Found You

by Mary SanGiovanni

  “Hello, ma’am. My name is Detective Corimar. What can I do for you this morning?”

  Her eyes swept the room before she settled on his face. “Well, I…I wanted to…okay, well my name is Dorothy Weatherin. Dorrie. And I…I guess I wanted to…” She stopped.

  “Ms. Weatherin? Is everything okay?”

  Her expression struck him as odd—soft, like her face, but running a series of thoughts. Finally she said, “I think it wants to hurt me.”

  “Who? Who wants to hurt you?”

  “I don’t know what it is. It isn’t anyone I know. In fact, I’m not sure it’s a person. I mean, it told me it wanted to kill me at the lake. And it kind of seemed like a person then. And then last night, in my fridge—” She studied his face for a minute, and her expression seemed to fall off her face. She looked utterly deflated. “Oh for chrissakes, I sound like a lunatic. I knew this wouldn’t do any good.”

  “Ma’am, maybe you should start at the beginning. I’m a little confused. Now you say someone threatened you?”

  “I don’t know if it’s someone or something. I see it sometimes. I hear it. It’s cruel, and it knows about me.”

  “So…someone is stalking you?”

  “I don’t think—I don’t know.” She looked flustered, confused.

  “But you’re sure it wants to hurt you?”

  She seemed to mistake his tone (and perhaps the expression on his face that his slow-dawning recognition formed) as doubt, maybe even derision. She got up. “I’m sorry for wasting your time. It—it was a mistake to come here. I’m sorry. Sorry.”

  “Wait, Ms. Weatherin,” Steve said, rising. “If someone’s trying to hurt you, you did the right thing in coming here, but I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me. Please—”

  “You can’t help me anyway,” she said softly, and she moved with a quick grace across the room. He began to follow her.

  “I can if you’ll just wait a minute and explain this to me. What did this person look like? Can you describe height? Weight? Distinguishing features?”

  At this she stopped without turning around and laughed. “Well,” she said, and her voice sounded hysterically on the verge of tears. “It sounded like my mother.”

  And with that, she was out the door, leaving Steve dumbfounded in the middle of a just about empty station room, wondering what the hell her scant descriptions meant exactly. On the heels of that morning’s file contents and his own unsettling experiences downstairs, he didn’t like the sound of any of it.

  When Erik saw Jake later that morning at the rec center, he was struck by how tired his sponsee looked. Bone tired, exhausted to the marrow. Erik remembered those days. He’d had many mornings where his whole body ached, even his scalp and fingertips, where his skin hurt to touch.

  He’d wanted so badly to get high back then that the ache wore him out.

  And that was before the Hollower…

  Erik used to call it the Jones in a hat. He’d been convinced that seeing it was a bad trip, some weird side effect of his newfound sobriety. But then Cheryl had seen it, and Dave, and Sean and Max and DeMarco…

  He worried about Jake. It had crossed his mind more than once that if Hollowers could sense one’s insecurities, one’s fears about oneself, all the skewed perceptions and screwed up ways of thinking, then people like Jake (and people like him) were easy targets. Sitting ducks, really, bundled in jittery nerves and cluttered minds and weakened bodies.

  But they’d killed it, like Dave said, and that was it. Out of sight, out of mind.

  If he asked…if Jake mentioned a faceless figure in a black hat and coat…

  He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. The chances had to be like getting hit with lightning. Of all the billions of fucked-up people in the world, there was no reason at all to think a Hollower would target the same fucked-up guy twice, or even any poor fool associated with him by common bond of sworn sobriety. It wouldn’t get Jake through him. Couldn’t. Erik was better. And Jake…well, he was getting there. Getting there slowly but surely.

  Nevertheless, Erik frowned as Jake shuffled up to him with the last inch or so of a cigarette dangling between his fingers. He handed Jake a cup of straight black coffee, steaming hot and faintly metallic from overbrewing, in one of the cheap foam cups they had downstairs for refreshments. Jake took it gratefully and sipped at it through dry lips.

  “You okay, J?” Erik asked him. “Everything going okay at home?”

  Jake smiled, and the shadow of truth flickered in his eyes before he lied. “Sure, man. Everything’s cool. Just not…sleeping well lately.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  Jake shook his head, looking down into his coffee. He dropped the butt of the smoke onto the ground and crushed it with small, thoughtful crescents beneath the toe of his boot. “Just bad dreams. Nothing. Nothing worth the effort.”

  Erik nodded, deciding not to press the issue. “Well, you know if you want someone to talk to…” As an afterthought he added on impulse, “Whatever you’ve got going on, I know I’d understand. I’ve been through a lot myself, J. Really, really strange shit.”

  The last part got a reaction, albeit subtle, from his sponsee. He raised an eyebrow at Erik and seemed about to ask something or say something, but then closed his mouth and offered a weak attempt at a grin. “Strange shit. Yeah.”

  Erik felt the beginnings of dread in his gut, lead-lining him and making him feel heavy, even poisoned. Jake knew. Something—something more was going on than Jake was telling him. And he hoped to God that whatever weird shit it was, it wasn’t the Hollower.

  Instead of asking, he said, “Part of recovery, man. The good, the bad, the strange, the dark, and the downright dirty, right?”

  Jake seemed to let go of whatever guard had been up—just a little—and said, “Yeah, no kidding. It’s been a long, strange trip every step of the way. Thanks for the coffee.”

  And with an uncomfortable side-step, he bypassed Erik and went inside for the meeting.

  Erik kept an eye on him that morning, though, through the prayer and the announcements and the accounts from veterans of the drug addiction wars. Jake seemed fidgety, distracted, unwilling to share.

  At one point, he noticed a strange look on Jake’s face. His sponsee had fixed a gaze on the door that was part confusion, part horror, and not a little bit of guilt. Jake glanced once back at Erik and the others in the rec hall and got up, making his way past crossed legs and folding chairs down the aisle to the doorway. Then he disappeared out into the hallway. With a nod from Terry, who was leading the meeting that morning, Erik got up and followed him.

  Jake was nowhere in the hallway, nor was he in the men’s room at its far end. He wasn’t in any of the open adjacent rooms either. Erik made his way outside to see if maybe his sponsee had gone out for a smoke. No sign of Jake out there, either. He was about to turn around and go back in when he heard the crying.

  Erik’s heart sank. He knew the sound of the stuff inside a person, the stuff that keeps the person together and sane, breaking. He knew that kind of crying.

  He followed the sound around the side of the building. In the narrow space between the rec center and the alley behind it, he found Jake crouched on the ground, hugging his knees and bawling. When he saw Erik, he toppled over, but quickly wiped his eyes and nose dry. Still, though, both were red.

  Erik sat down on the ground in front of him. “Want to talk about it now?”

  Jake shook his head, dazed. “I didn’t do it, man. I didn’t.”

  “I believe you,” Erik said, not sure what Jake was talking about. “Tell me your side of it.”

  When Jake answered, his monotone was soft, almost soothing, except for the things it said. “I didn’t kill her. It wasn’t my fault. I just…I just left her. I went out that night without her, to get out, away from her. We were fighting about some girl that meant nothing. I needed time to think, to figure out how to make her understand. And she took the heroin and the pills
and the booze. She shouldn’t have taken it all at once. But I didn’t put the needle in her arm. She only ever did it to keep up with me, but I never, never made her do it. Never even asked her to do it. I don’t think. I don’t remember. But I didn’t kill her. She killed herself.” The words came out on the crests of each wave of breaths, clumps of words at once that were hard to understand, nearly pulled under by the intensity in his voice and the tears in his eyes.

  Erik knew a little about the girl he was talking about, an old girlfriend who Jake never mentioned without a dark flicker in his eyes. Carefully, so as not to break the thin strands of communication between them, Erik said, “You’re right. Everyone needs to take responsibility for his or her own actions. You didn’t kill anyone.”

  Jake finally looked at him. He looked haunted, red-eyed, his cheeks and the pale forehead sweating. “I saw her,” he whispered.

  The sinking feeling in Erik’s chest and gut turned painful. “Who?”

  “Chloe. I saw her, man. I followed her out here. I—” He stood up with a sudden, unstable jerk. “I’ve gotta go. I’ve got to—”

  “Jake, wait. I—”

  Jake held up a hand. “Sorry, but…I can’t do this right now. I can’t. I need…air, need fresh air and a walk and…” Whatever else he said was lost to a series of mumbles beneath his bowed head. He hurried away from Erik and fairly broke into a run once he hit the street. Erik watched until he was out of sight. Then he turned back to the alley. Beyond where he and Jake had been sitting, it continued and then veered to the right, around the back of the building. Erik concentrated on the space there, on the very air itself, searching it, waiting to see something materialize.

  He saw nothing. He crept back there, every sense drawn tight and ready to spring if the bastard Jones in a hat made its appearance. But there was no upset of the world as he knew it, no turning the corner on some vivid scene of his past put before him to hurt him. There was nothing but the alley, the building, the cool air, the sound of the occasional passing car, and his own footsteps.

  Whatever Jake had seen was gone now.

  Erik got to the mouth of the alley, just about at the front of the building, when he heard the laughter, a twisted intertwined sound of many mocking voices. He spun around.

  No one was there. The laughter faded, carried off on the cool breeze.

  It took Dorrie most of the rest of the day to feel comfortable enough to go back to the house. By midafternoon, she grudgingly accepted the fact that she couldn’t stay in the hotel room forever and that if she wasn’t going to ask for help from the police, that she’d have to go back to her own place.

  Besides, a nasty little voice in her head told her, if you’re crazy, that’s going to follow you everywhere. You could just as easily see blood streaming out of the hotel shower head or open the minibar and see the severed head of the boy you had a crush on in the sixth grade telling you you’re a fat-assed bitch who could just jump in front of a train and end it all, except you’d probably derail the train with all that blubber…

  The mean voice, and the sheer disgusted horror with which she now looked at the hotel room’s plain black minibar by the television, made her want to cry again. Made her feel sick.

  You cry a lot, the little voice said. Big girls don’t cry.

  “Fuck you,” she whispered to the little voice and wiped away the wetness in her eyes.

  It had a point, though. First in that crying wasn’t going to solve anything. Second, if there was really something wrong with her, changing location wasn’t going to help. If she were really sick in the head with a tumor, a brain lesion, whatever, then it wasn’t the police she should have gone to that morning. She saw that now, that her choice to speak to the detective had been a last ditch effort to convince herself that it was really something external that was after her and not something in her head. But the responsible thing, the healthy thing (yeah, the sane thing) to do would be to go home, call a doctor, and schedule an appointment.

  The house was quiet when she got back. No giggling coming from the kitchen—a good sign. She dropped her keys on the table by the front door and went into the kitchen anyway. The refrigerator stood closed and quiet. She spent several seconds just watching it, screwing up her courage to approach it and open the door.

  She took the plunge and crossed the kitchen, grabbing the door handle and yanking it open.

  All the contents were as they should be, as they had been before those containers jumped all over the place. There was no trace of any blood. She exhaled her relief and closed the door. Then she walked through each room, inspecting it, searching for any anomaly, even the slightest difference from the night before. Completing her inspection of the house, she went back to the front door and outside to the small front porch. Little sat out there besides a couple of chairs, a small table, a set of wind chimes that hung from a plant hook at the corner where the porch’s roof met the end pillar, and a flower box that hung over the railing.

  She’d call the doctor when she went back inside. A few more minutes to herself, believing that everything could be okay—that was all she needed.

  A nice breeze picked up, lifting her hair as she stood there, leaning over the railing. It caught up the scent of the flowers and whirled them up to her face. It rustled the tops of the trees across the street. It blew low and soft through the suburban valley of Cerver Street. It was otherwise quiet. No people outside, watering or mowing or taking their afternoon constitutionals around the block.

  She’d call the doctor, a general practitioner, she supposed, and tell him what she’d been seeing—what happened at the lake and what happened in her kitchen. She’d explain about her exercise program and her diet. Maybe, yes, maybe that was it. Maybe she was working out in such a way as to cause some stressful side effect. Maybe she was dieting right out of her system some necessary food that kept her rational and calm. Maybe those diet pills…ooh, yes. The diet pills. Maybe there had been some chemical reaction she didn’t know about, and those pills had given her some bad side effect. There were options, choices. She’d feel better, stronger, and more in control with a plan.

  Unless…it wasn’t her head that made up the figure without a face to hurt her. What if it was its own entity, using her mind to do the work for it?

  Don’t be silly, the nasty voice told her.

  She looked at a house across the street and a few down from hers. There was a FOR SALE sign on it that had been there for months. Dorrie didn’t talk to too many of her neighbors, but she knew that the house used to belong to a bartender, a nice girl. A very pretty girl, with a nice enough looking boyfriend (or, reasonably, Dorrie assumed he was her boyfriend, as he’d come to see her sometimes and stay the night). Dorrie had envied her, even knowing so little about her or her life. Girls like that, she had always thought, had everything. Looks, a nice body, a nice personality, and, therefore, a life she imagined was full of friends and dinners and parties and boyfriends.

  More than the social aspects, though, Dorrie envied the confidence. The way the bartender moved, the way she held herself, the way she carried herself. All the rest could come in time, to anyone, she thought, if a person had the confidence to laugh easily, to move gracefully, to thrive in one’s own skin. Girls like that didn’t drive themselves nuts with hallucinations of monsters that thwarted every attempt to shed the weight that buried over her self-confidence.

  Dorrie sighed, and then shivered, noticing the wind picking up. It made her skin tingle in little goose bumps all up and down her arms. It rustled the trees now so that they sounded like whispers of words. It tore a bit at the flowers in the flower box. By instinct, Dorrie looked up to the wind chimes, expecting to have to untangle them…

  …and found them perfectly still. The wind blew all around them, but they didn’t move at all. They made no sound. They seemed completely apart from the rest of the neighborhood, like Colorforms or that transfer stuff you used to have to rub off with a plastic stick onto the background…
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br />   She shook her head. Those were disjointed, weird record-skipping childhood thoughts. They didn’t feel like her thoughts at all. And the wind chimes…well, maybe there was a current that was skittering around them, missing them. She reached a hand up and felt the cold air of the wind on the back of it. Her fingers trailed against the sides of the metal tubes and they dangled a bit where they hung and then stopped, hanging pin-straight as if another hand, invisible, had reached up next to Dorrie’s to still them.

  She drew her hand back and frowned.

  Then she heard her name.

  Only a tree-whisper at first. She wasn’t sure she’d heard it correctly, but then it came again, louder and clearer.

  It was coming from across the street.

  She turned and followed the direction of it, and there the figure stood. Her heart felt cold in her chest, each beat an icy stab.

  It raised a gloved hand and waved at her, tilting its head as if watching her.

  As if considering how to kill her.

  The breath stuck in Dorrie’s throat.

  It took a few steps forward and began crossing the street. When it reached the middle of the road, it said, “I brought you some flowers, Dorrie.”

  Her brow furrowed in confusion. Flowers? She didn’t see—

  Then she realized and looked down at the flowers in the box below where she was leaning. The petals sparkled in the afternoon light, jagged shards of glass arranged on glass pipettes. They suddenly grew upward, shooting toward her fingers. She jumped, crying out, and tried to pull her hands away, but she wasn’t fast enough. The petals sank into the flesh of her hands like thorns. The leaves curled around her wrists and cut into them. She screamed, shaking her hands until they were a blur in front of her. And when she stopped, she noticed the flowers were as they always had been in the box, not glass but organic petal and stem. Heavy breaths wracked her whole body. She looked down at her hands, turning them palms up. A dozen tiny cuts crisscrossed each palm, the thin lines of blood already coagulating. She watched them heal up and leave tiny white scars, which, within a few minutes, faded, too. The pain, however, still throbbed in her hands as if the wounds were still there, and Dorrie was gripped with the terrifying notion that the pain was the very intent, that the faceless figure in the street had specifically given her a preview of what it could do, what it would do. It didn’t have to touch her, but it could hurt her. It could drive her crazy. It could make her head believe the whole rest of her was in pain. Maybe mortally wounded. Even dying.