Repairman Jack [07]-Gateways (17 page)

“It’s a motion detector.”

This Carl was full of surprises. “Did Dr. Dengrove give you that too?”

“Nup. Got it myself. Took it out of a singin’ fish.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack said, poking a finger in his right ear. “I thought you just said you took it out of a singing fish.”

“That’s right. That’s what I did. Actually, I took it out of the board the fish sits on.”

“You’re losing me.”

“Big Mouth Billy Bass…the singin’ fish. He bends out from the board and sings ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy,’ and some other song I never heard before.”

“Oh, right. I know what you’re talking about.”

Jack had seen one in a store once and couldn’t imagine why anyone would want one. But a clerk had told him he couldn’t keep them in stock.

“Course you do. I bought mine years ago. Was one of the first around here to get one. Hung it by my front door and anytime someone came in it started singin’. Pretty soon everyone in the trailer park had one, but I was first.” He shook his head. “Haven’t used it much lately, though. Got pretty tired of havin’ to listen to those same two songs every time I walked by. So I let the batteries run out. But just the other night I remembered that it had a motion detector inside that set it off every time you passed.” He waved the circuit board. “And here it is.”

“I get it,” Jack said. “You’re going to attach the motion detector to the camera, and when Anya comes out to water, you’ll catch her.”

“That’s the plan. I made sure I popped off the speaker, though.” He chuckled. “Wouldn’t do to have that fish voice start singin’ ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ in the middle of the night, now would it.”

“I guess not. You think this’ll work?”

“Oh, it works. I checked it out at home.”

“You really think you’ll catch her?” Jack didn’t like the idea of Anya getting in trouble.

“Nup. But don’t tell Dr. Dengrove that, and don’t you go tellin’ her I’m doin’ this. I don’t want her mad at me.”

“And you also don’t want her tipped off that she’s being watched.” He nudged Carl with his elbow. “Won’t you feel bad if you get her in trouble?”

“I would, cept that’s not gonna happen. Like I told Dr. Dengrove, all this work’s gonna be for nothin’. We ain’t never gonna catch Miss Mundy waterin’.”

“Why not?”

“Because she don’t. All she does is sit and watch TV all night. Just like everbody else. Reruns of either
Matlock
or
Golden Girls
. That and the Weather Channel’s all anybody round here ever seems to watch.” He licked his lips. “But there’s somethin’ else.”

“What?”

“She looks dead when she’s watchin’ TV.”

“How do you know?”

“I peeked in last night while I was settin’ up, and I thought she was dead. I seen my share of dead folks—I’m the one found Mr. Bass dead in a chair on his front porch awhile back, and Miss Mundy looked just like him. Boy, was I glad to see her up and about this mornin’.”

“Didn’t you call anyone?”

“Hey, I wasn’t supposed to be there. And if she was as gone as she looked, there wasn’t nothin’ nobody could do anyhow. Tonight I looked in again, just a few minutes ago, and it was the same thing. Gwon. Look for yourself.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Gwon. See if I ain’t lyin’. It’s creepy, I tell you.”

The last thing Jack needed was to get caught acting like a Peeping Tom, but his curiosity was piqued. He crept up to the lighted window that looked in on the front room and peeked through the lower right corner.

Still in her kimono, Anya lay back in her recliner, mouth slack, eyes half open and staring straight ahead. A
Law and Order
episode was playing—Jack recognized the music—but Anya wasn’t watching it. Her gaze was fixed on a spot somewhere above the TV. Oyv was stretched across her lap, looking equally dead.

Jack watched her for signs of breathing but she was still as, well, death. His comatose father showed more signs of life. Jack straightened and was about to head around front to knock on her door, when he saw her chest move. She took a breath. Oyv took a breath too, at exactly the same time. Just one each. Then they went dead still again.

Okay. So she was alive. Maybe it was all that wine—she must have put away three liters—that put her into such a deep sleep.

Shaking his head, he returned to where Carl waited.

“You weren’t kidding,” he said. “But I saw her breathe. She’s okay.” He put a hand on Carl’s shoulder. “But you haven’t explained how she can have such a healthy lawn without watering.”

“Magic,” Carl said, looking around as if someone besides Jack might be close enough to hear. “You may think I’m loco, but that’s the only explanation.”

Jack remembered Abe telling him about Occam’s razor earlier in the year. It went something like: the simplest, most direct explanation—the one that requires the fewest assumptions—is usually the right one. Magic required a lot of assumptions. Water didn’t.

“I like water better as an explanation.”

“Nuh-uh. Not when you look at where her green grass ends and the brown begins. It runs in a perfect line twenty feet from her house all the way around in a big circle. And when I say line, I mean it’s got sharp edges. I know, cause I cut it. I may not know much about lots a things, but I know you can’t water like that.”

Jack couldn’t see the line in the low light. He figured Carl was exaggerating. Had to be.

“I think it’s them doohickies she’s got all over her yard,” Carl said. “And that writin’ on her walls.”

“Writing?” Jack didn’t remember seeing anything on Anya’s walls.

“Yup. You can’t see it lookin’ at it reglar, but—here.” He handed Jack the camera again. “You look through that while I put my flashlight on. Now I’m only goin’ to put it on for a second so you look real hard.”

Jack peered through the viewfinder at the blank wall, avoiding the glare of the lighted window. A section of the wall lit as Carl’s flash beam hit it. And there, flaring to life, a collection of arcs and angles and squiggles, very much like the symbols on the homemade ornaments dotting her lawn.

And like the symbols he’d found behind his father’s headboard.

“Y’see ’em? Didja see ’em?”

“Yeah, Carl. I saw them.” But what did they mean? He’d never seen anything like them. On a hunch, Jack did a one-eighty turn. “Flash that on my father’s place, will you?”

When Carl complied, the same symbols appeared.

Dumfounded, Jack lowered the camera. “He’s got them too.”

“Hmmm,” Carl said. “They sure ain’t doin’ nothin’ for his lawn. Wonder what they’s for?”

“Let’s do a little research,” Jack said.

With Carl in tow, Jack used the same procedure to check out three other nearby houses, but their walls were blank.

Returning to Carl’s original spot, he handed back the camera. That feeling of being watched was back and stronger than ever. He scanned the area and spotted a bunch of dead leaves scattered across the remains of his father’s lawn. Hadn’t noticed them before. Not unexpected, though. He’d seen trees drop leaves in a hot dry spell.

While Carl attached the motion detector to the camera—still no sign of a right hand, just a screwdriver poking from the cuff—Jack turned toward Anya’s house.

He had to admit he was baffled. That strange old lady was the common factor here: She lived next door to his father…visited him in the hospital…the symbols on her house were also on his dad’s place. Jack knew his father hadn’t painted them on his hospital bed. Not while comatose. So that left Anya.

She must have painted them with some sort of clear lacquer so they’d be invisible. But what did they mean? And what did she think she was accomplishing with them?

Maybe he should just ask her. But then he’d have to explain how he knew.

He glanced around again and noticed even more leaves on the lawn. Their number had doubled or tripled since his last look. Where the hell were they coming from? They were small, maybe three inches long; light from the parking area glinted off their shiny, reddish brown surfaces. Odd…dead leaves usually lost their gloss.

Jack looked around for the source but couldn’t see any trees in the vicinity with that kind of leaf.

“There,” Carl said. Jack turned and saw him on his feet, dusting off his knees. He’d duct taped the camera to the slender trunk of a young palm. “All set.”

“Tell me something, Carl,” Jack said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Where’d all those leaves come from?”

Carl was facing the light when he glanced past Jack. Jack saw his expression change from curiosity, to puzzlement, to shock. He turned and looked and knew his expression must be mirroring Carl’s.

No grass was visible. The leaves had multiplied till they now covered every square inch of the lawn.

“Those ain’t leaves,” Carl said in a hushed, awed tone. “Them’s palmettos!”

“What’s a palmetto?”

“A bug! A Florida roach!”

“You mean like a cockroach?”

“Yeah. But I can’t remember ever seein’ more’n half a dozen palmettos in one spot at the same time.”

Jack had encountered his share of cockroaches—couldn’t live in New York without seeing them—but never this size. These were cockroaches on steroids. His skin crawled. He wasn’t the squeamish type, but these were big, and there had to be thousands of them, all just a few feet away. If they started scuttling his way…

“What’re they doing here?” Jack said.

“Dunno. There ain’t nothin’ for them to eat on that lawn, that’s for sure.” He looked over his shoulder. “Tell you what I’m gonna do. My car’s parked in the shadows on the other side of your daddy’s place. I’m gonna head around the front of the house and get to it that way.”

“Why don’t you just shine your flashlight at them. Cockroaches hate light. Turn one on and they disappear.”

“Not Palmettos. Light don’t bother them ay-tall. They actually
like
the light.” He turned and took a step away. “Be back tomorrow.”

That step seemed to trigger the bugs. With a chittering whir of wings they took to the air in a cloud.

“They
fly
?” Jack shouted as he started backing away. “Cockroaches don’t fly!”

“Palmettos do!” Carl broke into a run.

Jack felt a surge of fear and didn’t know why. They were just roaches; not as if they were going to eat him alive or anything. But his adrenaline was kicking in, pushing his heart rate up a few notches. He quickened his backpedal.

At that instant the churning mass of bugs turned as one and swept toward him in a swirling cloud. Jack whirled and dashed after Carl.

“Here they come!” he shouted.

Carl didn’t even turn his head; instead he put it down and upped his speed.

But neither stood a chance of outrunning the bugs. The palmettos were too fast. They swirled around Jack, engulfing him, clinging to his face, his arms, his hair, buzzing in his ears, scratching at his eyelids, wiggling their antennaed heads into his nostrils, digging at his lips. The clatter of their wings sounded like a million tiny hands applauding. He felt countless little nips all over his exposed skin. Were they biting him? Did they have teeth?

He swept a mass of them from his face but they poured back in on him. He couldn’t see and he was afraid to open his mouth to breathe—they might crawl down his throat. He tore them again from his face and stole a quick look ahead. The last thing he needed now was to run into a wall or tree trunk and knock himself silly.

He saw that he’d reached the corner of the house. Carl was still ahead, waving his arms wildly about, all but unrecognizable under a swarming mass of palmettos, but still maintaining a stumbling run. Jack cupped a hand over his mouth, took a quick, bug-free breath, and shouted.

“Carl! Forget the car! Go into the house!”

But Carl either didn’t hear the muffled advice or chose to ignore it. Jack had to close his eyes again against the storm of palmettos. He angled to his right—the front door was somewhere in that direction—and hoped he wouldn’t trip over one of the front porch chairs.

He slammed into a wall and heard some of the bugs crunch against the siding. He felt to his left, found the handle to the screen door, and pulled it open.

The front door—had he locked it? He hoped to hell not. This being a gated community and all, why would he bother? But he was a New Yorker, and New Yorkers never—

He fumbled around, found the knob, turned it, pushed it open, and leaped inside. As he moved he was trying to think of ways to kill the bugs that made it through the door with him, but then he realized that wouldn’t be necessary. They were peeling off of him at the threshold line, like vacuum wrap being stripped from a piece of meat. Jack stopped two feet inside the door and looked down at his arms, his clothes—not a single bug had made it in with him.

He turned and stared through the door as the screen banged shut. The palmettos were buzzing off in all directions, scattering like…like the leaves he’d first mistaken them for.