Crawlers

by John Shirley

  She stood just outside the squares of light from the windows, gazing down into the basement.

  The basement rumpus room, as Mom called it—though no one in the house was quite sure what a rumpus was—had a much-torn leather couch; a coffee table with some framed photos of Dad and Cal posing on the deck of Skirmisher, both in scuba gear; and a worn Persian rug Mom’s sister Lacey had given her, over which Mom and Dad were doing a stately four-step to “Time of the Season.”

  Adair lingered, watching her mom and dad dancing.

  They would pass by below her, inside, right under the basement window. Dancing by the liquor cabinet, where that schnapps was— and then out of sight. Then after twenty seconds or so, they danced back into sight, slowly spiraling by, Mom’s head on Dad’s shoulder, and it looked, sometimes, like she was crying. His face was . . .

  She couldn’t read his face.

  Then Mom raised her own face, tear-streaked and happy, to his, and he kissed her, an open-mouthed kiss.

  Adair felt a mingled rush of both happiness and embarrassment, seeing her parents kissing that way, and she had to look away.

  Thinking, I was wrong, they’re okay. It was me.

  She turned to go—and out of the corner of her eye caught a flurry of quick movement, down in the basement. She thought she heard a sharp crackle sound. She turned back in time to see Dad drawing his hand back from Mom’s neck. And she was slumped in his arms. Her head tilted unnaturally to one side.

  But he seemed to still be dancing, dragging Mom’s limp body out of the window’s line of sight. Adair’s throat constricted.

  “Mom?” It came out as a squeak.

  Then she was running across the grass to the back door, banging through and down the steps, two at a time, opening her mouth to shout for Cal to call an ambulance.

  There were Mom and Dad, embracing, kissing, both very much alive. Mom breaking the clinch to turn to her, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glassy with rapture.

  “What’s the matter, baby? You never saw us kiss before?”

  “No, it’s not—I thought—I thought—I heard someone fall or something. But, I guess not.”

  They were both smiling at her. Without speaking.

  Mom looked like she had braces or something. Had she gotten braces? Adults did sometimes.

  But, no. When Adair looked again, the flash of bright metal was gone.

  They just kept beaming at her. Just to make them say something— and maybe going with a kind of instinct—she said, “Did they—did you find out anything more about that satellite?”

  Dad waved dismissively. “Oh, just an old weather satellite. But we’re not supposed to talk about it. It belonged to the military. They study the weather, too, you know. And they’re embarrassed about it almost falling on San Francisco. Big secret. Kind of silly. Won’t have to work much now, though. They paid me so well I could almost retire.”

  Adair almost said, What, from one job? I thought you gave up smoking pot in the eighties, Dad.

  But instead she said, “Um, you kids, have a good time.”

  Okay, Adair thought, I know why they’re talking in this wack kind of way. They’re hinting I should go. They’re all . . .

  Don’t even think it. It wasn’t what it looked like. But it’s so cool. They’re together again. And I had to be weird about it.

  She turned and climbed the stairs, stumbling once and painfully barking a shin in her hurry.

  December 12, night

  Cal stepped back from the sideshow, when the exhaust rolled toward him, making him cough.

  The cars were roaring in donuts and figure eights, mad close to each other, through a thick blue cloud that rose to draw a thin film over the stars. Three cars were showing moves: a rebuilt Mustang, an older Accord, a Trans Am. Maybe eight other cars were parked around the edge of the crowd, some facing in toward the sideshow with their headlights on, so that they were lighting the impromptu event. The crowd of kids around made collective ooh! and aah! noises and scurried back, screeching when the Accord, spinning in place, nearly ran them down. Someone threw a wine bottle that smashed on the concrete between the cars.

  The sideshow was in the big concrete lot where a group of warehouses had once stood. The crumbling rims of old building foundations stood around the edges of the big open concrete space. Grass poked spottily through cracks. To the north was the Sacramento River. To the south and west, a little under a quarter mile off, lay Quiebra. To the east was a woods, the long narrow strip of woods around the area where the satellite had crashed.

  Cal had heard two guys earlier, at the Burger King, arguing about that.

  “No fucking way a satellite crashed.”

  “Way, dumbass. Get a clue. I fucking watched them pull it up.”

  “A satellite would’ve made a big huge crashing hole, man, like a catastrophe, and it would’ve been all over the fucking news.”

  “This one slowed down in the atmosphere.”

  “You’re full of shit, dude. That’s like impossible. No wonder you fucking flunked physics.”

  Cal had worked hard at not thinking about the satellite—not thinking about when his dad came up out of the water. So he’d left the Burger King and come out here, to get his mind on something else. But there was that woods.

  The cars roared and spun, and the kids laughed and threw quarters and empty beer cans. He heard two boys bitching about how their computers had been jacked, and how fucked up that was, and their parents just didn’t care and fuck them, they didn’t understand.

  But some people still had their gear. It was like that story in the Bible where they put ashes on some doors in Egypt, and God’s plague passed those houses over. Some of the kids had CD cases and were selling pirated computer games and MP3s and video ROMs to each other; others were talking to people elsewhere on wireless handhelds.

  A girl stepped up beside Cal; a pretty blond, compact little thing in white jeans and a tight off-white sweater. She had a little red plastic purse on a strap on her shoulder. Cal recognized her; she was some friend of his sister’s, or had been.

  “Cleo, right?” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, opening the purse. “And you’re Adair’s big brother Cal.”

  She had pretty good tits, he decided. Nice round ass. He could get into that, though theoretically she was young for him.

  It’d been a while since he’d dated. He hadn’t been trying. The girls he knew lately seemed to irritate him in some way, and he just couldn’t hang with them. He guessed it had something to do with the way things were with his mom and dad, but he didn’t really want to think that through.

  She took out a little brass-and-wood pot-pipe and a lighter. She had a small pink stationery envelope in her purse, and she pinched some pot from that onto the blackened screen. She lit it, inhaled, and passed it to him. Cal took a hit and passed it back.

  The spinning, roaring cars seemed to slow down as the dope soaked through him. The cloud of exhaust seemed to turn iridescent and just slightly shimmery. He could feel the concrete vibrating under his shoes as the cars laid rubber.

  “I didn’t know you smoked pot,” he said. He thought he saw someone moving at the edge of the woods. A ragged figure hanging back.

  “Lot of shit people don’t know about me,” Cleo said.

  Some kid in one of the cars had turned on his stereo really loud— the heavy-duty bass speakers thudded against the night—and it took Cal a moment to figure out who the band was. “That’s Qurashi, that song, isn’t it?”

  “Either them or the Beastie Boys.”

  “Are the Beastie Boys still around? No, that kind of white, hard-rock hip-hop, it’s definitely Qurashi.” He waved the pipe away. “That’s enough for me. After two or three hits the stuff makes me nervous. I’m fucking nervous enough already.”

  She had moved close to him, and he could feel the warmth from her hips. Some of the kids were dancing at the edges of the crowd. She glanced up at him, asking, “You wanta dance?”
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br />   “Won’t, like, what’s his name, Donny, get all jealous if I’m dancing with his Kool-Aid?”

  “Not his Kool-Aid anymore. You know what? I think he’s a fag.”

  Cal was genuinely surprised to hear this. She’d been devoted to Donny. “No shit?”

  “I offered to give him head, and he said no.”

  It occurred to him to say that he wouldn’t have said no, but that seemed lame.

  She looked at him impishly. “So, do you want to dance or what?”

  “Uhhh . . . Here?”

  He was relieved when another car drove up and parked behind Cal. It was Donny. Cleo glanced at the car, but otherwise didn’t react.

  Donny got out and walked over to Cal. He had his digital camera in hand; now and then he got a shot with it. Cleo looked at him and walked away.

  Cal realized he was relieved she was going, which didn’t make sense. But it was how he felt.

  The sideshow had become a small drag race around the edges of the concrete, and Donny and Cal watched it silently. Finally Cal said, “I keep expecting the five-O.”

  “I don’t think the cops will be out here, tonight,” Donny said. “They like us to keep busy with this shit. They got some other things going on.”

  Cal looked at him. “Like what?”

  “You haven’t seen anything? Noticed anything in this town? The cops are right in it, man. I’m not sure what it is, but there’s going to be a meeting. I’ll let you know when.”

  “I’m supposed to know what you’re talking about?” But the cold feeling in Cal’s gut said, You know. You just fucking know, Cal.

  “Adair told me about some of the shit you guys’ve seen. For now, the best thing is just to keep a record of all this. And the other stuff. Because people who say too much too loud . . . disappear.”

  Cal looked at Cleo; she was drinking right from a bottle. “She used to do that, act that way?”

  Donny shook his head. “It’s part of keeping us distracted.”

  The sideshow went on and on, roaring ever louder at the night, gushing blue clouds; bottles smashed and someone fired a pistol into the air. And not even that brought the cops.

  “What’s wrong with this picture?” Donny asked, snorting, capturing the scene with the digital camera. Then he went back to his car.

  December 13, late morning

  Adair sat half-slumped at her desk, in second-period English class, yawning because she hadn’t slept much. She’d kept waking up, seeing her dad whirling her mom in his arms like a dancer doing a routine with a lifeless dummy. She was tired, but she felt a burning tension in her, too. It was worse than just being tired.

  She looked at the clock and wondered—where was the teacher?

  Her mind returned with itching insistence to her mom and dad. “What’s the matter, baby? You never saw us kiss before?”

  Adair shook her head.

  I am one fucked-up chick.

  Maybe she should talk to the guidance counselor again. About Mom and Dad. The stuff she thought she’d seen at the crash site. If that military guy was right, her mind might have been affected. Maybe she needed to get a blood test or something. Maybe a lot of them did. Maybe Ms. Santavo could arrange it.

  She glanced at the clock. No teacher yet.

  But then that thing with the money in the attic. My computer. It’s not like they’re not lying to us.

  About a third of the kids simply hadn’t shown up. That’s how it looked to Adair, as she glanced around. And it was twelve minutes after the class was supposed to start.

  “I don’t think she’s going to show up,” Donny said. “A lot of teachers haven’t been showing up. Your own mom hasn’t been coming in, right?”

  “She hasn’t?” She didn’t have her mom for PE, but it was true she hadn’t even seen her around school.

  “When you ask about it . . .” Donny shrugged. “Mr. Conracki says, ‘Don’t worry about it, just use that period for library time.’ ”

  Other kids began drifting away from their desks, congregating in the back of the room, laughing, whispering, giggling, gossiping; others spilling out into the hall. Donny, Adair, and Siseela were the only ones still at their desks.

  Donny glanced at the door. “I think I should tell you—you can tell Waylon and Cal—we’re planning a meeting, to talk about some stuff.”

  Adair didn’t ask him what the meeting was about. She knew.

  “We could talk in a chat room.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it on the Internet.” He looked at the door again, his jaw working. “You know Roy Beltraut?”

  She shook her head.

  Donny said, “He was that tall redheaded kid, was a pretty good forward, scored eight points in two games.”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember him. He doesn’t say much. But he’s nice.” Then it occurred to her Donny was talking about Roy in the past tense.

  Siseela leaned forward and whispered, a little melodramatically, “Girl, Roy’s gone. Just gone. Disappeared.”

  Adair said, “Well, so? He, like, ran away or something. People do. I mean, it could be lots of stuff.”

  Donny got up and moved to the desk in front of her, then leaned toward her and whispered, “Roy said on-line—in a chat room—that he was going to report something about the bank and about some other stuff he saw. He was going to report it to the police, and he said he didn’t trust the cops around here, he was going to the state police. He was going ‘right now’ in his car, he said, and he signed off and no one has heard from him since.”

  “That doesn’t mean—” But she broke off, thinking that it did make sense somehow. “Okay. Where’s the meeting?”

  “You know that big water tower up on Pinecrest? Tomorrow night at nine. And listen, don’t bring any parents. Or tell them.”

  She swallowed. “ ’Kay.” Her own voice sounded small in her ears.

  “Right now, it’s hella obvious Mrs. Donner isn’t coming,” Siseela said, getting up. “I’m going to McDonald’s.”

  Donny stood up, looking resignedly worried. “Good as any place. Everything is all, like, the default place to go.”

  Backpack slung over one shoulder, Adair made her way down the hall. Students were everywhere, talking, throwing paper wads, at a time when the hall should be empty. Some of them looked around, kind of scared. Then went back to pretending they were glad the adults were missing.

  She went into the office and looked around. No secretaries. The principal’s office looked empty. But she could see Ms. Santavo in her office, pulling a bunch of files—a big armful of them—from the file cabinet. She seemed to be dumping them into a suitcase.

  Adair pushed open the little swinging gate that led into the office area, feeling strangely intrusive, and went through, half expecting some alarm to go off because she was entering this sanctum without an invitation.

  She went to Ms. Santavo’s office and knocked on the frame of the open door.

  Ms. Santavo spun so quickly to look at her, Adair was a little startled.

  “Hi,” Adair said. She found herself looking at the suitcase, full of student files, and saw two more suitcases leaning against the wall. “Are you moving to another office?”

  How come, Adair wondered, Ms. Santavo didn’t just take the whole file cabinet, if she was taking everything that was in it?

  Ms. Santavo looked at her in a way that made Adair think of a bird, cocking its head. Then she smiled. “I’m going to scan them all into a zip file, at home. Can I help you?”

  “I was just—”

  “Who am I addressing?” The smile never wavered.

  “I’m . . . Adair?” Adair was a little hurt not to be remembered. “You helped me before, and some weird stuff has been happening.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And I was wondering—about Mrs. Donner? I mean, was the class cancelled?”

  “Just go to the school library and—we’ll let you know.”

  “ ’Kay. Um, the other thing . . .”


  Adair looked around. No one was there but she stepped inside and closed the door anyway. Ms. Santavo looked at her expectantly.

  Adair hesitated, not sure where to start.

  Mostly it was—what if her dad had really hurt her mom, and she hadn’t imagined it? She just couldn’t bear that to be true. She’d always assumed, on some level, somehow, that the troubles between her mom and dad were at least partly her fault.

  They were always finding a way to let you know. “We’re sacrificing for you kids,” Mom would say. “Show some appreciation.” So if things were bad, somehow she felt it was her fault, and Cal’s, because “it was all for the kids.” And if Dad had flipped out, that was probably her fault, too, wasn’t it? And that was one step beyond bearing.

  So she plunged in. “Remember what we talked about? It’s been— worse. I mean, it’s stuff like, I thought I saw my dad break my mom’s neck! I mean, it looked like he killed her, but then she was fine. So I know I’m seeing shit. I’m seeing stuff, and—other people are seeing stuff and . . .”

  “And you’re thinking of—therapy? Maybe going to a doctor, somewhere outside of town?”

  The question took Adair by surprise. “Outside of town? Well, no. Just—someone. I mean, are there therapists for kids here in Quiebra?”

  “Actually, there is someone.” She went to the door and opened it. “Come with me. I’ll introduce you. I’m going right by there on the way home. I believe that in fact today all your classes have been cancelled, anyway.”

  Confused, Adair followed Ms. Santavo to her car. Outside, a wind soughed at her face, stung her nose with chill. Pieces of the school newspaper blew up across the parking lot to wrap around her ankles, and she had to shake them loose as Ms. Santavo opened the car door for her. She got in the little car gratefully.

  “Brrr. It’s getting cold again.”

  Ms. Santavo started the car. “Yes. It certainly is. It’s getting cold again. I’ve noticed that myself. It’s cold.”

  Adair glanced at her. There was something . . .

  But then Ms. Santavo started to hum a tune to herself.