No One's Home

by D. M. Pulley

  Fumbling with the front door locks, he struggled to make his fingers obey as the muscles in them tightened. A low groan escaped the snarl of his mouth when he finally managed to get the dead bolt to turn.

  The night’s chill rushed in through the doorway as he hurled himself down the front walk. Beneath the screams replaying in his mind, he could hear something worse. Grunting. A muffled drowning. A high-pitched shriek cut short.

  In the distance, a red car headed east down South Woodland, but the rest of the street was empty. Benny forced his locked legs across Lee Road toward the spot he’d seen the girl, trying to yell, Stop! Help! but only managing a strangled yowl. “SOWWWW!”

  The sound of two bodies struggling against the bushes shuddered through the air. Terrible wet thumping sounds followed. An inhuman grunt. A choked gurgle. Then nothing but the muffled drum of two feet running over the wet grass and away.

  Benny stood there frozen, his back to his own house, his head dipped low. The street had gone silent with an exhale of air. The acrid smell of stomach gases hung all around him. Dead, the watcher whispered from the attic window behind him. Dead like Darwin the fish.

  He contracted into himself. Helpless. Seizing. The shape of him crumpled to the pavement. DEAD! DEAD! DEAD GIRL!

  “Benny!” his mother called from the front door, a note of panic in her voice. “Benny!”

  He couldn’t answer. He was gone.

  She didn’t see him right away convulsing on the sidewalk, a shadowy lump rocking back and forth, knocking against the cold concrete. The world sparked red and white as she ran across the street. Blood seeped out of his hair and onto the pavement with each crack of his skull.

  Scooping Benny into her strong arms, she whispered through panic and tears, “Benny! What are you doing out here?”

  She didn’t hear the girl dying ten feet away on the other side of the bushes. His mother didn’t suspect a thing until a young police officer knocked on the door the following day.

  62

  The Spielman Family

  August 12, 2018

  “It was Katie Green, wasn’t it? Who do you think did it?” Hunter finally asked after reading Benny’s broken account of the events a second time. The man took a few minutes to type out the answer.

  Ben33: A man. Big and tall. Older. Not a neighbor. Not that boy they put in the papers.

  “Did you ever tell the police what you saw?”

  Ben33: I tried. When I learned to type I sent letters. No one ever wrote back. They must have thought I was crazy or a liar. It is hard when you look and sound like this.

  Benny flashed his crooked grin and held up his curled hands.

  “Wow. I’m sorry.” Hunter shook his head and glanced out Benny’s window, then back to the contorted face on the screen. The man’s own mother had thought he was a killer.

  Ben33: Don’t be sorry. I like it here. I like my new window. I see the sun set every day. A machine helps me talk. A machine helps me read. There is a tank full of fish. The fish are happy here.

  Hunter glanced at the nurse over Benny’s shoulder, who was smiling at the sunny message. “Do you ever wish you hadn’t seen what happened? Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you’d just stayed in bed that night? Or if you’d never lived in this house at all?”

  The older man frowned at him. Beneath the jagged scars on his face and the gray hair, Benny was still mostly a boy. Inexperienced. Sheltered. Shut in. Naive.

  Ben33: Why wonder?

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m just . . . sort of hating the world right now.” Hunter felt ridiculous for complaining to a man with so many problems. He hesitated a moment, then figured, What the hell. He proceeded to tell Benny all of it. The history of the house. Ava in the attic. His father and the drugs. His mother with the gun. The bones they’d found in the backyard.

  Benny took it all in, wide eyed, processing and calculating and nodding. Then he didn’t move for several minutes, and Hunter began to worry the nurse would pull the plug on their conversation. Finally, Benny started typing.

  Ben33: Wow.

  Ben33: Where is the girl? Ava?

  “I don’t know. She left. I woke up this morning, and she was gone.”

  Ben33: You have to help her.

  “How?” Hunter threw up his hands, exasperated. “How am I supposed to help her? I’m just a kid. I don’t know what to do. I mean, I like her. I like her a lot, but I don’t really know her. I don’t know what she needs. I think she might need professional help. Squatting in a haunted house waiting for a dead brother to come back isn’t exactly normal, right?”

  Benny leaned into the camera, his enlarged face glaring into Hunter’s. He no longer looked like a boy trapped in a man’s body. He suddenly looked older than his years. His dark brown eyes deepened into black hollows, forever haunted by the sound of a girl dying ten feet away. A girl he couldn’t save.

  Ben33: She needs you. You have to help her. For me.

  Hunter shook his head at the camera. “It was really nice talking with you, Benny. I’m really glad you like your window and your fish. Maybe I’ll ring you again sometime. Would that be alright?”

  The man nodded at the camera, but his eyes stayed fixed on Hunter. Help her.

  After the call disconnected, Hunter sagged back in his chair a moment and listened. The attic was still. The second floor lay silent outside his door. Down in the kitchen, he heard footsteps and then the opening of a cupboard.

  He followed the sound down the stairs to find his mother standing at one of the counters with a mug of coffee. She looked like she’d aged ten years. The lines on her face ran deeper. Her skin had gone pale and thin. Her hands seemed frail and unsteady.

  “Good morning, sweetie,” she said with a pained smile. “How are you feeling? Are you okay?”

  She wanted to scoop him up and hold him like a little boy. The palpable urge made him shrink away ever so slightly. “Yeah, Mom. I’m fine. Have you seen Ava?”

  “No. Did she leave?”

  “I’m not sure. She wasn’t there when I woke up.”

  Margot pressed her lips together to keep from scolding him about a girl sleeping in his room. She allowed herself only one of a hundred questions. “How long have you been seeing her?”

  “I don’t know. We’re not really . . . I mean, we’re friends, but . . .” He blushed a little at the thought of what he wanted them to be.

  The blush told her everything she wanted to know. So sweet, Margot thought to herself. “I’m really sorry she had to see what happened last night, but I’m glad you weren’t alone. She seems like a nice girl.”

  He nodded and shuddered to think what might’ve happened if she hadn’t been there to pull him out of the room. “Yeah. She is. I’m kind of worried about her.”

  “Worried?” Margot set her mug down and picked up a white cat that had curled itself around her ankle.

  The animal distracted Hunter enough to give his mother a quizzical look. We have a cat now?

  “Why are you worried about her, sweetie?”

  He watched his mother pet the stray cat, debating whether to tell her everything about Ava living in the house and her brother, Toby. The sound of running water overhead stopped him. “I think that’s her. I’m going to go check, okay?”

  “Sure. Let her know she’s welcome to stay for breakfast.”

  Hunter took the back stairs two at a time and followed the sound of running water down the back hall to the guest bathroom over the garage. The door was shut, and the tub was running.

  “Ava?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Hunter knocked on the door. “Ava? You okay?” He pressed his ear to the wood and heard a faint voice humming. It was one of her creepy Shaker songs. “Ava, open up.”

  He tried the doorknob only to find it locked. Crouching down, he peeked in through the keyhole and caught a glimpse of her sitting on the floor in his T-shirt. The glint of a straight razor flashed between her hands.
r />   “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  She didn’t look up at him. The razor turned and turned in her hands as she hummed.

  An angel whispered in my ear.

  The dead, they know, they know you, dear . . .

  “Oh, shit,” he hissed as it became clear to him what she meant to do. “Ava! Don’t!”

  He banged on the door again, but she didn’t even look up. He took off running back down the hall.

  “Mom!” he shouted down the steps. “I need help. I think Ava’s—she’s got a razor—the door’s locked!”

  “What?” Margot stood up, alarmed at his panicked voice. “Slow down. What’s wrong?”

  “I think she wants to be dead. Like her brother. I think she’s going to kill herself.” DeAD GiRL flashed through his brain. “I need help!”

  Margot ran up the stairs. “Where is she? The guest bath?”

  “The door’s locked. I can’t get in, but I saw her. I saw her with a razor.”

  “Go talk to her. Keep her talking.” Margot raced to her room to get the skeleton key off her nightstand.

  Hunter ran down the back hallway and yelled through the door, “Ava. Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this. Toby doesn’t want you to die.”

  Through the keyhole, he watched her study her reflection in the mirrored edge of the razor. What do you see? Do you see them?

  Margot pushed past him and rattled the key into the lock.

  “Ava?” she shouted through the wood. “Drop the razor, honey. Just think about what you’re doing. This isn’t the answer.”

  The door swung open, and Ava shrank against the wall, still gripping the steel.

  “Hey.” Margot stood in the doorway a minute, then turned off the running water. The tub was full and spilling into the overflow drain. “Ava. Look at me.”

  Ava didn’t take her eyes off the blade. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” she whispered.

  “I know.” Margot crouched down and crawled halfway to where the girl sat curled into a corner. “I know how that feels. I do. But there are other places you can go. This isn’t the only way out.”

  “I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Ava’s empty gaze drifted over to Hunter’s feet standing in the doorway. “I miss him so much.”

  “I know you do.” Margot nodded, taking inventory of what Hunter had said. I think she wants to be dead. Like her brother. “I know it hurts. I lost someone too. And it hurt so much I wanted to die.”

  Ava finally looked up at her. “Why didn’t you?”

  Margot breathed a laugh as tears welled up in her eyes. “I tried. I was thinking like you are now. That it would be better to just go away. That it would be better to go and be with Allison, wherever she was. That I couldn’t stand to live without her.”

  Hunter gaped at his mother. It was the most he’d ever heard her say about it.

  “What stopped you?” Ava asked, still holding the weapon. She was within slicing distance of Margot’s throat. She eyed the vein pulsing at the base of the woman’s neck.

  “Hunter did.” Margot smiled through tears. “He knocked on the bathroom door. And I realized I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. And not just for him, but for Allison too. It’s not what the dead want.”

  These words struck a nerve, and Ava looked up at her like a lost little girl. “What do they want?”

  “Why don’t you give me that razor, and I’ll tell you what I think they want.” Margot held out her hand.

  Ava narrowed her eyes at the woman and gripped the handle tighter for a moment. It felt like a trick. Margot sat there in her yoga pants, just a sad middle-aged mother who’d lost everything. Her husband. Her daughter. Her home.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but what do you have to lose? If you really want to die, Ava, you’ll have a million other chances. There’s a thousand ways to end this.” Margot’s voice was no longer that of a lonely and unsure woman. It was the voice of a mother. Firm. Loving. Unyielding. Relentless. The sort of voice that had been missing from Ava’s life for years. “Now give it to me.”

  Ava handed Margot the blade. She looked so small and alone in that moment that Margot forgot she hardly knew the girl. She folded the blade and slipped it into her pocket, then held out her arms. “Come here, sweetie. Just come here.”

  Ava didn’t move.

  Undaunted, Margot picked up the girl’s hand and held it between hers the way she couldn’t hold her own daughter’s. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure this out.”

  Ava wanted to pull away and run, but she closed her eyes and made herself feel it. The pain flayed her skin and stole her breath.

  “What do the dead want?” she whispered.

  63

  A week later, Myron was released from the hospital and moved into the suite over the garage while Hunter and Margot packed. They were going back to Boston without him. Myron had agreed to not press charges for the gunshot wound in exchange for a nondisclosure agreement.

  Neither party shall speak publicly or privately or give any written testimony regarding the alleged drug use or any alleged drug paraphernalia found on the premises . . .

  Margot, for all her faults, felt sorry for him. The divorce filing cited “irreconcilable differences.” Myron did not contest custody. It would take years for his son to forgive him. His attempts at conversation with Hunter since that night had been met with curt one-word answers.

  Fine.

  Sure.

  Okay.

  Hunter sat on the edge of his bed next to Ava. His entire room had been stuffed into boxes. The moving truck was coming in the morning. “You have to come with us. I mean, where else are you gonna go?”

  “I don’t know.” Ava studied her hands. She’d spent the week in and out of different doctors’ offices and government buildings, following Margot from one place to the next. Each one was a dead end.

  “No one else will take her, Mom.” Margot spoke softly into her phone down in the den where the kids wouldn’t hear. “What am I supposed to do? . . . She needs extended therapy. Do you think Medicaid will cover that? . . . But there are no beds available . . . I know I did, but that cost us nearly fifteen thousand dollars. If we hadn’t had the money, I have no idea what we would’ve done.”

  Margot set the phone down and turned on the speaker. She reached down and pulled the white cat onto her lap. Coco, she thought, scratching behind its ears. I’ll call you Coco. Coco had become her worry stone and constant companion.

  Her mother’s nagging voice went on, “But what do you even know about this girl, sweetheart?”

  “I know she needs help. I know she’s been on her own for years. I know she’s nineteen, and no one will take her in. I know she’s completely traumatized. She’s a sweet kid and smart. She’s just a little messed up.”

  “What about Hunter? Have you thought about him?”

  “Of course I have, Mother. Hunter is the one pushing me to do this.” Margot gazed out the window into the backyard. Outside, the police had taped off a grid and were digging trenches. The skull of a baby boy watched over their progress from inside a clear plastic bag resting in the flower bed. It had taken three hours of digging to find him, but Hunter had been in a state that terrible night. His father had turned on him. His mother had shot the man in the foot. Margot shuddered at the memory and stared in disbelief at the bullet hole she’d made in the far wall.

  What good is all this money if we don’t use it to help someone? Hunter had demanded three days earlier. Did hoarding money make the Rawlings happy? Did a big house ever solve anyone’s problems? I mean, look at this place. It should be the happiest place on earth, right? But it’s not. It never was. Is this the sort of life you want for me? Private schools? Ivy League? For what? To get rich and ignore what really matters? We have a chance to do something good here. We have to help her, Mom.

  “Hunter is still so young. He doesn’t know what’s best. What’s safe,” her mother chirped from the phone.

  Marg
ot smiled ruefully at her son’s altruism. “It’s just for a little while, Mom. Until she gets on her feet and figures out what to do. If we leave her at the mercy of the welfare state . . . I really don’t think I could live with myself.”

  “What if she robs you blind? What if she gets pregnant, for God’s sake? I’m not saying she will, but you have to consider what this might mean for Hunter’s future,” her mother protested. “He’s been through so much. And now this?”

  “He’ll be fine, Mom. I don’t doubt that there’ll be complications along the way, but he’s a smart kid, and everything else is just . . . stuff. This is something I need to do for me and for Hunter.” Margot looked down at the cat in her lap. It gazed back with those unearthly eyes. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think Allison would want me to do this.”

  “Allison?” The name came with a held breath of air. There was a long silence and then, “Okay, sweetheart. If this is what you need to do. Just promise me that if it doesn’t work out, you’ll make other arrangements. What about you? Are you taking care of yourself? I’m so worried about you . . .”

  At the other end of the house, Hunter reached for Ava’s hand. “You can’t stay here. You know that, right? It’s not good for you to stay here. Not anymore.”

  “But why would your mom let me stay with you? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I dunno. Because she’s not a total monster? Because she wants to help? Because I’m making her? Does it matter?” He scanned the room. The only item not yet packed was the photograph of him and his sister. It sat on the floor next to the closet. The two cherub-faced children watched them both from behind the glass.

  “What if she decides she doesn’t like me? I wouldn’t like me,” Ava whispered. “This won’t work, you know. I’ve been here, trespassing, all this time. She’ll never trust me. Anytime anything goes missing, she’ll think I stole it . . . she thinks I’m crazy. And she’s probably right.”