“I thought you said you didn’t remember anything from that night,” he said, trying to keep his tone from sounding accusatory.
“I said there was a lot I don’t remember. But mostly that’s what Jen told me. Honestly, the first thing I remember is her waking me up the next morning, telling me to put on the dress she had for me.” Charlie made a face. “She always wanted me to dress more like a girl. Of course, the joke was on me; it turns out after a few near-death experiences, there’s nothing I wanted more than a makeover.”
John smiled, and she batted her eyelashes exaggeratedly. He laughed in spite of himself.
“So, you think she might be looking for you?” He paused, unsure how to phrase the next part. “Do you want her to find you?” he asked at last, and she shrugged.
“I’d like to know where she is.”
“She’s not at the house where you’re living? When did she leave?”
“Everybody leaves eventually,” Charlie said in a sardonic tone, and he laughed again, less heartily.
You didn’t answer my question.
Charlie glanced at her watch: like everything else she now wore, it was a smaller, feminized version of the one she used to have. “There’s a good zombie movie starting in about fifteen minutes, I think,” she said brightly. “The new theater isn’t far from here. What do you think, should we see if the old formula still works?”
What does that mean? John held back a smile. “I can’t go to the movies,” he said with real reluctance. “I’ve got somewhere that I need to be.”
“Another time?” Charlie said, and he nodded.
“Yeah, maybe.”
As he walked back to his car, John noticed a crowd outside the new pizzeria. I guess everybody likes the circus, he thought. He wandered closer, trying to see where Charlie had gone, but she was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, like noticing hidden figures in a picture, John realized that the crowd around him was dotted with clowns: painted faces, white billowy costumes, noses of all shapes and colors. They were everywhere. He backed out of the throng, tripping on an oversize shoe and almost falling off the sidewalk.
When he was free of the crowd, John took a deep breath and looked back at the restaurant, noticing for the first time the banner strung over the front entrance. GRAND OPENING: COME DRESSED AS A CLOWN AND EAT FREE! it read, hanging between the gigantic faces of two grinning clowns. He looked around. More people were arriving, many of them in costume, and John felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He glanced behind him, but there was nothing sinister, besides the clowns. He forced himself to look at them individually: people had dressed with varying degrees of enthusiasm—some had structured bodysuits, wigs, and enormous feet; others had simply painted their faces and worn polka-dot T-shirts. Still, his sense of unease did not abate.
They’re just people in costumes, he scolded himself, then laughed abruptly, startling a woman standing nearby. “People in costumes. That’s never gone wrong for me,” he muttered, walking away from the crowd to find his car.
* * *
Driving home, John found himself agitated; twice he looked at the speedometer and saw that he’d gone dangerously over the speed limit without noticing. He tapped his hand restlessly against the steering wheel, thinking of the next day. What then? Seeing Charlie had rattled him more than he had realized. After months of solitary scribbling, going over and over his bizarre theories, he’d been forced to put his conviction to the test, to ask her questions and watch her answer, and ask himself as he did, Are you her? Are you my Charlie? Now that it was over, it felt unreal, like a dream that lingered too long, unwelcome in the waking world. As he approached the turnoff that would take him home, he sped up, driving straight on past it.
John parked his car a few blocks away from Clay Burke’s house. He pulled the keys out of the ignition and jangled them nervously in his hand for a minute, then opened the door decisively and got out. When he got to the house it was dark except for a single window, which he thought was Clay’s office. I wonder if Carlton’s gone back to school, he wondered, unsure whether he was hoping for his friend’s presence, or his absence.
He knocked and waited, then rang the bell. A long moment later, Clay opened the door.
“John. Good,” he said, and nodded, seeming unsurprised by his presence. He stepped aside to let John in, and ushered him into the study. “Do you want some coffee?” he asked, gesturing at the mug on his desk.
“It’s a little late for me,” John said. “I’ll be up all night.”
Clay nodded. “I’m substituting lesser vices,” was all he said. John glanced around the room. The last time he had been here they’d used the desk as a barricade against an army of angry animatronics.
“You fixed the door,” he observed.
“I fixed the door,” Clay said. “Oak. Reinforced. What brings you here?”
“I saw Charlie.” Clay raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. “She said something: she asked if I’d heard from—” John stopped, seized by a sudden sense that he was being watched. Clay had his head tilted to the side as though sensing something as well.
Silently, Clay made his way to the closed window, positioning himself beside one of the long, pale green drapes, and peered outside. “Everyone is a little on edge with all these weirdos walking around in face paint,” he said, but he kept his voice low. He pulled the drapes together, then walked back toward John. “Have a seat,” Clay offered; there were two dark green upholstered chairs and a matching couch along one wall. John sat on the couch. Clay grabbed his desk chair and dragged it across the rug so they were only a few feet apart.
“What did Charlie ask you?” Clay began. John glanced at the window again; he felt as if waves of dread were emanating from it, rolling into the room like an unseen fog. Clay looked back over his shoulder, but only for a second. John cleared his throat.
“She asked about her aunt Jen. If I’d seen her. I thought you might know something?” he finished uncertainly. Clay looked lost in thought, and John wondered for a moment if he should repeat himself.
“No,” Clay said finally. “Did Charlie say why she was asking?”
John shook his head. “She just said she wanted to know if I’d heard from her. I don’t know why I would hear from her, though,” he said. He was choosing his words carefully, as if saying the right ones in the right order would unlock a door in Clay’s mind, and convince him to tell John what he knew. Clay just nodded thoughtfully. “Did you ever meet her?” John asked.
“Never a formal introduction, no,” Clay said. “She was a bit older than Henry, I think.” Clay got quiet for a moment and tilted his glass from side to side, swirling the last few sips at the bottom. “When he moved here, Henry was something of a recluse; we all knew he’d lost a kid.” Clay sat up slowly. “Didn’t see them for a while, even Charlie, and then …” Clay let out a pained sigh. “Jen was around for about a year, and she was the one watching the kid. Jen stuck to Charlie’s side like glue. I guess Henry just didn’t trust people anymore, and I can’t blame him.”
“I always kind of got the impression …” John paused, choosing his words again. “Charlie always gave me the impression that she was kind of cold.”
“Well, like I said, after something like that,” Clay said. “I was surprised when Jen took Charlie, after Henry died,” he went on.
“What about Charlie’s mother?” John asked hesitantly. It felt intrusive to pry, worse because Charlie was not here: he felt like they were talking about her behind her back.
“No, Charlie’s mother ran off before her and her father moved to Hurricane,” Clay said. “Henry never said anything bad about her mother. He pretty much never said anything about her at all, but I asked one day, just out of curiosity. Maybe it was the detective in me; I couldn’t help myself. He thought a long time before answering me, then he gave me this sad look, and he said, ‘She wouldn’t know what to do with my little girl.’ I backed off the subject after that. I mean, I knew they
’d lost another kid. I guess I assumed Charlie’s mother had had some kind of breakdown, or else just found herself unable to care for a child so much like the one she’d lost. I think it should be said, though, to her aunt Jen’s credit, Charlie seems to have turned out all right.” He smiled and gave a nod. “She’s a bit odd, but she’s a good kid.”
“She’s unique, for sure,” John said.
“Unique, then,” Clay said drily. The walls trembled briefly as a strong wind passed over the house. John cast his eyes around the room uncomfortably, then lit on something familiar in the corner, tucked away between the end of a bookshelf and the wall.
“Is that Ella?” John asked, pointing. Clay looked blank for a moment.
“The doll? That turned up in the rubble of Charlie’s old house. The rest got hauled away, but I kept that.”
“Her name is Ella,” John said. “Charlie’s dad made her, she used to go around on a track, carrying a tea set.”
“I asked Charlie if she wanted it,” Clay said. “She wasn’t interested.”
“She wasn’t?” John repeated, alarmed. Clay shook his head absently.
“I have a hard time believing that,” John said incredulously as he held the old toy in his arms, and Clay came back to attention.
“Well, tell her that it’s here if she ever wants it.”
“I will,” John said, setting the doll back down. Clay glanced at the window again and looked preoccupied. “Is something wrong?” John asked.
“Not at all,” he said.
John raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure about that?”
Clay sighed. “A child was abducted this morning.”
“What?”
“A little girl, she disappeared sometime between mid-night and six a.m.” Clay was stone-faced; John searched for words and came up empty. “It’s the second one this month,” Clay added quietly.
“I haven’t heard anything about that,” John said. He glanced at the window again as the wind began to howl outside, then looked back at Clay, and immediately the knot of fear took up its post behind his head again. “Do you have any leads?” John asked the first question he could think of. Clay didn’t answer for a long moment, and John asked the next question. “Do you think it has something to do with—I mean, missing kids, it’s not the first time that’s happened here.”
“No, it’s certainly not.” Clay was staring into the space between them as if there was something there he could see. “I don’t see any way that it could be connected, though; Freddy’s has been destroyed at this point.”
“Right,” John said. “So, you don’t have any leads?”
“I’m doing the best that I can.” Clay lowered his head and ran his hand though his hair, then sat up straight again. “I’m sorry. It’s got me on edge; I feel like I’m reliving those days: children, the same age as my little boy—the same age as you back when—getting snatched one after another, and there was nothing I could do to stop it then, either.”
“Michael,” John said quietly.
“Michael. And the others. There never seems to be a shortage of evil in this world.”
“But that’s why we have you, right?” John smiled.
Clay snorted. “Right. I wish it were that simple.”
“You said two kids were missing?” John said, his eyes drawn again toward the sound of the wind dragging branches and leaves against the side of the house.
Clay stood up and went to the window, almost defiantly, and opened it wide. John startled at the sound of the window cracking. John could see from where he sat that Clay seemed to be scanning the area for something under the guise of getting some air.
After a moment, he pulled himself back inside and shut the window, then drew the curtains closed. “It might not be as bad as it looks now, John. There’s usually a normal explanation, and most kids turn up, one way or another. Two weeks ago, there was a little boy named Edgar, whatever. Two and a half years old.”
“What happened?”
“His parents have been fighting about custody for over a year. His father ends up losing that fight—only gets to see the kid once a month, supervised visits, which I can tell you was for good reasons. Edgar disappears, surprise, surprise. He was found a few days later, alive and well; spontaneous road trip with his dad. Most kidnappings, it’s one of the parents.”
“Is that what you think is happening here?” John asked skeptically.
“No.” Clay didn’t take long to answer. “No, I don’t,” he repeated, sounding graver.
He took a deep breath and leaned forward. “And it doesn’t help that the whole town’s obsessed with this new restaurant, dressing up like clowns—it’s a waste of time for my officers to be doing crowd control, or clown control, as it were.”
“Can I do anything?” John asked, though he couldn’t imagine what kind of help he could be.
“Not a thing,” Clay said. “If I’m right, I may need you. And I’ll need—” He stopped.
“Charlie,” John said. “You’ll need Charlie.”
Clay nodded. “It’s not fair to ask that of her,” Clay said. “Not after everything she’s been through. But I will if I have to.”
“Yeah,” John said. Clay was staring at the space between them again, and John felt suddenly like he was intruding. “It’s getting late,” he said.
“Yeah, well, watch yourself out there,” Clay said, hastily standing. “Do you want to take my gun?” Clay said lightly. He smiled, but there was tension in his face, as though he were half hoping John would take it.
“Don’t need it.” John grinned. “I’ve got these guns.” He held a tight fist in the air and threatened the room before letting himself out.
“Okay, tough guy, see you soon,” Clay said grimly.
* * *
John started back toward his car: it was pitch-black now—it had been dark when he arrived, he realized, but now he noticed it. The streetlamps didn’t go far, the pools of light beneath him swallowed up only a few feet out. His footsteps landed hard; and there seemed to be no way to quiet them. The distant roar of the highway was too faint to provide cover, and the wind was silent for the time being, as though it had temporarily gone into hiding. Something moved a few yards ahead of him, and John stopped dead: coming down the road was another costumed moviegoer, but there was something off about this one. It was heading in his direction, walking in the middle of the road at an even pace. John stayed where he was between two of the tall, thin saplings planted along the sidewalk, his eyes glued to the approaching figure.
As it came closer, a chill gripped John’s spine: The clown’s movements were feminine, but wrong. She walked like something mechanical, yet graceful. His breath caught in his throat as the clown glided toward him like a wraith. The creature was staring straight ahead as it passed; John waited, hoping to stay out of its line of sight. As she grew closer however, her eyes drifted toward him, her head turning only slightly as though to acknowledge his passing.
John stared back, at first admiring the sleek and controlled beauty of her face, split down the middle through some trick of costuming. John instinctively took a step back—he had seen monsters before—and prepared to run, or fight, if necessary. But just as his heart began thudding against his chest, she looked away again and slipped back into the dark as gracefully as she had appeared. John watched for a moment, then continued to his car. He checked his rearview mirror, but there was no one in sight. As he drove home, he checked the mirror more often than he needed to. His thoughts kept returning to those shiny, penetrating eyes: the clown had looked at him like she knew him; like she could see right through him. “Relax,” John said to the empty car. “It was just some weirdo in a costume.” Saying the words aloud, however, did not make them any more convincing.
* * *
Clay went back to his office and stopped by the window, drawing aside the curtains slightly to make sure John had made it around the corner and out of sight. Clay sighed; he sat down at his desk, picked up the cas
e file on the second missing child, and began to review it. The information he needed just wasn’t there, but it didn’t stop him from returning to it over and over again. His officers had diligently done their jobs: they’d gone to the right places, talked to the right people, and asked all the wrong questions. They just don’t know what I know.
There was a sound from down the hallway, a distinct creak. Clay’s eyes lifted, and he set the file carefully back on his desk.
“John?” he called, but there was no response. With practiced calm, Clay quietly reached for the gun he kept in a holster under his desk and flipped the safety off. He went to the open office door and paused, listening for another noise from the dark hall. Nothing came. Clay pulled the door shut, snapping the deadbolts into place.
Clay stepped back into the center of the room and stood, listening. A moment passed in silence and his eyes dropped, his shoulders feeling at ease, but suddenly his eyes lifted again, and his jaw clenched. He took one deliberate step back, focusing directly on the center of the door ahead of him. He lifted and steadied his gun, and took aim. Several minutes passed, but Clay’s eyes never wavered. There was something in the hall.
* * *
John let his front door fall shut behind him with a heavy thud and tossed his keys on the kitchen counter. He sat down heavily on the couch, letting his head fall back, weighted down with fatigue. After only a moment, he lifted his head back up: the strange noise was coming from his bedroom again. It sounded a little like the sounds the rabbit’s head had been making, but something had changed, though he couldn’t pinpoint how. It sounded like a voice, then static, a voice, then static. Something was being repeated.
John’s bedroom door was almost all the way closed, and he got up from the couch and approached it slowly from the side, putting his feet down silently one after the other, the rubber soles scarcely tapping the floor. He eased the door open: the sound was louder now, more distinct: the voice continued, garbled and muffled. John turned on the light and went to Theodore’s head. He bent over so his eyes were level with Theodore’s plastic ones, and listened. The rabbit’s head stared back, muttered words, broke into static, then a moment later repeated. John grabbed a notebook and pen off his bed and closed his eyes, concentrated on the sounds.
The Fourth Closet Page 6