in.
“I mean, every time I opened my eyes, there they were, hanging there, looking like they were about to pounce on me or something. Totally, totally creepy!”
The Camerons left before noon. Ellen promised to call her father later that week. They would talk things over, she promised. Maybe he could come down to San Diego for a long visit. A real long visit.
“We’ll see,” Abe said quietly. “We’ll see.”
14
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, 2005, started out unseasonably warm, but by early afternoon the ocean- driven clouds had invaded the valleys, bringing high winds and the threat of rain. The air was damp, charged with heaviness.
Abe noted the cloud cover as he closed the front door. A car had just pulled out of his driveway, but right at the moment, he couldn’t quite remember whose. It was important to remember; he new that much, but the names, the faces just wouldn’t come.
He leaned against the door. His face was flushed and hot. He shuffled into the kitchen and drew a cooling drink of water from the tap. He crossed to the cupboard and carefully took down a small revolving stand that supported ten or twelve amber plastic medicine bottles, all imprinted with his name. His hand hovered over several as he tried to concentrate.
This one, for sure. He knew that he had to take the little white one. His hand dropped to another bottle. The six-sided red ones? Were they once a day? Or twice? He couldn’t remember for certain, and even when he squinted at the tiny print on the label, he couldn’t be sure. He took one anyway. He took four others as well, washing them down with the cool water. He opened the refrigerator and took a thin slice of turkey from a plastic-wrap-covered tray.
Turkey. It tasted good.
And it reminded him…reminded him…reminded him… Yes, he would have to get the turkey out of the freezer in the garage soon. Wouldn’t do to have the Thanksgiving turkey still cold and frozen and dead when the kids got there. Ellen should be pulling up any time now, and Jay, with their kids. I’m gonna cook them a dinner they won’t soon forget, Abe reminded himself.
Just to be on the safe side, he took a pad from the kitchen drawer and carefully wrote a note to himself: “Kids coming-Thanksgiving tomorrow.”
He slid the pad back into the drawer and closed it. He looked around. For a moment, he wasn’t sure where he was. He felt dizzy, and his breath was painful as he drew air into his lungs. His arm and shoulder ached. He would lie down.
He went down the hallway, but instead of turning into his bedroom, he continued on to the specimen room. The rollaway was open in the middle of the floor, sheets and covers rumpled at the foot. One pillow lay like something lost on the floor, mostly hidden by the metal framework of the bed. The rollaway. That surprised him. He didn’t remember putting it down, but then he didn’t remember many things nowadays. He sighed. He removed the sheets and pillows, folding them carefully and setting them momentarily on the top of the bookshelf near the door.
It was a chore for him to close the bed by himself, but he finally got the metal hasps on each side locked. After that, rolling the bed back into the closet was easy. He placed the sheets and pillows on top of the metal frame.
Finished, he turned and looked over the specimen room. He enjoyed the room. It brought back memories. Everything here was as it should be. Everything in place, just as always.
No, not quite everything.
A scrap of white cloth jutted out from beneath the desk opposite the closet.
Can’t have that, Abe thought. Got to get this place spick and span. I think I’ll have Ellen and…and… whatshisname…sleep in here this time. Let Jay and Linda have the good bed.
Still puzzled as to what the bit of cloth might be, Abe leaned over and picked it up. The movement made his ears buzz and a wave of dizziness made him stumble. He nearly struck his head against the sharp edge of the desk, but caught himself just in time.
He held the cloth out, studying it, turning it over and over in his hands until he finally recognized it-and felt embarrassed when he realized how puzzled he had been by something so simple as a pair of undershorts.
Probably one of the boys’ from last time they came.
But that was months ago. Abe was certain that he’d cleaned up since then. Why had he missed them all that time?
His hand closed over the material. It was oddly stiff in places, and for an instant Abe fluttered on the verge of remembering something more, something from his own youth so far back that he rarely ventured to visit there, even in memory.
He held the underwear in his hand and stared out the window for a long, long time.
Then he heard a sound. Two sounds, actually.
He turned toward the closet. The girls were sitting in there, sitting on the rollaway that he was sure he had closed up just moments before-but now their faces glowed with the vivid scarlet of a cloudy November sunset where the light poured through the window behind him.
Abe stiffened in horror.
The girls were naked. Sitting naked on the bed and crying, as if he had done something to them how could he have done anything he just came inhere to clean a minute ago then how come it’s dark outside old man, and how come they’re crying and cringing from you in terror in horror but he’d never even considered even thought of touching them not once not ever may God strike me dead this instant if I ever even thought but they were crying and the buzzing and the pain and the dizziness struck again with so much force that Abe stumbled backward, striking his back sharply against a filing cabinet. No no no no he wailed silently as the girls suddenly turned to face him, their eyes accusing and bright with hatred, their heads crowned with haloes of blood that ran slowly down their cheeks and dripped onto their bodies.
“No no no no no,” he wailed, but this time out loud as the buzzing increased until it was no longer inside his head but outside, in the room with him. His eyes darted around the room. Everything was moving. Wings fluttering, beaks clacking viciously, eyes opening and closing, talons stretching, paws extruding needle-sharp claws. The walls were a wash of movement, silent and threatening and angular. Shadow struggled with light, and even the once- familiar forms of ground squirrels and robins and sparrows enlarged and rustled toward him.
He tried to whirl away, but the pain and the dizziness came a third time. The last time.
This pain was an explosion that rocked his chest and hammered the breath from his body. He thrust his hand out to steady himself on the bookshelf. His fingers touched something hard and cold and ridged. The buzzing increased, only now it concentrated itself in a single focus.
As the rattlesnake struck-once, viciously, pumping poison from its glittering fangs into the old man’s frail wrist-Abe heard shrieks of laughter from the darkness that was the closet. He struggled to penetrate the darkness, to see whether the girls were gone, but he could not. Instead, the darkness reached out and touched him, penetrated his confusion and his terror and his loneliness.
And then there was only darkness.
And silence.
From the The Sun-San Bernardino and the Inland Empire, 1 November 1994:
YOUTH FOUND DEAD IN HOME, FOUL PLAY NOT SUSPECTED
The body of Brady Wilton, 12, was found in his Redlands home late last night by his parents, Frank and Julia Wilton, shortly after they returned from a costume party at Wilton’s company, Alexander and Wilton Electronics, in nearby Mentone.
“They were only away for an hour or so,” a neighbor, Benjamin Morely, revealed. “Frank owns the place, you know, and they really had to be there.” Brady was a careful and responsible young man, Morely added, fully capable
