A Long December

by Richard Chizmar

  Annie sat there, frozen with surprise.

  She wouldn’t have been more shocked if she had found a live snake inside the shoe box.

  What was it doing here? How was it here?

  And then it came to her: Charlie had found Max dead somewhere. In the woods beyond the back yard. Alongside a roadway. He had found their sweet Max and kept it to himself, sparing the rest of them the hurt he was experiencing. That would be just like their Charlie.

  Annie felt tears come to her eyes. A thickness in her throat. My poor brave boy.

  She placed the collar back into the box and her hand brushed against something else.

  She pulled it out from the box.

  A tangle of smaller collars. The kind that cats or small dogs wore.

  Again, Annie sat there for a long quiet moment, dumbfounded.

  And then her hand started shaking.

  It was suddenly hard to breathe.

  She started to look at one of the tags—and stopped.

  She realized she didn’t want to see.

  She suddenly felt sick to her stomach.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she thought. Of course, there’s a good explanation.

  Annie almost screamed when the cell phone in her pocket rang.

  She jerked to her feet, spilling the shoebox and Max’s collar from her lap to the floor.

  She looked at the caller ID on her phone.

  Lisa.

  She answered without thinking. “Hello.”

  “Hey, girl, you busy?”

  “Ummm…”

  “You are. It’s okay, we can talk later. Or maybe lunch tomorrow? I have something I want to tell you.”

  Annie couldn’t take her eyes off the collars in her hand.

  “Lunch sounds good. Call me…in the morning?”

  “Everything okay? You sound funny.”

  Do I? Annie thought.

  She flipped one of the tags over.

  “Just…tired. Need to break for lunch.”

  Annie brought the tag closer and read the tiny print.

  “Get some rest, Annie girl. Talk in the morning.”

  SPARKLES.

  Annie didn’t hear a word.

  She hung up.

  The phone slipped from her hand, landed on the floor next to the shoebox.

  She stared down at it for a moment. Saw that she was wearing her favorite shoes.

  Somewhere, outside in the distance, a lawn mower roared to life. A work truck backed up: BEEP BEEP BEEP. Someone tapped a car horn.

  Annie slowly bent down, as if in a dream, picked up her phone and the shoe box with the same trembling hand.

  Tissue paper slipped to the floor. She ignored it.

  She glanced inside the box and saw that it was empty.

  Wait…not quite empty.

  There was a key inside. Tucked against the narrow end of the box.

  She took the key and let the box fall from her hand.

  She didn’t have to wonder about the key.

  She knew.

  It had happened a few months ago…

  She remembered all this as she walked down the stairs, ignoring the voice in the back of her head telling her to call her husband at work, that something was wrong here.

  She had gone onto the deck one warm spring evening to read a book and drink a glass of wine and had found Charlie putting a padlock on the old shed in the back corner of the yard. The shed had been battered and leaning even when they’d first moved into the house ten years earlier.

  After Mark had assured her it was safe and wasn’t going to collapse, the shed had spent most of the years that followed as Charlie’s “secret fort.” It wasn’t much of a fort, and it certainly wasn’t a secret, but Charlie had adored it. He had dragged an old card table inside and three folding chairs. Stocked it with books and comics and playing cards. Hung posters of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant on the walls.

  But Annie hadn’t seen him inside or even puttering around the shed for several years until the night of the padlock. She had leaned over the deck railing and yelled down to him that evening.

  “What’s the lock for, Charlie Brown?”

  He looked up, startled, and then that trademark grin of his had come onto his face.

  He shrugged. “Figured it was time to lock the old fort up. Lot of little kids running around the neighborhood. Wouldn’t want any of them to get hurt in there.”

  Annie had smiled and sipped her wine and waved down to her beautiful boy. How thoughtful, she remembered thinking. Just like Charlie to do something like that…

  Annie no longer felt like she was moving in slow motion, like she was part of some bizarre and confusing dream.

  By the time she had made it downstairs and outside, she had convinced herself that she was being ridiculous. That the collars and key meant nothing, certainly nothing dark or dreadful. It was a mystery, but it would all make sense in time.

  She crossed the back yard with long, purposeful strides. Didn’t hesitate once she reached the shed. She slid the key into the lock, popped it open on the first try and hung the lock on the hinge of the shed door.

  She opened the door…

  …and the smell hit her.

  And still, despite the stench and the return of the voice in the back of her head—CALL YOUR DAMN HUSBAND, ANNIE!—she held onto that sliver of new confidence:

  Probably just a dead mouse in there.

  There was no electricity in the shed, so she swung the door open as wide as she could, jumping when the heavy door banged against the front of the shed.

  She stepped into the doorway, the tips of her overpriced shoes toeing the dirt floor inside.

  The smell was worse now.

  She covered her nose and mouth with her hand and squinted into the darkness.

  It was impossible to see.

  She stepped inside the shed.

  And the inside voice whispered: that’s not a mouse, Annie, and you know it.

  And she did know it…because her eyes had started to adjust to the gloom and she could see them now.

  Hanging from nails stuck into the walls.

  Cats.

  Squirrels.

  Rabbits.

  Frogs.

  Turtles.

  Some of them pink and glistening and freshly skinned.

  Others dried out and yellowed and rotting with age.

  Still others sliced open, insides dripping into wet, ropy piles onto the dirt below.

  And then she saw Max.

  Annie drops to her knees and gets sick right there in the dirt.

  She heaves until there is nothing left inside her and when she finally looks up, looks beyond a gutted and crucified Max…she sees the worst of it.

  There are dozens of photos on the far wall. Erin Cavanaugh. Their neighbor from down the street. One of the girls Charlie grew up with. The wall looks like a shrine.

  Annie struggles to her feet and turns to leave…

  …but there is someone standing behind her in the doorway. Silhouetted in the afternoon sunlight.

  Annie does scream this time, and the person steps forward.

  “Bailey?”

  Bailey takes another step, a strange look on her face Annie has never seen before.

  She notices that Bailey’s hair and shirt are soaked in sweat, as if she had run all the way from school.

  “What are you doing home, honey?”

  Bailey takes another step and this time Annie notices something else: her little girl’s hands are hidden behind her back.

  “Bailey, honey…”

  The little girl glances at the walls, then back to her mother.

  “I remembered in home room…I remembered that I forgot to put it back.”

  Bailey looks like she wants to cry.

  Annie tries to speak, but nothing comes out.She backs up another step.

  It’s fear she is feeling now. She is more afraid than she has ever felt in her life.

  “It was so stupid. I never forget.”
<
br />   Bailey takes another step forward.

  Annie backs away. Her baby girl. Big and strong for her age, just like Charlie.

  “I hid them in Charlie’s room because you and Dad never snoop around in there. And I wanted them close to me.”

  Bailey takes another step and starts to move her hands out from behind her back.

  “I needed them close to me.”

  Annie backs up another step.

  And her back touches the wall.

  Heroes

  1

  I’ve always watched him. Secretly. From the time I was a child. Watched the way his eyebrows danced when he laughed. The way he lit his pipe or handled a tool, like a magician wielding a magic wand. The way he walked the family dog; bending to talk with it or ruffle its fur, but only when he was sure no one was watching. The way he read the newspaper or one of his tattered old paperbacks, peering over the worn pages every few minutes to keep me in check. The way his eyes twinkled when he called me “son.”

  I’ve always watched him.

  2

  The detective’s name was Crawford and when he disappeared into the crowd, I wondered for what had to be the tenth time tonight if I was truly insane for trusting him.

  It was Thursday, December 21, and Baltimore-Washington International Airport was suffering under the strain of thousands of holiday travelers. A river of lonely businessmen and women, sweatshirt-clad college students, and entire families flowed by North Gate 23, blocking my view of the exit tunnel. I remained sitting on one of the orange-padded seats in the waiting area while Crawford tried to get close enough to look out the airport windows. Our man was due on an 8:30 p.m. flight from Paris—a private charter—so the computer screens all around me offered no news of its arrival.

  I stared at the clock on the far wall. It was almost time. Months of research and planning were about to come to an end. My stomach felt like it was bubbling over and I was tempted to duck into the bathroom. Instead, afraid to leave my seat, I popped another Tums and waited for it to dissolve under my tongue.

  Crawford reappeared, trailing behind an overweight couple who were moving with the grace and speed of a pair of hermit crabs. I could see by the expression on his face that the news was not good. I’d hired Ben Crawford, a Philadelphia-based private detective, two months earlier. He’d been the only one of the half-dozen detectives who’d been recommended to me who was willing to take my case. A fifty-thousand-dollar certified check—half payment in advance—had sealed the deal.

  We made an odd pair. I stood over six feet tall but tipped the scales at only one-sixty. Crawford, on the other hand, could best be described as a human stump; only five-four, he weighed in with one hundred and seventy pounds of compressed muscle. His arms and legs strained against his clothing, and like many other muscular men of his size, he more waddled than walked. Despite my edginess, I smiled and almost laughed aloud at the sight before me: the waddling detective and Mr. and Mrs. Hermit Crab.

  “What’s so damn funny?” he asked, moving his coat from the chair next to me and sitting down.

  “What…oh, nothing. Nervous tension, I guess.”

  He checked his watch. “The plane just landed. It’ll be another ten minutes or so.”

  I nodded, my throat suddenly dry, my stomach tightening another notch.

  Now it was Crawford’s turn to smirk. “Hey, take it easy, you’re white as a sheet. Don’t worry, he’ll be on that plane.” He glanced at his watch again. “Another couple of hours and it’ll all be over. Trust me.”

  I nodded again. I trusted him all right. I had no other choice.

  3

  Twenty years ago, when I was seventeen and still in high school, each student in our senior English class was assigned to write a paper about the person he or she most admired. The class was a large one and the list of heroes was long and impressive: Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Joe Namath, Willie Mays, John Glenn, and dozens of other famous figures. I was the only student who chose to write about his father. A nine-page tribute. My father cried at the kitchen table when he read it. Stood up and hugged me real close. I’ll never forget that day. Never.

  4

  Our man was the only passenger in the tunnel. A shadow. Moving slow. Carrying no luggage.

  Even in the dim light, I could see that he was a striking man. Tall. Elegant. Draped in a fine black overcoat, dark slacks, and shiny, zippered boots. His face contrasted sharply with his slicked, black hair and dark apparel. Deathly pale flesh appeared almost luminous in the airport lights, and sharp, high cheekbones seemed to hide his eyes under his forehead. Eyes as dark as midnight.

  “Jesus,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, I know,” Crawford said, leaning close enough that I could feel his breath. “He’s something, ain’t he?”

  Before I could answer, the detective stepped past me and met our visitor at the side of the walkway, away from the swelling crowd. I stumbled blindly after him, not wanting to be separated.

  “It’s a pleasure to see you again, sir,” Crawford said.

  Neither man offered forth a hand, and I noticed that our visitor’s hands were covered by black leather gloves. He nodded and smiled. A quick flash of teeth. Like a shark. A chill swept across my spine.

  “As promised, I am here.” His voice was mesmerizing; his words soft and melodic like music. I wanted to hear more.

  “Yes, you certainly are,” Crawford said, sounding infinitely more civilized than I had ever heard him. “I trust your trip was satisfactory.”

  “Indeed, it was quite comfortable. But, my friend, I long for the journey home, so may we continue on quickly?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Crawford eased me forward, his fingers digging into my arm. “This is—”

  “Mr. Francis Wallace,” he interrupted, smiling again. I felt a wave of nausea rush forward and began to sway. The detective’s fingers tightened on my arm again. “I have crossed an ocean to make your acquaintance.”

  “I…I really must thank you for coming here,” I said. I looked helplessly at Crawford. “I’m not sure I believed him until I saw you walking up the tunnel. I was so terribly afraid that I had been wrong all this time.”

  “It is not necessary to thank me, Mr. Wallace. I have thought about this moment many times since your friend’s visit to my home. I admit, initially, I was wary, hesitant to come. But yours is such a strange story, such a strange reason for my journey. My decision to come here was much easier than your decision to seek me, I trust.”

  A pack of giggling children skittered past us, brushing the man’s coat. He cringed and turned to Crawford. “I am ready to proceed now.”

  The detective led us through the busy airport, outside into the bitter December air, to his rental car in the upper-level parking lot. The traffic on the interstate was moderate. We drove north in silence.

  5

  It was my father who stood at my side on my wedding day, and I by his, eight months later, when Mother passed away. Barely a year later, and it was my father again, his arms around me, who broke the news to me that my precious Jennifer had been killed in an accident. It was the worst of times, but still we had each other.

  6

  The house I grew up in was dark, the street deserted. The rental car was parked in the driveway, its ticking engine the only sound in the night. I sat on the front porch, Crawford on my left side, smoking a cigarette. Snow flurries danced around us, drifting to the ground and melting. I played with the zipper on my coat for a long time before I looked up.

  He was staring at me.

  “You okay?” he asked, his breath visible in the chill air.

  “I don’t know.” I took a deep breath and looked over my shoulder at the front door, which our visitor had disappeared into just minutes earlier. “I planned this for so long…thought about it for so long, but I don’t know. I’m still not sure it’s right.”

  He shook his head. “Listen to me, I gotta admit that I thought you were a genuine
nutcase when you hired me. Offered me a hundred thousand to go find this guy and convince him of your little plan. Hell, I only signed on because I was short on cash and long on bills.”

  He stood up and inhaled on his cigarette. Began pacing the walkway. “I mean, I thought he was a fantasy, something made up for the movies and books. But the more you showed me about this guy—the papers, the files, the photos; all dated over hundreds of years—and the more time I spent around this house, getting to know you and your old man…the more I understood. You’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble, Wallace, an awful lot. Now, you don’t know me very well; not well at all, in fact. But if you’re asking for my opinion of all this, I think you did good. I think you did damn good.”

  A soft thud sounded from inside the house, and I jerked around.

  Crawford kneeled at my side, pointed a finger at me. “You did good, Wallace. Trust me.”

  “Oh, God, I hope so.”

  7

  I don’t watch my father anymore. It hurts too much.

  Ten months ago, on a Friday night, he forgot my name. I had just returned from the grocery store with the week’s supplies—he was no longer able to drive himself—when he called me into the den. The television was on the wrong channel and he couldn’t figure out how to work the remote control. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Charlie, could you please turn on HBO?” I laughed, thinking he was acting the smart-ass, one of his favorite pastimes.

  But later at dinner, he asked, “Charlie, pass me the salt and pepper.”

  I looked at him; there was no humor in his voice, no mischief in his eyes. “Dad,” I said, scared, “who is Charlie?”

  A confused expression creased his face. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “Just tell me who Charlie is, Dad.”

  He laughed. “Hell, buddy. Don’t you even remember your own name? We served in the war together, Charlie. You were my wing man, for Christsakes.”

  It came to me then. Charlie Banks—my father’s best friend, dead over fifteen years now.

  It was a long night, but the next morning, everything was back to normal. I was his son again, Charlie Banks completely forgotten.