Dark Duets Part 46

"Well, you don't know if something works until it works, do you?"

"Oh, it'll work. He told me so."

"He told you that?"

"With his eyes," she said, "with his eyes."

WHEN ERIN WAS dropped off and I was nearly home, I realized I had forgotten my coat. I wheeled the car around and headed back, hoping Swami Saul and/or Mildred would still be there.

By the time I arrived, it was dark inside and the door was locked, though I kept trying it, tugging like a fool until my arms hurt.

Of course the right thing to do was to go home and find out who owned the place, see if I could get them to let me in tomorrow, because I was pretty sure Swami Saul, who traveled across the country with his little circus act, had rented it for a night and had decamped for parts unknown with his cape, Mildred, and a small crate of chewing gum.

It was a good coat and I wasn't ready to give it up. I went around back and tugged on a door there with the same lack of results. I looked around then, felt the place was tucked in tight by hedges, and decided it wouldn't hurt anything if I went around and found a window open. In and out, and no one but me and my coat would be the wiser.

Circling the house, I tried the windows. They were firmly locked. I considered knocking out a pane, undoing the latch, and pushing one up. I liked the coat that much. This was an idea I was floating when the last window I checked moved up with a surprising mouselike squeak.

I hiked my dress and stepped through the opening without breaking the heel off my shoe, then edged around in the dark. My hip found a piece of furniture that hurt bad enough I made a sound like a small dog barking. I waited until the pain subsided and my eyes were accustomed to the dark. There was the desk I had run into, a few chairs folded and leaning against the wall, and a bit of illumination from the streetlights shining through a window near the front door.

Able to navigate now, I made my way to the foyer where we first met Mildred. All the knickknacks that had been on the wall were gone. All that was left of them was a kind of dry stink of incense. The closet where Mildred had hung our coats was empty too, which didn't entirely surprise me. Somewhere tomorrow she would be wearing one of our coats, the pockets full of gum wrappers. I was fit to be tied.

I had started back toward the open window when my foot banged into the trash can. Nothing serious. No toes were lost. But it made me glance into the can. It was full of papers. I recognized them. They were the pages we had all filled out before the event on the Internet. They had been printed and, after serving their purpose, dumped upon Swami Saul's and Mildred's exit.

I pulled them out of the can and tucked them under my arm for no good reason outside of curiosity, then went out of there through the window and walked to my car. Coatless, I drove home.

AT HOME I put on my pouting pajamas, which are large enough that I can jump in a full circle inside of them. I sat at the table and had a bowl of cereal and four chocolate chip cookies. I moped around for about thirty minutes, picking crumbs off my front, then decided it was time for bed.

I tried to go to sleep, but lay in the dark, twisting and turning as if the mattress were made of tacks. I finally went to the kitchen and picked up the stack of papers I had taken from the trash can.

I felt a little guilty, because at the bottom of each we had been asked to tell something about ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, what we were hoping for in love, and so on, but I didn't feel so guilty that it stopped me from reading.

I found mine near the top. I glanced at it. It read: I think it's everyone else that is messing up. I'm a real catch. Anyone would be d.a.m.n lucky to have me. I'm handy with a glue gun, can spell like n.o.body's business, and some people say I look like that movie star that everyone loves so much right now. Oh, and I got good teeth.

I always had been proud of my teeth.

I felt mildly conceited for writing such a thing but still considered the comments accurate. I thought about calling Erin, but as it had pa.s.sed the midnight mark by now and she had work in the morning, I decided not to. I had work too, but I wrote romance novels, which is ironic, and I was able to set my own hours. I wrote under a pen name and was just waiting for that free moment when I could write the great American novel. Susan Sontag didn't have anything on me. Except true success, of course.

I decided I'd keep thumbing through the pages, maybe even get some material for one of my books. The women's pages were on top. I read all the comments at the bottom of each one. Some of them were really sad and desperate. I felt sorry for those women. Only material I was getting was for a suicide letter.

The papers had everyone's address and phone number on them except mine, as I had given a false address and my old boyfriend's work phone number, the one with the animal website. I hoped they'd call. Asking for Jana was bound to make his wife or mistresses unhappy with him.

At the bottom of the stack I came across the forms the men had filled out, and there it was, Number Thirteen. His address was a place well out of town. I didn't know the exact spot, but I knew the area. It was pretty backwoods out there, though still within driving distance. Occupation was listed as MIKE TUTINO'S JUNKYARD. Was junkyard an occupation? I guess so.

Oddly, the man's name was listed as John Roe, not Tutino. The name was not too far off from John Doe. Either he had an unusual last name, or he thought he was way too clever. The rest of the information about him was vague, and there was a notation that he paid for his eye-gazing service with cash.

I thought in circles awhile, finally took a sleeping pill. and went to bed.

WHEN I AWOKE the next morning, I was still irritated about losing my coat. I went to Erin's workplace, a coffeehouse that has a kind of touchy-feely atmosphere about it and a very good Cafe Americano, as well as books for sale. You could drink and read and buy a book if you took the urge, though some of the books had chocolate biscotti fingerprints in them, and I admit some of them were mine.

Erin wasn't there, and no one knew where she was. She was supposed to have come to work. A friend of hers, another barista I knew a little, said the boss was mad at Erin and she wasn't answering her cell and she had better show up, and with a good excuse or the best d.a.m.n lie since Bigfoot.

I tried calling Erin on my cell but got nothing. I left a message and drove over to her place. It was a condo, which was essentially an apartment traveling under an a.s.sumed name. I had my own key that she had given me to feed the cats when she was out of town, and after knocking and ringing the doorbell and noticing her car wasn't in its spot, I went in.

Funny, but the minute I was inside I could feel the place was empty as a politician's head. I looked around. No Erin. I got a Diet c.o.ke out of her refrigerator, and knowing where she hid the vanilla cookies, I had one of those. All right. I had four or five.

I ate them and drank my drink while sitting on her couch. I tried to figure where she was, and I won't kid you, I was becoming a little scared. After a bit I had a brainstorm and went to her computer. I used it to examine her search history. And there it was: MIKE TUTINO'S JUNKYARD. I a.s.sumed she already had the address from Mr. John Roe, Number Thirteen himself, but she had looked up directions. Could she have gone out there last night and gotten lucky? If you could call bedding down with that little dude lucky. I'd rather have a root ca.n.a.l performed by a drunk chimpanzee.

I searched on the computer a little more and saw the junkyard was no longer in operation, and that struck me as an odd thing unto itself, an abandoned junkyard for a home. I probed around some more but didn't find anything spectacular.

I went home and tried to write, but all I could think about was Erin, and the rerun marathon of Friends. I figured that was just the thing to keep me from thinking silly thoughts.

It wasn't. I watched about five minutes of an episode and began to channel surf. I hit a local channel airing a news alert about a missing woman. Then another. And another. I was about to surf on when I thought I recognized one of the photos as a woman at the eye-gazing party, but I could have been mistaken. I hadn't really paid that much attention to everyone, being more interested in myself, which some might say is a failing. But it could have been her.

Calling the police was a consideration, but since what I had going for me was that we had all been at the same place last night, and it was an eye-gazing party, it was hard to believe at this stage I would be taken seriously. Frankly, I was a little embarra.s.sed about asking them to go out and hara.s.s a junkyard owner who might have acquired a harem of eye-gazing groupies due to inexplicable optical powers, and that I was immune to his loving gaze because of astigmatism. This was a thought that had started to move about in my brain quite a lot, that I was immune due to a natural malfunction. I wasn't sure how true it was, but I had started to embrace it, started to think maybe Thirteen was something a little different, and for his particular talents nothing could have been more perfectly made for him than such an event.

I mulled around all day, and just before dark I couldn't take it anymore. I decided I'd drive out to the junkyard, just for a look. No big deal.

At least that's what I told myself.

THE JUNKYARD WAS way out in the boonies off the main highway, down a narrow road crowded by pines. As I came to a hilltop-the moon up now and bright as a baby's eye- I could see it. It lay in a low spot, and the junk cars spread wide and far. Fresh moonlight winked off the corroded corpses of all manner of automobiles and the aluminum fence that surrounded them. Behind all those cars was an old house that looked like it needed a sign that said HAUNTS WANTED.

I coasted down the hill until I came to a barred metal gate that made a gap in the aluminum fence. The gate was about twelve feet wide and six feet high, with a padlock no smaller than a beer truck.

I sat there in my car in front of the gate, then decided to back up and turn around, and for a moment I was heading safely back to my house, feeling silly and knowing for sure Erin was probably home now, that she would have some logical explanation, like an alien kidnapping.

I activated the phone on the car dash and called Erin's number, got her answering machine again. I didn't leave a message. I got to the top of the hill, turned around, and went back down, but this time not all the way to the gate. I was dedicated to the mission now.

I parked on a wide spot off the road under a big elm, got out, and took a deep breath. It seemed I had begun a new career in trespa.s.sing, and possibly breaking and entering. I hoped I'd find Erin, or the only thing I was going to get was prison time and a close relationship with a tattooed lady with muscles and a name like Molly Sue who liked it twice on Sundays.

I walked slowly, staying close to the side of the road where the tree shadows were thick, glad I had worn comfortable tennis shoes and a warm sweatshirt parka and loose mom jeans. I pulled up the hood on the parka, and for a moment I felt like a ninja.

I went along the fence toward the gate but found a gap in the aluminum wall and decided that would be the way to go. I pulled the aluminum apart, slipped through without snagging anything, then crept along between rows of cars that looked like giant metal doodlebugs. The cars were really old, and if there had been any activity in this junkyard, it was probably about the middle of last century. Gra.s.s had grown up between the rows of cars and died, turned the color of rust; it crunched under my feet like broken gla.s.s.

Sister, I thought to myself, what the h.e.l.l are you doing?

No dogs with teeth like daggers came out to get me. No alarms went off, and no lights flashed on. There wasn't the loud report of a rifle shot, so I soldiered on.

The cars were like a maze, and at one point I wound myself into the metal labyrinth and came out near the front fence again. I climbed up on the hood of one of the cars and got my bearings, studying my situation carefully. I did everything but break out a s.e.xtant and chart the positions of the stars.

Finally, with it all firmly in mind, I tried again, and this time, after more trudging, I broke loose into a straight row that led directly toward the house.

STANDING AT THE foot of the porch steps with only the moon and a d.i.n.ky key-chain flashlight as my guides, the latter of which would have come in real handy earlier had I remembered it before now, I crept up along the side of the railing, careful of my footing. I had intended only to peek through the windows, where I was sure I would see Erin laughing and sitting on the couch, drinking a soda and having a h.e.l.l of a time with Thirteen, but before I could, I heard something.

There was a clang, and when I looked, a possum was hustling away from a pile of old hubcaps it had upset among the death camp of vehicles, and that brought my attention to the side of the house. There, its nose poking out from behind the side, was Erin's car. I was certain of it. I went over for a closer look and saw the miniature dream catcher she had made the summer before last hanging from the rearview mirror. That served as a final confirmation.

Glancing around, I saw a number of cars that I had seen at the eye-gazing event. I took some deep breaths to try to calm myself. I could call the police, but it would take them too long. Erin could be in serious trouble right now, and I couldn't afford to wait on the cops to get off their a.s.ses and mosey down to this side of the tracks, and the truth was, the cars were here, but that didn't guarantee there was a problem. Maybe Thirteen's appeal had led to an orgy of epic proportions and no one was harmed. I decided I should at least check out the situation a little before throwing myself into a panic.

I fumbled through my pockets, searching for anything I could use as a weapon. I had an old paper clip, a pencil stub, and the keys already in hand, and that was it. Maybe if I found a rubber band somewhere, MacGyver would appear and help a lady out.

Looking through the windows proved useless because upon closer inspection, I realized they had been blacked out with paint. I was left with no other option. It was time to go in.

I pushed at the front door to no avail. It groaned a bit, but it didn't budge. I backed my way down the rickety old steps and shined my light around the base of the house. Near the far left end, behind the overgrown and twisted-up hedges, I spotted a broken window close to the ground that looked just big enough for me to crawl through if I sucked in tight and thought about celery while I shimmied. I pulled back the limb of a bush, gently kicked out the remaining fragments of gla.s.s, and in a feet-first motion I slid inside the bas.e.m.e.nt with one swift, effortless move.

Despite the off-putting appearance of the outside, the inside looked pretty normal save for large amounts of a superfine, sparkly dust covering every surface. It looked as though nothing had been moved or cleaned in years and, ironically, could use a woman's touch. Unless it was my touch. All that would get you was a pile of dirty laundry in the corner and enough drain hair to create a rope doll.

I left my tiptoe footprints in the shiny dust like a mouse tracking over a snow-covered hill. After several minutes of searching, I started to feel the churn of my gut lessen. I was pretty sure I was alone in the house. Still, I opened the bas.e.m.e.nt door that led upstairs and connected into the kitchen with the stealth of a hired a.s.sa.s.sin, just to be sure. I bobbed my light around and once again found nothing but that dust. It was all over the house and where there were cracks and gaps in the old rotten roof, the moonlight shimmered on the dust and made it glitter.

I coasted out of the kitchen and into a large room with bulks of cloth-covered furniture, backed myself against the wall, and leaned there in the shadows. I let the weight of my thumb come off the b.u.t.ton of the light, causing it to go black, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness.

I was really nervous now, and since I had not found Erin, or anyone, in the house, but had found her car and recognized the cars of some of the other women from the eye-gazing party, I a.s.sumed I had enough material to take to the police. I could leave my suspicions about Thirteen's magic eye and my astigmatism out of the explanation when I spoke to them and would probably be the better for it.

It would certainly be smarter than wandering around a dark house and having the squeaking floor give way and drop me into the bas.e.m.e.nt faster than green gra.s.s through a duck's a.s.s to lie in a heap of lumber, broken bones, and if I knew my luck, my mom jeans hanging on a snag above me.

It was then that one of the pieces of furniture that I had taken for an ottoman stood up with a sound like cracking walnuts and a dislocation of sparkly dust that drifted across the room and fastened itself into my nostrils tighter than in-laws at Christmas.

The dust, however, was my least concern. I was more troubled by the fact that the ottoman was not an ottoman but a moving wad of clothes and flesh that, though I couldn't see it clearly, I felt certain was Thirteen. How he had been bundled up like that on the floor, I have no idea, nor did I have the inclination to ask him, but I can a.s.sure you, the sight of him coming into human shape that way was enough to make my legs go weak.

I wondered if I had been seen, or if the shadows concealed me, but that was all decided for me when the dust in my nostrils decided to exit by way of a loud sneeze. It was like a starter's pistol being fired, and here came Thirteen, shuffling through the dust, coming right at me. Track had never been my sport, but right then I wished it had, because I broke and ran. Behind me I heard the floorboards squeal and the pitter-patter of feet, and then Thirteen had me.

HIS HAND CAME down on my shoulder, and I'm ashamed to admit it, but I let out a scream that would have embarra.s.sed a five-year-old girl with its earsplitting intensity. I was yanked back and it caused me to wheel about on my heels, and I was looking right into the shadowy face of the little man.

I clicked on the key-ring light in my hands, lifted it quickly for a look. I can't explain it. It was just a reflex. Thirteen's eyes were still flat and uninteresting, but then something moved in them, and I actually heard a crackling as if a fuse had shorted, and for a moment it seemed as if his eyes had slipped together and become one. I blinked, and then he looked the same, bald and doughy with ugly gray eyes.

We held our places.

I swear I smiled, and once more, the light went off and I dropped it, along with the key ring to my side, said, "Have you seen Erin?"

Really. I did. He didn't respond, just leaned forward giving me the hairy eyeball, and then I got it; he was waiting on me to swoon. He couldn't figure why his evil eye wasn't working, why the hoodoo didn't do whatever it was supposed to do, and that's when I brought my keys up again and raked him across the face, cutting his flesh in the way a knife cuts paper. I shoved him and raced past, into the big room.

Glancing over my shoulder, I was horrified to see he was pursuing me, but on all fours, moving fast and light as a windblown leaf. Now I was in a hallway, and there was moonlight creeping in through a rent in the roof. I had a pretty good view of everything, and one of those things was my reflection in a huge mirror with a small table next to it supporting a pitcher of some sort. I grabbed the pitcher, wheeled, and struck Thirteen on the forehead, causing him to stumble back and fall. It was a short-lived victory. He rose to his feet and came at me with his doughy arms spread wide, making a noise like a cat with its tail caught in a door.

I turned, took hold of the table, and saw in the mirror that his image was contrary to what I had been looking at. Now he was little more than a skeleton topped by a bulbous head centered by one big eye, but when I turned, he looked just the same, a stumpy, balding man in an ill-fitting suit, his mouth open wide and his arms outstretched, ready to nab me.

By now adrenaline was running through me like a pack of cheetahs. I swung the table as he lunged. It was a good shot, resulting in the table coming apart in my hands, but I had caught him upside the head, and his head moved farther to the side than I thought a head could move. He did a little backward hop, dropped to the floor, lay there shaking his head like he was collecting his brain cells one by one. On the floor the shards of the mirror winked fragments of my reflection. It was not a happy face.

I darted down the hallway, figuring the jammed or locked front door might be more trouble than I had time for. I came to a stairway, decided on the closest port in a storm, hurried up it silently, pranced along until I saw a hall closet with sliding doors. In my great wisdom as one of the world's worst hide-and-seek players, I carefully opened one of the two wide doors, slipped inside, and snicked the closet shut, plunging myself into total darkness.

IT WAS A choice a two-year-old might make, but until you've been chased by an unknown creature, a supernatural being, an alien from the planet Zippie, or whatever Thirteen was, don't judge me.

I lifted my key-chain light near my face, not yet having released my grip from attacking Thirteen, clicked it on, and flashed it around. There were clothes on a rack, and I pushed in among them. At my feet were piles of shoes, and I must admit I spotted one really nice pair of high heels that I thought I might take with me when I finally decided to depart my hiding place, jump through a second-story window, and hope my legs didn't get driven up through my a.s.s. Most likely I would be found with the high heels clutched tight in my teeth. They were that cute.

The cuteness factor faded, and I made a little noise in my throat when I realized that the clothes hanging in the closet looked familiar, or some of them did. They were outfits the women at the eye-gazing party had been wearing-okay, I'm shallow, I take note of those things-and one of those outfits belonged to Erin. There was something odd about the clothes. They were all pinned there by ancient clothespins, but drooping inside of them were what at first looked like deflated s.e.x dolls (I've seen them in photos), but were in fact the skins of human beings. One of those skins belonged to Erin. I couldn't control myself. I reached out and touched it, but . . . it was not what I first thought. It was her, but all of what should have been inside of her had been sucked out, leaving the droopy remains, like a condom without its master in action.

How I felt at that moment could best be summed up in one word: ill. That's when I heard the squeaking steps of Thirteen on the stairs, then the shuffling sound of feet sliding down the hallway. I pushed back behind the hanging clothes and skins, feeling weak and woozy. I clicked off the light and held my breath.

After what had to have been a world-record time for breath holding, I heard the steps make their way back to the entrance on the hall and heard the squeak of the stairs again.

Flooded with relief, I cautiously let out my breath. At that moment there was a rushing sound in the hallway and the doors slammed open, and there I was, glancing through the skins and clothes, looking Thirteen dead in the eyes once more.

There was no question in my mind he saw me. I did my squeal again, ducked down, grabbed the high-heeled shoe, and came out from under the hanging rod, right at the dumpy, little man. I was thinking about what I had seen downstairs in the mirror, his true image as a bony creature with a big head and a single gooey eye in its center. That's where I struck. I was on target. It was as if his forehead were made of liquid. The heel of the shoe plunged into his skull and went deep. There was a shriek and a movement from Thirteen that defied gravity as he sprang up and backward like a gra.s.shopper, slammed into the wall, and fell rolling along the hallway, the heel still in his forehead. No sooner did he hit the floor than his body shifted and squirmed and took on a variety of shapes, which included a paisley-covered ottoman (nothing I would buy) and finally the shape I had seen in the mirror.

I pushed against the wall, trying to slip along it toward the stairs, taking advantage of his blindness. He staggered upright on his bony legs, weakly clawed at the shoe in what was left of his eye, jerked it loose, and began waving his arms about, slamming into the wall, feeling for me. He stumbled into the open closet, knocked the clothes rack down, scattered the clothes and deflated bodies all over the hallway. When I got to the edge of the stairs, I turned to look back. He lifted his blind head and sniffed the air, then shot toward me. I wished then I had not had the vanity to wear the perfume I was wearing, but I bought it in Paris and had made a pact with myself that I would use it once a week, even if I was merely shopping at Target.

He had smelled me, and now he was springing in my general direction on all fours, and before I could say "Oh s.h.i.t," he was nearly on top of me. But, smooth as a matador, I stepped aside and he went past me, scratching the air and tumbling down the stairs with a sound like someone breaking a handful of chopsticks over their knee. He hit just about every step on his way down, finally tumbled to the base of the stairs, and came apart in pieces.

The pieces writhed and withered, then turned into piles of blackened soot. No sooner was that done than the house was full of an impossible wind that sucked up the sparkly dust that coated the interior, whirled it in a little tornado, and started up the stairs. Quite clearly, even in the dim light, I could see the faces and shapes of women in that dust. I saw Erin, whipping around and around, her long hair flying like straw.

The black soot piles that had been Thirteen did not move, no matter that the wind went right over them with its dusty pa.s.sengers. As the dust twirled neared the top of the stairs I stepped back, watched it hit the upper hallway with a howling sound and smash into the closet.

I followed and watched the dust dive into the mouths of the deflated women lying on the floor of the closet. It filled up their bodies, and they filled up their clothes. They tumbled out of that closet and lay in the hallway blinking their eyes, unaware of what had just happened.

"What the h.e.l.l?" one of them said, and then I saw Erin, rising to her feet from the pile of women, looking blankly around, gathering thoughts slowly, her hair in a knotted clump around her head and shoulders.

I laughed out loud at their confusion, laughed too because I was alive and not an empty skin dangling on a clothes rack by a set of grandma's old clothespins. I began to weep a little with delight, mixing laughter and tears. I grabbed Erin and hugged her tight.

"What happened?" she said. "Where are we?"

"You were eye-gazed by a monster of some kind and all your essence was sucked out and turned to sparkly dust for no reason I can figure and you were a skin hanging in a closet inside your clothes and I rescued you by killing the monster with a shoe to the eye, causing the dust to crawl down your throat and fill you up again."

"Oh," Erin said. "Wait. What?"

"I think this is going to take some time," I said, watching as the women scrounged through the closet looking for their proper shoes, knowing that one would be hobbling her way downstairs, "but I prefer we talk about it somewhere else."

As we descended the stairs, the others following, chattering among themselves, I saw that the black piles of soot, all that remained of Thirteen, had turned gooey and were sinking unceremoniously into the pores of the wood like ink into soft paper.

TRAPPER BOY.

Holly Newstein and Rick Hautala.

When the shouting started, John knew exactly what was going to happen next.

He crept down the hall and through the kitchen to the back door and let himself out. The rotting floorboard of the narrow porch creaked underfoot as he made his way down to the weed-choked backyard, where Mama's chickens pecked in the gra.s.s.

Shep, John's dog, was cowering in his doghouse. He also knew what was coming. He looked at John with a mournful expression in his dark, soft eyes.

The fighting happened whenever Da came home late from the saloon after a hard day's work in the coal mine.

John leaned forward and slapped his thighs with both hands, clicking his tongue and whistling.

"C'mon, boy," he called softly to Shep.

He unhooked the chain that tied Shep to his doghouse, and together they left the yard and started up the hill that rose behind the house. The hillside was so steep that even on summer days daylight didn't hit the house until well after ten o'clock in the morning.

With Shep leading the way, John followed the well-trodden path up the slope. From time to time, he would pause while Shep bolted off into the brush after a rabbit or squirrel. John laughed at the old dog, but his laughter was thin and unconvincing because he was deep in thought . . . and worried about what might happen to Mama.