Everything looks the same, Kipp,” Tony Hunt said, standing at the window of his second story bedroom, looking west into the late sun. Some kids were playing a game of touch football in the street; their younger brothers and sisters sat on the sideline sidewalks on skateboards and tricycles, cheering for whoever had the ball—a typical tranquil scene in a typical Los Angeles suburb. Yet for Tony it was as though he were looking over a town waiting for the bomb to drop. The houses, trees and kids were the same as before, only seen through dirty glasses. He’d felt this way before, last summer in fact, felt this overwhelming desire to go back in time, to yesterday even, when life had been much simpler. Chances were the chain letter was a joke; nevertheless, it was a joke he’d never laugh over.
“We won’t have such a nice view out the bars of our cell, that’s for sure,” Kipp Coughlan said, sitting on the bed.
“I’m telling my lawyer I won’t settle for a penitentiary without balconies,” Tony said.
“A while back, they used to hang convicts from courthouse balconies.”
Tony turned around, taking in with a glance the plain but tidy room; he was not big on frills, except for his poster of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, which hung on the wall at the foot of his bed and which greeted him each morning with an erotic smile. “You know, we’re not being very funny,” he said.
“Really. Has Alison gotten hold of Joan?”
“Not yet. Joan’s away with her parents at Tahoe. She wasn’t at school today. But she should be home soon.”
“She’ll freak when she hears about the letter,” Kipp said.
Tony thought of Joan, her angel face and her vampish temperament, and said, “That’s an understatement.”
“Will Neil be here soon?”
Tony nodded, stepping to a chair opposite his bed, sitting down and resting his bare feet on a walnut case where he stowed his athletic medals and trophies. It drove his mom nuts that he kept the awards locked up where no one could see them; he liked to think it was beneath his dignity to show off. Of course if that were true, why did he collect them at all? When he was honest with himself, he had to admit a good chunk of his self-image was built on his athletic successes. Grant High had won the league title in football last fall, and it had been his passing arm that had been hugely to thank, a fact that was often mentioned but never debated at school. At present, running in the quarter mile and half mile, he was leading the track team to a similar championship. What made him slightly ashamed of his accomplishments, he supposed, was his being a hero in a group he couldn’t relate to. He was a jock but he really didn’t give a damn what NFL team acquired who in the draft. He could never carry on a conversation with his teammates, and he despised their condescending attitude toward nonathletic students. That was one of the reasons he felt comfortable with Kipp and Neil. Neither of them could hike a football, much less score a touchdown.
“Neil called just before you arrived,” Tony said. “He should be here any minute.”
“Does he know that he now has a Caretaker?”
“Yeah. Alison gave him the gist of the letter over the phone.”
Kipp grinned, which was always a curious affair on him. He had a buffoon’s nose and a rabbit’s ears, plus fair hair that had an unfortunate tendency to stick up, all of which at first glance made him look like a clown. But his intense black eyes belied the comparison. Even when he laughed, which was often, he looked like he was thinking. Kipp may not have been a genius, but he was close enough to make no difference. He had a 4.0 average and was going to M.I.T. come fall to study aeronautical engineering. He and Tony hadn’t been friends for long; they had gotten beyond the superficial “Hey, what’s happening?” level only after the incident last summer—nothing like a shared trauma to bring people together. He had the rare wit that could ridicule himself as comfortably as it did others. He loved to talk and, being a prodigious reader, usually knew what he was talking about. Tony was hoping he could shed some light on their dilemma.
“Why didn’t you invite Alison to this discussion?” Kipp asked. “She wanted to come.”
“Did she?”
“Brenda told me she did. And Brenda never lies, usually.”
“Brenda’s your girlfriend,” Tony said. “Why isn’t she here?”
“She says she’s not scared, but I’m not sure I believe her. I didn’t want us to have to have a hysterical female’s opinion to deal with.”
“Alison said Fran was the one who was most upset.”
“You don’t know Fran, she’s always upset. She wouldn’t even give Brenda the original letter for us to study.” Kipp leaned forward and pulled a folded sheet of notebook paper from his back pocket. “Brenda copied it down word-for-word. Do you want to read it?”
“Alison repeated it to me twice on the phone. But let Neil read it. Then destroy it. I don’t want copies of that blasted thing floating all over the place.”
Kipp nodded. “So answer my question: Why not have Alison here?”
Tony shrugged. “At this point, what does she know that we don’t?”
Kipp snorted. “Her liking you is no reason to be afraid of her. Look, you have no excuse to suffer the usual adolescent insecurities over creatures of the opposite sex. You’re built like an ox, have apple pie in your blond hair, and the flag in your blue eyes. You’re as All-American as they make them.”
“How do you know she likes . . . oh, yeah, because Brenda told you and Brenda doesn’t lie.” Tony scratched his All-American head and tried to look bored. Actually, he always felt both elated and annoyed whenever he heard of Alison’s interest in him: elated because he was attracted to her, annoyed because she was fascinated with someone who didn’t exist. She saw only his image, the guy who could throw the perfect spiral to the perfect spot at the perfect time. If she were to get to know the real Tony Hunt—that shallow insecure jerk—she would be in for an awful disappointment. Besides, Neil had a crush on Alison and he never messed with his friends’ girls. Indeed, Neil had asked Alison out a couple of weeks ago. She had turned him down but only because she was busy with drama rehearsals. He would have to get on Neil to try again.
“This is not the time to worry about starting a romance,” Tony added, glancing out the window and seeing Neil Hurly limping—he had a bum knee—his way around the touch football game, his shaggy brown hair bouncing against his old black leather jacket, which he wore no matter what the temperature. Neil was four years out of the back hills of Arkansas and still spoke in such a soft drawl that one could fall asleep listening to him. They had met the first week of their freshman year, sharing adjoining home room lockers. Tony had started the relationship; Neil had been even more shy then than he was now. What had attracted him to the guy had been clear to Tony from the start: Neil’s rare country boy combination of total honesty and natural sensitivity. Usually kids who spoke their minds didn’t give a damn, and those who did care deeply about things inevitably became neurotic and clammed up. Neil was a gem.
“Come right in, the folks are out!” Tony called. Neil waved and disappeared under the edge of the garage. A minute later he was opening the bedroom door.
“Hello Tony, hello Kipp,” he said pleasantly, hesitating in the doorway. On the short side and definitely underweight, with features as soft as his personality, he was not a striking figure. Still, his eyes, a clear warm green, and his smile, innocent and kind, gave him a unique charm. If only he’d get a decent haircut and some new clothes, he would be more popular.
“Pull up a chair,” Tony said, nodding to a stool in the corner. “Kipp, give him Brenda’s copy of the letter.”
“Thank you,” Neil said, taking a seat and accepting the notebook page from Kipp. Tony studied Neil’s face as he read the Caretaker’s orders. Neil was not as bright as Kipp but he had an instinct for people Tony had learned to trust. He was disappointed when Neil did not dismiss the letter with a chuckle.
“Well?” Kipp said, growing impatient.
Neil carefully refolded the paper and handed it back to Kipp. His pale complexion seemed whiter than a couple of minutes ago. “The person who wrote this is seriously disturbed,” he said.
Tony forced a smile. “Come on. It’s a prank, don’t you think?”
“No,” Neil said carefully. “It sounds . . . dangerous.”
Tony took a deep breath, holding it like it was his slipping hope, knowing he would have to let go of both soon. He turned to Kipp. “You’re the scientist. Give us the logical perspective.”
Kipp stood—perhaps for dramatic effect, he loved an audience—and began to pace between the door and the bed. Almost as tall as Tony but thirty pounds lighter and hopelessly uncoordinated, he moved like a giraffe. “I disagree with Neil,” he said. “I think it’s a joke. That’s the simplest explanation and it does away with us having to search for a motive. What probably happened is that one day one of the girls was feeling particularly guilty and blabbed about the accident to a friend, who in turn told God knows who about it. Somewhere along the line, the information got to someone with a kinky sense of humor.”
“Alison was very firm that none of them had spoken about the accident to anyone outside the group,” Tony said. “Unless Joan did, which seems unlikely.”
“Naturally they would deny it,” Kipp said. “Girls can’t be trusted, and here I’m not excluding Brenda.” He paused, leaning against the bookcase, thinking. “Or maybe they blabbed about it accidentally . . . Say Fran was talking to Alison in the library about last summer and they didn’t know they were being overheard.”
“Have either of you ever discussed the accident in public?” Tony asked.
“Are you kidding?” Kipp said.
“I would be afraid to,” Neil said, glancing at the closed door. “I feel bad talking about it now.”
“I know what you mean,” Tony said. “I’m sure the girls feel the same way. I can’t imagine them gossiping about it with even the slightest chance of being overheard.”
“Then let’s return to one of them doing it intentionally,” Kipp said. “That medieval urge to go to Confession could be at work here. One of the girls must have felt they had to unburden themselves on someone unconnected with the deed.”
“I can’t help noticing how you keep blaming the girls,” Tony said. “Do you have one in particular in mind?”
“Fran,” Kipp answered without hesitation. “She’s high-strung; she speaks without thinking. She could have told anybody. I think a couple of us should take her aside and squeeze the truth out of her.”
“But even if she were to admit to telling someone,” Tony said. “That doesn’t mean that someone wrote this letter. Like you said, the information could have passed through several hands.”
“We can only hope it hasn’t gone outside a tiny circle of people,” Kipp said.
“And what if this Caretaker is not joking?” Tony said. “What if he or she really would try to hurt us?”
He had not expected an answer to that question and he didn’t get one. A minute passed in silence, during which Tony had a vivid mental image of the expression on his parents’ faces if the truth were to come out, their shock and disappointment. More than the others, he had been to blame. Certainly a judge would see it that way. He might be sent to jail, and if the family of the man came forth, his parents would probably be saddled with a heavy lawsuit. College would have to be put on the shelf for years, and his record and image would be permanently ruined. Above all else, the incident could not be made public knowledge.
“We’ll question Fran,” Tony said finally. “But we’ll let Brenda and Alison do it, and no one’s going to squeeze her. And I don’t think we should count on a confession. Let’s look at other alternatives. What do you say, Neil?”
Neil appeared momentarily startled by the question, as if he had been lost in his own thoughts and had not been listening to the discussion. He fidgeted on his stool, said hesitantly, “I think the Caretaker might be one of us.”
“You mean that one of us is playing a joke on the rest?” Kipp asked.
“Not necessarily.”
“I don’t understand,” Tony said, not sure he wanted to.
“Someone in the group might be out to hurt someone else in the group,” Neil said. “Or maybe everyone in the group. The Caretaker could be right in front of us.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Kipp snapped. “What would be their motive? They would only be hurting themselves by revealing the incident.”
Neil reached out his hand, indicating he wanted another look at the letter. Kipp was quick to oblige him. Neil read it at least twice more before speaking. “The way this is worded—the paragraph structure and all—the Caretaker seems to be separating the revelation of the accident from the manner in which he would hurt us. He could hurt us without telling a soul about the man.”
“How?” Tony asked.
Neil shrugged. “There’s hundreds of ways to hurt someone if you really want to.”
“But who in our group would have the motive to do so?” Kipp asked, dismissing the possibility with his tone.
Neil gave a wry smile. “A crazy person wouldn’t need a motive.”
“It’s illogical,” Kipp said. “None of us fits the psychological profile. Now I say we—”
“Just a second,” Tony interrupted. “The theory simplifies things in a way. We wouldn’t have to explain how someone else came to learn about the man. Who do you think it could be, Neil?”
Kipp went to speak but changed his mind. There followed another lengthy pause. In many ways, Neil’s suggestion was the most disturbing; it was always worse to be stabbed in the back by a friend. Yet, try as he might, Tony could think of no one in the group who could write such a letter. On the other hand, he scarcely knew Alison and Fran, or for that matter, Joan and Brenda. He needed more information and wondered how he could go about getting it. He also wondered why Kipp was so anxious to dismiss Neil’s suggestion.
The warm orange light slipped off Tony’s face as the sun sunk below the city’s false horizon of smog. In spite of the fact that he was sweating, he shivered. The day would be gone soon and they still had no clear idea what to do about tomorrow.
“Fran is frightened,” he said. “If she doesn’t confess, let’s have her repaint the mascot tomorrow night and then pass the letter on. This will give us a breathing space to find more clues. You don’t mind if the Caretaker comes after you, do you, Kipp?”
“As long as it’s like Neil thinks, that he or she won’t retaliate against me for not doing my duty by spreading the word about last summer.” Kipp took the letter back and reread it closely. “Hmm, yes, it does seem that the phrase, ‘You will be hurt,’ is pointed toward the individual while the other threat is there to keep the group as a whole from seeking outside help.”
“It’s like we’re in a haunted house we can’t leave,” Neil said.
A haunted house we’re afraid to leave, Tony thought. They could end their dilemma this minute by going to the police. But the threat of harm seemed preferable to certain disgrace.
The phone rang. All three of them jumped. Boy, they made lousy heroes. Tony leaned over and picked it up. “Hello?”
“What is this crap about the hourglass and our sins?” Joan demanded in her throaty voice. In spite of the situation, Tony had to smile. Every high school needed a Joan Zuchlensky. She separated the jerks from the phonies from the wimps. She was gorgeously gross; her angelic face let her get away with her crude personality—at least as far as the guys were concerned; she didn’t have many girlfriends. And her coarseness just made her all the more attractive. Her eyes were a darting gray, her lips thick and sexy, her hair a taunting platinum punk-cropped masterpiece. More than anything, she looked nasty, and Tony could attest to the fact that the package could live up to its wrapping. He had gone out with her a few times with the excuse that she was “an interesting person,” but in reality to see if he couldn’t further his sex education. Their last date, they had gotten into some heavy fooling around. If he hadn’t started rehashing in his mind all the sound advice he’d read online, frustrating Joan in the extreme, they would certainly have gone all the way. There was always next time. . . .
“I take it you heard the news,” Tony said.
“Yeah, Brenda told me all about it.” She paused and lowered her voice, and perhaps a trace of anxiety entered her tone. “What are we going to do?”
“Fran will repaint the mascot, then we’re going to see if the ax falls on Kipp.”
“Why don’t we go after the guy?”
“As soon as we figure out who it is, we will.” What they would do with the person if they did find him was a question Joan thankfully didn’t ask.
“As long as that mess in the desert stays secret. You know my old man’s a cop? I swear, he’d have me locked up if he found out.”
“If the truth did come out, we could just deny it,” Tony said. That was not really as simple as it sounded. If they were questioned by the police, their guilt, especially Fran’s and Neil’s, would be easy to read. And the Caretaker might very well know where they had buried the body.
Joan laughed. “And here I was getting so bored with these last few weeks of school! It looks like they’re going to be wild.” She added, “Hey, I’ve got to go. Let’s talk tomorrow at lunch. And let’s get together some other time, huh?”
“Sure.” Lust was not at the forefront of his mind. Whoever had said danger was an aphrodisiac had said so in safe surroundings.
They exchanged good-byes, and Tony turned back to his companions. Kipp was meticulously shredding his copy of the chain letter. Neil was massaging his right leg just beneath the knee. He had injured the leg in P. E. a couple of months back and was supposed to have arthroscopic surgery on the cartilage sometime soon. Neil was having a lot of health problems. He had recently been diagnosed as diabetic. He had to inject himself with insulin daily and had to monitor his diet religiously. He said it was a hassle but no big deal.
“When are you going to get that joint worked on?” Tony asked.
Neil quickly withdrew his hand from the sore area. “My mom and I are still trying to put together the doctor’s fee. We’re almost there.”
Neil’s father had died when Neil was three, and his mother had never remarried. She worked two waitress jobs—lunches at a Denny’s Coffee Shop, dinners at a Hilton restaurant—and Neil put in long hours at a twenty-four-hour gas station. They barely seemed to get by. Tony had a couple of grand in the bank, but knew it would be useless offering it to Neil, who could be unreasonably proud at rimes.
“The way your body’s falling apart, pretty soon we’re going to be measuring you for a box,” Kipp said good-naturedly, though Tony would have preferred if he had kept his mouth shut. Kipp’s sense of humor did not always run the right side of good taste. Sometimes he sounded like . . .
Like someone who could write a weird letter?
Tony knew he had better stop such thoughts before they could get started. If he didn’t, he’d never get to sleep tonight.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Neil agreed, not offended. “I’ve had so much bad luck lately . . . ” His eyes strayed to the remains of the letter. “. . . I sometimes wonder if someone ain’t put a hex on me.”
The opposite of hardheaded Kipp, Neil was superstitious. Kipp often teased him about it, and he had the bad sense to do it now.
“A ghost, maybe, in a tan sports coat?”
“Kipp, for God’s sake!” Tony said, disgusted. The man had been wearing a tan coat.
“It’s possible, I think,” Neil said softly, his eyes dark. “Not the type of ghost you’re talking about, but another kind, I mean.”
Kipp giggled. “What do you mean?”
“Hey, let’s drop this, OK? It’s dumb and it doesn’t help us.” Tony stood and went to the window. The football game had ended and the kids had disappeared. The street was quiet. Soon his parents would come home. He wanted the guys gone before they arrived. It was getting dark.
“I mean, none of us is a doctor,” Neil continued as though he had not heard him. “You read online how someone’s heart stops, their breathing stops, and then, a few hours later, they’re up and walking around. It happens quite a lot, I understand. And sometimes these people talk about the strange things they saw and the strange places they went to while they were dead. Usually, it sounds nice and beautiful. But this one man I read about who tried to commit suicide talked about a place that sounded like hell. It made me sick reading about it. But what I wanted to say was that these people who die and come back sometimes develop powers. Some can heal, while others can read minds and transmit thoughts. It’s supposed to depend on how they died, whether they were scared or not.”
Could there be a death worse than premature burial? Tony asked himself. Edgar Allan Poe had spent a lifetime obsessed with the idea, and he had been a devotee of horror. It was obvious that this is what Neil was driving at.
And the grave they had dug had been shallow.
Shallow enough to escape from? Maybe . . .
Dead dammit!
He simply could not allow these paranoid possibilities a chance to start to fester. They had checked and rechecked: No pulse, no breathing, no pupil response, no nothing. Dead, absolutely no question.
“And what else have you learned reading The National Enquirer?” Kipp asked sarcastically.
Neil did not answer, hanging his head toward the floor. Tony crossed the room, put his hand on his shoulder. Neil looked up, his green eyes bright.
“The person who sent this letter is alive,” Tony said firmly. “It might even be, like you suggested, someone in the group. But it’s certainly not a psychic zombie who can give us diabetes from a distance or force us to turn ourselves in against our will.”
Neil smiled faintly, nodded. “Sure, Tony. I’m just sort of scared, you know?”
Tony squeezed his arm. “You’re no different from the rest of us. No different from even Kipp here, though he would be the last to admit it.”
“Judges and juries frighten me more than witches and werewolves,” Kipp muttered.
On that pragmatic note, the discussion came to an end. Tony walked them both to the front door and told them that as long as they stuck together they’d be all right. It sounded like a decent send-off remark.
He had been worried about getting to sleep that night but as he climbed the stairs back to his room, he felt suddenly weary and collapsed on his bed with his pants still on, his teeth unbrushed and his window wide open. Coach Sager had put them through a grueling workout in track practice that afternoon, but Tony knew it was wrestling with the unknown Caretaker that had worn him out. If only he could sleep now he could recover his wits for tomorrow.
And he got his wish, for within minutes he began to doze, or rather, he started to dream, which must have meant he was asleep. But the sleep was anything but restful. A shadow stood over him all night, forcing him to labor on a task that seemed impossible to complete. They were in a deserted field and he was working with his bare hands, digging a grave that would never be deep enough.