Found You (4 page)

The figure, seeming to sense his recognition, turned its head in his direction. The shriveled mouth, painted over in waxy pink lipstick, worked up a small smile. The eyes glazed over behind cloudy cataracts. The left hand made a fist, and then relaxed it into a little wave.

“Hey there, Jake,” his Aunt Naomi said.

He took a long drag and let the smoke seep out of parted lips. His eyes narrowed. He felt the heartbeats in
his neck, his wrists. His stomach swung out and away from him. The hand that held the cigarette shook.

“Wanna give your aunt a smoke, Jakey?”

Jake exhaled a stream of smoke but didn’t move. The ingrained response to get up and do as he was told was overridden by an underlying fear that once he reached that thing that looked so much like his aunt it would wrap one of those clawlike hands around his wrist and tear both the cigarette and his hand away from him. Stress-trip hallucination or not, he didn’t want it touching him.

“No, nothing like that,” an alien voice in his head responded to his thoughts. “I won’t touch you, Jakey. I won’t have to. I can hurt you right from here.” His aunt smiled at him, revealing rows of shark teeth.

Jake’s fingers tightened around the cigarette, pinching the end of the filter. He tried to stand, found his legs wouldn’t support the effort, and fell back onto the porch, scrabbling away from her until his back banged into the bottom of the screen door. Pain thumped across his spine.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I think you know.”

It wasn’t her. Couldn’t be. But Jake said, “You’re dead.”

The thing that looked like his aunt laughed; it was her smoke-crusted, throaty chuckle, just like he remembered.

“I’m ageless. I won’t die. Come on. You
know
, don’t you?”

Jake thought it might be right. He did know. Only the last time he’d seen it, in one of those awful newly sober dreams, it looked sort of like a man, with a man’s
long black trench and black hat. And it didn’t have a face.

After a moment, it said, “You killed her, you know.”

Jake felt weak and more than a little sick. He pressed his back against the door, hoping, he supposed, to pass right through it into the safety of his house.

“I didn’t. It wasn’t my fault. There wasn’t anything I could—”

“You left her alone.” His aunt took several rapid steps closer, and Jake cried out, his feet pushing uselessly against the porch floor. He dropped the cigarette, his hands smacking down against the wood to hoist himself up. He managed to get up off the floor, and then fell to sharp pain in his wrist. He reached up, grabbed the door handle, and pulled himself to his feet.

The Aunt Naomi–thing stopped when it got to the base of the steps. Its cloudy eyes caught fire, two tiny points of flame that burned out quickly into dark pits of ash. It leaned in with impossible balance, the top half of its body floating parallel to the porch floor, its legs keeping the angle of the stairs while its feet remained firmly planted on the ground at the base of the steps. It made his aunt’s body look broken.

It coughed and spat a wad of something black and quivering just in front of his feet. “You should have killed yourself, you selfish brat. You should have died with her, instead of leaving her.”

Jake felt tears burning his eyes. His tongue lay heavy in his mouth, too heavy to move. He shook his head emphatically, groaning a little.

Inside, the cell phone rang, and Jake jumped. He
chanced a quick glance over his shoulder. The phone rang again. He turned back to his aunt.

Whatever it had been was gone. Gone.

He’d stared it down. Not real.
Not
real. His lips formed the words, as if that would make them true, but no sound came out.

The phone rang again.

At his feet, the black phlegm dried and fell apart, no more than dirt, like the dirt around the shed. He kicked at it to get it away. His left wrist throbbed, and the palm of that hand burned. He turned it over and found the crushed remains of his cigarette there, gray-black ash around a tiny pit seared into his skin.

The phone rang a third time and kept ringing. He looked out over the yard.

He was alone. With his arm, he dabbed at his cheeks, which felt cold even in the late summer wind, and to his surprise, he wiped away tears.

It hadn’t been his fault. He hadn’t killed Chloe. He’d never made her do anything she didn’t want to do—never.

Except…

“
I don’t know, Jake, I’ve never done heroin before. I’m
scared, Jake. I’m really scared
.”

The new wave of tears felt hot on his skin.

He
hadn’t
killed her. But he couldn’t bring himself to mouth those words.

Jake pulled open the screen door and went inside, shaking his hand out as he crossed back through the kitchen to the den. The cell phone sat alone on the table, still ringing. No heroin baggie.

He noticed how pale his hand looked when he reached for the phone.

When he answered, dead air greeted him.

Dorothy “Dorrie” Weatherin knew every hateful inch of her own body. She knew how the inside curves of her thighs rubbed together when she walked and how they billowed out from the hems of her shorts when she sat. She felt the backs of her thighs curve around the edges of chairs, while the fronts of her thighs jiggled with every step she took. She saw how her skin folded on her back when she twisted to look at her view from behind in a mirror. Her hips made almost two curves between her waist and her legs, saddlebags that slid back to an ass like two large marshmallows. The skin under her arms jiggled when she waved. She saw double chins in every picture anyone took of her. Her large breasts drooped on the top of her gut. And her stomach—God, her stomach. When she wore low-rise jeans, she felt it hang over the belt line. When she wore waist-cut pants, it made a pregnant bulge beneath the fabric. When she stood naked, studying the ample curves, pressing into the skin to try to feel some muscle definition underneath, it made her want to cry. She imagined smoothing off the extra pounds as if they were clay and she a sculpture still in the making. She thought of the fat like cheese to be shaved off in layers with a grater. She thought of it like water balloons that she could prick a hole in, letting all the insecurity and extra baggage slowly leak out.

It wasn’t just the aesthetic aspect that got to her, either. Her gynecologist and general practitioner both
got on her case about her weight as a health issue. She had high blood pressure and high cholesterol. She got winded when she walked up stairs. Sometimes her chest hurt.

So at twenty-six, Dorrie decided it was time for a change. No more “but she has a beautiful face.” No more being called “full-figured,” “zaftig,” “breeder-built,” even “big-boned.” No more well meaning (she supposed) advice that echoed condescension in her ears. She was tired of being in the “posey” category in women’s clothing magazines, indicating a plump, round form. She wanted to be a daffodil. Even a tulip. She wanted to be thin. Fit. Healthy. Strong.

Today was day four of the new diet and exercise plan.

The actual lake in Lakehaven curved into inlets all along the shoreline, and in 1992 a track was paved around one of these inlets, with a quaint gray stone bridge stretching out over the lake itself. Inhabitants who lived close enough to the lake to pay the lake association fees used the track all spring, summer, and fall. They walked dogs and jogged and took romantic strolls. They played volleyball on the sandy shore just off the track. They pushed their babies in strollers and their el der ly in wheelchairs. And many, like Dorrie, power walked around the lake.

Dorrie wore a T-shirt and sweat shorts. Self-consciously aware of the thin girls with their long streams of blonde hair tied up in ponytails, their muscles tightly propelling them laps ahead of her, Dorrie swung her arms and pumped her legs and felt her body
groggily come to life. Her lungs burned, and her muscles started to hurt right away.

A couple of teenage boys with shaggy hair, dark T-shirts and jeans—bony and awkwardly tall—watched her round the first curve, and she felt her whole insides tighten. Teenage boys usually meant stares and snickers. They meant nasty muttered name-calling that she could just catch as she breezed by. These boys didn’t say anything, but she felt heat in her cheeks all the same.

Day four was a bitch.

But once she was a good distance from the boys, she felt her breath loosen in her chest. A light breeze blew across the sweat that beaded on her skin and cooled her, and she had the notion that maybe she really could do it—lose the weight, tone up, slim down. She wanted to be faster. Sleeker. In control of her body as well as her mind. She wanted people to see the Dorrie she wanted to be. It just took time, was all. She’d known plenty of girls who lost a lot of weight right away, just to pack it back on a month or so later. She wanted it gone for good.

Dorrie reached the halfway mark—a metal bike rack at the dirt path entrance to bike trails through the nearby woods. She felt a little better. Only half a mile left to go. She focused her gaze on the road ahead and, taking deeper breaths, plunged a little faster forward.

Later, when she sat curled up under a blanket at home with a mug of hot tea, when she went over what happened in her head, she would think of that road before her, that stretch of path that mattered above all else. Her focus had been on the road. And she’d think that was why she didn’t notice something wrong sooner.

She came out of that focus slowly, as she took in the last few landmarks indicating the home stretch—the fallen, twisted tree trunk, the stone park bench with “NIN” spray-painted in black letters. A gray cast of twilight had settled over everything, giving it a kind of pre-storm eeriness that in itself didn’t quite unsettle her. But as she rounded the last curve and headed into the last eighth of a mile, Dorrie noticed the people were gone. The track around the lake was very popu lar; people dotted the path when she got there and remained when she left. However, as she took in the periphery of the path, she saw she was alone. She slowed to a stroll, glancing around her, behind her, trying to peer through the sporadic trees to see someone on the path or shore of the far side of the lake.

No one was there.

She picked up the pace again, suddenly very uncomfortable at the thought of being alone on the path. The woods, full and dark in some places, presented endless possible hiding places for rapists and muggers. The growing shadows threw a sinister quality over rough surfaces of wood and stone. Alone. She was alone and yet…

She wasn’t. A figure leaned against a tree several hundred feet ahead of her, arms folded over the broad chest, black hat pulled down low over the face. She hadn’t noticed him, maybe, because his clothes were so dark and parts of him blended with the pockets of oncoming night that had nestled into the spaces between trees. She frowned, slowing without really being aware of it, reluctant to get closer. Somehow, the figure’s presence was worse than when she thought she was alone.

Because something…something wasn’t right about it.

Dorrie was used to scanning faces, observing body language and expression for signs of derision, pity, even disgust, and she supposed her oversensitivity sometimes made her see those things even when they weren’t there. But even from the corners of her eyes, she noticed faces. The head tilted up to her, and that’s when it struck her what was wrong. The figure leaning against the tree seemed to have no face at all.

She came to a dead stop. It waved. She glanced behind her, just a quick look, to gauge whether she should turn and run the other way. She’d have to backtrack almost a mile if she did, and she was already tired and covered with a thin, clammy sheen of sweat. It could overtake her, if it tried. She had little doubt of that.

Day four was definitely turning out to be a bitch.

“Dorrie….” The voice reminded her a little bit of wind chimes, many different timbres clinking together. It made goose bumps rise on her arms. The sound came from somewhere around the head, although she was sure now that the figure had no mouth. It was growing dark fast, and for every shade of night, the white head grew brighter. “Dorrie, you’re so close…so close to the end.”

“Who are you? How do you know my name?” Her voice sounded thin and strained in her own ears.

“I’m your new best friend, Dorrie. Where you go, I go. I want every inch of you. Dead. I want every inch of you dead.”

Dorrie felt tears form in her eyes. “Please don’t hurt me. Just…don’t hurt me.”

The head tilted thoughtfully as it stood straight. “But that’s the fun part, Dorrie. And you and I, we’re going to have a lot of fun.”

It took a step toward her, and Dorrie cried out. She turned to run and tripped over a rock. She fell hard into the packed earth of the path, the impact forcing air from her lungs, her hands slamming painfully onto pebbles and sticks. She gasped for air, tears squeezed from her eyes as she blinked hard. She tried to crawl forward but found she couldn’t. She rolled over, heaving breaths, and her eyes grew wide.

It was twilight, not dark, and two young men and a woman stood over her. She recognized them vaguely as other joggers she’d seen on the path before. She peered around their legs to the far tree where the faceless figure had been. It was gone.

She started to cry.

The bewildered joggers looked at each other and then back down at her.

“You okay, miss?” One man reached a hand down to pull her to her feet, and she grabbed it, cringing internally when a second hand reached down to help lift her.

She stood and dusted the dirt off her legs. Her face felt hot. Her breath came back slowly, and pain twinged in her chest.

“You okay?” the jogger repeated. “You, uh, you want us to call someone?”

Dorrie shook her head. “I’m okay. I’m…I’m okay. I’m just…I’m going home.”

She gave the tree where she’d seen the faceless thing
wide berth when she came upon it, wary eyes darting around the area for signs of a black hat, a glowing head. She saw nothing, and as she got in her car, she let go of a long, shuddery breath.