by Jerry eBooks
“Oliver!” I called in through the open doorway. I could see nothing inside—just pitch blackness. “Hey, Oliver! Are you in there? Are you okay?”
My voice echoed off the walls inside the house, but then faded to nothingness. I listened. Not a single sound came from within that house . . .
I turned around, gripped by terrifying certainty that Jeremy and Cyn had fled, leaving me all alone. But there they were, standing together in the middle of the street, looking up at me. I hurried down off the porch and over to them, my heart strumming feverishly in my chest. “I called but he didn’t answer,” I said, frightening myself even more by the reedy, whiny quality of my voice. “I don’t know what happened.”
“What do we do?” Cyn asked, her eyes volleying between Jeremy and me.
“Maybe he’s messing around with us,” Jeremy said, though he did not sound convinced. “Like, maybe he’s in there hiding, waiting for us to come in so he can jump out and scare us.”
It didn’t seem likely.
“We need to go home and tell my dad,” I said finally.
Jeremy’s eyebrow knitted together. “That’s a bad idea.”
“You got a better one? You wanna go in there and look for him?”
“No . . .”
“Then we’ve got no other choice.” I snatched my pillowcase back from Cyn, who jumped at the suddenness of my action.
The three of us headed straight for Luther Avenue, not stopping along the way, and cutting through people’s backyards when we knew the shortcuts. It was closing in on nine-thirty when we finally reached my house. The streets had grown empty at this deepening hour, and there were bits of candy strewn about the sidewalks and on people’s lawns. As I opened the front door, Jeremy said, “I’m not going in.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m going home.”
“We gotta tell my dad what happened!”
“You tell him. It was your idea about the house anyway, Brian.”
“You wanted to ditch him,” I protested.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m going home.” He cast his eyes down then slumped off the porch. He lived only two blocks over, not far, but when he hit Luther Avenue, he started to run.
I exchanged a look with Cyn. “You wanna go home, too?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was small.
“Go, if you want to.”
I turned and went inside, calling immediately for my father. He came down the hall and into the foyer, wearing a sweater with black cats on it. He was smiling until he saw the panic in my face. “What is it, Bri?”
“We lost Oliver,” I blurted.
“What do you mean you lost him?”
“He went into that old house on Cottage Lane, but he never came out. We waited around and I called to him but he never came out.”
My father’s eyes flitted past me and toward the front door. I spun around, hoping to find Oliver standing there in his sheet, but it was only Cyn. She looked too frightened to move from the stoop. My father waved her inside then told us to sit down on the couch. My mother appeared over the half-wall, plastic spiders pinned into her hair. She asked what was going on.
“Call the Toomeys and tell them to come over,” said my father. Then he came over to the couch and said, “Maybe he went home.”
“Yeah,” I said, hoping it was the truth, but not believing it. We would have seen him leave the house. Jeremy had been watching the back door. Nonetheless, I held out hope.
Yet this hope was dashed the moment Eric and June Toomey filed into the house without Oliver. June looked frantic and Eric had a stoic, medicated look about him. He came over and sat down between Cyn and me on the couch, but he didn’t say a word.
“What happened?” June said, first to my father and then to my mother. “Where’s Oliver?”
My father relayed what I had told him. When he’d finished, June looked at me. She was visibly shaking. “He doesn’t know the neighborhood,” she said. “He’s probably lost, wandering the streets.”
“I’ll call the cops,” said my mom, who departed for the kitchen.
“Why in the world would he go into that house?” Eric Toomey said.
My father looked at me. I held my gaze on him for perhaps two heartbeats before I had to turn away. My face felt suddenly very hot.
Less than ten minutes later, two police officers showed up. They asked questions of my father and then of the Toomeys. When they asked what Oliver had been wearing, June Toomey said flatly, “A bed sheet. A goddamn white bed sheet. He was a ghost.”
In a softer voice, Eric Toomey said, “The boy has problems. He’s got special needs.” His dead eyes looked over at the police officers. “You should know that, I think.”
“We’re gonna head out to the house,” said one of the officers to my dad. “I’d like to take one of the kids with me, talk to them, if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure,” my father said, his eyebrows arching. “Should I come, too?”
“No problem,” said the other cop.
My father waved me up off the couch. “Come on.”
“What about me?” Cyn said.
“You stay here with me, sweetheart,” said my mom. “We’ll call your parents.”
Sedately, Cyn nodded.
My father and I followed one of the cops out to the patrol car, while the other cop stayed inside and asked more questions. The cop opened the passenger door for me. “Why don’t you hop up front so we can chat? Brian, right?”
I nodded and climbed inside. My dad got in the back.
Once we had pulled out onto Luther Avenue and were headed toward Watchtower Street, the cop asked me to tell him again what had happened. I started to tell the same story Cyn and I had told back at the house when the officer cut me off in midsentence. “So you’re saying your friend Oliver just decided to go into the house by himself? You guys weren’t daring him or anything like that?”
“Well . . . ,” I said.
“I need to know the truth if we’re going to find your friend,” said the cop.
I looked out the passenger window, and at the glowing jack-o’-lanterns on all the porches as we drove by. The older kids were out now, safety pins in their shirts, black makeup over their eyes, tattoos. Some sat on cars parked up on lawns, drinking soda and smoking. They pointed to the police car as we drove by.
“Okay,” I said, and told the truth.
When we reached the house on Cottage Lane, the officer took a flashlight out of the glove compartment and got out of the car. He went up to the house, completed a full circuit around the property, then went in the front door. I saw the flashlight’s beam come slanting through the boards that had been nailed up over the windows.
I glanced up and saw my father’s reflection in the rearview mirror. His jaw was set and his mouth was nothing more than a lipless gash just below his nose. When his eyes met mine, he looked quickly away, ashamed of me. He said nothing for the entire time we sat in the car together.
The cop returned a full ten minutes later. Sighing, he tossed the flashlight back into the glove compartment then geared the car into Drive. “There’s no one in that house,” he said. His demeanor had changed.
By the time we arrived back home, Mrs. Cristo’s convertible Sebring was parked outside. As I got out of the police car, Cyn came out of the house, followed by her mother, and marched over to the Sebring without casting even the quickest glance in my direction. My mom stood in the doorway, her arms folded, looking cold and very thin. Apparently, the Toomeys had gone to the police station to fill out some paperwork. It promised to be a long night for them.
I went into the house and straight up to my room, where I dropped down on the bed and buried my face in my pillow. My father’s voice ghosted up through the heating vents as he spoke with the police officer in the foyer. Once the cop left, it was my mother’s voice that dominated much of the conversation.
After a while, I heard my dad creaking down the hallway toward my roo
m. He opened the door and poked his head inside, where he remained for some time. I still had my face buried in the pillow, but I could sense him there like a spirit at my back. Eventually, he came over and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Roll over,” he said. “Look at me.”
I rolled over and looked at him. My vision threatened to double.
“That story you told in the police car,” said my dad. “Never in a million years would I have guessed that my son . . .” Disgusted, he let his voice trail off. It wasn’t necessary for him to complete the thought. I felt horrible enough as it was. “Have you told the police everything?”
I merely nodded, not trusting my words.
“If there’s something else, you better tell me now.”
I shook my head.
“Speak,” said my father.
“There’s nothing else.”
“All right.” The bedsprings squealed as he stood up. “We’ll talk more about this in the morning. You better pray they find that boy,” he said, and left.
But they didn’t.
They didn’t find that boy.
I was questioned several times by the police, each time more thoroughly than the previous times. Cyn and Jeremy were questioned, too. Intimidated by the cops’ authority, they did not bother lying. In the end, we all told the same story. We all told the truth.
The house on Cottage Lane was searched more thoroughly, too. The cops used dogs, and my parents, along with the Toomeys, joined in the search. But it was futile. There was no evidence found that even suggested Oliver had ever gone into the house. He certainly wasn’t still there, hiding.
One Sunday, as we drove home from church, my mother said out of nowhere, “You should have never forced him to play with all those kids.”
My father, who was driving, glanced quickly at her, a look of surprise on his face. Then he turned back to face the road.
“They’re all problem kids,” said my mom. “What did you expect?”
“They were just kids,” said my dad.
“He could have just run away. Did anyone ever consider that?”
“It’s possible,” my father said.
“It’s the Toomeys’ fault, too,” my mom went on. “This is a nice residential neighborhood. Who do they think they are, bringing children like that onto our street?”
“Geri,” said my dad, his tone placating.
“Don’t give me that,” she spat. “There’s enough blame to go around. No one’s hands are clean in this, Roger.”
My dad’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. A confusing mix of compassion and disappointment greeted me.
“Maybe he’ll show up eventually,” said my dad as we pulled into the driveway.
But like I said, he never did.
Unless . . .
There’s that old chestnut—a verbal crutch of sorts—that goes, I told you all that to tell you this, and I suppose that’s the point we’ve reached in this story. I’ve told you all that to tell you this:
That a year has passed since Oliver disappeared in the house on Cottage Lane. In that year, I have changed quite a bit. For one thing, I no longer hang out with Jeremy Beachy. We hadn’t spoken since that night, when he left Cyn and me standing on my front porch to face the music on our own. I’m sure he was scared and acting out of impulse, and in truth I don’t really blame him for it; but the sight of him sickens me, because I see myself reflected in him. I see the way I may have provoked that girl into biting me on the arm, and how I teased the kid with all the hats in the A&P bag until he would cry. I remember one afternoon, troubled by that blank ghost-face peering down at me from the dormer window of the Toomey house, when I gave that little girl the finger. Most of all, I see the way I teased Oliver and tricked him and tried to scare him. Funny, how he wound up scaring us instead.
I still see Cyn at school, but she doesn’t come over to the house anymore. Perhaps she sees herself reflected in me the same way I see myself reflected in Jeremy.
The Toomeys still live next door. Since Oliver, they haven’t brought in any new kids. I hope they do eventually, because I could use the opportunity to absolve myself by changing my behavior. Maybe some of it is what happened with Oliver; maybe some of it is just a part of growing up. I’m thirteen now. I’m responsible for the stone I throw and the windows I break.
And then there’s my dad. I won’t be dramatic and say that, since that incident, he has looked at me differently, because that’s not the case. True, I had disappointed him. True, it took some time to earn his trust again. But I did earn it back, and we share a good, strong, close relationship. My father is a good man, and it’s funny how it took all these years to understand what that means.
So here we are, one year later, Halloween night. I didn’t go out this year. I’m too old for that. Instead, I stayed home to hand out candy while my parents, dressed as Popeye and Olive Oyl, went to a party a few blocks over. Around ten-thirty, well after all the ghosts and witches and goblins have made their final rounds and ventured back home, I heard a knock at the front door. There was some candy left in the bowl, so I answered it.
A ghost stood on the other side of the door. It was a person just slightly shorter and thinner than me draped in a single white sheet with two eyeholes cut into it. The sight arrested me, and I stood there without moving, the bowl of candy gradually growing heavier in my hand.
A hand emerged from beneath the sheet, holding open an empty plastic Ziploc bag. The fingers of the hand were small and white, but there were crescents of black grit under the nails. There were specks of dirt on the plastic bag, too.
Finding my momentum again, I reached into the candy bowl, snatched up a handful of goodies, and dumped them into the ghost’s bag. Apparently satisfied, the bag retreated back beneath the sheet. Yet my visitor did not move away from the porch. I stared at those two dark eyeholes, dark as roofing tar. Listening, I could hear the visitor’s respiration, thin and wheezy, behind the sheet. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.
The ghost turned and padded down off the porch. I watched it cross the yard and head down the driveway. When the sheeted figure reached Luther Avenue, I expected it to blink out of existence, but it didn’t. It continued up the block, the reflective tape shimmering with moonlight on the sides of the costume, in the approximate direction of Cottage Lane.
THE END
The knocking began a week after Roger moved in.
He’d arranged for the job and the apartment before his discharge, hardly a challenge after fifteen years managing on and off base services from posts all over the world.
Big city, because he was used to being around a lot of people. In a place far from anywhere he’d ever been stationed, to try something new. Furnished, because the Air Force had always provided.
The landlord liked veterans. He had family in the military and kept one or two smaller places in his properties for retired servicemen and women. Pensions guaranteed the rent, and carefully vetted candidates made responsible tenants who kept an eye on things. He liked single vets with uncomplicated histories.
Roger started working at the pop-up costume store the day after arriving in town. Halloween guaranteed he’d be busy, and he already had another manager’s job lined up at a department store for the Christmas season. That gave him time to line something up long-term, if he could see himself living in this part of the country for a while.
It was hard to see living anywhere out of uniform, out of the service. Without a mission. It was even harder to live with the hurt of no longer being needed.
Every evening, he rushed back to the new apartment to unpack. By the weekend he was squared away—TV up, clothes in closet and drawers, boxes and papers gone, kitchen stocked. Ready for inspection, as if he’d been stationed there for a year.
The single neighbor who preferred being called Mrs. Wise had stopped by one evening when he was taking trash to the garbage room. She’d left her door cracked open, a little wider each evening.
He took the bag, thanked her, headed back to his apartment.
“I put my number in the bag,” she said. “In case you need something. And tell your friends they can ring my apartment. The lobby buzzer doesn’t work for your place. Call me so I can let them in, if you’re expecting them. And if you aren’t, what’s your number, honey?”
“No phone, yet.”
“What’s your cell number?”
“Don’t have one. I don’t have any friends.”
She watched him until he reached his door. “You have one, now.”
He went in. Turned the lock against her need. There were a lot of guys he knew who’d take her up on whatever she had to offer. Hit it and quit. But she didn’t have what he needed. And he couldn’t give her what she wanted. No one could. Not ever. There was nothing there for him, just more empty promises. And a reminder of why he’d joined the service, given himself to service, all these years.
The next day, he put her empty Tupperware back in the bag and left it at her door. The food went out with the trash.
The super came by about the lobby buzzer. “Mrs. Wise sent me,” he said. “But it’s a problem in the wiring. I’ll take a look, anyway.”
“How about the door bell?”
“Sometimes we get it working, but the repairs never last. There’s a few others like that in the building. Landlord’s doing renovations one apartment at a time. Yours is one of the old ones.”
“That’s okay,” Roger said. He’d never liked buzzers when he’d lived off-base. Like ringing phones, they seemed like signals disconnected from their source. Who really knew what was on the other end of the line, who was pushing the button? The solid rap of knuckles on wood was a promise of something real like a voice calling out the right name , a hand on the shoulder. A hand, taking his to bring him home.
