Darling (18 page)

He was being ridiculous.

He stepped through the living room and to the bathroom slowly and with purpose, as though sheer defiance was enough to expel his fears. He clicked on the light and shut the door behind him. The faucet handle squeaked as he turned the shower on and waited for the water to warm. Then he stepped underneath it and rinsed the warm urine and cold sweat from his body.

When he finished he toweled off, slid the robe back on, and went back to his room. He was tempted to leave the bathroom light on and the door open behind him, but fought the urge. What was next? A nightlight?

—
And when the nightlight goes dim,

the closet creaks open and fingers crawl out,

long and spindly,

and it tells me what wonders are in store for me
—

What was that from? A story he had read? A movie? He didn’t recognize it and shook it off. He had worked himself up and his brain was sifting through its catalog of frightening imagery. If he kept this up he’d never sleep. He’d just lie in bed all night and listen to Regan MacNeil curse at her mother or tap his feet in time to the beat of the heart hidden under the floorboards.

—
Deep under the floorboards,

so far into the earth,

sleeping where it had burrowed,

thousands of tons of earth packed in above it,

tossing and turning

and unleashing its nightmares on
—

He shut the bedroom door behind him and chastised himself. He was being idiotic, letting a fear of the dark overwhelm him. It was a child’s fear, a little boy’s overactive imagination taking root in a man’s mind. He ignored it, pushed it away as he rummaged for a clean pair of boxer shorts and clean sheets. He struggled to fit the sheets around the corners of the bed and then slid under them. He was about to turn the light off when his eyes caught the rocking chair again, and the jacket that his mind had made into his mother.

He hung the jacket in his closet and went back to bed.

He gave the room one last look before turning off the light. Everything was normal.

Of course it was normal.

He reached over and clicked the light off. Darkness poured in. Even the pale strip of moonlight was gone from his ceiling. He wondered if a cloud had passed in front of it, and then wondered if it was going to rain tomorrow. He put the thoughts of ghosts and demons from his mind and drifted off.

He rested, but never fully slept. He always found it difficult to sleep when he wasn’t alone.

* * *

Carl Petrie, Kurt Hagen, and Terry Crowley sat out by the pool and watched the rain. They were sheltered underneath an umbrella as they sipped on their beers. Carl and Kurt worked construction, and Terry worked in landscaping, so the weather had given them all a day off. It was only ten after ten in the morning, but a day off was a day off and the three of them were well on their way to that glorious state of being that which was referred to as “bein’ soused.”

They stared across the field and drank.

“Rain’s pretty warm.”

“Yep.”

“Breeze is gone, too.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You’d think rain like this would cool things off, not heat them up.”

The other men shrugged.

One of them yawned.

“What you yawning for?”

“Didn’t sleep much. Bad dreams.”

They all nodded in understanding. None of them had slept much.

“You fellas see that light over there?”

They leaned forward and looked out through the field. It was faint and, if not for the dark clouds overhead, they probably would have missed it. But there it was, shining like a lighthouse in the storm.

“I’ll be damned.”

“I didn’t think they had electricity over there?”

“Not supposed to.”

They all drank in silence for a few minutes.

“Why you reckon that light’s on?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Maybe they’re planning on finishing it up?”

“Naw. All them lights would be on, then.”

“Hmmm…”

They drank some more.

“That place weirds me out.”

They were all quiet.

A boy in a blue poncho walked through the field. A man in a green poncho was behind him. The boy looked like he was yelling, but the men couldn’t hear what over the rain and thunder.

“What are they doing?”

“That’s that Turner kid. Lost his dog.”

“Lucy?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a damn shame.”

“Sure is.”

They drank some more. Lit cigarettes. Puffed away. The boy and the man made their way across the field and disappeared around the apartment building. They never so much as glanced at the supermarket, or the light shining from its parking lot.

“That place weirds me out.”

“You done said that already.”

“Yeah. Reckon I did.”

They drank, puffed on their cigarettes, and listened to the falling rain.

Chapter Eleven

When the alarm sounded, Dennis almost punched it. He clicked it off, rolled out of bed, and stumbled to the bathroom. He felt like he hadn’t slept in days. Part of it was the

—
visitor—

dream he had had last night, but the other part was the storm. It was so difficult to get out of bed on a rainy day. The gloomy sky, the soft
patter-patter-patter
of the rain—it all worked together to keep him feeling sluggish and lethargic. His limbs barely moved as he struggled to wash his face and brush his teeth. It was like lead pumped through muscles made of concrete.

He heard Mike in the kitchen rummaging around and wondered if some dream had kept him up, too. Mike never got up before Dennis, was rarely up before noon if he could help it.

Dennis shuffled into the kitchen and for a moment thought he must still be dreaming. Mike rushed around, cracking eggs into a bowl, frying bacon on the stove, pouring orange juice. He seemed bright and happy and, aside from a slight limp and an odd bow in his back, moved like a pro.

“What’s the special occasion?”

Mike turned around and grinned. “Thought I’d make us some breakfast.”

Dennis grabbed a glass of orange juice and sat down. “I can see that. Why are you limping?”

“Oh, just pulled a muscle in my back at work. Lifting some boxes around in the back. It’s okay, though. I took some Aleve this morning and can barely feel it.”

“You should ice it.”

“Not heat it?”

Dennis shook his head. “Lower back gets inflamed easy and heat just makes it worse. Ice it every couple of hours and you’ll be fine in a couple of days.”

“Good to know.” Mike slid some bacon and scrambled eggs onto a plate and sat it in front of Dennis. He made his own plate and joined him.

Dennis laughed. “What, no toast?”

“Shit. I knew I forgot something.”

“Sit down. I was joking. Thanks for breakfast. Beats the protein shake I was gonna have.”

They ate, laughing and joking the entire time, and Dennis marveled at what a great mood his friend was in. Mike even cleaned up and washed the dishes afterward. He wondered for a moment if his roommate might be manic-depressive and this was one of his mania stages.

Stop it. You sound like Eileen.

“You work today?”

Mike shook his head. “Nope.”

“Well, I was gonna go into town. Get some new shirts, maybe some notebooks and stuff for school. I have to meet Eileen for lunch at two, but other than that I’m clear. You wanna hang out? Maybe catch that John Carpenter triple-feature at Downtown West?”

Mike’s eyes lit up. “What’s playing?”

“The Kurt Russell flicks.
Escape From New York, Big

Trouble in Little China,
and
The Thing
.”

“Let me change clothes. You mind driving?”

“Not at all.”

Twenty minutes later they were heading down the driveway. The rain flowed along the curbs in tiny rivers, washing dirt, leaves, and litter along with it. Mike kept his face glued to the window.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Hey, look at that.” Dennis pointed to a family of possums making their way across the yard away from the driveway.

Mike smiled. “Huh…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

That night, after the movies, Dennis dropped Mike off at home and grabbed a change of clothes to take over to Eileen’s. He had a shirt of hers she had wanted him to bring that she had left, a green cotton thing that clung to her in a way he enjoyed looking at. He had washed it and thrown it into the dryer with his things the day before, but when he dumped it out of his laundry basket onto his bed, noticed that it was wrapped inside of a still-damp towel. Sure enough, it was wet.

He grabbed some quarters from his nightstand and a paperback he was reading and headed downstairs. He took the elevator to the basement, but felt strange doing so. He felt claustrophobic all of a sudden, like he was stuck standing in his little two feet by two feet space and couldn’t move around the car. He had never felt like that before; tight spaces rarely bothered him. He shrugged it off when the car reached the bottom and stepped out.

The basement was dimly lit at night. During the day an ample amount of sun shined through the windows, but at night the tenants were forced to rely on the sparse bulbs that hung from the ceiling. The maze of fenced-off storage areas that wound its way past pipes and water heaters cast long and deep shadows across the floor. His footsteps were loud and he had the odd sensation he disturbed someone, intruded on some private moment. When he reached the laundry room, he opened the door and went inside.

It was dark. He flicked the light switch, but nothing happened. He tried it again and again, but the bulb must have been busted.

Great.

He took his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans and held it open into the black. Its dull, blue light faintly lit the area and reminded him of the night vision goggles he had seen used in espionage films. He scanned the light across the cracked slate floor, making sure there wasn’t the too-common puddle of water in front of the machines, and then over to the machines themselves. Pipes burst out of the brick above them, snaking up the wall before disappearing into the ceiling. They were thick with cobwebs and spots of red rust. The doors to the machines themselves hung open, the blackness inside them even thicker than what nested in the rest of the room. Dennis thought they looked like mouths hanging open, waiting for someone to come along and feed them socks and underwear.

He swung his arm around, about to close his phone and put it back into his pocket, when the light reflected off of something in the corner.

Eyes.

The light had only settled on them for a fraction of a second, but he couldn’t mistake the inverted reflection of that pale light on a pair of small eyes, like the way a cat’s eyes look in the dark. But this was too tall for a cat. He swung the light back over to the corner of the machines.

A small wisp of hair shot behind them.

He took a deep breath. It was just a kid. One of the neighbor’s kids, some child playing around in the building, probably hide and go seek, ducking behind a washing machine to continue the game. Still, the basement was no place for a kid to play.

“Hey, kid.” Dennis walked over to the machine. “Kid, you shouldn’t be—”

There was no one there. The washing machine was pushed up against the wall only three feet from the other wall with its padlocked, knobless door.

He spun around. Did he miss the kid? Did he shoot past him or…or…

No. That was impossible. The path between the machines and the folding table was too narrow. The kid would have had to go right through him.

A chill tickled up his spine, slowly, until it reached the back of his neck. All of the hairs on his neck and arms stood straight and he took a few steps toward the door. He had the sudden urge to dart out, run to the elevator, and get the hell out of here.

Those eyes…

A child’s eyes reflecting light back, the child peeking out from around the side of a washing machine, watching him, the face round and pale, hiding when he came close, and then disappearing, leaving him with the cold, unnatural memory of eyes.

Like a cat’s eyes.

Or a rat’s eyes.

A rat’s eyes. That’s what it was. He saw a rat.

He chuckled once he realized it, but backed out anyway. A rat wasn’t something he needed to mess with, either. Not in the dark down here.

He looked at the shirt clutched in his hand and frowned. He threw it into a machine, popped his quarters into the tray, and hit the button. Then he grabbed a chair by the folding table and slid it out into the basement. He pulled it under a light bulb and sat, grabbing the paperback from his back pocket and opening it to the dog-eared page where he had last left off. It was
Lord Jim
by Joseph Conrad and, though the language weighed him down in spots, the story was engrossing. He finished the chapter and started another before he heard the noise.

It was faint at first, barely discernible, and he thought he had imagined it. He continued reading, but he heard it again.

A scraping sound.

He put his book down and stood, taking a few steps out into the room to try and hear where it came from.

Scrape.

The laundry room.

He took his phone out and shined it in again, half-expecting to see

—
a young boy
—

the rat perched on the edge of one of the machines, but there was nothing there. The dryer rumbled and shook, the soft
clack-clack-clack
of the shirt’s buttons smacking against the sides as it tumbled around, and he again thought he had imagined the noise.

Scrape.

From behind the door.

He felt a little fear again; a holdover from the rat mixed with that innate fear of dark places that enters you as a child and never leaves. But his curiosity was stronger. He walked to the door and dropped to one knee, peering into the hole where the knob should have been.