Lost Boy Lost Girl

Feeling as weightless and vague as ghosts, they went out onto the broken little porch. Something had happened to them, Jimbo thought; something had happened to him anyhow, but he could not begin to define what it was. All the breath and most of the life had been driven from his body, as if by a great shock. What was left was just enough to float down the steps into the lush tangle of the backyard.

Jimbo remained silent until they were walking across the mown grass at the side of the house, and then he found he had to speak. “It was built to hold a kid—that bed-thing.”

Mark stopped moving and looked back.

“He strapped a kid, or maybe even a couple of kids, onto that bed-thing, and he tortured them.” He felt as though he were banging on a bass drum. “Because those were bloodstains, weren’t they? They looked black, but it was blood.”

“I think those stains on the mattress upstairs were blood, too.”

“Good God, Mark, what kind of place is that?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Mark said. “Unless you changed your mind about helping me. If so, tell me right now. Are you quitting?”

“No, I’ll do what you want,” Jimbo said. “But I still say we should never have gotten involved in this stuff.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Mark said. “You know what? I feel like I was kind of selected . I agree with you, it’s terrible and it’s scary—but it killed my mother! ”

“How? Explain it to me, will you?”

“I DON’T KNOW HOW!” Mark yelled. “What do you think we’re DOING here, anyhow?”

Then, for no reason Jimbo could see, Mark’s eyes changed. His face went slack and dopey. Mark looked at his empty hands, then at the ground. “Holy shit.” Still looking at the ground, he went four or five feet back the way they had come. “Jimbo, what the hell happened to that photograph album?”

Jimbo blinked.

“Did I give it to you?”

“No. You had it when we came down the stairs.”

“I must have left it in the kitchen.” Mark was nodding his head. “I didn’t take it in the room, did I?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I must have set it down on a counter so my hands would be free.”

“No,” Jimbo said, knowing what Mark intended to do. “Leave it. You already saw the pictures.”

But Mark had already set off back toward the undergrowth, and in another second he was following the path they had beaten.

“I don’t believe you’re doing this.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right back.”

To Jimbo, it was inconceivable that anyone, even Mark, would be willing to expose himself a second time to the interior of 3323. He understood why the neighborhood had silently agreed to forget about the empty house in their midst, to let their eyes go out of focus when they happened accidentally to find themselves looking at it. There were things you shouldn’t look at, things better not seen.

He sat down and waited. The intense heat amplified the buzzing and clicking of insects hidden in the tall grass. Sweat dripped down the back of his neck and slithered over his ribs, cooling his skin. He kept his eyes on the back door at the top of the broken steps. His shoulders had become uncomfortably hot. He twitched at his T-shirt and rubbed his shoulders, still watching the door.

Jimbo moved around on the grass, searching for a more comfortable place to sit. He wondered if any dead chipmunks or squirrels might be decomposing in his vicinity.

Looking at his watch was a useless gesture, since he had no idea what time it had been when Mark went back into the kitchen. He looked at his watch anyway: 12:30 P.M. Amazing. They must have been in the house for two and a half hours. It had felt much shorter than that. It was almost as if the house had hypnotized him. The thought made him glance again at his watch. Its hands had not moved.

Of course the second hand was in motion, sweeping in its inexorable, clockwise way around the circle of the dial. The little needle darted from 22 to 23, on its way to 30. Jimbo glanced across the top of the grasses at the back door. It looked as though it had never been opened.

The moving needle rolled across the finish line and without hesitation launched into a brand-new minute. Jimbo’s eyes lifted to the sinister door, and relief washed through him, followed by an intense flash of anger. Through the opening doorway stepped Mark Underhill, carrying the ugly photo album and signaling apology with his every glance and gesture. Jimbo jumped to his feet. “What took you so long?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mark said.

“Don’t you know how worried I was? Did you forget I was out here waiting for you?”

“Yo, Jimbo, I said I was sorry.”

“Your ass is sorry!”

Mark stared at him with a fixed glare. Jimbo had no idea what he was thinking. His face was still unnaturally pale. Even Mark’s lips looked white. “Didn’t you ask what took so much time?”

“Yes. What took so much time?”

“I couldn’t find the damn thing anywhere. I looked all around the kitchen, I even looked in the, you know.”

“The room with the bed.”

Mark nodded. “I went back upstairs. Guess where I found it.”

Jimbo gave him the only possible answer. “Back in the closet.”

“That’s right. It was back in the closet.”

“Well, how did it get there?”

“I want to think about that,” Mark said. “Don’t say anything, okay? Please. Any opinion you have, keep it to yourself.”

“Here’s one opinion I’m not keeping to myself—you can’t go back inside that place. And you know it! Look how scared you are. Your face is completely white.”

“I think I could have left it there, maybe.”

Around and around they went, Mark now claiming to be unable to remember if he had been holding the album as they went downstairs, Jimbo unable to remember if he had seen him carrying it. They were still arguing about it, though less heatedly, when they reached the bottom of Michigan Street. They turned the corner into the alley, and fell silent as if by mutual agreement. Before they parted, Mark asked to borrow the Monaghans’ Maglite, and Jimbo ran up the block and got it for him. He handed over the heavy flashlight without asking any questions.

18

From Timothy Underhill’s journal, 23 June 2003

It’s astounding. Philip had no idea of who used to live in the house across the alley from him. If he ever did know, he made himself forget it. Proximity to the home base of one of the nation’s livelier serial killers could induce denial in people a lot less prone to it than Philip. And Philip, of course, had the added incentive of being shamefully aware of being married to the serial killer’s first cousin. A share of his blood ran in her veins, a smaller share in their son’s. Can that be the reason for Philip’s dismissal of the boy? Philip loves Mark, I know that, but his love doesn’t stop him from constantly undermining him.

Thanks to Jimbo Monaghan and Omar Hillyard, I know that Philip bought the house directly behind Kalendar’s, but the purchase had to have been innocent. I don’t think he could have bought his place if he had known it was right behind Kalendar’s. And of course Philip bought it in a typical rush. He wanted to get out of the suburbs, where his neighbors made him feel outclassed, and he liked the idea of living in the old neighborhood, close to his school. He rushed in, thinking he understood everything, and if he ever picked up a hint about the previous owner of the house across the alley, he closed his mind to it on the spot.

When I learned about Kalendar’s house across the alley, I did not say anything to Philip until I showed him the two strange e-mails Mark had sent me before his disappearance, and even then I waited until we were in the