It took an hour to get here. Always an hour, always while his wife was sleeping. She worked nights at a bar on Brook Park Road and slept until well after noon. A can of Fancy Feast cat food in hand, he crossed the street, jumped the ditch, and forged a path over new fallen deadwood, and into the field, the brush so thick you couldn’t see your feet. Shoulder-high trees camouflaged blackberry barbs that had grown and spread. The willowy briars piercing his skin brought a new vibrant color in the mix of tattoos. How it should be, his blood to her blood.
The barn had lost its dead animal smell where the small skeleton had fallen through the noose. He wedged the crowbar into a board and pried it off, enough room for him to squeeze inside. The cats scattered to the thistles and woodpiles. He punched an overhead rafter, solid enough to hold a naked human. He tied a heavy rope around it and tested its strength—swinging from it like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He’d pictured this in his mind for so long.
He made his way toward the house, knowing the only car there was hers. She was always alone this time of the day. He’d been watching her.
His footsteps light, underbrush snapping as he stepped, he made his way past the cow, the moo-thing lying in his own excrement, chewing a cud. Suddenly a black cat came from nowhere, hissing, and clawed its way up a tree trunk.
“You’re next,” Bruce said, pointing his knife at the cat. Once in the open yard he quietly sprinted to the deck in the back of the house. Through the screen he could see the window open about six inches—the window where he’d been watching her. He cut a hole in the screen and tried to open the window enough to get inside, but something was jamming it. Glancing up, he thought he saw a moving shadow inside the house, and ducked down. On his hands and knees he made it to the sliding glass door, and easily unlocked it with a nail file. The door slid open, but stopped at an inch. A wooden bar was wedged in the track, keeping it closed.
He duck-walked to another back door and cautiously looked in the small window. The door was peeling paint badly. He could see an old piano inside and a rickety staircase. It didn’t look like anyone lived in this part of the house. Glancing over his left shoulder Bruce wedged the file inside the doorframe, and slid it down. It caught right away. He pushed on the door but something was holding it closed. He looked in the four-paned window again and couldn’t see why the door wouldn’t open and shook the doorknob, trying to be quiet. “Shit,” he whispered, sniffing, choking back and swallowing the phlegm that was building in his throat. He couldn’t go to the front door, someone might see him from the road. Maybe she would come outside. She’d have to feed the cattle sometime today. He peeped in the window where he’d seen her before. Where was she?
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He heard a woman’s voice, someone walking down the driveway from the end of the road. Bruce backed into a covey and crouched behind a patio chair. He heard the jangle of keys and heard the side garage door opening. A few more minutes and he’d make his move. The black cat suddenly jumped on the deck and started purring as it butted its head against Bruce’s leg. Bruce nudged it away with his foot. The cat shot back and rubbed its back on Bruce’s leg, purring loudly. Bruce shoved it this time, trying not to make a sound. Then he heard the door open and close again, and he heard the sound of gravel as Debra’s car backed out of the driveway.
He glared straight ahead. “Shit! And jerked the cat up by its neck and held it in his fist. “You dumb ass cat!” The black cat hissed. Bruce stabbed him, gutted him right there. He retraced his steps to the barn and suspended the lifeless cat from the rafter. The sun beamed in narrow stripes between the wood-slat walls. Alabaster rabbit bones sank in the rubble, and poison ivy hung down through holes in the roof.
Bruce unzipped his pants. He looked down at himself and up at the cat. This wasn’t what he wanted . . . not now, not anymore.
Chapter 21
A black plume soared above a pile of burning branches—Kyle’s growing bonfire of deadwood and old papers he didn’t want anyone to pilfer through. Julie hurried up their driveway, coming back from her jog, in time to see Kyle throw in his version of useless mailers. He picked out a stack from a cardboard box.
“Wait a minute. I wanted to go through those. You burned some of my recipes last time.”
“Is this what you’re looking for?” Kyle held up a handful of letters.
“What is that?”
“The rest of his letters. The ones I never showed you.” Kyle tossed a letter into the fire. “He stays home from work sometimes just to watch you. But you probably know that. Don’t you?”
“You’re making that up. Let me see those.”
“I know why you leave the shades open, why you dress up to go to the bank. You like to be watched.”
“You’re starting to scare me. Where did you get those? How many are there?” she asked, barely seeing the handwriting.
He singled out a letter. “He talks about your black lace bra in this one,” then he tossed it in the fire, “you must have given it to him. He says he likes to sniff it.” He singled out another one, waved it in her face, and jerked it away before she could grab it. “Did you find the panties he bought for you? Red-zippered, he says. He left them for you in the barn. I burned those, too.”
“Let me see that.” Julie grabbed his arm, trying to get the letter, but he flipped it in the fire with all the rest. “Kyle. Don’t!” He grabbed her arms forcefully, enough to leave bruises, holding her back, her yelling, “You’re hurting me. Let go.”
He loosened his grip. “Didn’t want you to get burned, that’s all,” he said, dusting ashes out of her hair.
She smacked his hand away and took a step backward, her face aglow with orange and red hues of the fire pit. “He was stalking me this whole time, and you let me think he was some stupid businessman. Don’t you care about what happens to me? Do you think I would have gone to that bar if I’d known about those letters?”
“You know as well as I do, these were sent after your night at the bar. I don’t know what you did that night, but he wants more.” He turned his back to her and jabbed at the fire with a pitchfork. “Go away. I can’t look at you.”
That night Kyle slept in the guest room again. The next morning, he was gone before Julie woke up. She’d barely slept, visions of a faceless man watching her through her windows. She let the boys sleep in and was making coffee when the phone rang.
“Hi Julie. I can be ready by nine o’clock. Is that okay?” Debra asked.
She’d forgotten all about Debra, all about a morning jog. “I’ve got a lot of errands this morning. How about later?” Julie lifted a section in the closed blinds and briefly looked out the kitchen window. She wouldn’t open the blinds in the kitchen or anywhere in the house. Something had snapped inside, something during the night when her eyes wouldn’t shut. A stalker had been here, had seen her in every light. It was as though Kyle had welcomed it as a means to torment her.
“I thought you had a 4-H meeting later.”
“That ended when the fair did. The boys are leaving next week for college.” Julie nervously twisted the telephone cord around her finger as she talked.
“I can’t believe it. I barely got to know them and they’re already leaving.” Debra’s cheery voice was a welcomed reprieve, if only for a moment.
“I can’t believe that Kyle had them working across town all summer. The only time I got to spend with them was at the fair and then for orientation for Bowling Green.” An awful thought crept in, “For all I know that pervert was there, too.”
“Well at least that’s over, “Debra said.
“I’m not so sure.”
“What makes you say that? Did something happen?”
I didn’t know it, but he kept on writing to me. Kyle hid all the letters, and was burning them when I came home last night. I’ll talk to you later. Okay?”
Julie chose her clothes carefully that morning, making sure that whatever she did, she would not look nice. Wearing jeans and a Bowling Green t-shirt,
she poured coffee in a travel mug and left the house. The target of unwanted affection, she could still hear Kyle say, ‘he’s watching you,’ something that had troubled her all summer. Now she knew for sure.
Julie parked her car in the bank’s parking lot. As she walked to the door, a man was waiting there, holding it open, “Morning,” he said, smiling sweetly, nodding his head, giving her little room to get by him.
“Morning,” Julie said quietly, squeezing through the door, unavoidably brushing against him. A cloud of aftershave and hair gel swirled her in. Standing in line, she brushed off his essence the best she could. Now he was standing behind her, so close that he was almost touching her. She moved up a little. So did he, closer than before. She moved up again—so did he. Without the slightest touch, she felt the warmth of his body, and suddenly saw herself naked. The stalker, her stalker, had one of her bras. He’d been buying her panties. He’d been watching her undress.
Fumbling in her purse to find her transaction, she rushed up to the cashier. Then quickly left. As she drove away, she realized that she hadn’t actually looked at the face of the man behind her at the bank. She’d never be able to describe him, if he was the stalker. She’d never be able to recognize him, if it came to it, in a line up.
She drove to the grocery store where she impatiently rattled the cage of grocery carts, struggling to pry one out.
“Let me help you with that.” A pinstriped arm reached from behind her and pulled out the cart. This man was wearing a paisley tie and had a dimpled chin. He was so tall that he towered over her, and he was the right age. “There you go.” He gestured for her to take the cart, almost bowing.
“Thank you,” she mumbled, taking the cart, suspecting even him. Sailing down the first aisle, she pulled a shopping list out of her purse. The paisley tie guy seemed to be following her. He was subtle about it, yet there he was. She would study the face of this man just in case he was the stalker, and looked right at him.
“Well, hello,” he said, smiling like he’d won a prize.
She said, “Hello” like a gavel dropping, and walked abruptly out of the store. She was so flustered in the parking lot; she couldn’t find her car keys.
Pure happenstance, a man got out of a car parked next to hers. “Excuse me,” he said. “Do you know where the wine shop is?” A nothing man, he wasn’t unfriendly or friendly, just a man asking a question. But wasn’t that the guise?
“You’ll have to ask someone else.” She ransacked the bottom of her purse and suddenly found her keys, opened the door, and quickly got inside her car. Coffee on an empty stomach was churning acid.
Who was the man in the letters, the man who shared their favorite wine? What wine? She never drank with anyone where she worked—she simply opened the bottle and poured.
On the long drive home from Southland, a nobody man in the next lane was driving a black Mustang, keeping the same speed as Julie on the four-lane road. Every time the light turned red, their cars were neck and neck. She could feel his eyes on her. The road ahead seemed to narrow into a long concrete tunnel.
Miles away, Debra stared out her kitchen window, her arms folded. She watched a calico cat lick her kitten and then itself. A faint wind hummed through the cracked window. Then a disquieting racket, a ‘whoosh-scrape-rattle-rattle-rattle’ intruded. She harnessed a rogue shiver, suddenly thinking about what her mother had said, ‘It’ll be your turn someday.’ The house was quiet—uncommonly quiet. Debra went outside in spite of no shoes, lugging a bag of cat food, then dumped a pile right on the ground. Overhead a formation of geese announced their southward journey in conjunction with a premature autumn breeze. One by one the cats came, but only after she’d stepped away from the food. Midnight was always here first, but not today, not anywhere. “Here Kitty, Kitty,” she called. She counted fifteen cats. Midnight was not one of them.
On the other side of the driveway, in the thicket as tall as her, she heard something, someone, rustling and crackling the dead underbrush. Sam had been watering Otto while she’d been gone and she called out, “Sam? Is that you?” hoping he’d answer back. A phantom footstep crackled the underbrush. That did it. Two cats missing. Someone was out there, she knew it, someone who’d taken them and killed them for some sort of sick pleasure. Debra marched inside and retrieved the rifle from the bedroom closet. No bullets though. She came back, and aimed it at the edge of the field. “Whoever you are, you better leave now!” she yelled in her childlike voice. The wind rippled her long hair over her arms and down her back, the rifle butt in her shoulder, her eye on the sight down the long barrel.
Just then Julie pulled in the driveway and got out of car, ashen; angst etched in her face.
“Julie, what’s wrong?” Debra asked, taken out of her own uneasiness.
Julie suddenly found herself smiling. “Look at you, barefoot, surrounded by cats, and toting a rifle. Are you shooting some supper or shooting at some government agent man?”
Debra let herself laugh. “I heard something out there. Come on in before it figures out I don’t have any bullets.” She would tell Julie about everything.
“I think I might have seen him Deb, the guy who wrote the letters.” Julie meandered through the garage with Debra and into the house.
“Where? Did he try something?”
“No . . . no, they . . . he didn’t try anything. There was a man at the bank, a man at the store, and another one in the parking lot, and then I think someone else on the way home . . . . I don’t know which one was him.” Listening to herself, Julie hesitated; her story fell under the headlines of terribly vain and highly unlikely. “I mean, four different men acted funny in four different places. You know, like they all . . . . It’s so confusing.” She sat down at the kitchen table and covered her face with her hands. “I must sound like an idiot.”
“Don’t say that. Some men act as if they’ve never seen a pretty face before. You should ignore them. Tell me about the letters?”
“There were maybe five or six. He’s been watching me through my windows. He’s got one of my bras and he bought me red panties. And Kyle waited all this time to tell me. I don’t know what to do.”
“Call the sheriff again?” Debra said.
“I did. They won’t do anything—not unless he threatens me—not unless he commits a crime . . . when it’ll be too late.”
“I don’t know what to say. I wish I could help.” Debra bit her cuticle, fixing her gaze on the rifle she’d set in a corner. Julie leaned on the table and rested her chin in her hand, watching Debra’s face. A quiet hushed over them. Debra’s gaze turned to a blank stare.
“I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you,” Julie said.
“No. Really . . . I don’t mind.”
“Then something else is upsetting you. I can see it in your face.”
“Two cats are missing. Midnight’s gone. I’m afraid to look for him. I have a feeling he’s dead.”
“Tomcats roam for days sometimes. I bet he’s on the scent of a female. He’ll be back. Don’t worry about it.”
Debra got quiet, her face worried.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“I don’t know. It’s . . . It’s nothing. It’s dumb.”
“Are you still unnerved about that swing set?”
“The swing set isn’t the only thing . . . . Do you remember me telling you about that groundhog?” Her eyes shifted to Julie.
“It had rabies. You had to kill it.”
“The shovel I used disappeared and then it, I mean another one, showed up where I buried the groundhog. I know I said it was in worse shape than I thought. What I didn’t say was, we don’t even have a shovel . . . . I feel like someone’s watching me, maybe playing tricks on me. I almost thought that Sam took the swing set down or switched shovels, but now I don’t think it was him.”
“Alzheimer’s affects Sam more some days than others. He can’t concentrate on anything long enough to finish what he starts. Sometimes he w
anders over to my house. By the time he gets to the door, he usually can’t remember why he came. And other times he seems so lucid. It’s not Sam.”
“I know. I have to ask you though. What do you think about ghosts?”
“You know there’s no such thing.”
“Just for argument’s sake, let’s say there were. I like to imagine something greater than me erected this old swing set and planted that shovel when I needed them. I hear things in this house, too, like footsteps when no one’s there. You should have been here that night in the thunderstorm. I could have sworn someone was in the house.”
“It’s funny how the mind can play tricks on you. I think that anyone with even a staggering belief in ghosts can make themselves believe they’ve seen one. If you stare at something long enough, it can actually appear to move. Maybe listening for something long enough works the same way.”
“You’re probably right,” Debra said, her voice soft. She would say no more. Julie would think she was crazy, the kind of crazy people tolerate because they liked you once.
Julie knew how to read her face, or so it seemed when she said, “I’m not saying you should ignore it. My advice—buy some bullets.”
Chapter 22
It was September now. Julie’s hollyhocks had gone to seed, and the coral bell had curled up inside itself. The letters had stopped, and Julie wasn’t sure if they’d stopped because Kyle was hiding them or because Smitten had stopped writing them. Neither she nor Kyle spoke of it, and even though the hoopla died down it was never far from her mind.
Jeff and Nate had left for college, and Julie found herself in their bedroom, missing them terribly. A poster of Bruce Springsteen hung over Jeff’s bed. A poster of The Cleveland Browns hung over Nate’s dresser, and their high school graduation tassels were tacked on the corkboard inside the door alongside wallet size pictures of their closest friends. She ran her fingers along Nate’s pillow, still fragrant with his scent, she inhaled it, and inside the silent room, she cried.
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