The Night Visitors

by Carol Goodman

  Something cool brushes against my outstretched hand.

  The one escape clause in Lava was the lifeline. You could toss a rope (we used the gold silk cord from one of my mother’s bathrobes) to a stranded partner and he or she could walk it like a tightrope across the perilous lava field. That’s what this feels like, even though I know it’s just a draft of cold air from the uninsulated windows that need to be recaulked.

  I step across the dark expanse and reach for the lamp. My hand brushes against something and I hear a clear musical chime that reverberates in my chest. It’s only the scales, I tell myself as I work my hand down from the smooth glass shade to the hard brass knob that turns the light on. The bulb crackles and flickers, threatens to go out, then steadies weakly into a pool of pale green light.

  I haven’t been in this room in months. Dust lies everywhere, like pond scum, coating the thick leather blotter, the desk, the glass-fronted bookcases, the cracked leather chair. I trail my finger in it as I come around the desk, tracing a spiral pattern like some Celtic charm against ghosts. I use my sleeve to wipe off the seat of the chair and sit down, the old leather creaking, and then I reach across the desk to still the glass scales that hang from the bronze statuette of Justice that sits at the center of my father’s desk. She’s part of a pen set representing the state seal of New York that was given to my father by the New York State Bar Association on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his judgeship. There’s a plaque between her and another figure, Liberty: Liberty and Justice, my father would say when I sat in his lap and played with the scales, you can’t have one without the other. Which confused me sometimes, because so often my father’s brand of justice involved revoking some bit of liberty.

  I turn away from the figures on the desk to look at the tall glass-fronted bookcase. My eyes immediately go to the seam in the wall behind the case where there was once a door, but I make myself focus on the case, trailing my hand over the dust-coated glass doors until I come to the fifth shelf from the floor. I rap the glass twice, giving any mice fair warning, and pull the glass door up.

  The books are dustless behind the glass, their tooled leather spines as cool and clean as dried bones. I find what I’m looking for on the far right of the shelf, a tall slim book bound in blue the color of a summer night’s sky with silver lettering the color of starlight. An Astral Mythology: A Child’s Guide to the Night Sky. It’s an 1890 first edition of a translation of the third century B.C. writer Eratosthenes. According to my antiquarian friend in Hobart it’s worth several thousand dollars. I could have the roof fixed with the proceeds. Or replace the windows. Or buy a new boiler for Sanctuary.

  It will be perfect for the boy.

  I get up to go, reaching for the lamp, and notice a pattern in the dust—a random splatter of dots that might be the footprints of mice or a new constellation in the night sky. It’s all how you look at it, my father would say. Some people look up at the night sky and see random scatter, others read stories in the chaos. That’s what I do when I adjudicate a case. I make sense out of chaos.

  I turn the light off before I can start reading stories in the dust and walk quickly out of the office, locking the door behind me. I go back into the kitchen and lay the book on the table, then take the muffins out of the oven and put them to cool on a metal rack beside the book. I can hear the thump of the washing machine finishing its cycle, so I go into the mudroom, pull out the sweatshirt and towel, put them in the dryer, and then fish out the knife. It shines clean and cold in the first rays of dawn coming in through the window. I slide it under a pile of blankets stacked on the dryer.

  Dulcie stirs and stands by the door. I let her out and step outside for a moment. The storm has passed and the sky is lightening in the east, an orange glow that reflects off the newly fallen snow. There’s nothing better than a clear morning after a snowstorm, and I am filled with an unaccustomed sense of hope, of things beginning. I’ll tell the boy I found his knife and ask him if I can keep it. For safekeeping, I’ll say. I’ll tell him that whatever he and his mother did to get away is their business. The only thing that matters is that they’ve gotten away.

  I go back inside. Feed Dulcie. Put on the kettle. Turn on the radio. While the water is boiling I hear the muffled voice of the news announcer. One of the reasons I love this NPR station is that the newscasters speak in such subdued murmurs I can usually tune them out, but this morning a word snags my attention. Ridgewood. The town on Alice’s bus ticket.

  As I listen, sunlight swells over the window ledge above the kitchen sink, staining the pitted porcelain and scarred wooden counter a lurid blood orange. A body’s been found in Ridgewood, New Jersey. A man in his thirties, stabbed to death in his home.

  Chapter Five

  Alice

  I WAKE UP to the touch of a hand stroking my cheek. It’s such a gentle touch, so tender, that I don’t want it to ever stop. I keep my eyes closed, let myself slip back to sleep. I can feel a breath on my face, lips brushing my ear, then a whisper—

  He’s coming.

  I open my eyes. I’m alone in the yellow room, sunlight warm on my face. That must be what I felt. Davis never touched me like that and Oren isn’t here.

  Oren isn’t here.

  I bolt upright, fully awake now, and tear into the little closet where he’d gone to sleep. No Oren. His backpack is gone too.

  He’s coming.

  I hear the echo of that dream whisper. Had it been a warning? I step out into the hallway and hear the whisper again, only now it’s coming from downstairs. I stand at the top of the stairs and listen, my heart skittering around in my chest like a hunted rabbit, and make out the singsongy murmur of the woman and then Oren. I can’t hear what he’s saying but I can tell by the happy lilt in his voice—when did I hear that last?—that he’s all right. No one has come in the night to take him. And if Davis had—I put my hand on my chest to calm my heart—he wouldn’t have left me sleeping. Besides, Davis isn’t coming.

  I walk back down the hall to find the bathroom. It’s at the end of the hall and it’s as big as my bedroom at home. It’s got one of those old-fashioned tubs with creepy claw feet. No shower. I splash water on my face, pee, and then go exploring. That aw-shucks harmless-spinster crap is as good a cover as any for something dark and twisted inside. I knew a caseworker once—looked sweet as candy, cubicle full of cat pictures, dressed like your grammy—who was fired because she liked to pinch little boys’ behinds when no one was looking.

  She’s left her bedroom door wide open, like she didn’t have a stranger sleeping down the hall. Like she didn’t lock her front door. Is she an idiot or one of those idealistic nuts? I listen for a second to the murmur of voices downstairs. I can tell by the excited rush of Oren’s voice that he’s embarked on one of his long stories. He’s probably telling her the plot of all the Star Wars movies. Good boy, I think, as if Oren knows I need the distraction. And maybe he does, like he knew what town we were going to last night.

  He’s just smart, I tell myself, entering Mattie’s sad spinster bedroom. Only one side of the bed is rumpled, a smelly old dog bed on the floor, a flannel nightgown tossed in a laundry basket. The night table is stacked with dog-eared paperbacks, mysteries mostly, the kind with teacups and cats on the covers where dotty old ladies solve crimes. I bet she sees herself as one of those Miss Marple types, coming to the rescue of stupid trashy girls like me.

  There’s also quite the assortment of pharmaceuticals. Ambien and Valium on the night table, and when I open the drawer—why, hello!—OxyContin. I wonder what ache those are for. I open the Oxy, tip out two tablets, and slip them in my pocket. As I put the bottle back I notice the framed picture. It’s of a boy, about the same age as Oren, but with a terrible eighties haircut. Her son? Or the brother she mentioned earlier?

  I help myself to a Valium and open more drawers, looking for something I could pawn. All I find is sad old-lady underwear, flannel nightgowns, turtlenecks and long johns from L.L.Bean and Lands’ End. The o
nly jewelry is cheap ethnic crap. The frame is silver, but I haven’t sunk so low as to steal some kid’s picture from a nightstand.

  I walk back to the bathroom and wash down the Valium with a handful of water from the tap. Back in the hallway I open a few closed doors. There’s a door at the end of the hallway that has been boarded over, which is creepy. In one of the group homes I lived in the older girls told a story about a foster mother who would lock kids up in the attic. She told Social Services that the kids ran away and boarded up the attic. When she moved out and a new family moved in they broke into the attic and found a mound of bones. The worst thing was that some of the bones had teeth marks on them that were too big to be made by mice. The story went that even after the bones were taken away the new family could hear knocking coming from the attic—those starving children banging on the floor for someone to let them out. Of course, then one of the girls would secretly make a big banging noise and all the little kids would jump.

  The next door is a closet filled with moldy-smelling linens, and then a bedroom. This one is a child’s room—a boy’s room with a single bed, neatly made with a patchwork quilt and old-school Star Wars sheets. A bookcase filled with books about dogs and horses and Greek myths and astronomy. A mobile of the solar system, obviously handmade. There are plastic Day-Glo stars on the ceiling and a poster of the first Star Wars movie tacked to the wall. It could be Oren’s room at home except that there’s no computer, no video games, no sign that the boy who lived here once ever lived past the 1980s.

  Which is even creepier than the boarded-over door.

  What’s even more creepy, though, is that of all the rooms I’ve been in so far, this one is by far the cleanest. Someone dusts it regularly.

  OREN IS SITTING at the kitchen table in his newly washed Star Wars sweatshirt. When I walk in he looks up and breaks into a smile that cracks open my heart—or maybe it’s the Valium kicking in.

  “Mattie said I could go sledding after you came down. She’s got a sled and there’s a big hill where kids go. Can I?”

  “Give your mom a chance to have her breakfast, kid,” Mattie says, turning to look at me. In the morning light her face looks older than it did last night but also somehow prettier. Her silver hair catches the light and sparkles like tinsel, and her eyes look lavender against all the white snow out the window. “There’s coffee,” she tells me, nudging a chair out and pointing her chin at a Mr. Coffee on the counter.

  “I’ll get it!” Oren says, popping out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box. “Mattie made banana muffins too, with chocolate chips.”

  We’ll both have diabetes if we stay here too long. But I smile back at Oren and take the muffin and coffee. He pours the milk in for me just the way I like it, makes a big deal of taking a muffin out of a basket and putting it on a china plate, sits back down for three seconds and pops back up to get me a napkin. He’s wound up on sugar and nerves, trying so hard to please it sets my teeth on edge. Mattie sees it too.

  “Kid,” she says, “how are you with a shovel?”

  Oren squints at her and says, “Depends on what kind of shovel.” Like he’s had experience with a multitude.

  “A snow shovel. We got a foot last night and the Weather Channel says there’s an even bigger storm on the way. The front path to the driveway and the one to the barn need digging out and my back just isn’t up to it this morning. It would be a great help to me”—she looks at me—“if it’s okay with your mom.”

  “I can do it, Alice,” Oren says. “I’ve done our sidewalk in—”

  “As long as you stay away from the road,” I say, sneaking a look to see what Mattie’s made of that Alice. “We should do something to pay back this nice lady for all she’s done for us.”

  Mattie’s face pinches like something pains her. I’ve stolen a little bit of her charity high. But then she nods and braces her hands on the table. “That’s settled then,” she says. I see her wince as she gets to her feet, and her first few steps across the kitchen are bow-legged and stiff. She’s not kidding about her back. I feel a twinge of guilt for stealing her Oxy but then I remind myself that we’ve all got our pains.

  Mattie picks up a newspaper from the counter and tosses it onto the table in front of me. “Help yourself to more coffee, Alice,” she says. “I’ll be back once I get Oren kitted out.”

  I take a sip of coffee and listen to them in the front hall. These’ll fit . . . Here, you’d better put on an extra pair of socks . . . Take this fleece . . . Try these boots . . . She must have a whole assortment of boys’ clothes, which I find a little creepy. Maybe it’s just that she collects donations, but still, all the force-feeding us baked goods and giving us new clothes—and that boarded-over door upstairs—make me feel uneasy. Best we move on as soon as we can.

  I take another sip of the coffee, which I have to admit is pretty good, and a bite of the muffin, which is delicious, and turn the paper around. A do-gooder liberal like Mattie, I’m expecting the New York Times, but it’s a Kingston paper, folded open to the state and local crime report. I scan the page: a sexual assault in New Paltz, a drug bust in Newburgh, and there, at the bottom, a murder in northern New Jersey.

  Ridgewood man found stabbed to death in his home. I read the two inches of print, the coffee rising in my throat. Police are looking for a woman and ten-year-old boy for questioning.

  The words blur into gray sludge. I cover my eyes with one hand and breathe until the dizziness passes. When I open my eyes Mattie is standing in front of me, arms crossed over her chest, leaning against the counter.

  “Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Alice?” she says, all sweet and butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth.

  I shouldn’t say anything, but I want to wipe the smug right off her face.

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m glad the bastard’s dead.”

  Chapter Six

  Mattie

  ALICE TELLS THE story against a sound track of metal scraping against ice. We can see Oren laboring with the shovel outside the window, a diminutive figure in a red parka, peaked blue hat, and too-big snow boots. We both keep our eyes on him as she talks, as if we’re afraid he might vanish if we don’t.

  “I was really young when I met Davis,” she begins. I’ve listened to hundreds of these stories over the years and they always begin the same. I met a man. He seemed so nice. He treated me so special. “He seemed so grown-up, and it felt cool that a man that age would pay attention to me. I never knew my father.”

  She pauses, takes a sip of coffee. I picture myself standing on the threshold of my father’s study waiting for that imperious Come!

  “So I guess I had daddy issues.” She laughs. I smile. Say nothing. Wait. “And Davis was cool. He’s a musician—or at least he was until I got pregnant with Oren and he had to take a day job. I guess that’s when things started going bad—not that I regret having Oren for a second; he’s the best thing in my life, you know . . . or maybe you don’t. Do you have kids?”

  I’m familiar enough with this tactic of deflecting attention not to answer the question. “I can see how you feel about Oren. He’s a great kid.”

  Most mothers, you tell them their kids are great, they beam right back at you. But Alice seems to shrink into herself a little more and hunch over her coffee cup, as if she resents my pointing this out. There’s something off about these two. Him calling her Alice, for instance. Not that plenty of kids, especially only children, don’t try out their parents’ first names, but there was the way she looked up at me when he said it, like she was wondering what I made of it. I can sense that same hesitation now, like she’s checking out what I think of each thing she says, whether I’m buying it. Well, I’m not going to give her that. I stay quiet, and after a moment’s pause she goes on. “He’s so smart it’s scary sometimes. Davis says he gets it from him, but he’s way smarter than Davis. And Davis knows it. It started making him . . . jealous. Isn’t that weird? A parent being jealous of his own child.”

  “Depen
ds on the parent,” I say, trying not to be drawn in. My mother quips back, Depends on the child.

  “Well, I thought it was weird. It made him really hard on Oren. He was always prodding him, trying to prove he was better—than his own kid! When I objected he’d say I was too soft on him, that he’d grow up a sissy. Then when Oren would come to my defense Davis would say I’d poisoned Oren against him.”

  “Come to your defense how?” I ask, not willing to let that slide past.

  “When Davis hit me.” She holds up her chin as if I’m going to challenge her. “Oren would try to stop him.” She pulls up her shirtsleeve and shows me a line of white ridges on her forearm. Burn marks. “He started punishing me when Oren was at school. I tried not to let Oren see them but there’s not much that gets past him. He stopped going to school—and he liked school. He’d pretend to be sick, and when Davis made him go anyway he’d sneak back. Aren’t you going to ask me why I didn’t leave?”

  “I imagine it’s because you had no place to go,” I say.

  All the muscles in Alice’s face harden as if I’d struck her. She’s trying not to cry, I realize. “No, I didn’t,” she says defiantly. “I grew up in the foster system, so I don’t have anyone. But even if I did, Davis said he’d kill me if I tried to leave him.”

  No matter how often I have heard some variation on this threat, I am still amazed by the possessiveness of the abuser who tells a woman ten times a day that she’s worthless but still won’t let her go. Amazed, but not surprised. Nor am I surprised to learn that Alice grew up in foster care. She has the wariness I’ve seen in dozens of kids in the system, as if the ground beneath their feet’s not steady. Which it usually isn’t. If we had more time I’d ask her about that, but we have only as long as it will take Oren to finish shoveling and he’s already gotten to the driveway and started on the path to the barn. So instead I ask, “What happened yesterday?”