Chapter 20

 

Across town, Professor Charles Milling said, "Something’s going on."

He spoke, as had become his habit over recent months, both to his wife and to himself. Mary lay in her room across the hall, adrift in a foggy sea of morphine, succumbing to the final stages of a long-endured cancer. There was nothing left to do, and Charles felt as hollowed out and brittle as a shucked chrysalis litter.

"Someone’s shouting," he said. He opened the window. Was it next door? It didn’t sound like Burt, but who else would it be?

A window smashed next door. It was on this side, an upstairs window. The shouting came clearer now, louder. No words, just rage. It sounded inhuman. Charles thought of Robert Deniro, speaking tongues in the remake of Cape Fear, all that guttural gibberish and deep-throated anger. This sound was different, spiked with shrieks and guttered with bellows, but it had that same, unearthly quality and hearing it un-knitted something in him.

Up in the window, someone appeared, a shadow…two? Struggling? Had there been a break-in?

Charles hurried to the phone and dialed 911. The line was jammed. He cut the call. Redialed. Nothing. All systems busy.

Not good.

He heard another voice then. Dianne, next door, screaming, begging.

He tried the phone once more, met with the same result, and headed for the door, calling softly to his unconscious wife, "I’ll be right back, Sweetie. Something’s going on next door." He was a small man and an old man, but by the sounds of it, his neighbors and friends were caught up in an awful fight, so he had to try to stop it.

Out the door he went, into the side yard…where he was almost struck by Dianne Kelting. She plummeted out of the darkness, crunched into the hedge, and tumbled to the ground.

Dianne staggered to her feet, and in the light spilling from the opposite kitchen, Charles could see damage: a wide cut over a swelling eye; her lip, split and drooling a long strand of blood and mucus; her nose, flattened, the blood beneath it black-dark in the low light; and worst of all, her arm, its forearm shaped like a V, then a U, then a V again as Diane’s other arm raised and lowered the wrist above the break. Charles winced at the nub of raw bone jutting from her flesh.

"Dianne, my God, are you okay?" he said, starting toward her.

She shrieked and limped away on what appeared to be a broken leg. "Run," she said, her voice thick and labored. "Burt’s gone mad."

Overhead, Burt leaned from the window through which he’d defenestrated his wife, and howled another disconcerting blast of insane rage. Charles blinked. What did one do when one’s neighbor had a psychotic episode? Talk them down, back to their senses? Charles watched as Burt leaned full against the broken window, shards like teeth protruding through the flesh of his hands, face covered in blood, eyes wide and rolling. No, Charles decided. There would be no taking Burt into his senses, not tonight. What, then?

And Charles thought of the trains.

To Charles, Burt had always seemed a calm, quiet guy. Burt managed the parts department of Cheery Valley Auto, drove American-made cars, and collected old toy train memorabilia for fun. Once, years ago, he led Charles into his basement, where, with the sheepish, hopped-up pride and embarrassment of a man who’d long harbored a boy’s hobby, he unveiled his masterpiece. Sprawling between the furnace and the Bilco doors was the largest toy train set Charles had ever seen. There they stood, Charles a little buzzed and more than a little sun-burnt; Burt, normally quiet and reserved, building a head of steam, and soon, Charles having given a few stunned encouragements—Wow, I’ve never seen anything like it—Burt the fairly boring parts department manager disappeared, and a new, impassioned Burt, the real Burt, Charles realized, emerged.

"Painting the people took a long time," Burt had said, squatting down and picking a meticulously detailed miniature from a meticulously detailed sidewalk. "See, this guy’s bored. Maybe a little grumpy, too. Been waiting for the bus. See?"

And Charles nodded, seeing it. Weird…the little guy did have a face, did look bored, did look a little pissed off.

"He just stands there with his hands in his pockets," Burt said and returned the pissed-off figurine to his post.

As Burt pointed and narrated, Charles nodded and wowed and even managed a smattering of insignificant questions, taking in the toy town, its streets and sidewalks and stations all dotted with miniature people, each of their painted faces with something to say. There were several trains snaking along simultaneously, spinning in wide loops around the outside of the basement, climbing foam mountains and riding ridges along the upper blocks of the basement walls. Little horns tooted, and automated switches shifted sections of rail so that converging trains avoided collisions, rattling off on parallel tracks at the last possible moment. These moments pleased Burt immensely, and he’d say, "Look," and point as one occurred. Then he’d laugh, and Charles would laugh, too, thinking, Burt, my friend, you are one craaaaazy bastard.

When Burt had scrambled to the top of the stairs, telling Charles in a voice pitched with excitement to hold on just a second, Charles filled with a silly dread. Of what violent perversities was a fifty-year-old train freak capable? Then Burt cut the basement lights, and the little town glowed with a fuzzy blur somehow nostalgic. Little streetlamps gas-lit wide backstreets; house windows glowed warmly; even the headlights from little cars on the street twinkled to life. The demonstration went on for several minutes, by the end of which time Charles stopped questioning and wowing, just hoping to head upstairs. His beer was empty, and the damp cool of the basement was killing the joy of an unusual day—all that warmth and sunlight, a little pocket of summer, cropping up unexpectedly in mid-March—and so he was grateful when the door atop the stairs opened, the lights flicked on, and, after the briefest of pauses, Dianne had called down to her husband. "Burt?"

Burt kept his lawn in shape, cleaned his gutters in the fall, and had a pair of little white Yorkies whose shit never seemed to show up on Charles’s side of the narrow strip of grass between the houses. Burt enjoyed the occasional beer on his back porch, especially after mowing the yard, but he’d never drunk to excess, not to Charles’s knowledge, and there’d never been any sign of spousal abuse or mental instability.

"Garrslagatunuff!" Burt yelled overhead.

Charles stared up at him, trying to make sense of the moment.

Then the mad train enthusiast vaulted into the air, arms spread, like a panther springing from a ledge. Charles lurched backward, and Burt thumped into the ground and lay in a heap, breathing but no longer moving, no longer ranting.

Dianne limped crying around the corner and hobbled across the grass to beat her prone spouse with the only weapon she’d been able to find: a three-foot section of flimsy aluminum downspout.

Charles laughed. He couldn’t help himself. This was the strangest thing that had ever happened to him, the strangest thing he’d ever seen. He laughed and kept laughing, even as she fixed him with an offended glare that somehow managed contempt. In fact, he laughed harder. But when she started to actually use her pitiful weapon, not as a club but rather pushing its end into the exposed flesh of Burt’s lower leg, slamming it into the white of his calf muscle, slicing the leg…Charles stopped laughing and went to her.

"Stop," he said, but she wouldn’t listen. This wasn’t an action meant to subdue her husband; it was simply meant to hurt him, to cut and damage. "Stop," he said again, and grabbed her hands. "He’s moving."

"Oh my," she said and dropped the downspout. Then she shouted, "Help!"

"No," Charles said and couldn’t help but glance at the darkness of his own house, wherein Mary lay dying. For two long years, he’d hoped for a miracle and tried everything and anything he could to facilitate her recovery, but finally he’d been reduced to just trying to let his beautiful wife rest. It was all that was left to him, to her. And so, for the last two months, Charles had insulated Mary with as much calm and peace as he could. He hadn’t left the house, save for the briefest errands, for what seemed like a decade. He’d taken an early retirement and tapped without hesitation into their retirement savings. He’d made her a comfortable room, solicited the occasional assistance of the angels known as home hospice nurses, and that had been his lot, his only concern.

When his friends and daughters called or emailed, suggesting he take a break for his own health, he politely declined. They didn’t understand. Here he was, pale and scrawny and un-showered, smelling of the Ensure canisters his wife was no longer able to drink. If anyone in the neighborhood looked the part of deranged lunatic, it was he; shower robe and slippers, tufts of gray hair jutting from his head, glasses hazed with dust and dander, all of it a testament to the long commitment he’d made to his wife. He’d be damned if he’d let this nutty bitch and her nutty husband disturb Mary. "Please, Dianne," he said. "Please be quiet. Think of Mary."

"Help!" she cried again.

He hit her. It was an open hand slap, but it was harder than he’d meant, and she fell to her side. At least she stopped shouting. Burt made a sound, shifted. Dianne propped herself on one elbow and blinked at Charles.

Then someone answered her call.

Down the street, someone else, another man, bellowed. And from the sound of it, the man was moving closer…fast. Charles tensed. Faintly, he could hear another shouter, further down the block…and, down in town, sirens.

What the hell was going on?

Burt lurched beneath him.

Dianne burst into racking sobs.

"Keep quiet," Charles said. He pointed toward the street, where the shouter seemed to be drawing nearer, and then took off his belt and used it to tie Burt’s hands together. One wrist was broken badly. Charles ignored this, cinching the knot tightly, and Burt made a low, huffing sound.

"Don’t hurt him, you bastard," Dianne said, and Charles had to clap a hand over his mouth to restrain a new wave of laughter. It was all too much: the abruptness of the thing, the brutality of it, and now Dianne, flip-flopping from downspout torturer to passionate defender, just like that.

Out on the street, the shouter ran past. Either he hadn’t seen them back in the shadows or hadn’t wanted anything from them, but it chilled the humor from Charles to hear that garbled ululation, the same, atavistic, sub-linguistic rage Burt had been spouting. What the hell was going on?

There was no time to ponder. He had to get Burt restrained and had to get everyone inside. They couldn’t afford to drag the neighborhood shouter or anyone else into things. He kicked off a slipper, removed a sock, and tucked it into Burt’s mouth. It stifled the mumbling but increased the jerking.

Charles reached out. Dianne flinched, but didn’t pull fully away, and he touched her gently on the bruised cheek. "You’re in shock," he said. "We’ve had an accident, but we need to stay together now so that we can be all right. Something is happening, and it’s important that we go inside now and not draw any attention to ourselves."

She blinked at him then nodded.

"Good. Take off your belt," he said.

Wincing, she complied. She really was badly hurt and would need medical attention as soon as possible. Something told him, however, that the ambulances were going to be a little busy tonight. He thought of the morphine sitting in the refrigerator then dismissed the thought immediately. The supply was dwindling, and this event, whatever it was, was sure to make supplies shorter. Dianne could suffer now and laugh later. Mary would have her peace.

Dianne handed him her belt, which he looped over Burt’s head like a leash.

"You’re not going to drag him?" Dianne said.

"No, but if he comes full to again, this will help us to control him without having to hurt him so much. Can you lift him?"

Dianne opened her mouth, said nothing, and shook her head.

"That’s okay," Charles said. Internally, he berated himself. Lift him? She’s suffered multiple breaks, and she’s going to lift him? Think, man, think.

He couldn’t lift Burt by himself, not with his back. He could try to drag him under the shoulders, but again, his back…

And then he remembered it, sitting in the back room, folded up like a serving table, the wheelchair Mary had used on her chemo trips, after she’d grown too weak to walk. What a grueling marathon those sessions had been. Poor Mary.

Charles went inside. He wanted to snap on the TV or radio or check the web, but there was no time, not now. Instead, he went straight to the back room, where his wife lay in the shadows. She stirred, moaning. No matter how many times he heard that sound, it always managed to terrify and depress him. The sound of it was so deep and hollow, like winter wind moaning in a cold, dry cistern. It was only momentary, though, and she drifted off again. Even here, even now, with all that was happening outside, Charles said a little prayer of thanks, as he always did when he knew his wife had reached a fork in the road of probabilities and managed to move quietly down the more peaceful of the pair. He pulled the wheelchair out of the room, carried it back outside, and unfolded it into serviceable shape.

Burt was still out. Dianne hovered, examining his face with shaking hands. She rolled him onto his back and removed the sock from his mouth. Charles told her to replace it. She ignored him. Outside, the neighborhood shouter was looping back in this direction, and down in town, the sirens were louder.

A car roared up the street, tires screeching as it turned onto Maryland Boulevard, and shot away doing what sounded like twice the posted speed limit. I hope he hits the shouter, Charles thought, and pulled Burt into the chair.

It was hard work. Burt wasn’t a large man, but neither was Charles.

"Oh my lord," Dianne said, getting a clear view of her husband.

Charles grunted, pulling Burt further into the chair. Something in his back twanged like a breaking string, and a little line of fire leapt up, raced across his ass, and burned down the back of his left leg. Welcome back, sciatica.

Once Burt was loaded, things got easier, and in minutes, they had him in the laundry room of Charles’s house. Dianne was crying and thanking Charles.

"Stop," Charles said, taking her face in his hands again. "I need you to stop right now. Mary is right in there, and she’s gotten awfully bad these last weeks, and we’re not going to disturb her." He realized he was squeezing Dianne’s face a little hard. He let up the pressure. "Understand?"

She nodded, looking like a frightened kid. Charles needed her to come around as much as possible, as quickly as possible, needed her to regain control.

"We have to hurry," Charles said. "If Burt wakes up before we get him tied, we’re in a lot of trouble. Now, go to the front door, make sure it’s locked, and draw the shades. I left a light on in the foyer. Turn that off, too, please. Got it?"

Again, she nodded. Then she set off.

In her absence, Charles turned to Burt. The nose was flattened, and one cheekbone looked badly hurt, too, but these were minor in comparison to the generalized trauma evident in the skull. The right side of Burt’s forehead seemed further forward than the left, and slightly higher. Still, the guy was alive…and getting livelier.

Rope…where did he have rope? It was in the garage, which meant he’d have to go outside again, out in the yard, out with the shouters. No thanks. For starters, he would use cords from appliances. He drew the toaster to the center of the counter. Mary had loved the granite; it broke his heart that she’d enjoyed it for less than a year prior to the bad news. He pulled a large knife from the butcher block.

Dianne, returning to the kitchen and seeing the knife, shrieked, "What are you doing?"

Turning toward her, Charles hissed, "Shut up. I told you." Realizing that he was holding the knife toward her, he dropped its point. He also lowered his voice. "You can’t do that, no matter what happens. I told you."

In the brief pause, no sound came from Mary’s room. Again, he uttered a silent prayer of thanks.

"What are you doing with that knife?" Dianne asked.

In response, Charles went to the counter and cut the toaster’s plug. Leaving the knife on the counter, he crossed the linoleum and used the cord to tie one of Burt’s legs to the chair. Burt coughed. Then he gurgled.

"What’s wrong with him?" Dianne said, moving forward.

I think he fell, Charles thought, and again, laughter roared up inside him. This time, however, he contained it easily. The thought of Mary next door sobered him.

On a nearby side street, a chorus of insane shouting moved through the night.

"Try the phone," Charles said, nodding toward the counter. He doubted that she’d have any success, but he wanted to contact the police and paramedics, and beyond that, he knew she needed something to do. Without something to do, Dianne was a liability. "Try 911. It’ll be busy. Hang up, hit redial. Keep trying, and you’ll get through."

She went to work. So did he. He snipped the plugs from his coffee grinder and knife sharpener, and, after some hesitation, the coffee maker itself. It had taken Mary so long to find the thing. With these cords, he did a better job of tying Burt’s legs and wrists to the chair.

It wasn’t enough.

Charles stood, hands on hips, looking down at his half-bound captive and cursed himself for being so stupid. Why had he cut the cords? Why had he ever believed they’d be long enough to do the job? He had to think, had to keep everything straight and see everything for what it was. He had to secure Burt’s waist, chest, and neck, and he couldn’t get it done with appliance cords.

He had to go out to the garage.

Burt groaned.

Dianne froze, staring at her husband.

"Keep calling," Charles said. Then he went to the garage.

Outside, he could hear sirens in the distance. Nearer, though the shouting had stopped, the night simmered with malice. He could feel it, throbbing off the trees, the houses, the hedges. Lord, don’t let the hide-a-behinds get me.

The hide-a-behinds. How long had it been since he’d thought of them? Twenty years? Thirty? The memory of them should have made him laugh, should have at least brought a smile to his face, but here, tonight, it just shivered through him like a cold breeze.

Long ago, when Charles was a child in upstate Pennsylvania, his father had warned him to get home before dark or he’d be out with the hide-a-behinds. The hide-a-behinds, his father had explained, came out at twilight and retreated at dawn. Charles always imagined them standing stock still, eyes open and unblinking, in horrible, cobwebby, lightless caves pocking the wooded hillside behind his house. His father said they spent their nights waiting for tardy children to come within reach. In Charles’s mind, hide-a-behinds were hulking, bipedal moles, taller than men and lumpy, with short but strong arms drawn up close to their bodies, arms they’d use to snatch at passing children, should any unlucky boy come too near the tree behind which they hid. Every night that he left late the home of a neighborhood friend, Charles watched the trees and walls and hedges, waiting for the hide-a-behinds, knowing, because his father had told him, that if he did ever see one, it would be too late for escape. He would be dragged back to that cobwebby hole in the hillside and never heard from again.

The really scary thing about the hide-a-behinds was that they could hide anywhere. Take the tallest, fattest one, and he could easily hide behind a skinny sapling. It was their particular brand of dark magic, and it had such a powerful affect on Charles that he thought of them even during high school, walking girls through parks and quiet neighborhoods. Of course he knew by then that it was all one of his father’s jokes, a ploy to get him home on time, but still his eyes scanned the landscape, and some small part of him remained alert. More than alert…afraid.

Tonight, on his short walk to the garage, he thought he could feel the hide-a-behinds peering at him from behind every tree on the yard.

He hurried along, wincing at the crunching sound his feet made on the graveled driveway, and entered the garage. Over the years, it had accumulated more and more junk, until, much to Mary’s chagrin, it had grown so packed that they’d surrendered to the clutter and started parking the car outside on the gravel. Insanity. Charles felt a pang of guilt. Why hadn’t he seen to his responsibilities while his wife had been well enough to have enjoyed them? No. He’d ignored the garage, pleading too much work and too little time, ignored Mary and her requests, and the junk had spread like a goddamned tumor…

Get a grip, he told himself, realizing he was teetering on the edge of the same pit that had eaten Dianne’s rational mind fifteen minutes earlier. And that was something: he needed to finish up here and get back inside, make sure Dianne and Burt were still under control. Rope, then. He clicked on his flashlight and maneuvered across the clutter, half expecting a dozen hide-a-behinds to pop up, gleeful in their patient surprise, to the equally cluttered workbench where he found too little rope but also a wonderful treasure: duct tape. One dwindling roll and another full one.

He gathered rope and tape, and, starting for the door, saw the hammer hanging from the pegboard. Better grab that, too.

He reentered the house as Dianne hung up the phone. "It’s no good," she said.

"Keep trying."

He ran the tape around Burt and chair, first making a seat belt, then a chest strap. As things turned out, there was no easy way to fasten his neck or head, so Charles just ran some extra tape over Burt’s shoulders, arms, and legs.

He was weighing the use of rope, thinking it wise to keep the rope handy in case of another break in, when the phone rang. He and Dianne jumped. Even though he’d turned the ringer low months ago, the sound of it was impossibly loud in the heavy silence of this curious moment.

Dianne stared. It rang again. Charles took it from her. "Hello?"’

It was Sandy, his oldest daughter. She was sorry she hadn’t called when she said she would, but she had forgotten little Jimmy’s pee wee football game and then a few of the couples in the development had just gotten together, a spur of the moment thing—this she said as Charles stared at green slime drooling down Burt’s chin—and couldn’t quite get to it, but how was Mom?

Thankfully, he’d had this conversation so many times before that he was able to fly on autopilot. Oh, Mom was okay. Not good, really.

Sandy informed him that she was still planning to come out the next weekend, would that be okay?

During a brief pause, he studied the bulge of Burt’s forehead. It was growing. "Okay, Sweetie," he said. "That would be nice. Look, I hate to cut you off, but I’m in the middle of something, okay? Nothing, really, but I can’t talk now. How about I call you early in the week?"

They said their goodbyes. It was, all at the same time, surreal and sad and funny. He wanted to end the call as quickly as possible and yet wanted nothing more than to talk to Sandy. He had, in fact been waiting all day for her call, growing a little concerned as afternoon gave way to evening and the phone still had not rung, hating himself for fretting like an old woman and wondering how much of his urge to call her had to do with fears for her safety and how much had to do with his own, selfish loneliness. Time moved so slowly in the house. Now he was filled with a strange mix of emotions. He felt loss, guilt, and, surprisingly, a little thrill at having fooled her.

A car raced by out front. It roused Burt, who muttered more gibberish before nodding back into unconsciousness.

Charles handed the phone back to Dianne. "In a minute, we’ll start calling again," he said. Then, taking off his other sock, he said, "Tell me what happened tonight. How did it start?"