Damnation of the Faithful

It was just after four in the afternoon when Harry heard the muffled rumble of distant thunder.

Shit, he thought; storm’s coming.

He had spent the afternoon scavenging dumpsters and trash bins for aluminum cans and was a long way from the shelter, even further from the bottle redemption center. He picked up his pace, pushing his rusted shopping cart as fast as he could. The cart was overflowing with a sticky pile of garbage bags bulging with old soda and beer cans. The bags made a hollow metallic crinkling sound every time the cart hit a seam in the sidewalk. A few special grocery bags tied to the sides of the cart held his personal stuff; free clean clothing collected from a shelter, a half bottle of vodka, and some stale burgers pulled from the dumpster of a fast food joint the night before. He pushed the cart up the street, hoping to find shelter under a tree or a bus stop when he saw the abandoned house.

The house, a faded yellow ranch, had been boarded up for about forty years. After the last owner died, the city assumed ownership of it after it remained un-purchased despite being up for auction three times. The front door was secured with an ancient padlock encrusted with decades of rust, its keyhole barely visible. Plywood boards covered all of the windows on the first floor of the house; each coated with generations of graffiti.

Harry pushed the cart into the backyard of the house poked around for a bit before noticing a loose panel of weather-beaten plywood that covered a basement window. It was rotten and waterlogged around the edges. He pried it off easily with a moist crack and tossed it aside. He kicked the filthy yellowed glass out of the rusted metal frame, kicked in the now bent sash, and then slipped through the opening, feet first; just as the rain had started to come down in torrents. A penlight stolen from a free clinic provided some light for his exploration.

The basement was musty and unfinished; ancient cobwebs hung in dusty ropes from dry-rotting joists and crumbling cobblestone walls. An old wooden coal bin was nestled into one corner; its walls black with coal dust. A rickety set of cracked wooden stairs led to the first floor of house.

When he reached the upstairs, Harry could see that the house was in bad shape. Paint peeled and hung down in strips from the ceiling; wallpaper in some rooms was faded or had fallen off. Water damage had cause sections of plaster to bubble and fall off exposing a skeleton of warped wooden lath. Black mold darkened many of the houses corners and crevices. The carpeted floors were rigid with insect and rodent droppings. Furniture that did not have stuffing was intact and the house did have a fireplace. To Harry, who had grown accustomed to sleeping beneath highway overpasses, that was enough. All that mattered to him was that it was safe and dry.

He had been staying in the house for close to a month without anyone noticing before he told one of the other transients he knew about it. They needed a place to sleep one night in the late months of fall when the rain fell hard and the wind was becoming bitter cold. They didn’t want to stay at the shelter because they weren’t allowed to drink there. At the house, there were no neighbors to call the cops; almost every house on the block was abandoned. The other buildings on the street were vacant businesses or homes rented by gang bangers and drug dealers; attention from the police in this area was highly undesirable.

The house had quickly become a sanctuary where Harry and a few others squatted and fed their habits. On a good day he could spend a few hours panhandling on the side of the Route 81 off-ramp and have enough cash for a magnum of Smirnoff, a two day supply if he paced himself. The house had been a temporary safe haven and a secret for harry and his friends; that is, until a sex-offender named Williamson dragged a girl down into the basement where he raped her and crushed her head with a cinderblock. He hid her in the coal bin under some trash. None of the others knew she was there.