Wildwood Road

by Christopher Golden

  Heartburn seared Teddy's guts and he wished he had picked up the bottle of Tums back in his office. He might not get that jaunty little cardiac event he'd been hoping for, but he damned sure was on his way to a mighty evil ulcer.

  Michael's office door had been closed since he had arrived this morning. It was after eleven o'clock now and nothing had stirred from within since then. The guy was either hard at work, or asleep at his drawing table. Dansky was his friend, but Teddy reluctantly admitted to himself that he wasn't sure which of those was true.

  He rapped his knuckles lightly on the door, not wanting to draw attention to himself, or to Michael's office. There was no reply from within, not even any sound that might indicate the guy was getting up to open it. Teddy felt a burning sensation at the back of his neck and reached up to scratch at it. It wasn't an itch, though. It was just his certainty that someone was watching him, that there were eyes following his trek down to Michael's office and awaiting the outcome. Maybe old man Krakow was watching him, maybe he wasn't. Teddy didn't want to go barging in on Michael, but he thought that might be better than the appearance that anything was wrong.

  Or maybe you're just being paranoid.

  Still, he didn't want to draw attention, so he opened the door and stepped inside. Michael was seated at his drawing table, talking on his portable headset. He was slightly hunched over, as though he was in pain, and though he was not looking at the paper on the table, his pencil scratched across it even as he spoke into the headset.

  “No, today. I just . . . I'd really like to get in to see him today. It's sort of hard to explain. I'll take whatever time I . . . quarter after one is fine. Just . . . it's fine.”

  Michael held up one finger to let Teddy know he'd only be another few moments. He was still pale, and there were dark circles beneath his eyes that Teddy hadn't noticed before. His gaze darted around as though he were searching the corners of the room for something he'd lost. Michael seemed almost skittish, and if Teddy hadn't been almost certain it was ridiculous, he would have thought the guy looked frightened.

  “Thank you. Yes, I'll be there,” Michael said. He thumbed a small button on the headset to disconnect the phone and then slung it off of his head and onto the drawing table. His pencil went down beside it and he looked up expectantly.

  “Hey, Teddy. What's up?”

  For a moment, Teddy had no idea how to respond. It was such a goddamned stupid question. Didn't Dansky have a clue? Wasn't Teddy's concern obvious from the expression on his face?

  “Look, Michael,” he began, closing the door behind him. “I don't want to get into your business, but . . . I mean, we're friends, right? Aside from work?”

  Michael frowned, but even with that he seemed distracted. Twitchy. “Yeah. Of course we are.”

  Teddy let out a long breath. “Buddy, you've got me worried. You look like shit. You come in late. It's been days and I don't have even initial sketches from you on the ice-cream campaign. Gary's already been bugging me about it. The clock's ticking, and you're making me nervous.”

  He blinked, realizing how all of that sounded. “But it isn't just work. I'm worried about you. I don't know what's up with you, but whatever it is—”

  “Okay.” Michael held up a hand to stop him.

  Knitting his brows, Teddy only stared at him.

  “I . . . That was my doctor's office.”

  Michael let the words hang there between them for a long moment. He'd spoken them with such gravity that Teddy began to wonder—and to worry—that whatever was going on was even more serious than he'd thought.

  “I look like shit because I feel like shit.” There was a moment of hesitation, as though Michael had been about to go on, to tell him something else . . . something worse, maybe. But then he sat back in his seat and just shrugged.

  “All I can say is I'm sorry. I wish my head wasn't so fucked up right now. I'm leaving early. I've got an appointment to see the doctor. And I'm going to stay home tomorrow, work from there. I swear to you, give me the weekend and I will finish not just sketches but full designs for the ideas we've talked about. I will, Teddy.”

  Michael stood up and began to gather his things. His hands were shaking. “But right now . . . right now I've got to get out of here. I've got to see the doctor.”

  Teddy nodded. He was sure he said something comforting, something reassuring, told Michael not to worry. Mainly, though, he was focused on staying out of the way as his friend collected the things he needed to work from home. Whatever was wrong with Michael Dansky, Teddy didn't want to catch it.

  Not with Heather Vostroff brewing trouble for both of them.

  An art director could work from home and show up with something brilliant, and nobody ever wondered how long it had taken him to create. It was taken for granted that art was a time-consuming process. But as a writer, he never worked from home, even though Krakow & Bester certainly would have allowed it from time to time. It was all about perception.

  He stood in Michael's office and watched his friend go through the warren of cubicles, portfolio case in one hand and his jacket in the other. Only after Michael had departed did he glance down at his friend's drawing table and notice the charcoal image he had been doodling while on the phone. Shades of gray that formed the face of a little girl, the same girl Michael had drawn into his sketches on Monday.

  What the hell's going on with you, Dansky? Teddy wondered to himself. But he wasn't at all sure he wanted an answer.

  THAT NIGHT MICHAEL COULD NOT sleep. Long after midnight he lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, his hands at rest upon his chest as though he were a corpse, set out for viewing. The room was dark save for a dim, diffuse glow from the streetlight just across the road from the Danskys’ house. His chest rose and fell, his breathing even, but his mind would not turn off.

  He could not stop the echo of the things Dr. Ufland had said to him during his appointment. Michael had returned home from the doctor's office before three o'clock, and he had been hearing those words over and over since, seeing the doctor's face in his mind.

  “Anything like this ever happened before, Michael? And with these enhanced olfactory episodes, the heightened smells you were talking about . . . any of your other senses behaving the same way? Have you noticed an increase in the intensity of other stimuli? Do things sound louder? Do things seem more colorful? Flowers more fragrant?”

  No. No. And no. Nothing like that.

  “It certainly sounds like you might have been dosed with something that caused you to have blackouts and altered your perception. Kids are brewing up all sorts of unique drugs these days. I'll run some tests, but I have to confess that their inventiveness has us behind the curve. I might not find it even if it's there. And that was Saturday night. It's unlikely it would still be affecting you now.

  “As far as you seeing the girl . . . absent any of the other symptoms we've talked about, I'm fairly skeptical that there is a medical explanation for this. I will do an MRI, just to rule out a tumor, but this is so specific and individualized that I can't imagine dementia manifesting like this. We'll test as we can, but Michael, you should know that I suspect we're looking at more of a psychological issue than a physiological problem. You're obviously troubled by the episode over the weekend. Burdened with guilt about this girl you mentioned. Worrying that something might have happened to her. That may be what's causing all of this. I'm going to make an appointment for you with Helen Lee. She's an old friend, and a damn fine doctor.”

  Doctor. Helen Lee wasn't just a doctor. She was a psychiatrist. And the truth was, nothing Dr. Ufland had said had surprised Michael. Intuitively, he had understood that the things that were wrong with him were too focused to be the result of some malady. The twisted part of that was, he would have expected himself to be happier at the thought that he probably didn't have a brain tumor.

  But there might be worse things than a brain tumor.

  Michael lay in bed next to the only woman he had ever loved, his
eyes burning with exhaustion and with the sting of unshed tears. He gnawed on his lower lip. Beside him, Jillian breathed deeply, lost in slumber. He wanted to look at her, to watch her sleep. It calmed him to do that, on nights when he had trouble falling asleep. Not that it happened often. She was the one who had suffered from insomnia. Now, though, he was beginning to understand what she had gone through.

  Not that this was the same. Far from it.

  He wanted desperately to turn and watch his wife's sleeping form, to watch her chest rise and fall, her features silhouetted in the barest golden glow from the illumination coming in through the window from the streetlight. Michael wished he could reach over and caress her face, even perhaps lean down and kiss her forehead, or the spot just behind her jaw where she had a tiny mole.

  But he did not dare to turn toward her, did not dare to even look at her. For they were not alone in the room.

  In the far, shadowy corner, untouched by the dim golden glow and yet somehow containing her own faint illumination, was the lost girl. She had been standing there for more than two hours, silently watching him. Michael refused to look at her now, but earlier he had not been able to stop himself. Maybe the doctor was right and it wasn't drugs or a brain tumor; maybe he was just losing his mind. He wanted to watch her, to see her. And so he stared at the little blond girl standing there in the darkness. She only watched him, and she wept silently, fear etched upon her features. But fear for herself or for him he couldn't tell.

  Time had passed since he had last looked over at her. From his position he could see the digital readout on the cable box on top of the television. It was going on two in the morning. Perhaps by now she had gone.

  But he shivered under his covers, and gnawed his lip harder. For he knew she was still there. He could feel her.

  Come find me. She had not spoken the words. Even her tears were shed in silence. But still, Michael heard them in his head, an echo of the first time she had spoken.

  Now he lay in his bed and he waited. Waited for the dawn. It was a long way off, but he knew he would not sleep. He had a powerful hope that when the sun rose, its light would somehow disperse the image of the girl in the shadowed corner of the room. Until then, he would not look. And he would not . . . absolutely not . . . wake Jillian.

  What frightened him most was not that he might have a brain tumor, or even the prospect that he was losing his mind, though that was certainly terrible. What froze him there in his bed was the fear that whispered through his head and shivered up his spine, the fear that neither of those things was true. That if he woke Jillian up and told her to look into the corner, she would not tell him he was imagining things. His greatest fear was that he would wake Jillian and she would see the girl.

  And that would make it all real.

  So Michael lay there, very still, listening to Jillian breathe, and praying that she would sleep until morning.

  And that the morning would make a difference.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jillian was long gone by the time Michael dragged himself out of bed the next morning. The sky was chalk white, the daylight pale and wan where it washed through the windows. Nothing fell from the sky. Not a raindrop, nor a hint of hail or sleet. On the street outside the Dansky home, the world looked too quiet, too empty, as though some silent apocalypse had taken place during the night.

  True to the vow he had made to himself, the darkness outside his window had lightened to an impossible indigo and then the night had begun to bleed into morning before he had finally fallen asleep. Jillian had shaken him awake less than an hour later, and Michael recalled muttering something to her about needing to sleep, about working at home today. Now he glanced at the clock and saw the digital numbers burning an accusatory red atop the television: 10:47 A.M.

  Just a few hours' sleep. Not nearly enough.

  But the day was wasting, and there was something he needed to do. Something of vital importance. The appointment that his doctor had set up for him with the shrink wasn't until next Wednesday. Which might as well have been a hundred years away, to his mind. An eternity separated now from then.

  Michael stretched, muscles in his back and neck popping. He pulled off the white T-shirt that he had worn to bed and tossed it into the laundry basket beside the long dresser beneath the mirror he and Jillian shared. His reflection revealed gray circles under his eyes and a shadow of stubble on his chin. His face was puffy and he reached up to touch the places beneath his eyes, where the elasticity of his skin seemed to have given way. Staring into his own eyes, he could see an emptiness there, a kind of void where some of the emotion he ought to have been feeling had spilled out. He felt numb, as though an echo was rebounding inside his head. His eyes were dim.

  Haunted.

  On his nightstand was a full glass of water. Michael and Jillian both took water to bed with them at night, and normally both glasses were nearly empty by morning. But during the night Michael had not taken a sip. He had not dared to reach for the glass.

  A splinter of pain punctured his chest, perhaps a little tear in the fabric of whatever he had used to blanket his fear and dread. For a long moment he stared at Jillian's side of the bed. Her glass was empty. The book she was reading—a family drama from Joyce Carol Oates—lay there on top of a copy of the latest Bon Appétit. The drawer of her nightstand was open and a pair of cotton French-cut panties had been left sticking out, like the top tissue in a Kleenex box. She had been in a hurry this morning. Had she been running late, or just in a rush to get to work?

  At last he remembered why she was in a hurry. Jillian wanted to leave the office early tonight to get home in time for dinner with Bob Ryan and whichever of his political cronies were joining them. An image flashed through Michael's mind of Ryan at the masquerade that night. The gunslinger. The Man With No Name. And the guy had the cold, flinty eyes for the role. Perhaps he looked more like Clint Eastwood's costar in those old movies, Lee Van Cleef, than like Eastwood himself. But that was better, in a way. For in Michael's mind, Bob Ryan would always be remembered in that outfit, would always be the cruel-eyed, hawk-nosed Lee Van Cleef.

  Michael realized that Bob Ryan frightened him a little. Not for real. Not in any way that meant something. But the man was intimidating.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay, Jilly.” For Jillian, he would be back here and dressed and ready to go to dinner by six o'clock. But the time between now and then belonged to Michael.

  Or, really, to Michael's obsession. If he ever hoped to overcome it, he was going to have to find that girl. To find that house.

  Even with the pallid daylight that filled the bedroom, Michael had managed to avoid looking into that corner thus far. The corner where the ghost of the lost girl had stood throughout the night, watching him. Crying. Pleading with him in silence. Now, though, he did look.

  The corner was empty.

  The house was empty, except for him.

  Michael let out a long breath and nodded to himself. He stepped out of his underwear and tossed it into the laundry basket as well, then went to the TV and turned on CNN. A woman in Louisiana had driven her car off a bridge and into a river, with her seven-year-old son, and her five-month-old baby strapped into a car seat in the back. The seven-year-old boy had saved the baby and swum to safety. The mother had drowned. According to police, the boy reported the mother declaring that there was too much evil in the world and that the three of them would be better off in God's hands.

  A still photograph of the boy came up onscreen. His eyes were wide and his sandy blond hair was tousled. He wore a grin, as though he had just been surprised. Michael wondered how long it might be before he smiled like that again.

  When the next story came on, about the current standings in the NFL, he felt relief, as though he had been set free of the sadness of the story before it. With the television on the house was not so quiet and he did not feel as lonesome. But that was the irony of television. Too many people considered it a friend, but it was a friend th
at lacked the courtesy not to tell you what you didn't want to hear.

  His body smelled stale. He turned the volume up on the TV, then went into the bathroom and turned the water in the shower to its hottest setting. Steam began to fog the room moments later, clouding the mirror over the sink. The drone of CNN voices combated the noise of the shower. He was glad for the voices, and for the steam. When he stepped in and closed the glass door of the shower stall, he kept his gaze fixed on the interior wall and did not look out into the bathroom.

  Michael Dansky had never been claustrophobic, but of late he had grown hesitant to enter enclosed spaces. His shower was brief, and he hurried out of the bathroom, dripping onto the carpet as he dried off in front of the television set, letting the news story about some political imbroglio distract him.

  After the long, sleepless night, he wanted very much to be out of his house. But he was not foolish enough to believe that things would return to normal once he was out the door. The world had been twisted up, and it would take more than a new day to fix it.

  He did not bother to shave. Once he was out of the shower, it felt as though he was being propelled, as though he was on fast-forward. Michael put on blue jeans and shoes, a fresh T-shirt, and a hooded New England Patriots sweatshirt that would probably not be warm enough.

  As he went out of the house through the door that led from the kitchen to the garage, he noticed a note from Jillian on the kitchen table. There was a big heart drawn on it. Michael did not even slow down to figure out what the note said. Something about dinner with Lee Van Cleef, he was sure. But he would be back in time for that. It would be getting dark at that point, though, and he hoped that Jillian came home before nightfall.