Phantom Effect

by Michael Aronovitz

  She walked past her TV area and stood on the bare rug where Daddy’s poker table was going to go. She checked to make sure she was out of the sightline from the entrance at the top of the stairs, and waited for the muffled beeping in the living room to go into quick-mode, the last ten seconds before the alarm was set. She moved a bit more left. Even though her mother or father would kick off the motion detectors long before getting to that basement door, a girl couldn’t be too careful.

  From upstairs, she heard the alarm go to its rapid final ten seconds, then silence.

  She got out her cell and dialed Jerome, still on her speeddial—heck, she was a silly, sappy, hopeless romantic. It rang four times and dumped her to voicemail. She smiled brightly and looked at the ceiling, knowing she should have prepared for this circumstance.

  “Jerome, it’s me, Marissa,” she said. “I’m . . . umm . . . sorry that I failed you so terribly and I wanted you to know that I never stopped loving you.”

  She hung up. He wasn’t going to call back, and she didn’t need patchwork to know this. It was over.

  Now it was just a question of the lingering silence.

  NIGHT

  SOUNDS

  You’re kidding me, right, asshole? You think I’d be that stupid, snooping around with all those eyes everywhere, especially when they’d be paying such attention to what people looked like?

  Well, hell with ya, it worked out to my advantage without anyone second-guessing me anyway, but like I said I’ve always been lucky with the draw, the set-up, the circumstance. Halloween, right? Everyone’s attention was out front, or if you’re Marissa Madison, you were focused on the side of the house and the retard in the bushes.

  She never even came close to figuring my angle, because she created her own misdirection.

  See, I did a drive-by when she was first parking coming back from the Giant, and I noticed the ravine at the edge of her back yard. Hopeful, I pulled a 360 around that first rotary, tailed back passing her place going the other way and made the next right on Vasser, the street next to hers. Then I banged another quick right on Dartmouth. There was no outlet there, but one of the houses was vacant and under renovation, with its front all covered with Tyvek House Wrap and a dumpster smack in the middle of the yard. And the job had been abandoned or stalled: you could see by the fluttering caution tape they never refastened and the safety cones meant to zone off the entrance and exit pathways that hadn’t been repositioned after getting knocked over.

  To be honest, I thought it was all too pristine to be real when I made my quick survey through the windshield, but when I got back to Madison’s street I passed her house to confirm what I thought I’d seen out in front. Then I went through the rotary again, continuing up the hill to go down the far side of it, and my heart started clapping like a monkey with toy cymbals, I shit you not. There on the left I could see it coming into view as the trees thinned, a set of basketball courts, a playground, a sign that said “New Ardmore Ave Park,” and the treasure behind it.

  A creek.

  I came back long after dark and parked there at the house being renovated on Dartmouth. I had a hard hat, sunglasses, and a reflective vest, but it was all overkill because no one was going to notice me anyway. Just in case there were trick-or-treaters still working the streets, or more likely some sneaky bunch of older kids getting high, I was careful when I slipped in back of the residence across from the place under construction.

  I’d brought five rolls of two-hundred-foot measuring line, and I slipped down into the common ravine located at the back side of all these neighboring properties. By the time I shut down that phase it was past 11:00 in the evening.

  And I was far from finished.

  Oh, sleep could wait.

  Because this wasn’t about sex anymore, or its substitute, or whatever the forensic psychologists would most likely run up the flagpole so they could jerk each other off in the situation room and call each other sensitive geniuses. It wasn’t even about Marissa Madison. It was about pulling off the big one that no one would want to believe, it was about taking new risks, upping the ante, and waving it in everyone’s face.

  It was nothing but pride now.

  And committing to the perfect kill they’d write stories about.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  Marissa’s eyes flew open, and for a moment she was disoriented. It was too dark, and she was lying the wrong way. Her right hand was asleep and she flexed it, sitting up, looking at the clock on the cable box under the television. 11:43 p.m.

  She was home, that’s right, home sweet home in her upstairs bedroom where she was safe. She lay back down, pulling the covers up to her chin. The quilt smelled like cedar, like love, but she could sense how barren the place was without all her stuff. Growing up, her living space always had a comfy disorganization to it, with her jewelry and knickknacks strewn all over the place, teddy bears and collector figurines, the mega-piles of clothes on the chairs and the bed (if she wasn’t in it, of course). When she’d moved into the apartment in Chester it had all seemed too spread and thinned even though the place was technically an efficiency. Everything there was neat and clean and sterile, and she realized just how very much she’d grown to hate it, lying to herself all along that it wasn’t so bad and trying to make it work.

  She turned on her side and decided that if she survived this (when she survived this, girlfriend!) she was coming back here for good. She would fill up this room again and start over. Rethink things. Make everything make sense.

  There was a noise outside. Out back, something weird and metallic. She sat up and cocked her head, tucking her hair behind her ear. Nothing now. Thick darkness. Goosebumps on her arms and cold silence. She was about to lie back down when there was the noise outside again, something clunking, muffled, displaced in a way she couldn’t identify.

  Marissa put aside the covers and drew across her legs. She did this with great care, knee to knee as if the dark itself were measuring her subtlety, and she stepped down onto the carpet. She had on her royal blue Widener T-shirt that she’d bought big on purpose, and of course her plain cotton underwear—can you say vulnerable?

  She walked to the window. For a moment she thought about turning on the light, but that giveaway would make even the rookies scatter. And this was no greenhorn. Besides, with a glare she’d have to go right up to the glass, pulling one of those jobs where you cupped your hands at your temples making a view-tunnel, and what if there was someone pressing up against the window on the other side of it, say a serial killer on a ladder with his own hands cupped around his eyes looking back in at her? Better to sneak up, move the curtain ever so slightly, and glance from the side.

  She approached. One side of her mind was soothing her, telling her in a low steady voice that he’d never be stupid enough to put an extension ladder against the house where everyone in the world could see him like a bug on the wall. There were ADT alarm stickers all over the windows. They even had a lawn sign, so at the very least he would be aware that a break-in would kick off some kind of siren. And if he was familiar with this particular system he would know that after busting through he’d have sixty seconds of countdown to catch her in the dark and fight through her parents whom she’d certainly have woken with her screams. The alarm would be raising the dead at that point, and even if he managed to struggle her out through the front or back door there would be witnesses.

  She’d reached the window. What if he was so fast he could do a smash ’n’ grab, yanking her right here off the carpet and back into the night before she could move or utter a sound? She reached toward the shade, her hand making faint outlines in the darkness. Even if he was inhumanly swift, it was doubtful he would be able to muscle her down the ladder without killing them both . . . and by the way, why would he leave such a big piece of evidence behind? This killer was invisible. For a moment she pictured a faceless man trying to hold her under one arm kicking and scratching and biting and thrashing, and dragging the e
xtension ladder with his other hand, bumping over roots and dragging up crabgrass. She almost smiled and moved the shade aside just a tad.

  No face pressed close to the glass on the other side, but she was so jacked up with the spooks she half expected some large bird to come smashing into the window, bouncing off and leaving a web of splinters and cracks to distort her vision while the shadow stalker snuck off through the Tuckers’ back yard, or behind the Molinaros’ shed, or over to the other side of the Winstons’ wrought-iron garden trellis with the overgrown vines. The wind was kicking up, moving the branches and cutting the moonlight into wavy beacons that gradually faded and surrendered to the darkness of the ravine. Mother’s saddle-bred horse weathervane was spinning and slowing there by the vegetable patch where she’d tried and failed to grow cucumbers and peppers last summer, and the swings on the old set were floating and starting with the pulse of the breeze.

  There at the edge of the property where the land dipped into the common gulch Marissa saw a strange movement. She chanced moving the shade over a full inch or two and focused on the grainy vision. There was something at the edge of the ravine, moving in time with the wind like a car stuck in a snowbank.

  It was a trash can, caught between two trees and a wedge of prickerbushes, hence the odd metallic clunking sound. Marissa was about to laugh at herself for actually mistaking a trash can by the gulch for an extension ladder clunking up against the house when there was a sudden pop from the corner of the room, deep in the structure. Her hands flew to her mouth and she spun around, choking down the scream that had come up through her core, knowing it was one of those settling cracks but unable to deny it had scared the living shit out of her. Almost in answer then, as if the place were coming up with its own lullaby for Marissa in order to reintroduce her to the sacred sounds and hymns of the place she’d been reared, there was a muted rattle and hum from the belly of the house, and the familiar coda of the heat coming up.

  Marissa sat on her bed, pictured her parents sleeping comfortably down the hall, and wept harder than she ever had in her life.

  EARLY

  BIRD

  An extension ladder, asshole? Tumbling trash cans and swings in the wind? By 11:43 p.m., I was back at the shop working against the clock, putting shit together as quick as I could so I could get the fuck out of there before Reynolds came in at 6:30 a.m. to open things up, long before if I did things just right. Then I’d call out from the road, just two sick days in a year, not bad for a part-timer, eh?

  First, there was the lolly column I had to disassemble. The threaded shank was a flat-top measuring nearly two feet across, and while it was perfect for helping to budge concrete slabs from their underside it wasn’t gonna do dick for me unless I could make it into a cutter of sorts. I knew I didn’t have time to measure everything out perfectly ’cause we didn’t even have a caliper with jaws that big, but when I took the shank to the lathe I did a pretty good job reshaping the top end into a threaded cone. For torque I needed a three-prong crankshaft that could bear a shitload of foot-pounds, and the cropping and welding took me longer than I’d expected.

  The next part made me want to hurl shit around and trash the place I helped organize, since cancelled backorders weren’t my job and Schillinger had buried all his mistakes somewhere so the boss wouldn’t ride his ass for ordering specialty material without having the customers pay in advance. I wasted about forty-five minutes looking in all the shop cabinets, out behind the forklifts at the back of the warehouse, along the far edge of no-man’s land in the corner where they stacked all the wet vacs and pallets of sweeping compound, and I finally found his little hiding place in shipping and receiving, down on the floor under the table by the loading dock where they had the packing tape, the label maker, and the box cutters.

  Bingo, bitch.

  Right there behind a pile of flattened cardboard with the other specialty garbage lying on top of old invoices were those diamond bandsaw blades twined up in their figure eights.

  In about an hour I’d have them welded onto the screw threads, and while they might not have been the perfect bond for the base material I needed for them to cut through, they’d do. And a water source? That one made me laugh out loud actually.

  By 2:45 in the morning I’d completed work on the apparatus for all but the trimmings. By 3:15 I’d taken the roll cage for the 4000-watt Coleman generator and cut and rewelded the bars to make an offset brace-rack for the machine, complete with a couple of stainless mounting brackets.

  I thought of skateboarders and the X Games and how little we all respected that dumbass bullshit and I thanked those useless bastards for the concept, as I tore apart the bottom of a mop bucket nobody was gonna miss and welded on the multi-directional casters. Last was the safety harness I raped for its belt latch.

  I looked at my creation and saw that it was good.

  I went into my office, got on the computer, and made the adjustments that would bury the lolly jack, the diamond bandsaw blades, the generator, the safety harness, an exterminator’s ¼ × 12 carbide bit with an SDS shank, a cordless rotary hammer from rentals, a nylon and elastic four-way barrier unit city workers normally put up when they were fixing a water main, a couple of removable sleeve anchors, a wrench, and the last piece I still had to grab. Then I threw the scraps outside into my trunk along with my creation, careful not to bump and burr the threads I’d so carefully crafted. The sun wouldn’t be up for a couple of hours, plenty of time for me to get back and do what I still had to do.

  Cleaning up inside was a familiar chore, and I spot-checked everything twice before making my last warehouse walk, straight down aisle seven again where they stocked the safety equipment. Three-quarters in about ten feet down from the harnesses on the shelves and hanging off J-hooks, I saw what I needed there on the second rack from the bottom. The icing on the cake, asshole, the exclamation point.

  I just had to find one my size.

  And add the decals you could get at any neighborhood dollar store.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Marissa awoke the next morning, threw on a pair of sweats, and dashed out into the hall. There was a glorious aroma of coffee coming from the kitchen, and she raced down the short set of carpeted stairs.

  Daddy was in the den working on her device, wearing his jammy bottoms that were so long at the feet he had to cuff them, a T-shirt, and his favorite plaid robe. His silver hair was sticking up on top and it proved that he hadn’t taken the time to groom before coming down to dutifully continue with what was most important to his daughter. She squealed, ran over, and hugged him.

  “Whoa, easy there, Shane!” he said, brimming with obvious pleasure. She held on just that extra second before letting go and sat right there on the floor at his feet.

  “How’s it going?” she said.

  “How was the old room?”

  “Sweet. What you got there, anyway?”

  He turned to stare back through the magnifying glass at the mechanism in his other hand. It looked as if her trigger-killer had been burst inside out, with wires, springs, coils, and tabs poking and dangling.

  “I have here a project,” he mused, “with interesting formulaic inconsistencies I hadn’t accounted for in my original calculations, yet wonderful opportunities for discovery.”

  “Daddy, in English! Success or setback?”

  “Oh, right.” He snapped it all together like a magician fitting a chainsaw, garden shears, and a live rabbit back into a top hat and set the thing into the slot at the base of what appeared to be a small charger.

  “It will be ready sometime today, honey. I had to readjust for a cross-up in the circuitry I didn’t expect and . . .”

  He looked at her over the rim of his glasses and smiled.

  “Long story short, I substituted and improvised, making it so you’d be up and running sooner than later.” He stood up and placed his hands in the middle of his back. Then he motioned her over, indicating that they should both lean in so t
hat Marissa could see the dot of red light on the side of her reconstructed device.

  “That’s actually a miniature light bulb,” he said. “I had to remove your old warning indicator and go micro, one millimeter in diameter, probably a world record.”

  “I’ll call Ripley’s and Guinness myself,” Marissa said. “What’s the deal?”

  They both straightened.

  “When the red starts flickering you’re close, and when it goes green you should get your patchwork back.”

  “Totally unjammed?”

  “Totally.”

  He moved past and made his way for the kitchen.

  “I have a cup of autumn blend going in here if you want any,” he said. “Cinnamon and pumpkin.”

  She followed in tow with a smile.

  “Mother doesn’t like that froo-froo kind of thing.”

  “Yes, but I had a feeling you might be craving an old treat and I stopped on the way home yesterday.” He poured. “One cup, no waiting.”

  She sat at the table and, after she added the cream and the Splenda, he took a chair across from her. He sat, palmed his hands around his own drink, and stared at the affair for a moment.

  “Your mother tells me you’re not happy at school.”

  Marissa looked off to the back window that had a bar of sunlight coming through making a glare on the countertop. She blinked and knew that if Mother was in the room she would surely give her an impromptu speech about wearing sunglasses so much that she’d made herself into a light-sensitive cripple.