by Dan Padavona
I hid a little longer behind the hedgerow, just to be safe. I didn’t like crouching in the bushes much.
When we were ten, Riley and I camped in his backyard. We used his father’s tent, but somehow we’d fallen asleep in the grass while gazing up at the stars. I awoke to the first lightening of the eastern sky and felt something crawl across my face. Normally, I’d have brushed the thing away, but I was frozen, stiff as a board, scared out of my mind. I let my eyes travel over to Riley and saw hundreds of spiders crawling over his arms, legs, torso, through his hair. For all I knew he was dead, and they were cocooning him.
I didn’t dare look down. Something skittered across my bare legs.
Riley’s sudden scream broke my paralysis. I leaped up, doing a weird, panicked two-step as I brushed dozens of spiders off my shirt and pants. Riley had it worse than me. His face and eyes looked as though a boxer had worked him over all night. We’d slept on a nest of ugly, brown spiders, and they’d feasted on Riley.
It could have been worse, I suppose. The spiders weren’t black widows or brown recluses. Those breeds don’t exist in upstate New York. But I’ve seen a wolf spider the size of a field mouse in Smith Glen. Some things in the night bite hard.
I got the hell away from the bushes.
A cool dampness settled over my skin. It was late and getting colder. I didn’t relish the thought of riding home.
I walked the cul-de-sac, studying every property on one side of the street. Then I crossed to the opposite side.
The girl had vanished on me again. She might have been in any of the lighted houses with signs of activity. Maybe she wasn’t near a window. Maybe she was already in bed.
I didn’t think so.
Something about the dark, sleepy houses drew my attention.
Was she in one of those houses, watching me through a slit in the curtains?
I’d find her. I had to.
It was nearly midnight when I gave up and rode home.
I slept in the next morning. On my way out for lunch, I noticed a yellow slip of paper taped to my door. Jenkins taped notices to doors when someone was late on their rent.
That was odd. I’d paid him next month’s rent with the car proceeds. Perhaps he’d made a mistake.
I headed downtown to meet Riley for a beer at The Rainbow Pub, a dingy, dark bar with smoke-stained walls which belied its name. Except for the few tables along the back where Riley and I ate, it was standing room only inside the pub, the late lunch crowd shouting over each other as the jukebox thumped out an old Pat Benatar tune. Deep fried food and beer permanently colored the scent of the wood grain.
I brought the conundrum of the late rent notice up to Riley during our second round.
“I don’t want to freak you out, but did you pay Jenkins in cash?”
Riley narrowed his eyes whenever he was skeptical or critical of something I’d done.
“Sure. It saved me a trip to the bank. I doubt the bastard would’ve accepted a check from me, anyhow.”
“But he gave you a receipt, right?”
I sipped harder on my beer, feeling a little worried now.
“He had his hands full with a window repair at the end of the lot. I didn’t want to bother him anymore than I already had. The guy hates me enough as it is. He told me he’d write me a receipt and slip it under my door.”
“Did he?”
I didn’t need to answer. It was written on my face.
“Jesus, Steve.”
“Come on. He wouldn’t rip me off that brazenly.”
“Maybe not.” Chewing on a pretzel, Riley stopped to watch a leggy waitress walk past. “But I bet you never got that receipt.”
“No.” Something danced a jig across my spine. “Great. Now you’ve got me paranoid.”
“It’s like you said. Jenkins probably made a mistake. Just be careful from now on. We aren’t locals. Guys like Jenkins know the mayor and half the police force. If they want to take advantage of out-of-towners like us, they damn well can.”
Good ole’ boy country-and-western thumped out of the jukebox. A harried waitress raced to keep up with the lunch hour crowd.
“You ever figure out who the girl was?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
It didn’t sit right with me to hold back on tracking the stowaway to Park Place. I guess I didn’t want him to picture me as a stalker.
“Maybe you should tell someone about her.”
“The police?”
“Why not?”
I groaned. “She didn’t steal anything.”
“She’s the reason you totaled your car.”
“My car was on its last legs. You said it yourself.”
The sky turned dark out the windows. Raindrops pattered the glass. In a few weeks, those raindrops would fall as snow.
“I still think you should tell the police. A local woman went missing last week, so you can’t be too careful.”
I’d forgotten about the woman. A photocopied picture of the woman’s smiling face hung behind the bar.
Erin Tuttle. Long black hair, age twenty-six, mother of two. I couldn’t imagine a mother abandoning two infant children. Foul play was suspected. The news had run a story, strongly insinuating her ex-husband might be involved. She’d filed a restraining order against him after a messy custody battle.
I grinned over the rim of my mug. “I seriously doubt the girl in my car had anything to do with the Tuttle woman’s disappearance.”
“No, but she’s probably a vagrant, part of the reason Barton Falls is getting so dangerous.”
“Since when are you so high and mighty?”
I reminded Riley of the time we’d accidentally set fire to Old Man Richardson’s back lawn when we were ten. As was typical of early spring in Smith Glen, a burn ban was in effect due to dry vegetation. But kids don’t know about burn bans. We built a campfire out of sticks and crumpled newspaper in Riley’s backyard, when a gust tore apart the fire and rained sparks over Richardson’s brown lawn. The firetrucks arrived just before the flames caught the siding of Richardson’s ranch. Mom and Dad grounded me for a month for that stunt.
Choking on bits of pretzel with his face turning red, Riley lowered his head to the table and laughed into the crook of his elbow.
“You gonna live, Riley?”
After he composed himself, he went somber.
“You know, it might have been the Midnight Killer.”
“In Barton Falls? He only hits the big cities. I doubt he could find this place on a map.”
“He’s coming closer. Syracuse last month. Who knows where next?”
“You’re pretty morbid today.”
“Just considering the possibilities. Hey, if he strikes in Barton Falls, maybe he’ll take care of Big Red for you.”
Now it was my turn to choke. Big Red was Riley’s nickname for Donna.
“Don’t even say it, man. I want her off my back, but you know I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her.”
“Just joking, just joking.”
“Well, don’t joke about stuff like that. I mean it.”
Seeing I was serious, he apologized.
“You owe me one, anyhow,” he said, as he brushed expelled pretzel bits off the table.
“How so?”
“She stopped by the apartment to look for you this morning.”
I shivered.
“Donna?”
“Yep. I was outside working under my car when she drove up. Bee-yatch nearly drove over my legs. I told her you were at a job interview. Highly unlikely, but she bought it.”
“God. She doesn’t give up, does she?”
Back at the apartment, I eyed suspiciously the yellow warning taped to the door. I stuffed the paper into my pocket, unlocking the door just in time to answer the ringing phone.
The supermarket had finally gotten around to calling me. The store manager assured me I was high on his list of prospective hires and wanted me to come in for an interview.
&n
bsp; I’m pretty good at reading people. Even over the phone, I could tell from the desperate shade of his tone that I was his only applicant.
“Next Friday at noon,” I agreed.
The trapdoor slammed shut.
Do you want paper or plastic, Ma’am?
The way I figured it, I had a little more than a week of freedom left.
I was about to walk over to Riley’s apartment but found myself staring at the phone instead. I didn’t want to call home. Doing so usually left me feeling upset and drained.
I dialed.
Mom answered on the third ring.
“Stevie, is that you?”
“It’s me, Mom.”
“I can’t hear you too well. It sounds scratchy.”
“Bad line, I guess. How’s everything in Smith Glen?”
She fed me the extra helping of bad news I’d come to expect. Mrs. Harrington (she’d been my teacher in the first and fourth grades) had died of a stroke. Mr. Jackson from next door broke his hip last week, and now he had pneumonia. Cousin Jillian’s Penn State Masters Degree wasn’t helping her find a job, and she was back to living with Uncle Ben and Aunt Marylin, driving them insane with her constant critique of the lack of diversity in Smith Glen. Apparently, she was vegan, too, something Uncle Ben and Aunt Marylin never knew existed.
“She only eats plants,” Mom said.
I snickered, imagining Jillian stuffing her face with a rhododendron.
“And Dad got laid off at the mill.”
My father was sixty-one and should have retired by now. But nobody gets ahead in towns like Smith Glen, and nobody gets out. It’s a universal law, I think. The law says if you’re born into a hole, you aren’t allowed to crawl out. No matter what detritus life dumps down that hole, you live, work, and eat down there, accepting your fate the same as one accepts the sun setting in the west.
And you don’t get out. Not ever.
That’s the law of small town, rural New York.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“You stop that, Stevie. Your Dad and I will be just fine.”
The quaver in her voice told me she wasn’t so sure.
“I feel like I should come back. Maybe help out a little.”
“Help with what? You want to come do the laundry or take out the garbage on Tuesday nights?” She laughed. “The house is paid for, you know that. And the unemployment checks help.”
“That’s not enough to live on. Not comfortably.”
“Your Dad and I have always managed to get by. If I think how many times the mill laid off workers, and we still raised a beautiful boy.”
“Beautiful?”
“You are to us, Stevie.”
She cleared her throat. I heard her nervously shuffling papers. I wondered how many of them were overdue bills.
“Your Dad says it just isn’t right the way that computer company went to Florida and left all of you without jobs. Pretty soon they’ll move to Mexico or some Asian country where they can pay their workers peanuts. You know there was a time in this country when we took care of—”
“It’s all right. I still have a little money saved up, and I have an interview next week.”
“A good job?”
“Well…”
“You could do so much more, Stevie. I just wish we had the money to put you through college.”
She choked on that last bit. Now I really felt bad. Maybe I shouldn’t have called.
“It’ll all work out, Mom.”
“I know.” She sniffled and blew her nose. “I know it will. Can we send you a little money to help you out?”
“God, no. Come on, Mom. I’m fine.”
“You aren’t lying to me?”
“If I need anything, I promise I’ll call.”
The next morning dawned frosty and cold. Summer hadn’t quite surrendered to winter. By noon it was warm enough for blue jeans and a t-shirt, but before I could ride my bike up Cayuga Street, the telephone rang.
“Hello.”
“Hey there.”
Donna.
She was a tick burrowing into my skin. A big red tick with hair the 1980s wanted back.
“Wake up, Steve.”
“I’m here.”
She smacked on her gum. I could smell it through the receiver. It smelled purple and sticky.
“You never called me back. I started to worry.”
Yeah, right. She’d gotten the full scoop from Riley and knew my every move. If I pulled back the curtain, would I see Donna in her Subaru watching me from the parking lot? My hand moved to the curtain.
“Steve!”
“Dammit, Donna. I’m right here.”
“Then talk.”
“Uh, you called me.”
“Right. Well. There’s a Dakota Johnson movie playing at the Falls Theater tonight.”
“I’m not really into the 50 Shades movies.”
“It’s not, Silly Pants. It’s a comedy called, “How To Be Single.” It’s supposed to be great.”
I pulled back the curtain. Harry Jenkins was in the parking lot, looking at me. I waved, and he moved on without acknowledging me. Weird.
“So I’ll pick you up around seven?”
I saw my chance to find my stowaway girl slipping away.
No. Not this time.
“I’m not going to any movie, Donna.”
“Well, it doesn’t have to be that movie. We can see something else if you’d rather—”
“Donna, I really have to go.”
“Steve—”
“I don’t think you should be calling me like this.”
“Isn’t that what couples do?”
“For Christ’s sake, we aren’t a couple.”
“Steve? How can you say something like that to me? I thought you loved—”
I slammed the phone down. What made Donna think I was in love with her? Her sense of reality was slipping, and that felt dangerous to me.
I pictured Donna rushing to her Subaru and driving to King’s Road. If I was right, she’d be here in a few minutes.
My bike was chained outside my door. I undid the chain and quickly wound it around the base of the bike seat. I raced up Cayuga Street, focusing my thoughts on the stowaway girl.
A school bus was parked across the road, a stream of costumed youngsters pouring out through the doors: Batman, Superman, Dracula, zombies, witches, and a princess. The elementary school must have had a costume party.
Enjoy life while you can, kids. It all goes downhill after school.
My pessimism didn’t last. The sky was blue and endless, the leaves colored in fiery oranges and reds. The smell of raked leaves was thick on the air as I turned onto Main Street and made a quick right on Old State Road.
It was the sort of day that made hope spring eternal, yet I couldn’t have foreseen my stroke of luck.
No sooner did I swing down Park Place than I saw the stowaway girl round the corner of an expansive, gray Cape Cod near the dead end. Heart pounding and sweat pouring off my brow, I pulled the bike behind a shady elm before she noticed me. She paused at the corner of the house, eyes sweeping the street. Had she seen me?
Dead leaves scraped across the road.
After a long time, she cut across the lawn and started up the sidewalk, striding confidently between pools of shade cast down from the trees.
I suddenly realized she was headed right at me.
The second I rode out from behind the tree, she’d see me. Then what?
Maybe she wouldn’t recognize me in a bike helmet.
No chance.
My stowaway was savvy, careful, observant.
And beautiful.
Beneath the boyish, punky hair and the almost predatory gait was an easy, casual beauty that required no effort on her part. Studying her through the branches and dappled sunlight, I still couldn’t place an age on her. Teenager? She seemed too strong, too mature to be a teenager.
I got the distinct impression she didn’t belong
here anymore than I did. I’m not sure why. Just a feeling.
I didn’t know what she was up to, just that she was clever. In order to catch her, I’d have to be smarter.
She was close now. Ten or fifteen seconds away.
Should I confront her?
I didn’t know enough about her to decide. I sensed I was in no position to challenge her, that she’d make a fool of me and leave me in the dust as she’d done before.
Here she comes.
Time to move.
I knew I’d spook her by darting out of concealment.
Carefully angling the bike toward the Old State Road intersection, I edged away from the tree. Her footsteps halted. She’d seen me in the shadows.
When I didn’t hear her advance, I walked my bike out from behind the tree, keeping my back to her as I feigned checking the chain.
Muttering a curse, I walked the bike up the Old State Road shoulder. I twisted my head toward traffic so she couldn’t see my face, all the while complaining about the bike.
I’d put on a convincing act. Was it enough to alleviate her fear that I was anyone other than a bicyclist with a broken chain?
Halfway to Main Street, I finally dared to look behind.
The girl was gone.
But I knew where she lived.
CHAPTER TWO
The Chase
I waited until dark.
As blue dusk spread across the sky, I slipped out of my apartment. A black pair of sweatpants covered my jeans, and a matching set of gloves, hat, and sweatshirt turned me nearly invisible. Figuring it wouldn’t be easy for cars to see me if I rode in the street, I biked up the sidewalk. A small flashlight stuffed into my sweatshirt pocket dug into my stomach when I pedaled. It was cold enough to see my breath. The night air burned my out-of-shape lungs.
A sparsity of cars drove past. Nobody was out tonight.
Except for me.
Trees threw black shadows across the sidewalk, where whole sections of pavement appeared to vanish. As fast as I traveled, I worried about smashing into an unseen toy or kid’s tricycle.
I was almost to the lights of Main Street when the shadows moved.
Something alongside a rundown home with a sagging porch, maybe branches swaying in the wind.
A shape darted out of the yard.
A jolt ran through me, as though I’d touched a live wire.