Are you awake? the phantom voice whispered in his ear again, and Hunter swatted the memory of it away. He glanced over at his two companions. Frodo and Samwise had trekked across ten feet of tunnels to reach the cache of toilet paper rolls he’d left in the fish tank on the dresser, but the boy didn’t even smile. Instead, he got up and slid his small bookcase in front of the bedroom door with a long, high-pitched scrape. Safely barricaded, he collapsed back onto his bed and stared up at the fine web of cracks in the plaster that seemed to laugh and snarl, imagined shapes forming and unforming above him in a gathering storm.
Wait.
He shot up from the bed and clicked on his computer. After his mother’s invasion of his room, he’d set up a web camera on the corner of his desk. With a few clicks of the mouse, he toggled through hours of footage of his door standing closed with scattered flashes of his own face sitting down at the computer and getting up again. He watched the hours tick by at the bottom of the screen until the video went black with the click of his bedside lamp at 1:12 a.m.
He clicked through the steady blank image to the minutes before he’d flipped the light back on, but the feed was too dark to see a thing. He made a few adjustments, shifting the exposure from black to a grainy red, slowing it down. Even then, he could only detect the faintest hint of his door swinging open. He squinted at it, tweaking and replaying the footage, until he could just make out a blurred figure moving in the dark.
24
The Klussman Family
September 15, 1990
Frannie Klussman bolted upright in her bed and glanced at the digital clock glowing red in the dark. 12:22 a.m. The home’s security system was beeping.
Benny?
Throwing on her bathrobe, she dashed toward his room, halting after three steps. His door stood open at the other end of the hallway. Down the winding staircase, the front door gaped out into the front yard, the alarm spilling into the street.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Benny!” she shrieked, racing down the stairs. He hadn’t escaped the house in years. The last time, she’d found him seizing at the corner of Lee Road and South Woodland five feet from an ice cream truck, surrounded by a circle of children staring and whispering as they ate their popsicles. Is he okay? What’s wrong with him? Why is he shaking like that? Where’s his mom? Should we call somebody?
That was when she’d had the security system installed.
Fear stabbed her chest as she flew down the steps and out into the yard. Bill must have left the door unlocked. But Bill knew better than that.
“Benny?” she called. Not too loud. She couldn’t bear the thought of waking the neighbors, of answering questions, of another home visit by the social worker. They’d recommended Benny be placed in a home six months earlier after he’d broken his bedroom window with his fist. That one had required a trip to the ER and stitches. It’s for his own good, Mrs. Klussman. For his safety.
Frannie frantically scanned the lawn, running down the stone walkway to the sidewalk. Lee Road sat empty. Traffic lights blinked red in both directions with no sign of Benny. She opened her mouth to call out again, but then she saw him.
A dark lump on the sidewalk across the street convulsed violently. Groaning. Banging against the concrete. She ran to him barefoot and crouched down beside the quaking shell of a man who would always be a boy. He pounded his head against the sidewalk, eyes staring up at the starless sky, blank and frozen.
My baby!
Frannie threw a glance down each side of the street, desperate for help but also desperate not to be seen. A tall hedge hid them both from the neighbors behind it. The sidewalk stretched out in both directions empty. Benny let out a loud growl and cracked his head hard enough to leave spots of blood on the concrete.
Frannie grabbed him under the arms and wrestled his head up off the ground. He was too heavy to lift, so she dragged him foot by agonizing foot across the street, only stopping to catch her breath when they’d reached the safety of their own yard.
Partially shielded by their bushes, Frannie collapsed on the dewy grass, breathing hard. Her face splotched red with the exertion of dragging 150 pounds across the pavement. Sobs collected in her throat, breaking out in spurts.
Benny for his part had stopped moving altogether, his body knotted and his face a frozen gargoyle, twisted in a yowl. His hands had curled into stone knots. His bare heels were scraped and bleeding from being dragged over concrete and asphalt. A tuft of his hair was matted with blood from where he’d repeatedly smashed his skull against the sidewalk.
Frannie’s robe blotted the blood as she held him there. Tears streamed down her face. “Benny! What are you doing out here? Why, sweetie? Why did you do that? It’s not safe out here. You could’ve been . . . hit by a car or . . .” She couldn’t even find words for the rest. Images of ambulances and canvas restraints and Benny’s terrified face as they tied him to a gurney sent shudders through her. Not again. Not again. Not again. Not my baby. Not my sweet boy. “We’ve got to get you inside, sweetie. Mommy has to get you inside.”
It took two hours—dragging Benny’s dead weight into the foyer, shutting and triple locking the door, injecting the sedative to loosen his limbs, waiting for the medicine to smooth his tortured face into a peaceful sleep, pulling him up the stairs one by one, dragging him into the bathroom, undressing him, sponging away the blood, cleaning off the dirt, examining and bandaging the wounds, hauling him up into his bed, pulling clean pajamas onto his skinny frame, crying hard tears over all the bruises and cuts, wiping the blood from the floors and stairs, checking on him again, listening to his even breathing, kissing his forehead, crying bitter tears for the pain and injustice of his afflictions, locking his bedroom door, taking a scalding hot shower, gathering the bloodstained clothes.
Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling.
How could I have let it happen? What will happen the next time? What if they find out? What if Bill was right? What if Benny would be safer in a hospital? What if they pumped him full of the medications that dulled his mind and clouded his eyes and stole his smile forever?
By the time Frannie fell back into a guilt-ridden, heartsick sleep, it was well past five a.m. She never heard the police cars gathering on the street outside her window.
25
The Spielman Family
August 8, 2018
“What do you mean, you saw him with a knife?” Margot slapped her coffee mug on the marble counter, aghast.
Myron instantly regretted mentioning it to his wife. “Let’s not overreact. It was late. He’d heard a noise. The minute he saw it was me, he put it away and went to bed. I just thought it was a little weird. I have no idea what his plan was with that thing. You know?”
Margot looked up to the ceiling. On the other side of the wood and plaster, Hunter was still asleep with his bookcase blocking the door. She tugged at her lip. He’s been acting so strange. “I’m worried about him, Myron. Maybe we should get a security system.”
Myron lifted his eyebrows.
“Everybody has them, right?” she went on. “Maybe it would make Hunter less nervous being here alone. We could get the kind with cameras that connect to our phones. That way we could always see what was happening down here. Even from our bedroom.”
“Really? Isn’t that . . . what about privacy? Shit, what about the other morning?” He motioned to the den, where he’d failed to satisfy her. “Do you really want some security company watching every move we make?”