Spruce Street Peekaboo

"You know I don't like you going over on the west side, Jamie."

"That's where the work is, Ma."

"None of the young men are going over there. It's not safe. The police told us that we should avoid that area of town until they find out why young men have disappeared there. It was someone delivering pizzas just a few days ago. Before that it was a mailman. And that young plumber who they thought had taken off last month on his wife and kids with a woman he was seeing—well, they've found the woman now, and she claims she hadn't gone anywhere with the guy."

"Don't fret, Ma. I'll be out in the open the entire time, mowing lawns. With the scare, there's no competition on the west side—it's all moved to other areas of town. So, the west side is my best bet. I gotta make all the money I can before it gets cold so's I can buy a new car for the college commute. I'm lucky the chill is late this year. All of the kids are gonna love it too. It will be warm for trick or treating. And the weatherman says it'll be clear tomorrow night too."

"I don't think there'll be many trick or treaters going to the west side," Mabel said. She gave a shudder. "The interest seems to be narrowing to a man who lives at this end of Spruce Street—Jack Bailey I think his name is. His name has come up on a predators list. The paper couldn't get anyone to tell them why his name is on the list. I think that's a crime—not telling us what he's done. Don't you? People should be able to protect themselves. Just tell me you don't have any lawns at the near end of Spruce, Jamie."

"Can't tell you that, Ma. As a matter of fact, Mr. Bailey's is one of the lawns I've got to mow. He's payin' top dollar, so I don't want to turn that one down. Said he couldn't get anyone else to do it. Guess we know what that is now."

"You gotta tell him no, Jamie."

"No, I don't gotta do that, Ma."

"Well, then I'm comin' over there too."

"You? Coming over there?"

"Yeah. We'll take both cars and I'll sit at the curb while you do Jack Bailey's yard. You got any other yards to do on Spruce?"

"Yeah, three more. The Durbin house at the other end of Spruce and the Sweeley sisters across the street from there—and then old lady Jenkins in the middle. I'm saving hers for last, because she invites me in for something to eat and drink when I'm done. She's kinda batty and smokes and wheezes a lot. But she makes great cookies."

"I don't like the thought of you going into anyone's house, Jamie."

"You think old lady Jenkins has been tying young men on service jobs to the neighborhood up in her basement torture chamber and having her way with them, Ma?" Jamie was smiling, treating the whole thing like a joke. He was putting up a front, though. He wouldn't be doing this if he didn't need the money real bad. His clunker of a car had broken down, and he needed a better one for his second-year college commute. He wasn't as confident about the whole men disappearing thing as he was letting on to his mother—it's just that he needed the money so bad.

"I don't think you're taking this at all seriously, Jamie. I don't think you should go."

"Well, if you are that worried by Mr. Bailey, Ma, it's fine with me if you come over and sit at the curb and watch me not disappearing while I mow. But we need to get to it. As it is, dark will be coming on before I can finish with old lady Jenkins's lawn."

He wasn't going to fight his mother's offer to watch over him. But he wasn't going to tell her so, either.

* * * *

Jamie was glad his mother was there, in her car at the curb. The day was hot despite being late October, and Jamie was mowing just in shorts and his construction boots. As he moved around the house, it seemed like someone inside was moving with him. Jamie would round a corner of the house and glimpse curtains fluttering in a window in the corner of his eye. And there were times he could almost see a face peeking through the cracks in the curtains.

It was creepy, and Jamie felt naked.

When he was finished, he was nervous enough that he walked over to his mom's car and asked if she would come up to the door with her while he got his money for mowing.

"Very good job, James," Jack Bailey said when he came to the door. He too was just in shorts and flip-flops, and the look he gave Jamie from just inside his door gave Jamie the chills. He would have pulled his shirt across his chest if he'd been wearing one.

"Would you like to come in for . . . Oh, hello, who is this?"

"This is my mom," Jamie squeaked. "Sorry, I have several other lawns to mow today. I'd better just get on to them. Maybe I could just have the money for the job."

"Just a minute. I'll be back." Bailey disappeared from the doorway. His voice had had a tight edge to it.

"You'll come again, won't you. Maybe in two weeks," Bailey asked when he came back. He was all smiles now, like he was trying to impress Jamie with his friendliness.

"Yeah, if it still needs it then—the grass should be dormant soon, so you might not need another mowing this year. And if I can fit it around my classes over at the community college."

Jamie wasn't making any promises. This guy creeped him out and most of what he was thinking right at this moment was how to get away from here.

"Thanks, Mom," Jamie said as he walked back to her car with her.

"I hope it will be all right now," she answered. "At least you'll be at the other end of Spruce. Sorry, but I have to go pick up Katie at school."

Katie was the elementary school daughter of Jamie's unmarried sister. The sister had to work a day job, so Mabel was the surrogate mother.

"Yeah, I'll be all right. No problem." Jamie tried to keep his voice from shaking. Bailey had scared him, but he didn't want to admit that to his mother.

"The Seeley sisters are at the other end of Spruce. You see any sign of trouble, you go right to their door and then stay inside and call me, you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am." She was treating him like he was a child. He wasn't going to complain about that, though.

While he was doing Mr. Durbin's yard, the man came out and sat on his porch, watching every move Jamie made. The only contact that Jamie had had with the man was over the phone, and he sounded pretty normal there. But this guy had a hazy, shell-shocked way of looking around him. Something was a little off.

Jamie's mind went to some of the voyeur movies he'd seen on stolen DVDs—a guy just sitting there and watching a couple going at it—or, like here, just watching someone walking by and having nasty thoughts about doing something to them.

All of this was sort of spooky and Jamie couldn't get this lawn finished too fast. He didn't know anything about Mr. Durbin except that he spent a lot of his free time coaching a youth soccer league team. Jamie wasn't sure that was a very good recommendation, from some of the things he'd been hearing on the evening news.

The man was maybe in his thirties and in tip-top physical condition. Jamie wondered if there was a Mrs. Durbin. There certainly didn't seem to be any evidence of one. There also didn't seem to be much evidence that Mr. Durbin's lawn needed to be mowed—or that Mr. Durbin shouldn't be able to easily do that for himself. Jamie had to watch real careful as he walked behind the mower, as there wasn't much difference between the height of what had been mowed and what hadn't.

Just about the time Jamie was getting creeped out by Mr. Durbin sitting on his porch and watching him like a hawk, something he caught in the corner of his eye nearly put him into shock.

A car was moving slowly down the street and even slowed down as it came abreast of where Jamie was pushing the mower. What struck Jamie was that it was the same color and make—maybe even the same car—as the one Jamie had seen in Mr. Bailey's driveway.

The car was already past him, and Jamie could only see the back of a man's head in the driver's seat, but then . . . Jamie gulped hard as the car did a U-turn at the end of the street and came back toward him, still moving real slow.

Jamie had been working his way away from Mr. Durbin's house while he was mowing. He'd already decided he wouldn't go back to the house for his money—he'd call out that he'd get the money tomorrow, that he had to get across the street and to the Sweeley sister's yard and then push on to Mrs. Jenkins's yard because it was getting late.

But now he was caught between Mr. Durbin's house and a suspicious car moving slow out on the street.

Jamie's heart was going thumpty-thump. He looked at the car in panic, expecting to see Mr. Bailey with a insane smile on his face—watching him; thinking about what he'd like to do to him. But it wasn't Mr. Bailey. It clearly wasn't Mr. Bailey at all. And now the car didn't even look like it was the same color as the one that had been in Mr. Bailey's driveway.

He cursed himself and watched the car go back down the street and stop in front of a house a block east. The man got out of the car and went up to the door of the house and was let in by another man after they'd shaken hands. It was just someone looking for an address.

When Jamie turned back toward the Durbin house, he almost laughed in relief. A middle-aged couple had come out of the house and onto the porch. The older man was coming down the steps toward Jamie.

"Looks like you're about done son. I brought out your money for the job. I'm Tom Durbin, the one who called you."

"Um, thanks, Mr. Durbin. I almost feel like I shouldn't charge. The grass wasn't really high enough to be mowed."

"Oh, that's just Louis back there on the porch—my wife. We're going on vacation for two weeks starting tomorrow—having a family reunion. With the families of my two daughters. Emily lives here next door and Peg across the street this side of the Sweeleys. We go up to Asheville every October at this time. For the change of the leaves in the Great Smokey's, you know."

"Uh, that's nice, but . . ."

"Eloise said the grass would be too high before we got back. She wanted it cut. My son, Ted, up on the porch would have done it for us, but we thought he was going straight to Asheville rather than coming here first. He's just back from Iraq; kind of a delicate time for him emotionally, getting used to the States and no war again. I'd already called you. Glad he was here though. With all of the doings on young men disappearing in this neighborhood, I asked him to sit out here and keep a good eye out so nothing would happen to you."

"Uh, thanks." Jamie looked up on the porch at Ted, wondering just how long he'd been back from Iraq in the neighborhood—and somehow feeling relief that the guy would be up in Asheville for a couple of weeks. "And thanks for calling me on this job," he continued talking to the elder Durbin. "I can really use the money."

"I guess so if you're willing to come into the neighborhood just now. I'll have to say that our regular mower wouldn't do it. And did I hear you say you were doing Mrs. Jenkins's lawn after the Sweeleys'?"

"Yeah. And I'd better get on to the Sweeleys so that I can get them all in today."

"Umm, well. I suggest you be careful at Mrs. Jenkins's."

"Oh, why? She's the one who I've regularly been doing in the neighborhood."

"I don't know. She's been acting a little strange lately. Ever since her son got killed in Afghanistan, she's been . . . well . . . mad at the world. Can't say I blame her, but . . . well, you just be careful of yourself, son."

"Uh, thanks. I'll do that. I better go on across the street now."

"And we'd best be getting to the mall," Mr. Durbin said as he turned back toward the house. "My Eloise doesn't like the condition that Ted's clothes are in and she's insisting we go clothes shopping. Eleventh hour and all that. Emily's and Peg's families are already gone to Asheville. We'll be dragging along behind, I'm afraid. Neighborhood's gonna be pretty quiet around here for a couple of weeks. Good thing, as weird as it's been of late."

Jamie put the Durbin's lawn mower away in the shed at the back of their house. Their car was pulling out of the driveway as he came back around the house and walked across the street to the Sweeleys' house. He gave a shiver at the expression on Ted Durbin's face from the front seat of the car.

No one answered the door at the Sweeleys', but he'd been told the lawn mower would be in the shed in back, so he went ahead and got that out.

He decided then that it was getting a little late. Maybe he'd put off Mrs. Jenkins's lawn 'til tomorrow or the next day. What Mr. Durbin had said about her was a little disconcerting. Everything that had happened today had put Jamie on edge. He'd call her on his cell phone and see if he could postpone.

The problem was that Jamie didn't have his cell phone. He'd left it in his car, which was at the other end of Spruce, near Mr. Bailey's house. He'd just have to stop at Mrs. Jenkins's house on the way back to his car and try to beg off in person.

Jamie had finished the Sweeleys' lawn and put the mower back to the shed and was walking back to the street when he heard what sounded like a scream—a man's voice, in some agony. It was coming from nearby.

A repeated sound, more like a deep groan, brought Jamie to the side of the Sweeley house and looking down through a basement window—to a sight that he never in a hundred years expected to see.

He should have backed away and run, but he was frozen to the spot by a mixture of surprise, shock, fear . . . and curiosity and titillation. He'd watched porn DVDs before. Who didn't? Even some BDSM ones. But he never imaged he'd see anything like this in real life. In truth, for several moments he assumed he was watching a video—that nothing like this could occur in real life.

But it was very real.

His jaw dropped and his blood pressure went up and there was a ringing in his ears. But he didn't cut and run. He crouched there, mesmerized by what he could see in the basement room.

It was some sort of torture chamber—or made up to look like it. Black walls and floor and ceiling, and various pieces of equipment that Jamie remembered seeing in some of the DVDs he'd managed to get hold of. And rings on the walls, with chains hanging off them.

And he saw the source of the screaming. A man—a young man—was chained to the wall, at full stretch, his arms over his head and spread wide and his legs spread wide, with his feet barely touching the floor. He was naked. A woman, also naked, was standing near him, with something looking like an electric cattle prod in her hand.

Jamie heard the man scream again as the woman touched the prod to his genitals. There were weighted black balls hanging from the man's balls, pulling them down toward the floor. There was a ball gag in his mouth, which muffled, but didn't quite stifle his screams.

As Jamie watched, unable to pull his eyes away, licking his lips with his tongue and moving his hand to his lap—all of which shamed him, but not enough to make him stop and pull away—another naked woman came into view. The two women were almost identical in appearance, and they weren't all that old. In fact they looked in really great shape, and Jamie couldn't help his eyes from going to the parts of them he knew he shouldn't be looking at. The Sweeley sisters? Somehow Jamie had assumed the Sweeley sisters would be as old as Mrs. Jenkins.

But they weren't old. And they looked pretty hot to Jamie. That was a big reason he couldn't pull his eyes away from what was going on.

As he watched, the second of the women started working the man's cock with her hand, making the penis engorge. The other woman was touching him here and there on the chest and thighs and buttocks with her electrified prod. The young man was writhing and giving out muffled screams.

After a few minutes—far longer, Jamie knew, than he should be watching—the second woman stopped pulling on the cock, which was standing in an upward arc, and she moved close in front of him and, by everything Jamie could tell, pulled him inside her cunt and began to fuck herself on his captive cock.

The other woman had pulled out of Jamie's field of vision. He didn't wonder where she'd gone as engrossed as he was in watching the other woman fuck herself on her captive. But, of course, he should have wondered about that.

Jamie had just realized that the young man looked just like the newspaper photograph of the missing pizza delivery man, when he heard a sound behind him and came out of his crouch and turned—in time to meet a swung shovel face with his forehead.

When Jamie came to, he was strapped to a chair in a small room that must have been in the basement of the Sweeley house. He could hear the screams of a man coming from the adjacent room. He dully thought that the women must have taken the ball gag out of the mouth of the pizza delivery man.

The sounds began to give way to whimperings and gurglings, though. As this was happening, Jamie looked around him. The floor was made of dirt in this room. He tried to remember if it had been the same in the other, black-walled room, but he could remember. This room was walled in raw cinder block.

It was dark, but as his eyes became adjusted, he saw a shovel standing against the wall across the room. The same shovel that had hit him? he wondered. But he didn't spend much time wondering about that, because the shovel appeared to be behind a pile of dirt on the floor. And when he looked closer at that, he saw that there were three mounds, rectangles, about the size of a grave each, of dirt on the floor. And beside those, an open pit of the same dimensions with dirt piled beside it.

He moaned at the thought of what this might mean.

But then he wasn't alone. One of the women was in the room with him. Smiling at him, and leaning over him, her long hair swishing on his shoulders, and her mouth seeking out his in a kiss. He involuntarily went with the kiss, an arousing sensation even under these circumstances. His arousal leaped as she took his dick in her hand and started to stroke him.

He'd dreamed of this happening. He'd fucked a couple of girls, of course. What guy his age hadn't? But it had always been furtive, in the back of a car or behind a shed. And with him doing all the work. Her just letting him stick it in her, giving him what she knew he'd expected. What he'd really liked doing, though, was watching other guys fuck girls. He'd watched that whenever he could. Always straight sex, of course. He'd had no inkling until just now, looking down into the Sweeleys' basement from outside, how arousing watching BDSM was.

This was so much more sensual, though, than anything he'd watched before. The woman was older—and had a fine, firm body—and she was playing his body, teasing his cock to stand. And she was succeeding, even in spite of the fear clawing at Jamie. In fact, the fear might have been part of the extraordinary arousal he was feeling.

She straddled his thighs and lowered her cunt on his cock. She was riding him, and, in spite of the situation he was in, he was responding.

In the back of his mind, his defense mechanisms were telling him that it would be all right. That he could enjoy this sex and he'd be rescued before anything bad happened to him. It wouldn't be more than a day. The pizza man had been missing for several days—and he was still OK. Well, sort of. Maybe. It was awfully quiet from in there.

But Jamie would be OK. He was too young for anything bad to happen to him. And he was getting fucked real good.

The Durbins knew he'd been at their place and Mrs. Jenkins would know he hadn't gotten to her place. That pinned the Sweeleys down.

What Jamie didn't know, couldn't know, was that the Durbins would be in a tragic, fatal car accident on the way home from the mall. And that Mrs. Jenkins was already laying on the floor of her house, having been struck down by a heart attack while Jamie was mowing Mr. Bailey's yard.