“Without a doubt. Survivors can usually handle the stress of losing their friends, so you’ve got that going for you. You’d actually be perfect in my favorite movie.”
“Which one is that?”
“Dawn of the Dead. The original, from ’78.” He adjusts himself so that he faces me while his feet remain in the pool. The moonlight accentuates the sparkle in his zealous eyes. “Four people escape from a city that’s overrun by zombies and hole up in a shopping mall. Once they barricade the zombies out, they have everything they could ever want. Clothes, electronics, food. I mean, they live in a mall! But there’s a catch.”
“The zombies get back in?”
“Which isn’t their fault. They live like royalty until renegade bikers show up wanting a piece of the action. They’re the ones who let the zombies back in and ruin paradise.”
“And I remind you of . . .”
“One of the survivors is a woman. She’s pregnant and moody, which isn’t you, but she’s not afraid to face all the bullshit the world hands her.”
“I’m like that?”
“You were just sitting out here in the dark by yourself when someone is looking for you with bad intentions. You went to church, and the group home, instead of hiding and waiting for someone to come save you. What’s going down is worse than any zombie invasion, because it’s real, but you’re still living the way you want.”
“Maybe I am waiting for someone to save me.” I lift my crucifix charm toward the moon and twist it until Jesus catches the light. “Maybe God will just never show.”
“I guess at this point anyone would have doubts.”
“I’ve been having them for weeks. I know God is aware that His world is full of sin, and that He’s always watching out for evil. If you buy into Cain and Abel, it’s just a matter of time before He exposes and punishes the killer. It could be tonight, or it could be when we’re all dead. Only God knows for sure.”
Out of the blue, Dennis takes hold of my left hand. My butterflies explode into my throat, but I swallow them back down. I look up to the stars and toward my Heaven, a place where people love all people, and nobody is ever teased or made to feel fear. Nobody shouts, nobody cries, and nobody has a mother who places them beneath drugs and abusive men. I tilt my head toward Dennis and see him looking at the sky too. “Do you have a Heaven?” I ask.
“The Monroeville Mall, where Dawn was filmed.” He grins peacefully. “It’s a real place in Pennsylvania you don’t have to die to get into.” I look into his eyes to try to gauge his feelings, since I have no image of his promised land. Just as he looks at me, something splashes in the pool. We cringe with fright and let go of each other to stand. My eyes take a moment to adjust before detecting a black box with a curvy tail sinking in the water.
“My DVD player!” Dennis says. “Jeremy, you fuck!”
I can’t see Jeremy, but hear him say from a distance, “This is what happens when you pick the holy whore over me. Don’t think I forgot!” The back door slams shut, cutting out his sinister laughter.
Dennis takes off his shirt and jumps in after his machine. He retrieves and brings it to the deck, where I immediately wrap it with my towel. “I swear to God, I’m going to kill that pile of shit!”
“Swearing won’t help,” I say. “Neither will killing him.”
“What else can I do? Destroy his stuff? Everything he owns is already broken!”
“There are ways to punish him without resorting to violence.”
“Time out doesn’t work for him, Robin! He needs his ass kicked!” He lifts the DVD/VCR combo and dumps out water through the cooling vent, then tosses it onto the lawn where it crashes with a metallic twang. “Forget it. I finally found one with premium sound that doesn’t eat tapes, and this is the thanks I get.” He sits hard on the bench and runs his hands through his hair with a frustrated growl. I try to think of something that could get our moods back to where they were thirty-seconds ago, but I come up with nothing and sit beside him while reclaiming his hand. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“You were provoked. What I don’t understand is why Jeremy gets away with so much when you clearly don’t.”
“I’m as surprised as you are. Barry hadn’t laid a finger on me in the four years I’ve been here. I think he’s trying to impress you.”
“It’s not working.”
He looks at me with adoration. “We’d better go inside before Jeremy destroys the rest of my room.”
I follow Dennis down to the basement, where I’m thankful for the sounds of heavy metal, as it means Jeremy is too preoccupied to bother us. I peek inside my room, pleased to see no damage or destruction, but what I find in Dennis’s room is another story. Movies are thrown off the shelves, posters are torn from the walls, and a giant bowl of cereal has been splashed across the bed. We clean up without saying anything to each other, and when finished we sit side-by-side on his stripped mattress. He looks in my eyes and turns red when regarding my lips. After wiping his palms on his pants he nervously says, “Would you want to watch Dawn of the Dead with me? It’s only violent in spurts, and I’ll tell you when to cover your eyes.”
Delighted to partake in his Heaven, I quickly agree.
Dennis goes into his closet for his old DVD player. The flap is broken off the sliding tray, the plastic before the clock is cracked, and the top is dented as though someone stepped on it. The device powers up, though, and eventually, after a lengthy loading time, Dawn of the Dead begins to play.
When a helicopter carrying four survivors of a zombie outbreak hovers over the Monroeville Mall, Dennis pumps his fist, even though his paradise is something of an eyesore. The brick exterior is as cold as the surrounding gray sky, while the empty parking lot is littered with the living dead. Yet I feel Dennis’s breath softening, and ease myself into his tranquility. I can tell he’s no longer thinking about his family, and I manage to put aside the danger that looms over me. In a pure state of comfort, I crawl under Dennis’s arm and rest my head on his shoulder.
* * *
When back in my room, sleep doesn’t come easily yet again, this time because of a thunderstorm that steadily worsens. What began as distant rumbling and sporadic flashing has turned to vibrating bangs and extended electric glowing. I can handle the storm on my own, but I’m not sure about my roommate, Amanda, wherever she may be. I keep thinking about how frightened and alone she must feel right now. On nights such as these, she’d crawl into bed beside me, always with her Kermit the Frog doll, and we’d soothe one another with each other’s company. Tonight I use my pillow as a poor substitute, and just as I settle back down, lightning flashes and presents a dark silhouette against the wall I’m facing.
I roll over to look outside, but see nothing but darkness. Lightning blares again, highlighting a nun squatting before my window with her hands covering her brow to peer inside. When I throw off the sheets and jump out of bed, the figure scampers toward the backyard.
I rush into Dennis’s room and shake him awake. At first he fights off my hands, but when he becomes conscious he worriedly asks, “What’s wrong?”
“There’s someone outside my window,” I reply. “A nun. Or someone dressed like a nun. There’s no way it’s Sister Alice, right? You saw how fragile she looked, and she only wears her habit for church. Will you come upstairs with me while I call the police?”
Less than a minute after I call 911 and tell them who I am and what I just saw, a banging sounds on the front door. I open up to a man in jeans, a white T-shirt, and a red baseball cap. He enters holding a handgun and a walkie-talkie. A police badge dangles from his right pants pocket. He moves me away from the door and asks, “Which side is your bedroom on?” I point left. He presses a button on his radio and says into the mouthpiece, “West side of the house. Over.”
A voice from his device replies, “Copy that. Over.”
Barry staggers downstairs while tying his bathrobe belt and says in a haze, “What hap
pened here?”
“We received a call about a prowler,” the cop replies. “An officer is scouting the yard.”
Barry stands next to me, swaying, and puts his hand on my back. I allow him because he’s off balance, but once his hand begins rubbing circles I slink out of his reach and sit on the couch. Dennis sits beside me.
The cop’s radio crackles before an out-of-breath voice says, “I’m not finding anyone on either side. I’ll check the other yards. Over.”
“Cover the backs, I’ll get the fronts,” the cop replies, then looks directly at me with, “Don’t worry about a thing. Just stay inside.” He rushes outside and vanishes into the storm.
Barry closes the door, yawns widely, and asks, “What did you see?”
I don’t want him to get involved with anything that could make us bond, and it is quite possible I’ve started seeing things, so I reply, “I don’t really know. Everything has me on edge.”
He points at Dennis and says, fully alert, “Stop showing her your weirdo movies! You’ve got the poor thing rattled!”
Lori yells down from upstairs, “Would you all shut up? Some of us have to leave for work in a few hours!”
Barry pumps two middle fingers at the ceiling, then lifts a chain to fasten the door latch when it suddenly bangs opens. I jump to my feet, preparing to flee, and pull Dennis up with me. He grabs me back so tightly his fingernails dent my skin. For the first time, however, I’m relieved to see Jeremy. He stumbles inside, soaked with rain, and confusedly looks at us with bloodshot and glassy eyes.
“Where the hell have you been?” Barry asks.
“Cool your jets, tubs,” Jeremy replies. “Someone a lot drunker than me gave me a ride.” Jeremy staggers past us, reeking of a sweet yet pungent aroma, and stumbles downstairs.
Barry fastens the lock, moseys to his father’s chair, and plops down with an agitated huff. “I’ll wait here in case the cops need me,” he says, then swipes a finger across my stomach with, “I’ll let you stay up if you want to keep me company.”
“Thanks,” I reply, “but I’m really tired.” I walk past him, certain he’ll find a way to touch me again, but he reclines in the chair and closes his eyes.
Dennis walks me to my room and stares outside my window. Rain is falling hard, but the thunder and lightning have moved on. “At least you know you’re in safe hands,” he says. “They’re watching you like a hawk.”
“You don’t have to pretend you’re not afraid of what I bring to this house.”
“Pretend?” He looks at me with a confused glare, and leaves with a sharp sigh. I sit on my bed with my hands over my eyes, certain I screwed up a good thing by shunning his sincerity, but Dennis promptly returns with his pillow and a rolled-up sleeping bag. While untying the straps he says, “Whoever wants to get to you will have to trip over me.”
I long to leap up and hug him, but instead take two of his fingers and gently shake his arm while saying, “Thank you.” I switch my pillow to the foot end of the bed so I can sleep as close to him as possible.
CHAPTER V
In the morning, exhausted from lousy sleep and parched with thirst, I tread upstairs for a glass of orange juice. I almost back out of the kitchen when I see Lori at the counter pouring coffee into a thermos, but I press on. She speeds up her actions when she notices me, yet I still say to her, “Good morning.”
Without an ounce of joy she replies, “Morning.”
“Off to work?” She rolls her eyes, a clear indication she doesn’t want to talk to me, but I’m curious how far she’ll go in dismissing me. “May I ask what you do?”
Lori sets the thermos down with an annoyed huff, and laughs to herself before saying, “I work at a public library. I was recently requisitioned to computerize the corrupted card catalog, again, but I spend most of my day fixing the bullshit nobody around me knows how to take care of. I work on a strict deadline but nothing ever seems to get done. Happy?” I don’t say anything. I look away and assume she’ll leave without saying goodbye. She obviously doesn’t want to like me, but I refuse to take offense because she never tries. I wonder why she agreed to let me stay in her house.
Surprisingly, she continues with, “So what’s your big plan in life? Have any dreams a marriage will ruin?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’ll outlive the week.”
A modest amount of concern crosses her face. I’m stunned she can emote. “You make a good point. Especially living in the basement. God starts at the bottom, doesn’t he?” She picks up her thermos and leaves. Feeling neither delighted nor dispirited that she spoke to me, I fix a glass of juice and go back to my room, where Dennis is awake and staring at the ceiling with exhausted eyes.
“How did you sleep?” he asks.
“Not great,” I reply. “I’m glad those cops didn’t find anyone, but I couldn’t keep from thinking someone was watching us. Are there curtains around here?”
“There’s plenty in a closet down the hall.” He stands and stretches hard, as anyone would after spending the night on a floor. “Are you up, or are you going back to bed?”
“I’m up.”
“You want to do the curtains now? We just have to get tools from the garage.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll get dressed and meet you upstairs. Bring your baseball glove. I need to throw.” He gives me a thumbs up and leaves for his room.
I head out back with my mitt while Dennis scrounges around in the garage for a screwdriver and matching screws. I wander to the side of the house, near my bedroom window, hoping to find evidence of the prowler, but nothing in the area suggests anyone has recently been here.
“Ten bucks says it was Jeremy,” Dennis says while approaching me. “He knows how close you are to a nun.”
“I realize he’s deranged,” I say, “but why would he go out of his way to get a habit for a five second joke?”
“He might have found one in the house. Nathan’s wife was a nun for a little while. One in training, at least. Maybe she hung on to it.”
“I’ll add it to the ever-growing ‘maybe’ pile.”
Dennis tosses me a baseball and puts on his glove. I put on my own and we position ourselves near the fence, relatively close to one other. At first Dennis tosses the ball so softly he might as well throw underhand. I throw back with increasing speed, letting him know I can handle the force. We gradually step farther back and throw hard enough to make the ball sizzle through the damp air. Getting rid of the ball with powerful thrusts eases my tension. When I think of the dead, I throw harder. When I think of Sister Alice, I throw even harder. When I think of the figure at my window, I throw so hard it smacks into Dennis’s glove and causes him to cringe. He takes off his glove, repeatedly bends his red fingers, and gives me a nod of admiration.
“You on a team or something?” he asks.
“I use a pitch back,” I reply. “They’re a real pain to manage if you don’t hit them directly in the middle with fastballs. Would you like me to ease up?”
“Hell, no. I can take it.”
I throw several more pitches, my hardest yet, and grunt with each as I tax my body’s strength. When I’m out of breath and have worked up an uncomfortable amount of sweat, I wave my throwing hand at Dennis to call him off and say, “I think I’m done. Let’s hang some curtains.”
On our way to my bedroom, while passing Jeremy’s door, we hear something that isn’t “devil music.” In a voice much deeper than his shrill conversational tone, Jeremy is saying: “Oh come forth in the name of Abandon and destroy she whose name I giveth as a sign. Oh great brothers of the night—” I stare at Dennis with eyes so wide they immediately burn, especially when Jeremy shouts, “In the names of the great harlot of Babylon, and of Lilith, and of Hecate, may my lust be fulfilled! Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!”
Dennis waves me off and heads toward my room where he says, “Don’t take that seriously. Ever since he bought The Satanic Bible he made himself the local chieftain of dark bullshit
.”
“What if it’s not bull?” I ask. “What if he has no soul because he hawked it? What if he’s channeling the killer? What if he is the killer?”
“He’s too stupid to not have gotten caught by now, and I doubt whatever he’s summoning is the cause. If your prayers go unanswered, his should too. Especially if he’s bothering the Prince of Darkness before breakfast.”
Comparing Jeremy’s choice of religion to my own seems offensive, but I don’t say so, as I’d rather not argue with Dennis. Everything I’ve learned about Catholicism has to do with the betterment of others, whereas Satanists, to my limited knowledge, represent the more selfish aspects of human nature, those who’d rather profit in the here and now, rather than wait for an afterlife. I also can’t allow myself to process any further thoughts that Jeremy might be the killer. I could never believe God is vindictive enough to force me from a loving home and into the den of a murderer.
After hanging up a set of gray curtains, the thickest we could find, Dennis and I spend the day doing rather unspectacular things. We eat breakfast, watch a tame movie, eat lunch, and sit out by the pool. We could have gone in, but Dennis still doesn’t feel comfortable swimming in what he refers to as “Jeremy’s other toilet,” even though he treated the water with severe amounts of chlorine. We merely sit on the deck, watching the water grow more still in the windless air. When our lack of sleep catches up to us, we agree to take naps in separate rooms.
* * *
Around seven, I’m awakened when my mattress sinks near my feet. I look up to find Nathan sitting on the end of the bed watching me with an even smile. I’m barely awake when he asks, “Do you remember what you were dreaming? You seemed at peace.” I close my eyes, hoping blackness will remind me of what I last envisioned, but I see nothing. “Dreams, I find, offer all the pleasantries of life. The real world—”
Dennis stumbles through the door frame, pale and dazed.
“Best to see for yourself,” Nathan somberly says. “I had Dennis put on the news for you.”
I worriedly rise and walk into Dennis’s room. What appears on his TV is more appalling than any movie he’s shown me. Behind a female reporter are fire trucks and police cars with lights blazing. Men in black raincoats are hosing down the flaming roof of my group home. News 12 LIVE flares in the upper right corner.
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