The Locker

by Richie Tankersley Cusick

  “Same person?” Dobkin asked. “It’s not a very good copy.…”

  “Good enough.” I nodded emphatically. “The face in my mirror was all distorted. And there was blood.”

  “Blood? How do you know it was blood?”

  “I just know.”

  He nodded. He gazed solemnly at the collection of newspaper articles and then back at me.

  “So what happened to Suellen Downing?” he asked.

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “This is what we know so far—what everyone else knows. She went to school that morning. She never came home that afternoon. The last time her parents saw her was in her very own yard. She walked to the road in plain sight, turned around, and waved to her mother, who was watching from the kitchen window. Then she headed off down the road to catch the school bus about half a mile away. We know she was at school that day. When she didn’t show up that night, her folks got worried and started calling around to friends’ houses. Then they called the police. The search went on for weeks. The whole town turned out to help, plus volunteers came in from all the other towns nearby.”

  “No clues,” Dobkin said grimly, and I shook my head.

  “No clues. No leads.”

  “No ransom calls.”

  I sighed. “Nothing.”

  He looked sad. He tilted his head and gazed down at the photograph in front of him.

  “She was pretty,” he said softly.

  “Once, yes,” I murmured. “But not in my mirror.”

  Our eyes met in a long silence. At last Dobkin clasped his hands over his stomach and tucked his chin onto his chest.

  “So what are your clues?” he asked.

  “Oh, Dobkin,” I sighed, “this is so stupid. So weird. I can’t even believe we’re doing this. It doesn’t even seem real to me.”

  “Well, your friend Jimmy Fink thinks it’s real,” Dobkin said wryly.

  “Frank,” I corrected him. “Jimmy Frank. Yeah, I thought I’d freak out when he said what he did. Why would he bring that up, anyway? Almost like he’s—he’s—accusing me of something bad!”

  “Maybe he knows something about Suellen Downing,” Dobkin said matter-of-factly. “And he doesn’t want you using your power to find it.”

  “It’s not a power,” I burst out, more sharply than I meant to. He looked back at me like a little troll. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. I don’t like you calling it a power. That upsets me.”

  “Okay, then, a gift.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Excuse me, but I don’t think you have much choice.”

  “Yes, I do. I can just shut it out. I can just convince myself it’s not there—”

  “Like you’ve tried to do ever since Mom and Dad died?”

  It got real quiet then. I could hear the wind rattling the kitchen window, and the toe of Dobkin’s sneaker squeaking on the floor as he slowly shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “It wasn’t you, you know,” he whispered. “They didn’t die because of you.”

  Tears filled my eyes. Dobkin’s face swam in front of me, and my voice broke as I tried to talk.

  “But—don’t you see—I had this feeling—and then it came true!”

  “But you had the feeling because it was true. You didn’t make it happen.” Dobkin’s voice went husky, the way it does when he’s going to cry and tries not to. “Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember about that night?”

  I didn’t want to remember—not now, not for those two long years I’d deliberately shut it out. It was just too painful. One day Dobkin and I had had a mother and a father, and by the next day we were orphans.

  “You took Mom’s picture into your room that night,” Dobkin said quietly. “You’d found it in a drawer where she’d thrown some stuff”, and you asked her if you could have it, and she said yes. It was by your bed—”

  Yes, it was by my bed. Like it’s on the nightstand upstairs right now, still by my bed, by every bed I’ve ever slept in since that night—

  “Don’t you see?” Dobkin was almost pleading with me now. “It was Mom’s picture. That was the connection. That’s what made you know when she …”

  He broke down then. I heard his angry little sobs and the way he tried to hold them back, and I got over to him and held him against me until he was all cried out. The house was very quiet. He made a sort of snuffling sound and moved his head against my shirt, and I knew he was using it to wipe his nose. I decided to try and make a joke.

  “You know, Noreen’s right about the witch thing—some other century, and I could’ve been burned at the stake for having this gift.”

  “Only ’cause people didn’t understand,” Dobkin said.

  His voice was very small, still muffled against me. I slid my fingers under his chin and slowly tilted back his head so I could see his face.

  “You can use it for something good.” Dobkin looked back at me, that look that always goes straight to my heart and melts it. “Police call in psychics all the time to help them with cases.”

  “You want me to go to the Edison police?” I teased him.

  “I want you to make a difference.”

  He turned his head away. I reached over and ripped a paper towel off the roll on the counter and held it over his nose.

  “Blow,” I ordered him.

  “Someone misses that girl Suellen,” he said.

  “Blow,” I ordered again.

  He did. I went back to my side of the table, and he wiped one hand across his eyes with a defiant pout.

  “Okay,” I said, thinking back. “So far, there’re three things.”

  “Yeah?” He was being surly now, wishing he hadn’t cried.

  “First, the awful smell in my locker. Second, when I went with Tyler to his cabin, that spell I had after …”

  I paused, frowning. After what? After I lost my balance or after Tyler pushed me?

  “That spell I had after I rolled down the bank,” I said slowly. “Third, the face in the mirror.”

  He gazed at me, waiting for me to go on.

  “But you know, I smelled something at the river, too. It was different from the first smell, but it was almost scarier.”

  Dobkin blinked. “Do you know what it was?”

  “I’ve been trying to think ever since it happened. It’s just so hard to describe.…” I waved my hands helplessly, wishing I could magically pluck answers from the air. “It’s all these images—these sensations—hitting me at once, and it’s very hard for me to separate them into individual things. Do you understand?”

  He nodded slowly. “I think so.”

  “I remember the panic, and the fear … and …” I closed my eyes, trying to recall the exact feelings. I willed myself back down by that river, trying to stand up in the weeds and slime—thick … clinging … suffocating wet slippery can’t breathe—

  “Earth?” I murmured.

  I saw Dobkin watching me, slowly scratching one elbow where he had a red Band-Aid.

  “Earth,” I said again, but more certain this time. “Yes, that’s it. Earth—no—mud! I was smelling the mud there by the river and yet …” I looked at him in despair, feeling the pieces fading, knowing I was losing them again, but not knowing how to stop it. “And yet it wasn’t the river, it was somewhere else—”

  “That’s okay.” Dobkin gave me one of his most wonderful smiles, where he presses his lips together and spreads them from ear to ear without opening his mouth. “You’re doing great.”

  “I’m not.” I sighed. “It’s gone.”

  He put both his hands down on the tabletop and leaned over the newspaper articles.

  “Okay, this is what we have so far. Fear. A dead girl. And mud.”

  “Sherlock and Watson we’re not,” I said ruefully.

  But Dobkin wasn’t listening to me.

  I saw his head snap up and his eyes go wide and fasten onto the kitchen window above the sink. And as I spun around, the deep shadows beyond the g
lass shifted and disappeared, showing only a thin beam of moonlight tossed restlessly by the night wind.

  “What is it?” I asked him, and I watched as he lifted his arm and pointed one shaky finger in the air.

  “Marlee,” he whispered, “someone’s out there.”

  13

  By the time I got the door open, whoever it was had gone. I knew it was a stupid thing to do, but after everything else that had happened that day, I think something in me just snapped. All I wanted to do was get my hands on the Peeping Tom who’d scared my little brother.

  “Did you see him?” I asked Dobkin, coming back inside and making sure the door was locked behind me. “Did you get a good look at his face?”

  Dobkin’s eyes were huge and frightened. He looked just like a little kid.

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know someone was there?” I wasn’t trying to be mean, I just wanted him to be sure about what he really saw. “The wind’s picking up—maybe you just saw shadows and tree limbs moving and stuff.”

  But he shook his head stubbornly. “No, he was real.”

  “Then what did he look like?”

  “I didn’t see his face. He was just … there. And then he was … gone.”

  “Dobkin—”

  “What I mean is, I saw his outline. His head. Like he’d been watching, and just when I looked over there, he went away. So I saw his shape, but not his face. You know … as he was leaving.”

  I was cold all the way into the pit of my stomach, but I didn’t want Dobkin to know how scared I was.

  “Well, he’s not there now,” I said matter-of-factly. “Let’s make pizza and put a movie on.”

  “But what about—” Dobkin began, but I cut him off with a yawn.

  “I really can’t remember any more tonight, Dobkin, and I’m exhausted. Let’s talk about it again tomorrow. Maybe we’ll find something else out by then.”

  He acted disappointed, but I knew he was really relieved. Hardly anything scares Dobkin, but that night he asked me to leave the hall lights on upstairs and downstairs, so Aunt Celia wouldn’t trip over anything when she came home. I sat on the very edge of my bed to do my homework so I could hear him in case he needed me, and it took him a long time to finally fall asleep.

  I knew he hadn’t imagined it.

  I knew I hadn’t imagined that feeling of being watched the night before, either.

  Tyler?

  I didn’t want to believe it—didn’t even want to think it. And you’re only thinking it because he lives next door, and he seems like the most logical solution. But nothing so far about any of this had been logical, so there was no reason to start jumping to conclusions now, I told myself sternly.

  There was no way I could write a book report tonight. Throwing my tablet on the floor, I turned off the bedroom light and went over to the window, careful to keep far back from the pane. I could see dark scudding clouds and Tyler’s house next door, and the massive oak tree and the window just opposite my own. Tyler’s window? I wondered.

  As if in answer to my question, the light came on over there without warning, illuminating part of a bedroom. I could see rock posters and movie posters slapped up on walls, and shelves with books and magazines and cassettes scattered around. And then, as I continued to stare from the darkness, I saw a silhouette pass in front of the window, and I recognized Tyler at once.

  He was slipping out of his black coat.

  He was tossing his black cap onto the foot of a bed.

  My heart lurched and caught in my throat. A person in black would blend in perfectly with the night.… A person in black would never be seen.…

  “Are you crazy?” I muttered to myself. “Get away from the window before someone next door reports you!”

  But I knew no one could see me, and I also couldn’t move away from the window. I stayed right where I was and watched as Tyler disappeared at one end of the room, then reappeared again munching a doughnut. Then he disappeared at the other end of the room, and I could hear the muffled beat of music. He busied himself at the shelves and turned sideways, and I could see him talking into a telephone. He didn’t talk long. After about two minutes he tossed the phone away, and then he ran one hand back through his hair, almost like the conversation had upset him. And then he yanked his sweatshirt off over his head.

  If I’d known he was going to start undressing, I wouldn’t have stayed there that long—but his shirt was off before I even realized. Nothing else came off after that, but I could feel my cheeks burning just the same—totally shocked at myself, yet not shocked enough to move away from the window. He reached for something on a top shelf, his body stretching out slowly—and he was so beautiful, I thought, so sleek and graceful like an animal. And then he turned around, and I caught my breath, afraid he might look straight through the dark and see me hiding there in the shadows of my room.

  He walked over to his windowsill.

  He leaned his arms upon it and stared out into the night.

  In the room behind him someone appeared, and Tyler jumped, as though he hadn’t heard anyone come in.

  It was Jimmy Frank.

  Their voices raised and they seemed to be arguing, though I couldn’t make out a single word.

  Then Tyler turned back to the window and slammed it shut and jerked down the shade.

  I think I actually stopped breathing then.

  When that little square of window light had closed completely up, I let out my breath and sank down in a heap on the floor.

  I sat there a long, long time.

  I sat there and thought about life … and destiny …

  And Suellen Downing …

  “You need something else,” the voice said suddenly from my doorway, and I screamed and scuttled back into the corner before I realized it was Dobkin.

  “What are you doing?” I railed at him. “Trying to give me a heart attack?”

  The threat didn’t phase him. “I’ve been thinking,” he went on seriously. “To figure out what happened, you’ll have to find something else of hers to get feelings from.”

  “Go back to bed,” I told him. “It’s late.”

  “Her house,” Dobkin continued, as though I liked talking to the air.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” he said. “We’ll have to go where Suellen used to live.”

  “But we can’t just—”

  “Why not? You said no one lives there anymore—it should be easy to get inside.”

  “I don’t even know how to find it. I can’t remember all the roads we took last night.”

  “That shouldn’t be so hard. Anyone in town could tell you where to go.”

  I didn’t have any more arguments. Dobkin stood by the door and waited.

  “Dobkin … we are right, aren’t we? Thinking Suellen wants me to do this?”

  “If she didn’t,” he said quietly, “would any of this be happening?”

  14

  All I could do in school the next day was watch the clock. I’d asked Aunt Celia if I could borrow the van, and I’d promised to pick up Dobkin from kindergarten, and we’d told her we were going shopping in town. She’d been easy to fool because she wanted to devote the whole afternoon to her sculpting, so I didn’t really feel like we were doing anything wrong.

  I also didn’t really want anyone to know where Dobkin and I were planning to go.

  You can’t very well walk into a brand-new town and tell people you’re trying to find someone who disappeared, and that you know she’s dead because she’s been communicating with you. Especially not a place like Edison, where outsiders are already considered mortal enemies.

  Then I remembered that Tyler had told me I could borrow his cabin, so the first chance I got, I asked him again how to get there. He didn’t look the least bit suspicious—in fact, he looked kind of happy that I was going to take him up on the offer. He even told me where the key was hidden and said I didn’t ever have to ask permission to go—just to go whenev
er I felt like it.

  Phase one successful.

  I don’t know why I felt so nervous about going to Suellen’s house. I knew it was deserted, but there’s something creepy about poking around where dead people used to live. Out on the main road I passed up my first turnoff, and Dobkin had to yell at me to turn around and go back.

  “Calm down,” he told me sternly. “It’s just a house.”

  “It’s easy for you to be calm,” I retorted. “You haven’t been afraid to open your locker every day.”

  “I don’t even have a locker.”

  “I was trying to make a point.”

  “Did anything happen today?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, there you go.” He sounded smug. “We must be on the right track.”

  The van was making weird noises, which made me even more nervous.

  “If this thing breaks down, I’ll kill it,” I muttered. Dobkin ignored me and hung out the window, trying to grab the tops of weeds as we chugged along the country roads.

  There were a few times I thought I’d gotten us lost for sure, but finally we rounded a bend in the dirt road and there it was—the ugly old house—set back in its weed-grown clearing. I turned off the engine, and we just sat there for a few minutes, looking at it. Now I could see where most of the roof had caved in. The whole thing was sort of leaning to one side, and everything sagged, and all I could think of was how all the life had really gone out of it.

  “Come on,” Dobkin said bravely, pushing open his door. “We’re not going to learn anything staying here.”

  “It looks snaky.” I shuddered. “I can’t go in there.”

  He turned to me accusingly. “So you’d let a six-year-old child go in there all alone? How do you live with yourself?”

  “Okay.” I sighed, climbing out. “You win.”

  There might have been a pathway at one time, but the weeds had long taken over. Stepping carefully and trying to make a lot of noise, we made our way to the front porch, then hesitated outside the door. The screen hung from one rusty hinge. I bent down and tried to peer through a window beside it, but the pane was so thick with grime, I couldn’t see a thing.

  “Well,” Dobkin said. “After you.”