by Rick Hautala
He waited a moment, but when no answer came, he realized that Brian must also be off somewhere. He thought hopefully that maybe he had gone with Dianne to her doctor’s appointment but that wasn’t very likely. In spite of all of his best efforts, his son and his new wife still weren’t getting along very well.
Not very well at all!
At times, he actually found himself wishing he hadn’t arranged for Brian to spend the summer with them. His son’s presence certainly was adding extra stress to a situation which he wasn’t sure he and Dianne could have handled very well even it had just been the two of them.
A low grumbling in his stomach reminded him that it was well past lunchtime, so he went about making himself a bologna sandwich, got out the bag of potato chips, poured a beer, and sat down at the table to eat. He took a small bite of his sandwich and chewed slowly, thoughtfully. Usually when he had lunch home alone, he found the silence of the house relaxing, but today—for obvious reasons—he felt all keyed up, on edge. He couldn’t stop thinking how disappointed and outright pissed off Dianne must be. Stewing over it wasn’t going to do him or her any good, but it galled him that, for the first time ever, he had ever let her down like this.
His stomach also twisted with a deeper, colder guilt that had everything to do with his visit with Ray Saunders. Like so many times before, he wished to hell he’d had the courage to confess to his friend what he had done. But again, like all those times before, he hadn’t been able to face up to it. He had lived so long with this private torment that he had finally convinced himself that it was all for the best if his secret lived and died with him. Ever since that Saturday morning in the autumn of 1963, he had spent a portion of every day of his life regretting what he had done to Ray. Over the years, he had tried to convince himself that worrying and fretting about it was a ridiculous waste of his time and energy. The past was over and done with, and neither he nor anyone else could do a damned thing about it. Why let it eat away at him like a cancer? He should flush it out of his system and forget about it once and for all!
But like an amputated arm or leg, a “phantom limb” that can still have the sensation of itching, the guilt over what he had done wouldn’t disappear, not completely. In fact, over the years, if anything it actually seemed to have gotten worse.
Suddenly Edward shook his head, realizing that he had been just sitting there, staring blankly at the kitchen floor over by the back door. His sandwich was half gone, but he didn’t remember swallowing a single bite. He had only a vague memory that it had absolutely no taste. His hand was trembling as he picked up the can of beer, popped the top, and took a swig. The carbonation exploded in his mouth, but there wasn’t much taste to that, either—just cold, fizzy water. Even without trying the potato chips, he knew they would taste like sawdust in his mouth.
Yeah, he thought with a shudder, old sawdust … sawdust that been rotting away on the cellar floor of the old mill for the past thirty years!
A cold fluttering filled his stomach as he stared blankly at the square of sunlight by the door. Realization dawned on him so slowly, so gradually that he wasn’t sure when he had first noticed it or, after he had noticed it, when it first struck him as strange, but at some point, he realized that there was something wrong about the entryway. Pushing his chair back, he stood up and went over to the door, kneeling down to inspect the area around the doormat.
Funny I didn’t notice this before! he thought. Then again, why’d I even notice it now?
Like a spotlight, the sunlight illuminated the faint trace of a footprint as clearly as if someone had purposely stamped it on the linoleum just so he would see it. Little clumps of dried, black dirt, like miniature mesas, outlined the design of the imprint. Edward traced above the print with a pointed finger, immediately convinced that neither he nor Brian could have made the print. The sole of the shoe—a sneaker, he guessed—was wider than his own, but to confirm it, he placed his foot next to it. The footprint was clearly larger.
“What the hell?” Edward whispered.
He glanced out the door at the back porch, then over his shoulder at the doorway that led into the dining room. Could someone have broken into the house while they were out? He had assumed that either Dianne or Brian had simply forgotten to close the door behind them when they left this morning, but maybe that wasn’t what had happened.
With fists clenched tightly, ready for anything, he walked through the dining room and into the living room. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw that the television and VCR they had brought from their own house were still there. A quick tour of the downstairs confirmed that nothing valuable seemed to be missing, but he couldn’t dispel a feeling of uneasiness, as though he could sense, but not see, an intruder in the house. He leaned over and scanned the living room rugs for more telltale footprints but found none, so he walked back to the kitchen and went outside to have a look around.
The porch and back steps were scuffed and dirty, but there had been so much traffic back and forth that he couldn’t clearly discern any more of the footprints he was looking for. In spite of the warm sunshine on his back, he felt a slow, shivery chill track up his spine as he straightened up and looked around the backyard.
Where would someone get their feet that muddy? he wondered.
It hadn’t rained in the past few days, so unless there was some large standing puddle nearby, the dirt must have been caught in the grooves of the person’s sneakers. He looked down the dirt driveway, then his eyes tracked back to the woods that bordered the back yard. There was no way he could have known with certainty, but he was suddenly positive that whoever had left this footprint in the house must have come from the forest. There was a brook not too far into the woods. The mud easily could have come from there.
He was positive that wasn’t his or Brian’s footprint, so whose was it? Had someone come out of the woods and broken into the house earlier today?
Who? And why?
Just this morning, Dianne had said that she knew someone was living out at the mill. Could there be someone out there, living nearby without their knowing it?
He took a few steps toward the woods, but then stopped short when he caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye. Turning quickly, he saw that the side door of the shed attached to the garage was open, swinging back and forth in the fitful breeze. Edward knew that door had been locked because, as soon as they had moved into his mother’s house, he had cleaned out the storage room and brought over most of his carpentry tools so he would have ready access to them. He also knew, because he had thousands of dollars worth of tools, that he kept both the front and side doors of the garage locked.
For several seconds, he just stood there, watching as the door swung gently back and forth with a teeth-grinding squeak-squeak of rusted hinges. Then, without warning, a sudden rage gripped him. There was no way he was going to tolerate someone snooping around his house, breaking in while he was away and messing around with his personal property. Squaring his shoulders, he walked boldly across the driveway to the shed. He didn’t hesitate a moment as he swung open the rough wooden door and stepped into the room. A sickly wash of sunlight shot through the dirt and spider web- encrusted window, casting an eerie gloom in every corner.
“All right you lousy son of a—” Edward shouted, but his voice trailed away as his eyes adjusted to the dim light inside of the shed, and he saw that there was no one there.
At first sight, anyway, everything seemed to be in order—at least in the semichaotic order in which he remembered leaving it. But as he glanced around, although there was no one thing he could point to, there was a definite feeling that someone had been in here going through the contents of the room, dropping and leaving things wherever they may have fallen: a hammer on the floor, a saw leaning against the wall so the blade was bowed, a bright orange extension cord lying in a tangled knot underneath the workbench. Edward was fairly certain this was not how he had left his things.
He ran his finge
rs down the door edge to the porcelain doorknob. It was cold to the touch and looked like a spotted bird’s egg, but what drew his attention was the latch plate. Scoring the dull, tarnished brass were numerous small lines, like spider webs. They were fresh, glinting with shiny brass. Edward was positive someone had forced the lock to gain entrance to the shed.
But who, and why? What would anyone be looking for?
Although he stored plenty of valuable tools here, there certainly wasn’t anything of great value. He walked over to the bench and moved a few things around but soon gave up. Just like in the house, there didn’t seem to be anything missing, but he had a disturbing feeling that the place had been violated.
Maybe Brian had been out here, looking for a wrench or screwdriver to fix his bicycle or something before taking off for the day.
He tried to convince himself that’s all it was, but the lock had obviously been forced. Edward couldn’t get rid of the feeling that there was something else going on here; that someone had been in here rummaging through his tools, looking for something specific.
He decided not to take the time to straighten things up right now and turned to leave. As he did, his foot kicked against something. Looking down, he saw his chainsaw, which was on the floor by the door. As soon as he leaned over to pick it up to put it on the bench, he realized what was missing.
“That’s it!” he said, snapping his fingers. His voice sounded like sandpaper in the closeness of the shed. “The gasoline can.”
He had finished clearing the land for the new house several weeks ago. Because he knew he wouldn’t be needing the chainsaw again for quite a while, not until it was time to cut firewood for winter, he had put both it and the five-gallon gas can on the bench in the shed. Not on the floor! He was positive of that! Knowing that an empty gas can was more likely to cause a fire than a full one, he made it a practice to refill the can after using it, but he couldn’t remember if he had done it this time. Because of the fire at his own house and after the hassle of moving into his mother’s house, perhaps he had forgotten all about the gas can. Maybe he had left it out at the house site after using up the last of the gas to burn the brush he had cleared.
No, he seemed to remember refilling the can and putting it in here a few weeks ago; but it didn’t matter if he had done that or not. The fact was, the gasoline can wasn’t here now.
“Shit,” he muttered.
He knew he should get back to work this afternoon, at least until Dianne got back from the doctor’s office, but he felt much more inclined just to blow the rest of the day off—spend the afternoon in front of the TV watching a baseball game or lying in the hammock out back with a cold beer in hand. He left the shed, making a mental note to look around for the gas can tomorrow when he went back to work.
He closed the shed door firmly behind him and jiggled the doorknob to make sure the lock had snapped shut. He was halfway across the driveway when, from inside the house, he heard the faint ringing of the telephone. He started to run for the back porch, but just as he swung open the kitchen door, the phone cut off in midring. He dashed across the floor and grabbed the receiver anyway, pressing it tightly against his ear as he snapped a quick “Hello.”
The line was already dead. It droned in his ear like an angry hornet.
Swearing softly, he hung up the phone and sat back down at the table. He stared blankly at his lunch, then decided to finish it. The beer was probably flat and warm, and the sandwich bread was dried out and crusty, but he ate it anyway. All the while, he couldn’t stop wondering if that had been Dianne, calling from the doctor’s office to tell him how the operation had gone. By the time he had finished gagging down his meal, the questions of who or if someone had broken into the house and tool shed, and if his gasoline can had been stolen or simply misplaced, were out of his mind. The last thought he had about it was, since there obviously wasn’t much—if anything—missing, there wasn’t much point in bothering the police about it.
Even though she knew Dr. Collett was standing right behind her, watching her, Dianne stared into the mirror on the surgery room wall, unashamed as plump teardrops rose in her eyes and rolled down her face. The doctor had just finished carefully snipping and pulling out the last strands of wire that had held her jaw in place for the last few months. Her hands were shaking as she raised them and began to probe gingerly at the still puffy, pink flesh around her mouth. Her fingertips traced the narrow runnel of scar running down along the edge of her jaw. Gripping her chin, she worked the lower jaw up and down, and back and forth. It was stiff and hurt a little, and it made tiny click-clicking sounds inside her head, but—holy mother of God!—she could move it again!
“Of course, it’s still going to be sore for a few days,” Dr. Collett said, “and your gums are going to bleed for a while. I can prescribe something to prevent infection, but—” He smiled reassuringly and nodded. “I’d say we’re pretty much out of the woods on this.”
She smiled weakly as she glanced at his reflection over her left shoulder. Although he was smiling back at her, just having him standing there bothered her; she felt threatened, somehow, and mistrustful.
“I can’t … I just … after all this time … I can’t believe it!” she whispered, pronouncing each word with great care and watching in amazement as her restructured jaw moved up and down with every syllable. In utter disbelief, she watched as her teeth moved behind her pale lips. The teeth were stained yellow and covered with brownish gunk from months of not being brushed properly, but finally she was able to move them freely.
Oh, God! I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!
The tension in her upper jaw was almost unbearable as her smile widened. Her face muscles twitched, and a thick, sour taste flooded the back of her throat. Tiny white spots of light exploded and faded in her field of vision. She was suddenly afraid that she was going to pass out or vomit or something, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from her reflection. There were still hard, bright red scar lines running up the side of her face and cheek, and her skin still looked peeled and raw, but by staring at her reflection hard enough and long enough, she could almost remember how she had once looked. Then she looked closely at the reflection of her own eyes, and a cold jolt shot through her. She remembered that odd sensation this morning that these weren’t really her eyes. Before she could stop it, the idea took hold again. Her eyes widened with glistening tears, but behind them she thought she detected a cold, almost lifeless stare.
Like a dead person’s eyes! she thought.
A freezing shudder raced up her back and gripped the back of her head like a hawk’s talons.
That’s still not me … it’s still not my face, whispered a small voice in the darkest corner of her mind. She tried to shut it out, but it struggled to get louder. Those aren’t my real eyes!
She thought back to that day several weeks ago when Dr. Collett had removed the bandages from her face following the second operation. The elastic bandages had stretched out and clung to her face, and they pulled like adhesive tape as he slowly, carefully peeled them away, unwinding them to reveal her badly swollen face. She shivered, recalling that the sensation of liberation had been so dizzying, so absolutely unbelievable, but also completely terrifying!
She had that same sensation now, only this time it felt like it was her skin, perhaps her very soul that had been peeled away like a snake stripping itself out Of its dry, scaly skin.
And what’s underneath? she wondered as cold currents of worry and doubt twisted inside her. She pushed at her flaccid skin, fighting hard the impulse to scratch her face away, to reveal what was underneath.
Who—or what—have I become?
Chapter Twenty-One
The Portrait
It was almost nine o’clock at night. Strong gusts of wind lashed rain against the side of the house. Brian was sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring blankly at the dark rectangle of his bedroom window, watching as water slid like quicksilver down the glass. Every so
often, a whistling shriek of wind would rattle the window, sending a shiver through him.
It never rains like this in Arizona, he thought bitterly, and thinking about Arizona made him think about his mother—his real mother, back home in Phoenix—his real home. Maybe he should give her a call. Then again, maybe not. He had talked to her less than a week ago, and he didn’t want her to think he was acting like a homesick little kid who couldn’t handle being away from her. He wished he felt like listening to music or reading or going downstairs to watch TV or something, but instead, he just sat there on his bed, waiting … waiting.
For what?
He wasn’t quite sure.
As much as he didn’t like it, thoughts of his mother made him think about Dianne—his stepmother from hell. She had come home from the doctor’s office about an hour before supper, still looking just as ugly as before except she no longer looked like she had tried to swallow a ball of barbed wire. For the first time in two months, Brian had heard her speak without the encumbrance of those wires in her mouth. Practically the first thing she had done was start bitching at his father for not being home in time to come with her to her doctor’s appointment. His father had tried to apologize, but she hadn’t let up, yelling and screaming at him, telling him how scared she had been throughout the procedure and how let down she was that he hadn’t made the extra bit of effort to be there for her.
Things weren’t improved when, after supper, his father reminded her that he had to go to a meeting with the Cliffords to discuss some changes they wanted to make in their house plans. After an uncomfortably silent and very tense meal, his father had left after helping Dianne clear the table. Complaining of a headache, Dianne had washed the supper dishes and gone straight upstairs to bed.
So two hours later, here he was, sitting in his bedroom, waiting.
Brian realized that one thing he was waiting for was for his father to come home. He never liked being left home alone with Dianne … especially at night. The rain and wind beating against the house didn’t help his mood any, either. It wasn’t as though he was afraid she might say or do something mean to him; it was just that he felt kind of … nervous, a little bit spooked whenever it was just the two of them alone in the house.
