Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies (33 page)

People had gotten so comfortable calling Kyle Kravitz that he didn’t hesitate before answering.

The Lenny Kravitz thing was annoying, but Kyle rarely had to explain that his nickname was actually a nod to Gladys Kravitz, a character on the old TV show
Bewitched
, which ran from 1964 to 1972. Most people had forgotten about the TV show.

He preferred the first Gladys, portrayed by the actress Alice Pearce. She died after two seasons and was replaced by Sandra Gould, but the show was never the same for Kyle.

He was a trivia junkie, which was one of the few matches on his Internet dating profile he actually shared with Ramona Withers. An addiction to trivia games was one of his many admitted quirks that Ramona quickly grew tired of.

He collected information. It was a great asset for C++ writers.

Bewitched,
of course, had two Darrins, and that always made Kyle wonder what was really going on behind the scenes. Something in the water on the set? Or real witchcraft? That would’ve been a hoot.

Gladys Kravitz was his favorite character because she was always frustrated by her husband, Abner, who failed to notice the odd behavior that came from the home across the street that was occupied by Darrin and Samantha Stephens—who was really a witch. Alice Pearce had great comic timing. Something Kyle felt he, himself, lacked.

Kyle’s constant peering out the apartment window every time a car door opened or closed had proven too much for Ramona, who could not have cared less about what was going on five feet outside the circle of her physical being.

“You’re worse than Gladys Kravitz,” Ramona had said three days into their new living arrangement. She proceeded to call him Kravitz in front of his friends, family, and neighbors, trying her best to embarrass Kyle and change his behavior. Which, of course, proved how little she had paid attention to her new boyfriend and lover. She could no more change Kyle’s behavior than she could convince Kyle that the color of the curtains really mattered.

All of this had no bearing in Kyle Ludlow’s mind on the day the moving van pulled up in front of the vacant house next door to his father’s house, not so long after the not-so-painful break up with Ramona Withers.

But it should have. Especially when Baba went missing shortly thereafter.

Kyle had never known anyone who owned three refrigerators. Two were reasonably normal; one for the kitchen, one for the garage to hold an overflow of beer, soda, and winter meat in the freezer. Baba had always
had two refrigerators. Just about everybody on the street did. But three? That was curious.

Why would anyone need three refrigerators? Kyle wondered.

From his vantage point, peeking from behind the closed blinds in the living room, Kyle could see only the big yellow moving van and the two men unloading it. They didn’t look like the stereotypical moving men—muscular, tattooed, wearing T-shirts and jeans; instead they were both nearly identical in build, which could only be described as thin and slight, and both had similar toned red hair. Not carrot-top red, but a deep, sunset red, that Kyle found oddly comforting and familiar.

One man wore his hair spiked, and the other, a shorter man by about a half inch, had his hair parted down the middle. Otherwise they looked like twins right down to the uniforms they wore—white Oxford shirts, black cuffed trousers, and tasseled slip-on loafers. There was no logo on the truck or on the movers’ clothes.

Neither man was sweating, which may have not been an issue since it was mid-October and the sky was gray, threatening a chilly rain, but Kyle noticed anyway.

Just as he noticed the ease with which both men moved heavy appliances such as the three refrigerators, the three freezers that followed (and looked big enough to hold two sides of beef each), and the two stoves that came after that, without any strain or real effort at all.

Obviously, Mrs. Shirkline, across the street, had noticed the odd assortment of appliances being moved into the vacant house, too. She had walked her dog, Dippy, a thirteen-year-old Welsh corgi, around the block four times since the moving van had started to unload.

Dippy looked as if he was ready to expire as soon as
he stepped out on the front porch for the first go around, but Mrs. Shirkline persisted.

Kyle figured Dippy would be dead before the evening if the moving van wasn’t empty by then. That would suit Kyle just fine. He didn’t like Dippy. The dog was mean, baring its teeth every time Kyle came around.

For the most part, Kyle didn’t like dogs at all. One of his first memories as a child was being bitten by a stray dog when he was playing out on the patio by himself. But Kyle liked Mrs. Shirkline well enough . . . she was a cohort, a fellow nib-shit, who would trade bits of news with him when the chance arose and keep an eye on Baba when Kyle had to run occasional errands. He was not as fond of all his neighbors as he was Mrs. Shirkline, and after nearly a lifetime in the neighborhood, not all of his neighbors were as fond of him, either.

It was not often that a new person moved into The Ridges. The houses were well established, over thirty years old—older than Kyle by a year or two, and he’d lived there alone with Baba, who had never remarried, since he was born.

The houses were mostly all brick ranches with double-car garages attached and sat atop cinder-block basements. In all, there were nearly two hundred houses in The Ridges.

The name for the development was derived from the hills that encircled the houses. All of the houses sat in a shallow valley, with the town and all of its services—hospital, grocery stores, gas stations, schools, and restaurants—less than two miles away. It was an ideal suburban location, accessible to every necessity in just minutes.

Most of the houses had yards with several towering oaks or elms in them. Massive juniper bushes covered
the fronts of most of the houses, and the sidewalks were uneven, broken by the maze of roots of the giant trees that had popped up out of the ground.

Autumn brought the smells of decay and the laborious job of raking leaves to the forefront of everyone’s life in The Ridges. In the days before burning leaves was outlawed, the sky would be so thick with gray smoke that a driver would have to flip on his bright lights to drive through the neighborhood in the middle of the day.

The houses in The Ridges were a little weary, but the neighborhood couldn’t really be called run-down. Everybody mowed their yards, planted flowers in the spring, and kept their driveways free of old cars (only because of a local ordinance)—but there was an energy lacking that could be seen in the newer housing developments springing up south of town. The will to keep up with the Joneses had pretty much worked its way out of everybody’s system around the time Kyle graduated from high school twelve or thirteen years ago—including Baba, who never really had that inclination in the first place.

So everyone on the street had been on alert since the sold sign went on the Fergusons’ old house. Every time an unfamiliar car drove down the street, people stopped and stared, wondering if it was the “new” person. Members of the Welcome Wagon were gathering for the first time in years, putting together a basket of food and coupons from the local restaurants.

The curious neighbors reminded Kyle of a town of prairie dogs, popping up and down at every new noise. The only thing missing was a squeal or two to alert everyone when to dive underground. He knew he could be categorized as a prairie dog, too, but he didn’t care. He’d
liked the Fergusons, and having someone new next door made him nervous now that he had fully readjusted to life in The Ridges, since his brief foray with Ramona.

The Fergusons’ house had sat empty for nearly three years after Lloyd Ferguson died of a stroke. The house went to probate court because he and his wife, Matl ida, who had died a year earlier, had no children and no apparent heirs other than some distant relatives in Texas who obviously weren’t interested in keeping the property.

From what Kyle could gather, no one on his street could recall seeing a Realtor or the buyers ever looking at the house. One day a red sold sign appeared, and not long after that the moving van showed up.

The identity of the buyer was still a mystery.

And the bets were still on whether the new neighbor would take sides in neighborhood battles that always seemed to be raging about one thing or another—who was mowing over whose property lines, barking dogs, or just plain, flat-out annoyance with each others’ existence. Kyle wondered that too. No neighborhood with houses that sat ten feet apart was without its conflicts.

After seeing the three refrigerators and three freezers moved easily into the garage, he hoped they wouldn’t join forces with the people who lived on the other side of the Fergusons’ old house.

The Pinters were Kyle’s archenemies, keepers of more dogs than should be legally allowed by anyone living within the city limits, and they were not amused by his nib-shit ways.

Kyle had called animal control on them more than once, but the Pinters, Lena, Lou, and their three sons whose names all started with L’s (and who looked like bulldogs: heavy jowls and a constant stupid look in
their eyes), weren’t breaking any ordinances. Kyle had checked.

Desperate to get some sleep during the day, but unable to because the dogs barked constantly, Kyle called the police. But they couldn’t do anything unless somebody else complained—and all the other somebody else’s were at work during the day, so the dogs didn’t bother them. That, and Kyle was sure that the Pinters had a police scanner—or were psychic—because every time he called the police, after the first time, all the dogs were quiet and mysteriously absent when they arrived.

He had given up the fight, had quit calling the police, but the Pinters hated him, and depending on the day and how much sleep he’d been deprived of, he felt the same way about them. He avoided them if they were out in their yard, went the other way if he saw them coming. They did the same.

The last thing Kyle needed at the moment, considering Baba’s condition, was an enemy next door.

“Hey, Kravitz, what’s up?”

Kyle turned to see his cousin Randy standing next to him. “Not much, just getting some groceries.”

“How’s your dad?” Unlike his nickname, which was available to the world, Baba was Kyle’s own special name for his father. Randy was one of Baba’s sister’s sons that also lived in The Ridges. Five streets over, about half a mile away. Two other cousins and another aunt lived on the outskirts of the neighborhood. It was nice having family nearby, but they weren’t particularly close. No family reunions or cookouts in the summer. But they did manage to get together once a year at Christmas time.

“He’s about the same,” Kyle answered.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the grocery store wasn’t very busy. An instrumental version of “Hungry Heart,” the Bruce Springsteen song, was playing in the background.

Kyle had been standing just inside the entrance, staring at the bulletin board, when Randy had sauntered up—he hadn’t moved.

“Man, that’s a bad gig your dad’s playing. I hope my mind never goes,” Randy said.

There was no mistaking that Randy had Ludlow blood in him. All of the Ludlows that Kyle had ever met were on the short side, less than five foot five inches tall, but none of them had a Napoleon complex. They were agile, almost spry, and all of them, including Kyle, excelled at athletics.

Randy shared the same blue eyes as Kyle, and his facial features were similar. They all had slanted noses and lips that were hardly lips at all, making it hard for any of the Ludlows to smile. It was almost as though they didn’t have muscles in their faces that allowed them to bare their teeth. Kyle and Baba had the same problem, and everyone usually mistook their expressions, interpreting them as stoic and angry instead of focused and reasonably playful, which was a truer depiction of their attitudes, expressions, and approach to life.

Kyle was still staring at all of the handmade posters plastered on the bulletin board, barely paying any attention to Randy. He liked Randy well enough, though they rarely saw each other, but something had caught his eye that wasn’t making any sense.

“Huh?”

“Your dad. The Alzheimer’s. You all right, Kravitz?”

Kyle finally turned away from the posters. “Yeah. I’m
sorry. You’re right, it’s a bad gig. But Baba still has his good days.”

Alzheimer’s was a bad word that Kyle refused to speak. He wasn’t in denial. There was no mistaking what was happening to his father, but he believed in the power of words, of self-fulfilling prophecies, so he chose not to name the illness that was stealing his father away from him.

Kyle could not imagine being alone in the world. Even though he was thirty and had family in the neighborhood, the thought of living in an empty house terrified him.

A nurse had told Kyle, right after they diagnosed Baba, that Alzheimer’s wasn’t forgetting where your keys were, it was forgetting that a key was a key, what it was for. One of these days Baba would forget that he had a son and what he was for. The medicines were helping, but even they had an expiration date, and Kyle knew it.

“That’s weird,” Kyle said, after a long pause.

“What?”

“All of those.” He pointed to the posters on the bulletin board. Almost all of them were pictures of missing cats. Muffy. Fluffy. Charlie. All of them had been lost or vanished in the last couple of weeks. There were twelve posters, all told. Most offering a reward, with little tabs offering a phone number. None of the tabs had been pulled.

Randy shrugged. “Fox probably got ’em.”

“There are foxes around here?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen three in the last week. A buddy of mine down the street says one’s got a den under his shed. I’ve never seen so many before. Once, when I was a little kid, I saw one trot through our backyard.
I think you were still a baby. It was a gray one, too. A big male carrying a squirrel. I’ll never forget it. The fox stopped and stared at me. I swear I thought it was going to say something. But it just shook its head, flipping the squirrel back and forth like it was proud of its kill, then trotted on. Scared the crap out of me. I never saw it, or another fox, again, until lately. These were red though, not gray like that one.”