The Between

by Tananarive Due

  Kaya exhaled, looking thoughtful as she searched her memory. “It’s all fuzzy now. She talked a lot.”

  “Just try,” he said.

  “I remember she kept talking about doorways. She said she couldn’t find me in all of the doorways. She said stuff about you, too. She said you’re going to doorways you’re not supposed to, and that’s why I wasn’t supposed to be born. Jamil either.”

  do you think you can keep dying forever?

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  Kaya snapped her fingers: “Oh, I remember something weird she said now. She said one time you went through a doorway, and you woke up and saw something in your closet.”

  “What did I see?”

  “She said you saw your jacket in your closet,” Kaya said, remembering clearly. “A gray jacket. And then you knew the truth. What truth?”

  Hilton began to blink suddenly, and he realized he was near tears as he heard the shadows of his tryst with Danitra from the mouth of his daughter. He’d run out of rationalizations and explanations now, and he’d known for some time that they no longer applied to any portion of his life. The room felt frozen in time.

  “I don’t know, honey,” he said in a helpless voice. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to know. I really don’t.”

  “Antoinette told me to tell you to rest.”

  “She did?”

  Kaya nodded. “Uh huh. She said everything will be all right if you just rest and stop fighting. She promised, Daddy.”

  Daddy. For the first time, Hilton saw the raw pain in Kaya’s face as she gazed at him. Of course she must miss her daddy, the daddy she knew only a short time ago. How could she understand what was happening to him when he didn’t understand himself?

  “Are you and Mom getting a divorce?” Kaya’s voice was tight.

  Hilton swallowed hard and wiped his dry lips. “I don’t have an answer for that, hon,” he said. “Was that in your dream?”

  Kaya shook her head. “No. That’s from when I’m awake.”

  He struggled to find a way to explain it all to her. “Funny things happen when people are under strain, Kaya. It doesn’t mean your mom and I don’t love each other. We’re all having a hard time now. That’s why sometimes I get upset. Your mom, too.”

  “Don’t you think Antoinette is right and it’ll be better if you get some rest? She said if you stop fighting, you’ll be able to sleep from now on. Forever, she said.”

  stop fighting, hilton. it’s wrong to fight.

  “I will,” Hilton said, reaching to smooth Kaya’s hair back. “I promise, when I can, I will.”

  “Cross your heart?” Kaya asked.

  Hilton opened his mouth but couldn’t bring himself to utter the vow that lighted naturally on his tongue: hope to die.

  The glowing hand on the wall clock was creeping past 3:20 A.M., and Hilton still sat in the wicker chair in front of the patio door. He scans the patio once more and decides to stretch out, take a look at the front of the house and check on Charlie. When he stands, he sees a man with a shotgun blocking the doorway in the darkness. He is Hilton’s height and size.

  “Get out of my way,” Hilton says to him.

  The man folds his arms across his chest, still holding the gun. “Not this time,” the man says in Hilton’s own voice.

  Another voice speaks up from the pass-through kitchen counter, where a man is munching on potato chips. “You’ve run out of doorways,” the eating man says. He, too, is a Hilton figure, the one with the horribly mangled face. His flesh looks scorched.

  “Sleeping on the job,” scolds the Hilton figure with the gun. Hilton glances behind him and sees himself asleep in the wicker chair, his gun leaning on the wall in front of him. His chin is resting against his chest. Hilton can’t move to shake himself.

  “Forget it,” says the mangled Hilton figure, reaching for another handful of potato chips. “It’s too late now. He’s here.”

  “He’s been here for some time.”

  “Just let it all be over. It’s not as hard as you think.”

  “Everybody has to let go sometime.”

  Hilton clasps his hands together in front of his face to implore them. “Leave Dede alone.”

  “Of course. Dede belongs here.”

  “And Kay a and Jamil?”

  Neither Hilton figure answers. The armed one standing in the doorway hangs his head, exhaling a deep breath that circles the air until it lingers beneath Hilton’s nostrils with the scent of the dead. Its coolness allures Hilton, makes him sleepy.

  “What about Kaya and Jamil?” Hilton asks, his energy fading.

  “What’s done is done is done,” says the Hilton figure from the counter. “It’s time for all of us to rest.”

  Hilton sees a movement on the patio, which is clouded in a green early-morning fog. Kaya and Jamil are out there, clasping the hands of a lanky girl in a hospital gown. Their backs are facing them, and they are walking toward the swimming pool, where steam is rising from the glowing green water. The tall girl turns around to smile at Hilton over her shoulder. Antoinette.

  “No!” Hilton screams, breaking free from the death spell. He pounds on the glass door, shouting their names with all of his resolve. His voice shreds the air and time in countless hidden worlds.

  A low, focused barking outside awoke Hilton. He jumped from his chair and reached for his gun, but it was no longer against the wall where he’d left it. He felt a stifling panic until he spotted the gun’s glimmer at the family room entrance, lying across the floor. He paused for a split second before running to grab it. Who had moved his gun? He glanced up at the clock. It wasn’t quite 3:15. The dead of night, and Charlie was barking at someone.

  It must be him.

  The only light on in the house was in the hallway between the family room and living room, and Hilton switched it off. He knew every nuance of his home’s floor plan from his weeks of sleepless sentry duty, so he stole his way from room to room to glance out of the windows at the rustling hedges and serene sidewalks. Charlie’s barking was less tentative now, and he could hear him yanking hard against the chain. Hilton could go outside and let Charlie loose, he realized, but he thought better of it.

  No. That would only chase him away. He didn’t want that.

  Back in the family room, Hilton flicked off the patios green floodlights with the switch next to the sliding glass door. He ran his hand across the gun’s barrel until he felt the chamber, and he cycled the first shotgun plug into place behind the gun’s hammer with a loud, heavy clacking that echoed throughout the room. Hilton’s heart was leaping in circles, but his hands were steady. Painstakingly, he unlocked the glass door and gently eased it open on its track until he felt the night air on the patio. The backyard was cast in light from the solar lamp, but the patio itself was hidden in darkness. He heard the pool’s water lapping gently, unseen. Hilton padded across the tiles to the pool’s edge and walked around it until he’d reached the corner closest to the yard and the shed. He poised the gun against the screen to shoot.

  Hilton heard a sound from the fence that could be a cat or a squirrel, and his gun’s nozzle snapped toward the spot in an instant as his breathing grew heavier. The son of a bitch was really here. Right outside of his property. Walking right into a twelve-gauge, just like that.

  “Come on out, you prick,” Hilton whispered. Nervous perspiration dripped into his right eyelid, but he sealed it shut and didn’t move despite the painful sting. He waited.

  There. A crunch on the gravel from his neighbor’s yard, fifteen yards from his shed, thirty yards from where Hilton stood. Charlie’s barking grew louder, more frenzied. Charlie knew, too, even from the front yard. Maybe Charlie could smell him in the air. A whipping breeze shimmied through the leaves overhead.

  “Come on,” Hilton breathed.

  Hilton heard feet whistling through his neighbor’s grass. He was running along the fence, hidden behind the hedges. Goddammit. Why was he running? Hilton follo
wed the sound with the shotgun, straining to see anything, any glimpse that could serve as a target. His prayer was answered when he saw a flash of pale skin; maybe his neck, maybe his arm or his face.

  Hilton squeezed the trigger and the gun pumped, its nozzle exploding and the butt kicking his chin so hard that he took two steps back. Glass shattered in the darkness. Hilton cycled and fired twice more, ripping the screen apart with singed gaps, tracking the hidden flesh he’d seen. He was breathing in gasps by now, but he stood perfectly still. Waiting. For one perfect second he heard silence, and he dared to believe he’d hit his mark.

  Then his senses were rushed with Charlie’s hysteria, joining the chorus of alarmed dogs up and down the street. He heard one of his children crying and Dede screaming his name. He was still frozen with the gun raised as he watched his neighbors’ bedroom lights flick on with nearly synchronized swiftness.

  Hilton was startled by a sudden lick of warm water against his leg. Who— He whirled around, and his foot plunged into the deep end of his pool before his mind even registered that he’d backed against its concrete edge. He cried out, flinging the shotgun away as he toppled, arms flailing, into the water.

  you come back here, boy you hear me?

  He was submerged. Everything was silent, dark, and peaceful. Hilton felt the water gathering at his nose, but he remembered to keep his mouth closed. His eyes were also squeezed shut to keep out the chlorine. He didn’t move. Don’t panic, he thought. Hold your breath. Float to the top. Just climb out.

  look, hilton

  In the din of water rushing his ears, Hilton thought he heard a whisper of a voice calling him. He opened his eyes and realized he was close enough to the bottom to see the black tile letters splayed in front of him, larger than life. The letters seemed to be glowing, waving. He stared hard to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating; instead of the loving tribute to the previous owners wife, the oversized letters now spelled D-I-E.

  That instant, Hilton choked on the water fighting for possession of his mouth. To his amazement, the water tasted bitterly of salt.

  Now he was panicked, swimming furiously. His chest and lungs hurt as the water seemed to crush him. He craned his neck and stroked toward the faint light from the solar lamp shining across the surface, but something was wrong. His clothes felt like pure lead pulling him to the pool’s bottom. His swimming strokes seemed useless, and the depth had grown to far more than eight feet. The harder he stroked, the farther the surface yawned up away from him, a canyon of water growing, growing until he could barely make out the light or the rounded corner of concrete above where he should have been able to hoist himself out easily.

  This couldn’t be happening. This was worse than his dreams. Drowning. Lord Jesus, he was drowning.

  The water was growing colder, making him shiver uncontrollably and swallow more of the salt that was stinging tears from his eyes. No, he wasn’t on his patio. He could plainly see the specks of plankton and algae floating all around him, could feel the sand particles brushing against his face. He believed he heard a man laughing somewhere below, from the depths drawing him further and further. Charles Ray’s laugh.

  He gasped, drawing more of the water into his lungs. The tightness in his chest was going away. Instead of burning the way he remembered when he was a boy, the water was soothing him now. He felt an urge to suck it in like a drunkard in need of wine. He remained motionless, floating downward in a lazy spiral as the light above grew to a faraway glimmer, like a star.

  Then, as before, a solid, massive arm wrapped around his middle. He felt himself being pulled upward, swept past the floating algae in a beating rush that left him dizzy. In an instant, his head popped above the surface and the thick air wrapped around him, feeding his starving lungs. He began to cough violently, thrashing to reach the edge of the pool.

  “Thank you,” he tried to gasp but couldn’t because he could barely breathe. Oh, Jesus, thank you. thank you

  nana

  Dede ran to the pool’s edge and kneeled, screaming. He’d never seen such a wild look in her eyes. “Are you shot?” she asked inexplicably, reaching to grab his soaked, clinging shirt. “Are you shot?”

  When his coughing fit subsided, he saw the shotgun he’d thrown against the patio tile and heard the barking and commotion all around him. For the first time, he remembered Charles Ray in the bushes.

  He’d missed. Charles Ray had been there, right there, but now he was gone. It would be a waste of time to search his neighbors hedges with a flashlight for what might be left of him. Hilton knew this, just as he’d known Charles Ray was there at all. The knowing was the hardest part.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 24

  “Hil, come here. Let’s talk,” Curt said, beckoning.

  Flaggingly, Hilton pulled himself from beneath Dede’s arm on the living room sofa and followed his uniformed friend into the hallway. He hated to leave her warmth; he was wearing dry clothes but still felt soaked and chilly. The sky was dipped in 5:00 A.M. velvet, and Hilton’s household was bustling. Kaya and Jamil were watching a Terminator video at a soft volume, too giddy to sleep, and the front door was open so the Miami police officers still gathered outside could walk in and out with ease.

  Dede had served coffee earlier, and now she sat on the sofa with a dazed face, her eyes red. Occasionally, their neighbor’s hoarse voice rose to a near-shout as he spoke to the officers outside. “. . . and he’s going to pay for it, goddammit, that’s all I know. I don’t care if he’s Jesse Jackson.”

  Hilton heard the man’s voice floating inside the house just before Curt closed the door to the master bedroom. Hilton had never been introduced to his gruff neighbor whose son had called Jamil a nigger, but now he knew his name all too well. He’d been hearing it all night.

  Curt paced before Hilton with a sigh, his hands clenched behind his neck as he stared up at the ceiling.

  “He was out there, Curt,” Hilton said.

  Curt stopped, staring at Hilton straight in the face, and Hilton could see the anger tugging at his jowls. “Man, stop it. You act like you don’t know what the hell’s going on here. Don’t you get it? You’ve got to wake up.”

  “I know it looks bad . . .”

  “Looks bad?” Curt repeated, laughing ruefully. “Do you understand you almost took a ride tonight? Huh? We just spent an hour talking that redneck son of a bitch out of pressing charges against you. Illegal discharge of a firearm. Reckless endangerment. Hell, he thinks you did it on purpose. Are you starting to get the picture now? Or didn’t you go back there and take a look at the hole you blew in his bedroom window, two feet above his head?”

  “I know. The shot went wild.” His eyes were low.

  Curt was shouting by now. “Man, you can’t fire a weapon like that! If I’d known you were that crazy, I never would have let you get a gun. And I thought for damn sure you knew you can’t fire at somebody you thinks in the bushes, and he ain’t even on your property. It’s supposed to be self-defense, not big-game hunting.”

  “It’s him or us, Curt.”

  Curt paused, stepping closer to Hilton to probe his eyes. He looked as though he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “You’re really gone, aren’t you?”

  “What the fuck is so crazy about shooting at a terrorist sneaking behind your yard?”

  “Because he wasn’t even here, goddammit!” Curt shouted back. “No way in hell you can shoot three shotgun slugs within thirty feet and you won’t blow somebody apart. No way. There ain’t no such thing as missing with a shotgun like that.”

  Hilton exhaled, struggling to reason with his friend. “Curt . . . He’s ex-military. The first shot goes wild, he hits the ground. The next two don’t get near him. Then he books.”

  “And he drives all the way the hell back up to North Dade in time for his FBI tail to wake him up from dead sleep?”

  “It was forty minutes before anybody from the FBI even scratched their ass, and you know it. At least.”
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  Annoyed, Curt waved his hand in dismissal and turned away from him. “Hilton, you’re scaring the hell out of me. You told me yourself you never even saw a face clearly. Didn’t even see him.”

  “It was him. Charlie knew. He was barking like—”

  “Oh, man, shut up,” Curt cut him off. “I can’t listen to this. If you’d hit somebody, maybe Charlie could testify at your goddamn murder trial to corroborate your story. ’Cause that’s where your ass would have been, in a goddamn jail cell.”

  Hilton didn’t answer, sitting on the edge of the unmade bed where Dede had been roused from sleep in a fit when she heard the gunfire. She’d hugged Hilton, clinging to him, when she finally found him on the patio, but her own questions would come later when the shock finally gave way. Slowly, Curt’s words began to sink into Hilton’s consciousness. It was all spinning out of control.

  “We both know it doesn’t make sense,” Hilton said dully, unable to meet Curt’s eyes, “but I know what really happened.”

  Curt shook his head, looking at Hilton askance, then walked toward the door. “You need to rap with God tonight and thank sweet Jesus all you hit was that dude’s window and walls,” Curt said.

  “All right, man. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry don’t cut it,” Curt said, more gently, opening the door. “Just get yourself together, Hil. Get yourself straight.”

  Hilton heard the echo of Dede’s voice through the open doorway as Curt walked back out to the living room. “Is everything going to be okay with him?”

  “Yeah. Don’t sweat it, Dede. It’s all taken care of.”

  “I’m sorry, Curt.”

  He shushed her. “I don’t want to hear that now. He did what he thought he had to do, that’s all.”

  It would all be so different, Hilton thought, if only his first shot had been sure. Then what was left of Goode would be a harmless, bloody heap on the grass. He might have spent some time in jail, like Curt said, but at least his waking nightmare would be over. Would he have another chance?