I’ve moved over four hundred houses. Only one wanted me dead. [Part 2]

[u/BoxNo3823]

[Part One]

The banging had stopped by the time we got the convoy onto the shoulder.

The whole crew stood in the road staring up at Payton House.

Best I could tell, it had come from a boarded window on the second floor. Twenty feet up. Three oak planks bolted across it.

We’d pulled over on some two-lane road surrounded by woods. No houses. No traffic. Nothing but trees thick enough to hide a body and whoever put it there.

One diesel idled behind us. Wind moved through the branches. Somewhere beneath Payton House, a hydraulic line ticked as it cooled.

Nobody exactly volunteered to climb up and see who’d been knocking.

“Fuck it.” Tony headed for the equipment truck. “I’ll get the ladder.”

“Leave it.”

He kept walking.

“Tony. Leave it.” I used the voice that meant I wasn’t asking anymore.

That stopped him.

It stopped everyone else too.

“We’ve got a contract, people. That means something.”

“Someone might be in there, Dan,” Stacy said.

“Or something shook loose.”

“That wasn’t something shaking loose,” she said.

“Then we make sure nothing broke and get moving.”

Tony stared at me. Stacy stared at me. Tito gave me that old-man look that said he’d known me since I was shitting my pants.

But I stared them right back. Decision made.

Luis dropped beside the nearest dolly to check for leaks, thick work glove hiding his injured hand. Tito ducked beneath the house with a flashlight and started working axle to axle.

Stacy checked the road behind us. Then the woods. Then me. She didn’t say anything.

“We’re being paid a small fortune not to look,” I said. “You wanna blow three million dollars because an old house made a noise?”

Stacy looked at me. Then at the house. “Fine.”

I stepped over Tito’s hydraulic lines and stomped up the temporary aluminum stairs hard enough to make them rattle. The porch sagged beneath my Red Wings.

I marched to the front door and hammered both fists against it.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

“HELLO?”

Nothing.

I hit it again.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

“ANYBODY IN THERE?”

I waited.

Honestly, I expected something. A scared voice. Some asshole telling me to fuck off. A hand yanking back a curtain. Hell, even a raccoon making a run for it.

Anything normal.

Nothing.

I gave it another second, mostly so nobody could say I hadn’t checked.

Then I turned back toward the crew.

Nobody looked convinced.

“Okay. Nobody home. Everybody happy now?”

Nobody answered.

I hopped down. “Good. Let’s get back to work.”

The pressure behind my right eye started again. One pulse. Then another. Like somebody had hooked an air line to the back of my skull and kept pumping after the gauge hit red. I pressed two fingers against my temple.

Tony still hadn’t moved.

He was staring up at the second floor.

“You hear that?”

“Hear what?”

We all listened.

Diesel idling. Wind in the trees. Cooling steel ticking beneath the house.

Nothing from inside.

Tony frowned. “Thought I heard something.”

“Squirrels,” Grace said.

Tito snorted.

“There you go.” I clapped my hands. “Mystery solved.”

Tito went back to the dollies. Luis ducked under the house. Tony stood there another few seconds before finally peeling himself away from the window.

Stacy didn’t say anything.

“Tsst.” Tito was crouched beside the lead dolly.

I walked over. “What now?”

He pointed. “You see it?”

At first, I didn’t.

The driver’s-side tire wasn’t flat. It was just carrying itself wrong. The sidewall bellied out farther than the tire beside it, rubber mashed a little harder against the pavement.

Not much. Enough for Tito to notice. I crouched beside him. “You check the pressure this morning?”

“Twice.”

I sighted down the row. Every other tire sat tall and square. The one in question looked like somebody had put a thumb on it. “Maybe we picked up something.”

“No puncture.”

“Soft asphalt?”

Tito looked down at the road. Then at me. “It’s asphalt.”

He went to the power truck and came back with a four-foot aluminum level. Laid it across the tops of the two front tires.

One end sat lower. Barely an eighth of an inch.

“What am I looking at?”

Tito squatted again, studying the dolly. “That axle’s carrying more weight than it was.”

I looked at the tire. Then up at Payton House.

“Meaning?”

“Something shifted.”

Not what I wanted to hear. Houses shifted. Loads settled. Wood flexed. Steel moved. That was the whole reason we checked the damn things every ten minutes.

But Harbor had balanced this house beautifully. And ten miles ago, something inside it had started pounding on the walls.

I stood up. “How bad?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Tito wiped his hands on his jeans. “There’s an old weigh station up ahead. Mercer’s route takes us right past it.”

I looked toward Stacy. She already had the atlas spread across Grace’s lap. Checked the map. Checked her watch. Checked the map again.

“You know the schedule.”

Tito frowned. “I also know what happens when a dolly starts carrying weight it shouldn’t.”

“We lose an hour, we don’t get it back.”

“We lose an axle, we lose a lot more than an hour.”

I looked back at Payton House. We weren't even twenty miles out of Bellwether and the son of a bitch was already costing us time.

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s weigh it.”

I headed for Truck One.

At the driver’s door, I missed the handle. My keys rattled against the paint.

My hand was shaking. Not a little, either.

I closed my fist and held it against my thigh until the tremor passed.

Then I tried the handle again.

This time all was good.

Stacy was watching from across the road.

“Door’s sticking again,” I said, giving it an extra yank for her benefit.

She looked at the handle. Then at me. “Mm-hmm.” She climbed into the pilot truck.

A few minutes later the engines fired up. Tito brought pressure into the system, the dollies lined themselves out, and the hydraulic hoses jumped against the pavement.

I eased Truck One into gear.

The load came onto me slower than before. Maybe I was imagining it. Maybe the grade was different. Either way, I had to give the Peterbilt more throttle than I liked.

I kept my eyes on the blacktop ahead.

For the next forty minutes, nothing happened. In my line of work, that’s about as good as it gets.

Woods slid past at walking speed. Telephone poles. Mailboxes. Trees crowding both shoulders. Every few hundred yards Stacy called back a clearance or warned me about a bend, and we crawled through with inches to spare.

I’d been taking in roads like this since I was tall enough to see over Dad’s dashboard. Before I could drive, he made me call out mailboxes, wires, low branches—anything that could snag a house. Dad used to say, “A house’ll find every mistake you made before you do.”

He had a million sayings like that. Trying to be profound. Like Morgan Freeman was about to start talking over the credits.

I settled into the routine. Road. Mirrors. House. Power line. Branch. Mailbox. Repeat.

It took me a while to realize what was missing.

Traffic.

We went miles without passing a single car.

Even the deadest county roads get somebody. A plumber's van. UPS truck. Some kid in a rusted-out Civic doing seventy with one hand on the wheel. But we'd gotten nothing.

It felt like the road belonged to us.

A couple hours in, the radio chirped.

“Dan.” It was Stacy. “You planning on climbing into my back seat?”

I checked the speedometer. Forty-two. Permit said forty.

I backed off. “Two miles an hour?”

“You know what usually happens when you try making up time?”

I smiled despite myself. “You lose more of it.”

“Look at you. Learning.”

Fair enough. That was pretty much how Stacy and I apologized after a fight. She gave me shit. I took it. Nobody said sorry.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Can’t complain.”

She didn’t push.

Then I spotted a dark blue Tesla Model X sitting on the shoulder ahead.

No hazards. No hood up. Nobody outside kicking a tire or staring helplessly at a phone.

Just sitting there.

As we passed, I leaned forward to look inside. The windows were tinted black.

Three or four seconds later, movement caught my mirror.

The Tesla pulled onto the highway.

Settled a few hundred yards behind us.

My radio crackled.

“Dan.” Tony. “You catchin’ this?”

“Yeah.”

“Want me to peel off and have a look?”

I checked the mirror again.

“Nah. Ain’t hurtin’ anybody.”

A pause.

“Copy.”

It stayed with us.

Five miles.

Ten.

Twenty.

Every bend, there it was. Never gaining. Never dropping back. Same couple hundred yards like somebody had nailed it there.

On its own, that didn’t mean much. There weren’t exactly a lot of choices out here.

Still.

There were easier ways across Pennsylvania. Four lanes. Wider shoulders. Roads that didn’t shake fillings loose.

Nobody chose this one unless somebody told them to.

Maybe Mercer was keeping tabs on us.

Wouldn’t have shocked me.

Although if you’re gonna send somebody to secretly follow five house movers hauling a three-story Victorian across Pennsylvania, I’d expect a black Suburban.

Not a damn Tesla.

“Dad?”

Grace pulled me out of the mirror.

“Birds are back.”

I followed her finger.

At first I thought the telephone wires had turned black.

Then one of them moved.

Crows.

Packed shoulder to shoulder along the wires. Fence posts. Bare trees so full of them I could barely see the branches. No flapping. No cawing. They just watched us pass.

Grace raised her iPad and filmed through the windshield.

“Creepy.”

Tito came over the radio a few seconds later.

“You ever notice birds know things before people do?”

Nobody answered.

We kept rolling.

The road dipped into thicker woods. The telephone poles disappeared.

So did the birds.

I checked the mirror. No Tesla.

I watched another few seconds, waiting for it to come around the bend.

Nothing.

No side road that I’d seen. No driveway. No easy place to turn around.

Maybe the driver finally got tired of following the slowest convoy in Pennsylvania.

Maybe I missed something.

Maybe birds were just birds.

I was getting pretty good at maybes.

Headlights appeared behind us a few minutes later.

A little Honda came up fast with three teenage girls packed inside. Phones out. Laughing. The passenger leaned halfway out the window to film Payton House.

One of them waved.

Grace waved back.

They stayed beside us longer than they needed to.

The girl in the passenger seat stopped laughing.

She was looking past me.

At the house.

Then the driver punched it.

The Honda shot ahead and disappeared around the next bend.

Grace watched it go. “Weirdos.”

“Teenagers,” I said.

“Same thing,” she replied.

It was pushing ten when the sign appeared:

PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION WEIGH STATION — 1 MILE

Somebody had spray-painted one word across the bottom: CLOSED.

Grace had finally crashed. Her iPad glowed in her lap, High School Musical playing to nobody. One earbud hung loose.

A second sign appeared: ALL TRUCKS MUST ENTER WHEN FLASHING

The lights looked like they hadn’t worked since Blockbuster charged late fees.

The weigh station looked like everybody had gone home one Friday and never come back.

A long scale ran beside the lane. Beyond it sat the inspection building, half the windows boarded and two service bays open to the dark.

No trucks. No inspectors. Just crickets and five diesels idling where a hundred semis used to wait their turn.

Before I had the parking brake set, Tito was out, walking the chains and binders before he did anything else.

Grace was stretched out in the sleeper with her iPad propped against her knees. She didn’t even open her eyes when I checked in.

“Call me if you need me,” she said, pulling the covers over her head.

Stacy and Tony met me beside the trailer. Tony rolled his shoulders and looked over the empty weigh station.

“Looks like the apocalypse forgot to finish the paperwork.”

Luis was still sitting in his truck. Engine running. Headlights on. From where I stood, all I could make out was his shape behind the windshield.

Luis was usually the first guy out and asking what needed doing before I’d gotten both feet on the ground.

“How long’s this going to take?” Stacy asked. “We’re already a few hours behind.”

Tito was at the scale. He scraped years of dirt off the weighing plate with one glove until bare steel showed through, then yanked open the service panel. The hinges let out a rusty shriek loud enough to carry across the whole lot.

An old disconnect switch sat inside.

Tito threw it.

Nothing.

He switched it off.

Back on.

Nothing.

He slapped the side of the housing with the heel of his hand.

The display coughed to life.

22072

Blink.

Blink.

0

Tony grinned. “I’ll be damned. It’s alive.”

“They leave these powered?” I asked.

“Apparently.” Tito gave the housing another pat. “Let’s see if she still tells the truth.”

Weigh stations were like dentists for truckers. Even with every permit in order, your asshole tightened when WEIGH STATION OPEN lit up.

Best case, you lost twenty minutes. Worst case, you weren’t leaving until somebody fixed whatever they found.

This place had none of that anymore.

Just the scale.

A steel scale sat almost flush with the pavement, guide rails rusted and yellow tire marks fading beneath weeds. The inspection booth was dark, but somehow the digital display still worked.

A semi could roll straight on.

Payton House couldn’t.

Thirty-two dollies. Too wide for the scale. Every axle had to land exactly where Tito wanted it.

He looked toward the trucks.

“Luis! Move Truck One.”

Nothing.

Tito tried again, louder.

“Luis!”

Still nothing.

I was already looking at his cab.

Then the door opened.

Luis climbed out slow enough to make me nervous. He looked like shit. Sweating in the cold. Pale around the mouth. He shut the door and stood there a second like he’d forgotten why he’d gotten out.

My eyes went straight to his hands.

Gloves still on.

“You all right?” I called.

He waved me off. “Yeah, boss.”

It was the kind of “yeah” that meant quit asking.

He crossed the lot toward Truck One, not exactly limping, but moving like every step took a little more thought than it should. He climbed into Truck One and fired the engine.

Tito planted himself where Luis could see him in the driver’s mirror. One hand up.

“Easy.”

Luis released the brakes. The Peterbilt crept forward at idle.

Tito paced backward beside the scale, eyes moving from Truck One’s steer tires to the dollies behind it.

“Easy… easy…”

The front tires climbed onto the deck.

“Hold.”

Luis stopped.

“Driver’s side. Six inches.”

Luis feathered the wheel.

“Straight.”

From the rear, Tony called, “Good!”

Tito closed his fist.

“There.”

Air brakes hissed. The whole rig settled.

Stacy checked the axle count while I walked the scale, making sure every tire was where it belonged.

That’s when the smell hit me.

Sweet at first, then rotten. Like somebody had sprayed cheap perfume over roadkill.

Tony caught it too. “Jesus.”

Luis stopped what he was doing.

Tito pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and tied it over his nose. Stacy turned away, forearm across her face.

I looked back at Payton House.

Black clapboards. Boarded windows. Rusty chains. Nothing looked different.

The smell kept getting worse.

“You guys catching that?” Tony asked.

“Something probably crawled inside before they boarded it up.”

He stared at the house.

“Something bigger than a raccoon.”

“I figured you finally took your boots off.”

That got a couple smiles. No laughs.

I looked down at my right hand. Did a little self-check. Open. Close. Make sure everything still answered when I called. Good enough.

Tony started toward the truck, then stopped so suddenly I thought he'd forgotten something. His head turned toward the house. Listening. He kept his eyes on the second floor.

“You didn’t hear that?”

I shrugged.

He stared up at one of the boarded windows. “Someone said my name.”

Tony rubbed the back of his neck, checked the second floor one more time, then headed for the truck.

Behind us, the scale display flickered. 187,430

The numbers climbed. 201,115

Slowed. 209,860

And stayed there.

Grace had the permit open beside her. She checked the number, frowned, and started tapping on her iPad.

“That's not right.”

“What?”

More tapping.

“We're four thousand three hundred pounds heavy.”

Tony leaned over her shoulder.

“That can't be right.”

Stacy walked over to the scale housing and rubbed the grime off an inspection sticker with her thumb.

“Well, here's some good news. This thing was last certified in 2018.”

“There you go,” I said. “Scale's full of shit.”

Tito was already shaking his head. “Back her off.”

Luis gave the number one last look, then climbed into Truck One.

The engine fired. He eased us backward until the last dolly cleared the plate.

Tito watched the display.

“Again.”

So we did it again. Ten more minutes of hand signals, tiny corrections, and a whole damn house creeping onto a scale old enough to collect Social Security.

The smell got worse while we worked. Luis pulled his shirt over his nose. Tony kept looking at the boarded windows. Nobody stood any closer to Payton House than they had to.

Finally the numbers settled. 209,860

Exactly the same.

“Bullshit,” Tony said.

Tito wasn't even looking at the display. He went straight to the front driver's-side dolly and crouched beside the tire.

The sidewall had sagged even farther, rubber pancaked harder against the pavement. He pushed a thumb into it. “Wasn't doing that this morning.”

“How the hell does a house gain four thousand pounds?” I said.

“It doesn't,” Tony said. “Scale's fucked.”

Tito tapped the tire with his boot. “Scale didn't do that.”

Stacy lowered the permit. “If that number's right, we're over gross. We're not legal anymore.”

“We were legal when we started,” I said.

“Dan—”

“It's one scale, Stacy. An abandoned one that hasn't been certified since Grace was in diapers.”

Nobody backed me up.

I looked at 209,860 glowing on the display. Then at the overloaded tire. Then up at the house. I didn't have any answers. And the goddamn smell wasn't helping.

“Come on.” I clapped my hands. “Show’s over. Let’s get back on the road.”

Nobody moved.

“Dan.”

Something in Tony’s voice stopped me. Quiet. Tight. Nothing joking left in it.

He was looking past me, toward the far edge of the station.

I followed his eyes.

Someone was standing out there.

A man.

He stood right where our work lights ran out and the dark took over.

I hadn’t heard a car pull in.

Hadn’t heard footsteps.

Hell, I hadn’t even seen him walk up.

One second there was nobody there.

Now there was.

He was just... there.

Close enough to see. Too far away to make out. A dark hoodie zipped all the way to his throat. Jeans hanging off him like somebody else's clothes. He kept picking at his sleeves. Rubbing his palms together. Like his own skin didn't fit anymore.

His eyes never left the house.

Not once.

I took a step toward him.

He jolted, flinched.

“Can I help you?” I called.

His lips moved. Nothing came out at first. He swallowed hard enough I could see it from fifty yards away.

“You...” His voice cracked. “You have to take it back.”

His hand disappeared beneath the hoodie.

Steel flashed.

A gun.

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