With that, the man did finally turn and walk away. Mike stood for a moment, and before he knew it the man was back into the park and too far away to chase. Instead he watched him walk away while his mind turned over what the man had said.
He’s fucking with you. He set it up and now he’s trying to capitalize on it and get in your head so you’ll give up and, what, hand it back over to him? Good luck, dude.
He would have to keep an eye out and make sure the guy didn’t get too close to the house. And he was definitely changing all of the locks, in case crazy black man still had keys.
Brian had been finding it harder and harder to be at home, ever since the day his mother had told him, very loudly and insistently, albeit in a dream, to get out of the house or it would kill him.
He slept here in the day, he showered and ate here, but if he was awake and not at work, he tried to avoid the house as much as he could. It was a strange sensation for him, being gone all the time. He kept finding himself out somewhere and suddenly realize he was thinking I need to get home, mom and dad are probably wondering where I am.
Then he would wonder why he had been thinking that when, one, he was in his thirties and his parents hadn’t wondered where he was in over a decade, and two, they’d been dead for over two weeks. It took him a while to realize it wasn’t the need to get home and see his parents that was eating at him, it was the change to his entire way of life.
Brian spent time with his friends when he wasn’t working, but he was basically a home body who resisted making big life changes. And now it wasn’t just that his parents were gone, but since he was avoiding the house, his entire world had been altered. And it wasn’t a feeling that sat well with him.
So the day the Angel Hill Improvement Company had signed on their first property, Brian decided he needed some old comfort, and he resigned himself to spending the evening at home. At least until he had to leave for work.
He had made no plans for how to fill that time, just a general idea of doing what a normal person does when they’re home alone. The problem was Brian had never been a normal person home alone. And that realization filled him, all over again, with a loneliness he had been trying to avoid.
He would eat dinner, that would be a start. And no fast food. If he was going to be living by himself, he was going to have to learn to cook sooner or later, that is if he ever planned to eat anything besides frozen pizzas and French toast.
He stopped at the store on the way home and spent over $100 on groceries, having no idea what he planned to make, but he was hungry and all of it sounded good.
At home, he took his time putting it away, familiarizing himself with where things went. He knew, of course; he’d helped his mother put away the groceries as long as he’d been old enough to carry them in from the car. But it had always been helping, now it was his.
With that task completed, he stood back, the refrigerator and pantry doors opened, and took in all of the food he had, trying to decide now what would be the easiest to make and the most difficult to ruin.
Spaghetti seemed foolproof enough, he thought.
He put on a pot of water to boil, then went to the bathroom. He came out a few minutes later and detoured into his room where he sorted through his DVDs, trying to decide on a movie to watch.
The house was quiet, so when he heard the thump from across the hall, he stopped and stood up, listening, waiting to see if whatever it was happened again. A second later, it did.
It came from his parents’ bedroom, which he hadn’t been in since before the funeral when he and Mel had to pick what to bury their parents in. He knew they would have to go through everything in there sooner or later and get rid of much of it, but it just wasn’t time yet.
The thump happened a third time and Brian went out to the hall and listened again, thinking--hoping--he’d misjudged where it had come from. The bathroom? The garage? The crawlspace above the house?
No, when it came again, it was from behind the closed door across from his.
He felt a pit open up in his stomach and his dream came back to him. He was going to open the door and find his mother, twisted and rotting, deformed by the crash that had taken her life, limping across the floor on her way to finding him. She would smother him in her arms, stuffing her rotting limbs into his mouth until he couldn’t breathe and he would die on the floor with her dead weight pressing down, his eyes bulging, his skull feeling as if it would burst.
Or it’s nothing, he thought.
Yeah, it’s a noise. Grow up. This is your life from now on, get used to noises you didn’t make.
But what did make it?
This was stupid, he decided. He was going to eat dinner and watch a movie, then he was going to take a shower and go to work. Before that, he was going to find out what was thumping inside his parents’ bedroom since the door hadn’t been opened in two weeks. Before giving himself a chance to think twice, Brian turned the knob and pushed open the door.
A blast of cold air hit him. It stank like stale sweat and bile. He stepped into the room and his vision betrayed him because he flipped on the light switch, but instead of the bright 100 watters his mother used all over the house, a weak glow emanated from the ceiling, casting everything as if in moonlight. And over there, on the floor on the opposite side of the bed, trying to work its way around and closer to him, was Brian’s mother.
She pulled herself along as if the lower half of her body had been ripped off. Her open palms slapped hard against the carpet, pulling away with a wet smack, then coming down again as she struggled to haul herself forward. She looked up at him and the top of her head seemed to fall backward as if the hinge of her jaw were broken, causing her mouth to yawn open and a wail came from deep in her throat, sounding to Brian like he had a direct line to Hell.
He was frozen a few feet inside the door, staring down and trying to decide if this was real or if had fallen asleep on the couch.
His mother’s head snapped back up and her eyes rolled lazily sideways, coming to rest on his.
“I told you,” she groaned, slapping that wet muck sound of her bloated palms against the carpet, then the deadweight sound, like a sack of old, wet garbage being dragged over the carpet. “Stay out of the house!” She shrieked this and Brian tried to move but couldn’t feel his limbs.
He watched her inching closer and his mind was screaming to get the fuck out of here, but he felt like he’d been drugged.
She was around the foot of the bed and coming toward the other side. When she reached the corner, she’d be only a few feet from him.
Move your feet, he told himself. Get out and lock the door behind you. Grab your shit for work and just leave.
“Out of the house,” she croaked. “Out of the house.”
I’m trying, he thought.
Her right hand came down with another muck-smacking sound and he watched the muscles in her arms flex as she pulled herself forward again. Her legs trailed out behind her, as dead as the rest of her was supposed to be.
The dress he’d had her buried in, light blue with spaghetti straps--it was the only one he and Mel could agree on--was filthy now, covered not just in dirt and mud, but in something that looked like grey slime.
He wondered suddenly where was his father. Was he trying to sneak up and tackle Brian? Would he reach out from behind the door, or under the bed to grab his ankles and haul him into the dark with him?
This was enough to make him drag his eyes off his crawling mother and he looked around him. His feet still didn’t move, though.
He saw no signs of his dad, but that didn’t put him at ease, either.
He dug in his pocket for his phone. He wanted to call Mel, but what would he say? He couldn’t do that. If he was losing his mind, that was one more thing she didn’t need. And if this was real, a thought that made him hope for madness instead, then she really didn’t need to know.
Not even to warn her, he wondered, in case they come for her next?
But
he had a feeling this visitation was strictly for his benefit. Who would he call, then? Mike? And say what, the same thing he thought about saying to Mel?
Yes, he thought. Tell him what you’re seeing. Tell him you’ve been having dreams.
No, another voice said. What does that prove, that you’re under stress?
A picture, he realized. Then no one could deny what he’d seen, not even himself.
He opened the camera app on his phone and aimed it down to find his mother was gone from the foot of the bed.
Because she was at Brian’s feet now. Her cold fingers wrapped around his foot and the creak of the joints sounded like old leather being stretched. She leaned her head back again and another of those transmission-from-Hell sounds began to well up from her throat.
He yelled, “Fuck!” and leapt back as if a giant bug had just landed on his chest.
He found his feet again and dove into the hall. His mother slipped on the carpet and fell on her face, squishing in the rotten muck covering her.
He reached in to grab the door and pull it closed, but his fingers were covered in sweat and the door handle slipped out of his grip. He tried again, this time wrapping his hand around the knob, and yanked it closed, slamming it to make sure he heard the noise and knew it had caught in the doorjamb.
He couldn’t lock it from outside, and it opened inward, so he couldn’t block it.
Instead, he opted to do what he’d thought already. He would get his keys and get out of the house like she kept telling him to do.
He wasn’t thinking any further ahead than the next couple of minutes. He ran into the living room, then heard the water boiling in the kitchen and went in to turn off the stove. Then he left the house, locking the door behind him, got into his car, and drove away.
He looked at the clock on the radio display and saw he still had several hours before he had to be at work. He couldn’t go in early; they didn’t like it when people showed up early and hung around.
He could call one of the guys, see if they were busy. Mike was probably home.
He reached in his pocket to call, then realized it wasn’t there.
“Dropped it in the bedroom,” he muttered. “Shit.”
He wasn’t going back for it. He’d get a new one if he had to, but he was not going back into that house right now. He’d just go by Mike’s house instead. And if Mike wasn’t home, he’d go to Wal-Mart and wander around there, pretend to shop and chat with Steven a little.
Instead, he took the right at First Street, which transitioned into Little and eventually came to Irving.
He didn’t know why he’d come here instead. The place was empty, locked. Mike probably had the key, which made Brian mutter, “He’s gonna have to make some copies and stuff like that.”
Well, he’d just do a drive-by, then swing up Fifth back to Grey and drive over to Mike’s. Except the place wasn’t dark. The living room light was on.
Was Mike still here? Brian didn’t see his car anywhere, but maybe he’d pulled around back. They hadn’t checked out the back yard. Maybe there was a garage.
Brian parked across the street, in front of Upper Hill Park, which everyone still called NIN Park, even though it hadn’t been that in decades, locked his car and pocketed the keys, then went up the sidewalk to the house.
He tried to look in the front window and see who was there and what they were doing, but the living room looked empty. He half expected to see a ladder and open paint cans, even though they were supposed to get together and decide all that stuff by committee. There was none of that.
He knocked on the door and waited, but heard no footsteps inside. So he knocked again, harder, and waited again.
He tried the knob and found it turned. Not only that, but the door opened.
“Good way to get murdered,” he muttered as he stepped inside. “What’s up?” he called out, trying to get the attention of whoever was here. He was still expecting footsteps any second to come padding from one of the back rooms. But the house was silent.
He closed the door behind him and went into the living room. He looked into the dining room, which was dim, but he could see some by the living room light. The kitchen beyond was like a black hole, though, the doorway appearing to form a gaping black maw from which he almost half-expected to see a giant demonic tongue lash out and grab him.
You’re still freaked out from what happened at home, he told himself. This is just an empty house.
Yeah, he thought. An empty house. Something I could use right about now. Should have brought some music, or his laptop. He wouldn’t have wifi here, but he could watch DVDs or something.
He wondered what the guys would think if he offered to stay here while the work was going on. He did own a quarter of it, after all. And he wasn’t stopping any of them from camping out here.
Who the fuck had left the light on and door unlocked, he wondered. If it had been Mike, that was just going to make Brian’s case even stronger for having one of them be here at all times.
“Helloooo,” he called into the house again.
Maybe someone was in the basement. Of course, to determine that, he’d have to go into the kitchen, which, at the moment, wasn’t exactly inviting.
He flipped the dining room light switch, but nothing happened. He moved through the dim room toward the front bedroom, and tried that switch too, but still the living room was the only one with any light.
“Helloooo,” he said once more. But it wasn’t changing; he was here alone and whoever’d been here last had left the light on and door unlocked.
“Awesome, whoever,” he said. And he couldn’t lock the door behind himself when he left for work; he didn’t have the key. It was either Mike or Steven; Brian and Keith had left at the same time. So when he left here he’d go by Mike’s after all. At the very least, tell him, so if it was Steven, Mike could run out to get the key from him and come lock it up.
He went to the kitchen doorway and peered inside. The room was so dark, he couldn’t imagine any light penetrating it. He’d never seen a darkness so absolute.
He crossed to the bathroom and found, to his delight, that the light in there flared a bright white when he hit the switch.
“Thank God,” he said. He wasn’t crazy about trying to aim in the dark in an unfamiliar bathroom, but he had realized he’d had to piss for a while. He was surprised he hadn’t done it when his mother touched his foot, but he’d somehow held it in. He couldn’t hold it any longer.
Even though he was alone in the house, he closed to door while he did his business, and afterward, with his bladder refreshingly empty and the toilet hissing behind him as it filled again, he hesitated before opening the door.
It was light in the bathroom, it was close and comfortable and there were no places for anyone to hide.
That wasn’t the case out there, in the rest of the house. The kitchen was so dark, when he opened the bathroom, there could be anything out there.
Anyone, he asked himself.
No, he replied, I had it right the first time.
Well, you can’t stay in the bathroom all night, you have to get to work sooner or later.
“I still gotta get something to eat, too,” he muttered.
Fuck it, he might as well go ahead and leave, there was no one here. He’d run by Mike’s, tell him the place was open, then go get some food and head to St. Joe. If he got there too early, he could hang outside in his car until it was time to work.
That sounds like a plan, he decided. Just got to get out of this bathroom and stop being afraid of the dark like a fucking pussy.
Then another thought came. What if his mother was out there? What if she was crawling across the floor, leaving her slime trail on the wood, her jaw unhinging as she screamed at him again?
She’s not here, he insisted. She’s at the house, she’s in her bedroom.
“She’s in the ground,” he finally said, pulling the door open and confronting what he found in the darkness.
&
nbsp; Chapter Four
Mike showed up the next day around 11:30. He’d talked to Keith and Steven last night, but Brian never answered and when Mike had gone by Brian’s house this morning to tell him everyone wanted to get together at noon to start work on the house--or to start working on working on the house, meaning finding a contractor, deciding what was going to be done, what was their budget and timeline--Brian never answered the door. Mike couldn’t see into the garage, so he didn’t even know if he was home.
Eventually he left and decided to go ahead and come to the house and, if they couldn’t get hold of Brian before the meeting broke up, he’d just try to get to him later. It wasn’t how they wanted to do business, but time was money, especially for the two without jobs, and none of them wanted to put off getting to work any longer than necessary.
He was actually surprised, though, when he pulled up out front and saw Brian’s car already there. One of the other guys must have got to him, Mike thought. And he’s early. I like it. He can help me get those measurements right.
He was surprised, too. With Brian’s schedule, he knew he didn’t get to bed until about eight in the morning. He had felt bad, at first, about having the meeting so early, knowing that didn’t leave Brian much time for sleep, but it was unavoidable if they wanted to get started. Steven had to work at 3:00, and since Brian didn’t go in until 11:00 at night, he’d have plenty of time to go back to bed.
And now here he was. So the sooner Keith and Steven showed up, the sooner they could get started.
He crossed the street, then glanced back over his shoulder at the park to make sure the nosey guy wasn’t there. The park bench stood empty. Good deal, Mike thought.
He got to the door and was about to put the key in the lock when he realized something. Brian doesn’t have a key. How did he get inside? He stared at the door, expecting something, he wasn’t sure what, but waiting for it.
Had someone broken in? Had Brian broken in? Why?
He turned the knob and pushed the door open and it swung in easily.
The Flip (An Angel Hill novel) Page 9