by S. D. Perry
The slats hurt her feet. She went down quickly, pausing once when her bag shifted. A fat garden spider, its orange-and-green body an inch across, skittered over her hand, and she almost lost her grip in her sudden panic to fling it off. Her skin crawled, a spasm of revulsion, and then she hurried again, ignoring the strands of web under her fingers, on her bare arms, beneath her bare toes.
There was no drop; the trellis went all the way to the ground. She reached the bottom and stepped away, sparing a few seconds to brush at her hair and body in a brief, dancing frenzy, yah, she fucking hated spiders, and then she was moving across the backyard, mostly dirt and an evergreen hedge separating it from the neighbors’. She went around the hedge and across the next yard before stopping to put her shoes on, leaning against a garden shed. She’d forgotten socks which meant they would stink by this afternoon.
John’s office. She cut through a couple of more yards, skirting open spaces until she reached the corner, out of sight of the house. She told herself she wouldn’t imagine the look on Eric’s face when he realized she’d skipped out and then thought of nothing else on her way down the hill, occasionally throwing nervous looks back the way she’d come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
John’s ten o’clock had canceled last minute—there’d been an urgent early morning call logged with the answering service, one of his clients breathlessly reporting that she was leaving town, no reason given—and though he knew he should be catching up on paperwork and correspondence, he spent better than half an hour just sitting at his desk, staring at his date book. Every page was heavily marked, different inks colliding, updating daily changes. He had a wait list ten deep. He had two new clients he thought would need to be hospitalized, a lawyer on the very edge of suicidal behavior and a young woman who’d begun to hear voices—and a half dozen other clients that he should be seeing more than once a week, based on their most recent sessions. Candice had been trying to keep up, but she’d called in sick three times in the last two weeks, finally tearfully admitting that she felt overwhelmed, that she needed a vacation. He’d given it to her, even knowing that he’d drown without office help. Which was what seemed to be happening.
There had been other cancellations, six since the weekend, and a couple of people had been no-shows. He knew he needed to be going through the wait list, reworking his schedule, but what he really felt like doing was nothing, leaving the open hours free. No client meant nothing to distract him from thoughts of Sarah. He tried to consider the ramifications of Bob’s call, recorded while he’d been with his nine o’clock—he knew he should call the reporter back; they needed to get reorganized, decide their next step, and Bob had sounded depressed as hell, besides—but he found himself putting the call off. He would think of Sarah, and lose a minute or three to intimacies remembered…
“John? Dr. Hanover?”
He’d left his door partway open, habit when he wasn’t on the phone so he could hear the next client arrive; the hesitant voice called from the small waiting area.
“Amanda?”
He stood as she walked in. She looked bad, rumpled and frantic. There appeared to be spiderweb in her hair.
“Your cell’s, like, off,” she said, and he realized that he’d left it at home before going to Sarah, that he’d been unreachable all last night. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d forgotten his phone, the last time he’d been so irresponsible.
Oh, can’t you?
“I’m so sorry. What happened?”
“Oh, so, like, Eric’s going to stalk me. I saw it last night at the thing, and then he shows up this morning and walks into Devon’s house, without even knocking, and I totally took off, just climbed out the window when he went to make coffee,” she said, taking short gulps of air between words. He held up his hands, slowing her down, relieved beyond measure that there was something outside himself to focus on.
She sat on the couch and repeated the story over a bottled water, filling in the particulars. She was scared, and afraid she’d done the wrong thing, making matters worse. He reassured her; considering what she’d seen, worrying about Eric’s feelings didn’t need to be at the top of her list.
“Maybe when he reads the paper, or if his dad reads it,” she began, and he shook his head.
“Bob called,” he said. “The council pulled the paper. We have to come up with something else.”
“What do you mean?” Amanda’s voice rose. “What do you mean, something else, like what? What about the big meeting?”
He shook his head again, and she stood up, her arms folded tightly.
“He’s going to come after me; he’s going to be—maybe I should just talk to him.”
“Amanda, if he’s capable of hurting you, that’s nothing you can change. We’ll go to the police—”
“The cops think we’re crazy,” she said. “And he hasn’t actually done anything.”
“He walked into Sid’s house; that’s unlawful entry.”
She stared at him. “Whoopee fuckin’ doo. You think they’ll hold him based on that? You think he won’t be out of there in the time it takes his father to write a check?”
“Good point,” he said, and she seemed to deflate slightly, as if she’d hoped for an argument. She sat down again.
“So what do I do?”
“What we do, is, we get you out of Devon’s house, for now,” he said.
“I’m not—I can’t go back to the apartment, no way.”
John couldn’t help thinking of Amanda’s mother, Grace, without feeling both sad and angry. Amanda had been loaded down with more baggage than any kid deserved. She was a remarkable girl, not only for her psychic ability—which he believed in, he had not a doubt in the world that she had somehow been gifted or afflicted with extrasensory perception, quite probably an effect of Isley’s agent X—but also because of her maturity, her willingness to extend herself for the benefit of others, in spite of the abuses she’d no doubt suffered as an only child of an alcoholic parent. He wondered what would happen if she left town. Would her perceptions fade? Conversely, if she went closer to the origin of the influence, would her abilities strengthen?
“God, you don’t think he’d try to hurt Grace, do you?” Her eyes were wide. “Or Peter?”
He made himself focus. “Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t think so.” He knew that the majority of obsessive followers suffered from Cluster B personality disorders, particularly pathological narcissism. Stalking was most often a way to express rage, to demean and dehumanize the object of one’s obsession rather than suffer rejection.
“If you’re afraid of him, you did the right thing, leaving,” he said. “You can stay at my house. I have a spare bedroom you can use.”
“But what about Eric? Won’t him being all confused make things worse? I mean, I just disappeared, he doesn’t know what happened.”
“I’ll talk to him, if you like,” John said. “You don’t need to say anything, or even see him again. I’m definitely going to talk to his parents. They can get him some help.”
Amanda looked unhappy when he mentioned Eric’s parents, but nodded. John looked at his clock—his next appointment wasn’t until one—and decided he’d have enough time to pay a visit to Eric’s house. He could stop at Sid Shupe’s on the way there, in case Eric was still hanging around.
“You can stay here, or I can drop you where you want to go,” he said. “But you shouldn’t wander around alone until this is resolved. Do you have friends you can go to, other family?”
Amanda looked down at the floor. “You said I could stay at your house…?”
He hesitated. She’d be alone there…but Eric didn’t know where he lived, or that she’d come to him for help. He’d call Bob, ask him to keep her company until he was done with work at six. The two of them could brainstorm, maybe work up some more ideas about what to do next. Bob could probably stand to feel useful. Getting fired was a rejection no matter what the circumstances.
“I’ll take y
ou there first,” he decided. “We can go get your things from Sid’s later, when he gets home. You should call his cell, by the way, explain what’s happening.”
At her pained look, he added, “And you can tell him to call me, if he wants.”
She looked relieved. “Yeah, that’d be good.”
He locked up the office, and she tried to act casual as they walked to his car, but she was also trying to look everywhere at once, obviously spooked. He felt good about helping her, and it made sense that she and Bob could work together on their small crusade to save Port Isley from itself. What didn’t feel so good was the realization that he wanted to resolve all this now, today, so that nothing cluttered his time with Sarah, so that he needn’t waste a single precious second of their time with explanations, with words. He wanted someone else to deal with it.
Harold “Poppy” Peters, the mayor of Port Isley, went for a walk almost every day, a habit he’d picked up a few months after he’d sold the store. He’d taken early retirement at the age of fifty-four, both of the college tuitions were paid, and they owned the house and both cars, free and clear; he and Shirl hadn’t been rich, but certainly comfortable. Shirl had had her art classes and volunteer work; she’d had two grandchildren to chase on the weekends and some gals she’d gone and had margaritas with once a month. Poppy didn’t like to garden or golf, he didn’t own or want to own a boat, and his only real hobby had been drinking beer while watching football. Within two weeks of being home, it had become his default setting and might have stayed that way except that his lovingly honest wife had come home a little tipsy after her girls’ night out a few weeks after that and commented that his can wouldn’t fit in the La-z-boy for much longer if he didn’t get off it once in a while. He’d gone out the next day to buy a pair of walking shoes, and except for sick days and that time he’d strained his back—picking up a damned pumpkin, of all things—he had gone out walking. Shirl had started going with him, and he had been happy to relearn her way about things, after all the years at the business, going in early, coming home late; the Shirley Anne Edison he’d married had still been there, a lively, eternally optimistic woman. She’d liked to play word games while they walked, or talk about changing her hairstyle, or tell him the plot of whatever courtroom thriller she was in the middle of reading. He had fallen in love with her again and actually had some idea of how lucky he was. They’d both liked to meet people—they were extroverts, their daughter said—and they’d wandered the parks and streets of Port Isley and talked to everyone they met who didn’t mind stopping to chat for a minute or two. They’d always had a wide circle of friends and had quickly started accumulating more—more friendly waves at the store, more horns honked when they were out walking, more neighbors dropping by for coffee or a piece of pie. Not just the local folks, either. Shirl had said it was him, that people knew an honest man when they met him, but he’d known better. Shirl had been the draw; she’d just radiated sincerity and goodwill. People liked to be around her. When he had been approached to consider taking a seat on the city council, he’d been surprised, but Shirl had only laughed and nodded, just as she had when he’d told her that almost everyone on the council was pushing him to run for mayor. She’d believed in him, which had made him believe.
In one of their very last conversations, before the cancer had taken her—it had happened so fast, not four months after the diagnosis—she’d made him promise to take care of himself, to get enough sleep and eat vegetables every now and again and go for his walks. Consequently, even as miserably drunk as he’d been since she died, he headed out for Kehoe or Chautauqua Park every single morning, determined to keep his promise. He could see, now, that he’d been angry with her for leaving, furious, in fact, and because he couldn’t punish her, he’d become a drunk. He drank because he couldn’t bear to be angry with his Shirl, and because he missed her horribly, and because the best part of his life was over.
He might already have been dead—his health had been steadily failing for some time—but in June, less than six weeks ago, he’d been rambling through Kehoe Park at around four in the afternoon (morning walks went the wayside along with mornings), and he’d been soused on bourbon, nothing new there, and he’d tripped over a root and fallen down. He’d hit his head on a thicker root from the same cursed tree and been knocked cold, probably helped along by his passing out. He’d been on a small trail, an offshoot from the main path that ran behind a couple of houses bordering the park; if anyone had seen him, they hadn’t gone for help. He’d slept until after dark, four, five hours later. When he’d woken up, he’d rolled onto his back and looked up at the stars, more or less sober—and everything had changed. He had changed. It was as though while he’d slept the dark, heavy poison in his body, the blackness that had come to him the day Shirl had left the world, had leeched into the ground, leaving him light and free as air. Shirl might have suggested that the blow to the head had finally knocked some sense into it, but whatever the reason, he couldn’t remember ever feeling so calm. So aware of the universe and his place in it.
He’d stayed there for another hour or so, watching the sky, breathing and thinking and counting the shooting stars. He’d walked home and fallen asleep on the couch while icing his bruised temple. In the morning, he’d called Abe Bengston, his family’s doc since Shirl’s first pregnancy, and gotten some advice on how to quit the booze without killing himself. Abe had wanted to check him into a detox center, but Poppy had convinced the doctor to let him handle it himself, by telling the truth—his heart had been broken when his wife died and he’d dealt with it poorly, but he was ready to get better. The truth didn’t hurt at all, he discovered, and neither did letting go of the anger, letting go of the insane guilt he’d been living with for the choices he’d made, the mistakes he could suddenly see so very clearly. Somehow he’d convinced the doc, who had told him how to cut the drinking and what to watch for.
He’d mostly stayed around home since, doing repairs on the house and to his life, taking his walks in the morning again. He’d had hard but important conversations with both of his children, making amends as best he could, making plans to see his grandchildren before the summer was out. He’d fixed the kitchen sink and scrubbed out the bathrooms and washed everything. A number of old friends had left messages for him in the last few weeks, but Poppy hadn’t returned any of their calls; he didn’t want to try to explain what had happened to him, as he wasn’t exactly sure himself. For once in his life, he didn’t really feel like talking.
That was what he was thinking as he walked down Devlin toward Kehoe Park. It was hot, the sun bright. The neighborhood streets were dozing and quiet. He was off to a late start today; it was actually getting close to lunchtime, but he’d gotten caught up going through a box of photos, piecing together a couple of albums to give to the kids. Shirl had been meaning to do it for about a decade, ever since the first grandson, but had never gotten around to it. Poppy had been entranced by the aging snapshots of his family, the Christmas morning pictures, the vacation shots from Yellowstone. He had wept freely, sitting amid the clutter of memories. Without the muddiness that constant drinking provided he was able to miss her, clearly and poignantly, to miss the life they’d had together, to grieve for the years ahead that they’d lost. The feelings were hard, but he cherished them, proof of his time with her, proof that she’d introduced him to the ideas of forgiveness and charity. She had been, and still was, a vital part of his life.
He was still a few blocks from the park when an aging truck pulled up to the sidewalk next to him. The tires ground against the curb as the driver pulled to a stop. Bob Sayers got out of the truck, slamming the door behind him. Come to think of it, Bob had called a few times recently.
Bob walked to the sidewalk. Poppy smiled at him. The old reporter didn’t look well.
“Hey there, Bob,” Poppy said. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” It was, too. The sun was outshining itself. The shade of the park would be cool and green.
; “Where’ve you been, Poppy?” Bob asked. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for weeks. I’ve called, gone by your office…”
“I’ve been home,” Poppy said. As Bob came closer, Poppy could smell the acrid sweat of a practicing alcoholic. He would certainly know. “I’ve been a little preoccupied, I guess you’d say.”
“Do you know what’s going on?” Bob asked. “What’s been happening to people?”
Poppy thought about some of the messages he’d listened to in the last few weeks, the unpleasantries…he’d received several calls from Henry Dawes, Port Isley’s PR guy, even though Henry hadn’t called him at home in better than two years, and there was also what he’d experienced for himself. Something had happened, was happening to their little town, all right.
Poppy sighed. “It’s a struggle for some of us, isn’t it?”
Bob came closer. His eyes were bloodshot. “What do you mean? What is it? Do you know what it is?”
“You mean do I know what’s causing it?” Poppy shook his head. “No. But it doesn’t really matter.”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t really matter?” Bob’s voice rose. “People are changing, acting crazy! People have died, and if no one does anything, more may die! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Poppy could see his grief, his frustration, and felt a great empathy for him. “Of course it does. Seeing people suffer…no one wants that. I’m only saying that we all struggle. Whatever the source of our despair, the struggle is just as difficult.”
Bob’s jaw worked. “So what are you going to do about it? You’re still the mayor, aren’t you?”