by Ronald Malfi
“Oh yeah,” Don said, crossing over to them. “At the community college, right?”
Alan nodded.
“Hope you don’t get my kid,” Don said, rolling his eyes dramatically. “For the sake of your own sanity.”
“I get my students to listen pretty well,” he countered. “I take a gun to class.”
Don’s sense of humor was about as sharp as a balloon. But after a few beats his face creased in some suggestion of a smile. He laughed, which sounded like the backfire of an old pickup, and jabbed a stubby finger in Alan’s direction. “This guy,” he said, turning to Hank. “This guy, he shouldn’t be a professor; he should be a comedian.”
When the three of them returned to Hank’s backyard, the other neighbors were drinking around a large picnic table while Hank’s barbecue sizzled in the background. The world smelled of hamburgers, onions, potato salad, charcoal. Young Catherine was making the rounds performing card tricks for anyone who’d grant her ten seconds of attention. The men passed around cigars and swilled beer. Most of the women had gathered around one young woman whose swollen abdomen became the center of attention. Jane Probst had her hand on the woman’s pregnant belly, and she was grinning like an idiot. Never quite able to understand how one person could just walk up and touch another person’s stomach, Alan watched the women with a combination of distaste and sheer puzzlement.
Belly touchers, he thought. The whole lot of you.
His eyes connected with Heather’s. She sat alone in a lawn chair, an unopened can of beer in her lap. Her stare caused his testicles to retreat into his abdomen. At that moment he was all too clearly aware of his ulcer.
Thankfully, Lydia broke the tension when she clapped and told them all that it was time to eat.
That night, at some ungodly hour, Alan awoke to find Heather’s side of the bed empty. Fear shook him. He thought he could hear the shudder of pipes and the sounds of running water. Terrified, he thought of locked bathroom doors and tubs half-filled with pinkish water.
Blood pumping, he sprung from bed and called Heather’s name. It was like shouting into an empty steel chamber. He raced out into the hall and found the bathroom door standing ajar, the light from the bathroom spilling onto the floor and the opposite wall in a crooked rectangle. A curl of steam roiled into the hallway from the bathroom, like fog rolling across a graveyard.
But the bathroom was empty. Water emptied into the tub, which was half full. The water was crystal clear.
Yet this didn’t set his mind at ease. He staggered into the hallway, wondering if he was actually still dreaming …
“Heather? Baby?”
Still no answer.
Down the hall, the kitchen lights were off. So were the living room lights. He clicked on the lamp beside the couch, hoping to find his wife curled up there, but the couch was empty.
Jerry Lee whined from across the room, startling him. The dog stood by the sliding glass doors that led to the backyard, though the creature—seemingly equally as frightened as Alan—was looking at his master with moist, dark eyes that struck Alan as oddly human. Jerry Lee typically slept on the floor at the foot of the bed, as he had done in the apartment for many years, and Alan was surprised to find the dog standing here now, tail wagging.
Alan went quickly to the doors. Jerry Lee whined again but moved out of the way. Beyond the glass was nothing but pitch-black space. Alan ran his hand along the light switch that controlled the patio lights; they came on, casting white light onto the cement patio and the surrounding grass.
At first he didn’t see anything. But then he noticed Heather standing in the tall grass, her back toward him and wraithlike in a sheer white nightgown, a vampire from an old Hammer film. She faced the line of trees at the edge of the yard, seemingly staring at the opening in the trees that marked the entrance to the dirt path.
Beside him, Jerry Lee barked. It was like a gunshot going off in an airplane hangar.
Alan unlocked the door and slid it open. He was wearing nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms, and the cool summery wind suddenly chilled his bones and caused his chest to break out in gooseflesh. “Heather!”
She didn’t acknowledge him.
He stepped onto the patio, the concrete rough and cold beneath his bare feet.
Behind him, Jerry Lee whimpered but did not follow him outside.
“Honey?”
Still no acknowledgment. In fact, as if in direct disobedience, Heather began walking toward the opening in the trees, toward the dirt path.
For whatever reason, this caused a hard lump to rise in Alan’s throat. He broke into a sprint and closed the distance between them before she could disappear within the trees. He dropped a hand on her shoulder and spun her around.
Her face was frightening—a blank canvas. “Oh,” she uttered in a small voice. It was like waking a somnambulist.
“What are you doing out here?”
The question seemed to confuse her. She looked disoriented. He stared hard at her until recollection filtered into her eyes.
“Oh,” she said, though more clearly now. “I was looking for you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Out here?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
Heather looked confused. “I just … I didn’t know …”
“Why would you think I’d be out here in the middle of the night?”
“Because you whispered something to me. I was half-asleep. You whispered something in my ear about going down to the lake.” A small fissure formed in the center of her forehead as she frowned. “Didn’t you?”
“No,” he said.
“Someone did.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“But someone …”
“No one did. Maybe you dreamt it.”
“No,” she said simply. “I heard it.”
“Of course you dreamt it.” His heart was bursting.
“No.” She was calm but adamant. “I didn’t dream it. I heard it. It was you.”
“Come on.” He slipped an arm around her waist and led her across the yard toward the house.
CHAPTER SIX
Sunday afternoon, a full week after they’d moved into the house, Alan found himself alone for the first time since arriving in town. Lydia had come by earlier and, after much prodding, convinced Heather to go shopping with her. Heather had pulled on a pair of wrinkled slacks and a blouse and, after searching around the house for her purse for nearly fifteen minutes, left with Lydia without saying good-bye to Alan. He was certain Lydia noticed the awkwardness between them—she wasn’t blind—but she didn’t say anything. Heather’s bandages were gone now, and she took to wearing heavy silver bracelets to cover the scars, but Alan wondered if Lydia had noticed the bandages that first day when she brought over the casserole and the bottle of wine.
Nonetheless, he savored the solitude. He hadn’t realized how much he had begun to feel like Heather’s babysitter—no, Heather’s goddamn keeper—since her suicide attempt. It hadn’t even been a conscious thing; he just knew that he never felt right leaving her alone. And the night he’d found her standing in the yard, staring at the trees? Even now in the relative safety of daylight, it chilled him to recall that event. What the hell had she been doing? When he questioned her about it the following morning, she couldn’t even remember doing it let alone provide a reasonable explanation. With much unease, he wondered what he was going to do when school started in the fall.
Maybe that night in the yard was just a fluke and things will be different here, he thought. Maybe things will get better. This is a nice town and the people, however tedious, are nice, too. Heather might even find a friend in Lydia or one of the other neighbors and start living her life again. We can beat this; we can get past all the badness.
He hoped.
In the kitchen, he heated up some of the coffee from that morning in the microwave and listened to the silence of the otherwise empty ho
use.
Jerry Lee poked his head into the kitchen, sniffed around, then admonished Alan with solemn eyes. Then the dog licked his chops and retreated down the hall, yawning.
“Lazy bastard,” Alan called after him.
He was contemplating cutting away some of the vines that crept along the house when he happened to notice one of those very vines crawling up the wall from behind the refrigerator. It startled him at first, as it looked nearly snakelike in its appearance. Only a few inches were visible, thin and curling at the tip, but he imagined it must have come up from the floor behind the refrigerator and was probably several feet long and thick as an electrical cord at its base.
“Son of a bitch, you buggers are stubborn.”
He leaned against the wall and peered behind the refrigerator. Sure enough, the vine ran down the wall and vanished into a crack in the molding at the bottom. A second vine, much thinner, had branched off the first and had wrapped itself around the grate at the back of the refrigerator. The vines reminded Alan of a video he’d seen about Humboldt squid in the Sea of Cortez and how their tentacles would splay out and make grabs at the cameramen.
The microwave beeped, making him flinch. He laughed nervously and retrieved the steaming mug, smelling the rich aroma. The doctor had cautioned him about drinking too much coffee, as it promised to aggravate the ulcer, but for Christ’s sake, he couldn’t give up all his worldly pleasures, could he?
Through one of the kitchen windows, Alan caught sight of something dark moving in the forked trunk of a tree in the side yard. He approached the window for a better look and felt his bowels clench. His blood suddenly turned to ice.
It was enormous—perhaps the size of a car’s spare tire—and the enormity of it made the thing look almost ridiculous hunkered down in the crook of the spindly little tree. Since that night in the clearing off the path, Alan had managed to convince himself that in his sleep-deprived state he had either exaggerated the size of the birds or possibly even imagined them altogether; but here in the daylight, staring straight at one of the beasts, the truth of it all came crashing back down on him. The thing was huge.
Alan drummed his fingers on the windowpane.
The giant bird cocked its fleshy head but did not take its eyes from him. Alan tapped the glass harder. The damn thing refused to fly away.
In the foyer, he strapped on his sneakers, then went into the front yard just as thunder rumbled overhead. Across the street, a number of neighborhood kids were getting in their baseball game before the storm hit.
Mr. Pasternak from farther up the block jogged by on what Alan had come to learn was his usual midafternoon run. Mr. Pasternak raised a hand, his sweat-soaked tank top and nylon running shorts hanging from his narrow skin-and-bones frame. Mr. Pasternak was eighty-seven though he looked twenty years younger. Alan had met him earlier in the week while the old man jogged by, and they’d shared a short but pleasant conversation by the mailbox.
“My young friend,” Mr. Pasternak cawed as he strode by.
“Hey,” Alan returned, not pausing to talk this time. He crossed to the side of the house only to find the little dogwood tree empty. The big, ugly bird had disappeared. Fishing his cigarettes from his jeans and lighting one, he approached the tree with an overly sensitized sense of apprehension, as if the bird was going to spring out at him at any moment. Peck his eyeballs out or some such nonsense. Goddamn thing was large enough to swoop down and snatch up a small child …
He leaned closer to examine the trunk of the tree. It had left behind claw marks in the shape of lightning bolts in the bark.
“Hey,” Hank said from behind him, causing Alan to jump and turn around. Hank was leaning against a tree, two cans of Coors in his hands. He offered Alan his trademark grin, then handed him one of the beers. “Doing some yard work?”
“Something like that.”
“You look like you’re looking for somebody.”
“Big fucking bird,” he said, popping the top on the Coors.
“Oh yeah. You’ll get those, sure. There’s like fifteen hundred acres of forest behind your house in case you hadn’t noticed. Remember what I said about the bears, too?” He winked. “Wild animals, dude.”
For the first time, Alan thought he might actually come to like Hank. There was a goofy, brotherly quality about him that was warm and inviting.
“By the way,” Alan said, knocking his beer can against Hank’s, “thanks for the barbecue. We enjoyed meeting the rest of the neighborhood.”
“No sweat. Glad to do it. Seems like Lydia and Heather have hit it off, too, huh?”
He couldn’t tell if Hank was feeling him out, curious about Heather’s rather obvious state of detachment, and Alan wondered if he should try to mitigate Hank’s curiosity right off the bat. Not that he had any intention of filling him in on what he and Heather had been through and what she had done to herself …
There came the sound of screeching car tires followed by a vague whump from across the street. The shouts of the children playing baseball, which had been a constant cacophony since Alan had stepped from the house, now rose to a frenzied urgency that caused his stomach to clench like a fist. Both he and Hank dropped their beers and raced across the yard.
“Oh, Christ,” Alan uttered, skidding to a stop.
There was a child on the ground, unmoving. A few yards away, a red Audi with a dented front fender had come to rest crookedly in the center of the street. The driver’s door opened but no one came out. Through the glare across the Audi’s windshield, Alan could make out only subtle, indistinct movements behind the steering wheel.
Hank rushed past him and over to the fallen child.
It took a few heartbeats for Alan to snap back to reality. He forced his legs to move toward the injured child. With each stride bringing him closer and closer, the horror of the scene grew more pronounced. Finally, when he reached the child, he had to quickly avert his eyes. The boy’s legs were at funny angles, and there was a trickle of blood along one pant leg. Worse still was the way the boy’s head was turned on his neck …
Hank crouched down and pressed his ear to the boy’s face.
“Jesus, Hank. Is he … ?”
“He’s alive,” Hank said. Then he shouted it, as if to attract the attention of anyone holding a phone. “He’s alive!”
The crowd of neighborhood kids closed in, their faces slack, their eyes wide in a combination of fear and disbelief. Among them Alan recognized the boy he’d nearly hit with his car on that first day in town. For an instant, the boy’s big, dark eyes met his. The boy’s stare was accusatory, as if this had all somehow been Alan’s fault.
“Get back, guys,” he told the kids. His voice shook. “Give them room.”
While Hank touched the side of the boy’s throat, perhaps checking for the strength of his pulse, Alan took a step back. His foot came down on something. He looked down and found himself standing on a baseball glove. He suddenly thought he was going to be sick.
Neighbors stood on their porches. Some of the men gathered around the fallen boy. The boy wasn’t moving. Aside from the splash of blood on his pants, there was some blood on his T-shirt as well, but Alan held out hope that the minimal amount of it was a good sign. One of the kid’s sneakers was missing, leaving behind a foot within a floppy white sock pointing at the sky. Absently, Alan wondered where the sneaker had gone.
And his neck, oh God, the poor kid’s neck …
He hurried around the emergent crowd of men and peered into the Audi’s open door. A woman, no more than thirty years of age, sat behind the wheel. She would have been attractive had her face retained any color, had it not been stricken by the sudden horror of what she had done. White-knuckled, she squeezed the steering wheel in both hands. She was mumbling something under her breath as he approached.
He bent down and said “Ma’am” a number of times through the open door, but she didn’t respond.
“Move!” one of the men shouted from the huddle.
Alan looked up and watched the huddle begin to separate, amazed at just how far the boy had been thrown.
“He’s breathing! The kid’s breathing!”
“… nowhere,” said the woman.
Alan looked at her. “What?”
“Came out of nowhere.” Her voice was barely audible.
“It’ll be okay.” It was a stupid thing to say—the sort of stupid thing people say in movies that cause the audience to groan—but it was the only thing that came to his mind. So he repeated the stupid thing: “It’ll be okay.”
“Ask the woman her name.” It was Don Probst, coming up behind him. Don looked about as gray as the sky. “We should get her name.”
Alan reached into the car and turned off the engine, sliding the gear to Park. The last thing he wanted was for the woman to freak out and accidentally gun the accelerator, plowing through the crowd of men trying to help the injured boy. He withdrew the keys from the ignition. The woman didn’t even look at him.
“Someone should call an ambulance,” he said, backing away from the Audi. He slammed into Don, who hardly uttered a sound. Turning to face the neighbors who were still standing on their porches, Alan shouted, “Someone call an ambulance!”
He turned and, to his horror, saw Hank and two other men lifting the injured boy off the ground. The boy’s head pivoted awkwardly. His limbs hung limply, and that white sneakerless sock was like a finger pointing straight at the heavens. A large smear of blood was soaking into the concrete.
“Don’t lift him!” Alan shouted, already backing away in the direction of his house. “Are you crazy? Wait for a fucking ambulance!”
Of all the absurd things and despite the gruesomeness of the scene, the group of kids recoiled at his language. One of them even pointed at him in astonishment, then covered his ears. It would have been comical under different circumstances.
Alan rushed across his lawn and into the house, wondering where the hell he’d put his goddamn cell phone when, blowing past the kitchen, he realized there was a phone on the wall.
