This Side of Jordan by Monte Schulz

manure was considered the game’s supreme merit badge.
    Feeling adventurous, Alvin opened the gate, keeping an eye on the front door whose screen was still closed, and crossed into the yard, staying under the overlapping shade of the blooming magnolia and the old oak. As he moved along the fence to the rear of the house, the farm boy saw more junk thrown about: cushions, shoes, an old lamp, a wicker chair without its seat, a rusted bed frame, torn pillows. He decided that either somebody had been doing spring-cleaning and had forgotten to bring everything back inside or the people living in the house were hillbillies. He came up to the swing and gave it a shove. The rope curled above the tire and twisted into a mean knot where it looped over the branch. Alvin stared at the house. Lace curtains were hung in the window frames, hiding the interior like a shroud. Back of the house, the trashcan had fallen over, spilling its contents all over the walkway between a tool shed and a weed-eaten vegetable patch.
    Now he was curious what the indoors looked like, how high the garbage was piled elsewhere throughout the house. A short porch led up to the back door. If it wasn’t locked, well, he might just take a quick peek inside. He walked up to the door and reached for the knob, then stopped to reconsider. If someone came to the door, how would he explain his presence in the back yard? Thinking on his feet was not one of Alvin’s greatest strengths. All he could say was that he was lost and needed a drink of water and he’d already tried the front door and nobody had answered so he had come around back. Who could get bitter about a fellow asking for help? Alvin reached for the knob again.
    â€œBOO!”
    He stumbled backward and nearly fell over. Somebody laughed. Alvin hurried down off the porch, took a few steps backward, and stared up at the kitchen window. He listened for half a minute or so, then took half a stride toward the porch.
    â€œBOO!”
    More laughter.
    The voice hadn’t come from the kitchen, after all. The farm boy stepped back a few feet further and craned his neck upward to a second story window.
    The voice, in a guttural whisper, said, “No! Not there, either!”
    â€œI see you!” Alvin called out.
    â€œNo, you don’t!”
    Alvin hurried over to the swing and faced the window there above the thick coralberry. Imagining he saw the curtains move, he took a few steps closer. Was that a shadow there behind the glass? He walked close to the side of the house and got up on his tiptoes to see inside. “You’re in there, ain’t you? I just seen you!”
    Laughter echoed into the yard.
    â€œNope!”
    â€œI’m going to come in there and clean you out!”
    â€œNo, you won’t!”
    â€œHow about I give you a good pop in the nose?”
    â€œAll right, you win,” the voice sagged. “I’m down here.”
    Along the foundation below the window box, a patch of coralberry parted, revealing a narrow crawlspace covered by a lattice grate propped open now. Alvin knelt for a look. Divided from the glare of the noon sunlight, the entry was black as cellar pitch. He’d sooner dive headfirst into a brick well than crawl through that hole. As a kid, Alvin’d had a nightmarish fear of the old boogey-man his sister Mary Ann told him lived in the dirt crawlspace beneath his bedroom floor. She said it snuck in out of a storm one night and favored the house so much it decided to stay. It ain’t no wild beast, neither. It’s smart. Real smart. And patient. Boogey-man’ll camp out down there for years, eating bugs and mice, stray cats, biding its time till it gets what it come for: a nice fresh little boy. Boogey-man’ll wait till some poor little boy walks past by hisself and then it’ll snatch him. Take him way down into the earth, so far no human being’ll ever see him again, and make him a slave, or eat him,