by Ed
He couldn't reply. His mouth had become dry and gummy and words sounded like nothing more than senseless noises.
When Michael came in behind him, Carmen asked, "What happened to him?"
"I don't know! I was coming out of the bathroom and he just—"
"Get him a glass of water."
By the time Michael returned with the water, everyone had gathered around Stephen, except for Peter, who was still sound asleep on the floor.
"There was a man," Stephen gasped, breathless, once he'd taken a few swallows of water. "He was on the other side of the F-French d-doors. Pale. Really white. Tall. With long black hair. Staring at me."
Al turned and hurried out of the living room. They heard him going downstairs. They were silent as they waited...for something, for anything that might tell them what was downstairs.
Stephen drank some more water.
Carmen chewed a thumbnail.
Michael cracked his knuckles.
All of them watched the doorway.
Al's footsteps started back up the stairs. When he appeared in the doorway, his eyes looked tired, heavy.
'There's nobody down there," he said.
Stephen's eyes widened. "But he was there. I saw him. A guy with long black hair, really pale and...and he was, like, transparent."
"There was nobody there." Al's voice was suddenly firm, hard. "I went through the whole basement, Stephen. Now...transparent?" Al squinted at him, curious. "You mean, like a ghost?"
Stephen nodded.
"Oh, c'mon, Stephen, you've gotta stop this. I think we've all had enough. I mean, transparent people hanging around in doorways is enough, okay?"
Although it didn't seem possible, Stephen's eyes grew even wider as he stared at Al. "B-but I-I-I saw him! He was starting to come through the doors as I—"
"Stop it, Stephen!" Al said, and it was not a request. Al's eyes hardened slightly. "There's nobody down there now and there wasn't before. Okay? You understand me?"
Slowly, Stephen nodded, jaw slack, eyes still wide beneath raised eyebrows.
"Now, why don't you go to bed," Al said quietly.
"I...I think I'd rather sleep on the sofa."
Al exhaled slowly. "This is a living room, Stephen, not a bedroom. It's time you started sleeping down there. With Michael. You've got a bed waiting for you, you've got all your stuff in the room. C'mon, okay? Go back downstairs and go to bed."
Stephen suddenly looked a bit more pale than usual. "Really, I'd...I'd rather sleep up here on the—"
"Dammit, Stephen, will you stop it," Al snapped, closing his eyes for a moment. "Just stop it. Act your age."
Stephen stared at Al for a moment, then stood slowly. He took the glass of water, turned and left the room. The others listened as his footsteps retreated down the stairs.
"I think maybe you were a little rough on him, Al," Carmen said quietly. "What would it hurt if he slept up here another night?"
"Yeah, and another night and another night. Jeez, it's like having overnight company night after night with him out here. Whatever he thought he saw in the basement, there was nobody down there."
"I don't know," Michael said quietly, almost timidly. "Stephen says he's been hearing voices in the house. Maybe he really did see—"
"He told you that?" Al interrupted.
Michael nodded.
"Dammit," Al growled, spinning around and heading out of the room.
"Oh, come on, Al, leave him alone,” Carmen said, but he ignored her. She and Michael followed him downstairs and entered the bedroom as he began to speak.
"Listen to me, Stephen,” Al said, his voice low but quivering slightly with controlled anger. "Whatever you think you see around here, whatever you think you hear, you just keep it to yourself from now on, all right?"
Stephen was lying in bed with a sheet over him, wearing his Walkman earphones. He stared at the ceiling and did not acknowledge Al's presence.
"You hear me?" Al continued. "You don't need to scare the other kids with your stories. And if you do, you're gonna wish you hadn't, you understand?"
After a while, Stephen nodded slightly.
As Al went back upstairs, Carmen went to Stephen's side and bent down to give him a kiss. "Sorry about that, hon. He's kind of tense tonight."
"He's kinda drunk, you mean," Stephen whispered.
"He's not drunk, Stephen. He just doesn't want you to panic the kids, is all. Go to sleep now, okay? Sleep well."
Michael went to his bed and sat on the edge after Carmen left.
"They don't believe you?" he asked. "I mean, they don't believe any of it?"
Stephen turned to him without expression and said flatly, "Welcome home."
7
More Visitors
During the next few days, Carmen found herself feeling very tense. Al had seemed angry all weekend, and he'd allowed it to come out Saturday night with Stephen. She was sure that living in a motel and driving all that way every weekend was taking its toll on him, but she thought he'd been a little rough on Stephen, and she felt it was her duty to make it up to the boy.
Al's mood over the weekend had left a bad taste in her mouth and, after he'd gone, she did not feel rested or relaxed, as the weekend usually left her. She'd planned for this weekend to be especially fun, but it had been less enjoyable than most.
Unfortunately, Stephen's claim that he'd seen a pale young man with long black hair down in the basement didn't make her feel any better. In fact, she suspected—although she tried not to admit it to herself—that Stephen's story was the biggest cause of her discomfort.
Why? she'd asked herself several times. Why would a silly story like that make you so jumpy?
But every time she asked herself that question, she remembered the plates and silverware returning to the cupboard and drawer from which she'd taken them. She tried, again and again, to tell herself that it had been a mistake, that she hadn't actually taken the plates from the cupboard or the silverware from the drawer, that she'd only thought she had, but she was never quite able to convince herself. She knew she'd gotten the plates and silverware, could still feel them in her hands when she thought about it, but somehow, they had returned to the cupboard, to the drawer.
Unable to dismiss it, she brought it up with Tanya as they drank iced tea on Tanya's front porch while the baby slept just inside.
"Yeah, I do that all the time," Tanya said. "It's like going all the way across the house for something, and then forgetting what you were after once you get there. It's distraction, is all it is. When you have stuff on your mind, you do stupid, embarrassing things like that. Don't worry about it. We all do it."
"But I was so sure that I—"
"Yeah, I know, I always feel that way. But I've gotten so used to it happening that I don't even think about it anymore."
Rather than talking about it any longer, Carmen felt it was time to change the subject. But although she didn't say as much, she did not agree with Tanya.
That night—Monday night—Stephen and Michael went to bed early. They'd both been tired since Saturday night because neither of them had gotten much sleep. They spent much of their time Saturday and Sunday nights talking to one another in the dark. They talked about nothing in particular—music, movies, what Michael had done at Grandma's—just anything that might get their minds off what Stephen had seen. So, come Monday night, they were exhausted. They knew they had only a week of summer left before they would have to go back to school and they wanted to stay up late and watch television, but they couldn't stay awake.
And yet, once they got into bed, they couldn't quite get to sleep. They lay on their backs and stared into the darkness, talking now and then in soft tones about the coming school year and about the new Schwarzenegger movie when there was a sound in the room and both boys lifted their heads from their pillows. Michael drew in a ragged, frightened gasp of breath....
Carmen was in the kitchen fixing herself a cup of cocoa. She'd put Peter to bed and told
Stephanie to go, and now she just wanted to relax and, eventually, get to sleep.
She returned to the living room with her steaming cup and found Stephanie still on the floor scraping a crayon over a page in a coloring book.
"I thought I told you to go to bed," Carmen said.
"Can't I stay up a little longer? I'm not tired."
"You'll be tired in the morning when you have to go to school, and then I'll have to listen to you whine, so go. Now!' She softened her tone. "Okay, hon?"
"Oh, awright, Mom." Stephanie stood and gave Carmen a kiss, then went to her bedroom with her coloring book tucked under one arm.
Carmen sat in ATs recliner and turned the television to Murder, She Wrote, leaning back in the recliner to relax....
Stephen and Michael stared at the dresser against the wall across the room from their beds. On top of the dresser was a toy robot that belonged to Michael.
Staring at the robot, touching it, examining it, were three men. They stood in the dark tilting their heads this way and that, looking at the robot from different angles.
One man, the tallest, wore a pin-striped suit and a fedora. The other two wore dark clothes that blended with the darkness in an indistinguishable, shadowy mass.
Their voices hissed in the silence as the man in the suit picked up the robot and examined it. He turned and faced the boys.
Neither Stephen nor Michael could move.
The man holding the robot looked at them for a long time, and the other two, standing on either side of him, turned and did the same.
They whispered, gesturing toward the boys, their words indistinguishable, but their voices sibilant, secretive.
Suddenly, the man in the suit spun around, raised the robot high above his head and held it there, turning his eyes to Stephen. "Toys," he hissed, smiling around teeth that looked grimy and broken. "Mere toys." Then he brought his arm down hard and smashed the robot on the top of the dresser.
Stephen stared wildly as the man smashed the robot down again and bits of its body scattered in the darkness, chittering against the walls and floor.
One of the men laughed, a low, throaty chuckle, and Stephen blurted, "Run!" as he bounded from his bed and headed up the stairs, followed closely by Michael.
The boys took two steps at a time, both of them screaming, "Mom! Maawwwm!"
Carmen spilled a drop of cocoa on her shirt and muttered, "Oh, damn," as she leaned forward in the recliner, grimacing at the boys' screaming.
"Okay," she said, setting her mug on the coffee table, "okay, okay!”
The boys stumbled into the living room in their underwear, out of breath, saucered eyes frantic, both of them talking at once.
"Mom, men, there are men, down in the room, right now, right now!" Stephen screamed.
"My robot,” Michael gasped, "they broke my robot, they came outta nowhere and—"
"Stop it this instant!" Carmen shouted.
The boys fell silent, their shoulders heaving as they tried to catch their breath.
"Now, what the hell are you talking—screaming—about? And please talk slowly and quietly and one at a time."
The boys glanced at one another and Stephen said, "There are three men down in our room, Mom. They were standing around the dresser fooling with Michael's Robby the Robot and—"
"Wait, just wait a minute," Carmen said, holding up a hand. "How did they get in?"
"They were just there,” Michael said.
"But the windows are locked and nobody came through the front door, so how—"
"Mom, they were talking about us," Stephen said, "whispering to each other about us, laughing."
"Okay, okay, c'mon." She walked between the boys, out of the living room and down the stairs. At the bottom, she flicked on the bedroom light and looked back up the stairs at the boys who stood at the top, huddled close together.
She walked away from the stairs, then froze in the center of the room.
What if there really was someone in the basement? She'd come down unarmed, unprepared, automatically assuming the boys had just scared each other. She felt her heartbeat speed up, felt her palms become moist and sticky.
Moving slowly, cautiously, she looked around the room. The more she looked, the more she relaxed, and a little smile curled the corners of her mouth.
"There's nobody down here, you guys," she called over her shoulder, her relief disguised by her firm tone of voice.
She heard their footsteps hurrying down the stairs.
Her anger returned and she said, "Now exactly what the hell were you trying to—"
She stopped when her eyes fell on Michael's robot on the dresser. It lay on its side; an arm and a leg were missing, and the transparent plastic cover that had been over the face was gone. Fragmented bits of black plastic were scattered over the top of the dresser and on the floor below.
"Did one of you do this?" Carmen asked angrily as the boys came into the room.
"No, Mom, they did," Michael insisted.
"There was no one in this room but you two, so stop saying that."
"Mom," Michael said deliberately, as if he were speaking to a small child, "the guy picked up the robot and—"
"Okay, hold it, just hold it a second," Carmen said, holding up both palms. She studied the boys a moment. They not only looked sincere, they looked terrified. But it would have been impossible for anyone to get into the basement. She looked at the French doors; they were shut, with only darkness beyond them. All the windows were locked, she was certain of that.
Well...pretty certain.
No, they had to be making it up. At the very most, it was probably just the result of Stephen's telling Michael about all the voices he claimed to have heard. He probably scared the hell out of Michael and, before they knew it, both their imaginations were running away with them.
And Carmen was pretty sure she could prove it.
"Go upstairs a minute, Stephen," she said.
"What?"
"Just go upstairs and leave me with Michael. We won't be long."
Reluctantly, Stephen climbed the stairs, puzzled and a little angry.
"Okay, Michael," Carmen said, sitting on the edge of Stephen's bed and patting the mattress beside her, "sit down and tell me about it. Tell me everything you saw."
"Well, there were these three guys. They were standing over there by the dresser foolin' around with Robby the Robot and whispering to each other."
"What did they look like? What were they wearing?"
"Well, two of 'em were hard to see because they wore dark clothes and, well, the room was dark, so...but the one guy was wearing this suit. It was striped...thin little stripes, kind of oldfashioned."
"Pinstripes?"
"Yeah. And he wore a hat. An old-fashioned hat, the kind men wore in the old movies all the time."
"What did they do?"
"They looked at the robot and whispered, then they looked at us and whispered. One of 'em laughed. Then, the guy in the suit said something about...about toys, and picked up the robot and smashed it down on the dresser."
"Where'd they go?"
Michael shrugged. "I dunno. We ran."
"And they just stood here and let you run after you'd seen them standing in your room busting up a toy? Doesn't that seem odd to you?"
"Maybe it's odd, but...you wanted me to tell you what happened. That's what happened."
Carmen studied Michael's face, looking for some sign of guilt, for one of the familiar clues that he was lying. He was a lousy liar, always had been. Stephen could get away with it, but she'd only seen him use his poker face to pull pranks on her and Al, harmless jokes that required a straight face until the payoff, never anything as pointless as this.
But she saw nothing in Michael's face that told her he was lying, so either he'd picked up his big brother's talent for keeping a straight face, or...
Or he was telling the truth.
"Okay, stay here," she said as she stood and started up the stairs.
&n
bsp; "You don't believe us, do you?" Michael asked softly.
Carmen stopped and turned to him. "Just stay here, hon. I'll be back in a minute."
Upstairs, she found Stephen slumped on the sofa with his arms folded over his thin chest looking dejected as he whispered to Stephanie, who sat beside him, leaning close. Stephen stopped and Stephanie pulled away the moment Carmen entered the room.
"I thought I sent you to bed, Steph," Carmen said.
Stephanie stood and headed for her room, saying, "I'm going, Mom, I'm going."
Carmen sat down beside Stephen. "Okay. I want you to tell me exactly what happened down there."
She listened carefully as he told her exactly the same thing Michael had told her. When she questioned him—"What did they look like? What were they wearing?"—his answers were identical to Michael's, right down to what the man said: "He said, Toys, mere toys.'"
When he was finished, Carmen realized she was frowning. If the boys were lying, then they had to have made up the story in great detail before breaking the robot and telling her, otherwise their stories would not have been identical in every detail.
A chill fell over her like a blanket as she seriously considered, for the first time, the possibility that there had been three men in the boys' room.
Why would they come in just to whisper to one another right in front of Stephen and Michael, break a toy robot, then leave?
That was what she found so frightening about it: It was completely senseless.
Should I call the police? she wondered. But what if they come and it turns out the boys are lying?
She decided that if three men had indeed broken into the house, there would have to be some sign of entry somewhere, and it would have to be down in the basement.
"Okay,” she said decisively as she stood. "That's all I wanted to know." She left the room and, as she started down the stairs, she heard Stephen call, "What're you gonna do?" But she didn't respond.
Downstairs, she was asked the same question by Michael.
"Just stay here," she said as she opened the French doors and went into the next room, reaching out to flick on the light. She looked around the room that was supposed to be Stephen's, saw that the two windows were still locked and went into the wide hallway beyond, turning on another light.
