The Haunting of James Hastings (13 page)
Read The Haunting of James Hastings Online
Authors: Christopher Ransom
Tags: #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Suspense
Stacey napping on the couch with Henry at her feet, balls of wadded tissue on the coffee table beside her. Her eyes puffy, rounded with dark moons. She might have dozed off crying, or was battling the flu. Who would bother taking these? Had I?
The last shot:
Stacey in the backyard at dusk, standing in the fence’s shadow, in that sundress again, a dark shape without a face. Her arms hang limp at her sides. The photo grainy, the light all wrong. She is just a flat cut-out, a negative space too far away. I am nowhere there with her, only angry here. Who took this? Why would she show me these things? What is she doing out there in the dark all alone?
What happened to her eyes?
In this final photo they are but smudges of gray. As if the blue had been stolen. As if they aren’t even real.
12
I rang the doorbell. I knocked. I waited, turning in little circles and watching for movement inside Mr Ennis’s house. Either Annette was not home, which meant she was feeling better and went out for something, or she was not feeling better and was in fact comatose in the back bedroom or wherever she had collapsed last night. I knocked harder. Maybe she had called a friend to come by to take her to a doctor. I didn’t have her phone number. The only thing left to do was walk around and peek into the windows, but I could do that just as well from my balcony, with the scope, without looking like a peeper.
I remembered the lock on Stacey’s storage locker, my fingers spinning the green-faced dial. And I realized it was too late to check for fingerprints. If I asked Bergen or Lucy to have it dusted now, they would find no prints except those which belonged to me.
I stepped off Mr Ennis’s porch and shuffled over to my mailbox. I removed two bills, some home décor and clothing catalogs, and one shrink-wrapped issue of
Allure
from a subscription I had tried to cancel but which kept arriving month after month.
Allure
from a subscription I had tried to cancel but which kept arriving month after month.
I was halfway to my porch when a deep voice said, ‘Freeze,
muchacho
!’
muchacho
!’
I ducked, genuinely alarmed until the last arc of flying cold water slopped over my feet and wetted the cuffs of my pants. It was about a pint. I turned toward the Gomez place and was greeted by the sight of my neighbor’s son and daughter pumping their bazooka sprayers at me.
‘
Yo soy disparo!
’ I cried, miming a bullet wound by pressing the mail to my crotch.
Yo soy disparo!
’ I cried, miming a bullet wound by pressing the mail to my crotch.
Another line of cold water slapped a diagonal line across my chest and Emilia and Fernando ran away in a fit of giggles. Their father, Euvaldo, was leaning back against his truck, braying in such a way that his gold crowns twinkled in the sun. His dress shirt was untucked and he was running the garden hose over his chrome wheels. A can of turtle wax sat on a cloth rag on the truck’s hood. When we had moved in, the Gomez’s roof had basketball-sized holes in it and the house was up on stilts, waiting for a new foundation to replace the hundred-year-old bricks. The short hedge delineating the property had been something out of Tim Burton, and the Gomez mobile at that time had been a brown Dodge minivan held together with baling twine and duct tape. Now the house was immaculate, the hedge tighter than a nun’s ass, the GMC a $35,000 twin cab with lots of chrome. Euvaldo Gomez was running laps around me and both of us knew it.
‘You working hard today, James?’ His English was clear and he spoke with the clipped cadence of a wrestling coach.
‘Not really,
jeffe
. How about you? You gonna retire this year? Buy Lupé that beach house on Majorca?’
jeffe
. How about you? You gonna retire this year? Buy Lupé that beach house on Majorca?’
Euvaldo tossed his head back and emitted another series of jowl-rattling
gya-gya-gyahs
before cutting himself off as quickly as he had started. ‘I will stop working when I am dead, James. Not one day before.’
gya-gya-gyahs
before cutting himself off as quickly as he had started. ‘I will stop working when I am dead, James. Not one day before.’
During this neighborly ritual, Euvaldo worked his way across my yard sideways, a man walking the ledge of a tall building. This meant home improvement advice or neighborhood gossip.
‘James, James,’ my neighbor was saying, ‘you have a new roommate?’
‘Roommate?’
‘Yes, my friend. A lady friend. It is time for you to get back on the horse, no?’
I did not want to tell the story of how I had met Annette. ‘No, not really.’
Euvaldo was having none of it. ‘Oh, si,
cabrón
. Bring her to my barbecue Sunday. She can meet the rest of the family.’
cabrón
. Bring her to my barbecue Sunday. She can meet the rest of the family.’
Lucy knew the Gomezes, so he must have been referring to Annette. But why was he acting like Annette and I had something going, after only one night? What had he seen? ‘That is very kind, Euvaldo. Maybe a little soon.’
‘You are a young man, James. It is never too soon for love.’
I chuckled. ‘She’s having trouble with the plumbing. I don’t even know her.’
Euvaldo scowled. ‘Why must you hurt me this way?’
‘What?’
‘You can’t keep a secret from me, James. I’ve seen this girl in your house many times. She is very beautiful,
amigo
.’
amigo
.’
Half of the blood in my body dropped to my feet. ‘Hey, come on.’
‘
Que?
’
Que?
’
‘You’re joking.’
‘About what?’
‘You’ve seen her? In my house, before yesterday?’
The
señor
must have noticed his
gringo
neighbor’s change of color, because he stepped closer and spoke in a lower voice. ‘You just met her yesterday?’
señor
must have noticed his
gringo
neighbor’s change of color, because he stepped closer and spoke in a lower voice. ‘You just met her yesterday?’
‘You’re messing with me, right?’
Euvaldo squinted up at my house, then back to the Ennis place. ‘Maybe I exaggerate a little sometimes, but no, I am positive. This girl, I’ve seen her five, six times, James. Last week, and at least one week before that.’
‘Inside my house?’
‘I thought she was your girlfriend?’
Euvaldo was not only a vigilant member of the neighborhood watch, he was on the board that approved modifications to the historic homes and led various efforts with the city to fund restorations and improvements. He took an interest in people who were not invited guests in his hood.
‘Who is she, James?’
‘I—’
don’t know!
I almost screamed. Maybe I was desperate to deny what Euvaldo was suggesting. Maybe I didn’t want to make trouble for her, scare her away. But there had to be an explanation. Euvaldo could be mistaken, a little too vigilant in his neighborhood watch. Lucy might have filled his head with strange ideas.
don’t know!
I almost screamed. Maybe I was desperate to deny what Euvaldo was suggesting. Maybe I didn’t want to make trouble for her, scare her away. But there had to be an explanation. Euvaldo could be mistaken, a little too vigilant in his neighborhood watch. Lucy might have filled his head with strange ideas.
‘Forget it. It’s a misunderstanding. I’ll talk to her.’ I smiled. It was important to put my neighbor at ease. ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’
Euvaldo let it go, but he looked skeptical.
‘No worries. Thank you,
jeffe
.’
jeffe
.’
‘If you say so.’ Euvaldo edged back to his lawn and picked his garden hose up, turning the flow toward the property line. ‘You need to water your lawn, James. Your grass is turning to shit.’
‘I know, I know.’ I climbed my porch steps, biting my cheek.
‘Anything you need, James. We are here for you.’
Last call, over the shoulder, ‘You too!’
This is unacceptable, I thought, slamming the front door. I threw the mail at the nearest wall and stormed into the kitchen. What if she was here, watching me for weeks, snooping around my house? She said she had been trying to decide how and if to approach me. But
in
my house? Why would she let herself in? What the hell was she planning to do here? I was livid, as much with myself as with her.
in
my house? Why would she let herself in? What the hell was she planning to do here? I was livid, as much with myself as with her.
You dumbass
, I could hear Bergen say.
Didn’t I tell you to stay away from her?
, I could hear Bergen say.
Didn’t I tell you to stay away from her?
I would ask her what the hell was going on, she would explain it, end of story. And if it wasn’t a convincing story, one phone call and Mr Ennis’s house would be vacant by the end of the week.
Problem was, she’d disappeared.
Overnight I picked up the habit of walking around the neighborhood, circling back and passing her house four or five times a day. I didn’t see her for three days, but the walks seemed to revive me. My legs were embarrassingly stiff and tired after the first two of these outings, but my head began to clear. I had been drinking less since her arrival. I shaved my beard. Got back on the Grape-Nuts. Cleaned the house. Looked out the window every half-hour.
On the fourth or fifth day after Annette’s shower injury, I returned from a good two-mile stroll to see the sun setting on a forest-green convertible Mustang parked in front of Mr Ennis’s house, its black rag top down. It was a ’69, I could tell from the raised and rusting haunches. I don’t know how I knew it was her car, but I did. Maybe that first night I had glimpsed something rebellious and shambling underneath her veneer. Maybe it was a lucky guess, but it proved correct when she waved at me from the steps of my front porch. She stood, her hands in her back pockets, smiling.
I halted on the sidewalk and almost screamed. Her hair was blonde. Not lighter in the sunlight. White blonde, platinum blonde, snowbird blonde, neck-breaking blonde.
It’s nicer this way.
13
‘Where you been, stranger?’ she said. Then she noticed my expression. ‘What’s wrong?’
I walked toward her slowly. ‘Your hair.’
‘Yep,’ she said, doing a little shampoo commercial flip. ‘Can’t even see the cut now, can you?’
‘I hardly recognized you.’ With her blonde hair, her rusty freckles seemed . . . wrong.
‘You should have seen the bruise. Ugh, the purple under my hair, I might as well have taped a magnifying glass to my head. And it was time for a change anyway. I hated my hair.’
‘It’s pretty,’ I said.
Pretty fucking strange
. ‘I thought maybe you were in a coma by now.’
Pretty fucking strange
. ‘I thought maybe you were in a coma by now.’
‘Aw, you’re sweet,’ she said. ‘I must have given you quite a scare.’
‘Do you remember what happened?’
She squinted as if she couldn’t quite see me. ‘I slipped. I barely ate that day. Probably just fainted. It’s really not a big deal.’
‘I keep thinking about what you said, though. “Don’t let the red rabbit get me.” Like you were scared of the paintings.’
She smiled. ‘Really? I don’t remember any rabbits. Maybe you can show me later and we’ll see if anything comes back to me.’
I knew she had seen something. She just didn’t want to discuss it. I tried to think of a way to frame what was going to be, no matter how I framed it, an accusation.
‘Is everything all right?’ she said. ‘You look pale.’
‘No, everything is not all right.’
Annette crossed her arms over her chest.
‘My maid quit, after finding a pair of my wife’s shoes in the house.’ I waited, got no reaction. ‘Euvaldo Gomez seems to think—’
‘Oh!’ Annette lunged forward and took me by the arm. ‘Hold that thought. Can we talk about this over dinner? I got some shrimp at the market and left it soaking. I wanted to do something to make up for the other night. Do you have dinner plans, or is this too weird?’ Her eyes took on a vacant glaze. ‘You don’t owe me anything, ’ she added, her jubilation gone. ‘I’m such an idiot.’
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