Phantom Effect

by Michael Aronovitz

  And don’t try to time me. Sometimes the jump ’n’ snatch takes a week, other times a day. Depends on her. Depends on the portrait she paints, the places she goes to do things in secret.

  I like sharing secrets.

  Fun, ain’t it?

  Asshole . . .

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Marissa Madison did not alert the police. She couldn’t. She just sat there in the parking lot weighing things, looking for an out, some loophole, any way to bend or twist this thing so she wouldn’t be the target.

  But there was nothing here but the doomsday option. She had no evidence, no description, and blowing the whistle at this point was a poor strategy on a number of fronts, more than she had originally considered in the mall parking area. If they put a tail on her, set up a van outside her house and then nothing happened, they’d pack it in after the weekend, telling her to call if anyone actually made contact. If the killer really wanted her and had patience, he’d make contact all right, and even if the Broomall police stood willing to offer protection past the weekend she had to go back to school sometime. She had classes and an apartment her parents were paying for, and even if they could be convinced she had changed her mind and stood in favor of commuting at this point, they would insist she stick it out the semester to get the deposit back. Be logical!

  What’s more, Marissa wasn’t excited about her hypothetical protective surveillance passing hands from a small suburban precinct with officers who probably graduated from her high school and ordered from the same pizza shop to that of Chester, a wide urban area similar to Philadelphia where the only way to cut through the red tape and get a squad car into the vicinity was to report a murder or rape, and even then the responsetime was a crapshoot.

  Marissa stared out the windshield and shivered. She was parked next to a fleet of white police cruisers, proud steeds with their roof flashers and the slanted blue decals with the yellow bordering, all useless to her. And the evil wasn’t just “out there,” but he was somewhere close, right now, circling the block or parked across Springfield Road on one of the side streets, or maybe sitting right here in this lot pretending to read the newspaper, waiting for the splash of red from her Mustang to move in his rearview.

  The phone rang, and Marissa jerked in her seat, her hand going up to her chest. She hit the button a bit too hard.

  “Yes?”

  “That’s no way to talk to your mother.”

  Marissa rested her hands on the wheel and rolled her eyes.

  “I had the volume up too loud again.”

  “Scare ya?”

  “Hmm.”

  “You sound like your father now. Quit your mumbling and stop by the Giant on your way. We need candy for the kiddies.”

  “Whoppers?”

  “I’m off them. The hard malt gives me heartburn. Get M & M’s and Snickers.”

  “Mother, I hate peanuts!” She looked out the window and saw an officer exiting his vehicle and adjusting the brim of one of those black western-style Stetsons. John Law. The town sheriff. Mr. Man, so close and yet so far. “And I thought the candy was for the kiddies, anyway.”

  “Says who?”

  They laughed together, and Marissa thought of all the mother-daughter relationships this monster was severing forever. The real issue here wasn’t whether or not the Chester police would make lousy watchdogs, or even the idea that the Broomall cops might babysit her for longer than she was giving them credit for. The real point was, as she had hit on before in this awful mental roundabout, that if she alerted the brass to save her own skin the killer could simply move on. Then there would be another pretty young maid joining the row of corpses, and then another and another, each ripped from her mother, torn from her family and friends, immortalized in a creepy black-and-white news photo that shared the hollow, grainy quality of its replicas plastered on telephone poles and the back sides of milk cartons.

  Every victim would stare back at her with those dead smiling eyes.

  Monster victorious.

  And Marissa would have been his accomplice. She put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking area, making a left across the double yellow line, wondering whether or not the cops policed their own lot and would give her a ticket. She didn’t believe in omens, but if an officer pulled her over right now she knew she would give in to weakness, confess everything, put this nightmare in some other girl’s hip pocket and live the rest of her life in a state of rationalization and unsuccessful dissociation. The sun was brilliant, and she pulled down the visor. Of course, she wouldn’t get pulled over. Of course, it seemed that every car around her had a killer in it.

  Up past Latches Lane she signaled left at the light and saw something across the fork at West Chester Pike that made her breath catch in her throat.

  It was an omen, whether you believed in them or not. There in front of the Pacifico Ford’s service center was one of those inflatable monster dancing balloons that they pumped with bursts of intermittent air, making it pop and snap up and down, waving wildly at the sky. When did that go up? It was one of Marissa’s phobias, one she’d had since she was in elementary school, one she couldn’t explain in a million years, but the rubberized fly-guys freaked her out something fierce. She knew a girl named Gloria Minor who couldn’t see a picture of Chucky from that old horror movie, Child’s Play, without bursting into tears even in high school, and there were at least five kids she knew who couldn’t handle clowns. For her, it was the wide smiling pencil geeks with the crazy streamer hair and empty white eyes, the flapping arms and spasmodic horror they threw at the sky.

  And why here? These were usually city things, fodder for the flashy Northeast or down in Center City where even cheap advertising was good advertising, catcalling you as you drove by like, “Made you look.” This one was brilliant yellow with a wide, toothy, apple-slice grin. It slowly did its crumple and bow toward the earth and then shot upright, making Marissa seasick and dizzy. Someone behind her beeped, not a polite tap-tap, but a long, harsh blare. She was nearly paralyzed, it seemed. Her arms felt like rubber, like those of the fly-guy, and she made her turn down the ramp without hitting the guardrail and parked without clipping anyone’s bumper. Barely. The whole procedure was suddenly awkward and foreign, and her breath was hitching when she put it in park. She raised her knuckles to her mouth and hoped she wasn’t developing the hiccups, because she was the type to retain them for what seemed like hours and they made her chest hurt like hell.

  She looked all around and didn’t see much. She loved her car, but the sightlines were horrendous with huge blind spots back left and right, and the teeny-tiny rear windshield. It was all slants and flashes unless you were looking straight ahead, like one of those vehicles that depended on its mirrors and those annoying warning beeps when it backed up. There was no panorama unless the top was down, and it was too breezy for that today, not as if she was worried about messing up her hair or even getting a stiff dose of freezer face, but it would look suspicious, as though she knew someone was on her tail.

  She pushed out feeling exposed, but it had become important to her that she look natural. If this killer was as skilled as she thought he might be (still calling it a “he,” she couldn’t help this), even a slight giveaway in mannerism might make him disappear and start over with another girl. At the edges of the patchwork that she’d gotten from him when their cars passed back at the mall entrance, she thought there were hints that he was a gamer, wanting his victims to move forward with a dread they couldn’t quite define even to themselves. But hearing a bump in the night or a creak in the dark was different from knowing you were being followed in broad daylight. And a guy like this wouldn’t need something as obvious as a surveillance cruiser to know that you knew.

  She closed the door and locked. Shit. What if her pulling into the police station just now stood as enough of a warning to him to keep driving? Had she blown this already, let him off the hook?

  Marissa burst out laughing, and tea
rs simultaneously squeezed out of the corners of her eyes. Of course she hadn’t given herself away. Harvey Glick had just scared the shit out of her burning rubber by the Section 2H support column, and after considering it and stewing over it on the way home, she’d decided to report it to the hometown police where it felt familiar. She’d sat in the lot and reconsidered, as the killer would figure girls were famous for, and decided the sad sack wasn’t worth her time.

  She took a cart someone had left between two cars and walked it back to the canopy-station where it was meant to go. She wasn’t laughing anymore. This had a more than ominous feel to it, like old dusty writings in sacred books hidden in buried vaults, like fate. Even when she made a mistake it was the “right move,” bringing her closer and closer to this terrifying conflict she was supposedly destined to win. But no matter how much proof she had of the moment by moment, it was increasingly difficult to put trust in the big climax. Was she supposed to beat this guy, really? How on earth? She was no fighter and weapons frightened her, not as if she had any in the house to begin with, except for the kitchenware. She tried to picture herself holding the biggest carving knife out in front of her with both hands, or maybe the big curved meat fork, shaking hair out of her face, telling him, “Come on with it!”—and the image was pathetic, hysterical. She wasn’t about to go stabbing anyone, so the patchwork promise itself seemed antiquated at this point, whispers and dreams that maybe she’d read wrong. And again, considering Jerome’s failure she couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. She’d been conditioned not to trust herself, and that was this scenario’s most bitter symptom.

  Inside, the Giant was packed and the candy aisle was basically trashed. Nothing much left but Tootsie Roll lollipops, Butterfingers, and those awful sugared fruit rings that looked as if they’d been lying around since the Great Depression. After two sweeps, Marissa settled for two bags of “fingers” and a jumbo pack of Nerds that had dents in three of the mini-boxes. So what if the kids frowned? So what if the Madison household ran out by 7:00 and had the living room lights out soon after? Marissa wasn’t excited about answering the door after dark anyway, and she’d just fake cramps if Mother questioned her lack of enthusiasm.

  She opted for the quick self-checkout line and was miffed when someone crept up behind while she was swiping. Marissa looked over her shoulder like, “What?” and an older woman wearing a bandana on her head met her glare with a look of sour impatience.

  “Back up.” Marissa said. “Now.”

  The woman’s eyes widened and she backed up. A foot. Marissa finished and stuffed her receipt in her bag, trying not to shake. This wasn’t like her and she was ashamed of herself. And it made her no more confident in her ability to use a carving knife on a serial killer jumping out at her from the darkness. It only proved that she was rude to elderly ladies at the supermarket. A proud moment, to be sure.

  Marissa made it back to the beautiful home she’d grown up in without incident, without any trace of a stalker, but when she pulled into the driveway she noticed the mailbox and the “MADISON” in block lettering stamped across it. Might as well have been flared up in neon . . .

  She parked up by the garage to leave room for her father and sat there for a second with her hands high on the wheel, getting her shit together. The exposed surname didn’t mean anything. Information was exposed all over the Web nowadays anyway, and he wasn’t stealing identities here. Keep it relevant.

  She took a second to breathe and then adjusted her sunglasses delicately. OK. OK.

  When she strode up the walk there was a loud, maniacal laugh, and she started, almost tripping on her high heels and turning an ankle. Then a wry smile. Mother had set up the first Halloween decorations and gimmicks, and one of them was the sensor that let out the ghost giggle. Soon the lawn would be laden with the spiderweb fluff along the grass and the border bushes, and at the corners of the garden would lie the feet, hands, and face of the “buried man.” The small rubber skeleton they called “Pablo” would be dangling from the porch overhang, and by the door they’d finally set up the rocking chair with the bigger skeleton wearing the housedress, the one with the wig and the grinning skull face they had all nicknamed “Phyllis,” because if you looked at it right it resembled their elderly neighbor who lived across the street.

  “Mother, I’m home!” Marissa called out as she pushed through the door, her dog Rusty doing his Marissa-Welcome, the march up to her and the playful backtrack, feather-duster tail wagging so hard it moved his entire back end. She put her stuff on the sofa and picked him up. Love. That was what he was all about. Lousy watchdog, excellent bedwarmer.

  “I’m in here!” her mother called from the laundry room behind the kitchen.

  Marissa carried Rusty with her, whispering sweet nothings into his floppy ears, kissing him. She sat at the kitchen table, which was littered with an assortment of old photographs, three types of glue, scissors, tape, crepe and construction paper. Mother was getting into scrapbooking. Marissa waited there for her to finish switching over the clothes, and when she heard the dryer door shut, she worked up a smile.

  Besides admitting that she’d lost her patchwork and that she’d only bought underwear, she told her mother absolutely nothing.

  TRICK OR

  TREAT

  That’s right, asshole. That was me who beeped when she held up traffic there at the light by Latches Lane. I was right behind her bumper to bumper, and I risked everything, though it’s doubtful she would have remembered me even if she had bothered glancing back. I had to play the role; she gave me no choice. And by the way, the sightlines were just fine, at least from my perspective looking in through that narrow back windshield. What I’m saying is, I saw what scared her.

  And it changed things.

  Strange, I had never thought of working it quite this way, putting things out of order of priority, doing stuff backwards.

  Too much of a riddle for ya? Well, that’s just an awful shame. I know who you’re rooting for, and I also know that I’m breaking another sacred bullshit literary rule by telling you some things and masking others I’m aware of at this point. I’m playing smokeshifter like the drunk Injun telling the story poorly at the pow-wow, embarrassing the hell out of his relatives and lessening the credibility of the otherwise “wonderful and ornate Native American oral tradition.” Well, I got news for you, it’s the same thing Marissa Madison is doing to me in that she’s only letting me see the advance of the moment by moment with no memory of the outcome . . . so take it and like it, ’cause shit rolls downhill.

  And whoever said I played fair? You made your choice and shaped your favor a long time ago, so I have no problem telling you to go and sit on Marissa Madison’s shoulder and try to guess how and when I’m going to work my magic.

  A hint? OK, fuck ya.

  When I saw her looking at the dancing rubber dude, I knew I didn’t need to study much of her coming routine anymore. It was a new game because I’d been shown her heart and soul, her demons and painted savages.

  I knew right then and there how I was gonna kill her, or at least the exclamation point.

  It was just a question of the timing, the tools, and some luck with the landscape.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Daddy got home at 5:30, and he seemed more than disappointed about dinner. It was Halloween, so he’d expected Peking duck from the Thai place or at least some takeout calzone, not Mother’s vegetable lasagna. In protest, he picked at his food like a child and Mother finally caved, heating up some onion rings and Friday’s Sliders she had in the freezer.

  Earlier, she and Marissa had set up the Halloween decorations out front, and the discussion had quickly gone from the usual surface banter to more current issues. And it wasn’t difficult to notice that the mechanics of conversation had become difficult, the rhythm, the flow. Mother was so used to her daughter reading flashes in her mind that they often answered each other’s questions before they surfaced. Now that Marissa’s patch
work was on the fritz, it seemed they had to learn to talk to each other all over again, and of course Mother didn’t tread in safe waters even when the airwaves above them were filled with pauses and static. She went for what she knew, and that usually meant college, the apartment, or Jerome.

  “Why are you off again tomorrow?” she said. She was affixing the cotton ghost webbing to the porch roof over on the far right side by the big evergreen bushes they had planted last year to block the view of the Tuckers’ property and the carport where they stowed any number of things that belonged in the junkyard: a cast-iron stove, some rusted bicycles, a toilet, old bookcases. Marissa went over to kneel down and hold Mother’s stepstool in place.

  “The holiday,” she said.

  “How generous! Did you call the Writing Center to see if there were any cancelations?”

  When Marissa didn’t respond, her mother looked down at her, almost startled.