by J. S. Bailey
Randy may have claimed to be a man of God, but he seemed more and more like a herald of death.
Bobby swallowed and wondered what that might mean for him.
Then again, people tended to die around Bobby, too. Like his father and Tyree.
For a few minutes he entertained the idea that this might all be a dream and he’d wake up back in Kansas (or, in his case, Ohio) and everything would be back to normal.
His father would make fun of him right now if he could see him. Son, he’d say, you’ve done gone and made a fool of yourself. Running around in the dark like that—what’s gotten into you? And what did I tell you about never trusting a man who says he’s involved with spirits?
Ken Roland had been a practical man. He worked. He ate. He drank. And whenever Bobby showed a greater interest in his guitar than in physical labor, he would catch Ken shaking his head as if loving music was something to be ashamed of.
His stepmother had supported him, though. Even paid for all his lessons. But technically she wasn’t his stepmother anymore. She was simply the woman who had married his father and raised him as her own and then became his legal guardian when Ken passed away.
Simply. Ha. Charlotte Roland was the only mother he had, even though she’d never bothered to adopt him.
Loneliness tugged at his heart like a fish on a hook. He hadn’t visited his family once during the past two years because thoughts of them took a backseat to this new life outside of Ohio.
Again, the notion that he should pack his bags and return to his hometown flashed through his mind. Go home, an inner voice whispered. Go home.
The basement bedroom at the Rolands’ house was probably still unused unless Jonas had occupied it subsequent to Bobby’s departure. It wouldn’t matter. He could show up on their doorstep and be settled in within five minutes.
A car door slammed close by and the patter of footsteps crossed the apartment’s parking lot. How much longer would Randy be in there? Not that Bobby needed to be anywhere in the morning, but he had about as much desire to camp out here in his car as he did of sleeping on a park bench.
He sat up and stared at the distant door of the unit Randy had disappeared through. The light still glowed behind drawn curtains. He hoped everything was okay in there. Randy had told him he’d be back, but it grew so late he considered asking if Randy would be willing to stay there until morning.
But Bobby wasn’t going to be the guy to interrupt their conversation.
Or anything else that might be going on in there, for that matter.
Ever the gentleman, he waited for Randy to emerge.
Seconds turned into long minutes. It had to be two o’clock by now. Tomorrow he would be cleaning a church at this time of night. By himself. In a seedy part of town. Where people cut brake lines on cars and unseen beings tapped on the windows.
As if on cue, a small object bounced off the windshield and rolled down the hood. Fear seized his heart for a second before he realized it was only an acorn that had fallen from one of the tree limbs hanging above the car.
The night became still once more. He waited.
A length of time passed. He shifted positions and gazed out the window again. The apartment lights were still on.
He sighed.
A speck of orange light inside the car to his left caught his eye as he went to lie down again. He squinted. It looked like the burning tip of a cigarette, but aside from that he couldn’t see anything other than vague shadows within the vehicle.
It would seem Bobby was not the only one waiting for something in the dim parking lot, and since he hadn’t heard anyone enter or exit the other vehicle since he arrived, the smoker must have lurked behind dark windows for the entire duration of Bobby’s wait.
Creepy.
He continued to watch the cigarette. Intuition told him the person smoking it was a man. What was he doing here? Casing the joint? Waiting for someone to meet him? Or was he just out here to smoke?
Bobby held his finger over the automatic lock button, knowing he was probably overreacting. But he wasn’t in the best shape. Kids in school had made fun of him, calling him Knobby Bobby and Skinny Ninny and things like that, generally before he got slammed face first into a locker. If this guy wanted to break into his car and steal his wallet, Bobby wouldn’t be able to stop him without getting broken himself.
He pushed the button. The sound of the locks engaging was as loud as a car backfiring in the quiet air.
The cigarette went out.
Bobby stopped breathing. Two eyes that he couldn’t see were likely staring in his direction.
“Randy,” he whispered, “it would be great if you could get out of there so I can leave.”
He supposed he could leave the car himself and take refuge inside the girlfriend’s apartment, but it would be rude to barge in on such a scene. The woman had tried to kill herself. She had to be messed up on something. Drugs, maybe. Normal, healthy people didn’t want to die. They wanted to—
The voice of reason spoke inside his head. Get out of the car. Now.
Bobby didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled across to the passenger seat, made sure he had his keys and wallet, and dove out the door.
The temperature of the night air had dropped into the upper forties. He shivered as he raced between and around other parked cars and resisted the urge to glance back the way he’d come.
He rapped on the apartment door he’d seen Randy enter earlier. Please don’t let them be angry.
He heard movement inside. After several moments, the door swung open, and a haggard-looking Randy greeted him. “Come in.”
Bobby stepped into a tidy living room decorated in shades of orange and hot pink. A single lamp burned on an end table. Randy sat down on a couch where a slender Hispanic woman dressed in violet pajamas lay on her side. Randy began running his fingers through her hair.
“Lock the door, please,” Randy said in a quiet voice.
Bobby did as instructed and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Look, I’m sorry I—”
Randy held up a hand. “I’m the one who’s sorry for keeping you so long. I was about to tell you to go on home.”
“I’m not going home yet,” Bobby said. “There’s someone outside in the car next to mine. I’ve been out there for what, more than an hour? I noticed him smoking a cigarette, and nobody got into the car after I parked, so that means he’s been out there the whole time.”
Randy’s face became grim. “Could you see what he looked like?”
“No. It was too dark. I didn’t get a good look at the car, either.” Bobby went to the window facing the parking lot and held an eye to the gap between the slats of the blinds, but the glare from the lamp prevented him from seeing if the man had left the vehicle.
Lupe sat up and blinked sleep from her eyes. She had long, dark hair that was almost black, and it came down nearly to her waist. She bore no signs of self-injury that Bobby could see. “What’s going on?” she asked in a slight Mexican accent, looking from Randy to Bobby and shoving a strand of hair behind one ear.
“Bobby says someone’s been waiting out in a car the whole time we’ve been here.”
Lupe looked at Bobby and frowned. “Man or woman?”
“Man, I think.”
“Was he doing anything?”
“I don’t know. But what kind of creep sits in his car all night?”
Lupe gave Randy a worried glance. “What if it’s him?”
Randy stood up. “That’s what I’d like to find out.”
She seized him by the arm. “No! I won’t let you go out there if it’s really him.”
Bobby wondered if the “him” she referred to was the person Randy had mentioned when he had a knife pressed against Bobby’s throat back at the church. “It’s either go and check it out or wait here until he leaves,” Bobby said. “And I don’t think you two would like it very much if I spent the rest of the night sleeping on your couch.”
Randy pondered
this for a moment. “Lupe, where’s your flashlight?”
She went to the end table and pulled the drawer open. “Here. If you’re going, I’ll go with you.”
Randy clicked the flashlight on and checked the peephole, then opened the door. “Fine. Both of you stay behind me.”
Randy didn’t make the best human shield since he was neither tall nor wide enough to effectively conceal the two of them, but Bobby was still thankful he wouldn’t be the first one out the door.
They stepped out onto the concrete walkway leading past the row of units. Lampposts spaced every so many yards along the walk lit the apartment building’s façade. Bobby thought they should have installed lighting at the back of the lot, too. It had probably been some kind of budgeting issue. Who cared if you couldn’t see anything when you parked back there at night? If you couldn’t see the weirdoes, maybe they couldn’t see you, either.
Randy swept the yellow beam across the lot toward Bobby’s Nissan. “Is it the car on the left or the right?”
“If we’re facing it, it’s on the right.” Bobby squinted. Randy had the beam pointed at the car’s windshield. A male figure sat motionless behind the steering wheel.
The car was a newer make of Chevy, maybe a Cruze. Bobby tried to make out the plate number. “One, four, nine . . .”
The Chevy’s engine roared to life and two high-powered headlights pierced the darkness as effectively as twin suns. The rest of the license plate number vanished in the glare.
Randy broke into a run and Bobby almost followed, but the smoker’s car squealed out of the parking space, nearly grazed the back end of a parked sedan, and sped out onto the street without stopping.
“Did you see the rest of the plate?” Bobby asked as he tried to blink the afterimage of the headlight beams from his eyes.
Randy shook his head. “I was focusing more on who was driving that thing. Lupe, have you seen that car around here before?”
“Not that I remember.” Lupe stepped off the edge of the sidewalk into the parking lot and stared in the direction of the road. “Who was it? Did you see?”
“No,” Randy said, defeated.
BOBBY ROLLED out of bed at eleven in the morning, surprisingly well-rested after the night’s hectic events. He did some stretches for a few minutes and then threw open the curtains to see that the garbage cans still sat in disarray along the back fence and assorted pop cans lay here and there in the grass like poorly-concealed Easter eggs.
Looked like he’d be doing some yard work once he’d gotten a bite to eat. What fun.
He lumbered out of the bedroom. “I’m up,” he said. “Fix me anything good to eat?”
Silence greeted him, and he did not smell any food.
“Caleb?” He did a quick scan of the house, most of which could be seen from where he stood. Caleb did not occupy the kitchen, living room, utility room, or bathroom, leaving few other places for his roommate to hide.
Apprehension put him on edge. Caleb sometimes went out to grab fresh bagels from the shop down the street, but he always asked Bobby if he wanted anything before he left.
It seemed unlikely that Caleb would still be asleep at this hour.
Bobby knocked on Caleb’s bedroom door anyway. It swung open at his touch.
His stomach flipped when he saw inside the room.
He blinked.
Pale blue walls met bare, tan carpet. The science posters Caleb taped to the walls were gone. The closet stood open and empty.
Dizziness nearly overcame him as he tried to process the scene. Caleb could not have gotten all of his things, furniture included, out of the house in a single night without help and without waking him. And hadn’t his car been in the driveway when Bobby got home? He would have noticed it missing.
Caleb’s bedroom window gave Bobby an ample view of their driveway and the sole Nissan that occupied it.
Bobby raced back into the living room. Caleb’s usual mound of schoolwork was nowhere to be seen. No books, no papers, not even a pen or a paperclip. The piece of junk mail Caleb liked to use as a bookmark sat neatly next to the lamp on the end table.
As far as Bobby could see, the only sign that Caleb Young had ever existed was the squashed place at the end of the couch where he sat each evening, but it might have been that way when they’d bought it secondhand.
This was nuts.
I’ve entered The Twilight Zone, Bobby thought. Now he just needed Rod Serling to show up and start narrating his life.
It was possible, however unlikely, that something came up requiring Caleb to leave. Bobby had been exhausted when he got home. He might have overlooked Caleb’s missing vehicle, or he could have slept through Caleb’s departure.
He had one way to find out.
He dialed Caleb’s cell phone number. Held his breath. Waited.
A robotic voice informed him that the call could not be completed as dialed.
He punched in Caleb’s number a second time and got the same result.
Rats.
His only other option was to call the bookstore where Caleb worked. Bobby knew the campus’s main number since he’d seen it on some of the papers Caleb usually left lying around.
After connecting with the campus operator, he was patched through to the bookstore.
A female voice—human this time—came on the line. “Campus Books and More. This is Cassidy speaking. How may I help you?”
“Um, hi. Is Caleb there?”
“I’m sorry, who?”
“Caleb Young. He works there.”
A pause. “Sorry, but you must have the wrong location. Which store were you trying to reach?”
“The one at Autumn Ridge Community College.”
“I’ve worked here two years, and I don’t know anyone named Caleb.”
“He’s got brown hair and glasses,” Bobby said. “Wears a lot of polo shirts. Looks like a geek. You’re sure you don’t know him?”
“I’m very sorry, but no. I wish I could have been of more help.”
A rash idea occurred to him. “Actually, maybe you can. Does Trish Gunson work there?”
“Trish?” Genuine surprise colored the woman’s voice. “No, why?”
“I wondered if I could get ahold of her.” He hoped God would forgive him for the tasteless lie. “I haven’t seen her in a few weeks and wondered if she was okay.”
“Oh, you know, Trish is Trish. She’s been sick a lot lately. Started acting real odd awhile back, too, but she won’t talk about what’s bothering her.” Then came a longer pause. “Wait. If you knew Trish, you’d know she doesn’t work here.”
“Uh . . . I don’t know her that well. She’s in some of my classes.”
“I don’t think she’s taking any summer classes this year. What’s your name?”
“Nobody,” he said and disconnected the phone.
He sat down on the non-squashed end of the couch. Caleb had been lying to him the whole time he’d claimed to be working at the college bookstore. Where could he have gotten the money to pay his half of the rent, and where did he go each day when he claimed to be at work and school? Did he sell drugs for a living and have a deal go sour? That might explain why he left with such abruptness.
He shook his head. Caleb couldn’t have been a dealer. The guy was too friendly and unassuming, characteristics which Bobby supposed might throw suspicion away from someone who dealt in illegal substances.
Bobby returned to his roommate’s bedroom to think. He looked at the floor again. Such nice carpet. Countless drink stains speckled the carpet in Bobby’s room, but the carpet in here was as pristine as if it had only just been installed. There weren’t even any flattened indentations where Caleb’s bed, dresser, and desk had sat. Bobby squatted on the floor and ran his hand across the carpet fibers. This didn’t make sense. A heavy object sitting in one place for only a day or two would leave a mark once it was moved, and Caleb’s furniture had sat in this room for an entire year.
Even if Caleb had run the v
acuum before leaving (which in turn would have jolted Bobby from his slumber), it would not have eliminated the marks entirely.
His head began to spin. Something had to be horribly wrong with Bobby’s perception of reality. Had he been so lonely when he first came to Oregon that his mind fabricated a friend for him?
He thought of the times he and Caleb went to the bagel shop together. The cashier interacted with Caleb just as he had with Bobby, but that might just mean Bobby imagined that, too.
And what if he imagined every single thing that happened last night? What if he never really arrived in Oregon? Had he truly lived in Salt Lake City for eleven months? Had he ever set foot in New York?
Bobby realized he’d developed the shakes.
He recalled with clarity the day he chose to come here. He’d been sitting in his Utah apartment brainstorming the next leg of his journey of seeing the world but was unable to make up his mind on where to go. There were so many places to visit, but he would have to live to be ten thousand years old to get to them all. Should he go to California? Colorado? Alaska? Arizona? He’d picked up his Rand McNally road atlas, closed his eyes, shuffled through the pages, and jabbed his finger at one at random.
He’d opened his eyes to find his fingernail bisecting the name of Autumn Ridge, Oregon: a town he had never heard of in a state to which he had never given more than a passing thought.
A week later he arrived in the small city and started looking for a place to live. When another week went by in which he couldn’t find an apartment that fit his qualifications, he’d placed an ad online asking for a roommate who would be willing to rent a house with him. Caleb phoned him two days later, introducing himself as a college student who would gladly split the cost of a house.
Surely nobody could imagine so many specific details.
Yet he had apparently hallucinated the entire existence of Caleb Young. That, or the guy had been a ghost.
Or was playing a brilliant practical joke on him. What could Caleb have done, installed new carpet during the night?
