Tuesday, October 27
Manchester, New Hampshire
Alice, what did the penguin always tell you?
That simple sentence rattles around my head, refusing to leave. I stare out my bedroom window, scanning the dark for movement, but this does no good. If someone is out there watching me, they know enough to do it from a distance. They won’t close in on me until I’m asleep, and the combination of jet lag and paranoia ensure sleep won’t come anytime soon.
So now I keep watch and wonder why my father wrote those words to me.
He wrote them at some point before he died, perhaps as long as fourteen years ago. He was planning to give me the book with that inscription. Did he give up on it entirely, or was it still a work in progress when he died? And, more importantly, how did Mr. Interested get his hands on it?
What did the penguin always tell you?
Not to trust anyone.
I open the bedroom window and invite in the frosty air, which heightens my senses. The hum of a car in the distance rises and then falls, then is eventually replaced by another. The New England air is so distinctly different from that of Old England, and as I take it deep into my lungs, I feel happy to be home. Even if uncertainty waits for me here.
This is no use. It’s just after four in the morning, and since I’ve never been the type to sleep past six, I give in to the day. I dress, grab my purse, and head out the front door.
I turn and look at my house, consider how it’s changed in such a short period of time. It has the same shape and look as always, but we murdered a man inside there, so the energy of it is forever mutated. Depending on how my future unfolds, perhaps my little home will one day be part of a ghost tour for New England haunt-seekers.
All is dark in the Perch. I haven’t seen Richard since I arrived home yesterday, and I have no doubt he’s not eager to reconnect with me. But I sense ours is a relationship that is far from over. There are things to be said, assurances to be made. When you cover up a homicide with someone, that’s a bond not easily broken.
I walk down the street, feeling the weight of the black morning on me. My breath steams the air, and I squeeze my fists inside their gloves, keeping the blood in my fingers flowing. It’s a short distance to the Rose, and I’m certain I will hear anyone following me. But it’s as quiet as if I were strolling through a graveyard, which, seeing all the neighborhood Halloween decorations in the light of the streetlamps, it almost seems I am.
I reach the Rose and enter through the alley door. Brenda should be opening today, which means she’ll be here sometime before five. I’m looking forward to seeing her; she’ll be a splash of normality I desperately need.
I turn on the lights, which buzz to life and trap me in their harsh glare. It takes a few seconds to adjust, and then I move behind the counter and fire up the espresso machines, which hum and purr as they slowly wake.
I first hear the noise as I’m reaching for an apron. The sound is unmistakable, and I’m certain it didn’t come from the espresso machines. I freeze, cock my head, and wait.
There, again.
A knock.
I abandon the apron and take a step forward, closer to where I think the sound originated. It was so brief, it’s hard to tell, but I think it came from there. Above me.
Again.
Two knocks, and this time, they’re louder.
Rap. Rap.
Could be water pipes heating up, or any other sounds common to the creaking bones of an old building. But there was something very deliberate to the rapping I heard, something that was trying to command my attention.
Then it happens again, not ten seconds after the last.
Rap. Rap.
It’s the sound of a heavy-knuckled fist knocking on a thick wooden door. Not desperate, not pounding, but insistent.
Let me in.
But there is no wooden door here, just a glass one in the front, and though I turn to assure myself no one is there, it’s unnecessary. The sound isn’t coming from either side of me.
It’s definitely coming from the ceiling. As if someone is trapped there, telling me they want out.
I think of Simon, the ghost Brenda insists is real. She usually opens the shop and is so far the only one to hear Simon, so maybe he’s only active at this early hour. I’m less afraid there’s a ghost in here than another person.
I don’t move. The silence is so electric that I sense the slightest sound will jolt me to death. I suck in a deep breath and hold it, doing my best to push the fear down. I’ve had a lot of practice lately.
Then, again. This time, a single, deep pound against the ceiling. A closed fist rattling the floorboards in the space above. Then, after I remain completely still for what must be several minutes of ensuing silence, one solitary thought loops in my mind.
It doesn’t matter.
If it is a ghost, it doesn’t matter. What can I do about it anyway? And if it’s a person, then it’s probably just someone in the space above. The worst thing in the world is certainly not a hundred-year-old ghost animated by the smell of cappuccino.
Then, just as I’m having this thought, a loud hissing sound rattles me. A thousand-pound snake rearing to strike. I snap my head around and see a cloud of steam pouring from the espresso machine, and as I walk over to it, I find the valve open. You have to turn the valve to open up the steam, and I certainly didn’t do that.
I close the valve, and the hissing stops.
Standing there for a moment, my nerves are begging me to give in to their desire to fray. But then again, I think, it doesn’t matter.
“Happy Halloween, Simon,” I say aloud, and the sound of my voice soothes me. Then I laugh, and soon I can’t stop myself, laughing so hard, I almost have to kneel on the floor. Of all the true horror in my life, all the terrors of the terrestrial world I face, now I have to deal with a goddamn ghost?
If that isn’t funny, then I might as well give up on any chance of a happy life.
I make myself a mocha, and it’s delicious.
• • •
The morning hums along, and it feels good. There are things I must do, but here I’m in a safe place, ghosts notwithstanding. I spend time with Brenda, who doesn’t ask me much about my recent absence other than to see if I’m okay. I am, I tell her and, for the time being, mean it. She doesn’t even mention my bruised and swollen fingers, which aren’t broken but still ache terribly. We are both in good moods, and I’m feeling very fortunate to have her. There are things I must do, the first of which is go see Thomas and check in on him, but for the next few hours, I just want to serve my customers.
I relish the normalcy.
But then, during a lull in customers a couple of hours later, the normalcy disappears with a single sentence from Brenda.
“I forgot to tell you. Someone came in to see you yesterday.”
I wipe down the steamers on the espresso machine with a damp rag, pretending not to react to the words.
“Who?” I ask.
“Said his name was Jimmy.”
Fucking Jimmy.
“Are you sure that was his name?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Said you used to go out.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“He seemed… I don’t know.” Brenda seems to be searching for what to say. “Tweaked, almost. Nervous as hell. Real edgy. Looked like he’d gotten into a fight. Freaked me out, to be honest.”
I finally turn and look at her. “It took you two hours this morning before you remembered a tweaked-out ex-boyfriend of mine came looking for me?”
Brenda shakes her head. “No. I wanted to tell you right away, but you seem to have so much shit to deal with right now. And you looked relaxed and happy. I didn’t want to unload it on you. But he might be coming back, and I thought you should know. Is he trouble?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“He said he misses you. But he said it in a weird, nervous way. Didn’t seem like the kind of guy who suddenly finds himself pining for an old flame.”
I’m sure. And I know how he found me. The same way Freddy Starks did: Mr. Interested. But why does he want to see me now? When Jimmy shot that dealer, it was an irrational burst of violence, one born of a drugged, chaotic mind. But I know Jimmy. He never would have methodically tracked me down in order to kill the sole witness to his crime, as good of an idea as that might have been. Jimmy likely just accepted that I was gone and moved on with his desperate existence.
Yet, he’s here now.
“I’m sorry you had to deal with him,” I tell Brenda. “He won’t be a problem.”
“I’m just worried for you, Alice. I went to that website you showed me. That’s all true? I mean, about your past and those creepy twin girls?”
“Yes. It’s all true.”
“That’s so messed up. And that group of people in the forum, all stalking you?”
“Also true. And also messed up.”
Her questioning gains momentum.
“Does this have anything to do with where you just were?”
I let out a heavy breath. “I went back to England. I actually just met with the girls who stabbed me. They’re women now, of course. Just got out of prison.”
“Oh my God. What was that like?”
“As unsettling and bizarre as you might expect. One is a Jesus freak, and the other is a mute. I’m trying to find this person who’s stalking me and thought they might know him.”
“And?”
“And nothing. My world is spiraling out of control because of one sick bastard who has apparently been obsessed with me for fourteen years. It’s the person who found me—and saved me, ironically—after I was stabbed.”
“You know him?”
I shake my head. “No. He found me that night and called the police, then disappeared. I don’t remember him.”
“And this all has to do with the comic your dad made?”
At the mention of my father, I feel the energy of the story drain from me. I want to tell Brenda everything, but there’s no way I can, not here and now. And I don’t want to tell her bits and pieces just to satisfy her hungry curiosity. After all, once my storytelling is done, she gets to leave my world and go back into her own, which is assuredly a cozier place.
“It’s a long story, and some of it I can’t tell you,” I tell her. “The other parts are better told over a bottle of wine.” It occurs to me I said the same thing to Richard, but before that wine could be had, death interrupted.
“Of course,” she says. “I’m sorry… This all has to be horrible for you. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say it’s fascinating. I guess that makes me pretty shallow.”
“You’re not shallow. I just need to be in the right space to unload all of this.”
“So…sorry, one more question. So you can’t go to the police with any of this?”
Would that it were all that easy.
“We’ll have that bottle of wine soon,” I reply. Brenda smiles and nods, giving me the look that she’s so good at, the one that makes you feel you’re the only person important to her in the world at that moment. If I bothered to write a will, I’d surely leave the Stone Rose to her.
I stay until noon, the longest I’ve lasted here in what feels like years. I even found myself humming to the eighties music throughout the morning, nostalgic for a decade in which I barely existed.
As I take off my apron and grab my purse, I make a promise to myself. When all of this is over, assuming I come out the other side, I’m changing my last name back to Hill. I don’t know why, but it’s now a goal that holds importance. It’s my father’s name, and it should be mine. And, apparently, changing one’s name does little to hide you from the world.
I need to see Thomas, to make sure he’s okay. I haven’t heard much from him in days, for which I’m mostly to blame. I haven’t even told him about my visit with the twins. And then there’s my mother, who I need to talk to sooner or later, but she’ll have a million questions and opinions about my trip to London, none of which I’ll likely ever be in the mood for.
Mr. Interested has been silent since his last cryptic message to me, which promised he’ll be there to save me. Nor have I sought him out. I know that doesn’t make him go away, but we all need to pull the sheet up over our faces and hide every now and then. The monster will still be under the bed when I go looking.
• • •
It doesn’t take more than a block of driving out of Manchester when I spot the car behind me, as obvious and jarring as a shark fin cutting through the ocean surface.
It’s a 1970 charcoal-gray Dodge Challenger. Sleek and slippery, so dark, it seems as if light just disappears into it. But I see it. I see it clearly, and even if the illegal tint job obscures its driver, I know who’s behind the wheel.
Jimmy.
The Challenger rumbles up close behind me at the next traffic light. My rearview angle doesn’t show me his face clearly, but I can make out his spiked blond hair. Hasn’t changed that style since I last saw him shooting our dealer in that parking lot three years ago.
Despite the fact Jimmy’s low on the list of things freaking me out at the moment, I’m still consumed with nervous tension. But I can take him, no problem. He’s a waify little thing, and I can take care of myself. Unless he has a gun.
He said he misses you.
Then, while we’re still at the red light, he bumps into me. Not hard, not even what you’d consider a love tap, but this is something incomprehensible, because his car is the only thing Jimmy ever cared about besides heroin. He’d go days without a shower, but his Challenger always glowed like it was surrounded by some kind of force field. He actually used to garage the thing in winter, paid to garage a car in Boston, because of the weather. He washed that car more often than we had sex, and I don’t know if that’s a sorrier statement about his priorities or my taste in men.
He would never purposefully tap another car with his Challenger. Yet, he just did. And with that one little bump, I know I’m not avoiding him. So when the light turns green, I move forward a block and turn into the parking lot of the Hannaford Market, the place where Jesus the butcher precuts all my meat.
It’s midday. Decent number of people pulling in and out of the lot, and I’m highly visible to the nearby street traffic. A safe place. I stop, get out of my car, and watch him park behind me.
Come on, Jimmy, I think. Come tell me what you want. I’m looking for a problem to cross off my list, and you’d be a good start.
He gets out of the car, and I get a look at my old lover for the first time in three years. The first thing I notice is his bruised and battered face, compliments of Freddy Starks. In contrast to the black-and-purple hue of his beaten face are his baby blues, the eyes that drew me in from the moment I met him in that Boston bar. With one look, I can tell Jimmy isn’t tweaked. I’ve seen him tweaked; hell, there wasn’t much time we spent together not tweaked, and those eyes are not ones glazed with heroin.
No, it’s something else.
Jimmy is scared.
He takes a step toward me, an uncertain one, as if wondering if there’s a live mine under the pressure of his foot.
“Alice,” he says. “Help me.”
“Jimmy, what the hell? Why are you here?”
Then I notice a small…something in his left ear. He puts a hand up over his ear, cups it, and nods.
“I know, I know, okay?” he says. But he’s clearly not talking to me. If I had a normal life, I’d think this man was just talking to himself. A schizophrenic drug addict. But my life is not normal, and with instant certainty, I piece it together.
In his ear is a wireless headset.
Someone is talking to him through it.
And that someone has to be Mr. Interested.
Jimmy has been working with him the whole time.
I move to get back in my car, and he yells out, “Alice! Please, wait!”
He stops to listen to the voice in his ear again.
“What?” I ask. “What, Jimmy?”
Then Jimmy pulls back the flap of his jacket and flashes me the gun tucked into his waistband.
“You have to listen to me, or I’ll kill you,” he says.
Nothing seems right here, including Jimmy’s threat. Jimmy killed a man once, yet despite that truth, I know violence is not typically part of Jimmy’s nature. When we were together, he was sweet, sometimes even goofy, a good-looking junkie with boyish charm. Any agitation came from his need for a fix. He killed for drugs, and he killed because of drugs. After I left, I never worried he’d come looking for me, wanting to eliminate a witness—that just isn’t Jimmy. So now, here, as he threatens me with a gun, it feels hollow. Forced.
“Jimmy, who’s talking to you?” Though I probably know more about that person than Jimmy does. Jimmy likely doesn’t even know the name Mr. Interested.
“I can’t,” he says. “But I need to deliver a message to you, and then it’ll be okay.”
“Jimmy, what is going on? How is he controlling you?”
Jimmy looks on the verge of tears. He seems so weak, so fragile, and I think one swift kick to his torso would snap him in half. I don’t think he really wants to hurt me. Still, he has a gun.
I take a step toward him.
“Jimmy, it’s okay. He doesn’t want you. He wants me.”
His face is a mixture of confusion and imminent panic. “Stay back, Alice.”
But I don’t stay back. I take another step, and his eyes grow wider in fear as I close in. I almost feel sorry for him.
“What’s the message, Jimmy? Tell me.”
“Stay back.”
Another step. I’m nearly in arms’ reach of him.
“Tell me, Jimmy.”
He nods, but not to me—to the voice in his ear. Jimmy’s right hand shakes as it moves to the butt of the gun.
“It’s okay, Jimmy,” I say. I begin to shift my weight to my back foot, finding the balance that puts me in the best position to strike.
“I loved you once,” he said. There is no emotion to this.
“That’s your message?”
“I loved you once,” he repeats. “But I didn’t deserve you. I didn’t…didn’t know how special you truly are.” These aren’t Jimmy’s words. They are clearly being fed to him through the earpiece. What the hell is going on?
“And now I’m taking you with me.”
“Stop. You don’t even know what you’re saying.”
He mouths something to me. If I had to guess, he said I have to.
“If you don’t come with me, Alice, I’m going to kill you.”
“Jimmy, stop it already.”
“Alice, just do as I say, please. Get in the car.”
This whole thing is some kind of private performance staged just for me, but I don’t want to be part of it anymore.
“I don’t care what he’s telling you. I’m leaving.”
Jimmy takes out his gun and holds it by his side. He’s shaking so much, I’m not sure he could shoot me even from this short distance. But that’s a risky assumption to make.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, trying to keep my voice as calm and even as I can. “What’s he threatening you with?”
“I never deserved you,” he said. He sounds on the verge of tears, and a spit bubble rides his lower lip. “Now get in my car, Alice.”
“No, Jimmy. I’m not getting in your car.”
He pauses just a moment, and I can tell he’s listening to the voice in his ear. Waiting for his next set of instructions.
Seconds later, as he raises his arm and points the gun at me, I know my chance to attack is gone. I had it, right there, in that brief space of time. I could have pounced, but with the gun now trained on me, I’ve lost all the opportunity.
“I don’t want to do this, Alice.”
I chance a quick look around. There must be someone seeing a man pointing a gun at a woman, but if there is, I don’t notice them.
“Put the gun down, Jimmy. You don’t have to listen to him.”
He nods. Quiet, desperate, defeated. Then, with his free hand, he softly taps his chest.
“What?” I say. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Get in the car, Alice. I’m going to count to three.”
Is this how it’s supposed to end, with Jimmy the proxy shooting me? Mr. Interested is a coward. He can’t even kill me face-to-face. I’m not getting in that car, not going anywhere.
“One,” Jimmy says. His face is twisted in anguish, like someone is bending his arm to the point of the bone snapping.
“You don’t have to listen to him, Jimmy. Just drive away.”
“Two…” he says. Then he mouths something to me, something he doesn’t want the person controlling him to hear. I think I understand. I think he said Who are you talking about?
This makes no sense. I’m talking about Mr. Interested. Who does he think I’m talking about?
“Two…” he repeats, drawing it out.
He won’t do it. He won’t. This is Jimmy. He’s not the greatest example of a human being, but he’s not pure evil. He wouldn’t shoot me.
Then, in a sickening jolt of realization as he steadies his quivering hand, I think:
He’s going to kill me.
I pounce, knowing it’s too late, but it’s the only thing I can do. He’s going to kill me, but I won’t be running away when he pulls the trigger.
The sound of the gunshot is not as loud as I expected. Just a muffled pop, but I hear it. Jimmy’s eyes widen as I launch my body at him, and in midair, I expect my world to go black.
It doesn’t.
I tackle him, and he falls to the ground with no resistance.
He missed me, I think. No pain. No blackness. He missed me.
He’s already released his grip on the gun, and I waste no time making sure he’ll stay incapacitated. I raise my fist and deliver a quick blow to his trachea.
He should be gasping, struggling for breath against blinding pain. He should be reaching for his throat.
But Jimmy does none of these things. He just lies on the cold asphalt parking lot of Hannaford Market.
I rise from him and immediately see the blood on his dirty, gray T-shirt. The stain blossoms as I stare at it, growing until his whole chest is a deep crimson.
“Jimmy?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move. His eyes—wide open and staring into the gray skies—don’t blink.
I reach down and lift his shirt, pulling it above his chest. There’s no way he could have shot himself—the gun was pointed right at me.
It takes a moment to understand what I’m looking at. A thin metal band, around an inch wide, strapped around Jimmy’s chest so tight, his skin pushes out around it. I don’t want to see, but I have to see.
I grab under his arm and roll him halfway over, and that’s when I see the little black box—the size of a cigarette pack—held in place by the metal band. It’s positioned directly behind his heart.
“Oh my God!”
The voice is behind me.
I turn and look up at the woman staring down at me. I am suddenly aware of the warmth of Jimmy’s draining blood onto my fingertips.
She drops a grocery bag at the same moment she starts screaming.
A jug of milks breaks on the asphalt, and a pool of glossy white collects around Jimmy’s lifeless feet.