Scary Out There (19 page)

That ought to get him moving quickly.

Kelly looked to the bottom of the stairs. Then up them.

She stared at where the white steps led to the darkness until she thought her eyes were going to play tricks on her. Then she turned away and forced herself to watch the TV.

Come on
, she thought.
You're getting forty dollars to watch an empty house.
Then,
You're housesitting, not babysitting.

This thought comforted her.

You're housesitting. Not babysitting.

Below the TV, as part of the white entertainment center, books were stacked on a shelf. Kelly looked to their spines, then back to the TV. She looked over her shoulder again, thought of the cold marble-topped island in the kitchen and the look on Allison's face when Charles told her that they liked to pretend. Kelly looked back to the spines under the TV.

A photo album caught her eye.

She shook her head no. She wasn't here to snoop. She was here to make forty dollars. Her first job. A real moment. Something Dad and Mom were probably very proud of.

On TV, the same couple that'd been kissing were now swimming in a lake. Kelly could hardly hear them, but she didn't want to turn up the TV. She set her phone beside her on the couch. Maybe Charles and Allison would call. Maybe they'd check up on Danny.

Danny.

Kelly shrugged off the idea and tried to smile. If ever there was weird,
this
was weird. She tried to understand where the Donaldses might be coming from. They didn't have any kids. They wanted one. So they made one up. It really wasn't a big deal. People made things up all the time. In a way, they were acting like kids themselves, playing pretend. If Kelly thought
about it, in a certain way, it was okay. Not weird at all.

She shifted on the couch and heard a creaking come from upstairs. Possibly right above her.

Kelly looked up.

She turned quickly to face the stairs. Her body felt hot. She took the remote control and turned the volume of the TV down even more.

Her first instinct scared her. Her first instinct was to call out his name.

Danny?

But she didn't. She looked to the window by the TV and saw the snow was really coming down and she knew that a storm could cause a house to creak. She looked to the ceiling again, to where she thought she heard the sound. Then back to the stairs.

She took hold of her phone.

Call Dad.

But she didn't
want
to call Dad. She wanted to stay here (
housesit
) until the Donaldses got home. Then she wanted to put forty dollars into her pocket, get a ride home, and then maybe tell Mom and Dad all about the Donaldses and their . . . son.

No, she didn't want to call Dad.

She waited. Waited for another creaking.

The snowflakes outside the window were big, heavy-looking things, and Kelly imagined them covering her whole, hiding her.

She waited and she waited some more, trying not to look for too long into the darkness at the top of the stairs. Instead, she focused on the spine of the photo album.

Don't go looking through their things.

She rose from the couch, leaving her phone on the cushions.

She went to the shelf and knelt and pulled the white, puffy volume out. In cursive letters, the cover read:

Birthdays.

Kelly held the book a moment. The TV got brighter as characters walked down a sunny country road. Kelly wiped a thin layer of dust off the cover of the photo album and brought it with her back to the couch.

She set it next to the phone and pretended to watch TV.

But it didn't last long.

She opened the album.

Through the window, the snow fell, but
in
the window Kelly saw herself reflected, and she didn't like what she saw. She thought she looked guilty.

And yet she couldn't stop herself. She flipped to the first photograph.

Both Allison and Charles looked much younger. Allison wore light blue high-waisted jeans, and Charles, with no spot of gray in his hair, had a sweatshirt tied around his waist. They were standing on either side of an empty chair. Both had a hand on the back of the chair. Charles was pointing to the
camera, as though guiding the wayward eyes of a child, telling him where to look. Before the empty seat, on the table, was a vanilla birthday cake with a single candle stuck into it.

One.

Kelly looked over her shoulder, to the entrance of the kitchen, where the Donaldses had “confessed” to her. She looked to the ceiling. Then back to the book.

She flipped the page.

They looked pretty much the same, though there were signs that the two were growing more conservative. Charles's hair was shorter, Allison wore more ladylike makeup, and between them, the chair was a nicer one. A higher back. And upon the back was Allison's hand, as Charles knelt beside the empty space and pointed, this time, to a white and blue cake on the table.

Two.

Kelly paused, looking up to the TV but not watching the TV. She felt like she shouldn't go on. She felt a tugging in her chest. A sadness for these two. And yet there was something so . . .
authentic
about their poses, the looks on their faces. Kelly wondered if this was what love was. Two people sharing such a thing.

She flipped the page.

A closer shot. The two of them framing the same empty chair from the last one.

Three.

She flipped the page.

A new house, it looked like. Maybe this one. Charles was dressed nicer. They both looked cleaner. Allison's eyes were half-closed. Kelly wondered if it was the only photo they took that day.

Four.

A light flashed below the TV, and Kelly looked to see it was eight o'clock. She flipped the page and saw Allison genuinely smiling. Charles leaning back, staring at the empty chair (a new one) as though their son had done something funny.

Five.

Kelly looked to the clock.

8:01.

Make sure Danny's in bed by nine!

Kelly looked over her shoulder, to the bottom of the stairs. Suddenly it felt like she couldn't look anywhere. If she looked to the kitchen, she thought of the thermostat and how cold it felt in there. The front door reminded her that she was alone. The bottom of the stairs led to the top of the stairs, and at the top of the stairs was that dark hallway.

She flipped a page, looked down.

Six.

She flipped another one.

Seven.

Another one.

Eight.

In this one Allison was clearly older. Charles still had his
pretty smile, but the corners of his eyes were beginning to droop.

And in the chair between them . . . emptiness. Kelly stared into the emptiness for a long time. She was trying to make out a face. Make out a shoulder. She didn't like that she was doing that.

She flipped the page.

Nine.

Nine?
Kelly thought. How old was he?

Breathing deeply, she turned the pages.

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

Fifteen.

At fifteen, the Donaldses looked more like they did now than they did at the beginning of the book. Kelly felt a chill wash over her body. Fifteen was as old as she was.

She looked to the stairs and to the top of them, and she no longer imagined a little boy up there. Now she imagined something closer to a man.

She flipped the pages.

Sixteen.

Seventeen.

Eighteen.

Nineteen.

A man. In this house. A man. Not a boy.

Kelly flipped the page, wide-eyed, and saw the next one was blank. But the last one, the nineteenth, was definitely taken in this house. The child's birthday cake was on the marble-topped island in the kitchen.

Kelly looked to the entrance of the kitchen.

A man.

She imagined facial hair. A certain look in his eye.

But it's not a man. Look at the photos again. They were all children's birthday cakes. Not a man. Just the same imaginary child for nineteen years.

Kelly closed the book quickly and rose. She placed the album back where she'd found it and returned to the couch.

Forty dollars
, she thought. Then she looked once more to the front door. To her boots on the rug. Just getting to them, the short way across the white tile, looked like a long way to walk.

And the rug was near the bottom of those stairs.

She told herself to calm down. Told herself she was just housesitting, but the word carried less steam than it did before.

The digital clock beneath the TV told her it was already 8:30, and Kelly thought that meant she had another two and a half hours here. In this house. She didn't want to stay that long. She got up. She turned to face her boots.

Sit down
, she told herself.
Watch TV. Watch a movie. By the time it's over, they'll be home.

This sounded reasonable. This sounded like a plan she could hang on to. This was her first job and she wanted to handle it well.

Kelly sat down on the couch again and intentionally turned her back on the front door, the stairs, and the rest of the white house. She flipped the channels, trying to find the beginning of a movie. Any movie. Anything that might give her two hours. Her eyes traveled down the length of the TV screen, to the shelf beneath the screen and to the spine, again, of the photo album.

Birthdays.

She recalled the way Allison and Charles aged in the pictures. How their features had hardened. How their eyes seem to turn a bit gray through the years.

Birthdays.

She looked back to the screen to find that she was at the beginning of a movie after all. It was the opening credits, though she'd missed the title. She turned the volume up, just a little bit, enough to make her feel like she wasn't so on edge.

It wasn't a comedy, but it wasn't scary either, and Kelly was fine with that. A drama, she understood, about a family (that was fine), though she didn't yet know where the story was going to go. That was okay too, as Kelly wanted to watch it, get into it, and find out where the story went.

She watched TV.

If you're watching television, he may curl up next to you on the couch.

Kelly tried to push this out of her mind. But the thought made her shiver, and Kelly couldn't help but look over her shoulder, quickly, once more to the foot of the stairs. She followed them up, how could she not, and stared into the darkness there. She imagined a child. Then a man. A child. Then a man. She saw the photos flash across her mind's eye and truly imagined the couple setting the photos up, setting the timers on the cameras, telling each other to get ready, telling their son to do the same.

Make sure Danny's in bed by nine!

Kelly looked to the clock.

9:07.

She looked back to the darkness at the top of the stairs. What could she do? Did they expect her to go upstairs? To enter that dark hallway and tuck him in?

She tried to shrug it off. She
did
shrug it off, enough so that she was able to watch the movie again, though she'd missed a bit. But what did it matter? Every minute that passed was a minute closer to the Donaldses coming home. And that moment, far away as it seemed,
was
getting closer.

Kelly watched TV.

The movie was dull, but it continued, and the minutes passed.

She sunk into the couch. She began to understand what was happening in the movie. She checked her phone. She looked to the window and the snowstorm outside. She thought of Dad. She thought of Mom.

And she heard a second creaking come from upstairs.

Kelly sat upright and looked to the ceiling. But the sound she'd heard hadn't come from directly above her like the other one had. This one had come from farther along the ceiling. Closer to the top of the stairs.

He likes to peer his head around the corner of doorways, make a face at you.

Kelly stared at the darkness at the top of the stairs. She looked to the entrance to the kitchen. She heard another creaking.

She almost stood up. She didn't know what else to do. Her phone was in her hand, and she didn't even remember picking it up. Maybe she was about to call Dad. She didn't know. Her boots lay waiting by the front door.

Kelly looked to the window and saw a blanket of white. It looked soft. Very soft. Like she could enter it and start walking and get home safely without a problem.

She heard a fourth creaking and this time believed it was coming from someplace closer.

On the stairs.

The three words came to her so naturally that, at first, she saw them only as a point of fact.

They have an imaginary child
, she told herself.
They do it because they're sad. Please, Kelly, understand that. The Donaldses are sad. But you can't let their sadness scare you.

This sounded right to her, and yet she stared at the stairs.
Not at the dark hallway where they led and not at the ceiling above her, but directly at the white stairs themselves.

She looked to the TV. She tried to settle into the couch again. She tried to get back into the movie. If she could just get into it, time would pass and the Donaldses would be home and then she would be home soon too.

She waited for another sound. She waited a long time.

None came.

Wind tickled the window by the TV and instead of frightening Kelly it calmed her down. A little. It reminded her that snowstorms make sounds. Snowstorms cause houses to creak.

Kelly reached for the controller, to turn the volume down, or up, it didn't matter. She tried both.