The People Next Door (5 page)

In the darkness, which was cold and infinite and absolute, he was no longer aware of himself. There was no Mick, no Amy, no
children. His house, his business, his problems and all of the memories that had been weaved into the tapestry of his life,
disintegrated. He was without thought, without conscience. He was outside of time.

But he was not alone.

‘I found you,’ a quiet but very deep voice said. ‘Don’t worry now. You’re safe with me. No one’s going to hurt you. I promise.’

It was the voice one hears through the wall of a motel room at four in the morning. It sounded like death.

‘I only want to help you. We can help each other. There are possibilities, all kinds of possibilities.’

He did not understand and could not answer. A small bulb of emotion throbbed deep within him. He did not want to stay here
forever, alone in the black void. The
other presence cradled him, raised him up, whispering promises, pledging life.

‘I’ve waited so long for this day. We’re going to do beautiful things together.’

Slowly the darkness ebbed.

Mick regained consciousness on a dirt road. Weeds brushed his elbows and hot sunlight turned his eyelids into veined paisley
curtains. His body was sodden and his mouth was dry.

Amy was above him, wedging a towel under his neck, smoothing his wet hair. He realized had been somewhere else, she had been
waiting for him. He tried to recall where he had gone off to, but when his mind probed back in time, it ran into a black wall.
He was tired but not in pain. His lips felt sealed. Something bad had happened.

Behind Amy, holding a towel to the top of his head, was Kyle. His son appeared at peace, not at all worried, and there was
comfort in this. They had been in an accident together, but it was going to be all right now.

‘Did you see that?’ Briela was standing further back, chucking rocks into a body of water, and for a moment Mick was sure
they were on an island somewhere, on a beach beside the sea. ‘Mom, he moved his eyes.’

‘I know, honey. I told you he was going to be fine.’

What happened? His memory skipped to this
morning – which seemed to be some other morning, a long time ago – when he had been unrolling the cover from the boat, throwing
it onto his driveway. Between then and now there was no yawning chasm, not even a crack in the sidewalk. The splice in time
was seamless.

‘Welcome back,’ Amy said, taking his cold hand. Her face was drawn, angry. ‘Don’t you dare do that again. You scared the shit
out of me, Mick.’

‘I don’t remember,’ he said.

‘Nothing?’

‘I’m sorry.’

His wife smiled thinly, glancing at the kids. ‘You had an accident on the boat. Coach Wisneski rescued you.’

It took a moment for Mick to remember that his former wrestling coach from Boulder High had become, in his retirement, the
head administrator of Boulder Reservoir’s on-site maintenance staff, a lifeguard and a certified member of the lake patrol.
Memories of the growling old bastard came back, the way he always lumbered around the beaches and boat house in his orange
shorts, the metal whistle carried over from his wrestling days dangling on a cord in front of his bald, baby-smooth chest,
his legs and torso the color of fudge. Wisneski was six-four, lean, with vain Tom Petty hair, and he had been forced into
early retirement ostensibly for breaking a clipboard over the forehead of one of his athletes, a hardass who couldn’t evolve
with the times.

‘Rescued me,’ he said, the words coming out in a papery whistle. ‘From what?’

Amy shook her head, unable to say it.

‘Dad, you drowned,’ Briela said, chipper even in her awe of him. ‘You held your breath for the longest time. How did you do
that?’

‘I don’t know, sweetie. But I’m happy to see you.’ Mick forced himself to sit up. ‘Where’s Coach?’

‘There was some confusion,’ Amy said, meeting his eyes as if trying to impart something she could not explain in front of
the children. ‘One of his eardrums burst when he was diving for you. When I got here you were conscious and he was in shock.
I told the first ambulance to take him. He’s older and you were coherent before you blacked out again. Do you want to wait
for the second ambulance?’

‘No. No, I’m good.’ The thought of an ambulance ride, the hospital with its sick and dying, its probing doctors, revolted
him. It wasn’t just the lapse in health insurance. He did not trust
them
. ‘Help me up.’

‘But honey—’ she started.

‘But nothing. We’re going home.’

‘But what if—’

‘I said I’m fine, goddamn it.’

Amy looked away, shaking her head.

As they headed to the truck, his children hugged him and talked over each other in their relief. Mick smiled and put on a
brave face, ruffling their hair and telling them he was really okay, but inside he was still recoiling from something, repressing
tremors.

He did not understand why, but something about his family did not seem real. He felt duped, tricked by some
dark hand of fate. For a moment, as they touched him and kissed his cheeks, he was certain that these people, while bearing
every hallmark of his pairing and making, were not his real family at all, but others hiding beneath clever masks of artificial
skin.

After stopping at the pharmacy to buy a better first-aid kit and patching up Kyle’s scalp in the truck (the bleeding had stopped
and the cut was much shallower than it had seemed during their panic on the boat), they stopped for take-out subs at Deli
Zone. Most of the staff had coffee-break bong smoke wafting from their beards and the order took so long and they were all
so hungry, they decided to eat dinner in one of the small booths, chewing in happy silence.

After, Briela was dying to watch a movie she couldn’t wait for their Netflix queue to deliver, so they wasted another forty
minutes in Blockbuster, loading up on candy and popcorn. Kyle milked his head injury for three action-packed Blu Rays and
Amy bought two pints of ice cream. The rules had been suspended. Tonight they could have whatever they wanted.

They got home a little before nine and the kids ran inside. It was difficult to lift himself out of the truck and, after his
first attempt, Mick sank back into the seat with a sigh. Amy had driven them home in Blue Thunder. She told him the Lake Patrol
had already
towed the boat in and would dock it until Mick felt like retrieving it.

Amy opened her door but paused. ‘I don’t feel good about this.’

‘I’m sorry I gave you a scare. If anything changes, I promise I’ll …’

‘Go to the doctor?’

He forced a smile. ‘It’s possible.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Mick.’

‘What do you want me to say? You know our situation.’

Amy leaned her head against the steering wheel. ‘Nothing ever changes.’

‘It will.’

‘When?’

‘Soon.’

‘That’s what you always say, but it just gets worse.’

‘I need you to trust me, Amy.’

She stared at him. ‘Myra Blaylock. Should I trust you about her too?’

This was out of the blue. ‘What’s she got to do with anything?’

‘You said her name while you were … half-comatose or unconscious or whatever it is you were doing lying there on the dam,
swooning.’

‘I have no idea why,’ he said, feeling neither guilt nor alarm. ‘What else did I say?’

‘“I’ve been looking for you.” You said, “I’ve been looking for you for a long time.” And then, “We’re going to do beautiful
things together” … several times.’

Mick shook his head. ‘I doubt it means anything.’

‘You haven’t seen her?’

‘All that was a long time ago, Amy. You know that.’

Amy nodded, but he knew she was not convinced.

‘She has breast cancer,’ he added, surprised by his own words. ‘Doesn’t she?’

‘I have no idea. Where did you hear that?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Uh-huh. But she didn’t tell you herself.’

‘No, I swear. I would remember that.’

Amy stared at him as if he had just given her a box of ammunition but taken away the gun.

‘Maybe I’m confused,’ Mick said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I think you should walk yourself inside.’ She ejected herself from the truck and slammed the door.

Mick exited the Silverado and stood in the night air for a moment, waiting for his equilibrium to falter, but it didn’t. He
felt sound on the ground. He headed for the back doors off the living room and breakfast area, but paused on the patio. He
looked out over his back acreage, to the palazzo looming behind them. He didn’t see any cars, but new rows of lights were
jutting from the mulch berms to illuminate the driveway like a landing strip. Inside the house, at the back west corner of
the first floor, several windows glowed warmly.

They’re here
.

Higher, up on the terrace, a solitary figure in dark clothes stood watching over him. The figure did not move, but its stance
was that of a lookout, a kind of sentinel. Mick knew it was absurd, but he had the strangest
feeling that the figure had been there all evening, waiting for him to come home.

It was alone, its size hard to estimate. The lower half was obscured by the parapet, and it was too far away for him to guess
at its gender, but he assumed it was a man, the man of the house. Mick watched for a cigarette ember, a task, anything that
would suggest a purpose to what appeared to be blatant lurking, but there was nothing of the sort. He was prepared to accept
that it was a statue, maybe a gargoyle or knight, but when he started toward his own back door, the figure moved with him.
Mick took six or seven steps and the figure moved sideways along the terrace an equal number, though its own steps were not
discernible as such, but rather a smooth sliding motion, a shadow pacing in a mirror placed half a football field away.

Mick halted. The figure on the terrace halted.

Mick waved and the figure waved. Not back, but at the same time.

With the same right arm.

‘Sonofa …’ The man was taunting him. He had half a mind to go over there and rattle the gates, introduce himself to this paranoid
asshole. He headed back toward his truck and, sure enough, after only two paces the man – had to be a man, some macho peacock
strutting his feathers – was matching Mick’s every stride.

He stopped. His neighbor stopped.

‘Hey, bite me!’

The sentinel did not respond.

‘You want something from me?’ Mick called out. ‘Why
don’t you fuck off back into your ugly house!’ The sound of his own voice made him giggle.

‘Mick?’

He turned. Amy was standing at the open sliding glass door.

‘Are you coming in?’

‘Be right there.’

‘Who were you talking to?’

‘This asshole thinks he can …’ Mick pointed, but the terrace was vacant from end to end. And the house was dark, not a single
window was glowing, even though just seconds ago the entire back half of the house seemed to be filled with light. He lowered
his arm.

‘What is it?’

‘Forget it. I’m just tired.’

But he suspected already that this was not true.

He watched half a movie with Kyle before nodding off. Amy tugged his ear gently and he rose from the couch. She carried his
boat shoes in one hand as they went down the hall, her fingers under the tongues like hooks in fish gills, and he wished she
would throw them away. She set them on the carpet, just inside the master’s walk-in closet and he suppressed the urge to walk
over and shut the door.

Those are the shoes I almost drowned in. I don’t ever want to see them again
.

He sat on the bed, feeling stoned.

‘I did some research online,’ Amy said. She had some papers in hand. She was always probing around on WebMD, reading about
symptoms and treatments on various internet forums frequented by people who loved playing their own doctor. ‘When someone
suffocates in a body of warm water,’ she told him, glancing at the printouts, ‘damage at the cellular level is swift. The
most common danger is hypoxemia, lack of oxygen in the blood, which deprives the brain.’

‘My brain is fine,’ Mick said.

Amy squished the papers at her side. ‘You were out there all alone for at least ten and possibly as long as eighteen minutes,
Mick. You could have serious problems we aren’t even aware of.’

‘You’re overreacting. I hit my head, is all.’ He pointed to his forehead, which was not bleeding or bruised, only swollen.
‘Does this look serious?’

Amy read from her papers again. ‘Dizziness, auditory hallucinations, physical tremors, lapses in memory, fatigue, mania, lethargy,
foreign smells, loss of motor control, clumsy limbs, rage, depression, mood swings, PTSD, seeing things out of the corner
of your eye. This goes on and on. Do not lie to me, Mick.’

‘Is that all? I’ve had most of those symptoms for years.’

‘That’s supposed to be funny?’

Mick shrugged. The fight went out of them both. His thoughts then leapt to something so alarming, he could not believe Amy
hadn’t said something earlier.

‘What happened to Roger?’ He noticed how she stiffened. ‘Him and the woman. Something happened to them, didn’t it?’

Amy tugged at her sleeves, avoiding his eyes. ‘You’re remembering this now or it’s just a …’ She made a whirling motion with
her fingers.

‘It’s more than a feeling and less than a memory.’

Amy cleared her throat. ‘We saw them, earlier in the day. We were tied off at the dock when he stopped by. Typical Roger,
in party-guy mode. He was with Bonnie Abrahams, one of his hygienists. No one knows where they went.’

‘Was he there on the boat when I went to check on them?’

Amy hesitated before saying, ‘No.’

Something was wrong with that. ‘You’re not sure,’ Mick said. ‘Because I don’t remember. And Wisneski didn’t see them when
he saw me fall in. Jesus, Amy, do you think I did something to them?’

‘Of course not.’ But she sounded like she was considering just that.

‘Right. Did someone call the police?’

Amy nodded. ‘Coach was talking to Terry Fielding before the ambulance took him away. Terry will be by to see you in the next
day or two, to get a formal statement.’

Sergeant Terrance Fielding of the Boulder Police Department was a former friend and classmate of Mick’s from their CU days.
They had circled some of the same parties together as undergrads, and Terry used to stop by the Straw for a beer every couple
of weeks before he quit drinking. Mick hadn’t seen the small but intense cop in a year or so, and he didn’t want to see him
now.

‘He wants to question me,’ Mick said. ‘There’s going to be an investigation.’

‘And you’re not going to be a suspect in it,’ Amy said. ‘Don’t start down this road and get yourself all worked up. It won’t
help, so just don’t.’

‘Two people are missing and I’m the last person who saw them. Kyle said there was a struggle and I drowned and Roger and Bonnie
are probably having their eyeballs eaten out of their heads at the bottom of Boulder
Reservoir right now, but I’m not a suspect. That’s a relief.’

‘
Stop it
.’ Amy’s voice was shrill, not quite a scream. ‘It was an accident.’

‘But you don’t know that.’

‘Why would you want to hurt Roger?’ she said.

‘Maybe he was doing something to Bonnie. Maybe I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see.’ He was suddenly very tired of talking
to her.

‘No one found any blood,’ Amy said. ‘His boat was clean. Kyle probably saw them fucking and got excited. He plays too many
video games and watches those awful movies.’ She returned to her post at the doorway, folding her hands together. ‘I’m sure
Roger will turn up and, when he does, this will all seem ridiculous.’

‘You’re not sleeping in here,’ he surmised.

‘I’ll be in the guest room. I have a big day tomorrow and you’ll sleep better without me tossing and turning beside you.’

He guessed that Myra Blaylock escaping from his lips had something to do with it, but not all of it. Amy was disturbed by
the entire episode. He had scared her and was still scaring her, in a number of ways.

‘I’ll be back at work tomorrow,’ he said with more hope than promise.

‘Don’t worry about it. Just call me if you need anything.’

He eased back on top of the sheets, still dressed in his sweats, and admitted to himself that he was afraid to close his eyes.
The thought of
going under
again, in any
way, made his stomach queasy, as if he were standing on line to ride the roller coaster at a shoddy amusement park.

Eleven to eighteen minutes, he kept thinking. I might have been clinically dead, gone, out of this world for eleven to eighteen
minutes. He didn’t know what to make of that, there was no context for it. It was just a new fact, a piece of trivia that
had been inserted into his life without his permission, like learning he had a felonious third cousin somewhere in Indiana.
He wasn’t worried, but he wasn’t about to invite it over for a reunion, either.

He watched the enormous window they had cut into the bedroom’s south-facing wall, a six-by-four-foot postcard view of the
Foothills, half of his backyard and, in the far left corner, somewhere behind the lamp’s glare, the mansion that had been
constructed.

He thought about the shadowy figure he had seen on the terrace. The house had looked empty yesterday and this morning, before
the accident. Why hadn’t he asked Amy when they had moved in? Told her about the man he had seen on the terrace? It seemed
important in the moment, but he felt foolish, like maybe he was imagining seeing the guy up there.

You’re worried there’s something wrong with you, that’s why. But you’re fine. Walking, talking, thinking clearly. Why wouldn’t
you be fine? You hit your head, fell in the lake, took on too much water. Your hard drive crashed and rebooted, but everything
is back online now, running smooth. Leave it at that.

Or maybe there are no new neighbors
.

Maybe whatever you saw, it wasn’t real. Maybe he’s not even a real man
.

But that was silly, wasn’t it? What else could he be?

There are possibilities. All kinds of possibilities
.

Well, there was one very simple way to resolve this non-mystery. Tomorrow morning he would take a short stroll around his
backyard and see what he could see. And maybe, if he was feeling up to it – and why shouldn’t he feel up to it, he was in
fine health – he might just walk up the driveway and knock on the door. Hello, I’m Mick Nash, that’s my house right there,
my family lives here. I thought it was time we had ourselves a nice neighborly greeting. Stop by for a beer sometime, bring
the wife and kids, but in the meantime stop fucking standing there watching my house like a creep, all right? That would be
that, and then he would know.

Unless of course no one answered the door, no one had moved in, and the house was empty. How about that, Mickey? What would
that mean? It would mean you are seeing things. It would mean you need to tell Amy we have a problem with the machinery, time
to explore some unpleasant medical possibilities. Right? Right.

I’ve been looking for you for a long time
.

The sound of the voice echoing in his head lowered his core temperature so abruptly he felt as though he had just stepped
out of the shower on a January morning between furnace cycles. For the first time since waking up, the gravity of what had
happened – and what had
almost happened, the lake pinning him to the wrestling mat of eternity – hit him full force. The very end of Mick Nash was
no longer an idea, a distant event. It was right outside his window, stretching itself around his neighborhood, and it wanted
to come in, cozy up with him, reach its fingers in and close his eyes for good. He could feel it out there, beckoning. There
was no logic to it, but it had something to do with that obstruction sitting in the dark, and the man who had been watching
him.

Mick turned away from the window and crawled back onto the bed. He pulled the covers up, balling them in his fists. He closed
his eyes and experienced an echo of the unnatural feeling when his family had hugged him, kissed his cheeks. None of it felt
real. Today did not feel real. His life did not feel real. He wondered what had really happened out there during the missing
eleven to eighteen minutes. He wondered where he had gone and what he had seen.

He wondered what he might have brought back.