I?m on a baseball card, but I?ve never played baseball

The mint condition and properly sleeved Isaac Bradley baseball card that I needed for my collection turned out to be listed from a seller in an absolute eyesore of a town. Sure, I?m legally obligated to wear my prescription glasses when driving, but in Gary, Indiana, I?ve never ripped them off my head faster than when I was driving round that ****hole.
It was an utterly haunting hellscape filled with abandoned ruins of houses and lost hope left, right and center ? if I was breaking the law or not, I simply didn?t care anymore. My eyeballs couldn?t goddamn breathe.
My GPS ended its journey with a ping. Gravel crunched and popped under my tires as I rolled into the driveway around half-past five.
The place was downright decrepit. Cut brown fencing had fallen away from around the property, leaving sharp posts that could have been fit for Vlad the Impaler. Mossy fingers and growth climbed the dilapidated building, covering its wooden boarded walls in splashes of sage.
My years of searching for the end to my collection with no avail had brought me here: Staring into the abyss of an abandoned house?s open screen door. God help me.
?Hey man, here to pick up the Isaac Bradley card.? I closed the car door behind me as I planted two shoes onto gravel.
The seller was a sickly pale and plump man with two sunken eyes. Bloated slimy flesh held up his baggy shirt and slicked hair greased his round face. Bodies pulled from the river never looked far off from how this creep did. I should have turned around and left when he didn?t reply and only stared at me unblinkingly in the shadow of the doorframe. Yet, my collection beckoned me to step forward. Isaac Bradley beckoned me.
?From eBay?? I prodded him with more details, hoping for both a response to my question and an ease to my nervousness. This guy is exactly the guy you would have expected to be listing auctions from an abandoned house.
Intuition is a powerful thing. With every stride closer to the mute man, my subconscious zapped with me with a jolt as if to say: Hey, you?re risking it all for a piece of cardboard, man. Not just any cardboard, brain, it was the cardboard. If you?re ever at an unlikely turning fork in your life where you feel the need to burn your money by either collecting cards or starting to smoke crack, make sure to choose crack ? it?s cheaper that way.
Looking ahead as I approached, I saw his eyes that were vacant, glossy globes. They had sunk ghoulishly into his cheekbones, making my heart race as I closed in for a handshake.
I was a couple meters away from him when he abruptly reanimated and extended one arm, inviting me with a wide, artificial grin.
?Name?s Earnie. Card is right inside; did you bring cash??
My hand almost slid out of his grip; it was as greasy as his face. The smile said earnest Earnie, the eye?s said Jack Torrance from The Shining.
?Yep. All here.? I patted my pocket, leaving some sort of white gooey paint from his hand upon my jeans.
Inside we went. The place reeked of dust that littered unkempt furniture; broken floorboards creaked with the raspy gasps of a building never meant to be stepped through again.
?Take a seat while I grab it for you.? He gestured to one dull, grimy couch. I hadn?t really put much thought into it before, but his face was rather deformed ? the bridge of his nose was almost non-existent, skin from his face met the immediate snub holding two nostrils. He quite frankly looked like a gruesome boar, and when he spoke his voice was high pitched like the strange artificial whine of a farmer trying to draw in a group of livestock.
I sat down and pillows collapsed inward, flicking years of dust into the air. If I wasn?t entirely convinced it was a crack den, I was by the time I itched my arms as a cockroach scurried under a broken television cabinet.
Floorboards soon creaked above me, too. He was searching around for Isaac Bradley with his two meaty legs. As least, I hoped he was.
For a while, I waited and stared out through one of the shattered windows and ripped curtains as I contemplated my life choices that had brought me to this moment. Light streamed through ? dust sparkled and looked like small mosquitos in the setting sun. That?s when I saw something quite peculiar and rectangular shine.
I lifted myself out of the seat and adjusted the cushion. Underneath was a handful of sleeved cards sprawled out across the springy bones of the sofa in between balls of lint. I swooped my hand across the bumpy springs and collected them in a pile before drumming the dust away from my fingers.
When I stared at the cards, my lunch lurched at my throat from my stomach. On the card was a polaroid portrait painting of a poor, decomposing soul that rested one protruding cheekbone upon a stiff, contorted fist. He had two open eyes that still screamed. Above: LAZY BONES.
My heart rang in my ears and pounded my head, I couldn?t hear him upstairs anymore. I swallowed a lump of sour that tickled my throat.
I almost couldn?t bring myself to look at more. My fingers shuffled the next card to the front. The polaroid in the middle of the card was a shoddy, blurry camera shot that depicted a woman sprinting toward as door outside of a house, one hand clutching the gaping knife-holes in her back, the other stretching out, begging to be let inside before it was too late. I was shaking the card as I read it: HOME RUN.
Launching to my feet, I nearly tripped over bits of perked up rotten floorboard. One of nails that came out of the wood shot through my rubber shoe and into my flesh like a hot iron, sending a stabbing pain up through into my ankle.
I made it to the front door. I twisted the knob and pushed, but it didn?t budge. Back to the living room I went, leaving a long line of blood that gushed out of my shoe like the oil from a leaky truck on a long highway.
My elbow snaked around the metal borders of the smashed window, one hand feeling around for what I couldn?t see. My hand touched metal. Barred in.
From the creaking staircase, a bright camera flash lit up the dim room. And again.
He was coming, and I had nowhere to run ? my foot ached, yet I clutched my tight chest as I limped towards the kitchen.
Click, snap. More flashes of his camera followed behind as I held one limping leg in the kitchen doorframe.
On the kitchen counter: Photos of me, my wife. Eyes closed, in our bed. Beside his rusty hammer, I caught sight of a card and what was untidily scrawled at the top: SLEEPING BEAUTY.
Click, snap.
Thoughts stuck with me about grabbing the hammer, but it was already too late. I was limping forward.
I circled back to the hallway next to the stairs that he had come down from. It was strange, sure, but in that moment, I couldn?t help but still think about the collector?s item I had come to pick up. I would grab Isaac Bradley and we would both make it out of here, alive.
Without warning, one arm reached around and pulled mine. Turning, I saw the hammer in his other hand. I wormed and twisted to free myself as white flesh came away from his bloated hands from where he grabbed me, just like when I had shaken his hand.
He glared up at me with vacant white eyes over a revolting bloated body that must have been filled with vile, decomposing goo. I kicked and kicked before he tumbled down the stairs.
I climbed the staircase swiftly, spotting polaroid?s and bits of cardboard he had been stitching together moments before. Photos of my thin trail of blood upon the moldy wooden floor, photos of the back of my head turning and limping away.
I kept hobbling forward in the hallway, and the camera behind me kept snapping, snapping. Webs got caught around my arm as I sluggishly shuffled into the bedroom.
My heart that had been pounding in my chest soothed quickly as I caught sight of him, and a warmth of relief spread through me. There he was, upon one disintegrated bedside table. Isaac Bradley.
He was so beautifully unique, nothing I had ever seen before. I took the card with two shaky hands, but deep down I knew I would be needing more. More cards for my next perfect collection.
Steps sounded beyond the bedroom door I had shut behind myself; a thin black line bloomed in the space beneath it. He was outside.
Through the window I tumbled, sliding off roofing and hitting the lawn with a thud.
Still wincing and struggling from my slip and fall, I almost dropped Isaac on my way to the car when I fumbled my keys. I flung myself into my vehicle and roared off into the setting sun, the man watching me unblinkingly from the screen door through gravel and dust that kicked up behind my trail.
Taking a long route home was my best bet in case he gave chase. Though, reflecting on the cards of me and my wife sleeping meant he already knew where my apartment was, and my stomach turned.
The drive was long and when I was home, my wife was already sound asleep. I cleaned my wound thoroughly with alcohol and sat on my couch, trying my best to recompose. I pulled the six cards out of my pockets, slipping the top one into my leatherback folder in the last space that there was between all the dated faces of baseball royalty. Bradley was the perfect fit after all these years.
My excitement had passed, however. There was something else plaguing me now. I found something more important than Bradley and baseball: The other cards I had found in Indiana. I slipped them into my hands.
THE PITCHER was one of them. The face of the person in the polaroid wasn't recognizable, however the card?s beauty certainly was. Her features had been distorted to a sickening mush by the impact of the rusty hammer. Beside her head was a large punchbowl filled with a maroon drip that had flowed from her scalp like a tap. Filled halfway, and to the right of the polaroid, was a tall glass pitcher.
My baseball card collection was incredible, but my new collection was turning out to be perfect.
Many weeks had passed living in my apartment north of Indiana. I surfed eBay for cards occasionally ? yet there were none as rare and as beautiful as the pieces Earnie had blessed me with.
I loved my wife, but he turned her screaming mug into the rarest card in my collection.
If you ever order anything from Gary, Indiana, always opt for postage. But most importantly, don?t open your eyes when you wake up and hear the high-pitched whistle coming from the snub where his nose should be.
I usually pretend to be fast asleep on the nights that I wake up finding him standing over my bed painting or taking photos of me. Those make the rarest cards, he tells me, so I leave the door unlocked so he can work. He needs to work on my new collection. My rarest collection.
Though, just as my wife had, there are times I open my eyes when he?s at the foot of my bed. The times he brings the hammer. That?s when I scream.
[SS]


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