The Guardians

Or It's wrong that you're here. Or You are about to step from the world you know into one you don't want to know.

In short, I was afraid.

I think al of us wanted to stop, to sidle no farther along the thorny hedgerow that shielded us from the pale streetlight, the wan half moon. If one of us had said, 'I think we should go,' or merely turned and headed back toward the street, I believe the rest would have folowed. But none of us said or did anything other than proceed along the side of the house, inching closer to the two tal windows set too close together like crossed eyes. Both fogged with dust, through which someone on the inside had long ago dragged a finger to spel fuckt against the glass.

I'm not sure we discussed the best way to get in. I suppose each of us assumed there would be a window left open or gaping celar doors that would make it obvious. We never thought to try the front door.

'This is where he went,' Ben whispered, and the sound of his voice reminded us how long we had gone without saying anything. From the time we gathered at Carl's apartment and made the three-block walk to stand opposite the McAuliffe house, looking into its warm interiors from which we had so often safely peered out at the Thurman place across the way, we had traveled in silence. It was a journey that required no more than ten minutes but felt much longer than that. The whole time al of us walking in a defeated pack, as though escaped prisoners who had decided freedom was too much work and were returning to our cels.

And then, stil recovering from the sound of Ben's words, we paused to grapple with their meaning.

The coach. This is what Ben was telling us. It was over this ice-crusted grass that he carried Heather Langham the night before last.

In the dark, the backyard was impossibly enlarged, a neglected field of weeds poking through the snow and swaying in a breeze that rushed the clouds across the moon. A see-saw stood in one corner of the lot, the seat of the raised end poking up from a cluster of saplings like the head of a curious animal. Little kids used to play on that, I remember thinking. And then: What kids? When would any child have run around on this ground? Who could ever laugh into this air?

I wondered about that long enough to be surprised when Carl nudged me from behind.

'It's not locked,' he said.

I folowed his pointed flashlight to see Ben standing in front of the open back door.

We folowed him inside. Al of us making our way through a mud room into the kitchen. An old gas stove stood in one corner, the face of its clock cracked, the time frozen at a quarter to twelve. An undoored fridge. The walpaper a photographic mural of a country scene: a pondside with a forest beyond, and a single deer lowering its head to drink. But then you looked again, looked closer. The forest was cloaked in shadow that seemed to darken as you watched. And the deer wasn't drinking but lifting its head, startled by a cry from the woods. Something about the composition of the picture suggested that whatever was about to emerge out of the trees meant to hunt the deer, to spil its blood on the grass. And that the deer knew this, was frozen by the knowledge that it was about to die.

We were al gazing at the walpaper now. Al of us listening. For the thing in the woods. The thing that was here.

And with our listening came a count. One, two, three, four—our lungs, our in-and-outs of air. Along with a fifth. The idea of another's breath somewhere within the house.

Ben shook his head. A gesture that signified the denial of a request, although none of us had asked anything of him. Then he walked on, and we folowed, through the archway that opened on the main-floor halway running the length of the house to the front. Ben puled open the sliding doors to the living room.

I hadn't expected al the things left behind. Not just by previous inhabitants—a sofa exploding its white stuffing, amputated dining-room chairs, a rug patterned with cypress trees—but by visitors. I must have imagined the interior of the Thurman house to have been set-decorated in the manner of a Transylvanian castle: cobwebs thick as shredded T-shirts, a candelabra set atop a grand piano, rooms the size of soundstages. Instead, it was merely filthy. A heap of brown glass shards in the fireplace where a thousand beer bottles had been smashed. You had to watch your step for the used condoms and needles on the floor.

Along with the messages on the wals. Most of it what you'd expect: the graffitied declarations ('I LUV U PENNY!!') and invitations ('Need yur cock SUCKED?

232 4467 ANY time') and pride ('Guardians Rule—Elmira Eats Poo') and slander ('Jen Yarbeck is a WHORE'). The primitive spray- painted penises and anuses, a long-haired woman with enormous breasts and a dialogue baloon shouting 'Moo!' over her head.

Then the strange ones. Phrases much smaler than the others. Al in lowercase. Utterances that sought the corners and baseboards of the room, that made you, upon finding one, look for another.

stay with me

no such thing as an empty house

i walk with you

I don't know if the others read these or not. The next thing I remember, we were walking away from each other. We must have spoken, though I can't recal what was said. Or maybe we separated without discussion, knowing the quickest way to search the house, find it vacant and get out of there was to split up. In any case, I went to the staircase by the front door knowing I was on my own.

At the landing, I looked back. There was a railing over which the foyer floor lay fifteen feet below, a bulb hanging on a wire where some more elaborate fixture would once have hung. I squinted down the halway, a spine with two doorways on each side that, if configured the same way as the second floor in my house (as it probably was, this house so much like an unloved version of the one in which I lived), opened onto three bedrooms and a bathroom at the end.

I started toward the first door on the left with shuffling, elderly steps. It had been easy for me to take the stairs up, but now my body fought against moving. My shoes tearing the old newspapers strewn over the floorboards, a carpet of Falklands War headlines and ads for used-car lots, including Randy's dad's place (Kum Kwick to Krazy Kevin's!), his clown nose and lunatic grin floating over the rows of Plymouths.

A comics page got stuck to my sole. I bent to peel it off, wondering, with a turn in my stomach, what could be