The Year's Best Horror Stories 11

thinning hair. “Elaine?” he called.

She appeared at the bedroom door and moved to hug him. “You look frazzled.”

“Am,” he said, face buried in her hair. “Fought half the morning with a dimwit from Human Resources who tried to tell me I don’t know my Social Security number. Took the IRS’s word over mine. Ha!”

“Take a short loving recharge,” she invited.

“Glad to,” he said, tightening his embrace.

“That’s enough,” she said, and pushed him back. “Choose: start dinner or get the mail in. My hands were full.”

“Mail, thank you.” He took the key from her hand and the stairs to the lobby, returning with six pieces of junk mail—one promising “Sexually Oriented Advertisements”—one bill, a letter from Elaine’s mom, and a tattered copy of the Cross Creek Weekly Chronicle. Cross Creek, which was every bit as small as its name implied, had been Hall’s birthplace and home for seventeen years. His mother still lived there, and the subscription was an annual gift from her, about which he had never had the courage to say, “Please don’t bother.” The paper came an average of three weeks late, by the cheapest class of mail, and the high point of it was frequently a list of where townspeople had gone on vacation or the weights of the 4-H sheep.

Settling back on the sofa and kicking off his shoes, Hall ripped out the staples and turned to the front page. He immediately frowned, and read quickly.

“Elaine?” he called. “Listen to this.”

“If it’s the balance of the Total Charge bill, I’d rather not hear it,” she called back.

“No—something in the Chronicle. They’re closing my old high school.”

“Why?” Elaine appeared, bringing him a cold soft drink.

“According to this, the school board decided that they could get better value sending the students over to the new consolidated high school in Atlasburg. Cross Creek High School was too rundown and had too few students. So the last day of classes will be—” Hall looked at his watch “—tomorrow. Oh—and they’re going to hold an all-class reunion as a kind of going-away party.”

“When’s that? You’ll want to go, won’t you?”

“It’s…” Hall scanned for the date. “It was yesterday,” he said, his voice dropping.

“Oh, Rick, I’m sorry. You missed it.”

“I’ve been meaning to get back and visit the teachers, my old friends… what happened to the six years, Elaine? It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long,” he said, shaking his head. “Listen to this: ‘Class officers will be assisting Mr. Hutchins and Principal Jane Warden in contacting all graduates.’ Jim Harris is our class officer, and he has my address. I should have heard from them before this.”

Elaine moved next to him and rubbed his shoulder, and he smiled at her.

“I feel cheated. It would have meant a lot to be able to be there. I haven’t really kept in touch with some people that were good friends, either.”

“It’s two hundred kilometers away,” Elaine said, trying to let him off his own hook.

“I could have written.”

“I’m surprised your mom didn’t let you know.”

“So am I.” The timer on the oven began ringing, signaling that dinner was ready, and they rose together to rescue it. Cross Creek High was forgotten for the time.

But that night, after Elaine had fallen asleep beside him, Richard Hall lay in the darkness with the hum of the clock and the creaking of the walls, and thought about high school and the friends he had lost track of, and felt alone.

He eased out of bed without disturbing his wife, and moved quietly to the den. It was only nine-thirty in Cross Creek, and a good friend should be able to excuse a call at that hour. Hall dug the small white address book out of the back recesses of the desk. Some of the entries, he saw, were very old.

Too old, in fact. The number he had for Jim Harris was no longer in service. The same was true when he tried calling his closest friend. The phone of Ruth, whom he had been both friend and boyfriend to, was answered by a sleepy man who said gruffly, “You got a wrong number.” And the phone of a teacher who’d been more than a teacher rang thirty times without being answered.

Hall returned to bed, feeling both anger at himself and a deep depression. Something good that had been his had slipped away, and in the darkness it was easy to believe that it was forever beyond his grasp.

A few days later, Richard and Elaine arrived home from work close enough together to take the same elevator to the fifth floor.

“I’ll bet dinner didn’t cook itself tonight,” she said.

He smiled. “I won’t take that bet.”

When they reached the apartment, she disappeared for a moment into the kitchen. “I was right,” she said on her return.

“Want me to fix it tonight?”

“No. I want you to take me out.”

“Suggestions?”

“The little lakeside restaurant outside of North Springfield.”

“Our old summer rendezvous. The one where we had the wedding reception.”

“That’s the one.”

“That’s a good hour’s drive away—and I’m not even sure I can find it again.”

“You’d better be able to!”

Hall showed a mock grimace. “We’d better get going, then.”

The Halls were generally silent while driving—Richard disliked being distracted. But as they neared the lake, Elaine turned away from watching the scenery—it was growing too dark to see well—and spoke.

“Do you think they still have our picture on the wall?”

“I don’t see why not. Pictures of customers are the only decoration they use.”

“It’s been a while since we’ve been here. Maybe they move the old ones out every so often.”

Hall pursed his lips. “Would you be angry if I couldn’t remember the name of this place?”

“No, because you never remember anything. But I won’t tell you what it is—you’ll have to work for it.”

“The Benchcraft… the Beachhouse…”

“Something like that.”

“Beachbelch…”

“Oh, come on!”

“Beachwood!” he said triumphantly.

“That’s it.”

“I can’t claim any credit—just saw it on a sign back there. Isn’t this the exit up here?”

“I think so.”

They turned off the highway, headlights sweeping across the undisturbed grass-covered sandy mounds found everywhere near the lake. A kilometer farther on, the road turned to parallel the shore.

“It’s not too far now,” Elaine said.

“No.”

They both watched the roadside ahead, expecting at any moment to see the sign, the building, lights, parked cars.

“That’s odd,” Hall said, frowning. “I was positive it was just a bit after the road turned.”

The car bored through the lakeside night for a minute more, and then Richard slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder. “We must have passed it right at the beginning, when we were talking,” he said as he made a wide U-turn. “It was never that well lit.”

“But it sits right out in the open—right on the shore. We couldn’t have missed it. I don’t think we went far enough.”

“I’m not going to drive all the way to Cleveland. If we didn’t pass it, then we’re on the wrong road.”

They drove back the way they had come, confused.

“There’s someone walking,” Elaine said suddenly, as the headlights picked up the shape on the lake side of the road. “Let’s ask him.”