December Park

  February brought new snow, but it could not blanket old fears. “Towns like ours have good, long memories,” my grandfather said, “and the people aren’t so quick to forget.”

  Pink paper hearts went up in shopwindows. Stanton School held its annual Valentine’s Day dance. The Bagel Boutique served their traditional pink bagels, and Mr. Pastore handed out Hershey’s Kisses to anyone who came into his deli. The Kiwanis held their obligatory bake sale. Ice skaters took to Drunkard’s Pond. The sordid bars in the industrial park served hot toddies, the smell of heated whiskey permeating the concrete alleyways and tenements straight out to the interstate. The homeless took refuge beneath the Solomon’s Bend overpass. It seemed the world hadn’t changed and that things kept on motoring along just as they always had.

  But that wasn’t the truth of it. Like hairline cracks in bone, tiny differences could be perceived if one looked closely enough. The skaters at Drunkard’s Pond left each evening before the sky became fully dark, and there were no high school lovers camped out on the snow-covered benches, sharing kisses well into the night. The Valentine’s Day dance was cut short so everyone could make it home before nightfall. The Butterfields let their Holsteins out and opened their fields for sledding, but very few kids came around.

  People were on edge. Two men got in an argument over a parking space outside the Generous Superstore. A nervous woman struck a pedestrian with her car, breaking the pedestrian’s leg in three places. Local taverns suffered an increase in barroom brawls. Break-ins occurred with more regularity at the industrial park, where there were nothing but liquor stores, pool halls, and pawnshops pressed against the banks of a soiled brown river.

  At the Juniper Theater, Darby Hedges, the ancient and grizzled proprietor, continued showing old public domain horror films well past Halloween; it was as though he suffered from some lingering obsession with men in rubber monster costumes and bad dialogue. Meanwhile, several dogs ran away from home.

  Eleven-year-old Callie Druthers claimed a stranger driving an old Plymouth tried to coax her into his car. A few hours later, police apprehended thirty-eight-year-old Kevin Topor who had gotten lost in Harting Farms, so he had stopped at an intersection and asked the nearest pedestrian, who happened to be Callie Druthers, if she could give him directions to Route 50. He offered to drive her home because the girl had been attending to a fresh cut on her knee.

  Topor was from out of town and had no knowledge of what had been going on in Harting Farms over the past several months. Had he known, he would have never asked the girl for directions or offered to give her a ride home. It was a stupid thing to do, and he was gravely sorry.

  When Kevin Topor was released, there was an outcry from the citizenry, this time on a much larger scale than when word got out about Chester Vaughn’s interrogation and subsequent release. The people of Harting Farms wanted someone to pay for what had happened to Courtney Cole, and they wanted answers as to the whereabouts of the four other missing teens.

  Chief of Police Harold Barber told the press that they had done a thorough investigation into Topor’s background and found nothing suspicious. His alibis all checked out. His Plymouth was searched for fibers and hair, but there was nothing. They had no reason to believe he had been involved in Courtney Cole’s murder or in the disappearances of the four other teens.

  Rebecca Ransom appeared again on the news, pleading once more for the safe return of her son, Aaron. Hers was the ghoulish face of someone who is neither alive nor dead but some type of creature that exists between worlds, perpetually tormented.

  . . . and the people aren’t so quick to forget.

  Two days after Topor was released by police, Courtney’s mother suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to Sheppard Pratt for a full psychological evaluation.

  Chapter Eight

  The Secret

  It was early evening, and I was out by the woodpile stacking firewood when I heard someone approaching. My first thought was, Nathan Keener.

  I knew Keener and his gang were still prowling the streets for me, and I’d done an admirable job avoiding them since Halloween. Most recently I had seen Keener’s truck idling outside school when classes let out (I took a shortcut through the woods, avoiding the main roadway), and one time I even caught sight of his pickup at the end of our block, its darkened headlamps facing our house. I had cut through the yards on the parallel block and came in through the backyard, avoiding Worth Street altogether.

  I turned around and was relieved to see Adrian Gardiner walking around the side of the house. His pale skin seemed to shimmer in the fading daylight. He wore a puffy ski parka with lightning bolts on the sleeves and had his hands stuffed into the pockets.

  “Man, you scared the crap out of me,” I told him, catching my breath and stacking another log onto the woodpile.

  “Your grandmother said you were around back.”

  “Yeah, well, you should know better than to go creeping up on people,” I said. I hadn’t meant to sound so exasperated, but I was exhausted from a day doing chores around the house.

  Adrian shuffled a few steps closer, and I noticed how the arms of his glasses bent his ears down and how his legs looked like those of a flamingo poking out from the oversized bulk of his ski parka.

  Since that day at Drunkard’s Pond, Adrian had become a sort of de facto member of our little group. He came with us to the pond after school, pitched stones with us in the ravine behind the Generous Superstore, and had even spent two whole afternoons at Scott’s house watching all the Friday the 13th movies back-to-back. We introduced him to Nirvana, Metallica, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, and he let us borrow his superhero comic books, which turned out to be pretty cool.

  For the most part, Adrian remained quiet, but he seemed comfortable with my friends and me, and we didn’t mind his company. We even began to like him, as much as anyone could like someone like Adrian Gardiner. In an effort to solidify our friendship, he had invited me over to read comic books, though I had politely declined, fabricating an excuse on the spot. (I had been in his house only once, and the thought of returning to that airless catacomb populated by his zombie-eyed mother still didn’t sit well with me.)

  Adrian was haunted. For one thing, he seemed constantly preoccupied with thoughts of Courtney Cole and the other missing teens. However, he brought it up only when he and I were alone together. He pushed me for details, though my details consisted exclusively of the broad strokes I’d gotten from Scott who had gotten his information from the various newspaper articles he’d read. Yet somehow Adrian’s preoccupation with Courtney Cole and the missing teens was more troubling than Scott’s. Scott approached it in a pragmatic, investigative way. Adrian, on the other hand, seemed obsessed. It wasn’t until he asked if I had a photograph of Courtney Cole did I start to think he might be a little off in the head.

  “You busy with chores?”

  “Just stacking up some firewood,” I said, stating the obvious. I tossed one final log onto the woodpile, then wiped the palms of my hands on my jeans.

  “You going out tonight?” he asked.

  It was a school night. My other friends would have known better than to ask such a question. But Adrian was new and didn’t know the score. I wouldn’t hold it against him.

  “Wasn’t planning on it. My dad’s pretty strict about that. Anyway, I’ve got some homework.”

  “You finish that paper for Mr. Mattingly’s class?”

  “Not yet.” I hadn’t even started it, and I still hadn’t mentioned Mr. Mattingly’s suggestion that I bump up to AP English next year to my father. Thankfully, Mr. Mattingly hadn’t brought it up to me again. If he had forgotten about it, well, that was just fine by me.

  Adrian kicked a pinecone and kept his gaze on the ground. “I asked my mom about all the disappearances and about the dead girl, too. To see if she knew anything. She had heard about what’s been going on in town.”

  I thought, This is it. This is why he’s here. Obsession.

/>   “She’s not cool with me going out after dark until they catch whoever is, well . . . I guess, doing what . . .”

  “Yeah.” He was a chore to listen to when he groped for words. I learned to come to his rescue lest we both suffer under a barrage of fumbling sentences and half words that never came. He seemed sadly grateful whenever I did this.

  “But there’s someplace I want to go tonight before it gets dark. And I want you to come with me.” Then he added, “If you can.”

  “Where?”

  Adrian shivered in his parka. “I don’t want to tell you just yet. I don’t know how to tell it.”

  “What do you mean? What don’t you want to tell?”

  “First I need to know if you’ll come with me. Then I’ll tell you.”

  “You can’t even tell me where you want to go?”

  “Not yet. I want you to swear you’ll come first.”

  I almost laughed at him. Michael had laughed at Adrian’s horrified reaction to the Friday the 13th movies, and Adrian had looked like he’d been near tears. At first I thought it was because of the movie—someone’s head had just gotten chopped off—but he’d sat and watched the rest of it without flinching. When the marathon was over, he had simply gotten off the couch and gone home without saying a word to Michael before he left.

  I said, “What time?”

  “As soon as you can.” He glanced up at the sky, as if to alert me to the oncoming night.

  “I’m covered in sap. Let me grab a quick shower, and then I’ll meet you back out here. I’ll only be fifteen minutes, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You want me to call the guys and have them meet us here, too?”

  “No,” he said. “No guys. Just you and me.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s just how . . . I mean, it’s just the way I need it to be for right now . . .”

  I could hear Adrian breathing—his raspy little nasal respirations that sounded like a circus whistle was caught inside his sinuses—and I could even sense a slight tremor to his voice. I found myself confronted by a mixture of frustration and uneasiness. This happened often when I was around him; it went beyond simply being embarrassed for him or irritated by him.

  But then I realized that it had taken great courage for him to come here and ask this of me, and I found myself apprehensive about what might be on Adrian’s mind. Although I had never been a superstitious or prophetic person, I knew with a frightening certainty that the stars had aligned and afforded Adrian Gardiner the opportunity to meet and befriend me, because there was something fate needed him to tell me, to show me.

  “Yes, okay,” I said, even though I was still thinking things through. “Fifteen minutes.”

  Adrian bobbed his head like a spring-loaded toy. “Thanks, Angie. Thank you.”

  I didn’t like the relief I heard in his voice.

  Freshman year at Stanton School, a boy named Dennis Foley sat in the back of my biology class. Largely ignored by the rest of the students, Dennis was a chunky kid with a peppering of brown freckles on his cheeks. He carried a plastic lunch box with cartoon characters capering on its lid, and had he sat with anyone during lunch, he would have no doubt been made fun of. Every day after school the other students watched Dennis climb into the backseat of his mother’s rattling old Escort because the family dog, who apparently took precedence, was belted into the passenger seat.

  One afternoon, midway through one of Mr. Copeland’s discourses on photosynthesis, a small commotion began toward the rear of the classroom. A few heads turned. Mr. Copeland frowned and spoke a bit louder. More heads turned.

  Then one of the girls shrieked, “He’s bleeding!”

  Dennis had opened up his left wrist with one of the dissection scalpels Mr. Copeland had stored at the back of the classroom. There were dark splotches on the floor, and there was blood soaking into Dennis’s polo shirt and rumpled khakis.

  Dennis dropped the scalpel, which clattered to the floor where it reflected the sunlight coming in through the partially shaded windows. The look on his face was one of stupefaction. As I stared at him, I could see the color drain from his cheeks.

  Dennis had been rushed to the hospital where he had recovered from his wounds. He never returned to Stanton School. His family lived in a dilapidated hovel along the Cape, not too far from the Keener farm, and on occasion people spotted him milling about the property.

  One time, I saw Dennis walking by himself up Woolworth Avenue, his meaty hands wedged into the pockets of his too-tight corduroys, his attention focused on his feet. He had the same look of stupefaction from that day in the classroom. I wondered if it would be there until the day he died. However, I never found out, because his family eventually moved away.

  Sometimes Adrian reminded me of Dennis Foley and of the look of stupefaction seated permanently on Dennis’s wide, dull face.

  Despite Adrian’s request, I considered giving Peter a call and seeing if he’d tag along with us on whatever adventure Adrian had planned. I wasn’t afraid, but Adrian’s intensity and awkwardness were generally best diluted among others. To suffer him alone was to truly suffer.

  However, in the end I decided to abide by Adrian’s wishes and go it alone. I was certain he would refuse to show me whatever it was if Peter—or anyone else, for that matter—was present. And as wary as I was about the whole thing, I couldn’t pretend that my curiosity wasn’t also piqued.

  I showered and dressed in warm corduroy pants, boots, a flannel shirt over a thermal one, and a hooded sweatshirt. My dad was in the basement, screwing around with the furnace, which seemed to cause trouble every February. He knelt in front of the open grate, peering at a wavering blue flame. There were various tools spread out on a grease-spattered drop cloth on the floor beside him.

  From halfway down the stairs, I watched him work for a few moments. When he stood to look around the back of the furnace, I heard the tendons popping in his knees—great audible cracks that sounded like twigs snapping. Listening to that sound, it occurred to me that my father would grow old and eventually die.

  My mother had died, leaving nothing behind of her memory except a photo album with all her pictures in it in the den, wedged between an atlas and a thick leather-bound volume of Kipling stories, as well as the framed picture in my dad’s bedroom. I scarcely knew my mother, so her absence meant little to me.

  Charles had died in combat in 1991, and that had caused an indescribable darkness to come to our house—a darkness that could never leave. Charles’s death had stripped something vital from my basic framework, my insides, simultaneously replacing it with a burning rod of anger. I often felt that parts of me had become translucent, turned to glass, since he’d gone.

  But thinking of the inevitable death of my father instilled confusion within me. Despite our differences, I loved my father very much. I knew I would never be the son that Charles had been—my father would never be proud of me the way he had been proud of Charles and all that Charles had accomplished—but I also knew he loved me, too. Sometimes I wondered if our differences—and the mystery of our differences—forged the strongest bond.

  “Hey, Dad. I’m gonna run out with that kid Adrian from next door for a little while.”

  He poked his head out from behind the furnace and mopped sweat away from his eyes with the heel of one hand. “Where are you guys going?”

  “Probably just for a quick bike ride.”

  “Did you finish all your homework?”

  “Mostly. I’m still working on a paper for English.”

  “I want you back before dark, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  He nodded, scooped up a wrench from the drop cloth, and disappeared behind the furnace again.

  Outside, the evening had turned cool and gray. The moon, a faint whitish pearl, was already visible over the Mathersons’ house. I could tell by the current temperature that tonight would drop to damn near freezing, which was probably why my father had seemed so pressed
to get the furnace up and running today. I crossed the yard and sat atop the woodpile where I had a cigarette while waiting for Adrian.

  Nearly twenty minutes went by with no sign of him. I had nearly given up and gone back inside to finish my homework when I heard him rustling through the trees.

  “Angelo?” he called.

  “I’m back here.”

  “Is that you?”

  “Who else would it be?” I said, sliding off the woodpile.

  He stumbled into the yard, breathing heavily and adjusting his glasses. He had his backpack on, and the weight of it made him look unsteady. “I thought maybe you’d change your mind.”

  “I said I would, didn’t I? So where are we going?”

  “To the woods where they found that girl’s body. Just like you said they did.”

  I stood there staring at him. “Why?”

  “Because we have to. You said you’d come,” he reminded me. “Are you gonna change your mind?”

  Not that I had anything to prove to this mealy limp-wristed kid, but I couldn’t go back on my word. Short of jumping off the Bay Bridge with him, I’d said I was in. And so I was.

  “Yeah, okay.” My tone should have alerted him to my displeasure in being duped. He’d tricked me into following him on some odd little escapade that served his morbid obsession. I hadn’t expected to traipse out across the highway to what the neighborhood kids had started referring to as the Dead Woods. “Let me get my bike.”

  “We gotta walk,” Adrian said.

  I pulled my bike out of the ivy patch on the side of the house anyway. “It’s too cold to walk and it’ll take too long. Besides, I gotta be back before dark.”

  “We have to walk,” he insisted.

  Is this part of the game, too? “Why the hell do we gotta walk?”

  “Because I don’t have a bicycle.”

  I gaped at him, still clutching the hand grips of my dirt bike. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No,” he replied.