Calling Mr. Nelson Pugh

by Christopher Opyr

  “But I still need you to do one thing for me,” I said. Here we were at the switch, the moment where I might fall, and all the groundwork so far laid would be washed away. “I want you to say goodnight to the girls,” I continued.

  “They’re asleep.” This again. Damn it.

  “That’s okay. I don’t need to talk with them, just to them.” Where had that come from? I didn’t know. I had no clue how I was navigating so quickly, so effortlessly. Don’t question it, I thought. Just ride.

  “To them?” She sounded skeptical.

  “Yes, to them. Grab the cordless from the foyer. Take it upstairs and peek in on them. Hold the phone up in their room. I’ll say goodnight.”

  “This is ridiculous. They won’t hear you.” She budged. I could hear it. The blockade had cracked. Keep her going.

  “They don’t have to hear me. This isn’t for them. It’s for me.” It was a complete lie, but she’d buy it. I had always been a selfish husband.

  “For you?” She sounded almost convinced.

  “Tonight was bad. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was. You know that. I feel like I’ve walked down from a ledge, and I’m so close to calm. But now, now I just want to say goodnight to my girls. I love them and…” My voice caught. I did love them and now what? The thought of losing them, is there any greater fear for a parent – anything worse than the thought that you might outlive your children?

  “…And it will help you to say goodnight,” Eleanor finished.

  “Almost like I was there with them.” I knew if I made it about my well-being, she might actually check on the girls. That may have been the only thing that would have convinced her. Still, as much as I knew this, as much as I realized that the request came as a means to alleviate my overwhelming fear more than anything else, I found myself surprised to realize that what I had said was also true. For me that call would be like being in the room with Erica and Marie.

  Through all the fear and the panic, I looked forward to that moment with eager anticipation, not only because it would verify that our daughters were okay, but also for the emotional proximity within which it would bring me to our two girls. Fatherhood carried a strange tangle of emotions, both simple and complicated at the same time – a web of joy for your daughters, for yourself as a father, and for simply being loved by these two little girls who looked at you through their rose-tinted glasses of youth and innocence. Even at such a great distance apart as we were on that night, that joy would immediately come crashing in upon saying goodnight, upon speaking with or to them. I needed that feeling then. I didn’t want to admit it, but I couldn’t shake the possibility that this call might be the last time that I would ever feel that connection and that joy again.

  “You win. Tell them goodnight. But remember, you can’t speak with them.”

  He wins. Hmmm… As she said that, a thought occurred to me for perhaps the first time. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who saw our conversations as a game of strategy. Novel as that realization was, I knew it best to keep that insight to myself. Instead, I kept my response simple.

  “Thank you.” I saw no danger in an expression of gratitude; no threat to the plan. Soon she would be with the girls and if there were any higher power in the universe watching out for me, then those girls would be okay. They had to be okay.

  I wanted to believe that, but how could I? Someone had called and that someone had to be nearby.

  THREE

  I paced by the window, the phone pressed forcefully against my ear. Each step carried with it a tinge of pain and I noticed that I had begun to limp. The bruise on my hip might have been worse than I had originally believed; yet I could grunt and bear through the pain.

  On the other end of the line I could hear nothing. Eleanor had left the bedside phone and headed off to the foyer, and from there would be off to our daughters’ room. I had no choice but to wait and wonder.

  As each moment passed, the stress mounted. My whole body had wound up coiled tight. Each step back and forth brought with it an internal war. I didn’t know if I should seek calm and continue to keep the panic at bay or if I should delay that peace and continue planning. Should I try to stay ahead of the conversation and figure out exactly what to say to convince my wife of eighteen years that she had to get out of that house? Was I sure that the danger was real? Could the voice have been nothing more than panicked delusion – part of one more episode in a long chain of nervous breakdowns?

  The answer eluded me, but whichever side I chose I would still lose. In one scenario my family was in no danger, in which case my anxiety had driven me to this place of madness. This would constitute evidence that I had lost all touch with reality and I would seriously need to consider drastic steps to curb myself before I could no longer function in everyday life. In the other of the two scenarios, my sanity would prove intact, but I would be left a feeble, panicked, and psychologically flawed husband and father struggling to convince my family of a very real threat. My pre-existing mental state and the lack of trust that said state had generated over the years would drastically diminish my chances at opening my wife’s eyes to the danger in which she and our daughters found themselves.

  Add in that the extra dose of Lorazepam had begun taking effect causing my thoughts to be increasingly clouded and I knew that I did not have the mental acuity to make Eleanor understand. As such, I had to face the very real possibility that I would lose her and our daughters.

  The choice boiled down to one of rapidly diminishing sanity or the loss of my entire family, an event that would eventually lead to the same end. No greener pasture existed.

  I pushed these dismal thoughts aside, or at least did my best to do so. I couldn’t dwell on the worst-case scenarios. That thought pattern did not help. More than that, I had to move. I had become dangerously drowsy and had to do something to counteract my anxiety pills. I jogged in place for a moment but to no great effect. Returning once more to the mini-fridge, I fished inside and pulled out an energy drink. To hell with the cost. I cracked it open, took two quick gulps, and hoped for the best.

  The caffeine beginning to feed into my system, I glanced about the room, my eyes stopping on the window. I yanked open the curtains, no longer willing to stare through their dusty veil, and desperate for some distraction while I waited for my wife to return. Below I saw the parking lot, only half full. A few pedestrians walked by the street corner, hugging their arms close and breathing into their cupped hands. I could see their breath rising in smoky tendrils. Their lives continued on, oblivious to my own discontent. It was more than discontent; it was my desperation.

  I turned from the window realizing that this distraction held no value. Outside waited parked cars and the faint hints of city life. The trees of Durant Nature Park had faded to nothingness and the calming image of its lake proved unattainable.

  I listened closely for any sign of Eleanor on the line. So quiet. For a moment I thought that I could make out my wife’s footsteps plodding up the stairway. Perhaps she had picked up the foyer phone, but if she had, she had not bothered to speak and let me know that she was there.

  “Elly?” My voice came out meek, trying to catch her attention. I needed to hear her voice. I wanted her to pick up the line and for this entire night to be nothing more than a fever dream. I called out to her, again.

  “Elly?”

  She did not answer, but I heard her footsteps slowly moving up the stairs. This time I knew that it was not in my head. She had the phone and was making her way to our daughters’ room. As this crystalized, and that moment with our daughters drew near, I suddenly knew which option I wanted to be true. I prayed for perhaps the first time in years, maybe even decades. I prayed that all of my suspicions amounted to nothing more than a delusion, and that my sanity had vacated.

  I do not mean this figuratively. As I stood there in my rumpled work shirt, my back to the open window and the phone tucked between my ear and shoulder, I clasped my hands together and literally prayed. When onl
y silence answered, I fell to my knees and prayed some more. Still no reply came.

  That is when I heard it: a door opening. At first, I thought that Eleanor had reached our daughters’ bedroom, but then the door clicked shut somewhere deep within that house and nothing changed. I could still hear Eleanor plodding up to the girls’ room. The door had been more distant than her footsteps. Had she even heard it?

  My entire attention shifted back to the phone, my prayers discarded. I listened as attentively as I could. My wife’s footsteps echoed up the stairway. I could remember what pride we felt seeing those wooden stairs when we had bought the house so many years ago, moving for the first time out of the carpeted apartments of the early years of our marriage. Elly had been so happy with our new home. We both had. The wood had been a highlight only, however, and we had never been able to afford to install it throughout the entirety of the house, not in all the places that we had wanted it.

  Her footsteps softened, the echo diminishing, and I knew that she had reached the top landing, the old carpet there having quieted the sound of her feet. I could imagine her walking through the hall down toward the bedroom door.

  As I envisioned her, the imagined image warped, inventing dangers and never allowing her nor my thoughts a moment’s rest. Shadows loomed around my wife, all around her, and someone waited within that dark right behind her.

  Focus, Nelson!

  Pushing the vision aside like so many before it, I tried to catch any noise that I could, any hint of what might be happening in my distant home. Then, beneath my wife’s steady footsteps, I heard the thing that I had feared. Another set of footsteps sounded in the distance, softer, but most definitely there.

  Someone was in the house, someone that did not belong.

  Someone had entered as Eleanor went upstairs. No doubt remained. I knew completely, and with every instinct, that I was sane. My family was being stalked and, almost two hundred miles away panicked and dozing off as my pills took effect, I was the only person that could do anything to help them.

  With that certainty, I knew what I had to do. I had to call the police; yet at the same time a different certainty battled for my attention: a certainty that if I hung up on my wife that I would never hear her voice again. The nightstand and the lamp lay in a heap off the far side of the bed. On the closest side, however, stood another nightstand. Adorned in a traditional hotel fashion, this one bore a lamp, a small radio alarm clock, and an old-fashioned bedside phone. The device was a dirty cream color, and bulky, with a red light like a mini siren above the number pad. In front of the phone rested the usual hotel stationary.

  I had taken only two strides toward that phone when my wife’s voice interrupted from the other end of the line.

  “Okay, Nelson,” she said. “I’m here.” She paused. “You know this is insane, right?”

  I nodded, then realized that the motion would mean nothing over the phone. “Yes, I do.”

  “Okay. I’ll open the door and hold the phone in. Then you say goodnight.”

  The door creaked slowly open, but I knew that I had to get my wife’s attention before she pulled the line away from her ear.

  “Elly?”

  “Yes?”

  I knew that my lie would quickly be revealed, but I had to ask. “Are they okay?”

  “What?” The response came instinctually. I could see her processing what I had just asked and its implications, but I did not care. That luxury no longer remained.

  I repeated myself. “Are they okay?”

  A long pause followed. I had gotten her to their room, but now I needed Eleanor to check on our daughters. Elly had always been a smart woman; my deception had come to an end. She had surely figured out how I had deceived her the second that I had asked about the girls.

  Finally, she responded, directing my own words back at me. “Are they okay?” A tin-like quality pierced her voice as the anger crept back into her words. “You didn’t want to say goodnight. You didn’t want to talk to Erica or Marie. You’re still, still, I don’t even know what to call it!”

  The proverbial shit had hit, but that had been inevitable. Worse things were at stake than her perception of me. I had to come out with it.

  “There is someone else in the house with you.” The words poured out and with them and their honesty I found some relief. Pretense had been cast aside. Now I had but to make my case.

  “I’m hanging up.”

  “No.” So that went worse than I had expected. “Elly, Eleanor, I need you to make sure the girls are okay, and I need you to trust me. I know how that sounds, and I know you have no reason to, but you need to do it anyway. I heard someone in the house.”

  “Don’t you think that I would have heard if someone was here?”

  “I must have heard them over the open line from the bedroom. Earlier, when you answered the door, did you lock up again, after?”

  “Nelson, this is crazy. I know you hate when I say that, but it just is. It’s crazy.” Even as she denied me and what I had told her, I heard the tremor in her voice. I had always been a panicked man, as I have made abundantly clear, but tonight my panic had hit heretofore unreached heights. Maybe the extreme nature of my protestations that night, above and beyond my typical neurotic musings, had allowed her to finally listen to me. Just maybe, I thought, I still had a chance to save her.

  She needed me to say something that would push her those extra few feet into the girls’ room; something that would convince her beyond that still lingering doubt. I had to say something to keep her with me…

  Before I could, however, my thoughts trailed off and my chance vanished, ripped away as the sound muted and my phone vibrated with an unheard ring.

  Incoming Call.

  Eleanor

  “Nelson?”

  “You’re calling me, again.” As I said it, a stabbing pain shot through my chest. I lost my footing and reached out, bracing myself against the wall.

  “What’s wrong?” I must have gasped with the pain, because concern broke through her anger and hesitation, concern not for herself but for me.

  That concern was not misplaced either, not wholly. My left side tensed as if a boulder were pushing down against it, crushing the air out of me. Sweat beaded on my forehead and a tingling sensation overtook my left arm. I knew the signs. I knew them well. These signs had been the precursor to Elly’s original request that I seek treatment.

  When they first presented, I had thought that I had been having a heart attack, but tests demonstrated that my heart was healthy, at least then. My mental state had been the real danger. Those pains, however, had diminished years ago, and the weighty pain suffocating me then while that call beeped through, that pain felt worse than any I had before experienced. The stress had built up too high, become too much.

  “It’s nothing.” Another lie. How many lies would I tell that night? “I need you to check on the girls and then get somewhere safe. I’ll call the police.”

  The phone cut in and out as the other line continued to battle for my attention. The dropping line cut off the first words of Eleanor’s response.

  “… it, Nelson.”

  “What?” As I tried to make out what she had said, I slid down the wall until I came to rest just barely propped up into a sitting position. My eyelids drooped as the medication began to win against my better efforts to resist.

  “I said that’s it. You’re losing…” The line dropped, then returned. “… can’t do this. You’re having an episode…” Dropped. Returned. “…is obviously in your head.”

  I had lost her. She had been afraid, but my gasp when the pain struck had obviously triggered all her memories of my previous breakdowns, and with that recollection had stripped away the thin shred of credibility that I had built.

  “Yes, I’m panicked!” I continued. Giving up, letting her win, could not be an option. “Of course I’m panicked! Someone is in the house!”

  “Nelson, there is no one in this house except…” Gone for
a moment. “… girls and I!”

  Damn call. This wouldn’t work. I couldn’t have a clear conversation with her, and without anything tangible to back my claims no amount of discussion would matter anyway.

  “Elly, I’m sorry,” I started, “but you won’t believe me without proof. When I call back, answer.”

  With that I hung up and took the incoming call.

  TWO

  Only after I clicked over to the other line did I realize that I had hung up without telling Elly goodbye. More importantly, I had not told her that I loved her. Perhaps that was a trivial matter considering the circumstances, but I knew in that instant that I had spoken with my wife for quite possibly the last time; too much had been left unsaid. I had only a moment to reflect on this regret before the immediacy of my situation took hold.

  On the other end of line, I heard someone breathing.

  I did not know how to respond. My brain tried to form words, and my lips to utter them, but neither succeeded. What did one say to the man that was stalking his family?

  In the quiet of that open line a faint sense of peace rose amidst the panic. I blinked and my eyes held shut for a moment. Time stretched. It would have been so easy to just fall asleep and drift away.

  Then it struck me. I gasped as another jolt shot through my chest and slammed my head back, banging it against the wall. That only managed to trigger another stab of pain, this one in the back of my head, and as this new pain hammered in, I bit down, catching the tip of my tongue. A light trickle of blood began to flow. Perhaps it was a result of the taste of blood in my mouth, or of the pain that had shook my system, but I began to wake from my pill-induced haze.

  That is when the silence on the other end of the line broke.

  “You do not sound well, Nelson.” The voice drifted in, light and soft, just barely a whisper. Yet behind its calm tone a strength of purpose loomed. The man spoke directly without a hint of question. Each word came forward carefully enunciated and spoken with a rigid level of control.