The Shadows Behind

by Kristi Petersen Schoonover

  “Manzino?”

  “Yeah?”

  I want to say, “It’s okay. I’ve actually come to think of the little guy as my friend.” Instead, I say, “He’s plastic.”

  “Even better,” Manzino says. “Plastic doesn’t crap.”

  ~~**~~

  When Bunny moves out, I don’t let her take Demon Bunny. I offer her a dollar—twice what I paid for it—to let me keep him. She just looks at me funny, and says, “Keep your dollar, you want him that bad. You bought him anyway.”

  She closes the hatchback on the old station wagon and pulls out of the driveway, and the porch light on the house across the street goes out.

  I could turn on the TV and probably try to catch the end of Holiday Inn, but then I decide I’m tired. I go up to our bedroom, and there’s Demon Bunny, sitting in the corner, smiling at me as I climb into bed and pull the sheets over my body.

  I stare at the ceiling. Something’s wrong. Something’s—someone’s—missing. Demon Bunny’s not turned on.

  I toss back the sheets and heft myself over to the corner, bend down and dig my fingers into the hole in the back to flip the switch. He lights up; I go back to bed. I lay there, still, and look at him. “Goodnight,” I whisper.

  He just grins.

  ATTEMPTED DELIVERY

  A whisper comes from the package intended for my neighbor.

  I’m Margolynn Jameson and I live at 53 Morgan Avenue, Mystic, Connecticut; the neighbor, Marilyn Jensen, is at 53 Morgan Avenue Extension. Occasionally, that’s where my Amazon Pantry boxes get delivered—my phone often notifies me that my item has been left on the porch. I don’t have a porch, so I cut through the woods, descend the embankment, and navigate the rickety wooden steps that parallel her steep driveway to get the parcel.

  Marilyn and I haven’t met. She’s never home, no matter what time of day or night it is. My girlfriend Suzanne, who met her once, claims Marilyn works for a museum, and that she’s probably always traveling to exotic places. Suzanne, though, has a talent for romanticizing. I didn’t take her seriously until the first time I stood on Marilyn’s porch amidst Tiki statues, wind chimes made of bones, and shrunken heads.

  It’s creepy, and I’m an anxious person. It’s only my need for eyeliner and tampons that keeps me going back. But this is the first time one of her deliveries has ended up at my place, and it’s only right to go drop it off.

  I’m about to pick up the box when I hear the whisper: broken lobster.

  What the hell was that?

  I look to see if anyone’s around. There isn’t.

  Broken lobster. What the hell does that mean, anyway?

  I’m supposed to take Suzanne to Red Lobster for her birthday, and that’s been on my mind because it’s her favorite place and I’m not really a fan of seafood. That’s probably it.

  Broken lobster. There it is again.

  I’m afraid to touch the box. It didn’t come from Amazon—in fact, the return and shipping addresses are the same: Marilyn Jensen, 53 Morgan Avenue Extension. Someone was desperate to make sure this got to the right place. Then I think: she won’t be home, and what if the thing inside is alive? It shouldn’t be left outside in the cold—it’s the first week in April, but the nights are still dipping below freezing on occasion, and the pouring rains we’ve had for the past two days don’t make anything more hospitable. What if what’s in there dies of exposure? What if it’s—

  Broken lobster.

  I lift it; it’s light. When I shake it, something rattles, but it feels like it’s in one piece.

  Maybe it’s another one of those weird bone things that’re hanging all around Marilyn’s porch.

  I put my ear to the box.

  This time, louder: Broken lobster!

  Startled, I drop it on the ceramic tile of my foyer floor.

  Shit. Shitshitshit, what if it’s broken?

  Open it, I tell myself. Just check it out and make sure it’s intact, whatever it is.

  The problem is it’s wrapped completely in what looks like butcher shop paper. If I tear into it, there’s no way I’ll be able to hide the evidence that it’s been opened.

  BROKEN LOBSTER!

  That’s it. I have to do it.

  I get a knife—one of the joys of living alone, no one yells at you for using one of the good steak knives to open your mail—and plan my strategy. Every seam and flap is plastered in tape. It’s a struggle not only to get the knife in, but also to keep from stabbing myself.

  At last I’m through. The knife, now covered in sticky residue, is probably ruined. I toss it in the sink, where it lands on a precariously stacked pile of the Pier 1 dishes my last girlfriend left here.

  I sincerely hope I broke at least one of them.

  I work the box free of the paper and pull off the lid, inhaling a waft of something that smells like rotting leaves and bourbon. Once it passes, I take a peek.

  Inside is an intact, petrified fish—what kind I have no idea, but the protruding mouth armed with murderous teeth gives me chills. Its taut, grayish-tobacco skin—only slightly heartier than tissue and tackier than crepe paper—is worn in patches, revealing bones. Equally disturbing are dark brushstrokes marbling its rib cage: meticulously painted characters in a maroon ink that bleeds into hairline cracks in the bones, spreading like tree roots.

  But it’s the perfectly round, tenantless eye sockets that nail stalactites through my core.

  They look angry.

  Who would want this hideous, scary thing in her house?

  I slam the box closed. I’m dumping this back on her porch where it belongs. Just as I start trying to patch what I’ve done, Suzanne texts that she’s waiting for me out in front of Red Lobster—no time to drop it off now. I brush my teeth, freshen my makeup, and am about to get on the road when I realize I don’t want that thing in my house either—not even for a few hours.

  I carry it to the fiberboard shelf in the garage and ram it between rusty cans of WD-40 and quarts of paint.

  Broken lobster. It haunts me through the mojitos. Broken lobster. It haunts me through the cheddar biscuits. BROKEN. LOBSTER! I expect Suzanne will order her lobster with the shell already split.

  Instead, she breaks up with me.

  When I get home, eyes burning from mascara fail, I rush to the shelf and take the lid off the box.

  “What are you?” I whisper.

  It doesn’t answer. It just stares at me with those sinister, accusatory pits.

  ~~**~~

  I’ve always been anxious, waiting for that shoe to drop. I don’t enjoy the now because I’m not certain of the later: Will I have an argument with someone at work? Will a friend suddenly ditch me? Will I owe more on my taxes than I can pay?

  For a while I was hooked on tarot cards, and although they gave me a heads-up on the daily, they couldn’t foresee the long term: Will my latest relationship go Beauty and the Beast—or Kramer vs. Kramer? Will I get fired or laid off? Will a meticulously planned vacation suck? Will I die from an illness or in an accident? Whatifwhatifwhatif. Sometimes my stomach roils so badly I can’t eat.

  I didn’t sleep last night. While I’m upset about Suzanne and aware there are lonely waters ahead (I’m a sucker for that high-school-bathroom wisdom the time it takes to get over a relationship is equal to the time you were together) that isn’t why.

  I didn’t sleep because I was haunted by the grotesque thing in the garage.

  Broken lobster broken lobster broken lobster . . . it was telling me we were going to break up over lobster. It knew what was going to happen.

  Why wouldn’t it just say, “Suzanne is breaking up with you?” Why the cryptics?

  On the other hand, it’s not like the tarot cards used to show pictures of fender benders and overdrawn checkbooks.

  I sip my double-downed coffee—so strong it’s thick—and notice that, mercifully, the torrential rains that have pounded us since yesterday have stopped. Over the loud ticking of the kitchen clock, I hear noise in the
garage.

  My back stiffens. I listen.

  Hishhishhish.

  I set my coffee on the counter, tighten the sash on my bathrobe, and step deliberately down the hall toward the waiting door to the garage.

  I set my hand on the knob, press my ear to the hollow core woodgrain.

  Leaf left.

  An ensuing empty sound, like the ocean waves you supposedly hear in a conch.

  Leaf left, it hisses again.

  I think about broken lobster. I think about the pain in my heart.

  Leaf left.

  “I raked the leaves in the fall and carted ’em away. I don’t know what you’re talking about!” This is ridiculous. I’m having a conversation with a dead fish.

  I hear something metal hit the concrete.

  I yank open the door and go to the shelf. A rusting can of WD-40 bumps against my slipper.

  The fish is no longer in the box. It’s sitting next to one of the dusted-over bottles of ArmorAll, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear its insidious mouth is turned up at the corners, like it’s smiling.

  My stomach pits in fear. I flee the garage, slam the door behind me, and breathe. Just get ready for work. Hop in the shower, do your makeup, prep your Swiss sandwich and chips for lunch. Just like normal. Dump that evil thing on her porch on the way.

  When I’m ready to leave I seize the corpse with a long-handled grabber I keep around and set it back in its carton. I secure it with a piece of tape, toss it on the passenger seat, and screech out of the garage.

  To get to Marilyn’s the quickest way and avoid being late for work, I have to make a right instead of my normal left, and I can’t possibly drive fast enough. The only thing that slows me down is the blind corner two hundred feet from my driveway; if you don’t hug that curve, you’re liable to lane drift and smack into someone.

  I skirt the corner and slam on the brakes.

  The road is blocked by an overturned garbage truck, muddy water damming up behind it. Dark green and brown trash bags hunch on the road. Two men in reflective orange vests stand guard; one smokes a cigarette and has his hand up to stop traffic (as though there’s room to go around); the other, cell phone pressed to one ear, finger stuck in the other, paces back and forth.

  It must’ve tried to take the corner too fast.

  I’m stuck. The road’s too narrow for me to turn around.

  I curse at myself. Why didn’t I go the way I usually go? I could’ve still been able to get to Marilyn’s driveway. It would have been several additional turns and a bit of backtracking. That’s all.

  But it would’ve made me late for work.

  If I’d made a left out of my drive instead of a right, I would’ve missed this whole incident.

  I slide a glance to the box on the passenger seat.

  I remember this morning’s message. The one that spooked me into this position in the first place.

  Leaf left.

  Oh my God.

  The fish wasn’t saying leaf left, it was saying leave left.

  That creepy thing was trying to help me.

  The thought gives me the shivers.

  ~~**~~

  I arrive at my desk thirty minutes late, and my boss Courtney has to walk past to get to her office. I drape my jacket over my chair and sit down right away so when she powers through here clutching her green tea I’ll be working.

  Kasey—who sits behind me—and I don’t usually talk. We don’t have to, because she’s like a mosquito, always hovering and swapping inanities like the latest drama on Beer Pong Wives with the other office supply manager, who’s over seventy and messes up so much my real job is correcting her errors.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “Fine.” What am I going to say?

  “Today should be a heavy mail day.” Kasey opens her desk drawer and takes out her Post-It-tongued planner. “Fridays always are.”

  That is one thing she always does—reminds me that Fridays are our heaviest mail day. I’m frequently overwhelmed by it to the point that sometimes I hide at least half in a bottom drawer where no one will find it, because Mondays we get nothing. It’s my little secret that I’ve been keeping for years; the only time I was ever anxious about getting caught was when I was unexpectedly out with the flu for two weeks and I remembered I hadn’t locked my drawers before I left. There were customers’ checks that weren’t deposited. I ended up coming back and secretly shredding them, claiming we simply hadn’t received them when complaints came in: “You know how the post office can be sometimes,” I’d told Courtney, who’d appeared to believe me, although I had flashbacks and panic attacks for weeks afterward.

  Courtney appears at first to motor by without noticing me; then, she stops and presses her thighs against the edge of my desk, gripping her Of course I talk to myself, sometimes I need expert advice mug with both hands. She peers down at me over the steaming rim with a forced smile. “Good afternoon.”

  I avert my gaze and reach under my desk to boot up my computer. “There was an accident on my road.”

  “Yes, well.” She nods. “Big mail day today. Sure you’re up to it?”

  I look at her, confused. “Um—yeah, sure.”

  “Good. Because I have a big project I want you to work on for me.” She sips her tea. “When you’re done, come see me.”

  She pivots and goes into her office and closes the door.

  “Wow.” Kasey says. “That sounds like a punishment.”

  The panic comes on strong: first as a little queasy, then full-on nauseated, then my heart pounds in my ears and my fingers quake. I haul myself up from my chair.

  I hear Kasey ask me, “Where are you going?” almost dimly as I round the corner and head down the hall through the double doors to my favorite hideaway: the janitor’s supply closet.

  I shut myself in and sit on a milk crate and focus on my breathing. As I stare at the mop—it’s always looked like it’s seen better days but is now so ratty I feel pity for it—I wonder what the fish would tell me.

  ~~**~~

  It’s the next morning and I’m in my kitchen.

  “You’re going to think I’m insane.” With a grapefruit spoon, I grind the sugar cubes I’ve just dropped into my lifelong friend Juliane’s coffee cup, Courtney’s big project—alphabetizing files—done and forgotten. The sound is as toe-curling as nails on a chalkboard. “And I don’t trust myself to know that I’m not, so I’m asking you to help me out here.”

  Juliane leans against my kitchen counter, arms folded across her chest. She’s one of the few people—okay, maybe the only person—that I admit anything to. I know she’s had a crush on me forever, and even though it’s never worked out, she’s always around, giving me backup when I need it.

  Now, though, I can’t read her expression. “What?”

  She shrugs and shoves her hands in her pockets. “I was expecting the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth, Margie.” Everyone else calls me Margo, but she’s called me Margie since the day we met. “I’m a little feeling like a fish outta water here, ’cause I just blew sixty bucks on the post-breakup Patrón—are you sayin’ it’s goin’ to waste?”

  “Nah, we’ll drink it.” I hand her the cup. It says Keep Austin Weird—a leftover from Suzanne. I muse at how I usually would’ve already destroyed everything the heartbreaker left behind.

  Maybe we won’t be drinking that tequila after all?

  She furrows her brow over the rim of the mug, and I notice she’s wearing mascara, which is rare. She takes a hard swallow and grimaces. “Damn, that’s hot.” She sets it on the counter. “So, you gonna show me this thing, or what?”

  Nothing I say to her ever sounds crazy, either. I used to think this was because she was secretly in love with me. This strange fish has made me think, though, that it’s just because she has a head full of interesting folklore about the creatures in her care down at the Mystic aquarium—and she’s always looking to add one more. She’s not a fan of her job, and has always told m
e it’s part of how she keeps herself entertained.

  I go out to the garage and retrieve the box. When I come back, she’s got a Dum Dum lollipop in her mouth; she claims they help her think, but it’s the mystery flavor that’s her favorite (how she could say that about something unidentifiable, I don’t know. The very thought of grabbing a Dum Dum out of the bag and not having any idea what’s underneath the wrapper is uncomfortable).

  “Hnnnn.” She holds the mummy up to the kitchen’s fluorescent, a light I usually keep off because it reminds me of the ones I see in morgues on TV crime shows. “What you’ve got here is a piranha.”

  The word is comes out like ish as she manipulates the lollipop. She sets the fish gingerly back in the box. “No idea where it came from, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  “And it actually says things.”

  I sip my coffee. “I know it’s not the television or stuff coming through my non-existent baby monitor. I know what I heard.”

  “I’m not doubting you, you know that.” She bites through the Dum Dum and puckers. “Ooh! There’s sour apple in the middle of this one. And it’s only the future, you’re sure.”

  I reiterate the two warnings it’s given me so far.

  She tosses the lollipop stick in the trash. “But . . . it doesn’t seem to say things like secrets people are keeping from you, or anything like that.”

  “No. Not yet, anyway.”

  “You know.” She turns and faces me. Her nipples poke through the white tank top that has the word Twister written across it in ragged black letters. “You ever heard of Fordlandia?”

  “No.”

  She sighs. “It’s a history lesson, but I’ll keep it short.” She moves to the white wicker bar in the sun room and grabs a couple of shot glasses. “In the thirties, Henry Ford wanted cheaper rubber for his tires. So he built a city in the Amazon—and I mean, it was a city.” She yanks the Patrón from a paper sack and works at the cork. “It had a school and a dance hall and a movie theater . . . like, the whole nine yards . . . for the workers.”