by Peter Straub
“You just take a shower?”
“You wouldn’t believe how dirty I got,” Mark said. He was exulting. “The bottom of the bathtub was all black.”
“I guess you found something.”
Mark’s grin tightened, and his eyes narrowed. Jimbo could not decipher these signals. It looked to him as though what Mark had found was either unspeakably bad or outrageously good.
“How about you?”
“I’ve got some stuff, yeah, but you go first.”
Mark straightened up on the park bench, placed a hand over his mouth, and looked over his shoulder at Patrolman Jester. Patrolman Jester looked back at him, poker-faced. “Well, that’s a pretty amazing place. Whoever lived there last probably. . . . Are you ready for this?”
“I know something about it already. Whoever lived there probably what?”
Another backward glance at Quentin Jester, who went to visible pains to look elsewhere. “Probably murdered a lot of people.”
Mark told Jimbo about the hidden corridors, and his exploration of the basement, his discovery of the trunk, and the stains soaked into the concrete floor. “That’s why nobody can stand to look at the place. Something terrible really did happen in there. Maybe he built that big wooden bed so he could torture them before he took them downstairs.”
“You couldn’t fit a grown-up woman into those straps,” Jimbo said, knowing more than he was willing to say. He could not understand why Mark seemed to be in such a bubbly mood.
“If they were small, you could.” His all but hidden internal mirth, which would have been visible only to Jimbo and perhaps his father, flickered for a moment into view. “And how about you, Sherlock. What’s this information you said you had?”
Jimbo felt as though he had been pushed to the end of a diving board and ordered to jump. “Most of the people on Michigan Street don’t have a clue about the place. All they know is, some people in the neighborhood got together to keep it from looking like a slum, and they mow the grass on the sides and in front every two weeks. They have a kind of a list, and all these guys take turns. A couple of women told me their husbands hate the place. They hope it’ll burn down one night. The Rochenkos were both home. That was one of the only two places where I got asked why I wanted to know about the house.”
“Where was the other one? Ah. I bet I know. So what did you say?”
Jimbo made a face. “I said I was thinking up a topic for a research paper I have to do next year. The Rochenkos told me to think about global warming. Mrs. Rochenko said she had a bad feeling about 3323, and I shouldn’t even look at it if I didn’t have to.”
“I bet they don’t look at it even when they’re mowing the lawn.” Mark stared at Jimbo, and Jimbo braced himself. “The other guy to ask why you were so curious was Old Man Hillyard, right?”
Jimbo nodded. “Old Man Hillyard saw us sneaking around the back yesterday, and he saw you going there this morning.”
Alarm bloomed in Mark’s eyes. “He’s not going to tell anybody, is he?”
“No, he’s not like that. Old Man Hillyard is different from the way we always thought.” Jimbo paused. “He’s pretty off the wall.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Same thing. Research project.”
“Did he believe you?”
“He asked me if I thought he was an idiot. He said, even if high schools assigned research papers in summer, I was the kind of kid who’d put off doing it until the last week of August.”
Mark laughed. After a moment Jimbo laughed, too.
“Okay, okay. So I told him that we were just really interested in the place, that’s all. And he said . . .”
“He said . . . ?”
“He said it was interesting that we were interested.”
Mark lifted his chin and opened his mouth just about wide enough to sip the air.
“It was especially interesting that you were interested in it.”
Mark’s head tilted, and his eyebrows went up. Jimbo had to say it now. It was either that or make up some lie.
“I hope you’re going to explain that to me.”
“Naturally, I asked him what he meant.” Jimbo paused again, searching for words.
Mark leaned forward. “Well?”
Jimbo inhaled. “The first part, you already know about. The man who lived in that house was a murderer.”
“No shit.”
“And the second part . . . is that he was probably related to your mom. Because they had the same last name. Before your mom married your dad.” Puzzled by the growing recognition visible in his friend’s face, Jimbo said, “Calendar? Like the months and the days, a calendar?”
“Kalendar,” Mark said. He spelled it out for Jimbo. “You saw it at the funeral home, remember?”
“I guess I didn’t really notice. But Old Man Hillyard said the murderer’s name was Joseph Kalendar, and he didn’t even know it was your mom’s maiden name until he went to your house and saw it on those cards. With the sunset and the Lord’s Prayer?”
“And?”
“And he was surprised, because Kalendar was such a bad guy. He killed all those women, and he murdered his own son. Old Man Hillyard knew these people!”
“Wow,” Mark said.
“I thought you were going to be upset. But you almost look like you’re happy to hear about Kalendar.”
“Of course I’m happy. You just told me what I needed to know. The guy’s name, and what he did. He and Mom were related. Maybe he was her brother!”
He gave Jimbo a look of pure wildness, his eyes bulging in their sockets. “Joseph Kalendar is the Dark Man. And he’s the reason my mom killed herself.”
“The Dark Man?”
“The man whose back is always turned. He’s the guy I saw at the top of Michigan Street.”
“What? You think he’s a ghost?”
Mark shook his head. “I think he’s more like what some people call a ghost.” He thought for a moment. “What happened to Joseph Kalendar?”
“He was sent to a mental hospital, and another inmate killed him.”
“I bet we can find out all about him on the Internet.”
Jimbo nodded, then thought of something else. “What do you mean, what some people call a ghost?”
Mark laughed and shook his head. “I mean, like—something left behind. Something real enough so sometimes you can see it.”
“I can’t see it,” Jimbo said. “I mean, I couldn’t. That day in your kitchen, I didn’t see anyone standing with his back to the door.”
“You saw him two nights earlier, and you were so scared you fainted. He was what was left behind of Joseph Kalendar. Maybe I see him more often than you do because I’m related to him. And maybe this Sherman Park Killer is stirring him up.”
“Stuff like that doesn’t happen. Parts of people aren’t left behind. The only person who sees dead people is Haley Joely Osmond, or whatever his name is.”
“Joel Haley Osmond,” Mark said, thinking that did not sound quite right, either. “Only, you’re wrong. A lot of people see dead people—the part left behind. Don’t you think? A friend of yours dies, and one day you’re walking down the street and you look in a window and just for a second you see him in there. The next day, maybe you see him getting on a bus, or walking across a bridge. That’s the part of him that’s left behind.”
“Yeah, left behind in you.”
“In you, right. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“But you never heard of this guy.”
“My mother knew all about him. She must have worried about him, she must have been afraid of him. This guy had to be a big deal in my mother’s life! Don’t you think some of that could have passed into me?”
“You’re crazy,” Jimbo said.
“No, I’m not. Parents pass things on. Things they have no idea they’re passing on, those things especially they pass on to their children.”
As if to put an end to this conversation, Mark stood up
and glanced around. A few adults were hurrying homeward through the park. Patrolman Jester stared thoughtfully at an empty place on the other side of the walkway. Together, the boys noticed that the air had begun to darken.
Jimbo stood up, too, looking a bit belligerent. “That doesn’t explain how you can see Joseph Kalendar, who’s been dead for twenty-five years!”
Mark and Jimbo walked, their pace slower than usual, down the path to Sherman Boulevard.
“I don’t think I actually saw Joseph Kalendar. I think I saw the Dark Man, the part that’s left of Joseph Kalendar. Like I said before, maybe the Sherman Park Killer woke him up, and the only person he’s visible to is me.”
“Well, maybe the Dark Man is the Sherman Park Killer,” Jimbo said, with the air of one throwing out a random speculation.
“I think it’s the other way around, that the Sherman Park Killer is the Dark Man.”
“What’s the difference?”
“There’s a real killer out there, that’s the difference. The Dark Man can’t take people—he doesn’t even have a face. The Sherman Park guy can kill you.”
They strolled across Sherman Boulevard, as usual paying no attention to the traffic lights.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if other people saw the Dark Man here and there, you know, in little flashes. Things are getting a little weird in this part of town.”
“You’re getting a little weird,” Jimbo said. “It’s like finding out about this Kalendar, this psycho, cheered you up!” He glanced at Mark’s face. “It did, didn’t it? You’re all, like, electrified about something.”
“Well,” Mark said.
“A trunk full of hair and a couple of secret passages wouldn’t do this to you.”
“Well,” Mark said again, and told Jimbo about finding the paper bag in the downstairs closet after leaving it upstairs. “Don’t you see what happened?”
Jimbo honestly had no idea.
“Somebody moved my bag.” Now Mark’s mirth shone from his eyes.
“Kalendar? The Dark Man?”
Mark shook his head. “This person is playing with me, Jimbo. She’s saying, I’m here, why can’t you see me?”
“It’s a she?”
“I think it’s that girl, the one I sorta saw through the window that morning. Even back then, I had the feeling she was deliberately showing herself. And this morning, I thought I saw—”
Jimbo stopped moving, then shook his head and resumed walking along the west side of Sherman Boulevard toward West Burleigh Street.
“You just remembered something,” Mark said.
“No, it wasn’t anything.”
Mark continued to stare at him.
“When we were in the house together? I thought something moved. I saw this movement, this blur.”
“No kidding,” Mark said. “There you are. See?”
“Not really.”
“Everything’s different in there now. Everything feels different.”
Jimbo sighed. “What do you want me to do tomorrow?”
“See if Old Man Hillyard knows anything about a girl or a young woman.”
“A lot of women died there, did you forget that?”
“Ask anyhow.”
“Kalendar didn’t have any daughters.”
“Just ask, okay?”
“If you promise to tell me what happens if she’s really there and you meet her.”
“Let’s go to your house.”
“Now what do you want to do?”
“Now,” Mark said, “we are going to Google Joseph Kalendar.”
Patrolman Quentin Jester moved to the far side of an immense clump of dying azaleas growing a few feet from the right side of the walkway. He had already walked once around the periphery of the azaleas, and he felt both discouraged and irritated with himself. It was too hot for a man to spend his working day standing out in the full glare of the sun, waiting for a villain who was never going to show his face. In all that heat and glare, even a trained officer could lose his bearings. Patrolman Jester had let his senses persuade him that he had seen that very same massive, black-haired character dressed in the heavy coat and boots following along behind the red-haired kid and his friend. His professional instincts had come into play, and he’d set off down the big flagstones in pursuit of the mystery man; whereupon the said mystery man peeled off the walkway and stepped behind the long bunch of azaleas. Whereupon, for the second time that day, said mystery man upped and vanished from human view, “like,” as Patrolman Jester’s grandfather used to say, “the unclean spirit at sparrow fart and cockerel’s cry.” Quentin Jester might speak of this enigma to his friend Louis Easley after a couple of beers at the House of Ko-Reck-Shun, but he was never going to put it in a report.
“Yo, ever see one like that before?”
“One what?
“One of those.” Jimbo pointed back across Sherman Boulevard, where eight or nine cars lined up at parking meters stood baking in the sun. Near the center of the row was a red Chevrolet pickup truck, which Mark supposed was the subject of Jimbo’s question.
“Yes, odd as it may seem, I have seen a red pickup before.”
Jimbo was shaking his head vehemently and grinning. He was in a good mood, Mark thought, because he had been let off the hook in regard to Joseph Kalendar’s house.
“Okay, it’s shiny,” he said. “In fact, it’s really shiny. It’s the cleanest, brightest pickup I’ve ever seen. I’d eat a fried egg off its hood.”
“Can’t you see?” Jimbo asked. “It’s the only pickup in the world with . . . with . . .”
“Oh,” Mark said, having seen. “Smoked windows.”
“Pimp windows, man. With windows like that, I bet you can hardly see a thing.”
“What kind of guy owns that truck?”
“A rich guy,” Jimbo said. “That thing never leaves the garage. It’s like a toy to the guy who owns it.”
The boys were walking slowly along Sherman Boulevard, watching the truck across the street as they drew parallel to it. “It’s some rich kid,” Mark said. “Some twenty-year-old guy who lives in his parents’ gigantic house on Eastern Shore Drive and who will never, for as long as he lives, ever have to get his hands dirty or work outside and get sweaty.”
“Unlike us,” Jimbo said. “The sons of the soil.”
Both of them burst into laughter. When they had gone past the pickup truck, what had been a pleasant diversion ceased to exist, and they forgot all about it.
They reached the front of the Sherman Diner, and Jimbo stopped walking and looked in through its long window.
“I’ll catch up with you later, okay? I kind of arranged to meet someone here for a Coke or something.”
“I don’t believe you,” Mark said, then remembered Jimbo suggesting that they drop in at the diner the day before. “Who is it?”
“Lee Arlington,” Jimbo said, too quickly.
Lee Arlington was an extremely pretty girl in their class. She was reported to be prone to moods, and she wrote poetry in a big journal she carried everywhere with her in her backpack.
“Come on in, too,” Jimbo said. “She’s with Chloe Manners, and Chloe always liked you.”
Mark wavered. He wanted to go into the diner and see what the girls were talking about and what was on their minds, but he also wanted to see if he could find a full-frontal picture of Joseph Kalendar’s face, as well as the details of his crimes.
“You go, have a good time,” he said. “I want to get some info on this psycho cousin of mine. Come over when you’re through here.”
“Half an hour,” Jimbo said. “I’ll be there.”
At the end of the block, Mark remembered the red pickup and glanced back to get another look at it. Jimbo was right: guys who rode around in pickups generally didn’t go for tinted windows. Back down the street, a little sky-blue Datsun was reversing into the empty space where the pickup had been. Too bad, he thought, but no major loss—he just wished he could have gotten a glimpse of th
e lucky son-of-a-bitch kid who owned that truck. Mark swung his head around to look forward again, and bright, gleaming red flashed in the periphery of his vision. He looked to his left and discovered that while he’d been strategizing with Jimbo, the red pickup had done a U-turn and come far enough down his side of the street to arrive at a point immediately behind him. He waited for it to move past him, but it did not.
Curious, he looked over his shoulder again. The dark gray-green panel of the pickup’s windshield reflected gold sunlight straight into his eyes. Blinking, Mark shaded his eyes with one hand. All he could see were the windshield and the windows; whatever was inside the cab was invisible. The truck still did not move past him, but kept inching along at exactly his pace.
Mark wished he had gone into the Sherman Diner with Jimbo.
Then he told himself not to worry. He was being silly. The guy hidden behind the slick windshield was a kid from Eastern Shore Drive who had managed to get lost on the decidedly ungridlike streets of the former Pigtown. Getting lost in the Sherman Park area wasn’t difficult: Uncle Tim, who had grown up here, had told him that he’d had trouble finding Superior Street on his first day back. The pickup’s driver was going to roll down the passenger window and ask for directions. Mark turned around and began walking backward, waiting to be questioned.
The pickup simply trundled along at two, three miles an hour, hanging back at the unvarying distance of eight or nine feet. Seen close up, the vehicle looked amazingly clean and well polished. The curves of the hood and the fenders appeared almost molten. Along the side and the door panel, the red seemed lacquered in layer after layer, so that for all the brilliance of its surface Mark could look down and down, deeper and deeper, as if into a red pool. Completely free of dirt and pebbles, the tires shone a clear, liquid black. Mark had the feeling that this truck had never been driven in the rain, that it had never seen mud or snow, had never been entrusted to a valet or a public parking lot. It was like someone’s pet cougar that, after having been pampered and brushed every day of its life, was now at last permitted to explore the outer world. It seemed to Mark like a living thing—a large, dangerous living thing, a real entity.
