The Stranger Inside

by Lisa Unger

  I have to laugh. “Fair enough.”

  I tip an imaginary hat to her and step out into the cool night.

  By the time I get back to the garage, I’m sure they’re not following me. I leave the Volvo in the lot and get into the Toyota.

  Tess is there as I pull onto the street, sitting beside me. She’s a child tonight, thin and shivering. I am grateful to her, you know. That she’s here with me this way.

  In a disaster-stricken Japanese town called Otsuchi, there was an earthquake followed by a tsunami, which precipitated a nuclear plant meltdown, and over ten percent of the population was lost. A young man installed a disconnected rotary telephone booth in his backyard, a way to call his lost beloved cousin and deal with his grief. He called it a wind telephone. After a while, others from the town started to come, everyone trying to find some way to reach out to the many people lost. I heard about it on NPR. It struck me, how we hold on to each other, how we are so desperate to find those who have been taken from us.

  I know you still think about her, too, Rain. Because that time together, those friendships, they were special. Grown-ups dismiss the love that children share. But there is nothing purer, no love more accepting, no affection more complete than the love among young people. You don’t know yet how much pain there is on the other side of it. You haven’t learned to hold back the biggest part of yourself so that you can survive the end of things.

  Maybe that’s why I can’t let her go. Why I can’t let you go. I’ve never cared about anyone as much since. You told me that you found it sad. Maybe, you said, if I’d built a life, I wouldn’t be clinging to the past. But I wonder.

  “Let me go,” Tess says. “Let this go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t?” she asks. “Or he can’t.”

  “There’s less distance between us lately.”

  “Maybe you should see a shrink about that.”

  We drive a long time; it’s late. “What would you tell a patient who was behaving like this?” she asks.

  “I couldn’t condone it,” I admit. “This is criminal behavior. I’d have to advise my patient to stop immediately. I’d have to turn him in to prevent him from harming others.”

  She nods solemnly. “Physician heal thyself.”

  “I saw Lara today,” I tell her.

  “She doesn’t love you,” she answers.

  She was always so honest like that, remember? Never cruel but just an innocent stating the facts. “She never did. Not even when we were little, and you stared and stared at her, tried to hold her hand at the Valentine’s Day roller-skating party that time.

  “Or that crystal heart you gave her for her birthday,” she says. “Remember how proud you were of that, how you shopped and shopped for the perfect thing. What did she do with it?”

  “She left it,” I admit. “She forgot about it.”

  Tess nods meaningfully. It still hurts. How sad is that? We were ten.

  “And she just liked that goth kid who wrote that horrible poetry and didn’t even know she existed.”

  I remember. That guy. He was such an asshole. What did you ever see in him?

  “She might have loved me, later when we met again.”

  Those weeks with you, they’re like a film reel I play in my mind. Your scent, your skin, your body in my bed, the sound of your laughter, the silk of your hair. It was a glimpse at the world that was still there waiting for me—love, a family, children. Helping people in order to ease my own pain. Not the other things—the obsessions, the secret plans.

  “But not him,” she says. “You let him scare her away.”

  “No,” I say. “He is not lovable. He’s a dog on a chain.”

  “I was the one who loved you,” she says softly. “I love him, too. He tried so hard to save us.”

  She reaches out to touch my face. Her fingers are ice on my skin and I shiver. She looks wounded, then disappears, stardust. I watch the empty seat beside me. I’m not a hundred percent sure what she is. A haunting. A hallucination. A manifestation of my deep and total aloneness. I don’t dwell on it for long. She is what she is, I guess.

  Physician heal thyself?

  Easier said.

  The house is isolated—as it would have to be. So I park the car just inside the hidden drive, pulling it close to the trees so that it can’t be seen from the road. Then I walk through the woods.

  The temperature is dropping. Winter comes later in our age of global weirding. But the cold arrives like an ambush, bringing all-new superstorms, like the “bomb cyclone” that’s expected to hit later this week. Or maybe there are just new names for these things, some marketing department somewhere cooking up phrases to incite maximum dread. Keep people afraid and you keep them consuming, stockpiling supplies and buying generators.

  I know my way around this property now. I know all the exits and entrances to the big house. I understand that there’s another structure here, as well. But I’ve yet to find it. That’s why I’m here. A patient of mine was a foster child here; she’s made claims that no one believes—shocking stories of starvation, children locked in rooms for days, physical and psychological torture. There have been investigations that turned up no evidence. The girl, a damaged young thing, has a reputation as a pathological liar. She has a rap sheet of petty crimes—shoplifting, possession of marijuana, attempted prostitution. But I know the look of trauma. She’s broken. The question is—who broke her? And can he (or she—yeah, sometimes) be stopped from breaking others?

  As I make my way through the woods, I hear her shuffling footsteps behind me.

  “It’s just an excuse,” Tess says. “He’s aching to do it again. And I don’t think you can contain him.”

  Maybe she’s right.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Gillian waved from the doorway, a slim figure in a rectangle of light. Lily was already asleep, Rain having nursed her and put her to bed. She was a sound sleeper. If Auntie Gillian didn’t go in there too often, checking and poking around as she was prone to do, Lily would sleep through the night.

  They hadn’t even pulled off their street before Rain was checking the app. Lily lay on her back, arms ups, head to the side, mouth agape. The sleep of the innocent, deep and peaceful.

  “You’re not checking the app already,” said Greg, looking over. At the stop sign, he took the phone and stared at the baby a moment, then at her.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Date-night rules: don’t just talk about the baby. Don’t compulsively check the monitor. Don’t succumb to the constant fatigue and go home early. Devices on Do Not Disturb except for Gillian’s number. No social media posting.

  “What did our parents do?” asked Greg. “They didn’t have any tech, not like there is today.”

  “I guess they just did what they did,” she said. “Figured if there was an emergency someone would call.”

  What if her parents had had that tech? Maybe she, Tess and Hank would all be raising their children together in the same town, like so many of the people she knew. She saw their posts on Facebook, kids going to the same schools as their parents, same community fairs and soccer games. Mini versions of the people she knew, playing in the same parks, visiting the cider mill in fall, the sheep-shearing festival in spring. Maybe Tess would have married Hank, on whom she’d had a lifelong crush. Maybe Hank would have stopped staring at Rain and noticed Tess one day.

  “What are you thinking about?” asked Greg, resting a hand on her leg.

  “Nothing,” she said, looking at him, trying for a smile. “Just zoning out.”

  “So, how’s the story coming?” he asked. “Did you hear from Andrew?”

  The space between them was still tingling, charged with the energy of his worry, his anger about the letters, her guarding of this thing she wanted to do, maybe for the wrong reasons, her guilt about Lil
y, the visit from the FBI, her sins of omission. He hadn’t brought up the letters again, though they were fluttering in the air. What was there to talk about, really? She’d lied or omitted something important. She hadn’t made excuses or even really apologized. He was angry, confused—of course he was. She didn’t know how to make things right. She’d been able to explain it to Gillian, but she wasn’t sure Greg would understand.

  She had a feeling it wasn’t going to be the best date night they’d ever had.

  In fact, sometimes date night just turned into fight night, the only place they had that wasn’t sucked up by work or parenting. So everything they held inside came out in a rush; they’d wind up parked somewhere screaming at each other.

  Sometimes they wound up parked somewhere—at the overlook, once in the parking lot of the closed library—and fucked in the back seat—raw, desperate, tawdry. Then, laughing at themselves, they’d grab fast food, or go to a bar and have a couple of drinks. Once they took an Uber home. Thank god Gillian had been there to wake up with the baby.

  “He’s pitching it next week,” she said. “I’m taking it slow until then.”

  It was a half-truth. She wasn’t taking it slow. She’d connected with Henry, reached out to an old colleague who’d started a very successful podcast. She’d purchased a few URLs—rainwinter.com, winterstories.com, murrayandwinter.com and a few others. She’d created a timeline, compiled a list of people she wanted to interview. All of this in down moments while Lily slept, or was occupied with her toys, eating in her high chair. She was doing this, with or without NNR. It was a runaway train inside her.

  She fought the urge to check the app yet again, even though it hadn’t even been a few minutes. She looked at her husband instead, that wild mop of hair, that presidential jaw, the impressive span of his shoulders. She gripped his hand, wound her fingers through his. Remember to touch each other, one article on “Keeping your marriage alive after the baby!” advised.

  Often, still, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Even after so many years, just the sight of him could make her jittery with desire. “When you’re both focused on the baby, it’s easy to forget about each other,” the article warned. Why did she even read that stuff?

  But just that simple action caused him to smile, caused some of the tension in her own shoulders to relax. His tone was softer.

  He made the turn, drove through town.

  She turned up the heat; she felt chilled to the bone. The temperature had taken a steep drop. Halloween decorations glittered—witches on broomsticks, bats, and cats with arched backs hanging from the streetlamps. The little square had been turned into a pumpkin patch. On weekends, there was a farmers’ market—cider and maple syrup candy, bags of candy corn on offer. She and Gillian were taking Lily tomorrow; it was Greg’s morning to sleep in.

  “So, I did a little research today,” he said. “About Kreskey.”

  She was surprised, and not. She knew the way his brain worked, a lot like hers. Probably he went into the office after the FBI visit and, stewing, he started researching the thing that was irking him, trying to figure out the puzzle of the past that was always pushing its way into their present.

  “There’s a lot of information about him,” said Greg. He kept his eyes on the road, but she saw a muscle working in his jaw.

  “Yes,” she said, feeling that familiar tingle of unease she had whenever she had to talk about him.

  Kreskey, for whatever reason, was one of those killers with a following. Though he wasn’t technically a serial killer, there was something about him that kept people returning to his story. There was a documentary that had aired on one of the big cable networks, a slew of features, and he had his own page on a particularly sick website called thekillernextdoor.net, devoted to high-profile murderers, their histories, current status. On this site, the perpetrators had followers, fan clubs. Those living might submit a blog from prison. Rain had spent far too much time on that site, often came away feeling vaguely sick and slimed.

  “Detective Harper,” said Greg. “The officer who saved Hank and brought Kreskey in, then investigated Kreskey’s murder ten years later. He’s still alive and living near your father.”

  “How old is he now?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

  Rain remembered him as an old man when she was a young girl, but maybe in that way that all adults seem ridiculously old, almost living on another plane of existence in the mystical world of the “grown-up.” Only once she was a grown-up (allegedly) did she realize how close they all were to childhood, how plenty of people were still living there, clinging, in fact, to that place. Herself included.

  “He’s in his seventies,” said Greg. “Long retired from the department, but still working as a PI. I thought he might be a good connect for you.”

  Detective Harper was the first person on the list she’d compiled. They’d talked a number of times over the years, were connected by the events that had transpired—his finding her, the years that followed. They shared something that few people did. But she didn’t want to make it seem like she didn’t want or need Greg’s help.

  “Thank you. That’s a good idea.” Then, “I’m sorry. I know this is hard for you.”

  Greg had taken them to the overlook and put the car into Park. They sat, looking at their glittering town in the distance. Looking at all of the points of light, she wondered which house was theirs.

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said. He squeezed her hand. “I get that it’s way harder for you.”

  He bowed his head a moment, and she waited. Then, “I get mad, so frustrated—because I can’t protect you. I was on there, that website, reading about him, about the abuse he suffered as a child, how it turned him into a monster—”

  The sentence came up short; he shook his head tightly in frustration. “I want to go back—you know? Stop it before it all began. Save you. Save your friend Tess. Even Hank. If I could just lift that one moment out of all of your lives. It’s stupid. I couldn’t protect you then—in a lot of ways I can’t protect you now. How, then, do I protect Lily?”

  He pressed his mouth into a tight, angry line, looked away.

  “That’s who you are,” she said, rubbing his shoulder. “You’re a fixer. A protector. But we can’t always protect each other. All we can do is love each other.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “It has to be.”

  “And Kreskey,” he said after a moment.

  “What about him?”

  He traced a finger along the line of her jaw, pushed the hair back from her face.

  “The abuse,” said Greg. “The police found him in the basement. They kept him in there, for days and weeks, no food, no sunshine. He was twelve. He’d never been to school. His mother had taught him how to read and write, claimed she was homeschooling him for religious reasons. He’d only seen other children at the grocery store. He had broken bones that had healed wrong, scars from cigarettes that had been put out on his flesh. His right eardrum had been pierced by something. What if you could go back even further, and save him?”

  His words bounced around the car.

  What if?

  If only.

  That black spiral into nothing.

  “The investigation into Kreskey’s murder,” said Greg after they were quiet for a while. “It was—cursory.”

  “How do you mean?” She felt her body stiffen a little, forced herself to relax.

  “There wasn’t a lot of energy put behind it,” said Greg. “There were a few lackluster interviews, other ex-cons at the halfway house, doctors who treated him, a woman whose land edged the Kreskey property.”

  The wizened old woman with her hat and stick, the camera around her neck. How swift she’d been on the path through the trees, how quickly she’d disappeared. Was it her?

  “What’s her name?” asked Rain. �
�The neighbor.”

  “Greta Miller.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “She’s still alive,” he said. “She still lives in the house next to the Kreskey property.”

  “Did she see anything that night?”

  “That was the strange thing,” he said. “There was no recording or transcript from her interview. I mean, things get lost in small departments. No one is as organized or meticulous as you’d hope, especially when you go back that far. But everything else was intact.”

  Greta Miller. What did she see?

  “But no one was ever brought in, no one charged. No leads. No real suspects.”

  He went on, “In a way, it reminds me of the Markham murder. The story is already out of the news, the investigation ‘ongoing.’ You know? No one cares. It’s like—good riddance.”

  Yeah, good riddance.

  In recovery, she’d struggled with the idea that Kreskey still thought about her. He could still dream about her. She existed in his fantasies, as if a version of herself was trapped within him. She used to wonder: What does he do to me in his dreams? She could still hear his voice, feel his hands, the hard shock of his fist. When Kreskey died, the part of her he kept in his fantasies died, too. She was free.

  “But it’s just this cycle of abuse, violence, murder,” said Greg. “If we never understand it, we can never lift that next Kreskey out of his circumstance, or save the next Hank, Tess and Lara.”

  “Maybe that’s why I do what I do,” said Rain. “That’s what my father thinks, what Tess’s mom thinks.”

  “You’re trying to understand.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Because monsters live and thrive in the dark. Hank, too, I think. I think we’re both trying to understand, to fix, to prevent.”

  He stared ahead, nodded lightly.

  “So,” Greg said, reaching to the seat behind and retrieving a thick file folder. “Here’s all my research so far. I’m in—I’ll do what I can. I’m behind you. I support you—we’ll make this work. We’ll make sure Lily gets everything she needs. And that you do, too.”