Here After

chapter nine

Friday, July 27

PETER SAT IN HIS COROLLA a half block down the street from Roger’s house, tucked behind a camper in the night shadow of a sprawling oak. It was ten thirty-five and Roger’s Suburban was parked in the driveway, the main floor of his house still brightly lit. If he was working the graveyard shift tonight, he’d be leaving in the next few minutes. If not, Peter would try again tomorrow.

At ten to eleven, just as Peter decided it was time to leave, Roger came running down the front steps, buttoning a blue work shirt. Peter hunkered down in his seat and thought, Good. Roger wouldn’t be back for at least twelve hours.

He waited another ten minutes after the Suburban roared away, then found a parking spot closer to the house. He emerged into the sticky night air and checked the street in both directions, finding it peacefully abandoned. Though Roger had left without turning off the lights, the houses on either side of his were dark, save porch lights and a few dim sources inside, a pilot light over a stove, maybe, or the shifting blue glow of a television set. The neighborhood had settled in for the night.

Heart racing, Peter strolled up the walkway as if he belonged there, then veered right at the base of the porch steps along a cracked cement path that led to a side door, a rickety fence separating Roger’s property from his neighbor’s. Here, between the houses, it was pitch dark and a few degrees cooler, and Peter realized he was trembling.

He continued past the side door, crouching now, and stepped onto desiccated lawn, dead grass crunching under his feet. The sound startled him and he paused, listening, watching the neighbor’s place for a light or a shifting curtain; but there was nothing, just the distant bark of a dog, a single lone volley and then silence.

Stepping as lightly as he could, he made his way to the small back yard, a low deck back here with a barbeque and some patio furniture, four chairs and a circular table shaded from the moonlight by a striped parasol. The deck creaked when he stepped onto it and Peter froze, thinking, What am I doing here? Thinking, Is this what it’s like to be insane? Is that what I’ve become?

But he crept up to the kitchen window—the one he’d noticed on his first visit here, that damp breeze sifting in through a ten inch screen, the kind that just stood there, wedged between the window and the sill—and slid the window open, catching the screen before it could fall and make a racket. He rested the screen against the wall and took a last look around.

Nothing had changed.

He stood for a moment with his back pressed to the brick, waiting for the voice of reason to intervene, telling him to replace the screen and go back home, see a shrink and be done with it. Then he slipped into Roger’s kitchen through the open window, his heart a tripping jackhammer in his chest, his clothing sticky with sweat.

His first thought inside was, Motion sensors, and he froze again; but he’d been in Roger’s front hall a couple of times now and hadn’t seen an alarm panel. Still, he looked around for the telltale red glow and saw none. He took a deep breath and kept going, through the kitchen to the main hall and the front entrance, then the staircase to the second floor, trying not to think about what Roger would do to him if he came through that door right now.

He started up the stairs, every footfall creating a dry creak that echoed through the empty house. Then he was in the hallway at the top, the same hallway the kidnapper had trod with the same deliberate stealth. Had he felt the raw fear Peter was feeling now? The same withering sense of trespass? Somehow Peter didn’t think so.

He crept past the master bedroom and picked up his pace, his fear of getting caught doubling with each frantic breath. Jason’s door was closed and Peter got that same whiff of stale air when he pushed it open. The room was dark, the only light that eerie orange wash from the streetlights outside, filtered through gauzy curtains. He gave his eyes a few seconds to adjust then tip-toed to the train set, as if Jason were asleep in here rather than lost to the world. He did not look at the bunk bed.