Strangers Among Us

by LR Wright

  There were no houses nearby, which is why he’d headed off in this direction, but of course that meant no lights were shining anywhere, and that’s how he’d ended up climbing the damn rocks. Now he heaved himself to the top and saw that he was on a ridge. Below him was a shelf of rock, and below that—a house. He could just make out the shape of it. There were no lights on inside, so he figured nobody was home. He wondered hopefully if there might be a shed or something behind it, a place for him to hole up in until it was time to check out Earl’s.

  Eliot carefully dropped the sleeping bag onto the rock shelf, and followed it, the straps of the backpack digging into his shoulders. Then he tossed it onto the lawn of the house, and climbed down.

  He stood still for a minute, listening hard; but all he could hear was the ocean—a familiar sound, and one that he found for the moment comforting.

  He crept around to the backyard but there was nothing there, nothing at all, just the flat yard and then the forest again, and nothing on the other side of the house, either.

  But in the front, facing the ocean, there was a little more light from the sky, enough for Eliot to see when he peered through a window that the house was vacant. And he was so cold by now that his hands and feet were getting numb.

  He went back to where he’d climbed down from the shelf and found a good-sized rock. Then he circled the house again and selected the smallest window that he could get through. He took off the knapsack and his jacket, wrapped the rock in the jacket and struck at the window. But breaking it wasn’t as easy as he’d expected. He had to clobber it twice. And as he wielded the second blow, suddenly furious with the glass for not shattering the first time, bringing his arm back, swinging it forward, his body remembered swinging the machete…

  “No!” Eliot cried. “No!”

  The window broke, then, and he leaned against the house, panting, and smeared the bottom of his sweatshirt across his eyes. After a while he cleared the windowframe of broken glass, dropped the sleeping bag and the knapsack through, and climbed inside.

  He found himself in a bathroom. In the hallway beyond, he closed the bathroom door to keep the cold air from coming into the rest of the house and made a slow circuit of the place, to make sure that it was truly unoccupied. And it was. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the whole house.

  Eliot checked out all of the rooms and finally settled in what he decided must be the living room, because it had a fireplace. He spread the sleeping bag on the floor in a corner and sat down and looked out into the night, through a pair of big glass doors across the room. He was surprised by the amount of light that came in. It wasn’t bright, and there weren’t big rays of it, but the light generated by the stars and the sliver of a moon radiated, quietly, illuminating things with a gentleness that soothed him: the trees and the rocks outside, the wood floor and the white walls inside.

  He opened the knapsack, intending to eat again. But either he wasn’t hungry or he lacked the energy necessary to open a can—he didn’t know which. Maybe he’d make himself something at Earl’s, he thought, putting the knapsack aside.

  Eliot let his mind turn to Alvin, now. He saw Alvin’s floppy black hair, and his expression of perpetual astonishment; he heard him yell “Yes! Go!”

  And Eliot had gone. Because he’d have had to abandon Alvin soon anyway.

  He leaned his head back, to rest against the wall, and blinked hard several times. Then he closed his eyes, concentrating on the sound the ocean made: it was closer, here, than it was at his own house. Eliot listened to it very hard, hoping it would wash away the hopelessness that crowded his heart.

  Betty heard the front door close and stood in the kitchen smiling and breathing and thinking about all the things there were to do and wondering which one of them she would do first.

  And then she knew that Heather hadn’t gone.

  The whole house turned to watch her. She hurried to the front door and as she came into the hall she saw a flash of white disappearing up the stairway, saw it from the corner of her right eye, and felt the skin on the right side of her body wrinkle.

  She heard a muffled sound from above and ran heavily up the stairs, calling, “Heather, Heather!”

  A quiet giggle, she heard. The bathroom door was open; to the right, down the hall, Heather’s door swung closed.

  Betty went into the bathroom first. There was the little plastic bottle that kept her green headache pills; there it was lying beside the bathroom sink with its top off and it was empty, empty. The sink was all wet. She must have put them all down the drain, all my pills. Betty saw something flash in the mirror and looked quickly, but there was nothing there, just the memory of a white flash. She ran down the hall to Heather’s room and threw open the door.

  The bed was not made. Betty saw the hollow in the pillow where the child’s head had lain. The sheet and the blanket and the green-and-white-striped bedspread were thrown back and teddy bears lay there, sprawling, twitching their limbs. Heather’s clothes were scattered all over the floor; there was a pile of comic books on the floor beside the bed, pushed over like a deck of cards. The curtains were closed. Over everything in the room a gray light filtered, like the light inside a cave, or a big balloon.

  Betty yanked open the door to the closet, where there were empty hangers and piles of clothes on the floor and boxes filled with games and handicrafts on the shelf. I have never seen her playing those games, thought Betty, never seen her making feather flowers or doing beadwork, but the boxes look worn, and they are put up there neatly, not like her clothes.

  A scurrying sound came from the hall. She pushed herself out of the room. “I have a headache, Heather,” she called, “and I need my pills, have you seen them, have you seen my pills?” Her voice echoed in the house, and the echo didn’t sound like her at all. Could there be two Bettys in that house? Was there another Betty walking around somewhere?

  She groped her way to her bedroom and lay down, and pulled the yellow spread right up over her head and looked through it. Everything was yellow and pleasant—that steady yellow light flowing down upon her like sunshine, like the heat of sunshine in a tropical country.

  She heard a click, and the light went off…

  …She stops breathing, sees a shadow over her bedspread, over her, her poor heart is so terrified it starts beating loud and fast like a drum being struck by someone, bang, bang, bang, and her heart becomes more and more terrified—she throws off the cover and sits up.

  There is nobody there.

  Heather has gone. She has stopped pounding on Betty’s chest on Betty’s heart and has gone.

  Betty sits soothing her heart, calming it, and as it calms, her head becomes very clear. She sits on her bed and laughs and laughs, and then calls out cheerily, “All right, Heather, I know you are here, and I am coming to find you, just like in hide-and-seek.”

  She is very large.

  She pats and strokes her chest to soothe her heart, and then she looms from the bed and strides from her room, ducking her head so as not to hit it on the top of the doorway. She walks, stooped, down the stairs, treading softly on the carpet in her red slippers. She doesn’t make a single sound going down the stairs, and into the kitchen she goes, and right up to the door to the basement.

  She stops there, just for a second. Then she reaches out her huge hand and the knob disappears into it and she opens the door, steps down onto the first basement stair, and closes the door behind her. She chuckles, and the chuckle booms down into the basement.

  “I’m coming, Heather, I’m coming, you can’t get past me I’ll see you and stretch out my long arm and catch you by your white blouse.”

  Heather doesn’t answer. Not even a laugh, not even a scuffle does Betty hear. Heather is nervous now, Betty knows; she will catch her, because she has no fear of the basement now, no fear at all.

  She walks down the stairs one at a time. It is a long, long flight of stairs, the basement is deep, miles deep beneath the house, beneath the earth
, and there are no windows.

  It is dark, so dark, and there are things flitting about in the darkness, bats and cobwebs slowly making their way toward her.

  There are squeakings and rustlings and creakings, and she smells choking musty smells and sees huge boxes filled with things, the tops of the boxes slowly opening and shapes beginning to drift out… Why did I not turn on the light at the top of the stairs that was so stupid so stupid…

  Her size is changing again. She is becoming small, smaller than Heather, and now she hears a tiny giggle and sees a flash of white, the collar of a blouse, the top pearl button of a blouse, the pale throat and chin above it, the gold chain winking on the throat—Heather has flitted behind one of the boxes, and one white hand is reaching up behind it to open the top of the box wider, to let the shapes drift out faster.

  Betty turns around and starts crawling back up the stairs, each step so tall now. Little drifts of air chill the back of her neck; the things drifting through the air make small cold breezes that change her sweat to ice. She hears Heather laugh as she laughs when she is with a friend, or with Jack, only this time she laughs as she watches Betty crawling up the stairs.

  The anger comes back in a tired spurt, but the oozing, floating things behind her are much stronger. Her knees hurt on the slivery wood of the stairs, but she keeps going, eyes squeezed shut, hands clutching the edge of each stair, knees following one at a time…and now her hands bump something, she opens her eyes and sees a crack of light beneath a door, presses her hands against the concrete wall, pushes herself up, touches the doorknob, turns it, and falls into the kitchen.

  She lies here on the floor; hears the laughter from below. Her face is pressed to the floor.

  If I get up fast and slam the basement door and ram a chair under the handle she will be trapped down there.

  She gets up and turns around, quickly—and Heather flashes around the corner from the basement into the living room, I see you I see you, she sees her yellow hair hanging over her white collar, sees her white skinny wrist disappear around the corner, hears the front door slam.

  Betty shuts the basement door and stands still, listening. There is nothing in the house but her.

  Chapter 26

  Sunday, December 4

  ENID SAT AT HER bedroom window, looking out upon a cold, bright day. She watched the houses across the street for signs of Sunday morning life. She observed the trees that lined the road, saw that they still wore a few of their bronzy leaves but that most were gone, heaped on the ground below or carted away by now to compost piles in backyard gardens. She admired the mountains in the near distance. They were sheathed in coniferous green, but the recent rains had been snowfalls at higher levels, and the mountaintops were white, now, blinding white against the blue glare of the sky. Enid sat, sipping coffee, clothed again in her elegant robe, and waited for her lodger to leave her.

  And soon, he did.

  He came around the house, wearing his red plaid jacket and a pair of jeans and some hiking boots—and sunglasses, which turned him into a stranger. And he carried his duffel bag, as she had known he would.

  He climbed into his truck, let it warm up, and drove away. He didn’t glance at the front of the house, or up at her window. He just drove away.

  Enid sipped her coffee. The Jantzens, who lived directly opposite, emerged in their Sunday best and got into Hank Jantzen’s four-by-four and disappeared down the street.

  Enid considered calling Gloria. Perhaps they could arrange to meet, in Vancouver, and go to the art gallery, or have lunch at the Van Dusen Gardens.

  A group of teenaged girls strolled down the block, smoking cigarettes and laughing. None of them looked warmly enough dressed. But they shook their long hair and spun their lithe bodies and lifted their laughing faces to the winter sun.

  Enid stood up and took her coffee cup to the kitchen. From there she heard the washing machine, and went downstairs into the suite.

  The bed had been stripped, the blankets and quilt neatly folded. The bureau drawers were empty, and the closet—the wire hangers looked forlorn and shivery.

  No dishes had been left unwashed. The refrigerator and the food cupboards were empty. A small white plastic bag, secured with a twist-tie, sat on the table. This was his garbage, Enid surmised.

  The shower curtain was wet. There were a few hairs in the tub, and a splotch of toothpaste in the sink. The towels were gone: they would be spinning around in the washing machine, with the sheets.

  He had of course taken his alarm clock. And the photograph of his daughter.

  He had paid two weeks’ rent in advance, so he owed her no money—in fact Enid owed him some, two days’ worth. But he hadn’t left his address behind.

  She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. It was very quiet down here. Very peaceful. Enid rested her head on the back of the love seat. The suite no longer smelled of paint, she realized.

  Alberg was on his way to the detachment, intending to make some phone calls before picking up Cassandra, who was having breakfast with her mother. He was approaching the intersection at the eastern edge of town when he saw Jack Coutts’s pickup approaching opposite. There was no other traffic in any direction.

  Alberg’s Oldsmobile pulled up at the red light, facing west. The Silverado pulled up across the street, facing east. It wasn’t a very wide street and Alberg could see Jack clearly, except for his eyes, which were hidden behind sunglasses.

  Despite the surge of adrenaline, the realization that all his senses were on full alert, ludicrous parallels came to his mind. Gunfighters facing off on dusty streets, hands poised over their holsters—or in politer company, striding fifty paces from back-to-back positions before turning, calmly, to fire. Or swordsmen, touching the tips of their weapons in a bizarre salute before attempting to stab one another to death.

  “Shit,” he muttered, sitting in the Oldsmobile, motor running, staring across the street at Jack Coutts, who was sitting higher than Alberg in his brown Chevy Silverado.

  The door of the Silverado opened, abruptly, and Jack stepped out onto the street. He looked across at Alberg and started walking toward him, picking up speed.

  “Shit,” said Alberg. He cut the motor, got out of his car, closed the door, and waited.

  Coutts stopped about six feet away from him. The traffic light, Alberg noticed, was now green.

  “You know why I came here?” said Jack. Alberg could see the tension in his shoulders, and his balled fists.

  A car pulled up behind the Silverado, then cautiously drove around it and turned right, into town.

  “No,” said Alberg quietly. “Why did you come, Jack?”

  “I came to shoot you, you sonofabitch.”

  Jack wrenched off his sunglasses, as if he were ripping off a bandage. Alberg saw that his hands were shaking. He wondered if he was going to have to arrest him.

  “I came to shoot you dead.”

  He held no weapon, though, and none of his pockets sagged with the weight of a handgun.

  “You had special responsibilities,” said Jack, “because you’re a goddamn cop.” He punched the air. “Right? Right?”

  A car pulled up behind the Oldsmobile. Alberg heard the driver tap lightly on the horn.

  Jack turned away for a moment, and then back. “Or myself. Maybe I was going to shoot myself.”

  The car behind Alberg’s Oldsmobile drove around it, slowly, the driver craning her neck to see what was going on.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t do it,” said Jack. “Why didn’t I do it?”

  Alberg watched him rub his face.

  “Maybe I just don’t have the guts.” He sounded exhausted, now.

  Jack looked Alberg directly in the eyes for a long time. Alberg felt this not as a challenge but as a legitimate, justifiable search, and he found himself trying to open his mind to Jack, trying to make available to him whatever he needed to know.

  Finally, Jack said, dully, “Ah, fuck. There’s been enough dying.”
He was silent for a while. Then he looked around him as if surprised to find himself there, in the middle of the street.

  “Jack.”

  Jack looked at him. “I’m going home,” he said. “I’m gonna pick up a coffee and drive home to Kamloops.”

  “Jack. I’m very sorry for your trouble.”

  Again, Coutts gazed intently into Alberg’s eyes, then shook his head, put his sunglasses back on, and headed across the intersection.

  Alberg got in his car, started the motor, and waited for the red light to become green again, and as he waited he watched Jack climb into the Silverado and drive away, turning right.

  Jack parked in front of Earl’s Café & Catering and climbed out. The restaurant was locked, although Earl was in there, sweeping the floor with a wide, black-bristled push-broom. The sound of his whistling could be heard out on the street. Jack knocked, and Earl came to the door.

  “I don’t open until noon on Sunday,” he explained.

  “Yeah, I just noticed the sign,” said Jack. He took off his sunglasses. “You got coffee on yet? Could I get a cup to go? I’m about to hit the road.”

  Earl looked behind Jack, up and down the sidewalk, as if checking to make sure there wasn’t a big crowd there waiting for a chance to rush in.

  “Sure,” he said. He held the door open for Jack, then locked it again. “The coffee’s on, but it’s not ready yet. Have a seat.” He retrieved the broom from where he’d leaned it against the wall and resumed sweeping.

  Jack dropped his sunglasses onto the counter. “Is there another broom somewhere? I’ll give you a hand.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Earl. He saw, though, that the man was agitated, so maybe he needed to be active.

  “No, I’m not kidding. Through there?” said Jack, indicating a door next to the washrooms.