Guardian (10 page)

The Skylark Pest Control van is parked on our street again. Boy, there must really be some kind of gigantic infestation going on, but you expect things like that in south Florida. I'm glad Stephanie is such a stickler for cleanliness. I haven't seen anything weird around our house, except the human inhabitants.

The sun is just setting as I fit my key in the lock, and I feel myself breathing deeply and just enjoying life. I want to hesitate here forever on the threshold, but hunger makes me go inside.

The first thing I notice is that the house is too quiet. Also, no lights are on. Usually, the minute the sun gets low in the sky, Stephanie shuts the drapes and turns the lamps on. She can't stand the time when the light is fading. And the house
feels
wrong. I stand perfectly still, almost afraid to move, like a deer stepping from a clearing and sniffing for predators.

I hear a funny little sound coming from the kitchen. A soft clinking rattle that comes every few seconds, but not at regular intervals you can count off. I just keep listening, trying to identify as the sun gets lower and the western windows pour this deep orange light across me.

Rattle-clink. Rattle-clink. Drinking. Someone is drinking back in the kitchen. Stephanie is drinking and there is no sign of my sisters.

My arms and legs turn to ice. I've watched a lot of truTV over the years. Stephanie is capable of anything. My mind goes to teen horror flicks and I picture a different sister in every room, lying in pools of blood, Stephanie waiting for me to come home for the coup de grâce. Still, I'm paralyzed, not knowing what to do. Should I run to the neighbors for help? What if this is all my imagination and nothing is wrong? What if it's not? I reach behind me for the doorknob.

“Hunter? Come here. I've got something you'll want to see.”

Her voice sounds perfectly reasonable. Yeah, just like Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
. What's she got to show me? An ax from the garage?

I hear footsteps coming and my legs prickle. My knees get weak and I go down like a lame horse. Ruby red light bathes me from all directions.

She stands, a black silhouette in the brightness. “What's wrong with you? Are you all right? Did you get too much sun?”

She sounds like a mother. Like a concerned mother. I look up, trying to find her face. She puts some things she's holding down on the floor and comes to me. “Hunter, answer me. Are you sick?”

Yes, yes, I'm mentally ill. I'm seeing angels and murderers everywhere. Help me
. “I just felt faint for a second. That's all.” I struggle to stand. “Where is everybody?”

She gives a little laugh. “As if you didn't know.” She goes and turns on a lamp. I see that what she's set on the floor is a sheaf of papers, the long court kind, and a cocktail. She has raccoon eyes from crying. I creep to the couch, holding the edges of it. “What happened? Where are the girls?”

Her laugh is almost a cough. “They left with the social worker who's coming back tonight to talk to you. You won, Hunter. It took you four years to destroy my family, but now you've done it.” She goes and retrieves her drink and the papers. She keeps the drink, gives the papers to me. I'm very familiar with these kinds of documents. Scanning them quickly, I see that a social worker was tipped off and came out to investigate our home and decided to take the girls on the spot. I play in my mind the familiar scene of how you get loaded into a strange car and taken off to who knows where for your next adventure. It's terrifying. I think of Drew and want to cry.

Stephanie sits on the couch facing me. She didn't close the drapes and the windows turn into mirrors, reflecting both of us from several directions.

“What are the charges or grounds or whatever?” I ask.

“What you told them. That I was physically abusive and sexually exploitive. Sweet little Jessie started pounding the nails in the minute the caseworker got here, telling her about the photographer I wanted to send Drew to, making me sound like some kind of goddamn child pornographer when all I wanted was for Drew to have a modeling career! Andrea kept her mouth shut, God bless her, but Jessie said I was physically abusive and they found this tiny little bruise on Drew's butt from that tap I gave her the other day and that was enough to bury me. Of course, if you'd been here it would have been even worse, since no one understands how hard it is to control a boy your age without a father around, but hey, no one is interested in my side of the story. That was obvious from the start. The fact that I've taken care of all you ungrateful little demons all these years—that was worth nothing. Anyway, someone's coming at seven and then you get to leave the wicked witch's castle too.”

I can't believe it. I can't believe my sisters are gone. This is the longest I've been in any home, and even though Stephanie
is
the wicked witch, where will I go now? I'll probably never see my sisters again. I could end up anywhere, or worse, stuck in some group-home limbo until I turn eighteen. My eyes fill up and tears spill out.

“Save it!” she hisses, taking a big gulp. “This is what you wanted, isn't it? When you called CPS? How did you do it? From a pay phone? Did you disguise your voice?” She looks at her glass and frowns, gets up and staggers to the kitchen. I listen to her making her next drink. I wonder how many she had before I got home. I wonder who called CPS. Maybe Jessie. Then I sort of shiver and wonder if it was me. Maybe I'm really in bad shape and I'm doing all these things and blaming it on some guardian angel in my mind. It's so creepy. I try to force myself to remember if I went inside any of the houses today. If I asked to use the phone.

“How do you know Jessie didn't do it?” I call out.

“The caseworker kept asking me if I had a boyfriend. So I know they got an anonymous tip from a man. Can you believe it? I told her I'm a widow and she's got a lot of nerve asking me if I've got a boyfriend. Then she wants to know how recently Mike died because obviously they want to make a case that I'm a grieving psychopath!”

That would be a good case to make, I think.

“They all look alike, don't they?” she calls over the rattle of ice cubes. “Those drab little social workers. You've probably seen more of them than I have. Can't they dress properly? I mean, it's not a question of money. You can put together a decent outfit at Target if you want to. I used to do it, back when. They don't have to wear those ratty cardigan sweaters. They could get a nice cotton jacket, even a polyester one. Anything but those droopy sweaters. I swear, I'm watching her fill out her ten million papers and that droopy, disgusting sweater kept sliding off her shoulder until I wanted to KILL her!”

I look at the clock. Fifteen minutes to seven. It won't be hard to get me out of here, what with Stephanie's drinking herself into a stupor and the bruises I can show. I wonder if Stephanie would freak if I just slid down to my room and threw a couple of things into a duffel. When they go back for your things, they always miss something important.

“Everything was so perfect before we got you,” she continues. She's not really talking to me anymore. “We had the perfect family. Andrea and Jessie were so sweet in those days. I used to dress them up in these little Ralph Lauren dresses and take them to church. We could afford things like that back then. Then we adopted the baby and I was so happy. Drew was so beautiful. I almost felt like she was really mine.” I hear glass shatter in the kitchen. Stephanie explodes into curses.

I decide to wait for the social worker from the locked safety of my room. I stand up.

“Where do you think you're going?” She's practically on top of me. “I'm talking to you! I want to tell you how that bastard Mike ruined my life just because he wanted a boy!”

I knew it. I always knew it. Mike wanted me and she didn't. I really want to get to my room. It's five to seven, but social workers tend to run late.

“Why don't you lie down?” I ask, putting a few steps between us. “You've had a really tough …”

She lunges, her claws digging into my collar. I try to break loose by running, but that just pulls me off my feet and swings me to the floor. She gets on me like a schoolyard bully, knees pressing into my chest, screaming in my face. “From day ONE you were trouble!” The heel of her hand slams the side of my head. I see pretty fireworks.

The hell with this. She's not my mom anymore. She's just some nut I've had enough of. I grab her hair and pull hard, yanking her off balance. She slides to the side and I scramble up and run, but she chases me into the hallway and kicks me, I think. Something sharp hits me in the kidney and I double over. “I knew you were a bad kid!” she screams, punching me all over. “Those other homes threw you out. I told Mike you would ruin everything. You …” It deteriorates into nothing but swearing and random explosions of pain. I can't find a way to get free.

Then we're on the floor again. I realize as her hands go for my throat that she thinks she has nothing to lose and just a couple of minutes to get her revenge on the kid who ruined her life. I thrash like a panicky fish on a hook, break her hold on my neck, and scream, “Saint Gabriel! Help me! Help me!”

The front door crashes open.

Chapter 10

Haloed by lamplight, I see the gigantic man, black wings swirling as he rushes toward us. No, it isn't wings. It's the leather fringe on his jacket. His long blue black hair, his face. His eyes. This is the man I saw at the cemetery, the man who came to me when I was four. He's real. He's
real
.

He wrenches Stephanie off me and throws her like a sack of laundry. Her body hits a wall and slides down. “Hunter, are you okay?” he asks me.

I'm incapable of speech. I'm sure I'm not hallucinating, but how do I know? Maybe she choked me into another episode. But no, he's real. I don't know what he is, but he's real and he knows me and he's here to rescue me. I make a croaking sound.

Meanwhile Stephanie has staggered up and throws herself on his back like a cougar. He lurches around and they go down together. I can't move and I don't know what I'd do if I could.

Stephanie is screaming at him and trying to use her claws on his face, but he's very big and strong and he gets her down and sort of straddles her. I feel sick. “Don't fight him!” I call out in my croaky voice. “He's too strong!”

He has her by the throat now and is sort of shaking her and saying, “Stop it, stop it.”

Then everything comes to a stop. Stephanie comes to a stop. I turn my head and throw up on the rug. The house is very quiet. He lets go of her neck and stands up. “Hunter,” he says. “I didn't have any choice.”

“Who are you?” I say. “What are you?”

“We have to get out of here now,” he says, looking around. “Your social worker will be here any second. Come on.”

I'm just barely able to sit up. My whole body is shaking. Different voices are shouting in my head, telling me different things to do. Go with him. Don't go with him. “You …”

“Come on, we don't have time.” He picks me up, fireman style, and we're out in the twilight, him racing with me, me bouncing on his shoulder. I hear his panting breath, smell his fear. He's human. He's human and I don't know who he is or what he wants.

“Help!” I scream to the whole neighborhood. “Help me!”

“Oh, God, no, Hunter, don't!” He's running to the van, Skylark Pest Control, and he slides the side panel open and throws me in. I collide with his motorcycle and what looks like a lot of sound equipment. The word
surveillance
surfaces in my mind. This man has been stalking me. I drag myself to the panel door, but the engine has already started and we scream off into the night.

The song plays over and over, a woman's voice like an angel, but the song is oppressive, a slow, trudging melody with a horrible edge of fear in it. A language I don't know. He plays it 24–7, here in his hovel, where I'm now a prisoner, locked in a bathroom so small I can barely stretch my legs out. It's like a song you'd play in a movie if some guy was walking the last mile to the electric chair. And that's how I feel. Doomed.

The bathtub has rust stains and drips continuously. There are several cracked floor tiles. The medicine cabinet is low on hygienic products, high on prescription meds. I wonder where I am, what time it is, whether the social worker ever came and if she did, did she find Stephanie's body? Maybe they'll assume I snapped and killed her. That would be great, because then the police would be trying to find me.

The music cycles again, like Chinese water torture. I want to bang my head on the floor, knock myself out to make it stop.

The lock springs on the door and I jump up as he comes in. He has a bowl of some kind of muck with a spoon stuck in it. I guess he doesn't plan to murder me if he's feeding me. But that still leaves a whole range of other horrible things he might want.

“Tell me who you are and what you've been doing to me with all this angel stuff,” I say.

“I will, I promise,” he says. His eyes are very kind, but I keep the image of him choking Stephanie fresh in my mind. “Are you hungry, Hunter?”

I sit down on the only available furniture. I feel suddenly very weak. “How do you know my name?”

“I've always known your name. I've known you all your life.”

“Don't give me any of that angel shit, mister, because I'm not a genius about religion, but angels don't stalk people and kill their parents. I'm almost positive.”

“I had to do certain things.…”

“Tell me how you did it. Was my room bugged?”

“Yes. I needed to know what was going on in that house.”

I remember the day I thought Andrea had disturbed things in my room. Shortly after that my guardian angel started knowing what I was praying for. “Where was the bug?”