The People Next Door (25 page)

It was a child, barely a teenager, and maybe as young as ten. She shouldn’t be out here biking alone, and what the hell is
she doing on her dad’s bike?

Melanie backed into the weeds to give the muppet a wide berth.

That’s not a dress. It’s a jacket tied around her waist
.

And the hair’s not short. It’s bald
.

The bike came whizzing down the center of the path, but at the last second swerved at her. The little person’s face came up
and Melanie almost got off a scream as it launched itself over the handle bars, baring teeth fenced with plated metal braces.
The small body slammed into her chest and the two of them were falling back into crackling weeds. The bike tumbled with them,
tangling in their limbs, gears and spokes catching Melanie’s fingers, scraping her bare back.

The child was growling. Grunting, hissing, throwing some kind of fit. Melanie felt something cut into her rib, screamed and
rolled, hurling the bony frame. The attacker rolled in the grass and hopped to her feet, swaying like a tiny gladiator. Melanie
blinked, registering details, the lack of certain features, the carnival presence of others.

That’s no little girl. It’s a boy in a rubber swimming cap
.

The eyes are solid black and leaking blood
.

Those aren’t braces. The mouth is full of blades
.

The instinct to stand her ground was extinguished. The deep blooming terror inside Melanie matched and then eclipsed the Cassandra
incident. That had been chilling. This was reality-melting, bad-acid-trip fear, the kind of raw alarm that electrifies the
limbs. She bolted over the path and deeper into the field, toward the nearest subdivision some quarter of a mile away.

The small footsteps tore at the ground behind her and she watched for prairie dog holes as the weeds whipped at her sides.
She saw the three-line barbed-wire fence a second before she would have slammed into it and hurdled off her right foot, certain
her shoe or one Lycra-skinned shin would snag. But her training paid off and she sailed over it, her Asics plowing into soft-tilled
rows of soil. She put a palm down, pushed off, and sprinted across the rows of low green vegetation.

Her skin came alive with sour sweat. Clods of dirt dragged at her shoes. Her right knee was strained in some way, the cramp
had come back with a vengeance, the pain worsening with every step, and she could not
keep an even stride. She made out a flatter field of mown grass beyond the soil rows and, higher up on the hill, the first
house – a McMansion with a caged trampoline standing in the sweeping backyard. The lights were off, but that did not matter.
She would scream, break the door down, find a place to hide, snatch up a weapon, call for help. Maybe once the thing saw the
house, it would give up.

She chanced a look back. It had not given up. It was still there some fifty feet back. Running clumsily but, yes, she was
certain, it was also learning, somehow improving its stride with each step.

Goddamn it, you’re a runner
. She had to be faster than this thing. Whatever it was, it was just a kid. Her breathing grew ragged.

The house was less than a city block away now.

Melanie was on solid ground and moving at full speed when she ran into the second barbed-wire fence. Her right leg passed
through the gap between the top and middle wires, her waist slammed the top, and her left leg hitched into all three flatly,
the spikes of steel puncturing and ripping into her abdomen and thighs, stringing her upside down as she folded over. She
cried out, scissoring her legs, hands pulling at the bottom two wires to free herself. Barbed knots gouged her arms and left
breast, ripping the strap of her sports bra before she finally tore free and flopped onto her back, her torso and every limb
striped in agony.

She was rolling onto her hands and knees to push herself up when the thing landed on her spine and cut her
ear off with a swipe. The pain in her back was shocking, blinding. She was smashed to the ground, her mouth and nostrils filling
with dirt. Something cold slashed the back of her neck deeply and one of her arms went numb. She struggled, rolled onto her
back, and it was above her, thrashing, mouth open. She stabbed out at the face with her thumb, jabbing and screaming frantically.
The first poke missed but the fifth or seventh went into the thing’s eye and her thumb came away wet as the child-thing wailed
and fell off her.

Pain ran in molten streams up and down her back and legs as she got to her feet and hobbled away, almost hyperventilating
now, staggering with dirt in her mouth and eyes. She found her stride and in her pure panic the house seemed to meet her halfway.
A flower garden, the patio. She pulled on the sliding glass door and fumbled her way inside, slamming and locking it behind
her.

‘Help! Somebody help me!’ Great cramps tugged at her and she fell against the kitchen counter, driving a basket of fruit and
a stack of bills to the floor. She retreated deeper into the kitchen, bleeding on marbled tile, eyes on the glass door. She
groped around in the dark for a knife, anything sharp or heavy. She knocked the dish rack into the sink with a crash.

‘Oh God, oh God … help me!’

Upstairs, footsteps and voices. The light fixture shaking above her. Then more footsteps, harder, thudding down the stairs.

A light threw itself into the hall and the adjacent dining room.

Melanie rubbed at her face and when she felt for her ear it wasn’t there and she tried to breathe but she couldn’t contain
her panic. She shrieked, her words garbled.

‘Oh, God, please, help me, someone’s out there, it tried to kill me, call the police!’

A woman in a sheer yellow bathrobe and silk under-garments appeared in the kitchen, staring at her in wonder, arms crossed
over her stomach.

‘What did you do? How did you get in here?’

Melanie slid to the floor, pointing. ‘Out there. Tried to kill me. Please help me … please … call help … not safe.’

The bandy legs, boxer shorts, and pot belly of a man appeared behind the woman. He was short and squinting, hair standing
up in wave of thick black curls. He rubbed his mouth and shook his head.

‘The hell is this? What’s wrong?’

‘… says there’s someone trying to get her,’ the woman said.

He stepped past the woman and unfolded a pair of reading glasses. His nose bunched and sniffed.

Melanie was crying with mild relief but they weren’t doing enough. ‘Lock the doors … you don’t understand … it’s not human!’

‘Mom? What’s wrong?’ A boy’s voice carried in from behind her but Melanie couldn’t see him.

‘Stay there, Alex,’ the woman said. ‘She’s hysterical. Dangerous. I don’t know what.’

The man said, ‘I should call the—’

The sliding glass door shattered, raining safety glass into the breakfast area. The little body came after it, bare feet walking
slowly over the beads. Melanie screamed and tried to stand but her foot slipped and she fell back to the floor now slick with
her blood.

The man and woman stepped back and their faces went slack.

‘Oh dear sweet Jesus,’ the woman said.

‘There, now,’ the man said.

The little figure darted into the kitchen and found the magnetic knife rack mounted above the marble back-splash and there
was a
zing
. Adroitly he crouched in front of Melanie and ran a nine-inch serrated fillet knife in and out of her stomach with the speed
and accuracy of a sewing machine.

Melanie ruptured, saw black and red stars, bayed as if giving birth, and lost her breath as her face locked in a silent-movie
scream.

The child pivoted and ran to the now fully awake residents and impaled the father first, plunging the kidneys and carving
down in looping oval scoops, then abandoned him for the mother. She slid around the corner and disappeared into the hall,
and Melanie understood from the squealing and crashing sounds that filled the entire first floor he had brought her down too.

The thing’s footsteps trampled up the stairs and the boy screamed and it might have taken pity on him for he was silenced
quickly even though his father was still walking on his knees across the floor at Melanie, one hand reaching for his open
back the other groping for her
as if she could help him now, as if anything could save them.

Melanie no longer had the strength to scream or get up or think of anything else. Her lap was wet and hot. The one that had
pursued her emerged around the counter and looked at her and then the man. It was just a boy, she saw now, a boy not yet ten,
with no hair to speak of, no sign of emotion in his dark eyes, and he wasn’t even breathing hard. In fact he didn’t look to
be breathing at all.

He finished the man with a swipe across the throat, pulling the chin from above while straddling the larger body. Crimson
fanned across the floor and the man fell into his jet stream, the arm that had been reaching for Melanie slapping the tile
at her feet.

The boy-thing dropped the knife. He crouched low and watched her. He began to crawl toward her. Hesitantly at first, testing
the air and finding what it smelled to its liking, then hurrying into it as the animal inside rediscovered its earliest capabilities
and most basic drive.

Moving on a final surge of adrenaline, her body drawing on every resource to preserve itself, Melanie rolled away as the thing
crashed into the refrigerator. She clawed at the slick floor and scrambled onto carpeting into a darker space that looked
like a den and maybe a better hiding place but she didn’t get past the dining room.

It was there, under the table draped in champagne linen, she swooned. Dawn broke across the Front Range
and a cold draft swam inside her leg. There wasn’t any pain left, only the boy. He wants all of me, she thought, offering
herself with the noble acceptance of the impala kneeling under the cheetah. Her will to resist collapsed under his bite and
she thought, I wonder why. But as soon as she asked the question, her ancestral genetic code supplied the answer: In the kingdom
they waste nothing, consume all. She wished he hadn’t found her, but in the end she understood him as clearly as she understood
her own history.

Then he was getting into places she had never known, taking and taking and bathing in her, until Melanie Smith and all of
her appetites were no more.

Amy had no idea what was so urgent that she had to drive to Whole Foods at nearly nine p.m. on a Tuesday night, and she cringed
when she saw the glowing green sign across the Mapleton Center’s parking lot. She hated shopping here. Ever since Whole Foods
had become Whole Paycheck (ho ho! though not so funny now that it was true) and she had reverted to buying donuts and sugar
cereals at the regular grocers, she couldn’t help feeling like a traitor amongst the Organic Reich every time she set foot
inside the store.

She changed lanes on 30th and worked her way up to the front, amazed to find the parking lot half-empty. The awfully planned
plaza was usually a hamster farm of Priuses, the sidewalks clotted with enough pedestrians to make one think the store was
giving away free coffee colonics – an added-value service that actually wouldn’t surprise her if it were offered in little
stalls between the non-dairy case and bulk spices – and the sight of so many vacant spaces seemed an ominous development.

But Cassandra said it was important, so she parked.
She didn’t see either of the Rovers, but maybe Cass wasn’t here yet.

For the first few minutes she simply browsed the bright space, trudging past the salad bar, sushi bar, burrito bar, coffee
bar, deli, massage stations, and sparkling wine sample tables, the fresh faces above the green aprons tracking her movements,
ready to thrust a slab of Nor wegian salmon or tub of in-house-roasted peanut butter upon her with the zeal of airport pamphleteers.
The sheer variety and specificity of so many innovative foods assaulted her with a casino’s torrent of sensory overload.

She rounded an aisle lined with gourmet soda and corn chips the color of Christmas ornaments and found herself bellying up
to a table displaying a slow cooker full of what appeared to be potted meat but was in fact
Not Quite Chicken!
simmering in a vegetable and white bean bouillabaisse. A gaunt man with a brisk gray beard and skin the color of wax paper
handed her a paper cup with a tiny wooden spoon leaning out of it, his bulbous eyes blinking rapidly.

‘Taste our three-season amino soup? It’s our gluten-free pick of the week.’

‘Thank you … Bruce.’ She slid the contents back in a shot and stifled a cough of disgust. She owned socks that tasted better.
‘Mmm, that’s unique.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Bruce agreed. ‘Only four hundred calories
per quart
. Zero sodium or fat, high in fiber. I have customers who make a whole pot and eat it for
days
. It’s full of anti-oxidants and really cleanses just superbly.’

Amy smirked. ‘And, uhm, how do I make that? Does it come in a package?’

Bruce proceeded to explain which ingredients from which aisle she would need, but the instructions went on for over two minutes
and Amy lost track of the entire scheme somewhere between kale flakes and psyllium husk powder.

‘Sounds great. Good luck with the … that.’ She walked away quickly.

She was standing in the produce section, smoothing her palm over a crate filled with avocados the size of croquet balls, $7.99
each, when a woman spoke behind her.

‘I
thought
that was you. Oh, this is perfect.’

Amy brightened as she turned, but it wasn’t Cass.

Rita Larson, she of the daughter with the fork-tined face, was barreling at her and digging in her purse as if for a weapon.
Her corked clogs halted within kicking distance and a cloud of patchouli roiled over Amy. Rita’s newfound martyrdom had added
a glowing vibrancy to her usual harried Bohemian frump, or perhaps she was just really pissed off. She removed a folded document
from her purse and thrust the papers against Amy’s chest with a
whack
.

‘This belongs to you. I suggest you pay it, unless you want to see me in court.’

‘Rita—’ Amy began.

‘I have
witnesses
.’

‘I’m not disputing the accident, but please, can we sit down for a minute and talk? They’re kids. No one wants—’

‘Accident? Are you joking? That monster of yours
assaulted
my daughter.’

‘I don’t think it’s quite that clear-cut. Please let me explain—’

‘Seventeen thousand dollars,’ Rita hissed. Amy glanced down at the bill, unable to read the numbers. ‘Not to mention the
trauma
. Tami’s entire summer is ruined. She’s afraid of her friends. You’re lucky she doesn’t need plastic surgery. You’re lucky
she isn’t
blind
.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Amy said softly.

‘Goddamn
right
you are.’

There were others in the produce aisle. Amy could feel them watching her. It was the Vo-Tech parking lot again, only worse,
for this time she was guilty. Grief over some loss greater than good will between parents broke and spread inside her. It
was about Mick, and Kyle, and Briela. The restaurant, her weight, her students. Her life was out of control, edging into ruin,
and now she was going to have a breakdown in public.

‘What do you have to say for yourself?’ Rita said, encouraged by Amy’s stunned silence. ‘Does your daughter have any idea
what she’s done? How absolutely wrong she was? How dangerous she has become? What kind of punishment will she receive, Amy,
that’s what I want to know. Where is the respon
sibility
in that house of yours?’

Amy forced herself to meet Rita’s eyes. ‘My daughter’s not well,’ she managed. ‘We’re dealing with some personal problems,
Mick and … I don’t expect … it’s all so … haven’t you ever felt like … Don’t you understand that if I could change it … this
is a very difficult
time, is what I’m saying, Rita.’ Was any of this getting through?

‘Oh, spare me. You’re not fooling anybody, Amy. I
know
you. You were a selfish bitch in high school and you’re a selfish bitch now. You think you and your husband are hot shit
because you own that restaurant, but you’re just like everyone else in this town. With your big house and your precious family
assistant. Turning your daughter’s birthday party into another showcase for your conspicuous consumption. It’s grotesque.
Your life is grotesque. You’re a taker, that’s what you are. You take and take and you have no decency.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Amy said. ‘If I went too far, it was only because I love my—’

‘Save it. Enjoy it while it lasts. Because you’re headed for a big fall, sweetheart. Don met with the district attorney and
he
knows things
. He plays golf with your accountant and he knows plenty. Your husband is in deep shit and you’re going to get what’s coming
to you. And guess what – I don’t care. All I care about is that you pay that medical bill before you file for bankruptcy and
stick the rest of us with your bad decisions, do you understand me? I want that bill paid and I want a letter of apology and
I want your daughter to—’

‘Excuse me. What the hell is going on here?’ another woman piped up behind Amy, her voice calm and firm. Amy was too poleaxed
to recognize it, but when she turned and saw Cassandra Render standing there with a bag of lemons in one hand, dressed as
if she had just stepped out of a singles bar, a wave of gratitude broke
over her with such force she could have kneeled. Cass winked at Amy and then pushed herself between the two parties. ‘Are
you harassing my friend?’

Rita’s head reared back. ‘What business is it of yours? Who are you?’

On the other side of the potatoes and onions pyramids, a male couple in matching art-school glasses and Under Armour shirts
paused to enjoy the show. A stock girl pushing a dolly loaded with Japanese melons moved past the women, double-taking off
the confrontational vibe that had just gone from heated to ice cold with a slight chance of violence.

Cass took another step toward Rita and her eyes narrowed. ‘Honey, you don’t want to know who I am. But what you better know,
before you speak another word, is that Amy’s business is my business. So why don’t you start by lowering your voice,
Rita
.’

Rita gasped, and Amy saw the first twinge of fear in her eyes.

Rita said, ‘Fine. Your
friend
is responsible for nearly blinding my daughter.’

Cass barked with laughter. The gay couple joined in, then averted their eyes when Rita shot them her disapproval.

‘You think that’s funny?’ Rita said to Cass. ‘You think a little girl spending the night in the emergency room is funny?’

‘I do, actually,’ Cass said, and her voice remained as smooth and sweet as June Cleaver’s. ‘Because I happen to know it was
hardly more than a scratch, and that Tami
had it coming. That’s right, Rita. Your little butterball is a bully, and now we all see where she gets it. And if there’s
one thing I hate more than bullies, it’s parents who turn a blind eye when their children prey on others.’

‘You tell her, sista.’ This from one of the guys in his gym clothes.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Rita snapped. ‘Briela attacked Tami out of the blue. Everyone saw it. You weren’t even
there, so please, just don’t.’

‘Well, jeez, that’s not what Theo Havas’s father says,’ Cass said. ‘Larry Havas saw Tami threaten Briela in the bathroom five
minutes before she was forced to defend herself with a plastic fork. He overheard your little porker tell Briela that she
was going to cut off all her hair if she didn’t give Tami half her birthday money, and he’s willing to give a statement to
that effect.’ Cass produced a cell phone, wiggled it between two fingers. ‘Want me to call him? He said anytime. He was rather
disgusted and – as a local business owner with republican allies in the state legislature – he’s fed up with frivolous lawsuits,
especially at the hands of the
uninsured
.’

Rita’s mouth fell open. ‘How dare – this is outrageous. You’re lying. Lying through your teeth! And even if that were true,
which it is not, that’s no excuse for violence.’

‘Violence?’ Cass said. ‘You want to talk about violence? Why don’t you share with Amy the little event that transpired in
the coat room of Mrs Tally’s second-grade class last March? Something involving a pair of scissors, your daughter, and a boy
named Douglas Erickson?’

Scarlet blotches crawled up Rita’s neck.

‘Well?’ Cass said.

Rita’s body trembled, her eyes watered, and she seemed poised to explode. But it passed, she sagged with exhaustion, as if
forfeiting the entire complaint … then sprang forward grasping for Amy’s throat. A split second before she was to be strangled,
Amy felt Cass take her arm and pull, a mother yanking her child out of traffic.

Rita grasped at air. Something on the floor squeaked. A single felt clog flung backward and Rita slammed face-first onto the
tile floor with the sound of a coconut struck with a claw-hammer.

The produce girl eeeked.

One of the Under Armour gentlemen said, ‘Oh my God, that was so Naomi.’

But they couldn’t see how bad it was, none of them could. At first.

Rita began to moan again, in a way that was more disturbing than at the party. A brisk managerial young man with a name tag
reading
Cal
rushed in warning everyone not to move her, but Rita was already worming herself sideways, then rolling over. Her nose had
ruptured and two streams had spread down her chin. Her lips were peeled back and her entire mouth looked like a broken bowl
of grape jelly.

‘What happened here?’ Cal demanded. ‘Someone call 9-1-1.’

‘She tried to attack us,’ Cass said, with what sounded like real remorse.

‘I saw it,’ the produce girl said. ‘She totally lost it and slipped.’

Amy covered her mouth and ran away. She could no longer bear standing there, looking at Rita’s teeth, one lying in a pool
of the blood, two others embedded and standing upright in the tile, snapped off at the roots. She was crying from the realization
that she had enjoyed seeing Rita fall, had been wishing violence upon the woman from the moment she had appeared. She was
sickened by the coldness settling into her heart. She couldn’t help feeling as though everything she touched or came near
these days inspired physical harm to others. It was as if she had become a radioactive being whose mere presence tainted all
other living things.

Cass joined her in the parking lot a few minutes later. They leaned against the Passat’s hood, smoking a couple of Cass’s
Benson & Hedges Golds as the paramedics loaded Rita into the back of the ambulance. Tami’s mother had walked out with her
head up, a giant wad of white towels held to her face, but the paramedics were steering her as Cal followed at their heels,
handing them each a business card. The ambulance lights flashed a few times for show but the siren stayed mute.

‘That poor woman,’ Cass said when the ambulance was gone.

Amy felt detached, worn out. ‘How did you know she would be here?’

Cass issued a stream of blue smoke at the sky. ‘She always does her shopping at this time.’

‘You’ve been following her?’

Cass flicked ash, took another drag.

‘Cassandra?’ Amy said. ‘Did you plan this? How did
you know those things about her daughter? Who have you been talking to?’

Cass rolled her eyes. ‘I knew she had it in for you and I thought it would be better if we dealt with her sooner than later.
So I did a little homework. But I didn’t plan anything, Amy. How could I? The woman slipped. You saw her. Gawd, I don’t take
any shit, but I’m not obsessed. You should be relieved she didn’t succeed in trying to strangle you.’

‘She’s going to sue me.’

‘No, she won’t. This took the wind out of her sails.’

‘How do you know that? You don’t know that.’

‘I’ll never let anything happen to you,’ Cass said. ‘You’re too important to me.’

Amy tossed her cigarette. ‘Why is that?’

‘What?’

‘Why am I so important to you?’

‘We’re friends,’ Cass said. ‘You’ve welcomed me into your home.’

‘No, really. Tell me the truth. Why are you and Vince so interested in our problems? The night we first met, then the birthday
party, tonight. And I don’t even know what Mick and Vince got into the other night at the restaurant, but it wasn’t good.
You two keep showing up at the strangest moments.’