES SQUELCHED AS HE SLIPPED THROUGH his kitchen door, exhausted and hardly able to believe that it wasn’t even midnight yet. This day felt as if it had been a hundred hours long. Plus, the two previous sleepless nights had finally taken their toll. His plan was to microwave a can of soup, then crash.

  He changed into a set of dry clothes and checked on his sleeping mom—still breathing; that was good. The bowl of chicken noodle soup was taking its final spins when a piercing shriek burst up from the basement.

  He hurried downstairs, only to find Burg camped out on the couch, wearing, as expected, no pants. One hand was shoved into a bag of Cheddar Fries, and the other was hiding beneath a suspiciously cube-shaped blanket. His eyes were glued to the television, where a spiky-haired woman with large hoop earrings was screaming and telling the camera that if anyone stole her sewing machine, she’d stab out their eyes with a pair of pinking shears.

  “Turn that down!” Max said.

  Burg didn’t move. “She didn’t come here to make friends,” he said around the Cheddar Fries in his mouth, gesturing at the screen. “She came here to win.”

  Max, t
oo tired to rehash the never-followed pants rule, sat down on the arm of the couch. “Lower. The volume.”

  Burg picked up the remote with his cheese-powdered fingers. “It’s do-or-die time. Their entire careers have been leading up to this.”

  Max looked at the TV. “And what is this, exactly?”

  Burg gave him a duh look. “Duh,” he said. “New York Fashion Week.”

  Max thought he could make out something resembling Heidi Klum beneath an arrangement of fabric that could have been either a dress or a shrunken circus tent. “Project Runway?” he asked, vaguely recalling his mother being obsessed with it a while back. “This show is still on?”

  “It’s a rerun, but I haven’t seen it!” Burg’s voice shot into a high-pitched register. “Don’t ruin anything!”

  “Calm down,” Max said, getting up to leave. “I haven’t seen it either.”

  “Then you’re in luck—there’s a marathon! Kick back and stay awhile!” Burg patted the empty couch cushion next to him, covering it in a fine orange dust.

  “I can’t, I’m too . . .” An acrid odor made him trail off. “What’s that smell?”

  Burg put on the guiltiest “I’m innocent” face Max had ever seen.

  “Burg,” he said patiently. “Kindly tell me what—oh no. No.”

  Max looked on in horror as Burg removed his hand from underneath the blanket, revealing the can of beer he was clutching. “Yayyy!” Burg yelled. “It’s beer!”

  Max yanked the can out of Burg’s hand, but Burg instantly replaced it with another. Max got up and whipped the blanket off the couch like a disgruntled magician, revealing a full case of Schwill beer.

  They must have been stolen, because Burg was most assuredly able to drink them. He gulped the beverage at an alarming rate, foam building up in his beard as he yelled things that sounded like “Sweet nectar of life!” and “Make a home in my belly, fizzy mistress of intemperance!”

  “Where did you get these?” Max asked.

  Burg switched from exclamatory remarks to run-on sentences. “Your little girlfriend reminded me that Vermillion used to haunt these parts, and where Verm went, beer was sure to follow, so I went to check out his old digs just in case maybe he left some behind, even though Verm LEAVES NO BEER BEHIND, but I guess this time he did, so I took it! I took it all!” To punctuate this victory, he poured the dregs of his current can all over his beard.

  Max felt slightly nauseated watching Burg guzzle. He couldn’t take the beer away—Burg would surely scream loud enough to wake the dead, and maybe even his mom. “If I let you drink these,” Max said in the tone of a scolding parent, “do you promise to pace yourself? Only have a couple tonight and save the rest for another night?”

  “Yeah,” Burg said with a laugh. “Okay.”

  Max couldn’t discern the degree of sarcasm in his voice, but he was too tired to expend any more discerning energy. “Okay, then. Good night.”

  He turned to leave, but a crumpled can whizzed past his nose and hit the wood paneling, sending a bubbly mist across his shirt.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Burg bellowed.

  “Um. Sleep.”

  “Don’t you ‘um, sleep’ me, young man!” Burg launched himself up, threw a friendly arm over Max’s shoulder, and dragged him back to the couch. “It’s been eons since I got myself a drinking buddy. Here.” He drew two more Schwills out of the box and opened them both so deftly that Max was now sure that devil hands doubled as can openers. But he didn’t have time to further reflect upon this, as Burg was shoving the lip of the can into his mouth.

  “Stop!” Max shouted, pushing it away and spilling some onto the table. “I don’t want any.”

  Burg frowned. “I don’t follow.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  Burg thought harder. “Still not getting it.”

  Max spoke very slowly. “In all of my seventeen years on this green earth, not once have I imbibed an alcoholic beverage.”

  Burg looked from Max to the can, then back to Max, then back to the can. “Then tonight’s a perfect time to start!” he crowed. “Lesson one: Schwill is the cheapest, best piss you can get. Enjoyed both ironically and unironically. That’s really hard to do, you know? Very popular in Brooklyn. Huge fan base. That’s why Verm’s responsible for the whole brand.”

  Burg chugged the rest of the second can and moved on to a third. “Lesson two: once you start, you can’t stop until it’s gone. Oooh. OOOH. We can play a drinking game along with the show!” He started counting on his fingers. “One drink for every ‘Make it work,’ two drinks whenever someone bursts into tears at a sewing machine, three drinks every time someone is thrown under a bus, four drinks every time someone claims they would never throw someone under a bus, ‘I will not stand here and be insulted by the likes of you’—”

  “But—”

  “Five drinks every time someone says ‘fashion-forward’—”

  Max continued to protest, but the inevitability of it all stopped him. Burg wasn’t skilled at the art of self-restraint. Burg would never ‘pace himself,’ as Max had hoped. If Max left him alone with all of this alcohol, it was a near certainty that it would be gone within minutes, dumped directly into Burg’s bloodstream, giving him all sorts of malicious new ideas . . .

  “You know what?” Max said, deciding to take one for the team. The team, of course, being Team Not Getting My Mom Disemboweled by a Devil. “I think I’ll join you after all.”

  “Splendid!” Burg put the beer down on the table in front of Max, then, spontaneously developing a taste for manners, daintily placed a coaster beneath it. “Go ahead. Taste the rainbow.”

  Max picked up the can and nervously squeezed it.

  “This is very exciting,” Burg said in a quiet, watchful voice, as if providing commentary for a golf tournament. “What kind of drunk will the lad be? A mean one? A boisterous one?”

  “Maybe I’ll just slink off into the corner and sob.”

  “Hahaha! Quit stalling.”

  Max put the can to his lips and took a swig. Half a second later the swig reemerged, spraying across the room and coating the television screen.

  “Ugh!” Max choked. “That’s what beer tastes like?”

  “Like the feet of a thousand angels dancing the Baltimore waltz on your tongue?” Burg said. “Yessir.”

  “But it’s disgusting!” Max had never imagined an instance when washing his mouth out with soap would be the preferable option, but here he was, casting about for a bar of Irish Spring. “People drink this voluntarily? And repeatedly?”

  “Well, see, therein lies the magic,” Burg said, bringing the can back up to Max’s mouth. “Each sip tastes better than the last.”

  Max recoiled, but remembering that the alternative was the painting of the basement walls in his mother’s blood, he forced himself to take another glug. It went down just as repulsively as the previous one, with twice as much gagging.

  Good thing I’m never going to be able to afford college, Max thought, steeling himself for the next swig. I wouldn’t last through a single party.

  “She’s using chiffon?”

  “She’s out of her damn mind!”

  “What happened to the organza swatches? At least those weren’t a ghastly shade of chartreuse.”

  “Seriously. This pencil skirt’s going to be a hot pot of disaster!”

  Three hours, a case of beer, and countless outfits later, Max and Burg’s bender had taken a strange, fabulous turn.

  “Call me crazy,” Burg said, clutching no less than a dozen Funyuns in his fist and gesturing wildly at the screen, “but I liked it better with the pleats.”

  “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?” Max, it turned out, was a loud drunk. Especially when it came to opinions about fashion, which were bold and impassioned, if not exactly educated. “Pleats are never a good choice. Never.”

  “They’re better than embroidery.”

  “Nothing is better than embroidery!�
�

  “Shhh!” Burg waved a hand in Max’s face. “Tim Gunn is about to be concerned.”

  Max clammed up and stared at the screen, where the dapper mentor was tenting his fingers in front of his mouth, brow furrowed. The room went silent.

  “I’m concerned,” said Tim Gunn.

  “DRINK!” Max and Burg yelled, downing the last of their beers and then smacking their empty cans together, crushing them flat into disks between their high-fived hands.

  “Of course he’s concerned,” Max said. “She’s attaching the zipper with glue.”

  “Oh girl, you can’t swing a dead cat in that studio without hitting a dress that’s been glued together.” Burg’s eyes widened in a sudden panic. “JUST KIDDING ABOUT THE DEAD CAT!” he shouted toward the staircase.

  When no offended meowing sounded from upstairs, Burg relaxed again. “You know what I think?” he drawled as the show went to commercial. “It’s all gonna come down to styling. You gotta use that accessories wall wisely, bro. Too over-the-top, your look’s gonna be costumey. Too cheap, and it’s gonna be commercial. Then it’s the Sears catalog for you, and that is the kiss of death, my friend.”

  Max looked up, bleary-eyed. “Youdon’tthinkmakeup’llmatter?” he asked, his words slurring. How much time had he wasted in his life up until now, bothering to put spaces between words?

  “Well of course it will, but a smoky eye and a full lip can’t save a bad design.” Burg stuck a languid hand into the paper bag. “Where’s the rest of the beer?”

  “But Paisley’s doing it all in honor of her dead brother,” Max insisted, nearly moved to tears. “That asymmetrical hemline was a tribute.”

  “Are we all out of beer?”

  “He’s watching down from heaven and giving her the strength to feather stitch—”

  “Hey!” Burg looked downright panicked. “We’re all out!”

  Max looked at him blearily. “Huh?”

  “There’s nomore. Is allgone.” Now that the flow of alcohol had ceased, the full force of inebriation seemed to catch up with Burg at once. “Is allgone,” he repeated sadly.