by Ronald Malfi
But she had been wrong; the head-voice was not some clinging filament of her dead father.
It was the baby. The baby she had so recklessly dismissed in her jaded youth.
And now, somehow, the head-voice had finally manifested itself in tangible form—in life. The child she had hit with her car out on Full Hill Road was her child. After all these years, after all the horrible things she had done, it had finally come back for her…
It had come back.
Evan grabbed the remote off the coffee table and turned the TV on. Grunting, he dropped into the armchair and flipped absently through the channels, his half-eaten bowl of macaroni and cheese balanced on one knee. Maggie hardly registered him; she was still worried about the encroaching darkness and the child that was out there waiting for her, probably standing out there just beyond the reach of the floodlights. It had gotten Tom Schuler—she had seen Tom standing beside the smallish figure that night by the willow tree, though not clearly and without definition. And then…when it had come up to one of the windows, its pale and hairless head gleaming like a skull in the moonlight…
I’m home, Mom.
Her moan must have been audible because Evan glanced over and met her eyes. The look on his face was not one of confusion or concern. Maggie thought her husband looked like he knew something was going on with her. Almost as if he knew specifically what was going on.
Without saying a word to her, he turned back to the TV. Some old John Wayne movie was on AMC.
Maggie closed the book. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Evan said nothing.
“I can make you something else to eat when I get out,” she added.
“This is fine,” he said, picking up the bowl of macaroni and cheese. “This is dandy.”
He’s making fun of me. He doesn’t talk that way. He knows something is up.
Still trembling, she made her way down the hallway and into the bathroom off the master bedroom before hot and silent tears spilled down her face. She did not turn on any lights. Instead, she went to the small bathroom window and peered through the slatted blinds into the yard. In the dirt turnabout, the VW and Pontiac sat side by side. Shapes capered in the darkness beyond the reach of the floodlights. The longer she stared at the darkness, the more shapes seemed to taunt and tease her.
I’m out here, Mom, but I’ll be home soon. I’ll be inside soon. I’ve come back. Just wait till you see where I’ve been all these years when you thought I was dead, when you thought I was nonexistent. Just wait till you see what I look like…
While she stared out the window, the floodlights went off. At the far end of the house, she could hear Evan moving around, mumbling to himself.
She turned on the shower and waited for the water to turn warm while she undressed. She kept the lights off, for she did not want to allow anything outside to see in through the blinds or even know what room of the house she was in. Her body felt alien, her skin pimpled with goose bumps that felt like braille. Her nipples pained her, engorged and hard for some reason. Her feet felt numb.
In the dark, it was like showering in a coffin. She smelled the mildew between the tiles and felt the needling of the water. When the water turned cool, she wondered how long she had been standing beneath it. She hadn’t even washed—just stood there, weeping silently to herself, terrified.
It was after ten when she got out, toweled off, and dressed in sweatpants and a Crossroads tank top. The house was eerily silent. She went into the living room to find it empty. The kitchen was also empty, as was Evan’s work area in the basement. Back upstairs, she flipped on the floodlights and found the VW Beetle gone. Evan had left.
He knows. Somehow, he knows.
She turned the floodlights back off then went into the kitchen. From the cabinet over the refrigerator, she pulled down a bottle of red table wine. With trembling hands, she uncorked it and filled a wineglass. Dead leaves, curled like clamshells, blew against the window over the sink.
Maggie felt her heart seize at the sight of eyes watching her from the darkness on the other side of the window. Taking two steps back, she reached out one shaky hand and flipped off the kitchen lights. Darkness swallowed her like an abyss. The square pane of glass over the sink radiated with a deep blue moonlight and, in the distance, she could make out the pinpoints of streetlamps lining the road.
No longer able to reflect the light coming through the kitchen window, the eyes vanished. Maggie rushed to the sink and nearly pressed her nose to the glass. At first she could see nothing in the blackness…but then she could see a small, fluid form moving across the top of the wooden fence. Maggie held her breath as the thing glanced back up at her, apparently able to see her just as clearly in the dark.
It was the Morelands’ cat.
Maggie released a shuddery breath. She was aware of wetness on her hands and arms and the front of her tank top felt damp. She turned the kitchen lights back on to find that, in her momentary panic, she had spilled her wine. The wineglass lay on its side on the kitchen counter and there was a blood-colored puddle on the floor. Tearing a length of paper towel from the dispenser on the wall, she hastily mopped up the mess then stuffed the wine-soaked wad of towel into the kitchen trash. She forced herself to laugh at least once to prove that she once again had things under control, but it came out as a sharp, disharmonious cackle.
She filled the wineglass again then carried it into the living room while pulling her hair back with one hand. She could put a CD in the CD player, something melodious and soothing, and try to wade through her book while drinking her wine, not worrying about what Evan might or might not know, not worrying about what might or might not be out—
A slight, pale figure stood in one of the living room windows. As Maggie’s eyes fell upon it, the thing receded into the darkness, the way something will gradually vanish as it descends into a murky pond.
A prickling heat caused the skin to rise on her arms. Again, she felt her nipples tighten painfully into knots. For what seemed like an eternity, she remained motionless. It wasn’t until she saw—or thought she saw—the milky, ghostlike form cross behind the crescent of glass in the back door that she regained control of her body. She dropped the wineglass and ran to the door, double-checking that it was bolted. It was. Peering out, she could see nothing.
A cry that sounded pathetically like steam whistling from a tea kettle issued from her throat. She went to the wall, slammed her palm against the switch that activated the floodlights, and shoved it up with the heel of her left hand.
The face of a cadaver stared at her from the nearest window. It was human, though just barely—its scalp was a hairless dome of flesh, its brow disarmingly smooth above colorless eyes as swollen as jellyfish. The thing’s mouth hung open, and Maggie caught a glimpse of rigid black gums and square, blunt teeth.
I’m home.
Maggie screamed and flipped the floodlights back off.
A colorless hand slammed against the windowpane, hard enough to vibrate the glass.
Her first instinct was to curl into a ball and weep. Instead, she followed her second instinct, which was to run down into the basement and grab the shotgun off the wall. She tripped at the bottom of the stairs and crashed into the basement wall, a sharp, hot pain bursting to life in her right ankle. Using the wall for support, she managed to stand and swing one arm blindly before her in the dark, searching for the chain that turned on the basement light.
You took care of me all those years ago, said the head-voice, but now I’m back, Mom, to take care of you.
“No,” she breathed, shuddering. Her fingers grazed the chain and she closed a fist around it, tugging the light on.
The shotgun no longer hung from the wall. Frantically, she looked around. It was nowhere. She’d put it back here, hadn’t she? Where the hell could it have gone?
She thought she heard floorboards creak above her head.
“No!” she screamed back. “No! Go away! Please!” But the “please” ca
me out as a shrill whine, not even a word.
In the face of self-preservation, she reverted to her initial instinct and backed into a corner, crouching down and pulling her knees up to her chest. If it came down here, she’d be trapped. There was nowhere to go, no way to get out.
Suddenly, in her mind’s eye, she was seventeen again and trundling along in a Toyota pickup that belonged to Lyle Pafferny’s father. Steve Miller was on the radio and there was a look of seasickness on Lyle’s face. They hadn’t said more than a handful of words to each other on the drive into Garrett and they’d said absolutely nothing on the drive back.
Maggie blinked tears down her cheeks and shuddered at the memory.
2
A sharp pain raced up her neck as she jerked awake. Somehow, amazingly, she had fallen asleep.
Something had woken her up…
“Evan?” Her voice sounded like the lone wail of a loon reverberating off the basement’s cinder block walls. She waited. No response came.
After several more minutes passed with the lethargy of a steamship on the horizon, Maggie was able to coax herself to her feet. Her entire body was stiff. There were little red welts on her forearms and the tops of her feet that she immediately identified as bug bites.
It seemed to take an eternity to climb the basement steps. Upstairs, the house was as silent as a crypt. Listening, she could hear the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the hallway clock. Nothing more. When she crossed through the kitchen and into the living room she spied her broken wineglass on the floor. Shards of glass sparkled like jewels and wine spread from the epicenter like a bloodstain. Beyond the windows the night was still dark, though there was a predawn shimmer of pink light in the fork between the two mountains.
Somewhere inside the house, Maggie’s cell phone rang. She cried out at the sound and felt her heart threaten to push up into her throat. When it rang a second time, she became aware that this had been the sound that had woken her up in the basement just moments earlier.
Having forgotten where she’d put her phone, she wandered quickly through the house, following the digital chirping until she located it on the nightstand on her side of the bed. She snatched it up mid-ring, her blood running cold as she read the name displayed on the screen: Schuler, Tom.
She let the phone clatter to the floor. Though it could have been a coincidence, the ringing stopped. She had the desire to kick it under the bed and forget about it. Or take the battery out first.
She didn’t realize she had backed up against the bedroom wall until the phone rang again, startling her into striking her head on a picture frame. From where she stood, she could see the phone’s display with horrific clarity: Schuler, Tom.
Shimmering in digital light like an accusation.
Too easily she could imagine the phone ringing and ringing forever until it drove her insane.
Grab it, pop the battery out, she thought. And if that doesn’t silence it, flush the fucker down the toilet.
The phone was already in her hands before she’d even finished the thought. Yet instead of prying out the little rectangular battery, she hit the button and accepted the call. It was like someone else was controlling her now.
With an arm that felt like it was made of rubber, she brought the phone to her ear.
“Come out back,” Tom said. It was his voice…but, at the same time, it had changed. Something had turned Tom into something else. My child, she thought frantically. My child did that to him.
The sound she made into the phone approximated a bullfrog’s croak.
“Maggie,” Tom said firmly. It was then that she knew it wasn’t Tom at all. Somehow, it was Evan, her husband. “Did you hear me? Come out back. Now.”
Trembling, she hit the End button. Just moments ago she hadn’t wanted to touch the phone at all; now, walking back down the hall to the living room, she found she could not let go of it, as though it had been fused to her flesh. On the living room wall, she toggled the switch for the floodlights but they did not come on. Either the power had been cut or the bulbs had been removed.
When she reached the back door, her hand paused in midair on the way to unlock the dead bolt. Things were happening too fast; she didn’t have time to think things through clearly enough. How did Evan get Tom Schuler’s cell phone? None of it made sense.
Dreaming, she thought, undoing the dead bolt. I’m dreaming.
She opened the door.
3
In the wine-colored light of dawn, Evan sat on the sloping hood of the Volkswagen. The shotgun lay across his lap and he had one boot on the front bumper. His eyes locked on Maggie, who remained standing in the doorway. Seeing him there, coupled with the sheer impossibility of Evan having called her from Tom Schuler’s cell phone number in the first place, Maggie’s hold on reality slipped yet another notch. Absently, she wondered when exactly reality had ended and the nightmare had begun. Had she actually had the affair? Was she still a little girl under the oppressive rule of an abusive father?
“Come ’ere,” Evan called to her. His voice boomed.
Maggie didn’t move.
Evan held up something small in one hand. He kept his other hand around the maple stock of the shotgun. “Recognize this?” he asked her. “Your boyfriend’s cell phone.” He looked at it himself now. “Saw the call log. Read the texts.” Then he fell uncomfortably silent.
Maggie tried to speak but found her voice absent and her throat impossibly dry.
“Just answer me one thing,” Evan spoke up eventually. There was a pathetic crack in his voice this time that jabbed a barb into Maggie’s heart. Mostly masked in shadows, she couldn’t make out the expression on his face. “How long has it been going on?”
She thought she spoke. Her face burned.
“Answer me!” he shouted. “How long?”
“It was just once,” she said.
“What?”
She realized she’d just muttered the words, and that they’d come out in a jumble of nonsense. “Just one time, Evan,” she repeated, more loudly and clearly this time. “I swear it.”
Evan stood the shotgun up, the butt planted firmly on one of his thighs. He looked like the photograph of a prideful hunter slouching over a kill. Looking at him turned Maggie’s blood to ice.
“Went by his house earlier,” Evan said. “Son of a bitch wasn’t home. I waited for a while but he never came. Lucky motherfucker.”
“Evan, please—”
“Shut up!” It came out as a partial sob, as if something vital had just broken deep down in his throat. “You just shut the fuck up, you whore!”
She took an instinctive step back into the house.
Her husband leveled the shotgun at her. “Don’t you move.”
She froze.
“I bust my ass at that fuckin’ factory while you sit home, and what do I get for all my trouble? A cheatin’ goddamn whore of a wife and a friend who sticks a knife in my back. A so-called friend who sticks it wherever he wants.”
She wanted to tell him he’d misunderstood the situation. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t how he thought it was and that there was nothing—no feelings at all—between her and Tom Schuler.
Tom Schuler is dead, said the head-voice. Tom Schuler is—
A slight shape materialized out of the darkness behind Evan. Maggie’s heart seized. The shape shuffled its small feet through the dirt, its body pale and exposed and seeming to glow in the moonlight that still spilled over the peaks of the mountain that bordered Stillwater to the west. Maggie shook and found herself powerless to move. Evan caught her gaze and spun quickly around, the barrel of the shotgun swiveling away from her and over to the frail shape shambling out of the shadows. Even from such a distance, Maggie could hear the shotgun begin to quake in her husband’s unsteady hands. Then he lowered the shotgun and muttered, “What the hell is this?”
It was the boy. His pale skin bluish in the cool predawn, his knobby little knees practically buckling beneath him, h
e managed yet another step closer to Evan. He wore no clothes, and his abdomen and hips appeared to be dappled with something that could have been—
(blood)
—dried mud. His eyes wandered, like great roving searchlights, beneath a perfectly smooth, white brow. The boy’s scalp was not completely hairless—strands of tawny gossamer sprang out in sparse patches. He was a boy, but not wholly…more like the skin left behind after a reptile molts.
“Who’re you?” Evan barked at the boy. “What are you doing here?” And then he actually laughed, possibly at the child’s nudity and overall awkwardness.
The boy took another awkward step closer to Evan. Maggie watched, unable to move, unable to scream.
“You hurt?” Evan asked.
The boy staggered right up to the side of the Volkswagen and gazed up at Evan. When he turned his thin little body just the slightest bit, Maggie could make out a quartet of what looked to be tiny puncture wounds moving vertically down the center of the boy’s back.
Evan extended one leg and thumped the boy’s chest with his boot heel. The boy rocked unsteadily but his large, black eyes never left Evan.
“Hey,” Evan said to the boy. “I’m talking to you.”
Maggie saw it begin in the boy’s pale and narrow chest—a gathering of essence, followed by a fullness, a welling, in the breast. Something akin to a bubble of air seemed to rise up through the boy’s chest where it fattened the stovepipe of his thin, white neck, bulging it out like the throat of a bullfrog. The boy’s lips formed a perfect O just as his large eyes rolled back into his head like those of a great white shark preparing to strike. The boy’s cheeks quivered as—
(oh god something is going to come out something is about to burst right out of that)
—Evan scooted backward on the hood of the Volkswagen.
“Hey,” Evan said. His voice quavered then broke like glass in the night.
A gout of greenish fluid burst from the boy’s mouth. It arced through the air like a party streamer toward Evan’s face. Evan bucked his hips and jerked his head back but he wasn’t quick enough—the liquid pattered across the upper portion of his face.