Dead Echo

  *

  Twenty-eight minutes later he pulled into the subdivision and a blackness gripped him. His old street, Samane, spanned the length of the neighborhood all the way back to Valhalla where it T’d off left and right. Beyond that a Dead End and woods. He’d never had the nerve to walk there after Little Billy got run over, the damn dog. He pulled the car to the side where the pond waited, lost a hundred or so yards away in the swaying grass. Little Billy, Debbie’s poodle. He hadn’t thought of that dog since it got killed. He still remembered the neighbor, some little teenage girl whose name he’d forgotten, knocking on their door and telling them about Little Billy beside the mailbox out by the road. He’d been as limp as a wet rag when they got there, a splash of blood in one ear but nothing else. Just some kid hotrodding, he’d thought then, though in his heart, now, he felt that had been a warning. Or maybe (and this felt a little more right) the warning. They hadn’t been in the house three months. Really the point where everything had started to go…weird. Or at least the next level of weird. And his mind came back to the poodle. Little Billy had been such an easy dog to walk. Put him on a leash and you hardly knew he was there at all, but in those woods….

  Miles squinted down the length of the street through his Ray-Bans. He could just see the STOP sign down there at the end, and then, what was that? A run of fence maybe?

  He pulled back onto the road and drove slowly down the street. Strangely enough, it felt like years since he’d been here, as if he’d never lived here at all. But that was just his mind trying to hide because there was something else deep down inside, something that whispered he’d never left. He could walk in that bedroom right now and find her, dead and spread out like some horrible pornographic joke. He jerked to a stop in front of the house.

  Felt his blood run cold.

  Same walnut vinyl siding, blending in with the brick along the sides. The roof would need replacing in a couple of years, yeah, and the Maple was the same, more like a big bush than a tree. The curtains were drawn along the front and the carport was empty.

  He put his foot on the gas and moved farther down the street. Early summer morning and not a person in sight. No kids, walkers, not even a fucking yard man mowing. Like the slate had been cleaned for his homecoming. Or so it appeared, because unknown to him, in fact, a pair of binoculars tracked his every move. He reached the end of the street and stopped. It was a fence, he saw, an eight-footer. That must have been how he picked it up all the back to the pond. Back when he’d lived here you could walk right down to the end of the street and take a trail that led back to God-knows-where. He’d tried, but Little Billy had absolutely refused. Had pulled and strained at the leash like a dog three times his size, digging his painted toenails into the crumbling gravel at the end of the road, twisting and spinning and whining, and then, eventually, actually growling.

  Little Billy had never growled.

  He’d simply known something was wrong. His instincts told him the place was evil and he’d listened. And they had not gone into the woods that day or any other. Oh, yeah, sometimes he’d whined inside the house, whined plenty if the truth be known, but he’d never refused to go inside. Never refused anything except going into the woods. Miles unconsciously fumbled with the turn switch and made the block. The street back here which ran parallel to Samane was still mostly undeveloped, but as he made his way down he did notice several newly-poured foundations, and in no particular pattern, several brand new houses. The sweat started on his forehead. He was thinking of the children, of the new families ecstatic with new home ownership. It was a lost feeling he knew well.

  He found himself at the STOP sign at Achin and Stickler and thought about high-tailing it. He shouldn’t even be here! This fucking place had taken his wife and it, it had no goddamn right to continue plaguing him! He’d sold it fair and square and that was it!

  Except it wasn’t.

  He turned back right on Samane, having made the block, and headed back down the street to his old house. Still no one home. He pulled the Volvo into the driveway and idled, his heart pounding. He gripped the steering wheel for a moment, closed his eyes, moved his lips as if in prayer, and then opened them again. “Okay,” he said. “All right, goddammit,” and reached over for the briefcase. He popped it open and withdrew a pad and pen. He quickly scribbled a few lines on the notebook page and tore it out, leaving a diagonal slash across the bottom quarter. Then he got out of his car, walked determinedly up the drive to the carport. He pulled back the screen door and stuffed the paper into the same groove in the jamb he’d used on several occasions with Debbie. When she was alive. Some things didn’t change, and perhaps that was the worst, the feeling that tiny inconsequential things or circumstances still held you tenuously to a past you could never retrieve.

  He backed away and pushed the screen door closed. He could see his message through the tiny squares and knew anyone opening the door would see it too. If he walked back to his car right now and left, he would have definitely set something new in motion. That one little piece of paper was proof of that. His hand went back to the handle as if of its own volition and started to pull the screen open again but he stopped it with an extraordinary act of will. No. Now whatever happened, happened. He nodded and walked back to the Volvo. He stood by the door for a moment looking around, but the street was still empty; the grass still grew unabated.

  A crawl of gooseflesh started along his back and he flinched. Suddenly, all he wanted was to be clear of this abortion of a neighborhood, this abomination. He pulled the door open and slid inside, his hand automatically going to the ignition where he’d left the keys. Then he started the car, backed up, and drove off.