Froze to death, I think, remembering the boy in that story Travis and Lisa had told us. Mattie didn’t mention that detail. My parents and brother died of carbon monoxide poisoning, she’d said, not My parents died of carbon monoxide poisoning and my brother froze to death trying to get the hell out of this batshit-crazy house.
A gust of ice pellets hits the window, making me jump. There’s more to the story, but I’ve read enough. I fold up the newspaper and tuck it in my pocket. Then I walk down the hall to the boy’s room. It’s easy to tell which one it is, because it’s got a pattern of plastic stars on the door—a pattern just like the one that showed up on the window downstairs. I consider knocking, but I’m afraid Oren will just crawl under the bed, so instead I open the door slowly.
At first I’m so dazzled that I’m not sure what I’m seeing. Pinpricks of light dance around the darkened room. It’s like the star show I took Oren to see at the planetarium. He had begged to go because it was called “Star Wars.” I thought he’d be bored when he found out it wasn’t like the movie, but he liked it so much we stayed straight through three showings, hunkering down in our seats so they wouldn’t kick us out between shows.
“Oren?” I call quietly, scanning the room. It’s hard to make out anything through this crazy light show, which I realize is coming from a lamp on the night table. A constellation projector lamp. Oren asked for one at Christmas but it was too expensive. He must have been over the moon when he found this one.
I move cautiously across the room, expecting Oren to jump out at me any minute. But there’s nothing really to hide behind. The only place he could be is under the bed.
I walk slowly to the night table, offering up my bare and vulnerable ankles. “I wonder where Oren can be,” I say, mock-serious. “It’s too bad he’s not here to tell me the names of all these stars. Hmm . . . I think that one’s called Rumplepotomi Doofus. And that group over there must be the Three Stooges.”
I think I hear a tiny giggle from under the bed.
“And that must be the constellation of Snuffleupagus.” This time I hear a definite snort. “And this one, under the sign of the bed, must be—” I drop to my knees and grab under the bed, ready to pull out a giggling boy, but instead my hands close on dust balls. I sweep the space, finding only one small plastic figure, a miniature R2-D2 with a Post-it note that says: “These are not the droids you’re looking for. Look inside the house inside the house.”
What the—
I flatten myself on the floor to look under the bed for a trapdoor, somewhere Oren could be hiding, but just as I do all the lights go out. Followed, two heartbeats later, by a scream from downstairs.
Chapter Twenty
Mattie
WHOEVER IS COMING in must be startled by the lights going out because he freezes. His hesitation gives me the advantage: I’m in the dark, but there’s still a little light left in the sky so I can see him—or at least the shape of him. A man, definitely, with a baseball cap under a hood. His face is in shadow. I can make out the gun in his hand perfectly well and an inch of bare skin between coat cuff and gloved hand. Although I’m flattened against the wall I’ve angled myself, with my dominant foot back, in exactly the right defensive posture we learned in self-defense class, so when I swing my right arm forward I bring my leg with it, adding force to the blow I aim at his wrist.
The knife sinks deep into flesh. The man screams and drops the gun to the floor. I kick it behind me and wrench open the door. The door opening knocks him off-balance and he falls backward into the snow. I take a step forward but then I hear Doreen’s voice in my head. Close it, idiot! Or at least get the gun first!
I step back, slam the door, and lock it. Then I turn to look for the gun, but it’s too dark. I sink to my knees and feel around on the floor, groping in Dulcie’s bed and through the piles of lint and old socks and half-chewed dog bones under the dryer. Finally, my hand closes on cold steel. I feel along the barrel gingerly for the safety and find that it’s off.
The bastard was ready to shoot.
Leaving it off, I get to my feet but stay half crouched below the window. He could have another gun. I peer out the window.
He’s gone.
Which means he could be trying the front door. Did I lock it? Doreen’s always after me to, but living out here at the end of the road, surrounded by woods, I hardly ever bother. What’s to steal? I’d ask Doreen.
Your life, she’d say.
Who’d want that? I’d quip back.
But now there are two more lives in this house. I head for the front door—and trip over Dulcie. I reach out to brace myself but the gun’s in my hand and I end up banging poor Dulcie’s head. She whimpers and I feel terrible. I could have shot us both. I thumb on the safety and keep going more cautiously, left hand out, feet feeling for obstacles. I know the way well enough, but there are piles of donation bags in the hall and boots lying by the door.
This is what comes of bad housekeeping, my mother’s voice says in my head.
“Fuck off!” I shout out loud as I throw the bolt on the front door.
“Who are you talking to?”
The voice right behind me nearly makes me jump out of my skin. I wheel around, right arm extended, left hand bracing my grip, dominant foot back, body angled to protect my own vital organs (who knew I even still cared about them!). I’m aiming into the dark, though, and for a moment I wonder if I really heard anything at all. Haven’t I been listening to the voices in my head for years? Didn’t I just hear Caleb’s voice in a tin can?
But then the voice comes again. “What the fuck? Are you trying to kill me?”
Of course she can see me. Now I’m the one standing in the dying gray light. “Alice,” I say.
“Who the hell else would it be? What happened? I heard someone scream. It sounded like—”
“A man,” I say. “A man was coming through the kitchen door. I stabbed him and took his gun but he’s still out there.”
“A man? What did he look like?”
“I didn’t get a good look at him . . . why? Were you expecting someone?”
“What? No! I just thought it might be someone you knew.”
I’m about to snap back that I don’t know any housebreakers but then I realize that I probably do. Instead I ask where Oren is.
“Hiding,” she says. “Upstairs, I think.”
“Shit. We have to find him. I need to get my phone from the kitchen and then we’ll go upstairs and . . .” And then what? We tell victims of domestic abuse who are in their houses with their abusers that if they can’t get out they should lock and barricade themselves into a safe room with their children. The only room that locks is down here. But I don’t tell Alice that. “Stay right here. Watch the door and listen for breaking glass. If you hear glass breaking run upstairs and hide under one of the beds.”
I walk past her toward the kitchen but she grabs my arm. “I’m coming with you,” she says. Her hand is clammy and trembling. Her breathing sounds shallow. Like a person having a panic attack.
“Fine. Just try not to trip me up. This is no time for me to break a hip.”
She hangs on to me like a barnacle all the way to the kitchen. I feel my way to the kitchen table and retrieve the flashlights I pulled out earlier. I pocket one and hand the other to Alice. “Don’t turn it on yet,” I say as I feel around on the counter for the phone. “I don’t want him to know where we are.”
“You couldn’t see his face at all?”
“Not really. He had a baseball cap on under a hood.” The baseball hat jogs a memory: Camo from the Stewart’s handing Atefeh a MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hat. The asshole whose groin I doused with hot coffee. Who was driving a jacked-up plow truck with fake antlers on the hood, just like the plow truck that nearly ran me over as I was going into Sanctuary earlier today. I’d been too busy looking for Oren to notice, but now I’m sure it was the same truck. He might have waited for us to come out of Sanctuary and followed us back to the house.
“How tall was he?” Alice asks.
“Why?” I ask. The phone’s not on the kitchen counter and I remember it was still in my hand when I reached for the knife on top of the dryer. I must have dropped it there. I approach the back door warily, checking the window to see if the intruder is out there, but it’s too dark to tell. It’s full night now.
“Did he have a goatee?” Alice asks.
“A goatee? Honestly, I have no—” My hand closes on the phone. I thumb the home button and the screen lights up. “Thank God!” I say, and then realize that the lit screen might be visible from the outside. I turn my back to the door and bump into Alice. She’s so close that I can smell her coppery fear-soaked breath. In the light of the phone screen her face looks gaunt and haggard. Why did I ever think she was in her twenties? She must be thirty-five at least, and those years have not been kind to her.
I touch the phone icon and tap in 911. As it’s ringing the low battery alert comes on. Shit. It was plugged in only long enough to get a tiny charge before the power went off. But maybe it will be enough. The police operator answers on the third ring.
“911. What’s your emer—”
The screen goes black. “Fuck!” I swear, shaking the phone as if that will bring it to life.
“Mattie,” Alice says. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Not now, Alice,” I snap, years of reflective listening training going out the window. “We have to get upstairs. Find Oren. Block ourselves in my bedroom. We’ve got two guns and the police will trace that call. The chief of police is my—” I’d been about to say my friend, but that really isn’t true anymore. Frank Barnes hasn’t so much as smiled at me since the night Caleb and my parents died. Still, Frank’s too upstanding a guy to let personal feelings come between him and his duty. “He’ll head out here when he sees I tried to call. We just have to stay safe until he gets here. This asshole—I think I know who he is—is just a redneck blowhard. I pissed him off at the Stewart’s last night and he came out here to teach me a lesson. He’s probably nursing his injured paw and crawling back to the nearest bar, where he’ll tell the regulars that he put the fear of God into a couple of pussy-hat-wearing feminists.”
I’m not sure I believe any of what I’m saying. Secretly I am hoping that dumbass Jason has crawled off to freeze to death in the barn, but as soon as that thought appears in my head I picture Caleb in the barn and I have to brace myself against the dryer.
Alice grabs my arm to hold me up. She lowers her face so it’s inches from mine. “It’s not some dumbass redneck you pissed off at the Stewart’s,” she spits out. “It’s Davis. He’s alive and he’s come to get me and Oren. And he won’t stop until we’re all dead.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Alice
MATTIE DOESN’T SAY anything right away and it’s too dark to see her face. I can picture it, though, the same sour disapproval I’ve seen in a dozen caseworkers, foster parents, and teachers over the years. People who put their trust in me and were then disappointed when I wasn’t able to live up to the pretty picture they’d made in their heads. The young teachers and social workers were the worst. They’d get the idea that they were reaching the poor foster kid and then you’d make one little mistake—missing curfew, lifting a lip gloss from Walmart, punching the dickwad who called you white trash—and their pretty picture of themselves as your savior blew up in their faces. It wasn’t you they were mad at; it was themselves for being stupid enough to trust you.
When Mattie does speak, her voice is flat with rage. “You told me Davis was dead.”
“No,” I point out, “you told me that he was dead.”
“They found a body at his house.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t Davis, it was Scott.”
“Who is Scott?”
“Oren’s caseworker,” I say, “and a nice guy. I called him to tell him not to worry about us.” Yes, I’m leaving out the idea of running away with Scott. Mattie doesn’t have to know all my business. “When I called Scott’s cell phone, Davis picked up. So I figure Scott must have gone by to check on us and Davis killed him. That must be the body the cops found.”
Mattie doesn’t say anything right away. She must be deciding whether she believes me. It’s creepy standing here talking in the dark, like being in a confessional. One of my foster parents, Maria Tomaselli, was Catholic and took us kids to church every Sunday trying to convert us. I hid in the confessional one week and wrote some comments about the Virgin Mary and Jesus in Sharpie on the walls. Maria gave up trying to convert me after that; she’d made up her mind I was going to hell.
“Did you ask Davis to come get you?” Mattie squeezes out the words like toothpaste from a spent tube. “Did you tell him where you are?”
“No! What kind of an idiot do you think I am! Like I’d endanger my boy—”
“I know Oren’s not your son.”
This takes me by surprise—and it hurts too. She says it like she knows every dirty secret I’ve ever had. Like she knows me inside and out. But she doesn’t know the first thing about me.
“You assumed he was my son and I just went along with you. He’s still my boy. I’ve put up with Davis’s shit for two years because I couldn’t stand to leave Oren with him or let Oren end up in the system. I love that kid.”
I brace myself for her to challenge that but she doesn’t. “Where did you call from?”
“The CVS pharmacy phone. I don’t know if it has caller ID—”
“It does,” Mattie says. “Shit. Why didn’t you tell me? We could have told the police.”
“I’d’ve lost Oren. I’ve got no claim to him. And . . . I’ve got a record. Little shit . . . shoplifting, pot . . . but I’d never get custody of him. You know where he’d end up.”
She doesn’t argue with this. Instead she turns on her flashlight and shines it right in my eyes, blinding me. “I know you took drugs from my bedroom.” Her voice is cold and hard. “Have you taken it all?”
I fish out two Oxy from my pocket and hand them over. “I only took one of the Valium to calm down,” I tell her. “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”
I don’t mean it as a joke but she laughs. When she lowers the flashlight I can see her face. It’s wet and shiny; she’s cried all through my story without making a sound. “Okay,” she says, wiping her face with her shirtsleeve. “We’re not going to solve anything by standing here jawing. Let’s go up and find Oren and then hunker down. Do you have any idea where he is?”
“I heard him in your brother’s room. I thought he was under the bed but then when I looked he wasn’t there. Though I did find this.” I hand her the R2-D2. She turns it over and reads the sticky note. Even in the weird glow of the flashlight I can tell her face has gone pale. “What?” I ask, for a second more afraid of what the note means to Mattie than the fact that Davis is prowling outside the house.
“I’ll explain on the way up,” she says, stroking the plastic robot with her thumb as if it were a holy relic. “I think I know where Oren is.”
AS I FOLLOW Mattie up the stairs she explains in a hushed whisper something she calls “the game.”
“Caleb loved to play hide-and-seek. It was his favorite game and he didn’t get to play a lot of games. My parents . . . they were old by the time Caleb showed up—a change-of-life baby, some people called him. A mistake, others said.”
“That’s mean,” I say.
“People are mean. I expect you’ve learned that, Alice. Caleb didn’t have many friends. My mother didn’t like for him to bring other kids home—too much mess, she said—or to go to the neighbors’ houses. When I was growing up my father would read to me, teach me about the stars and trees and birds, but by the time Caleb came along he had less patience.” She pauses and I suspect there’s more to the story that she’s leaving out, but I don’t press her. There’s plenty I’d want to leave out of my story too.
“So I played with him. In the summer we would play hide-and-se
ek for hours out in the fields and woods. He got so good at it that he scared me sometimes, disappearing for hours. I made him agree to a place he’d always come back to if I couldn’t find him in an hour—home base, we called it—and he started leaving clues there. At first they were pretty simple, like ‘I’m with the pips’ for the apple orchard, but after we saw the first Star Wars movie he started mapping out whole adventures for the characters.”
“Oren did that too,” I say. “I think it was easier pretending to be a rebel Jedi hiding from Darth Vader than a scared little boy hiding from his asshole father.”
We’ve reached the door to Caleb’s room. It’s closed, though I don’t remember closing it. Mattie turns to me, the flashlight lighting up her face like a fright mask. Despite the scary shadows on her face her eyes look kinder than they have since I pulled Oren’s arm. “Of course it was. The game got more complicated the summer Caleb was ten. I was away at graduate school. When I came back I knew right away that things were . . . different. My mother, who’d always been a compulsive cleaner, had gotten crazy. She’d mop the kitchen floor and then forget she’d just cleaned it and start all over again. She was always yelling at Caleb not to track in mud, not to make too much noise, not to move things around—”
“Not to move things around?” I ask, thinking of Oren’s poltergeist.
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