The People Next Door (33 page)

‘And why do you keep returning to the lake?’ Render continued. ‘The swimming. The others couldn’t stay away from the water,
either, as if that well was still calling them, trying to bring you all home. Myra Blaylock. You must remember her.’

Myra’s bronze minivan exiting the lot, Amy’s wagon emerging from the shadows with its headlights off to follow her. I turned
away, lying to myself, even after I returned home that night to find her Passat missing, the guest room empty
.

‘She was your lover before any of this started. She visited your restaurant and was never seen again. The boys in the parking
lot. I watched them be destroyed myself, and I have a good bit of it on video. Would you care to
see the footage? If you watch closely, you can actually see the moment of change. The rage comes over you and you turn, rising
from the ground with the strength of five men.’

I was blind with rage, seeing spots, my blood roaring, glands seldom utilized sent into battle. Despite what should have been
a broken femur, a shattered ankle, a paralyzing black-out concussion, I got back up, throwing them off as I sprang to my feet
and the pain-obliterating rage cut through my fog and sent me into an ecstatic fury
.

‘No? Then how about this?’ Render went to the table, opened a box, and removed a rubber swim cap. White, with a blue Speedo
logo, smeared with dried blood. He flapped it in front of Mick’s face and dropped it in Mick’s lap. ‘Do you recognize that?
Your daughter likes to swim, yes? It protects her hair and disguises her rather nicely. I found it at that house off of Eagle
Trail, where Melanie Smith took her morning runs. Melanie was last seen at your daughter’s birthday party, but I cleaned her
up. Melanie and a family of three. Hunted down by a nasty little blonde monster. There are more, people close to you. What
is happening to them, Mick? Why does everyone who crosses you and your family wind up in pieces? How much longer can your
family survive without protection? Where does the evil go? The Percys lost control early, but the other families worked with
me and learned how to integrate their Gift. I’m offering you fortress and fortune to join us for the coming change, but you
have to do your part.
You have to do your part!
’

Mick shoved Render away and stood. His fury was
back, as all-consuming as it had been in the parking lot the night he was attacked. He was going to kill his neighbor, put
an end to it all right here once and for all so they could go back to the way things were. He opened his mouth to tear into
Render and someone upstairs started screaming hysterically.

Amy was studying Cassandra’s beautiful face, the fine blue veins beneath her cheeks that touched the corners of her mouth,
when the hostess’s eyes shifted abruptly behind her sunglasses, registering trouble.

Kyle shouted, ‘Briela, no!’

Amy turned and spilled her wine, the red falling in nearly suspended blobs as the afternoon slowed with the hyper-clarity
of impending trauma. In the final split seconds before everything changed, Amy felt the wine splashing on her foot and glanced
down to see the red there staining her sandals, dripping from her toes.

The night she first met Cassandra, on the patio, when her strange new friend stepped on the wine glass. Amy bent over with
a broom in one hand and a dust pan in the other, kneeling on her flagstone patio, leaning down with a hungry moan, tongue
flicking, first on the stone and then tasting the sweet copper of Cassandra’s blood. Lapping it up like an animal, every last
drop, until the stone was clean. She thought of the orange cinnamon rolls, how she retreated into some darkened corner of
her mind where Amy Nash could continue living as she always had while the other one, the hungry beast inside of her, came
forth
.

The wine splashed around her feet.

Amy looked up.

Life as they knew it ended.

There was a flash of blonde hair, her daughter in motion, running full speed and in the same blur a tremendous banging of
metal, the sound of cymbals crashing.

Briela was looking over her shoulder at Adolph when she collided with the Weber kettle. The entire bag of coals were now,
to a briquette, at their white-hot cooking prime. Briela tripped over the tripod legs and sprawled between the toppled grill’s
basin and flipped lid, rolling in dusty clods of red-white charcoal that sank into the skin of her chest, neck, right cheek
and arm. Her beautiful blonde hair singed and flamed to life, her blouse cratered and smoked. The flesh over her ribs and
shoulder blackened, rippling and curling, and great blisters of pink swelled and opened around her collar, up the side of
her face.

And in the midst of her own private inferno, Briela did not scream or cry out, only blinked, her mouth working at sounds that
refused to come, her beautiful blue eyes large and sky bright. She was frightened, Amy saw, but not of what had happened.
She was terrified of what it meant for them, what would happen now.

She knew
, Amy thought.
She’s not crying because she’s known all along and she’s been trying so hard to be a good girl, to conceal it the way we all
have
.

For a moment, time elasticized beyond all reason, no one moved. Amy was rooted by the broad daylight
reality of it. Cass stood by, her expression dull, eyes unreadable behind her glasses, while before them Briela rolled in
the fire, thumping side to side like a small mammal caught in a trap. She used her good arm to prop herself up and patted
the small flames at the bib of her new overalls.

‘It doesn’t hurt,’ she reassured them, a child afraid of being spanked. ‘I didn’t mean to, Mommy. It was an accident.’

‘For the love of God,’ Ingrid screeched behind them, running from the house with a towel, breaking the spell. They used her
to watch us, Amy realized. Convinced her to help and now Ingrid was with them, part of this day. The day of our intervention.

And then there was only her love for her daughter, Amy’s undying love for Briela. It did not matter what they had become or
what happened next. Her daughter needed her. Her daughter, who would never be an adult, would always need her.

Amy sprang forward at last, but Ingrid got to Briela first, clobbering the girl with the towel. Amy’s feet, shod with designer
strappy heels, slid on the patio and she fell and rolled among the coals but felt no pain. She crawled and reached for Briela
but Ingrid was already pulling the thrashing girl away.

The towel covered the face and most of the body, but Briela’s right arm was flung to one side, stirring dumbly on the stone
like a lizard’s amputated tail. For a moment Amy was sure it was no longer attached, but when Ingrid lifted Briela the arm
came up with the rest of the bundle
and folded against their sitter’s body, leaving a streak of black and red across the white stone patio.

‘Call an ambulance!’ Kyle shouted, in denial. ‘Call 9-1-1!’

‘It’s all right, Kyle,’ Cass said with cool authority. ‘There’s no need.’

‘Give me my daughter!’ Amy screamed.

Ingrid turned, cooing into the girl’s ear as she backed away from Amy. The small body writhed against her breast and the small
feet twitched at Ingrid’s thighs. Psychological reflexes for dumb limbs.

‘Ingrid, give her to me,’ Cass said.

‘What are you going to do with her?’ Ingrid said as Cass walked toward her. ‘Stay away. All of you, keep away from her. You’re
sick. She needs help!’

Amy screamed again. Briela’s head lolled over Ingrid’s shoulder.

‘Mom!’ Kyle was wailing, fumbling Egg. ‘Where’s Dad? What’s going on? Where’s Dad?’

June moved alongside Kyle and took the device away, mumbling to him urgently. Kyle stared at his girlfriend with pleading
panic but the look in her eyes stopped him and he settled into a numb daze.

Ingrid continued backing away from Amy and Cassandra.

‘Give her to me, Ingrid!’ Cass said. ‘You don’t have any idea what’s happening.’

Amy wailed at both of them. ‘What did you do with my husband? Give me my daughter!’

‘Stay back!’ Ingrid backed off the patio, into the grass.
‘Hold still, Briela, hold still, baby, it’s not so bad. I’ll take care of you, I promise.’

Amy screamed a third time.

Briela squirmed in Ingrid’s arms, and Ingrid wrestled her under control. She turned her face into her nanny’s neck.

‘Be careful, Ingrid,’ Cassandra warned. ‘Calm down, Amy. I told you this was coming. Everything’s going to be fine but first
we need—’

Ingrid gasped and let go of Briela but the girl clung to her, biting into her throat. The first bellowing scream was cut off
and there was a sucking-tearing sound as Ingrid fell backward in the grass. Briela thrashed on top of her, shaking her head
like a dog with a pheasant. Blood fountained up onto the back of Briela’s burned hair and sprayed the lawn.

‘Briela, stop! Stop, stop, stop!’ Amy screamed, running in and taking the girl by the waist, pulling but unable to separate
her from Ingrid’s neck.

Beneath them Ingrid’s eyes rolled back and her mouth overflowed with blood that bubbled at her teeth.

Behind them June started screaming. Kyle fell into a lawn chair, stunned.

Amy pulled with one arm and slapped Briela’s back and head with the other, until the girl released the dying sitter and turned
on her mother, teeth gnashing. Amy caught one of her daughter’s arms and the girl snapped mindlessly, cutting into her forearm
twice before Amy was able to fall on her, pinning her to the grass, her nostrils filling with the scent of burning pork ribs,
her mind
recoiling in disgust even as her stomach growled in hunger.

Vince emerged from the house at a fast walk, glancing around with alarm but not panic – until he saw Ingrid on the lawn. Ingrid
twitching, the life pouring from her. She coughed and her throat leaked a while and then she was still. Render turned away,
looking at his children, his wife, and their guests.

Sobbing, Amy clutched her daughter and pushed herself up, the two of them stuck together in blood and melted flesh. Adolph
watched Briela as Amy carried her away from them. He seemed torn between sympathy and excitement, wanting to see more.

Mick followed close behind Vince. Amy would never forget the look on his face as he noted the fallen grill and the mess of
Ingrid on the lawn and his daughter in his wife’s arms. It was not surprise or fear. It was a soldier’s hardened gaze, the
look of a father who has already buried three sons, the cold determination of a man who beholds ultimate horror and finds
himself
quite up to the task
.

‘Take her home,’ he said. ‘Now, Amy. Go home.’

‘I have medical equipment,’ Vince said in a hoarse whisper, not looking at any of them but reciting lines he had been rehearsing.
He cleared his throat. ‘Ingrid’s going to be okay. We can treat her here. She looked to both our families as her own, and
now we will treat her as our own for the rest of her days.’

‘Stay away from my family,’ Mick said to Vince. ‘Amy, go home now. We’re all going home.’

‘Amy, stay,’ Cassandra said.

‘You don’t know what’s at stake.’

‘You don’t know how bad it’s going to be,’ Vince said to Mick and Amy. ‘You don’t have to be afraid any more. We are connected
to the other families and our time has come. You won’t make it on your own. This is the only way.’

‘Kyle!’ Mick barked, shaking Kyle from his catatonia. ‘Do as I say, son. Go with your mother.’

Warily, the boy went to his mother. Amy squeezed Briela to her breast as her husband and son closed around her.

‘We’re leaving,’ Mick said to Vince. ‘If you follow us it will be the end of all of you. The very end.’

The Nash family turned and headed toward home.

‘It’s not over,’ Vince said as Cassandra and their children came to stand with him. ‘I won’t let you jeopardize everything
I’ve worked for, Mick. The others are waiting. You have until midnight and then we’re coming to finish it. We’re all coming
for you.’

Behind the Render family, the grass at Ingrid’s feet began to stir.

After having her bath, where her father had rubbed away the flesh that could not be saved and bandaged the seeping patches
around her arm and cheek, Briela was as close to sleeping as was possible. The worst of the burns were already puckering,
tightening in delicate pink strands and regenerating in smooth patches, the infection healing her as it had healed them all
three years ago.

Mick unclogged the drain while Kyle made a circuit of the house, locking every door and window, then ordered Kyle to stay
in Briela’s room, guarding her until Mick and Amy had decided what to do.

Amy did not emerge from the master bathroom until the sun was down. Mick had heard her in there, sometimes crying, sometimes
making the sickness sounds. She stayed in the shower far longer than was necessary to wash away the blood. It reminded him
of the showers they had all taken the first night, when the change came over them and turned them inside out, not speaking
or even able to look each other in the eyes as they struggled to come to terms with the changes in their bodies. The showers
they all took at odd hours to wash away the
evidence of their feedings. The showers that had become a private ritual between the glimpses of what they were and the lives
they were forced to carry on. He knew tonight would be worse for her, now that everything had been exposed and the spotlight
of shame was fresh upon them. He had to keep them all together now. Together they would survive. Without each other, without
his wife and children, he would be condemned for eternity.

Amy exited the bathroom quietly and sat on the bed, facing the large picture window with its view of the Flatirons and the
long Front Range tapering off into the night. She wore only a thick robe with her hair pulled back and she was very still.
He sat on the other side of the bed, watching her back.

‘Don’t shut me out,’ he said. ‘I can’t live without you and the kids.’

She answered a minute later. ‘You call this living?’

‘We’re still here. I don’t care about the rest. Only you and Kyle and Briela. Nothing else matters to me.’

Amy stood and walked to her dresser in the corner of the room. She opened the smallest drawer, the top center where she kept
her jewelry. She took something from within and walked back, standing above him. He looked up her. Her eyes were inflamed
with a decade of sorrow. He wondered what they would look like in another fifty years. A hundred.

‘Here.’ She held the earring out for him and it fell into his palm. A pearl set within a silver spiral, Myra Blaylock’s. ‘I
took it from her,’ Amy said. ‘I don’t remember where or when. But I remember the way her hair came
out in my fists. I remember the sound of her lips when I bit them off. I remember the taste of her heart. Can you live with
that?’

He hesitated only briefly. ‘Yes.’

‘The Sapphires too,’ she said.

‘I know. I should have confronted him sooner, but I can live with all of it.’

‘I don’t think I can. Not any more. Ingrid …’ She moved away from him and he rose to catch her as she fell to the floor. She
curled against the wall, shaking with grief, beyond tears. He leaned over her, tried to hold her still. She recoiled but he
wouldn’t let her go. He lifted from under her legs and back, carrying her to the bed as she beat at him with her fists, raked
at his cheeks. He set her on the bed and she backed away from him, pressing herself to the headboard.

‘Yes, you can,’ he said. ‘You have and we will. Nothing’s changed.’

‘Everything’s changed! Ingrid’s dead!’

‘They manipulated her. Convinced her to take our daughter. I will handle them.’

‘I want to die,’ she said. ‘I want to burn until there is nothing left but ashes.’

‘Think about the kids.’

‘I am. We don’t deserve them. None of us deserve to go on.’

‘How do you know that? Who gets to decide that? Why were we allowed to survive if we were not meant to?’

‘We’re freaks. There is no place in the world for us. How can there be?’

‘We can do better. We can change. If we work together, we can control it, learn to use it. You don’t know—’

‘I know we haven’t been able to control anything,’ she said. ‘We don’t even know what we’re capable of. It’s like living as
two people, leading separate lives.’

Mick crawled toward her, took her wrist. She kicked at him but he pushed her legs down and sat on top of her. ‘We were hiding
from the truth,’ he said. ‘We lied to ourselves and to each other. It was destroying us because we pretended it wasn’t there,
Amy. If we embrace it, if we work together …’

‘I wasn’t pretending! I lost my mind!’

‘Now’s your chance to get it back,’ he said. ‘We have a right to life.’

‘Whose lives? What gives us the right to take from them?’

‘The others deserved what they got. They hurt us. They stole from us, threatened to harm you and the others at school, they
came after our family and we didn’t let them. It happens every day in this world. There are predators and victims, the strong
and the weak.’

‘There are laws, morals. There’s no room for … this.’

‘I say there is. There has to be. We are proof.’

‘Who are you? What gives you the right to decide?’

‘I am as my maker made me. We paid for this life with our own. We survived. How do you know there isn’t a reason for that?
How do you know we weren’t meant to come back and change everything?’

‘You’ve lost your mind. I don’t know you. I don’t know who I am any more.’

‘I am your husband and I love you.’

‘If we have any soul left, we will destroy ourselves.’

He looked back to the hallway, toward the kids’ rooms. ‘What will you tell our children? That they don’t deserve to live?
That they are a disease? How will you do it, Amy? Because I won’t help you. I won’t let you. You will have to kill me first
and then do it alone. What is the humane way to end the only life they know? Will you burn them? Inject them? Bury them in
the backyard?’

She screamed at him. She fought him. For a long time he did not have control of her and he thought, only for a moment or two, that
maybe she was right. Maybe it would be easier to end it all, end them all tonight. He imagined starting with her, doing it
quietly before the kids woke up, but he couldn’t imagine what would come after that.

Later, she was lying under him, hands pinned above her head, and she knew that she could fight him until they were both lying
in bleeding tatters, but she was tired of fighting. The resistance went out of her and he was staring down at her with eyes
that looked black in the darkened bedroom and she wanted to laugh now that she had ever called him a quitter. He wasn’t a
quitter. Tonight he was a killer, capable of anything.

‘How would it be different?’ she said softly.

He relaxed his grip on her wrists, leaned back but did not get off her.

‘We can go away,’ he said. ‘Tonight. Never come back. Start over somewhere we don’t know anybody.’

‘I can’t imagine leaving Boulder. What would it change?’

‘If we stay, we will always be at risk. There are too many connections.’

She thought about that. ‘We shouldn’t have made it this long.’

‘They’ve been cleaning up after us,’ Mick said.

‘Not all of them, though,’ she said, thinking of the disposals. ‘What did you do with yours?’

‘I used the restaurant. Late nights, in the kitchen. It’s all a blur but I remember … I remember the tools. Taking out the
trash.’

She shifted beneath him, not minding the pressure on her hips. Her eyes were wide, her voice very low. ‘Did you like it?’

‘I must have. I think … yes, I did. I felt stronger after.’

‘Yes.’

‘But there was always a hangover. The come-down.’

‘Yes.’

‘I couldn’t focus on anything. Work was hell.’

‘Everything was hell.’

‘I kept seeing them,’ he said. ‘They started following me to work.’

‘In the classroom,’ she added.

‘Roger was here, in the house. I followed him into the yard. He was trying to warn me about the new people. He saw it coming.’

‘It was a vision. A warning. You saw it coming,’ she said. ‘Like Briela’s tantrums. She knew. We see things others can’t.
It’s like holding down three jobs. The real job, then finding them and doing it, cleaning up after, reentering the regular
world. And then the burden of
pretending, carrying it inside. I don’t want to do that any more, Mick. I can’t.’

He rolled off her but his leg stayed draped over her thighs. She didn’t want him to go away. When he was close like this,
she almost felt warm. It had been three years since she’d felt any warmth at all.

‘You don’t have to,’ he said. ‘If we stay, we will do it all differently. We’ll have more resources.’

‘How?’

‘Vince has some kind of plan,’ he said. ‘He said the other families that are like us are working with him.’

‘To what end?’

‘I don’t know, but we must be worth a lot to him. He offered us the house and everything else.’

‘Money?’

‘Millions.’

‘Do you believe him?’ she said. Her right hand rested on his thigh.

‘He helped me. That night, after Briela’s party. I was attacked by three junkies trying to rob the restaurant. I handled the
first two but the third took me down and Vince finished him. I saw him do it. He’s serious.’

‘I’m scared,’ she said, pulling him closer.

He held her tighter, kissed her neck, her ear, pressed his nose into her hair, trying to remember the way she used to smell.
The bigger question occurred to her then, and perhaps to both of them as they lay in silence for a few minutes.

‘There will be others,’ she said. ‘If we don’t end it ourselves, it will spread.’

‘Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.’

‘Unless there’s a cure,’ she said.

‘There won’t be unless one of us is caught. Imprisoned, studied, cut into pieces.’

‘Whether we stay or go, someone will find out and we’ll be hunted down, Mick. They’ll take the kids away.’

‘I will never let that happen.’

‘Promise?’

He crawled back on top of her.

‘Hold my arms again,’ she said.

‘Like this?’

‘Above my head.’

He raised them up and pushed against her. Held her wrists with one hand and opened her robe with the other. He looked into
her eyes. She did not look away. They had never been this close.

‘There’s nothing left to hide behind,’ she said.

‘No. You know the worst things about me. You know everything.’

‘No one else knows me the way you do,’ she said. ‘They don’t know what we have.’

‘It’s ours.’

She arched under him and he kissed her neck, her breasts, her belly.

‘Is it disgusting?’ she whispered.

‘This is all I want. You are all I want.’

‘Don’t ever turn away from me again,’ she said.

‘Keep me warm, Amy.’

Their bodies could not generate heat on their own, but the things they shared replaced all the cold inside
and closed the distance that had grown between them.

After, when his mind was empty and the house was silent and she was stretched across him and licking the blood from the cuts
she had made in his chest, he slid his fingers into her hair and cradled the back of her head. He massaged the base of her
neck and she became still, more content than he had known her to be in years.

‘What happens if we say no?’ she said.

‘I don’t know. He might try something, but it wouldn’t involve the police.’

‘He planned this for a long time,’ Amy said. ‘He must have a plan to deal with us if we refuse.’

‘On the other hand, what is the downside to agreeing? How would it be any different than our lives now?’

‘That house.’

‘The security.’

‘It’s like a compound,’ she said. ‘With a view.’

‘We already have a view.’

‘We need to find out everything.’

‘He said midnight,’ Mick said. ‘He’s not going to wait. I need to go back soon. You can stay with the kids.’

‘I love you, Mick.’

‘I love you, Ames. I’m sorry it got to be this way.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘At least we’re not alone.’

‘Never again.’