The People Next Door Page 30

  But he wasn’t Mr Render. This was all a lie. His entire life was a lie.

  ‘Why not?’ Troy said, voice cracking.

  ‘I don’t think you’re going to like what you find on the other side.’

  He began to walk into the light.

  ‘Feeling all right there, Mick?’ the blond man said. Behind him the bag of charcoal was shriveling, turning black.

  ‘Nothing another one of these won’t fix.’

  Mick sipped his beer, thinking it such a shame that his family had agreed to participate in this charade. Amy, who wanted so badly to please them. Kyle, who wanted so badly to be normal, fit in with them. Briela, who was too young to understand the magnitude of her family’s problems. And here we are, even now, everyone pretending this is a normal Saturday afternoon between neighbors. It’s like we wandered into a swingers party, he thought. Except that instead of getting naked, any minute now one of them is going to rip open my son’s throat and drink his blood. Take us all hostage and announce their plans for the second coming, a new master race. Resistance is futile, now drink your punch.

  Behind them, Amy laughed.

  54

  When June came out, Kyle almost choked on his cola. Her hair was slicked back and glistening, and she had changed into yellow terrycloth shorts and a gray hooded top sheer enough for him to see her yellow bikini top beneath. She chatted with her mom as she set the patio table, but she smiled at him twice.

  He kept trying to look mellow, idling by the pool, but inside he was twisted up about what they had done. He kept seeing that security guard lying on the ground, the event replaying, infecting his wide-awake dreams. In some he was torn apart, cut up in a hundred places like someone had gone at him with a lawn-mower blade. In other dreams, like the one last night, the man’s limbs were severed at the joints, as if he had been drawn and quartered there on the parking lot. Each time the event replayed itself, Kyle and June were stuck to him, unable to run away, slipping and sliding in a pool of the man’s gooey blood like flies on a sheet of yellow flypaper.

  He told himself he was just scared. His mind was fucked up. He’d been going stir crazy while grounded and June had not answered any of his texts. The rest of that exchange had been amazing, but most of all it had seemed far more intimate than this – the sight of her tromping around in daylight. Now she was a person, not a disembodied series of digital words, and he had no idea how to talk to her.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, coming up behind him, rolling her eyes. She pulled two lounge chairs over by the side of the pool. ‘Have a seat.’

  Kyle ass-hopped back into the lounge chair. He fished for clever lines, got nothing.

  ‘Looks like our parents are hitting it off,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah.’ Think of something, idiot. But he didn’t know how to look into her eyes.

  ‘Are you doing okay?’ she said.

  ‘I guess so. Are you?’

  She took his hand. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ she said. ‘It will all be over soon.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  She squeezed, her eyes watery. ‘It won’t be easy, but no one will ever be able to hurt us again. Like that man down by the creek. The way he hit you.’

  ‘You saw that?’

  ‘You handled it very well.’

  ‘I got my ass kicked.’

  ‘No, you were a man. You didn’t resort to unnecessary violence. You’re good inside. You give me hope that all of this is going to be all right.’

  Kyle looked at her. ‘Is it? Going to be all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. But no matter how strange it seems, we can still do things.’

  Things.

  What was she offering? Couldn’t be what he was thinking …

  She took his other hand. ‘All kinds of things. Whatever you want.’

  Kyle’s hands trembled in hers, but she would not release him, and he imagined taking her body now, here on the patio chair, his hands around her ribs, easing her back, touching her skin under the shirt, sliding her yellow bikini top up, over, the underwire pushing her nipples before his mouth was on her. He wanted to feel inside her. He wanted to use his fingers and press his mouth to her, lick the heat from her to stop him from shivering, to erase the horrible dreams and replace them with a world that revolved around her.

  She leaned her forehead against his and her lips parted.

  ‘June, Kyle!’ Cassandra called from the patio. ‘Come get some food.’

  June pulled away, her eyes filled with tears. ‘Stay with me,’ she said. ‘Just a little longer now and then we’ll have eternity.’

  She stood and led him to the table. Everyone was milling around plates of spicy corn on the cob, spinach dip in a bread bowl, and other tapas Kyle didn’t recognize. He wasn’t hungry, not for food. He couldn’t stop staring at her. He didn’t notice until minutes later that none of them were eating. Mrs and Mr Render were too busy talking with his parents, but they weren’t even holding plates. June said she was on a diet and only sucked on her crostini. The boy, Adolph, was just staring at his plate, and maybe the rest of them, in disgust. Something was wrong with him. The greenish hue in the cheeks, the pinpoint brown eyes and patchy homemade buzz cut. The kid gave Kyle the creeps. They all did.

  Except for June.

  55

  At first she was afraid of Adolph, but soon Briela realized he wasn’t so different from all the other boys at school, and he was kind of cute. He pretended to be tough, but he was just shy, even though he couldn’t stop looking at her. They argued about which kinds of pop were best. He said Orange Crush but she liked Cherry Coke. He showed her his hiding place behind the trees, where he’d built a little wooden fort that looked like a rabbit cage, and no, she did not want to get in it.

  Now they were running in the yard, pretending they were hunting (and being hunted by) the alien creatures he made up, hiding behind trees and the house’s little coves and overhangs, in the garages, then racing around the pool. Briela thought it was dumb at first, since she knew the aliens were make believe. But Adolph kept adding details in between attacks. The aliens were only two feet tall. They had sharp green eyes and bald heads and long skinny tails, pink and pointy. The mouths were small, hardly large enough to fit around a carrot stick, but inside, Adolph said, were seven rows of teeth, clear as glass and sharp enough to bite through wood.

  Around that time, even though it was daylight and she wasn’t really afraid, Briela could feel the little creatures watching her, hiding behind the bushes and the big trees that threw deep shade across the backyard. She could hear their quick alien footsteps in the grass, the scuffing of their scales against the tree bark as they came for her. She ran behind Addie, always trying to catch up, but he was too fast. He kept laughing and tricking her, turning this way and that, taunting her even as the creatures got closer.

  Every time she looked in Addie’s eyes, he was so excited, she could see that he was pleased, that he liked her, because in playing his made-up game she made it real for him. He whispered in her ear, his lips cool at her neck.

  There’s two of them right behind you. See? Back there, behind the gazebo. He keeps poking his head out, waiting for the right time to pounce.

  We have to run now or else they’ll get you and eat you. They like to eat the feet first. They’ll dive at your heels and drag you down. They’ll eat your toes and make a cake out of your brains.

  We have to go now, hurry! The one with the yellow eyes is the meanest one, the leader, and he’s on his way to get you right now!

  And not long after that Briela lost control. She ran wild, shrieking, her panic thrilling and pure, the vividness of the things he described as real as the chairs on the patio, as her brother and June sitting around the table. She ran blindly, her chest aching, her tummy knotted tight, and still she fell behind Adolph. She came to a stop and slumped down in the grass, unable to go on. He was laughing and making his fighting sounds. He took his shirt off and whirled it above his head. He wa
s a devil, a wolf-boy. And she was frightened for him as he kept looking back, watching her, watching her watching him, showing off for her.

  Something was wrong with them, she knew now. Not just Adolph, but the whole family. She should have tried harder. She should have told her family to stay away and never set foot in their home, because now they were friends and soon it would be too late to stop the monsters that were coming for them all.

  56

  ‘I’m still not used to this Colorado sun,’ Render said, removing his sunglasses. ‘I feel exposed under this big sky, like someone took the lid off the world.’

  In the kitchen, Render removed another Stella from the side-by-side and handed it to Mick. He wasn’t drinking, Mick noticed. But he did not have the air of a teetotaler. If Render had the air of anything at all, it was that of a playboy or a prince, an entitled man-child with a streak of sadness beneath the cool veneer. He moved with a slow, casual grace, but there were fine lines around his eyes, as well as a certain weariness in the eyes themselves, a fried, battle-tested numbness only men of tragedy, heavy drug use, or middle age acquire. Something inside Render was not well, not well at all.

  ‘Can’t imagine it any other way,’ Mick said.

  ‘And those mountains? All that forest? No thanks. Might as well put your family in a rubber raft out in the middle of the Pacific.’

  Mick laughed.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Render said. ‘What do you have here? Cougars, rattlesnakes, bears. You ever take the family camping, Mick? Spend a few nights roughing it?’

  ‘Years ago.’

  ‘It’s like that thing on the news. Those two teen boys went up the canyon with some beers and a gun, hoping to have a little harmless fun.’

  Render looked at him for some acknowledgement.

  ‘I must have missed that one,’ Mick said.

  ‘Less than ten miles from town, they just disappeared.’ Render wiped his hands theatrically. ‘Rangers found a few scraps of clothing and a bunch of blood in the dirt. The boys were never seen again. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Wonder what?’ Mick said.

  ‘What got ’em.’

  Mick shrugged and followed Render to a wrought-iron spiral staircase cut into the corner of the den. ‘Where are you from, anyway?’

  ‘The Midwest originally,’ Render said. ‘But I’ve moved a lot. Can’t say I’m a native of any place, not like you.’

  ‘How’d you know I was a native?’

  ‘I know all about you, Mick. Remember?’

  Mick felt his insides clench.

  ‘Watch your step here.’ Render descended the narrow steps in a nimble, almost sideways canter. ‘This one’s a little tight.’

  They reached the basement, a single long and unfinished space. Wood framing had been erected here and there about the concrete floor, a drain at its center, and some drywall lay stacked in a corner. A row of huge cardboard boxes lined one foundation wall, like they had ordered ten refrigerators, but there were no labels.

  ‘I have only the one room for now,’ Render said, walking to the south end. A bundle of sewage-gauge PVC piping lay across the floor, and an industrial-sized sink of the type Mick had in the Straw. Three basins, wide flares to stack dishes. ‘Center of operations is under construction.’

  In the far left corner stood a brick oven, something he had considered putting in the Straw back in the days when he was mulling an Italian makeover. Wood-fired pizzas, rotisserie chickens, a hearth that warmed the entire dining room. He thought it strange Render had installed one in his basement.

  They approached an unpainted door set in a wall so wide Mick had mistaken it for the end of the house. Render opened the door and stood to one side.

  I asked you to wait outside, Mr Render. You’re not supposed to be in here.

  Go ahead then, Troy. Open the door.

  Mick entered, and Render flipped on a light as he closed the door behind them.

  It was not an office of the kind Mick had ever seen. The room was at least sixteen by twenty, and the change in decor was disorienting. The carpet was bright aqua blue. Two black leather sofas faced each other, a tinted yellow glass table between them. At the back of the room was a twelve-foot swath of desk space built into the wall, with three black computer monitors lined up, the blade server machines humming beneath. On the wall was a map of the United States with clusters of red pins around half a dozen metro areas. Five cell phones were arrayed on a pad of black felt. Surreal canvases of modern art were mounted on the walls, desert motifs featuring black saguaros, skinny coyotes, blood-red suns. Others with no real scene, only mesmerizing saturation. Gaudy maroons and blacks, wilted flowers of orange and pink. Another wall featured a series of paintings with purple skies and black amusement park rides, carousels, a pointy ferris wheel, forests lit by gas lamps, futuristic bicycles, small leashed dragons, faeries, swirling Van Gogh stars, paths of emerald grass, and strange men with handlebar mustaches courting buxom women twirling parasols.

  On the end tables, black crystal balls were perched on chrome vases. A screen of red silk, like an Indian sari, was mummy-wrapped around a white plastic mannequin with no arms or legs, her busty trunk impaled on a black iron rod mounted to the ceiling. What Mick knew about art would fit into a matchbook, but if forced he would have called it Alice in Wonderland by way of New Age crap with a death miasma. It was unpleasant to look at, all of it cruel in some way.

  ‘I collect strange art,’ Render said. ‘Things that do not reflect the world out there, things which remind me of nothing. It helps me unplug, prepare for the other side.’

  ‘It’s … something.’

  ‘Have a seat.’

  Mick sat on one of the leather couches, Render collapsed across from him. Here they were, all done flirting, and Mick had the strongest urge to run now, just grab his wife and kids and get the hell out of here while he still could. But he didn’t. Because he was no longer afraid. Maybe, in that moment, their shattered lives weren’t worth worrying about and there was nothing left for Render to do that had not already been done. The two of them stared at each other for a minute, taking in the silence and each other’s flat expressions.

  ‘So,’ Mick said. ‘How did you get to be this way?’

  Render raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Obscene wealth,’ Mick said.

  ‘Ah.’ Render nodded. ‘Does your dog have a chip?’

  ‘A what?’

  Render patted the back of his neck. ‘A microchip. An implant for identification purposes.’

  ‘Amy adopted Thom from the humane society. I have no idea.’

  ‘Funny name for a dog, by the way,’ Render said.

  ‘Amy used to be a Radiohead fan.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘He’s a Yorkshire. Thom. Yor— Never mind. Not important.’

  Render nodded. ‘Well, they chip most of them these days. If he does, there’s about a seventy per cent chance I made it. Or, my former company. I still hold the patents. Little pill about the size of a grain of rice. Made hundreds of millions on the dumb things, sold my stock in the early nineties.’

  ‘But it’s not enough to save you,’ Mick said. ‘You’re still dying.’

  Render nodded. ‘How far did you get last night?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘When she came to you.’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t touch—’

  ‘Relax, Mick. I’m talking about the dream. If she did what I asked her to do, you should have stumbled onto something.’

  Mick puckered his mouth, said, ‘Nope.’

  Render tried to stare him down. Mick offered him nothing.

  ‘All right,’ Render said. ‘For a long time I assumed you had to know, because the alternative seemed impossible. But I have to admit, the way you’ve stonewalled me, I’m still not sure. So I’m going to ask you one more time. Do you know what this is all about? Or are you just trying to drive up the negotiation?’

  ‘Who said we’re negotiating?
’

  ‘I already offered you the house,’ Render said.

  ‘I have a house. It’s our home and we intend to stay in it.’

  ‘I recouped your embezzled funds.’

  ‘That was your money,’ Mick said. ‘For show. Clever, but you didn’t fool me. Someone else already got to Sapphire.’

  ‘You know who?’ Render said.

  ‘I have a pretty good idea.’

  Render stood and went to the desk built into the wall. From underneath he removed a silver suitcase of the sort drug smugglers prefer. He carried it to the yellow glass table and set it down. He worked the combination locks, popped the latches, and spun the open mouth of it toward Mick. It was filled with cash.

  ‘Unmarked, of course,’ Render said.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three point five.’

  ‘Is that all you got?’

  ‘How much more do you need?’

  ‘I don’t need any of it.’

  ‘I can put it in an overseas account. I have everything arranged. Think about what kind of security that will afford your family.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything to earn it.’

  ‘Oh, but you have, Mick. You’ve done so much. And now it is time to trust each other. I’m going to lay my cards on the table. We’re going to finish our business today, because the world is changing quickly and you really do need to prepare yourself for what’s coming.’

  Island Living

  When Bob Percy forced me to look down over the balcony, everything I thought I knew about life and death and the borders in between vented from me in a single, childish gasp of disbelief. Of course, by then disbelieving was no longer an option.

  All of the families, including Bob’s wife and children, were standing in the swimming pool – which was mercifully not lit. I could see that some were naked, others were clothed. They weren’t doing anything except standing in the water, facing the ocean like mannequins. Sculptures in a fountain. It was not a large pool but there were more than twenty of them crammed into it like sardines, standing shoulder to shoulder. Husbands and wives, the teens and younger children, some as young as five or six in the shallow end. At least two were elderly, perhaps grandma and grandpa had been invited on the trip. The rain continued to plop and sprinkle around them, but they didn’t mind the dark or the weather or anything else. I don’t know what their minds were on, or if at that point they even possessed minds.