The Return

by Bentley Little

  The picture.

  Her pulse accelerated. She thought of that other piece of pottery, with its eerily accurate rendering of her face, and suddenly she was not sure she wanted to see what her father had found.

  But she followed him back out to the family room, where he held up the shard so it was illuminated by the sunlight streaming through the sliding glass door.

  The picture was crude, primitive, in the style of the early Anasazi, although it looked more like the simple renderings of cave art than the more elaborate designs usually associated with pottery.

  It was her parents' house.

  She took the object from him, feeling cold. She glanced from her father to her mother, but both of her parents' faces were blandly calm. Obviously, neither of them had recognized the image for what it was, and for a brief second she thought it was her. She was reading into the picture an interpretation that wasn't there. Maybe she had imagined the depiction of her own face on the pitcher shard as well. But, no. That wasn't the case. She had witnesses. The others had seen her likeness in the artwork. All of them had noticed the strange resemblance.

  She examined the pottery fragment. The specificity of the image unnerved her. The building depicted was a single-story ranch house with a covered side stoop and a centered chimney. Such structures did not exist, had not even been conceived of, during the time of the Anasazi. Once again, the most logical explanation was that this was fake, that someone had painted this recently and planted it. But Al's examination of her previous find had revealed it to be legitimate, and she knew enough about Anasazi art to know that this, too, was real.

  Oddest of all was the fact that she could see a figure peeking out of the front window, a small, simple face that bore no resemblance to anyone in her family. The crazily off-center visage looked like a cross between a clown and a crash-test dummy.

  She was suddenly glad that her parents had not noticed the similarity between the pottery art and their house. It was childish and superstitious, but she felt better for the fact that they were out of the loop, as though not knowing would protect them.

  Protect them from what?

  She had no idea. It was not even a concrete thought, more a vague feeling, but almost immediately it solidified into certainty.

  "You think it's an important piece?" her father asked.

  "Oh, George," her mother said. "Give it up."

  "She seems pretty impressed," he insisted.

  "It's rare," Melanie admitted. She spoke carefully. "Most pottery from this period, from this area, had either no ornamentation or had just a repeating geometric pattern that circled the entire pot. The fact that this is a stand-alone image is different."

  "See?" he said triumphantly.

  "I'll take this to Al and see what he thinks."

  "Go ahead. But I want it back. I found it on our property and it's mine."

  She tried to smile. "Especially if it's rare and worth money, huh?"

  "Especially."

  "Okay," she lied.

  She left soon after, explaining that she was going to meet some friends. Her father said good-bye and settled back into his easy chair, flipping on a football game, while her mother walked her to the door. "You'll be here tomorrow for supper?"

  "Of course."

  Melanie opened the screen and stepped outside.

  "So when do we get to meet this guy?" her mother asked.

  Melanie looked back. Through the mesh, she could see her mom smiling.

  She smiled herself. "I don't want to scare him away."

  Her mother laughed. "I'm happy for you. You deserve it."

  Melanie turned away, embarrassed. "Thanks. I'll see you tomorrow." She waved good-bye and walked down the porch steps. The kids were gone, having taken their kickball game to the end of the block, but old Mr. Babbitt was out next door, watering his lawn, and he waved at her. "How are you, Melanie?"

  She waved back. "Fine, Mr. Babbitt. How are you?"

  "Fine, fine."

  She'd known Mr. Babbitt her entire life, and she used to stop by the house every time she visited her parents, but ever since Mrs. Babbitt died two years ago, she'd stopped. She felt guilty about it, but the truth was that she felt uncomfortable around the old man.

  Still waving, she hurried over to her car and hopped in.

  She spent the next two hours before the date reading the newspapers and magazines that had been piling up, eating a light lunch, taking a thorough shower (just in case), and choosing clothes. Shortly after noon, she picked up Glen at his teepee cabin, and they met Randy and Judi at Denny's. They'd made no specific plans, and over milkshakes and iced teas, they tried to figure out something to do. Bower's lone theater was showing a mid-level action movie that none of them wanted to see; they'd all been to the park and its adjacent "historical museum" more times than they cared to; and window-shopping in the town's small business district had long since lost its appeal.

  "I don't understand why we have weekends off," Glen said. "It seems to me that if there's this big rush to get as much done as possible during the summer and there's a shortage of volunteers, Al would want us to keep working."

  "School policy," Randy told him. "Funding is always contingent on following bizarre and irrelevant rules to the letter, and apparently this time, Al's obligated to work only five days a week."

  "He doesn't mind," Judi said. "He gets to work on his findings, flesh out his report, and every other week he speeds back to Tempe and the university. For the rest of us, though . . ." She shook her head. "No offense, Melanie, but Bower is not exactly a hub of activity."

  She laughed. "Tell me about it."

  The waitress who brought their drinks was not the one who had taken their order, and she smiled shyly as she placed the glasses on the table. "Hi, Miss Black."

  Melanie recognized the waitress as a girl who'd been in her class several years back, though she could not remember her name. She smiled back. "Hello. How are you?"

  "I got married last year. To Dwayne Bunker. Remember him?"

  She didn't, but Melanie nodded. "I'm happy for you."

  That was one of the unfortunate aspects of small-town life: constantly running into old students. When she went to the grocery store, the clerks and boxboys were ex-students. When she went to the movies, the kids in the ticket booth and at the concession stand were ex-students. When she called someone out to trim her trees, they were ex-students.

  That wasn't such a problem for most of the other teachers. Bower Junior High (or "B.J. High" as the more discontented students snickeringly referred to it) had an extremely high turnover rate--Bower was not exactly the garden capital of the world--and it seemed to be primarily a stopover for new teachers on their way to jobs in the cities and districts they really wanted. But she was born here, grew up here, lived here, would probably die here, and even when her students grew up, there was still that distance. She was always "Miss Black" to them, and while they were nice to her and unfailingly respectful, it was impossible for her to develop the sort of easy cameraderie other people had with them. She was only thirty-four, had only been teaching for a decade, but sometimes she felt like an old spinster schoolteacher who was destined to end up alone in an overcluttered house with a townful of acquaintances and no family.

  It was why she spent her summers on projects with people from outside of Bower. If she ever hoped to meet someone, to have a life beyond the narrow boundaries within which she'd been living, she would have to look elsewhere.

  She glanced over at Glen.

  Now she had met someone, and the ironic thing was that it was right here in her own backyard.

  Her own backyard.

  She looked down at her purse on the booth seat next to her, spread open the twin flaps and saw on top of her makeup and sunglasses the pottery shard her father had found. But . . . something was wrong.

  She squinted, bent over to look closer.

  The face in the window was gone.

  The house was the same, but that wild
visage was no longer there. That was impossible, and as she thought about those crudely drawn features, she shivered involuntarily, a short spastic shudder that passed through her whole body.

  "Anything wrong?" Glen asked, looking at her.

  She thought of telling him, but at the last second shook her head, pulling together the sides of her purse. "No," she said. "No, everything's fine."

  Four

  1

  "So how did that make you feel?"

  Cameron looked away from the psychiatrist's steady gaze and shifted uncomfortably in the oversize chair. "I don't know."

  "Were you frightened?"

  Of course, dipshit, he wanted to say, but he simply shrugged. He was only here because he had to be. All of the scouts who'd been at the ranch were required to see a counselor to make sure that what they'd seen hadn't screwed them up. Part of him wanted to confide in the man and tell him the truth, describe what he was really feeling; but another, more logical, part reminded him that there would only be this one meeting, that the psychiatrist didn't know him from Adam, didn't care about him, and would never see him again.

  So he answered the overly personal questions in as impersonal a manner as he could, wanting only to finish the session and get the hell out of this office so he wouldn't have to sit here and dwell on--

  Scoutmaster Anderson's face

  --what he'd seen.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity longer than math class, the psychiatrist stood, smiled at him, and said they were through. The old man shook his hand in a way that Cameron assumed was supposed to make him feel like an adult, but instead made him want to laugh.

  He handed Cameron a business card. "Here is my number. Feel free to call me anytime if you would like to talk. I can tell you right now that you will continue to have nightmares about this incident for quite some time. You may even start to feel anxious during the daytime, perhaps find yourself fearful of places and people that did not bother you before. Scottsdale is not the Rim Country, so there won't be as many physical reminders as there could have been, but just be aware that your reactions and feelings may not be what you expect and may not be something that you can control. So if you need to, you can call me and we can talk about it."

  Cameron nodded. But who would pay for that? he wondered. Psychiatrists weren't free. Probably, Dr. Jeifetz would send a bill to his parents for anything beyond this first visit.

  It didn't matter. He didn't need any extra help. He could handle this. He wasn't a complete wussboy.

  His parents were in the waiting room, and his mom smiled at him and walked him outside to the hallway and the elevator, while his dad stayed behind and talked to the doctor. He wondered what the psychiatrist was saying, what his opinion really was, but Cameron tried not to let it bother him. He needed to get on with his life and pretend that everything was normal.

  Afterward, they drove home.

  There'd been changes in the neighborhood since he'd been away at camp. The biggest and best was that Devon and his gang of bullies had been broken up. He didn't know what had happened to the other boy and his pals, but their parents were still here and they were gone. The rumor was that they'd been arrested for beating up some kid whose dad was a lawyer and were now in juvy. But no one knew any more than that or even knew if that was true. The adults had to know, but they weren't talking. Both his parents and Jay's, however, were letting them play on the block unsupervised, so obviously wherever Devon and his gang had gone, they weren't coming back anytime soon.

  The other change was that the Dunfords had moved out. They'd only been here for six months, so their leaving was no great loss, but it fueled speculation about their house. No one had been able to stay there more than a year since the Abramsons left, and the kids on the block had long cherished the belief that the place was haunted.

  Cameron didn't want to think about that. Not after what he'd seen.

  They pulled into the driveway, and before they'd even gotten out of the van, Jay had ridden up and was jumping off his bike, having obviously been waiting for them to come home. Across the street was another flurry of activity as Stu and his little sister Melinda ran out of the house and came over.

  He was glad to be back, was happy to be in the city, surrounded by buildings and people, instead of being out in the wilderness surrounded by . . . God knew what.

  The Mogollon Monster.

  He was a big hero now. Everyone wanted to hear the story of his adventure at the scout ranch. Even kids he didn't know or didn't like, kids from way over on Third Street, begged him to tell them about seeing the torn face hanging off the tree. The last thing he wanted to do, though, was keep reliving that terrible morning, and in a way he wished he had told Dr. Jeifetz about his dilemma.

  "So what'd the shrink say?" Jay asked after Cameron's parents went in the house.

  Cameron shrugged. "Not much." He swiveled slowly on his heels. "Except that I'm . . . insane!" He screamed and leaped toward Melinda, hands extended, and the girl ran crying back across the street toward home.

  "Good one," Stu said shakily.

  Jay laughed. "Thank God, you're back. It's been a long week having to hang out with these weenies."

  "I'm not a weenie!" Stu said.

  "You're a weenie," Jay told him.

  "I'm glad to be back," Cameron admitted. He realized his mistake the second the words left his mouth.

  Stu saw the opportunity and pounced on it. "So where were his eyeballs?" he asked. "Were they with his face or were they still in his head?"

  Cameron sighed. "Could we talk about something else? Do I always have to entertain you clowns and do all the talking?"

  "Yeah," Jay said, hitting Stu in the back.

  "Hey!"

  "Hay is for horses, mostly for cows." Jay kicked Stu's heel, sending the smaller boy sprawling.

  Stu quickly got back on his feet. "I'm telling my mom!" He followed the path of his sister across the street.

  Cameron nodded. "Thanks."

  "No problem." Jay looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping and no one else was coming. "So where were his eyeballs?"

  There was an afternoon thunderstorm, a monsoon from the north, and Cameron was glad. The kids playing street soccer all scattered to their respective houses, and he, too, went home, ostensibly to get out of the rain. He must have retold his story twenty times since getting back from the shrink's, but instead of desensitizing him to the events, the repetition only cemented the horror in his mind and made it harder for him to think of anything else.

  Luckily, his parents left him alone, didn't bug him about it, and he hid in his room, closing the door and pretending to be playing with his Game Boy. In reality, he sat staring out the window into the backyard, wondering, as he had so many times since that terrible morning at the scout ranch, where the monster had gone and what it was doing. He was acutely aware of the fact that it could have been him rather than Scoutmaster Anderson. He recalled the crunch of gravel outside the cabin, the sickening smell of rotted food. The creature had been close, had passed within a few feet of him, and if it had seen him, if it had known he was awake, it might have gotten him instead. He recalled also how a change had come over the world just before the monster had passed by, how everything had gone silent, how he'd wanted to cry out but couldn't, how there'd been that strange heavy wind. The memory was tactile, specific, not merely a one-dimensional remembrance but a sense-surrounding re-creation of the event that he knew he would be able to recollect at any time.

  And suddenly--it happened again.

  The world outside grew instantly darker, as though a filter had fallen over the window, and the air became thick, liquid. He wanted to run out of the bedroom, but could not move, wanted to call out to his parents, but could not scream. Outside, he thought he saw a shadow in the rain, a hulking figure that should have shambled, but was instead lightning quick.

  The Mogollon Monster.

  Cameron looked away, concentrating on the shelf above the
desk that held his rock collection and scouting awards, trying to ground himself in reality and make sure that he'd seen what he thought he'd seen, that he hadn't just imagined it. His mouth felt dry, and he swallowed hard before again looking out the window. The backyard was empty. There was only the lemon tree, the fence, the old swing set, and his dad's barbecue soft-focused by a heavy curtain of rain. There was no monster, no--

  He saw it again.

  It was standing between the tree and the fence, and this time it didn't look so big. It was the size of a teenager maybe or a short man, certainly not the Bigfoot-like beast whose shadow he'd witnessed a moment before. The rain and the angle and his own mind had conspired to make it appear so large. But its existence was not just a trick of his imagination. The thing was actually there, and somehow the fact that he could see it, even if it was smaller than he'd originally thought, was more frightening than any vague glimpse or ephemeral shadow could ever be.

  He could make out no specifics through the rain-blurred glass, could only see a hairy, silhouetted shape, but he knew that the monster was staring at him, and he was filled with a coldness that seeped all the way down to his toes.

  He blinked, and it was gone. The air was once again normal, light. He could move, he could make noise, and the dark filter that had settled over the world disappeared.

  Cameron fell back on his bed, trying to catch his breath. The monster had followed him here to Scottsdale all the way from the scout ranch. He didn't know how, didn't know why, but he knew it was true, and he wondered if his face would be hanging from the lemon tree in the morning.

  What could he do, though? Tell his parents? Jay? Stu? Melinda? What if that put them in danger? What if it came after them next?

  The shrink.

  Yeah! Dr. Jeifetz. He had the psychiatrist's number. And the monster certainly couldn't track telephone calls (and even if it could, a small part of him said, at least the shrink wasn't a friend or family member).