The New Neighbor (20 page)

Prosky shot to his feet and a broad smile of relief twisted the scarred flesh of his cheek. "Yes, Robby?"
 

"I ... I'm scared." His voice broke and dropped to a whisper. "I'm really scared and I think I need help."

Chapter 14
 

The Stranger's Story

The man picked Robby up at the Shell station on the corner of Mistletoe and Hilltop. He said his name was Ronald Prosky and although Robby tried to conceal his nervousness – actually, it was more like fear – and to avoid looking at Ron's face, he knew it was obvious because Prosky tried immediately to put Robby at ease.
 

They went to the International House of Pancakes just a couple of blocks away and got a booth in the back, where they each had a cup of coffee.
 

"Please don't be nervous, Robby," Prosky said quietly. "I know that my appearance is off – putting and I'm a stranger to you, but if we can just talk a while, I think you'll feel better. "
 

Robby fidgeted, wondering if he'd made a mistake – maybe this guy
was
just a streetwalking lunatic who ate out of trash bins and lived in his clothes.
 

"Okay," Robby said hesitantly, "so what do you want to talk about?"
 

"Your new neighbor."
 

"What about her? I mean, yesterday, you seemed to think you knew
everything
about her, so what do you want
me
to tell you?"
 

"What has she done?"
 

"She hasn't done anything."
 

Prosky stared into his coffee for a moment, then took a deep breath. "Okay. Maybe it'll be easier if I tell you what
I
know about her. Then you can talk." He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Five years ago, I was a reasonably successful investigative journalist. I had a wife and a sixteen-year-old son. We lived in a suburb of Chicago, a nice friendly neighborhood. A lot like your neighborhood, Robby. Then Lily moved in. At least, that's the name she was using then." He took a long sip of coffee before continuing. "She was a beautiful woman. Very nice. Friendly. Generous. It was the kind of neighborhood that welcomed new neighbors, so everyone started to get to know her. I
really
got to know her.

“My wife and I had been married for nearly nineteen years by then. It wasn't a bad marriage, but ... well ... " He looked away from Robby and winced, as if someone had stuck him with a needle. "I guess I'd gotten ... bored. And I didn't even know it at the time. At least, not until Lily let me know that I was –" he cleared his throat abruptly, " – welcome in, uh, her bed any time. She was ...
god
, she was gorgeous. Women like that do
not
proposition men like me every day. So I took her up on it. She assured me it would be discreet and just between us.

"So, I was having an
affair
. And what an affair it was. I mean, she was the kind of lover men only
dream
of having. But as the months passed, something happened. I began to change. I noticed I wasn't as coordinated as usual, I wasn't as strong. I was always tired, couldn't get enough sleep. And when I
did
sleep, I had these dreams. Incredibly vivid. I dreamed that Lily came to my room and we made love on the bedroom floor or on the bed beside Marie while she slept, and she never woke, no matter how noisy we got. I didn't think much of it, until it got worse – the fatigue and the dreams – and then I woke one night and she was there. On
top
of me. In my
bed
. It wasn't a dream, she was really there, and I didn't know how she got in. I didn't know how she got out, either, because I lost consciousness at the end. I always did with her. I asked later, but of course she wouldn't tell me."
 

The inside of Robby's mouth had turned to soggy felt and he gulped his ice water down quickly, then sucked on some crushed ice. The glass clattered against the tabletop when he set it down because his hand was trembling. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear any more.
 

"Then I noticed something,” Prosky continued. “It had been happening gradually, right in front of me, I just hadn't noticed. I wasn't the only one not feeling well. My son and wife were tired all the time, pale and sickly. They didn't talk much. None of us did. And if we did, it was bad, you know, we ... we fought, said hurtful things to each other. That just wasn't like us. Things had changed, and they were changing still.

"I tried not to see Lily much anymore, but she would come to
me
. One night, I decided to stay up, find out how she got in, so I drank a bucket or so of coffee and took some little white pills. It was
still
tough staying awake. I felt so ...
drained
all the time. I sat in the living room, in the dark, waiting. When I heard a noise outside, I looked out the window and saw my son climbing down a tree outside his second-story bedroom window. He walked over to Lily's house. I realized that I wasn't the
only
one being neighborly.
 

“The next day, I had a private talk with him, told him I knew, and that it had to stop. Some father, huh? It's okay for
me
to fuck her, son, as long as your mom doesn't find out, but
you
can't. Anyway, when I told him to stop, I saw such ...
hatred
in his eyes. Hatred like I'd never seen in anyone, and he was my own
son
. And he said – no, no, he
spat
– 'Why? Are
you
fucking her
too
?' I told him to stop, he said he'd stop when he was ready. So, the next day I hired someone to cut down the tree in front of his window and had a new lock put on his bedroom door, one that could be locked from the
outside
. See what I mean when I say I changed? I was jealous of my own son, so I locked him up. Like a prisoner. Marie wanted to know what was going on, so I told her. She went to his room. They talked. That's what she said, anyway. They
talked
–" He chuckled icily. " – for nearly three hours.

"All of this began to affect my work. My editor – whose position I was supposed to take over later that year, because he was leaving – noticed a drop in my quality, said I was irritable and preoccupied, and suspected I was drinking or doing drugs. I told him I'd take care of it, problems at home, all that shit. But I couldn't, I just couldn't. Not long after that, he informed me I wouldn't be promoted. The position was going to someone else. Someone ... more responsible. More reliable.
 

"That very day, I went home and found my son and wife in bed together. Fucking. Everything exploded. We
hated
one another. I don't know how we stayed in the same house. It was like ... drinking. I had developed a bad drinking problem in college, see, so I know what it's like. You're not yourself, you don't even
know
yourself. The bottle does something to you, makes you do and say and think things you wouldn't even consider under normal circumstances. That's the way I was then, I hated them for what they'd done. And they kept
doing
it. I hated them so much I didn't stop to think
why
they'd done it or what was happening to us. Instead, I decided to go on seeing Lily, to see her even more. Fuck 'em, I figured.
 

"About that time, the man down the street killed his family and himself. A couple of weeks later, a woman at the other end of the street ran over her own son with her car.
Not
accidentally. And somewhere in the back of my mind I realized that everyone in the neighborhood – or
nearly
everyone – looked sick, weak, like they had the flu, which is what everybody
said
they had. Except the flu goes away. This didn't. It got worse. After a while, some of them even stopped bathing. They wore dirty clothes. I remember seeing Mrs. Denny – about fifty, normally a real cow – walking naked out to her mailbox, scratching her crotch and hacking, and I realized she'd lost about sixty, maybe seventy pounds. She looked like a corpse.

“And again, I realized – almost subconsciously – that something was wrong. It was like a little voice inside me that couldn't get above a whisper, trying to tell me that I had to
do
something because things were going really
bad
. But I didn't listen to it, because there was another voice, a louder one, talking over it, telling me that my wife was a cunt and my son was a spoiled little shit and the only person I had to think about was myself and what made
me
happy, and what made me happy was fucking Lily. So I kept it up while everything crumbled down around me.”

Prosky stopped, tugged at his collar as if he were choking, and stared silently out the window for a moment. "I haven't talked about this in a while," he whispered. "It's ... hard."
 

Robby didn't know what to say. He couldn't feel pity for the man because he was too busy fearing for himself ... for his family.
 

"My wife and son fought," he continued with a broken voice. "Like lovers. More passionately than she ever fought with
me
. And other times, I could hear them somewhere in the house. Moaning obscenities to one another. I got fired. I didn't know what to do. My wife didn't work and I was afraid of how she would react if I told her. So I got drunk. First time in years. I went on a real skull-grinder, spent my last dime at the nearest bar and walked home –
staggered
, really – talking to myself like some wino, even singing, for Christ's sake. But after I turned onto my street, I saw something that sobered me up. Fast.

"At first, it looked like smoke and I thought something was burning, because it was the middle of summer and I knew no one was using their fireplace. But it wasn't smoke. Smoke drifts. This was
moving
. It was white as a summer cloud and ... liquidy. And ... maybe it was because it was floating by a streetlight, I'm not sure, but ... it seemed to glow. Just a little. It moved through a tree in front of Lily's house and over the street, formless, but moving with purpose. And it went straight to my house. I stood there with my mouth hanging open and watched it hover outside my bedroom window. The curtains were drawn, but the window was half open. Then, like milk being sucked through a straw, it flowed into the window and was gone.

"Whatever it was,
it was in my house
! I practically
forgot
I was drunk, ran down the street, let myself in and went upstairs. Halfway up the stairs something hit me, I don't know, something like ... a drug. Yes, it was like I'd been drugged. My feet weighed a ton and I could hardly keep my eyes open. It wasn't the booze, I was pretty sure at the time – and I'm
certain
it wasn't, now. It was an effort, but I made it down the hall, fighting to remain conscious. I
fell
into the room and ... and I ... I saw ... " He shook his head. "She was there. Naked. Pulling the bedcovers back as Marie sat up reaching for her. When Lily turned to me, my knees gave out and I fell as she slapped her hand to Marie's forehead. Marie dropped back like a rock, unconscious, and I was losing it, too, just on the edge, but fighting, scared shitless. Then there was this ... this
rush
, like all the air in the room was being sucked to the center of it, and she was gone. Replaced by this-this-this writhing
cloud
that blew back out the window. Then I passed out.

"I woke up a few hours later, I think. Went to bed. Marie never mentioned it the next day, but she didn't talk to me anyway. I tried to tell myself it was the booze, or a dream, but I couldn't deny it anymore. Something horrible was happening. Something horrible was
wrong
with Lily. But
what
? I didn't know what to do, where to start. Then I remembered something.

"She had this sculpture. Black onyx. It was –"
 

"Lilith," Robby interrupted, surprising himself.
 

Prosky nodded slowly. "That's the one. I'm not sure what made me think of it at the time. I guess what I'd seen the night before shook me up. I started thinking more clearly – I started
thinking
, period – and I remembered the first time I went to her house. I'd never heard of Lilith, didn't know who she was, and when I admired the sculpture she told me the story of Lilith. What I remembered was the
way
she told me the story; so passionately, lovingly, and all the while sort of watching me out of the corner of her eye, as if she were waiting for some reaction, some specific response."
 

"She did the same thing with me," Robby said.
 

"And what did
you
think?"
 

"Well ... " Robby shrugged. "I guess I wondered why she was making such a big deal out of the story. You know, being so dramatic about it. I wondered if maybe it, you know,
meant
something."
 

"Exactly. That's what I thought. And after seeing her in the bedroom with Marie that night, going up in
smoke
in front of me like that, I started thinking about it again. And her name ...
Lily
. It was a hunch. So the next day, I went online and looked up this Lilith woman. I learned a lot. I didn't believe any of it at first. Didn't
want
to believe it. But I knew, deep down inside, I
knew
it was true.

"One of the things I learned was how to keep Lily out of my house. I followed the instructions in one of the books. Then I waited. I didn't sleep, I didn't eat. I
tried
not to drink, but didn't try hard enough, I guess. She didn't come back.

"But during the next week, I noticed a change in the house. Things got worse. I'd have these flashes of violent and uncontrollable anger. But I tried to keep my mind off my anger by burying myself research. I read everything I could find about Lilith, learned about her, tried to figure her out. And I slowly realized exactly what she'd been doing." He leaned back in the booth, rubbed the back of his neck a moment, then leaned forward again. "Are you religious, Robby?"