The Handyman

by Bentley Little

  The questions were generic: where was she at this time, at that time; had she and Kelsey had a fight; did she know of any enemies Kelsey might have had.

  What disturbed her most about the interview, what really brought it home to her, was the way the detectives kept referring to Kelsey in the past tense. Kelsey didn’t exist anymore, she was dead, and though the rest of the world seemed to have caught on to that fact, Zoraida’s brain was still a step behind, and the words remained jarring.

  She was released fairly quickly, and she returned to the apartment feeling numb. The first thing she noticed when she walked inside was how many of their furnishings and possessions were Kelsey’s. The sight of a book her girlfriend had been reading, lying on top of the end table, made her burst into tears again, and she plopped down on the couch, feeling overwhelmed. Were Kelsey’s parents planning a funeral? If so, would she be invited? To her knowledge, Kelsey had no will (why would she? She was only twenty-six). So what would happen to her belongings? Would they go back to her parents? Kelsey’s name was on the rental agreement. How was that going to work? There were too many things to consider, and Zoraida felt completely unprepared to deal with any of them.

  It was the middle of the day, but she felt tired and just wanted to go to bed. Part of her thought that maybe if she went to sleep and woke up, she would find that this had all been a dream, that everything was back to normal. She knew that was wishful thinking, but she also thought that it couldn’t hurt to try, and she dragged herself into the bedroom, fell onto the bed and pulled the covers over her head.

  The pillow still smelled like Kelsey.

  She dozed off, crying, and when she awoke several hours later, it was dark and Kelsey was still dead. It hadn’t been a dream. She tried to fall back asleep again but couldn’t, and after a half-hour of tossing and turning, she sat up, feeling hungry, intending to go into the kitchen and get something to eat.

  Then she saw it.

  There in the dark corner, looking at her.

  A small huddled figure with the face of a wrinkled old woman.

  Screaming, Zoraida ran from the bedroom, outside, into the courtyard of the complex. Lights were turning on, other people coming out of their apartments to see what was going on, perhaps thinking there was a fire. Luckily, Zoraida had fallen asleep with her clothes on, but she didn’t even care about that at the moment. All she cared about was getting away from that…thing, and she ignored her emerging neighbors, running all the way out to the street before stopping.

  She bent over, breathing deeply. What the hell was she going to do now?

  She wasn’t going back, that’s for sure. And she certainly couldn’t expect to stay with Kelsey’s family. Maybe she’d be able to crash at a friend’s house for a night or two, just until she could sort things out.

  Her purse, car keys and pocketbook were back in the apartment.

  Zoraida’s heart dropped as the realization came to her. She hurried back into the courtyard. Maybe some of her neighbors were still out, still curious about what was happening. She didn’t really know any of them, but one or two of the braver men might be willing to accompany her back inside while she picked up her purse. It was on the floor next to the magazine rack, if she wasn’t mistaken. That’s where she usually dropped it before plopping herself down on the couch. She’d be able to get in and out quickly.

  She looked at the open door of the apartment. The idea of seeing that thing again terrified her. She didn’t know what it was or why it was there, but it frightened her even more than the ghost of the Asian man had, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to face it.

  Most of her neighbors had gone back indoors; the fireworks were over, there was nothing to see, no reason to stay outside. But an older man in the apartment above theirs—

  hers

  —was leaning against the railing, smoking. He looked down as she entered the courtyard. She didn’t know his name, was not even sure she’d seen him before, but she stopped, addressing him. “Hi. I’m Zoraida. I live in the apartment below you.”

  “Heard you screaming. Saw you running out,” he said. He took a long slow drag on his cigarette. “What was that about?”

  “I think someone’s in my apartment. I was wondering if you could just…walk in there with me. I need to get my purse, and just in case…”

  He looked at her disinterestedly. “Call the police.” He pinched the end of his cigarette, then flicked it down at her and turned to go back into his apartment.

  “Asshole!” she called out.

  His apartment door closed.

  She considered knocking on another door, asking someone else to help her, but the brief confrontation had boosted her courage, and she thought she’d be able to do this herself. She’d just rush in, take the two steps to her purse, grab it and run. Besides, that thing was in the bedroom. She wouldn’t even have to see it.

  Fear gripped her as she approached the open doorway. It was dark inside. She’d fallen asleep when it was day and hadn’t turned on any lights. Gathering what was left of her rapidly dwindling courage, she reached the doorway and stretched her arm around the side of the jamb, reaching for the light switch.

  Maybe it’s gone, she told herself. Maybe I imagined it.

  She flipped on the light, intending to grab her purse and go.

  But there it was.

  It had moved to the sitting room. Still in a corner, it was shaking, vibrating, and there was a toothless smile on the wrinkled old woman face.

  Something pushed her from behind, knocking her forward. The door slammed shut. Zoraida’s hands landed on her purse, breaking her fall. She heard something crunch inside (sunglasses? Tic Tacs?), then she was pushing herself to her feet, grabbing the purse.

  The small huddled figure was next to her, its wrinkled face looking up into her own.

  She was alive until it touched her.

  ****

  Kimber Edwards looked at her husband, mouth set in a straight hard line. “Didn’t I tell you? When Kelsey first got involved with all those…lesbians, didn’t I say things would turn out this way? I knew it. I knew it! But, n-o-o-o, you knew better. ‘Leave her alone,’ you said. ‘Let her find her own way.’ Well, are you happy now? Huh? Are you happy? If you hadn’t allowed her to—”

  “SHUT UP!”

  Kimber blinked, stunned into silence. She could not recall the last time Tom had raised his voice to her, and his outburst cut her off in mid-diatribe. She narrowed her eyes. “What did you say?”

  “SHUT UP!”

  There was danger in his expression, and the thought crossed her mind that if she continued, he might hit her.

  But that was crazy. Tom? Hit her? He couldn’t hit anyone.

  “You’re the one—” she began.

  “I TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP!”

  He pushed her back on the couch. Hard. She bumped her head on the wall behind the sofa, causing a framed photo of Kelsey to fall, but before she could even cry out, he was pulling down his pants, and she saw that he was harder than he’d been in years. She was both shocked and disgusted. How could he be aroused at a moment like this? Their daughter was dead, for God’s sake! It was not only nauseating, it was incomprehensible. “You sick—” she began.

  He grabbed her midsection in mid-sentence, roughly flipping her over and pushing up her dress, ripping her underwear.

  Furious, she tried to get up. Then his weight was on her and she couldn’t move. “What are you—”

  In one brutal movement, he forced his hardness inside her, intentionally shoving it up the wrong hole. “No!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, but he rammed it in deeper and began pounding away. She cried out in pain—it felt as though she was being ripped apart—but his hand went over her mouth to muffle the sound, and he continued thrusting so violently that she thought she would pass out. There was a disgusting grunt of rele
ase in her ear, his body stiffened as he finished, and then he was finally off her, pulling his pants back up. She could feel that she was bleeding back there and wasn’t even sure she’d be able to stand, but she managed to roll over and stagger to her feet. The pain was unbearable, and she hobbled, sobbing, into the bathroom, where she locked the door and sat on the toilet, mingled sperm and blood dripping into the water below.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there, but morning became afternoon, and afternoon became evening. Throughout the day, she could hear Tom moving around the house, but he never spoke to her, and she didn’t call out to him. She heard the microwave bell and smelled re-heated chili when he made his lunch, heard the microwave ding again later and smelled the hot dogs he made for dinner. He made no effort to use the bathroom, though they had just the one, and she wondered if he was holding it, going outside in the backyard or pissing in the kitchen sink. The thought made Kimber’s stomach churn.

  The bleeding had stopped for the most part, but she knew she still might need medical treatment. She would have herself checked out later, but for now she’d gooped a bunch of Neosporin on her finger and gently slathered it in and around the hole. What was going to happen when she had to poop? Would that open the wounds again? Would everything get infected?

  She didn’t even want to think about it.

  Tom had not interrupted his after-dinner routine for her. She could hear, from the front of the house, the muffled sound of the television, and several hours later (probably after he’d fallen asleep in his chair and woken up several times) the TV finally shut off. She heard him coming down the hall. The bathroom door was locked, and she braced herself against it, just in case he tried to force his way in, but he passed by and went into the bedroom, where she heard the rattle of his belt buckle, the thump of his shoes hitting the floor. He was getting ready for bed, and moments later there was no sound at all as he lay down and tried to fall asleep.

  Kimber had turned on the lights in the bathroom when it started to get dark outside, but the lights were dimmer now than they had been. In fact, they seemed to be fading by the minute, as though they were connected to a dying generator whose power was gradually diminishing. She didn’t see how that was possible, but it was happening, and she tried to look through the frosted glass window to find out whether any of her neighbors’ homes were being similarly affected.

  Movement glimpsed out of the corner of her eye caused her to turn, and in the mirror over the sink she saw the reflection of a figure that wasn’t in the room.

  Startled, she sucked in her breath. She thought her heart would burst through her chest, and for a moment she even forgot the pain and what had happened to her. She almost called out for Tom but stopped herself at the last second. He was real; this was not. He could actually hurt her, while this was merely a reflection.

  Of what, though? She wanted to believe it was a figment of her imagination, but it was still there, even though she’d looked away and looked back. She hoped that it was a misperception on her part, the confluence of objects in the bathroom that looked like a figure when viewed from a certain angle. But she’d changed angles, moved closer and it was still there.

  In fact, the figure had the face of an old lady…and it reminded her of someone. She couldn’t think of who at the moment, though it came to her later: the wife of Mr. Wilbert, the handyman who’d built their back patio. At that instant, however, she was too scared to think about whose appearance the phantom resembled. Her priority was getting out of the bathroom and away from that thing without waking up Tom in the bedroom.

  And then it spoke.

  Just as she thought of Tom, it spoke.

  “Kill him,” the old lady mouth whispered.

  There were scissors on the counter next to the sink, the scissors she occasionally used to trim her bangs. She didn’t remember putting them there, hadn’t trimmed her bangs for awhile, but she picked them up and looked at them in the dim half-light.

  Kimber glanced up at the thing in the mirror.

  It was grinning.

  As if on autopilot, she unlocked the door and walked out of the bathroom. The hallway was dark, but there was a blue light coming from the bedroom. The TV. Tom couldn’t fall asleep without that flickering light, though he always turned the sound off because he also needed silence. She walked into the room. He was on his stomach, in his underwear, the covers pushed down, dead to the world.

  Dead.

  She held the scissors above his bare back for several minutes…but in the end she couldn’t do it. She hated him, yes, but she realized as she stood there that she didn’t want to live without him. She didn’t want to sleep in an empty bed. She didn’t want to go to jail, either, but that wasn’t even part of the consideration. She was at that moment in a world with no legal consequences, where she was free to act as she pleased, and though her rectum was still bleeding, though she was still in terrible pain, she decided to let him live.

  Taking a deep breath, Kimber returned to the bathroom to put away the scissors. The lights were again at full power, and the only person reflected in the mirror now was herself. Back in the bedroom, she took off her clothes, put on her nightgown and crawled into bed. She faced Tom, still not comfortable with turning her back to him, but it was nice to feel his warm body next to hers.

  When she awoke in the morning, he was gone.

  Was he consulting with the police to see if they’d found Kelsey’s killer? Had he headed off to work? Was he down at Dunkin’ Donuts getting coffee? None of those felt right. He was gone, and she knew he was gone, but she decided to wait a few days to see if he came back before reporting him as missing.

  Getting out of bed, Kimber walked over to the bathroom. There was nothing in the mirror, though the scissors were again on top of the counter. Had she put them back in the drawer? She thought so, but couldn’t remember. For some reason, apropos of nothing, she found herself wondering what had happened to the vial of Billy Bob Thornton’s blood that Angelina Jolie used to carry around with her. Had it been thrown away—or was it sitting around somewhere, growing moldy, turning into something?

  She’d probably never know.

  There were a lot of things she’d never know.

  Staring into the mirror, Kimber looked for the figure, but it was not there, not standing in the foreground as it had been before, or hiding in the background. It was not in the shower, not in the window. It was nowhere to be seen, and she stood in that same spot and stared that way many times over the following days, weeks and months, patiently waiting for the figure to come back.

  But it never did.

  THREE

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 1995

  It was raining again—it always rained here—and Laurie Skeffington stared out the wet window at the blurry world stretched out beneath the gray sunless sky. She should have put her foot down, she thought now. When Patrick’s company had transferred him, she hadn’t wanted to move, but it was a key promotion and he was really excited, so she went along with it and said nothing. A year later, she still hadn’t found a full-time job, hadn’t made friends with any of her standoffish neighbors, and with Patrick gone most of the day, it was difficult finding something to do with all the hours at her disposal.

  No wonder this region had such a severe drug problem.

  To top it off, the roof was leaking.

  It had started yesterday, a drip in the center of the upstairs bathroom that at first she’d put down to ordinary condensation. Water was everywhere in Seattle, and sometimes the mirror, fogged up from the shower, did not clear up all day no matter how many paper towels she used to wipe it. But when she’d returned to the bathroom later and nearly slipped on the growing puddle on the tile floor, Laurie knew something was wrong. She mopped up, put down a plastic wastepaper basket to catch the drips, and called Patrick at work. He could not get off until lunch, and by that time, she’d emptied the was
tepaper basket three times into the tub. It was a serious leak, and they needed to get it fixed before it spread and caused some real damage.

  Patrick called every roofer in the phone book, but the storm had created a lot of business, and the only company that could come over within the next week charged twice as much as its most expensive competitor. Asking around at work in the afternoon, while Laurie continued to empty the wastepaper basket and keep an eye out for new leaks, Patrick managed to find an unlicensed, independent, off-the-books roofer whom one of his colleagues had used last year. The quote was reasonable, and the man, who worked alone, said he’d be able to come over this morning. They’d thought their problem was solved.

  But…

  Laurie didn’t like being home alone with the roofer. It was an intuition thing, but the man rubbed her the wrong way, and when he arrived she asked Patrick if he couldn’t take a day off and stay home. He couldn’t, he said. They were right in the middle of an important project and he was the project coordinator. He had to be there.

  He had at least gone in late, staying long enough to explain what needed to be done. But then he’d left her alone with the man, and she’d spent the morning staying out of his way. He’d been on the roof for an hour or so before ringing the doorbell and asking to come inside. “Shakes at the top’re patched,” he explained, “But there’s probably water damage inside. I need to access your attic and come at it from underneath.”

  Laurie had nodded her assent, and he’d been nothing but professional as he courteously took off his raincoat and boots in the foyer, but she still felt uncomfortable having him in the house, and after showing him the attic entrance and pulling down the ladder, she’d retreated to the kitchen at the far end of the house. The polite thing to do would have been to offer him some coffee, but she didn’t want to do that, and she sat here looking out the window as he worked upstairs.