Entropy in Bloom

by Jeremy Robert Johnson

  The rear of the house was well lit, the bedroom doors wide open.

  Did we leave it like that, or did they? How long were they here? Are they even gone?

  Roger was five feet away from the master bedroom, silently approaching, steeling himself to rush in, sweat beading across his forehead, when his cell phone rang.

  Shit.

  It rang again. And this time he wasn’t the only one who heard the jangling tones.

  Something thumped against the rear wall of the house with enough size and strength to make the floorboards under Roger’s feet tremble and send shockwaves through his bones. A painting of two nesting doves fell from the wall. The glass in the frame shattered—Roger was looking at the shards in disbelief when he heard the sound coming from his bedroom. He felt it in his chest first, then his ears, as the rumble moved from its subsonic state to full warning.

  Something was in the house, and it was massive, and it was growling at Roger.

  The knife was forgotten, dropped to the hardwoods. The anger drained to nothing.

  Instinct took control and Roger’s brain was re-wired with only one purpose:

  Escape.

  He was all the way to the street in front of his house when some kind of reason returned, and it was then that he heard a more human sound in the night air.

  Laughter. Sounded like a young man. Close. Maybe in Roger’s backyard.

  Wherever the man was, he sure as hell thought the situation was hilarious. Robbing this dumb family. Scaring the husband into a cardiac arrest with some kind of sound effects.

  One big laugh.

  They’re playing with you, old man. Rush back there. Bust that punk’s nose and pin him until the cops show.

  But the feeling of the growling animal was still a tremor deep in his marrow, and Roger found he could not go back into the house.

  “911. WHAT’S YOUR EMERGENCY?”

  “Somebody robbed us. They took a TV at least. Probably more.”

  And they might be huge. Or some kind of animal. But I can’t say that or you’ll ditch this as a crank call.

  “Thank you, sir. Your location?”

  “1450 SE Lily Court.”

  “Are you at the house currently?”

  “Yes. In the driveway.”

  “Okay, Roger, is anyone else with you?”

  Roger blinked, and pulled the phone from his ear to look at it. Did I tell her my name? His ears were ringing. He couldn’t remember. Don’t be dense, they can probably pull it up on their caller ID system.

  “No,” he finally answered. “My wife and daughter are headed to the in-laws.”

  “Okay. That’s good, sir. Do you have any reason to believe someone else might still be in the residence?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure. I only saw the living room, really, and noticed the TV missing.”

  Static crackled over the line. Roger felt a sharp pain behind his forehead, pressure behind his ears, building to nearly intolerable levels.

  What now? Wasn’t my house getting jacked and me getting scared like some little bitch enough? Is this what a heart attack feels like?

  “Sir, do . . . might be . . . enter the house . . . kill them a . . . grab . . . shovel and . . . pieces?”

  “Come again? I’m sorry.” What the hell? Am I going to stroke out right here? I’m losing it.

  “A man knows . . . must be done . . . .”

  And then, as quickly as the pain came, it faded. The white noise which saturated his hearing cleared, the sound of ocean water draining from his ears at the beach.

  “I wanted to know if you have somewhere you can go until police arrive?” the voice on the other end said clearly. “We do not advise you remain at or enter the property. Nothing you own is worth risking your life. Do you have a neighbor you might visit?”

  Roger tried to think, but it was like the gears in his mind wouldn’t lock together. Three years at this house and I still can’t remember a single neighbor’s name.

  “No, I . . . uh. Sorry. I’m freaking out, I think.” Roger saw a flash of light, short and bright, from the periphery above his right shoulder.

  Someone on the roof, shining a flashlight around?

  “Hold on, miss, I think I saw . . . ”

  “Sir? We’ve got an officer in your area. He’s being dispatched to your property. Do you have a vehicle on site that you can enter and lock?”

  “Yeah. My truck’s right here.”

  “Okay, let me know when you’re inside.”

  Roger couldn’t stand the idea of being cooped up in the cab of his truck. Hell, he was breathing so fast he felt the night air around him running thin.

  He opened and closed the door of the truck, holding the phone out for the 911 operator to hear it creak and latch.

  “This isn’t a game, sir.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m only looking out for your safety.”

  “I know.”

  “Still sounds like you’re outside. I can hear crickets. Wind on the receiver. Your dress shirt flapping in the breeze.”

  “No, I’m in the . . . ” Wait, how does she know what kind of shirt I’m wearing?

  “Okay, the officer is reporting he’s a block out. He’ll be with you in a moment.”

  And with that there was a click on the line. Roger turned from his house to see an unmarked patrol car parked across the street.

  THE OFFICER’S LED FLASHLIGHT was so bright that Roger could barely see him until he was a few feet away. Casual dress. Must be an undercover. Or maybe he took the call after going off shift. Happened to be in the neighborhood. Something like that.

  “You the owner? Called about a break-in?”

  “Yup.”

  The cop holstered his flashlight and pulled out a notepad.

  “First name Roger. Last name?”

  “Stephenson.”

  “F or PH, sir?”

  “PH.”

  “Very good. Thank you. I’m Officer Hayhurst. Can you tell me a little bit about this situation?”

  “Sure. My wife and daughter and I got back from a kid’s party . . . ”

  “Round what time, you think?”

  “Maybe nine-thirty-ish. It’s kind of a blur.”

  “You been drinking tonight?”

  What? What’s that have to do with anything?

  “I had a couple of beers at the party. Maybe one an hour or so.”

  “Sure. Have to if you want to make it through one of those damn things.”

  What’s this have to do with anything? What about the robbery?

  Roger squinted at Officer Hayhurst and waited for him to continue.

  “Only asking because I had a case last week, the guy comes home blitzed, I mean three sheets, trashes his own house for whatever reason, breaks his ankle stumbling down the stairs into his garage and passes out. Then he wakes up, calls us, thinking somebody knocked him out and rifled his house. We show up, ask him what they might have taken, or what he’d have that they’d want to steal, and he gets shifty and tries to give us the boot. While I’m trying to calm him down, my partner looks in the guy’s bonus room and finds a couple of pounds of partially wrapped mushrooms—I’m talking the Schedule I type—and there you go.”

  “There you go.”

  “We booked him for it and logged the contraband, but it still felt like a colossal waste of time. So, when I get calls this time of night, I start to look for how much alcohol might be a factor in the situation.”

  “That makes sense. But I didn’t get drunk and rob my own house. I mean, I was driving home with my five-year-old and my wife in the car.”

  “You’d be surprised, sir. We pull over plenty of parents who thought they were sober and still blow a point one zero.”

  “I’m sure. That’s very sad.” Roger thought back to when he was five, flying around the big back seat of a Ford Galaxie while his dad swerved and took slugs off the bottle of Crow he kept stashed in the dash. A different era.

  Officer Hayhurst
’s eyes narrowed. He was making some kind of decision.

  “So, you returned around nine thirty p.m. to find the property disturbed?”

  “Yes. When I went inside I noticed that the TV was missing. I got Claire and Julie out of here and then called you.”

  And then I went inside thinking I might kill whoever busted in, but I got spooked when I realized there might be a giant in my bedroom and I was about to shit my pants when something growled at me and then someone was laughing and I called 911 and maybe started having some kind of seizure or psychic breakdown and now I’m here with you and you’re not helping one fucking microscopic iota. So that’s about that, pal.

  “Do you have any reason to believe the perpetrators might still be in your house?”

  “No. Might have been here when we first arrived but I think they would have heard us and left by now.”

  But there also might have been someone on the roof, shining something at me and filling my head with noise. I break out that little fun fact and you’ll have me puffing into your breathalyzer, right?

  “Okay, Roger. I’m going to head in and clear your property, and then I’ll invite you in and we can go over the next steps. Is there anything inside the house—dogs, security devices, things of that nature—that I should be aware of?”

  “There’s . . . um . . . no. No dog. Nothing I can think of.”

  Maybe a kitchen knife in the hallway, but you can’t tie that to me. Can I be prosecuted for self-endangerment?

  “Good then. Back in a moment.”

  Roger nodded and looked up to the sky and listened to the sound of police helicopters hovering over the city in search of the kind of people who laughed when a man ran in terror from his own home.

  “WELL, THEY DEFINITELY MADE a mess of things. But they’re gone. You can come on in.”

  Roger had never had a man with a gun tell him he was allowed to enter his own home. Had never needed anyone’s permission to enter his own home before. Something about it made him shiver.

  Officer Hayhurst gestured to the gaping hole in the drywall where the television and its mount had been ripped clean away.

  “That surprises me, honestly. They’re not grabbing TVs much anymore, now that the price point came down and they got more trackable. Obviously, they didn’t have the time to unscrew it from the wall. Did you have that thing hooked into a stud?”

  “Yeah.” Roger had wanted to mount it dead center on the wall, but Claire was paranoid about the thing falling onJulie’s head during an earthquake, so he’d made sure it was secured to the frame of the house even though the asymmetry set his brain to twitching when he noticed.

  “Strong guy, to rip that right out of the wall.”

  “You think the robber was a male?”

  “Most of ’em are. And in this case, actually, you’re dealing with a burglar. A robber steals from people using force. A burglar steals from properties. Easy way to remember it is to think of the Ham-burglar. He was sneaky. Creeping around, stealing burgers. Already dressed in jail duds, which was dumb now that I think about it. But you didn’t see him pistol-whipping Ronald and jacking his fries. He did that, he’d be the Hamrobber.”

  “Duly noted.” Fuck this guy.

  “Main other places you want to check are the master bedroom and the office. They usually don’t bother with kids’ rooms and the kitchen. They stay away from the front of the house in general, especially if their exit point is out the back. Nobody wants to get trapped.”

  They walked down the central hallway. Hayhurst pointed to the knife on the floor.

  “That’s weird to me. Sometimes they grab a nice set of knives, but they usually nab the whole block. Can’t help but picture the intruder waiting for you with that, trying to decide if they were going to run or fight. Looks like you got lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  “Well, all things considered.”

  “So, you see anything missing in here?”

  They turned left into the office.

  Missing: laptop, computer speakers.

  Opened and tossed: the file cabinet. Did they get the checkbook? Tax records?

  He pictured the thieves collating his routing and checking numbers and Social Security numbers and birth certificates and credit card numbers and everything they’d need to make his family’s finances an unholy mess for decades to come.

  Those numbers have too much meaning We’re screwed.

  Toppled, probably just for fun: the bookshelf. Technical manuals and military thrillers and comic books everywhere.

  And there, on the center of his desk, surrounded by the dust outlining where his laptop used to exist, was a framed black and white photo of him and Julie, taken last Father’s Day.

  Over the top of the image, scrawled on the glass in fast, violent strokes, a large red X across both of their faces.

  “Fuck.”

  “Now Roger, I want you to know that we’re going to take that seriously, as it could be construed as a threat, but I also have to tell you that I’ve seen thousands of burglaries and I can’t tell you how many times they leave behind a little something to mess with the victims. You seem like a down-to-earth guy, so if you’ll pardon my French, I can tell you I’ve seen much worse. Family photos shit on. Wife’s unmentionables laid out on the bed with come all over them. Housecat strangled and stuffed in with the kid’s plush animals. Awful. Some types, it isn’t enough to take a family’s property. They want your sense of security too. They’re either too juvenile to guess at the kind of damage this sort of thing does, or worse, they don’t care at all. It’s fun to them.”

  Roger remembered the laughter echoing from his backyard.

  “Let’s move to the next room.”

  The reading lamp in Julie’s back corner was on, shedding soft light on dayglow kid posters and pony bedding. Nothing appeared to be disturbed. Roger flipped the switch for the brighter overhead lamp and paced the room looking for anything amiss, skin crawling at the thought of some asshole in what was supposed to be his daughter’s idyllic space.

  “Looks fine.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think they came in here. Quick check in the bedroom and then we’ll go around back and see if they left anything behind for us.”

  Hayhurst went in first and walked to Claire’s dresser, pointing to the open jewelry box on top.

  Roger scanned the box. It was in total disorder, but he didn’t know enough about Claire’s jewelry to determine if anything was missing.

  “Maybe check the little black boxes. Burglar’s been at this any length of time, they can tell right away what’s costume jewelry and what’s going to get them something at pawn.”

  Three black boxes.

  Not a thing left inside. Her whole diamond set, gone.

  Son of a bitch. He rarely had enough money to get something nice for Claire of his own accord, and now they’d taken five anniversaries worth of scrapping and scrimping and they were probably already on their way to trading them for one tenth their value in drug money. Goddamn it.

  “Yeah. Looks like they were pretty well targeted. You’re going to want to check that drawer too.” Hayhurst pointed down to the lowest drawer, where Roger kept his boxers and socks. It was already open, the contents tornadoed. He squatted next to the drawer.

  “Why?”

  “Guns. Drugs. Your best jewels. That’s mainly what they’re looking for. Small, valuable shit. Easy to abscond with. Easy to use or trade. And the odds say they can find at least one of those things in a man’s sock drawer. You tell me why that is, because I don’t know. But this definitely looks professional. Normally, this close to the bus line, I might guess a bored teenager did it, but the longer I look around your house, the more this seems too pro for your average teen or tweaker.”

  A pro job. The idea gave Roger zero comfort. Had they been watching us? For how long? Had my computer been hacked? Had they seen my response to the party evite? Could it have been one of the parents who didn’t come to the party? Who else woul
d have known we’d be out. . .

  “Do you own any guns that might have been stolen? It’s very important that we get as much info about firearms as we can.”

  “No. No guns. I grew up with them, but my wife . . . ” Roger shrugged. Claire saw guns as death incarnate, a physical manifestation of fear, and the need for them a kind of moral weakness.

  “Say no more. My wife’s the same. I try to not even let her see my service pistol. That’s good news though. One less stolen gun on the streets.” Hayhurst walked around the king-sized bed at the center of the room and pointed to the open window. “And over here we have the point of entry. Looks like they pulled the screen, applied a little pressure to the glass, and slid the window to the side. You can even see a footprint here where they stepped on your bed coming in. Tracked some grass with them.” Hayhurst clicked on his flashlight and leaned out the window. “Yeah—very close to the ground here. Easy to hop in once it’s open. No security latches?”

  Roger couldn’t think of a response that didn’t make him feel either dumb or defensive or both. The truth was that he’d fucked up. He’d barely thought of the windows, of how accessible they were, of how easily secured they could have been. He’d thought their new place was, somehow, safe. He’d done nothing and now his family had been endangered. Who knew how this would impact Julie, or how Claire would look at him now? It was his job to protect them and he’d failed.

  Fuck.

  I’ll fix it though. I can fix this myself.

  The cop cleared his throat, waiting on Roger’s response. “No. Nothing. No security, aside from the deadbolt on the front door. We thought . . . this kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen in this neighborhood. That’s why we moved out here after dealing with all the bullshit in the Northeast.”

  Hayhurst’s eyes took on a strange dull softness then. He looked right at Roger, then past him.

  “Hey, Roger.” The cop’s voice had taken on an odd monotone. “That’s magical thinking. There is no glass which can’t be shattered, no lock which can’t be broken, no life which can’t be taken should someone else possess both hunger and the will to feed it.”