The People Next Door (11 page)

Amy sat forward in her lawn chair but did not stand; she was afraid of drawing attention to herself. Who, or what, the hell
was this? Had it been watching her the whole time? It looked like an emaciated deer on its hind legs, with thin limbs, an
odd shaped head that narrowed. But it had walked upright, like a person. It had to be a person, the shape merely distorted
in the darkness.

It was standing there against the pine tree at the edge of her lawn, and she could feel its eyes watching
her. It was as if it knew when she was looking, and would only move again once she looked away.

It wants something from me
.

She placed her cigarette on the flagstone and stepped on it, and when she looked up the figure was gone. She refocused, seeking
along the tree line. There. Standing a few trees down. It seemed to have shifted position without actually walking. Now it
lowered itself to the ground while she stared at it, hunching in a crouch, then rose up again, and as it reached its full
height there was a new kind of mass to it. Difficult to know from this distance and in this light, but the longer she studied
it, the more
convinced she became that it was human, a woman. She needed it to be a woman.

Amy was only twenty feet from the house. She had time to run, but curiosity (and gnawing fear) rooted her to the chair. It
was probably some girl who had come sniffing around for Kyle. He had been caught sneaking out past his curfew eleven or twelve
times this spring and summer. Maybe she could scare the girl away. Because I’m really not in the mood for games, Amy thought,
and stood.

‘Might as well come out,’ she called across the yard. ‘I see you standing there.’

The figure retreated deeper into the trees, then pivoted and came walking directly at her. The motion-detector was activated,
casting a funnel of blue-white light over the patio and lawn, drawing in the figure slowly.

‘I hope I didn’t startle you,’ it said, resolving into a thin woman approximately Amy’s age. Her shiny black hair was streaked
with red highlights and she wore black designer jeans and a plain black blouse, buttoned crookedly. Her feet were bare, pale
and dirty. Her eyes were shiny black, her expression languid. ‘I was just out for a walk.’

‘Okay.’ Amy was relieved that it was only a woman, but she was mildly shaken by the shifting shape she had seen, and this
flat voice and vacant expression. I will never eat seven orange cinnamon rolls again, she vowed. ‘Something I can do for you?’

‘Were you smoking?’

Amy sniffed. ‘Uhm, yes, I was.’

‘My husband says I’m not supposed to.’

Amy softened, heard herself say, ‘Sounds familiar. Is there some reason you’re sneaking around my backyard, or …?’

‘I’m sorry. I think I’m lost.’

This was like having a conversation with a car crash victim.

‘Where’s your husband? Is there a problem?’

The woman glanced back toward the palazzo. ‘Oh, there it is.’

‘That’s your house?’

‘I was supposed to bring this over.’ She clumsily proffered a bottle of white wine. Amy couldn’t read the painted label, but
the green glass was moist with condensation from its chilling.

‘Wow,’ Amy said. ‘You read my mind.’

This brought the first sign of a smile, albeit a thin one. ‘I’m Cassandra Render. That’s our name. The Renders.’

Amy nodded politely, thinking, What pills are you on, Cassandra Render?

‘I’m Amy Nash. My husband is Mick. Your house is lovely.’

Cassandra Render looked back at the house. ‘That’s where we live now,’ she said. ‘In our new house.’

‘You just moved in this week?’

‘Is your husband home?’ Cassandra smiled, her teeth large and white in the artificial light.

‘He’s working late. We own a restaurant, so he’s always working late.’

‘My husband works late too. He’s always working. You
can call me Cass. My husband is Vince.’ Cassandra eyed the lounge chairs with a fearful longing. The woman seemed fragile
and Amy found this endearing. Minutes ago she hadn’t been in the mood for company, but a fault line had shifted inside her.

‘Well, I think it’s nice,’ Amy said. ‘That house can only increase property values and we could use some fresh blood around
here. Welcome to the neighborhood, Cass. Sit down. I’ll grab a corkscrew.’ Amy jaunted off for the kitchen.

Cass said, ‘I love your swimming pool.’

‘Thanks,’ Amy called over her shoulder. ‘Help yourself anytime!’

‘You are very kind, Amy Nash.’

When Amy returned, Cass accepted the corkscrew and then stared at it in her open palm. She looked to the bottle and back to
the corkscrew, and for a crazy moment, Amy was sure the woman was contemplating using it as a weapon.

Amy said, ‘Here, let me,’ and manhandled it open. Cass watched as if trying to memorize it for next time. Amy poured and when
she looked up, Cass was studying her.

‘What?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Why are you staring at me like that?’ Amy said.

‘I’m sorry. Just nervous, I guess. I don’t have any friends here.’

Amy laughed but stopped herself. ‘Aw, why do I suspect that’s not true?’

Cass shook her head and stared into her wine.

Amy decided to change the subject. ‘Do you want to hear a funny story?’

Cass smiled.

‘Okay, I teach on a program out at Vo-Tech, for kids who are at risk. And there’s these two rotten little scoundrels, Eric
Pritchard and Jason Wells. I mean, they’re all troubled, but these two are another breed. Last week they tried to smoke in
class and when I told them to put it out, one of them said, “I’m gonna get you for that.” I swear, kids these days have no
respect for teachers, and really, that comes from the parents …’

Cass listened intently as Amy unwound her tale, which became a rant of sorts extending a good ten minutes beyond her best
intentions. When she finished, Cass reached across, touching her arm. Her fingers were soft, cool.

‘And how did that make
you feel? When they called you the c-word?’

Amy twitched, but Cass would not let go. A warmth seemed to ooze from her palm, into Amy’s skin, until her touch was as pleasant
as it had been startling. Amy scoffed, shook her head, and at last decided to be honest. ‘It hurt.

It made me feel weak. Like a failure and a pathetic excuse for a teacher.’

Cass nodded, her cold blue eyes unblinking. ‘And? What else?’

Amy looked at this stranger in the lounge chair beside
her. ‘It made me mad. Furious. So mad I could kill them. Make them pay for …’ She paused, shocked by her own rancor. ‘Well,
I shouldn’t let them get to me.’

Cass traced the rim of her wine glass. ‘I understand.’

‘You do?’

‘The world is full of mean people. I’m so glad we’re friends.’

‘Me too.’

Cass sat forward and placed her wine on the patio. Amy realized the woman had not taken a single sip. Cass stood.

‘I should go,’ she said. ‘Before it gets too late.’

Amy stood. ‘Oh. All right, then. Do you want me to walk you home?’

‘No.’ Cass turned and stepped awkwardly and something clinked. Amy looked down to see Cass’s bare foot standing on the shattered
wine glass.

‘Oh my God,’ Amy said.

Cass slowly lifted her foot and leaned forward to stare at it with clinical detachment. A triangle of glass jutted from the
arch, and smaller speckles were embedded in the sole.

‘I’m sorry,’ Cass said.

‘No, no, it’s my fault. Here, please, sit down while I get the first-aid kit.’ Cass took another step, and another, crunching
more of the embedded glass.

‘Oh my God, no, wait!’ Amy said. ‘Jesus, that looks serious.’

Cass stopped. ‘It’s no trouble. Vincent will fix it. I
have to go.’ And then she was hurrying away, waving a hand that said please do not follow me.

‘You shouldn’t walk on that. You could get an infection—’ But it was no use. The woman was already slipping back into the
darkness. Amy looked around, wishing someone was here to tell her if what she had seen was as strange as it seemed. Cass was
probably on Valium, some kind of sedative. Lonely housewife addiction disorder.

She went inside and fetched the dustpan and brush. As she was cleaning up the glass, sweeping all around the lawn chairs and
between puzzle pieces of flagstone, even with her face so close to the ground her nose was nearly touching the gritty surface,
she found not a single drop of blood.

A summer breeze was blowing through Briela Nash’s hair. She was standing on a wide black road in her pink elephant pajamas,
the ground cold on her bare feet. It was nighttime and she didn’t remember coming outside. There were only five or six cars
up near the big grocery store’s darkened windows. The bright blue sign above the store blinked and went dark. She knew it
still said Albertson’s, but Mommy called it Fat Albertson’s. Which meant this was the parking lot and her family’s restaurant
was right behind her! She turned, ready to run to the Last Straw – and stopped.

A thin man with a red-and-blue baseball cap was staring down at her, quiet as a cat. His eyes were black and lined with red
veins and he was trembling with excitement. He smiled, his lips wet as he bent to reach for her. She backed away, but there
were others, circling her. Black shapes, their feet sweeping pebbles on the ground as they slinked closer.

She turned and saw her dad walking toward her. He was playing with the Broncos keyring she gave him for Father’s Day, head
down, tired and sad. She had to warn
him. The man in the red-and-blue cap and the others were going to get him, and she tried to speak but her mouth didn’t work.

Everything jumped like the TV fast-forwarding and she almost fell over from the shaking. The whole world was shaking, and
there was screaming, and so much violence it was like standing next to a car crash, but it was only people. Roaring with animal
rage. Daddy was screaming and they fell on him like a pack of wild dogs.

Briela’s entire body twitched like it was one electric muscle, yanking her from terrible dreams. She blinked in darkness,
waiting to find out where she was. A lone tower in some dark kingdom gradually became her bedpost. The deep black cave her
closet door. And then her bookshelf was there, with Pooh in his red shirt. She hadn’t slept with him since she was a baby,
but she crawled from her tangled sheets and ran and snatched him down. He was heavy and dusty in her arms and she scampered
back to bed and fell onto him, rolling with him pressed to her nose, until the two of them were safe under the covers.

She wanted to run down the hall and make sure Daddy was home safe, but she was too afraid to leave her bed. Nothing could
hurt her here. As long as she stayed under the covers with Pooh.

Briela had learned the word ‘transmissions’ from a show about aliens Kyle was watching late one night, and she thought that
sounded exactly the way they felt. She began receiving them a little more than eight months ago, right after construction
on the new house in the
backyard began (though she had not made this connection yet, only thought of the house’s appearance as a kind of marker in
her life, a change in the landscape that irritated her parents and piqued Briela’s curiosity every time she glanced in that
direction, as if she were expecting the house to grow out of the hole in the ground). The transmissions came to her in single
shots, like the photos Mommy was always uploading to her Picasa, but sometimes they were longer, like the movie clips Kyle
looked at on his Egg.

Except, these photos and short movies were of things that had not happened. Or maybe they had happened, but not with Briela’s
eyes acting as the camera.

She imagined a device inside her, like a tiny cell phone, or maybe a rubber ball that glowed with light at its center. Sometimes
– like that day on the lake, right before Kyle crashed and she saw the family on the dam – she could feel it, hard and round,
throbbing warm in her belly. Whatever it looked like, it was growing stronger.

Right before she got one, it was like someone was tickling the inside of her tummy with a feather. Sometimes the tickle made
her dizzy and she threw up, which she always did her best to hide, or else Mommy would think she was sick.

One time, when she was taking a hot tub on the night it snowed last spring break, she saw Kyle sitting on a park bench on
the Pearl Street Mall, daydreaming with his eyes closed. Another time it was their dog Thom, running away from a chipmunk
in the backyard, and Briela had been in school. Those were calm ones. But in
the past couple months the images had come to seem dangerous.

This summer she started going away for longer periods, maybe as long as fifteen minutes, the images stringing together like
a story whose meaning was just out of reach. One time she had been trapped in darkness, with things on four legs crawling
around her bed. She had seen ridges of black fur moving sideways, the smell of rotten hamburger everywhere, and their golden
eyes shone in her bedroom. She started screaming and when she ‘woke up’ she realized she wasn’t in her bedroom at all, but
in the movie theater with Ingrid. The kids in the row ahead of her were crying and the manager was standing in the aisle,
asking them to leave.

Even before she got out of school for the summer, the little movies began to have people in them she had never met. They would
show up standing next to Mommy or Daddy, talking and laughing in the daytime, in the backyard, or in the kitchen, and once
at Their House, which was familiar even though Briela had never been inside it in real life (because it did not fully exist
yet). Only once did they speak clearly enough for her to hear them. They said, ‘Welcome to our home. Please come in.’ And
a pretty woman with two-colored hair caressed her cheek and said, ‘You are the angel, aren’t you? A real angel among us.’

They weren’t scary, the people she didn’t know. The man looked familiar, with his blond hair and strong blue eyes. They were
nice, and had expensive clothes, and their house was filled with the kinds of things Mom
called good taste. But she sensed something magical about them, like they weren’t afraid of anything, and they could do anything
they wanted. She wondered if they were the people she had seen standing on the dam, all dressed in white. Maybe one day soon
she would meet them and learn they were from another planet.

The worst part about the bad visions, though, was that she didn’t know how to explain them to Mom, or anyone else. She only
remembered little pieces of the visions in the in-between time, like when she first woke up or was just drifting off to sleep.
But in daylight, whenever she felt a nudge that something had happened and she tried to remember, it was all gone.

She dozed under her bear, her last thoughts heavy and sad, because she knew that when she woke up tomorrow she would not be
able to remember what she had seen, or that she had seen anything all. But even if she could remember
them
, whoever
they
were, she wouldn’t know if
they
were real. She wouldn’t know if the things she saw had happened in the past, were happening in the moment she saw them, or
would happen at a later time.

In this moment, on the edge of sleep, with the night pressing against her bedroom window, Briela Nash knew only that she had
seen a scary man coming for her daddy, and that her daddy needed to come home from work because he was walking into a nest
of monsters that had the power to take him away, forever.

That, and that she was tired. So tired …