The Unwelcome

by Jacob Steven Mohr

  But just as she was about to throw open the sliding door, Kaitlyn burst out of her bedroom with a clatter. Her eyes were wide and rolling like a spooked horse, and before Riley could duck back out of sight, Kaitlyn zeroed in on her and half-sprinted up to the door, slipping and sliding on her stocking feet.

  “Riley!” she hissed through the glass. “You’ve gotta come inside. Right now.”

  “I’m coming—” she began to say, but not before the other girl yanked open the door and practically dragged her through by both arms. Riley stumbled against the doorjamb, stubbing a sock-clad toe on the wooden partition, but the pain was numbed by the cold and drink in her belly. “I said I was coming in,” Riley mumbled, a little irritably despite the tear-streaks still gleaming on her face. “No need to get grabby.”

  “Did you hear anything out here?” Kaitlyn asked, ignoring both her and her tears.

  “What?” But Kaitlyn was barely listening; she twisted her neck around, casting frenzied glances first at her bedroom door, then Benjamin and Alice’s, both closed tight. Then she grabbed Riley by the lapels of her jean jacket and pulled her closer, so close their faces were nearly touching and Kaitlyn was breathing Budweiser in her face.

  “He’s here,” she slurred. “He’s inside the cabin.”

  “Who?” Riley asked. “What are you talking about? Where are Benjamin and Alice?”

  “I heard him,” Kaitlyn moaned, again ignoring her. “You gotta believe me. He knocked… on my door. Just now. He talked to me. It wasn’t his voice but, Goddammit, I know it was him.”

  She tugged Riley’s jacket, pulling her even closer, almost like she would try to climb into Riley’s lap. “You believe me, don’t you, Riley?” she whispered. “You know I wouldn’t lie about something like this, don’t you?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know,” Riley replied, trying her best to free herself from the other girl’s grip. There was a funny feeling stirring in the pit of her stomach, warm and heavy like a good meal or a shot of bourbon. “Now, girlfriend, you’d better tell me what’s going on,” she said, “or I’m gonna lose it. Who’s here? Who are you talking about?”

  Kaitlyn opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak, Benjamin’s bedroom door creaked open an inch or two. Kaitlyn turned her head, staring into the deep shadow beyond the door, but nobody emerged. The doorway remained empty. But when she finally spoke, the words that fell from her lips seemed burdened with unspeakable horror, and even though to Riley it was the name of an utter stranger, the words still made the warm thing inside her twitch and coil.

  “My ex,” Kaitlyn said in a voice like powdered glass. “The boy from the gas station.”

  And then, in an even softer voice:

  “Lutz Visgara.”

  Chapter 6

  Jill

  Kait held her breath. She watched Riley blink once, twice, three times, and then the other girl’s stunned expression melted into a mixture of concern and exhausted relief. For a split-second, Kait felt relief wash over her as well—but then she saw the pitying twist of Riley’s lips as she smiled fondly at Kait, and panic bloomed inside her once more, bursting like a balloon in her stomach. A thought fluttered through her head like a bat through a cave:

  She thinks I’m crazy.

  And if I didn’t know better—I’d say she had a point.

  “Oh, Kaitlyn,” Riley began in a mothering tone. “This is all my fault.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kait yelped. Her hands were still clenched in fists around the lapels of Riley’s denim jacket, but the taller girl took hold of her wrists and gently eased her grip away. “Don’t talk like that. This hasn’t got anything to do with you.”

  “But it does,” Riley persisted. “I pushed you to drink. I didn’t know your limits. And now… Well, listen to you.”

  “I know it sounds impossible…” Kait hissed.

  But it’s true, she wanted to say. She had heard it, clear as the blast of a car alarm. She and Alice had been in her dark bedroom, with Alice curled up and shaking oddly on the bed and Kait standing awkwardly in the corner, trying to comfort her. It was a dance they’d done dozens of times as children, but tonight the words had refused to come to the surface. The best she’d managed was a friendly pat between Alice’s shoulder blades, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed in the equation: Alice wasn’t crying, exactly—just kind of trembling, making no noise. Kait had never seen her do this before, and the sight almost disgusted her, though she couldn’t name the reason.

  And then, across the silent room, somebody had knocked on the door.

  “Are you all right in there, Heart-Brecker?”

  The sound struck at her marrow, and for a single, terrifying instant Kait feared she might actually crack in two. The voice was all wrong, but the cadence, the musical bounce of the words, could only come out of one person. And that name: Heart-Brecker. This was a sobriquet that belonged to Lutz and Lutz alone. She remembered hating the nickname at first—and then for four months, she hadn’t been able to hear it often enough. But to hear it here, in this darkness? It was enough to freeze her heart, to turn her intestines to jelly, even as her head continued to spin and throb in the grip of the beer she’d drunk.

  Just beyond the door, the voice heaved a deep sigh, and Kait heard what sounded like a forehead tapping against the wood. “You’re busy in there, I can tell,” said the voice behind the door. “Well, I can wait. Come on out when you’re ready to talk seriously.” And then she heard retreating footsteps and the sound of a door creaking, and the presence vanished into thin air.

  Kait couldn’t count the long seconds she waited, frozen on her knees next to the bed. Alice had stopped trembling, but she made no sound, gave no sign that she had heard the sound that had struck Kait so. So at last she forced herself to her feet with a tremendous thrust of will and exploded through the door, determined to catch her ex slinking away—but she’d seen only Riley, slinking in, and Ben was nowhere to be seen.

  “Kaitlyn?” Riley began again, now in a slightly more jovial tone. “How far away are we from that gas station?”

  Quick-blooded fury flashed behind Kait’s eyes, mixing and pooling with her panic. But as she cast a furtive glance over her shoulder, all she could do was repeat, “I know it sounds crazy.” Her own bedroom door was snugly shut, but Ben’s was still hanging ajar, oozing darkness.

  “And how far are we from the closest town?” Riley continued. “The closest… anything?”

  “I know!” Kait snapped. “I did the math. I know how this sounds. But—”

  “How does it sound, Kaitlyn?”

  Kait balled her hands into fists. Her tone had been gentle, but there was something mocking in Riley’s face—in the twist of her mouth or the angle of her brows. Or maybe it ran deeper than that: maybe it was lurking just behind her eyes. Heat roared in Kait, bullying her like a kite in beach wind, but she smothered the feeling behind a forced smile. Now was not the time to lose her cool, she reminded herself. She needed help—and Riley had been nice to her this far. Maybe she’d imagined that sneering look. Maybe she’d imagined everything.

  “It sounds insane,” she admitted. “But you didn’t—”

  “It sounds drunk,” Riley countered. Again her expression softened—I must have imagined it, after all, Kait reasoned—and she put a hand on Kait’s knee, squeezing it gently. “You had a little scare back at the gas station, and now you’ve gone and scared yourself all over again. But it’s okay,” she continued. “Sometimes the bad stuff comes back. Sometimes it happens to me too. Maybe it happens to everybody.”

  “But it…” Kait wavered. Riley blinked at her expectantly. “But it felt so real,” she finished, her voice limp in her mouth.

  “That’s how it always is,” Riley admitted. “Listen—I don’t know what you heard, but if it makes you feel safer tonight, I’ll come sleep in the bedroom with you. Would you like that?”

  “I—” But before Kait could fully
reply, her bedroom door creaked open and Alice emerged, blinking and squinting in the light. “Kaity…” she mumbled, searching the room for her. “You out here?”

  “I’m here,” Kait said in a small voice.

  Alice’s eyes found her and seemed to focus, zeroing in on her friend. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You kind of… took off, there.”

  “I’m…” Kait paused, turning from Alice to Riley, to Alice to Riley again. Her head spun, but she caught Riley mouthing ‘yes’ and aping a big smile. “I’m fine,” she said at last. “I just scared myself, I think. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  Alice nodded, half to herself, and then tottered on her feet. “I’ve had a lot to drink,” she said suddenly. “Too much,” she added. Then: “I’m going to bed.”

  “Good night, girlfriend!” Riley sang out. “I’ll bring you some water in a minute. You don’t want to get dehydrated.”

  Alice nodded again and wobbled across the den, past the ash-filled hearth before pushing open her bedroom door with her face and kicking it shut behind her. Kait rose to her feet without a word and padded into her own bedroom, sparing only a backwards wave over her shoulder to Riley. The truth was, she felt ashamed—but more than that, she was head-tired and head-sick. The room kept tilting sideways on her, and at that precise moment, there was nothing she could think of that would suit her better than a good old-fashioned coma. She shoved her door closed with her toe and collapsed into bed, feeling sleep clawing at her aching eyes. Moments later, the light clicked off and the crack beneath her door went dark—Riley getting ready for bed as well.

  She’s right, Kait told herself. She has to be right. Lutz wouldn’t come here. He’s got to be done with me—and I’m done with him. And that’s how the story ends.

  But as she wriggled under the blankets and squeezed her eyes shut, she let her right hand dangle to the floor, brushing her fingers along the smooth cool wood of the stock of the Model 94. Her fingers twitched, again full of a memory she could only half-claim, and before she knew it, she was swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and kneeling on the floor next to the big hunting rifle.

  I imagined it, I know I did, she repeated to herself.

  But just in case I’m wrong…

  With sure, practiced movements, Kait loaded a single cold bullet into the gun in her hands and slammed the chamber closed once more.

  * * *

  Through a deep fog, Kait drifted—and through a gap in the dense clouds an image floated into view: a wooden doorframe, hanging in space, opening into darkness. A light flickered on just inside, and soon after Kait could hear voices drifting out across the void, the words wriggling painfully into her ears like squirming maggots burrowing into soft soil. Beyond the door, the scenario began to take shape, and Kait waited, suspended in the fog, for the curtain to rise and the show to begin.

  “Wait right there,” Lutz said. “There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

  They were seated on the purple futon couch in Lutz’s one-bedroom apartment downtown, Kait with her tennis shoes kicked up on the cheap coffee table and sipping a beer from the bottle. Lutz stood, stretched with a grunt, then ambled across the den to the door leading to his tiny bedroom and disappeared inside. Kait preoccupied herself looking around the bits of the flat she could see. She had never been inside Lutz’s apartment before—their previous flings and flirtations had all taken place in her dormitory bedroom or in the backseats of parked cars.

  The space in which she found herself now was almost comically masculine: hardboiled action movie posters crammed in cheapo plastic frames littered the walls, and the white laminate countertops were besieged by empty beer bottles and cans and half-empty bags of chips and pretzels. A set of adjustable dumbbell weights—something Kait was quite convinced Lutz had never used more than a few times—lay in a heap in one corner of the room, resting atop a balled-up dingy green towel. Aside from these ornaments, the apartment was entirely undecorated and under-furnished: besides the couch she sat on, the coffee table, the TV stand and television, and a pair of beat-to-hell folding chairs, the den was a furniture desert. Lutz’s apartment looked like her then-boyfriend had just been robbed.

  But what surprised her the most about the apartment were the two street signs hanging from the eggshell-colored walls, one above the entranceway, and the other over Lutz’s bedroom door on the outside. The first read LUTZ CIRCLE; the second, VISA GARA BLVD. Kait—the real, dreaming Kait, not the fabrication waiting patiently on the hideous purple sofa—remembered wondering how he’d managed to steal them, and why he’d done it. She remembered all this through a deep and complex haze, and even the simple act of conjuring the images of the street signs left her head feeling like a wet paper bag.

  “Hi, Kaity,” said a voice from down the hall.

  “Don’t call me that…” Kait began, almost on instinct, but she paused, looking down the passageway towards the source of the voice.

  A tall young woman with very dark hair was padding down the hall towards the den, dressed in a brown bathrobe drawn tight around her waist. There were dark purple-black bags under her eyes, but Kait’s gaze was drawn quickly to the smile on her face, which was so lopsided and goofy, it reminded her enough of Lutz to guess at a family resemblance. But no—on second glance, the face was too long, the hair was too straight, the eyes too small… plus her skin was a full shade darker than Lutz’s, who was whiter than bread mold.

  The bathrobe slipped down around the girl’s shoulders, and beer splashed down the front of Kait’s sweatshirt as she jumped to her feet, stumbled, and sat back down again. There was nothing beneath. No clothes, no bra—only smooth, perfect, bronze skin.

  “Don’t call me that,” was all she could think to say. “Only one person calls me that.”

  “I know,” the woman replied, still grinning. “Lutz told me all about you.”

  “Is that a fact,” said Kait, making an effort to stand once more while averting her eyes. “Yeah, Lutz told me a little something about you too. About how you—hey, Lutz?” she hollered down the hall. “Lutz? I’m panicking. I want you to know there’s a very serious chance that I’m panicking right now.”

  “Well, stop panicking,” Lutz called back, his voice muffled by distance. “There’s no reason to panic.”

  “There’s a woman in here who’s wearing your bathrobe.”

  “Her name’s Jill Cicero,” came the reply.

  “Fine—there’s a Jill Cicero in your den wearing your bathrobe.”

  “She’s in town for the week,” Lutz called back, “and she’s an old family friend, so they asked me to put her up a few days. She just got off the plane, but I wanted you to meet her now, before the school week started back up.”

  “Bullshit, she’s from out of town,” Kait spat. “Lutz, she’s not wearing any clothes!”

  “Does it make you uncomfortable?” asked Jill Cicero, still smiling that lopsided smile.

  “You stay out of this!” Kait barked. She felt like she was losing control; reality was sliding though her grip like fine sand.

  “She’s from California,” Lutz replied, as if this were answer enough. Then, after a deep sigh: “That’s why I’m having you meet her now. I don’t want you to think she’s a threat. At least,” he continued, popping his head around the corner of the hall, “not in, like, the existential sense. You know what I mean?”

  “Try to relax,” said Jill, circling the coffee table to plop down on the hideous couch next to Kait. Kait squirmed away, but her limbs felt like tubes of putty.

  “You’re all worked up over nothing,” Lutz said, sinking down to sit on Kait’s opposite side. His skinny, birdlike chest was bare, his black Iron Maiden T-shirt slung over one arm like a waiter. “I promised I would explain everything, didn’t I?”

  “I want the two of us to be friends,” Jill added.

  “Friends…” Kait parroted, removing her hands from her face at last.

  But when Jill spoke, she spoke in Lutz’s voi
ce… Horror jolted through her like a crossbow bolt. She has Lutz’s voice. And now she had Lutz’s face too.

  The lights flickered and sparked, the fog swirled threateningly, and Kait, the dreaming Kait, felt herself lifting, surging up and up and up towards the gleaming hard surface of the sea.

  “I don’t want you to think I have any kind of agenda here, Heart-Brecker,” she heard Lutz’s voice say, somewhere in the far distance.

  * * *

  “I’m just doing what I feel like I have to do.”

  Kait turned in her sleep, drifting up, out of the gloom, thrashing and striking out with an open hand—and at the height of her swing, her palm connected with a solid object. A chin, bristling with stubble, floating in mid-air above her bed. She recoiled with a yelp, but before she could wake enough to really scream, a strong hand clamped down across her mouth and made her swallow her cry. Her eyes flew open to see shadows scurrying crazily across the four walls of her little bedroom, cast by the white-hot light of a smartphone flashlight. And in these shadows she could see her own vague silhouette, dancing across flat space and bending like a postcard whenever it slid across a corner—plus the even vaguer form of a second person’s head, just above or just behind her own.

  There was somebody in the bed with her.

  His weight shifted, bending the mattress beneath his knees; Kait could hear his heavy breaths, feel them hot on her cheek, ragged with the effort of controlling her mouth and head. A second hand tightened around her shoulder, the rigid forearm barred across her chest, forcing her to roll face-up. The shadows leaped, and she struck out with the hand that had found the intruder’s cheek, but her blows hit blind air or were smothered against the bare, heaving chest. Her other hand was trapped beneath the blankets, pinned by the weight looming above her.

  “You know,” said a voice in the dark, “you’re a hard woman to reach.”