Wildwood Road (18 page)

Michael cried out and spun around, stomach lurching, heart pounding against the inside of his chest as though it might tear free. But the girl was not there. He was still alone in the house.

Slowly he faced the microwave again. He opened the door. The bag of popcorn was just that, now. The oily streaks were barely noticeable. But the name was seared into his head. The lost girl had been doing everything she could to try to communicate with him, but something didn't want her to. She was bound, somehow, and couldn't really reach him. In some way he knew that. But she managed, still. She managed.

Barnes.

Susan Barnes.

J
ILLIAN PULLED INTO THE DRIVEWAY
a little before one
A.M.
and did not bother to try to get the car into the garage. She was not so drunk that she didn’t realize she would likely scrape one side or the other going in. There was a kind of delicious feeling burning low in her abdomen. Her lips seemed very dry and she licked them over and over. At some point she had taken off her shoes to make it more comfortable to drive, and they were on the seat next to her. Jilly left them there as she got out of the car and slammed the door.

Her suede jacket was not warm enough for the chill of a November witching hour, and even with the alcohol in her she shivered as she hurried to the door. The cold pavement of the walkway stung her bare feet and swirled around her legs, flapping her skirt. Jillian purred softly to herself with the thrill of that cold wind caressing her.

It took her a moment to realize that her keys were clutched in her hand and she snarled at them as though they had conspired against her. Teeth chattering, she scraped the key against the door several times before finally sliding it home and twisting it.

When she closed the door, her keys were still hanging from the lock. She noticed for a moment, and then just as quickly forgot. The warm buzz in the most primal part of her brain had not blocked out the most vital bit of information. She had to work in the morning. Time for bed.

She went up the stairs with her jacket still on, holding the rail to steady herself. Her palm made a shushing noise on the wood that she liked.

A dull drone of voices came from the bedroom. Jillian paused at the top of the stairs and frowned deeply. Her nostrils flared.
Fuck,
she thought.
Fucking Michael.
The light from the television flickered from that open door. After a second or two she rolled her eyes and continued on.

When she stepped through the door she found Michael still awake. He sat propped against his pillows, watching something black and white. A tall man was arguing with a short, stumpy guy and a blond-haired woman with a masculine voice and the body of a prison matron. Michael had a plastic tub of popcorn on his stomach. There were bits of it spilled onto the bed. On the sheets. Some on the floor. Two empty microwave bags were on the nightstand beside him.

Michael's gaze shifted to her, then back to the television.

“What the hell are you up to?” Jillian asked, swaying a bit as she walked into the room.

“What does it look like?” Michael replied.

She flinched. Unbelievable. He was lazing around having himself a grand old popcorn fiesta and she was working to pay the goddamn mortgage. Beautiful.

“Did you finish your sketches for that client?” she asked.

Michael resolutely refused to look at her. This was the last thing in the world Jillian was going to put up with. Who the hell did he think he was? She shifted position, blocking his view of the TV. For several seconds he continued to stare straight ahead, as though he could see through her. Then, with hateful slowness, he at last met her gaze.

“Go to bed,” he told her.

“Fuck you. You don't talk to me like that,” she snapped, hand on one hip. “What the hell have you been doing around here all day and all night?”

His breathing quickened and his eyes grew moist. He bit his lip. “Me? What have I been doing? It's one in the morning, Jilly. What have you been doing? Besides drinking. I can smell that much from here.”

She saw his gaze dart to her legs, and he winced as though the sight of her bare flesh hurt him. Her husband was a good-looking man. Darkly handsome with plenty of what she called Grrrrr. He hadn't shaved in days, but that usually only added to his appeal.

Not tonight.

Jillian smiled and withdrew her pantyhose from the right-hand pocket of her suede coat. Michael seemed to crumble a little, right before her eyes.

“I got a run in them,” she explained.

A glint of hope lit his gaze.

Then she pulled her lavender lace thong from her left-hand pocket. “This, though . . . this I took off just for fun.”

Michael stared at her. In the flickering television light she could see his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed several times in quick succession. He gritted his teeth and nodded slowly, as though making his mind up about something. And the truth was, something had changed in his eyes then. Jillian saw it. She just had no idea what it was.

“What did they do to you, Jilly? Can you tell me that? Do you even know?”

A slow grin crept across her face. She felt it, uncontrollable. “How much detail do you want?”

Confusion was etched in his features, and then dawning surprise and revulsion. Michael seemed speechless. Jillian liked that. She gestured at the TV, where the black-and-white sitcom played on. “What is this shit, anyway? Why the hell are you watching this?”

Michael froze. His face went slack and his eyes widened. He looked at her as though he had never seen her before in his life. Jillian did not like that look. Something about it got under her skin, and not in a way that pissed her off—like everything seemed to—but in a way that made her a little afraid.

“What are you talking about?”

He got out of bed, spilling the bowl of popcorn all over the floor, and barely seemed to notice it as he took a step toward her. It crunched under his foot. His eyes were wild. In his underwear and a Donald Duck T-shirt, he looked like a lunatic.

“This . . . this show,” she said, uncertain now, taken off guard by his reaction. The revelation of the thong wadded up in her pocket ought to have gotten a very different response.

He drew in a long, shuddering breath and stood up straighter. “It's
The Dick Van Dyke Show,
Jilly. How can you not know that? I know you haven't seen it since you were a kid, but you've told me a dozen times you used to watch it with your father when you were little.”

A ripple of something unpleasant went through her. “I've never seen it before. And it's black and white, Michael. Do you think I'm stupid? This show is too old for me to have watched it as a kid.”

“Reruns, Jillian,” he said, narrowing his eyes, his head twisting slightly to one side as he studied her. “How can you not remember that?”

Twitching, she stuffed her thong and hose back into her pockets and doffed her jacket, throwing it over the edge of the bed. The question bothered her and she did not want to talk about it, did not want to deal with Michael anymore at all.

“Hold on,” he whispered.

She spun on him. “What? Hold on to what? Stop
looking
at me like that!”

All traces of the pitiful Michael were gone. Grim and determined, he reached for her face. Jillian flinched as he caressed her cheek and though she wanted to slap him, to claw at his eyes, she held back.

“Have you forgotten other things?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Michael dropped his hand. “What was the name of the guy who took you to your prom?”

She scowled. “Andy Hollings. He forced me to give him a blow job and I threw up in his lap.”

Her husband's face twisted in distaste, but then the contemplative look returned. “Talk to me, Jillian. For better or worse, remember? Have you forgotten other things? You forgot
The Dick Van Dyke Show.
What else? I've been trying to figure out why you've been acting so . . . why you haven't been yourself. I know you feel it. Well, what if it's something really wrong with you? Some chemical imbalance or . . . or worse?”

“Me? How's
your
head, Michael? You're the one who was seeing ghosts.”

“Jilly—”

She gave him the finger and turned her back on him, unzipping her skirt and letting it fall to the floor, showing him her bare ass. He swore under his breath, but it wasn't from admiration. She grinned to herself, relishing the flavor of the wine in her mouth and the warm tingling ache between her legs.

She tried to unbutton her shirt but the operation proved problematic for her fumbling, drunken fingers. She tugged the shirt off over her head and grabbed a clean T-shirt from her closet. When she pulled it on and turned toward the bed, Michael blocked her path.

“Get out of my way,” she snarled.

But Michael had been thinking. That was plain on his face.

“You don't want to answer, or you can't answer?”

“Get out of my way, Michael.”

“Who was your first-grade teacher?”

“Michael,” she muttered, warning him.

“What about fifth grade? Seventh? Who was your eighth-grade teacher, Jillian? What about high school? Who was the principal in your high school?”

Trembling, and furious at herself for it, she tried to push past him. Michael grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Rita Welch! My high-school principal was Rita Welch!” she cried, hating how shrill her voice sounded.

Michael closed his eyes and let out a long breath. He nodded and opened them again. “All right. Now we're getting somewhere. Do you remember what your mother bought Hannah for her eighth birthday? You were so jealous.”

“Of course I do.”

“What was it?”

She scowled and rolled her eyes again, stumbling a bit. Michael caught her. Jillian met his gaze fiercely, wishing now that she wasn't a little drunk. Wishing she was sober enough to outsmart him.

“You don't remember. Do you remember anything?” His voice rose to a panicked pitch. “Hannah? The beach house your family always rented on Cape Cod? The first boy you kissed? Chasing the ice-cream man? Do you remember the trip your family took to Florida when you were ten?”

“Of course I do,” she said, not liking the quaver in her voice.

Michael took a step away from her. “You've never been to Florida in your life. Not ever.” He ran his hands over his face. “Jesus, Jilly, what did they do?”

It was the same question as before, but this time she did not misconstrue it. The question had nothing to do with her absent thong or the pleasant throb up inside her. It was about something else. But Jillian was entirely mystified as to what that something else might be.

And it frightened her. What if there really
was
something wrong with her mind? A brain tumor or something?

“Jilly, please, just tell me. What's the earliest memory you have?”

She was still trembling, but now she began to shake her head back and forth violently. “Stop it,” she said. “Just stop it, Michael. Leave me alone! Stop with this psychoanalysis bullshit. I can't . . . I don't want to know!”

The words were out of her mouth before she knew they were coming. Once they had escaped her lips she gave a little hiss of surprise. Then she felt a change sweeping through her. Her head shook harder, her teeth grinding down, and her hands clenched into fists with such ferocity that her fingernails slit little crescent wounds into her palms.

“Jilly—”

“Don'tyoufuckingcallmethatyousonofabitch!” Jillian began to beat him then, raining her fists down on him. She caught his jaw with a hard right that felt like it might have broken a knuckle or two, but it was worth it. It felt so good she nearly came all over again.

Michael was off balance and Jillian followed through. She stepped after him, slapping and punching. Her left hand flashed out and she scratched his cheek, but he rolled with it and she did not gash him as deeply as she wanted to.

“Fuck you, get out of my house! Get out of here!”

She kicked him, aiming for his balls, but he moved enough so that she caught him in the shin instead. Michael hissed in pain, staggering back again. In a second she'd back him up against the bed and he'd fall down and then she'd have him.
Fucking asshole. Son of a bitch.
Who the fuck did he think he was?

“Who the fuck? Who the fuck?” she asked, turning it into a chant, saying it over and over.

“It's my house, too. I live here,” he said.

Jillian spit in his face.

Michael's mouth dropped open in abject horror.

They both froze.

“Get the fuck out of my house. And keep away from me.”

He shook his head with an expression of utter despair. A single tear slipped down his cheek. When Jillian saw it she scoffed, her upper lip curling.

“Pussy. Get out.”

She crossed her arms and watched him as he pulled on his blue jeans and a sweatshirt, threw some things in an overnight bag, and left. His footsteps went down the stairs and she heard the door slam. The rumble of his car starting floated up from the garage; she went to the window and watched as he jockeyed around her car, which was parked at an angle across the driveway.

Then he was gone.

Jillian picked up the remote control and raised it to change the channel, but then she froze, staring at
The Dick Van Dyke Show
. She was mesmerized, watching the actors. They were wretchedly happy and kind. The jokes weren't funny. The laugh track couldn't have convinced her otherwise. Where was the charm in this?

She lay down on the bed, still tender all over—the two guys at the bar had used her mercilessly and she had urged them on—and she watched that old black-and-white relic on the television. Within her was a vague awareness that something was missing, and that its absence should have hurt her. But she was only bored.

Bored, and cold.

Moments later she fell asleep, and slumbered on undisturbed by conscience, or by dreams.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Michael Dansky's world had been twisted so completely in the past few days that he could no longer look at anything the same way. The very fabric of things had been undone. Or perhaps it was only that the curtains of reality had been drawn aside and the real performance was only just beginning. The apparition of a little girl appeared and disappeared at will. Strange, malformed women spied upon him from the side of the road and appeared in the darkness of his bedroom to violate his flesh, to attack his wife. To taint her.

All that he had known for certain about the world now had to be unlearned.

And yet . . .

He drove from home to the office of Krakow & Bester with the window down, the November chill promising an early winter as it whipped at his face. WBZ news radio said nothing about the alteration of reality. There had been a double murder in Newton, a woman and her daughter killed by an unknown assailant. The weather was supposed to warm up in the morning, with the possibility of some rain. The Patriots were primed for another banner year. Ordinary life continued.

But the real and mundane had now become surreal to him. How the reversal had taken place, Michael did not know. But as he drove the winding road into downtown Andover his gaze shifted frequently to street corners and to the shadows between buildings, and he found himself surprised not to see ugly, emotionless faces staring back, watching him. There was no sign of the girl, either. Of Susan Barnes.

After a while, it began to worry him. If she was no longer appearing to him, and those misshapen women were no longer watching, did that mean something further had happened? Had they
caught
her? It was a strange thought, but Michael felt certain the girl was thwarting them somehow by appearing to him.

Even as he turned left at the light in Andover center, a turn that would take him right past Krakow & Bester, he chuckled softly to himself at the perverse irony. He was anxious because the specters that had been haunting him were now leaving him alone. Despite Jillian's aberrant behavior, everything else seemed normal. He thought of a story he had seen on television about a teenage surfer girl who had lost her arm in a shark attack. The shark had come and done its damage, and then moved on, leaving the girl forever changed. Yet everyone behaved as if things could continue as if nothing had ever happened. Life would return to normal, somehow.

The sharks had come and they had mutilated Jillian, sure enough, though her wounds were invisible. And now things were returning to normal. But like that surfer girl, the damage was done.

And in this case, the sharks were still out there.

There was no traffic on the road. Streetlights went from green to yellow to red and back to green again in a silent display. Fluorescent lights flickered in shuttered storefronts. Others were dark behind metal gratings. It was after two o'clock in the morning and the world was asleep. An ordinary night. Yet no matter how ordinary the world seemed, for Michael life could not go on as usual. Things would never return to normal.

Not unless he
made
them.

Jillian had changed completely, and now he knew that those changes were more than behavioral. She had no recollection of her childhood. Michael felt certain that those twisted women had somehow destroyed part of her mind, that they had damaged her. He did not know if there was any way to help her, but if one existed, he first had to find out what they were, those shapeless figures. And the key to that knowledge was the lost girl.

Michael parked in front of the office. Before getting out of the car he took a careful look around. The street was deserted. Only one other car was parked on that entire block, several spaces back, and it had a couple of parking tickets under the windshield wiper. Whoever owned it wasn't coming back
anytime soon. Idly, he wondered what had happened to the owner. It reminded him that other people were living their lives and had their own problems. Somewhere out there, he reasoned, there must be others who had touched the truth the way he had—or had it touch them. It made him feel less alone.

He left his overnight bag locked in the car. As he let himself into the building with his front door key and went up the stairs, he realized he had never come here in casual dress. With Jillian shrieking at him, he had dressed in blue jeans, sneakers, and a Patriots sweatshirt. Now he felt like a thief, breaking into the place. There weren't any lights on but when he unlocked the office doors and slipped inside, he found that the lights from the street outside provided more than enough illumination to keep him from crashing into filing cabinets or the copy machine.

More than ever, in that strange combination of gloom from neon and moon, he expected to see Scooter. Everything seemed washed in a dull golden glimmer. If ghosts were to appear they ought to come now.

But he was alone in the office with the hum of equipment that had been left to run all night. A refrigerator. The copy machine. Computers. Unfortunately the heat was not among them, and he shuddered with the cold that had settled into the office overnight. He did not want to turn a lot of lights on. It was unlikely anyone would notice from the street at this hour of the morning, but it still felt like a bad idea. The heat, on the other hand, no one was going to notice.

Once he had found the thermostat and dialed up a more comfortable temperature, Michael went to his own office. Inside were the remnants of the days he had been absent from Krakow & Bester. Mail was piled on his chair. The red light on his phone blinked rapidly, demanding he pay attention to the accumulated voice mail that must await him. Half a dozen yellow sticky notes adhered to his computer screen. He stripped them off, ignored the blinking light on the phone, and dumped the mail from his chair onto the floor, immediately forgetting all of it.

His eyes burned with exhaustion but he felt as though his mind had gotten a second wind. From his car he had made a call to the Hawthorne Inn, just a few miles away, and he knew a comfortable bed awaited him there. But he had things to do before he could rest.

“Miles to go before I sleep.”
That was the Robert Frost poem, wasn't it?
Yes. “. . . Promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

Both so true.

In the darkened office he turned on the computer and typed in his password. Once it gave him access, he opened his Internet browser and began to search for Susan Barnes.

It was a massive exercise in frustration. There were dozens of search engines that promised results. Many of them required him to sign in, some with a credit card, and among those, some guaranteed an answer if he would just pay the one-year membership fee. It was a reckless pursuit. Susan was a girl; no child that age would have her own telephone or address listing. But an e-mail address—or photographs on a family Web site—those things were not impossible. He typed “Susan Barnes” into the most reliable search engine on the Net.

There were 45,700 results.

He bit his lip and nearly wept. For well over an hour he keyed in additional words and combinations. “Massachusetts.” “Missing.” “Abducted.” Even “death.” If she was a ghost, surely that word would be a part of any article about her. An obituary, even. But in all that time, his frustration only grew. The Internet was supposed to be the answer to every question a person might have. You could buy or locate anything that way. But though he found reference to hundreds of women named Susan Barnes, even girls, there was nothing that even hinted that any of the entries might be the girl he was searching for. Some had pictures and looked nothing like her. Most were far too old, or lived too far away, even in other countries.

The closest he came was an Amesbury real estate agent. She lived only fifteen minutes away, but her picture on the real estate company's Web site revealed her to be in her fifties. Her hair was dyed a strawberry blond, but as Michael studied the picture something made him take a closer look. If he was looking for a relative of the lost girl, of
his
Susan, there was enough of a resemblance to this woman that she would certainly be on his list. She was too old to be the girl's mother, but a grandmother or an aunt, perhaps.

He nodded to himself. That wasn't a terrible idea. If he could find a relative with the same name, that might be the lead he needed.

He hit the address and phone number search engines and developed lists of women named Susan Barnes, not only in Massachusetts but throughout New England. Rubbing his eyes, he checked the clock as he printed them up. Half past three. Reams of paper accumulated on top of his printer. If he had to call every single one of them, he would.

Exhausted, he sat back in the chair and scanned the pages. There was only so much he could do in one night.

Michael glanced at the clock to find that it was ticking toward four in the morning. The last thing he wanted was to still be here when the first person showed up in the morning.

Reluctantly he shut down his computer and stacked up the pages he had printed. Tomorrow he was going to search for the house again, while it was still light out. And then, tomorrow night, he would begin making phone calls. For now, though, there were things he didn't want to leave the office without accomplishing.

By the time Michael left Krakow & Bester, locking up behind him, it was just after seven
A
.
M
. on Thursday morning, the ninth of November, and the sun was on the rise. Already there was life on the street, people walking their dogs or jogging by, light traffic on the road, a short line inside Starbucks.

He had never been so happy to see the morning. It energized him, made him want to go out and search for the house right then, take full advantage of the daylight. But he had not slept in far too long, and just the thought of a soft mattress at the Hawthorne Inn was enough to coerce him.

Sleep. At least a few hours.

He hoped that he would not dream, or that if he did, he would not remember.

T
EDDY
P
OLITO HAD HIT THE
snooze button on his alarm clock one too many times this morning. Running a bit late, he had foregone breakfast and regretted it the instant he pulled out of his driveway. One stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through later, he had remedied that situation. His stomach rumbled gratefully in response, but he left the cinnamon bagel in the bag while he drove the rest of the way into work.

With the Dunkin' Donuts bag in one hand and the biggest damn cup of coffee they dared to sell in the other, he marched up the stairs with the determined dignity of a condemned man. Work had sucked miserably the past week. Michael had fucked up the Newburyport ice-cream gig and Teddy was certain that when the campaign was reassigned, there wouldn't just be a new artist chosen, but a new copywriter too.

The worst part of it was that he couldn't really even be that pissed off. His star at Krakow & Bester had risen thanks to its being tacked onto Michael Dansky's, like the tail nailed to Eeyore's ass in the old Winnie the Pooh cartoons. Only Michael was anything but a donkey. Which made it all the more upsetting to Teddy the way he'd been behaving. He was no saint; his primary concern was for his own livelihood. But he was concerned about Michael as well.

He tugged the door open and walked into the agency's reception area. Brittany was behind the desk. Her eyes lit up as he entered, and he perked up a little. Brittany was the kind of girl Teddy Polito had never had a chance in hell of bedding, not even back in college, and to see the sparkle in her eyes as she greeted him, to know that she was fond of him, always gave him a lift in his step.

“Morning, Teddy,” she said.

“Good morning, Red,” he said.

Brittany rolled her eyes with a good-natured grin. She had been Red Riding Hood at the masquerade party and Teddy always enjoyed reminding her.

“Any sign of Dansky?” he asked, lowering his voice a bit.

Her smile disappeared. “No. He hasn't called, and I haven't seen him yet.”

Teddy sighed and thanked her. As he was walking past her desk, though, Brittany called him back.

“Listen,” she said, her voice hushed. “Michael's a good guy. If he's having a rough time . . . I guess what I'm saying is that if Gary tries to stir up trouble for him, you'll let me know, right?”

Brows knitted in surprise, Teddy felt like he was seeing Brittany for the first time. She was sweet, and stunning, but not very bright. All those things he had known. But he realized now what kind of person she was. The girl was screwing the boss's son, but she knew right from wrong. She knew the stand-up guys from the scumbags, even if her heart sometimes got in the way of that perception. She was willing to use her relationship with Gary Bester to help Michael out, because Michael was a good guy.

“You're all right, you know that?” Teddy said. It could have come off as insulting, in a way, but the sentiment was genuine and heartfelt, and Brittany must have realized that, because she blushed and thanked him.

“Just let me know,” she said.

Teddy nodded. “Absolutely.”

The sun had been shining when he had dragged his carcass out of bed, but now, as he strode through the bullpen full of cubicles that was the heart of Krakow & Bester, the day had turned gray outside the windows. His mind rewound the morning news bites from the radio and he recalled something about the threat of rain.

As he did every morning, he thanked the gods of commerce that he didn't have to work in a cubicle anymore. Teddy managed the doorknob without crushing his bagel and shoved the door open with his knee. He flicked the light on and went in, dropping the Dunkin' Donuts bag onto the little table against the wall and setting his coffee down to shrug off his jacket. He picked up the cup and took a sip, enjoying the heat of the coffee.

Only when he at last went to sit at his desk did he see the enormous black portfolio folder propped on his chair.

His brow furrowed and Teddy reached for the portfolio, setting the coffee on his desk. He propped the bottom of the portfolio against his voluminous belly and lifted the cover.