#7

the house at the end of the block is evil. there are several ways you can tell. one is the lawn. the grass, while always quite short, has overgrown itself in large patches, leaving matted grey areas where the stolons cross but no leaves emerge. the other is the house color, which is grey-- a color which reveals nothing. then there is the path to the front door, which is made of cement rectangles almost the size and shape of the segments of sidewalk in front of the house. the windows are each covered with blinds, each the same grey color as the outside of the house. and the backyard fence is chain link covered with tarp which flaps back at the joins to reveal bare ground broken up into small heaps and sparsely strewn with unidentifiable house detritus-- part of a sink, maybe?, a paint bucket?... at the edge of the yard is an outbuilding of some sort-- made of plywood, pressed up against the chain link fence, windowless.
across the alleyway, there is a pump station-- largely brick, largely abandoned. asphalt, heaped at the corners and ringed with weeds, laps at the edge of the building, hemmed in by an answering chain link fence. beyond this is the river, a dry riverbed this time of year with a trickle of a creek in it, lavished with strange migratory birds, patrolled endlessly by joggers and dog walkers like me.
i peer through the chinks in the tarp, trying to work out the objects in the back yard, trying to figure out where the side yard goes, all the time imagining the headlines, ten years from now, the police tape and the news crews and the coroner's van loading up the bodies from the shallow graves in that horrible back yard, the firemen draping blankets on the survivors and herding them into waiting ambulances, the neighbors huddled on the sidewalk trying to explain how they never knew, never suspected.