by Amy Lloyd
‘I’m going that way anyway so if you need anything?’
He wiped his forehead. ‘It’s OK, really.’
‘Fine.’ Lindsay’s keys rattled in her hand. ‘See you tomorrow. Call if you need anything.’
‘Sure will,’ he said. They watched the truck pull away. ‘She gets so clingy and weird.’
‘Yeah, that was weird,’ Sam agreed.
‘Like she doesn’t have anything better to do.’
‘Doesn’t she have kids? What happened to them?’ It made Dennis laugh and she felt a kick of pleasure. ‘I actually feel bad for her.’
‘I don’t,’ Dennis said, and they laughed again.
It had been a perfect day, she decided later, brushing her teeth. In the wastebasket she saw the bloodied cotton balls she’d used to dab at his torn knuckles. She picked one out and held it in her palm. The blood was turning brown. She remembered it vivid red, as it came fresh from him in that moment. She held the cotton ball in her fist, deciding to keep it, to start a box of her own, to remember days like this one.
Thirty-six
For a few days, Sam felt as though they were the only people in the world. They sat in silence on the porch, her legs on his lap, watching the light fade ahead of them, the sky like a bruise. Dennis worked with renewed energy, emptying the garage, emerging with cobwebs in his hair that made him look grey, and Sam pictured them growing old together, and wondered where they would be. Dennis told her they would be in LA by the end of the month and, sensing that since the night Howard broke in he was as eager to leave as she was, she believed him.
The house became bare and cavernous. ‘Will you sell it?’ she asked as he hauled a rusted ride-along lawnmower out of the garage.
‘I think we should just tear it down,’ he said, ‘and plant over the foundation. Before it becomes some kind of morbid attraction. It’ll be like nothing was ever here.’
Something had changed him, Sam realised. It had happened the night Howard had broken in. Whatever he’d been holding on to here he had finally decided to let go of it.
Dennis took a sledgehammer to the garage, the tin roof sliding down towards his throat like a guillotine. He jumped back, grinning, laughing at his near miss. Trucks came and took away the dumpsters. Dennis tipped the drivers folded hundred-dollar bills, and they smiled to Sam and called her ‘Miss’. It made her think of her life back in England, all the teenagers who raised their hands and called to her for help. She didn’t miss it at all.
In the heat of the afternoons Dennis worked indoors, emailing his publisher, arranging the final details for the release of his autobiography. Because of the backlash he would no longer be doing a tour, and it seemed they would be promoting the book in his absence. A negative Buzzfeed article about the new documentary series, ‘23 Things The Boy from Red River Left Out’ was shared widely. In small print at the bottom they claimed that they’d tried to reach Carrie for comment but hadn’t received a response.
‘I responded,’ Carrie said in a phone call. ‘I told them to go fuck themselves.’
Dennis found he was calling his manager, Nick, more than Nick was calling him. He did a Reddit AMA, a telephone interview for a successful podcast and got paid ten thousand dollars for taking an Instagram photo in a T-shirt from an athleisure range with the caption ‘Ready to get on it’. It only got three thousand likes.
Frustrated with the lack of viable opportunities, Dennis agreed to film a pilot for a reality show, focusing on his and Sam’s move to LA and their adjustment to a celebrity life. It would be aspirational while remaining relatable, with structured real-life events. Sam remembered the comments she’d received when he was first released.
‘I’m not sure I want to,’ she told him.
‘I didn’t graduate high-school,’ Dennis said. ‘I can’t even work at McDonald’s without people staring at me like I’m some kind of freak. At least if I’m on TV I don’t have to see them staring at me. Unless,’ he added, ‘you want to go back to teaching?’
‘God, no,’ Sam said, remembering how it felt to get up every day to do something she hated. Wasn’t this what everyone wanted? Fame, money, an easier life? Eventually she agreed and Dennis gave Nick the go-ahead, telling him they would be back in LA in the next couple of weeks.
One afternoon, as they sat in the living room while Dennis replied to emails and made arrangements for their departure, a telephone rang. They looked at each other. It was the house phone, hung on the wall of the living room, an old corded phone, once white but now yellowed, with the grubby grey marks of a handprint around its middle. It was an old, rattling buzz, as though it hadn’t spoken in years and its throat was dry. She picked it up and gestured to Dennis, who turned and frowned. It hadn’t rung the entire time they’d been there. In fact, Sam thought, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d answered her own house phone.
‘Hello?’ Sam said as she answered, smiling at Dennis, cherishing the weirdness of the moment. No one said anything. ‘Hello-o?’ she repeated. She heard breathing on the end of the line, uneven. The smile fell from her face. She thought she heard a sob. ‘Who is this?’
Dennis moved closer. ‘What is it?’ he asked her. She gestured for him to lower his voice so she could listen. ‘If it’s some creep just hang up. I thought this place was unlisted—’
‘Shhhhh!’ she hissed. The person on the phone had cleared their throat.
‘You tell him,’ the voice said, the words choked up. He cleared his voice again. ‘You tell him that if my boy doesn’t get in touch soon that I’m coming for him.’
‘Who is this?’ Sam said just as Dennis took the phone from her hand.
‘Listen,’ Dennis started, before falling silent. After some time he lowered the phone from his ear and let it hang at his side.
‘Did they threaten you?’ Sam said.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It was Harries. Howard’s missing. He didn’t come home last night.’
‘Oh,’ Sam said, not knowing what to say. ‘Well, you’ve been with me this whole time. I can tell him that.’
Dennis wrapped the wire around his hand and ripped it from the phone, then threw the receiver into the trash bag beside them.
‘I know,’ he said to Sam. ‘Thanks.’
He seemed despondent and the silence made her feel as if she should say something else.
‘Do you think …’ she said, hesitating. ‘Maybe he killed himself?’
‘What?’ Dennis stepped towards her and she had to stop herself from taking a step back. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘Well, you know. He’s a forty-year-old man living alone in a trailer park. It must be kind of depressing.’
Dennis picked up the trash bag and walked away without saying anything. Sam watched through the window as he pushed the bag into the trash can, the rain darkening the shirt he was wearing. For a moment he just stood there, his head bent as though he were praying. Abruptly, he turned and walked back to the house. Sam shifted out of sight, hoping he hadn’t seen her watching him.
After the incident with the phone, Dennis became short-tempered and distant, and stared into his phone, reading out tweets from people who irritated him.
‘Look at this one. “I used to think Dennis was innocent but now I feel like he’s definitely got some creepy vibes going on …” I mean, it says it all, right?’
‘What?’
‘“I used to think … now I feel …”?’
‘I don’t follow,’ Sam said, putting down her own phone.
‘When did people start to value feelings over thought? It’s like, Yeah, I used to look objectively at things and make informed decisions but now I just go with whatever I feel like. It’s stupid.’
‘Right,’ Sam agreed. ‘Why don’t you just delete your account, Den? It only makes you miserable.’
‘And then there’s this one …’ he continued.
Lindsay came by that evening and Dennis spoke with her in the hallway, their voices too low and soft for Sam to m
ake out their words. She imagined he was telling her about the phone call, that Howard was missing. When they came back into the living room Lindsay was quiet and pale. She sat on the sofa, her dirty feet curled under her, chewing her nails incessantly and staring blankly at the television.
Dennis seemed similarly distracted. Neither complained when Sam changed the channel, though they usually protested bitterly about anything she wanted to watch. Dennis told them he was going to check something out back and Lindsay didn’t seem to notice him leave. They sat together in silence while he was gone and when he returned Sam could bear it no more.
‘It’s so sad about Howard, right?’ she said, looking from Dennis to Lindsay, hoping they would let her in on what they were thinking.
‘What do you care?’ Lindsay said.
‘Well, I’m worried about him.’
‘He’s probably fine,’ Dennis said. Sam didn’t think he sounded convinced.
‘You didn’t even know him,’ Lindsay said, sitting up straighter. ‘In fact, didn’t you sock him in the gut? Didn’t you accuse him of—Wait, Dennis, you don’t know, do you?’ She turned to Sam. ‘Tell Dennis,’ she said. ‘Tell him what you thought Howard was going to do.’
‘Shut up,’ Sam said.
‘Sam thought Howard was going to rape her. Can you imagine that?’
Sam expected Dennis to laugh, but he didn’t. She saw his eyes darken and the smile fall off Lindsay’s face.
‘Why is that funny?’ he asked.
‘You know,’ Lindsay said. ‘Because Howard’s a total fag, right?’
Sam waited for Dennis to say something. He stared hard at Lindsay.
‘Come on, Dennis. He was, you know … He’s, like, obsessed with you,’ Lindsay added nervously.
‘And you’re not?’ Dennis said.
Sam watched Lindsay’s cheeks redden.
‘Fuck you,’ Lindsay said. ‘You can find some other bitch to take you to Walmart. I’m done.’ She slammed the front door as she left. Instead of satisfaction, Sam felt a slimy sense of guilt.
‘That was kind of harsh, Dennis,’ she said.
‘Leave me the fuck alone,’ he said, turning to storm out of the house. The cats were mewing, winding their way around his legs as he walked towards the kitchen. ‘Hey,’ he snapped at them. ‘Get the fuck out of the way.’ Then Tuna got between his feet and he tripped. The cat yowled under his foot and Dennis collided with the doorframe. ‘Fuck!’ he yelled. ‘Fuck off!’ He kicked Tuna and she skidded across the floor.
‘Dennis!’ Sam shouted. ‘Don’t!’ She ran to the cat to pick her up but Tuna cowered against the wall. ‘Get out!’ she told Dennis, but he was already leaving, the door slamming behind him.
Sam tried again to approach Tuna, extending a hand, but the cat was shaken and wanted only to be left alone. So she went back to the bedroom, which still smelled of piss, antiseptic, cigarettes, even with the window open all hours. This time she knew what she’d seen. The cruelty had shocked her but, looking back, she wondered whether she should have been shocked at all.
Lindsay returned the next evening, quiet and anxious after their argument, all her usual bravado missing.
‘So did you still need a ride or …’ she said while Dennis remained stony silent.
‘Sure,’ he said. And Sam sensed this was a fight they’d had before, that whatever it was between Lindsay and Dennis and Howard meant there was no need for apologies; it ran deeper than that.
When they left, Sam waited five minutes and searched the kitchen for the key to the storm shelter. At first she’d dismissed the thought as madness but something about Howard’s disappearance kept nagging at her, and seeing the flash of cruelty that had come so naturally from Dennis the night before had made her wonder what else he might be capable of.
And Dennis had been spending so much time in the shelter lately, always closing the hatch behind him as he went. Sam remembered how she’d felt when she was down there, so hidden, so alone. She had to check, just once, to make sure Howard wasn’t down there. As stupid as she thought she was being, she had to see it now, just to prove to herself that he had nothing to hide.
Before opening the hatch Sam knocked. Feeling ridiculous, she called out, ‘Hello? Is anybody down there?’
When there was no answer Sam took a torch and went down the stairs, sitting, sliding off each step and landing on the next with a bump. She shone the torch over every corner of the space, and exhaled. Of course she hadn’t expected to find Howard. It had been a stupid idea, even given Dennis’s outburst the previous evening.
Even so, Sam wondered why Dennis would want to spend so much time down there. It was basically empty now. The cots had been removed, thrown into the dumpsters, and the only thing left was the memory box. She couldn’t imagine why he had moved it in here. Was he hiding it from her? But she had already seen it; he had showed it to her himself. Out of curiosity, she opened it again and spread the pictures across the floor. She looked for meaning in them, the reason why they were so precious to Dennis, but came up with nothing.
Defeated, she picked up the box and started to collect the items to put away. As she lifted it, there was a noise, a feeling, of something moving inside. She shook it a little and heard it again, the sound of something shifting. She tipped it upside down, rattled it, tapped it on all sides. Eventually she threw it, face down on to the concrete. The bottom came loose and more Polaroids scattered out, face down, on to the floor around her.
Shaking, Sam crouched down and touched the backs of the photographs. The room had filled with something else, and she knew whatever was in the pictures was something she didn’t want to see.
Carefully, she took the corner of one of the Polaroids and turned it over. The girl in the picture was young, Sam realised, only sixteen at most. She was naked from the waist up and lying on her side, eyes closed, like she was asleep. There were more, similarly posed, in various states of undress. They were curiously unsexy, Sam thought, though she knew with a twist in her gut that these were pictures Dennis had taken with ex-girlfriends. Not so weird for him to have these when he was younger but did he still look at them now? Sam wondered at the morality of this as she flicked through them.
Then one picture made her stop. The girl in the photograph was naked, her arms out and palms up, her feet crossed at the ankles and her hair spread around her head like a mane. Sam couldn’t immediately tell what was off about it, but when she looked again she saw there were no nipples. Instead, just red lumpy tissue and fat.
She flipped the pile of photos and spread them quickly, her eyes scanning every one for something logical, only to find herself more confused. There was the girl again but her lips were gone and she was grinning. There she was again but her body was gone, her spinal cord protruded from her neck and the ends of her mousy hair were stained red. Then a different girl, someone blonde, and her face was swollen and her arms and legs were tied behind her, making her pelvis stick obscenely into the air. The next girl had plastic cable wrapped around her throat; her hair was short and dark, her skin was purple and the cable looked as though it would go right through her. Sam realised that she was holding her breath and that her fingers were on the girl in the picture’s throat, as if she could untie the cables and let her breathe again.
She looked up, retching and gasping for air. Why he would have these? How did they look so real? They couldn’t be real, could they?
Sam seemed to be moving before she’d made any conscious decisions. She fixed the bottom of the tin in place, gathered all the objects and put them back inside, then tucked the Polaroids into the waist of her trousers. They felt cold against her skin, as if they were oozing something toxic and contaminating her. She remembered a corner of the playground in her primary school, where she’d found a magazine with lurid colours and a woman’s legs spread open. A boy had kicked it at her and she’d cried, feeling as though touching it somehow made her a part of it, guilty and ashamed.
Making sure everything looked
as if she’d never been there she crawled back up the steps of the storm shelter, closed the door and covered it up. In the kitchen, she hung the keys on the hook. She looked around for somewhere to place the photos, wishing now she’d left them down there. She needed to hide them, quickly, while she decided what to do next, but there was nowhere to put them. Everything in the house had been stripped clean. There was only her suitcase, and she was sure that would be the first place he’d look if he noticed they were missing.
Sam stopped and tried to calm herself. She would have to call the police. There was no other way. She grabbed her phone and twice typed in the wrong passcode with shaking hands. But when it came to it she found she couldn’t dial. Instead, she looked at the pictures of Dennis she’d taken, pictures they’d taken together. It didn’t make sense. And she looked at Carrie. It made her chest hurt, thinking of her. All the years dedicated to proving Dennis was innocent, fighting for him. What would it do to her if it turned out that Dennis had …
Then she heard them, unmistakably the sound of an engine approaching in the quiet, and she panicked, unzipping the sofa cushion and stuffing the photos inside. Quickly she switched on the television and lay down, wiping sweat away from her forehead and trying to steady herself, trying to work out what she was doing and if she wanted to be doing it.
‘They didn’t have any avocados!’ Dennis shouted from the door. ‘Can you believe that?’
‘You were quick,’ Sam said, trying to sound bright.
‘Well, they didn’t have anything. We need to go back tomorrow; they were sold out of fucking everything.’
Sam’s stomach flipped. If they went tomorrow she could put the photos back, call a cab and leave. ‘What time are you going?’ she asked.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’ll go with you.’
‘Not too late,’ Dennis said. ‘We need fresh produce, probably better to go in the morning.’
She needed a specific time. If she booked a taxi she couldn’t risk it passing them on the road as it came. ‘So … ten? Earlier?’