The Night Parade(8)

“Sounds like you’ve given this more than just a passing thought,” he said.

“What about you?” she said. “Will you give it more than just a passing thought, too?”

He chewed his lower lip for a moment. “Yeah, okay. I will.”

Kathy’s smile widened. David admired the sweat at her temples, dampening her hair. When she eased back down into her pillows, he could smell the sex on her, wafting over to his side of the bed.

“So, do you want to see it?” Kathy said.

“See what?”

“What she bought.”

“I thought she didn’t tell you.”

“Not right away. But when we got home, she wrapped it in construction paper and gave it to me as a gift.” Kathy rolled over and opened the drawer to her nightstand. When she turned back toward him, she was cupping a small, shiny sliver of metal in the palm of her hand.

David leaned forward for a better look. “It’s a spoon,” he said.

“Well, it’s a charm,” Kathy said. “Like for a bracelet. But yeah, it’s a spoon. It was the sweetest thing.”

David smiled and shook his head.

Kathy returned the tiny spoon to the nightstand, then made a sleepy purring sound while her cool foot found one of his sweaty legs beneath the sheet. David opened the book and skimmed the same sentence several times, not really paying attention to it. Deep inside the belly of the house, the furnace kicked on.

“Hey.” Kathy sat up on one elbow. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shhh,” she said. “Listen.”

He listened but heard nothing.

“Sounds like music,” Kathy said.

“Music? I don’t—” But he cut himself off as he heard it, too: the faint and discordant jangle of chimes set to some familiar tune. It took David just a few seconds to place it—“Yankee Doodle.” But it wasn’t the music itself that he found most peculiar; it was that he recognized where it was coming from, that prerecorded jangling melody, incongruous in the middle of a December night.

“Oh,” Kathy said, sitting up in bed fully now. “That’s eerie as hell.” Which meant she recognized it, too.

The music grew louder, louder, until it was right outside the house in the street. In the summertime, that jocular little melody would send the neighborhood kids flooding into Columbus Court, anxious for a Rocket Pop or an Italian ice. But now, in the dead of winter and in the middle of the night—David glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and saw that it was well after midnight—the sound of that tune unnerved him.

“That’s the strangest damn thing,” he said, and climbed out of bed. He tugged on a pair of sweatpants and an undershirt, then went to one of the bedroom windows. He lifted the blinds and peered out into the night.

“What?” Kathy said.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s the freakin’ ice cream man.”

Much of his view was blocked by the Walkers’ house next door, but he was able to make out the rear bumper of the Freez-E-Friend ice cream truck with perfect clarity. It sat idling in the middle of the cul-de-sac, its tailpipe expelling clouds of vapor into the cold night air. The brake lights were on.

Kathy joined him at the window. “Is this some kind of joke?” she said, her breath fogging up the glass.

“Well, as far as jokes go, it’s the creepiest one I’ve ever seen.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Just sitting there, it looks like. I don’t know. I can’t really see.”

When he turned and headed out into the hall, Kathy said, “Where are you going?” There was a level of trepidation in his wife’s voice he found strangely endearing.

“To go check it out.”

“Outside?” She said this with incredulity, as if he’d just suggested he walk blindfolded into traffic.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s weird,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

“It’s fine. Just wait here.”

In the foyer, he shoved his feet into a pair of ratty moccasins, unlocked the front door, and, sans jacket, stepped out into the night.

It was bitterly cold, causing the sweat that still clung to his exposed flesh to freeze. From the front porch, he had a perfect view of the Freez-E-Friend truck, idling right there in the middle of Columbus Court. It was a quaint little cul-de-sac that served eight homes. The lampposts cast pale white light onto the white-paneled truck, giving it an otherworldly appearance. There were Christmas lights on all the houses, but at this hour, they had all been turned off. David hesitated for just a moment before stepping down off the porch, hearing Kathy’s words echoing in his ears: Because it’s weird. I don’t like it. But then he was crossing the lawn and stepping down off the curb into the street, his shadow stretching disproportionately out in front of him in a halo of lamplight.

It was a typical ice cream truck, done up in white panels with decals of everyone’s favorite flavors pasted onto the side. Cartoon clowns capered among the flavors, pulling cartwheels and somersaults. The truck’s engine sounded like an uncooperative lawn mower, but it was barely audible over the sound of “Yankee Doodle” emanating from the roof-mounted speakers.

A figure sat behind the wheel—a dark form whose slouched silhouette suggested some level of distress, though David could not immediately identify why. Yet the sight of this figure caused him to pause once again. Despite the cold, he found he was suddenly perspiring.