Scary Out There (20 page)

She turned once more, toward the stairs, then back to the TV and set the controller down next to her and felt someone's naked leg beside her.

Kelly leapt from the couch.

It was a body it wasn't a body it was a body it wasn't a body it was a body it wasn't.

She stared, trembling, at the open space on the couch.

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

Danny likes to play games.

Sometimes I have to call him four, five times before he shows himself.

Kelly crossed the room, nearly running, and stumbled,
putting her boots on. She put her jacket on too and then opened the front door and exited the house and entered the snowstorm.

She checked her pockets. She had her phone. She looked back to the house and didn't care anymore about forty dollars, didn't care anymore what Dad or Mom might say. She was leaving, she'd
left
, and she'd call Dad from the road.

Then she stopped halfway down the long drive and looked back to the house. To the windows and the front door.

At the end of the long drive a pair of headlights popped up in the snowy distance, and Kelly quickly hid, kneeling half in a ditch that began behind a low row of white bushes.

She watched the car approaching and knew it was them before they reached her. They were home early. But they didn't see her, of this she was sure, as they turned slowly into the drive and the soft snow crunched beneath their tires as they rolled to the house, lighting up every window on the way.

Kelly knew she should go, should continue into the storm.

She watched as the Donaldses parked their car, then got out and walked through the snow to the front door. At the door Charles put his arm around Allison. He held the door open for her and they entered. The door closed behind them.

Kelly stared at the house. She waited. She stared.

She stomped quickly through the snow, back to the house. It took her forever, and it felt like the light above the front door exposed the entire world. But she made it to the side of
the house quickly, ducking beneath low-hanging branches of frosted evergreens.

Light poured onto the snow through the window that she knew was the window next to the TV, and Kelly stepped into the light and up to the window and looked into the house.

She wanted to see them. Wanted to see how they'd react when they found out the babysitter had left their child . . . all alone.

She saw them. Saw a look of incredulity upon Allison's face, saw Charles trying to calm his wife down.
Where is she?
Kelly heard Allison say, desperation, horror in her voice. Neither had taken off their coat yet. Charles went to the foot of the stairs and began to ascend, but Allison stopped him with a sudden shriek.

Kelly watched as Allison took a step backward, closer to the window, and gestured toward the entrance of the kitchen.

“Danny,” Kelly heard Allison say. “Why aren't you in bed? Where is your babysitter?”

Charles, with one foot still on the first white step, looked to his wife, then to the entrance of the kitchen. Kelly couldn't see into the entrance. Couldn't see what they were seeing. But she believed they were mad, in a way, pretending for so long, until it felt real.

“What did you say?” Charles said, and his voice was muffled by the glass. “She's where?”

“Right where?” Allison asked.

They turned their worried faces toward Kelly at the same time. As if someone had told them that the babysitter was outside, looking in through the window.

Kelly ran. Into the storm she ran. Down the long drive. When she got to the main road, she continued to run. She called Dad. He'd come for her. But until he got to her, she ran.

Josh Malerman
is the author of the novel
Bird Box
and the novella
A House at the Bottom of the Lake.
Malerman is also the songwriter/guitarist for the Detroit rock band The High Strung, whose song “The Luck You Got” is the theme song for Showtime's hit show
Shameless
.

Twitter:
@JoshMalerman

Facebook:
facebook.com/JoshMalerman

MADELEINE ROUX

R
ight, um, I'd like to report a murder.”

The cop was staring back at me like I'd just burst into the station doing a tap dancing routine. No jazz hands, I guess, but for my part I couldn't stop thinking about my hands. Hot, hot, too hot and needly, like someone was poking them over and over again or holding them over a range.

“Could you repeat that?” He was lumpy and short, like maybe he had to be standing on a box to see over the counter. Wasn't sure he was even a cop. No hat. Rumpled uniform. But there was a badge, yeah? So he had to count.

“I'd like to report a murder.”

My voice came out less shaky and weird that time.

Skeptical. But of course. I hate that look. That look adults give you when they think you're full of shit for no other reason than they've seen a few more years than you. I made my face real hard. I know things, buddy, things that'd make your hair fall out.

“Start from the beginning,” he said, finally maybe believing me just a bit. The station was dim and brown, used tea
bag brown, a brick box with phones blaring off like a seagull screech every once in a while. Not all that many folks calling in at midday. More than you might think, though.

Area's gone to shit.
That's what my uncle would say.

Anyway, the beginning. I'll go back and start from there for you, too. Hard to know where the beginning's at, looking at it here from now. But it starts round about when I moved to Bramhall to live with my uncle.

Uncle Sid is a twat. And yeah, that's the kind of rough language that got me sent there in the first place. The social services people, also a bunch of twats, thought I wasn't doing so well living with my dad. They got called a few times, like, because of drugs or whatever. Not mine, his. Or because I cut school a few days. But I didn't mind his rotating list of girlfriends, so give me points for that at least. Some of them were even sort of nice. One called Molly had big red blotches all over her tits and forearms, but she snuck me cigarettes once in a while, so she couldn't be all bad.

But the social workers weren't pleased, and when they ain't pleased, things go bad for you. Worse for my dad, sure, but bad for me, too, because they shipped me off to live with Uncle Sid in Bramhall—a “nice” town with “nice” people—to straighten out a girl like me.

“You should be happy,” the lady social worker they sent over said. “Bramhall is lovely, so much nicer than Moss Side. You'll see, Lauren, this is a place where you can really flourish.”

Right. I flourished on over to Uncle Sid's with all my shit, looking at how everything in the world I owned fit into, like, two squashed cardboard boxes. Depressing. I'm not a Make the Most of It kind of girl, but maybe, I thought, it could be better. Watching Dad waste away wasn't fun, sure, but he's my dad. You make it work.

I'd make it work with Sid, too. The social workers had to take me over to Bramhall because it was a drive, and they told my dad to get me over there, but then he never bothered, so they finally arranged for me to get picked up. Bramhall's not like Moss Side. Bramhall is green, lots of old, white cottagey buildings everywhere, like maybe Shakespeare wandered around here ages ago writing his things. That's what it made me think of when it went by out the window—posh idiots in wigs and funny outfits dancing about on the village green, holding hands and singing or whatever. But Sid didn't live in a nice cottagey place, his dump was farther outside town, a council block set a nice
appropriate
distance from the fancier housing. At least that made me feel a little more at home.

Sid's place is short and dumpy, like that cop at the station, but not lumpy, just a crumbling brick rectangle with the bare minimum effort put into the lawn. Weeds and crumpled up cans of lager and patches of dirt with yellowing cig butts stuck here and there like pimples. I remember the sky was cement gray that first day and that Sid wasn't anywhere to greet me.

Turns out he was inside on the fluffy chair with his feet
up on the table, watching whatever wasn't ads. I'm not sure Sid ever saw a whole show, just clicked around to avoid the adverts. The social worker lady with me made him look at some paperwork and took my uncle's grunts for agreement. Guardianship. What a laugh. Someone called a guardian should be tall and strong, right? Sword, shield, bright, shiny armor that can actually deflect a thing or two. Looked like anything you chucked at Sid would just sink right into his blobby body and get absorbed, like one of them amoeba things I got tested on in science.

The neighborhood seemed to go on forever in one direction, other brown, slumping buildings clustered on either side. Right before the lady left, I heard a bunch of nasty idiots walk by, cursing and laughing. Kids my age that thought they were real tough, picking up whatever rubbish they had found on the street and hurling it at neighboring houses. A can hit the bricks on Sid's house, and I watched his face go splotchy and red, all one color, so that his thin lips and stump of a nose disappeared into one spit-mad circle.

Sid's a builder, so his hands look like a boxer's. That's also why he looked so incredibly stupid trying to scribble down his name, the pen disappearing into his giant fist like it was a toothpick.

“Bloody kids,” he muttered, then he remembered the lady was still there and signed his name on the papers she had given him. He glanced at me, standing there like a total idiot
with nothing to do, two cardboard boxes stacked in front of me like a little wall. “Suppose you're not like that,” he added. No telling if it was a question.

I didn't actually want the lady to go. I didn't know her, right, didn't
care
about her, but she at least felt safe and like something that might put a little fence between me and Sid. She smelled like the makeup corner at Boots, and men—my dad, Sid—got real quiet and weird when she was around, like a dog that's just done a piss in the corner and got caught.

When she went, though, Sid was different right away. He glared at me, pointed at the boxes and then to the stairway. Shit, but it was narrow. I wasn't even sure if my boxes would fit through. Couldn't even imagine Sid stuffing his whole lumpy bulk though it, cookie dough through a bendy straw.

“You're up there,” he said, going back to his brownish, fluffy chair. “Second room. Don't go poking around in mine, yeah? Mind your business and we can be all right.”

That was the most encouragement I was going to get, obviously. I went up, parked my things in the little empty room, and sat on the bed for a while. It had a mattress but no sheets and peeling wallpaper that looked damp and sad at the edges. I wondered if maybe the social worker lady was supposed to look in on all these things. Make sure Sid had blankets and food and the like, things a girl needs to live. Groaner—he probably had no idea that I'd need tampons. I'd stuffed a few at the bottom of my duffel, but that wouldn't last me even a month.

At least that gave me something to do. I didn't tell any of this to the pig, okay? Wasn't going to tell him about tampons or whatever, not “relevant,” like they say on those crime shows, and anyway, adults get so weird whenever you talk about a period, like it's the worst thing you could do, like you got naked and waggled all your bits at them.

I had a little cash saved up from writing essays for the dumb shits in my class back in the old neighborhood. I had a way with words when I wanted to. Never told the twits I'd nicked most of the essays off other Internet people. Like it mattered. Everyone got what they wanted. I took the cash and went real quiet down the stairs—you learn to do that, tiptoe everywhere, when you don't know what you'll find in the next room. Maybe it's your dad passed out on the floor, maybe it's him and his latest girly slobbering all over each other.

Point is, you learn to get stealthy.

But Sid had only moved once, I think, to get up and grab a beer and then flop back down into his chair. There was a sofa on the bottom floor too, pushed up against the windows near the door. The walls were empty, a few nails here and there, like there had been posters or pictures put up and taken down. Carpeting, swirly and orange like a calico cat, had been worn down to prickly nubs. For some reason Sid parked the TV in the middle of the room, just an arm's length from the archway that led to the kitchen. Prat.

It was like he was floating out there in the sea of orange
carpet, away from the windows and away from the walls.

An old
Eurovision
tape was on, and he didn't take his eyes off the screen, probably because some Swedish girls were jiggling their tits all over the place and trying to sing. The VCR looked about as up to technological snuff as the miserable old television set.

“Going out,” I said. “Need some things, toothpaste and whatever.”

“You going to cause trouble for me?” He hadn't turned around, but I stopped anyway. “Place ain't what it used to be. Gangs of kids everywhere. Can't go anywhere in peace with those bastards just waiting to get in your face. You ain't one of them, eh? You best not be one of them.”

I rolled my eyes at the back of his balding head. “I need
tampons
, like for my
monthly time
, all right?”

Worked like magic, like it always does.

“Go on, then.”

It's weird how when you're in a place you don't like, you kind of shrivel up when you're there. You don't know until you're away from it and you feel your shoulders get loose and comfortable again. That's how it felt leaving Sid's, like he was that big eye thing in those shit nerd movies with all the elves and wizards, like he could see everything I was doing even when I was just sitting in my new room staring at the sad, molding wallpaper.