by Peter Straub
He was letting himself get spooked. Those tinted windows were doing it to him, he knew. If he were able to see the driver, everything about the situation would feel different.
Mark turned his back on the pickup and decided to act as though nothing unusual was going on. In a little while, the truck would drive past him. It had to. And if it did not, he would lose it when he turned onto West Auer, because the red pickup would have no reason to follow him when he left Sherman Boulevard. He moved along the pavement, wondering if anyone in the vicinity thought it was strange that a vehicle should follow along behind a teenage boy, keeping pace as he proceeded down the street. In fact, that was exactly the sort of thing the Sherman Park Killer might do.
The corner of West Auer lay fifteen yards ahead. Mark wanted to look back over his shoulder, but he thought it best to ignore the pickup. In a second, in a couple of seconds, it would pick up speed and move off down Sherman. He quickened his pace, not by much, and the truck clung to him like a shark to its pilot fish. Mark moved along a little faster, but he was still just walking, not jogging or running. He was moving a little faster than usual, that was all. He thought someone watching him would get no special impression of haste.
Ten feet from the corner of West Auer, the pickup moved ahead, advancing into Mark’s field of vision, and pulled up level with him. He flicked a glance at it and kept moving. This was getting scary, but he forced himself to keep his pace steady. Out of the side of his eye he checked to see if the passenger window was being lowered. It was not, which helped. Maybe the driver was just trying to frighten him—that almost made sense, if the driver were a rich, bored twenty-year-old from Eastern Shore Drive or Old Point Harbor. Someone like that would get a kick out of throwing a scare into a high school kid from Pigtown.
Pigtown . . . that was a joke, right? Who could take a place seriously if it had a name like Pigtown?
The pickup moved along at exactly his speed. The window did not roll down, but Mark was certain that the driver was looking at him. He could practically feel the driver’s gaze on his body. Then he thought he could feel it. His stomach turned cold.
He came to Auer and executed a neat, military right-face, hoping to make his getaway before the guy in the pickup realized he was gone. To his dismay, he instantly heard the sound of tires turning in behind him. Mark glanced sideways and saw the hood of the pickup gliding alongside him. When the cab came into view, the passenger window was winding down. No, no, he said to himself, I really don’t think I want to have a conversation with you. Heart pounding, Mark burst into a sprint, thinking that he would run between the houses and make it home through the alley.
The pickup shot ahead and squealed to a halt a little way down the block. The passenger door cracked open. Mark stopped running, unsure of what to do. The driver was not going to come running after him, that was obvious: he wanted to sit behind the wheel and say something to Mark. He had something on his mind, and he wanted to share it. Mark did not want to hear whatever the man had to say. He took a step backward.
The passenger door swung completely open, revealing the dark interior of the pickup’s cab and the huddled, massive shape behind the wheel. It was like looking into the back of a cave. The driver was a big, big man, wrapped in a coat that fell around him like a blanket or an opera cape. A squashy, wide-brimmed hat covered his head. He looked mountainous. A big hand fumbled out of the folds of cloth and waved Mark forward.
“No need to be frightened,” said a low, soft voice. “Aren’t you Mark Underhill? I realize this looks a little funny, but I want to pass on a message to your father. It’s about your mother.”
“Talk to my father yourself,” Mark said. The man behind the wheel seemed shapeless and without a face—a huge pile of flesh equipped with a hand and a soft voice.
“I’m afraid I don’t know him. Come a little closer, will you?”
Somewhere, a door slammed. The shapeless man behind the wheel leaned forward and gestured. Mark looked in the direction of the sound and saw, stepping out onto a porch one house up, the University of Michigan football alum who had called him and Jimbo “youngbloods.” The pickup had swerved into the curb directly in front of this man’s house.
“Pardon me,” the man shouted, “but could anybody use a little help down there?”
Before Mark could answer, the man slouched behind the wheel had thrust out his arm, yanked his door shut, and spun the gleaming pickup backward into the middle of West Auer. In an instant, the pickup was speeding toward the next intersection; a second later, it skittered around the corner and was gone.
“Holy shit, what was that?” the man said. “Are you okay?”
“That guy said he wanted to tell me something about my mother.”
“No shit.” The man stared at him for a second. “He knew your name?”
“Yes.”
The man shook his head. “I didn’t get his license number. Did you?”
“No,” Mark said.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” the man said. “But you should probably stay away from red pickup trucks for a while. I’ll call the police, tell them what I saw. Just in case.”
Still vibrating, Mark went home to look up Joseph Kalendar on the Internet.
This is how the Sherman Park murders, which were more numerous than even Sergeant Pohlhaus had suspected, were solved. After a wretched lunch with his brother, Timothy Underhill decided to drive around to see Tom Pasmore before returning to his room at the Pforzheimer. Tom welcomed him warmly, poured out a measure of whiskey, and led him to his beautiful old leather sofas and the shelves of sound equipment. For old times’ sake, he put on a CD of Glenroy Breakstone’s greatest record, Blue Rose.
Tom asked, “Have the police come up with anything new concerning your nephew’s disappearance?”
“No,” Tim said. “But today I discovered that he spent a lot of time fooling around in Joseph Kalendar’s old house.”
“Do you think that might be relevant?”
“I’m sure it is,” Tim said. “Sergeant Pohlhaus said he’d look into it, but I had the impression he was just humoring me.”
“He must like you,” Tom said. “Sergeant Pohlhaus doesn’t have a reputation for humoring people. It might be interesting to learn who owns that house. Who does, do you know?”
“I don’t think anyone owns it.”
“Oh, somebody does, you can count on that. Why don’t I go upstairs and snoop around on my computer? It’s 3323 North Michigan Street, isn’t it?”
Tim nodded.
“This won’t take more than a couple of minutes.”
And that is how the Sherman Park murders were solved: by a single question and a few keystrokes.
21
From Timothy Underhill’s journal, 26 June 2003
This is one of the most remarkable days I’ve ever lived through, and that includes Vietnam. In the morning, Jimbo finally told me Mark’s secret, then Omar Hillyard told me the secret of the secret. In the afternoon, I “assisted” in the arrest, as the police say, of the Sherman Park Killer. One other remarkable event occurred, and it has kept my spirits afloat ever since. Franz Pohlhaus and Philip believe that the mystery of Mark’s disappearance has been almost completely resolved, the final certainty to come with the discovery of his body. (Before that can happen, Ronnie Lloyd-Jones is going to have to admit his guilt and get around to telling Pohlhaus where he buried the rest of the bodies. As of this evening, he shows no interest in doing either.) I don’t agree with them, but for once I’m keeping my opinion to myself. And even if Mark’s body turns up in Ronnie Lloyd-Jones’s backyard, his body is not all that is left of him. Mark said something to Jimbo about the part of Joseph Kalendar that was left behind, and that gives me a way to say what I know: the part of Mark Underhill that was left behind is with her.
Jimbo tried to run when he saw me walking up, but the combination of conscience and his mother brought him back. Margo told me he was somewhere in the house, and the slamming of
the screen door brought us into the kitchen. I followed her out into the backyard. Bustling down the alley, Jimbo looked over his shoulder and knew instantly that he had been busted. He stopped moving and let his shoulders slump.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you,” his mother said.
“Aw, I don’t want to talk about Mark anymore.”
“You get back here right now, young man.”
“I wish he’d of stayed in New York,” Jimbo muttered, already moping back up the alley and into the yard.
“You are going to tell Mr. Underhill everything you know,” Margo said. “Don’t you want to help Mark?”
“Help him do what?”
Margo thrust out a handsome arm and pushed him into the house. “Don’t you talk back to me. Don’t you remember that those boys died?”
Jimbo slouched into the living room and collapsed onto the sofa like a broken marionette. “Okay, I give up. What do you want to know?”
I told him that he knew what I wanted to know—everything Mark had told him about his experiences in the Kalendar house.
His eyes flared.
“What were you hiding from me in the restaurant, Jimbo?”
He squirmed. “It’s not important.”
“Why isn’t it important, Jimbo?”
“Because Mark lied to me,” he said, revealing the core of his reluctance. He felt wounded by what he saw as his friend’s mendacity while wishing to keep it out of sight. This was intensely loyal, and in spite of what Philip had said, I thought Mark had been lucky to have had such a friend.
“Tell me about the lie, then. It won’t make me think any less of my nephew.”
Jimbo stared down into his lap for so long I thought he might have fallen asleep. When he finally spoke, he did not look up until he had come almost to the end of what he had to say.
“He said he could sort of feel that someone else was in the house with him. He called it the Presence. And he said it was a girl. And he was going to go back there every day and wait for her to show herself.
“The next day he said he could hear her moving around behind the walls. Hiding from him. Running away whenever he got close. The day after that, according to him, it finally happened. He said she came out through the secret door under the stairs and walked right up to where he was waiting. She took his hand, he said. Her name was Lucy Cleveland, and she was nineteen years old. According to Mark, she was the most totally beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He said it almost hurt to look at her, she was so beautiful.
“What she said was, she was hiding from her father. Her father did terrible things to her, so she ran away. This was a long time ago. Ever since, she hid out in that house and a few other empty houses in this part of town. Only she called it Pigtown, the way people used to.”
On his third visit after their initial meeting, Mark and Lucy Cleveland had sex together—made love. Jimbo used the word “screwed.” They screwed—made love—on the giant’s bed, Mark told Jimbo. He added that Lucy Cleveland had a way of finding the comfortable places on that ugly bed, and if he positioned himself just as she advised, he could have been lying on his own bed at home.
The second time they made love, Lucy Cleveland told him to put one of his wrists into one of the cuffs on the bed, and when he had done so she fastened the second cuff on her own wrist. Mark said that was fantastic, Jimbo told me. Being bound to the bed that way made the sex even more incredible. Mark said that it was like being carried away on the back of some huge bird, or being swept along by a great river.
“He wanted to spend the whole night with her,” Jimbo said, “but he knew his father would go crazy if he did. ‘Tell your dad you’re staying with me,’ I said. ‘He’ll never check.’ So that’s what he did. And the next morning he came over here from her house and my mom made us pancakes. When she left us alone, I asked him if he was bringing Lucy food, and he said, ‘She doesn’t eat.’
“‘Doesn’t eat’? I asked. ‘Everybody has to eat.’ ‘Everybody except her,’ Mark said. ‘Don’t you get it? She was left behind.’
“It’s all such crap. Last year, Mark told me he had sex with this really hot girl in our class, Molly Witt? Later, he confessed he made it all up. If he did it once, he could do it again. And this time it was a girl I didn’t know, and she was older. But he was so happy! He was completely in love with this Lucy Cleveland. He was sort of glowing.”
Jimbo was wild with curiosity. To accept the existence of Lucy Cleveland, he would have to see her, and he was hungry to know if she was as beautiful as Mark claimed. Jimbo knew instinctively that he would not be welcome in the house if Lucy was there. Could she leave the house? Of course she could leave the house, Mark said. Then take her somewhere where I can meet her, or at least see her, Jimbo said. Mark insisted that Lucy Cleveland would refuse to meet him; in fact, she had told Mark that she wanted to know no one in the world but him. Another possibility occurred to Jimbo. He asked Mark to take Lucy Cleveland out for a walk. Unobtrusively, he would appear on the opposite side of the street, say nothing, and melt away again.
But Lucy was afraid to go outside, and when she did leave the house, it was always very late at night. She feared being seen by her father.
They arranged a compromise that satisfied both of them. At noon, Mark would try to get Lucy Cleveland into the living room. He would tell her something about Mr. Hillyard or the Rochenkos, and she would come near him, which meant near the window, to look at the place he was talking about. Across the street, Jimbo would do his best to conceal himself somewhere that allowed him a good view of the front window.
“I got there about ten to twelve,” Jimbo told me. “I got up beside Old Man Hillyard’s porch and sort of hunkered down to wait. Old Man Hillyard takes a nap right around then, I knew, and Skip was so used to me by then he didn’t pay me any attention at all. A couple of minutes later, I could just barely make out Mark moving around way at the back of the room. He vanished, and he came back again. It looked like he was talking to someone. I assumed he was trying to get Lucy Cleveland to come into the room and look out the window. I really felt relieved. If he was talking to her, then she was there.
“Anyhow, at just about noon on the dot, Mark came across the room and up to the window. He was talking, but no one was with him. Mark gets this big grin on his face, and he’s talking, and he’s looking next to him, and waving his hands around, and he looks really happy. Only there isn’t anybody standing beside him! This stupid charade goes on for a minute or two, and Mark turns away from the window. Before he disappears again, he looks over his shoulder and gives me a thumbs-up.”
Jimbo at last looked up at me. I saw anger and pain stamped into his good-natured face. “I pulled out my cell phone and called him, but his was turned off. So I left him this pissed-off message. When he finally did call me back, I was still angry. ‘Why did you wait so long to call me back?’ I said. He said, ‘I was busy with Lucy.’ ‘You’re a liar,’ I said, and he said, ‘She told me you’d say that.’ ‘Say what?’ I asked. ‘That I was lying to you. You can’t see her, that’s all, not unless she wants you to see her.’ I told him that was the biggest bunch of bullshit I ever heard and he said no, no, Lucy Cleveland wasn’t an ordinary person. ‘I guess not,’ I said, and I hung up on him.”
And that night, which was the night before Mark’s disappearance, he went to Jimbo’s house to try to explain—to give him his story. Lucy Cleveland wasn’t an ordinary person, he said. He wasn’t really sure what she was. But she had been waiting for him; he had called her into being. All Mark really knew was that Lucy Cleveland was everything to him, and vice versa.
Jimbo couldn’t stand listening to this stuff. He yelled at Mark. Mark just wanted him to think he was having sex with a gorgeous nineteen-year-old girl. It was like Molly Witt all over again, only worse, because now he was saying his sex partner could make herself invisible! He couldn’t dream up a more obvious lie if he worked at it.
Mark said he was sorry Jimbo tho
ught that way, and went back home.
By the next morning, Jimbo regretted yelling at his friend. He’d had a bad night’s sleep, and he got out of bed long before the usual hour. After an agreeably surprised Margo had scrambled a couple of eggs for him, he went back to his room and called Mark.
“Good, you decided we’re still friends,” Mark said.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you. What do you want to do today?”
“I’m spending most of the day with Lucy Cleveland,” Mark said. “Sorry. I forgot, you don’t think she’s real.”
“She’s not real!” Jimbo shouted, and managed to bring himself back under control. “All right, let’s do it your way. Are you going to spend the entire day hooking up with your imaginary friend, or just part of it?”
“How about we meet around six-thirty at your house?” Mark said.
“If you think you can tear yourself away.”
For the rest of the day, Jimbo wavered between anger and a puzzled variety of forgiveness. He had the idea that Mark’s lie had been caused, in some way he did not really grasp, by his mother’s suicide. Maybe he was using fantasy to replace her; maybe he was so far gone he believed his own fantasy. Once again Jimbo found himself thinking that it was important for him to take care of Mark, insofar as Mark would permit it. Shortly after Mark turned up at his back door, which was closer to seven o’clock than six-thirty, it became apparent that Mark would allow him only a very little caretaking.
But the first thing Jimbo noticed when he answered his friend’s knock was the blissfulness that shone in his face, and the almost alarming degree of contentment and relaxation radiating from him. The second thing he noticed was that if Mark Underhill appeared to be the happiest young man on the face of the earth, his happiness had come at a price. Mark looked subtly older to him, somehow more defined than ever before, and so exhausted he could have fallen asleep leaning against the door.