Other terrors, p.2
Other Terrors, page 2
But today there’s no messing around in other people’s apartments. We go straight down to the basement, pausing on the stairs to kiss because we can’t wait a second longer. Her body presses into mine, and I have to hold the railing so I don’t lose my balance.
Jaz tastes like cherry lip-gloss and salt water. She smells like the cheap perfume she shoplifts from the drugstore. Hurrying now, Jaz leads me the rest of the way down the steep wooden steps. The basement smells like damp cement, old books, grease, and heating oil. The furnace sits at the front end of the building, pipes snaking up to bring hot water to all the apartments. We pass by the storage units: cages of two by four frames with stapled on chicken wire, flimsy doors with padlocks. They’re stuffed full of bicycles, mildewed boxes, furniture that didn’t fit in the tiny apartments upstairs. We head to the one at the end—the extra unit with no padlock. It’s where everything that has no place to go gets shoved: bags of salt for the sidewalks in winter, grass seed, driveway sealant, a dented toolbox with a bent screwdriver and a rusty hammer. There are things left behind by old tenants and never gotten rid of: an old chest of drawers, a worn green velvet couch, a bicycle missing the front wheel, boxes of artifacts from people long gone.
“Hello, Jit,” Jaz says as she pulls me down on top of her on the old stained couch. We’re safe here, tucked away behind the rusted file cabinets, moldering cardboard boxes, a ratty old box spring.
She tugs at my sweater, my favorite—chunky and black and coming unraveled at the edges.
“Hello, Id,” I say, brushing my lips over her neck until she shudders. I start unbuttoning her heavy wool blazer: St. Christopher’s Catholic school, where her mother sends her to keep her away from public school sinners like me. I undo the last button with my teeth, ripping it off, the smooth white circle like a worry stone I hold under my tongue.
“The id, Freud’s id,” Jaz explains for the hundredth time, her breathing coming fast, “is all about instinctual desire.” She puts her tongue in my ear and a little moan escapes my lips.
Soon the clothes are gone and we’re tangled together, bodies sticky with sweat and lip-gloss and cheap drugstore perfume. It’s impossible to tell whose limbs are whose.
Instinctual desire, I’m thinking, and then, all thoughts are gone.
There is only Jaz. Her fingers. Her mouth. Her breath coming faster and faster.
After, she lights a joint. I don’t know where she gets pot, but she’s always got it.
She’s naked, lounging on her back on the couch, smoking, watching me. I’m straddling her, on my knees, my weight keeping her pinned to the couch. She looks so beautiful, so perfect, her dyed red hair splayed against the worn green velvet couch.
She runs the fingers of her left hand up my belly, to my breasts, brushing the nipples.
Soon it’ll be time to get our clothes back on, go back out into the too-bright afternoon. But I want to stay here, just like this, with her pinned below me forever.
“This isn’t what I am,” she says, because she always has to say it at least once, just to let me know, to keep me in check. “I’m not like this, really. I mean, I like boys. Don’t you like boys?”
“Sure,” I say, but the lie is thick in my throat. I grab the joint from her, take a deep a hit, let it seep into my lungs. I climb off her, slip my underwear and jeans back on.
“What do you think happened to that boy?” she asks. “The missing one?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he ran away. But the fact that they found his backpack and his bike under the bridge like that, it doesn’t look good, right?”
She turns, stretches like a lazy cat, takes another hit from the joint, watching the smoke drift up.
“I can’t believe you bit my button off,” she says, annoyance giving her voice a sharp edge. “Where’d it go?”
She’s feeling around the couch for it, pulling back the filthy cushions. “Fuck,” she mumbles. “I really need to find it.”
I see it on the stained cement floor, glinting in the dim light like a tiny moon. I pick it up without her noticing and wrap my fingers tightly around it, tuck it deep in the pocket of my jeans, a talisman. My own little secret. A little piece of her I can carry with me everywhere I go.
“Why are you getting dressed?” she asks, her voice soft again.
I shrug.
“Come here,” she orders, a low purr as she reaches out her hand to pull me back down. I’m on top of her again, my mouth on hers, her fingers running up my spine, making my whole body feel electric, dangerous.
We’re all hands and teeth and tongue and she’s sliding my jeans back off and saying my name, panting it, saying, Hurry, please, please, please, hurry.
And then, everything freezes. Time stops. Her body goes rigid beneath me. The temperature in the basement, already cold, seems to drop.
She shoves me off her with a strength I didn’t know she had, covers her bare chest with her hands. I land on the floor, jeans tangled around my legs, hip smashing against the concrete.
“What the fuck?” I say, rubbing my hip.
She’s gone pale, her eyes fixed on some point beyond me.
I turn and follow her gaze.
There, back in the shadows, over near the boiler, a pale face watches. He’s angled in a way that he can see us around the barricade of junk. He steps forward, his face framed in the dim light coming in through the tiny rectangular window.
Mr. G.
He doesn’t say a word. He just stares, clenches his jaw, then turns and walks away. We hear his footsteps on the stairs, boots heavy.
When I turn back to Jaz, she’s pulling her shirt on.
“Jaz,” I say, putting my hand on her shoulder.
She pushes me away.
I say, “Maybe he won’t—”
“Just go,” she orders.
Jaz’s mom, Mrs. Fletcher, is a squat woman draped in too many layers: a housedress, an apron, a heavy wool cardigan.
“You,” she says as she opens the door, eyes beady. “What do you want?”
The giant crucifix hangs on the wall behind her: a bloody Jesus with a crown of thorns looking at me, his eyes desperate, pleading.
“I . . . I’m looking for Jasmine. Is she here?”
It’s against the rules. Me coming here, to her apartment like this, but she’s left me no choice. I haven’t seen her or talked to her since I left the basement yesterday afternoon. She isn’t answering my calls or texts. I waited for her to get off the bus down at the end of the driveway to the apartments, but the St. Christopher’s bus went right by. She wasn’t on it.
I fiddle with the smooth white uniform button in my pocket, a charm I hope might have the power to call her back to me.
“She’s not here,” Mrs. Fletcher says.
I swallow, my mouth dry. Jesus watches, waiting. “Do you know where she is?”
“If not with you, then with some other whore,” she says.
I take a step back.
“The devil wears many disguises,” she tells me, moving closer, her face inches from mine. She smells like sour milk and whiskey. She touches my face, pinching my cheek and pulling at my skin like it’s a mask she’s trying to remove. My eyes tear up and I jerk away, then turn and run back down the stairs.
“Stay away from my daughter!” she calls after me.
I hurry away from Building B, cheek stinging, and feel my phone vibrate. Pulling it out, I see a text from Jaz: Meet me in the canal.
I practically run across the parking lot. At the north side of the apartments is the big ditch where the old canal once ran, but it’s been dry for over a hundred years now. I clamber down the embankment of brown grass to the bottom. Jaz and I meet here sometimes to smoke pot. Because it’s so low, when you’re down here, you’re out of sight from the apartments—only someone standing at the edge can look down and see you. On the other side of the old canal are the train tracks. The freight trains go by twice a day. Jaz and I sometimes walk the canal all the way into the town, looking for the bodies and bones of dead animals hit by the trains. There’s a surprising amount, really: rabbits, cats, even a dog once—the poor thing was missing his head.
Mr. G has a big burn pile going at the bottom of the ditch—he’s dumped all the leaves he’s raked on it, added a pile of old shipping pallets, a chair with a broken back, a couple of stumps. The old Canal Street Apartments sign is on the pile too, the maroon and gold paint worn away by years of sun and rain. They’ve replaced it with a carved granite sign that reminds me of a tombstone.
Jaz is there, sitting on the ground beside the burn pile, her legs pulled up to her chest, red hair sticking out from under her black knit hat.
I sit down next to her. “Hello, Id,” I say.
She makes a funny little sound, not quite a whimper, but says nothing.
And then, because I know she’ll find out soon enough, I tell her. “I was just at your place. I talked to your mom.”
“You went to my apartment?” She turns to me, snarls, “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I—I needed to see you. You weren’t answering my texts or calls.”
“So you go and talk to my mother?”
“I thought maybe you were there.”
“You don’t go to my house. I don’t come to yours. We agreed.”
“I know, but it’s not like you left me a choice.” I stare at her. “We need to talk. About yesterday. About what we’re going to do.”
“Going to do? What’s there to do?” Her face is twisted, furious. “He saw us. He’s probably told everyone—my mom, your grandmother, every resident here. He probably went around like the town crier: I caught the dyke and the Catholic schoolgirl doing it.”
My muscles tighten. A lead ball drops down into my stomach.
“Fuck,” she says. She leans down, picks up a twig from the ground, and snaps it in two.
“Jaz?”
“What?”
Do I say it? Do I not say it?
What if this is it—the last time we ever talk? I’m sure Jaz is one breath away from saying we need to stay away from each other from now on, that she’s done.
“I love you,” I tell her, thinking maybe these three words will be enough. Enough to save us somehow.
She laughs bitterly. “Well, that’s just the fucking icing on the cake.”
“And I think you love me, too.”
She stops laughing. Her breathing is loud and strange. “I can’t do this,” she whispers. “You and me—him seeing us, it—”
“I know,” I say, taking her hand. “But you’re wrong. You can do this. We can do this.”
She jerks her hand away from mine.
I look at the burn pile. At the ruined and broken things Mr. G is going to make disappear, turn to ashes and smoke.
My eye catches on something: a flash of red like a flag under the leaves. I stand up, stepping forward, brushing aside the leaves, and pull out a red flannel shirt. It’s wadded up and covered with brown paint.
No. Not paint, I realize.
Blood.
Dried blood.
I’m holding the shirt up to Jaz, and then we hear a voice from up above. “You two get away from there!” Mr. G shouts down, a big metal shovel in his hands.
I freeze, the shirt in my hands flapping in the wind like a strange flag.
“I said go!” he yells as he starts coming down the embankment, moving toward us fast, the shovel raised like a weapon.
I drop the shirt, follow Jaz, who’s already taking off along the canal, away from Mr. G.
“Id-jit girls!” he calls.
We run and don’t look back. We keep going for nearly a mile until we’re out of breath and nearly all the way to the center of town.
“What was that?” she asks when we stop at last, bent over, panting. “The thing you found?”
“A shirt. A kid’s shirt, I think. And it had blood on it.” I look down at my hands, wipe them frantically on my jeans even though there’s nothing on them.
“Are you sure it wasn’t like a painting rag or something?”
“Come on,” I say, pulling her forward. We climb up the embankment out of the canal, make our way to Arch Road, and turn right. Soon we’re by the rec center. Kids are playing basketball on the court outside—lunging and jabbing each other with elbows, sneakers skidding on the asphalt.
I walk up the granite steps to the building and stand in front of the bulletin board.
“What are you doing?” Jaz asks over my shoulder.
I study the flyers: youth basketball league schedule, ski swap this Saturday, youth hunting safety courses. There it is: have you seen emmet? A photo of the boy: short dark hair, a gap between his two front teeth, a smattering of freckles on his nose and cheeks. Eleven years old. Last seen leaving Strafford Middle School on October 3. He was wearing blue jeans, black Converse sneakers, and a red plaid flannel shirt. Anyone with any information is asked to call the Strafford Police Department. The family is offering a reward for any information.
“It’s his shirt,” I say.
“What?”
“Emmet was wearing a red plaid flannel shirt,” I tell her, pointing at the flyer. “Like the one I just fucking found with blood all over it.”
“So what are you saying? You think Mr. G killed him?”
“I don’t know. But we’ve gotta go back and get that shirt. It’s evidence.”
We see the smoke rising in a great black cloud, smell it in the air before we even get to the edge to look down. We’ve run all the way back, but we’re too late.
There’s Mr. G, a gas can by this side, a roaring fire blazing before him. Sparks fly up, ashes floating through the air, drifting slowly to the cold ground.
He looks up at us, eyes flickering with the light of the fire, his whole face red and glowing.
And I know then that he isn’t going to tell anyone about what he saw down in the basement.
Because we know a secret much worse.
We stand in front of apartment A-1 with the pass key. There’s a big gaudy wreath of fake fall leaves with acorns and little stuffed squirrels on their door. Jaz looks at it, reaching out like she’s going to pet the squirrels, then rips it down off its hook.
“Um, are you stealing their ugly-ass wreath?” I ask.
She shakes her head, eyes fixed on the door, on what the wreath was hiding.
Under it is a drawing in chalk: a circle with a symbol in the middle that reminds me of a man hanging.
“What the hell is that?” I ask.
She takes a step back. “A magic symbol I think.”
“What? Like witchcraft?”
She nods.
I remember the strange design I’d seen on Mr. G’s chest. A mark. A sigil.
Jaz hands me the pass key. “Open the door.”
We hold perfectly still. Outside, I hear Mrs. G’s wind chimes tinkling and rattling, sending out the alarm: Intruders!
Mr. and Mrs. G have gone to town. They go out for the early bird special at the Sirloin Stockade every Wednesday. Mrs. G gets all dressed up and Mr. G puts on clean blue slacks and a white shirt instead of his coveralls.
I unlock the door to their apartment. “Are you sure about this?” I ask.
Jaz nods, bites her lip.
I turn the knob and push the door open. There’s the smell that drifts out of their open windows: smoky and bitter, vaguely poisonous.
Jaz looks down at the threshold, at a line of what looks like ash sprinkled on the other side.
“I don’t like this,” I say.
“Me neither.”
“You go in,” she tells me. “I’ll stay here and be lookout. Just in case.”
“Uh-uh. No way am I going in there alone.”
“Five minutes,” she says. “Just go, take a look around.”
“What am I even looking for?”
“Like you said—evidence. Something to tie Mr. G to the missing kid. He burned the shirt. But maybe there’s something else. Something we can go to the police with.”
Reward, the sign promised. A reward offered for any information.
I imagine what Jaz and I could do with the money. Run away together, maybe. Buy two bus tickets to anywhere but here. Away from her batshit mom. My Gram would miss me at first, but she’d be better off without me to take care of, in the long run. Someplace far away from the Canal Street Apartments. We could get jobs waiting tables or something. Get a cheap little apartment, decorate it with thrift-store stuff. We’d be happy, Jaz and me. I know we would.
“If he killed that kid, we need to know,” Jaz says.
I open the door, take a giant step over the line of ash and into the kitchen.
“Five minutes,” I say.
Jaz nods, keeps the door open, looking in. “I’ll be right here the whole time. Go check the living room. And their bedroom. Check the closets. All the hiding places you can find.”
I nod.
“Hurry,” she whispers as I make my way through the tidy kitchen and into the living room, which is cramped and dark, the shades drawn tight.
A dingy couch with no pillows or a blanket, a coffee table with nothing on it but the TV remote. There’s nothing on the walls—not a single photograph or piece of art. It’s like robots live here. My heart is pounding and my mouth tastes like metal. This feels all wrong.
“Anything?” Jaz calls.
“No.”
“Check the bedroom.”
I make my way down the hall, stopping at the bathroom, which is clean and neat and smells like menthol. I open the medicine cabinet, find a bottle of aspirin, a pack of razor blades.
I go into the bedroom.
The smell is strongest here: smoke and spice and something acrid. I let my eyes adjust to the dark, make out a tall lamp next to the bed and flick it on.
“What do you see?” Jaz calls.
“Well, there’s normal bedroom stuff—a bed, a dresser, bookshelves. A little table next to the bed. There’s a brass dish of ash. Incense maybe? I think that’s what the smell in here is. I see jars full of weird herbs and stuff on the shelf. There’s a book on the table.”
