No One's Home Page 20

  “Who was that?” Bill asked, looking up from his puzzle. He cared about her despite his best efforts. Ms. Klussman is the loneliest person I’ve ever seen.

  “What?” Frannie grabbed a paper towel for her cut hand, keeping her back to Bill so he wouldn’t see the blood. Bill would find out. They’d all find out eventually. She just couldn’t face it yet.

  “At the door. Who was it? Cops?”

  She nodded into the sink.

  “I saw them when I pulled up this morning. What’d they want? There a car accident out there or something?”

  “No. It . . . some girl died. They’re knocking on all the doors in the neighborhood.”

  He stood up at the odd sound in her voice and walked over to her, studying her shock-white face with a nurse’s eye. The paper towel in her fist was turning red at the edges. “You don’t look so good. Maybe you should go lie down.”

  “Yes. You’re probably right. I should.”

  She headed up the back stairs. This isn’t happening. It can’t be. Benny’s fists swung at her in her mind. Her hand flew to the scar, the puncture along the side of her neck where he’d inadvertently stabbed her with a pencil. He’d been hospitalized for almost a year after that incident. They’ll take him away forever now. The blood rushed out of her head.

  “Whoa.” He caught her as her knees buckled from under her. “Take it easy. You’re just tired, Ms. Klussman. Let’s get you to bed.”

  Bill helped her up the stairs and into her room.

  Down at the other end of the hall, Benny’s brow furrowed in his sleep. His face screwed up in terror at the nightmare playing in his mind and memories of a girl screaming somewhere outside.

  38

  The Spielman Family

  August 9, 2018

  A little before midnight, a key slid into the side door of the house next to the basement stairs. The lock pins turned until they landed with a metallic click. Hunter stood outside and listened for a solid minute to the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of his own breath against the wood.

  Still not trusting the house, he pressed his nose to the glass and scanned the dark basement steps in front of him and the sliver of kitchen he could see through the basement doorway on his right. The lights were off. Turning the handle with the faintest of squeaks, Hunter nudged the door open just a crack and waited. Then an inch. Then a foot. His mother’s enormous kitchen stood empty.

  He waited another minute before closing the door behind him and sliding the bolt back into place.

  Leaving his size 13 shoes on the basement landing next to the door, he padded out in socks onto the cold marble tiles, then froze. Is that a footstep upstairs? The rainfall cascade of water down a pipe in the wall told him someone had just flushed a toilet upstairs. Then more footsteps. Then nothing.

  It was his mother shuffling back to bed, half-asleep. Margot crawled under the covers for a few more fitful hours. Next to her, Myron lay curled up on the far edge of the bed, his back to his wife. Roll over, Myron. You’re breathing on me again.

  After the toilet stopped running, Hunter found the courage to move. He opened a pantry cupboard and grabbed one of the plastic shopping bags Margot hoarded there and began to fill it with granola bars, chips, juice pouches. Like a good thief, he was careful not to empty any box, lest it be noticed. Once his bag was full, he risked opening the refrigerator. In the white glow of the appliance, he stuffed whole slices of cheese and ham into his mouth, barely leaving enough room to chew.

  A creak in the floor directly above him caught him midswallow. He slowly closed the door to the fridge and backed away, studying the ceiling as though a specter might float down through one of the recessed light fixtures Max had cut through the plaster.

  Another rush of water came through the pipes overhead, this time closer to the bedroom over the garage. Hunter frowned up at the ceiling. No one had slept in the guest suite since they’d moved in. Who’s there? he wondered. The sound of running water stopped.

  Spooked, Hunter grabbed the bag of stolen food off the floor. Chips rustled. Plastic baggies crackled. Cringing at the sound, he slipped into the basement stairwell and closed the door to the kitchen with the softest of clicks.

  Imaginary feet pounded across the ceiling toward the back stairs. The phantom intruder rushed through the kitchen, reaching for the handle, flinging Hunter down the basement steps right onto his back. Teeth at his neck. Claws through his shirt.

  But the house stood still.

  Next to where he stood on the basement stair landing, the side door flanked the driveway. He pulled aside the lace curtain. The driveway was empty. The house next door was dark. He flipped on the light bulb at the foot of the basement stairs.

  Carrying his looted plunder and shoes, he staggered down the flight of steps into the cold air pooling over the cement floor. He set his bag down inside his parents’ pretentious wine room. Several lower-cost bottles sat in an open case on the floor. Thanks for the two-buck chuck, his father had laughed into his phone when the gift had come in the mail.

  Hunter grabbed a cheap bottle and unscrewed the cap. He took a whiff of the acrid, thin wine, then a large swig. It went down like acid, but he drank another gulp anyway. It had been a long, terrible day. After a few more sips, his shoulders loosened a bit, and his heart rate slowed to a more manageable pace.

  Exhaustion hit him with the buzz of the wine. He slumped against the wall of the cellar and ate a granola bar. He pressed his forehead to his knees. He’d come back despite his father looking at him as though he were a drug addict and a thief, despite the intruder his camera had caught in the hallway. He had nowhere else to go.

  He lifted his head and stared at the far wall as though he could see her standing there. Whatever she was.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” Hunter whispered.

  He put the cap back on the wine and stood up. Over in the storage closets on the other side of the stairs, his mother kept skis and camping equipment that looked as though it had never been used. He pulled out two sleeping bags, unrolling one on top of the other onto the wine room floor. It felt safer in there, he decided. Four walls and a door. Out of sight from anyone or anything that might come along while he slept.

  The thought made him glance back at the far door at the other end of the basement. Clenching his teeth, he crept over to it and looked out the window into the backyard six steps up. Blue shadows of trees and a sliver of moon hung beyond the dirty glass. A flash of headlights lit between the houses as a car turned down South Woodland a hundred yards away. In the bloom of light, Hunter saw something behind the trees. The shape of a person? A deer? He squinted, but the car had passed, leaving everything darker than before. He grabbed the loose, rusty door chain, forcing it into its track with a rattling scrape. He gave the empty yard another scan before walking back to his makeshift bed.

  Inside the wine cellar, Hunter closed the slatted wood door, wishing it had a lock. Slivers of yellow light streamed in through the open gaps between the boards, and he was glad he’d left the light burning out in the main room. Still scared, he placed the half-drunk bottle of wine at the foot of the door as a makeshift booby trap. He had no idea what he would do if the intruder tipped it over in the night, he realized.

  He pulled the old-fashioned straight razor from his pocket and opened the blade. For good measure, he grabbed another bottle of cheap wine to keep at hand just in case he needed to bludgeon something to death. He tested the heft of the bottle in his hand with little to no conviction. With nothing left to do but wait, he lay himself down and dropped almost immediately into the abyss of sleep.

  Hunter didn’t hear the approaching footsteps or see the light go out with a sharp click.

  39

  The Martin Family

  August 12, 2016

  “What are you doing in here, son?”

  A flashlight blinded poor Toby, curled up in the corner of the basement storage room. The voice belonged to a police officer. “Everyone’s been lo
oking for you.”

  The small boy recoiled from the light and the man holding it. His face was smudged with dirt. His clothes were filthy. He’d been hiding in the basement for the past two days. He’d been running from the authorities ever since the strange woman had delivered the horrifying news.

  We’ve found a new home for you, Toby. A really nice family can’t wait for you to come and meet them.

  But this is my home. I want to stay with Ava! Where is she?

  Of course, it wasn’t up to him or the policeman. It was up to the computers. It was up to the teachers at his school and the rules and regulations about children in unsafe homes. Not even Mama Martin could save him. An eviction notice from the bank had been posted on the front door in January.

  The policeman grabbed the boy by the arm. “C’mon, son. Let’s not make this harder than it has to be.”

  “But I can’t leave. Don’t make me go.” The boy began to cry big ugly tears as his heart crumbled in his chest. “This is my home. I live here.”

  Papa Martin had died a year and a half earlier, and nothing had been right since. Mama Martin had stopped eating. She’d stopped getting the mail. She’d stopped going to work. She’d stopped washing Toby’s clothes and making his lunches. She had taken to spending hours up in the attic, talking with herself. I don’t know what to do anymore, Clyde. God, please tell me what to do. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this . . .

  “Mrs. Martin isn’t here now. She doesn’t own this house anymore. The bank does. You know this. She’s going to the hospital, where she can get the help she needs, and she wants you to be safe.”

  Toby had heard her screaming upstairs when the police broke down the door.

  “It’s against the law for you to be here. A boy like you needs a home and supervision.” The man was losing patience, and Toby could hear the bomb ticking in his voice. It was the third time they’d come to collect him from the house. “You’re trespassing here, son.”

  The man wasn’t wrong. The house wasn’t safe for a child his age anymore. The doctors had given Mrs. Martin pills to cope with her grief. Medicated, she’d slept all the time. She’d locked him in his room once and forgotten about him for an entire day. Then there was the night the ambulance had come for her, and the next day, social workers had come for him. That was over a year ago.

  He’d returned to Rawlingswood three nights later under the cover of darkness, shaken and bruised, looking for his sister. Every few months, he came back.

  “But I belong here. I want my sister. I want Ava,” he whispered, even though he knew it wouldn’t do any good. “Why can’t I stay with her?”

  Nobody had been able to officially locate his sister, but the officer didn’t say that. “We have to go, kid. You can’t stay here. Now, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Your choice.” The policeman kept his flashlight trained on the boy’s fallen face. A pistol hung at the man’s side along with a pair of handcuffs.

  The wavering light in the boy’s eyes went out. They’d never listen. He pulled himself to his feet and let the large man drag him out of the cellar and up the stairs. Toby debated yanking his arm free and running away but thought better of it. He’d find a way back, he told himself. He always did.

  Behind them, in the farthest corner of the basement, a shadow stood hidden, watching, trembling with tears. It was the shape of a girl.

  40

  The Spielman Family

  August 10, 2018

  The dull tink tink tink of a glass wine bottle sliding against the concrete floor pried open Hunter’s eyes. The room was cold and dark. Too dark.

  He bolted up and blinked to get his bearings. He was in his parents’ wine cellar. The events of the previous day shuffled back into place. He’d run away. Sort of. No one knew he was there. As he squinted in the dark, a rectangle of gray stood against the black. The door to the wine room was open.

  The feeling of someone hovering nearby sent him shrinking against the wooden wine rack to his left. His mouth dropped as if to speak, but nothing came out, not even air. A shadow moved into the open door. It was the shape of a girl. A wisp of white fabric.

  DeAD GiRL.

  Rabbit eyed and drained of blood, he shook his head. I’m dreaming, the wish whispered between his ears, along with a jumble of others. Please. Away. Don’t. Not me. Go.

  Her shadow slipped into the corner of the wine cellar, where her shape blended with the walls until it had all but vanished.

  Hunter struggled to see in the dark. The wine buzzed around his head as he strained to hear the thing breathing, but there was nothing but the dripping of the faucet in the next room. Still, he felt it. The magnetic pulse of another being stood there, three feet away. He felt the cold concrete for his razor and came up empty.

  “Who are you?” he whispered into the dark. What are you? “Are you . . . real?”

  A soft breath of laughter fell through the silence.

  The connection between his mind and body severed at the sound, and the boy sat there trapped in his own quaking skin. Help! Somebody! Help us! His rabbit eyes focused on the open door. Run.

  The thing picked his booby trap up off the floor and unscrewed the cap. Wet gulps followed. Obscenely loud and threatening in the dark, the sounds sent thrills of terror through the cornered deer that was Hunter. Blood. Vampires. Teeth.

  He was stunned still.

  Neither fight nor flight could move him. He could barely breathe. Backed against the wine, tangled in a sleeping bag, blinded in the dark, what could he do? The thought of his razor finally sent his numbed hand fumbling over the concrete again. Slowly, slowly, so the poltergeist wouldn’t see.

  His fingers finally connected with cold glass, winding themselves around the neck of a bottle. Bash. Bludgeon. Kill. Die. Am I going to die? His eyes drifted on their own toward the ceiling with a hopeless hope. Mom? Dad?

  The warm smell of his mother’s sugary vanilla perfume drifted down to where he cowered on the floor, holding his bottle. But it wasn’t her. His mother would’ve turned on the light. His mother would’ve yelled.

  “Wh . . . why are you here?” he breathed.

  The feel of a soft hand brushed against his cheek and sent his bottle clanking to the floor. “I need your help.” The voice warmed his ear, soft and female.

  He jerked away from it. “My help?”

  The shadow moved over him, hovering. “I want to be friends. I’ve been watching you, Hunter. You could use a friend like me.”

  The scent of wine on her breath and the warmth of her skin only inches away from his brought him back to his senses. He raised a finger and connected with the solid flesh of her arm. Thin and soft. Not a ghost. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  The shadow of her nestled down onto the sleeping bag beside him. “Are you going to drink that?” She tapped the bottle on the floor.

  Fumbling, he offered it up to the shape of a girl sitting there in the dark. She took it and cracked the seal on the top, slowly unscrewing the cap. The sound of her drinking came much quieter now, softer, prettier. The glass bottle then pressed back into his hand, and he accepted it. Dry mouthed with terror, Hunter took a long swig. Blood rushed back into his limbs. Vampires don’t drink wine. She’s just a girl.

  A new fear took hold. This girl will think I’m a total pussy.

  “Seriously,” he said, desperate now to sound like a normal teenager confronted by a total stranger. An intruder. “What the fuck is going on? How’d you get in here?”

  “I live here,” she whispered, taking the bottle back.

  “What do you mean, you live here?”

  “I mean this is my home.”

  “But . . . we live here.”

  A little laugh twinkled in the dark.

  “What’s your name?”

  The shape of a girl turned toward him, revealing a silhouette of her face, fine and delicate. “Does it really matter?”

  “How are we going to be friends if I don’t even know your
name?”

  She sighed. “Ava.”

  “Okay, Ava. Nice to meet you. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “What is anyone doing here?”

  Hunter let out a frustrated stream of air and took another gulp of wine for courage. “Enough with the fucking games! Why are you here?”

  “Waiting. Like you.”

  “Waiting,” he repeated. Waiting to leave? Waiting to go off to college and start your life? “Waiting for what?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  He frowned at the shape of her next to him. She suddenly seemed so small and young. “How old are you? Does anyone know you’re here?”

  She exhaled another laugh. “Don’t bother calling social services, okay? I’m nineteen.”

  “How long have you lived in this house?” Hunter measured his words. He took another swig of wine. No sudden movements. No accusations. Just friendly questions. He shifted ever so slightly, wishing he could pull out his phone and record her.

  “Since I was nine years old.”

  “But the Martins lived here. They bought the house in 1994. I’ve seen the property records.” He was going to piss her off, he realized, and he tried to ease up. “I mean, I didn’t think they had kids.”

  The shadow of her moved and shifted. A cigarette lighter flared up, casting half her face in a flash of yellow light as she lit a cigarette, and then it was gone. He got a good glimpse of her eyes, dark and lifeless as a shark’s. After blowing out a plume of smoke, she said, “That doesn’t mean kids didn’t live here.”

  “What do you mean? Did they”—what? He cringed slightly—“kidnap you?”

  “Not exactly.” The ember of her cigarette glowed red in the dark. “You smoke?”

  “No. Thanks. What happened to your parents?”

  “What happened to yours?” Her voice drifted lazily, a little drunk.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re a mess. Aren’t they?”