The Keeper (25 page)

Finally, he opened his dad’s bedroom door. Sitting on the easy chair like she’d never left was his dead mother. “Steve,” she cackled, “I’ve been waiting.”

Steve started to cry right then and there. Full-on sobs.

“Come here, Steve,” she said. She puffed on a Parliament Light. Trailer trash smokes. But that was what she came from. God, he hated her.

“Joseph?” he shouted for his brother, but he knew now that the kid was hiding. That was the problem; between the two of them, his little brother had always been the survivor. Joey had come through life with Mom without a single scratch.

“Steve, show me your hands. I know they’re dirty because you’re a dirty boy,” his mother said.

Steve took a step into the room. Dark hair. Dark skin. Part Indian, his mom. Him, too. She held up her cigarette. Bitch. The things she’d done when no one else had been around to tell. The things people do, because they can. He was crying now. He couldn’t stop.

The air was thick with smoke. He couldn’t stand the smell. Her fingers were talons wrapped around his wrist. He tried to pull away but she was strong. Stronger than she’d ever been in life.

They’d said it was the tumor that had made her mean, but he’d never been convinced. They said the thing had eaten up her gray matter, the part of her personality that had made her a person. But he’d always thought that the cancer had been an excuse. He’d always wondered if all women were like his mother, once you scratched below the surface.

“You cried too much when you were a baby. I always wanted to cover your mouth. They put me on medicine. Said I was depressed. But that’s not true, Stevie. I wasn’t depressed. I just wished you’d come out with the coat hanger. Now show me your hand.”

Steve made a fist. This time he wouldn’t let her hurt him. This time she wouldn’t get the best of him. Since he buried her he’d imagined a thousand times the way he should have pushed her down the stairs. Those brittle bones, they would have broken like clay.

She took a drag off her Parliament and its tip crackled. That sound. That terrible sound of burning stopped his heart. When she was well, she’d been okay. When she was well, he’d adored her.

“Give me your hand, boy,” she whispered.

“No,” he cried like a little baby. Like a fag. He couldn’t stop.

She squeezed his hand. Her fingers were long and hairy. An animal’s fingers. Her feet were hooves. This was what she was like on the inside. This was what she’d hidden from everyone but him. She lit her cigarette and smiled.

Oh, please. Not again. You died, you bitch. You died.

He tried to pull away, but he couldn’t. She squeezed, and the bones in his hand popped. He fell to his knees. Her face was hairy with stubble now. Drool ran down the sides of her mouth. Then came the cigarette. Its cherry was the brightest thing in the room. It hissed when she pressed it against his skin. That sound, that terrible sound.

She pressed again and again, lighting and extinguishing all along the back of his hand and up his wrist. She wasn’t a woman anymore. Maybe she never had been. Her legs were like a goat’s, and up above her face was hairy. She smelled like the paper mill. He screamed when he saw what was coming, but he didn’t get away. The cherry burned through his closed eyelid. It crackled. The pain was so bad he fainted. When he woke, he felt thick jelly running down his cheek. When he realized what had happened, he fainted again before she started on the other eye.

The smell of burning, he’d never been able to stomach it.

I
nside the paper mill, Susan Marley stepped over Paul Martin’s body. She walked out the door, and into Bedford. She did not look at the fat spider with hairy legs that was twice her size. It laid its eggs inside the nourishment of Chuck Brann’s corpse. She did not look at the ghost of the newly dead young woman with stooped shoulders who rang the Andriases’ front bell. The Andriases turned their locks, and the girl walked through the door.

As she walked these things parted for her. They made an aisle down Main Street. She waded through the rain that fell, and the smoke, and the darkness of the night. The skin on her body was loose now, sliding off her bones. She walked, because there was one final place she wanted to visit before this night was over. A familiar place. The place where the girl she’d once been had lived. She was going home.

N
o matter how hard you try, she’ll never get any better.

A branch banged against the window, and his thoughts left him. Where was he right now? What was this place? Oh, right, he was in his room. Sitting at his desk, looking out the window into noisy blackness. His limbs felt heavy, as if his blood had turned to lead, and every breath he took was an effort.

What was this on his face?

Oh, right, he’d been crying again. Why was he crying? There wasn’t anything wrong, was there? No, nothing was wrong. He always cried. He cried when he was happy, he cried when other people cried, he cried like a pussy. He shouldn’t be crying now like some kid. There was something he was supposed to be doing, wasn’t there? Something important? Something to do with his family? No, not his family. Something to do with the girl. What was her name? Liz. That’s right, they’d broken up today.

Bobby frowned. Break up? Why would they break up? He looked out the window, into the darkness. It moved like fog taking form. Just the night, he told himself.
This is what it looks like at night, only I’ve never noticed it before; it looks like faces at my window.

His stomach growled, and he realized he was hungry. When was dinner? Funny, it was two in the morning, and his mother hadn’t yet served dinner. Where was Liz? They’d broken up, that’s right, they’d broken up today.

He shifted in his chair. His arm had gone dead.

Pins and needles, needles and pins. It’s the bitch in the blue dress who always grins.

The branch of an oak tree banged against the side of the house and it lulled him. How long had he been sitting in this chair? What about the girl? He’d been in her house and it had smelled rotten like mill air. No, not like the mill—like death. And he’d wanted to tell her to come back with him. He remembered now. In that house he’d started to believe. Her sister was alive, and had somehow woken up the dark part of Bedford.

Why had he left her there?

The branch of a tree knocked at his window. He blinked, and his thoughts were gone. Like a dog chasing its tail, he’d been asking the same questions all night, tears running down his cheeks, but they led nowhere, like wind. Like being stuck in the same moment over and over again.

Why was he sitting in his room while the rest of his family was sitting in the kitchen, listening? Listening to what?

When he got back from dropping Liz off tonight, his family had been waiting. His dad had come home early from work with day-old gray stubble on his face. “Give me a hand, will you, Bobby?” he’d asked. The two of them had gone from room to room, checking for leaks and locking windows. They’d shoved dishrags under doors so that nothing would get through the cracks, and made sure the roof was not leaking. When they reached the study, his father had pointed at the bookcase filled with medical texts and leather-bound classics by Dickens and Shakespeare. “You take that end.” His father pointed, and the two of them had heaved the entire thing into the hallway and propped it against the front door. “In case someone tries to get in,” his father explained.

“Who would try to get in?” Bobby asked.

His father looked him dead in the eyes in a way that had made him feel as if he’d failed on some very basic level to understand the fundamentals of adult life.

Then the family took their seats at the formal dining room table: Alexandra, Adam, the twins, Katie, Margaret, and Bobby. They sat like that for a long time, no one speaking. Power went out, and Adam placed a lit candle at the center of the table. Shadows flitted against the walls. They blanketed his family’s faces so that it looked like they wore ever-changing masks.

“Shhh,” Alexandra said when Michael started crying. “Shhh, it’s just rain.”

But no one cooked dinner, and no one got up, not even to pee. No one laughed or teased. The scene was familiar, like something lived before. Margaret squeezed his fingers tight. Across the table the twins shared a chair, and held each other close. They wore matching SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas. His father slumped down in his seat, and for the first time he saw that the old man really was getting old.

“I wish Liz was here,” he thought, only his mind made a sound that carried through the air.

“You never should have brought her into this house. It’s her fault. It’s all her fault,” his mother hissed, pulling Katie close and looking around the table at her children like an angry wolf. Only she didn’t say a word.

“Let him alone,” his father answered in a tired sort of way. “You can’t blame some girl.” But again, no lips moved.

Bobby stood. Margaret squinted to keep from crying. His father wore only a pair of red polka dot boxers, and his round belly flopped over the elastic waistband. Something smelled, and Bobby realized that Michael had taken a crap in his pants and no one had bothered to clean it up. The bottom of his pajamas sagged.

His family turned to him in unison. In his mind he could hear all of them speaking.
Stay,
they said.
Sit with us. Watch the rain. You belong to us.
But was that them speaking, or was it Susan Marley looking out through their dead eyes?

“I don’t belong here. I have to go,” he whispered.

It took all the energy he had to climb the stairs and sit in his chair. In his room he thought about the girl. What was her name? Liz. He picked up the phone to call her, but couldn’t remember what to say. Couldn’t remember who she was. Only that she was important. Only that he had failed her. How had he failed her?

He sat like that for several hours, and now he wondered:
Am I dreaming?

A tree branch banged against his window, and his thoughts circled. A voice, it might have been his own (hidden deep down someplace where this night could not touch it) told him:
Put away your toys. You can’t hide in that room forever. They belong in this house, you don’t.

But he did not leave. He sat in his chair, his limbs like lead. He was safe here, in this house at the top of the hill. His family knew better than the rest. They locked their doors.

From whom? What was happening to him?

It was two-thirty in the morning. By now the twins should be in bed. Long ago he should have heard pots banging, and been called for dinner. Someone should have knocked on his door and said, “Hey, Bobby, what are you doing in there?” But they were still sitting at the table, weren’t they? All this time, hours, they’d been sitting there, quiet as mice. Sure, everyone else was supposed to act weird, sure, everyone else was in trouble, but not him, not his family. His family was safe, watching from a distance. His house was on solid ground.

But this year was different, wasn’t it? This year was worse. Because she’d been right, hadn’t she? She’d been right. Bedford was haunted. Bedford never forgets. It’s in the air and the dirt and the rain and this year someone had set it loose. Susan Marley had unleashed it, and he could feel it crawling inside him, making him dead.

Who had been right?

He tried to make a fist but couldn’t. He knew the answer to this question. The girl. Liz. She needed him. More to the point, he needed her.

He could picture her in his mind. Long, shaggy hair that got tangled when they made love. Always looked on the verge of tears except when she was laughing. Not so pretty. He’d always thought she was pretty, but maybe that was because she was the first (only) girl he’d ever had sex with. Not so pretty after all.

What was happening in her house?

She’ll die in there. She wants to die, that’s why he broke up with her. Not because she wouldn’t tell him things, not because she had problems. Because it hurt so much to know that no matter how hard he tried, she’d never get any better.

The branch knocked against his window, and his thoughts left him. They fled like shadows in light. The lead in his limbs felt heavier, and his whole body went numb. How long had he been sitting here?

He’d been crying again. He was always crying. He hated that he was the type of kid who cried. The type of kid who got quivery lip at the slightest teasing about his height in the schoolyard. The type of guy who even now practically browned his pants (
Pants? The twins?
) when someone raised their voice at him.

Just then, he heard a knock at his door. “Yeah?” he called, only his voice was very low. Only, had he spoken at all?

Margaret joined him at the window. She pulled on the fabric of her Project Greenpeace T-shirt, stretching it from inside out with hands balled into fists so that little knobs of fabric jutted out over her flat belly. She sat very quietly. She always sat quietly. She, like Liz, had a fear of breaking the things she sat upon with her weight. “I hate the rain,” she said. The statement lingered in the air and he thought he could touch it.

“I do, too,” he told her.

“It’s not going to end this year,” she said. Then she nodded her head in the direction of the rest of the family. “They’re pretending we’re safe but they know we’re not.”

“It’ll end,” he said. “It always does.”

She looked out the window and pointed at a thick cloud blowing from the direction of the mill. It was most dense near the valley, but its tendrils reached up the hill and toward the river, and even into the woods. “It’s getting closer.”

“Stop it, Margaret.”

“It’s a sickness she brought back. It makes us forget who we are.”

“Margaret—”

“We’ll die in this, all of us. And then we’ll never get out. We’ll be stuck here forever, just like all the other ghosts.”

In a quick and terrifying moment he was tempted to strike her. But just as quickly the moment was gone. Margaret rubbed her hollowed-out eyes, and he knew that she had not slept for some time. He felt a swell of affection for his sister, the odd duck of the family who never seemed to measure up in looks or smarts or charm. The one who stood on the outside. And yet he loved her no less than the rest. “Why aren’t you with Mom and Dad?” he asked.

“Did you dream about her?” Margaret asked him.

“Yes.” It was the thing he had not been able to tell Liz. The thing he wanted to forget. He’d dreamed that he and Liz got married. He transferred to UMO to be with her, and they lived in a cheap apartment that she decorated to look like a home. In his dream he came home one day, and instead of Liz sitting at the kitchen table, he found Susan. She smiled at him, her lips stretching so taut that they ripped apart and blood splattered all over the floor. Only she didn’t care. Only she liked it. “Hi, Bobby,” Susan gurgled. In the dream her voice was just like Liz’s, and he realized that they were the same girl after all.

“I’ve had the same dream every night since Susan Marley died,” Bobby said.

“Me, too,” Margaret said. “I dream the valley burns to ashes. In my dreams, we burn, too.”

The branch knocked on his window, and his thoughts circled. Where was Liz right now? Why had he left her all alone? Not alone. “What’s happening?”

Margaret pointed out the window and into the darkness. “She brought back the dead.”

Bobby got up from his chair and opened the window. The rain rushed in, along with the voices, a din of voices, like madness the color black. Like the things he’d been hearing in his head all these hours, the things that had made him forget, for a little while, the name of the girl he loved, only louder. Only worse. Only shouts and moans and laughter all at once. He heard April Willow crying. He heard Paul Martin laughing a death laugh an hour ago, he heard his mother screaming inside her head right now. How could you possibly remember yourself if you listened to this? How could you possibly remember who you were? No, not even this house was safe. Nothing was safe. His nose itching, his eyes burning, he shut the window, picked up the phone, and called Liz.