Lost Boy Lost Girl

by Peter Straub

  It’s astounding. Philip had no idea of who used to live in the house across the alley from him. If he ever did know, he made himself forget it. Proximity to the home base of one of the nation’s livelier serial killers could induce denial in people a lot less prone to it than Philip. And Philip, of course, had the added incentive of being shamefully aware of being married to the serial killer’s first cousin. A share of his blood ran in her veins, a smaller share in their son’s. Can that be the reason for Philip’s dismissal of the boy? Philip loves Mark, I know that, but his love doesn’t stop him from constantly undermining him.

  Thanks to Jimbo Monaghan and Omar Hillyard, I know that Philip bought the house directly behind Kalendar’s, but the purchase had to have been innocent. I don’t think he could have bought his place if he had known it was right behind Kalendar’s. And of course Philip bought it in a typical rush. He wanted to get out of the suburbs, where his neighbors made him feel outclassed, and he liked the idea of living in the old neighborhood, close to his school. He rushed in, thinking he understood everything, and if he ever picked up a hint about the previous owner of the house across the alley, he closed his mind to it on the spot.

  When I learned about Kalendar’s house across the alley, I did not say anything to Philip until I showed him the two strange e-mails Mark had sent me before his disappearance, and even then I waited until we were in the police station with Sergeant Pohlhaus. It was quite clear to me that speaking of these matters with Philip alone would be a waste of effort. The first e-mail showed up in my Inbox two days before Mark vanished, the second the day before. Reading the e-mails only cranked up Philip’s suspicion that Mark and I had been engaged in some kind of conspiracy. Once Philip read the e-mails, he insisted on showing them to Pohlhaus, which was obviously the right thing to do. Pohlhaus read them, asked both of us a few questions, and put the printouts of the e-mails into a folder he kept in his bottom drawer. “You never know,” he said, but as he said it, he sighed. I did my best—I told them both about the connection to Joseph Kalendar, but I might as well have been talking to a couple of dogs.

  From: munderhill697@aol.com

  To: tunderhill@nyc.rr.com

  Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 3:24 PM

  Subject: crazy but not that crazy

  hi unc

  wondering how u r these daze, been thinking abt u. it isn’t e z living here after what happened 2 mom. hard 2 concentrate, hard 2 keep myself in focus. now that i’m finally writing, i don’t really know what 2 say.

  do u ever get some idea u think is totally messed-up mad crazy, and it turns out 2 b right? or good?

  b cool

  m

  “Did you write back?” asked Philip; Sergeant Pohlhaus asked, “Did you respond to the boy’s e-mail?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I wrote that it happens once or twice a week.”

  Here is his second e-mail to me:

  From: munderhill697@aol.com

  To: tunderhill@nyc.rr.com

  Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 4:18 PM

  Subject: Re: crazy but not that crazy

  hi unc t—

  deeper & deeper we go, and where we come out nobody knows . . .

  so what I want to ask u is . . .

  do u ever feel like u r in 1 of your own books? does the world ever feel that way 2 u?—like a tu book?

  thanx,

  m

  “What did you tell him?” asked Philip and Sergeant Pohlhaus.

  “I told him ‘never’ and ‘all the time,’” I said.

  “I’m sorry?” said Sergeant Pohlhaus. He was a steely, whiplike man, and his question indicated that he was not amused.

  So I showed him my e-mail:

  From: tunderhill@nyc.rr.com

  To: munderhill697@aol.com

  Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 7:45 PM

  Subject: Re: crazy but not that crazy

  Dear Mark,

  >do u ever feel like u r in 1 of your own books? does the world >ever feel that way 2 u?—like a tu book?

  Answer:

  (1) Never.

  (2) All the time.

  What the hell is going on out there, anyhow?

  Unc T

  “He never answered,” I said. “But don’t you think that this mysterious project is probably involved in his disappearance?”

  “Maybe,” Philip said.

  Both Sergeant Pohlhaus and I looked at him. We were in a room crowded with desks. Plainclothes policemen were talking into their phones and typing up reports. When I asked Pohlhaus what the room was called, he gave me a funny look and said, “The bullpen,” as if that was something everyone should know.

  “This so-called project obviously had something to do with the Sherman Park Killer,” Philip said.

  “I think it was about something else,” I said. “I just learned that Mark and his friend Jimbo let themselves into that house behind yours, Philip, and after that I think Mark spent a lot of time there by himself. I think the house was his project. Or the project took place in that house. It used to belong to Joseph Kalendar.”

  “That’s impossible,” Philip said. “My wife would have told me.” He looked at Pohlhaus. “This isn’t something I want everybody to know, but my wife and Kalendar were cousins.”

  “That’s interesting,” Pohlhaus said. “It would have been logical for her to have said something about it at the time.”

  “Philip,” I said, “did you let Nancy see your house before you bought it?”

  “Why would I have done that? It was in the right neighborhood, and all the houses are pretty much alike. Besides, I had to act fast.”

  “So she didn’t know until it was too late to back out. Once she realized where the new house was, I think she wanted to protect you.”

  “To protect me? That’s . . . that’s . . .” He fell silent and seemed to ponder the matter.

  “Mark was fascinated with that house,” I told Pohlhaus. “He was obsessed with it.”

  “A kid would be,” Pohlhaus said. “There must be a lot of bloodstains in there. Probably a lot of other stuff, too.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to go over there and take a look?”

  “Hang on, maybe we already did.” Without explaining what he had just said, Pohlhaus took a little notebook from his pocket and flipped through it until he came to the page he wanted. “Is the address of that house 3323 North Michigan Street?”

  I said, “Yes,” and Philip said, “How am I supposed to know?”

  “It is?” Pohlhaus asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He looked at Philip. “Your son and his friend called us on the seventh of June. They wanted to inform us of their suspicions that the Sherman Park Killer had been taking refuge in an abandoned residence at 3323 North Michigan.”

  “There you are,” Philip said. “That proves I’m right. Mark and that dummy were snooping around, pretending to be great detectives like your friend Pasmore. I should have known.” He looked as though he were going to spit on the floor.

  “Did you know they called the police?”

  “What, you think they’d tell me?” Here I got a flat, triumphant glare. “That’s why he was interested in the place. They must have seen someone in there.” He looked at Pohlhaus, whose impervious demeanor had not changed since Philip and I had come into the “bullpen.” “You guys checked it out, I’m sure.”

  “We went over and had a look. The place was locked up. Had been for years.”

  “You never got back in touch with my son?”

  “He gave us a tip, we checked it out, and it went nowhere, like most of the tips we get from the public. We don’t follow up unless we find something useful.”

  “It went nowhere, huh? Is that what you thought after my son disappeared?”

  “Mr. Underhill, I am very sorry about your son, and we’re doing everything we can to find him.”

  “You sit here and say that to me. Didn’t it occur to you that my son could have drawn attention to himself
by his investigative efforts?”

  “Not if our bad boy wasn’t there,” Pohlhaus said.

  My brother looked back at me. “But that’s what all this garbage in the e-mails is about, isn’t it? These crazy ideas, and feeling like he’s in one of your books? He wants you to know he’s playing detective.”

  “He could be talking about something else,” I said.

  “I certainly hope you’ll let me in on whatever it is you have in mind.”

  I glanced at Pohlhaus. “It seems to me that you should go back to that house and give it a much closer inspection.”

  “Another country heard from,” Pohlhaus said.

  The day after the break-in, Mark took the photograph album with him when he returned to the empty house. He did not want to leave it at home. His father was getting weird enough to start searching his room, and the album would be impossible to explain. Best to stow the album in its original hiding place, where it would be safe from parental discovery. Also, he wanted to consult the photographs, to go over them many times, dredging for whatever information he could pick up; since he planned to spend most of the day in that house, he more or less had to bring the pictures with him.

  Late that morning, he and Jimbo had worked out the day’s schedule on their cell phones. They were both basically still in bed. Mark, having showered and dressed, was lying supine on top of the blanket while Jimbo was still prone between his sheets.

  “Phase Two, I get it,” Jimbo said. “Let’s get together at the Sherman Diner around lunchtime and compare notes, okay?”

  The Sherman Diner, two doors down from the former site of the old Beldame Oriental Theater, was an unofficial hangout for Quincy students. Jimbo’s mentioning it meant that he wanted to swap information with Mark but felt like seeing other people afterward. At this time, all the students in the area were constantly gabbing on their cell phones about the local murderer.

  Mark said, “You go, if you want. I don’t think I’m going to be very interested in food, and I don’t feel like explaining myself to the kids who’ll be there. We’ll talk later.”

  “When, like.”

  “Whenever I’m done for the day, Jimbo. You have plenty to keep you busy.”

  “I know.” Jimbo sounded a bit aggrieved.

  He probably sensed that his best friend was holding out on him. Mark was indeed holding out on him, and he intended to keep on doing just that. While going through the house the day before, Mark had noticed many curiosities that he had not mentioned to Jimbo. In a sense, he had given Jimbo the key to understanding these oddities (if, that is, he was right about them, as he was almost certain he was), so technically perhaps he had withheld nothing. But Mark had known that Jimbo would not understand what to do with the key, or what it meant, or even that it was a key. The house, Mark had concluded, held an immense secret that had been built into it by the same madman who had added the ugly little room and created the giant’s bed.

  After getting off the phone with Jimbo, Mark went downstairs and prowled through the refrigerator. Mark’s father shopped only when forced to do so, and he tended to buy unrelated items like bottles of olives, peanut brittle, pickles, lite mayonnaise, and Wonder Bread. On his first foray through the shelves, Mark thought he might have to go over to the 7-Eleven before getting down to business, but his next pass took in the sliding drawer, which yielded cheddar cheese, cream cheese, and some sliced salami that still looked edible. He made a salami and cheddar cheese sandwich with mayo and slid the gooey thing into a plastic bag. Then he put both the sandwich and the photograph album into a paper bag that already held a crowbar, a ripping hammer, and the Maglite, and went outside, rolling down the top of the bag to make it look smaller.

  Out into the hot white sunlight he steps, our heroic boy, out into the oven the sun has made of these poor streets, moving like a jockey toward the winner’s circle, like a conqueror toward his mistress’s tent. For once in his life, he feels locked in, prepared for the first stage of whatever destiny will turn out to be destined for him. His fear—for he is actually filled with fear—seems to energize him, to increase his sense of purpose.

  Such a manner invites rather than repels notice, and not long after he turns onto Michigan Street and begins his purposeful march toward the fourth house up the block, one Michigan Street resident inclines his head toward his living room window and immediately takes him in.

  There’s that good-looking Underhill kid, thinks Omar Hillyard, on his way to the old Kalendar house again, I bet. Where’s Sancho Panza, the little Irish bulldog who goes everywhere with him?

  God, what a handsome kid. Bold as brass! Look at him come cutting right up alongside that house . . . he’s breaking in, for sure. Little demon! If I were the Irish bulldog, I’d be wildly in love with him.

  I bet he finds more than he bargained for inside the Kalendar place.

  Enjoying the sensation of light warming his arms and shoulders, Mark moved onto the grass. His legs carried him along, stride after rhythmic stride. If he wanted to, Mark could walk to the Rocky Mountains, jump up one side, down the other, and roll on until he was standing ankle-deep in the Pacific.

  He plunged through the tall grasses and parched weeds, bounded up the broken wooden steps, and after the slightest hesitation, opened the back door. Here was the giant’s house, and here was he, Mark the giant killer and his little bag of tricks. He had half-expected some form of resistance to his entrance, but his coming alone did not invoke the invisible spider webs and the emotional miasma of his first visit. He passed unimpeded through the door, and without bothering to check out the room containing the obscene bed, carried his laden paper bag up the stairs to the master bedroom.

  An excellent carpenter had once lived in this house. The sloppiness of the addition amounted to a deliberate deception: anyone who saw it would be unlikely to guess at the extent of the adjustments its maker had made to the fabric of his house. The sheer monstrosity of the torture bed also had to be deliberate—the carpenter had built an object commensurate with the enormity of his feelings. However, when free to exercise the full extent of his skill, he had set in place a kind of builder’s tour de force. This was what Mark had not revealed to his best friend.

  Up in the bedroom, he took the crowbar from his bag and used it to pry away a section of the panel in the back of the closet. Plaster and bits of broken lathe rattled to the floor.

  He had found the photograph album within a small, square, tablelike construction to the side of the vacancy he had just enlarged. The little table looked as though it had been built to hold a lamp, but Mark knew it had two very different purposes. It provided a perfect place to sit unseen and listen to what was going on in the house. It was a seat for a domestic spy and terrorist, and that it had been built at all demonstrated the extent of the builder’s psychosis. By means of a secret, sliding catch, the little box also opened up to become a concealed vault or safe.

  Mark stepped into the space he had widened and saw that his secret theory about the house was fact. His heart climbed into his throat, and for a couple of seconds, the sheer weight of his fear made it impossible for him to move forward or back. He wished he hadn’t been right: the hiding places that had spooked Jimbo were bad enough, but this was much worse. This was a kind of demented savagery.

  He was looking at another wall, separated from the back of the closet by perhaps three feet. After four or five feet, the gap between the inner and outer walls disappeared into darkness. This was a madman’s house, and it resembled the workings of his mind, being riddled with unseen, unseeable passageways. Mark would have bet his right arm and leg that this one continued all the way to the other side of the house. He went back into the bedroom for the Maglite.

  Once again in the closet, he passed through the opening and turned on the Maglite to send a beam of cool yellow light, wobbling with the trembling of his hand, down a narrow, rubble-strewn corridor. He turned around, and the same thing happened on the other side. His mouth was completely dry.
There it was, exactly as he had supposed. Mark was looking at the first few yards of an invented corridor. It proved him right about the nature of the carpenter’s modifications. To see if the other part of his theory was correct, he had only to make his way down the narrow passage.

  Because what happened at the end of this sadistic secret hallway? Did it just run bang straight into the wall, or did it, as he hoped. . . . The narrow beam of light struck a blind wall, and disappointment squeezed his heart. The flashlight drooped in this hand, and the trembling yellow circle of light wavered down over the lifeless plaster and slipped, like a waterfall down the face of a cliff, into a space beneath the level of the floor. Mark heard himself exhale. There was no reason for his having been right to have meant anything more than that he had been clever, but he stepped forward to see the first few steps of the descending staircase with nearly a sense of gratification. The house was a honeycomb.

  The man who owned this house had lived alone—he had either killed his family or sent them away. In any case, children had died on the great wooden bed and in the small single bed on the second floor. Once he had eliminated his family, the man had enticed women into this house, or he’d pounced on them in the dark, tied them up, and carried them in. The doors would have been locked, and the windows would have been boarded up. The women had found themselves alone in a house they could not leave. Soon, they would have heard him moving through the house, and they would have tried to run from him, but he would have seemed to rove invisibly from room to room, following their every move. He was like a great spider speeding across his web, and he was capable of appearing anywhere. He liked peering through his peepholes and watching the trapped women. He liked killing them, too, but he loved tormenting them.

  Mark felt weak with a mixture of exhilaration, terror, and nausea. He had thrust his way into the evil heart of this poisoned house, and what he saw there sickened him.