A Noise Downstairs

Paul reached the top of the stairs, then tiptoed down, one soft step at a time. When the house was rebuilt after Sandy, a new staircase had gone in, and there wasn’t a single squeak in the entire flight.

  As he reached the second step from the bottom, he heard it again.

  Chit chit. Chit chit chit.

  He looked across the kitchen to the closed door of his study. There was no light bleeding out from below it. Just like the other night. How was someone supposed to mess around with that Underwood in total darkness?

  A miniflashlight. Sure. Whoever was in there wasn’t going to want to attract attention by turning on the lights.

  Yeah, like that made sense. They were already attracting attention with the typing.

  Paul moved barefoot across the floor. As he closed the distance between himself and the door, he wondered whether he needed some kind of weapon. As he sidled past the kitchen island, he carefully extracted a long wooden spoon from a piece of pottery filled with kitchen utensils.

  He had a pretty good idea how ridiculous he looked, but the spoon would have to do. You went into battle with what was at hand.

  Paul reached the door, gripped the handle. With one swift motion, he turned and pushed.

  “Surprise!” he shouted, reaching with his other hand to flick the light switch up.

  And just as it was when he thought Josh had been fooling around in here, the room was empty.

  The typewriter sat where it had been since Charlotte bought it for him, seemingly untouched. No paper rolled into it.

  Paul stood there, blinked several times. “What the fuck,” he said to himself. He scanned the room, as if someone could hide in a place that wasn’t any bigger than a closet.

  Suddenly, struck by an idea, he ran to the steps that led down to the front door. Someone could be making a run for it. Quietly, for sure, but did anything else make sense?

  Paul ran his hand along the wall, hunting for the switch. He flipped it up, illuminating the stairs and the door at the bottom.

  There was no one there. From where he stood, he could see the dead bolt on the door turned to the locked position.

  In his rush, his left foot slipped over the top step and dropped to the next, throwing him off balance. He canted to the right, reaching frantically for the railing to break his fall, but missing it altogether. His butt hit the top step, then bumped down two more, hard, before he came to a shuddering stop.

  “Fuck!” he shouted. He suddenly hurt in more places than he could count. Butt, thigh, foot, arm.

  Pride.

  Upstairs, Charlotte shouted. “Paul! Paul!”

  Wincing, he yelled back, “Down here!” He grabbed his right elbow, ran his hand over it delicately. “Jesus!”

  He heard running on the upper floor, then thumping down the stairs. “Where are you?”

  Charlotte sounded panicked.

  “Down here,” he said, struggling to his feet. His boxers had slid halfway down his ass, and he gave them a tug up, hoping to preserve what little dignity he had left. She arrived in the kitchen, her white nightgown swirling around her like a heroine in a romance novel.

  “What’s happened? Did you fall? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  Instead of telling her, Paul wondered whether there was something worse than nightmares and memory loss.

  Going batshit crazy.

  Fifteen

  The sun wasn’t even up, and her dad was at it already.

  Anna White, dressed in an oversize T-shirt that hung to her knees, was awakened not by her alarm but by the sound of the rowing machine. She tossed back the covers and padded down the hall to her father’s room. She gently pushed open the door. Frank, in his pajamas, was stroking away on the machine, watching the cartoon channel.

  “Dad,” she said softly, “it’s five-thirty.”

  Anna believed the cartoons put her father into a kind of trance, keeping him from any awareness of how long he had been on the machine. She was convinced he was going to have a heart attack at this rate.

  He either didn’t hear her, or had chosen to ignore her. He laughed as Daffy Duck took a shotgun blast to the face, spinning his bill to the other side of his head.

  “Dad,” Anna said, stepping forward, putting a hand on his upper arm. She was amazed at how hard it felt. Her father’s head jerked in her direction.

  “What?”

  “You should go back to bed. It’s too early to be up. It’s sure too early to be up doing this.”

  “This one’s not over.”

  The remote was on the floor. She knelt down to reach it, hit the POWER button. The screen went black.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Dad, please. Go back to bed.”

  “Not tired. Gotta take a whiz,” he said, getting off the machine and walking down the hall. Anna sat on the edge of his bed, waiting for him to return. He wandered back in after a couple of minutes, a dark coaster-size stain on the crotch of his pajama pants.

  Always hard to get that last drop, Anna thought.

  She stood, allowing her father to get into the bed. Then she plopped herself back down on the edge once he had his head on the pillow.

  “You going to read me a story?” he asked.

  She felt a twinge of fear. Was he joking, or did he think he was five years old?

  “Something raunchy’d be nice,” he said, grinning.

  Okay, a joke.

  “No, I am not going to read you a story,” she said. He hadn’t called her Joanie, so maybe this was one of his moments of clarity. She hoped so.

  “I’m not going to get back to sleep, you know,” he said. “I’m usually up by six, anyways.”

  “Yeah. Who am I kidding.”

  Frank rubbed Anna’s arm affectionately. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Dad.” It struck her that he seemed very much with it at this moment. “Since we’re both wide awake, let me ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “You were always my go-to guy when I was wondering what to do with my life.”

  Frank waited.

  “I wonder if I’m in a rut,” Anna said. She then added quickly, “And not because of you. This has nothing to do with you. I’m talking about my work. It’s interesting, and I like it, but there are times when I need to get out of my comfort zone.”

  Frank nodded.

  “I’ve got this one patient, doesn’t matter who, but he wants to set up a meeting, in prison, with the man who tried to kill him. And he wants me to go with him.”

  Frank looked intrigued. “Wow.”

  “Yeah. I’m not sure he’s in the right frame of mind for an encounter like that, but he seems pretty determined, so it might be better if I were with him.”

  “I think you should go,” her father said. “Sounds damn interesting.”

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I shouldn’t always just play it safe, staying in the office.”

  Her father blinked at her several times. She wondered whether she was losing him.

  “Isn’t that why you asked me to move in? To feel safer?”

  She gave his hand a squeeze. “It was one of the reasons. A good one, too.”

  “It made me feel safer, too.” He smiled in a way that seemed almost childlike. “I like that feeling. It’s a warm feeling.”

  Anna patted his hand. “I’m gonna have a shower, and then I’ll start the coffee.”

  Her father’s brow wrinkled slightly, as though he was considering something.

  “What is it?” Anna asked.

  “Just wondering if I need to pee again.”

  She grinned. “I think only you know for sure.”

  He thought one more second, then said, “No, I’m good.”

  She looked back at him as she was stepping into the hall, and his eyes had shut. In two seconds he appeared to have fallen back asleep.

  The shower could wait, Anna thought.

  She returned to her bedroom and crawled back under the covers. It did
n’t take her much longer to nod off than it had taken her father.

  So she was out cold when the police stormed the house five minutes later.

  Sixteen

  So what’d you tell her?” Bill asked, sitting on the locker-room bench, lacing up his shoes. “What’d you tell Charlotte?”

  Paul shrugged, twirling the squash racket in his hand, waiting for Bill to get ready. “I told her I thought I’d heard someone knocking.”

  Bill chortled. “What, like Girl Scouts going door-to-door selling cookies in the middle of the night?”

  “Like someone trying to get in.”

  Bill shook his head. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  “I want to get back to doing the things I used to do.”

  “Yeah, but this?” Bill held up his own racket. “Doctor gave you the okay?”

  “Didn’t ask,” Paul said. “I want to hit the ball, move around. I’m not going to do anything heroic. The ball lands in the corner, I’m not going in after it.”

  “So I’ll take it easy on you,” Bill said. “Like always.”

  “Fuck you.”

  They walked out of the locker room and into the West Haven College athletic facility. They strolled past exercise machines and an indoor track before they got to the squash courts. There were five, all backed with glass walls for the benefit of spectators.

  “Does Charlotte know you’re doing this?” Bill asked.

  “No.”

  “This is a bad idea.”

  “I’m telling you, I’m fine.”

  Two women were playing in the court they had booked. Bill glanced up at a wall clock. “They’ve still got two minutes. Okay, so Charlotte finds you on your ass on the stairs and you say you heard someone at the door, but there was no one at the door.”

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  “Why didn’t you tell her the truth?” Bill asked, his eyes on the two women in the court.

  “I had already accused Josh of messing with the typewriter in the middle of the night. What’s Charlotte going to think if I tell her I heard the same thing again?”

  “That you’re losing it?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “But you’re telling me what you really heard. Suppose I think you’re losing it?”

  “Do you?”

  Bill sighed. “I haven’t got any other explanation.” He tapped the edge of his racket on the glass. When the women turned around, he pointed to an imaginary wristwatch. The women ended their game and exited. One of them gave a long smile to Bill as she blotted her neck with a small towel.

  “You’re as bad as Hoffman,” Paul said as the woman headed for the locker rooms.

  “Hey,” Bill said, “that’s low. He was married. I’m not.”

  They ducked through the low door and entered the court.

  “So you do think I’m losing it,” Paul said.

  “I’m not saying that,” Bill said. He was holding the ball. He tossed it a couple of feet into the air and whacked it against the far wall.

  Paul returned the serve. “What are you saying?”

  Bill, swinging, said, “You’ve been totally stressed-out and this is how it’s manifesting itself.” The pings of the ball bouncing off the walls echoed within the court. “There’s no evidence anyone was in the house, right?”

  Paul swung, hit the ball. “Right.”

  “The door was locked, you didn’t see anyone, you didn’t hear anyone running down the stairs.”

  Paul ran to the right side to hit the ball. “Yeah.”

  “So no one was there, and you couldn’t have heard what you thought you heard. Which means one of two things. You heard something else that sounds like that typewriter, or you heard it in your head.”

  Bill went into the corner for the ball as Paul said, “What else sounds like a manual typewriter?”

  “So you dreamed it.”

  “I didn’t. I was awake.” He let the ball sail past him.

  Bill shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. Are we stopping?”

  “I’m feeling a little light-headed,” Paul said, looking ashamed to admit it.

  “Then let’s stop before I end up killing you.”

  “Thanks.”

  The court was still theirs, so they stood there as they continued talking. Bill shook his head, struggling on Paul’s behalf for an explanation.

  Bill snapped his fingers. “I got it.”

  “What?”

  “Mice.” Paul rolled his eyes. “No, hear me out. You’ve got mice, and they ran over the keys in the middle of the night.”

  “Even for you, that’s pretty dumb. Even if we did have mice, which we don’t, a mouse weighs so little, the key wouldn’t go down. And you’d need an entire troupe of dancing mice to make as much noise as I heard.”

  Bill held up his palms in defeat. “Call the Ghostbusters.”

  Paul ran his hand over the back of his neck. “I didn’t even work up a sweat.” As they turned for the door, Paul said, “I think I’ll move it.”

  “What?”

  “The typewriter. I’ll put it in the laundry room or something.”

  Bill nodded thoughtfully. “That’ll make Charlotte happy. Her special gift relegated to the laundry.”

  “Shit.”

  “And what, exactly, would that prove? Where’s the logic? If you believe someone, somehow, is breaking in, hiding the typewriter isn’t the answer. A fucking dead bolt is the answer.”

  “We’ve got a dead bolt on the door.”

  “Windows all secure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got an alarm system?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe that should be your first step. If you still hear keys tapping in the night after that, well, then maybe you really do need the Ghostbusters.” He grinned.

  “Who ya gonna call?”

  Bill’s face lit up. “Here’s what you do. Roll in a sheet of paper and see if there’s a message in the morning.”

  “That’s the strategy of a crazy person,” Paul said.

  _________________

  THAT NIGHT, AT DINNER, PAUL SAID, “WHAT WOULD YOU THINK ABOUT our getting a security system?”

  “Seriously?” Charlotte said, digging her fork into her salad. “What, you’re getting me a priceless jewel collection?”

  “Just asking.”

  Charlotte shrugged. “Sure. I can get some recommendations at the agency. But what’s prompted this?”

  Paul pressed his lips together hard, debating with himself whether to get into it. His mouth was dry, so he picked up his glass of water and took a long drink. “So you know, that thing with Josh? When I said I heard typing noises in the night?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I heard it again.”

  “The typewriter?”

  Paul nodded slowly. “That’s why I was up. I didn’t hear someone at the door. I heard someone on the typewriter.”

  Charlotte shrugged. “So you were dreaming. Or, more specifically, having another nightmare. Was it about Hoffman?”

  “It was.”

  “What happened in it?”

  He touched his stomach without thinking about it. “I don’t even want to say.”

  “Okay.”

  “But . . . but at the end, he was trying to talk to me, but the sounds coming out of his mouth were like typewriter sounds.”

  “So it was a dream.”

  “But then I got up. I went to the bathroom. I started hearing it again.”

  Charlotte studied him for several seconds. He could see the skepticism in her eyes. She didn’t have to say anything.

  But finally, she spoke. “So, if you hear it again, wake me up.”

  Paul nodded. “Deal.”

  _________________

  AND THAT NIGHT, THERE WAS NOTHING.

  Paul lay awake for hours, staring into the darkness, waiting for the chit chit chit to begin.

  It did not.

  When he rose the following morning?
??he thought he’d finally fallen asleep around five—he was exhausted and bleary-eyed, but also slightly relieved.

  But the more he thought about his situation, the less relieved he was. If the typing sounds were imagined, even when he was certain he was fully awake, was his head injury to blame? Were there symptoms the doctor had not discussed with him?

  Had he been sleepwalking? Had he been in some kind of trance?

  At breakfast, Charlotte said, “So, no tippity-tap last night?”

  “No,” he said groggily. “I listened for it all night.”

  “Oh, babe, you gotta be kidding. No wonder you look like shit.”

  “Yeah, well, I feel like shit, too.”

  She went back to the counter and filled a mug from the coffee machine. “I’ve just renewed your prescription.”

  He stared into the black liquid and said, “Can you inject this directly into my veins?”

  “Look, I gotta go,” she said, leaning in to give him a light kiss on the cheek. “Maybe the mystery typist will return tonight and we can all have a drink together.”

  Paul didn’t see the humor in the comment.

  “What have you got on today?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Just my project.”

  After Charlotte had left for work, he continued sitting at the kitchen table, sipping his coffee, hoping the caffeine would kick in. He noticed his hand was slightly trembling.

  “God,” he said to himself. “You’re a mess.”

  The door to his small study was open, and from where he sat, he could see the black Underwood typewriter sitting atop his makeshift desk, dwarfing the laptop next to it, facing in his direction.

  The semicircular opening to the cathedral of keys struck Paul as a kind of garish smile.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” Paul said, and went back to his coffee.

  Seventeen

  The following morning, more than twenty-four hours after it had all happened, Frank White still found himself trembling at the memory of it.

  Anna, who had canceled all her appointments for the previous day but expected to return to work today, was sitting with her father at the kitchen table, stroking his hand. He’d hardly touched the scrambled eggs she had made for him.

  “It’s okay, Dad.”

  He nodded, slipped his hand away from hers and picked up his fork. “This looks good,” he said.