by R. L. Stine
Lea gasped. “Oh, those poor boys! They must be so scared.”
“Actually, they seem fine,” Mark said, taking a sip of her iced coffee. “You need more ice.”
“You know I don’t like it too cold.”
“The twins said they didn’t see anything. They said they went back to the guesthouse when Hulenberger started to back down the drive.”
“And you don’t believe them?” Her voice rose a few octaves. She gripped the glass with both hands. “The way you said that, you think they were lying?”
“All honesty? I don’t know what to think. I remember seeing them at the top of the driveway. When I discovered the murder . . .”
She shook her head. “Listen, Mark—I know you didn’t want those boys to come here. But they are sweet, lovely boys. And accusing them of lying is—”
“We don’t know what kind of boys they are, Lea. We don’t know anything about them. Yes, I didn’t want you to bring them here. But I’m giving them every chance. And I didn’t accuse them of lying. If they saw something horrible, it’s possible—”
He stopped. Spun around at the sound of a cough. The twins stood side by side in the kitchen doorway.
“How long have you been standing there?” It came out like an accusation.
They didn’t answer. Instead, broad smiles crossed their faces. They dove across the room to wrap Lea in enthusiastic hugs.
“The new mum is home! Mum is home! Yaaaaaaay.”
36
“Where are we going, Daniel?”
“To find the bruvver.”
The twins wore their colorful surfer swimsuits, still crinkly and stiff, and white sleeveless T-shirts that came down nearly to their knees. Their plastic flip-flops clopped on the pavement. Daniel took long strides, eyes straight ahead. Samuel struggled to keep up.
A mail carrier in his tiny white truck waved as he putted past. Samuel returned the wave and watched a chipmunk dart under the truck’s wheels. He waited for the bump and then the squish. But the little animal scampered out the other side.
“Close call,” Samuel murmured.
Daniel didn’t reply. He appeared lost in thought. The blue of his eyes had faded, as if all of his energy was retreating into his mind. Samuel had seen him disappear into himself before.
They turned onto Long Point Road, which snaked along the bay. Samuel’s flip-flop snagged a clump of tall grass, and he had to stop to free himself. The afternoon sun beamed down on his face, making it feel more like July than May.
“Hey, Daniel—wait up! Do you mind telling me where we’re headed, laddy?”
Daniel kicked pebbles into the tall grass along the side of the street. Tall, leafy hedges hid the houses that lined the water. “Ethan’s house,” he said finally. He pointed. “Up there.”
“Ira is swimming there with his friend,” Samuel said. “That’s why we’re walking there? To swim?”
Daniel wheeled around, startling his twin. “Time to get in the swim, right, Sammy? Get in the swim. You know? Rule the pool?”
Samuel started to laugh but cut it short. He could see that his brother wasn’t joking around. “You mean—”
“The new pa doesn’t like us,” Daniel said, a sneer making his features hard. His eyes suddenly ice instead of sky. “The new pa doesn’t want us. The new pa is our enemy.”
“Yes, I know that, boyo.”
“The new mum will do anything for us. But Pa fights her. He shouts at her. He doesn’t want to give us what we want. He is our enemy.”
“Yes. So we keep him busy. I understand what you are saying. But what are you thinking? What does it mean, Daniel? Go ahead. Tell me.”
Daniel stared so intently at his twin, Samuel had to turn away. “What it means is . . . What it means is . . . we don’t have to take our time, Sammy lad. We can make our move now. It doesn’t matter. We’ve no one to impress. We don’t have to pretend anymore. That’s good news—right? You want to rule the pool and rule the school?”
“But if we waited—” Samuel gazed at two fat yellow bees fighting over a tiny blossom tucked in the hedge beside them.
Even bees fight.
But not like Daniel.
The mailman waved again, moving the other direction in his stupid little cart-truck. This time, Samuel ignored the grinning jerk.
“Daniel, we already murdered someone to keep Pa busy. Maybe if we take our time . . . go a little slow . . .”
“Slow is no,” Daniel sneered. He saw the bumblebees, too. He moved quickly, reached into the hedge, cupped them both in his hands, and flattened them between his palms. “Slow is no.” He squeezed his hands together, grinding the bees flat.
“Mum deserves a better man,” Daniel said, wiping his palms on the front of his T-shirt. “Mum deserves better. She’ll want us to rule the school, Sammy. It will make Mum happy. You’ll see.”
Samuel shrugged. His face felt burning hot, not just from the sun. He knew he’d already lost the argument. “What do you plan to do?”
“Test the bruvver.”
“What? Test Ira? You’re going to start with Ira?”
“First Ira, then the sister. We have to show him. We have to dominate him—dominate him to win him over. Right, Sammy?”
Daniel didn’t wait for Samuel to reply. He turned and started walking again, running his hand along the hedge, making bees fly and butterflies jump. “We have no choice. It’s time to start. And we will start by dominating the bruvver.”
They turned and Samuel followed his twin up a smoothly paved driveway that led to a wide three-car garage attached to a white frame house. He could hear the splash of water from behind the house and recognized Ira’s laugh.
“Are we going to swim, Daniel? Can’t we have a nice swim first?”
Daniel kept walking. “We need to test the bruvver.”
“What are you going to do?” Samuel jogged to catch up. He grabbed his twin’s shoulders and spun him to face him. “What are you going to do to Ira?”
A crooked smile crossed Daniel’s face and his eyes regained their deep blue liveliness. “Maybe see how long he can stay underwater.”
37
The lovemaking didn’t seem the same.
Was it just his guilt?
No. Mark wasn’t imagining it. They’d been married fourteen years. Long enough to know each other’s every move.
Fourteen years and suddenly he decided to try another woman. No. Not a woman. A girl.
So, yes. Guilt had to play a part here.
Afterward, cradled in her arm, waiting for his heartbeats to slow and his breath to come easier, tapping one finger on his sweat-damp chest, he pictured the young Lea. Only twenty-two when they got married. What could she have been thinking?
He saw the diamond-sparkle of her dark eyes and remembered how sunlight shone in her hair, softer and flowing down past her shoulders then. What year was it? Yes, 1998. In another millennium. She smelled like lemons. Sweet lemons. When did she change her scent?
Once you start seeing the past, pictures fly at you as if falling out of an old album. Does anyone still keep photo albums?
He saw Lea’s roommate, the lanky, toothy girl with the sexy laugh. Always pushing her coppery hair off her face, twisting it in her fingers, popping her chewing gum with that smile, as if it was some kind of clever joke.
Claire. Lea had moved from Rockford to New York with Claire. Their big adventure. Thank God Claire had a thing for the First Avenue bars, for that’s where Mark met Lea. Very romantic. The two of them breathing beer fumes on each other.
Did she feel the instant connection he did? Of course, it was entirely physical. And what a jerk he must have been that night. Trying so hard to impress her with his stories about college life in Madison, and his studies in psychology. He even bragged about his father being such a hot-shit Park Avenue shrink.
Can you imagine? Using his father? Lying beside her, he cringed. Fourteen years later, he shut his eyes and tried to make the hideous memory go away
.
Claire. Think about Claire. Claire Shiner. Yes. It took this long for her last name to reboot. Claire got pregnant. What did she expect, picking up men in the bars every weekend? Always so horny and obvious about it. She decided to go home to Rockford to have the baby.
If she hadn’t gone home . . .
. . . Lea wouldn’t have needed a roommate. Lea, he remembered, worked as an intern at the New York Press, a weekly giveaway newspaper. She couldn’t afford that East Side apartment she and Claire shared, tiny and sordid and odorous as it was. Would she and Mark have moved in together if Claire hadn’t fucked her way back to Rockford?
All so romantic.
The breeze from the open window made him shiver. He wanted to slide under the covers, but he couldn’t tell if Lea was awake. Don’t move. This is too nice.
Too nice. In bed with Lea in the afternoon. A lovemaking matinee like young people. It seldom happened in this crowded house. He listened to the sweep of the curtains making the sunlight dance across their bed.
Silence everywhere else. Ira was swimming at Ethan’s house. The twins had pulled on their swimsuits and hurried off to join him. Roz had dropped Elena and Ruth-Ann at the Bridgehampton mall. Roz and Axl were . . . He wasn’t quite sure where they were. So hard to keep track of everyone.
So maybe the illicit nature of this rare chance increased his expectations.
No. That wasn’t it. Sure, he was eager. He hadn’t seen her in a week. And in a way, he wanted to reassure himself that they were okay. That he hadn’t screwed up anything.
No. You’re thinking too hard, Mark.
She had welcomed him with that little sigh from deep in her throat that she always made when he entered her. And he felt the same surge of joy as they began. But it didn’t take long to realize that it was different.
Numb.
Such a strangely out-of-place word. But as he moved on top of her, the word invaded his thoughts.
Numb.
And he realized he was doing it all and she was just accepting. She had her arms around his neck and then his waist. But she didn’t grasp him with the strength she always had.
And her eyes . . . gazing over his rolling shoulders. Yes, she seemed distant. Numb. She wasn’t reacting, and she wasn’t trying to hide it.
When he finished, she murmured, “Nice,” and her eyes settled on him for a moment before losing their focus and settling back into what seemed to be a hazy world of her own thoughts.
“Lea? Is everything okay? You seem so . . . far away. I could see on your face.” He took a breath. “You’re still on that island, aren’t you?”
It took her a long time to respond. And then she nodded her head, her gaze not on him but at the ceiling. “Yes. Still on the island.” Whispered so that the words sent a chill down his neck. “Still on the island. Still back there.”
A long sigh. “So many nightmares. Every night. Nightmares pulling me there, pulling me into all that death and horror. I can’t get the wailing out of my ears. The wailing and the moaning and the crying. It’s like I’m still there. Still there.”
She squeezed his hand. “But . . . I want to come back, Mark. I really do.”
And then an abrupt move. To break the sadness? Pushing him aside, she stood up. “The kids will be home soon.” It was still a thrill to watch her walk naked across the room. She vanished into the bathroom, and he thought of Autumn.
I can’t keep her around. I don’t want to ruin my life.
And what could he do to help Lea? The things she saw on that island. He felt as if he could see them, too, in her eyes.
Numb.
She had gone numb.
That will just take time.
He felt a heaviness lower over him, his eyelids suddenly heavy. What a luxury a Saturday-afternoon nap would be. He pulled the quilt up, shut his eyes, and sank into the pillow.
He drifted off. For how long? He didn’t know. A gentle tapping sound woke him. He lifted his head to see Lea at her rosewood desk, her head a silhouette in the glow of her laptop monitor, leaning toward the screen and typing rapidly.
She moved her lips when she typed. So cute. It always made him smile. But her back was turned and he could see only the bobbing of her hair, pulled back in a loose ponytail, and the fingers of her right hand tap-dancing over the keys.
“Hi,” he called. “How long did I sleep?”
“Not long.” She didn’t turn around. She was wearing a light green beach cover-up.
Mark pulled himself up. “It’s a beautiful day. Feels like summer. Maybe we should round up the kids and drive to the beach. Sagg Main?”
She shook her head. “No. Think I need to get this written.”
“The island? Are you getting your experience there in writing?”
She kept typing. Her head nodded toward the screen, then pulled back. “I’m not writing about that.”
“What?” He stood up quickly. The breeze from the window tickled his skin. The short sleep had revived him. He did three or four knee bends just to show off to himself.
He walked to the dresser and pulled out a red Nike swimsuit. Tugging it on, he stepped up behind her. “What are you writing about?”
“Something different.”
He chuckled and cupped his hands over her shoulders. “You’re being secretive?”
“Yes.”
He leaned over her shoulder to read what she had written. “You don’t have secrets from your husband, do you?”
He thought of Autumn.
She lowered her hands to her lap. “I just . . . have some new ideas.”
He squinted at the screen and his eyes scanned her last paragraph:
Tibet’s inhuman climate and hard, stony ground makes burial nearly impossible. This is why Buddhists there choose a sky burial. Upon death, the body is chopped into small pieces which are mixed with flour. Then the remains are spread out over a tree to be eaten by scavenging birds.
Mark stood up and released her shoulders. “Lea, what is this? Dead Buddhists in Tibet? Sky burial?”
She turned and raised her face to him. The light from the laptop monitor bathed her in gray. “Death rituals,” she said, just above a whisper. “I’ve been doing some research.”
She hadn’t said anything funny. Why did she have that strange, guilty smile on her face?
“Your blog,” he said. “You’re not going to write your travel blog?”
She shook her head. The strange smile remained. “I’ve kind of lost interest in that.”
“But . . . you’ve put so much time and effort—”
She shrugged and turned her face away. “I can’t write it anymore. It’s just not interesting to me. You know. I have to write what I’m interested in. I’ve always been that way.”
He blinked at the screen. “But, sweetheart—death rituals? Why death rituals?”
“It’s all so fascinating. Did you know there’s a province in Madagascar where people pull the dead out from their graves and dance with them? Every seven years, Mark. They dig up their relatives and dance with them. Isn’t that sweet?”
Sweet?
He took a step back. He watched her type. She leaned toward the screen as if she wanted to dive in. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration.
As if I’m not here.
“Sky burials? Dancing with the dead? Lea? Should I be worried about you?”
38
“Hey, how’d you get here?” Ira raised his head from the fat blue inner tube and squinted at the twins as they pulled back the gate and stepped onto the deck.
“Walked,” Daniel answered.
Samuel had never seen anything as beautiful as this pool. It was long and wide, nearly the length of the house. The pool walls were a light blue. Sky blue. The water sparkled with little patches of sunlight. As if little chunks of the sun had fallen into the pool, he thought. He wanted to dive in and scoop them up.
He just wanted to sink into the water, immerse himself in the clear, clean cold. Be clear and cl
ean himself. But he knew Daniel had other plans.
“You guys know how to swim?” Ethan sat on the edge of the deep end, blond hair as bright as the sunlight, leaning down to fill a yellow-and-red plastic water blaster.
“We swim,” Daniel said. “We lived on an island, remember, lad? Sammy and I swam before we could walk.”
“That’s cool,” Ethan replied. Samuel had never seen a boy so pale, nearly as white as the fence surrounding the pool deck. He could see Ethan’s rib cage poking out from his chest.
He’s puny for twelve. The boy needs to pump up.
Maybe we can help him. If Daniel doesn’t drown the lad today.
Ethan dipped the blaster under the water. Then he raised it and shot a lazy spray of water across the pool to Ira. Floating drowsily on his tube, luxuriating with his eyes closed, Ira didn’t even notice.
“Is the water warm?” Samuel dropped to his knees and ran a hand through it. Under the surface, he could feel the spray of cold water shooting into the pool. “Nice.”
Ethan aimed carefully and sent a long spray of water into Ira’s face. Ira spluttered and dove off the tube. Ethan laughed. He had a dry cackle of a laugh. Like an old witch, Samuel thought.
Ira floated beneath the surface. He rose up in front of Ethan and spit a long stream of water onto his legs.
Daniel grabbed the chrome ladder and lowered himself into the water. He pushed himself away from the wall and paddled toward Ira. “How long can you stay underwater?” he asked, bobbing in a spill of gold sunlight.
Ira’s head sank into the water again. He rose up and spit another mouthful onto Ethan’s legs. Ethan gave him a blast between the eyes with the plastic squirt blaster.
“How long?” Daniel insisted, following Ira across the pool.
Samuel’s body felt sticky and drenched with sweat from the walk to Ethan’s house. He held his breath and leaped into the deep end. The shock of the cold water made him gasp, and he came up to the surface spluttering.