Jack got the door open and Liz carried Joey. They let him sleep with them since theirs was the only room close to done.
In the middle of the night, Jack roused just long enough to hear Joey coming back down the hall. While he was almost asleep again instantly, he was conscious enough to know he didn't remember feeling Joey actually climb onto the bed.
Chapter Two
Over the next few weeks, the house became theirs. The first floor was unpacked and decorated, pictures on the walls, plants in the windows, the couch pushed against the wall and the cable hooked up.
The bedrooms were arranged and the sheets covered the mattresses. Joey only occasionally asked to sleep with Jack and Liz. Usually they let him. Sometimes they told him to sleep in his own room like a big boy.
The front door was usually locked, Jack and Liz opting to use the back door instead of dealing with the stairs, especially with an armload of groceries. Jack's keys were still lost, and it drove him crazy like he knew it would, but they simply couldn’t be found. He'd copied Liz's and had been able to get another house key from the realtor's office.
Liz had begun making plans for the second floor restoration, spending as much time as she could at McCauley's Hardware, choosing paint colors, light fixtures, a good varnish for the hardwood floor that drew your attention in the open main room. It was easy to concentrate on the house; being new in town, they hadn't found time to meet anyone who might steal their free time. Jack had found a music store and found, not only new strings for his guitar, but a big white acoustic with a pearl pick guard and gold edging. He was thinking of buying it as soon as the big checks started coming in.
A week after moving in, he'd taken his guitar and amp to the third floor, thinking up here he could turn up the volume a little without blasting out his wife and son's eardrums. He plugged into the corner room wall socket, flipped the power switch and waited. When the amp never warmed up, he checked the plug. It was in, but nothing was coming out. He flipped the breaker in the basement, but still the outlet didn't work. Nor did any of the other outlets on the third floor.
He went to the second floor, but the best he got there was a crackle with the intermittent whine of guitar strings. On the first floor, closed off in their bedroom, he played. The headphones were on, so all Joey and Liz heard was the strumming.
A couple weeks later, Liz had just finished the first coat of burgundy on one of the second floor's main room walls and was covered in red specks from the roller. She considered a bath, but didn't want to soak in a tub of red water. The shower was in the second floor bathroom, but she hadn't used it yet. In fact, after the name-calling incident, she’d not used the upstairs bathroom at all. But by now enough time had passed, while she recalled the event, the emotional memory had faded quite a bit. In fact, that entire day was such a jumble of hustling and moving and noise and people through the house . . . she had been sleeping before it happened and now two weeks later, couldn’t say with all certainty that hadn’t been part of it.
She flipped on the light and found it brilliant.
"What the hell wattage is that?" she asked. "Two million?"
Well, it was bright enough; whatever she hadn't liked about this room couldn't possibly be as sinister in this light. She brought her things from downstairs, towel, soap, robe, and closed the door. The bathroom was small and had no windows. It filled with steam quickly.
She lathered up and began to scrub at the paint freckles.
Joey lay sleeping in his bed. He'd finally dozed off with a truck in his hand, sleep claiming him just as the truck topped the crest of Pillow Hill. His leg twitched as he dreamed.
For years, Joey had dreamed about his mother, whom he'd never met. Although his dad never told him, Joey knew his mother had left very soon after he was born. He also knew Liz was just as good as a mother, even if she wasn't the real thing. But he dreamed about his mother a lot. Until recently, anyway.
Lately his naptime dreams had been scattered bits of weird. In the current dream, Joey was playing at the park a few blocks down the street from their house. He was playing hide and seek with some other kids from the park, and Joey was it. He covered his eyes and counted to ten, then yelled, "Ready or not," and twirled to see it was getting dark.
Joey walked around the park, alone and searching for someone, anyone else. For some reason, his parents weren’t around, and when he yelled for the other kids to come on out, he couldn't find them. He went behind the bathrooms, but no one was hiding there. He checked in the tunnel on the jungle gym, but no one was hiding there, either. He climbed to the top of the slide, looking out over the entire park. The sky looked pale green, like it was going to storm, and a breeze chilled Joey's legs and arms where his clothes didn't cover.
Then he spotted someone. From the top of the slide, he could see a kid sitting on a bench by the water fountain. Joey slid down, leaped off the edge into the sand, and ran to the bench.
It was a girl. Her head was down and blonde hair hung in her face.
Joey asked, "Where did everyone go?"
She didn't answer, but her feet kicked back and forth, too short to touch the ground.
"I thought we were playing hide and go seek," Joey said. "I guess I'm not very good at it 'cause I can't find anybody." Joey glanced off to the parking lot and realized all the cars were gone. He was really alone at the park with just this little girl, and she wasn't even talking to him.
Joey slid toward the edge of the bench, ready to stand and leave.
"I think I'm gonna look for my dad," he said and leaned forward to hop to the ground.
The girl's head tilted up then and Joey saw her eyes were huge, like hardboiled eggs bulging from her head. Her skin was yellow and cracked and her hair, now that he saw it right, wasn't blonde, it was dirty and closer to brown. A damp leaf clung to it, a small twig sticking out from behind her ear. She opened her mouth and the lips split with long, red cuts.
"Your father's a murderer," she yelled into his face.
Joey flew off the bench and took off across the park, imagining he was wearing his fast shoes. He looked back and saw the girl get up and step up into the water fountain. Joey stopped running and watched, wondering.
Then the girl dissolved into the fountain, her dead, yellow skin dripping off her and slipping down into the waterspout. Joey was alone for real. He looked around, wondering which way was home.
Then his dream changed and Joey was sitting on a picnic blanket and his mother was with him. As always, her dream-face was blurred, but Joey knew who she was.
Liz rinsed away the soap from her arm and saw most of the paint flecks were gone. What few were left she figured would wear off by the end of the day. She wet her hair, lathered and scrubbed it, and turned her back to the showerhead to wash the shampoo from it. A stream of soapy water ran into her eye and she plunged her face into the line of spray to rinse it. All that accomplished was causing it to burn even more. She squinted through the other eye, searching for the cloth to wipe them.
As she pressed the soaking cloth to her face, Liz suddenly felt a series of chills skitter up her spine. The backs of her legs went very cold and she had the feeling someone was watching her.
Had Jack come home early? Was he joining her in the shower for a nooner on his lunch break?
She wiped her face and peered over her shoulder to see a gap in the shower curtain and a small boy, younger than Joey, staring at her. He had glasses and short black hair.
Liz dropped the cloth and stepped back, slipping on the tub floor and tumbling backward. She knocked her head on the edge of the tub and bruised her hip. She must have blacked out for a second because she remembered the sense of waking up when she opened her eyes, then twisted her face out of the line of hot spray.
"Oh, my God," Liz said out loud, shutting off the water and flinging the curtain back. Cold air assaulted her, breaking her skin out in wet goose bumps. She yanked her robe off the doorknob and wrapped it around herself, then stepped out of the bat
hroom in a haze of steam and confusion.
"What the fuck was that?" She hurried to the middle of the main room and looked back at the open bathroom door, steam still swirling out in white wisps.
The sun shone into the room, casting Liz’s shadow large on the floor before her. The smell of paint surrounded her. A valve was released on her skull and it felt as if it would float away.
"Just paint fumes,” she said. “That’s all."
She gathered her things, turned off the light and closed the door. As she rounded the landing on her way downstairs, she thought, Forgot to open the windows. Passed out from too many fumes.
She found Joey still asleep and decided she'd relax for another half-hour or so before waking him. After pulling on a shirt and a pair of shorts, she rolled onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, crossing her ankles and trying to think of parties or shopping, something to get her mind off the look on the boy's face and how real he seemed.
Jack had been two weeks on the job, but it was a job he'd been doing, more or less, for over a year. His last thirteen months in Houston had been spent as acting lead man for the electronics department of a computer manufacturer. The previous supervisor had left suddenly to avoid a nervous breakdown from job-related stress and Jack had been moved in to take over until a permanent replacement could be found. For six months they strung him along, never giving him an official title, but never saying he wasn't in charge. Finally, he decided to find a company that wasn't afraid to commit. Fett Technologies was the company. Their main plant was in Angel Hill, Missouri and, although the money wasn't as good, the cost of living was lower, too, and, after doing some figuring, Jack realized he'd actually be coming out more ahead every month than he had been. So he took it.
Liz offered no resistance. In fact, Jack suspected she might see the move as a chance to solidify the feeling of family and belonging she'd been trying to build since they'd married a year ago. The only person Jack was leaving behind was his brother Allen, and they rarely saw each other except holidays. So to Angel Hill it was.
The folks at Fett Technologies took quickly to Jack, at least it seemed to him. And he liked them. His days were split, spent half in meetings and half trying to track down a late toggle switch or a roll of thirty conductor cable that was supposed to have arrived three weeks ago. What little time he didn't spend sitting or searching, he familiarized himself with as many aspects of the job as he could.
Jack's department consisted of three areas. One built the circuit boards to go inside the control boxes, another made cables to connect the boxes to the utility trucks, and the third put the boxes together, assembling the switches and buttons to the faces, inserting the boards, and connecting the cables. Jack spent the first week helping in the circuit board area, and the second week soldering connectors to lengths of raw cable.
What he liked most about the job were the absolutes. When a part came back for repair, it was only a matter of finding the problem and solving it. In the test phase, if one of the switches didn't light up the correct test button, check it out, fix it, and that was that. The job of building control panels didn't require a great deal of guesswork and that was the solid, logical world Jack had made for himself. He said sometimes, when asked why he went into electronics, that if he'd wanted to deal with unreality, he would have studied the arts instead.
Although he'd been there two weeks, the day Liz thought she saw a little boy in the bathroom was the first day Jack had sat down and talked to Charley Clark. Sure, he'd passed a minute here and there with him, but Jack didn't know a thing about him. He'd never had a conversation with him. When Jack walked into the break room to eat his lunch, Charley was the only one who had opted not to eat out that day. His plate of microwave pot roast sat steaming in front of him.
"Wow," Jack said, "mind if I sit down? It's kind of crowded in here, I don't know if I can fight my way through the mob."
"Go ahead," Charley said. He closed his newspaper and slid it aside. "You haven't decided to get out while you can, I take it?"
"Huh?" Jack asked, setting his coffee and chips on the table. "Oh, you mean the job? No," he replied, tossing a small pizza into the microwave. "This is a great job. I like the company. My last job, they were so screwed up, it's a wonder the company didn't go under."
"Wow," Charley said. "So you just worked for a different division of Fett, right?"
"No," Jack chuckled. "This place is a well-oiled machine compared to that one. At least here, I know what's going on, you know? I know the chain of command and if there’s a problem, I’m figuring out who to go to for what. Down there . . ."
"That bad?"
"More so," Jack said. The microwave beeped and he took his pizza to the table. "No, I like the job. The town's a little different, but I figured it would take a while to get used to a much smaller place."
Charley smirked as he said, "Better watch what you say about Angel Hill. She might come back to bite you in the ass."
Jack looked sideways at him, not sure if Charley was trying to be funny or not. His tone was serious, despite his smile. "What do you mean?"
Charley took a bite of his pot roast. When he swallowed, he said, "There's a bookstore on Dayan Street, Arthur's Used Books. The man sells nothing but old books. Except," Charley said, holding his finger straight to mark his point, "this one book at the counter. The Outsider's Guide to Angel Hill. It's a collection of local stories, legends and shit that have sprung up since the town was founded. Some of them are bullshit, but some are right on. Arthur wrote it himself and had it published a few years ago. You won't find a person in town who owns a copy, but somebody's buying it 'cause he sure as shit doesn't keep his business open just selling old books."
"What's that got to do with the town, what did you say, biting me in the ass?"
"Just read it. Halfway through and you'll wonder what the hell's wrong with you to stick around here. Even if you don't believe a word of it, just that any of that crap could be associated with one town--."
Jack had finished his small microwave pizza while Charley was talking and he tossed the cardboard plate into the trash.
"Yeah well," Jack said, "every town's got its stories. I'm sure Angel Hill's are no different."
"Think what you want man, I'm just giving you the warning every new person gets when they move to town."
Jack tossed back the rest of his coffee and rinsed his cup in the sink. He had his chips, unopened, in his hand as he walked out.
"Just get the book, man. 'Arthur's Used Books' on Dayan."
Jack wasn't buying into Charley's bullshit, but what the man said did get him thinking. If he was going to live here, why not try to learn a little about the place. The main library was on Angel Hill Road, straight across from Holland.
Angel Hill Road was out of Jack's way. Angel Hill sits on the intersection of US169 and the Platte River. The highway and the river, on the map, form an X, splitting the town into four smaller sections. Fett Technologies stood in the lower section, in south Angel Hill. The Kitches lived in north Angel Hill in the top of the X. But the library lay in west Angel Hill and would require backtracking to get home. Jack contemplated the last half of his day whether he wanted to bother today, or wait until the weekend. After all, the drive home was a good thirty minutes with traffic and Fett Tech was on a regular nine-hour workday. If he made the detour today, he'd get home even later, and that meant even less time with his wife and son. And Liz would have been working on the house all day; her mood wouldn't be the best. It would be worse if he got home later.
He'd go this weekend instead.
Jack set his mind for a Saturday trip to the library, then he clocked out and went home.
When he got there, Joey was staring down from a third floor window. Jack glanced up, saw him and waved. Joey turned away and was gone from sight. Jack used the front door this time; he wanted to see the second floor and get a look at what Liz had done today.
He had to give her credit. For someone who hadn't wanted
a big job like this house, she was bringing everything together nicely. The fumes hit him and he winced, but he liked the color. As he was admiring the paint job, he heard Joey moving around upstairs. Banging around would have been a better description. He'd never noticed before what a heavy walker his son was.
Downstairs, Liz was on the couch, her feet up and bare. When she saw him, she stretched, popped her back, and smiled.
"I'm glad you're home," she said.
"Oh yeah? How come?"
"Just am. I don't care so much for being by myself here."
He kicked off his shoes and fell onto the couch at her feet. "You got Joey," he said. "He seems to be getting used to everything."
"He doesn't count. I doubt Joey's gonna stop the monsters."
Jack chuckled. "I doubt that if monsters came to take you away, babe, I could do much about it. So I guess it's a good thing that isn’t gonna happen."
"Did you see the color upstairs?"
"I did," he said, nodding. "I like it. Hey, this Saturday, I'm gonna go to the library, do you want me to get you something?"
"What?" she asked. "I'm not allowed to go, too?"
"Of course you can go," Jack said. "I figured I could take Joey and give you a day to yourself. You don't even have to do any work on the house if you don't want to?"
Liz smiled with mock glee. "Do you mean it? I get a whole day off and don't have to touch the house?"
"Yeah, yeah," he said, standing. "Hush up. I was trying to be nice."
"Yes," she said. "And it was very nice. And I just might take Saturday and sleep until noon."
A knock came on the back door and Liz said, "There's dinner."
"Pizza?" Jack guessed.
"Yep."
"I'll get Joey," Jack said, walking toward the hall.
"Where are you going?" Liz asked as she got her purse and the checkbook.
The Third Floor Page 3