JMariotte - Boogeyman Page 3

  “I’ll get your coat,” Tim volunteered. He headed away from the party, toward her office. Jessica said her good-byes, moving through Pam’s wake, wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Glasses were lifted to her. Turkey jokes abounded, along with references to football games and parades. A few people asked about Chelsea, but Jessica promised she’d tell the stories after Thanksgiving, hoping that everyone would forget by then.

  Finally, she freed herself from the thinning throng and went toward her office. Tim still hadn’t reappeared with her coat, and she had begun to wonder what was keeping him. When she reached her office, she saw him through the big glass partition, standing trancelike, in front of the open door to her freestanding closet. It was almost as if he’d been hypnotized by something inside. Jessica glanced up and down the corridor, hoping none of their coworkers were witness to Tim’s strange behavior. She went inside and touched his shoulder. “Hey.”

  Tim jumped as if someone had shouted at him. “Jess!” he said, too loud and too fast. “Sorry.”

  Reaching past him, she took her own coat from the open closet and slipped it on. “You’re not getting weird on me again?” She worried about Tim from time to time, though he always seemed to normalize before things got too creepy. If he hadn’t, they never would have lasted even this long. She was pretty crazy about him, but she was no social worker. Guys as nice as Tim were hard to find, especially when they were also handsome. But head cases were a dime a dozen.

  “I just spaced out for a minute,” he explained.

  Maybe so. He’d had a few drinks, after all. Maybe more than a few—as bartender, he had been at the party since its beginning. That could have put him off balance. “Okay.” She smiled, wrapping an arm around his. “Shall we make an exit?”

  Outside, he walked her toward the parking garage with his own coat on and his backpack slung over his shoulder. He looked normal enough, but there was still something going on with him, she thought. More than just the drinks. Something on his mind. He was silent, lost in his own thoughts, barely acknowledging her presence beside him. “Hey, you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” He was trying to sound convincing, but didn’t quite pull it off.

  “You’re being kinda quiet.”

  Tim stopped, pulled her toward him, fully engaged at last. “I think I just drank a little too much. C’mere, I’ll show you I’m okay.” He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close. His lips found hers, his tongue slipping past her teeth. He tasted of booze, but at least he waswith her again, not off in outer space by himself. After a minute, he broke the clench and smiled hopefully. She nodded, letting him know that she accepted the demonstration.

  “I can’t believe I have to drive all the way out there tonight,” she complained as they hurried toward the garage. The night was cold; stars glinted in the dark sky like chips of ice. She had foregone alcohol herself, knowing the long drive awaited, and she couldn’t wait to get inside the car and get the heater going.

  Inside the garage, her silver BMW was one of the only cars in sight. “Where’s your car?” she asked Tim.

  “It wouldn’t start.”

  A flash of suspicion ignited in her. She hoped this wasn’t some kind of scam to get out of coming to her parents’ house. “Is it gonna make it tomorrow?”

  “I got a guy looking at it.”

  She pressed the button on her remote. The BMW unlocked, its inside light coming on. She loved its sleek lines and precise German engineering. “Tim, if you think you’re gonna use the ‘car broke down’ excuse to get out of this…” She left her threat unspoken.

  “I’ll be there,” he assured her. His face was serious in the half-light of the garage, his gaze locked on hers. “I promise.”

  “Okay,” she relented. Puppy dog eyes, that’s what he had. That’s why she always cut him slack when he asked for it. He knew it, too, and used them as weapons. “You want a ride home?”

  “Nah, I’m good,” Tim replied. “I’ll cut through the park. It’s a ten minute walk.”

  She knew he was right, and knew the cold wouldn’t be a problem for him.Probably be good for him, she thought.Sober him up a little . “All right,” she said, kissing him again. “Be careful.”

  Jessica got into the car, hoping he really was okay. She cared for Tim, a lot. Probably more than she ever had about any other guy. Bringing him home for the holiday proved that; she’d never taken any previous relationship that far. They hadn’t talked about forever, yet, except in the most vague terms. Someday we’ll go to French Polynesia together. Someday we’ll have a place in the country. Stuff like that. French Polynesia was her idea—Tim had a thing about wanting to visit Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle, during summer. The sun doesn’t go down for more than a month, he had said, as if that was some big selling point.

  She cared for him—loved him, she figured, when she allowed herself to even think about that word—but she also worried about him, and at the back of her mind a niggling fear never quite went away. She was afraid that someday the worry would overwhelm the caring.

  Not yet, though. He gave a friendly wave, blew a kiss, and strode away confidently.Maybe I’m just being overprotective. He’s fine. A couple drinks too many, but fine .

  She started the car, letting it idle for a minute, and watched him disappear into the dark.

  Three

  Tim felt the cold air waking him up as he walked the dark, quiet streets. The city seemed to have turned in early, maybe everyone saving up energy for the big day tomorrow. There were still a few people out, but not nearly as many as there would have been on a normal weekday evening. He actually would have liked a ride from Jessica, but he wanted to clear his head, to get over his senior moment in front of her closet.Don’t know what happened there, he thought.Just…well, it’s a closet. Dark inside .

  Bad news.

  He didn’t like the dark, not a bit. He never had. He didn’t like closets, either. The combination of the two was just more than he could deal with sometimes. He hated that Jess had seen it. He knew she was already a little concerned about his mental state. He strove for normalcy, especially around her. She was the best thing that had come his way in years, and he really, really didn’t want to blow it. She was sweet, funny, drop-dead gorgeous. A very talented artist and designer. As smart as anyone he had ever known. He couldn’t stand the idea that he might someday drive her away with his stupid little phobia.

  Glancing at the sidewalk ahead, he noticed a city utility door set into a brick wall, its surface marred by the ragged shreds of old posters and handbills. Concerts that had already come and gone, a play running in one of the downtown theatres, “Have You Seen This Boy?” The kind of wall-plastering detritus common to every city.

  But the door hung open, which it shouldn’t have. The city wouldn’t have anyone working in there, not on the night before a holiday, unless it was some kind of emergency. Tim looked around. The streets were bright with holiday lights: flashing, blinking, every color imaginable sparkling from shop windows, apartments, lampposts. Neons, fluorescents, incandescents. Even cars on the road or stopped at traffic lights got into the act—in addition to their headlights and tail-lights, some had extra holiday lights mounted on grills or strung on roof racks.

  One thing Tim Jensen noticed was lights, and they were on here. No power failure or other emergency that he could see.

  But another thing he was attuned to was dark places, and that door was open, no doubt about it, and behind it, inside the utility closet, he saw nothing but shadow.

  Tim swallowed, suddenly nervous. There was something very not right about this scene. He cast his gaze this way and that, hoping someone else had noticed the door, or that maybe a workman would show up to close it. But the street was nearly empty, and none of the handful of people Tim could see paid it any attention at all. Tim was the only one who seemed to have spotted the door, the only one who cared.

  He drew closer. Turning back and going around this block woul
d cost him another ten minutes, at least, double the time home. Tim considered it anyway, but then decided against it. Too much trouble, too cold out.

  Too dark out.

  It’s just an open door,he told himself.Just walk past it. Just a door .

  An open door that captivated his attention. As he approached, he couldn’t look away.

  And in one of those sudden, unpredictable moments when all the city’s noises—traffic, TVs, conversations, the rumble and roar of millions of people pushed together—come to a brief hush all at once, he heard it.

  A low, groaning sound came from inside the utility closet.

  It was like nothing he’d ever heard—maybe the noise an injured rhino would make. Tim shuddered and stepped up his pace.Is there something inside? he wondered. All he could see was blackness, empty and infinite. As he passed by it, he heard the groan again, and it was like the fingers of death’s hand tripped lightly down his spine. It took everything Tim had not to break into a sprint. Finally, a dozen or so feet beyond the gaping black maw, he risked a glance behind him.

  Someone stood at the open doorway. Dark, indistinct, as if he was made of shadow, warped and twisted in unskilled hands into a shape only vaguely reminiscent of humanity.He can’t be real, Tim thought,no one could look like that for real . Tim turned around again, eyes front.Watch where you’re going, Timmy. And next time, don’t drink so damn much. Hallucinations are a bad sign .

  No one called him Timmy. Even when he’d been a kid, it had almost always been Tim. Very occasionally, his mom had used Timmy, but usually he was just Tim unless she was pissed at him, and then it had been Timothy. Never his dad or his friends. He guessed he just had never seemed like a Timmy. But the voice inside his head, the one that berated him when he was stupid, that warned him when he was about to burn his fingers or step into traffic—that voicealways called him Timmy.

  The strange thing was, that voice sounded a little like his dad. Or like a cross between himself and his dad. As an adult, Tim had never heard his father’s voice, and he had often wondered how alike they might have sounded, if the old man had still been around.

  A couple of blocks farther, the mouth of an alley loomed. Out here on the street, the lampposts and windows and holiday lights kept the shadows mostly at bay. But the alley, long and lit only by incidental illumination from the street, was dark. Tim hurried past its mouth, hazarding a single glance down its length. Black, oily puddles on the ground, ladders and strange latticework above, sheer, unbroken walls all around. Steam billowed from vents he couldn’t see. Not for a million bucks would he walk down it at night.

  He was almost past the alley when he heard that moaning sound again. He missed a step, almost tripped, but caught himself. There was a different undertone to it this time—as if the invisible animal, though wounded, still held a grudge against whoever had injured it. This was a fierce growl, not rhino-ish in the least. Predatory.

  Curious in spite of his apprehension, Tim stopped, peering into the gloom. The clouds of steam were too thick, the darkness beyond them too absolute. He couldn’t see—

  Two dogs, black but for bared white teeth and a white blaze on one’s chest, tumbled from the steam, snapping and growling, each intent on getting a piece of the other. Tim dodged the duet of dogflesh, picking up his pace again as he moved away.

  He had gone beyond apprehension now, toward something very like fear. Things werewrong tonight, somehow. The world had slipped its axis, passed through gamma rays. Or he’d stepped through a curtain and was looking back on it from the other side. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong, but everything seemed more menacing than it should have, as if danger waited at every step.

  There was no way out of it, though. He needed to get home, and because he had let Jessica go, that meant negotiating the nighttime city. Ahead, he had a choice of two paths: through a small park, which would cut off almost four blocks, or around it. Going through saved time, which meant he’d be home that much sooner. At home, he would be safe, in control. He would have light on his side.

  Making up his mind, he climbed the steps and entered the park. Almost instantly, the world smelled different—the downtown stink of exhaust and trash and baked concrete giving way to the rich, fertile smells of earth, the crisp odors of fall foliage. The grass had been cut today and that added another layer, making Tim think of summer evenings when the light hung around until late.

  Tim usually enjoyed the park, even at night, as much as he liked any place at night. Sodium vapor lamps cast soft yellow light toward the ground, somehow without splashing light into the sky like ordinary incandescents. He knew that astronomers preferred them, that their glow didn’t prevent telescopes from seeing into deep space, like the white wash from other types of bulbs did. He had heard complaints (part of editing a magazine was that one became partially knowledgeable in a lot of diverse areas, and expert in almost none) that they changed colors on the ground too much, making it hard for people to identify others, muggers, and so on. Every kind of light, he figured, had its advocates and its detractors.

  For his part, he wasn’t overly partial. He just liked light in general.

  The thick black shadows behind the trees were threatening, but the light etched the branches themselves nicely, creating, to Tim’s eyes, a kind of modern art piece. It was ordinarily quiet in here, the sounds of city traffic filtered by the trees and dampened by grass.

  Tonight, though, a strange noise disturbed the park’s normal quiet. This was not like the weird moan he’d heard earlier, or the racket the fighting dogs made. After a moment, Tim realized it was the electronic fuzz of walkie-talkies. Staying on the same path, he topped a low rise, and saw where it was coming from. Up ahead, a team of police officers trained flashlights in every direction. The walkie-talkie noise got louder as Tim approached.

  Tim thought briefly about turning back, going around the block after all, but that was silly. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He was a responsible guy, law-abiding, a hard worker. His taxes paid their salaries. He kept going. Anyway, he was curious now. What could they be looking for in here, in the dark?

  Ahead, one of the cops stood ramrod-straight, his hands behind his back, at the edge of the path. He looked like a soldier waiting for the general’s inspection. Beyond him, a guy in a suit sat on a bench talking to a woman who held her hands over her face, shoulders hunched. The light was dim over there, but Tim thought she was crying. He stopped next to the cop who stood by the path. “What’s going on?”

  The officer’s voice was tight, and he wouldn’t meet Tim’s gaze. “A missing little boy,” he said. “His mom can’t find him.” The cop, young and beefy, tried to look firm and resolute, but Tim thought he detected a glimmer of moisture in the man’s eyes, a slight quivering around the mouth. Whatever had happened, this cop was taking it hard.

  Tim found that he was badly shaken as well by this, on top of everything else. Losing a child was one of the worst things he could imagine. Tim wasn’t a parent, and didn’t know if that was a responsibility he would ever feel ready to take on, but he thought he could well imagine the horror of that loss, such a reversal of his own. He looked for words to say but he couldn’t find them. Finally, he settled. “Well, I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Thanks,” the young cop said. “Lots of creeps out here these days.”

  He turned away and Tim kept heading down the path, the static of walkie-talkies and the piercing beams of flashlights providing accompaniment to his walk. A couple of minutes later, he had left them behind, lost in the woods and the quiet darkness.

  As he continued his solitary walk, a lone jogger huffed up the path behind him. Tim was momentarily startled, but that was just because he was so on edge from everything else he had seen and heard tonight. The jogger passed on, and was gone. At the intersection of two paths, Tim passed a young couple, their arms wrapped around each other, oblivious to everything around them.

  Tim watched his own breath steam. He pulled his
jacket tight against a cold wind that blew skeletal leaves across the walkway, rattling like the bones of the ancient dead.

  As he walked, other sounds rose from the night. The walkie-talkies had faded away, but the sodium vapor lights buzzed dully overhead, and plastic trash bags in their cans rustled in the chill breeze. A distant car horn bleated.

  And underneath it all—suddenly, if it had been ongoing he would already have started running—the same deep, groaning sound he had heard before.

  Instantly alert, Tim’s gaze darted in every direction. There, close to a tree—the same shadowy figure he’d seen before, by the utility closet door? Maybe. This one was dark, just a silhouette, black on black. But the shape looked similar: malformed, twisted, and somehow not quite human. It might have been someone just standing around in the park, at night, the shadows distorting his appearance, but even so, that was a bit odd in itself, wasn’t it? Tim stepped up his pace again, all the more anxious to reach the safety of his own apartment.