Brian stood behind his friend at Mr. Pruitt’s back door, glancing anxiously over his shoulder. “Just hurry the hell up, will ya?”
“The key is to not leave any marks on the door frame, in case you have to come back later.” Jimmy carefully wedged the screwdriver in a little further and jiggled it up and down.
“We ain’t coming back later.”
“I know that, just saying.” He held the screwdriver in place with his left hand and removed the card from his pocket with his other hand. He aligned the card between the wooden door-frame and the metal latch, then started swiping it up and down. After a moment, he stopped and wiped his hand on his jeans. “Sweaty. Guess I’m nervous.”
“That makes two of us,” Brian said. “Hey, if we’re being so careful, why aren’t we wearing gloves or something?”
“Don’t need ’em. It gets to the point where cops are over here lifting fingerprints, we’re screwed anyway.”
The thought made Brian even more nervous. “We should just give it up, man. It’s not gonna work.”
There was an audible click—and the door swung inward a few inches. They caught a glimpse of linoleum floor inside.
Jimmy looked back at his friend. “You were saying?”
“Oh, bite me.”
Jimmy stuffed the screwdriver and membership card back into his pocket, carefully nudged the door open, and stepped inside. Brian followed right behind him and started to close the door.
“Leave it cracked open. In case we have to make a quick escape.”
“Lemme guess…you saw it in a movie?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
“Jesus,” Brian said, looking around. “What’s that smell?”
They were standing in Mr. Pruitt’s kitchen, and it was a mess. Dirty dishes were stacked in the sink and on the surrounding countertop. Empty pizza and Chinese food delivery boxes littered the kitchen table and overflowed from the trashcan. There was a leaning tower of old newspapers piled in front of the dishwasher.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Jimmy whispered.
Brian, eyes wide, nodded in agreement.
“The smell is coming from down there,” Jimmy said, motioning to a door in the adjoining hallway.
“Basement?”
Jimmy nodded and headed that way.
“I was afraid you were gonna say that,” Brian said, following close on his friend’s heels.
“I used to come down here every Christmas Eve when I was little to see Mr. Pruitt’s train-set. He let me play with it for hours.”
Jimmy opened the door into complete darkness. He gathered his courage and slid his hand along the wall just inside the doorway, feeling for the light switch. He found it and flipped it on. The stairway was long and narrow and covered in the same ugly shade of gold carpeting Jimmy remembered from years past.
“After you,” Brian said, voice cracking.
They slowly started down the stairs. Both boys heard and smelled the animals before they actually saw them.
“What the hell is that?” Jimmy asked, and then they reached the bottom of the stairway and turned the corner.
The room erupted in a cacophony of frantic barking and growling and whining as soon as the boys walked into view.
The entire length of one wall was lined with small cages. There had to be at least twenty or more of them. Each secured with a heavy padlock. Inside the metal cages were mostly dogs and cats. But there were also squirrels and rabbits and even a raccoon. And positioned along the adjoining wall, underneath one of the blacked-out basement windows, were two large, clear-plastic hutches, each containing a monkey. The wiry monkeys skittered from one side of their enclosures to the other, eyes bugging, clawing madly to get out.
Jimmy stood a few feet from the bottom of the stairway, his mind racing to register what his eyes were seeing. The smell was horrible here in the closed room; a toxic mixture of piss and crap and something chemical he could almost taste on his tongue. The basement walls were soundproofed.
“Some serial killer!” Brian said from behind him in a booming voice. He walked deeper into the room, laughing with relief. “Old Man Pruitt is Doctor Doolittle!”
“Sometimes they start by torturing animals,” Jimmy said, his words almost drowned out by the animal screeches. “Then they move on to people.”
Brian pointed out a stainless steel table—with leather straps—in the far corner of the basement. Syringes and vials of what looked like medicine were lined up on a nearby shelf. “Looks like he’s trying to help them, not torture them.”
Jimmy glanced in the opposite corner of the room, noticed a computer, its monitor-screen glowing, sitting on a small desk next to a printer. He headed that way.
Behind him, Brian bent down and reached his hand through one of the cages. A mangy cocker spaniel gently licked his fingers. “Poor little guy. All cramped up in there.” He got to his feet and studied several of the other cages. “Helping or not, they shouldn’t be locked up like this. Most of them don’t even have water.”
Jimmy stopped in front of the desk. Reached out and nudged the mouse, and the screen-saver image of a sunny beach disappeared and was replaced by a series of strange letters and numbers. He leaned closer, trying to remember where he had seen something similar.
“Hey, Jimmy,” Brian said from behind him. “Wonder what the suit’s for.”
He looked over and saw Brian struggling to hold up a full-body suit, the heavy-duty kind you see astronauts wearing on television. A helmet with a clear faceplate hung from a hook on the wall next to him.
“Beats me. Just put it back, man.” Jimmy returned his attention to the computer screen, once again searching his memory for where he’d seen such writing.
“I bet these keys are for the cages,” Brian said, but Jimmy, lost in deep thought, didn’t hear him. His eyes and nose stung from the horrible stench; his brain hurt from thinking. He was about to give up when the answer suddenly came to him like a ship sailing free of a fogbank. He snapped his fingers.
“It’s Arabic! I remember it from school.” He scrolled down, then clicked on a blurry photo at the bottom of the computer screen—and almost screamed when something brushed against his pants leg.
He looked down and saw a flash of black cat. He turned back to his friend and frowned. “What are you doing?”
Loose dogs and cats scampered across the basement and fled up the stairs to freedom. As Jimmy watched, Brian flung open another cage door and lifted a fat rabbit onto the floor below. The rabbit hopped in a drunk circle, then raced away, joining the others. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” He laughed and moved on to the next cage.
Jimmy opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, screaming erupted from the computer behind him. Startled, he spun around and realized that a video was playing on the monitor:
A dark-skinned man wearing a filthy robe sat strapped to a chair in the middle of a small room. He screamed and wailed and fought against his restraints to no avail. Harsh voices could be heard off-screen speaking in a foreign language. After another thirty seconds of screaming, a scraggly mutt limped on-screen. The man stopped screaming and started crying. The dog wagged its tail and licked the man’s restrained hands. The man started screaming again and tried to jerk away, but before long the screams were drowned out by a deep guttural choking sound. The camera zoomed in on the man’s face, and Jimmy could see blood and bile spilling from the man’s mouth in a foamy mess. And then his eyes erupted in twin geysers of blood that dribbled down his cheeks, and after a few more seconds, the man went limp and quiet. The foreign voice spoke up again, and then someone shuffled on-screen wearing a heavy-duty suit eerily similar to the one hanging on the wall right there in the basement.
The puzzle pieces suddenly snapped into place inside Jimmy’s brain and his entire body went rigid with terror. “Brian…”
All of a sudden, he wished he had brought his cellphone. He wished it more than anything else in the world. “Brian…STOP!”
Brian was kneeling in front of the second monkey enclosure. The first hutch was empty, the door wide open. “Why? I feel sorry for ’em, Jimmy.”
Jimmy’s voice was thick with surging fear. “He might not be a serial killer, but I think Mr. Pruitt is working with some very bad people.”
Brian pulled the open lock from the latch and tossed it to the floor beside him. “What kind of bad people?”
“Like ISIS-terrorist-bad people.”
Brian rolled his eyes. “Dude, you’ve seen too many movies. Mr. Pruitt’s an old man. He’s up to some weird shit down here, but he’s as American as you and me.”
“I don’t think so,” Jimmy said, his legs feeling like rubber. “Not anymore.”
Brian yanked open the glass door and the brown monkey skittered into his arms.
“Brian, don’t…”
Brian, still down on a knee in front of the hutch, grinned and cradled the monkey in his arms like a baby. “Look how cute he is!” He pressed his face close to the monkey’s tiny head. “You’re so cute. Yes, you are. You’re so darn…”
The words suddenly stopped—and Brian’s voice faded to a wet gargle. The monkey slipped from his arms and scampered happily away. Brian didn’t move, just kept staring down at his lap, his long hair obscuring his face.
Jimmy backed up a step. “You okay, man?”
He didn’t answer.
Jimmy backed up another step. “Brian…?”
Brian slowly lifted his head, looked up at his friend. His eyes were bleeding. Dark foam bubbled from his gaping mouth. He rose up and reached out for Jimmy, took a zombie-like step forward, and then he collapsed to the ground face-first, convulsing.
Jimmy stood there, frozen, watching his friend die. Everything made sense now—the animals, the vials, the chemical smell, the Hazmat suit—and nothing made sense at all. He thought about his mother and father and his Uncle Manny, as he turned and sprinted for the stairs.
He was almost to the top of the staircase when he felt something small and heavy latch onto his back with an ear-piercing screech. Sharp claws tore at his shirt, digging into his flesh, and he felt the brush of bristly fur against his neck.
He staggered into the kitchen, flailing, trying to wrestle the beast off of him. Even in his panic, he noticed the dogs and cats fleeing outside through the open kitchen door, scattering in the yard and running off in all directions. Free again.
His frantic mind chose that moment to flash another scene from a movie and even amidst the chaos, it bothered him that he couldn’t remember the title: Common house-pets carrying a dangerous new strain of rabies. Infected people going violently insane before dying agonizing deaths. And then, finally…the end of the world.
Jimmy slammed his back against the kitchen wall, trying to shake the beast loose. He knocked piles of dishes to the floor where they shattered into pieces. He kicked over the pile of newspapers. The beast only screeched its awful banshee cry and dug its claws deeper into Jimmy’s scalp.
He stumbled out the door into the back yard and felt the sun hit his tear-stained face. Its comforting warmth and blinding brightness filled his final moment of consciousness before the monkey lunged and buried its razor-sharp teeth deep in the flesh of Jimmy’s neck.
And then his throat was closing up like a caved-in mineshaft and he couldn’t breathe; and his skin felt like it had been set ablaze; and hot blood poured from his eyes in twin rivulets—and then he felt and saw nothing at all.
SILENT
NIGHT
The man sat in his car parked alongside the cemetery and finished his cigarette. The engine was off and the driver’s window was down. It was raining, not too hard, not too soft, a steady rain that drummed the man a lonely lullaby on the roof of his car and soaked his left elbow, which was propped out the window.
He reached over with a gloved hand and dropped the butt into an empty water bottle sitting on the passenger seat next to him. He did this by feel, never once taking his eyes off the cemetery grounds. He scanned from left to right, and back again.
The cemetery had been crowded earlier—always was this time of year—but now the grounds were nearly abandoned thanks to the late hour and the cold and rain. His eyes touched an elderly man a few hundred yards to his right. The old-timer had been there for the better part of an hour, standing still and rigid, staring down at a grave marker, lost in thought and memory. A middle-aged couple knelt on the wet ground directly in front of the man’s car, maybe a hundred yards out. Had they lost a child, the man wondered? Or were they mourning a mother or father or both? The man thought it could have been all three. The way this world works.
The old-timer left first, weaving his way surprisingly fast between the headstones to a faded red pick-up. The truck started with a backfire that sounded too much like a gunshot and slunk away into the twilight. The man watched the taillights fade to tiny red sparks and imagined a dinner table set for one awaiting the old man at home and wished he hadn’t.
Five minutes later, the middle-aged man helped the middle-aged woman to her feet and, with wet knees, they walked hand-in-hand to a gray SUV parked at the opposite end of the road. The middle-aged woman never looked up, but the middle-aged man did. Just before he opened his car door and got inside, he glanced back at the man and nodded.
The man remained perfectly still in his car. He didn’t return the nod and he didn’t lift a hand to wave. He cast his eyes downward for a moment out of habit, an old trick, but he knew it wasn’t necessary. He was being paranoid again. He gauged the distance at sixty yards and it was raining and his wipers weren’t on. The middle-aged man was merely nodding at a dark shape behind blurry glass; a polite acknowledgement that he and the man sitting alone in his car both belonged to the same somber fraternity. A moment of kindness shared, and nothing else.
The man watched the middle-aged couple drive away and fought the urge to light up another cigarette. He scanned the cemetery grounds, left to right and back again, waited five more minutes to be sure, and then he got out of the car.
****
Let’s pretend, for just a moment, that Forest Hills Memorial Gardens employs a night watchman. And let’s further pretend that, at 6:19pm on December 24, this watchman is lurking in the dark shadows just inside the tree-line of gnarly old pines that marks the cemetery’s northernmost property line, perhaps smoking a cigar (which is strictly prohibited by employee rules) or perhaps just trying to keep dry in the rain.
If this scenario is indeed accepted as fact instead of fiction, then this is what our stealthy night watchman might witness at that particular time on that particular night:
A single man exits the lone car that remains parked on cemetery property, a dark sedan with rental license plates. The man is of medium height but broad in his chest and shoulders. He looks around, like he’s making sure he’s alone, straightens his jacket, lowers his winter hat, and despite walking with a slight limp, he makes his way quickly and confidently to a nearby gravesite. The man’s eyes never stop moving beneath that winter hat, and the path he takes is precise and direct. The man has been here before.
Once he reaches his destination, the man bends down and places a single red rose—our night watchman has wickedly sharp eyesight—at the base of a headstone, where it joins several other much fancier flower arrangements and a plastic Santa decoration with a candle inside, its flame long since drenched by the falling December rain. The man traces a finger along the names engraved on the marker, and now the watchman notices that he is wearing gloves on both of his hands, and then he catches a glimpse of something much more interesting: a flash of dark gunmetal at the back of the man’s waistband.
The man doesn’t linger. He quickly stands up, readjusts his jacket and once again surveys the cemetery, slower t
his time, as if he somehow senses the watchman’s presence there in the trees, and then he heads back to his car without a backward glance.
Within a heartbeat of closing his car door, the man starts the engine and speeds out of the cemetery. Headlights off and nary a tapping of brake lights. A dark shadow swallowed by the night and the approaching storm.
High in the towering pines, the rain changes over to snow and the wind picks up, whispering its secrets.
But the cemetery is deserted now and there is no one left to hear.
The man is gone, and, of course, our night watchman never existed.
****
“Are you Santa Claus?”
The man stopped in mid-step, one foot in the kitchen, one foot still in the family room, staring over his shoulder at the little boy standing in the glow of the Christmas tree lights. The boy was wearing red-and-white pajamas and blinking sleep from his eyes. The man slowly removed his hand from the gun in his waistband, where it had instinctually moved to at the sound of the boy’s voice, turned around, and lifted a finger to his lips. Sshhh.
The little boy—nine years old and named Peter, the man knew—wrinkled his nose in confusion, but stayed quiet.
The man slowly stepped back into the family room. His hands held out in front of him. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I was just on my way out.”
The little boy moved closer, unafraid, and whispered right back: “If you’re not Santa, then who are you?”
The man didn’t know what to say, so he just stood there, memorizing every inch of the little boy. He had entered the house twenty minutes earlier through the basement door. It had been too easy; he hadn’t even needed to use his special tools. He’d crept up the carpeted stairs, silent as a house cat, and eased his way into a dark kitchen, and then the family room, where he’d found a Christmas tree tucked into the corner by the fireplace with dozens of wrapped presents waiting beneath it. The man had stood there in the quiet darkness for a long time, taking it all in. The decorations on the tree, many of which he recognized. The framed pictures on the mantle, several featuring the man’s younger, smiling face. He stared at the paintings on the wall, the knickknacks on the shelves, the furniture, even the curtains. This was the man’s first—and most likely last—time inside the new house, and he wanted to soak up everything he could into his memory banks…to remember later.
The Long Way Home Page 4