Strangers Read online

  He pushed the thought away. He’d been doing so all day. He’d keep on doing so. Until this day, the worst day of the year, was over.

  He slowed. He was almost home. He looked at the clock, wondering how late it was, how much hell he was going to catch.

  The clock said “8:16 PM” in orange letters that were almost too bright. Next to the time was today’s date.

  Nice night for a swim?

  Jerry felt his face draw tight, his cheeks tautening over his skull. He’d lost weight in the last year. Lost weight, lost sleep… lost hope.

  And now, worst of all, he was home.

  2

  The American Dream Home – his American Dream Home – sat at nearly the end of the long cul-de-sac that he had just traveled. Like the other houses it was large, prestigious. Like the others it bespoke prosperity without being ostentatious. Like the others it was protected from the intrusions of the outside world by a high wall. The wall was beige. Wrought-iron barbs jutted spear-like out of the top of the front wall, adding another six feet to its already impressive height and, Jerry supposed, dissuading any would-be climbers.

  At the front of the property the wrought-iron barbs seemed to crawl down the wall and link hands to form a large gate that was the single way in or out of the property. The gate sat on a track and, at the touch of a remote control, a chain would pull the gate to the side, allowing the house’s inhabitants and invited guests to enter freely.

  Jerry’s own remote control was clipped to the visor of his Mercedes. He thumbed it as he drove up, slowing down as he did so. After living here for a few years he knew exactly how fast the gate opened, how slow he had to go to just squeak by without losing a side mirror to either the still-opening gate or the silently crouching wall. His wife hated that he did that, hated that he didn’t just wait until the gate was completely open, but Jerry liked to get home as fast as he could.

  Or at least, he used to like getting home as fast as he could. Now he supposed he mostly did it out of habit more than desire.

  Still, he slowed down a bit. Because if there was any day he didn’t want to be home, it was today.

  He glanced at the dashboard again. At the date.

  One year.

  His eyes darted forward again.

  “Shit!”

  The word burst out of his mouth, more surprise than rage or fear. His foot, already resting on the brake pedal, now jammed down hard.

  The gate wasn’t open. Not the slightest bit.

  Jerry frowned. He must not have activated the remote correctly. He flipped his visor down and thumbed the button again.

  The gate didn’t move.

  Jerry’s first thought was that the remote’s batteries had died. But even as he thought that his finger punched the button again, and this time he was aware of a faint grinding noise. It sounded like a garbage disposal into which some enterprising toddler had jammed a handful of spoons. He hit the remote again and got the same result.

  He sat still for a moment. An insane thought occurred: maybe he should just go back to the hospital. Sleep in one of the on-call rooms, curl up in a ball and sleep the night away, pretend none of this existed, that today was just a dream.

  But he knew that wouldn’t end well. He was going to be in hot water as it was for working so late.

  Jerry got out of the car. The night air was just as the car had advised: just about perfect. A bit more humid than in the car, where the filters and conditioners stripped much of the moisture away. But nice.

  Nice night for a –

  Jerry shoved the thought away. He left the motor on, the engine idling and the lights aimed at the gate. He walked up, wondering what he was going to do. Unless it was something fairly obvious, he doubted he’d be able to fix it.

  Still, what was the alternative? Just sit in the car all night?

  As he walked up to the gate a dark shape came bounding forward over the well-manicured lawn. It moved like a piece of shadow that had sheared itself off the night and now made a beeline for Jerry, barking excitedly. A moment later Socrates’ muzzle was poking through the gate and the dog was licking at Jerry’s hands and wrists, yipping with delight to see one of the masters of the castle come home.

  “Hey there, boy,” said Jerry. He smiled at the pooch. Socrates was a mutt they had picked up at a shelter about six years ago. Looked like he had some Alsatian, maybe a bit of Elkhound. He was a big dog, but well-groomed and affable. He had one of those mouths that always seemed to be curled up in a puppy’s grin, a long pink tongue lolling over his teeth and adding just the right touch of silly affection to his demeanor.

  Socrates barked in reply, licked Jerry’s hand, then barked again.

  “Yeah, good to see you, too,” said Jerry. He patted the pooch’s head one more time, then turned his attention back to the gate. He had brought the remote from the car, and now he pressed the button again.

  The grinding sound was worse up close. Like someone had replaced the bones in Jerry’s skull with slate and was raking their nails across his temporal bones. He winced but hit the remote once more. Socrates didn’t like the sound either, yipping and barking as the whir/crackle/grind rent the otherwise still night air.

  “Sorry, Soc,” said Jerry.

  The sound was coming from just beyond the gate, just to the right of the privacy wall the surrounded his home. The bars of the gate were close-set, about five inches apart, so Jerry couldn’t stick his head through to see what was there. He tried moving to the left, hoping he would be able to spot what was causing the problem.

  Just call the house.

  Sure. That’ll be a great way to come home.

  No way to come home that’ll be great. Not today.

  Jerry took another step, pressing his head against the bars of the gate as if by doing so he might silence the internal argument sounding in his mind.

  Socrates started barking again, as though weighing in on the debate.

  “Easy, Soc.”

  Socrates didn’t pay him any heed. Also typical. Jerry often reflected that there might have been a time where a man was the master of his domain, but that time was not now, and that place was not here.

  “What?” he said. The sound was almost a breath, just a surprised exhalation that became the barest ghost of a word. He thought he had seen something wedged in the chain mechanism that drew the gate out of the driveway.

  Jerry moved back to the left. Socrates kept barking. “Soc, shut up,” he said. Again, the dog kept barking. Jerry couldn’t tell if the dog was excited by the general adventure of the moment, happy to see his master, or simply being a dog.

  He reached through the gate, questing fingers feeling for what he had glimpsed from his oblique angle. He touched something. Wood, rounded edges. A splinter bit his finger.

  Somehow a rake had fallen into the chain winch.

  Jerry’s brows pulled together. The gardeners weren’t due today, were they? Then he shook his head. Didn’t matter. No matter how the rake had gotten there, he had to get it out.

  Socrates’ barking took on a more urgent tone. At first Jerry thought the mutt was cheering him on as he reached for the rake, urging his master to get it get it get it get it you can do it master get it! Then his bones and his skin almost jumped in separate directions as –

  “Can’t you shut that damn thing up?”

  Jerry’s head smacked against one of the bars of the gate with a clang. He pulled his arm from between the other bars, his hand going to his forehead as he swiveled to see who had startled him. Even though he already knew. Indeed, he should have known from the moment Socrates went nuts, because very few people rubbed the good-natured dog the way that the man standing behind Jerry did.

  Ted lived next door. Jerry didn’t know his last name. He was pretty sure he had known it once, but he didn’t anymore. The man was just “Ted.” And that was quite enough.

  Ted was about five-eight. Maybe a hundred eighty pounds. Perennially hurried, perpetually sweaty. Beady eyes that see
med to float just a tad too close together in the pasty mass of his face. Comb-over that was only slightly less revolting than having a toupee made of dead ferrets would have been. He was a judge, Jerry thought. But he couldn’t be sure. They were neighbors; that didn’t mean they knew each other.

  Jerry stared at the middle-aged man, rubbing his head until the sharp pain where he had whacked himself subsided, then turned back to the gate. He reached back through and tried to push the rake out of the chain where it had fallen.

  “Hey,” Ted said. His voice rose a notch, both in volume and tone. He was the epitome of the “I live alone because I can’t stand people” type. “Did you hear me?”

  Jerry sighed. Kept reaching for the rake. “I heard you, Ted. But I’m trying to ignore you.”

  He tried to close his fingers around the rake handle, but couldn’t quite gain purchase on it. It was just barely out of reach.

  “Well, doesn’t that just –”

  “Ted! I’m concentrating.”

  Ted went silent, though whether respecting Jerry’s wishes or simply taken aback, Jerry couldn’t say.

  Jerry felt the rake. Handle worn smooth through use. He tried to grab it. Couldn’t get a grip. Switched to pushing instead.

  The rake fell away from the winch chain. It clattered to the concrete driveway with a skeletal rattle.

  Socrates kept barking.

  Jerry turned back to Ted. The man was scowling like he had just found out his favorite fantasy football team had been eliminated, right after a bad colonoscopy.

  Jerry pasted a too-wide grin on his face, wishing Socrates would shut up. “Now,” he said. “What were we talking about?”

  Ted fumed for another moment. Jerry could almost hear the squat man’s teeth grinding. Then Ted exploded, stepping forward and waving a short sausage of a finger in Jerry’s face.

  “I should call animal control and have that mutt hauled away!” he nearly screamed. “And your kids were listening to their stereo loud enough to hear it over the wall again!”

  Jerry had no doubt that Ted was telling the truth about the kids: Sheri and Drew listened to their music at levels that could only be described as seismic. But he still felt his blood pressure going up like a bottle rocket. Because even though the kids might be in the wrong on this one, they were his kids, and he was damned if he was going to let some Napoleonic twit with an attitude bitch them out, even in absentia.

  Jerry felt his grin grow wider, creeping up until the corners of his mouth felt like they were resting just below his earlobes. “Tell you what,” he said. “You cut back your tree – you know, the one that keeps dropping branches on my wife’s garden – and then I’ll talk to my dog. Maybe even my kids. Until then, Ted, please kindly shove it up your ass.”

  Jerry turned away from the shorter man’s glowering face. He was suddenly struck by the fact that Ted looked like a badly-coifed version of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters and had to quell a rising fit of laughter. Instead he hit the remote, praying that the gate would open. He did not want to have to go back to the gate right now. Not with Ted-Puft glowering at him like he was trying to incinerate Jerry with his mind.

  The gate opened.

  Jerry got into his car. Back into the sterile non-temperature of the Mercedes. He put the car into drive, then pulled into his property. Socrates followed the car, barking in a way that sounded oddly like he was saying “Nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah!”

  Ted stayed where he was the whole time. Arms crossed. Glaring at Jerry’s car in a way that probably would be lethal to small woodland creatures at ten paces.

  Jerry kept watching Ted in the rearview mirror as he drove up the driveway. Longer than he should, in fact. Longer than was safe.

  3

  For the second time in minutes, Jerry almost slammed into something. He turned his eyes forward just in time to see the woman in front of the car and mashed his feet down automatically, practically standing up in his seat as he put all his weight on the brake.

  The car shuddered to a halt, and he was treated to a glimpse of a rage-soaked face that seemed to be lit half by his headlights and half by internal combustion. Then the face was gone as the woman flitted around to his side of the car. She pounded on the hood as she walked, tiny fists hitting it with dull thuds that resounded even in the sound-proofed interior of the Mercedes.

  Then the face was at his window. Jerry stared at the woman. He knew her, but… didn’t. He had seen her almost daily for – how long? Years? – but now she suddenly seemed unfamiliar. Her eyes, normally soft and compliant, shone down hard and angry. Her mouth was drawn firmly across her face like a thin slash that someone had cut with a razor.

  What the hell is going on today?

  Jerry rolled the window down. The woman said nothing, simply continued to stare. “Hey, Rosa,” he said.

  Rosa didn’t say a thing for another moment, a quick second that was long enough for Jerry’s heart to do a fast lub-dub and for Jerry’s mind to wonder if he should roll the window back up and maybe call 9-1-1 on his cell.

  Then she started screaming.

  Jerry didn’t understand it. Not a word. She was shrieking full speed in Spanish, her hands flapping like the wings of a hummingbird in a karate class.

  “Easy, Ro –” he began. That just resulted in even louder shrieks. He noticed she was still wearing the apron she always wore when working at the house, but none of the cleaning supplies she usually carried in its pockets were present.

  After another second Rosa slapped the car. Still screaming in Spanish, she shook her finger in his face, then stomped away down the driveway. Jerry leaned out to track her progress. Rosa marched down the drive, then seemed to reconsider halfway down and moved onto the grass, lifting her feet extra high with each step and then ramming them down as though to smash as much grass as possible on her way out.

  Then she was out the still-open gate – Ted was gone by now – and turned past the privacy wall and disappeared from view.

  Jerry watched the empty driveway exit, as though if he stared at it long enough normalcy might return to the day.

  Fat chance.

  Socrates barked once. No longer gloating, the bark was sharp and almost angry. Like he was warning something. Stay away, the bark said. Which was ridiculous, because Jerry could see nothing in the night other than him.

  The universe has gone nuts.

  On that thought, he clicked the remote and the gate slid shut. He meant to make himself feel better, as though closing out the evils that threatened him in the outside world. But the closing of the gate did no such thing. Instead he felt suddenly as though he knew how an insect must feel, swallowed up in a Venus flytrap. Like he was seeing his last view of the outside world.

  Like the house was swallowing him.

  4

  The man gets out of the black van. Because it is his turn to get out of the van.

  Of course, there is no one in the van but him, so it is always his turn. But still, care must be taken. Attention must be paid. There are rules to any game.

  He does not break rules.

  He stands outside the still-open door and watches Jerry and Ted fight. He has never understood why people fight like that. Or rather, why people squabble. He understands fighting – certainly, fighting is struggle and struggle is understanding and understanding is necessary to life – but merely squabbling?

  He sighs.

  “Why would they do that?” he says in a whisper. And then he answers himself, as he so often does: “Because they have not yet been brought to enlightenment. They are still hiding.”

  “From whom?” he wonders, though he knows the answer. And, knowing, he says, “From themselves.”

  The squabble – the quarrel, the tiff – finally ends. Jerry goes to his car and leaves. Socrates follows. Barking happily. Socrates is a good dog. The man likes dogs. Dogs have no secrets. They are open books. They have only love or hate. Purity.

  Ted watches Jerry drive away. Then he smirks
as though he has seen something funny and begins the long walk to his own driveway, to his own property. Next door, but a whole world apart.

  Perhaps the man will visit Ted someday.

  No, probably not. Ted seems thoroughly… unredeemable.

  But he knows that the fun is going to begin. Because Rosa has been cast out from among them. And Rosa needs to be dealt with.

  This family is going to be fun. More fun, more riveting, more teachable than any of the others. Not even the last family, the ones who died in so much pain while Christmas lights drew colorful pictures outside their home, will hold a candle to this one. He knows it. He can feel it.