Gateway

by David C. Cassidy

  “Sure,” Jared sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good. Let me know on Monday. I’ll be in the office all day.”

  “I will.”

  “Great. Try to enjoy the rest of your evening. It’s not that big a deal. Bye, Marisa. Bye, Jared.”

  “Bye,” Jared and Marisa said in time.

  “Oh!” Gwen said. “Did you hear about Sonia Wheaton?”

  “Yes,” Marisa said. “It’s awful.”

  Jared echoed her.

  “Did you know she was pregnant?” Gwen said.

  “Pregnant?” Marisa said. “Are you sure?”

  Jared stiffened in his seat. “Jesus.”

  “Gwen?” Marisa said. “How—how do you know that?”

  “Her sister told me. Can you imagine?”

  “No … no.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring you guys down,” Gwen said. “Just me rambling, as usual. I mean, what with Kyle and Tom and Artie. Now this. What the hell is happening in this town?”

  “I know,” Marisa said. “I know.”

  “Look forward to seeing you guys,” Gwen said. “Bye.”

  “Bye,” Marisa said. She made sure the call had ended. She didn’t have to say it.

  Jared stopped tapping on his own.

  ~ 91

  Marisa insisted on helping with the cleanup, and afterward, Jared continued the house tour on the second floor. She uttered a few more OMG’s, but reserved her most exuberant outburst for the master bedroom, where the voluminous walk-in closet, shelved with shoe caddies from floor to ceiling, swallowed her.

  “The kitchen was Heaven,” she said, running her fingers over the fine mahogany shelves. “But this? Xanadu.”

  Jared had to laugh. Especially when most of his wardrobe took up a couple of small drawers and about a half-dozen hangers. “I was thrilled that the bathroom had a light in the shower.”

  He led her down the corridor and into the study. Kit was sitting at Jared’s desk, tapping away at the Underwood.

  “Kit!” Marisa said.

  “It’s fine,” Jared said. “He can’t hurt it. The thing’s a tank.”

  Kit smiled and kept on, but quickly grew tired of the game. He got off the chair and was soon marveling at Jared’s telescope.

  “Touch with the eyes, Kit,” Marisa said. She sat at the desk, getting very comfortable in the soft leather. “Ooooh, nice.”

  She scanned the room. “So this is where the magic happens now.”

  “Yeah. Where the monsters live.”

  “What?” Kit said.

  “Nothing,” Jared said, realizing his slip-up. “Sorry. I was just kidding around.”

  Kit went back to his exploration, examining the slow-motion controls on the telescope mount.

  Marisa swiveled in the chair. She tapped a key on the old typewriter. “I always wondered if you kept it.”

  “Of course I did,” Jared said. “It always reminded me of you. Of us.”

  She smiled. “I remember that look on your face when you saw it. If only I’d had a camera.”

  Jared regarded the room—the house—with a roaming eye. “The truth is, Mar, none of this would have happened without you. You believed in me. Especially when I didn’t.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot.”

  He moved close and stroked her hand.

  Marisa read the Chinese fortune taped to the Underwood. Soon will come great success on a new horizon. “Trouble with the new book?”

  “Don’t have a rabbit’s foot,” he quipped. “I couldn’t stomach the bloody fur.”

  “Gross,” Marisa said, and she turned. “Kit. Stop that.”

  Kit was leaning over an open box on the floor, so far over that he might have fallen in if given a gentle push. He straightened and stood back, then turned to his mother with an expression of guilt, as if being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Sorry.”

  “No problem,” Jared said. “It’s just a bunch of stuff I haven’t got around to unpacking yet. I don’t even remember what’s in half these boxes.”

  “Is that a picture?” Marisa said. She was eyeing the object in Kit’s hand.

  “I think it’s you, Mom.”

  Marisa motioned for him to bring it to her. She cupped a hand to her lips, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you kept this!”

  It was a Polaroid, fuzzy and faded. Marisa stood in a pink flowered dress, her hair perfect, her eyes bright. Her smile was infectious. She was all of seventeen.

  “I can’t believe you asked me to the prom,” Jared said.

  Marisa laughed. “After all the rejections you gave me? I can’t believe it, either.”

  She looked at the photograph, pensive.

  “Something wrong?” Jared said.

  “Just wondering where the years went,” she said. She looked at her child. “It really does fly by.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jared agreed. “But you know, I learned a hard lesson after the accident. It’s a bit of a cliché, but it’s what we do with the time we have that’s important.” He gave her a warm grin. “I like to think we have a lot of great years ahead.”

  “Me, too.”

  Kit was back at the telescope, standing on his tip-toes trying to peer into the eyepiece. “I can’t see anything.”

  “It’s not really for inside,” Jared said. “Hey—I just had a great idea. Why don’t I get a fire going out back and we roast some marshmallows? I can move the scope downstairs and we can look at the stars.”

  ~ 92

  By sundown, Jared had roasted half a bag of marshmallows around the fire pit. He brought down his telescope, and after a short tour of the Milky Way, he showed Kit the crisp shadow of the volcanic moon Io as it crossed the face of a rising Jupiter.

  “The stars are amazing out here,” Marisa said when Jared joined her. Even bundled up in a jacket to combat the cool evening, the faint orange firelight gave her a sensual glow.

  “They are,” Jared said. He zipped up his coat and sipped the hot tea that Marisa had made. He gave her a look. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m so proud of you,” she said. “Your parents would be so damn proud.”

  “Thank you.” He paused. “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And whatever else that’s going on in there. I can tell.”

  She sipped some tea, diverting her attention to a sudden crackle of the fire.

  “Mar.”

  She straightened a bit in her chair. “I don’t want to start anything. But I think your brother would be proud, too.”

  “I wouldn’t say proud. Bitter seems more appropriate.”

  “Maybe you should try again. Invite him for dinner.”

  “He won’t come. I’d just be wasting his time. And mine.”

  “I really hate seeing you two like this. It’s such a waste.”

  “Well, I tried. At least I tried.”

  “Your parents wouldn’t want it this way.”

  “This sure sounds like you’re starting something.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to. It just breaks my heart.”

  Jared got up, stretched his legs, and showed Kit the Double Cluster. They spent the next twenty minutes scanning craters on the crescent moon, and by then, Kit was expressing more yawns than oohs and ahs. When he joined his mother by the fire, he was out like a light about ten seconds after leaning back in his chair.

  “I should get him to bed,” Marisa said.

  Jared brought the telescope upstairs and then carried Kit up. He put him in the bedroom across from the study. Kit didn’t even wake up as Marisa changed him into his pajamas and kissed him tenderly on the forehead.

  “Poor kid,” she whispered. “All that fresh air tuckered him out.” She shuffled through a zippered pocket in his suitcase, and placed his calming stone on the night stand beside his glasses. Grabbing a night-light from the suitcase, she asked, “Can I put this in the hall?”

  Jared set it into a sock
et down the corridor. Marisa thanked him as she closed the door behind her, and they went downstairs.

  Out back, Jared took up a seat next to the fire. He sat up when Marisa stepped past him to the edge of the pool.

  “Mar?”

  Marisa smiled in the slim light of the setting moon. She unzipped her jacket and slipped it off. She let it slip from her fingers, and before Jared knew it, she was slipping out of her sarong. Now she stood before him, that smile, oh so teasing.

  “It’s a perfect night for a swim,” she said. She bit down playfully on her lower lip, then stripped slowly out of her bathing suit. “Just like the old days.”

  The light caressed her every curve as she turned away. She flipped her head back, her perfect hair falling along her naked shoulder. She paused, breathless, then dove into the water.

  Jared got up with a spring in his step. He unzipped his coat with a smile.

  “Just like the old days,” he said.

  ~

  It was eleven-fifteen when they emerged from the water, shivering in the brisk of the night. They said nothing; nothing needed to be said. They had made love; they were in love.

  Inside, Marisa checked on her son and met Jared in the corridor. She was wearing only her jacket. He, his coat.

  “Should I stay down the hall?” she said, whispering.

  He kissed her. Even in the subtle glow of the night-light, her beauty possessed him.

  He swept her off her feet and carried her to his bedroom.

  ~ 93

  Jared stirred in his bed. He had an arm slung around Marisa’s side, her soft hand holding him close as they spooned. She was fast asleep. She hadn’t heard the footsteps beyond the door.

  He listened for an encore. Kit must have gotten up to go to the bathroom, but when there were no further sounds after a few minutes, he figured the boy had returned to his bed. He was drifting off when his eyes shot open.

  Footsteps. Soft. Plodding. Almost rhythmic.

  He slid his hand free, careful not to wake Marisa. She stretched a little, and he held still until she settled.

  He slipped on his pajama bottoms and stepped quietly to the door. The unfamiliar glow of the night-light beneath it helped, as he waited for the slightest shadow to betray the presence of someone in the corridor.

  He held an ear to the door. When no sound came, he cracked it open. He stepped into the corridor. The door to Kit’s bedroom was open. Down the hall to his right, the guest bathroom was dark.

  The monster got him, he thought, and chastised himself for even thinking such a childish, horrible thing. He had always embraced those crazy ideas that often struck him when writing, but sometimes, like now, those ideas scared the bejesus out of him.

  He checked Kit’s room. Kit was not in his bed, and his glasses were gone. So was his stone.

  He turned toward the end of the corridor. The study door was open, but he had closed it earlier. He reasoned he had left it open when he brought up the telescope.

  The night-light guided him to the study. If Kit was in there, there were more than enough things lying around he could trip over. If he’d wandered out to the deck, it was a long way to the ground if—

  Will you stop it?

  He took an anxious step into the study. No sign of Kit. There were two open boxes on the floor. He would have sworn only one had been open before they went to bed.

  He shivered from the cool night air as he searched the deck, all the way round to his bedroom. Marisa was still curled up, dead to the world.

  He made his way back and closed the French doors with a soft click. He listened. Nothing.

  Back in the corridor, he heard a small sound from downstairs. It sounded like a voice, but it was so distant, so faint, he could not be sure. He passed the bedrooms and approached the top of the stairs. The gloom below offered little more than the ghostly outline of a small child.

  Kit stood with his back to him, turned toward the dark of the living room. He was barefoot in his wrinkled pajamas. Half of him was masked by the edge of the wall.

  “Kit?” Jared whispered. “Kit?”

  There was no reply. And yet there was.

  He could not be certain what the boy had said. The words had been almost inaudible. He took a slow step down, and stopped as Kit disappeared into the darkness.

  A chill ran the nape of his neck. He saw nothing, but again he heard the unmistakable sound of a child’s voice. And again, he could not discern what was said.

  He took two more steps. Three more. “Kit?”

  Another step brought him halfway down, and he stopped again. This time, he was close enough to make out those words.

  “I can hear you,” Kit said. His voice was almost robotic. As if he were talking not to Jared, but to someone else.

  Maybe some thing, Jared thought. Some horrible beast that will claw him in two.

  He hesitated, recalling the fear that had gripped him in Sonia Wheaton’s kitchen. It was gripping him now.

  Slowly, he made his way to the main floor. He had seen too many horror movies, had read—and written—so many stories, that he held no doubt that something creepy, possibly something from the very pits of hell, lurked beyond that corner. It was crazy, he knew, some bad egg his zany brainy had cooked up, and yet his thudding heart could not be stilled.

  He stepped past the wall and froze. Cold, dead fingers seemed to skitter up his spine.

  Kit stood in the pearly moonlight spilling through the tall windows. More shadow than shape, he barely stirred. In fact, had he not whispered again, Jared might have thought him a dream.

  “I can hear you,” Kit repeated.

  Jared studied him, mystified and terrified. This wasn’t just odd; it had a creep factor that was off the charts.

  “Kit?”

  The boy stared into the darkness.

  Again, Jared felt cold slither through him … and something more. He could not shake the feeling that something formless hovered at the edge of his senses. Something dreadful and black.

  “Kit,” he whispered weakly. He feared startling the boy, but the truth was, he feared being heard by something else. With every beat of his heart, he was more certain they were not alone.

  Kit stirred. Just as Jared believed the boy might turn around, Kit began to count down from ten. He started calmly, but at seven he began to tremble. The countdown grew faster, and Jared took a daring step forward. He would have taken another, but on the mark of one, he stopped. Something had struck the hardwood with a clunk so loud, he was certain it would wake Marisa—and whatever waited in the shadows. It was too dark to see, but he knew what it was. The calming stone.

  “Go away,” Kit whispered. “Go away.”

  “Kit—”

  There it was yet again, that unnerving cold, that palpable dread. Something was there, as real as fear.

  The shape, Jared thought. The monster is here.

  But that was crazy.

  That was impossible.

  “I won’t let you get me.” The words slid from Kit’s lips. They were so frail, yet so determined.

  Jared took another step. He reached out to put a hand on Kit’s shoulder … and froze.

  It glistened, if only for that split second—more than long enough to thrust a lasting tremor into his heart. The thin light had struck it at that terrifying sweet spot, shimmering along its cold steel barrel. And when Kit raised the small handgun slowly and with purpose, Jared thought he might scream.

  And before he could, Kit fired the .38.

  ~ 94

  Chaos ensued. If the writer in Jared had been asked to describe it, no words would come. For him, time stilled in the darkness. The shot had been deafening, as loud as anything he had ever heard. In the relative confines of his living room, his world shrank in that moment. This was his world.

  He heard a scream as Marisa’s steps pounded along the hardwood above. She cried out for him, and a moment later, cried out for Kit. Jared called to her, called again, and called a third time as she
bounded down the stairs.

  Panic gripped him. Kit was on his back. He wasn’t moving. The kick of the .38 wasn’t much, but the recoil had been enough to make him slip on the slick hardwood floor. It was too dark to see, and Jared feared the worst.

  By chance he saw a glint of moonlight on the gun, and he scooped it up. For a fleeting moment, he froze as that chilling darkness lingered. He turned one way, then back, the weapon poised.

  The monster’s here. It’s come for Kit—

  The overhead lamp blinded as Marisa slapped the light switch. Jared whirled round and nearly fired in fear. If she hadn’t screamed for her child just as she had, shrill and wild, he might have.

  Kit’s body had begun to tremble.

  “Kit! My baby!”

  Marisa fell to her knees beside her son. Kit was trapped in a debilitating seizure. She tried to steady him, but her efforts were futile. She held his hand as tears streamed down her face. “Come on, baby. Oh God, please, please—”

  Jared tried to focus, tried to shake the boiling head rush that threatened to overwhelm him. Everything was spinning.

  “What the hell is going on?” Marisa shouted. “Jared! Jared!”

  He slipped back with a groan. It took a moment for him to settle, and he managed to keep it together. He saw no sign of a gunshot wound on Kit, no blood at all, but the child’s condition seemed no less precarious.

  Marisa turned her attention back to her son. Seconds ticked by, and only by grace did the event come to a merciful end. Kit’s tremors ebbed, and when he opened those foggy eyes, Marisa broke down in tears.

  “Oh, baby,” she cried. “Oh, my beautiful baby boy.”

  Kit blinked, squinting into the bright light above. He seemed utterly puzzled. “Mom? Mom?”

  “Are you okay?” Marisa said.

  “Why am I on the floor? Where are we?”

  “We’re at Jared’s. Remember?”

  Kit nodded. He started to sit up, and she helped him. He had to straighten his glasses. “Jared?”

  Jared steadied himself. The fever had diminished, and the room had stopped spinning. “I … I’m good.”