The Sleepwalkers Part 9

G.o.d, bless the sinners, And the believers, And bless my Keisha.

Amen.

Ron opens his eyes. All is still. A truck rumbles past again. The far wall starts shaking, a rhythmic hammering. A breathy moaning, animal grunts. Every cheap adornment in the cheap room rattles.

Before he knows it, Ron is stifling tears. Embarra.s.sed, he blinks them away, pulls his lips together tight. The muscles of his face quiver with tension. He tries to remember the last time he cried. It's been a long time, he knows that much. Why now? Why here, finally?

Why anything?

The muscles of his face relax and his eyes stop blinking. He sits very still and stares at a picture on the wall in front of him across the darkened room. It's a print of an abstract painting, which is to say a picture of nothing. He's won the fight, knows he's not going to cry tonight. The emotion has ebbed and left him vacant, an empty seash.e.l.l washed up on a deserted beach. Not surprising that's how he'd end up. He was never good for much anyway.

In five minutes, the s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g is over next door and his tears are forgotten. Another truck bellows past and Ron Bent falls asleep.

It's dark in the Mason house. The fire has burned away to smoke. Caleb blinks in the dark. He hears Bean breathing next to him in long, even breaths. Outside, the wind gusts and a tree branch whispers against the window. When the wind dies away, Caleb hears something. The noise is tiny, barely a scratch in the surface of silence, and he pushes up on one elbow and c.o.c.ks his head to listen intently, to be sure. Something is ticking. His first impulse is to look at the mantle-there was always an antique clock there, and a memory races through Caleb's mind of his father winding it before bedtime with the slow, mechanical-sounding twist of a silver key. The clock is still on the mantle, its once-white face dark with dust, but even with no light Caleb can see that the pendulum is still. Tick, tick, tick. Caleb reaches for the flashlight-should be by his shoulder. His heart begins to feel tight with fear as his hand gropes the dirty rug, finding nothing. Then he finds it-it had only rolled a few feet away.

With a click, the light is on. Caleb glances over at Bean. There's a glint of drool at the corner of his mouth, but he lies still and his breathing stays steady. For a minute, Caleb considers waking his friend, then decides against it. Tick, tick, tick. After all, he's dragged Bean halfway across the country, and for what? To visit some crazy girl and squat in an abandoned building? Some vacation. Some friend. But at least he knows when to quit. They'll buy a plane ticket tomorrow and be back in LA by happy hour. Tick, tick, tick. Caleb looks at the ceiling. The sound is coming from upstairs.

He crosses the living room in slow, measured steps. His feet crackle across the grit-strewn marble floor of the foyer.

Suddenly, he freezes. He whips the beam of his flashlight around. It comes to rest on the obsidian surface of a window. Felt like somebody was watching him, but there's nothing there but h.o.m.ogenous darkness and the white oval of his reflected flashlight beam.

Up the steps, slow, one at a time, his eyes trained upward, toward the darkness crouching behind every doorway in the long, long, hallway. He reaches the top of the steps. This was the spare bedroom; that was a bathroom. He remembers when this carpet was new. His mom had dragged him all over three counties trying to find the perfect color to match the drapes. Now it's littered with little black seeds of mouse c.r.a.p and stained from the mildew and the dust.

Tick, tick, tick.

He pushes open the door to his old room. There's a desk and a computer, a home-gym system against the far wall; nothing else. Not a single teddy bear or Matchbox car or old baseball poster; nothing to indicate that Caleb used to live there all. He shuts the door and walks on.

A sound. He stops, freezes. A sc.r.a.ping, faint. Then again. Something moving slowly, just behind the door right next to him.

With a crash, he elbows it open and the flashlight swoops in. His breath exhales in a hiss. Two glowing eyes stare back at him.

There's a racc.o.o.n in the bathtub.

He curses and shuts the door, angry at first, then laughing at himself. He shakes his head and continues down the hall. He's remembering back a few years when he was a kid, almost a teenager. He hadn't been living in California too long when he went to a Halloween party with some friends. He had always been a well-liked kid, but he was just becoming cognizant of the social implications of real popularity when he got invited to this party. There were five or six of the most popular kids in the school there, and they led him down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. They all got some punch and were arguing about Pete Rose or something when Caleb wandered over to a coffin sitting in the corner of the room, ignored by everyone else. Inside was a mannequin, or an exquisite dummy, which looked just like the dead body of a beautiful girl. Caleb had leaned close, admiring the detail of the pale figure-even the eyelashes looked real-when it screamed. Caleb jumped back, yelled, and dumped his punch on his pants and had to go home. Turns out the woman in the coffin was the mother of Caleb's friend, an ex-Playboy model, who had set everything up for a little Halloween joke. Looking back, it was funny. It could have been anybody who walked up to the coffin and got the s.h.i.t scared out of him. Caleb just wished it hadn't been him.

This is what he thinks to himself as he walks into his dad's old bedroom, where he used to sleep between his parents if he had nightmares. He's still almost smiling with embarra.s.sment at the memory as he flashes the beam of light over the objects in the room. Some are familiar, the bed, the dresser-and some are new, like an ugly, African-looking statue in the corner. He walks to the nightstand and the ticking gets softer. As he rounds the foot of the bed, it gets louder again, and when he slowly opens the closet door, it becomes twice as distinct. As he looks up at the closet ceiling, Caleb stops smiling.

There's a square of plywood with a pull string hanging from it. Pull the string, and the staircase comes down. Climb the staircase, and you reach the attic.

Around the edges of the plywood, Caleb sees a light.

Tick-tick-tick-tick.

He reaches up with a trembling hand and pulls down hard. A dusting of particles drifts into his eyes, but he blinks them away, finishing the motion and pulling the staircase down as the light of one bare electric bulb, burning above, leaves him half-blinded. But there's no electricity. So how . . . ? His shoulders are tense, pulled almost up to his ears. He isn't breathing. The staircase moans as he puts his weight on it. He wants to look down to make sure he doesn't miss a step, but he can't take his eyes off the door above. Because somebody turned on this light.

Tick, Tick, Tick.

His head breaks the plain of the attic floor and he jerks it around, back and forth, looking for feet, looking for a figure, seeing only walls and rafters, layers of fluffy, dusty, pink insulation. Satisfied that he's alone, he pulls himself up, kneeling first, then standing halfway, as much as the pitch of the roof will allow. The light beam traces back and forth. Nothing but cobwebs and suspended dust. But here-over this way, a series of particleboard sheets bridge the insulation. Somebody put them there. That's the direction. Tick, tick. That's the way. He hears his footfalls on the boards, muted steps. He breathes shallowly. The air is heavy, almost too thick to breathe at all, and hot. The particleboard sheets tilt under him, but he walks on. Ahead, something reflects in the light. Something gla.s.s. As he comes toward it, a room emerges out of the darkness, walled off with plywood. He steps slowly through the uneven doorway, ticktock, and sees a clock, choked with dust. Its pendulum is still. The light beam drifts to . . . another clock. And another. And another. And another. And another, and another and another and anotherandanother.

And this one's still ticking.

"Bean!"

"Bean!"

Caleb hears himself screaming, but doesn't feel his mouth moving, doesn't remember making the words.

Floor to ceiling to floor, all around him.

"Bean!"

Ticktockticktockticktocktick.

Who would make a room of all clocks, just clocks?

"Bean!"

Then it came, faint. "Caleb? Jesus, where are you?"

"In the closet! In the attic! Up here!"

Caleb stands very still. His arms are wrapped tightly about himself, as if he were about to freeze to death, and his flashlight beam blazes into the clock, the one that still ticks, the one that somebody must've wound.

That's how Bean finds him.

"Jesus Christ, you okay, man? I thought I'd find you in a b.l.o.o.d.y pile."

"Look," says Caleb, and he lets his flashlight play across the faces of the many clocks.

"What the h.e.l.l?" says Bean.

"I heard the ticking," says Caleb.

"What kind of nut-wagon has a room full of fifty clocks?"

"Sixteen," says Caleb. "There are sixteen of them. And somebody wound this one within the last couple of days."

They look around in a pregnant silence, then glance at one another with wide eyes, but neither of them speaks.

Caleb waits for Bean to make a joke. He doesn't. He says: "Let's get out of here, man," then whispers: "This is a haunted place."

They cross the attic bridge, climb down into the closet, trudge to the bottom of the steps, and wordlessly start packing up their stuff.

Finally, Bean starts ranting: "Somebody was here. Somebody wound that s.h.i.t up. And whoever it was, I don't want to meet him. I just want to be back home. We can take a road trip up to Big Sur, do some surfing, play some video games. You know, I don't even care if my parents nag me about what to do with the rest of my life anymore. I don't care what I do with my life, as long as I'm not here, in this messed-up, crazy place. In fact, I'm glad we came. It's taught me a very important lesson; namely, no matter how bad anything is, we are some lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.ds because we don't have to be here. We get to leave. Some people live in this town, and they're screwed, and I feel bad for them, but we live in a place where, despite the drive-by shootings, child drug use, and rampant bulls.h.i.t, n.o.body is crazy enough to put sixteen clocks in one room. I'm just glad-"

"Bean?"

"Huh?"

"What did Christine say about clocks?"

"Ummm . . . "

"She said something about clocks."

"Uh . . . I don't remember."

Caleb is looking at his friend with fierce eyes. Suddenly, he covers his mouth with his hand.

"Bean," Caleb says, "we can't leave. She said the clocks are ticking." "Maybe she snuck out, came over here and wound it," Beans says, sounding unconvinced.

"Maybe," Caleb says, "she isn't crazy at all."

Eyes open. There's no sound now, no traffic. Ron looks over at the green-burning numbers on the old alarm clock next to him. They say five-oh-four. He's never been so awake in his life. He rolls onto his back and looks at the ceiling. There's nothing to see. With nothing else to look at, he looks back on his life. He does this a lot. He's gotten good at it, so good that he no longer has to look at it piece by piece. Now he can see it all at once, like a big mosaic. It's better that way. Like a bed of nails: you lie down on one nail, you might puncture a lung; you lie down on ten thousand nails, no problem. You may never be very comfortable-h.e.l.l, you'll never get a good night's sleep on a bed of nails, but it sure beats the alternative. Praise G.o.d.

Ron's life has been reduced to a movie montage. Sledding with his brother; cut to being slapped in the ear by his drunk mother; cut to the princ.i.p.al telling him "young men who get caught smoking marijuana on school grounds can't partic.i.p.ate in the graduation ceremony"; cut to Nick Wilford appearing out from behind some foliage with a strange, electric look in his eyes and his intestines dangling down to his knees, asking if he can b.u.m a smoke; cut to playing solitaire in the dark at the VA hospital, listening to the guy down the hall who hasn't quit screaming in three days; cut to hitchhiking through Montana-beautiful. Cut to running his tongue up the dark skin of Camilia's thigh, tasting her sweat, tasting her desire, the way she moved her hips; pan up, see her nipples poking hard through that thin, worn white tank top; cut to being slapped in the ear by Camilia, drunk; cut to Keisha, Keisha the day she gets her bike, the birthday bike he saved up for three months to buy her. Cut to Keisha sitting on his lap, listening to him read her One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, her big brown eyes really watching him, her arms reaching up to really hug him. Close-up on Keisha. That's how the montage always ends. Close-up on his little girl.

Tap. The sound chokes off his thought. Tap. A drip. Must be the faucet. Tap. His tired old body doesn't want to move, but now his mind is running like a hamster on a wheel, and it'll never stop before sunup. Might as well get up, watch some early-morning TV, catch the weather, maybe. He grunts as he hoists himself up onto one elbow. Reaches over, fumbling, fumbling-where's the d.a.m.ned switch? Click. Light. He blinks, sits up, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands, hears himself sigh deep and thinks what a sad sound it is. Leaning with his elbows on his knees, exhausted but wired, the light's okay now, not blinding. He sees the map on the floor, half open. Must've fallen down last night during the s.e.x earthquake. He gets to his feet slowly-slower every day, now-takes a couple of heavy steps to the table and braces against it with one hand and leans down, about to scoop the map up.

Tap.

On the map in front of him, a drip of water. He looks up. One of the pipes in the ceiling is going. Slow leak, but someone had better get up here before the water damage starts. He knows about water damage-he used to do some construction work. He wasn't much good at it, but he has enough experience with water damage to know it can be an expensive pain in the a.s.s to take care of, especially if you let it go. He'll pack up, head down to the office and let them know, then hit the road. Reaches for the map.

Tap.

He stops midreach and leans down, squinting, his sight is still a little feeble in the dim light. The drips are landing on the little black dot of a town. He picks up the map, brings it close to his face to read the tiny letters. They're hard to make out. He needs to snap out of his denial about needing gla.s.ses, but he can still make out the name of the town: Hudsonville.

He's coughed up enough unanswered prayers to know that while G.o.d is great and G.o.d is good, he ain't much of a communicator. He doesn't seem to deal in signs much anymore. No burning bushes for us. And even if you come across what seems like a sign, chances are it's just a reflection of the desperation in your own mind, an expression of your own reckless need for meaning-and if you follow this supposed divine advice, you have about a 65 percent chance of wasting your time. Still, Ron thinks, might not hurt to check out Hudsonville again. Anything's worth a shot. Praise G.o.d.

The car rattles over train tracks. Ron flicks his cigarette out the window. Hudsonville. He's pa.s.sing the downtown now, what there is of it. There's that diner, there's a gas station-not much here. Bunch of big, old trees, folks walking along the road looking at him with dark, sharp eyes. Not much here. He remembers where the sheriff 's station is and turns in. Has to crank the wheel, 'cause the power-steering fluid is low-it's a pain in the a.s.s with only one gripping hand, but he manages. That's one thing Ron does well: he manages. Always has. He stops the car in front of the white trailer. Birds are calling. Pine needles and sand. Out of the car, up the steps, and in the door.

The only one in the office is a woman. She's sitting in the whir of an old electric fan.

"How can I help you?" Her voice is a mechanical drawl. She looks up with her big hair, over the top of a People magazine. When she sees Ron she shuts the magazine and tosses it on the counter. "Well, h.e.l.lo," she says, then squints. "You ain't from around here, but I seen you before."

"I guess you probably did," says Ron. "I wondered if you had anymore information about a missing person, Keisha Bent? She'd be about fourteen. Her momma was black, so her skin is pretty dark. She's probably tall by now."

The woman's popping her gum. She leans up against the counter, looking at Ron hard. She juts out her enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s and her lips bow up into a crimson smile on her saddlebag of a face.

"Yep. I remember you, alright. You was looking for that colored girl, 'bout a year back or something, right?"

Ron nods. "That's right. She went missing from the beach about thirteen miles away-Rabe Point State Park. It was two years ago, October twenty-seventh, around dusk."

"Well," the lady cop says, "she ain't turned up yet, but tell you what I'll do. I'll give you my phone number and maybe you can give me a call and check in with me from time to time, in case she does turn up. How long you in town for?"

"Not long," says Ron. "Any other children gone missing around here?"

The woman looks surprised, then laughs. "You really ain't from around here, are you?" She glances over her shoulder, then looks back at Ron, serious now. "There's a lot of people around here who don't turn up," she says.

Ron's heart flutters. He leans in. "Yeah? How many kidnapping cases do you have open right now?"

"None," she says. She greets Ron's confusion with another bout of laughter. "I never said anybody got kidnapped. I said a lot of people just don't turn up. Maybe they move someplace else to get better jobs. Some of them maybe ain't happy with their home situations so they hightail it outta here. There's lots of reasons to leave. Kids run away from their parents all the time."

Ron says: "My daughter didn't run away."

"I didn't say she did," says the woman. "My name is Janet. Deputy Janet to you."

"How many kids, or people, are missing right now?"

"None," Janet says, "but lots of people-maybe hundreds-might have left."

"You're telling me hundreds of people have disappeared in this area, and I haven't read it in any of the papers, I haven't seen it in the news, I haven't heard a word about it from anybody in the two years I've been combing this county looking for my little girl?"

"Ron-it's Ron, right?" she says. "There ain't no paper in this town. And n.o.body is going to go to Panama City or someplace and blab to their paper about it because if they do, then maybe they might be the next one to get lost. You get me? People are dumb, you know. They're superst.i.tious. A lot of them think there's a witch stealing the kids."

"And what do you think? Haven't you done a little investigating, seeing as you're the law enforcement around here? Haven't you come up with some kind of evidence, some kind of theory?"

"Sure." She shrugs. "Sheriff says people move away. Kids run away from their parents. Husbands run off from their wives. There ain't no laws being broken."

"My daughter was stolen from me. There's no law against that?"

"Well, Ron, if you'd like to file a report, we'll be glad to-"

"I already filed a blessed report!"

"Then when something comes up, we'll be in touch." She smiles. "I'll give you my number, just in case."

She starts writing on a sc.r.a.p of paper. Ron is livid. His face feels hot and flushed. The light in the room seems to be growing brighter, then dimmer, to the beat of the blood pulsing through his head. He puts his hand, his good hand, on the counter and presses it flat to steady its shaking. He's learned to watch all the trappings of his rage as a spectator, to distance himself from his own emotion. Otherwise things get ugly. It's amazing how well it works. There was a time when he'd have punched a hole in the wall by now.

Deputy Janet presents the slip of paper to him. "You feel free to call me if you need anything," she says.

Instead of taking the number with his good hand, he reaches up with "the hook," as he likes to think of it. It splits along its length, following the prompts of his readapted forearm muscles, and clamps down on the little slip of paper.

Janet frowns. The hook has that effect on people.

"Jeez," she says, "what happened to your hand?"

"It's missing," he says. "Maybe it ran away."

She laughs, but instead of a flirty laugh, it's an uncomfortable one.

Ron hears a click behind him. Light floods the entryway and a figure steps in the door. It's the brawny-looking sheriff with that Neanderthal forehead. He stands very erect, clearly an ex-military man, and clearly the boss around here, judging from Janet's reaction.

"Everything alright, sir?" asks the sheriff.

"No," says Ron. "I hear there are hundreds of people missing from this town, and n.o.body's doing anything about it. Well, I am going to do something about it, because one of the missing children is my daughter. What are you going to do to help me?"

The sheriff glances at Janet, then nods slowly, studying Ron. When he speaks, his words are slow. "Well, we can take a report, keep our eyes peeled."