On the Edge of Twilight: 22 Tales to Follow You Home (12 page)

A Quick Break

Brian Lumley knew how important it was to get away from the books for a few hours every week or so. Penn State, for all its possible avenues of growth, could become a stifling place, especially with final exams approaching. But without money, car, or time, even getting out for a haircut and a cup of coffee was difficult—and the best he could do.

He shook rain from his coat as he pushed open the glass doors to the Nittany Mall. Just inside, he encountered a contest in full swing.

SHOW YOUR PATRIOTISM FOR A CHANCE TO WIN BIG! a giant banner read. Beneath it, a least a hundred people had surrounded a particleboard stage by the big fountain. On it, above a line of perhaps two dozen other hopefuls, a pimply teen with braces and corn-shuck hair stood awkwardly, belting out the national anthem for all she was worth.

Brian winced as she veered off key, stumbled, resumed, then finished to a smattering of applause. He ducked into Holiday Haircuts, signed in, and took a seat. Flipping through a well-thumbed
Newsweek
, he tried to read, but found himself distracted as more contestants took their turns. The din of the noise coupled with the neon lights of the salon left him feeling slightly anxious.

“Hello there.”

He looked up.

A plump, smiling old lady took a seat. Brian noticed that although the waiting area was empty, she’d chosen the seat directly beside him. He could smell her perfume—lilacs—and see a tiny smudge of makeup caked in the crease between her ear and face, just beneath the closely-permed white hair.

“Goodness, but I’m glad to see it isn’t crowded. I didn’t even have an appointment!”

He smiled. “Oh, you don’t need one here. They’re never very busy this early in the morning.”

“That’s good to know. Thank heavens for that!”

Brian liked the look of her. She seemed down-home, agreeable, and relaxed… quite different from most of the people he knew on campus. It felt good to get away for a quick break, even if it
was
for a mundane reason.

“You have a busy day planned?” he ventured.

“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed! I’m here visiting my son, and I can’t be late.”

“You’re from out of town?”

She nodded. “Pittsburgh. But while I was driving up, I happened to look in the mirror, and my
land
, what a sight! I thought, ‘You can’t be seeing your son like
that
, can you?’ And I knew the answer was no. So I stopped off here. I still have an hour to spare before I’m expected.”

Brian nodded. Behind him, out in the mall, a small child wailed about “the land of the free” so shrilly the sound system gave off an earsplitting shriek of reverb. He winced.

“Well, I hope you have a good day together,” he said, determined to drown out the noise. “Does your son live in State College? Or Bellefonte, maybe?”

The old lady looked at him with eyes suddenly wide and glassy. “Oh, no, no, I’m off to Blairsville to see a psychic! Just five miles down the road.”

“Hmm?” He furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand. Didn’t you say you were going to visit your son?”

“Oh, yes, dear!” she exclaimed, grasping his wrist in a firm, clammy grip, giving it a hard squeeze, then releasing it. “My son is dead, you see. They found his body next to his car on Route 26 three years ago. Not a drop of blood left in it.”

Brian blinked rapidly. Finally, he cleared his throat.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” he said lamely. His lips worked silently a bit longer before he added, “Um… what are you going to ask him? The psychic, I mean. Or, you know, your son
through
the psychic. Or… or whatever.”

“Oh, that’s simple!” The woman threw back her head and cackled. “I’m going to ask what happened to his head! They never found it!”

“I see.” Brian’s vision blurred.

The lights, the singing, the perfume, the laughter…

“Well, ma’am, I think I’m going to go out and watch the contest while I wait,” he announced as brightly as he could. “I love the national anthem.”

“Oh, good idea!” She squeezed his wrist again, pumping it hard with her damp, cool palm. “Isn’t that precious?”

Brian felt nauseated as he staggered out into the mall.

On stage, a fat man with a tobacco-stained beard and jean overalls was belting out the part about the “dawn’s early light.”

Brian walked quickly back to the glass doors and pushed through them, stepping out into the cold, wet day again. He hoped the bus to campus would come early. He needed to get back there, he really did. He no longer wanted a haircut. He no longer wanted to get away.

“A break,” he muttered, pacing back and forth in the rain, letting the cold drops numb his skin. “It was just a quick break.”

Dead End

Cutting his parents’ lawn just wasn’t enough anymore. Summer wouldn’t last forever and James needed more money. He wanted that iPhone,
had to have
that iPhone, and time was ticking by.

Taking his incentive from Harry Larkin, an older boy who always seemed to be mowing a lawn somewhere in the neighborhood, he set to work. After several hours with paste, pencil, and marker he headed out to post two dozen signs around the neighborhood. They read:

Lawn need mowed??

Leaves need raked??

Dog need sat??

CALL JAMES BROCK!

1-814-555-8927

109 Sycamore

CHEAP RATES!!

That done, James sat back and waited for the money to roll in.

He waited a long time. Rain streaked the signs. Wind blew some of them away. No one called, no one came by.

“Why?” he asked his mother.

“Maybe Harry Larkin’s got the market cornered,” she answered.

“Why?” he asked his father.

“The economy,” the old man answered, but didn’t elaborate.

Then, just when everything seemed positively hopeless, Mrs. Wentworth knocked on the door.

The old lady was a piece of work. James had never spoken two words to her before. She chased children off her property on Halloween and scowled at them from her living room window while they waited for the bus. She walked around the block every evening, humming a strange tune, but never said hello to anyone and grumbled when they made any overture. Once a year, on Christmas Eve, she attended church, but never stayed for the reception afterward.

So James was amazed to find her standing there, clutching one of his faded signs in a skeletal, blue-veined hand.

“You sit dogs?” she demanded abruptly. “The sign says you sit dogs.”

“Er,” James replied.

“You an idiot, boy? I don’t have the time of day for idiots.” She pursed her lips.

“Uh… that is, no ma’am. And yeah, I sit dogs.” He’d added that job to his signs as an afterthought. To the best of his knowledge, Harry Larkin didn’t sit dogs. Not that James knew much about how to do it himself.

“Well, I need my dog taken care of. His name’s Riley, and he’s a sweet fellow. Kinda big. No trouble, though. He’s too old for trouble. What do you charge?”

“Ten dollars a day,” he said promptly, rattling off his spiel. “That gets you two feedings and two walks, plus all messes cleaned up. Should there be any. And it’s two dollars a day extra if I have to give him any medicine.”

The old woman signed impatiently. “Highway robbery. I’ll give you eight. No walks needed. Riley’s too old. And no medicine, either. Deal?” She stuck out her hand.

James shook it. Her hand was cold and dry. Later, he brushed some hair from his eyes and happened to smell the fingers that had touched hers. They stank like something gone rotten, covered over with talc.

“You begin tomorrow morning,” she said, clearly ready to be on her way. “Eight. Then again at four. The key is under the mat. The food is on the counter. I’ll pay you when I get back from my sister’s next Sunday. She’s got arthritis real bad, but it’s a pain for both of us, let me tell you.”

And then she was gone.

James stood in the doorway blinking.

“Mom!” he shouted. “Mom, I’ve got a job!”

* * *

He was curious about Mrs. Wentworth’s house. Entering it was like entering enemy territory, except that suddenly it was OK, he was allowed, and that made it even stranger.

But what James found left him disappointed: a slightly musty, perfume-laden home filled with faded photographs, a broken record player, old prayer books, frilly curtains, and the kind of precious knick-knacks the five-and-dime sold at the back of the store for 75% off. It was exactly like Great-Aunt Irene’s house: a place that bored him to tears the three times a year his parents forced him to go there.

James sighed. Where was Riley?

He remembered the dog vaguely: a brown Great Dane, paws the size of a bear’s, with lanky strides and a droopy muzzle. He hadn’t seen it outside in a long time. Too old, he supposed, like Mrs. Wentworth had said.

He sneezed. Really, he’d never been in a place so covered in perfume. Like funeral flowers, he thought fleetingly. The old lady must drench herself in it. And everything she owned.

Riley. He walked slowly through the living room and back into the foyer, then started down the hall.

James hated empty houses. He didn’t like being alone, didn’t like it when his parents went to dinner or parties or the movies and wouldn’t let him come. Didn’t like the way every sound amplified, every piece of furniture loomed when only he was there. Didn’t like the pregnant, waiting darkness as he moved from room to room, or the cold, impersonal light when he flicked the switches on.

He had never been alone in a stranger’s home before. Somehow that was much worse. And maybe it was the strangeness of the place, sure, but there was something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on… a hostile, bleak feeling. Later, when he was older, he would recognize it for what it was: the knowledge that he had entered a part of the world that didn’t know him, that he hadn’t touched and which didn’t need his presence, that didn’t care if he lived or died.

Moving down the hallway, steps slow and unsteady, he marveled as the heady, stifling air grew denser and more saturated. Roses and lilies, wild gardenias. His stomach lurched. He swallowed. Lilac. Tulips and chrysanthemums…

Where was Riley?

“Here, boy,” he called in the thick stillness. No sound of the dog. James entered the kitchen and caught a whiff of something else, something buried beneath the flowers. It made him remember shaking hands with Mrs. Wentworth, of the bad smell on her fingers.

He flicked on the light switch. The smell, the stench, gained identity.

Riley lay in a huge wicker basket. Both it and the dog were covered with flies. They streamed over the body, rose disturbed and buzzing to resettle, and beneath them James caught sight of things white and wriggling, things he’d only seen before on dead birds and rabbits left on hot, blacktopped roads. Everything about the basket and the body seemed in motion—two things made one by a seething, boiling sea.

As he ran from the house, sleeve over his mouth, eyes streaming, he thought,
I hate the cold light in empty houses. Hate it, hate it, hate it…

Then he was home, back where he belonged, in a part of the world where people lived who cared about him, where things made sense, where he felt safe.

But not as safe as he once had been.

* * *

A week passed. Mrs. Wentworth hadn’t left a number where she could be reached and didn’t call. James’ father buried the dog in Mrs. Wentworth’s side yard and returned home sweaty and pale. His mother helped clean out the kitchen.

Both his parents spoke words of comfort to James, trying to shrug off what had happened, to joke about it, to let him know
it wasn’t his fault
.

Well, no kidding
, he thought.

But at night they talked, and James, sitting half-way down on the stairs, heard.

“That dog had been dead for weeks,” his father said, folding the newspaper.

“James mustn’t see her again,” his mother replied over the sound of Johnny Carson. “When she comes over, I’ll talk to her.”

But Mrs. Wentworth didn’t come over.

* * *

“
What did you do with Riley?”

The words were a shriek, barely language.

“I… I…,” said James.

He’d been expecting Brooke Newcomb to call with help on his math homework. Instead, it was Mrs. Wentworth.

“You
buried
him
?”

“I… yes!” he blurted. “Yes, he was
dead
. He was… there were flies, and—”

“Well of
course
he was dead, but
you buried him
?”

James held the phone, still and silent, not daring to suck air.

“That means you didn’t
feed
him. All week
without food
!” Mrs. Wentworth was breathing heavily. Then, seeming to calm herself, she took one big, deep breath and said, more evenly, “Well, I think you can see why I won’t be paying you, young man.”

And with that, she hung up.

* * *

James took the long way around the block for weeks, all to avoid passing Mrs. Wentworth’s house on foot. He didn’t mind, except that the longer walks gave him more time to think. Sometimes, he discovered, thinking too much wasn’t a good thing.

For instance, he often found himself thinking about the newly-dug hole in Mrs. Wentworth’s side yard—the hole his father had dug and filled, and which was now empty again, dirt piled up alongside it. He could see it every time the bus passed her house to and from school.

And invariably, when he thought of that, he also thought of his father’s comment after he’d told him about Mrs. Wentworth’s phone call. His father was a man of few words. But when he spoke, James usually listened.

“I suppose,” his father had told him, handing him a new iPhone, “that you’d best take down those signs. That business venture of yours was kind of a dead end, don’t you think?”

Yes, he did, but he didn’t want to think
too
much. Not about that. No, he didn’t want that at all.

And looking at his new iPhone, a gateway to the homes of a billion strangers, James suddenly felt as though he were holding a part of the world that didn’t know him, that he hadn’t touched and which didn’t need his presence, that didn’t care if he lived or died.

Graduation Day

It was 1996, it was May, it was a Friday, and evening was already coming on. As always, Patrick Hughes wanted to go out. His mother had given him the Corolla, the loan good until his eleven o’clock curfew, so after dinner he escaped into the fading sunlight and warm twilight air, buckled himself in, and had already dialed the first number on his new cell phone before even clearing the driveway.

He called Bill Plourde, his best friend, as he headed, without really thinking, toward the Columbia Mall.

No answer.

Strange. He’d said he would be around. Well…

Charlie Karavlan, then. Charlie was always up for anything. And wherever he was, others were too.

“Charlie?”

“Sorry, Pat,” said Charlie’s father. “He’s away for the weekend.”

“What? Really?” Charlie hadn’t mentioned that in school.

“Sorry,” Mr. Karavlan repeated, and hung up.

Shaking his head, Patrick dialed his girlfriend, Lisa. The phone rang ten times. He frowned, hung up, dialed again. Nothing. Not even her voice mail. Same with her home number… it just rang and rang, no answering machine message, nothing.

Two stoplights from the mall, he abruptly took a right turn, cut through the neighborhood of Thunder Hill, and continued calling numbers, now systematically going down the list of his friends. Dave Turnbull? No answer. Brian Sheets? Out. Rich York?

Someone strange answered the phone when he called Rich’s home number.

“Who?” It sounded like an old lady. Was his grandmother visiting?

“Rich. Rich York. This is his number.”

“I don’t know no Rich York.”

He paused. Maybe the old lady was senile.

“Are you visiting family?” he asked. “Is this the York house?”

Click
.

Maybe he’d misdialed. But no, he was pulling the numbers from his contact list. The dialing was automated.

With a sign of relief he pulled into Lisa’s driveway. He honked the horn. No one came out.

“Jesus.
Someone
has to be home. Mrs. Horowitz never leaves the damned house.”

He got out of the car and slammed the door. The night—
full
night now—was dark, a deep ebony. No streetlamps, and Lisa’s front door lamps weren’t lit. Patrick felt the hair on the back of his neck and rubbed away a shiver. He rang the doorbell.

Flower, Lisa’s German Shepherd, didn’t bark on the other side. She
always
barked.

No lights came on.

He peered in the garage windows, cupping his hands to ward off reflections.

No cars.

“What the
hell
is going on?” His voice sounded weak and thin in the thick, late-spring air.

Ten miles away and fifteen minutes later, he pulled into VIPs, his favorite pool hall. Every other Friday night for three years he’d gone there, usually with half a dozen friends, to play eight-ball, smoke, cuss, and eat frozen candy bars from the freezer behind the counter, fifty cents each, before turning to the old arcade games along the far wall, then heading out to the Double-T Diner for late-night dinner.

He pushed open the broken glass door and entered fast, scanning the cool darkness, the whispering fans, the muted yellow lights over each threadbare table.

It was too quiet. A couple of old men played billiards nearby, but the rest of the tables were clear and empty, and so were the arcade stools.

“Evening,” said the attendant behind the counter—an old man missing his top front teeth. “How many hours you want?”

Patrick took another look around.

“Kind of dead tonight, huh?”

The attendant laughed dryly. “When is it ever not?”

“Last Friday there were fifty people in here. Hey, I never saw you before. Where’s Carl?”