It's Alive! (20 page)

Chris felt like an animal, excited, tense, watchful, scared. He crouched under a bush, trying to stem his breathing, his heart pumping wildly. So many policemen around. Why? Were they already looking for him?

He knew the ones on the corner had almost seen him. That was the worst part, the most difficult part, crossing the streets. He had made it three times. Just one more street to go.

A breeze rustled through the bushes and trees. Chris was glad. They wouldn’t notice his movements.

They shouldn’t be looking for him—it wasn’t wrong to be going home. But they might think it was. They wouldn’t hurt him, but they would stop him. They would take him back to Charley’s. Charley would be sad. He wouldn’t understand.

He liked Charley. Very much. He didn’t want to hurt him. He would explain it to him later. Or Dad would. Dad would understand, Dad always understood everything. Except now. Now Dad didn’t seem to want to talk to him, didn’t want to see him, didn’t want him to come home. Maybe Mom would. He hoped Mom would be happy to have him home.

Anyway, it wasn’t wrong to be going to his own home. He wouldn’t be doing it, if it was wrong.

Something
was
wrong, though. Something was so wrong that it forced him to climb out of the window at Charley’s and run to his own house. Forced him to. He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t figure it out, what made him do this. Just something he felt. Something pulled him. Like love, maybe. He was drawn by how much he loved Mom and Dad, and how much something didn’t seem right about them right now, something that scared him. He loved them so much that he started to cry, soundlessly, his tears rolling down his face and his neck, making the inside of his shirt wet. That’s all he knew.

The policeman walked by again on the sidewalk, jabbing the bushes with his nightstick, his partner a few steps behind. Chris cringed back, folding his arms tightly over his chest, holding his breath. The stick jabbed close to his head, and went away. The two policemen walked farther on.

He could follow the bushes along, for a while. Why did everybody have bushes around their houses? It was as if they wanted to help him. They wanted to give him a place to hide.

While he was trying to get home.

The policemen were gone. Chris slid along the base of the bushes and across more backyards. One more street to cross.

Frank stood just outside the nursery door, shaking, listening. Everything was quiet. Lenore had stopped laughing. The TV was off. He breathed deeply, silently, then shoved the door open.

A shaft of light from the hall cut across the crib. Frank slid in along the door. His feet hit toys. They were scattered all over the room.

He took a step toward the crib. It was still. Everything was quiet. He took another step. The light from the hall bathed only the crib, just like (the thought flitted blackly through his mind) the star of Bethlehem. Another step. He looked down at the crib.

Empty.

Naturally.

Lenore. Lenore had been in here, just as she had been in Chris’s room.
She
had messed up the toys. She’s on the ragged edge, Lenore is. She needs help.

God, if all this would only end, just be over, so he could get her out of here, get her some help, nurse her back. They would all be crazy soon.

He looked down at the crib. He was not checking on her. Not this time. He took the edge of the comforter in his fingers and pulled it back. Slowly he lowered the palm of his other hand. He flattened it on the sheet.

The sheet was warm.

It was not Lenore who had been in that crib.

The door slammed shut behind him.

He stood in the darkness. Terror crept up his legs, up his back, along his neck. He didn’t know if he could move. Or should. His leg took a step backward. His breath came in spasms. Then it stopped altogether.

He took another step back, then another. Against the wall. He slid his hand up the wall an inch at a time. The switch. He turned it on.

The room was empty. He was alone.

Lenore was alone too, downstairs.

But he couldn’t move. For a minute or two. He stood, seeing nothing, feeling nothing.

“LENORE!” he screamed. Then he could move.

Chris crawled forward on his hands and knees. He hoped he wouldn’t be punished for his pants. It didn’t matter. He was almost home. These were bushes he knew, played under when he wanted to be alone, to pretend.

The same police car, back and forth on the street. They couldn’t catch him now. They were too late. He was home. He could run to the house.

He sat back on his haunches, gathering his breath for the final sprint.

He scratched the ground with his hands. What was that? Something on the ground. He picked it up, brought it close to his face to see. Some kind of cloth. Torn. Like an old shirt.

He felt around. A pile of the stuff. Rags. Placed neatly, round, hollowed out in the middle. Like a nest.

He would have to find out who’d been messing around in his bushes.

He inched forward to the grass and looked out at the street. He could see the red taillights of the police car as it turned away around the corner.

Now would be good.

But Chris was smart. Already he had learned a lot. Across the street walked two policemen, jabbing their nightsticks into the bushes. They couldn’t fool Chris. He would wait until they all were gone.

He wouldn’t go for the front door—too easy to be seen. He wouldn’t go to the front at all. He’d go around to the back. Not to the back door. It’d be bolted from the inside. But to the cellar door, which had a padlock on it.

He would only have a few seconds, before the police came around again. But that’s all he needed.

Frank stumbled down the stairs and lurched through the living room. “Lenore!” She wasn’t there, or in the den.

He tore into the kitchen.

Lenore was pressing the hook closed on the cellar door. She spun toward Frank and leaned back heavily against the door.

“Lenore! Lenore!” He grabbed her in his arms. Then he held her away from him. “What were you doing down there?”

She smiled. “In the basement? Oh, just getting . . . a bottle of wine.”

“Where is it?”

“What?”

“The wine. You don’t have any wine.”

“Oh, well,” she again leaned against the door, casually, “I couldn’t find just what I wanted.”

He stared at her, panting, his lips quivering. “No.”

“No?”

“What were you doing down there?” He grabbed her and shook her shoulders. “You were down there before too. What were you doing, Lenore?”

She wrenched free, pushed him back, and threw her arms wide against the cellar door. Her eyes widened, she bared her teeth. “Go away! Leave us alone!”

“Who? You and Chris? WHO!” He grabbed her arm, twisted it fiercely.

“You’re hurting me.”

“WHO, GODDAM IT! WHO!”

Her chest heaved, her breath grated through her throat in a howl. “You know who! YOU KNOW!”

Chris watched the patrol car cruise by one more time, then lunged out of the bushes and raced across the yard, illuminated for a few feet by the streetlight.

Long enough for Charley to see him disappearing into the shadows to the rear of the house.

He careened his station wagon against the curb and tugged on the inside door handle. It wouldn’t move. He yanked on it. It broke off in his hand. He banged on the door with his shoulder. “Chris!” he hollered, the word resounding in his car.

Chris felt along the outside basement wall for the flowerpot, lifted it, scooped up the key, and probed for the hole in the padlock. He found it, turned the key in it to pop it open, and flipped the lock away. He pulled hard on the big door, lifting it slowly on its hinge. Slithering inside, he let the door close quietly down against his back.

He shivered in the dank cellar, standing on the stone steps for a moment to get his breath. Then he went down the steps and started across the cellar floor toward the sliver of light glowing under the kitchen door at the top of the stairs on the opposite side.

He groped along the familiar passage between the storage stacks, recognizing by touch his sled, his old stroller, the tall pile of old
Life
magazines, the fishing poles, the boxes of Salvation Army clothes.

He stopped.

Eyes. Large eyes looking at him. Across the cellar.

“Dad? Mom? Who is it?”

He was afraid, in a way. But not afraid. Something in the eyes made him not afraid. “Who is it? Biscuit?” They were not cat’s eyes. Large, round, like his own. “Who is it?”

He worked his way slowly toward the eyes, and heard a low whimpering. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.” The whimpering became a steadier cry, still low. “It’s okay.” He moved closer. It cried and sniffled.

Just a few feet away.

He peered through the darkness. His eyes were growing accustomed to it, his pupils widening like those in the eyes he was looking at. “It’s okay.”

He could see it now, dimly. He was not afraid. Not at all. Nothing like he had ever seen before. Or even dreamed. But it
was
a baby, and it didn’t scare him.

He reached out his hand. The crying stopped. It blinked. Slowly it too raised its hand—its strange, clawed hand—and reached out.