by Platt, Sean
That thought died on the vine when he spotted Gina’s purse and keys on the kitchen table, right where she put them every night before bed, ready for the next morning.
He looked back down. No people. No cars on the street. Well, none that were moving, anyway. Brent could see a handful that were either in the middle of the street, or had crashed into the cars parked on the opposite side of the street. He could see exhaust from some of the cars, their lights still on.
It was as if everyone on his block just simultaneously vanished. Everyone except Brent.
He went to Ben’s room again to get a look from his son’s window, which had a slightly better angle at the cross street. Something sharp stung his foot. He cursed as he stumbled, glancing at the carpet to see a small blue train.
Stanley Train, Ben’s favorite toy, which he carried with him everywhere, including to bed. It was there, just sitting on the floor. Brent bent and picked it up. Its wide eyes and eternally giant smile stared back at him. Wherever his little boy was, he was without his favorite toy.
He set the train on Ben’s pillow and returned to his room. He got dressed, then grabbed his keys, wallet, and phone. He shoved everything in his jeans, then went to the kitchen, found the notepad and a pen and left a note for Gina.
“Where did you go? Went outside to look for you. Knocked on doors at our neighbors, nobody’s home. I’ll be back at 1 p.m. If you come home, wait for me.
Love,
Brent”
Halfway through the front door, Brent thought of something, then went back to his son’s room, grabbed Stanley Train from the pillow and put it in his pocket.
**
Brent took the stairs down to the next floor, and started knocking on those doors, despite not knowing anyone on this floor.
At the sixth door without any response, he worked up the courage to try a doorknob. Locked.
Halfway down the hall, he got an idea. He found the fire alarm and pulled it. The alarm blared; a banshee shriek amid the quiet. Brent covered his ears, watching the hall, waiting for people to flee.
Not a single door opened.
“Fuck it,” Brent said, and went to apartment 310, tried the knob. It was locked. He backed up a bit, kicked at a spot right below the doorknob and was surprised at how easily the door burst open. Why even have locks?
“Hello?!” he shouted.
No response.
The apartment was as vacant as his own. Pictures on the wall showed a Puerto Rican family of four. Parents with two twin boys, about 10 years old. He was about to leave the apartment, but movement grabbed him. Something just beyond the sheer curtains covering the living room window. He moved closer and saw the slinky silhouette of a cat sunning on the windowsill. How it could relax with the alarm blaring was beyond Brent, but then again, so were most things feline.
He went to the curtain, pulled it aside, and saw the white long-haired cat stretched out, face nuzzled against the warm windowsill. As he reached out to pet the cat, it started to roll over to show its belly. As it turned, Brent jumped back.
The cat’s face had no eyes or mouth.
Brent fell back two steps, letting the curtain fall into place, his heart racing, half expecting the monstrosity to jump on him or worse. He stared at the curtains, dread creeping up his spine.
What the hell is that?
He watched the cat’s silhouette as it laid back down. He worked up the courage to pull the curtain aside again to make sure he’d seen what he thought he’d seen. The cat’s face was turned down, so he had to reach out, hesitantly, again and pet its head to get it to look back up at him. As his fingers touched the cat’s fur, he felt a slight shock, like static electricity. The cat didn’t seem to notice the shock. It began purring in response to the touch, then lifted its chin to meet Brent.
Only this time, the cat had eyes, wide blue ones, and a mouth.
Brent shook his head, feeling stupid. He continued to pet the cat’s head as the alarm kept ringing.
“You deaf, kitty?” Brent asked.
No response. Which was a good thing, or Brent might have just jumped right out the window.
He glanced out at the street below to see if tenants were pouring from the building’s lower floors because of the fire alarm. If so, he didn’t see anyone.
As the curtain drifted back into place, he saw movement on the street below.
He snatched the curtain aside again, and glanced down at the apartment building across the street. A man in a dark sweater, baseball cap, and pants emerged from beneath the green awning and onto the street, looking around. He was too far away to get a good look at, particularly under a baseball cap, but something about his gait suggested he was nervous.
Brent jumped up, excited, and began smacking the window, yelling, “HEY! HEY!”
The cat leaped down and scurried out of sight.
The man on the street didn’t seem to hear Brent. He was walking north along the street, sticking to the sidewalk. Brent stopped trying to get his attention. While the man did glance over at the building a couple of times, likely drawn by the sound of the siren, his attention was mostly on something further down the road that Brent couldn’t see.
Brent watched, waiting to see where the man would go.
He seemed to be looking for someone. The man pulled a pair of binoculars out of his jacket and scanned the street in both directions. Then, he raised his binoculars up toward Brent. Brent waved frantically. For a moment, the man paused, and Brent was certain that he’d seen him. But he put the binoculars down and turned quickly to the north side of the street as if he’d heard or seen something.
The man lifted the binoculars to his eyes and focused to get a better look at whatever had his attention.
Brent turned, pushing his face against the window, struggling to see whatever the man was now staring at, but the angle was marred. He looked back down at the man, only to see him running as fast as he could in the opposite direction, and back into the apartment building he’d come from.
Brent pressed his face against the window again, struggling to see what scared the hell out of the guy. Whatever it was, he couldn’t see it.
Hide, a voice in Brent’s head said. Hide now.
It’s coming.
**
MARY OLSON
Saturday
October 15, 2011
morning
Warson Woods, Missouri
Mary woke up sticky.
Another dream about Ryan, the sixth one in the last two weeks. Weird. She probably hadn’t thought of him for a month before that. Or longer. Though she couldn’t help but picture her ex from time to time since their daughter was his spitting image — well, a cuter, girly version, anyway.
Mary turned over and buried her face in the pillow. She hated dreaming about him, and really hated when they were sex dreams.
He’d never stop being inside her, but he hadn’t actually been there in three years. They’d been divorced for two, but once she found out about Natalie Farmer, the bitch that was 10 years too young and as perky as a sitcom schoolgirl, she couldn’t touch him without a shudder.
She hated him for the innocence he stole and the lives he abused. But a large part of her could never forget the way he made her feel — the way he made her laugh, the way that, for no reason at all, he used to slip behind her and whisper treasures in her ear. The way he truly seemed to love her and their daughter, Paola. And the way he always reassured her that everything would be okay, even if he only did so in her dreams.
Mary rarely slept past seven. During the week, Paola had to be at school by nine and they usually left by eight because Paola liked to go early. Unlike most 12 year olds, Paola would wake early even on the weekends. Sometimes, Paola would join Mary for some early morning yoga before Mary worked a few hours on the greeting cards that paid for the $1.1 million house high on a hill in Warson Woods, just outside St. Louis – no thanks to Ryan.
A million dollars bought a palace in Warson Woods, the kin
d of house Mary liked most, even though it made her feel guilty all the time. Her cousin lived outside L.A. He said nothing was for less than $350,000 unless you were willing to settle for bullet holes.
It was probably thinking about bullet holes that made Mary realize how quiet the house was. More than usual. She sat up in bed. More than quiet – eerie. The trees were swaying, but that was it. No birds chirping. No dogs barking. And no lawnmowers. In Warson Woods, people loved lawns like children, and spoiled them the same, either themselves or through their teams of landscapers. Mary started calling lawnmowers the “Missouri Symphony” the second week she moved in. To not hear lawnmowers on a Saturday morning made her briefly question whether she’d slept straight through to Monday.
Mary left the bed and padded toward the stairs. She needed coffee. That would help the oddness fade. The hallway was dark. Mary flicked a light but nothing happened. She sighed and kept walking. One million for a house, fine, but everything should work.
She would have a hard enough time this morning without light, but being without caffeine might make it impossible. So she wasn’t happy when her new Keurig wouldn’t work either. Maybe there was an outage in the neighborhood? A sudden chill iced her insides. It wasn’t logical, but it came from the place that keeps its eyes peeled for the stuff logical doesn’t.
“Paola?”
Paola didn’t answer, but the Keurig rumbled to life and started warming its water as the hall light came on and the air conditioner cycled on. She would’ve called for Paola a second time, but she didn’t have to. Paola called for her instead. “Mom!!!” Mom sounded like a war cry rattling from the throat of a warrior who knew she was about to die.
Mary was at the foot of the stairs in less than a second and all the way to the top in two after that. She flew through Paola’s open door. Her daughter was screaming at something out of view.
It was gone before Mary got there, but it had left Paola a vibrating mess. Mary tried to soothe her, but Paola pushed her away. “It’s okay, Honey.” Mary pulled her closer. Paola surrendered and Mary’s hands fell in a familiar pattern behind her daughter’s head.
“What was it?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know,” Paola shook her head. “I don’t know the words.”
“Try.”
“It was like,” Paola fell into a second fit of sobs. Mary continued to pet her. “It was like ...” more sobbing, then, “It was like Daddy.”
“What? What do you mean, it was like your father?”
Paola shook her head. Her cheeks burned. “It was Daddy. He was in my room but he wasn’t. It was just him, but not all of him.”
“Your father was here?!” Mary could feel her white face making Paola’s redder.
“No.” Paola started to say something, then closed her mouth. A long three seconds passed, then, “It was like if a ghost was there without the ghost. Daddy, but not Daddy.”
“How do you know it was a ghost, or your father, if you couldn’t see anything?”
Paola just stared at her mother. “I’d know daddy anywhere.”
Her face cracked and she started to cry again as the power went off again.
**
It seemed to take longer than normal for Mary to calm Paola’s whimpers down to heavy breathing. Right when inhales and exhales were starting to meet, Paola broke the rhythm.
“Why is it so quiet?”
Mary had almost forgotten. “I’m not sure, honey. The power’s out and everything feels...”
“Wrong,” Paola finished.
“Yeah, wrong.” Mary stood and held out her hand for Paola. She was almost as tall as her mom, and would likely tower over her in another year or two. Paola followed her mom downstairs and into the kitchen. The coffee machine had died before it could produce enough for a cup. Frustrated, Mary went to the fridge and grabbed a Diet Coke for herself and poured some OJ for her daughter.
When they finished, Mary looked out the front window.
“Let’s go look outside.”
They walked the neighborhood that had gone from posh to ghost town overnight.
They peered through windows and into cars, and crossed well-manicured yards, starting at Mrs. Parker’s house on the corner, because she was the first to move into the sub-division and had made it family business to know everything about everyone every day since. She wasn’t home.
After two empty streets, they rounded the hill and hit the hiking trail, thinking there might be a neighborhood gathering they didn’t know about. The trails were empty, too. Odd for the weekend, when the housewives and retirees were usually out en masse.
They followed the trail, then rounded the avenue back to their street. They were surprised, and thrilled, to see someone standing in front of their house. It was their neighbor, Jimmy Martin – Jim, as he’d been introducing himself since 8th grade, even though no one would listen. He was a head too tall for his age. That, along with his long dark hair that he let hang in his eyes, made him look a bit older than his 16 years. Any advantage he had in looking older was usurped by his immaturity. While he was generally a good kid, as far as Mary knew, he got into frequent trouble for skateboarding in the shopping center, trespassing at the pool after hours, skipping school, and the stuff that unfocussed kids generally did to pass away the time.
“What’d you find out Mrs. Olson?”
“Nothing,” Mary shook her head. “Do you know what’s going on?”
“Other than the entire world going POOF!?” Jimmy made jazz hands, “I’ve no idea. I woke up, my mom and dad were AWOL. So were both my brothers. I figured they were fu ... messing with me, but I can’t figure out the angle, plus there’d be no way they’d get the whole neighborhood to play the reindeer games.”
Jimmy seemed oddly unfazed by events.
Mary was about to ask him if the electricity was working in his house when her neighbor from the other side John, appeared in the distance. He was walking fast, directly toward them. Mary closed her mouth mid-sentence, Jimmy and Paola turned to see why.
“Thank God!” John was running toward them.
“What’s going on?” All three asked, hard to tell who was first.
“No idea. Jenny’s gone. No note. Nothing. She doesn’t even go downstairs without kissing me goodbye.”
It was true. With any other couple it would’ve been disgusting. But John and Jenny were probably the two nicest people alive. And so adorable and doting, it was almost creepy.
No one had a chance to console John, or consider Jenny, before a smoke-colored Audi appeared on the drive coming toward them. It was Desmond Armstrong, the neighbor from across the street. The Audi’s engine died but Desmond stayed inside. They could see him through the tinted windows, sitting and staring into space. It was an endless minute with no one knowing what to do. Finally, the door opened and Desmond put his boot on the grass.
“There’s no other way to say it,” Desmond shook his head. “The world is dead.”
**
CHARLIE WILKENS
Saturday
October 15, 2011
morning
Jacksonville, Florida
Charlie Wilkens wasn’t upset when he woke to find an empty world. In fact, it was the best damned thing that had happened in his 17 years on the planet.
He was frightened at first, of course, when he woke to find his house empty, both cars in the driveway, and no sign of his mother or asstard step-dad, Bob. But when he went door-to-door and discovered his entire block was as empty as his house, he was a few planets past the moon.
As he tottered down the street on his 12 speed, he stopped to knock at each house, considering its occupants and the offenses they’d committed against him over the years. He knocked on the bully Eddie Houghton’s house, remembering the time the fat red head made Charlie eat dirt in front of his classmates in sixth grade.
Good riddance.
He stopped at Josie Robinson’s house, a girl he had a crush on since kindergarten, and who had been his fri
end until last year, before she started hanging out with Shayanne and the rest of the cheerleaders in the Bitch Clique. It was bad enough that she’d shunned him, but at one point, she called him “pizza face” in front of half the lunchroom. It was all he could do to keep from crying.
Bye-bye, Josie.
Then there was that asshole, Mr. Lawrence at the end of the block. A short, creepy dude who once hired Charlie to go door to door and hand out flyers for his painting business. Mr. Lawrence had promised Charlie $40 for the job. But after Charlie spent the entire weekend canvassing the neighborhood with the ads, Mr. Lawrence claimed someone saw him dumping a box of the flyers in a dumpster at the Quick Stop (which was bullshit). So he refused to pay Charlie.
Sayonara, asshole.
Charlie laughed as he raced to the next block and repeated the process, growing more giddy with every empty house.
“Goodbye, assholes! Fuckers! Motherfuckers!” he shouted from the top of his lungs. It was an amazing release, even if no one was around to hear him.
For too many years, he’d had to bottle his emotions and take shit from everybody. He’d been the world’s doormat for most of his life, through no fault of his own. He just happened to be a bit geekier, a bit paler, and had a few more zits than everyone else in his class. If he didn’t have the zits, got tan instead of turned pink in the sun, and his hair was straight instead of a curly blond mop, maybe people would have seen him a bit differently.
All he wanted to do was get through adolescence under the radar. But ever since middle school, it was as if he had some sort of homing signal which seemed particularly honed to attract unwanted attention. And when you stood out, the wolves licked their chops.
Growing up a momma’s boy had made him soft.
He spent the first 11 years of his life practicing ways to make his mother happy. She’d been depressed since his father died, so it was his mission to bring her smile back. He’d put on puppet shows, tell her jokes, and would even go to painting classes with her on weekends. While most kids avoided their parents, Charlie was best friends with his mom.
