Animosity (22 page)

When, I wondered, would I be forced—like the victims in the horror films that were my lifelong addiction—to board up my doors and windows in order to keep the beasts at bay? How long until a tangled mass of sweaty, moon-pale arms burst through, ripping at my clothes and hair like reanimated corpses clambering for fresh brains? How long until they tore me limb from limb?

It would have been so easy to just
give up.
To throw open my front door and surrender to their murderous embrace. I envisioned my broken body passing over that sea of scowling faces like a crowd surfer at a heavy metal concert, imagined what they would do with my head if I finally let them have it…

It was so damn tempting. At least then this would all be
over…

At some point early in the morning, eight or nine hours after they had first surrounded my home, I succumbed to my fatigue despite fighting sleep with every trace of energy left in me. Shortly after changing the dressing on my lacerated scalp one last time, gulping down a handful of Tylenol, I nodded off for a minute or two right there on the bathroom floor, and I dreamed that my neighbors had busted inside my home at last… they filled the house to capacity, and I lay crushed amongst them like a helpless minnow surrounded by a thousand ravenous sharks. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Their teeth were made of shiny silver nails in my nightmare, and the unified alien war-cry that issued from their mouths as they descended upon me was not unlike the hoarse, dying whine of my best friend on the day they took his life.

After that, I did not allow myself to fall asleep again. Sleep was not an option. Sleep could be the death of me.

Every second of the night and into the following morning, I could still hear them outside. Even when their racket tapered off a bit, the thumping and banging fading to sporadic bursts of malicious laughter, it never died completely. Wood cracked, splintered, popped and whined as they vandalized my front porch, as if they planned to tear the house to the ground one piece at a time. Glass shattered in my driveway every few minutes. Constant profanities were hurled my way, vehement curses far more offensive than any I had ever used in my books the bastards rushed to condemn. Once I was sure I heard Dr. Tom McFarland’s normally cultured, effeminate voice boasting from atop my house, “I’m going to bounce this hammer off his goddamn skull, I get half a chance… just you wait and see”; I assumed he was all done tending to Whitmire’s injuries, and had returned to the game thirsty for blood, ready to make up for lost time. An awful metallic clatter echoed up and down the street, the resounding din of the mob finishing off my already destroyed Explorer with their crowbars, baseball bats, and jagged two-by-fours. On more than one occasion I attempted to drown out my neighbors’ fury by cranking up the stereo in my office, blasting my old Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and Blue Oyster Cult CDs at maximum volume. But none of it did any good.

On and on, it went. On and on…

My property had become nothing less than a battlefield. Suburban apocalypse. These were the sounds of war all around me. But in this war, every one of the participants loved what he was doing. They
reveled
in it.

Just before dawn I heard the puttering growl of a chainsaw start up in my backyard. My heart pounded painfully in my chest as I gripped my trusty Maglite in one hand and my makeshift spear in the other—I barely recognized my own reflection in the butcher knife’s blade, a twitchy, wild-eyed stranger with an ugly smear of crusty brown gore at his hairline—and I lay prone in the middle of the hallway waiting to see the saw’s vicious razor-teeth come chewing through the back door. Although that never happened, I could hear them cutting up
something
back there. Raucous laughter ripped apart the night, louder even than the grating buzz of the saw. I strongly suspected it might have been Norman’s doghouse which fell prey to their lunacy—a terrible thought that sent tears of both overwhelming sadness and murderous rage streaming down my face—but I did not dare peek out the window above the kitchen sink to be sure.

I did not want to see.

I did not
want
to know what they were doing out there.

“God help me,” I wept.

A few minutes after eight a.m., twelve hours into my captivity, help finally arrived.

At least for a little while.

I thought I was hearing things at first. Chalked it up to nothing more than an auditory hallucination induced by chronic wishful thinking. The drug-like funk of sleep deprivation married with my throbbing head wound filled my skull with a grating buzz louder even than the destruction outside.

During the first few hours of my ordeal, I had hoped Detectives Norton and Hembry might come visiting. I assumed they would want a word with me soon, about that second child’s body. By mid-morning, if I could only hold out that long, surely I would hear car doors slamming, would hear the detectives chasing the mob off my lawn. I longed to see Norton’s smug, condescending face in my doorway. I would gladly hand over his damned DNA sample, would even provide it for him while he watched, if he would only come
save
me…

But I knew that it would not happen.
They
had no doubt I was innocent. The investigators knew their time was better spent elsewhere, chasing down real leads that had nothing to do with me.

Unfortunately, the only thing that mattered here… was what my neighbors believed.

I was alone. No one was coming to rescue me.

Or so I had thought…

Now, a hush fell over the crowd gathered on my lawn. I heard the assholes reacting to some unforeseen hitch in their plans—whispered questions and an aura of confusion rippled through the tides of scorn that had ebbed and flowed upon my property for days—and I knew I had not imagined it.

It was
real:
the purr of an engine. A soft whine of brakes. Tires on asphalt, rolling to a stop.

My heart raced. Chills of elation—of delicious
hope—
spread over my entire body.

A flurry of footsteps clunked upon my porch, receded down the steps, as whoever had been standing watch by the door marched across the lawn to confront my visitor.

Who could it be?
I wondered, almost forgetting to breathe.

I ducked across the living room to the window, pulled back the curtain. Bright sunlight splashed into my home, temporarily blinding me.

Squinting, I peered through that ocean of bodies to steal a glimpse of my savior.

At the curb, beside the decapitated pole that had once been my mailbox, a shiny green Volvo idled in the street. Beads of water stippled its roof and hood, as if it had emerged from a carwash minutes ago.

My jaw dropped as the driver-side door opened.

And
she
stepped out.

***

“Karen!” I called to her from behind the spider-web pattern of shattered glass in my storm door. I knew it was a risky move, showing my face again to those who wished me dead, but somehow I fooled myself into believing that the screen between us kept me safe. For now.

Instantly, all eyes were upon me. My neighbors turned to glare my way, but for the next minute or so rampant disbelief replaced the murderous rage on their faces. They glanced at one another worriedly, as if they did not know what to do now that the enemy had reappeared.

Their numbers had doubled since the previous evening. That seething congregation of hate filled my yard, spilling out into the street where there was no more room left upon my property. How many were out there? Two dozen? Three? I had never realized so many people
lived
on Poinsettia Lane! Each of them still carried his or her makeshift weapon—bicycle chains, baseball bats, metal pipes, crowbars, sledgehammers, tire irons—and at their feet lay the evidence of all the
fun
they were having at my expense. Crushed beer cans, flattened Dixie cups, soggy cigarette butts, and broken liquor bottles littered the trampled grass everywhere I looked.

Someone, I noticed, had even defecated on my welcome mat. Recently. It lay coiled before me in a stinking wet pile, like a cruel gag gift.

I grasped the doorframe with both hands to keep from passing out, wondered when all of this had ceased to be about the death of an innocent child… and when it had become one gigantic fucking
block party.

“Andy…?”

At the curb, her mouth hanging open as she gazed at the bedlam, stood my ex-wife. She wore a knee-length dress the same color as her car, dangling gold earrings and a modest touch of make-up. She had cut her hair since the last time I saw her, and unless it was a trick of the sunlight she might have added a few blond streaks to it as well.

In spite of my situation, I couldn’t help thinking that she looked gorgeous. Angelic.

“Andy? What the hell’s going on here?” she called to me from across the yard, a tremor in her voice.

“Karen!” I wept. “Oh, thank God… Karen!”

“What is this? I don’t—”

“Karen, please… you’ve got to get help!”

“Are you hurt? Jesus, what have they done to your—”

Impatience rippled through the crowd between us, drowning out the rest of her question. As one, my neighbors moved, shifting forward slightly.

I stepped back, braced myself for their attack. Prepared to slam the door.

“About time you showed your face!” Ben Souther shouted up at me from his place near the front of the mob. He wore a navy blue bathrobe above red-and-white plaid pajama bottoms, no shirt. “You’ve already made this a lot harder than it has to be, boy!”

“That’s right,” Floyd Beecham agreed from a few feet away. “We told you before, we just wanna talk to you! But you been locked up inside there, like you got something to hide!”

“Don’t look good on your part!” a younger, teenage voice insisted, but I could not see who said it.

“Shut up,” I growled at them, through clenched teeth. “Just…
shut up.
Karen, get back in your car. Get the hell out of here.”

“What is this, Andy?” she asked me again. “What’s happening? I was worried about you. We’ve been up at the lake the last few days. I tried to call, but—”

“Karen—”

“—I wanted to drop by and make sure you were okay—”

“Call the police.
Go.
”

No one moved. No one spoke. The air seemed to hum with tension.

Overhead, a distant airliner streaked across the sky. I wished I could be up there with its passengers. Comfortable. Safe. Peering down like an apathetic god upon someone else’s problems.

When Karen stepped over the curb and onto my lawn, my neighbors echoed my own shocked gasp. They each turned to gawk at her with the same incredulous expression they had displayed when I first came to the door. As if they did not believe the nerve of my ex-wife, daring to proceed. As if they could not understand how anyone would still choose to associate with
me,
after everything that had happened.

I watched, my pulse hammering violently within the wound upon my forehead, as they gripped their weapons tighter.

“Karen,
no
,” I whispered. “Don’t be stupid…”

As she parted the sea of bodies, Karen paused to make eye contact with several of my neighbors, and the look on her face was the one she used to scold Sam when our daughter misbehaved.

“Francine?” Karen said, when she swerved to avoid a broken beer bottle in her path and nearly collided with Floyd Beecham’s better half. “What are you doing here?”

Each subsequent victim of her admonishment stared down at his or her shoes, as if ashamed. For a brief moment, I saw the face of a kind neighbor I once knew. But only until my ex-wife’s back was turned, and she moved on to someone else…

“Donna? Patty? Yvonne?” Her brow creased as she glanced down at the rolling pin in Patty Carstensen’s chubby hand. “I don’t understand. You ladies are a part of this, too?”

She took several more steps toward my house, and as she did so she kept shaking her head in disgust.

“Is this some kind of twisted joke? Because if that’s what this is, it’s not the least bit funny. Sal? Sal Friedman? What is it you think Andy’s done? You should be ashamed of yourself, old man… I can’t believe you people. You
know
Andy…

She took several more steps, surveying the crowd.

“Is that you up there, Ben Souther? What the hell has gotten into you? I thought you were his
friend.
Joe? Eileen? My God, Charlene… put down those hedge-clippers before you hurt yourself.”

She stood within just five or six feet of my front porch when they finally spoke back.

Someone at the bottom of the steps—a young man I did not recognize right away, though he might have been Drew and JoLynn Pruitt’s boy, Darren—suddenly stopped Karen from going any further. He was tall, lanky, had a silver hoop in his eyebrow. He trembled with an obvious mixture of rage and nervous anticipation as he blocked Karen’s path with a long, thin lawnmower blade stained with splotches of green.

She looked down at it, back at the spiky-haired teenager.