The Long Way Home

by Richard Chizmar

  They drove home in silence.

  ****

  “Wine or lemonade?”

  Harold looked up from the magazine he was reading and smiled. “Lemonade, please.”

  “Coming right up.” Lily poked her head back inside the house, leaving Harold alone on the deck.

  The last couple days had been strained between the two of them and Harold didn’t even fully understand why. He knew it had something to do with the damn homeowners’ association, but he didn’t know what he had done wrong. In the end, he’d decided to leave the final decision up to Lily: write a check or call a lawyer. She had until tomorrow to decide.

  He’d been surprised and relieved earlier this evening when Lily had greeted him at the door after work with a hug and a kiss. They’d both been relaxed and talkative during dinner, and he was hopeful that they were out of their funk for good.

  “Here you go.” Lily walked onto the deck and handed him a tall ice-filled glass.

  “Thanks, honey.”

  She sat down in the chair next to him and sipped from her own lemonade. “It’s so pretty out here in the evenings.”

  “You just missed a bunch of deer down by the tree-line.”

  “Any babies?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “Last night, there was a whole family down there.”

  Harold lifted his glass and took a drink. “Ahh, that’s good.”

  “What do you think about a vegetable garden next spring?”

  “I think vegetable gardens are a lot of work…” He saw the disappointed look on Lily’s face. “…but I think we should do it. It’ll be fun.”

  Lily rested her head on Harold’s shoulder. They sat there and watched the sun drop below the horizon, and then they went inside and straight to bed.

  ****

  Harold finished drying off and tossed his wet towel over the shower door. “Well, that was pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself.”

  Lily smiled at her husband through a mouthful of toothpaste.

  Harold couldn’t remember the last time they had started making love in bed and finished up in the shower. Things were definitely looking up. He scooted past his wife and walked naked into the bedroom.

  “Honey, do you know where the Tylenol is?” Lily walked out of the bathroom wearing only her robe. It was untied at the waist and Harold could see her wet skin glistening. He felt himself stir again.

  “Hang on.” Harold searched the cluttered mess on top of the dresser until he found a bottle of Tylenol. He handed it to her. “Headache?”

  She grimaced. “Bad one.”

  “Maybe it was all that screaming you just did.”

  “Ha ha, funny.”

  Lily took a bottle of water from the nightstand and swallowed three of the pills. She crawled into bed and pulled the covers up to her chest. Her head was pounding and she was starting to feel nauseous. She closed her eyes.

  Harold climbed in next to her and turned off the light. “I love you, Lily.”

  Softly, from the darkness beside him: “Love you more, baby.”

  ****

  A short time later, the sound of Lily vomiting woke Harold. He sat up to help her and was immediately struck by a wave of nausea and dizziness. His vision blurred and his head felt like it had been set on fire. He looked over at his wife. She was struggling to lift herself out of a puddle of vomit. Her eyes were wide and helpless. He tried to reach out to her, but his arm wouldn’t work. His head slumped back onto his pillow. He lay there in agony and watched his wife die. A few minutes later, he joined her.

  ****

  A lone ambulance cruised down Brooks Road, dark and silent, like a shark prowling night waters. It backed into the driveway of 1920 and cut the engine. Two men got out and were met at the front door by a tall, dark figure. They talked for a moment, and the two men wheeled a stretcher into the house.

  A short time later, they reappeared with a body on the stretcher. They loaded it into the rear of the ambulance, its back doors yawning open like a hungry mouth, and then returned to the house with the empty stretcher.

  A few minutes later, they reappeared again, wheeling another body. They loaded it into the ambulance and closed the doors and drove away.

  Not long after that, the front door of 1920 Brooks Road opened and the dark figure emerged. He crossed the front lawn and started slowly walking down the center of the street until the night swallowed him.

  ****

  Chuck Noonan stood on the sidewalk the next morning and stared across the street at 1920 Brooks Road. All the windows along the front of the house were open, the curtains billowing in the July breeze.

  Chuck was about to go back inside to watch the rest of Good Morning America—Garth Brooks was a guest today and Chuck wanted to hear him sing his new single—when a car slowed and pulled to the curb beside him.

  “Morning, Mrs. Cavanaugh. How you feeling these days?”

  “Oh, fair to middling, fair to middling.” She glanced at the house across the street and frowned. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”

  Chuck thought about poker night with a bunch of rich accountants and nodded his head. “That it is, Mrs. Cavanaugh.”

  “Carbon monoxide again?”

  “That’s the look of it.”

  “Wonder who will move in next?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Well, have a lovely day, Mr. Noonan. Time to tend to my roses.”

  “You, too. Don’t stay out in this sun for too long.”

  Mrs. Cavanaugh waved goodbye and drove away. Chuck Noonan watched her pull into her driveway, and then headed back inside, hoping he hadn’t missed Garth Brooks.

  THE SCULPTOR

  “How’s it going, Alex?”

  “Don’t ask, Marcus, you don’t want to know. Give me the usual.”

  “Still can’t work?” Marcus said as he scooped ice into a glass and poured the bourbon.

  Alex shook his head. “Nine months.”

  He lifted the glass to his lips, intending to sip. Instead, he finished it off in a couple of swallows and placed the glass back on the bar. “Keep ’em coming.”

  It was a dark little hotel bar called the Black Diamond in Alex’s neighborhood, with shiny mahogany and backlit hanging plants. Not especially stylish, but comfortable and quiet. He loathed the sound of people having fun when he was miserable. Twinkling piano music came from the corner, where a lovely Asian woman was seated at the old piano.

  “She’s new,” Alex said. “It’s nice. I like it.”

  Marcus smiled. “She plays a lot of the old stuff I love, she’s good, and I told her she’s welcome here anytime.” He leaned his hands on the bar, arms spread, a rotund black man with a bald crown and a lot of salt in his pepper fringe. “Sorry about the work, man. Must be tough to run out of ideas.”

  “No, it’s not that.” He knocked back another drink and Marcus poured. “The ideas are still there, the urge is — no, the need to sculpt is still there. But I’ve…I don’t know, somehow I’ve lost my connection to it, or something. But it’s still in there, squirming and clawing. Trying to get out.” He lifted the glass. “That’s why this has become such a good friend.” He took a sip.

  Marcus’s eyes darkened with worry. “You sure you’re okay? You know, I don’t close tonight. You slow down on that drinking, we can go out when I get off, have a few together.”

  He shook his head, then finished the drink. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Marcus. I’m not good company for anybody tonight. I’m better off alone.”

  “Well, if you change your mind, you’ve got my number.”

  Alex tapped a finger on the edge of the glass. “Pour me another.”

  ****

  Alex jerked awake and sat up clumsily in bed, in the dark, with the feeling that thick te
ntacles were wrapped around his legs. He was merely tangled in the covers and a little sweaty, even though it was a chilly night. He had been awakened by a noise.

  It was a scratching sound, but it stopped the moment he sat up, if it had been there at all. He listened to the night’s silence, wondering if he had dreamed it. It was probably Sophie, his Siamese cat. She often had bursts of energy at night and ran through the place as if pursued. He lay back and rested his head on the pillow. He had been quite drunk when he’d gone to bed earlier that night, so drunk he couldn’t remember going to bed at all, and his head was still thick, his stomach still queasy.

  The sound came again, louder this time, a harsh scraping sound, as if something heavy were being moved in increments over the floor. Something much heavier than Sophie. It came from the direction of his studio down the hall.

  Alex rose up again, extracted his legs from the clutching covers, and sat on the edge of the bed. Although he normally slept in the nude, he found he was still wearing his boxers.

  He lived in an ancient, remodeled warehouse that consisted of four separate rooms and an enormous open studio space. It was cold and drafty that night, so he stood, took his robe from a chair beside the nightstand, and slipped it on as he stepped into a pair of old flip-flops. He swayed for a moment and almost sat on the bed again because he was still drunk and not too steady on his feet. Instead, he headed for the door and stopped when he heard the sound again.

  Fully awake now, the fact that someone else was in the house cut through his alcoholic haze like a razor and made him feel an inner chill unrelated to the room’s temperature. He turned back to the nightstand, opened the top drawer, and removed the loaded .38 pistol he kept there.

  He opened the bedroom door, leaned out, and looked in both directions. The hall was empty. The soft light he always left on over the stove fell through the open kitchen doorway. He saw no one, no sign of anyone. Stepping out of the doorway, he turned left and started toward the closed studio door at the end of the hall, his flip-flops slapping softly against his heels as he walked. Drunkenness gone now, vaporized by a sudden surge of fear, Alex felt hyper-alert. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple and his heartbeat increased as the door of the studio grew larger in his view.

  The terrible scraping noise came again and Alex froze, fist clenched on the butt of the gun.

  Losing my reason for living wasn’t enough, he thought. I needed a home invasion to top it all off. Maybe he’s armed and he’ll end it for me, get the whole damned thing over with.

  He started forward again.

  ****

  Two weeks after his thirty-second birthday, Alexander Lynn Cason made the jump from the ripped-bluejeans, long-haired, unemployed freak world of sidewalk sculptors to the highly respected and deliriously lucrative world of the artiste. His award-winning black-granite statue of two Vietnam infantry grunts lifting a wounded comrade to the outstretched arms of a Huey helicopter medic had allowed his foot to slip firmly in between the success threshold and the constantly slamming door of rejection.

  More significant work followed, and before he had time to catch his breath, he was being featured in dozens of art publications and was even covered by pieces in Time and Newsweek.

  Four years later, in a festive, televised ceremony in the nation’s capital, Alex celebrated the pinnacle of his new career when, during the traditional Fourth of July ceremony, his eighteen-foot statue of George Washington was unveiled in front of the Washington Monument, and Alex captured the heart of a patriotic America.

  The big-ticket commissions continued to pour in and he was able to choose his work more selectively. Over the next four years, he worked just twice — a bust for a Harvard Law School library and an eccentric billionaire’s life-size sculpture of George Armstrong Custer making his last stand at the Little Bighorn, both of which earned him enough money to focus on personal projects in his home studio for a while. These creations were not for sale and were rarely even shown to the public. They simply kept his skills, vision, and soul happy and content.

  Until nine months ago, when the troubles began.

  Initially, he began having problems concentrating on his work. His usually sharp and clear vision felt blurred and sluggish. Then, slowly, his ability to sculpt abandoned him a piece at a time. It was like parts of his body falling off. He was quickly, systematically stripped of the skills that allowed him to create and the inspiration that brought those skills to life. He was suddenly a novice once again, all of his experience vanished as if it had never been, replaced by feelings of self-doubt and a sense of crippling inadequacy.

  At first, he thought a part of him had died, but that was not accurate. As he had explained to Marcus, his favorite bartender, the thing inside of him that was released when he created something special was still there, still alive and squirming. But it was trapped. Somewhere deep inside him, it was bound and writhing and suffocating, in a tight cocoon.

  Alex told no one. He had no family and no close friends, only acquaintances. Marcus was the closest thing he had to a real friend. Alex had learned at an early age not to trust easily—from his parents. They were textbook alcoholics, never physically abusive, but always neglectful. The three words he remembered most clearly from his childhood were not “I love you.” Instead, they were a cold and dismissive: “Not my problem.”

  So, he had told no one of his troubles. He had even kept it from his agent and his manager and let all calls go to voicemail. After a while, he stopped checking his messages and email, and he never answered his door. He was completely alone with his suffering.

  The previous evening, he had tried one final time to find his muse and create something. Anything. For two hours, he’d worked with a block of clay, searching for the thing hidden inside, waiting for the spark of inspiration that would find it. The inspiration did not come and the block of clay yielded nothing.

  And yet, inside of Alex, it still squirmed.

  Frustrated, he had gone for a walk through the park, along the canal, then hit some bars on the way home, an activity he had been engaging in with increasing frequency over the past six weeks. His last memory before being awakened in bed was of one of those bars. He could not even remember which one it was. Only that he had vomited in a toilet stall in a filthy bathroom.

  He wanted—needed—to sedate that thing inside him, make it stop writhing, but before he could accomplish that, he had sedated himself into a blackout. It had not been the first time and he feared it would not be the last. His work had been his life, but that life seemed to be over now. Drinking helped to numb the pain of his loss. Drinking helped him forget.

  ****

  Alex turned the knob, pushed the door open, and looked into the silent, mineshaft-black darkness of his studio. The gun felt heavy in his right hand as he aimed it into the darkness. He reached his left hand over it, found the two light switches just inside, and flipped them up.

  The sudden brightness blinded him, and he shielded his eyes with his forearm. After taking a moment to adjust, he lowered his arm and saw it. The gun forgotten at the end of his suddenly limp arm, he whispered, “What the hell?”

  Centered in the middle of his studio was an enormous block of rough, uncut granite of exquisite quality. He estimated it was ten feet tall, eight feet wide.

  He lowered his eyes to the rough grooves in the wood floor forming a path that extended three feet from the granite, then stopped. It was as if the slab had been lowered onto the floor from above, or had somehow risen up through the floor from below, then had been pushed or dragged for three feet to the center of the studio.

  That was the sound he had heard. But how had the slab been moved? And by whom? It would have to have been a team of people with the appropriate equipment. He looked around the room slowly. There were no hiding places in his studio; it was a vast, open space, quite well-lit, and there was no one in it.

  Something b
rushed softly against his bare calves and he reflexively leaped forward into the studio with a startled yelp. He spun around to see Sophie sitting in the doorway cleaning her face after a midnight snack. She stood and stared at him from the doorway for a moment, then turned and padded back down the hall, her tail a bouncing question mark.

  Alex turned to the enormous block of granite — he was closer to it, now — as frantic warnings tumbled through his head. Get out of here, leave, just turn around and go, because something’s wrong here, something’s very wrong. Closing his eyes tightly, he thought, I’m still drunk. That’s all. This isn’t happening.

  When he opened his eyes, the stone was still there. He walked closer, reached out a trembling hand to touch it, and then abruptly pulled it back. Not yet, he thought without knowing why.

  Alex took a few more steps until he was only inches from the stone. Narrowing his eyes slightly, he closely examined the surface. It was perfect, the finest granite he had ever seen. He yearned to touch it. But still, he did not.

  How did it get here? And why?

  He stepped around the slab and walked to the row of windows along the wall beyond. He raised the blinds on one of them and looked out into the night, trying to understand the presence of the enormous block of granite. There was no one outside, the narrow street which the window looked upon was deserted, with only the dim glow of a single streetlight cutting through the darkness.

  Turning away from the window, he began to pace, eyes never leaving the block of stone. Minutes passed. An alien, unfamiliar sensation rose slowly within him. Sweat rose on his forehead and upper lip in tiny glistening gems. His body trembled as if he had come down with a fever, and his pacing slowed to a stop as he began to feel unsteady on his feet. He wondered vaguely if he was getting sick.

  He wanted to touch the stone, feel it against his skin. He already could feel the rough edges against his palms in his mind. He wanted to hammer away at it, cut into it. The warning voice came again: No, don’t do it, get out of the studio, lock it, and have someone come haul it off! But he was distracted by the sudden awareness of his own heart beating, of his blood rushing through his veins.