Lit Up | Fiction

Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You

With its peeling gray paint, cockeyed shutters, and boarded-up windows, the place fairly screamed “haunted house”

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash

Evan bent low and, with all his strength, launched the baseball into the air. It soared up past the power lines and almost to the top branches of the sycamore tree before its ascent first slowed, then faltered. As the ball began hurtling back to earth, Evan set his feet, bent his knees, and raised his mitt like he’d been taught. He was positioned perfectly this time, but at the last minute he turned his face away. He couldn’t help it. It was just instinct. The ball glanced off the tip of his glove and bonked him squarely on the top of his head. Direct hit.

Evan threw his glove on the ground and then kicked it across the yard. “Damn, shit, piss!” he growled, running through a litany of his favorite cuss words. He could gobble up grounders all day long and even snag the occasional line drive. But high pop flies–the kind he routinely faced out in the lonely confines of left field–remained an enigma.

He rubbed that knot that was already rising on his head, retrieved both ball and glove, and tried again. And again. Daryl was probably right: The reason Evan couldn’t catch a fly ball was that he was a clumsy shit, plain and simple. His mom’s boyfriend might be a jerk, but it didn’t make him wrong.

Clumsy or not, Evan wasn’t going inside until he managed to catch one. He mashed his sweaty hand into the mitt and fired the ball skyward once more.

The baseball climbed high into the air, but Evan saw right away that it was drifting off course. Rather than going straight up and right back down as intended, it swerved drunkenly to the left, heading toward the perimeter of the yard. Evan ran to the property line, hoping he had misjudged the ball’s trajectory only to watch it vanish over the warped wooden fence.

“Damn,” he said again. It was his last baseball. Daryl had given him a bucketful last summer for his 11th birthday, back when he was still trying to impress Evan’s mom. That stage of the relationship was over now, and Evan didn’t expect more baseballs anytime soon.

The fence that separated their yard from the vacant property next door had been a selling point when Evan and his mom had been looking for a place to rent. It kept them from having to keep Tater chained up when he was outside doing his business. Of course, it became a moot point after the terrier ran off a couple of months later.

The fence was much too tall for Evan to see over, and in all the time they’d lived there, he’d never been tempted to try. Frankly, the house next door gave him the creeps. It had been empty since he and his mom had moved in, and Evan couldn’t see that changing any time soon. With its peeling gray paint, cockeyed shutters, and boarded-up windows, the place fairly screamed “haunted house.”

Someone came to cut the front lawn every couple of weeks during mowing season, but to Evan’s knowledge, no one ever bothered with the back. How could they? There was no gate anywhere on the buckling pine enclosure. The only way in or out of the back yard was through the house. Or over the fence.

Evan wasn’t going over the fence. No way.

Still, he had to admit he was curious. After two years of playing within inches of the yard next door, it seemed strange not to know what was over there. A quick peek couldn’t hurt, could it?

Evan went to the garage and fetched the rickety wooden stepladder. He dragged it back to the fence line, set it up with difficulty, climbed to the top, and peered over.

“Jesus.”

The place was a jungle.

Evan had seen overgrown yards before. In their old neighborhood, Mr. Grayson’s place had become a forest of two-foot-high weeds and unruly brambles in the months before cancer finally took him.

But what Evan saw now from his perch atop the ladder was something else altogether. The scene below was an ocean of green. Tangles of vines clung fiercely to the fence and along the exterior walls of the neglected house. Burly shrubs and gnarled trees peppered the yard. But mostly there was grass–dense and almost unfathomably tall, rising nearly as high as the fence in some places. Evan had never seen anything like it. It was like some kind of African savanna on steroids. The grass was a brilliant, almost incandescent green, standing in sharp contrast to the short, yellowing fescue in their own yard. What the hell kind of fertilizer are they using? Evan wondered before remembering there was no “they.” He glanced over at the vacant house, which remained just as dark and empty as ever.

As he stood peering into the verdant abyss, his eyes were drawn to a small white object nearby, and he snorted a surprised laugh.

Poking up from the high grass a few feet from the fence was a small sapling with a latticework of crisscrossing branches.

Through some miracle, his errant ball had managed to get lodged amid the uppermost tangle of twigs. Even a tree can catch better than I can, Evan thought with a sad shake of his head.

He stretched his hand over the fence toward the ball, but it was out of reach by a good two feet or more. Evan had resigned himself to losing it earlier, but now that the ball was so tantalizingly close, he aimed to have it back.

He leaned his torso as far over the fence as he could, holding tight to the splintery wood with one hand and stretching for the ball with the other. Close. Just another couple of inches would do the trick.

He squirmed his body a little further over the fence top and felt the rough lumber digging into his lower belly. A warm breeze tousled his hair and sent the long grass below undulating hypnotically. He watched it sway in rapt silence for a minute before remembering the task at hand. Then he reached out again, stretching with all his might. He felt his fingers first graze and then wrap around the leather ball. He cried out a triumphant cheer, but the sound died on his lips as he lost his grip on the fence and felt himself tumbling forward.

Evan braced for an impact that never came. Instead, he landed in a bed of grass so dense, so soft, he might have been jumping into a pile of feathers.

Clumsy shit is right, Evan thought. Still, he couldn’t help but grin. How was he always getting into messes like this? He clambered to his feet and started swatting his way through the long grass back to the fence when he remembered the baseball. He had knocked it loose and watched it fall alongside him. After coming this far for it, he decided there was no point in leaving it behind now. Evan got down on all fours and began feeling around in the grass for the ball.

As he crawled around, Evan became aware of the smell. It was a jungle scent, both alive and dead at once. Mixed in with the musky, vegetal funk of the thriving grass was a darker odor–the fetid reek of rot and decay. Evan gagged a little as the smell filled his nose. He was wondering just how much of that stench he was going to be able to stomach when he saw the ball again. It was up ahead on a narrow dirt path in the middle of the yard. Tall grass converged over the path, blocking out the sky and creating a tunnel of sorts.

Evan crawled over to the grassy shaft and peered inside. It was surprisingly dark, and he felt a ripple of unease run through him. The feeling wasn’t helped any by the sound of the grass rustling around him like a whisper. Just the wind, of course, but still it set his teeth on edge and made him question just how badly he wanted this baseball.

Evan looked deeper into the tunnel and could see the ball dimly up ahead in the distance. It was farther away than he had thought–another five feet at least. He wondered how he’d been able to spot it in the first place, deep as it was in this dark shaft. Just grab the damn thing and go, he thought and started to crawl. The ground was damp, and the knees of his jeans quickly soaked through. Each time he pulled one out of the muck, it made a wet sucking sound.

He was halfway to the ball when he felt something brush against his ankle. Brush or slither? It hadn’t occurred to him what a great place for snakes the yard made. Evan hated snakes. Hated. He let out a little yell–which in truth was more of a squeal–and scrambled further into the grassy burrow. He forgot entirely about the baseball, which he passed without pause.

“Shit,” Evan said. The last thing he wanted was to crawl further into the tunnel, but he couldn’t muster up the nerve to go back toward... whatever that was.

Although it was surely his imagination, he thought he felt something brushing against his leg again, and he scampered farther yet down the path. Just the grass, he told himself.

The smell was worse here, and Evan soon saw why. On the path in front of him was a possum or, more precisely, what remained of one. It was badly decomposed, but even in the darkness of the tunnel, Evan could see that the animal had not come to a peaceful end. It looked, well, mushed. Rung out like a dishtowel, he thought.

Evan felt something gently graze the small of his back and had to resist the urge to panic. Not a snake, he thought, just the grass. He had almost convinced himself of it when he felt something slink across the back of his neck. Then he was in motion again, hands and knees trodding over the decaying carcass without a second thought.

He was crawling fast now, ever deeper into the grassy tunnel, which grew steadily smaller and darker. Surely he’d pop out on the other side soon, Evan thought, before considering another possibility: That there was no other side. That the tunnel just dead-ended.

The sound of the wind coursing through the grass was louder now, and he again marveled at how closely it resembled a whisper. He almost imagined he could make out words.

Evan felt panic rising once again but managed to force himself to stop and catch his breath, which now came in great heaving gasps. As he paused, he glanced down and saw a small black strap lying on the path next to his right hand. As dark as the tunnel was, Evan still recognized Tater’s collar immediately. As he looked at the path again, he saw without much surprise that it was strewn with bones and feathers and fur.

Evan made a high keening noise now, somewhere between a whimper and a whine. He couldn’t seem to move forward, and he couldn’t bear to back up. Instead, he stayed put, rocking back and forth on his hands and knees. Just the grass, he told himself. Just the grass. Just the grass.

As the slick green tendrils closed in around him, it was cold comfort to find out he was right.