No One's Home Page 5

  The pimple-faced teenager turned a slow circle in the foyer. The morning sky rippled like water through the freshly polished leaded glass window overhead. Storkish and painfully awkward, the boy slouched his shoulders at his father’s hanging question: Not too shabby, eh? He shifted uncomfortably in his own skin as Myron waited for an answer.

  Is he disappointed? Is he impressed? Is he still devastated at the move? Will he ever be okay? Am I a total failure as a father? Myron struggled with each of these questions as guilt pulled at his face.

  Margot gave her floundering son an unwanted squeeze around his shoulders. Poor kid never wanted to move in the first place. Worry for the boy clouded her face as she shot Myron a grim smile and clacked past him into the unfinished kitchen to take stock and steel herself for the long road ahead.

  The kitchen was enormous now, three rooms combined into a giant culinary theater. The size of it stunned her as she scanned the vast expanse of newly laid marble tiles. It suddenly felt cold and empty instead of warm and homey. What have we done? It’s all wrong. All of it. She bit back tears and searched the room for a way to fix everything that had gone wrong.

  “Could we turn this into a cozy sitting room instead of a pantry?” she asked herself in the empty expanse, pacing out the idea. Fretting. None of the cabinets had arrived yet. There was still time.

  Trapped in the foyer, Hunter struggled for something positive to say, squirming in the glare of his father’s attention.

  “So? Hunter?” Myron tried again. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s nice,” he muttered in a voice deeper than his years. Deeper than his father’s, even.

  “Well, take a look around, kiddo! This is home.” Myron clapped him on the back and then began taking inventory. The paint in the hallway hadn’t been finished. Cover plates were missing from the outlets. The workers had scrambled the day before to clear away the plaster dust, but not enough to—

  “Hey, hon?” Margot called from the kitchen in a strained voice, a thin smile forced through barely contained hysteria. “Could you come here a sec?”

  Myron’s face fell an inch. The tension between him and his wife had tightened since their last trip to the house. “Coming, dear.”

  In the kitchen, Margot was pacing. “I thought they said the cabinets would be delivered last week? The appliances aren’t even in yet. How the hell are we supposed to . . .”

  Hunter grimaced at the sound of his mother’s shrill anxiety, and his oversize feet began to climb the front stairs to get away from it. The house wasn’t done. His mom was upset. None of this seemed to surprise him. A pained expression pinched his face as his mother’s voice pick-pick-picked at everything.

  At the landing, he paused to look out the rippled glass to the foreign street behind the trees and sighed. He’d left an entire life behind. Friends. School. Some other house in some other place he loathed to leave. The plight of all children hung from his awkward shoulders, always being dragged somewhere they’d rather not go by forces beyond their control. Like luggage.

  With a deep breath of resignation and self-pity, he turned from the window and trudged up the stairs to the second floor with none of the excitement that children brought to a new house. No running from room to room. No delighting in running down the second staircase at the far end of the hall. No exploring. No planting flags. No arguing for this room or that. No brothers. No sisters. No hide-and-seek.

  His mother had called the contractor a week before with strict instructions. On the door of each room hung a handwritten sign. From his left to his right, they read, “Margot Closet,” “Master Suite,” “Myron Closet,” “Reading Room?,” “Yoga Studio.” Down the crooked hallway that led over the garage, there were more signs, “Game Room,” “Laundry,” “Guest Bath,” “Guest Room.” Frowning, Hunter traced his steps back to the main hall and a door marked “Hall Bath.” The door marked “Hunter” was at the very end of the house across from the back stairwell. He would’ve preferred the guest suite over the garage, but no one had asked. He barely gave his assigned bedroom a glance.

  New basket weave marble tiles gleamed up at him as he flipped on the lights to the hall bath that would be his. He scanned the new drywall, light fixtures, and frameless glass shower with grim eyes, as though he sensed the violence of the renovation. The wood timbers still hummed with the vibration of the jackhammers. A mere five weeks earlier the room had been gutted bare. Fresh towels hung from the new antiqued brass towel rods. Shampoos and miniature soaps had been laid out like it was a hotel room. Hunter flipped off the lights.

  He opened the door marked “Game Room” briefly but found only a stack of unpacked boxes the movers had left there. Anything in the attic? one of the burly men had asked his foreman. Doesn’t say here, but I ain’t goin’ up extra stairs for nothin’.

  Hunter stopped at the only door without a label. The blankness of it drew him in more than any of the others, including the one with his name on it. He creaked the mysterious door open and gazed up the narrow stairwell leading to the third floor.

  The smell of burnt sage still lingered there along with the sweat of the contractors who had laid ductwork into the crawl spaces. They’d demanded double pay after the old witch had left abruptly five weeks earlier. Something’s wrong up in that attic, dammit.

  The general contractor, Max, had blamed it on the heat but agreed to hazard pay to shut the two guys up and to keep the rumors from spreading. Little good it had done. Whispers still hung between the muted glow of the window dormers. Did you see her face? Ran out of here like her hair’s on fire. Spooked, downright spooked. Yanni had walked off the job, leaving Max without a plumber for three days.

  Hunter crept up the stairs one at a time with the bewilderment and uneasy wonder of a child. He’d clearly never been in an attic before. Despite his aloof shrug to his father, the house impressed him, especially as he caught sight of the long cavern under the roof. The wood plank floor was covered in traces of construction debris and hidden footprints. Dust draped itself like curtains over the four windows that protruded up through the slanted roof.

  “Hello?” he called out to no one in his embarrassed baritone. He listened to the echo of his voice reverberate in the hollow of the room. The loneliness of the sound mirrored the lost look on his face.

  The stairs strained under his large feet as Hunter climbed up and out into the open attic. A tiny room to his right stood empty. Hunter approached the open door and figured it for a closet—low ceiling, tight walls, tiny window. He felt trapped the moment he stepped inside it and didn’t linger.

  The door next to it was locked. Hunter tried the handle and pushed his bony shoulder against it for good measure, but it stuck. Frowning, he pressed his ear to the wood and listened for no reason.

  The sound of approaching footsteps pulled Hunter’s ear from the door. He turned and scanned the attic floor behind him. Dad? his eyes said. But there was no one there.

  A shiver rose up on his skin. Fear flickered behind his eyes. He’d seen the graffiti on the walls, now buried under layers of paint. Murder House!

  “Hello?” Hunter said again, this time not for the echo. “Somebody there?”

  He turned to the bathroom over his shoulder. Its yellowed pine door stood open several inches, lit by the slanted light of the window on the other side. The dirty floor tiles and porcelain sink peeked at him through the gap.

  He took a timid step toward the washroom, braced for something or someone to lunge at him. The pine door hung perfectly still in its frame, waiting. Untouched by the renovation, traces of so many people—the contractors, the vagrants, the past owners, the servants—still lingered in the fibers and the varnish of the wood. Fingerprints. Sweat. Cigarette smoke. Hunter pressed his palm to it slowly, as though it were alive, and swung the door open.

  Nothing, except—

  “Hunter?” his mother’s voice called from the floor below. “Hunter, where are you?”

  Hunter
turned away from the empty bathroom, his trance broken by the nagging sound of her voice. “Yeah?”

  “Myron, have you seen Hunter?” his mother muttered, not hearing him. “I swear we’re going to lose that kid in this place. Hunter!”

  As he lurched his ungainly body toward the stairs, he felt a pair of eyes on him. He stopped and faced the empty rooms again, not knowing who or what peered back.

  “Hunter!” his mother bellowed.

  “Coming,” he called, dragging himself back down the steps to where his mother stood in the hallway, tapping her foot.

  “I need these boxes unpacked by dinner. Okay, honey?” She motioned to the stack of cardboard bins on the floor of his room. Clothes. Books. His computer. Two gerbils sat shell shocked in an aquarium off to one side, eyes twitching.

  There was no use in putting her off. Her tone made clear that she would harangue him endlessly until he did her bidding. Or worse, she’d sit down and try to have a mother-son talk to see if he was “okay.”

  His eyes drifted up to the ceiling and the creepy attic above it. “Yeah. Okay.”

  “I know it’s tough, honey, but everything’s going to be alright. You’ll like it here. You’ll see.” It was more of a plea than a comfort. Please be okay! Her eyes bent toward him with motherly concern and buried guilt. I’m sorry about all this. I don’t want to be here either. She gave him a pained smile and opened her arms for a hug. He returned the gesture with an awkward one-armed embrace.

  “School starts in a few weeks. You’ll make some friends. Right?”

  “Yep.” He nodded dutifully, anxious for her to leave him alone. Once she did, he closed the door and plopped onto his bare mattress. The room was enormous, big enough for two beds and then some. In comparison, he looked like a boy on a raft drifting along a dark sea of refinished wood. A stately oak mantel mocked him from the far wall with an arrangement of scented candles in the fireplace. He shook his head at them. Scented candles. Gee, thanks, Mom. Sighing, he gathered them up and pulled open the door to the closet he’d been allotted.

  DeAD GiRL!

  DeAD GiRL!

  RuN!

  “What the fuck?” Hunter whispered. He clicked on the light bulb and took a step back from the slashing red letters. He narrowed his eyes at the bizarre epitaphs, then glanced at his bedroom door as though debating whether to call for his mother.

  The walls inside the closet had been left unfinished in the contractor’s rush to complete the work and turn over the keys. The final walk-through and punch list wouldn’t be completed for three more weeks, and his mother had been too distracted with the movers to notice the oversight.

  She’d be furious, Hunter realized, squinting at the smaller print:

  SepT 2 1990 386 cARs 2 yeLLow

  AuG 8 1989 223 cARs 5 MissiNG

  Hundreds of bizarre notes and stats covered the walls. Some of it was too small to read. Some of it so large he had to stand back. Most of it was crooked and written in the unsteady hand of a small child. Morbid curiosity etched over Hunter’s face as he stepped inside for a closer look.

  BAD BeNNy BeNNy

  BAD BENNy KicK. MoM. MoM. MoM.

  SoRRy so soRRy sosososo.

  HeLp NeeD HeLp NeeD HeLp NeeD HeLp

  DeAD GiRL. DeAD. PRetty. DeAD. DeAD.

  GiRL oN tHe Bike. RuN. RuN!

  DeAD GiRL!

  Must teLL. MusT

  Lighter markings in a much finer hand covered a few of the spaces in between the scribbled madness. Hunter narrowed his eyes to read the smaller notes:

  Did you see them, Benny?

  Did the old religion cast a spell?

  When the dead speak, what do they say?

  Benny, Bad Benny, did you see them too?

  Did your dead girl come back and haunt you?

  9

  The Klussman Family

  June 18, 1980

  “Look, Benny! Sweetie, look. See what Daddy brought you?” Frannie stood in the doorway to his bedroom holding a small plastic tank filled with water. A tiny goldfish flitted between her two hands. Flashes of yellow and orange flickered between a stone castle and a sprig of greenery.

  Benny’s face broke into a wide and crooked grin. He clapped his two curled hands together to show her how much he liked the fish. He’d never had a pet but desperately wanted to touch the animals he’d seen on TV. The furry dogs and sleek cats fascinated him endlessly. He often tried to pet them through the cadmium-coated glass. And now here was another living, breathing thing. A miracle. His eyes followed its every move, hungry for more.

  The boy’s broad smile almost undid his mother. Her green eyes glistened behind her frizzled red hair. It had been weeks since she’d seen him so happy. “So where should we put him? How about here?”

  It was a rhetorical question. She’d already considered the safest spot and carefully set the fish tank down on his desk, far from any edges, far from his bedside, where he might flail an arm and knock the small tank over.

  Utterly transfixed by his new companion, Benny didn’t consider the placement of the tank until much, much later. His mother busied him with the task of gathering a pinch of fish food between his two fingers. It was clearly another planned opportunity to strengthen his fine motor skills, but he didn’t mind.

  “Just a little, sweetie. Just like that.”

  His lack of coordination nearly dumped the entire can of food onto the desk, but he didn’t mind that either. Delighted by the feathering fins and bulging black eyes, he dipped his fingers into the flaky powder and managed to shake enough into the water to make his mother proud. “Good job, Benny!” she cooed at him and smoothed his dark brown hair.

  He looked nothing like his mother. Benny was a distorted image of his father, with dark hair and deep-set brown eyes. When the boy slept, his face placid and smooth, he looked so much like Hank Klussman it unnerved both his parents, but for different reasons.

  Papery flecks of red and yellow floated on the surface as Benny counted them, making special mental notes of the flecks that sank, the flecks that clumped together, the flecks the fish ate first. Red. The fish likes the red ones.

  “What should we call him?” Frannie asked. It was a dicey question. Frustration often sent Benny into convulsions if he couldn’t make his mouth behave or if he desperately wanted to be understood. Gauging the boy’s faltering expression, she decided to make it a game. “How about Ernie? Do you like Ernie?”

  He shook his head.

  “Bert? . . . Oscar? . . . Elmo?” She rattled off the entire cast of a children’s show he’d stopped liking years earlier.

  No. He shook his head. The name etched itself between the boy’s eyes. Darwin. His name is Darwin. It was the name of a man that studied fish and animals in a book she’d read to him. A scientist’s name. A best friend’s name.

  “Daw—” He tried to say it, keeping his eye on the fish. The little thing clung to the green plastic kelp as though holding on to it for dear life. Benny knew exactly how it felt.

  Frannie could feel his frustration building at being unable to speak clearly but did her best to ignore it. It had been over a week since he’d smiled, and she wasn’t about to ruin it. “I can tell you have a good one in mind, Benny. Whatever it is, I love it!” She kissed the top of his head and quickly changed the subject. “There are some rules, sweetie. About fish.”

  He tore his eyes away from the impossibly thin webbing between the spines of Darwin’s tail and blinked at her. Yes?

  “Fish don’t like it when you tap on the glass. It hurts their ears.”

  Benny nodded. Loud noises hurt his ears too.

  “You can’t touch or pet a fish. It hurts their skin.”

  He understood. He hated to be touched.

  “And he only needs to eat once a day. If he eats more, it hurts his tummy.”

  This one surprised him. Benny liked to eat four times a day. He eyed his mother for a moment as though calculating something important and then nodded his head. He truste
d her. Almost.

  “We’ll feed him together, okay? Just until you’re used to it.” She patted his hand, knowing full well that he would most likely always need her help. The grim thought almost broke through her smile, but she didn’t let it.

  A few moments later, Frannie left the room. She stood outside the door for ten minutes, waiting, listening for a loud thump and the splashing of water, braced to run back in. But there was nothing. Blissful silence. Biting her lip, she debated opening the door and checking on her son but thought better of it. Instead, she crouched down and peeked in through the keyhole.

  Benny sat perched on the edge of his bed, staring at the fish. When little Darwin finally emerged from his hiding place behind the green plastic, the boy clapped his hands gently as though witnessing a magic trick.

  He sat like that most of the day.

  For the next three weeks, Benny did little else but study his pet fish. Darwin was a source of endless data. The boy charted its every movement across the tiny acre of blue pebbles at the bottom of the tank. He noted its reactions to different colors of construction paper he’d set as gently as he could next to its bowl. He timed the number of minutes it took for the shiny thing to vacuum up all of its little paper flakes of food (7.3 minutes!). He played hide-and-seek with it to see if the fish could see him (he could!). He got up in the middle of the night to see if Darwin was sleeping (he wasn’t!). He weighed and measured its growth day to day with his eyes, using the tiny castle as a ruler. He studied every scale on its skin, every spine of its fins, every movement of its eyes.

  Frannie was delighted. “I’ve never seen him so engrossed in anything, honey!”

  Hank nodded but couldn’t muster her enthusiasm. He’d begun sleeping in the guest room over the garage after their latest fight. You’re not going to make me the bad guy here! I’m just saying he’d be happier in a home where he can get the care he needs. We don’t have to live like this.