by Nic Sheff
“Wait.”
I start to run after whoever it is but stop short at the line of trees.
The forest is very dark. The sky has turned gray and clouded overhead. The wind through the treetops scatters the leaves and strips bare the creaking branches. I hear the insane call of a woodpecker laughing, maniacal in the distance. There’s a feeling like my stomach dropping out—like jumping off a high bridge into water, the way my friends and I used to when we’d take trips down to the Passaic. A strange smell comes from the entrance to the forest—a smell like something dead maybe, an animal rotting. And the cold from out of the dark becomes almost unbearable.
Even the cat, who’s followed along beside me, seems leery of continuing on. It stands poised at the edge of the forest, swaying slightly and staring off as though hypnotized by the music of a snake charmer. Its eyes are yellow and watchful.
I force myself to laugh.
I pick the small cat up in my arms.
It begins to purr.
I carry it in the opposite direction, away from the smell and the forest and whoever it was behind the trees there.
“Do you have a home, or what?” I ask the cat.
I put it down next to a neatly stacked woodpile on the side of the house and then make my way back down the winding gravel path to the front gate we left open.
It takes me about ten minutes to walk into the town of Beach Haven—little more than tourist shops, a grocery store, a post office, an equestrian and hardware store, a library, a medical clinic, a dentist’s office, a gas station, and a restaurant called the Double R Diner. The entire town spans the equivalent of two or three city blocks.
As of seven o’clock on a Wednesday night, the Double R Diner is the only establishment showing any signs of life. I walk there with my head down, doing my best to avoid my own darkened image in the reflection of a dull street lamp against the plate-glass windows. The engine of a large rusted pickup truck complains loudly as it drives slowly up the main road. A wiry, thin man with a reddish beard and hollowed-out features stares at me black-eyed and openmouthed.
I don’t look away.
I imagine the red-bearded man and the driver both falling dead and the truck running off the road—careening through the darkened window of the Beach Haven Pharmacy and Five & Dime.
The sky is black and starless, with the pale fingernail of a moon obscured by racing clouds.
The truck lumbers on up the road.
The neon sign for the Double R Diner blinks red and orange—on and off, on and off. I have a little money saved up from my job last summer working at the bookstore in Johnstown, so I figure I’ll go in and get a coffee and maybe something to eat.
The diner is relatively spacious with red vinyl booths set up along the walls, a few tables, a counter with built-in stools and a bright flashing jukebox in the corner playing twangy-sounding cowboy music. An elderly couple, both with skin like yellowed wax paper and heavy-lidded bloodshot eyes, turn to look up at me. So do the truck drivers at the counter and the old woman sitting by herself wearing a mass of thick sweaters and one of those long quilted barn coats. The gray-haired waitress behind the counter puts down her pot of coffee to look at me, too. No one smiles. I set my jaw tight. I wish I were back home. I imagine the diner on fire, all of them running out screaming as flames spread from floor to ceiling.
The cowboy song on the jukebox fades out. There is an interminable silence before the next song is queued up. I think about walking out. But I don’t. I go sit at the counter. The waitress comes over and offers me coffee from a deeply stained, chipped coffeepot.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
“You wanna see a menu?” she asks, her voice hoarse-sounding. “We have a meat loaf special.”
I shake my head.
“No, thank you.”
She pours the coffee. I add milk from the pitcher and two packs of sugar. It’s good coffee. Hot.
The door behind me dings open.
A girl, probably around my age, but with blond hair and a sickeningly cheery smile, comes bouncing over next to me.
She gives the waitress a hug, leaning her long, slender body over the counter.
“What are you doing here?” the old woman asks her. “Did you eat yet?”
The girl smiles even bigger.
“I wanted to come see you. And Dad said you baked a huckleberry pie. There any left?”
The waitress laughs.
“Thought that might be it.”
“Well, I wanted to see you, too,” the girl says.
“I know,” the old woman tells her. “Come sit down. I put a piece aside for you. You want it hot? With vanilla ice cream?”
“Yes, please.”
The girl sits down at the counter.
Then she turns to me.
“Oh, hello,” she says. “What’s your name?”
“Uh, I’m Jen,” I say.
“I’m Christy. Are you on vacation here?”
I take a sip of ice water, feeling a little flushed for some reason.
“Uh, no,” I say. “I . . . I just moved here. My dad’s gonna be the caretaker of that old Harmony House place.”
Christy gets even brighter and cheerier and her general positive whatever is kind of freaking me out, if you want to know the truth.
“Harmony House? Cool.”
She turns to the waitress again.
“Hey, Aunt Rose, did you hear that? This is the girl living with her dad up in Harmony House.”
“I heard,” says the waitress—her aunt—Rose—I guess.
She sets the pie and ice cream down in front of Christy and, I have to admit, the smell is pretty damn incredible.
She turns to me, studying my face like she’s trying to figure out . . . I don’t even know what.
“How’s it going up there so far?” she asks.
I try to smile.
“Fine,” I say. “We only just got in today.”
“And you’re staying here all through the winter?” she asks.
I nod, half watching Christy eating that pie with a look that must give away how hungry I am, because Rose laughs to herself and then tells me, “Hold on,” and starts making up another plate for me.
“Thank you,” I tell her. “I haven’t eaten all day.”
“Aunt Rose’s pies,” says Christy, smiling. “The cornerstone of every nutritious meal.”
I take a bite and smile, too. “It’s good,” I tell her.
She pats me awkwardly on the head.
“Sweet of you to say.”
I drink the hot good coffee and eat the hot good pie.
Christy and her aunt both laugh at how hungry I am.
“So are you gonna be startin’ high school here?” Christy asks me. “At Beach Haven?”
I shake my head.
“Uh, no,” I say, haltingly. “I’m gonna be . . . uh . . . taking a break, I guess. I’m supposed to be a junior. But . . . uh . . . my mom died a couple months ago, so . . .”
I trail off—not sure why the hell I just let that out of my mouth. I take another bite of pie to try to shut myself up.
“Oh God,” Christy says, startled. “That’s terrible! I’m so sorry.”
She puts a small, fragile-looking hand on my shoulder.
“Yeah, no,” I say, stumbling over my words. “It’s been hard, but . . .”
“Well, I tell you what,” she says. “I’m working at my family’s store down the block all winter—selling beads.”
I make a face. “Bees?”
She laughs.
“B-e-a-d-s. Ye Olde Bead Shoppe. Most businesses close this time of year. But we’re open right up ’til Christmas and then all through January. ’Cause, you know, people might have . . . bead emergencies . . . I guess.”
I can’t help but laugh a little at that, too.
“I’m there most days after school gets out,” she says. “You come by any time you need anything, okay?”
“Thank you,” I say. “That’
s super sweet. Are you a senior?”
“Yeah,” she tells me. “Doing all the college application stuff right now.”
I groan.
“So not looking forward to that.”
“Well, at least you’ve got a good thing to write an essay about.”
She covers her mouth, flushing a bright red.
“Sorry, that wasn’t funny.”
“No, you’re right,” I say. “Some girl at my old school got attacked by a bear while she was on one of those Outward Bound trips and she got into every school she applied to. Maybe you should just pretend you’re a bulimic cutter with ADHD, OCD, and bipolar disorder.”
Christy keeps on blushing.
“Believe me, I’ve thought about it. But I’m sorry just the same. That was a stupid joke.”
I tell her, again, that it’s really okay.
We continue on talking for a while more—eating pie, drinking coffee, and listening to the twangy cowboy music coming from the jukebox.
“Maybe you’d like to come over sometime?” Christy says.
“Yeah, I’d like that,” I tell her, trying to be polite and all. “If my dad lets me.”
Aunt Rose comes over then and refills our coffees and presses her wide, wrinkled, hand with the knotted blue veins down on the Formica countertop.
“You be sure to make him,” she says, surprising me that she’d been listening to our conversation. “You don’t want to let yourself get too isolated living up in that house just the two of you.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I say.
“Really should’ve burned that place down years ago,” she says—more to herself than to me.
“Oh, you hush now, Aunt Rose. There’s nothing wrong with that house.”
She turns to me then and says, “Aunt Rose used to work there when she was a girl. Don’t pay any attention to her.”
I force a smile, not sure what the hell they’re talking about.
“Well, in any case,” says Rose, handing me a paper menu. “Here’s our phone number if you need anything. And, here, I’ll write my niece’s number and my home number on the back, too.”
And then she adds, “Please don’t hesitate to call either one of us.”
I thank them both, thinking that if everyone in this little town is as nice as these two, then maybe Beach Haven won’t be so bad after all. I stand and try to pay, but Rose won’t let me. I fold the menu up and put it in the side pocket of my black parka.
Outside it is cold, so I pull my hood up over my head and put on a pair of woolen fingerless gloves. The moon has risen higher and there is the steady sound of dry leaves rattling in the dark. I can hear a train whistle way off in the distance.
There’s a path behind the diner that winds through an overgrown field of weeds and dead blackberry bushes. A smell like damp and rot rises up from the ground.
At the edge of the town there is a group of boys standing huddled against the back of the feed store smoking cigarettes—the burning orange embers glowing like coals in the hearth of a smoldering fire.
“Hey,” I say, walking closer. “Hey, you guys got an extra cigarette?”
It’s three of them in all—tall, muscular-looking boys wearing baseball hats and Carhartt jackets. They are handsome, I guess, in a frat-boy kind of way—but I’m definitely getting kind of a date-rapey vibe from the three of them.
“Where’d you come from?” the biggest of the three asks me.
“Just from the diner there,” I say.
He snorts a laugh.
“No. I mean, where you from? I know you ain’t from around here . . . gorgeous.”
I roll my eyes.
“Okay, never mind,” I say.
I start off walking in the direction of the house. From behind me I hear the boys’ muffled voices discussing something. I try to walk a little faster, back out onto the main street, where, at least, it’s not totally dark—even if it is completely fucking empty. There isn’t a single other person or car in the street.
Only I can hear footsteps coming up behind me.
It’s that first boy I talked to. He’s by himself, which is a small relief, but not a big one.
“Wait up,” he says, a little out of breath. “I didn’t mean to scare you off. I’m Alex.”
He gets in front of me and extends his hand for me to take it. His broad face is covered in a constellation of freckles and somehow that works to make him seem a little less threatening.
When I don’t take his hand right away he says, “Aw, come on. I was just messing around. And, anyway, what’s the big deal? You are gorgeous.”
“I gotta go,” I tell him.
He keeps on traipsing along beside me.
“How ’bout this,” he says. “If I can figure out who you are in . . . uh . . . three guesses, then you have to agree to let me walk you home. What do you think about that?”
I shake my head.
“I think you probably already know who I am, considering there are about twelve people in this whole goddamn town.”
He laughs.
“Yeah, okay. You got me. You’re the girl whose dad is taking care of Harmony House through the winter, right? You just got here today?”
I slow my pace down.
“Yup. That’s right.”
“Well, what’s your name?” he asks. “Will you give me that, at least?”
“You can’t guess that?”
He takes off his Yankees baseball hat and runs his long, thick fingers through his blondish-brown hair. He’s wearing too much of some cheap cologne and it kind of gives me a headache.
“All right,” he says. “Just stop for a second. I’ll try.”
I stop walking and turn toward him.
“Okay,” he continues, squinting his eyes and reaching his hands up to me like a carnival fortune-teller getting messages straight from the goddamn cosmos.
He starts mumbling some different vowels and consonants, stretching out the sound and watching me closely as though I might tip him off when he’s getting close. “Mmmm, Nnnn, Geeeeeee, Aaaaa, Beeeeee, Kaaaaay, Llll, Eeeee, Jaaaaaay . . . Jen?”
“What?” I say, genuinely surprised.
“Jen? Is it Jen?”
Now it’s my turn to squint at him.
“Someone must’ve told you,” I say.
“No, I guessed.”
“Well, I am dubious,” I tell him. “But I guess a deal’s a deal.”
“Here,” he says, handing me the cigarette I’d forgotten I’d asked for.
“Oh, thanks.”
I take it and do the whole lighting-a-cigarette thing. I breathe in and out.
“Listen,” I say. “You can walk me to the gate, but you really can’t come any farther. My dad . . . he’s kind of old-fashioned. If he sees me walking with a boy, he really might kill you and me both. That’s no joke.”
Alex seems to puff up slightly.
“I ain’t scared of nobody.”
“Yeah, well, you might wanna rethink that.”
I start walking again and he follows right up next to me.
“Are you a senior, too?” I ask. “I just met that girl Christy whose aunt works at the diner. I guess you must know her.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve lived here my whole life. Me ’n Christy been in school together since kindergarten. Same with Matt and Charlie, my two friends back there. What about you? What grade are you in?”
I tell him.
“So you’re seventeen?” he asks—saying it like he’s disappointed I’m not, you know, legal, yet. It creeps me out. Especially because we’re already through town and on the winding road back to Harmony House—walking under the canopy of low-hanging trees and moss.
“What do you think about living in a haunted house?” he asks—the question startling me a little.
“A haunted house?” I say. “What do you mean?”
He laughs. “You didn’t know it was haunted?”
I try to laugh, too, but it doesn’t come
out right.
“Uh, no,” I say, sounding as casual as I can. “I didn’t.”
“Oh yeah,” he says. “No one in town will go up there.”
“What was Harmony House?” I ask. “Do you know? Before it was a hotel?”
I drag on my cigarette and exhale and listen to the night noises from the forest around us.
“There are a lot of different stories. Some say the family that built it, their daughter, who was like our age, actually . . . she committed suicide in the house.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah. Then I heard it was like a home for unwed mothers—run by the Catholic church. Supposedly there’s a graveyard out back with all the dead babies and mothers who died in childbirth.”
“Jesus.”
“I’ve never seen it, though.”
“You looked?”
He smiles.
“Sure, yeah. When I was a kid, me ’n my friends would come ’round here on dares and stuff. It wasn’t a hotel then—just a big . . . you know . . . abandoned house.”
He stares off for a moment before adding quickly, “But we never found anything. No graves. No ghosts.”
“Great,” I say. “You really know how to welcome a girl to the neighborhood.”
He laughs.
We’ve reached the wrought iron gate now and I turn to say good-bye to him.
“Aw, come on,” he says. “I’ll walk you a little farther. Your dad won’t find out.”
“No, I can’t. Seriously.”
I step in front of him, kind of, to block his path, but he keeps on walking around me, through the gate, looking around and saying, “Wow, I haven’t been up here in a long time.”
“Look,” I tell him. “I really have to go.”
He smiles. The trees along the driveway cast his face in shadows.
“Which room are you staying in?” he asks. “I could come climb up and see you later?”
“Uh, yeah, not gonna happen,” I say.
He laughs.
“I’m serious.”
“I’m serious, too.”
“Don’t you like me?”
“I just met you.”
“We could have some fun,” he says.
He leans in close to me in the dim light, like he’s trying to kiss me and for the first time I realize that he must actually be kind of drunk, or something, because his breath smells like some kind of hard alcohol. I take a step back.