Bad Things

by Michael Marshall

  Or, Miss Williams implied, sometimes on one of the children themselves.

  This man didn’t look like a watcher.

  Carol didn’t once see his gaze drift. Either he’d sensed someone was keeping an eye on him—though generally when that happened, a watcher would absent himself from the library very swiftly—or he was just a regular guy spending an unusual amount of a weekday morning wandering around the books. Unemployed, on vacation, at some other unknowable kind of loose end.

  It was now that she was looking at him more closely that Carol began to think she recognized him. She didn’t think it was from Renton, however, and for just about the only time since she’d started working there, she began to wish Miss Williams was around. Either she’d already be on the man’s case, or Carol could point him out and fade back to watch the fireworks. There was supposed to be two members of staff on duty at all times, but budget cuts blah blah blah, and so today this was Carol’s problem and hers alone.

  Assuming it was a problem, and she wasn’t just letting her imagination get away from her. She was starting to feel anxious. She didn’t want to feel that way. Not in her place of work, an environment in which she’d begun to feel comfortable and valued. She wasn’t actually alone, after all. There were three mothers over by the window, a couple of guys over in nonfiction, another sifting dispiritedly through the help-wanted sections of the local papers.

  Carol came out from the desk and headed over to where she’d last seen the man, a cheerful offer of assistance forming confidently on her lips.

  He wasn’t there.

  She turned, confused. Two minutes ago, she’d seen the back of his head and shoulders over here in Art (Oversize). Now he was gone. He couldn’t have left the building. That would have meant going past Carol at exactly the time when she’d been turning him over in her mind. She didn’t get that wrapped up in her own thoughts. Not anymore, anyhow. Not usually.

  She backed out of Art and looked around. Couldn’t see anyone but for the people she’d cataloged before deciding to come over to this side. Except. . .

  Yes. Over in the American History section, a pair of feet was visible beneath one of the half-height stacks, stuck out as if the owner was sitting at the table there. Carol was beginning to get irritated with herself now. So some guy had so little to do that he was making a meal over visiting the library. Big deal. Maybe Miss Williams had a case against these people, but she didn’t, surely? No.

  And she wasn’t scared of them, either.

  She walked quickly across the central atrium and into the stack which led to the American History section. The guy was going to get some goddamned help whether he wanted it or not.

  She found him sitting to one side of the table and looking down at his large, fleshy hands, which were resting comfortably on his lap. He wasn’t holding a book, and as soon as Carol realized this she understood she might have made a mistake.

  “Can I help you?”

  The man looked up. His eyes were the pale end of blue. He was dressed casually, in jeans, a white shirt, and a dark jacket. He looked too large for his clothes, and had the air of someone who was dressing against type.

  “Sir, is there anything I can help you with?”

  Her voice sounded fine the second time, too. Strong, confident— and loud enough to carry to other sections of the library.

  “No, Carol, there’s nothing I want from you. Not here, anyhow.”

  She stared at him. “How do you know my name?”

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small envelope, pale cream, the kind that holds greeting cards. He held this out toward Carol, who saw the name Carol Henderson written on the outside in a flowing hand, but did not take it.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The man stood and walked away—placing the envelope on the table as he left. He strode past the empty front desk (where a young mother stood waiting to check out an armful of books) and through the door to the street, where he turned left and disappeared.

  “Um, miss?” said the mother, when she caught sight of Carol. Carol hesitated, then grabbed the envelope from the table and hurried over to process the woman’s books.

  It was only when the young mother had left that Carol opened the envelope. Inside was a sheet of glossy paper, about six inches by four. When Carol turned it over she realized it was a photograph.

  It had been taken from the opposite side of the street from the Renton kindergarten, and showed Tyler going into the building.

  She arrived at the school twenty minutes later. She’d already called Ms. Hackett, immediately, and been told that her son was fine—but when she got to the kindergarten to see her son doggedly coloring by himself in the corner, for a moment she thought she was suffering an optical illusion, so convinced had she become that her son would have disappeared.

  Ms. Hackett appeared in front of her. “Is everything okay?”

  Carol hadn’t explained why she’d called, or why she was here now, red in the face from running.

  “Fine,” she said. “Just fine.”

  “So . . . why did you want to check if Tyler was here? When you called?”

  Ms. Hackett was fourteen, or so it seemed to Carol, and spoke with the surety of someone for whom the world could be contained between the neat, parallel lines of an exercise book. Someone against whom the universe had not yet turned, biting like a pet turned rabid dog, shredding to blood and bone.

  “My ex-husband’s coming to visit,” Carol lied. “It’s unexpected. I just wanted to check that Rona hadn’t already picked him up—you know Rona, right?”

  Ms. Hackett nodded. Of course she did. Photos of everyone mandated to collect a child—parent and especially nonparent—were arrayed in neat lines on the wall in the staff room. As Carol should know.

  Carol bulled on regardless. “She’s taking him to a playdate this afternoon, and I’m not sure what the address is.”

  Way too much information, she knew. Ms. Hackett’s eyes drifted to the wall clock, which clearly indicated it was some while yet until the time for Tyler’s group to be released back into the wild. The teacher would also be thinking, Carol knew, that any competent mother would know exactly where her child was going on a playdate, would have the GPS coordinates logged with the local police.

  “I’m glad you’re here, in fact,” the teacher said, turning away and opening a drawer. “I did want to ask you about something.”

  Carol didn’t want to be asked about anything. She wanted to grab Tyler in her arms and leave. But that wouldn’t look right. “Fire away.”

  The teacher handed Carol a small stack of childish works of art. “Is this something you’ve taught him?”

  Carol leafed quickly through six or seven drawings, at a loss. What was the teenager in front of her asking? Had Carol taught her son to scrawl randomly over pieces of paper in a variety of colors? Surely that was a standard feature of the underfives?

  She looked more carefully at the last of the sheets and couldn’t see much except what could possibly be a badly drawn stick figure of a dog, slashed across with red lines.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t quite get what you mean.”

  “Well, look,” the teacher said earnestly, and started turning some of the sheets of paper around. “I’m talking about the way that pattern keeps cropping up on other—”

  “I actually don’t have time for this right now,” Carol said, waving at Tyler—who immediately leaped up and came running over. She handed the sheets back to the teacher. “Perhaps tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Though . . . Tyler’s not with us on Fridays, is he? I can check, but . . .”

  “Of course not. Silly me. Monday, then.”

  Carol smiled glacially at the woman, daring her to come out into the open and say what she was obviously thinking. That Carol was unfit. A crazy person.

  The teacher didn’t say anything. Carol took Tyler’s hand and led him out of the classroom.

  “I’m fine, honey," Carol said. It wasn�
�t the first time Tyler had asked, but it was the last time he was going to get a civil answer. “I just thought it might be fun for us to play at home. Won’t that be fun?” She slowed as they crossed the playground, scanning her eyes over the other side of the street. The man from the library wasn’t there, but she didn’t know for sure that it was him who’d taken the photograph. When they reached the sidewalk she stopped completely, carefully looking all around. Everybody looked normal. Except for her, of course.

  She glanced back and saw that Ms. Hackett was standing in the window of the classroom, arms folded. Carol stood her ground, and stared right back.

  “Don’t you look at me like that,” she said, very quietly.

  Ms. Hackett watched a moment longer, then turned away and disappeared into the gloom beyond the clouds reflected in the school’s windows.

  They played a game all the way home, counting their footsteps in sets of eight. As soon as she entered the sitting room Carol noticed a light flashing on the answering machine. She erased the message without listening. When nobody called, nobody listened—and when people pushed their way into your life and handed over threatening photos, nobody listened to that, either.

  She sanctioned a request for half an hour’s DVD watching, to give herself time to think. As Tyler settled on the floor to watch his favorite section of the ever-popular classic The Incredibles (for about the fifty-billionth time) she watched the street while she thought it through.

  Option 1: Leave.

  Option 2: Stay.

  The decision didn’t take long. She was tired of running. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Sometime later she became aware she was still by the window, and Tyler was asking if he could watch the DVD again. Which meant she’d been standing there, what? Twenty-five minutes? More? When she tried to think back over that period it felt blank.

  She blipped the DVD back to the part where the Incredible family went superhero (her son was volubly bored by the parts where they pretended to be normal, having yet to learn that’s what most of life boiled down to) and went to the bathroom to wash her face.

  Feeling better, she headed to the kitchen to make some De-Stress herbal tea, which she’d taken to buying from a health store a few doors down from the library. It tasted fairly weird but the nice-looking, capable woman who owned the shop swore by it, and so Carol now drank it several times a day. As she measured out a tablespoon into the strainer she realized she was running low, and so turned to the little blackboard on the wall to add it to the weekend shopping list. She’d clamped a hand over her mouth before much sound came out.

  Someone had written something on the blackboard, in big letters, firm and underlined.

  COME HOME NOW

  PART 2

  [Faith is] the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

  HEBREWS III

  CHAPTER 18

  By midafternoon I was in a truly heinous mood. Phone calls had established I couldn’t get on a flight until the next morning. Another attempt to talk to Carol on her cell had failed, resulting in me leaving a message on her home answering machine that I already regretted. I could drive down to Yakima to be early for the airport tomorrow—or reorganize it again, and fly out of Seattle instead, or drive the car the seven or so hours down to Marion Beach—but I couldn’t imagine why I’d do any of those things.

  So I kept heading along empty roads through the forest, until I realized that I was going somewhere in particular after all.

  When I got back to Black Ridge I drove through town to the eastern side and parked outside the police station, which stood on the busy road that cut through that end of town down toward Yakima. Inside the station, a heavyset guy of around forty was sitting behind the desk pushing a pen around. His badge said he was Deputy Greene. “Deputy Corliss around?”

  The policeman shook his head without looking up. “Something I can do for you, sir?”

  “I wanted to talk with him specifically,” I said.

  “Regarding?”

  “Keeping his mouth shut.”

  The deputy stopped what he was doing. I realized I was breathing more deeply than I should, and that my hands were clenched inside my coat pockets.

  “Can I help you?”

  A new voice. I turned to see an older man had emerged from an office in the back. He was tall, broad across the shoulders, with short, graying hair. I knew who he was.

  “Recognize me?” I asked.

  He looked calmly back for a moment. “Yes.”

  “You okay with your men gossiping about dead kids?”

  The sheriff raised both eyebrows slowly. Deputy Greene sat back and observed us with the air of someone who’d sensed an average day might be about to become genuinely interesting.

  “Was about to go grab a coffee,” the sheriff said. “Come. Let’s talk.”

  We sat outside a diner down the street. During the couple-minute walk there I had got my hands to relax. I knew I was overreacting, frustration making do with the only outlet it could find. Sheriff Pierce listened impassively to what I told him. By the time I’d finished I’d realized it didn’t amount to a lot. Nonetheless, the policeman looked pained.

  “Phil Corliss is a good man,” he said. “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, probably just assumed that—whoever this woman was—she’d have the sense not to pass it on. Could be his sister. She’s a talker, but Phil’s too close to realize that. I’ll have a word with him.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” I said. “Your deputy was good to us and I don’t mean him any ill will. This probably seems dumb to you. I don’t even live here anymore. But . . .”

  “Doesn’t seem dumb at all,” he said, shaking his head with finality. “The business of law-abiding people is their concern and no one else’s. Not even mine, thankfully. So where are you living at now?”

  “Oregon,” I said. “My wife is over in Renton.”

  “Separated?”

  “Divorced.”

  He nodded. “Terrible thing happened to you people. I’m not surprised it turned out that way.”

  For a moment I suddenly felt very sad. Carol and I had loved each other. Shouldn’t we have been better than this? Shouldn’t I have been, at least? Wasn’t there some other track the train wreck of the last three years could have rolled down?

  This thought knocked the remaining wind out of my sails and I wished I could just get up and walk away without anything further being said.

  Pierce nudged the conversation. “First time you’ve been back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Visiting friends?” I looked at him, and he smiled. “Sorry. Habit.” Talking to him, I remembered something else about Pierce: that, in the hours following Scott’s death, he had seemed something of a father figure, or the closest thing to one that had been available at the time. Quiet and dependable, the person who might stand in the way of you backing helplessly into the pit an event like this opened up. This in turn made me realize that I hadn’t seen my own father since that time. Three years. Nearly a twelfth of my life. How could that be right?

  “No,” I said. I hesitated, and then thought . . . what the hell. “Someone contacted me. A woman. The one who overheard the conversation I told you about. She implied she might know something about what happened to my son.”

  Pierce frowned. “And did she?”

  “No. She’s been bereaved and I think it’s made her a little unstable. Do you know the Robertsons?”

  “Of course. I grew up right here in town.”

  “The woman I’m talking about was Gerry’s second wife. Ellen.” He nodded. “I’m aware of her.”

  “Was there anything weird about her husband’s death?”

  “Nope. Went on a run, blew his pump. Which is why I take care to never go above a walking pace. Don’t see the sense in giving death a helping hand.”

  “Very wise. And that’s all she wrote?”

  “Just one of those things. You ever get to the bottom of what h
appened to your boy?”

  “No,” I said. “And I don’t suppose I ever will.”

  “Could be there’s no bottom to be found,” Pierce said. “Sometimes there isn’t. Stuff happens, and that’s all there is to it. As a police, you learn that.”

  I shook his hand and walked away down the street, leaving him to finish his coffee in peace.

  I killed a couple of hours walking around town. I hadn’t meant to.

  The truth is, I got lost. That doesn’t happen to me often. I have a good sense of direction and Black Ridge is not a large place. Unlike pretty much every other settlement of its age, however, whoever laid the place out clearly hadn’t believed the right angle was king. I felt tired and as if whatever energy I had was seeping into the ground as I walked. The whole town felt pretty much the same way—perhaps literally. Streetlights flickered. As I passed a tired-looking diner on a side street, all its interior lights went off at once. They came back on again. Through the window I saw the lone customer and a waitress look at each other. It was impossible to tell what the look communicated, if this was business as usual.

  By the time I got back to the motel it was full dark. I sat on the bed and flicked around television stations that seemed to have been conceived with someone else in mind. I couldn’t convince myself I was hungry. Instead I found myself cradling my phone in my hands, considering phoning my father but wondering what good could come of it.

  Fathers are often portrayed as distant, eyes and attention constantly elsewhere. It wasn’t until I’d become a parent myself that I realized this might be because fathers may be tired, bored, and mired in an existence they don’t understand. Our culture is rife with parenthood porn, the idea that children are bundles of innocent joy and our love for them should be unconfined—keeping silent about the fact you may occasionally wish to bang their head, or your own, against a wall. Resisting this urge is precisely what makes the bond between the generations so strong, but sometimes you want to do the banging nonetheless.