The Nobody

by Tom Piccirilli

  12

  The facility cut him loose three days shy of a full year after he’d been stabbed in the head.

  Like they’d told him, his home had been taken back by the bank. The insurance payout was long gone too. They set him up in a halfway place.

  It made him wonder: Halfway to what?

  Toward sanity? The grave? The reclaiming of a life?

  A caseworker was supposed to get in contact with him soon and help him get set up, find a job, get back on his feet as he reentered the world.

  He spent the morning sitting around the place, watching other mental deficients arguing over the television, flipping channels from one kid’s show to another. Nothing else was allowed. Nothing adult, nothing real, because it might upset the loonies.

  Others were reading children’s magazines and religious pamphlets. The entire place was like a doctor’s waiting room. The same boredom, fear, and hopelessness. The tension constantly growing until it consumed everyone.

  Cryer got up and started for the door. Somebody in charge–what were they called?...guards, nurses, counselors?–big guy in a white shirt, dark pants, shiny shoes, put a hand to Cryer’s chest, pushed a little, told him to relax. He wasn’t allowed to leave until he’d met with his caseworker.

  "I just want some fresh air."

  "Open a window."

  All that time in the hospital, the tests, and the fact that, no matter how you looked at it, none of this was his fault, he’d been a victim, and even now he continued to be victimized, all of that and still they had to fuck with him.

  "What’s your name?" Cryer asked.

  "For you, for right now, in this house, it’s Boss. That’s all you need to know." Boss shoved a bit harder, rocked Cryer back onto his heels. "You do what I say, got that? You take your medication on time, keep your room clean, don’t get in anybody’s face, mine or the other folks in the house, and we’ll get along just fine. That’s all you need to do."

  Cryer reached up and took the guy’s wrist in his hand and squeezed. Boss went down to his knees screaming as if he’d been shot. Cryer didn’t know he’d broken Boss’s wrist until he released him and saw the guy’s hand dangling at an ugly angle.

  The other deficients began to laugh and a couple came over and kicked Boss in his stomach, his ribs, his ass. Boss started calling for Mikey and Evelyn. Cryer hadn’t seen any other guards, nurses, counselors around, so he walked through the halfway home and found Mikey and Evelyn getting a fairly elaborate groove on upstairs in the claw-foot tub. They didn’t look like anything was likely to break their concentration for a long while, so Cryer just backed out and went downstairs again.

  Boss was getting the shit beat out of him. Cryer found himself a touch worried that the deviants might kill the guy, so he grabbed Boss and locked him in a pantry closet filled with about eighty cans of powdered milk. If the apocalypse came tomorrow, the maniacs would still have plenty of calcium.

  13

  He had the address for his house, the house of the man he’d once been, where he’d lived with his dead wife and daughter. He shut his eyes and tried to visualize them, the life they’d shared. He searched down through the blackness behind his eyes, going deeper backward into his own skull, trying to get beyond the thrust of the knife that was still somehow there. But he saw nothing.

  Although he couldn’t remember the address, or the area, his body knew the way.

  He had just enough money to get around. He took a bus and transferred to another. It was difficult and not really familiar. He must’ve been a man who drove everywhere who’d still managed to occasionally overhear schedules, see buses go by in half-recollected flits of motion.

  Then he walked.

  He entered a suburban development and saw a number of groups of children playing together in the streets and yards. These might very well have been his daughter’s friends.

  Cryer came to his house. They’d told him it had been sold but it actually seemed abandoned, perhaps taken over by the bank. He didn’t know what kind of job he’d once had, but it must’ve been fairly lucrative. The home was large, impressive, and had been so well-cared for that even now it still retained the look of wealth and attention. He’d been rich, and had still been stuffing his fat face with fast food burgers gobbled down in a parking lot. What did that tell him about his home life? Was it average despite his money? Did he see shame in the face of his wife?

  He tried the front door and it was locked. He put his face to the window and saw empty rooms that meant nothing to him. He walked around the side, through a large wooden gate, and into the back yard.

  A large deck with weather-chipped paint hung off the back of the house and jutted across the yard. There was a pond crusted with dead leaves and algae. A broken trampoline. Dead branches that had fallen during the winter and never been cleared.

  He stared up at what he knew was the second story bathroom window.

  He had no names, not even his own. How did you dig like a dog through your own life when you knew nothing about it?

  Cryer walked back around front, down the driveway to the sidewalk, made a left, and decided to pay a visit to his one-time next door neighbor.

  14

  The fence on the house next door was faux split-rail, made of some kind of hardy plastic that would never need repair. He could see a trampoline in the back yard here too. All these kids in the neighborhood bouncing around like crazy. Limber as hell. He thought his daughter must’ve been disgusted by him, the way he trundled with his fat belly. Weak, bloated, full of insipid vices.

  Cryer rang the doorbell and then gave a tippity-tap knock, his hand moving on its own. Something else from the other life.

  It took a minute before the door swung back to reveal a woman about his age, mid-30s, petite, very pretty, with flowing blonde hair. A name moved across his tongue. His lips tried to taste it. Annie. Annie...Kostler.

  A broad vapid smile was tacked into place on her face. She said, "Yes?" the way that someone who doesn’t want to buy your shit says it while you stand their holding your product.

  He looked into her eyes and saw no sign of recognition. More had changed than the weight loss and the silver blade cutting through his hair. He wet his lips and said, "Annie Kostler?"

  "Yes?"

  That stopped him. He couldn’t even go, Hiya, I’m Abe Fishbaum. I’m Chuck Smith, Joe Evans. It’s me, Annie; it’s your old friend Johnny Guitar. Nick Steel at your service. He couldn’t say anything of significance at all.

  Cryer simply stared, and after a minute tried once more. "Annie?"

  Her face fell and she started to retreat into the house. Nobody needed to deal with trouble on their stoop, some guy preaching his religion, wanting to sell magazines, asking to clean your gutters.

  Then the door stopped closing and was flung open again. Annie Kostler stepped to him and, with her hands held as if she might touch his face, said, "Oh God. Oh my Christ. You’ve come back." Then she spoke the name that he could not hear, could not retain.

  She moved into his arms and hugged him. It felt natural to be held by her, and he vaguely wondered if they’d been having an affair, or were just such good friends that they’d done this many times before, acted this way, during holidays or parties or during rough patches.

  Or perhaps it was true that even now, as Cryer, he had grown so lonely and in need of human contact that he could finally reach out to another person.

  Except he wasn’t. His arms hung around her limply, his powerful hands opening and closing while he waited as Annie Kostler patted his back, pressed her face to his throat, and then drew away. She continued to hold him though, looking deeply into his face, and seeing that he was not the same.

  Tears brimmed and fell in jagged patterns down her cheeks.

  "What did they fucking do to you?" she asked.

  Meaning the killer or the surgeons or the psychiatrists or the guards or all of them?

  She said his name again, the name that was not his name, would nev
er be his name again, but Cryer nodded as if it was his own, as she led him into her home.

  15

  His presence wrecked her. Annie broke down sobbing twice more within ten minutes, before they’d even had a chance to speak much. She sat on the couch and he sat in a chair facing her, near enough for Annie to cautiously reach out and press her finger to knife scar, then thread her fingers through his white patch. She apparently felt very comfortable touching him.

  She suffered through a brief trembling fit, and then put cookies, coffee, and a bottle of scotch out. The bottle she kept close to herself, the coffee in front of him. There was clearly a message in that.

  "We visited you in the hospital," she said. "Phil and I. Do you remember that?"

  "No."

  "I didn’t think so. You stared but didn’t recognize us at all, or didn’t seem to. The doctors said your memory would be permanently damaged."

  "Yes."

  "We came to the private clinic as well. You were...catatonic, I suppose it’s called. We couldn’t bear seeing you like that. That’s why we didn’t come again. I mean...I’m sorry."

  "Don’t be, it’s all right."

  Eyes steeped with genuine grief, she stared at him, afraid to learn exactly how much of the man she’d once known was gone. "Do you recognize me now?"

  "My body does," he said. "My lips knew your name."

  "Your lips?"

  "Yes, but I don’t really recall."

  The truth seemed to both frighten and relax her. Perhaps she’d been worried that he wanted to discuss the affair, if there had been one, or planned on impressing himself into her life in some fashion, since he no longer had a family of his own. Ask to stay in the guest room, throw Phil into a dither. Have her run away with him to the halfway house, live on powdered milk.

  "You actually look good," she said. "Healthy. Fit."

  "Thank you."

  "But you’re so different."

  "Yes."

  "You’re not the person I knew."

  "No."

  "I want to help," she said. "What can I do?"

  Where to start? Where to begin digging like a dog? When he cried, he cried for this. When he bled, he was bleeding for this. This was his mission.

  "They never found who did this to us," he said.

  "No. The police canvassed the area for days. They interviewed everyone in the neighborhood. But they never found out anything."

  "Someone told me there were burglaries in the neighborhood just before the night my family was attacked," Cryer told her. "Do you know anything about that?"

  Annie pointed over her left shoulder, toward the back of the house. "The Russells, two blocks south of us, were burglarized while they were vacationing in Barbados. The police suspected it might be the carpet cleaning crew they used or maybe the pool guy who came twice a month. Turned out to be someone who once fixed their central air unit. He’d hit a number of homes all over the city."

  "Did you ever hear of a possible connection between those robberies and what happened at my house?"

  "No," Annie said. "I never heard anything like that."

  "Think about it for a minute. Does it seem likely?"

  She didn’t have to think about it, just immediately frowned and shook her head. "No. Nothing was taken from your place. And this central air guy, he only went in when he knew families were vacationing. And he never hurt anyone, so far as I know."

  The vicious nature of the wounds and the fact that he watched your family for so long almost definitely proves the crime was fueled by a personal grievance or a presumed personal grievance. This was almost certainly someone you knew.

  "Did I have any enemies?" Cryer asked.

  "Enemies?"

  "At work? In my personal life?"

  She poured a medium-sized glass of scotch for herself, didn’t offer him any. "It’s so strange hearing you talk like this. So distant. Asking me questions about your own personal life. It’s...unsettling."

  He picked up the coffee cup, put it down again. "I’m sorry."

  "Jesus Christ, don’t be. It’s not your fault. It’s just...I wish I was stronger. I feel like...I don’t know what I feel like doing. Crying some more. Screaming. I don’t know what. But none of that would help you."

  Cryer waited but she seemed to have forgotten that he’d asked a question. "Enemies, Annie. Did I have any that you knew of?"

  "No."

  He thought, If we were fooling around, would that have sent Phil over the edge? Could the psychopath have been living next door, all of his bad triggers pulled at once because he walked in and saw my fat naked ass in his bed?

  Spread throughout the room were framed photos of Annie and Phil. Cryer studied the man.

  "Did my wife?"

  "Enemies? No, she managed a flower shop on the other side of town."

  "How about my daughter?"

  "She was twelve."

  "She was gutted."

  Annie remained composed for another minute while she threw back the drink and followed it with another. Then she slowly reached for a napkin, covered much of her face with it, and began sobbing. It wasn’t a sign of weakness but of humanity, of free emotion. She wouldn’t have been feeling as desperate if only he could console her in some way.

  He also realized she wasn’t crying merely for him and his family, but also her own. Knowing that this awful thing happened right next door. That it could have just as easily been her and Phil.

  She snapped out of it quickly, maybe the liquor helped. She dried her eyes, cleared her throat, and said, "No. No enemies that I’m aware of."

  On the mantle was a picture of a young girl, maybe thirteen. The same lovely features as her mother, same flowing blonde hair.

  "Your daughter."

  "Milly. She’s at a swim meet this afternoon."

  "She’s beautiful. Like you."

  "Terrible as it sounds, that’s the real reason why I’m crying. Because every time I think about what happened to you, I imagine how easily it might have been us. How it could have been Milly."

  "Yes. You were home that night?"

  "Yes."

  "You heard nothing?"

  "No.

  The pure brazenness of the killer, the arrogance of that rotten bastard.

  "May I see Milly’s room?"

  "Why?"

  "I don’t know. Maybe it will help me to remember my own daughter. To feel closer to her."

  But there was no real chance of that, because he couldn’t really feel anything at all.

  16

  Milly’s room was at the top of a huge staircase that receded into the bright and silent expanse of the house.

  Moving through a doorway beautifully decorated with prints of celebrities and stills from film–black & white photos of Monroe, Dean, Bogart, and Nixon–Cryer had a strange sense of déjà vu, and his scar seemed to tingle. Maybe because he’d been here before or maybe because his own daughter had shared similar tastes. He had to wonder: Nixon?

  Three cameras were laid out on her desk–two digital and one with ancient flashbulbs. Milly was an amateur photographer with a high caliber of talent. He looked around and let himself waft to and fro into the hundreds of photos adorning her walls. A mosaic of the life and fantasy and interests of a hip thirteen-year-old. Some of the pictures were blown up to poster size, scissored into sections and clipped together to form new and intriguing patterns of subtly conflicted images.

  Medals, ribbons, and awards were arrayed across Milly’s bureau. Trophies she’d won in swimming, gymnastics, and track cluttered her packed bookshelves. Already an old pro and star athlete at thirteen.

  He stared at the pictures. It was impossible to take them all in at once, yet easy and natural to be taken in by them, to feel the inviting vista opening before him and drawing him forward. The smiling faces, the action of these figures and illustrations, the motion of effigy, each portrayal a small aspect of a much larger whole. Annie’s presence pressed against him from behind, advancing withi
n his space but somehow not reaching him, unable to truly touch him.

  "Is my daughter here?" he asked.

  For an instant it seemed he was alone, and was talking to no one, as if she had left the room and perhaps even the house. His voice darted back at him, not quite the same as before. Charged with a kind of new energy. Was it love? Was it memory?

  Annie moved past him, tapped her index finger to a photograph of two grinning girls in pink leotards, hair tied back in ponytails, mugging for the camera. "Yes, right here."

  "Which?"

  The finger touching the dead girl. She pointed out Cryer’s daughter in a number of other photos.

  Standing at the edge of a pool preparing to dive in, gyrating on gymnastics mats, bouncing on a trampoline. "This is her. Here. Here. Here."

  Cryer was soon able to see and memorize the lines of his dead daughter’s face, although he still couldn’t hold onto her name.

  Names didn’t matter. Names had no true meaning. They could be given or taken away with ease. Johnny Guitar knew it. Abe Fishbaum knew it. Nick Steel knew it.

  "She was beautiful," he said.

  "Yes, she was."

  "Do you think it would be all right if I took one of these? Would Milly mind much?"

  "Of course not." She removed a photo and handed it to him.

  The weight of his lost life and death suddenly seemed to land on him all at once. The burden of it hung heavy atop him, crushing down, first shoving at his skull and then the rest of his body. He bowed before it and had to struggle to stay upright.

  Annie sensed his exertion and put both hands on his elbow, drawing him up from the depths of himself. Cryer looked at her, moved as if he might kiss her, and she turned her face up to meet his.