The People Next Door (6 page)

Mick sat up some hours later, in middle-of-the-night darkness, tangled in the bedding, feeling trapped. He hadn’t heard a
door creak or window breaking. He simply surfaced from a shallow pool of near-sleep and with primitive certainty
knew
.

Someone was in his cave.

He surveyed the bedroom, catching the scent of stale water and something muddied, like silt at the bottom of a lake. He turned
to shake Amy, but her side of the bed was empty; right, she was in the guest room. Outside the big window, the five largest
Flatirons stood risen from the earth like stone tents crooked with time.

He got out of bed and found the three-foot scrap of stainless-steel pipe he kept behind the walk-in closet door. The gummy
handle wrapped in electrical tape was comforting. Nice heft. You want it, you got it, fuck-o.

He took a few steps toward the open bedroom door and cocked his ear. He imagined the sound of drawers opening and closing,
the telltale creak of a floorboard, but nothing came. The scent of fetid water was less
potent now, as if it had originated in the bedroom and since moved on.

He stepped into the hall. The carpet was wet in places near the door. He went further, feeling around with his bare toes,
spots of it squishing under his feet. He looked up, to the end of the hall where it opened into the foyer and front living
room. A large whitish form was standing there, squared off as if blocking the exit, waiting for him. It was a man. Mick’s
soft insides seemed to swell and shudder, his head began to throb. The man did not move but there was a steady
pat pat pat
on the carpet where water yet dripped from his arms and sodden shorts. Mick couldn’t see the face, but something about the
man’s posture – the set of his shoulders, the slight bend in the left knee, blocky head – was disturbingly familiar.

‘Come on, Mickey,’ the pale figure said, and though he was still twenty feet away, the dentist’s voice carried as if he were
whispering in Mick’s ear. ‘We have to go now.’

The steel pipe slipped from Mick’s fist, thudding on the floor. Roger Lertz wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in the middle
of the night, not in his wet swimsuit.

‘What do you want?’ Mick said in a dull croak.

‘This is your fault. You owe me. If you don’t come with me now, it’s all going to be very bad for you. For Amy and the kids.’

The bald fact of Roger’s presence here at this hour carried Mick forward. Whatever the hell Roger wanted, he did not need
to be here, inside the house. Mick had
to get him out before Amy woke up and this turned into some kind of scene. He approached slowly on unsteady legs.

Up close, Roger’s hair was matted to his skull. The lake smell was on him, and something sweetly decaying with it. His skin
was so pallid in the darkness it seemed cold blue. Gaping wounds in the flesh appeared like plaster impressions taken from
sharks. Three of his ribs were exposed and his throat was slit, ragged near the ears. His mustache and chin hair were a deep
amber, sodden over his plump lips, and the eyes were filmed over with a cotton glazing that reminded Mick of old dogs, searching,
caressing Mick with a gentle desperation.

What happened to you?
Mick said or thought. He could not hear his own voice beneath the ringing panic in his ears.

The dentist leaned closer. ‘My demons caught up with me. Soon yours will too.’

Mick did not know what that meant but he knew Roger was dead, which meant this could not be happening, which meant it was
a nightmare and he would wake up any second now. He thought about waking up, willed it to happen, but Roger only stared at
him with his filmy eyes and nothing changed.

‘You’re not supposed to …’ Mick couldn’t finish. It was too awful to speak of.

‘You’re in a lot of trouble,’ Roger said and, without waiting for a reply, turned and walked away. Mick followed him across
the first floor, out into the backyard.
The air was warm. They moved past the pool and the guest house, toward the row of pine trees at Mick’s property border, then
down the old Jenkins driveway that had been repaved for the new house. The ground seemed to move under them, the borders of
his property retreating in great gaps and strides, and the land beneath his feet changed – fresh asphalt to cracked dry dirt,
then grass again, then back to dirt and the rocky prairie of Boulder’s open space. Seconds turned to minutes and Mick began
to think in terms of acres, a country mile, with no sense of direction.

This is exactly how location and distance get warped in dreams
.

The thought was not comforting, but it was enough to allow him to continue.

No owls hooted, no dogs barked. If they crossed near prairie dog holes and darting foxes and bull snakes nestling beneath
rotting timber, the fauna called no attention to itself. The land felt barren, cooling as night progressed. There were fields
and the occasional tree far off in the distance, but no other houses, and Mick found this to be further proof he was dreaming.

Roger continued with purpose, a man in a wet swimsuit out for a brisk hike, off to some newer, better beach. ‘That’s it. This
is how we do it, Mickey, you see? You know the way.’

Soon they were crossing a dirt lane, moving into a field dotted with thistle and small cacti and rocks, but Mick felt nothing
under his feet. The clouds moved overhead, letting moonlight glow at Roger’s back. Though they
had been outdoors for what seemed like half an hour, the dentist’s bathing trunks – pink and chocolate in a flower motif –
were still dripping, the water running off the hems in rivulets that coursed down his legs, pasting the hair to his hamstrings
in dark whorls.

Mick felt a sadness and pity for the man. All at once he felt guilty for severing the friendship in a cowardly way, by cool
temper and years of neglected invitations to parties, blatant shunning in public places. By all accounts, the man had spiraled
into addiction and familial despair, and all through it Mick had shed not one ounce of empathy for him. A real friend would
have told Roger to his face that he was out of control, behaving like an asshole, and that he needed to get his shit together
for his own health and for the sake of his family.

‘I’m sorry, Roger,’ Mick said. They should have reached Boulder Municipal Airport by now, but he saw no gliders or the fence
or the runway. Apparently there were entire pockets of land back here that Mick had driven by a thousand times growing up
but never explored. He felt like crying. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ Roger said without slowing or looking back. ‘What for?’

‘I should have been there. I could have done something for you.’

‘There’s nothing you could have done for me,’ the dentist said. ‘What do you think you could have done?’

‘I should have been kinder to you on the lake, and the other times.’

‘Maybe,’ Roger said. ‘But in your own way, you did save me. I’m free of all my addictions. Now it’s my turn to help you.’

Mick was frightened beyond his adult understanding of fear. Something terrible was out here. Roger was leading him to some
awful intersection of knowledge and possibility, a place where the ground opened up and showed you the eventual, final future,
a place where worms fed on dead prairie dogs and dried-up birds and gray-muzzled raccoons who died without anyone to comment
on their departing souls, where there were no pretty flowers or fond memories, only the absorption of the decaying carcass
into soil.

‘Where are we? Roger?’

The dentist did not respond. Mick hurried, head down for a while, and when he looked up again Roger was standing against a
white wall that extended hundreds of feet in either direction. It was his new neighbor’s security wall, and the house stood
lightless on the other side. What should have been a walk of only three or four minutes and covered less than an eighth of
a mile had taken an hour or more. The house seemed to tilt toward him, leaning like a parallelogram, a shadow of itself.

My demons caught up with me. Soon yours will too
.

‘Who are they?’ Mick said.

‘I don’t know,’ Roger said, and in the dark his eyes were soft, almost childlike. ‘But they are very interested in you and
your family. They have been searching for a long time and now they are here. They want to be your
friends, but they aren’t anybody’s friends. They will do anything to get what they want. They use other people, make them
do horrible things.’

‘They did this to you,’ Mick said.

‘What happened to me has already happened,’ Roger said, his tone suggesting that he did not like to be reminded of his condition.
‘It is no longer important. This is about you.’

‘I don’t understand. None of this makes any sense.’

‘True, but it’s happening. They found you, Mick. If you’re smart, you’ll get away, move, take your family some place far from
here and hope they lose interest.’

‘I can’t leave,’ Mick said. ‘This is our home. The restaurant …’

The dentist took what was supposed to be a deep breath, his face creasing with sadness. ‘Then there’s only one other option
for you.’

‘What?’ But he did not really want the answer.

‘Kill them. Kill them in their beds, destroy them, before they come for you.’

‘This isn’t real,’ Mick said. ‘I can’t accept it.’

Roger shook his head slowly. ‘It’s survival, Mick. If you don’t put an end to them, they will infiltrate your lives and break
you down and your family will spend the rest of your days in a living hell. I promise.’

Roger turned and trailed his fingers along the rough stucco. Mick watched him shamble along the length of it and turn the
corner, disappearing on the south side.

‘Roger?’

The dentist did not answer. Mick walked to the
corner and peered around, but the field was empty. Roger was gone.

Mick stood alone in the darkness, a hundred questions in his mind. What was he supposed to do now? He turned in a circle and
saw only deep black rolling land in all directions – except for this white wall. He couldn’t see his own house, which was
supposed to be just a couple of acres behind him. He made his best guess and started walking in that direction, feet cold,
everything cold, shivering.

When he had gone only half a dozen paces, a sound brought him to a halt. Low voices. Urgent mumbling, and then whining. A
girl was whimpering, on the edge of hysteria, and someone older was talking to her, whispering, telling her to stay quiet.

Mick turned and stared at the wall, the large house looming behind it. The noises were coming from the other side of the fence.
The girl was hiccupping with grief, keening softly.
Briela
.

His daughter was over there, on the other side.

‘Daddy?’ she said. ‘I’m scared. I got lost and I can’t find my way back home. Please, I just want to come back. I promise
I will be good—’

Briela gasped and was silenced.

Mick ran toward the wall and jumped, reaching over the top and pulling himself up as his feet paddled against the rough surface.
He was halfway up when his feet slipped and his knees slammed into the stucco grain, scraping skin there and on his elbows
as he dragged himself upward. He got his hips over the flat
top, and rolled, twisting as he fell down into the yard. He landed on his feet and staggered to one side, catching himself
with one hand, his skinned knees burning with rash.

‘Briela? Daddy’s here, sweetie—’

But she wasn’t near the fence, not in either direction, and the rest of the yard was one great field of grass that seemed
to be expanding as he surveyed it. He searched the house’s many windows for his daughter, or whoever had her, but they were
all dark. The house grew taller, enlarged, rearing back as if tilting on high stilts. The sight of it sent a spasm of vertigo
through him and he groped for something to hold onto. Beneath him the ground shifted and for a moment he seemed to totter
on the edge of the world.

Where there should have been a yard of grass, a patio, or even a foundation, now there was nothing but a giant gaping hole,
a drop-off that went on for hundreds of feet, a thousand, became bottomless. Mick swayed above it, feeling like a man on a
balance beam. It seemed infinite, containing nothing, but the longer he stared, the more he could see. It wasn’t bottomless.
The bottom was liquid, a mirror disc of silver and black reflecting the night sky.

Laid out on this cold surface as if floating were three white figures, one larger than the other two. From this distance they
looked like piano keys, flat white bars with thinner bars of silver-black in between. But they were shifting, moving, changing
in some way, and soon he realized they were rising, coming up to meet him.

The floor of the well rose like an elevator in a stone shaft and a cold draft blew up into his face, his hair. An awful butterfly
sensation wound through his stomach and he couldn’t breathe. The surface wasn’t rising, he understood at last. He was falling.
The cold wind sailed around him, and the squirming figures beneath him enlarged, magnified, resolved.

They were his family members, white as Roger’s back had been, naked and dead. Their eyes were fleshed over and their mouths
were open in the manner of infants mewling in the newborn wing of a hospital. But if that soft warmth was their beginning,
this was their end. He knew they were dead, even as they writhed in agony, their bodies animated by unholy energies whose
purpose was pure pain and endless chaos and the sucking of human souls.

Amy. Kyle. Briela.

They were suffering in a purgatory of lifelessness outside of time and he fell to meet them, knowing it was too late, he had
been tricked, and they had fallen for his mistakes. His failures, his weakness, his sins. It was too late to save them, or
himself. Mick screamed in everlasting despair as he slammed into the blackness.

Mick dozed in and out of the morning light, too comfortable to get up for another hour, until his lower back was stiff and
throbbing. He forced himself to rise and made his way to the shower.

Stepping under the rain spout’s hot spray, he felt strangely rested and upbeat, ready to move on from the disaster that was
yesterday. He knew he was supposed to take it easy and avoid stress, Dr Amy’s orders, but he thought he would whittle away
the morning until she left for school, then sneak by the restaurant for an hour or so, just to make sure everything was functioning
smoothly.

The hot water beat against his forehead, the steam opening his sinuses, loosening his shoulders. He was in less than a minute
when his knees began to sting and spots around his elbows began to burn. He reached for the lever to adjust the temperature
and froze. His mouth fell open in sigh of stunned remembrance. He rotated his left arm so that he could see his elbow.

The scrape was the diameter of a baseball, with a comet streak of red up his tricep. His knees were also
raw, one of them bleeding a pink trail down his shin, across the pebbled shower floor.

Sleepwalking, it had to be, and yet Mick had never been a sleepwalker, not even as a child. He exited the shower and wrapped
a towel around his waist, then walked the length of the hall, flicking on the lights to inspect the carpet.

A single wet footprint waited for him outside his bedroom door. The blot of it had faded but was still visible in the low
wool blend. He touched it with his hand. The dark spot was moist, if not wet. He stood and held his naked size ten over it,
heel and toes hovering less than two inches above the gray outline. His foot was at least two sizes too small. This print
belonged to a man with a size twelve, maybe a thirteen. Someone heavy, solid, maybe six-two or six-three.

Kill them. Kill them in their beds, destroy them, before they come for you
.

Of course the water might have soaked in and spread, making the print appear larger than the foot that had made it. There
were no other prints in the bedroom or hall. If Roger had actually been here, there would be more of them, a trail. Mick might
very well have made this print less than a minute ago, when he was inspecting the hall.

But then again, summers in Colorado were known to be very dry. Nights when Mick came home from work feeling hot and filmy,
he often showered before bed, and then again in the morning, and the same towel would be nearly dry after hanging on the rack
for only eight or nine
hours. So it was impossible to say when this print had been made, and a person could go crazy thinking about such unprovable
details. The worst nightmare you’ve ever had doesn’t make it more than a nightmare. The real world does not allow for things
like he had experienced last night. Whatever had happened to the dentist, Roger and his warnings were the product of Mick’s
traumatized subconscious, his mind’s way of working through the stress of his drowning accident.

Such were the reassurances Mick supplied for himself as he dressed for work, pulling his jeans over his bandaged knees.