The Lost (11 page)

Claire and Peter are already jogging toward the house. I lag behind as they veer left at the porch and circle the house. In the backyard, there’s a barbecue grill on the patio and a swing set with three faded plastic swings and a slide.

Even in the wind, the swings don’t move.

I feel goose bumps prickle up and down my arms, even though the air is as hot as someone’s breath. Weeks, months, or years ago, a family had a barbecue here. Kids swung on the swings, played catch, chased each other around, while the adults gossiped and ate burnt burgers and drank lukewarm beers that had been sitting in the sun. I don’t know how they lost their house, or why they left their things behind. But I decide that abandoned playgrounds score high for spookiness, even considering the fierce competition in this place for Most Spooky. I hurry after Peter and Claire.

The sliding glass door on the back patio is broken. Peter steps over the shards and ducks through the hole. His coat brushes against the broken edges but doesn’t catch. Claire shoots looks left and right and then darts through the hole in the door. I hesitate for a moment, but then the wind blows harder and one of the swings squeaks as it swings back and forth, as if a ghost child were pumping her legs. I step over the broken glass into the house.

“Don’t look at the couch,” Peter says.

Of course, I look at the couch.

And I scream.

There’s a dead man, white T-shirt, briefs, stomach exposed with hair curled around his belly button. He has a rifle in one hand, resting against the couch. His other hand is coated in reddish-brown. It rests over a stain of more red-brown-rust...blood. Oh, God, he’s covered in dried blood. His eyes are open and sightless.

Peter claps his hand over my mouth. “Shh.” His breath is warm and soft as a feather against my ear. I feel my body shake. He holds me tight against him, stilling me. His warmth comforts me, even if I shouldn’t feel comforted looking at a dead man. Peter lowers his hand. “Food will be in the kitchen.”

I’m not screaming anymore. I force myself to stop looking. “We should...” I try to think. I can’t think. There’s a dead man on the couch. What do you do when there’s a dead man on a couch? “Call the police.” Yes, that’s it. I feel as though I have had an epiphany, the thoughts stirring up through the murk of my mind. “Get out and call the police. We don’t know...who did this. Or why. Or if they’re still here.”

“Hence the ‘shh.’ Come on.”

He tugs my arm, and I follow him numbly through the house. I think the death must be recent, or the house would smell. Oh, God, what a horrible practical thought: the smell. But the house only smells a little like Lysol, a little like potato chips.

Claire is already in the kitchen, standing on a stool, an array of food spread out on the counter in front of her: cans of tomato sauce, black beans, peas, tuna fish. There’s a box of Uncle Ben’s rice. “Jackpot!” she crows.

I feel stuck in the doorway. “Shh!” To Peter, I say, “Does she know? Did she see?”

Claire looks up from her treasures. “It’s been more than a few hours but not more than a day. You can tell because the blood has dried but it doesn’t stink yet.”

She sounds so nonchalant that I can’t even process her words. “But there could be... Whoever killed...” The words feel caught in my throat. I go back to the first thing I said. “We need to call the police.”

“There aren’t any,” Claire says.

“But the killer...”

“Probably isn’t lost, either,” she says.

“How do you know?”

“No one can leave without the Missing Man,” Claire says as if this is a perfectly clear explanation. “If that man had been killed in Lost, he wouldn’t be only a dead body. He’d still be here. And he wouldn’t like us taking his stuff. So someone must have killed him somewhere else and then lost the body. Silly thing to lose.” She opens another cabinet. “Ooh, raisins!”

“You mean...you can’t
die
here?”

“Noo.” Claire rolls her eyes. “Of course you can die. You just can’t
leave.
Not without the Missing Man.” She enunciates each word, as if I’m hard of hearing. “If you die here, you can’t ever go back to the world. You can only go...wherever dead people go. Also, I’m told that it hurts a lot. Other than that, it’s kind of hard to tell the dead people from the not-dead people.”

Peter swings open the refrigerator and begins tossing out items. Salsa. Ketchup. Containers of Chinese food. “Fetch a bag, newbie.”

Mechanically, I check a few drawers. Under the sink I find a box of trashbags, the sturdy black kind. I pull out one, and Claire and Peter begin stuffing it with their finds. I feel numb.

“Can we leave now?” I ask.

“You don’t want to check the bathroom? Toothpaste? Mouthwash? Shampoo?” Peter asks. “Rare to find a recent, intact house like this. Usually they’re empty or old.”

“I don’t want to use a dead man’s toothpaste.”

Claire tilts her head quizzically. It’s an endearing expression. It would be even cuter if we weren’t talking about a dead man. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”

“Please, let’s leave. I promise I’ll...loot another house more successfully.”

Claire and Peter exchange glances. He shrugs and then hefts the garbage bag over his shoulder. “Your loss.” He walks past me back into the living room...back where the dead man is.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?” I trail after him. “My ‘loss’?” Claire scampers past me. I try not to look at the man on the couch, and I climb through the hole in the glass door and then nearly bump into Peter’s back. He spins, grabs my arm, and forces me down.

We crouch on the patio behind the barbecue. Beyond the swing set, three teenagers laugh and shove each other as they saunter by. They’re dressed in cut-up camouflage jackets and pants, covered in safety pins and buttons. One of them has a tinfoil crown on his head. Another has a shotgun casually over his shoulder. I think of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan. But older. Scarier. And not friends with my Peter.

I don’t scream. I don’t breathe.

One of them points to the house. There’s laughter. I imagine them laughing as they shot the man on the couch. The one with the shotgun swings it into position. He tilts his head to line up a shot, and he squeezes the trigger.

Behind us, the bathroom window explodes.

I bite my sleeve to keep from screaming.

The boy then saunters on as his friends joke and point out his next shot, a mailbox farther away. He shoots that, too, the echo of the shot reverberating across my skin, or maybe it’s just that I’m shaking and can’t seem to stop.

We wait until we can’t hear them anymore, and then we creep across the lawn and away from the house. Loudly, far more loudly than I’d like, Peter says, “Well, that was a productive stop. Still need breakfast food, though. Ready for our next target?”

He sounds so cheery. I point behind us. “There’s a dead man back there.”

He pauses, puts down the trash bag, and puts his hands on my shoulders. I feel the strength in his hands. I don’t know how his hands continue to have such calming power. It’s as if he’s cupped his hands around my heart, soothing it. “You can’t save everyone. Consider that your next lesson. That man died before he came here.” He’s earnest in a way I’ve never seen him, eyes intent on mine. I imagine I see a flicker of...what? Sadness? All the childlike play is gone, and I see a man who looks as though he’s lost more than I can imagine.

“How do you know? Those kids had guns. They could have—”

Claire answers. “If he’d died here without the Missing Man, he wouldn’t have been able to leave.” She mimes a bird flying away with her hands.

I try to make sense of that statement, turn it around in my head, twist it upside down and sideways as if it were a Rubik’s Cube that will resolve itself if I turn the sides correctly. It matches what she said earlier about the man’s death, but it still doesn’t make sense. If Claire is telling the truth...even death isn’t an escape from this place. “I don’t—”

“And now we hide again.” Peter yanks my arm and pulls me behind the nearest junk pile. We crouch while Claire scampers silently to the top of the heap. She peeks around an open, torn umbrella. She holds up three fingers for us to see and then points to the left.

“Three people, to the left,” Peter whispers in my ear.

“You know I’m not an idiot, right?”

“All evidence disagrees with you.” His breath flutters on my skin, and I tell myself not to react to his nearness, not to even notice.

“All evidence says you’re insane, but you don’t see me condescending to you, do you?”

His mouth twists as if he wants to laugh. He glances up at Claire. She scrambles down from the heap and lands lightly beside us. “Lots of scavengers today,” she reports. “Another group of six that way. And I think I saw three go into a blue house.”

“All right then,” Peter says. “It’s time for intensive training. First, keep your hands free.” He combs over the trash heap and extracts a backpack. It’s black with lacrosse team patches sewn on. “There’s never a shortage of bags here. Always check them for holes. Also, for scorpions.” He unzips and upends it. Notebook and textbooks fall out. Claire squats and sorts through it but comes up empty, except for a soccer-ball key chain, which she pockets. Peter fills the bag with the canned goods and other food items from the dead man’s house. He slings the pack over his shoulders. “Second, keep moving. Scavengers are interested in what’s stationary and easy, not in what’s tough to catch or hard to see.” He strides toward the nearest building. It’s a boarded-up storefront, formerly a Laundromat. A row of rusted washing machines lines the window. “Third, when possible, go up.” He climbs onto a trash can, grabs the Laundromat sign, and swings onto the roof. He then flattens onto his stomach, leans over and holds out his arms. Claire climbs like a spider monkey up the window and onto the roof without his help. He’s waiting for me.

I step onto the trash can and grab his hand. His muscles flex as he pulls me up. I try to help by clinging to the gutter and swinging my leg, but it’s mostly him hoisting me onto the roof.

He continues as if he weren’t hefting me up with one arm, “Scavengers are looking down most of the time, not up. You can pass within feet of them without notice if you’re above them.”

I flop onto the flat roof like a fish, and I roll onto my back. He doesn’t look winded. In fact, he smiles at me. “There has to be a better way to do that,” I say.

“You’ll learn,” he promises.

“I don’t want to learn. I want to go home.” His smile fades, and I wish I could suck the words back in. “I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to help.”

“I’ve told you already—I can’t send you home.” I hear coldness in his voice, and I shrink from it. “How many times must I say it?”

“I know. I’m sorry. Only the Missing Man can. I get it, really. Please...continue the lessons. I’ll shut up.” I mentally slap myself. Last thing I need is to offend him so badly that he strands me on a roof.

Peter looks at Claire. “Are you
sure
she’s different?”

Claire nods. “Maybe she just doesn’t know it yet?”

“All right. I’ll accept that. For now.” Peter spins, and his coat swirls around him like a cape. He springs across the rooftop. Claire runs after him, and I follow, determined not to risk alienating him again. If I want to find my way home to Mom, I have to stay alive long enough to do it.

He lifts up a plank of wood that lies near the gutter, and he lays it from one roof to the next. He then walks across it with his arms outstretched for balance. Claire follows behind him like a little acrobat.

Clearly, they expect me to follow them.

Just as clearly, I have to.

Stopping at the edge of the plank, I look down. It’s only one story. People can’t die from a one-story fall, can they? Peter and Claire wait on the other side. I kneel on the board, focus on them, and crawl across. I don’t look down.

Peter picks up the board, carries it across the roof, and lays it down again. This time it reaches to the sloped roof of a house, not a storefront. I don’t know why the plank doesn’t slide, but it stays in place as Peter again crosses it. I grit my teeth and follow, crawling again. On the other side, I see there’s a notch in the roof that holds the board. “You’ve done this before.”

He flashes me a smile, lifts up the board, and walks across the roof. I spread my legs for balance on the slope, and I waddle after him, awkward as a flightless bird. Claire dances along the peak.

Climbing from roof to roof, I try not to think about how badly I need to go home, about how I don’t know if my two saviors can save me, about the absent Missing Man or about the other scavengers or about Lost. Instead, I focus only on step after step across the shingles and roof tiles as they warm beneath the desert sun.

Chapter Nine

On a roof, we split a stale loaf of bread and eat as furtively as squirrels. Claire rifles through the bags in search of additional snacks, while Peter checks in each direction to be certain we haven’t been spotted. We don’t talk. I am so tense that when a seagull lands on the chimney, I slide down three shingles. After I catch myself, I toss the gull a bit of crust.

I wonder if this is what my life will be like if I fail to find a way home.

Hiding.

Scavenging.

Barely surviving.

More likely, the mob will catch me. Or Peter will grow bored with me, Claire will return to whatever life she had before I arrived, and I will be eaten by feral dogs. Or feral pigs. Or cows.

I have to find a way home.

After we eat, we hit several more houses and junk piles around the outskirts of Lost, and I begin to get the hang of scavenging, at least at a basic level. Certain items are easy to find, I learn: socks, hats, mittens, coats, keys, sunglasses, umbrellas, cell phones, balls. I locate a summer dress in dry cleaner’s plastic, which is a respectable find, but I don’t find a toothbrush or a decent pair of jeans or an entire sandwich. Bits of sandwich are easy, as are stray pretzels, crackers, chips...Most of them are coated in dust or mold. It’s quickly obvious that the loaf of bread was a lucky find. Claire had pounced on it like a cat on a mouse. And it’s equally obvious that the dead man’s house was a treasure trove, though I don’t want to return.

We scurry from house to house, pile to pile. Claire darts out first—a practice I object to until I see the rationale. Of all three of us, she’s the least likely for anyone to want to hurt. Plus she’s little, harder to see. Once she reaches the next bit of shelter, she beckons, and we dart after her. In my case, it’s more like lumbering than darting. Clearly, I shouldn’t have cancelled my gym membership.

Out here, on the farthest outskirts, the houses are spread apart so Peter doesn’t make us climb over the roofs. I’m grateful for that. I have scrapes on my palms and knees, and bruises pretty much everywhere else. On the plus side, I haven’t had a single encounter with a homicidal townie all afternoon. So I don’t complain. After a while, it even starts to be a little fun, a kind of wide-ranging treasure hunt. We continue to fill our backpacks until the sun dips low enough to kiss the horizon.

At last, Peter calls a halt.

“Nice haul,” he says approvingly.

I’m coated in sweat and dirt and grime, but I’ve scored multiple slivers of mostly used soap and a nice wash towel, in addition to a new dress. I feel strangely proud, even though I’ve stolen from a dead man and failed to find a way home. There’s an odd thrill to scavenging. I bask in Peter’s approval as if it’s warm sunlight.

“Now you don’t need me anymore,” he declares.

And like that, the feel of sunlight vanishes. “Yes! Yes, I do. I found a few pretzels, a towel, but no way home, and the townspeople still want me dead. If any had caught me—”

“Shh.” He puts his fingers to my lips. “You don’t need me—you’re merely needy.”

I swallow. Don’t speak.

“Others need me more,” he says. “Lost people wander into the void every day. If I don’t bring them out, they give into their despair and fade away. As much as I enjoyed spending the day with you—” His fingers move from my lips and brush my cheek. For an instant, I see something in his eyes—sadness? Longing? Need? “I have responsibilities.”

Never mind other lost people, I want to say. I want to beg him to stay, to keep me safe, to keep me distracted from realizing how trapped I am. “Are you coming back?”

“You and Claire will do fine on your own.”

“But...” I search for an excuse. “What about your vendetta?”

“You know the basics. You’ll survive fine without me.”

I am not nearly as confident. “I don’t even know how to find home—the house, I mean, the yellow house. And it’s nearly dark—”

He points over my shoulder, and I turn.

Dusk has washed away the distinction between shadows, I see the yellow house. “Oh.” Looking back at him, I try to think of another reason for him to stay. Before I can, I see his expression change, darker and harder. He catches my arm and pulls me down behind an overturned wheelbarrow. “What...” I begin.

He places a finger on my lips again. He’s close, inches away. I hear his breath, and I feel the warmth of his body. His muscles are tense.

The front door is wide-open.

Claire draws her knife and darts forward. She scampers around the junk pile, and she creeps onto the porch. I remember she’s just a kid. It’s easy to forget. “Are you sure we should let—”

“I’m sure you talk too much,” Peter says in my ear. I feel his breath on my neck.

Claire disappears into the house.

I stare at the house as if I could force my eyes to see through walls.

I don’t hear any sounds, except for the sound of Peter’s breath and the wind across the desert. Beyond our house, the darkening desert is empty except for scrub brush, cacti, and tumbleweeds that skitter across the dirt until they are impaled on a bush or cactus. I’d thought there were more houses in that direction. Maybe not. Maybe I have a bad memory. Or maybe the houses vanished back into the void. Peter had said the void was like quicksand or a black hole. I want to ask him if it can suck away houses, but I don’t want him to shush me again.

Several minutes pass. Claire doesn’t return.

What if someone’s inside? What if they’ve hurt her? What if they’re hurting her right now? I stand, not sure if I should sneak inside or charge to her rescue. Peter grabs my shoulder and forces me down.

Claire bursts out the front door and barrels across the yard. “He’s gone!”

Peter catches her as she slams into him. Sobbing, she sinks onto the ground. He strokes her hair and holds her against his chest.

I kneel next to her and look her over for signs that she’s been hurt. “Are you okay? What happened? Who’s gone?”

She wails. “Prince Fluffernutter!”

“Hey, hush, hush, don’t say a word, I’m going to buy you a mockingbird,” Peter croons. “Remember what I am? I’m the Finder. I’ll find you a new one, a better one.”

“I don’t want a new one! I want Prince Fluffernutter!”

He scoops her up and carries her toward the house. “Then no new one. Let’s look for him, okay? He can’t have gone far.” Arms wrapped around his neck, she blubbers into his shoulder. He’s gentle with her, like the kindest big brother in the world. I follow behind and wonder if whoever took the bear, whoever left the front door open, is still here. It’s already dusk. The shadows have lengthened and are darkening, and the house looks dark inside. He carries her through the front door. “You take the bedrooms,” he says to me. “I’ll search the rest.” He carries Claire into the dining room.

I’m alone in the hallway, the door open behind me.

I close it, lock it. Then I wonder how we’ll escape if someone else is here. I unlock it. Then I lock it again and step back. I wish I’d found a knife like Claire’s instead of a summer dress. I shed the backpack and use it to block the door, most likely ineffectively.

Stepping as softly as I can, I cross to Claire’s bedroom first, and I halt in the doorway. Someone has been here. The drawers have been yanked out. The closet is open. All the sheets are off the bed in a tangle. Taking a deep breath, I check the closet.

Empty.

Under the bed.

Empty.

Behind the door.

Also clear.

I repair the bed, stretching out the sheet, fluffing the pillow, and laying down the blanket. I find her old bear Teddy tangled in the blanket, but the new bear doesn’t miraculously appear. I place Teddy on the pillow. I then check behind the bedside table and in its drawer. I look in every drawer and again in the closet. Tucked in one drawer I find a photo album. I open it. Smiling faces of a family—a mother, a father, a girl about Claire’s age but with strawberry-blond hair and freckles. In the first photo, they’re posing in front of a white house with red shutters. The house has a green lawn, as well as a neatly trimmed hedge of bushes in front of the porch. There are wind chimes and a potted plant with red flowers—geraniums, I think. Mom would have known. Another photo has the mother and daughter hugging in front of the ocean. Foamy waves swirl over their bare feet. The mother’s flesh sags around her bathing suit, but her smile lifts her face up so that she looks as full of life as the daughter who holds a broken seashell in one hand. The seashell is on the shelf over the desk. I cross to it and pick it up.

I wonder if this album reminds Claire of her mom—or if she only wishes that it did.

“Any luck?” Peter says from the doorway.

My fingers close around the seashell and then I force myself to put it back on the shelf. I shut the album and lay it on the dresser. I don’t look at Peter. There are tears in my eyes, heating the corners of my eyes, but I don’t want him to see. I shake my head.

I don’t have any mementoes or photos with me of Mom.

“Lunch boxes are gone, too. As are a bunch of utensils, like the can opener.” This is the first time I’ve seen him actually annoyed. His forehead crinkles, marring the perfection of his handsome face. “Damn scavengers.” He doesn’t seem to notice the hypocrisy in his words, given our day’s activities.

Claire appears behind Peter. She’s holding Mr. Rabbit. Solemnly, she delivers it to me. “He’s safe.” Her voice catches a little.

I take the rabbit and nod toward her bed. “So’s he.”

“Guess they were too old to take.”

“Guess so.” She’s not crying anymore, but her cheeks are stained with dried tears. I lift Mr. Rabbit up to my ear. “What’s that? You want to belong to Claire? No, I’m not offended. Yes, I think that’s a good idea.” I put the rabbit in Claire’s arms. “He’s sorry about your other bear and wants to be yours now.”

Claire tucks the rabbit under one arm and then throws her other arm around my neck. I feel the hilt of her knife digging into my ribs as she squeezes me tight. “What if they take him tomorrow?” she asks. Her grip around my neck is tighter than a turtleneck.

Peter pats her shoulder, but I notice he’s watching me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. “They won’t. I know the type. This is a one-strike kind of hit. Just grazing through. He or she won’t be back. And I’ll make sure of it.”

She sniffs. “You will? You said you were leaving. I heard you tell her.”

“I’ll be back,” he promises, “
with
your bear.” And then he runs out the door and off the porch so fast that he looks as if he’s flying. Claire and I watch him disappear into the darkness.

I break the silence. “Come on. We’ll find Mr. Rabbit a hiding place,” I say as I ease her grip off of me. “Lift up a floorboard or tape him to the underside of the mattress. Or we just take him with us.”

She nods and at last releases me.

I smile at her. “That’s better. Let’s see if we have any dinner in those backpacks. I’m pretty sure I found a can of delectably slimy string beans.”

She sticks out her tongue.

“I can mush them up more and we can eat through a straw.”

She laughs. “Bleck! Lucky for me, we have no can opener.”

I shut the front door and double-check the locks. I know I should feel even more scared now that someone has found our house, but I don’t. Peter will come back.

* * *

I don’t sleep at all.

Or maybe in brief stretches. My night is full of imagined sounds in the darkness, creaks and thuds and cracks and...I dream that I am in the living room of the little yellow house. Moonlight pours in through the windows and bathes the couches and chairs covered with white sheets in soft light so that they look like ghosts. The dead man sits in one of the chairs. “You can’t leave,” he says. “Even if you die, you can’t leave. Not without the Missing Man.”

He starts to bleed.

I wake in a sweat.

The sheets are tangled around my legs. I sit up and untangle them, and I look around the room, trying to make sense of the shadows—that’s the shadow from the footboard, that stretch is from the wardrobe, that is my backpack in the corner, those are my shoes and pants. I stare at the closet door for a while.

Obviously, there’s no one in there. I checked the closet thoroughly when I hunted for Claire’s bear. Also, I locked the front door and dragged an end table to block it, in case the intruder came back. Peter is not in the closet.

Unless he is.

“Peter?” I call softly.

Just paranoia. It’s the darkness and the unknown and the weirdness and everything. I force my muscles to relax. Close my eyes. Breathe evenly.
Crap,
I think. Still can’t sleep.

I call a little more loudly. “Peter, are you there?”

I’ll laugh at myself in the morning. It’s not as if I’m a kid that needs a night-light. Even as a little kid, I never needed one, though I liked the bedroom door cracked and the bathroom light on, but that was more for practical reasons. If I had to get up, I didn’t want to trip on the cat and break either myself or the cat. I didn’t need the reassurance that—

“You talk too damn much.” Peter’s voice from somewhere in the darkness. “Go to sleep, Little Red.”

Clutching the sheets, I freeze. “Are you in my closet?”

“Maybe.”

I consider screaming, but who would come? I take a deep breath. Let it out. If Peter wanted to hurt me, he could have done so a hundred times already. I keep my voice nice and calm. “Why are you in my closet?”

“To sleep, perchance to Dream.”

“You have an apartment. I assume it has a bed. You could be sleeping in your own nice bed with your own pillows and blanket.” But as I say this, I’m thinking,
He came back.

“Closets are comfortable.” I hear a laugh in his voice. He has a low, musical voice that rolls through the room. He’s almost whispering but not quite. I wonder if Claire is listening.

“Did you find the intruder?”

“Not yet.”

“Prince Fluffernutter?”

“No.”

I want to ask him why he came back if he didn’t find them, but I don’t want him to leave again. The nightmares are too fresh. Still, though, why is he in my closet? I hit on an explanation that doesn’t freak me out...or at least doesn’t for the same reasons. “Are you staying in here to guard me?”