The Night Parade (4 page)

The phone powered up, searched for a signal, then chimed repeatedly to let him know he had unread text messages. He checked the log and saw there were five missed calls with an equal number of voice mails. There were twice as many text messages, too, each one sent from the same person, the most recent sent only an hour earlier. They were from Sanjay Kapoor. And although a white-hot rage rose up through him as he looked at Kapoor's name, he couldn't bring himself to delete the messages. Instead, he clicked on the most recent and read it.

His eyes burned. Without giving the message another thought, he deleted it, then powered down his phone.

He stripped out of his clothes. They were sour with perspiration and fell to the floor in a stiff and smelly heap. When he climbed beneath the spray of hot water, he tried hard to erase the past several hours from his mind—the past several days, several weeks, several months—but they haunted him. He couldn't scald those images away.

H
e showered for a good fifteen minutes. When he was done, he toweled off, pulled on a fresh pair of underwear, sweatpants, and an old Pearl Jam T-shirt. Unlike Ellie, he happened to have his own clothes with him, already packed. He had anticipated a longer stay at the hospital.

Back in the room, Ellie was already curled up on the bedspread, asleep.
My God, she looks so old.
He felt a pang of sadness in his chest. Looking at her reminded him of Kathy, and that hurt, too. It had all happened so quickly, his grief was still confused with disbelief, with anger, with helplessness. He had to keep reminding himself that it wasn't a nightmare and that it had all actually happened—was
still
happening. When he closed his eyes, it was Kathy's face that materialized through the darkness; only his urgency to
keep moving
was enough to bump her from his thoughts for small periods of time, allowing him to function. Well, his urgency . . . and what had happened earlier that night in the car, that unsettling and inexplicable thing that Ellie had done to him when they first set out on the road . . .

Ellie had one arm draped around the shoe box. David considered attempting to remove it, to set it on the nightstand, but in the end he decided to let it be. What was the harm?

Despite the squealing bedsprings, Ellie didn't stir when he eased down on the other side of the bed. Thank God for small miracles. He dreaded any discussion with her about the truth of what had happened. But she was a smart kid. A September baby—their Miracle Baby—they had petitioned to have her advance a grade early on, and it was a decision they never regretted. Sometimes, he knew, the kid was
too
smart.

She knows I've been lying to her,
he realized now, the notion striking him like a terrible epiphany.
Jesus, she's just been humoring me, hasn't she? Yes, of course she has. I don't give her enough credit. She gives me too much.

He turned off the bedside lamp, then reclined on his back, listening to the soft sounds of his daughter's respiration. As tired and defeated as he was, he thought he would have crashed the second his head hit the pillow, but that was not the case. He stared at the black ceiling, at the border of cold sodium light framing the closed drapes over the window. He counted the seconds between each flash of the smoke alarm's cyclopean eye.

His thoughts returned, not to Kathy and his final moments with her, but of what had occurred only hours earlier back in the Oldsmobile, as he drove frantically down the highway, his mind a kaleidoscope of nightmarish thoughts, his heart speed-racing in his chest. Ellie had been in the backseat, and had leaned forward at one point and placed a cool hand against the nape of his neck. She had—

It gave him chills.

After a time, he got up and fumbled around in the darkness until he located what he was looking for: Ellie's stuffed elephant. He crawled back into bed with it, pressing his face against it. There was Ellie's smell on it, a soft and breathy smell he associated with summer mornings spent lazing in bed. But there was another smell on it now, too—the stink of Kathy's hospital room, and all the horribleness that had happened there. It was a harsher and more specific smell than Ellie's, rounded and full in its terribleness.

I should sleep with the gun instead,
he thought, burying his face in the stuffed toy.

After a time, sleep claimed him.

 

“W
ell,” said Kathy, rolling off of him. They were slick with sweat and David's heartbeat thumped in his ears. He grazed his wife's buttocks with one hand as she rolled off her side of the bed. “I'm going to the kitchen for some water. Want some?”

“Yes, please.” He smiled demurely at her from his side of the bed.

Kathy folded her arms over her bare breasts, cocked a hip. “What?” she said.

“You're pretty.”

“Charmer. But you're supposed to say those things
before
getting lucky. You know that, right?”

“I've been out of practice.”

“Making love?”

“Being charming.”

She laughed as she tugged on her robe and went out into the hall.

David got up and went to the bathroom. He urinated, washed his face and hands at the sink, then returned to bed with a Robert Ludlum paperback. He was readjusting the pillows against the headboard when Kathy returned. She handed him a glass of ice water, then climbed into bed beside him.

“Ellie did the strangest thing today,” Kathy said, fluffing up her own pillows against the headboard. “We were walking through Target, picking up a few things, when she disappeared down one of the aisles. You know how she does.”

David nodded, smiling to himself. Ellie was prone to wandering off when something interesting caught her eye.

“She came running up to me at one point and asked for some money. She said she'd pay me back with her allowance when we got home, but that she saw something and had to get it right then and there. When I asked her what it was, she said she couldn't tell me, and that it was a surprise.”

“Oh boy,” he said, sliding an index finger between the pages of his book. “Did you give her the money?”

“Yes. It was only five bucks, and she was true to her word, paying me back as soon as we got home.”

“What'd she buy?”

“You'll never guess. Not in a million years.”

“So tell me.”

“She said it was a present for the baby.”

“Whose baby?”

“Ours,” Kathy said.

“We don't have a baby.” But then he looked at her, leaning over on one elbow. “Or is this your way of telling me something?”

Kathy's eyes went wide and she shook her head, laughing. “Christ, no. I'm not pregnant.”

“So what's the deal?”

“I don't know. Maybe it was wishful thinking on her part. Or maybe she was trying to tell us something.”

David sat up straighter in bed. He set the book down on the nightstand. “Are you saying you want to have another kid?”

She looked at him, the sweat from their lovemaking still glistening on her face, and smiled. “You know, I just don't know. I mean, I think about it from time to time, but never really seriously. And it's not like we've talked about it or anything.”

“Is that what we're doing now?” he asked. “Talking about it?”

“Would you want another baby?”

He thought about it for a second. “I'm forty years old,” he said. “And not to point out the obvious, your highness, but you're just a few years younger than me. Is it even safe?”

“Women are having babies later in life now,” she said. “There are risks, but then there are risks with any pregnancy. There were complications with Ellie at the end, remember?”

The umbilical cord had gotten wrapped around Ellie's neck during labor. They'd had a monitor on her, and with each contraction and subsequent push, David had watched his unborn daughter's blood pressure drop on the computer screen beside Kathy's bed. In the end, the doctor had to take Ellie out via emergency cesarean. Even more terrifying was that she came out in silence, not making a sound. It wasn't until she was aspirated that she started to cry, but even then it had been a few short bleats, and she quieted right up to the moment she was placed in Kathy's arms, those deep obsidian eyes surveying them both from beneath a pink and furrowed brow.

But those complications hadn't just been at the end. They'd spent nearly two years trying to get pregnant, had visited countless fertility doctors. Kathy had been on a strict regimen of prenatal vitamins. There had been no medical reason why they shouldn't be able to conceive, yet conception eluded them for the longest time . . . until that one morning when both pregnancy tests turned up positive and a visit to the obstetrician confirmed it. Ellie—their Miracle Baby.

“Sounds like you've given this more than just a passing thought,” he said.

“What about you?” she said. “Will you give it more than just a passing thought, too?”

He chewed his lower lip for a moment. “Yeah, okay. I will.”

Kathy's smile widened. David admired the sweat at her temples, dampening her hair. When she eased back down into her pillows, he could smell the sex on her, wafting over to his side of the bed.

“So, do you want to see it?” Kathy said.

“See what?”

“What she
bought.”

“I thought she didn't tell you.”

“Not right away. But when we got home, she wrapped it in construction paper and gave it to me as a gift.” Kathy rolled over and opened the drawer to her nightstand. When she turned back toward him, she was cupping a small, shiny sliver of metal in the palm of her hand.

David leaned forward for a better look. “It's a spoon,” he said.

“Well, it's a charm,” Kathy said. “Like for a bracelet. But yeah, it's a spoon. It was the sweetest thing.”

David smiled and shook his head.

Kathy returned the tiny spoon to the nightstand, then made a sleepy purring sound while her cool foot found one of his sweaty legs beneath the sheet. David opened the book and skimmed the same sentence several times, not really paying attention to it. Deep inside the belly of the house, the furnace kicked on.

“Hey.” Kathy sat up on one elbow. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shhh,” she said. “Listen.”

He listened but heard nothing.

“Sounds like music,” Kathy said.

“Music? I don't—” But he cut himself off as he heard it, too: the faint and discordant jangle of chimes set to some familiar tune. It took David just a few seconds to place it—“Yankee Doodle.” But it wasn't the music itself that he found most peculiar; it was that he recognized where it was coming from, that prerecorded jangling melody, incongruous in the middle of a December night.

“Oh,” Kathy said, sitting up in bed fully now. “That's eerie as hell.” Which meant she recognized it, too.

The music grew louder, louder, until it was right outside the house in the street. In the summertime, that jocular little melody would send the neighborhood kids flooding into Columbus Court, anxious for a Rocket Pop or an Italian ice. But now, in the dead of winter and in the middle of the night—David glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and saw that it was well after midnight—the sound of that tune unnerved him.

“That's the strangest damn thing,” he said, and climbed out of bed. He tugged on a pair of sweatpants and an undershirt, then went to one of the bedroom windows. He lifted the blinds and peered out into the night.

“What?” Kathy said.

“Yeah,” he said. “It's the freakin' ice cream man.”

Much of his view was blocked by the Walkers' house next door, but he was able to make out the rear bumper of the Freez-E-Friend ice cream truck with perfect clarity. It sat idling in the middle of the cul-de-sac, its tailpipe expelling clouds of vapor into the cold night air. The brake lights were on.

Kathy joined him at the window. “Is this some kind of joke?” she said, her breath fogging up the glass.

“Well, as far as jokes go, it's the creepiest one I've ever seen.”

“What's he doing?”

“Just sitting there, it looks like. I don't know. I can't really see.”

When he turned and headed out into the hall, Kathy said, “Where are you going?” There was a level of trepidation in his wife's voice he found strangely endearing.

“To go check it out.”

“Outside?” She said this with incredulity, as if he'd just suggested he walk blindfolded into traffic.

“Why not?”

“Because it's weird,” she said. “I don't like it.”

“It's fine. Just wait here.”

In the foyer, he shoved his feet into a pair of ratty moccasins, unlocked the front door, and, sans jacket, stepped out into the night.

It was bitterly cold, causing the sweat that still clung to his exposed flesh to freeze. From the front porch, he had a perfect view of the Freez-E-Friend truck, idling right there in the middle of Columbus Court. It was a quaint little cul-de-sac that served eight homes. The lampposts cast pale white light onto the white-paneled truck, giving it an otherworldly appearance. There were Christmas lights on all the houses, but at this hour, they had all been turned off. David hesitated for just a moment before stepping down off the porch, hearing Kathy's words echoing in his ears:
Because it's weird. I don't like it.
But then he was crossing the lawn and stepping down off the curb into the street, his shadow stretching disproportionately out in front of him in a halo of lamplight.

It was a typical ice cream truck, done up in white panels with decals of everyone's favorite flavors pasted onto the side. Cartoon clowns capered among the flavors, pulling cartwheels and somersaults. The truck's engine sounded like an uncooperative lawn mower, but it was barely audible over the sound of “Yankee Doodle” emanating from the roof-mounted speakers.

A figure sat behind the wheel—a dark form whose slouched silhouette suggested some level of distress, though David could not immediately identify why. Yet the sight of this figure caused him to pause once again. Despite the cold, he found he was suddenly perspiring.

Across the street, porch lights came on. Another light blinked on in Deke Carmody's front windows farther up the block. A second later, Deke was beneath the awning of his front porch, cinching a bulky white robe around his thick frame.

“What is it?” It was Tom Walker from next door, coming up beside David. “What's going on?”

David shook his head. “I have no idea.” Then he proceeded to walk around to the driver's side of the truck.

Tom Walker grabbed him by the bicep. David paused and looked at his neighbor, noting the dark, sunken, sleep-weary eyes, the stubble on Tom Walker's chin. In the cold light of the street lamps, Tom looked like the newly risen dead.

“What?” David said.

“Nothing,” Tom said, as if changing his mind, and released David's arm. Then he shook his head and uttered a nervous laugh. “I'm right behind you.”

Yet despite Tom's proclamation, David walked around the front of the truck by himself. Only when he passed in front of the truck's headlights, their startling white glow casting heat along the exposed flesh of David's arms, did he realize that he was suddenly vulnerable—that if the figure behind the wheel decided to floor the accelerator at that moment, he'd be a goner. Thinking this, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that there was a light on in one of the front windows of his own house. Kathy's silhouette stood behind the glass.

He crossed to the driver's side without incident. The truck's door was higher than a regular vehicle's, so David had to take a few steps back to see in the window. But even then, the window was rolled up, and there was nothing but glare from the streetlights at the opposite end of the court splashed across it.

“Hello?” he called to the driver. He waved his hands over his head, like someone signaling an aircraft.

Tom Walker came around the side of the truck. He looked spooked, his knobby knees poking from below a pair of lacrosse shorts, his big feet stuffed into what looked like his wife's fuzzy pink slippers.

“He's in there,” Tom said. “He's watching us.”

“He's not moving,” David said.

Deke Carmody materialized out of the darkness, his bald head gleaming in the lamplight. He was staring at the truck as if the thing were an alien spacecraft just descended from the sky. “It's friggin' one in the morning,” Deke said, as if this needed to be stated. “Somebody order some Rocky Road or what?”

And let's not forget that it's the dead of winter,
David thought, but did not add. Instead, he reached out—

“Hey, now,” Tom uttered.

—and popped the handle on the door. The door eased open, exposing the darkened cab and the oddly bent figure behind the steering wheel.

David took a step back. He couldn't make out the man's face, but from what he could tell, he was dressed in his starched white uniform and pin-striped apron. The Freez-E-Friend hat was perched on his head, a thing that always reminded David of an old milkman's hat. It was when the hat seemed to reposition itself in the darkness of the truck's interior that David realized the ice cream man had turned and was looking straight at him.

“Are you all right?” David called to the man over the din of “Yankee Doodle.”

The man inside the truck said nothing. A starched white knee came into the light, ghost-white, and David could see the man wore shiny white shoes, too.

He's in full uniform. Which means he must be a lunatic.
As if driving an ice cream truck around at night in the middle of winter wasn't enough proof of this.

The man's hand came up and brushed against the steering wheel column. David heard the jangling of keys. A moment later, both the truck's engine and the music died. The silence that replaced it was almost deafening.