More Stories from the Twilight Zone (8 page)

Deb stumbled across the foyer into a homey living room filled with antiques. Pushed against the wall beneath a painting of an old forest, there were five large plastic bins, each one labeled with a name:
SEAN, MARCIE, HAILEY, DOUG, STEPHANIE
. The names of her children.

Deb and Ellen went down a hall where various certificates were framed—soccer, softball, good citizenship, honor roll—and a large white board labeled “CHORES.” The children's names were written there, too, with a series of checkmarks beside each one. To the right of that were at least half a dozen calendars, hung up side by side, each with a different theme—puppies, baseball, France, sunsets, motorcycles. The squares for October were all filled in, with different handwriting for each calendar.

Ellen caught her looking. “Each of my children has their own calendar,” she said. She laughed. “Of course I have one for my husband, and one for me. And I keep it all on a spreadsheet.”

Deb stared at Ellen as if she were speaking a foreign language. She swayed behind Ellen as she led her into her kitchen. It was blue and white, and it was immaculate, from the white grout between the white tile squares on the counter, to the white tile floor and the white appliances. Tidy refrigerator art. A pumpkin candle
sat in the kitchen bay window, overlooking a perfectly manicured yard. There was one orange coffee cup decorated with a black cat in the dish drainer. Ellen laid the rubber gloves on a stand that hung over the sink, wiped her hands on a brown dish towel with a smiling jack-o'-lantern on it, and reached for the containers.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, there are only four dozen,” Deb said in a rush, “but I had to talk to you. What did you do? Did you come back, or . . . or . . . ?” She trailed off as Ellen cocked her head quizzically and set the containers beside each other, burping open the nearest one.

“What
adorable
cupcakes. Did you run out of supplies? I always keep some mixes on hand. I get them when they're on sale.”

Deb stared at her. “Ellen, what did you do about
Aidan
?”

“Aidan?” Ellen said, opening her cupboard. She pulled out a box of chocolate cake mix. “Who—”

“
You
know,” Deb said. “The man . . . in the book.”

“Oh.” She laughed. “You see, I have it all blocked out.” She smiled at Ellen. “On my calendar.” As Deb blinked, she walked back to the row of calendars and pointed to the one closest to them, themed with sunsets. She tapped her finger on Wednesday's square. “See? Nine to ten
P.M.
tonight. Mom's Reading Time. I'm halfway through a great new one about a highlander.” She leaned toward Deb. “Scorching. I'll give it to you after I'm finished.”

“Reading time,” Deb said, trying to make sense. “Scorching.”

“My husband teases me about my romance novels, but I'd go crazy if I didn't have some ‘me' time, you know?”

“Me,” Deb said.

“No one better interrupt my reading time,” Ellen declared. “It's my lifesaver.”

Deb flopped backward against the wall. Ellen peered at her. “Are you all right?”

“Dinner,” she blurted desperately, scanning the chore list. “Do
they make dinner? Do you have . . . what about the store? If you run out of toilet paper . . .”

“Let me get you a glass of water.” She left Deb, who had slid halfway down the wall, and went back into the kitchen. She got Deb some water and brought it back to her. “It's Doug's turn to make dinner. Of course all of them have chores. And if they don't do them, well, they might say I'm too hard on them but it's all about consistency, you know?” She wrinkled her nose. “And boundaries.”

“Oh, my God, I'm going crazy,” Deb said, gulping down the water. “Completely crazy.”

“Is there someone I can call?” Ellen ventured, taking the empty glass. “Do you need something, some medication or—”

“I need to go,” Deb announced. She pushed herself away from the wall.

“You can keep the book,” Ellen assured her. “I just recycle them when I'm finished.”

Deb lurched to the door. “Okay. Okay, thank you.”

“Are you sure you can drive? Is there anything I can do? I'll make the last two dozen cupcakes. Don't worry about that.”

Ellen hovered at the door of her perfect home as Deb staggered out to her car. Her messy, stinky car that was almost out of gas again.

I'm the mom I'm the mom I'm the mom.

I
am
the mom,
she thought.
Me.

She did a lot of thinking on the way home. Once there, she threw open the door to the master bedroom. Aidan had on his shirt, and the bed was gone.

“At last. I have been waiting,”
he said.

She crooked her finger. “We're not going anywhere.”

 

Six months later, and the dark days were over. It was spring.

The calendars were up. The bins were in the hall. Andy was
putting away the groceries, including the items Sarah had requested for her dinner preparation. As indicated on her calendar—ballerinas—it was her turn.

“Hey, are you ready?” Kevin asked Sarah, as he strode into the room in his new track shorts and a freshly laundered T-shirt. It had been Andy's turn to fold and put away. Kevin was clean-shaven, and he had lost forty pounds. Deb had promised Ellen she would have the bright green Camporee invitations finished by this evening at seven.

“Yes. Hold on,” she told him.

While Kevin jogged in place, she went to the master bedroom and rapped lightly on the door. It was their code, giving Aidan permission to exist.

She opened the door and there he was, lying beneath the canopy of Indian silk, naked from the waist up. His eyes beamed with joy at the sight of her.

“My beauty, my joy,”
he whispered.
“How I need—”

She glanced down at the paltry pile of invitations beside his elbow. The scissors in his hand caught the light. “You should get the sheikh to help you,” she told him.

He sighed unhappily.
“But my beloved, I need—”

“
I
need those invitations. Pronto.” She blew him a kiss as he huffed and picked up the scissors.

Smiling, she shut the door, and retraced her steps back down the hall. Stopping at Sarah's door, she gave it a soft rap.

“How's it going?” she asked.

“Mom,” Sarah said, “do I
have
to make dinner
and
the dishes?”

“Yes,” Deb replied. “You forgot to clean the cat box. That's the punishment.”

“It's not fair!”

“I know.” Deb smiled to herself.

“But then why do I have to do it?”

Deb couldn't wait to say it. She loved saying it.

“Because I'm the mom.”

And Deb set sail for her walk.

 

 

“Books fall open, you fall in,” or so the saying goes. But sometimes books fall
out
into our world, and take us to a place we've never been before . . . a dimension where imagination trumps reality every time . . . the Twilight Zone.

 

For millennia men have looked to the sky for signs and portents of Earth's destruction—will the end come in a fiery collision with a comet or asteroid that will leave only barren debris in what once was Earth's path around the sun? Or is it possible that, all along, men have looked in the wrong direction for their doomsday, which quietly, almost undetectably, already has begun?

Lenny (for Lenora) Vespasian, just twenty-two and with enough money to buy Portugal, had been a gilded filly flawless in form but with the heavy-lidded sated eyes and languor in her limbs of a burnt-out post-deb, stale cake for brains and the vocabulary of a stevedore. Right now, at eleven twenty on the bright cloudless morning of August 13, she was just a stiff, having expired in the night while her current lover, the crackhead rocker Bobby Benedict, lay deep in noddy land beside her on Lenny's Dux bed.

The Suffolk County police weren't calling it murder yet, but one of the crime scene investigators had opened a week's worth of neglected e-mail on Lenny's laptop and come across the ominous message
YOU
'
RE NEXT
.

That detective was waiting on the lawn of the 24,000-square-foot brick house that faced the glistening sea near Amagansett, shading his eyes (even though he wore tinted glasses) as a helicopter circled to land near the tennis courts. The passengers were a top-rank FBI agent and one Pierre Saint-Philèmon, a heavyweight
from Interpol in Brussels. They comprised the two-man spearhead of an international task force. Two more helicopters were on the western horizon, approaching the estate.

The special agent in charge of the FBI's team introduced himself. Nobis. No first name. A tall graying man, fit as a triathlete, with bronze skin and triangular sapphire eyes that made the sky look dingy.

“Bud Podokarski,” the detective said. He was sweating and nervous, awed that one phone call of his had rung loud bells in D.C.

“Big damn house,” Nobis commented as they approached from the west lawn the bedroom wing where Lenny Vespasian lay forlornly nude and stone dead.

“And wide open,” the Interpol investigator said as he looked around. “Although the family must employ security.”

“Twenty-four hours, two-man patrols, Dobermans,” Podokarski replied.

“They saw and heard nothing unusual, of course.”

Podokarski shook his head. They paused at the edge of the wide tri-level terrace outside the late Lenny's suite, which was easily accessible through French doors. The terraces were paved with flagstones. There was a hedge-bordered path to Lenny's private swimming pool.

At the pool a boy and a girl, prepubescent, were lounging in swimsuits beneath an umbrella, looking at them. The boy was playing with what looked like a Matchbox car.

“Who are the kids?” Nobis asked.

“They belong to the caretaker and his wife. Apparently Miss Vespasian let them use her pool whenever they want.”

Podokarski mopped the back of his neck with a handkerchief. Hot, hot, hot. Nobis wore a dark suit with his white shirt and tie, but even with the sun full on his face, he wasn't sweating. Nor did he blink as he looked at the kids. Podokarski wondered what it would be like to be interrogated by this guy.

“Want to have a look at the body before we have it removed for autopsy?”

“What I'm looking for,” Nobis said, “won't be visible to the naked eye. And you won't be taking Miss Vespasian anywhere. She's going back to Washington with us.”

The other helicopter descended on the lawn a hundred yards away and blew in their direction the fine sand from the beach that had collected at the roots of the close-cut Bermuda grass. Nobis looked at the sand sifting lightly over the terraces and abruptly left the others, walking down the path to the pool.

The kids studied him warily. The boy picked up the car he'd been rolling across the glass tabletop where they sat and spun the toy wheels idly with a finger. The car the boy had in his hands wasn't much larger than a good-sized cockroach. Dark and sleek-looking, tapered cowling, a racing model with NASCAR wheels. Four sets of exquisitely crafted tires.