Strangers Read online

  He’s getting better and better at this. Each family that he teaches, teaches him in turn. This will be his best visit ever.

  “Whose turn is it?” he says.

  “For what?” he answers.

  “To teach a lesson.”

  He giggles. The sound pleases him.

  “Why, mine, of course.”

  5

  Jerry clicked another button on the remote, and this time the garage door rolled up.

  He glanced at the rearview mirror. He didn’t know why he did it. Habit? Perhaps he was hoping to catch Ted standing at the driveway gate, glaring at the house. It’d serve the crabby turd right, to stand there alone all night, hoping to intimidate the family or something.

  Ted was not there.

  But something else was.

  At first Jerry thought it might be Rosa, come back from whatever bout of insanity had gripped her. But no, whoever it was simply stood there. No movement toward the callbox that would allow him or her to call the house. And even from this distance Jerry could see that the shadow was considerably larger than the diminutive Latina.

  He stopped the car before going into the now-open garage. Turned in his seat so he could look out the rear window rather than staring at the mirror.

  The person was still there.

  The face and figure were cloaked in shadow, just a dark patch in the night. But it moved, and icy coils crawled up Jerry’s back and gut. He couldn’t be sure why at first, but then he realized: it looked like whoever it was was sniffing the air. Smelling it like an old lady enjoying a rosebush, or a child sniffing a pot of fudge… or a hyena inhaling over a fresh-killed corpse.

  Jerry watched the shadow for a long time. Then the person stepped back. The night seemed to take him. Hold him. Swallow him.

  Gone.

  Jerry watched another second. Waited to see if the stranger would come back.

  The person – whoever it was – didn’t.

  Jerry pulled into his garage. As fast as he could.

  6

  The man waits at the gate. Watches as Rosa stomps away. But by the time she gets in her vehicle, a small blue economy car, he is already waiting for her there.

  It is impossible for anyone else. But not for him. He is much, much faster than anyone he has ever met. It is one of his gifts. One of the things he has given himself.

  He watches her, fumbling in her pocket for her keys, her mouth moving as she mumbles to herself, probably saying nasty things about the people in the house.

  She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. Crying. Perhaps that is why it is so easy for her not to notice him. Perhaps it is just another one of his gifts. He has so many.

  Finally, she fishes the keys out with shaking hands. They jingle, a light tinkity tink that he rather likes. It sounds bright and happy.

  She gets in the car and drops the keys on the seat and that sound, too, is deceptively jolly in the night. She leans over in the darkness to fish around for them – he already turned off the dome light – and when she finally straightens up with them he sees her eyes widen in the rearview mirror and knows she has seen him.

  She gasps. Inhales, clearly ready to scream.

  Before she can scream, he snaps his hand forward. He is fast. Very fast. Her inhalation cuts off as his hand clamps over her mouth. The sound she makes – a muted “Hrrrk,” the sound of a scream being stuffed backed down her throat – is funny and he giggles.

  He reaches for her. Smiling. Then says “No!” in a stern voice. He rolls his eyes, but knows he is right. He glares at the woman. “You’re lucky,” he says. “Lucky it’s my turn.” He nods. “Yes, because when it’s my turn things can get ugly.”

  Rosa whimpers.

  “Still,” he says. “You were stealing. Not so nice.” He nods agreement. He makes a good point, as he so often does. “No. Not nice at all.”

  Rosa whimpers again, but this whimper disappears and turns into a gagging scream.

  “Shhh,” says the man. “It’s better this way.” He leaves his hand on her mouth, puts another over her throat, and push-pulls in a practiced motion. Something pops and shatters and Rosa’s larynx rips to pieces in her throat. Her whimper turns to a breathy gasp. She is still alive, but will not scream again. Not ever.

  The man smiles to himself.

  The night’s play has really, truly begun.

  7

  Jerry pulled into the garage. The tires squeaked on the epoxy-coated floor that was maintained at a high gleam by both Rosa –

  (What the hell was that all about?)

  – and by a pair of men who came twice a year to clean, polish, and buff the garage floor. The sound usually made Jerry smile. It was a good sound, a clean sound. The kind of sound that said, “You’re home, and things here are A-okay and under control.”

  But that was the case less and less of late, and not at all tonight. Tonight the sound was just a tortured shriek of rubber on a floor that simply wished to be left alone.

  Socrates was still running around the yard, barking at the grass and the sky as he chased his tail in circles. That was a bright spot. Hopefully the mutt would keep it up all night, long enough for Ted to go nuts and maybe consider putting his house on the market.

  As if I’d be so lucky.

  Jerry hit the garage door remote and the light switched on in the garage as he got out of the car. The light cast bright flares of illumination onto the many mostly-bare surfaces. There were bikes for each member of the family on one wall, a few cleaning supplies.

  And his tool board.

  Jerry didn’t remember leaving it open. But since it was, he stood for a moment to admire it. It was a large pegboard wall on which hung every kind of hand and power tool available to mankind, along with a few he was pretty sure hadn’t been invented yet but were only available via time portal technology exclusively licensed by Home Depot and eBay. He had never used the great majority of the tools and had no idea if some of them even worked. But that was all right, because they were his.

  If he needed something he liked to have it available to him. That was the whole point of a tool collection: having the right tool for the right job at the right time. Whether you actually used it was irrelevant. Availability was the point, not utility.

  Jerry realized he was stalling: something he did more and more these days, putting off going into the house for precious minutes or seconds. But the house – and the people in it – weren’t going to change or go anywhere no matter how long he stood here.

  He might as well go in.

  He grabbed the wide door to the right of the tool display. It was on rollers that were cleverly hidden in the floor and ceiling of the garage, and when it slid home it hid the tools completely. Just another blank wall. White and clean, no clutter or confusion, which was pretty much Jerry’s own personal definition of happiness.

  He hung his keys on the hook near the door that led from the garage to the house. He squared his shoulders and took a breath, half of him feeling like a soldier preparing to go into battle and the other half of him feeling idiotic for feeling that way.

  He went in.

  The door opened soundlessly. He poked a head in, blanching as though expecting to be gunned down by sniper fire.

  The house was silent. Mostly dark. The kids were probably upstairs.

  What about Ann?

  She could be anywhere. The house was over five thousand square feet. Vaulted ceilings, lots of hallways and interlocking doors and jack-and-jill bathrooms. It was a labyrinthine layout – one that you could easily get lost in, if you had half a mind to do so. Jerry himself was continually getting turned around, forgetting nooks and crannies the place possessed. Fun sometimes, a real pain at others.

  Jerry sighed. He’d either see her or he wouldn’t. He beelined for his office, and as soon as he was in he put down the attaché case he’d brought in from the car. He put it next to the closed laptop on his desk and briefly thought about taking out the papers inside and going over them,
then discarded that idea. A minute or two of malingering outside was one thing, but if Ann came in and saw him working in the office she’d really lose it.

  When did things go so bad? he wondered. When did everything fall apart?

  He knew. He knew exactly. But he didn’t want to think about it. It was too hard to think about.

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and plugged it into a charger. Then all movement ceased; every muscle in his body went rigid as a sound slid into the office. It wasn’t loud, but it was strident. The kind of sound someone made when they were being particularly careful to be very careless with their steps. Stepping around in such a way that anyone within fifty feet would have no alternative but to hear them.

  Jerry cursed under his breath.

  He turned off the light in his office and walked the short few steps across the hall and into the kitchen.

  Ann was there.

  As always, Jerry felt his heart leap into his throat when he saw his wife. Even now, even after almost two decades of marriage, Ann was still one of the most stunning women he had ever seen. She was older now, of course. No longer the brightly smiling woman he had taken to his heart and to his home and to his bed when they were both barely out of their teens. But where she had once had youth, now she had so much life, so much experience.

  She was still a knockout, too. Judicious eating and borderline obsessive use of a Stair-Master had kept Ann Hughes at a level of fitness that most high school cheerleaders would envy. Dark hair tumbled in thick waves well past her shoulders, and her eyes, though deep brown, could light up enough to power a city when she was happy.

  Now, however, those eyes seemed to pull light out of the room, a pair of small thunderclouds that spat lightning at anyone who dared to approach.

  Behind her, Jerry noticed that the door to the basement was open. He wondered why. Then realized he was searching for excuses to avoid talking to Ann… and that in so doing he was only going to make things worse.

  He forced himself to look at his wife. Tried to plaster a smile onto his face, much as he had with Ted. Only he couldn’t muster up even the insincere, go-screw-yourself smile he had aimed at his neighbor. All he managed was a strange squiggle-mouthed expression that probably made him look more gassy than anything.

  “Sorry about having to work late today,” he said.

  Then even his weak attempt at a smile disappeared as Ann said, “What else is new?” She turned her back on him and when she turned back around she was holding a glass of wine. Another thing that hadn’t happened before life started to splinter: Ann never used to drink at all. Now it seemed like she never missed a day without at least a glass of wine, and often much more than that.

  His wife’s words stung him. Probably all the worse because of their truth. He pushed down the flare of anger that rose up within him. “If he hadn’t needed an emergency surgery, I wouldn’t have gone in,” he said finally, keeping his words neutral and his tone even. Ann said nothing. Just stared at a point in space about a foot in front of her.

  Jerry decided to change the subject. “Did you know there was a rake stuck in the chain that pulls the gate back from the driveway?” Still nothing. Ann looked like she was trapped in her own private world of thought. “Honey?”

  Jerry took a deep breath. He knew what she wanted, though he really didn’t want to oblige her. Didn’t want to deal with it. Not today. Not today.

  But she wasn’t going to move, he saw. Not until he asked. “Okay,” he said, and was surprised how tired his voice sounded. “What happened with Rosa?”

  “Bitch was stealing from us!” shouted Ann, her words coming so hard and fast in response that Jerry literally stepped back. His hands went up in front of his face, not as though to calm her but more as though he was worried she might try to hit him. He had never seen her respond like this to anything. Not even….

  “Whoa,” he said. “What do –?”

  Ann grabbed a large, antique silver ladle off the counter and waved it around like a sword in her right hand while her wine sloshed out of the glass she still clutched in her left. “And not little things, either. It wasn’t just a fork, or the ten bucks we leave for the kids’ lunches. This was big, big things!” She approached Jerry, jabbing at him with the bowl end of the ladle like someone enrolled in a bizarre remedial fencing class. “Did she think we wouldn’t notice? Did she think she could just stick this down her bra and hide it?” Ann slammed the ladle against the counter. The implement clanged, a strangely empty sound in the large kitchen. “I shoulda jammed this thing down her throat and let her keep it that way! See how she likes it then!”

  The ladle punched out at him again, and Ann inhaled like she was going to head into another rant. Jerry felt like hiding under something. Then the air seemed to trickle out of Ann. The ladle slowly lowered.

  “Today, of all days,” she said. She was looking at something. Jerry didn’t have to follow her gaze to know what it was. A picture. Her and the kids. All of the kids. “Why today?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

  Jerry felt something tugging at him. Something close to the way he had felt for her before everything started to come down around them. He stepped toward Ann and slowly reached out. Wrapped his fingers around the haft of the ladle, then pulled it from her now-loose grip. He put it down on the counter, then took his wife in his arms. He held her carefully, as though she were a cracked porcelain doll, an antique that might come apart with the barest breath of a breeze.

  He could feel her. Still looking at the picture.

  “Let it go,” he whispered, and wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to himself. It probably didn’t matter, he supposed; probably neither of them would be able to do such a thing. “Let it go for tonight.”

  He pulled back and looked at Ann. She was still staring over his shoulder and wouldn’t meet his gaze no matter how he tried to catch her eyes with his own. “Let’s enjoy ourselves,” he said. “No one bothering us, no phone calls, no nothing but the family. Okay?” She didn’t answer until he gave her a small shake and added, “Okay?” one more time. Then her chin went up and down about a half centimeter. Her gaze was far away, long ago.

  Not too long, though. One year. Just a single year.

  “Why don’t we order some take-out?” he said. “We can have a nice, low-key dinner. Sound good? Just the family.”

  Ann nodded again. Her movements were slow. Delayed, like she was processing everything at one-quarter speed. Which perhaps she was.

  They all were. Life was moving too slow for her, just like it was for him. Passing by, minute after agonizing minute, moving toward… what?

  Jerry looked over his shoulder. Finally let himself look at the picture.

  Three children.

  Three happy children.

  Three.

  He swallowed, feeling a hard lump forming at the back of his throat. “I’ll make the call for the food,” he said. Ann didn’t answer, and he wondered if she was even with him right now. Or was she there? One year ago, finding him? Finding their son?

  “I’ll make the call,” he said again. Because in spite of the fact that he held his wife in his arms, in spite of the fact that he held her close and could feel every curve of her body, he still felt as though he were alone in a room full of nothing but memories and ghosts.

  8

  It took a while, but he gradually got her to move away from the counter, from the ladle that she had been swinging about. Though truth be told, it was almost nice to see some emotion in Ann’s eyes, some life. She had been so passionate, so fiery when they met. Sometimes that was a royal pain in Jerry’s ass, but Ann had never been boring.

  But since the night it all fell apart, Ann had settled into a state of doldrums that bordered on the comatose at times. The whole family had. They moved like people, but acted more like zombies, or maybe those weird automatons you might see at Disneyworld. Jerry wouldn’t have been surprised to hear twin clicks when his eyes closed each night, wouldn’t have
been surprised to hear near-silent whirrs as he powered down for another nightmare-streaked sleep.

  He called in an order for Chinese food from their usual place – though the voice that answered was not one he recognized – and when he came to the table Ann was running a finger along the edges of the wineglass, lazy circles along the rim that he knew he would have found subtly erotic not too long ago. Now… nothing. Especially since she was still looking at the picture.

  The three kids. All three of them smiling like life was fine and forever. Like the universe owed them a debt of happiness.