by Gerald Rice
He didn’t say that he’d just told her he’d lost his cell phone. She was understandably worried. He figured it was also not the best time to tell her he’d finally gotten something significant down on paper. “I tore the house up looking for my cell. I looked inside and out before calling it quits twenty minutes ago and coming down here to call. I’m sorry I worried you.”
“You had me worried. Are you okay?” Phyllis took a deep breath and blew it out into the phone. “Should I come up there?”
“No!” he said a little too loudly. “I’m fine now that I finally got to talk to you. Everything’s fine.”
“What did the sheriff say?”
“Not too much in the help department.” There was a little anteroom off the back of the kitchen and Toby was half-mindedly examining the junk inside through a window when he spotted what looked to be a wavy strip of white aluminum siding sitting atop a pile of junk. “Uh, honey, I gotta go, there’s a call coming on the other line. Love you. ’Bye.”
He hung up the phone and put his back to the fridge. Mr. Laferle was still standing there. Maybe that particular siding hadn’t come off his house but Toby noticed the man’s half-bandaged hands. One was pretty well wrapped even though blood had soaked through until it looked like he was wearing a red mitten. The other hand had a deep gash through the palm and Toby would have guessed he’d severed some tendons. The bandage on that hand was haphazard, wrapped securely at the wrist and looser as it went up the hand like he’d lost interest in what he’d been doing. The man didn’t seem to notice his still oozing wounds as he stood silent as a mummy, his wide eyes on Toby.
“Mr. Laferle, are you okay?” His layer of panic stripped away, Toby was able to process his surroundings more effectively. The man was in shock. There was still an air about him, however, making Toby nervous. More than his own issues, though, he was worried about the man. Was it possible for someone to bleed to death from the cuts on his hands? At the very least, he could have permanent damage if his wounds weren’t tended to promptly, Toby guessed.
He spotted a stack of books on the kitchen table. He recognized the cover of the one on top and realized it was one of his. Mr. Laferle was a fan! Maybe the man was in shock and a little bit in awe of an author he’d been reading now standing in his kitchen.
He smiled and pointed at the books. “Hey, why don’t we get you to the hospital and I’ll sign some of those for you.” His neighbor lunged at him, wrapping oozing hands around his neck. Toby batted at his arms, breaking his weak grip and stepping aside. Mr. Laferle crashed into the refrigerator and Toby circled around him. The shorter man turned, his eyes locking onto Toby. He had that same expression, but the sudden violence changed the tenor of his eyes. He almost looked mindless.
They stood in front of each other, the air between them like ice. Toby wanted to run, but he didn’t think he could get the door open and out before the man was on him.
“Now wait a minute,” Toby said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we can just forget I was even here.” He held out a placating hand. “Just let me walk out the door and we’re good. Okay?”
By way of reply, his neighbor’s mouth fell open. Toby thought he saw a blue light from behind his teeth and a millisecond before the man charged again, Toby snatched up the boiling pot and swung it in an arch at his head. It connected with a ping, but redirected him rather than stopping him. Mr. Laferle whirled, his bloody hands up like a 10 percent–wrapped mummy, and Toby hit him again. The man didn’t go down, didn’t seem to understand his face had just been smashed open, didn’t appear to hear the pot clanging off his skull, his eyes never wavering from his target. Toby didn’t stop swinging, each time the pot pinging off Mr. Laferle’s head until his forward momentum stopped and he was driven back. There was a dent at the corner of the man’s hairline before he fell and Toby stood over him, panting heavily.
His neighbor’s eyes were still pointed at him, but they were glazed. Toby sidestepped to make sure they didn’t follow like a creepy wall painting. Mr. Laferle was dead.
Toby dropped the equally misshapen pot, his hands going to his mouth as if to stop it from speaking some secret against his will.
He had to call the police.
He had to get out of here.
The whole episode had taken on an eeriness he couldn’t stand to be around.
Toby backed away. He retreated to the phone, grabbing it off the wall mount, and thumbed 911. The county operator he was routed to took his information and asked him to stay on the line while she contacted the local police. Toby let the phone slide from his hands, already headed for the door. He knew what this looked like and it would still look the same from the relative comfort of his own home. Let them say he’d murdered a man because he’d torn off a piece of Toby’s house. He knew the truth, and if that were anyone’s conclusion then he had a pit bull of a lawyer who would muddy the waters enough for a jury to not know what to believe. But staying there was not an option.
He tore open the front door, making a beeline for his house. “The writer didn’t dare look into the moonless night or listen to thick silence,” Toby said as he ran. “His eyes and ears were only for the house in front of him.” Toby’s lungs were starved for oxygen by the time he got the door shut behind him. He went through the house and turned on all the lights as if to wash the dark off him and sweep it back outside like a receding tide.
He was paranoid, he knew, and clueless as to what to do. Toby partially wished he’d stayed long enough to call his wife back. He needed more than just her shared concern; Phyllis would have known what to do in such a horrible circumstance. He peeked through the shades, hoping to spot blazing red and blue emergency lights. He would have welcomed a dozen of them even if they were coming to arrest him just so long as they got him out of here.
What had happened, though? Why did Mr. Laferle force Toby to kill him? He looked at his still trembling hands and noted the puffiness of one index. He touched it with his other hand and found it was sensitive like he’d been burned. It had to have been the scalding water that had been in the pot. He had to have slung some of it on him when he’d used it to hit his neighbor.
A flash of light passed by.
Toby peered outside again and saw the taillights of what had to have been Sheriff Carey’s cruiser. He wanted to step out on his porch and wave her down, but thought better of it.
Something bumped outside. Or rather, something bumped into something outside. It had sounded like the little picnic table scraping on the concrete patio and he dashed into the kitchen and peered through the vertical blinds of the patio door.
The table was gone.
Sure, it was small, but it would have taken two or three people to move it that fast. And the little grill he never remembered to bring in was missing too. There was a punch followed by shattering glass back in the living room and Toby saw a bloodied arm poking through his bay window waving around, grabbing at air.
“No!” he shouted. “You go away!”
Surprisingly, the arm withdrew, but not before it had picked up the tiny cactus plant he kept on the sill and taking it. The fillet of skin the arm left behind had a distinct tattoo of a fish Reggie Tillman had been proud to show off because he’d allegedly caught one just like it in North Carolina. Toby had signed his paperback copy of Deathwork when they had run into each other at the pharmacy last year.
Were all of these crazy people his fans?
Sheriff Carey pulled into his driveway and he saw her climb out. Toby thought he could feel more of them out there, closing in, and he wanted to call out to her. She sauntered up his walk and onto the porch. Toby yanked open the door and hustled her in, locking it behind her.
“Did you see them out there?” he asked. She didn’t answer, wandering over to the couch and hooking her thumbs into her belt.
“Hank Laferle’s dead.”
Toby sat on the couch, the fear of the home invaders temporarily forgotten. He couldn’t meet her eyes, though: mirrored
sunglasses were securely on her face.
At night.
He opened his mouth to speak and Sheriff Carey interjected. “It’s a good thing I answered the call,” she said. “When he woke, all he kept sayin’ was how you attacked him with the pot he was usin’ to make tea.”
“You . . . killed him?” Toby recoiled despite not moving. The sheriff sauntered into the kitchen. He felt equal parts relief and fresh horror. He hadn’t just murdered someone, but here was an officer of the law confessing freely that she had on his behalf. And she had a gun, too.
“Get over here,” Sheriff Carey said. Toby stood and saw her filling a pot roughly the same size as the one he’d used on Mr. Laferle. She placed it on the stove and turned on the eye. Save for the bedroom and bathroom the house had an open floor plan. Everything he could see and hear going on outside she had to have heard as well. He stood at the edge of the kitchen’s linoleum floor, watching as silhouettes stripped the siding off his house.
“C’mon,” the sheriff said. She held up a shaking hand and waved for him to come closer.
He took a few small steps over and she smiled as if to disarm him. The woman was a good fifteen years older, four inches shorter, and had a good deal of husk on her frame, but Toby wasn’t sure he could take her.
Finally, he stood by the stove next to her.
“I want you to show me,” she said, gesturing to the already boiling pot. “What happened?”
Toby hardly saw the point of re-creating the scene. “He attacked me—was going to attack me,” he said. “I—” She held up a finger then pointed it at the pot.
“Show me.”
He was about to speak again when she casually rested a hand on the butt of her holstered revolver.
“Pretend I’m Hank.”
Toby looked over at the pot and hesitantly reached for it. How far was she going with this? He grabbed it, the hot handle setting his nerve endings ablaze. Toby arched his arm slowly, rotating the pot in his grip to not slosh out the steaming water.
He was inches away from her face when he said, “Like this.”
“Good,” she said, and snapped a cuff around his wrist. With a slight twist of his body Toby felt like his shoulder was about to be wrenched out of the socket. He tried to fall to his knees in compliance but she stretched his arm out and a second later he was handcuffed to the cabinet door handles above him.
He’d burned himself again. Something crashed through the bathroom window and a moment later came a grunting voice. It took a few minutes of working before something broke.
Sheriff Carey’s whole body was twitching now. She slowly and deliberately reached into her shirt and plucked out a collector’s copy of The Big Sleeper with a leatherette cover and gold foil stamping. Toby didn’t even have a copy of that.
“Sign this,” she said, handing it to him with a Sharpie. Toby’s mouth hung open.
“I’m right-handed,” he said, indicating his restrained hand.
“Sign!” She slammed the book down on the counter. Toby opened it and thumbed the cap off the Sharpie then awkwardly scrawled his name as quickly as he could. He’d seen that same trace of blue light flicker in her mouth as had been in Hank Laferle’s.
Unintelligible chatter in falsetto began and he recognized his ringtone. Sheriff Carey took his cell phone out of her shirt pocket, her shivering hand reaching into the sink and depositing it into the disposal.
“No!” Toby snatched at air as she easily stepped out of his reach and flipped on the disposal. It made an angry, metallic chewing sound and a minute later the cell phone was gone save for a stubborn chunk of plastic.
“Don’t need that anymore,” she said. She turned her back to him and fell to the floor in a full-body palsy. When she stood again her hat was canted at an odd angle and she didn’t fix it. Her sunglasses were gone.
She had the same expression as Hank Laferle. She opened her mouth wider and he saw the blue light, tracing the inside of her mouth. Carey took a lurching step toward him.
“Fran?” Toby said. “Fran, stop.” He pulled on the cuffs, trying to yank the cabinet doors off. His wrist was more likely to break first, though, and he tried shoving her away.
She stumbled back and came on again. He tried shoving her again and she latched on to his wrist. Her mouth swung open and she stuffed his hand into it. Toby screamed as his hand suffused with an alien heat. A moment later his wrist popped out of her mouth and was a smooth nub.
He leaped back from her, expecting her to come at him again. She turned and shuffled toward the door. Toby yanked on his cuffs again, his mind reeling. Had to keep calm. The way out was simple. It had to be or the others would be in here and on him soon.
He’d replaced these cabinets himself last summer and had a hell of a time keeping the doors on. They fell off easily if a little upward force was applied to the bottom. He used his blunted arm to push, and the first one came off immediately, a corner catching him in the forehead. He could hear more of them in the house, but hadn’t seen them yet. Someone was in the bedroom, someone else had climbed in through the bathroom window. The back door and the front door were both intact, but occasionally one of them would rattle as someone tried the knob.
Toby had to get somewhere to hide. He couldn’t take for granted that these were just thieves set on looting his house while he was still in it. Sheriff Carey had taken his hand. He didn’t want to dwell on it for fear of sending himself into shock; he instead concentrated on working the other cabinet door off its hinges, using his remaining hand to steady it so he didn’t get bashed in the head again.
The door came free, the two of them clattering together on the counter. The commotion around the house stopped and Toby knew they had heard him. He picked up the doors as silently as he could and ducked behind the island.
They were moving closer. He wanted to cry out, to scream at them to leave, to drop what they had taken. It was wrong, it was all wrong, and there wasn’t more proof of that than what was missing at the end of his arm.
He risked reaching into the drawer over his head and fished around until he had a butter knife. It was tricky using his hand and stump, but eventually he got the screws for the handles undone and snapped the other bracelet around his wrist. Toby didn’t want to chance getting it snagged on something else and getting stuck all over again. He peeked around the island and saw the throng of residents milling about. So much of his house was bare from what he could see. The couch and television were gone and someone was in the process of lifting an end table, letting the vase atop it smash to the floor.
He used the momentary distraction to run through the thin crowd. He’d almost made it to the stairs when Pendleton White grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and held him in place. Toby got a good look at his invaders: Brenda May, Martin Stubblefield, Boyd Carr amongst others—it looked like his last book signing in town at the K of C.
Toby didn’t ask, instead plunging the butter knife into Pendleton’s forearm. His grip sprung open and Toby raced up the stairs, hearing them right behind him. He was only going to have one chance with the door so he spun around and kicked as hard as he could, catching someone with the same build as David Bowers in the face. The man didn’t go down, though, rather Toby’s shoe stuck to the man’s face and came off Toby’s foot. “David” sucked it down, his mouth awash in blue glow, and began retreating.
Others surged forward, their arms reaching for Toby as he climbed the last few stairs and shut himself inside. He hoped the flimsy lock would hold them at bay long enough to get onto the roof. The house was a ranch and this had been the attic, but the prior owner had converted it into a small study. The fall from the roof was about fourteen feet, and if he did it right he could keep his ankles intact.
Toby realized the lone window was painted shut after tugging on it a few times. He figured he had seconds before they had the door open and piled on him. He turned to his little desk and typewriter. They wanted pieces of him, right? He grabbed the small stack of typewr
itten pages and tossed them behind him, letting them scatter to the floor. What sounded like a giant fist pounded on the door, and he thought it had already been knocked off its hinges. He scooped up the heavy typewriter and flung it at the window. It went through much too easily and he found himself wondering if he should have saved it to fend off the people at the door. They had to have wanted that.
Toby was still kicking out glass when the door finally gave and he climbed through. His pants tore on a shard he’d missed, but he lifted himself out, concentrating on his footing, not wanting to go tumbling off the roof. He almost lost his balance trying to grab hold of the window frame with his missing hand. Hopefully, most or all of them would be in the house and he could leap down, make it to his SUV, and drive away. As soon as he was fully on the roof someone reached for his legs. Toby sidestepped and the person climbed out after him. Before Dwight Mullins could stand, Toby grabbed him by the collar and heaved him toward the edge of the roof, watching as he tumbled off. Someone else began to climb out, but he didn’t wait to see whom. Toby crept to the edge and peered over. He saw there was no hope of getting off the roof and to his vehicle; there were just too many people on the ground. That wasn’t what made his heart drop, though. Phyllis’s vehicle was parked in the driveway behind his. He hadn’t heard her call to him and hoped that didn’t mean what he was thinking. He hoped, too, that the girls weren’t with her.
“Phyllis!” he called to his wife. The people on the ground who hadn’t noticed him yet looked up. All were familiar faces, strange in the wan light coming from his house. Wanda was there. So was Mel, though Toby had not known the man had actually read any of his books. He wondered if just liking the fact that Toby was a writer had been enough to change him, too.
He was past the point of doubting; his missing hand was all the evidence he needed. There was no reason to any of it. It just was and there was no one to whom Toby could cry for deliverance.
Someone else was on the roof behind him. He didn’t turn to look and the grip on his shoulder was firm. Toby went to his knees, managing to not fall over despite the pitch of the roof. Marv Redding rolled head over heels and disappeared over the edge. He finally spotted her in the crowd and his wife’s face was as alien as the others.