The Lost Night

by Megan Maguire

  Her note has to be in this room.

  I open the door and step inside, hearing a creak from somewhere in the house.

  Then.

  A second creak.

  Louder.

  It could be the wind, or mice, or my imagination.

  A shotgun cocks.

  “Get your ass on the floor!”

  Or Lona Anderson.

  “On the floor, Dylan!” She stomps her foot. “On the fucking floor!”

  Heat rushes down my spine. I lower to my knees and place my hands behind my head.

  “Joel, get down here!” she shouts.

  Lona Anderson: head of the family, award-winning real estate agent, short, stocky, bleach blonde, spray-tanned whore.

  “How did you get in?” Her voice is biting, the muzzle of the shotgun like a spike in my back, directly over Heather’s memorial tat. “Joel, hurry up!” she hollers. There’s rumbling on the stairs and a groan when he flips on the light switch.

  “Dammit, Dylan, what the hell are you doing in my office?”

  “Call the police. I want him arrested,” Lona says.

  “No, don’t.” I try to get up, but she jabs me with the muzzle.

  “Shut your mouth.” She slides the shotgun to the back of my head. “How’d you get in here?”

  “The door was open.”

  “Liar!”

  “It was. It was open.”

  “Joel, don’t just stand there, call the police.”

  I’d run out of here if I thought I had another chance at finding the note, but this is it, they’re going to start setting the alarm after tonight. “Show me what she wrote. I’ll leave you alone if I can read it.” My fingernails dig into the faded Oriental rug. I’m so damn close; it could be in this room, a foot away.

  “Do we have to go through this?” Joel says, his voice nasally. “The kid smells like he was swimming in a brewery. Let him go. He’ll sober up and realize his mistake in the morning.”

  She marches over to Joel’s desk, opens a drawer, and rummages through papers. “Who knows if this is the first time he broke into our home.” I raise my head and see her picking up the phone. “Stay down!”

  “No. I want the note.”

  Joel paces next to me, his scrawny, hairless legs poking out from his robe. “I don’t want any cops from Heather’s case coming here. I can’t handle it. I can’t! Either let him go or show him the note so he can be at peace.”

  “Me. ME!” She thumbs her chest. “I deserve to be at peace, not him.”

  “Why not me?” I ask.

  “Fine, then call 9-1-1 and get this over with, but I’m not getting involved,” he says.

  “Sure, go hide in your bedroom. I’ll deal with everything. Like always, right? That’s why I sleep on the sofa.”

  “Don’t,” he snaps at her. “Don’t you dare start in front of him.”

  “Why not me?” I repeat. “What did I do?” The room spins. “Are you blaming me for this? What did Heather write?” My stomach convulses and I make a retching sound, nearly tossing up the night. “What’d she write? Tell me!” Tears blur my vision.

  “Sit your ass down.” She points the shotgun at my chest.

  “Sit down, Dylan,” Joel says.

  “Screw you both.” I get up and walk over to a bookcase, hurling photos and books onto the floor. I pivot and swipe everything off the top of Joel’s desk with a quick swing of my forearm. The phone falls out of Lona’s hand, crashing to the floor, along with pens, and photographs, and a whirlwind of papers. “I deserve peace. ME!” I slam my fist on the desk. She raises the gun with a steady hand, the barrel following my drunken strides throughout the room. “Go ’head and shoot me.” I tip over a lamp and lift a framed photograph of Lake Chert off the wall, pitching it at Joel’s feet. I turn back to the wall, spotting a shiny black safe. “It’s there, isn’t it?” I point. “Open it. Open the safe!” I pound the wall. “Open the fucking safe!” I lower my head between my arms. My shoulders rise and fall as my chest constricts. “Open it. Open it!” I kick the wall.

  The kick ricochets back. No … not a kick, a knock, knocking at the front door. And then a low voice echoes through the house, “Police Department.”

  “Goddammit,” I whisper.

  “Did you call?” Joel asks.

  “I didn’t have a chance,” Lona says.

  She scampers out of the room, shotgun swinging at her side, the sash of her white robe floating behind her like a ghost.

  “Coming. I’m coming!” The door opens. Heavy boots thud on the hardwood floors toward the room. “Back this way,” she says.

  My heart starts jackhammering through my chest. I lower my head and place my hands behind my back, spreading my legs for the cops. Breaking and entering, property damage; what else will I be charged with?

  “That’s him,” Lona says. “Joel, he said a neighbor reported a man walking up our driveway.”

  “He’s a friend of the family,” Joel says to the cop. I keep my head down and eyes on the floor. “You can put the gun away. We’re not pressing charges.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Lona freaks. “He broke into our home. Just look what he did to this room. Are you insane? Of course, we’re pressing charges.”

  “This is Heather’s boyfriend. We can’t—”

  “No!” She stomps her foot again. “Was her boyfriend. Was. He turned our baby into an alcoholic. She was unstable because of him.”

  “That’s bullshit. No, I didn’t.” I look up, seeing Ed in the room. Of all the cops, he had to be the one who showed up.

  “We’re not pressing charges,” Joel repeats. “That’s final. He’s drunk and doesn’t mean any harm.”

  Lona crosses her arms and extends her bottom lip, puffing her bangs off her forehead. “I’m disgusted by him and his family. They’re trashy drunks. The mother, the father, even the youngest was—”

  “Don’t talk about us that way.” I try to form a wad of saliva so I can spit in her face, but my mouth is too dry. “Owning a bar doesn’t make us drunks. You had my parents over for a barbeque, and my brother did yard work for you assholes. Since when are we trashy drunks?” I sway because I’m drunk.

  “That’s enough.” Ed uses a crushing grip on my shoulder. “If you’re not pressing charges, I’ll escort him out of your home and the neighborhood.”

  Joel notices Ed’s tight hold. He starts to say something but becomes paralyzed when he recognizes Ed’s face. He remembers that morning. I’m sure of it. He looks heavenward, fighting back tears. “Dylan, don’t ever come back here. Please don’t.”

  “Arrest him,” Lona insists.

  “This is over, Lona. I’ll clean up the room.”

  She turns away with deep disgust. “Then get him out of here. Hurry, before I change my mind.”

  “Where are your boots?” Ed asks.

  “In the mudroom by the kitchen.”

  “I’ll find them and meet you at the front door,” Joel says.

  “How’d you get in?” Lona asks, turning back.

  My lips tighten.

  “Check to see if he broke a window,” she calls to Joel. “Check the back door, too. I need to know how he got in.”

  “Tell her how you got in,” Ed demands. His hand leaves my shoulder and lands on his baton. A threat. He’ll beat me with it the instant we’re alone if I don’t fess up. And honestly, at this point, why keep the key? Lona will probably have the locks changed in the morning, and the alarm will be set from now on.

  “Heather gave me a key to the house years ago. It was a birthday present.”

  “Give it to me.” She holds out her hand. “Now!”

  I take it from my wallet and slap it in her palm. She stares at it for a moment, then waves for us to leave.

  I’m taken down the hallway and through the living room to the front door where Joel is waiting with my boots. Devastated, I slip them on, but a second later
I can’t remember doing so. My outburst in his office drained me to the point that I’m in a trance. Bleary-eyed and full of regret, I want to drink until I pass out, or curl into a fetal position and weep.

  For sure, Ed will punish me first.

  8

  Ed opens the passenger-side door of his SUV, and I sink into the seat, lowering my head between my knees. Any other cop and I’d be on my way to the station. Even without Lona pressing charges, a report for a domestic dispute would be filed. But Ed doesn’t follow any rules. And since he hasn’t said a word, I know he’s livid, ready to attack.

  I clasp my hands behind my head as a shield in case he slugs me. The scent of greasy fish fry is still on him, and oddly, a trace of strawberries. The sweet smell of that girl must be on my clothes. I inhale deeply and let her sink in before I ask him where he’s taking me.

  “Where are we going?”

  Snow crunches under the tires and the wipers squeak. I stare at the floor, waiting for an answer.

  “Sit up. We need to talk,” he says, breathing heavier than an old Bulldog. “That’s an order, not a request.”

  I sit up feeling lifeless and hollow, knowing I can’t go home and be alone in my bedroom. I won’t be able to fall asleep. Not after what just happened.

  He swerves to the right, leaving the Roosevelt Park area, starting the two-mile drive to my house.

  “Take me back to the bar,” I tell him.

  “It’ll be closed.”

  “Not till four. I’ve got an hour.”

  “I’m not driving you there. Your dad deserves better than to see you like this. You should think about him sometimes and how he feels instead of always thinking about yourself.” He turns on the defroster and adjusts his rearview mirror to look in the back seat. “You wanna pass out in the bar when your dad’s trying to shut it down for the night? That’s your plan?” His face turns red. “What about him? He already lost one son. He doesn’t need to lose another. Is getting drunk to forget about last year all you care about?”

  “Yeah, that’s all I care about, asshole.” I elbow the door, lashing out. “I never think about Jake. He never crosses my mind!”

  He drives down an unlit street and presses his shoulder mic. “Rick, meet me at the dead-end section of Thompson Street, off Elm.”

  The Tahoe slides into the curb. He puts it in park, slams my head into the passenger-side window, and presses my face against the glass. I catch his wrist but can’t twist free.

  “You want to know what I saw that morning? Is that what you’re waiting for? Will it help you get out of this sick state?” He grabs my coat collar and brings me inches from his face. “I drove up and saw Heather’s dad collapsed underneath her. He was inconsolable. Gutted, Dylan. And her mom was sitting on the front stoop, rocking back and forth, sobbing like a baby with puke on her feet.”

  “Stop it.”

  “She begged me to cut Heather down so she could hold her. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t touch the scene until the homicide detectives got there!” He shakes me. “You think it was easy, like I don’t give a shit? I think about it every fucking day!” He pushes me away. “It took detectives minutes to arrive. It felt like hours. I had to stand there and wait, do nothing, but wait.”

  “Ed, stop.” My voice quavers with emotion as my throat closes up.

  “She must’ve showered because her hair was frozen. She was in nothing but underwear and a tank, and those goddamn heart lights were spiraling across her body.”

  “Stop it!” I open the door and stumble onto the sidewalk. “I only wanna know about the note!”

  He gets out and follows me down the street, grabbing my neck and tossing me down. He strikes me with his baton, a hard blow to the kidney. “You wanted to know. Now listen!”

  “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know!”

  “Her boots were next to the front door.”

  “That’s not true!” I kick my feet. “I took her home early. She was wearing black sneakers. I remember!”

  “She went out after an argument with her mom and drank when she got home. There was a bottle of vodka on the kitchen counter.”

  “She never drank alone. She wouldn’t.”

  “She wrote you and her parents each a note that she left in their home, not yours.” He hits me again. “That makes both notes their property. So don’t force that couple to relive their mistake.”

  “What mistake?”

  “Straighten out, Dylan.”

  “What mistake!”

  “Did you just tell him to straighten out?” A voice taut with anger comes from the Tahoe. “Why don’t you straighten out, Dorazio? Get off him, you scuzzy cop. If I tell—”

  “Shut up back there!”

  “Who’s that?” I look up, seeing the girl in the burgundy coat staring out the back window of Ed’s SUV. She’s here.

  Ed uses my head as a crutch to stand. “Dylan, give it a rest. They’ve been through enough.” The girl shrinks in the seat when she sees Ed coming. He twirls his baton as he walks. “Make sure you thank Sean for calling me. He saved your ass tonight.”

  “He called you?”

  A dark car turns onto the street and parks behind Ed’s SUV. Ed opens the back door of his Tahoe and motions at her to get out.

  “Come on, time to go.”

  “No,” she says.

  “I’m done babysitting. Get out.”

  “I’ll walk home, tell him to go away.” She glances at the car.

  Ed puts his hands in the air, palms up, signaling to the guy in the car that she’s not moving. The driver’s-side door swings open and a man built like a Mack truck steps out, just the opposite of Ed’s fat face and his middle-aged beer gut. He snaps his fingers at the Tahoe.

  “Step out of the vehicle,” he says, marching toward us, dressed in a white shirt and a black tie. He’s carrying a gun and wearing a badge—all business. This is no street cop. He must be a chief from another district, the guy Ed just called to meet us here.

  His focus is on the girl, still snapping his fingers and whistling at her to follow orders like she’s a dog. “Now,” he commands. “Autumn, get out. I don’t have time for this.”

  Autumn. He called her Autumn.

  “No,” she says.

  “Get out!” He reaches inside and drags her out by her arm. “Who said you could do this?”

  “I can do whatever the hell I want.”

  That’s twice in one night. Two men have jostled her this way and that, but this time I’m at a loss, not about to step between her and this police chief when I don’t even know what’s going on.

  He forces her to his car and pushes her inside, fighting to get the seat belt across her chest.

  “Don’t touch me.” She slaps his hand away.

  He closes the door then gets behind the wheel. Ed follows suit, getting in his Tahoe. They flash their lights at one another before driving off, taillights fading to black, the sounds of the city muted by the snow.

  I’m left behind to sit in the cold as if I don’t even exist.

  I take out my smokes, crushed from the night, sensing deep frown lines wrinkling my forehead as I bend one back into shape. I flip it in my mouth and light it, the silence of the dead-end street somewhat soothing, until my ass falls numb and I decide it’s time to call Sean for a ride home.

  I finally make it to my bed and crash without undressing, keeping the poem from Autumn locked in my hand, listening to the wind whistling through cracks in the window frames.

  9

  I spent a week in my routine of working and drinking at the bar. Work. Drink. Keep busy. Work. Drink. Emotional avoidance. There are only so many days I can repeat that behavior before needing an ASMR break to lessen my depression. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, a method Heather often used to relax before an exam or when she had anxiety. She tried it on me when I couldn’t calm down after a bloody fight at a dealer’s house. I was skeptical at first; h
er description of it sounded like cult mind control, but when her whispering put me at peace within fifteen minutes, my skepticism turned to awe. I felt tingling in the back of my head that ran down my spine as if her soft fingertips were massaging my brain. My muscles loosened, and I was asleep within an hour—the most relaxed I’d been after one of Ed’s jobs in years.

  After I lost her, I did a Google search for ASMR and found it was an online movement with thousands of people creating videos as a full-time job. Channels have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, the best videos with over a million views.

  Not every trigger works, a few make me restless, like the tapping, or typing, or other repetitive sounds that make me want to punch the wall. But the personal attention videos, the ones based more on roleplay, are gold. My favorite go-to woman has twenty of them. I open her channel on my laptop and click the Tingly, Relaxing Massage video. She smiles and whispers, hello.

  “Hey.” I lean back on my bed and close my eyes, visualizing the glitter on her cheeks, and her tat-covered arms. She’s pretty, but this isn’t sexual in any way. It’s not porn. I’m using her only for the calm.

  “Welcome back to the family,” she says. “My channel is a safe place. I won’t do anything without asking you first. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” She inhales. “Breathe with me and relaaax … relaaax … relaaax…”

  “Dylan, wake up!” Sean pounds on my bedroom door. “Yo, let’s go. We gotta get a move on if we’re gonna eat before the job.”

  “Give me five.” My voice is high-pitched, sounding like it did when I was a kid masturbating in the bathroom and my mom knocked on the door. “Five minutes,” I say, more composed. “I’m getting dressed.”

  He tramples down the stairs of our small two-story house, mumbling as he goes.