by Mike Ramon
Chapter Eleven
It started raining at sunrise, and by ten o’clock, though the rain had slackened off to occasional drizzle showers, the streets of Cedar Falls were slick and glistening, and shallow puddles had formed in potholes and along sunken curbs. The sound of crickets, what often seemed like the ever-present background music of summer in the Midwest, was absent as the insects took shelter from the soggy morning. Parks, front lawns and backyards were mostly deserted as people chose to stay in on a gray day.
Tom parked in front of a McDonald’s five blocks away from Frankie’s house and started walking, the hood of his raincoat raised despite the fact that it wasn’t currently raining. The sky was a cold slab of granite. It was a chilly day, and Tom walked with his hands stuffed in his pockets. A few cars passed him as he walked a wet cement path that led him to the house behind Frankie’s, which sat facing the next street over from the one the Gardener’s lived on. This had been part of the half-assed plan he had come up with the previous day after talking with Patricia. He didn’t want to risk being seen by Frankie’s parents, who might recognize him, raincoat or no raincoat, and so he made up his mind to approach the Gardener home indirectly.
He stood in place for a second, scanning the street for any watchful eyes. When he was convinced that the coast was clear he cut across the side yard of the house; as he ran through the backyard he shot a glance at the yard, hoping this family didn’t have a dog, or if they did, that it was the cute and cuddly kind, not the rip out the throat of all trespassers kind. He didn’t see any dogs, or a doghouse, so he thought he would be all right.
At the point where this house’s backyard ended and Frankie’s backyard began there was a short wooden fence. Tom planted his hands on the top rail and vaulted himself over; when his feet hit the sodden ground they slipped out from under him, and he found himself lying on his side, his face planted in the mud. He pushed himself slowly up to a sitting position, wiping some mud from his face. He looked at the back window of Frankie’s house to see if his slip-and-slide routine had attracted anyone’s attention, but he didn’t see anybody peering out from any of the windows. That was good.
Tom stood up cautiously, testing his right ankle, which had twisted considerably when he lost his footing. It was sore, but he didn’t think he had a sprain. He walked around to the side of the house, crouching low, below window-level. He crouched beneath the first window he came to for a moment before lifting himself up slowly to peek in. The room he was looking into looked like the master bedroom, not the room of a twelve year-old boy. Tom crouched down again and duck-walked to the next window. When he tried to look in the window he found that the glass was opaque and pebbled, and he couldn’t see inside; Tom figured it was a bathroom window.
There was one more window on this side of the house. He moved to this last window and looked in. The curtain was only parted about three inches, but he was able to see Frankie sitting at a desk, staring at a computer with his back to the window, a pair of headphones settled on his head. From Tom could see of the room the boy was alone. He tapped lightly on the window, but Frankie didn’t hear him. Tom tapped again, a bit louder this time. Still, Frankie didn’t seem to notice.
“Crap,” Tom said to himself.
He tried again, but instead of tapping he rapped the window twice with his knuckles, two sharp knocks. Frankie jumped in his seat a little, startled at the intrusion. He twisted around in his chair and looked at the window, staring at Tom for a moment as if he were a stranger. Tom put his hood down so Frankie could see his face better, and the look of confusion (tinged with a slight hint of fear) disappeared from the boy’s face.
Frankie took his headphones off and set them on the desk, then got out of his chair and came to the window. He unlatched the window and lifted it up at far as it would go, then leaned down through the opening. Tom was still crouched low.
“What are you doing?” Frankie asked.
“I came to talk to you.”
“That much is obvious. What I mean is, why are you here at my window? I do have a front door, you know?”
“I…I, uh….”
Tom was starting to feel just a little bit ridiculous.
“I guess I didn’t want to have to explain to your parents why I needed to talk to you alone. I thought it would seem…well, a bit creepy.”
“You’re right,” Frankie said. “Sneaking around and knocking on a twelve year old boy’s window is far less creepy.”
Frankie laughed, but there was no meanness in it.
“Come around to the front door. My parents are gone. My dad’s at work, and my mom left yesterday to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Milwaukee. She won’t be back for a few days.”
Frankie shut the window and latched it, and Tom stood up. He walked around to the front of the house. When he got to the front door it was already standing open. He wiped his muddy shoes on the doormat before going into the house and shutting the door. Frankie was sitting in the same La-Z-Boy he’d sat in when Tom first met him.
“What happened to you?” Frankie asked. “Your coat is all muddy.”
“Yeah, I fell…”
He didn’t finish the sentence: when I hopped over a fence. That little feeling of ridiculousness had escalated to full-blown embarrassment. Leaving the sentence unfinished Tom took off his coat and hung it on a peg near the door, kicked off his shoes and took a seat on the couch. There was that feeling of déjà vu; it felt like the first time he and Frankie and met.
“I was wondering when I would hear from you again,” Frankie said. “It’s been almost a week since we met at the park. I was starting to think that you had forgotten about me.”
“Sorry,” Tom said. “I’ve been dealing with…things.”
Tom took a deep breath, and then he started to talk. He didn’t stop until he had filled Frankie in on everything that had happened since they had met last. He told Frankie about Patricia, and about her missing husband, about the dreams that she and Frankie had in common, about the history of the Home that he and Patricia had managed to dig up, about the missing kids, and about the incident at the library. He told Frankie about his own dream of the man whose name he knew to be Walter, and how he had found confirmation at the Open Arms Home for the Displaced that the dream was not merely a dream, that Walter was real and was missing, and that his “dream” was really a vision of something that actually happened. As Tom spoke the look on Frankie’s face turned from one of quiet interest to one of shocked horror, and finally to one of stout resolution. When Tom had finished his story a palpable silence hung between them for a minute. It was Frankie who broke that silence.
“We have to do something,” he said. “Whatever that building--that thing--is, we can’t let it get away with it. We should burn the fucker down.”
The boy’s eyes lit up at the thought, and Tom could tell that Frankie was picturing it in his head: the Home all aflame, whatever presence dwelt within its archaic walls screaming in agony as it faced, at last, its own death.
“What about your sister?” Tom asked. “Shouldn’t we try to find Jessica first? That’s what you said you wanted to do when we met at the park.”
Frankie didn’t say anything at first; he just stared off into some unknown void, his face tortured.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to find her,” he said. “Whatever happened to her in that place…I don’t think she’s coming back.”
Frankie looked at Tom with that tortured, sad look in his eyes, as if he were seeking confirmation of that most dreadful thought, which would bring an end to the agony of the unknown…but would also be the end of hope. Tom chose hope.
“We don’t know anything for sure, Frankie. There’s still a chance that she’s in there somewhere. And if she’s still in there, there’s a chance that we can find her. I believe that.”
A single, solitary tear traced a path down Frankie’s cheek and Frankie wiped it away with the back of his sleeve.
“Listen, Patricia’s been communicating with this gu
y named Harry…damn, I still don’t know his last name. This guy is a…”
Tom racked his brain trying to remember the term that Patricia had used, fighting the urge to use his own pet term, “ghost buster”. It was on the tip of his tongue, but like all such thoughts he sensed that it was slippery as a greased up pig, and might shoot away beyond his grasp at any moment, not to return until he had no use for it anymore.
“Paranormal researcher,” he spat out, the words floating up in his memory. “She says that he wants to come out here and take a look at the place. Maybe he can help us find some answers.”
Frankie looked uncertain.
“Do you really think he can help us?” he asked.
Tom thought about it.
“Patricia seems to place a lot of faith in him.”
Which, of course, wasn’t really an answer, but Tom thought it best to keep his doubts to himself for the moment. Frankie sat all the way back in his chair, using the tips of his toes to rock himself gently back and forth, thinking, computing all of the information he just been given. Doubt entered into Tom’s thought flow, and he wondered whether he should have shielded the youngster from some of what was going on, but he disregarded the idea quickly; Frankie had a much more immediate connection to all of this than Tom had, and surely deserved to be kept fully in the loop.
“So we’re going to wait for this dude who Patricia’s been talking to,” Frankie said. “Then what? What if he doesn’t have any answers?”
“I don’t know, Frankie. I guess we’re going to have to cross that bridge when and if we come to it. For right now, I think it’s best if we all sit tight and wait.”
Frankie nodded his head almost imperceptibly.
“I’m not going to go off on my own to that place, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said.
Tom didn’t say it, but that’s exactly what he had been thinking of.
“Now that you’re all caught up on the situation, I’d better get going,” Tom said. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah; I’m fine,” Frankie said.
Both of them stood, and Frankie followed Tom to the door. Tom put his shoes on, took his coat down from the peg and slipped it on. Frankie opened the door for him and Tom stepped out onto the stoop.
“Thanks for coming,” Frankie said. “I appreciate the fact that you’re keeping me involved.”
“What else could I do? I’ll see you again soon, Frank.”
“Don’t go playing around in any more mud,” Frankie shot at him as he closed the door.
“Smart ass,” Tom whispered, but he had to admit it was pretty funny.
When he got about halfway to the McDonald’s where he had left his car parked his cellphone chirped in his pocket. Tom pulled the phone out and stared at the screen; it was an unknown number. He answered it.
“Tom speaking.”
“And this is Frankie speaking. Just so you know, this is my cell number. My parents bought me this phone for my birthday last April. Now you can get in touch with me without having to go sneaking around backyards. Talk to you later.”
“Later,” Tom agreed.
Frankie hung up and Tom saved the number to his directory, feeling stupid for not thinking to ask the boy a simple question like, “Hey Frank, do you have a phone I can reach you on?”
As he started walking again a light rain started coming down, and Tom put his hood up. When he got to the McDonald’s he went inside and bought a large coffee, then went back out to his car. He thought for a while in the car as he sat and drank the coffee. When he was finished with it he opened his window and tossed the empty cup into a nearby trash can. He started the car and drove out of the McDonald’s parking lot, then headed for the Review offices. He had resolved to put in an appearance, even if he was only going to spend the day playing solitaire on his computer. Maybe he would even dig up some fluff story to write about to keep Charlie off his back.