Long Bright River(61)

* * *



—

I jog to Madison. It helps to keep me warm. I check my watch: 2:30 exactly.

I slow my pace to a walk as I turn onto the street, and then down the alley that runs perpendicular to it. I try, and most likely fail, to look casual.

There it is, all the way at the end: the back of the house in question. White siding. Three Bs spray-painted onto a board over one of the two back windows. One large, rotting piece of plywood over the place where a back door would formerly have been. It looks like it would be easy to push it to the side, and I imagine that this is how its temporary residents make their way in and out.

I put my face up next to the board that covers the window, try in vain to peer inside through a crack, but the interior is too dark for me to see much. I hesitate for a moment, and then I knock rapidly on the board that covers the door. If Dock answers, I’m not sure what I’ll do.

I wait for a while. And then a while longer. I knock again. Nobody answers.

Eventually, I push the plywood covering aside, and, tentatively, I step inside.



* * *



—

Upon entry, I am met with the familiar smell of all such houses, and the deep chill of a shadowy structure in winter. Interior cold, I think, is even bitterer than the cold of the outdoors. No sunlight penetrates the inside of these abandoned homes, not boarded up as they are. The air is still and brutal, like the inside of a freezer.

I take two steps and wait while my eyes adjust. The floorboards creak precariously. I am afraid, in fact, of stepping on the wrong one—or an absent one—and being summarily deposited into the basement.

I wish I had my duty belt, if only so that I had access to my flashlight. Instead, I palm my cell phone and turn on its flashlight application.

I swing it around, shining it toward all four corners of the room I’m standing in. I realize, as I do, that I’m expecting to see human bodies: lifeless ones or living ones, I can’t be sure. But I see neither. Only a few mattresses on the floor, heaped with cardboard and trash bags and blankets, and some piles of fabric—clothing, most likely—and other objects I can’t identify. This abando appears to be, at least for the moment, actually abandoned.

I think of Truman’s description of his encounter with Dock, and recall his saying that, at one point, it sounded like Dock disappeared upstairs. But I don’t see a staircase. Not immediately, anyway.

I inch forward and shine my phone toward the front of the house, across from where I entered. I see a front door and a small threshold cut into a wall that ends before a foyer. The staircase, I realize, must be on the other side of that wall.

My eyes have finally adjusted enough for me to walk more confidently, and suddenly I am propelled forward by a new sense of urgency. Get in, I think, and get out.

I mount the staircase quickly, stepping over a few rotten steps as I go, holding the rough banister in my left hand.

When I reach the top, I see a human face staring back at me, wide-eyed.

I drop my phone with a clatter and realize, at the same time, that the face is my own, reflected back to me in a mirror mounted to the wall.

Shakily, I retrieve the phone and begin the old familiar routine of peering into doorways in search of my sister.

I realize that I’m sniffing the air for signs of decaying bodies. It’s not a smell one readily forgets. But although the house smells awful, I am grateful to observe that it lacks the distinct and nauseating scent of human death.

A bathroom is missing both its toilet and its tub: there are gaping holes in the floor where both used to be.

A bedroom contains an old sofa, a bunch of magazines, and some used condoms on the floor.

In another, there’s a bare mattress on the floor and a chalkboard on the wall, bold markings on it in a childish hand. The windows on the upstairs rooms aren’t boarded, and in the daylight they let in I can make out what the artist has depicted: a sort of skyline, a city of tall buildings with innumerable windows represented by tiny dots. I gaze at it, wondering whether the drawing was created before the house’s abandonment, or whether a child might more recently have drawn it. There are three stubby pieces of chalk on the wooden rail beneath it, and I can’t resist: I reach for one and make a tiny, inconspicuous mark in the right-hand corner. It’s been years since I drew on slate.

I’m just returning the chalk to its groove when I hear someone enter the house below.

I flinch. And the chalk makes a slow arc from the rail to the floor, landing with an unmistakable clack.





Who’s up there, the person says. A man.

Wildly, I eye the nearest window. How badly injured would I be, I wonder, if I opened it and dropped down to the ground from the second floor?

Before I can decide, I hear loud footsteps pounding up the staircase, and I freeze.

I wish I had my weapon now.

I keep my hands visible. I clear my throat, prepared to speak.

The person pauses on the landing at the top of the stairs. When I entered this bedroom, I closed the door behind me, but didn’t latch it. I can almost taste my heart as it hammers in my chest. It feels abnormally high inside me, as if it’s trying to escape up through my throat.

The bedroom door opens with a bang. Someone has kicked it open.

At first I don’t recognize him.

He’s been very badly beaten. His right eye is swollen completely shut. It’s black and green. His nose looks out of joint. His ear, too, is swollen, as is his upper lip.