The Loveliest Dead (28 page)

David sat on a crate with his back to the stairs, hunched forward over an open cardboard box. He wore old sweatpants, a sweatshirt with the left sleeve empty, and sneakers. The flashlight’s long, heavy handle was held between his head and left shoulder, shining the beam into the box. As she watched, he reached into the box with his right hand and pulled out a few magazines, looked them over briefly, then tossed them back into the box. He took the flashlight from the crook of his neck and put it between his legs, shining upward. He reached down and found the can on the ground beside him, raised it to his mouth, and tipped his head back slightly, took a few gulps.
 

Jenna realized he was drinking a beer—she got a glimpse of the gold can in the light and recognized it as a Michelob. Her mind flashed on the image of all those old empty Michelob cans David and Miles had cleaned out of the garage. Her chin dropped when she suddenly realized that David
had
gone to the 7-Eleven in the middle of the night, to get
beer
, of all things—and while he was under the influence of painkillers.
 

“David?” she said.

He was so startled, he dropped the can of beer as he stood. It hissed as it spilled on the dirt floor. The flashlight stood on end, shining upward as it leaned against the crate on which David had been sitting.
 

She slowly and carefully started down the stairs. “What are you
doing
down here?” she said. She realized her voice sounded distressed, panicky, but she couldn’t help it. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t just the fact that David had gone out in the middle of the night to buy beer.
 

Jenna stopped halfway down the stairs and looked down at David. His left arm, in its cast and sling, was a lump beneath his sweatshirt. He stood with his shoulders back and his hips forward—an odd posture, one that was uncharacteristic of David, who always stood straight. But it was familiar. For a moment, Jenna was chilled by the certainty that she was looking not at David but at the same fat man she had seen in the basement early the previous morning, if only in brief glimpses. David arched his back as if to support a great belly he did not have.
 

“David?” she said again, but this time the word came out a breathy whisper.

He pitched forward suddenly and retched. He dropped to one knee, then the other, leaned his right arm on the floor, elbow locked, and groaned before vomiting onto the dirt.
 

Jenna hurried the rest of the way down, with both hands on the railing to the right. “David, are you all right?” Her foot kicked a couple of empty beer cans as she hurried to his side, and they clanked together.
How many beers has he had?
she wondered.
 

He got to his feet and looked around with his mouth open and eyes wide. “Jeez,” he said, his voice hoarse, “how long have I been down
here
?”
 

Jenna’s heart skipped a beat. “David... have you been asleep?”

He smacked his lips and frowned. “I’ve been walking in my sleep lately.”

Jenna remembered his brief mention of walking in his sleep the day before, but she’d had so much on her mind, she hadn’t given it a second thought. “Walking in your
sleep
?” she said.
 

David shrugged a shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’ll pass. I used to do this when I was a kid. It’s nothing to worry about, it’s—”

“David. You drove to 7-Eleven tonight.” She bent down and picked up one of the empty cans and held it in the light. “You went out for beer.”
 

He stared at the can as if he’d never seen one before. “Are you sure?”

“Well,
I
didn’t go, and Mom doesn’t drive, and obviously it wasn’t Miles.”
 

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“It’s freezing down here,” Jenna said, hugging herself against a deep chill. “Can we get out of here, please?”

They went up the stairs and into the kitchen. David put the Mag-Lite back in its place, then stood and stared at it for a few seconds. Jenna wondered if he was trying to remember picking it up in the first place. She took his hand and led him to the breakfast nook—he stared at the 7-Eleven bag on the counter as he passed it—where they sat facing each other, his right hand beneath both of hers.
 

“David, you looked very different down there,” Jenna whispered.

“What do you mean, different?”

“The way you were standing ... it wasn’t the way you stand. But I recognized it, I recognized the posture. Down in the basement last night, I saw—”
 

“What were you doing in the basement last night?”

“I heard the music again. It was the teddy bear. I went down there to get it and I saw a man.”

David’s eyes widened. “You saw
what
? Did you call the police?”
 

“No, no—he wasn’t
really
there. I mean, he kept disappearing every time I shined the flashlight on him. But I saw him. He stood exactly the way you were standing when I came down the—”
 

“
Goddammit
, Jenna!” he said as he pulled his hand away from hers and slammed his palm down on the table. “How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t even want to
hear
that shit. I don’t understand why you’re suddenly so wrapped up in this supernatural crap. Is it because of Josh? I mean, I know you miss him, but Jenna, come on, tell me you don’t
really
think you’re going to contact him with the help of these bullshit mediums and fortune-tellers.”
 

Jenna closed her hands around his again and squeezed as she smiled. “No, honey, I
told
you—I thought I was seeing Josh at first, but it wasn’t him, it was another child completely. And there are others, you’ve seen them—the boys in the backyard who disappear into thin air. And then there’s the man I saw down in the—”
 

“Would you
stop
it!”
 

“You don’t have to believe me, just stick around, you’ll see what I mean. There’s something in this house with us, David, and when I came down those stairs, I wasn’t looking at you—it wasn’t you at
all
. Just like it’s not you to go out and buy beer in the middle of the night—or any other time of day, for that matter, even when you’re awake.”
 

He frowned down at the lump his arm made beneath his sweatshirt but didn’t seem to see it. He was thinking about what he had done, and it bothered him, Jenna was certain—the possibilities made fear flash in his eyes as he looked across the table at her again.
 

“When I went down the stairs, I was looking at you, but you were
completely
different,” she said. “Then you vomited. Why, David, what made you sick?”
 

“Probably the beer.”

“You were yourself then.”

“When?”

“After you vomited. And you didn’t know where you were for a second, did you?”

“Well, no, I’d just woke up.”

“Did you wake up, or were you
allowed
to wake up?”
 

David squinted at her. “What? Jenna, are you having some kind of breakdown?”

The question made Jenna flinch. She slowly pulled her hands away from him and sat back on the bench. She had been trying to ignore the ache deep in her chest—like a tear in her heart that had been there ever since she’d realized she hadn’t been seeing Josh after all. It had been buried by her initial fear and concern over David’s injury, and she had put off thinking about it. But now she realized how desperately she had wanted—
needed
, she thought—that hooded child to be Josh. The ache deep in her chest opened like a blossoming rose. Jenna sobbed as tears sprang to her eyes.
 

“I don’t know,” she said. “I know how all this stuff sounds, I can hear it coming out of my mouth and I don’t believe I’m saying it, but David”—she leaned forward, clutched his right hand with her left—”I’m not imagining any of this.”
 

David shook his head angrily but said nothing for a moment. He had never been able to remain angry about anything when Jenna cried. He came around the table, and she scooted over so he could sit beside her. He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to him.
 

He said, “I don’t understand why you’re trying to attach some kind of supernatural significance to this— isn’t it enough that I’m walking in my sleep, that I drove around in my damned
sleep
? I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do, tie my ankle to the bed? Wear a bell?”
 

In spite of her sobs, Jenna smiled because David was trying to make her laugh. It made her feel somewhat normal again, and it was a welcome feeling. She pressed against him, wrapped her arm around him.
 

“My hand is really throbbing,” David said. He sounded groggy. “I’m going to take one of my pills and wait for it to kick in, maybe have a cup of hot chocolate.”
 

“But you’ve been drinking beer.”

“I got rid of the beer in the basement, remember?” He stood. “Why don’t you go back to bed, honey. Come on.” He tugged on her arm until she stood. He kissed her ear and whispered, “You just let those people get under your skin, honey, that’s all. You thought you were seeing Josh and you went to them for help, and they got to you. It’s what they do, it’s what they’re good at. C’mon, let’s go upstairs. I’ll get my pill and tuck you in.”
 

“You’re not coming to bed?”

“In a few minutes, after the pill starts working. My hand is killing me.”

They went upstairs together, and David turned on his bedside lamp as she took off her robe and got into bed. David sat on the bed, leaned over, and kissed her. She knew he was hurting badly—she could see the pain in his eyes. Was there something else there, as well? Something he sat up quickly to keep her from seeing?
 

He took a small plastic orange bottle from his bed-stand, shook one of the tiny white pills onto the stand, replaced the lid, and picked up the pill. He stood, turned off the lamp, and said, “You go back to sleep. I’ll be up in a while.”
 

After he left, Jenna stared into the dark for a while. She thought again of David’s odd posture as he’d stood in the basement, of how unlike himself he had looked. And she thought of the tabloid headlines Martha had shown her the morning before. She decided to look up Arthur and Mavis Bingham on the Internet in the morning. If they had a phone number, she would call them first chance she got. If necessary, she’d go over to Kimberly’s house to make the call so David wouldn’t overhear her.
 

He wouldn’t like it, but Jenna could not bother thinking about that. Something was very wrong in the house. Dwayne Shattuck’s warning weighed heavily on her mind, because she knew he was right—there was something bad in the house with them. She was afraid it had been hunkering inside David down there in the basement, slurping beers and—doing what? What had he been doing down there?
 

Jenna tried to stay awake and wait for him to come back, but she drifted off to sleep not long after he left the bedroom.

David went downstairs, got a glass of water from the tap, popped the OxyContin into his mouth and drank it down. Soon, it would make him woozy and tired and he would have to go back to bed. But for the time being, he was pumped full of adrenaline. He filled the kettle with water and put it on a burner—a cup of hot chocolate might help him relax.
 

“Ghosts, spirits,” he muttered angrily as he paced the length of the kitchen a few times. He got a mug and a packet of instant cocoa from the cupboard. He tore the packet open with his teeth, poured the powder into the mug, and tossed the torn packet into the garbage can under the sink. He dropped a spoon into the mug and paced some more. His hand throbbed, and with each throb it felt like it doubled in size.
 

It had been a stupid, bloody accident. It never would have happened had he been getting enough sleep and had he not been so preoccupied with those damned kids who kept showing up in the yard in the middle of the night, if he hadn’t been preoccupied by wondering how they were getting in and out of the locked gate—or if he had been dreaming them. His hand had been cut between his two middle fingers nearly to his wrist. He remembered staring at his own exposed bones and tendons for several dead-silent, paralyzed seconds as blood cascaded down his forearm and spattered onto the concrete floor of the garage’s pit beneath a canary-yellow 2000 Chevy Cavalier coupe. He remembered only bits and pieces after that, until he awoke in the recovery room after surgery.
 

Now the hand buzzed and throbbed with pain. But as bad as it was, it did not distract him from what was really on his mind—his sleepwalking, his dreams, and what he’d been doing in the basement.
 

The fact that he’d been walking in his sleep was not much of a surprise given his pattern of sleepwalking in the past. The dreams, on the other hand, were disturbing. He could remember only vague bits and pieces of them, as hard as he’d tried, but they left behind a residue, and the visual echoes of horrifying images. They were images that did not belong inside his head— harshly lit images of young boys, scrawny and naked, posing together in ways that turned David’s stomach. The images were repugnant and made him wish he could reach into his head and physically extract them. He did not understand them—they were not memories, because he had never seen such things before, and they were too brutally offensive to him to be anything else. They felt almost as if they had been planted there—as if they were someone else’s thoughts.