Horror Business (5 page)

“How come?” I ask between bites of broccoli. I don’t turn around to face him, but watch him in the reflection of the television. He shifts in his seat. Mom puts her hand on his knee for support. I shovel more vegetables in my mouth.

“Your mother thinks—and I agree—that she needs a little time off,” he says. “Things have been stressful here.” He removes my mother’s hand from his knee. “And you know … .” He trails off, and we all become sidetracked by an over-stylized mattress commercial.

“You guys will be able to have some quality boy time,” my mom says, after the commercial’s finished. “Two bachelors. Party time.” My dad laughs, an over-eager laugh that sounds hysterical.

I poke around at the food on my plate; it has been arranged into some unintentional smiley face. “But school’s just started.” It’s all I can think of to say. Most kids relish the thought of their parents leaving, but Mom has been gone more or less for the past year already. The thought of her physical absence, however, fills me with a nameless dread.

“Yes,” my father says. He watches an advertisement for the new aquarium in our town:
Grand Opening soon!
“We’ll have fun. Just you and me. Like Mom said: two bachelors. Bachelor pad. Bachelor living.”

It sounds like a threat.

“But, Mom.”

“That aquarium looks fun,” Mom says, distant again. Dad shushes everyone because the news is back on.

I get up and clear my place—clear the floor, I guess—and put my plate in the sink. In the other room, my dad turns the volume of the TV up to, in my opinion, ear-splitting levels. The baritone of the newscaster explodes through our subwoofer. I say goodnight as I head downstairs. They don’t hear me.

The voice of the newscaster follows me downstairs: “Due to recent events, the curfew is still in effect. Sheriff Lancaster has issued an advisory … .”

I lie on my bed and the movie posters in my room watch me toss.

What’s wrong?
Suspiria
asks
.

Yeah
,
Nightmare on Elm Street 3
says
.
Your mom gone. It’ll be fun.

It’ll be even easier to sneak out,
continues the zombie from
Zombie
, maggots where its eyes should be.
It could open up some time in your busy schedule to get in Ally’s pants
.

I try to smile, but that nameless dread comes back.

Toughen up
.
It’s John Carpenter’s
The Thing
.
What could be the worst that will happen without your mommy?

Jason
.
The vintage poster of
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
its voice distant amidst all the horror chatter. I sit up to hear better.

Someone else is in your room.

Gooseflesh crawls up my arm.

Who left the door open? Who turned on the light?

I should have reached around the doorframe to turn on the lights.

This is not how I left my room when I went to dinner.

My eyes move down from the
Caligari
poster to the floor beneath it, falling on the video camera. The lens points at me, and the recording indicator light flashes red.

Bingo,
says
Caligari.

I reach out for the camera, careful. My fingers brush it. The light clicks off and there’s a faint
whir
that makes me jump back. Just the tape rewinding itself. I fight the urge to run upstairs to my parents. The volume is so loud they probably wouldn’t hear me scream. My lip trembles. I grab the camera, handling it like a dangerous creature.

I flip out the LCD screen and hit the
play
button, stopping at timecode 00.19.54. The screen flares up.

My real breathing matches the heavy breathing on the soundtrack.

At 00.20.27, I expect the eerie, muffled sound of the wind and then the abrupt stop of the image going black. It doesn’t stop. The scene continues: my brother and Ally keep making out. I’ve never seen this before. Brian keeps copping a feel and Ally doesn’t stop him. They’re lying next to each other—she lets him put his hand up her shirt. The camera zooms in, and he isn’t being gentle with her, pinching and tugging. She writhes. She doesn’t do anything to stop him; she’s lost in the passionate kiss. He climbs on top, straddling her now with both hands up her shirt, violently kneading what’s underneath. Her hips gyrate in the air. Suddenly his shirt and hair are different—spiked up like how I like to wear it. As soon as I notice this, Brian stops making out and looks at me. He gets off Ally and starts walking towards my voyeur spot.

There’s a glitch in the tape and he’s in front of the camera. His face takes up the whole screen.

He’s looking straight through the screen at me
.

His eyes are deep black. He cries dark tears.

His teeth are large and sharp.

He shouts something at me, but there’s no noise except the muffled sound of wind.

The camera rises high above him, up over the park, above the rolling mountains surrounding our town, above the graveyard, until finally pointing right at the sun and cutting to static.

The timecode remains at 00.20.28.

The image cuts from the static to the interior of my room. The angle is low and slanted—the original resting place before I picked it up. It’s hard to see because the room’s so dark. Everything looks muted, flat and brown.

Then, from behind the camera, the sound of a door opening. The lights click on. Someone giggles.

Feet step over the camera and stand in front of the lens. They’re bare and filthy, with black dirt caked under the toenails. A pair of jeans comes down and covers the heels, dragging threads from where the cuffs have been stepped on. I can’t see up past the knee, but whoever it is keeps wiggling their filthy toes. Because of the camera angle, I never see above their knees.

The feet move to the bed and then to one of my dressers. I hear the sound of drawers opening and closing and things on top of the dresser being pushed around. The feet go to my bookshelf, and a couple of the books fall on the floor. I look up from the LCD monitor and see the Stephen King books on the floor. The cymbal-banging monkey on the cover of
Skeleton Crew
stares at me with red eyes. I turn my attention back to the video. The feet step away from the bookcase and hesitate, the toes pointing back at the camera. Finally, as if coming to some sort of conclusion, they turn and walk to my closet. The door opens, the feet go in and the door closes behind them. I still hear muffled giggling behind the closet door. Then static.

The static lasts a couple seconds before clicking back on to the scene when I enter my room. I know how it goes from here. The image cuts to black when I jump back, startled.

I shut the LCD screen, make sure the lens cap is on tight, and place the cursed machine under my bed. While my arm’s under the bed, I probe around for something heavy and blunt, something that can take care of—

That’s right,
Caligari
says.

Whatever it is, is still in the closet.

All the poster monsters break out into a hellish chorus of laughter.

My hand falls on a baseball bat, a present from my parents a couple years ago as an effort to lure me away from the video camera, which they thought I was spending too much time with. It didn’t work, but right now, at this instant, I’m thankful enough that I would consider trying out for the team if they asked me. The bat has good weight to it, and there are black lightning bolts down the side. Outside my window, the wind blows dead leaves against my window.

Bat raised, I open the closet door.

Nothing.

Only the faint scent of dirt.

And restrained laughter.

I shove the bat into the hanging clothes. Shirts fall off their hangers while I thrash around until I’m swinging at nothing but air. Still reeling from the adrenaline, I reach for the light’s pull-string. I find it and yank so hard that it rips out of the socket and the illuminated bulb dances, throwing shadows that mock my fright.

Shadows. Nothing more. The broken pull-string hangs out of my hand. I unscrew the bulb before closing the door, shutting in the darkness.

I sleep with the light on and a pillow wrapped around my head to block out the overpowering volume from my parents shouting upstairs. It’s also easier to ignore the monstrous posters this way; their terrible laughter lasts long into the night.

My brother jostled me awake. He told me to come with him. I climbed out of my bed and followed him out of my room, up the stairs, and out the front door, always a corner behind him. The house was still. Everything sounded simultaneously muted and loud, like being under water.

My brother stood outside the front door with his back to me, the porch light overexposing him and blurring his edges. The effect was blinding. I squinted and put my hand up to shield me from the brightness as I approached him. He didn’t turn to face me. His attention was too far away.

“What do you think that is?” he asked, pointing at the single speck of light in the black sky. “You think that’s Venus? Mars?”

Still groggy, I followed his finger. “I think maybe Polaris, or something.” I wasn’t a very good astronomer.

“Yeah, must be the North Star,” he murmured, and then, more to himself, “second star to the right.”

I didn’t ask what we were doing on the front porch in the middle of the night. I was only upset at my own poor astronomy skills. I also didn’t ask him why he was dressed and wearing his backpack.

“Why didn’t you help me when Colt had the knife to me?” he asked.

“I guess I was scared.” I sat down on the steps of the porch. “I’m sorry,” I added.

My brother jumped down all the steps and turned to face me. “We could’ve taken him. Probably.”

“I said I was sorry.” I yawned.

He turned to look down the street and then back at me. “I’m leaving tonight. I just wanted to say goodbye. Sorry for waking you up.”

“Wait.” I grabbed for him, but only held air. “How come?”

“I don’t know.”

“This isn’t about the Colt thing, is it?” I asked.

“Maybe. People do this kind of stuff all the time. I’ve seen it in the movies.”

“What about our movie?”

“You can play both parts,” he said.

Too tired to even ask where he was going, I tried to reach for him again. “Wait”—I paused—”can I come?”

“No. You would be too scared.” He turned and walked down the street into the darkness. “I’ll keep in touch!” he called back from infinity.

I kept sitting on the porch for a long time, waiting to wake up. I half-expected to see my brother levitate into the night sky, an up-up-and-away. A silly way to end the sad scene.

I lay down on the hard cement and looked up at all the stars, which I could see clearly now since my eyes had adjusted.
There you go,
I thought
There’s the Big Dipper, and that’s Polaris, Venus is to my right … see, you’re better at astronomy than you thought.

I’ve had this dream every night since my brother disappeared.

The wounds from Brock’s battle aren’t healing, and his limp worries me. Usually, when I pull his leash out, he bounds to my side. Today, he whimpers with droopy ears and hangs his head while I connect the leash to his collar. I have to drag him to the vet.

A brightly-colored poster of some lost kid hangs on the door to the animal hospital. I throw my shoulder hard against the door and enter the sterile, fluorescent waiting room.

The receptionist is an attractive girl who wears a V-neck shirt, and I get a good eyeful of cleavage when she bends over the counter to look at Brock.

“Is poochie not feeling well?” she asks my dog in an unsettling baby voice. Brock lowers his head and whimpers. The receptionist smiles at me, and I avert my eyes. “I’m going to need you to fill this out.” She hands me a clipboard with a stack of documents. I retreat to the corner of the waiting room. My dog follows behind obediently, keeping the chirpy receptionist at a safe distance.

“Here boy.” I give him a treat so he’ll stay still while I fill out the paperwork. He laps it up out of my hand and swallows it whole, much to the disgust of a pug-owning lady sitting across from me.

“Ugh.” The little dog looks up at its master and licks the lady’s face. The little flicking tongue leaves wet marks on pasty skin.

There is a man next to me with a colorful bird in a cage. On his other side, a woman carries her cat in a plush-lined bag with the name
Chloe
embroidered on the side. The cat sticks its tiny head out of the bag and studies the bird.

“What kind of cat is that?” asks bird man.

“It’s a Siamese,” she says in the matter-of-fact demeanor that cat people have. She doesn’t want anything to do with bird man, and her bluntness quiets him for a moment before he turns to me. I keep my head down and try to look busy so I don’t have to talk to him. He addresses the question to my dog.

“And what kind of dog are you?”

Bird man sticks out his hand for my dog to sniff, but Brock doesn’t fall for it. Instead, his attention is fully on the bird. He emits a low growl.

“No, Brock,” I say and pull his leash tight, but the man keeps patting his lap and making kissing sounds, beckoning my dog. “He’s a mutt,” I say, trying to get the man to stop. “A mix of a lab and a … .”

Bird man doesn’t pay attention to me. He’s moved from kissing sounds to whistling, which causes his bird to squawk. Brock perks his ears to the sound, and the cat in the plush bag sits high, ears tuned like antennas. The man, eyes black behind his glasses, reaches out to pet my hypnotized dog.

As if awoken from a nightmare, Brock snaps at him. The man pulls back and Brock lunges for the cage, knocking it off the man’s lap. The Siamese jumps out of its bag and grasps the cage with its claws. The menagerie of dog, cat, and cage tumble to the hard tile; and the cat struggles to reach through the wires of the cage while fighting Brock for the treat inside. The bird bounces off the sides of its cage in a pitiful display of confusion.

“
No!
” I pull Brock’s leash until his front paws lift off the ground.