Expiration Date (12 page)

From behind a small forearm covered with light, downy hair, a tiny eye forced itself open. A beautiful green eye.

And then she screamed.

I tried shushing her, reassuring her, but it was too late. Her piercing cry traveled up the pipes, through the floorboards, through everything, and convinced Dennis Michael Vincent—who was probably already awake, sitting in his parents’ old king-sized bed on the second floor—that something was wrong. I heard his heavy footsteps clomping down a wooden staircase. He was coming down to check on his captive.

“Patty! Listen to me! You need to be quiet!”

Then he was right above us, almost tripping over the open trapdoor.

“The
hell
!?”

Years from now, the neighbors would come forward with all kinds of details. Like how they remembered Vincent putting out ten paper bags of dirt for each weekly garbage collection. Didn’t even dump the dirt in the backyard; he put it out for the trash guys to pick up. Neighbors would also remember hearing sawing and hammering—and, once in a while, screaming. But they just thought it was a cowboy or science fiction show on TV. Maybe a war picture. Nothing to worry about.

Couldn’t they hear Patty’s screams now? Why didn’t they pick up the telephone and call the police—if nothing else but to put their minds at ease?

There was a harsh, bright light from above as Vincent turned on a light in the laundry room. Instantly I felt like I was going to throw up. The light again. Light did not like me. I inched backwards, trying to tuck myself back into the shadows. Of all of the Achilles’ heels in the world to have, why did mine have to be the thing the planet is bathed in half the time? And could be summoned with the flick of a switch?

Two brown work boots landed on the dirt, along with two legs clad in muddy denim. Then his whole form crouched down. Dennis Michael Vincent was a tall man. Ruddy-cheeked, big-boned with sideburns gone wild. His eyes were too close together, like he’d grown up while the upper half of his face stayed frozen.

“Shhhh now little girl,” he said. “We talked about this now. You don’t want to get the belt again do you? You want me to bring the belt into the pit?”

I lunged at him.

It hurt like hell—my
other
bones colliding with his real ones. But I think it hurt Vincent, too. And confused him. He grunted and spun around, squinting into the near darkness. I hissed at him, trying to sound as monstrous as possible.

“Get out of here now.”

Let him worry. Let him freak. Let him run screaming from his own house. Maybe then the neighbors would do something.

“Who is that? What the—”

I didn’t know if he could hear me. I didn’t care. It made me feel good.

“I’m the Devil. I’m here for my daughter.”

I charged him again.

This time, though, Vincent managed to grab me for a few seconds—how, I have no idea. But the light from above burned my back. I felt like I was going to throw up and fry to death at the same time. I twisted and rolled across the dirt, hearing Patty’s screams and Vincent’s fevered grunts as he searched for whatever was attacking him.

The opposite corner of the pit was pitch dark. I crouched there for a moment, trying to catch my breath and fight the dizziness I was feeling. Not yet. I couldn’t wake up just yet. Just a little while longer. Just until she’s free.

“You’re doing that, aren’t you? You’re doing that, aren’t you, you little whore?”

Patty screamed, but the cry was broken in half, like she’d been throttled halfway through.

“You’re doing that because you’re the daughter of the Devil! You stop it! You stop it or I’ll use the belt on you until your bottom bleeds!”

There was a slap. I charged him again. I didn’t care if I burned alive down there. I needed this man to
stop hurting this child.

Vincent’s head struck pipe. There was a dull bonging sound and a second later he cried out in agony. Then he went scrambling up out of the pit. I grabbed a sheet from the kiddie mattress, draped it over my head and then climbed up into the laundry room, not stopping until I was safe in the darkness of the living room. He was in there, too. I could make out his dim form among the shadows, mouth agape, eyes bulging, trying to figure out what the hell was chasing him.

“I’m still here.”

I snarled, then smacked a lamp off a table.

Vincent screamed, stepped backwards.

I moved in closer, looking at his body, wondering where I could strike that would do the most damage.

“Go outside. Call to your neighbors for help. Tell them to send the police. Tell them the Devil has come for you.”

Vincent stumbled backwards until he bumped into his living room wall. He was panting. Shaking his head.

And then he reached over and flicked on the living room lights.

I threw my right arm up in the air. For a moment I must have looked like one of the scenes from 1950s movies about people caught in the flash of an H-bomb explosion. As if a forearm and bicep can hold back sheer atomic hell? I didn’t black out, but I think I stopped recording conscious memories, because the next thing I knew I was huddled beneath a coffee table. Vincent was taunting me:

“Devil don’t like the light, does he?”

My right arm was paralyzed by agony. Physical pain is one thing. As bad as it gets—like, say,
torture room
bad—you can always go into shock and retreat inside yourself. For whatever reason, this felt like
soul pain
…pain you couldn’t hide from,
ever.
So long as your soul exists.

I couldn’t take it anymore so I darted for the only available darkness—the kitchen. Then under the table. Sliding across the linoleum. Shaking badly. Ready to throw up and pass out.

“I’ll give you light, Devil!”

Another click. More light, all around me. Where the hell was I? Right. Kitchen. There was cool linoleum beneath my fingers—the remaining fingers of my left hand, that is. I didn’t know where my right hand was.

Two brown work boots appeared in front of me. The table above me began sliding to the left. Then two table legs lifted up from the floor. The shadow line raced toward me. And with it, a wave of murderous light. It was endgame time.

So I charged at the son of a bitch with all of my remaining strength.

Momentum propelled me forward, forward, forward. There was a crashing sound and I felt like I’d tumbled into a Black & Decker food processor. Skin, shredded; bones, ground to dust. Nerves, sliced open and prodded with hot needles.

But somehow I was still alive.

And in the cool, soothing darkness of night once again.

Dennis Michael Vincent lay next to me, gurgling, on the concrete path on the side of his house. We had gone through the kitchen window, and now pieces of glass were sticking out of his neck and forearms. Blood squirted from the right side of his throat in small, urgent beats. He moaned. Cursed the devil with the little bit of voice he had left.

There was a burst of yellow light to my right. The sound of a wooden door creaking open. A neighbor.

I crawled backwards until I felt a metal chain-link fence behind me. I tried to use it to stand up, but something weird was happening. I couldn’t seem to grab hold of anything. I heard a noise, then looked back at the house.

Patty Glenhart was standing on the back porch. She saw me. I guess only kids and psychos could see ghosts.

She screamed and turned and ran back into the house.

I glanced down at my right shoulder. My arm was completely gone.

The neighbors next door were calling out.
Is everybody okay? Does anyone need help?

Meanwhile, Dennis Michael Vincent choked on his own blood.

I tried to forget my missing arm and used the three fingers on my left hand to pull myself up the fence until I was standing. Then I staggered along the side of the house, completely thrown off-balance. I turned right and walked a block, trying to make it to Frankford Avenue before I passed out.

When I woke up Meghan was staring at me. She had a cell phone in her hand and a panicked expression on her face. I was on the floor, wrapped in Grandpop’s overcoat, his fedora still on my head.

“Christ, Mickey—are you awake?”

“Oh God.”

I groaned, then rolled over on my side, wondering what Meghan was doing here. Wondering how I was going to explain why I was dressed in a coat, hat and gloves on the floor on a sweltering June morning.

“Mickey! Come on, stop screwing around!”

My right arm was still attached to my body, but like the fingers on my left hand, it was completely numb. A useless slab of dead meat hanging from my shoulder. Fingers were one thing. A whole arm was something else.

The pain coursing through my body was unreal. It was like the flu on anabolic steroids.

“I’m one button away from 911 unless you tell me what’s going on. And this time, I’m going to make sure they pump your stomach.”

I looked at her. Swallowed.

“I’m not…I’m not on drugs. I swear. Just help me up and bring over my laptop.”

“What? Your laptop? Why?”

“It’s important.
Please.
”

Against her better judgment, Meghan put the phone down and helped me to the houndstooth couch, then grabbed my laptop from the cherrywood desk and put it on my lap. I used my three good fingers to pull it into a useful typing position.

“Hey—what’s wrong with your arm?”

“It’s numb. Hang on a minute.”

It was difficult to type with three fingers. I knew plenty of people got by with two, but you have to understand—I was hardwired to type with at least eight. (The pinky fingers usually sit out my work sessions, like foremen on a construction crew.) Using three was unnatural. Using three was like trying to put in a contact lens using my elbows.

“Want me to do that for you?”

“I got it.”

I hunt-and-pecked “Patty Glenhart” and looked for the entry I’d found earlier.

It was gone.

I tried searching for it a different way, going to the main page of the true-crime website (SinnersAndSadists.com, it was called—charming, huh?) and search by “W” and “P,” but there was no entry about a girl named Patty Glenhart.

Meghan touched my shoulder.

“What are you looking for?”

“Hopefully, something that isn’t there.”

It sounded absurd, but maybe I’d actually gone back and changed things. Maybe there was a little girl who was alive right now because I traveled back to the year 1972 and pushed a pedophile out of his kitchen window. I’d lost the use of my arm in the process, but that didn’t matter, because maybe, just maybe Patty Glenhart was alive and the bad dreams were behind her.

Meghan looked at me.

“You know, for someone who’s trying to convince me that they’re not on drugs, you’re doing a really awful job.”

“Swear to God, I’m not on drugs.”

“You’re talking gibberish. I found you on the floor, wrapped in an overcoat and wearing a hat. Your right arm is numb. Tell me which of these things does not say,
I’m having a lost weekend in the middle of the week.
What’s going on?”

There were a million reasons not to tell Meghan what was going on. The spiral of insanity I mentioned.

But I told her anyway.

After I’d finished laying it out for her—and I must have done a fairly good job, because she didn’t interrupt once—Meghan asked me if I wanted some Vitamin Water. I told her sure. She removed a plastic bottle from a paper bag she’d placed on the cherrywood desk, unscrewed it, then handed it to me. I was clever enough not to reach for it with my right hand. But not clever enough to realize that my three-finger grip on the bottle wouldn’t be enough. It slipped straight down, bouncing slightly on a couch cushion, and gushing pale purple liquid all over my lap.

“Gah!”

I lifted the laptop out of the way. It was a Mac relic, but it was also my only link to the outside world. That is to say, anyplace that wasn’t Frankford.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Meghan said, picking up the bottle and then darting across the room in search of a clean towel. Which she wouldn’t find, since I hadn’t done laundry since I’d moved in. There were two paper towels left on a roll that my grandpop must have purchased. She brought them over, started patting my lap.

“Dear Penthouse Letters. I swear this never happened to me before, but one night…”

Meghan shot me a sardonic grin. It was the first joke we’d shared in days, and it felt nice. She finished soaking up what she could, then balled up the paper towels and executed a perfect hook into the sink. Then she grabbed my knees and looked me dead in the eye.

“Here’s how this is going to work.”

“How
what
is going to—”

“Don’t interrupt me. I’m going to try to shoot holes in everything you’ve just told me. If it all holds up when we’re finished, then I’ll stay and we can talk through this. But if I get the slightest hint you’re messing with my head, or inventing some bullshit story because you’re out of your mind on drugs, then I’m gone.”

“Okay.”

“Last chance. You swear that everything you’ve told me is true?”

“Yes. To the best of my knowledge. Want me to put my numb right hand on a Bible?”

Meghan was her father’s daughter. She wasn’t a lawyer. In fact, I had no idea what she did for a living—if she made a living for herself at all. Our friendship had revolved around life in the Spruce Street apartment building, as well as its nearby bars and restaurants. But some of her father’s prosecutorial skills must have rubbed off on her, because she grilled me like a pro.

First, she demanded to see these “pills.” I told her to check the Tylenol bottle in the medicine cabinet. She found them, tapped one out into her hand. Examined it. Looked for a brand name, but couldn’t find one. They were smooth white capsules with only the dosage (250 mg) carved along one side.

She placed the pill in a small Ziploc baggie like she was preserving the chain of evidence.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“Don’t worry about it.”