The Guardians (11 page)

    At
the landing, I looked back. There was a railing over which the foyer floor lay
fifteen feet below, a bulb hanging on a wire where some more elaborate fixture
would once have hung. I squinted down the hallway, a spine with two doorways on
each side that, if configured the same way as the second floor in my house (as
it probably was, this house so much like an unloved version of the one in which
I lived), opened onto three bedrooms and a bathroom at the end.

    I
started toward the first door on the left with shuffling, elderly steps. It had
been easy for me to take the stairs up, but now my body fought against moving.
My shoes tearing the old newspapers strewn over the floorboards, a carpet of
Falklands War headlines and ads for used-car lots, including Randy's dad's
place
(Kum Kwick to Krazy Kevin's!),
his clown nose and lunatic grin
floating over the rows of Plymouths.

    A comics
page got stuck to my sole. I bent to peel it off, wondering, with a turn in my
stomach, what could be gummy enough to act as glue on the floor of this place,
and when I raised my eyes again he was there.

    
A boy.

    Eyes
fixed on me. I recall little else about his appearance other than the
impression that we were the same age, nearly men but not quite. He could have
been Carl, or Randy, or Ben—there was a millisecond flash when I assumed it
was
one of them—but there was a threat in the way he cocked his head that
I'd never seen in them, or in anyone.

    The
boy said nothing. I remember no detail of his face that could be described as
an expression, the outline of his body still, ungesturing. So what was it that
prevented me from thinking of him as a fully living boy? How could I tell he
wanted to show me something?

    I
remember attempting to speak to him, though what I intended to say I have no
idea now. What I do remember is the panic, the claustrophobia of being bound
and hooded. Buried alive.

    Oh
yes
,
the boy said but didn't
say
.
You're going to like this
.

    A wet
click of breath in my throat and he was gone. Not with a puff of smoke, nothing
uncanny or ghostly. Simply gone in the way a thing confirms it was never there
at all.

    I
registered the squeak a moment later. The grind of a rusty hinge.

    This
was what made the boy disappear, what proved he was a misreading of reality.
The bathroom door at the end of the hall had been wrenched open, a full-length
mirror screwed to the inside. And now, with a nudge of draft, the door moved an
inch, shifting the angle of the mirror's reflection. Removing me from view.

    There
was the explanation for what I'd seen, rational, conclusive. It was
me.
Me, summoning a dark twin to return my gaze.

    But
even as I continued down the hall with calmed breaths, I didn't believe it.
That wasn't me.
A line of thinking I wrestled down but couldn't completely
silence.
You know it wasn't.

    It
strikes me as strange now—and it must have then as well—but once the boy could
no longer be seen, the feelings he brought with him could no longer be felt
either. I was certain that Heather Langham was not going to be discovered tied
to the radiator in any of the bedrooms I leaned into, or slumped in the shower
stall whose glass door I swung open to a party of skittering roaches. It
smelled bad up here, but only in the way of smells I had already encountered,
of piss and damp and long-discarded fast-food bags.

    I had
pulled the bathroom door closed and was leaning against it, suddenly winded,
when I saw someone standing where I had been when I noticed the boy. Another
figure of dimensions similar to my own drawn in a sharper outline of darkness.

    Carl
took a step closer. A dim veil of moonlight glazing his face.

    "Randy
found something," he said.

    We
descended to the main floor in silence, and I noticed that the house was silent
too. Had the others already left? Carl said Randy had found something, but I
remember doubting this. Not only because the house was so quiet it seemed
impossible that three other breathing, heart-pounding boys could still be
within it but also because of the lingering sense of change that followed the
appearance of the boy. The world had been altered now that I'd seen him—the mirror
me that wasn't me—and the solid grip I'd had on my perceptions before tonight
was something I thought might never return. I had the idea that I could no
longer count on anything as true anymore, every observation from here on in
holding the potential of trickery. Which included my friends. Included Carl.

    He
led me down the front hall into the kitchen. Only once we came to stand side by
side on the bubbled linoleum, listening to the stillness as though awaiting
whispered instruction, did I change my mind about the house's vacancy. There
was
something in here with us. Not Randy or what he'd discovered. Not even
the boy. But something else altogether. A presence that had yet to let itself
be known, but was aware of us. Saw endless possibilities in our being here.

    Carl
nudged me closer to the top of the basement stairs. I wondered if he might push
me. I could feel my skin ripping on the steps' nail heads, the crack of bones
loud as felled trees. At the bottom, something sharp.

    Carl turned
on his flashlight, and a yellow circle spilled over the stairs to collect in a
pool on the hard soil of the cellar floor. I expected him to start down first
but he waited, looking down the stairs with the distracted expression of
someone working to recollect a half-forgotten name.

    His
lips moved. An inaudible gulp. He turned his head and looked at me. "It's
different," he said. "What? What's different?"

    He
gave his head a shake. Two pouches, brown and tender as used tea bags, swelled
under his eyes. "You go first," he said.

    And I
did. My oversized shadow looming and lurching as I made my way down the narrow
steps. A plumbing pipe screwed into the wall for a handrail. One that
threatened to give way any time you called upon it.

    At the
bottom of the stairs, another flashlight found me. As it approached it blinded
me to whoever stood behind it.

    "We
need to make a decision."

    I
could see Ben only after he pointed the light up into the pipes and frayed
electrical cords running through the wood slats of the ceiling.

    "You
need to be a part of it, Trev," he said. "Okay. What's the
question?" "What do we do now?" "How about we get out of
here?" "No," he said, pursing his lips. "I don't think
that's an option."

    Ben
started away into the cellar's broad darkness. I turned to Carl behind me, but
he only waved his flashlight against his side like an usher impatient to show
me to my seat before the show starts.

    Ben
stopped. Directed the light down to the floor. How to describe the scene it
revealed in the cellar's far corner? I don't think I could say what it was like
to take it in whole.

    The
elements, then:

    Randy
standing with the help of one hand against the stone wall, his other hand
pinching wads of red snot from his nose. Blood dripping off his chin and
pushing dark dots through his Human League T-shirt.

    Carl
staring behind us. Terrified. Not of what lay in the corner and he'd already
seen, but of what he alone saw in the dark.

    Blood
on the floor. Not Randy's. Older-looking smears, formless as spilled paint
stirred around with bedsheets, along with more recent spits and spots.
Handprints, toes. Clawed trenches in the earth.

    Heather
Langham. Or a life-size doll of Heather Langham, her face looking away from me,
knees and elbows bent at right angles the way a child draws a running stick
figure. She lay on the floor, so flat it was like she was partly buried,
deflated as the long-ago poisoned mice I'd once discovered behind hockey bags
in the garage.

    I
said something. I must have, because Ben asked me to repeat it. Whatever it was
I couldn't remember, then or now. So I said something else.

    "We
have to go."

    "I
told you. We can't do that now."

    "The
fuck we can't."

    Carl's
hand was on my elbow, a grip that held me within the flashlight's circle.

    "Randy
moved her," he said.

    
What's
that got to do with anything
?

    "Randy
moved her," I repeated.

    "I
don't know why. But he did."

    "So
let's move her back."

    "It's
not where she
is
that's—"

    "What
are you saying? What are you saying? What are you
saying?"

    I
believe I was shouting. And I don't know how many times I asked this before Ben
stepped in front of me.

    "They'll
know we were here," he said.

    "Who?"

    "The
police. After they find her. And they'll find her. Somebody will."

    "How
will they know?"

    "They'll
look. And dead things—they start to stink or whatever, and—"

    "Not
her.
Us.
How will they know we were here?"

    "The
blood," Ben said. "Randy's blood. On
her."

    Past
Ben's shoulder Randy was nearly doubled over, as though the mention of his name
was a boot to his guts. Then I took a peek downward. Saw the new, shiny drops
of crimson atop the older, brownish crust on Heather's skin.

    "Our
fingerprints too," Ben said, scratching his jaw. "Along with the
witnesses who saw us come here."

    "Nobody
saw us."

    "I'm
not so sure about that."

    "The
street was empty."

    "But
not the houses."

    I
remembered us standing across from the McAuliffes' maybe a half-hour earlier
and wished we were there again, outside in the night air. A wishing so strong
it was a physical effort to sustain, already slipping out of my grip, like
holding a medicine ball against my chest.

    "Your
mom," I said. "In the living-room window. Looking out between the
curtains."

    "I'm
not sure she even saw us. But she might have."

    "This
is insane," I said.

    "That's
not stopping it from happening," Ben said.

    "We
have to stop it."

    "How?"

    "We
tell."

    "Tell
who?"

    "Our
parents. The police."

    "I'm
not sure you're quite getting this." Ben came to stand inches from me. He
looked seasick. "She was murdered."

    "I
can see that."

    "No,
you can't. Look at her."

    So I
did. And as I kept my eyes on Heather, Ben spoke into my ear.

    "This
isn't the time you threw the football through Mrs. Laidlaw's window. This isn't
letting Randy drive your dad's car into a mailbox. She's
dead.
And they
don't just forgive people for that. They need someone to pay. And that is going
to be us, unless we make it go away."

    I
stepped back to get away from him, the sharp tang of his skin.

    "How
did Randy bleed all over her anyway?" I asked.

    "I
hit him," Carl said.

    "You
punched Randy?"

    "A
few times."

    "Why?"

    "For
being so
stupid.
Moving her? I didn't know he'd bleed all over the
place, though."

    "We
can clean it up."

    "It's
all
over
her," Ben said. "No matter what we do, if they look
for it, they'll find it. And if they find somebody's blood other than Heather's
down here—blood on her
body—"

    "They'll
know who to look for," Carl finished.