Bury the Children in the Yard (8 page)

“You should try me.”

Michelle was standing, her coat on and her purse slung over her shoulder.

“You look like you’re going someplace,” Barry said.

“Yeah, Brandon called. He’s over at Derek’s. Wants me to pick him up. He’s been pretty clingy lately. I don’t think he wants me and you getting too close, you know. I’ll be back tomorrow though. He has school.”

“Okay, I’ll make it quick.”

Barry told her about what had happened at the laundromat, his voice as full of bewilderment as it was of anger.

“Oh well,” Michelle said. “Stranger things have happened, I guess. It could have been your wallet or something.”

“I know,” Barry said, resigned. “It’s just, I don’t know, it was so fucking odd. I mean, why would he want my
clothes
? Wasn’t he wearing any clothes when he came in? Wouldn’t somebody have noticed? Who goes to the laundromat to steal people’s clothes? Why not dig through dumpsters or something. Did he put them on
over
his regular clothes?”

“Everything doesn’t have a rational explanation. You’re old enough to know that by now.”

“Oh, I’m well aware of that but it’s just …
frustrating
.”

“Well, as much as I’d rather stick around and hear you mope about your lost clothes, I’d better go. See you tomorrow.” She came over to the couch and kissed him deeply. He ran a hand up the inside of her smooth thigh, beneath her loose skirt.

“Sure you can’t stay for a few more minutes?”

“I really have to go. Sorry.”

“That’s okay.” Barry watched her walk out the door, enjoying the view and saddened by her encroaching absence.

With Michelle gone, Barry didn’t really have anything to do. He sat on the couch with the television on, unwatched. He couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened in the laundromat. The more he thought about it, the more it unnerved him.

He thought about making himself something to eat and then decided he wasn’t hungry.

He couldn’t even really figure why it bothered him so much. It wasn’t like the clothes were expensive or anything like that. It wasn’t even that they were
his
clothes, or were at one time. He had donated countless items of clothing to the Salvation Army and Goodwill. Hell, there was probably a whole town somewhere adorned in clothes that had once been his.

What bothered him about this incident was that it was almost like this man had gone to great lengths to …
abduct
these clothes. Barry felt like he had been singled out. That’s what really bothered him about it – the fact that he was alone in this situation. Never had he heard of anyone else suffering this same problem.

Suffering?

Okay, maybe that was a bit too much. Sure he was a victim, but of what?

Feeling helpless, he switched off the TV, stripped down, and crawled into bed, longing for the nights that Michelle would be there beside him, his nose pressed against her strawberry scented hair …

Barry awoke to a brightly lighted apartment. A quick look around told him it was his, however scarcely recognizable. The couch and coffee table were kicked over. The TV was turned up to full volume, buzzing test patterns of a station that had gone off- air. All of his drawers were opened, clothes strewn everywhere. His closet was gutted. All the cabinets in the kitchen were open, the water faucet in the kitchen sink running full blast.

Three men stood in the middle of the room, staring at him.

One of them was the man he had seen at the laundromat, still wearing Barry’s brown shirt and gray corduroys. The other two were also wearing Barry’s clothes.

Barry fought the temptation to pull the sheet up around his shoulders and cower back into the bed. Instead, he slung the sheet off, walking up to the three men in all of his nakedness.

He drew very close to the man in the middle, the one from the laundromat and, sounding as authoritative as he could, said, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“What are
you
doing here?” the man shot back.

“I
live
here.”

“It’s a shame. The place is a shambles.”

“Take off my clothes,” Barry demanded.

“These are not your clothes.”

“Yes, they are. You stole them from the laundromat. And you two, you must have taken those right out of my closet.”

“Actually, they were laying on the kitchen table. And they’re not your clothes.”

“What do you mean they’re not my clothes?”

“We think they fit us better. These should be our clothes. Therefore, they are our clothes.”

“You need to leave. Right now.”

“No.”

“Okay. You know what, fuck it, I’m calling the police. Stealing my clothes is one thing but breaking into my house is another. So I’m calling the police and then I’m going to get out my baseball bat and beat you fuckers until they get here.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that.”

Barry went into the kitchen where the phone was. The phone was off the hook and he had to place it on the hook before picking it up again.

Before dialing the “9,” Barry asked, “Why wouldn’t you do this?”

“Because you’re in a lot more trouble than we are.”

“I think you’re fucking nuts. And I think you’re breaking and entering. And I think you’ve vandalized my entire apartment. I think you’re in plenty of trouble.”

“But you invited us.”

“Like hell I did.”

“I don’t think you’re aware of all the things you’ve done.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. How did you find this place anyway?”

“When a man is running, when he is desperate, he leaves behind a scent, an essence. That’s what led me to the laundromat. That’s how I found your clothes. And of course, your scent was all over your clothes, embedded in the fabric, smudged against the collar.”

“I’m not running from anything.”

“Where were you at 3:28 this morning?”

“I was …” Barry looked at the clock on the stove. It read: 3:28. “I was standing in my apartment calling the police on three intruders.”

“But we were never here.”

And then the apartment was plunged into darkness and quiet.

Barry was back in his bed.

The apartment was more than dark. Barry had the sensation of being somewhere very deep under the sea.

He heard a popping sound. And then another popping sound and felt himself rising through the sea, toward his apartment, toward his bed that felt like it was at the surface of the water.

Suddenly, he broke through the surface of the sea. Into his apartment. Into his bed.

Barry stood in the middle of the bed, aware that he was holding something heavy. When he looked down, he saw that it was an ax. And what he saw beneath that, pressed down wetly into the bed, caused him to scream.

Michelle was down there only it wasn’t the whole Michelle. It was pieces of Michelle, her blood spattered all over Barry’s gray pants, wetting the arms of his brown shirt and sticking the fabric to his skin.

She was red and the bed was red and Barry couldn’t stop screaming.

The Warm House

School let out early because of the snow. Amy Bradshaw pulled her car to the curb in front of her house. There was already at least a foot of snow on the ground and her cheap car with its bald tires (a perfectly good car for a sixteen-year-old girl, according to her father) had barely made it from the high school. On the way home, she had listened to the weather reports on no fewer than three different radio stations and they all predicted the same thing – blizzard. When it got dark in a few hours, the temperature was expected to drop even further and the winds were supposed to pick up. They were advising businesses to close and motorists to stay off the road. There would be white-outs, the weather people said. They advised against the elderly and the infant leaving their homes.

Great, Amy thought, I’m going to have to be a shut-in for the next three days. Maybe she could go over to a friend’s or get one of her friends to come over to her house so she wouldn’t have to bear the company of her parents without some kind of a buffer. She was an only child and often hated this fact of life. The fact that she was the only one for her retired parents to focus their considerable attentions on.

My little princess
, her dad often called her.

Yes, it seemed like he called her that every chance he got and she was getting sick of it. She no longer wanted to be anyone’s princess. Sadly, her parents’ affections were making her hate them. Maybe she was just getting older. She wanted to go off to college, someplace very far away and maybe only come back to visit during holidays and summers. She felt bad for feeling these things but, nevertheless, the feelings were there. They brewed to a thick froth with each passing day.

She thought all of this as she sat there in her shit car in front of her (her
parents’
) large house and took a deep breath before getting out. She pulled her coat tight around her neck and decided not to bother grabbing her backpack from the passenger seat. She probably wouldn’t need it until Sunday. Today was only Thursday. She counted on school being cancelled tomorrow.

The car door opened with an ancient squeak, wind biting into her skin.

Getting out of the car, she plunged ankle-deep in the snow and cursed it. She went around the front of the car and cautiously walked up the walk leading to her house.

Reaching her front door, she was surprised to find a package waiting below the mailbox. Hopefully, it was something for her. Maybe something she had ordered from the Internet and completely forgotten about.

It was a simple rectangular box sitting with its length vertical. The side of it, in green lettering, read: “OPEN IMMEDIATELY ORGANIC MATTER ENCLOSED.”

Maybe someone sent me flowers, she thought. It
was
getting close to Valentine’s Day. She quickly laughed that thought away. High school boys were not considerate enough to send packages.

A disappointing affirmation flooded her as she cleared some of the dirt from the address label. These weren’t for anyone in her house. The label read “1311 Oakmount Dr.” They were for the neighbor. The toad who lived next door. She could probably tell her dad they received a package in error and let him be the one to take it over but Amy thought it might buy her a few more minutes. Not to mention that she would, hopefully, be able to get a glimpse of the way the toad lived. She loved finding out things about people. The man had lived next door for nearly a year and she didn’t know anything at all about him. She knew he was ugly, middle-ageish, lived alone, and rarely left the house. This chronic indoorsiness led her to believe he did not have a job. Of course, the neighborhood was relatively affluent so maybe he did something over the Internet. Or maybe he collected disability. Or maybe he lived off an inheritance.

Suddenly, her interest was piqued.

Besides, it was very cold outside and if the box did contain flowers then she didn’t think it was such a good idea to leave them sitting out there any longer than was absolutely necessary.

She picked the box up, holding it delicately with both hands, and walked back down the snow-covered walkway. The snow had picked up; big fat flakes that accumulated fast and stuck to the road. Maybe she would walk to Jennifer’s later. She was the only one of her friends who lived in the neighborhood and she certainly didn’t think she would be driving anyplace for the rest of the day.

Reaching the end of her walk, she turned right and walked the short distance to the neighbor’s house on the obscured sidewalk.

Then she turned another right and started up the neighbor’s walkway.

Curious, she thought. His house wasn’t covered in snow like all the other houses in the neighborhood. The roof gleamed black as though it
had
snowed on it and now the snow had simply ... melted off. That didn’t seem quite right, she thought, but she guessed stranger things had happened. Maybe it was just the way his house sat or something. Maybe the wind had peeled off most of the snow and she was just imagining it looked wet. It was possible the meager sunlight hit his house in a more direct way than it hit the other houses.

As she reached the porch, she noticed the windows were also steamed up and while this didn’t seem exactly normal, it didn’t seem to be any reason for her to run screaming or anything. Maybe the guy just liked it warm. And speaking of the guy, she realized she didn’t even know his name. Live next door to someone for nearly a year and you don’t even know their first or last name. That didn’t seem right, either. Suddenly, that seemed just as strange as the lack of snow on the man’s roof.

But she had just seen his name, hadn’t she? On the mailing label of the box. Why hadn’t it stuck with her? She glanced back down at the box.

Brent Johnson, the man’s name was. Totally inoffensive and unremarkable. No wonder it had simply bounced off her memory. Sometimes it amazed her how shallow she could be. How could she be truly interested in people and not remember a name, however forgettable, for two minutes?

Oh well. She was cold. She now wanted to be done with this business. Dump the package on the poor old ugly guy, pop in and say “hi” to Mom and Dad and then head on over to Jennifer’s. Maybe Jen had managed to score some more vodka from her friend who worked at the drive-thru and they could warm up their evening that way.

Sounded good to her.

She rang the doorbell and waited.

She tapped her foot in the slush at the bottom of the door and rang the bell again.

Waited.

Jesus, it was cold. And the wind had already picked up.

She was about ready to simply set the package on the porch swing to the right of the door when she heard a voice call from inside.

“Coming,” it said.

The door swung open and a tired-looking man opened the door. Her breath caught up in her throat. No, she realized, she didn’t know anything about this Brent Johnson at all.

What startled her was that he wasn’t as ugly as she had imagined. Only he was. She didn’t know exactly. It was like he was probably really attractive at one time but, somewhere along the line, scars had happened. A lot of them. His face was covered in a series of thin, spiderweb-like scars, reaching down his neck and into the collar of his shirt. It made her think of looking into a fractured mirror.