Animosity (14 page)

“Unless it was a warning.”

“What do you mean?”

“Unless they’re planning to take the law into their own hands,” I said.

“I highly doubt that’s the case, sir.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“I’m assuming you missed my partner’s statement in last Thursday’s
Tribune
,” said Detective Norton. “It was right there in black and white, on the front page. You are not a suspect.”

“I saw it,” I said. “But I’m starting to think I’m the only one. Apparently my neighbors don’t read the
Tribune.
Or they’ve made up their minds already, and don’t give a shit what the police have to say.”

“Mr. Holland, I’ve worked in this business long enough to know that people believe what they see on the six o’clock news, what they read in the paper. Whether it’s the truth or not.”

“That’s precisely what I’m afraid of,” I said.

“Listen, sir—”

“Sure, they printed your partner’s statement. But a lot of damn good it did, don’tcha think, when they negate that in the next paragraph by dredging up something that happened when I was twenty years old? The media is
crucifying
me, Detective, in case you hadn’t noticed! Because I write horror. Because of a stupid mistake I made when I was just a fucking
kid
—”

Norton’s new tone indicated he was speaking to someone whose mental faculties were nil. He sounded tired, fed up: “You’ve been cleared, Mr. Holland. Beyond that, my department has no control over what the media does or does not choose to print. Your conviction
is
a matter of public record, in case you had forgotten. Still, despite this
conspiracy
you’re convinced your neighbors are plotting against you… I think if you’ll just give it time, you’ll realize that last article in the
Tribune
went a long way toward—”

“What’s taking you so long to catch this son of a bitch, anyway?” I interjected. “Maybe if you would hurry up and catch the real killer, these people would get off
my
back…”

He didn’t appreciate that. At all. “There’s no need to shout. We are doing the best we can. Now, look—”

“I don’t think I’m safe here anymore,” I said. “I think I may be in danger.”

“Danger?”

“I think they might try to… hurt me.”

“This isn’t one of your novels, Mr. Holland. This is real life.”

I barely refrained from telling the prick where he could shove his shiny fucking badge and his condescending attitude.

“This is going nowhere.” I heard Detective Norton’s chair squeak again in the background, as if he was already standing up, preparing to end this call whether I liked it or not. “It is not my intention to be rude, but I honestly have more important things to do with my time, sir.”

“Of course you do,” I said.

“Now, if you’d like to file a complaint in regards to the vandalism on your property, I can put you through to an officer who will take care of that for you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay. Maybe I should do that.”

I wondered briefly if I should also file a complaint about Officer Keith Whitmire, and the conversation I had overheard several days ago at the Beechams’ place. At the very least, perhaps I should tell Norton about it? But then, what crime had Whitmire committed against me? He was a cop, one of their own, so I knew it would be futile.

“Understand, however, that our hands are tied unless you caught the culprit in the act,” Norton was saying.

“In other words, you’re not gonna do a damn thing about it.”

“I didn’t say that. But what do you expect us to do? Arrest the whole neighborhood?”

“Of course not.”

“Well…?”

“Forget it. Just… forget it.”

“Fine. Your call. Have a nice day, Mr. Holland.”

I gripped the phone so tight its plastic casing creaked and popped in my hands.

“You have a wonderful day too, Detective,” I said. “Thanks for nothing.”

For several disoriented seconds I had no idea what awakened me. I knew that
something
had dragged me out of my deep, alcohol-induced slumber, yet I couldn’t be sure what, exactly…

A dream?

No. This was something real. Tangible.

A suspicious noise. Nearby. In the middle of the night.

My first thought: Was there an intruder in my house? Had someone broken in?

I cursed as I sat up, trying to clear the lingering wisps of sleep-fog from my brain. My head felt swollen to twice its normal size, as if it were filled with nothing but swirling hot air, and a bittersweet residue seemed to coat the insides of my mouth. Earlier that evening, I had finally popped open the bottle of Chardonnay I brought home with me the day I caught Karen cheating, and I had polished it off in record time. Though I have never been the type of guy who attempts to wash away his problems with chemical substances, if nothing else the wine’s numbing effects did grant me the courage to sneak outside under the cover of darkness, to at last clean up the scattered debris that had turned my property into an eyesore for the last thirty-six hours.

I glanced at the clock by my bed, yawned. Glowing numbers the color of freshly spilt blood informed me that the time was 3:34 a.m.

For those next few minutes, I just sat there in the darkness of my bedroom. I tried to convince myself that there existed a perfectly logical, innocent explanation for a noise loud enough to jerk me from inebriated sleep in the wee hours of the morning. There had to be. Because I did not want to consider the alternative.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just sat there. Straining to hear it again. Whatever
it
was…

Norman started barking in the backyard.

My heart skipped a beat. The retriever’s gruff voice ripped through the otherwise tranquil night, and although the sound was muffled through the house’s walls I could feel the vibrations of his tirade in the headboard of my bed.

If I had not known it before, there was no doubt in my mind now—someone was out there. Messing around on my property.

Again.

From the front yard: a metallic crash. Like a shopping cart being kicked over, skidding across asphalt.

That was followed by a chorus of deep, masculine laughter.

My heart slammed in my chest. A rash of goosebumps sprouted over my naked arms like a million frigid pinpricks.

What the
hell…?

A low thump. Like something heavy dropped onto my front porch.

A woman’s giggle.

“Do it, man! Do it!” a male voice commanded.

More drunken laughter filled the street outside.

Then I leapt out of bed, nearly colliding with the wall. Were those footsteps on my
roof?

An awkward clumping/shuffling din overhead, like someone climbing onto the eaves at the front of the house. A sharp squeal of metal, like a gutter being knocked loose and scraping against vinyl siding. A few seconds later, the sound of
pacing
up there… back and forth, back and forth…

I stared at my bedroom ceiling, stunned.

From outside: another dull thud. A smoker’s cough. It obviously came from the person on the roof—a man—and sounded as if he were right there in the room with me.

Norman began to bark more furiously than ever, his urgent call echoing up and down the block like an army of angry retrievers.

“Wish his dog would shut its trap,” someone said.

“Don’t worry about him.” A younger, female voice this time. “He’s harmless.”

“Woof, Norman, woof!” I heard one of the fuckers taunt my dog. “Grrrrr!”

“Quit screwin’ around, you guys. We gonna do this or what?”

A labored grunt. More heavy footfalls overhead.

“Hurry up! Gimme it. Easy… there we go…”

In a sort of low, stiff-legged crabwalk, I at last began to creep down the hallway, toward the front of the house, cringing each time the floorboards creaked beneath my feet.

The night was hot and sticky. I had been sleeping in nothing but a pair of ratty old gym socks and the Batman boxers Sam bought for me last Father’s Day. As I passed the bathroom, I grabbed my robe from the hook on the door, threw it on.

Next I took a detour into the kitchen, retrieved the Maglite from atop the refrigerator.

I wrapped both hands around it. The flashlight felt heavy as hell in my grip. Huge. Lethal.
Good…

When I stepped back into the hallway, though, I almost dropped it. I froze again. The temperature around me seemed to plummet a thousand degrees.

“What the
fuck?”

A trio of faceless black forms stood on my front porch, gazing into the house through my living room window like lost souls trapped in limbo, peering into the land of the living. Their tall, misshapen shadows stretched onto my carpet in twitching obsidian pools, and something about that more than anything else filled me with an icy terror the likes of which I had never known before. As if even the window’s triple-paned glass could not deny the intruders entry to my private domain. They would eventually bleed through, and get inside…

“Heads up!” someone shouted. “He’s coming!”

Another voice: “Shit! Move, hoss,
move!
”

Dull bluish moonlight washed into the room as the figures in the window vanished.

“Go! Go! Go!”

A thunderous cacophony of footsteps clunked and pounded on the porch.

A woman squealed.

“Yee-haaaa, Martha!” bellowed a man with a thick Southern drawl. “Time to pay the piper!”

And then the night exploded with a resounding CRASH. The unmistakable sound of glass shattering.

I ran for the door, wielding the Maglite like a club.

I fumbled with the deadbolt for what felt like forever. Fought with the chain for another eternity. Cursed my jittery, useless fingers.

Outside, Norman’s barking grew to a fever pitch. His grating yelp filled the night with an unending staccato barrage. I imagined him red-eyed and foaming at the mouth, transformed into something feral and malevolent, a snarling blond beast that looked nothing like the beautiful, friendly-to-a-fault retriever I once knew.

I threw open the door and staggered outside.

Madness greeted me on my front lawn. Chaos. Everywhere I looked, silhouettes sprinted through my yard, scattering in all directions like a swarm of spindly black demons escaping into the night. How many? A dozen, maybe more. They spilled from my driveway, from both sides of the house, melting into the impenetrable darkness beyond my property. Their fleeing footsteps whispered through the grass like a thousand obscene sighs,
thwapp
ed upon the blacktopped driveway in an odd counter-rhythm to my own frantic heartbeat. Several of the scampering forms tripped and fell as they fled, but then immediately leapt to their feet again and scurried away, spider-like, before I had a chance to confront them.

“What… who… what are you—” I babbled, my mouth hanging open as I watched that ebony sea of faceless figures flood the neighborhood.

Normally, the streetlight between Donna Dunaway’s and the Beechams’ properties across the street would have illuminated enough of my yard to make out the trespassers’ features. Its bulb had burned out a month ago, however, and our local power company had not gotten around to replacing it yet.

Some of them might have looked familiar—in the shapes and sizes of their bodies, the way they moved—but even the night conspired against me. It hung like a thick black veil around the edges of my property, and it seemed to grow thicker and blacker as I squinted through the darkness, trying to identify just
one
of my tormentors…

Was that Sal Friedman’s stooped shape shambling down the block? Impossible. How could the old geezer move so fast? Was that Ernie Tomblin colliding with my mailbox in his rush to get away? For a second I thought I even spotted… Glenn Sommersville and his wife Charlene? Charlene Sommersville had been undergoing radiation treatments for breast cancer the last few months, but the way her gaunt silhouette darted and zigzagged across my lawn like an Olympic track star made me wonder if her disease hadn’t been a filthy lie all along. That is, if the figures
were
the Sommersvilles. I couldn’t be sure. Nor could I be sure if that was Lorne Childress, Freddy Morgan, or tall, lanky Doc McFarland cutting through my next-door neighbor’s front yard as he raced like mad for home.

As I watched my neighbors retreat into the night, I felt helpless, disoriented, perhaps still a bit intoxicated from my fling with the bottle of chardonnay earlier that evening. None of this made any sense.

Slowly, like a zombie from one of my novels, I descended the steps of my front porch and stumbled out onto the lawn, oddly mesmerized by the mayhem before me. I could only stand there, my mouth hanging open, as I fought to understand what the hell was going on here.