by Ronald Malfi
Alan shrugged. “Nothing. Just the crawl space.”
“Maybe an animal died down there?”
“Possibly.”
“Or maybe …” But her voice trailed off.
“What?” he prompted.
It was her turn to shrug. “Maybe it’s something just under the floor. Like, almost at the surface.”
Alan had frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind.” She couldn’t explain what she was talking about, she told him.
Jerry Lee died just a few days after the visit to the vet. Alan had awoken earlier than usual on that Sunday morning to the sound of heavy tapping somewhere off in the house. He crawled out of bed, slipped on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt (he and Heather had taken to sleeping in the nude lately and engaging in rigorous and lengthy bouts of lovemaking that left them both exhausted and glowing), and went into the living room. To his horror, he found Jerry Lee dead against the glass patio doors. The tapping sound he had heard was one of the buzzards, bigger than a housecat, sitting on the other side of the glass. The hideous creature was absently knocking its curved, bone-colored beak against it.
“Shit.” He’d stared down at Jerry Lee for a long time. The dog’s eyes were open and glazed over, filmy in their sightlessness. With one fist, Alan pounded on the glass until the buzzard spread its wings and bounded off through the tall grass. When it reached the line of trees at the edge of the property, it climbed into the air and nested in one of the high branches. It kept watch on the Hammerstun house like a gargoyle.
Jerry Lee’s body had already grown stiff with rigor mortis. Alan wrapped the dog in an old afghan quilt and carried it to the Toyota. He placed Jerry Lee in the trunk and after breakfast took him to Dr. Grouse who promised a proper disposal of the animal.
“There’s a cemetery out back and up the hill,” Grouse had informed him. “It’s not very expensive, and many folks like the idea of having their—”
“No,” Alan had said curtly. “Thanks, anyway.”
And he’d left.
Alan found teaching at the community college easy, though unrewarding, and he skated through his days without difficulty. For the first time in a long while, he was excited about returning home at the end of each day. Sometimes Heather would be there, preparing dinner and wearing a nice new dress, looking fit and glowing. Other nights, when she stayed late at the gallery, he would arrive home before her and prepare his own version of dinner—things overly burned, undercooked, or overzealously seasoned—which they would eat late once Heather had come home. Then they’d watch television over a bottle of wine before adjourning to the bedroom for another session of furious lovemaking. Some nights, they didn’t even make it to the bedroom.
Alan curtailed his daily jaunts to the lake as the summer turned to fall. Soon he would go only once a week to refill a jug of water. He never told Heather about it; moreover, his treks to the lake would always happen in the earliest hours of the morning, even before the sun had time to rise, so he began doubting the authenticity of these trips himself. If it hadn’t been for the fresh jug of water in the refrigerator, he would have written it off as a series of lucid dreams.
He had no more run-ins with Sheriff Hearn Landry, although he did get Landry’s son, Bart, in one of his classes. Young Bart Landry was dim, petulant, meaty, and possessed the protruding brow of a caveman coupled with the slack, detached look of a country imbecile. As the elder Landry had promised, his son was a poor student, but at least he wasn’t disruptive.
Hank had taken his family to Florida around the end of summer, just before school started for Catherine, so he wasn’t around when Jerry Lee died. Upon his return, he was saddened at the news. He joined Alan on his back patio one cool, fall evening for some beers. Fireflies strummed in the air. After talking about the dog for a while, Hank commented on what he had seen to be a sudden change in Alan’s wife.
Alan frowned. “What do you mean?”
They were seated around the picnic table, the day turning into night all around them. Hank set his beer on the table and didn’t meet Alan’s eyes. “Can I ask you a … a personal question, man?” he said eventually.
“I guess so.”
“What happened to Heather?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Hank pressed his lips together and still would not meet Alan’s eyes. Picking at the label of his beer bottle, he said, “Her wrists. Both Lydia and I noticed it the day you moved in. She was … all bandaged up.” Finally, he looked up. Hank’s eyes were glassy. “Is she okay?”
“She is now, yes.”
“Is it too much for me to ask why her wrists were bandaged like that?”
Alan’s mouth tasted suddenly dry. “Why do you think?” he said evenly. It was like talking through a dream.
Hank raised his eyebrows and looked abruptly uncomfortable. He picked more furiously at the label on his beer bottle. “I mean, someone who’s got their, uh, their wrists bandaged up like that … well …”
“Go ahead,” Alan pressed. He knew he was being cruel but didn’t care. “Say it. Say what you’re thinking.”
“Suicide.” Hank practically breathed the word. Somehow he’d managed to rob it of substance, which was exactly what Alan thought he’d intended to do. “Did she … try to kill herself?”
After swallowing a lump of spit that felt like a chunk of obsidian, Alan said, “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Things happened back in New York.”
Silence simmered between the two men for a beat. Then Hank asked what kind of things.
“Things,” Alan said flatly, “that upset her. Obviously.”
“Hey.” Hank raised one hand. “Listen, I get it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
Alan shrugged, chugged some beer.
“Look, man,” Hank went on, “I like to think we’re friends, right?”
Alan nodded.
“If there was something you and your wife, you know … needed … I’d like to think you’d ask me for help.”
“There’s nothing we need.”
“Because I’d help if I could.”
“There’s nothing we need.”
“Yeah, right.” Hank sighed. “Not anymore. Everything seems fine now.”
A hot ember ignited deep inside Alan’s gut. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s just that Heather seems to have done a complete one-eighty.” Hank shrugged, as if this whole discussion had become unimportant to him. “A month ago she was walking around like a zombie, breaking down, crying to Lydia, staying in the house for days without coming out. Christ, I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s just … if something was going on, you’d tell me. I mean, wouldn’t you?”
Alan exhaled what felt like steam through his flared nostrils. After gathering his composure, he said, “And just what do you think is going on?”
Hank visibly recoiled. He turned away from Alan and looked beyond the trees at the distant mountains. They were the color of cobalt in the deepening night. When he brought his beer to his mouth, his hand shook.
They talked no more about it that evening.
In the darkness, Alan came awake with a sudden jerk. He had no idea what time it was—late evening or early dawn—and he struggled to sit up in bed, the sheets beneath him dampened with sweat. In fact, his whole body glistened beneath a sheet of perspiration. His respiration was ragged, coming in hyperventilated gasps.
There’s someone else in here with us, he thought, frightened.
There was a sound—sharp and quick, like a distant bark. Like someone moving a chair across the kitchen floor. For a split second, he attributed the noise to Jerry Lee banging around in the dark. But then he remembered the dog was no longer alive and that it was only Heather and him in the house.
And someone else … someone else in here with us …
He held his breath and listened for the sound again.
It’s not in the kitchen, he thought, the hairs
on his arms teasing upward. Someone is here, right here in the bedroom with us. Jesus Christ, I can feel it.
“Heather … Heather …” Whispering like a ghost.
Heather slept peacefully and did not stir. Her skin looked like candle wax in the light coming in through the window.
Then there it was again: a definite thump at the other end of the house. It was the sound of something—of someone—barking a shin on a piece of furniture, sending it skidding across the floor.
Someone’s in the house.
When he was ten years old, two thugs had kicked in a window on the ground floor of their Manhattan brown-stone while he and his father had slept. In threadbare Jockey shorts and a tight bowling league T-shirt, Bill Hammerstun appeared in the doorway of Alan’s bedroom, a baseball bat held in both hands. Alan remained in bed, the blankets pulled up to his neck, and didn’t move. His father went down the creaking stairwell, and Alan heard shouting and scrambling around downstairs. He heard someone cry out in pain and something shatter like glass on linoleum. The next morning, his father went to Fifty-First Street and bought a handgun from one of his pool hall cronies.
Alan thought of that now as he climbed out of bed and crept into the hallway. The house was dark, the hallway awash in shadows so thick they could have been vortexes to other dimensions. He owned no gun and, unlike his father, held no baseball bat at the ready. Running one hand along the wall, he felt around for a light switch that was not there.
In the kitchen, he flipped on the lights and winced at the overbearing glare of the ceiling fixtures. The kitchen chairs appeared to be in perfect order around the table. Nothing seemed out of place.
“Owen?” he whispered. It took a lot out of him to say that name aloud—as if he was confessing some horrendous atrocity he’d committed … or admitting to his own slipping sanity. His recollection of following Owen to the lake had been relegated to another feverish dream … yet standing here now, he wasn’t quite so sure …
Unwashed plates were stacked in the sink like ancient stone tablets. Water dripped incessantly from the faucet. The ceiling lights fizzed and flickered but remained on.
He tried to feel relief but it was tough to summon it. He had been so goddamn certain …
I still am. I can still feel it. There is a third presence in this house. We are not alone.
He grabbed a carving knife from the butcher block and, wielding it before him, continued into the dark pool of the living room. Every footstep creaked. He paused, expecting to see the silhouette of Owen Moreland in front of one of the windows again, but he didn’t.
Held his breath.
Counted to twenty.
Jesus Christ, I can feel it.
His heart was strumming steadily in his chest now. His nude body was slick with sweat.
Turning on all the lights, he searched the house for any intruders. Of course, he found no one, yet the feeling that he and Heather weren’t alone did not leave him. In fact, the more he searched and came up empty, the more certain he was that someone was hiding from him.
“Goddamn it.” A mouse’s whisper.
Back in the kitchen, he replaced the knife in the butcher block. The knife’s handle had imprinted itself on the palm of his right hand—he’d been squeezing it so tightly. He went around shutting off all the lights, then headed down the hall toward the bedroom—
—when someone grabbed his ankle.
He shrieked and stumbled backward in the dark, crashing against the opposite wall. The sound was like artillery fire in his head. He jerked his knee toward his chest … and could feel something tugging back, tightening around his ankle, not wanting to let him go …
“Alan!” Heather flipped on the hall light and stood naked in the sudden blaze. She stared down at him. “What happened?”
“Something—,” he began but cut himself off. Breathing heavily, he propped himself up on his hands and looked down at his right ankle. “Oh, Jesus …”
A thin vine was wound around his right ankle. Alan’s eyes followed it across the floor where it disappeared between the molding and the drywall. A strand no bigger than a length of spaghetti but strong as hell. A nervous laugh tickled the base of his throat.
Standing above him now, Heather looked petrified. “Goddamn it, what the hell are you doing?”
“It’s nothing.” Laughing louder now, like a madman. “I swear.” He unwound the vine from his ankle. It came away willingly enough. Then he wrapped it around his fist and tugged it until it sprung free of the wall. Unlike the thicker vines, this one left no purplish fluid behind when it broke.
Heather crouched beside him, ran a hand through his sweaty hair. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“I thought I heard someone in the house.”
“Did you check?”
“Yeah. No one’s here. Must have been a bad dream.” Although he still didn’t believe it.
“Come on,” she said, hoisting him up off the floor. “Let’s go back to bed.”
But Alan slept fitfully. And when he awoke, it was late morning and he was still exhausted. He remained in bed for some time, running one hand along the empty spot on Heather’s side of the bed, while watching the trees bend in the wind.
He got up, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a ratty old Clutch T-shirt, and examined his arms. His tattoos were fully gone now, the skin perfectly unmarred. It was as if he’d never had them.
He walked into the hallway, anticipating the smell of frying bacon and coffee percolating on the stove. He smelled none of that.
The kitchen was empty. There was no food cooking, no coffeepot jouncing away on the burner.
The living room was equally empty. He checked the doors and they were all locked. So were the windows. Peering outside, he saw the Toyota still in the driveway.
“Heather?”
He returned to the hallway and froze. There were no windows in the main hall, so it was dark even in midday—just as it was now. The only glimpse of light came from beneath the closed bathroom door.
It was silly—everything was fine between them now—but his heart began to race nevertheless. It felt like he stood there, unmoving, for the passage of countless millennia.
Don’t forget, he reminded himself. She fooled me once before. After the pills, she said she was okay and everything was fine for a while. Then, that night, with the bathroom door shut… the razor in the soap dish and the bloodstained bathwater…
(fooled me once before)
“Hon?”
Alan went to the door, tried the knob. Locked.
Panic shook him. For an instant, he forgot how to open a door.
Knocked with a fist. Fucking pounded.
“Heather? Open the goddamn door! Heath—”
The door popped open. Heather stood on the other side, her face creased with concern. She was wearing a flimsy cotton nightdress and looked so small standing there in the harsh light of the bathroom. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
He looked her up and down. He even grabbed her by the forearms. “Me? Christ, are you okay?”
“Were you calling me? I didn’t hear you.”
“What were you doing in there?”
A wide smile broke across her face. She looked instantly stunning. Something turned over in his chest seeing her smile like that. Then she hugged him. He returned the embrace, more than just puzzled, until he noticed the white stick and the open package on the bathroom countertop.
“Congratulations,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re gonna be a dad.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Dr. Regina Crawford was tall, with short-cropped hair the color of polished silver and an edginess to her overall demeanor that called her sexuality immediately into question. But she was a frank and pleasant enough doctor who made Alan comfortable the moment he shook her hand.
“So you’ve had two miscarriages in the past,” Dr. Crawford said, flipping through a chart.
They were crowded together in a tiny examination room, A
lan sitting as straight as an arrow in a chair against the wall while Heather, still in her paper gown, sat on a reclining, cushioned table covered in butcher’s paper. Crawford leaned against a counter that could have used a good scrubbing.
“The doctors could never actually tell us why,” said Heather.
“How’ve you been feeling?” Crawford asked, motoring on.
“I’ve been feeling good. Strong.”
“And eating?”
“I’ve been eating well. Alan has taken over the cooking duties, too, and I couldn’t be more thankful. Sometimes the smell of food cooking makes me violently nauseous.”
“And you’ve been keeping away from medical books?” Dr. Crawford cocked one slender black eyebrow. Her eyebrows appeared to have been drawn in with a grease pencil. “Been refraining from chitchat with other pregnant women to compare aches and pains and everything else?”
“Well,” Heather said, “I’ve been reading some stuff on the Internet but nothing I—”
“Bah.” Dr. Crawford held up one hand and scowled.
Heather grinned.
“Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me you think you have malaria or rickets or X, Y, Z, whatever. If you want something to read, I can give you a list of materials.”
“Oh,” Heather said. “Okay.”
“So,” said Crawford, “you two want to have a look?”
After Heather had reclined on the table, Crawford switched on a TV monitor bolted to a stand and produced a cylindrical phallus, the tip of which she greased up with clear jelly. “This is going to feel about as comfortable as you might expect, honey, but try to bear with me.”
“I’ve done these before,” said Heather, and she shot Alan a glance.
He smiled and gave her a nod of approval.
The cylindrical phallus disappeared beneath Heather’s paper gown. The black-and-white image on the TV monitor changed. Alan leaned forward in his seat. Something that looked like a clown’s smiling, toothless mouth appeared.
“That’s the cervix,” Dr. Crawford said.
The image readjusted. What Alan was looking at now was the vague suggestion of a well, or the opening to a well, and nothing but empty space beyond it. Blackness. For one terrifying moment, he wondered what he’d do if Heather was wrong—if the pregnancy test had been wrong—and they weren’t pregnant after all. What if the sonogram showed no baby, just an empty womb? What would the goddamn car ride home be like?