Final Breath

by Kevin O'Brien

  "Um, I was wondering if you knew anything about the lady and her son who used to live in our place," Eli said.

  Larry stirred some greasy-looking potatoes and cabbage cooking on the stove. "What lady and son?"

  "The ones who died there, back in the seventies," Eli said.

  "Oh, them," Larry nodded. "Well, I wasn't here then, sport. Hell, I wasn't even born yet." He opened the oven and checked on his rabbit.

  "Still, I figured you might know something about them though, maybe like how they died or something."

  Larry was silent for a few moments. Eli listened to his canary chirping away in the next room.

  "Listen, I'd like to help you out," Larry said, finally. "But if the property manager ever got wind I was flapping my mouth off to you about what's gone on in Unit Nine, I'd get shit-canned in no time. Then Anita and I would be out on our tails."

  "Who's Anita?"

  "She's my girl," Larry said.

  Eli stepped aside as the pale, hairy caretaker walked back into the messy living room. He opened the birdcage. "C'mon, Anita, girl. There's my boopie-boopie. That's my nickname for her. Hey, boopie-boopie!" The canary jumped on his finger, and Larry carefully took Anita out of her cage.

  "My mom and I already figured out the place is haunted," Eli said, watching him play with his bird. "Plus one of the neighbors told us about the lady who killed her son in there and then killed herself. I just thought you might know more. I won't tell anyone you said anything, I swear."

  Larry pursed his lips at the canary and cooed at it. Then he gave Eli a wary look. "You rat on me, and I'll have Anita peck your eyes out."

  "I wouldn't," Eli murmured.

  "Ha, I'm messing with you," Larry grinned. He put the bird back in its cage, then fussed with the water and feeder trays. Eli heard some seeds spill onto the newspaper. "I really don't know that much about it, sport," Larry said. "I do know they replaced the tub upstairs in that unit."

  "The tub?" Eli repeated.

  Larry nodded. He seemed focused on his chores with the birdcage. "Yeah, that's where she shot herself after she slit the kid's throat."

  "The mother shot herself in the bathtub?" Eli said, blinking. He thought about all the weird disturbances in their bathroom.

  "Yep," Larry replied. "They found her in the tub with a bullet in her head and the gun on the bathroom floor. They replaced the tub for the next tenant. Everything else in there is the original fixtures."

  "And the son," Eli said numbly. "Where did they find him?"

  "In his bed," the caretaker answered, still tinkering with his canary's cage. The bird wouldn't stop chirping. "I think she killed him in his sleep, but I'm not sure."

  Eli nervously rubbed his forearms and felt gooseflesh. He was thinking about what the Ouija board had told him. It had said the boy died in his bedroom. It had spelled out L-A-C-ER-A-T-I-O-N. "She cut her son's throat?" Eli heard himself ask.

  "That's what I hear."

  "Do you know how old the son was?" Eli asked. The Ouija board had said Carl was fourteen.

  "A young teenager, I think," Larry replied with a shrug. "Probably around your age."

  The sweet, spicy smell of that rabbit cooking started to make Eli sick. "Um, do you know when this happened?" he asked. "What year?"

  "Some time in the mid-seventies."

  "Did you--did you ever get their names?"

  "Nope," Larry said, wiping his hands on the front of his pale blue shorts. He peeked into the cage. "Okay, boopie-boopie, all cleaned up," he cooed to Anita. The bird kept chirping.

  "Is there any way to find out their names and when they lived here?" Eli pressed. "I mean, the management company must have some kind of records, right?"

  Larry reached under his yellowish T-shirt and scratched his pale, hairy stomach. "Nope, sorry, sport." He shook his head as he walked past Eli and into the kitchen again. "They tossed out all the old documents when the apartment complex changed ownership back in 1987." He stirred the potato concoction on the stove, then turned up the heat.

  "Do you think any of the neighbors here might know more about them? The kid and his mother, I mean...."

  "I doubt it," Larry said, opening the oven to peek at his rabbit again. "Most of the people who were living here when it happened in the seventies are long gone now."

  "Do you know if any of them still live in the neighborhood?" Eli asked.

  Larry shut the oven door, leaned over the stove, and scratched his chin. "Shit, what was that old lady's name?" he muttered--almost to himself. "Vera something, she moved away two years ago. Wait a sec, I know..."

  Larry brushed by him as he moved back into the living room. He opened up the middle drawer of an old rolltop desk. "She sent me a Christmas card last year. It's in here somewhere. Good thing I don't throw anything away. Vera something, she was still pretty much on the ball for an old lady, only her legs were giving out. So she moved into this rest home. Sucks to get old. Here it is..." He pulled out an envelope. "Cormier, Vera Cormier," he said, reading the preprinted return address label. Then he handed the envelope to Eli. "Go ahead, you can keep that if you want."

  Eli glanced at the shaky penmanship on the front of the envelope and the Christmas wreath return address label:

  Vera D. Cormier

  Evergreen Point Manor

  7711 Evergreen Court, N.E.

  Seattle, WA 98177-5492

  "Do you know where this Evergreen Point Manor is?" Eli asked.

  "It's this rest home up in north Seattle," Larry said. "Not too far, about a fifteen-minute drive."

  There was a hissing sound, and Larry rushed to the stove to turn down the heat on his potato dish, which was boiling over. Now a burning smell competed with the sickly sweet waft from the roasting rabbit.

  "Did you want to keep the card?" Eli asked, pulling out the Christmas card. It had a cheesy painting of a bird on a holly branch on the cover.

  "Read what she says, will ya?" Larry replied, tending to his potatoes and cabbage.

  Under the preprinted Merry Christmas, she'd scribbled something in her frail hand. "Um, 'Happy Holidays to you and all my Tudor Court neighbors,'" Eli read aloud. "'I keep busy, busy, busy here. Miss you, Larry. Hello to Anita. Best Wishes for the New Year. Vera.'"

  "Keep it," Larry said, still toiling over the stove. "Anyway, if you want the real lowdown on that murder-suicide, Vera's your lady. She was living right next door in Number Ten when it happened."

  Eli politely turned down Larry's second offer to dine with him. Larry cut off a piece of his roasted rabbit, then wrapped it in tinfoil, and stuck it in a plastic store bag for Eli to take home with him. "I promise you, you haven't tasted anything like this," Larry said with a wink.

  "Well, thanks," Eli said. And I promise you, I'm not going to taste it, he thought.

  He was glad to breathe fresh air again as he stepped out to the courtyard. Slipping Vera's Christmas card back into the envelope, he folded the envelope and shoved it in his pants pocket. Eli held onto the plastic bag with the roast rabbit part in it. Though tempted to toss it in the Dumpster, he didn't want Larry finding it tomorrow and getting his feelings hurt.

  A cool wind came off the lake, and Eli shuddered. He suddenly had a weird feeling. It was the same sensation he sometimes got in his bedroom at night--when he wasn't quite alone. He felt this invisible other presence, like someone or something was there watching him.

  Glancing around the courtyard, Eli didn't see anyone. He stopped to stare at that alley again. But no one was there.

  He still felt a little sick to his stomach, but it wasn't something left over from the smell of that rabbit cooking. It was a feeling of dread he couldn't shake.

  Eli nervously patted the envelope in his pocket, and he hurried toward the apartment.

  "Eli?" his mom called, when he came in the front door. "Honey, is that you?"

  He didn't even have time to answer or shut the door. She scurried out of the kitchen. "Oh, thank God," she said, hugging him. "You gav
e me such a scare. Where were you?"

  He gently pulled back from her. "I just went for a short walk, that's all. What's the big deal? Why are you acting so weird?"

  She glanced at the plastic bag in his hand, the one holding Larry's roast rabbit section, wrapped in tinfoil. "What's that?" his mom asked.

  "I got some candy at the store," he lied.

  She put her hand on his shoulder. "Listen, honey, I'm sorry I snapped at you earlier. Sit down for a second, okay? I have to tell you something that might help explain why I'm 'acting so weird...'"

  Eli sat on the stairs, the third from the bottom step, and his mother leaned against the banister. She asked if he remembered the guy she'd almost hit with her car while pulling out of the driveway earlier that afternoon. Eli had barely caught a glimpse of him. His mother gave a long description of the man: medium build, black hair, olive skin, possibly a Latino, one eye had an infection of some kind, and he wore a navy blue T-shirt with a silver number 59 on the front. She explained how she'd spotted the same man an hour later in the audience at the ValuCo event, only he'd had on sunglasses and a baseball cap. At least, she was almost positive it had been the same man, and he'd had on the same T-shirt. "Did you notice anyone with a navy blue 59 T-shirt when you were wandering around the fun fair?" she asked.

  "No, Mom," Eli said, shaking his head. "But y'know, the Seattle Mariners' team colors are navy blue and silver, and 59 is probably a real popular number because of Felix Hernandez. You sure it wasn't two different guys in the same T-shirt?"

  His mother just stared at him for a moment. Then she rubbed her forehead. "Oh, good Lord, you must think your mother's a crazy woman." She sat beside him on the stairs. "That didn't occur to me about the shirt. But it did look very much like the same man. And if both guys were one and the same, it means he followed us all the way out to Auburn. He knows where we live. Can you see why I'm a little concerned? I keep thinking about that weird break-in on the Fourth of July."

  "So you figure you got a stalker?" Eli asked.

  "It's a possibility," she said soberly. "Anyway, do your crazy mother a favor, and keep a lookout for someone fitting that description. If you want to step outside, let me know where you're going and when you'll be back. Let's err on the side of caution for the next few days, okay? Humor me. Maybe I'll give you that cell phone you've been wanting."

  Eli nodded. "Okay." He managed to smile at his mother. "Sorry I took off like that, Mom," he murmured, patting her shoulder.

  She kissed his forehead, then rubbed her hand over his scalp. "Your hair's starting to grow out again. It looks nice."

  "Well, I'm gonna wash up," he said, standing. "What time is Uncle Kyle coming over?"

  "I don't know. I haven't heard back from him yet. But I'm hoping we can eat soon. Don't eat too much of that candy and spoil your appetite."

  "I won't," Eli said. He started up the stairs, but paused on the landing and glanced back at his mother. She moved over to the front door and double-locked it.

  He continued up the stairs and stopped in the second-floor hallway. Switching on the bathroom light, Eli stood in the doorway for a few moments. He gazed at the bathtub, the one they'd replaced after that woman had shot herself in the old tub.

  Eli retreated to his room, closed the door, then dumped Larry's rabbit-doggie-bag in the trash can. Something shiny on his desk caught his eye--a tiny metal train engine. It looked like a Monopoly token, only his Monopoly set didn't have a train token.

  "Who would..." he started to whisper.

  He knew the Monopoly tokens had changed over the years. Maybe they had train tokens back in the seventies.

  Back when that kid was murdered in this room.

  Sydney didn't hear any water churning in the second-floor bathroom as she climbed the stairs. "Eli, honey, if you're not going to take a shower right now, I might jump in ahead--"

  She stopped at the top of the stairs, and set her purse on the half-table in the the hallway.

  Eli stood in his bedroom doorway with something shiny in the palm of his hand. "Hey, Mom, did you leave this on my desk?"

  She looked at the Monopoly train token, and shook her head. "No, honey."

  "Well, it was on my desk," he said. "And I didn't put it there. Do you think your stalker guy broke in and set this on there?"

  Sydney hesitated before answering him. Terrific, she thought, I've made my son a nervous wreck. She worked up a smile and shook her head. "I don't think so. The front door was locked when we got back from Auburn, and so was the back door. I checked."

  "But maybe he broke in like he did on the Fourth of July, only this time, he locked up after himself."

  "I doubt it, honey. I mean, if the man I saw at the ValuCo event is indeed stalking me, he was in Auburn when we were there. He couldn't have gotten back here that much sooner than us." She stroked Eli's arm reassuringly. "It was probably on your desk earlier, only you just didn't notice."

  Eli looked like he was about to say something, but hesitated. He frowned at her. "Fine," he muttered finally.

  "If you're not going to use the bathroom, do you mind if I pop in the shower?" she asked.

  He headed for his room. "I don't care," he said, his back to her.

  Sydney watched him close the door. He almost seemed disappointed that they hadn't had a break-in. Of course, she couldn't blame him. To a bored, suddenly friendless, twelve-year-old boy, a potential break-in was something exciting.

  Reaching back for the zipper to her top, Sydney headed into her room. She walked through the doorway into a wall of warm air. This room usually didn't cool down until nighttime. A fly darted in front of her--and then another. Sydney stopped to shoo them away. Their buzzing sound seemed to fill the bedroom. She glanced over toward the open window, where a few more flies scurried around against the sunlight. Some stopped to crawl over the windowpanes.

  "My God," she murmured. There were at least a dozen flies in her bedroom.

  It didn't make any sense. Except for one side window, which was open only a few inches, all of her windows had screens.

  Then she noticed something on her pillow, something dark on the pale blue and white sham that matched her quilt bedspread. A swirl of flies buzzed around it.

  Her mouth open, Sydney stared at the small dead bird. It looked like a robin--with its mousey brown feathers and reddish chest. The poor thing was perfectly centered on her pillow as if laid to rest there.

  Dazed, she took a few steps back and bumped into her dresser. "Eli!" she screamed. "Eli, could you come in here, please? Now?"

  He'd left here mad at her, then returned with something in a rolled-up plastic bag. But she couldn't believe he'd do something this sick, no matter how angry he was at her.

  "What is it?" he called.

  She grimaced at the sight of all the flies picking at the dead robin on her pillow. "Um, come in here, please," Sydney repeated. She was getting so upset, she couldn't breathe right. "I need you to look at something...now."

  Eli came to her door. "What's going on?"

  Sydney pointed at her bed. "Are you responsible for this?"

  He glanced over at her pillow and winced. "Oh, God, gross!"

  "You didn't put it there?" she pressed.

  He scowled at her, "No, of course not!" He looked at the dead robin again. "Jeez..."

  "Well, it didn't just fall out of the sky and land there dead," she argued. "You sure you didn't put that there?"

  "Of course I'm sure! God, stop asking me that!" Eli glared at her and shook his head. "You think I killed a bird?"

  "I didn't say you killed it. But maybe you found it outside someplace, already dead. I know you were mad at me--"

  "I didn't leave that fucking bird there!" he yelled, cutting her off. "God, I can't believe you'd think I'd do something like that! This is so fucked!"

  Sydney was stunned. Eli had never used language like that in front of her. She saw tears in his eyes. She took a deep breath. "Okay, I'm sorry, but--"

  "God
, I hate you!" he screamed over her. He spun around and stomped toward his room. "This really sucks!" he yelled, his voice choked with tears. "I want to live with Dad! I can't stand living with you!"

  Sydney heard his bedroom door slam.

  Frazzled, she marched out to the hallway, grabbed her purse off the table, and dug out her cell phone. "Well, that's just fine with me!" she screamed. She put the cell phone down on the floor, by his threshold. "Go ahead! Call him! I just left my cell phone by your door. Call your father and tell him you want to stay with him. And while you're at it, tell him you just used the f-word in front of me twice! I don't care how angry you are, you don't use that kind of language in front of your mother. If you pulled something like that in front of your dad, he would have nailed your hide to the wall! Go stay with him! I'll even help you pack! I'm so sick of you moping around and blaming me for everything! Do you think I like this?"

  Eli's bedroom door opened a crack. He glared out at her.

  Sydney felt tears stinging her eyes. Her throat was sore from screaming. She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I accused you of putting that dead bird on my bed," she said in a scratchy, strained voice. "But you left the house mad at me, then returned with something in that old plastic bag and came up here. I didn't know what to think. Anyway, Eli, I'm sorry, I know you'd never do anything that--that creepy."

  He stared at her through the narrow door opening. Crouching down, he swiped her cell phone off the floor.

  Then Eli shut the door.

  "Hi, you've reached the McClouds," his mother's recorded voice said. His dad still hadn't changed the greeting. "Sorry we missed you. Leave a message for Joe, Sydney, and Eli after the beep. Bye!"

  "Hello, Dad?" Eli said, after the beep. He swallowed past the tightness in his throat. He didn't want his father to know he'd just been crying. "You home? Are you there? It's me--"

  There was a click on the other end of the line. "Hey, buddy," his father said. "I was just call-screening..." He lapsed into his Arnold Schwarzenegger impression for a moment: "I am The Screenanator." Then he went back to his normal voice. "So what are you up to, sport?"