Strange but True (46 page)

“You little prick,” he says and raises it above his head.

He's about to bring it down when Philip reaches back and grabs a handful of ashes from the fireplace, throwing them in the man's face. Erwin screams and presses his hands to his eyes, releasing the poker. It falls to the ground with a loud clank and Philip takes hold of it. There is no time for him to stand, so he swings with as much force as he can muster from his position on the floor. The hard iron of the poker cracks against the man's boots, right at the ankles, knocking him off his feet and sending him crashing facedown onto the coffee table. The hat and the phone go flying as the legs of the table buckle. Erwin lands among the pieces of broken wood.

Quickly, Philip stands. He brings the poker down upon the solid mass of the man's back, swinging once, twice, three times against his hulking frame. Each time Erwin releases another loud moan, but soon the moaning stops.

The room grows quiet.

In the sudden stillness, Philip finds it hard to breathe. His hands shake as he steps away from the broken table and Bill Erwin's body on the floor. He limps to the basement door and calls down to Gail. “If you can hear me, I'll be back for you. You're going to be okay. I promise.”

Philip grabs his cell phone among the rubble, dropping the poker. He walks unsteadily to the front door and steps out into the glaring light of this winter morning. His eyes have been in darkness for so long that he has to hold one hand to his forehead in order to see. He is not sure what to do next, so he staggers over to Melissa's house. The door is locked, so he bangs on it, still gasping for breath. As Philip waits for her to open up, he reaches down and presses the On button of his cell. His thumb is shaking, but he doesn't miss a single button when he presses 9–1–1.

“Melissa!” he calls, pounding his fist against the door as he waits for the call to go through.

Behind him, a voice says, “There's nobody home.”

Slowly, Philip turns and sees him: Bill Erwin standing outside the front door of his house, his shoulders slumped, his gray hair falling down in front of his haggard face, blood streaked across his chin and hands, down near the cuffs of his pants.

“This is the emergency operator, how can I help you?”

Philip's eyes go to the phone. He knows the police won't get here in time to save him, so he makes the impulsive decision to run as fast as he possibly can to the only place he thinks might be safe for a while. Philip goes toward the vacant house at the edge of the woods. When Bill sees where he is headed, he doesn't follow right away. Instead, he waits as Philip steps into the shadowy darkness of that abandoned cabin, slamming the door behind him.

“This is the emergency operator, how can I help you?”

Philip's hands quiver uncontrollably now. It is all he can do not to drop the phone as he lifts it to his ear. His voice is hoarse, his words come out clumped and broken, as he whispers, “I. Am at Thirty-two. Monk's Hill. Road. In Radnor Pennsylvania. Someone is trying to kill me.”

The operator says she is notifying the local police department, but she needs him to stay on the line and give her more information. Philip repeats the address. He tells her that someone has already been badly injured. A woman. Gail Erwin. It's her husband who is after Philip now. The operator continues to question him, urging Philip to stay on the line, but he presses the Off button. Philip stands by the door, listening for Erwin's footsteps outside. The only sound to be heard comes from those snapping sheets of plastic. He looks around him and sees that the layout of this house is almost identical to Melissa's. But here the peeling walls are covered with graffiti. The ceiling sags so much that it looks as though it might give way any minute. And there, in the center of the room, he sees an enormous hole in the floor where it must have collapsed.

Philip takes a step closer to the edge of that gaping hole, peering down into the absolute darkness of the crawlspace below. Something about the black void down there sends a violent shudder through his body. Slowly, he steps away. With his back to the window, he waits. Staring at the door. Not knowing what he will do when Erwin steps through it. But just then the wide metal end of a shovel slams through the plastic behind him. In an instant, the room goes from darkness to light. Philip whirls around and sees Bill Erwin on the other side. The man reaches in and swings the shovel like a baseball bat, slicing the air in front of Philip's face. When he swings again, Philip takes a step backward. As he does, the boards by the edge of that crater in the floor give way and he drops three feet into the crawlspace below.

Now that the cabin is filled with light, Philip can see the dirt and rocks around him. And that's when he spots them: two empty holes, the perfect size for human bodies, to each side of where he landed on his back against the cold hard earth.

Put them with the others
…

Above him, he hears the door creak open. Philip remembers that screwdriver tucked in his cast just in case. He reaches down and grips the ridged plastic handle, staring up at the tattered sheets of plastic hanging by the window, as the footsteps get closer and closer. The instant Erwin's shadow eclipses the hole in the floor Philip hears their voices.

“Philip!”

It is his mother outside.

“Philip!”

Though it cannot be, he thinks he hears his father too.

“I'm down here!” he screams.

And then comes the faintest of sirens. The sounds cause Bill Erwin to drop the shovel. He turns and his footsteps slam through the doorway. As the high-pitched wail grows louder in the distance, so do the voices of Philip's parents. Again Philip calls, “I'm down here!” Instead of waiting for them to find him, he struggles to a standing position, leveraging his aching body against the rotted floorboards and lifting himself out of that hole. A moment later, he limps outside to see his mother and father coming around the back of Melissa's house. “I'm here,” he calls out, though his mother has already spotted him. She rushes across the yard and wraps both her arms around Philip with so much force and love that she just about knocks him down again. His father does the same.

“You're alive,” Charlene says in a breathless voice into his ear, stroking his hair the way she used to do those long-ago days at the airfield. “I'm so happy you're alive.”

As she repeats those words again and again, Philip squeezes both his parents tight. He gazes over their shoulders at a faint but certain trail of blood leading off into the woods. The sirens grow louder still, and Philip turns his eyes upward toward the spindly treetops. The branches are empty. Those birds—those strange dark birds—have all flown away.

Before
Boy Still Missing
was published, another novelist told me that he always found it best to begin a new book before the current one came out. I took that advice and started writing immediately. Two years later, the story was nearly done, but it hadn't come together as I had hoped. Then, on a rainy April night, I was riding the subway home from work when the idea for
Strange but True
came to me. The moment I got to my apartment, I began writing in longhand, and in three weeks I produced a very rough draft on twenty-three pads of paper. I spent the rest of the spring, summer, and fall transcribing, rewriting, and revising, telling almost no one what I was up to.

The morning the book was due, I arrived at my editor's office with the manuscript in hand and the feeling that it might have been slightly more professional to let her know sooner that I had put aside the novel I was under contract to write. So at the top of my list of thank-yous is my editor, Carolyn Marino—first for not throwing me out of her office that day; second for responding passionately to this story and caring so deeply for these characters that I sprang on her without warning. Her careful editing of this story helped more than I can ever say. I am also grateful to the rest of the gang at William Morrow/HarperCollins, especially Michael Morrison, Lisa Gallagher, Sharyn Rosenblum, Debbie Stier, Jennifer Civiletto, Jane Friedman, Cathy Hemming, Julia Bannon, Sam Hagerbaumer, and Michele Corallo, who all treat me with such kindness and make the publishing process fun.

I am forever indebted to my incredible agent, Joanna Pulcini, who works tirelessly on my behalf, reads draft after draft of my work with great care, and laughs with me along the way. On the foreign front, I am doubly blessed to have Linda Michaels and Teresa Cavanaugh taking on the world for me. On the film front, I am triply blessed to have the amazing Daryl Roth in my life, plus Matthew Schneider at CAA, and now Ross Katz too.

At
Cosmopolitan
, Kate White is a dear friend and fellow writer who offers me unending encouragement and support.

Alison Kolani read too many drafts of this story to count, and I owe her a gift certificate to every spa in the city.

For the help with Philip's Spanish, I thank all the many dishwashers I've worked with over the years who taught me everything I know. Plus, Ann Luster, who was unfazed by the nasty e-mails I sent her, and John Hansen, who double-checked my dirty work.

There have been so many others who have read, commented, given me a place to write, or simply cheered me on over the years, and I owe each of them a huge heartfelt thanks: Betty Kelly, Susan Segrest, Alysa Wakin, Stacy Sheehan, Elizabeth Barnes, Amy Chiaro, Patricia Burke, Jan Bronson, Linda Chester, Gary Jaffe, Colleen Curtis, Carol Story, Andrea Sachs, Atoosa Rubenstein, Sara Nelson, Alison Brower, Amy Salit, Dawn Raffel, Chris Bohjalian, Wally Lamb, Frank McCourt, Terrence McNally, Adriana Trigiani, Melise Rose, Vivian Shipley, Richard and Linda Warren, Abigail Greene, Michele Promaulayko, Isabel Burton, Esther Crain, Jenny Benjamin, Sara Bodnar, Pat Cliff from Blue Heron Books in Key West, Rob Carlson, and the Caruso family—Birute, Mario, Paul, and Yanna—who never mind when I sneak away at family gatherings to write.

And, of course, I need to give my family the biggest thanks of all: my mom, my dad, my sister, Keri, my brother, Raymond, and Grandma Dottie too.

Finally, there are those two friends with the baby at Aggie's so many years ago—they were special to me too.

“This novel belongs to the
That Terrible Night
storytelling genre. It begins with the memory of a calamity, but the author, John Searles, is determined to keep the details shrouded in mystery. Searles's chain-of-events approach to narrative is so linear that one missing sock in a laundry basket can lead, step by inexorable step, to the revelation of old secret crimes. And then it leads to new ones… The author's omniscience is used to intriguing effect, especially in the book's early stages. Information has been shuffled and withheld in ways that coax this novel along. Personal histories that seem to make sense are powerfully altered each time a disturbing new fact emerges. Searles ends on a note of furious action and redemption… You'll race right through it.”

—Janet Maslin,
New York Times

“Part thriller, part mystery, and part coming-of-age fable, this story of a high school quarterback's tragic death—and a most unlikely pregnancy—will hold you transfixed… The characters are vividly alive… Searles writes with clear, efficient prose…
Strange but True
is like a carefully ordered set of snapshots, depicting what the characters' lives were like before the watershed moment of Ronnie's death, and what has become of them since that awful night… I felt powerless to put this book down.”

—
Salon.com

“
Strange but True
is an imaginative and compelling novel about lives splintered by tragedy and relationships corroded by secrets; with vital prose, dark humor, and taut suspense, John Searles has created a novel that is sometimes eerie, sometimes thrilling, and always completely engaging.”

— Carolyn Parkhurst, bestselling author of
The Dogs of Babel

“The emotions ring true on every page. These are living, breathing characters, and John Searles's novel illuminates the intricate dynamics of families with humor, heart, and truth.”

—Augusten Burroughs,
bestselling author of
Running with Scissors
and
Dry

“[A] poignant second novel… As Philip [Chase] and his mother exchange barbs in a vitriolic one-upmanship worthy of Eugene O'Neill's family in
Long Day's Journey into Night
, we're led on a serpentine path to find out the origins of birth. Searles's portrayal of a family in collective emotional agony is spellbinding. He manages to insinuate his way into their minds and push from inside—causing their fears and loneliness to float to the surface.”

— BookPage

“
Strange but True
is the absolute best novel I've read in a long, long time. Part psychological suspense, part character study, and all beautifully written, this is a page-turner with characters you can never forget.”

— Lisa Scottoline, bestselling author of
Killer Smile

“Crisp, clear prose and shifting perspectives take us into the minds and motivations of the characters… A compulsively readable exploration of the ways in which lives can pivot on one horrible occurrence.”

— Booklist

“
Strange but True
is a mysterious and suspenseful novel about family and redemption … crammed with regret and mystery and intrigue and suspense. There are plenty of references to popular culture and flashes of humor—an odd New York apartment shared with a snake and a mynah bird that demands the occasional martini.”

—
Portland Press Herald

“Funny, mysterious, and poignant, with just enough despair to make the path of redemption open wide, John Searles has created a novel to reread and treasure. This story is filled with the angst of what might have been, the ache of true love and the terror of loss. This is a genuine page-turner written so beautifully, you never want it to end.”