The Orphan (8 page)

Beyond the woman, the male one was drawing a triangle inside the circle, and then more lines, and Geri’s first thought was a peace sign, or maybe the Star of David. When he finished she realized it was neither of those things.

It was one of those hex thingies. A pentagram.

Geri began to tremble violently. She backed deeper into the kitchen, until she was wedged beside the fridge, at the counter’s elbow.

The man stood and stared at her. The woman was an arm’s length away, also staring at her.

‘I don’t understand,’ Geri said. ‘I don’t know what you want. There’s no one here named Adam.’

The tall one put away his shoe-shine kit and was now coming around the other side of the island, looking at the floor, the counter, the chairs, and his face was twitching. The mashed stub of nose was stretching, wiggling. Was he sniffing? Can regular people do that?

What scent was he after? Adam’s?

Upstairs the shower continued to run. It seemed that her husband had been in there for hours. Geri had to make a decision now. She could scream again. She could run, try to break her way past them and make it up the stairs before they caught her. Or she could snatch up a weapon and try to beat them back. She didn’t think screaming would help. And they probably wouldn’t let her run through them.

She glanced toward the stove, where she kept a tall masonry jar filled with cooking utensils, and she took a speedy inventory: wooden spoons, potato masher, a clawed pasta server made of plastic… no knives. The knives were in the drawer over by the toaster oven, too close to the tall one for her to reach.

She tried to gauge their movements while keeping her eyes averted, for it was hard to look at them and on a subconscious level she was trying to display a manner of submission. Not provoke them.

‘Mom, what the hell is —’ Josh said, hurrying around the corner from the hall into the kitchen. Her son had pulled on a pair of jeans, no shirt, and his face was flushed with concern. He knew there was trouble but not how much, and he hadn’t brought a weapon. He was moving fast and he wasn’t a big kid and he wasn’t in good shape, but he was still much leaner and faster than his mother.

‘Josh, no!’ she barked. ‘Stay away, go get your dad —’

But her warning came too late. Josh was already standing between them, not hearing her. He was too shocked by the sight of them.

‘What the fuck!’ he shouted at them. ‘What the fuck!’

They weren’t fast, but that didn’t matter, because they had prepared. The man reached into his back pocket again and coolly produced a long plastic cord looped back on itself like a lasso. He went two steps and tossed the hoop at Josh. The thin band fell around Josh’s collarbones and there was a sickening
zzzzziiiiiippp
.

Josh’s hands flew to his neck but the cord was already sinking into his flesh and his face reddened in seconds.

Geri screamed and threw herself at her son, only vaguely aware that the two of them were falling into the black circle on the floor, inside the pentagram.

Upstairs, the shower turned off.

Down here, the ceremony began.

After recoiling from the chaos of screams and heavy concussions on the floor above, a destructive rage that seemed would never end, Adam’s paralysis broke. He could no longer remain in hiding, hunched into a ball under the sheet behind the water heater, his mind furnishing itself with horrors he could hear but not see.

Trembling so violently he thought he would vomit, he pulled on his damp clothes as fast as he could, fingers slipping on the buttons of his jeans and the laces of his shoes. He didn’t have time to put on his socks. He bit his lower lip to keep from crying out but he was crying anyway.

He was responsible for this. He had led them here. Because he had chosen to hide in this random house, innocent strangers had been killed, or were being killed at this very moment. But he couldn’t dwell on that now. He had to escape before they got him too. Cinching the straps of his backpack tight, he slipped into the basement’s rec room and considered his options.

If he stayed down here they would search the house, sniffing him out until they trapped him and killed him. The stairway leading up to the first floor was out of the question – it would land him in the killers’ path. If he exited the sliding door he had come through, he would appear somewhere in the backyard and they might see him fleeing on foot. He thought of wrapping one of the towels around his fist to punch his way through another of the basement windows, escaping through a window well or some such, but he feared the sound of shattering glass would only draw their attention.

Above him, the sound of a door slamming echoed down. Another, and then another. Adam knew they were going room to room now, searching for him.

The backyard, then. Same way he came in. He looked across the billiard table, to the rack of cue sticks on the wall. He thought of taking one to use as a spear or a club. But he discarded this option out of fear the long stick would only slow him down.

He remembered the butterfly knife and slung off his backpack, intending to carry it with him as he ran. His fingers were shaking too severely to open the drawstring top.

Lumbering footsteps sounded above, changing in pitch the way they do on stairs. For a moment they sounded like they were descending into the basement, and whether that was true or not he couldn’t stay in this house another second.

Adam trusted his feet more than the knife. He donned his pack, yanked the sliding glass door open and dashed across the lawn, never looking back.

He ran for a long time.

Beth Lynwood pulled the blinds to dim the encroaching sunlight, then returned to her daughter’s bedside. She leaned down and kissed Raya’s hair, noting how it had been darkening from golden blonde to honey brown into her teens, as if the hair were trying to warn her that her daughter was changing, shedding the last light of girlhood. Even so, the scare Raya experienced earlier had temporarily reduced her in a way, offering Beth another chance to soothe her like she used to, when the girl was still just a little girl.

‘I love you, Ra-rah,’ Beth whispered, using Raya’s name for herself when she had been too young to pronounce it correctly.

‘Love you too. Wake me up soon,’ Raya mumbled without opening her eyes.

‘Just sleep. No one cares about the last day of school. You said so yourself.’

Raya offered her a faint smile, and Beth hoped it was a sign that she was already letting go of the… event. She didn’t know what else to call it. Between Darren’s increasingly frequent late-night wanderings and Raya claiming to have received a series of threatening texts, Beth was beginning to wonder if they were coming down with a case of late spring fever. Hormones and Chad might explain part of Raya’s hysteria or nightmares, but what about Darren? What was his excuse for being out of bed until sunrise?

She went into the kitchen to make coffee and thought about pregnancy, children and their parents. Raya had come early, easily, and unexpectedly, when she and Darren were still just twenty-five and living in their first house, the one he had purchased with a down payment from the trust his father had set up, which was really an early inheritance in disguise. Andrew and Eloise had borne Darren late in their own life, when Eloise was forty-two, his father in his mid-fifties. Andrew had suffered a heart attack and passed away when Darren was not yet finished with college. A meticulous man who had kept his affairs in order, and a husband who had not wanted to burden Eloise with financial management, something she’d never showed an interest in, Darren’s father had established individual trusts for the two of them.

Eloise had spent the following fifteen years leading an active life, never remarrying but traveling with friends, taking dancing lessons, volunteering with the church, and all manner of other things to keep her busy until her health declined. She was still alive but Beth knew she would not be for long. She was eighty-five and succumbing to Alzheimer’s.

As for Darren, Beth had been impressed when she met him. He studied without the benefit of self-mercy, rarely drank, never took drugs, and at the tender age of twenty he had big plans. Instead of blowing his inheritance on drugs and parties and cars, like so many college kids might have, he had invested it in a strip mall located in a rough but improving neighborhood on the east side of Milwaukee. Later, when he left the ad firm and struck out to launch his first company, his eighty-hour work weeks and entrepreneurial plans put their plans for a second child on hold.

They started trying again when Raya was three, and this time it became much more of a struggle. Neither Beth nor Darren had any unusual medical conditions thwarting their efforts, but after eighteen months they lost their enthusiasm. Darren was busier than ever with work and Beth was fulfilled with Raya. Darren joked about needing a son so he would have someone who would sympathize with him when Raya was a teenager and the household was ruled by girls, but Beth had never sensed any real resentment or disappointment in her husband. By the time Raya was seven, they stopped discussing the possibility of a second child and let nature take its course, or not, with respect to matters in the bedroom. Nature had declined.

But she had never stopped wondering if Darren still longed for a son, if the old jokes weren’t more than jokes. Why else the bike collection? Or, more precisely, his love of his own boyhood, and childhood in general, a love which had spawned his obsessive collection. Or was it the other way around? She could never tell if The Totally Radical Sickness collection was the result of his obsession and nostalgia, or the source. The addiction or the drug itself.

Either way, his connection to his youth was almost magically pure, sometimes startlingly alive. The fact that he had built a shrine to it – the shop standing in their backyard – had rendered his past a tangible thing, even for Beth.

Poor Raya. Between the ages of nine and twelve, a period as close to a true tomboy phase as she would ever have, she’d tried to get into BMX. Going out for rides with him, spending time in the garage working on bikes, trying to learn how to lace a rim with new spokes, opening herself to the enchantment these bikes cast over her father. But, patient as Darren was with her, and grateful for her effort, he could never keep her interested for more than a few summer days when she was bored. When Raya broke her collarbone one day at the dirt park, her interest in BMX came to an end.

Well, too late now. They weren’t going to try for another in hopes of having a boy this time. If that was what he needed, he’d have to find another remedy for the Radical Sickness. Perhaps he already had.

‘We should take a vacation,’ Beth said from the kitchen, filling a cup of coffee before joining Darren in the great room. He was slouched down in the corner of the leather sofa, a fleece jacket zipped to the throat like a child’s jumper, picking at the bandage on his thumb. Was he shivering? She sat in one of the leather armchairs, sipping the hot Guatemalan blend. ‘I’m serious, by the way. In case you’re listening.’

‘Where would you like to go?’ Darren said, distracted, eyes punchy.

‘Mexico. Hawaii. DIA has non-stops to Costa Rica. Did you know that?’

‘What’s in Costa Rica?’ he said, still avoiding eye contact. She followed his gaze across the room, to the sliding glass door, and she knew he was thinking of the shop again. His damn bikes, or whatever else was out there keeping him up all night.

‘Volcanoes, rainforest, beaches. Who cares? As long as we get out of the house for a week or two.’

‘Raya just had spring break. She has the whole summer ahead.’

‘Lotta good it did her.’

He faced her, nodding tightly. ‘I’m worried about her too.’

‘I’m thinking of finding someone for her to talk to.’

‘She talks to us,’ he said.

‘But we don’t know what’s going on with her. That’s the point.’

He seemed to consider it for a moment. ‘I don’t know that the problem is Raya.’

‘You heard her description of those texts, the boy’s laughter at the end. She said she felt watched, like someone was here. But you checked the alarm yourself and there were no texts on her phone. Why would a boy break into our house, and what else could it be if not her imagination getting the better of her?’

‘It was four in the morning,’ Darren said. ‘Maybe she had a nightmare.’ But he didn’t sound like he believed that anymore than she did.

‘I asked her. She wasn’t sleeping. She was up texting Chad.’

‘Like I said. A nightmare.’

‘Oh, stop. He’s a good kid. And more importantly, she’s a good kid. She knows how to take care of herself.’

‘Good. Glad you have that under control. I’ll know who to come to when he gets drunk and cheats on her.’

Beth set down her coffee. ‘Is that what’s bothering you? Chad? Somehow I don’t think Chad is responsible for your insomnia, or that bandage on your hand.’

Darren shot her a look of warning.

She shot him one right back. ‘You think I didn’t notice? At least twice last week. It used to be an hour or two. Now it’s all night. I don’t always hear you get up, but I always know when you come back.’

Darren sipped his coffee, winced.

‘You were out there until seven in the morning, Darren. What time did you leave? Tell me the truth.’

‘A little after one.’

‘Six hours,’ Beth said. ‘Are you avoiding me?’

‘No, Beth, that’s not —’

‘Are we girls driving you batty around the house? You’ve been running a company for the past fifteen years, now all the sudden you’re stuck with us. You can tell me. If that’s the case, I get it, I just want us to be honest here.’

He was shaking his head. He looked at her warmly. ‘Honey, the fact that I’ve even given you reason to ask that makes me feel horrible. I love spending time with both of you. You can’t even begin to understand how much I missed the two of you all those late nights, the weekends on business trips. I’m not avoiding you, okay? I promise you that.’

She believed him. ‘Then what is it?’

‘It sounds so stupid, but…’

‘It’s not.’

‘The nightmares,’ he said with a sigh. ‘They’re worse than ever.’

‘Is it still the same version? The fire?’

When he looked at her, she almost didn’t recognize his expression, it was such a rare one for him. He was genuinely scared.

‘Oh, honey. Hey. You’re really rattled by this thing. Okay, let’s talk about it.’

‘Here we go,’ he said.

‘Is it the dream itself or the number of them that’s spooking you?’

‘Both, I guess. It’s the same as before. I’m trapped, I smell smoke, I can hear the flames coming closer. I don’t know if it’s this house but it’s our house. There’s just this roar all around, everything’s burning, and I always know when I’m struggling, near the end, that’s it’s too late.’

‘You’re going to die in the fire? Is that —’

‘No. Too late for you and Raya. It’s already gotten both of you. I can hear you screaming, dying like something in a gas chamber.’

‘God, that’s really awful.’

‘What’s worse is, it doesn’t feel like a dream,’ Darren said.

‘They never do when you’re in them.’

‘No, this is different. When I wake up and realize it’s not real, I’m still convinced it is, or it’s going to be. Almost like I can feel it coming. I realize it sounds crazy, but I believe it’s going to happen. I really do.’

‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘It’s not going to happen. You checked all the fire alarms. Now you’ve got me on high alert. We’re careful. The house was inspected when we bought it, the guy said the electrical would last another twenty years. There isn’t going to be a fire. This isn’t about a fire, anyway.’

‘Then what’s it about?’

Beth took a moment to gather herself. She didn’t want to upset him more by suggesting he was the one who needed psychological counseling. She tried to think of anything he’d been through, recent stress or some trauma that would inspire such nightmares, but nothing came to her. Not recently. But the past…

She looked up at him. ‘Unless… were you ever in a fire?’

‘What?’

‘No, really.’ She softened her tone, easing him toward the possibility. ‘I mean, what if you were? In a fire. When you were young? Any close calls? Maybe someone you knew was in a fire? Lost a friend, an ex-girlfriend, anybody?’

He looked at her like she was crazy.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Pretty sure I would remember being in a fire, Beth.’

‘Anyone in your family?’

Darren scoffed. ‘You’re not hearing me. No, I’ve never been in a fire, not like this, okay? I’m alive, sitting here with you. I’m not burned up like charcoal, am I, which is exactly what happens in the dream. There’s nothing like it, you have no idea.’

‘Okay, okay. Sorry. But then, what are we missing?’

He opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind and went in another direction. ‘This thing tonight, it got me thinking. Have you ever noticed anything funny about Raya’s little hunches?’

‘What do your dreams have to do with Raya?’

‘Just think about it. Our daughter gets hunches, and it seems to me, pretty often they come true, or close enough. What do you make of that?’

‘Everyone has hunches. Does Raya have different hunches?’

‘That thing with your car,’ he said. ‘When you had the flat tire, lost your phone?’

‘What about it?’

‘Raya sort of predicted that.’

‘Coincidence,’ she said too quickly, then realized she sounded defensive. ‘At the time, yeah, maybe it was a little eerie, but all in all not that difficult to put together. Mom leaves, Mom’s late coming back from the store, what else would she think besides I had car trouble?’

‘Maybe,’ Darren said. ‘But there have been other incidents.’

Beth was about to argue otherwise until she remembered their first trip out to Boulder two years ago, when they decided to fly out together to spend the weekend touring the town Darren had grown up in. He’d stayed back in Milwaukee wrapping up the deal to sell Revolver, and it had been just the girls. Sitting in General Mitchell International waiting to board the Frontier flight, Raya had turned to Beth out of the blue and said, ‘I betcha twenty dollars it snows while we’re in Boulder.’

Colorado was famous for its snow, especially along the Foothills where severe weather changes came over the mountains with alarming lack of notice. Still, Beth had dismissed the notion because this was late August and Wisconsin, a colder state than Colorado, was at that moment basking in a heat wave. Temperatures had reached almost ninety and there hadn’t been any precipitation for weeks. Their lawn at home was burned brown, dead for the season.

‘No way,’ Beth told her.

‘Afraid you’ll lose?’

‘I don’t want to take your money, sweetie. And since when did you become a gambler?’

‘It’s going to snow. I can feel it.’

Beth had refused the bet, but sure enough, that night the temperatures dropped sharply and Boulder got its first snow of the fall season. Fat wet flakes, two inches that melted as fast as it fell, but snow nonetheless. Raya nagged her about it all the next day, until Beth begrudgingly handed her a twenty just to shut her up.

‘The snow thing, here, on our trip,’ she said, her mind already racing for more of Raya’s hunches that had proved correct. ‘She was so sure, she wanted to bet on it.’

Darren said, ‘She sees me storming around the house looking for my keys or my phone, she blurts it out and ninety per cent of the time she’s right. My keys are right where she said they’d be.’

‘She’s intelligent,’ Beth said. ‘She notices everything.’

‘She knows when Chad’s about to call. You’re telling me you never noticed that one? She’s a regular radar dish when it comes to Chad.’