by L V Gaudet
“Time to get to work,” Jim mutters. “The first thing I want to do is learn more about the old man.”
The first door he knocks on is the young mother. He can hear the baby wailing inside through the apartment door. It takes her so long to answer that he starts to wonder if the child has been left alone.
He knocks a few more times while waiting and finally hears movement on the other side of the door.
She opens the door just a crack, keeping the flimsy security chain on.
“Yes?” She peers out at him, looking a little frightened. The screaming baby is louder with the door open.
Jim decides to play straight up with her. He flashes his badge, knowing she’s too nervous to pick up on it being for another city.
“Police, I would like to ask you a few questions about one of your neighbours.”
She blanches.
“No, I can’t,” she whispers, trying to scan the hallway despite the almost closed door.
He knows her nervousness. She’s afraid of what would happen; that he wants information on a neighbour she knows is doing something criminal, and that they will come after her for it.
“It’s the old man,” he says. “I’m checking on his well-being. His family is concerned.”
Her fear slips away, but not completely.
“I didn’t think he had any family,” she says, closing the door and slipping the security chain off.
For that brief moment, Jim is sure she is closing him out, refusing to talk to him. But then the door opens.
She stands there, just a little bit plump, her clothes looking like she lives on hand-me-downs, the ill-fitting cast offs of others after they had been picked clean of any clothes purchased with any semblance of taste.
“Do you need to get that?” he asks, referring to the still crying baby. The non-stop screaming of the baby is wearing at him.
She glances back towards the baby somewhere in the apartment behind her and turns back to him. He can see the stress, the struggle of being a single mother. She shrugs.
“He won’t stop until he falls asleep.”
He wants to yell at her to go pick up the damned baby. The cries are turning to hiccupping cries now, the baby finally tiring himself out from crying.
Her eyes cloud for a moment.
“You guys were already here,” she says, “you know, to check up on the old guy.”
Jim is taken aback by this, but tries to hide it.
She picks up on his surprise.
“I don’t think the other guy was a cop though. Was he family?”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall and thin. Kind of looks like a buzzard, you know, those big ugly birds that fly around in the sky looking for dead stuff to eat in the desert.”
“Hawkworth,” McNelly mutters under his breath.
“What?” she asks, not quite hearing him because he spoke too quietly. The baby’s cries are muffled now.
He must have buried his face in his unhappiness, Jim thinks.
“Lawrence Hawkworth,” McNelly repeats. Hawkworth must not have told her he was a reporter. She would have remembered that.
“He’s a social worker,” he lies.
The young woman nods understanding, thinking how the old man must need the help, being so old.
“Does he have any regular visitors that you are aware of?” Jim asks.
“No. I don’t think he’s ever had a visitor. He likes things quiet, doesn’t like people coming around.”
She ducks her head towards him conspiratorially. “He doesn’t even like anyone else having visitors.”
“How is that?”
“That other woman who lives here, she’s a prostitute you know.” She makes a face indicating her disapproval. “She was always bringing strange guys around. They wake my baby up. It takes me forever to get him back to sleep.”
The dark circles and bags under her eyes are a clear indication that her sleep has not improved.
The baby’s cries finally drop off, much to Jim’s relief. He’s asleep.
“These guys were always bugging me when they saw me,” she continues. “Like they thought I’m like her.” She says “her” like it’s an insult. “They scared me. I didn’t feel safe.”
She points, indicating the other apartments.
“They’re all kind of scared of the old guy. I’m a little scared of him too, I guess.
He started coming out and threatening these guys coming around here, her Johns I guess. He yelled at her too. She stopped bringing those guys around after that. I’m not sorry, though. I feel a lot safer here now she doesn’t have these strange guys coming around.”
“So, the old guy has no visitors, no family or anything coming around, checking on him or anything?” Jim presses for confirmation.
“None that I know of.”
He nods. “Thanks, that’s all I need. You take care now.”
He turns and leaves, leaving her standing there wondering what it’s all about.
She closes the door and locks it, going to sit down in the silence of her apartment now that the baby has finally stopped crying. She sags onto her couch in exhaustion and starts watching T.V.
Jim moves on to the next tenant on his list, the soon to be divorcee.
The man who answers the door has the haunted look of someone whose life has turned into chaos and they have no idea why.
He stares at JIM, his eyes both blank and angry and his face puckered into a permanent scowl as though the whole world is against him.
“What?” he says it insolently.
Jim flashes his badge.
“Detective McNelly,” he introduces himself. “I’m doing a wellness check on the elderly gentleman. He’s not answering his door. Does he have any regular visitors; friends, family, social workers? Anywhere you know that he hangs out regularly?”
The man’s scowl deepens and his eyes get a wild look as if just talking to him or being in his presence somehow offends him.
“Gentleman?” he cries the word out indignantly, his face triumphant and angry. “That old geezer is crazy! He threatened me, do you know that? I told that other guy too, the tall ugly one that came around asking about him.”
Jim only nods, the man is on a rant. He might get some good information letting the guy just go with it. More likely, though, anything he says will be tainted by his anger at the world.
“He tried to tell me how to look after my own kids. My own kids, like he knows better than me. He’s always down there sweeping the sidewalk. And he doesn’t like anybody.
If you have anybody come around he’s watching. If he doesn’t think they should be here, he’s right in your face about it. The only good thing about it is at least that prostitute and the junky don’t bring their low life people around anymore. He scared them all off.”
“He’s a scary guy, huh?” Jim says.
“That guy is creepy weird. Always watching like he doesn’t approve, going on about family and keeping quiet and not bringing attention on yourself.”
“He has a thing about that, does he? Not bringing attention on yourself?”
“He’s crazy obsessed with it. That’s probably why he doesn’t have any family. He just hangs out down there sweeping the sidewalk and watching what everyone else is doing.”
He looks distraught and lets out an animal sound of angry despair. Jim’s automatic reaction the moment the wail starts is to wonder what the hell that was for.
“Auugh, he’s just like my wife, telling me what to do, how to look after my own kids, where I can go and who I can see. He’s going to get all in my face just for talking to you!
I don’t deserve this! She kicked me out for nothing, just to be a bitch, took everything from me, all my furniture, my stuff, my house, my kids. I don’t deserve this!”
Jim heard enough. The man is really grating on his nerves. He read Beth’s report, and it was more in depth than needed. The man’s wife had bagged all his belongings and dumped them outside for him to pi
ck up. The separation and ongoing divorce are bitter and ugly.
I guess she took offence to the girlfriend, he thinks.
“That’s all I need, thank you for your time.” Jim turns and walks away, not giving the man the opportunity to try to keep him there. He can hear his tirade still going on, even though he no longer has an audience, all the way down the hall, even after the man had retreated to his apartment and closed the door.
Jim moves on to the second floor. It’s too early to be claiming to be doing a curfew check. It doesn’t matter. The prostitute and druggie both don’t answer their doors.
His final stop is William McAllister’s door. He doesn’t answer either, although Jim thinks he hears movement inside. He waits, knocking on the door again, and finally has to give up.
He has the sense of being watched through the peephole as he walks away.
Jim returns to his car. He doesn’t start it right away. Instead he pulls out his phone and dials. He waits, listening to the drone in his ear of the call ringing.
“Hello,” the voice on the other end starts. Jim doesn’t give him a chance to continue.
“Hawkworth, what are you doing snooping around William McAllister?” he demands.
Lawrence picks up immediately that Jim is pissed, both from his tone of voice and his use of his surname.
“Just following up leads,” he says.
There is a heavy pause over the line, Jim breathing to control his temper and Lawrence knowing him well enough to give him that time.
“What did you find?” Jim finally asks.
“I might have a lead on William McAllister’s wife, Marjory.”
“Where do you want to meet?”
Lawrence gives him the name of and directions to a small corner pub.
Jason McAllister doesn’t know what to do, so he hops the bus back home. His meeting with his father went as badly as he expected it to.
He warned him the police are coming to question him, maybe his mother too. But that’s all he got out of it. That and an unpleasant bitter taste in his mouth from his father’s open hatred of him.
What was I thinking? He asks himself silently, staring out the bus window at the fields going by. The bus is half empty and he has a seat to himself.
Did I think we would have some kind of happy reunion after all these years? That he would greet me with open arms? From the man who has never been capable of showing any emotion except anger?
Did I think he would have forgiven me for Amy? For being who I am?
Jason’s thoughts turn to his mother, kept locked way in that home. He suddenly has the urge to go see her. He promised his father he won’t. He made that promise a long time ago, the last time he had seen him.
Maybe if nobody sees me? If she doesn’t see me? No, I have to wait. At least until after they would have tried to talk to her. Then I’ll go see her.
Jason needs to blow off some steam in a bad way. He thinks about visiting the old farm property and thinks better of it.
I could justify it, since it is my family farm. But that would not be smart. They’d be watching the farm. I have to find someplace else, someplace secluded.
Cities are full of secluded places, sometimes only feet away from a heavily populated building, street, or in the midst of a busy park. Sometimes it depends on the time of day or night. The right place at the right time.
His bus pulls into the station at last, breaking him from his thoughts. He hadn’t even realized they reached the city and he wonders when it happened, although being a small city it didn’t take long to go from the surrounding farm fields to the center city bus depot.
Jason has no plan of action in mind when he disembarks off the bus except to return to the rooming house.
He does not make it there.
Billy’s stomach lets out the distressed sound of gnawing hunger.
He is huddled on the floor in a corner with the blankets and pillow as shelter, eyes still wide with fear.
Did they follow me? Are they outside right now watching? Coming up the stairs?
I didn’t hear the door open downstairs or the creak of that step in the staircase that always creaks loudly under your weight if you don’t know to step over it.
He looks down at his empty stomach and clutches it. He is so hungry that he feels like he is going to vomit, but he’s terrified of going back out there in search of food.
Finally, driven from hiding by hunger, Billy climbs out of the corner and dumps the bedding half on the bed.
He goes to the window, conscious of the creeper’s warning never to be seen in the window, and pulls back the curtain just a little, looking out. He searches the street as far as he can see in both directions.
There is no sign of the white van or anyone watching the house.
He turns to leave and pauses at the door.
“No, better leave it like I found it.” Returning to the bed, he tugs at the sheets, making the bed with an unpractised hand. He never bothered making his bed when he lived with his family.
It isn’t the best bed-making job, but he feels better after it’s done.
He pulls the curtain back again to look outside, spending a long moment studying the neighbourhood.
Still not feeling safe, he has no choice. “I have to find something to eat.”
The hunger pain in his stomach gnaws at him in reply, sending another gurgle rumbling through his stomach.
Billy turns away from the window and leaves the room.
Across the street, a wild-eyed unkempt man watches through a little door flipped open in a room repeatedly wallpapered in newsprint and tinfoil. The room is dark, the only light coming from the night sky and streetlights glowing in that little door that opens to the glass window behind it.
He sees the curtain move in the upstairs window across the street and a face appear in the window. He leaps back, plastering himself against the wall behind him. He stares at the little opening as if he expects something or someone to lunge through it at him.
Trembling, he pushes himself away from the wall and cautiously approaches, making himself look again.
He watches the face in the window.
“No no no,” his voice wavers. “You do not do this to me. You are not the man, you are the boy. How? How did you become the boy?”
He gasps, the realization horrifying, covering his mouth with his hands.
“You are a changer!” he sucks the words in as he speaks them as if that somehow will take away the truth of them.
The face vanishes from the window and he turns away, pacing the floor and poking his head hard with one finger.
“Think think think think,” he chants.
It doesn’t work and he starts hitting his head harder, open palmed, sucking those words back in and trying to blow out whatever is blocking him from thinking.
“If I blow hard enough, maybe I can push out whatever they put in my head to stop my thoughts,” he pants
He paces frantically, smacking himself repeatedly.
“Think think think think!”
His eyes widen with a thought and he stops.
He rushes back to the opening to stare at the window in the second floor of the rooming house.
There is no face there.
He watches for what feels like forever and is reaching for the little door to close out the world, giving up, when the curtain moves again.
“There, the boy again, looking out. The man has become the boy. For how long?”
“You are weak like that, aren’t you?” he hisses at him. What did you do to the boy? Eat him? Did you suck him up into your being? Consume him? Is he a dried shrivelled empty husk like the spider’s victim, sucked dry of his life? Is he there, locked up somewhere?”
He hates the boy. But now that he thinks the man has done something to him, has somehow become him, he likes the boy.
“Poor boy,” he says, shaking his head sadly.
He turns away, closing the little door and blocking out the only l
ight in the room.
He starts pacing, holding himself and rocking, pacing harder.
“Nnnngh, nnnngh, nnnngh, nnnngh, nnnngh, NO!”
He groans and plasters himself against the wall, wild-eyed.
“No no no no, do not make me. No.”
He looks wildly at the now closed little door.
“You are weak now. A weak little boy, not a man. I can stop you. I can kill you.”
He flings himself at the door to what was once a bedroom, flipping locks open one after another after another and yanking the door open.
“If I get you before you become the man again I can kill you so you can’t hurt anyone else.”
He flies from the room, feet pounding down the hallway and down the stairs.
An elderly woman’s voice calls to him from somewhere in the house.
“Nathan, what are you doing? What’s all that stomping?”
“Nothing Mom, I’m going out,” he calls back.
The elderly woman blinks in confusion in her chair in the darkened living room where she sits. The furniture is worn and outdated. It’s impossible to tell if the house has electricity or not.
“Out? But he never goes out. Almost never leaves that room.”
She struggles to push herself up from the chair, reaching for her walker and dragging it closer with one hand. Gripping it with both hands, she pulls herself up unsteadily.
He is already gone before she can stop him.
Billy pauses at the top of the stairs, looking down into the darkness below. The lack of windows here lets little light into the stairs and hallways.
He turns back to look at the creeper’s door.
“What if something happens to me? Nobody will know.”
Billy scurries back to the room, almost dropping the key as he fumbles it, and makes it back inside, locking the door behind him. He leans against the door in desperation.
“Come on man, you got to eat,” he groans.
Afraid, he writes a note before leaving the room.
“If I’m not here the white van people got me,” the note reads in jagged printing that seeps fear.
Billy leaves the note on the bed with his stuff. He thinks better of it, and pockets the phone. He cautiously unlocks the door and slips out, locking the door behind him.
