“Thanks, you’re so considerate.”
I resisted the urge to knock. I tried the knob, and after a few determined twists, I felt the door start to creak open.
“Anything yet?” Dobkin hissed at me.
To tell the truth, I was a little surprised myself. After what had happened at the locker, I’d been preparing myself to be bombarded with images and feelings from all sides. But nothing happened. I just felt like a nervous trespasser who wished she were safe at home.
I stepped cautiously across the threshold.
“Anything yet?” Dobkin hissed again.
“Will you be quiet?” I said irritably. “I promise you’ll be the second to know.”
He nodded and followed me, being careful to step exactly where I stepped. The place was filthy—rain had come in, leaving mold and mildew and rot, and the stench of animal droppings was everywhere. Dobkin took a whiff and promptly held his nose.
“Something died, I think,” he said through pinched nostrils.
“What was your first clue?”
It was really rank, and I fanned the air in front of my face, eyes darting back and forth, ready to bolt at a second’s notice. There were only a few rooms and no furniture to speak of, but it was clear that people had broken in over the months and left their garbage behind. I couldn’t even picture someone living here, much less try and pick up their psychic signals.
Dobkin looked disappointed. “Nothing?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “Let’s go. This place is disgusting.”
“One more minute. We haven’t seen the kitchen yet.”
The kitchen turned out to be the most repulsive room of all, and I put my arm around Dobkin’s neck to keep him from stepping in. Sewage had backed up into the rusty sink and spilled out across the floor, and flies were thick everywhere, the air vibrating with their buzzing.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
I rummaged in my pocket for a tissue and pressed it against my nose. In the protective circle of my arms, Dobkin pressed into me and buried his face against my stomach.
“Anything yet?” His voice was muffled, and in spite of everything, I had to laugh.
“You don’t give up, do you?” I shook him by the shoulders. “You’re bound and determined we’re not going to leave here empty-handed.”
“Empty-minded,” he corrected me. He tugged on my hand and forced me to take three steps onto the cracked linoleum. “Come on, Marlee, you must feel something!”
“You mean, besides nauseated?”
I started to laugh again, but suddenly my eyes shot like magnets to one corner of the room.
“Ssh—Dobkin—did you hear something?”
He pulled away from me and followed the direction of my stare with his eyes. Shaking his head, he started to say something, but I put a warning finger to my lips.
There was a doorway in that far corner. It opened straight out onto an enclosed porch, where piles of junk were buried in dust and spiderwebs. From where I stood I could also see part of one window out there, its rusty screen twisted in and hanging down one wall.
“What is it?” Dobkin mouthed, but I shook my head and pushed him firmly back behind me.
“Stay here,” I mouthed back to him, and once more he nodded.
It was the creepiness of the place, I tried to tell myself as I picked my way carefully across the kitchen floor. It was making me imagine things—hear things—see things moving from the corner of my eye.
For just one split second I thought I’d heard that porch creaking.
For just one split second I thought I’d seen something move beyond that window.
I glanced back at Dobkin. He was standing as straight as could be, his feet planted determinedly, as if ready to rescue me at the first sign of danger.
“Stay there!” I jabbed my finger at him to show I meant business, then I jabbed it toward the window, and then toward the porch. He didn’t look so brave then. He glanced back over his shoulder and molded himself flat against the wall.
The porch was an impossible mess of garbage and decay. Weeds grew up through the splintered boards, and small bleached bones littered the floor. There were mouse droppings everywhere. I froze in the middle of the cramped space and strained my ears through the quiet. I could hear my heart pounding and the sound of my own harsh breathing. You must have imagined it.… Nothing could hide out here without making a whole lot of noise.…
I was afraid to get too close to the window. The floor was in such bad shape, I knew it wouldn’t hold my weight, and I could hear things scurrying away from me beneath the piles of trash. Shuddering, I took a step back and rubbed goose bumps from my arms.
Why would anyone be out here anyway? This place ought to be condemned.
“People break in sometimes … looking for food and a dry place to spend the night …”
“Dobkin,” I said softly, “let’s get out of here.”
And suddenly the whole place seemed threatening—a wasted, tragic testament to memories and death and unsolved questions.
“Dobkin?” I murmured.”
My eyes went slowly up one of the walls, and I saw where several pipes were showing through the rotting plaster. One pipe seemed darker than the others, and as I watched it, I suddenly saw two tiny points of light gleaming out at me.
“Run, Dobkin!” I shouted. “There’s a snake!”
Whirling around, I raced toward the door where I’d left him.
But Dobkin was gone.
15
Dobkin!” I screamed. “Where are you?”
In a mad panic I stumbled back through the house and out onto the front porch, nearly collapsing when I saw him standing by the van.
“What—” I sputtered, “what do you think you’re doing, scaring me like that!”
“There was a snake in there,” he said calmly. “You know how much I hate snakes.”
He looked annoyed with me. I fluctuated between wanting to hug him and wanting to pull his hair out of his head. Instead I summoned every ounce of self-control and marched out to the van and climbed up into the seat.
“You could have warned me,” I said sternly.
“I thought you saw it. You practically stepped on its head.”
“I did not! It was hanging there in the pipes!”
He looked at me blankly. “You mean … there was another one?”
“Oh, God …” A shiver shook me from head to foot, and I reached across and shoved open his door. “Just get in here and be quiet, will you?”
“Well …” He hesitated, summing up the situation. “Are you mad?”
“What do you think?” I muttered. I shoved the key in the ignition, and the van gave a shudder to match my own. “Dobkin”—I sighed—“will you just get in here and close your door so we can leave? Please?”
He shrugged and got in, and we took off in a cloud of dust to search for the main road.
“So,” he said, looking at me as if I’d flunked an important test, “you didn’t feel anything.”
“Let’s not talk about it, okay?” I said abruptly. I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened back there on the porch—not the snake, but that feeling that someone had been there with us … watching … listening … I didn’t want to think about it, but I couldn’t seem to shake it.
“The van’s acting up again,” Dobkin said.
“Let’s just pray we get home before it decides to quit,” I muttered.
But of course my prayers weren’t meant to be answered that day. Why should they—when everything else so far had been going wrong?
We hadn’t gone a whole mile before it started sputtering and bucking something awful, and with a huge groan it coasted to the side of the road and died.
“No.” I leaned forward and banged my head on the steering wheel. “No! I don’t believe this! No!”
Dobkin didn’t say anything. He opened the glove compartment and rummaged around for a few seconds, then pulled out a very stale
-looking candy bar.
“Half?” he asked.
Food was the last thing on my mind, but I took it anyway. I needed something in my hands to keep from destroying the van piece by piece.
“No one will find us out here,” I said glumly.
Dobkin stared at me. “Someone will find us.”
“No one will ever come.”
“Someone will.” He pried a cashew from the spotted chocolate and held it up to the light before popping it into his mouth. He chewed slowly.
“We’ll have to spend the night out here, and Aunt Celia will be frantic. She won’t have the slightest idea where we’ve gone.” In growing despair I let my eyes sweep down the road as far as I could see. The shadows were lengthening, and the birds had gone all muffled.
“Look,” Dobkin observed. “Everything’s so still. It doesn’t even look real.”
“I don’t suppose in that astute brain of yours you can figure out how to make this thing run?” I asked without much hope.
“Sometimes Aunt Celia sticks it with something.”
“Sticks what with what?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never paid that much attention.”
I got out then. I got out and lifted up the hood and looked under it without a clue as to what I was looking for. Dobkin got out on the other side, walked slowly around the van, then called to me.
“There’s someone coming,” he announced.
“What?”
But I could hear it now—the low, uneven rumble of a motor in the distance, growing louder and closer. It sounded so eerie out there with dusk falling around us, and Dobkin and me all alone with a car that wouldn’t work, and not a soul around for miles and miles.
“What’ll we do?” Dobkin was standing close to me now, and we could hear the engine slowing down … slower and slower. Instinctively I looked around for a place to run, but there was just woods, and I wasn’t about to go in where I didn’t know my way.
It was a pickup truck.
We saw it crest the hill about a quarter mile away, and then come down. It crept along the road, and then it finally pulled off.
The engine stopped.
Dobkin slipped his hand into mine, and we watched as a tall figure climbed out and started toward us through the shadows.
“Trouble?” he asked.
I stared at him. I knew the voice, yet instead of feeling thankful we’d been found, I only felt a strange sense of uneasiness.
“Trouble?” he asked again, and Jimmy Frank stopped a few feet away from Dobkin and me.
He didn’t even seem surprised to see us there.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly. I glanced at Dobkin, knowing how weird the two us must look, almost as if we’d been waiting for Jimmy Frank to come along. “The van won’t start,” I added with a glance in that direction. “I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”
“If you have a cellular phone,” Dobkin suggested politely, “we could call for a mechanic.”
Jimmy Frank made a sound in his throat that might have been a laugh.
“If you want to wait two hours.” He walked over to the van and bent low inside the hood. “Let’s take a look.”
I kept waiting for him to ask why we were out there, but he didn’t. I wondered if somehow he knew, and that made me more nervous than ever. It seemed to take him forever to look at the van, but finally he straightened up and pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and slowly wiped his hands.
“Looks like someone’s been fooling around with your gas tank,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I burst out indignantly, and Dobkin gave me a quizzical look.
“I mean there’s sugar here on the rim of the cap. No wonder it won’t run.”
“Sugar? But that’s im—”
I broke off, remembering that noise in the house … the movement by the window …
“What’s wrong?” Jimmy Frank was watching me, and somehow I managed to keep my face a perfect blank.
“Nothing. I’m just wondering how we’ll get home.”
“I won’t even be able to push you,” he said. “You’ll have to ride along with me to town.”
I didn’t say anything. I bit my lip and looked at his truck and then down at Dobkin.
“It’s okay,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I know him.”
Dobkin looked like he didn’t quite believe me, so I added, “This is Jimmy Frank. I go to school with him.”
Jimmy Frank turned around and strode back to his pickup, and I guessed he meant for us to follow. Dobkin looked at me for confirmation, so I put my hands on his shoulders and steered him over to the truck.
“Is there room?” Dobkin asked doubtfully as he squeezed in between Jimmy Frank and me. “I feel like egg salad.”
Jimmy Frank threw him a funny look, so I said quickly, “That’s his favorite.”
“What is?” Jimmy Frank looked like he didn’t really want to know.
“Egg salad,” I explained. “You know. Sandwiches.”
Jimmy Frank slammed his door and turned the key. He pumped the engine. Then he shut it off again and shifted sideways in his seat, angling himself back in the corner and looking straight at me.
“You out sightseeing?” he asked. His voice had that low sound to it again, something between angry and dangerous. I took a deep, silent breath before I answered.
“Are you?” I countered.
“I live here,” he said. I thought he sounded kind of smug.
“Where?” I challenged him.
“Just over that next ridge, there’s a road that cuts back through the woods and leads over to my place.”
He might have been lying—I mean, how would I have known? So I shrugged my shoulders as if it made no difference at all to me where he lived.
“You didn’t answer me,” he went on. “What were you doing out here?”
“Going—driving—” I stammered, and Dobkin looked Jimmy Frank right in the eye.
“To Tyler’s cabin,” Dobkin said. “He told her she could use it whenever she wanted. She was taking me there to show me.”
Jimmy Frank turned his head away slightly, just enough so I really couldn’t make out the expression on his face.
“I see,” he said quietly.
“Can we go now?” I asked.
His head moved back. His eyes settled on mine and stared and stared till I thought I’d jump right out of the truck.
“Now?” I asked again, trying to keep my voice steady.
He gave a slow nod. “Sure.”
To my relief the pickup started moving. Dobkin scooted even closer to me, and I pressed back into the door. For a long while there was silence except for the rumbling and crashing of the truck hitting potholes in the road. Then at last Jimmy Frank came right out with it.
“Rumors say that locker of yours is acting up.”
“Rumors say a lot of things. That’s why they’re rumors,” I retorted.
“What do you say?” he asked bluntly.
“I say you shouldn’t believe everything you hear.” I hoped I sounded breezy and bored, but I don’t think it came out quite that way. The truck went on another mile or so, and I shifted my gaze out my window.
“Why are we going so slow? I’d like to get home sometime tonight if possible.”
“I’m not going to ruin my tires just to get you home,” he informed me.
But after that he did pick up speed a little, and I started feeling a little less nervous. I just wished we could get home where it was safe. I don’t know why I felt the way I did about Jimmy Frank—he hadn’t really done anything to me, and he had stopped to help us out—but everything about him made me uncomfortable.
I glanced over at his hands as he drove. Work hands … strong and sun-browned and calloused … long fingers gripped tightly around the steering wheel. His denim jacket had seen better days—there was a rip in one elbow and the sleeves were full of old stains.
“Why did you come here?” he asked.
“What are you trying to do, shaking everybody up with this locker crap? Can’t you think of any other way to get attention? It won’t make you popular, won’t help you fit in. Just makes you look stupid.”
“What!”
I was so shocked by his accusation, I forgot to be nervous. I stiffened up and glared over at him and felt Dobkin tense against me.
“Are you accusing me of—what? Trying to get attention? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! How dare you accuse me of that! If anything, I should be accusing you—any of you—of rigging up my locker to try and scare me half to death! Do you think I like feeling sick to my stomach every time I have to get something out of there—do you think I enjoy these things happening?”
“Why are you so interested in Suellen anyway?”
“I’m not interested in Suellen,” I lied. “Why don’t you just stop the truck right this minute and let us get out and walk!”
I put my hand on the door, fully prepared to jump out if I had to.
But I never got the chance.
Goose bumps exploded all over me. My throat closed up and went dry, and a surge of half laughter, half tears flooded through my heart, so the sound I made was more like a sob. I put one hand to my mouth, and tears filled my eyes, and every nerve, every sense was on fire—
“Marlee?” Dobkin grabbed my arm. He looked scared.
“Someone she cared about—” I choked. “Here. Right here—”
And Dobkin was pulling back from me, his eyes like saucers, and Jimmy Franks’s eyes were narrowed in on me and not on the road—
“She was here the day it happened!” I cried. “On this road—in this spot—but—but she never got home—I—I don’t know—happiness—trust—she trusted someone—went someplace else? Something—something—I don’t know! I can’t make it out! Oh, Dobkin—”
“Take it easy,” he whispered. “Please, Marlee—”
“Right here on this spot in the road where we are now—with someone she knew—”
“What the hell—” Jimmy Frank began, but suddenly his head snapped forward and he let out a gasp. “Look out!”
The Locker Page 9
