No One's Home Read online

  The house was watching.

  The boy wiped a hand over his face and leaned against the wall, trapped in uncertainty. His lanky frame sagged with interrupted sleep. The clock next to his mother’s pillow had read 4:16 a.m.

  After standing there for three more minutes, Hunter forced his feet back into his room. In his wake came a thread of song so faint he could barely hear it, if he was hearing it at all. He stopped, wide eyed, as a quavering voice wound its way up the back stairs from somewhere below.

  ’Tis the gift to be simple,

  ’Tis the gift to be free,

  ’Tis the gift to come down

  To where we ought to be . . .

  The words trailed off, leaving only a lilting hum like wind whistling in an abandoned churchyard or the creak of an empty swing.

  Hunter slipped down the narrow kitchen stairs, chasing after it as it faded, not really believing he’d heard it at all. Surely, if he’d really heard it, he’d raise the alarm and wake his parents. Phone the police. Something.

  Instead, he followed the sound down into the kitchen, where the light over the newly installed industrial stove cast a warm glow. The workers had nearly finished assembling his mother’s dream kitchen. One of the pantry cupboards stood open.

  Who doesn’t know how to close doors around here? Margot had asked him more than once. Hunter instinctively pushed it closed and turned around in the cold expanse of marble and stainless steel, trying to pick up the song he’d lost.

  The hint of a faint melody seeped in from beneath the shut door to the basement. Hunter spun toward it, but the refrigerator compressor kicked on, drowning it out with a mechanical hum. Inside the freezer, a tray of ice turned itself out with a cascade of falling glass, followed by the crystalline splash of water filling it back up again.

  Hunter stared at the refrigerator. Was that all it had been?

  A muted laugh turned his head. A blue light flickered on the polished wood floor beyond the kitchen. It was coming from the den.

  Air caught in his throat. Hunter grabbed the largest knife in the wood block on the counter and crept toward the sound. Another laugh. And then the muffled sound of a man’s voice came through the wall. Three high-pitched dings, and then the rippling rush of a river running over rocks. As he drew closer, the knife dropped down to his side. The rushing river was studio applause.

  The television in the den had been left on.

  With a big exhale, Hunter opened the glass french doors and found the remote lying on the coffee table. A rerun of some game show washed the room in flashing colors. Exhausted and embarrassed, Hunter slumped onto the leather couch. The rest of whatever his father had been drinking that night still sat in a little puddle of condensation on the coffee table. Hunter picked up the tumbler and wiped the wood with his hand out of habit. He sniffed it—watered-down scotch—and drank what was left.

  “Shit,” he whispered to himself.

  “And what has he won, Bob?” the announcer demanded, pointing at a lit scoreboard.

  Hunter clicked off the television in disgust and tossed the remote. He carried the tumbler back into the kitchen, again by habit. Not that Margot or Myron would notice in the morning. Setting the glass onto the marble counter, the hairs on his arm stood up before his brain registered why.

  The basement door was standing open. It had been shut a few minutes earlier.

  Still gripping the knife in his hand, Hunter crept over to it and flipped on the light. “Hello?” he called down the stairs loudly, not caring if he woke his parents. Maybe hoping he would.

  He scanned the kitchen again, the two giant islands, the closed door to the newly built mudroom, the archway leading to the foyer, the long hall to the den and the sunroom they never used. Finding nothing, hearing nothing, he finally forced his feet down the open wood stair treads to the basement below.

  The lower level of the old house smelled faintly of mice, then bleach with a layer of mildew underneath, and then something sweeter. His mother’s perfume? Custom storage closets lined the wall to his right. The barn-style doors were all shut with rustic wooden peg locks. Clay bricks covered in flaking white paint held up the house on all four sides. Two lines of steel beams and pipe columns held up the middle. A small wine closet sat to his left with custom wine racks for his parents’ growing collection. Its slatted wood door stood shut.

  Hunter surveyed the space for movement—old boxes, the new boiler, the iron octopus of the old boiler covered in asbestos insulation, the water heater, gym equipment, pipes, wires, cobwebs. Rusty floor drains dotted the concrete slab. A puddle of brown water sat in the far corner under a utility sink.

  The steady drip of the sink’s faucet tapped out the seconds.

  Another door sat at the far end. As he drew closer to it, he felt a pleasant rush of fresh air move through the clammy basement. The door’s dusty window looked out into a concrete stairwell leading up to the backyard. A warm breeze whistled softly in through the jambs and a large crack running horizontally through the wood panels below the glass. He tried the handle and found it was locked. A rusted chain and sliding bolt had been added for good measure, but they both hung open. Unlocked.

  He pushed against the doorframe, but it wouldn’t budge. Warm air spilled through the empty keyhole as he eyed the lock below the doorknob. After a few more attempts, he gave up and rolled his eyes at himself. What the hell am I doing? His bare feet turned a grimy brown as he padded across the damp concrete floor back toward the kitchen.

  At the foot of the steps, he stopped cold. Someone, or something, had closed the door behind him.

  23

  Hunter stared up at the closed door, his entire face a question. Who’s there?

  The bare bulb hanging from a wire over the stairwell went out with a dull click, plunging the steps into darkness. Hunter stopped breathing.

  The utility sink behind him dripped, dripped, dripped. An inch-wide sliver of light under the door lit the stairs. Two dark shadows split the pale rectangle beneath the wood. The sight sent a shudder through him. Feet.

  The two shadows stepped away from the stairwell, and light footfalls creaked across the diagonal planks of the subfloor next to him and then down the kitchen toward the den.

  Still not breathing, Hunter began to see spots. A blanket of clammy air settled onto his skin as he stood there frozen. The faint scratch of mouse claws on concrete came from the far end of the basement and then rodent nibbling sounds. I have to get out of here.

  Blood cold and teeth chattering, Hunter crept up the stairs, the treads creaking dryly, announcing his presence. Ereek. Ereek. At the top of the steps, he pressed his ear to the door and listened.

  After a prolonged silence, he cracked open the door and peered around the corner into the freshly remodeled room. It looked more like a morgue than a kitchen. A bowl of apples sat on one of the island slabs, ready for autopsy.

  Hunter padded silent and barefoot across the cold marble, the bare bottoms of his feet now near black with the residue of a hundred years.

  The sound of footsteps in the foyer made him shrink back toward the basement. The feet shuffled closer, and Hunter squeezed the knife still in his hand, raising it to his shoulder.

  A shock of white fabric and dark hair appeared in the archway. Hunter sucked in a yelp and braced his knife.

  The light flipped on.

  His father stood startled in the kitchen entrance, grabbing at his chest through silk pajamas as though he’d been shot. “Jesus! Hunter! You scared the shit out of me! What the hell are you doing down here?”

  “I, um.” Hunter lowered the blade, feeling suddenly even more exposed than before. “I heard a noise. Someone. Someone, uh . . . left the TV on, I guess.”

  “What the hell’s with the knife?” Myron held on to the wall as though caught red-handed himself. He’d woken in the grip of a nightmare, silently screaming, Abigail! His hair was slick with cold sweat. “You okay, son?”

  Peaked and trembling, the boy was
clearly not okay. “Yeah. I’m fine.” He quickly put the knife back into its wooden block and headed toward the back stairs. “Sorry. About that.”

  Myron just stood there anchored to the wall as Hunter loped away with his head down as if he’d broken something.

  After a full minute, Myron tried to dismiss whatever thought had paralyzed him and staggered to the whiskey decanter in the den. He grabbed a tumbler and filled it to the halfway point, then stared at the crystal vessel for several beats, calculating. Some liquor was missing. Frowning, he set the decanter down and looked up at the ceiling toward Hunter’s room with a mixture of anger and bemusement as he slumped onto the couch with his drink and clicked on the television. Some woman had just won a new car on a game show.

  Myron let his neck go slack against the couch, and the night terrors that had roused him in the first place resurfaced. He shuddered and took another drink. “Abigail,” he whispered as involuntary tears welled up. He set down the tumbler and put his face in his hands. “Please, God. Forgive me . . .”

  The shadow of a girl passed behind him in the hallway. Unseen.

  Upstairs, Hunter sank down onto his bed, staring at his hands, wishing he’d kept the knife. Seeing his father was no reassurance. He hadn’t missed the sway in the man’s frame as he’d stood there. It wasn’t just sleepiness.

  Are you awake? the phantom voice whispered in his ear again, and Hunter swatted the memory of it away. He glanced over at his two companions. Frodo and Samwise had trekked across ten feet of tunnels to reach the cache of toilet paper rolls he’d left in the fish tank on the dresser, but the boy didn’t even smile. Instead, he got up and slid his small bookcase in front of the bedroom door with a long, high-pitched scrape. Safely barricaded, he collapsed back onto his bed and stared up at the fine web of cracks in the plaster that seemed to laugh and snarl, imagined shapes forming and unforming above him in a gathering storm.

  Wait.

  He shot up from the bed and clicked on his computer. After his mother’s invasion of his room, he’d set up a web camera on the corner of his desk. With a few clicks of the mouse, he toggled through hours of footage of his door standing closed with scattered flashes of his own face sitting down at the computer and getting up again. He watched the hours tick by at the bottom of the screen until the video went black with the click of his bedside lamp at 1:12 a.m.

  He clicked through the steady blank image to the minutes before he’d flipped the light back on, but the feed was too dark to see a thing. He made a few adjustments, shifting the exposure from black to a grainy red, slowing it down. Even then, he could only detect the faintest hint of his door swinging open. He squinted at it, tweaking and replaying the footage, until he could just make out a blurred figure moving in the dark.

  24

  The Klussman Family

  September 15, 1990

  Frannie Klussman bolted upright in her bed and glanced at the digital clock glowing red in the dark. 12:22 a.m. The home’s security system was beeping.

  Benny?

  Throwing on her bathrobe, she dashed toward his room, halting after three steps. His door stood open at the other end of the hallway. Down the winding staircase, the front door gaped out into the front yard, the alarm spilling into the street.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  “Benny!” she shrieked, racing down the stairs. He hadn’t escaped the house in years. The last time, she’d found him seizing at the corner of Lee Road and South Woodland five feet from an ice cream truck, surrounded by a circle of children staring and whispering as they ate their popsicles. Is he okay? What’s wrong with him? Why is he shaking like that? Where’s his mom? Should we call somebody?

  That was when she’d had the security system installed.

  Fear stabbed her chest as she flew down the steps and out into the yard. Bill must have left the door unlocked. But Bill knew better than that.

  “Benny?” she called. Not too loud. She couldn’t bear the thought of waking the neighbors, of answering questions, of another home visit by the social worker. They’d recommended Benny be placed in a home six months earlier after he’d broken his bedroom window with his fist. That one had required a trip to the ER and stitches. It’s for his own good, Mrs. Klussman. For his safety.

  Frannie frantically scanned the lawn, running down the stone walkway to the sidewalk. Lee Road sat empty. Traffic lights blinked red in both directions with no sign of Benny. She opened her mouth to call out again, but then she saw him.

  A dark lump on the sidewalk across the street convulsed violently. Groaning. Banging against the concrete. She ran to him barefoot and crouched down beside the quaking shell of a man who would always be a boy. He pounded his head against the sidewalk, eyes staring up at the starless sky, blank and frozen.

  My baby!

  Frannie threw a glance down each side of the street, desperate for help but also desperate not to be seen. A tall hedge hid them both from the neighbors behind it. The sidewalk stretched out in both directions empty. Benny let out a loud growl and cracked his head hard enough to leave spots of blood on the concrete.

  Frannie grabbed him under the arms and wrestled his head up off the ground. He was too heavy to lift, so she dragged him foot by agonizing foot across the street, only stopping to catch her breath when they’d reached the safety of their own yard.

  Partially shielded by their bushes, Frannie collapsed on the dewy grass, breathing hard. Her face splotched red with the exertion of dragging 150 pounds across the pavement. Sobs collected in her throat, breaking out in spurts.

  Benny for his part had stopped moving altogether, his body knotted and his face a frozen gargoyle, twisted in a yowl. His hands had curled into stone knots. His bare heels were scraped and bleeding from being dragged over concrete and asphalt. A tuft of his hair was matted with blood from where he’d repeatedly smashed his skull against the sidewalk.

  Frannie’s robe blotted the blood as she held him there. Tears streamed down her face. “Benny! What are you doing out here? Why, sweetie? Why did you do that? It’s not safe out here. You could’ve been . . . hit by a car or . . .” She couldn’t even find words for the rest. Images of ambulances and canvas restraints and Benny’s terrified face as they tied him to a gurney sent shudders through her. Not again. Not again. Not again. Not my baby. Not my sweet boy. “We’ve got to get you inside, sweetie. Mommy has to get you inside.”

  It took two hours—dragging Benny’s dead weight into the foyer, shutting and triple locking the door, injecting the sedative to loosen his limbs, waiting for the medicine to smooth his tortured face into a peaceful sleep, pulling him up the stairs one by one, dragging him into the bathroom, undressing him, sponging away the blood, cleaning off the dirt, examining and bandaging the wounds, hauling him up into his bed, pulling clean pajamas onto his skinny frame, crying hard tears over all the bruises and cuts, wiping the blood from the floors and stairs, checking on him again, listening to his even breathing, kissing his forehead, crying bitter tears for the pain and injustice of his afflictions, locking his bedroom door, taking a scalding hot shower, gathering the bloodstained clothes.

  Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling.

  How could I have let it happen? What will happen the next time? What if they find out? What if Bill was right? What if Benny would be safer in a hospital? What if they pumped him full of the medications that dulled his mind and clouded his eyes and stole his smile forever?

  By the time Frannie fell back into a guilt-ridden, heartsick sleep, it was well past five a.m. She never heard the police cars gathering on the street outside her window.

  25

  The Spielman Family

  August 8, 2018

  “What do you mean, you saw him with a knife?” Margot slapped her coffee mug on the marble counter, aghast.

  Myron instantly regretted mentioning it to his wife. “Let’s not overreact. It was late. He’d heard a noise. The minute he saw it was me, he put it away and went to bed. I just thought it was a
little weird. I have no idea what his plan was with that thing. You know?”

  Margot looked up to the ceiling. On the other side of the wood and plaster, Hunter was still asleep with his bookcase blocking the door. She tugged at her lip. He’s been acting so strange. “I’m worried about him, Myron. Maybe we should get a security system.”

  Myron lifted his eyebrows.

  “Everybody has them, right?” she went on. “Maybe it would make Hunter less nervous being here alone. We could get the kind with cameras that connect to our phones. That way we could always see what was happening down here. Even from our bedroom.”

  “Really? Isn’t that . . . what about privacy? Shit, what about the other morning?” He motioned to the den, where he’d failed to satisfy her. “Do you really want some security company watching every move we make?”

  This gave Margot pause. Her eyes flitted toward the stairs and her makeshift yoga studio. “We wouldn’t have to put them in every room. Right? Certainly not in bedrooms or bathrooms, but the front hall? The kitchen? I hate to admit it, Myron, but I get nervous being here alone. Hunter is starting school in eleven days, and it’ll just be me in the house. Alone. Christ, I can’t even hear the doorbell upstairs. What’s to stop someone from—”

  Myron held up a hand and nodded. “Why don’t you look into it? Alright? Tell me what it’s going to cost, and we’ll figure it out.” Reduced surveillance seemed to agree with him better as he ticked off rooms that would still be safe in his head. Bathroom. Closet.

  It was a done deal. Margot would start making calls that day. But the thought wasn’t soothing enough to forget what had brought the issue up in the first place. “What about Hunter? Do you think he needs counseling?”

  Myron made a show of considering it. Counseling. Anyone who knew him well would notice all the reasons he thought it was a bad idea ticking through his head—the stigma, the cost, the labeling, the overmedicating.

  Margot pressed on, oblivious. “I’m worried about him. He just doesn’t seem normal, does he?”