The People Next Door Read online

  It was dark in the corridor, the hall leading into the house. It was like talking to a man in an alley at night, and something about it – about the way Bob was so excited and urging me into the house – immediately made me nervous. I could smell something in the wet air, something foul, like spoiling fish.

  I asked him if everyone was all right and he said, Yes, fine, never felt better. In the kitchen Bob lit a candle he’d found in one of the drawers. There was only a small glow and the rest of the house around us was dark from the cloud cover and approaching dusk.

  ‘Did you get stuck out in that weather?’ I asked him.

  ‘The weather?’ Bob said, tilting his head like he hadn’t even thought about it until now. He had a silly grin on his face and in the dark beside that candle he looked like a big Halloween pumpkin. ‘Never mind that,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to believe what we found.’

  ‘Where are your wife and kids?’ I asked.

  ‘Upstairs changing,’ Bob said. ‘But listen …’

  They’d been hearing about a special beach from one of the other families, and found it early that morning. After a few hours, Bob’s son Timothy wanted to do some exploring in the jungle, see if he could catch an iguana. His parents told him not to go too far, but of course what’s too far mean to an eleven-year-old boy?

  After half an hour they were worried Tim was lost, so they gathered up their daughter and the three of them trekked back in about a mile or so. They could see their son’s footprints in the sand, and pretty soon they heard his voice, calling to them. His voice seemed to be coming out of a bullhorn, or echoing from a canyon. They knew they were close, and after another hundred meters or so they came to the well in the clearing.

  Have you ever been to Chichen Itza, the Mayan ruins outside of Cancun? There is a cenote down there, a sacred well, spanning about sixty or seventy meters across. It’s a natural geological formation in the limestone, a depression, caved in from water running underneath the stone for hundreds or thousands of years. The well at Chichen Itza is only about a hundred feet deep, forty of water and sixty of stone above that. The Mayans dedicated it to Chac, the god of rain and lightning, whom they appeased with human sacrifices. We know they threw live bodies into the well. Archaeologists have found human bones and skulls down there, as well as masks of copper and gold, and other ornaments – gifts to Chac, on whose generosity with the rain the Mayans thrived or starved.

  What Bob Percy from Madison, Wisconsin, was describing to me then sounded a lot like the cenote at Chichen Itza, but I was skeptical such a thing would exist on an island, and such a small island at that.

  ‘It’s smaller,’ Bob told me, ‘maybe forty feet across, and about as deep. Inside, the water is silver, like melted pewter.’

  When he and Lynn arrived and looked down, their son Timothy was swimming in it. Hollering like a wild man, having a ball. At first they thought he’d fallen in, but Tim said he wasn’t hurt, and while they were asking him what happened and generally panicking about what the hell to do, their daughter, Tanya, was shaking Bob’s hand, pointing. ‘Look, Daddy, look.’

  On the other side of the well, cut into the limestone or whatever type of rock lies under the sandy forest of Vieques, was a stairway. It looked like a carved rock version of the ladders you see on the side of an oil refinery tank, curving down, only this one was inside the wall. Descending in a spiral until it disappeared into the water. It was narrow but the steps were just wide enough for a small adult or child to walk up or down. According to their son, he stumbled upon the well and decided to see how close he could get to the water. He didn’t slip and fall until he was about six steps from the bottom, when he imagined seeing a shape beneath the surface, and an arm reaching up to pull him in.

  You might ask now the same thing I asked myself at that moment in Bob’s story. If this well was used like the cenote in Chichen Itza, a repository for human sacrifices, what was the purpose of this ladder? The ladder suggested humans had carved it and used it for some purpose, but a gift to the gods is not something you take back. They wouldn’t retrieve the bodies. So there would be no need to go down. But, you might ask, as I asked myself, what if there was a need to climb out?

  Of course I was skeptical of Bob’s story. None of the maps or guidebooks for Vieques mentioned a well or landmark of any such sort, and I had done my share of research on the place, so I would have remembered that.

  ‘You should have seen the water,’ Bob said. ‘Even as my son was paddling around in there like some kind of otter, the surface was shifting, reflecting in the shade, rippling with crosscurrents that scaled the small waves the boy was making.’ Bob said it reminded him of ‘sea monkeys, but instead of pink and brown little organisms, the water in this well is a mosaic of silver and gray … hell, we don’t know what it was. Plankton? Algae? Bacteria? Something similar to the bioluminescent bay? Whatever it was, the mercury surface of this water looked like it was alive.’

  Despite being frightened when he thought he saw something rising from the depths to pull him in, Timothy did not want to leave the well. He said it felt too good. But his parents were scared. For all they knew, their son was swimming in a toxic puddle (Or amongst the bones and ancient dust and silt of the first Native American peoples who happened upon the island before the Spanish arrived, I thought but did not say to Bob).

  Bob and Lynn were screaming at him to get out. Finally Tim agreed, swimming to the base of the stairs, or where the stone steps met the water, and he climbed out reluctantly, pouting. Bob and Lynn were worried he was going to fall, but the kid moved right up and along in a sideways shuffle, never slowing or looking down, as if he had been using these stairs all his young life.

  They got him back to the beach and toweled him off, and that’s when they noticed that the water – the silver mass he had been splashing around in for at least ten and maybe even thirty minutes – wasn’t coming off. It was on his skin and his limbs were running with it in filmy lines that wouldn’t dry. It was slick, like oil. They decided to make him rinse off in the ocean. They were worried it was on them now, too, because they’d been hugging Tim and inspecting his body for wounds. Neither Bob nor Lynn found any on themselves or Tanya, but they all hopped in the ocean anyway, scrubbing themselves with sand. They emerged from the sea about ten minutes later looking clean and feeling better. The silver stuff was gone.

  Except, of course, it wasn’t gone.

  I was standing there in the Percys’ villa, listening to this rather fabulous tale amidst the candlelight, when I saw it. On Bob’s arms, along his neck and, when I held the candle out like a torch to illuminate his legs, it was down there too. On his ankles, up his thighs. I’d never seen anything like it. I don’t think now that it was on their skin. I think it was already inside them, under or within the epidermis. Have you ever seen one of those new custom cars, with the paint job that changes color depending on the amount of light and the angle from which you view it? It seems black when you stand in front of the hood, but when you move around and stare down the side panel, you see purple and green and silver? Bob’s skin was like that. Very faintly luminescent and in no way normal. Even in the darkness, with only candlelight, I could see that it was in him.

  Bob wasn’t frightened. He felt fine, he said. Better than fine. He was animated by something other than the excitement of discovering a well in the jungle. His eyes were black in the dark villa but wide with a childish delight, and he was grinning. When I expressed my concern and stepped away from him, he laughed at me. I remembered how he had grabbed my arm when he answered the front door, and I was very glad I had been wearing that windbreaker. I wanted to get away from the Percys as soon as possible.

  Bob wondered if we were still on for drinks tonight. I made excuses, telling him that the storm had frightened the kids and that my wife wasn’t feeling well. I just wanted to make sure you had made it back from the beach in this weather, I told him. Bob watched me curiously and I am sure he knew that I was lying,
but he said nothing as he followed me to the door. I was so anxious to be on my way, I forgot to ask him why the lights were off.

  I made it home a few minutes later. The wife and kids were eating soup and grilled cheese sandwiches around the glass dining table. Our lights were still on. They asked me if everything was all right. Fine, I assured them, and then I went to have a long hot shower before joining them for dessert.

  I don’t remember tasting my wife’s key lime pie.

  I did not sleep well that night. I tossed and turned in half-dreams, the rain pattering on our roof as my mind went round and round with thoughts of the Percy family. Capricious thunderstorms rolled over the island in half-hour intervals, bulbs of lightning flashing inside the belly of cloud cover and illuminating the bedroom like a photo negative every few minutes. Sometime around two or three a.m., I came fully awake to the sound of fading thunder and people screaming.

  Ungodly screaming coming from the villas next to ours.

  40

  The summer days were a blur, and then it was Saturday, her special day.

  Briela didn’t see the boy for the first two hours of the party, and then he just appeared. He was standing in the corner of the rec room while the other kids played their games, ignoring him. None of the mothers were paying attention to him and she knew he had come alone. He looked different than he had that day at Glacier, when he had stared at her through the window. He was wearing a brown plaid flannel shirt buttoned to the throat, even though it was summer, and dirty brown pants, like he had been playing beside a pond all morning. His face was streaked with chocolate, or more dirt, his lips chapped, with red cracks at the corners of his mouth. His skin was the color of soy milk. He was staring at her, smiling, and there were dark streaks in his teeth. He could have been cute but he needed a bath. He didn’t try to play with the others. He was only interested in the birthday girl.

  She pretended to lose interest and busy herself at the crafts table, where Tami Larson and some of the other kids were making crowns out of orange and purple construction paper, smearing them with paste and coloring them with markers that smelled like candied fruit. But even as Briela scribbled little jewels at every point, she could feel him watching her. In fact she could almost hear his voice, high and soft, whispering inside her.

  Hey, Birthday Girl, look over here. I have to show you something. It’s important. Look here, it’s about your mommy and daddy … I know what’s going to happen to them, to all of you. You’re in a lot of trouble …

  His eyes on the back of her neck were like cold lizard fingers. He wouldn’t leave her alone, so she finally looked up, to the corner, and he was still there. Staring at her. His eyes were even wider now. All the other kids retreated and the room seemed to draw her forward, toward him, even though he didn’t move, and it was like being on one of those conveyer belts at the airport, only faster. All of the laughter in the room got sucked into a buzzing silence and her ears popped. His eyes were bright green, with long brown lashes, and when she was about to crash into him, a line of blood seeped from the corner of each eye. The top of his head seemed to roll back, becoming taller, and his jaw popped open, until she could see inside, where all his teeth were shining red, his mouth filled with blood. His eyes began to vibrate and his entire body was shaking in a fit.

  Briela screamed and thrashed her arms out, trying to fight back, to make him stop, make him stop showing her these terrible things and go away. There was a different scream then, not her own. When she blinked, the room was bright and the boy was gone. She was back at the crafts table and the boy wasn’t standing in the corner, or anywhere else in the room, but she didn’t even have time to wonder where he had disappeared to, because by then everything was different, flying out of control.

  41

  Amy didn’t see it happen. She was pre-bussing the mess of plates and cups over at the counter where the cake had been destroyed, picking over detritus like a crime-scene technician so as to avoid soiling her outfit. For this very special occasion she had spent half an hour straightening her hair with a hot iron, and wore a new peach blouse with an embroidery motif of flower petals she had ordered from J. Crew. The deep blue denim skirt made her look three sizes smaller while the brown leather gladiator sandals showcased her new lavender-sparkle pedicure. She was brushing a morsel of chocolate cake from her bust (thankfully it did not leave a frosting skid) when the first scream pierced the already loud party in the rec room.

  Amy recognized it as one of Briela’s screams, shrill and brief, and it was followed by ominous silence. She turned and saw a purple plastic fork jutting from Tami Larson’s sweet upturned face, like some kind of a magic trick performed by a sadistic clown. Right in the soft pad of cheek, halfway between eye and mouth. For the first few seconds, even Tami Larson – an obese girl with thick black hair and chocolate freckles almost the same color as the blood dots made by the fork – was too stunned to cry out.

  Standing eye-level with Tami was the angelic blonde viper known as Briela, her arm raised. To everyone else it was obvious what had just happened. And yet it took another agonizing moment for Amy to admit what she was seeing. It was like a simple math equation with only one correct answer.

  Tami Larson + purple fork + sticking out of her face + Briela’s raised hand + everyone in shock = my daughter went fucking psycho.

  Everyone in the room – kids, moms, and the one dad, Larry Havas – seemed to be waiting for someone to bark, ‘Just kidding! It was a rubber fork, no harm done!’ Then Tami started to scream. And the other kids started to scream. But Rita Larson, Tami’s mother, didn’t scream. She was standing against the stairway railing, conversing with Andrea Grayson’s mom, her nose in a goblet of Shiraz. As she absorbed the fact that her daughter had been stabbed in the face with a fork, Rita Larson’s face (same freckles, gray streaks in the frizzy hair) went through the kind of sublime transition that wins actresses the Academy Award.

  The happy smile crumbled slowly, like a detonated bridge. Then came the paling of her cheeks, followed by a long dawning of anguish (during which the wine leaned over and then toppled from her hand). And finally, just before she lunged in to remove the weapon and cover her daughter as if the basement were about to be filled with a hailstorm of plastic forks and knives and God only knew what else, for this was now the House of the Devil, there came an ugly working of Rita’s lips and a hoarse lament that in any other context might have been orgasmic but here was pure maternal anguish and turned Amy’s blood to cracking ice.

  ‘Oh, no, Briela, noooooo …’ Amy finally played her role, stepping in to yank Briela away. ‘What did you do? What on earth happened?’ As if it wasn’t clear, as if there might be a rational explanation.

  By then the other mothers were gathering up their children and leading them away from the monster who had materialized, and away from Amy, the other monster who was responsible for hosting this uncoordinated freak show.

  Chaos ensued. The parents filed out, appalled, glaring at Amy as if she had meant for this to happen. Rita Larson ran up the stairs with her daughter in her arms, using words like ‘my lawyer’ and ‘should be ashamed’ and ‘psychiatric help’. Amy had chased after her, apologizing, offering to call a doctor, only to be repelled by a Godzilla squall of ‘Stay the hell away from my daughter, both of you!’

  Minutes later the storm had passed. The birthday party was at its ugly end.

  Only Melanie Smith, whose daughter was already off to college in Bozeman, Montana, stayed behind to offer sympathy. Melanie had gone to Fairview High with Amy, but dropped out early. Their friendship hadn’t rekindled until Kyle reached his terrible fives. Melanie was the non-judgemental mom in the group, a former self-admitted screw-up of various sorts, a recovered addict twice divorced and amazed her own daughter was not by now knocked up or strung out, as Melanie had been at that age. She was the friend the other mothers called upon in their darkest hours, because whatever it was, Melanie had been there. She had come over this afternoon at the
last minute to help Amy set everything up in Mick’s absence.

  ‘It’s the chemicals in the food,’ Melanie said. They had retreated to the kitchen after stuffing Briela into her bedroom. Amy was too stunned to cry. ‘It could be anything. You’re a wonderful mother.’

  ‘I’m an asshole.’

  ‘No. Don’t beat yourself up about this, Ames. I’ve seen kids do worse. Remember the Keenan boy? He gave Jason Turner fifteen stitches with a Lego.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident,’ Amy said. ‘I know that look. It was, it was … premeditated.’

  ‘She’s at that age, they don’t always understand the difference between arguments and physical outbursts. In their minds it’s, You hurt me and now I’m going to hurt you back.’

  Amy wiped her nose with a dish towel. ‘My daughter stabbed that girl in the face. How does she even think of that?’

  ‘Did you get a hold of Mick?’

  ‘He’s working. Again. The restaurant is failing. What am I supposed to do?’ She meant about anything, about her entire life.

  ‘Nothing tonight.’ Melanie hugged her. ‘Jesus, you’re cold, girl. Go take a hot bath. Get some rest and then think very carefully about how you’re going to address this with your husband. He needs to hear loud and clear that this is not okay. He needs to start participating in this marriage and be present for these milestones. We’ll work through it, hon. Call me tomorrow.’

  By the time Melanie left, dusk had given way to night. The house was simultaneously too empty and closing in on her. She was gripped by a need to erase all traces of the crime.