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“Why do you say that?”
“Better to accept the dead, wear the scar, and move on.”
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.
“Were you in on the big snake hunt after they died? Andy Pelley told me about it.”
“Oh yeah, I was there. To this day I can smell those rattlers as they burned. And do you know what? Sometimes I think I see em, especially around this time of day.” He leaned over the rail and spit his toothpick into the Gulf of Mexico. “Dusk, you know. Real things seem thinner then, at least to me. My wife used to say I shoulda been a poet, with ideas like that. After the stars come out, I’m okay. I’ll see plenty tonight. I’m on until twelve, then Patricia takes over.”
“I wouldn’t think you’d get many boats wanting to go through at this time of the year, especially at night.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. Lookit there.” He pointed to the moon, which was just coming up and beating silver across the water. “Folks like a moonlight cruise. Makes em romantic. Dark of the moon’s different, at least in summer. Then it’s mostly Coast Guard boats. Or DEA. Those boys are always in a hurry. Like blaring their horns could make this old bridge open any faster.”
We talked a little more and then I said I’d better be heading back.
“Yes,” Jim said. “Long walk for a man getting on in years. But you’ll have the moon to light your way.”
I told him good evening and started back across the bridge.
“Vic?”
I turned back. He was leaning against his little booth, arms folded across his vest. “Two weeks after my wife died, I came down in the middle of the night for a glass of water and saw her sitting at the kitchen table, wearing her favorite nightgown. The kitchen light wasn’t on, and the room was shadowy, but it was her, all right. I’d swear to it before God Almighty. Then I turned on the light, and…” He raised one loosely fisted hand and opened the fingers. “Gone.”
“I heard my son after he died.” It seemed perfectly right to give that up after what Jim had told me. “Speaking from the closet. And I’d swear to that.”
He only nodded, wished me goodnight, and went back into his booth.
For the first mile of my walk home, maybe a little more, there were plenty of houses, first those of ordinary size but getting bigger and fancier as I went. There were lights in a few of them with cars parked in the shell driveways, but most of the houses were dark. Their owners would come back after Christmas and leave before Easter. Depending on the pandemic situation, of course.
Once I passed the swing gate at the north end of the Key, the few McMansions on this part of the island were hidden behind the rhododendrons and palmettos that closed in on both sides of the road. The only sounds were the crickets, the waves breaking on the Gulfside beach, a whippoorwill, and my own footfalls. By the time I reached the yellow police tape closing off Mrs. Bell’s driveway, it was almost full dark. That three-quarter moon had risen enough to light my way, but it was still mostly blocked by the foliage that grows in Florida’s hothouse climate.
As soon as I passed Allie’s driveway, the squeaking started. It was thirty or forty feet behind me. My skin broke out in bumps. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I stopped, unable to walk, let alone run (not that with my creaky hips I could have run far, anyway). I understood what was happening. They had been waiting for me in their driveway. Waiting for me to pass so they could follow me back to Greg’s. What I remember most about that first moment is how my eyes felt. Like they were swelling in their sockets. I remember thinking that if they popped I’d be blind.
The squeaking stopped.
Now I could hear another sound: my own heartbeat. Like a muffled drum. The whippoorwill had fallen silent. So had the crickets. A drop of cold sweat trickled slowly down from the hollow of my temple to the angle of my jaw. I took a step. It was hard. Then another. A little easier. A third, easier still. I began to walk again, but it was as if I were on stilts. I had gotten perhaps fifty feet closer to Greg’s house when the squeaking started again. I stopped and the squeaking stopped. I started forward on my invisible stilts and the squeaking started. It was the stroller. The twins pushing the stroller. They started when I started and stopped when I stopped. They were grinning, I was sure of it. Because it was a fine joke on their new… new what? What, exactly, was I to them?
I was afraid I knew. Allie Bell had left me her house, money, and investments. But that wasn’t all she had left me. Was it?
“Boys,” I said. My voice was not my own. I was still facing forward and my voice was not my own. “Boys, go home. It’s past your bedtime.”
Nothing. I waited for cold hands to touch me. Or to see dozens of snakes weaving their way across the moonlit road. The snakes would be cold, too. Until they bit, that was. Once the poison was injected, the heat would begin. Spreading toward my heart.
No snakes. The snakes are gone. You could see them but they wouldn’t be real.
I walked. The stroller followed. Squeak and squeak and squeak.
I stopped. The stroller stopped. I was close to Greg’s house now, I could see the bulk of it against the sky, but that was no relief. They could come in. They had come in.
See us. See us. See us.
Roll us. Roll us. Roll us.
Dress us. Dress us. Dress us.
The thoughts were maddening, like one of those earworm songs that gets in your head and won’t leave. “Delta Dawn,” for instance. But I could stop them. I knew what would make them go away, at least temporarily.
They also knew.
