Макс Коллинз - A Shroud for Aquarius

I felt better with my shorts on — I didn’t particularly relish being naked while confronting a midnight intruder — but not that much better. The burglar alarm system I’d inherited covered most of the doors and many of the windows in the house, so I had no real sense of where this possible intruder might have entered. There had been a rash of house break-ins this summer; kids with no jobs looking for loose change and/or kicks. That’s probably all this was.

But at the very least a door or a window had been breached. The alarm system had, as I’d told Jill earlier, been disconnected as far as alerting the local cops was concerned and I rarely, almost never, switched the key in the control panel to turn on the loud, neighborhood-rousing alarm that went with the system; that left only the various tiny glowing green lights on walls about the house to provide a constant source of security, telling me my doors and windows were secure.

Or not.

I was in the little connecting nook between my bedroom, study, bathroom, and dining room, the carpet beneath my bare feet helping keep my footsteps down to a minimal squeak. I paused, listening.

I heard nothing.

I edged carefully toward the open door to my study. Listened. Heard nothing. Just my heart pounding.

I moved into the dining room; there was a little light coming from the dining room windows and filtering through sheer curtains: street light, moonlight, not much, enough to help me and my memory maneuver around chairs, tables and such.

Soon I was in my small kitchen, a little hallway with appliances, the linoleum cold on my soles. Cold on my soul, too. The lingering smell of that Italian sauce I was so proud of now made my stomach turn; why nausea accompanied fear was a puzzle to me — I’d noticed it first in Vietnam, but had never got used to it.

I took tentative steps, because walking made more noise in here; no getting around it. I’d pause between steps, listening, stepping sideways, my back to the stove and dishwasher, brushing their cold metal, so that should anyone enter via the door at either side of the small kitchen, I’d not provide that someone with my back. Also, that allowed me to face the doorway to the basement (here in the kitchen), several windows of which were among those wired to the alarm system, meaning an intruder could be coming up via the basement steps. I crossed to the basement door as silently as I could, shut it as silently as I could, bolted it as silently as I could, which in the latter case meant making the following noise: THUK! which seemed to echo through the house.

I moved back against the appliances, trembling, waiting, listening.

Nothing.

I began wondering if the alarm system had shut down for some maintenance reason; but every little green light in the system — there were half a dozen of them — couldn’t burn out simultaneously. If such were the case, I’d be sure to call Ripley tomorrow. Still, there could be some other bug in the system. Could any intruder be this quiet?

That was when I heard the noise out in the entryway area, a bumping. Unless I missed my guess, someone had just bumped into my pinball machine. Thank you, Bally.

I moved to the kitchen drawers directly across from me, slid one open — it creaked, but just barely — and my hand fell on the tray of silverware within. My hand found the knives alongside the tray — not table-setting knives, not even steak knives, but the carving set a relative had sent last Christmas, a gift I’d never used. I felt for the thickest wooden handle among them, knowing it held the longest, widest blade in the set, and withdrew it, clutching it in my hand like Jim Bowie sitting in his little room at the Alamo, waiting for the Mexican Army to rush in.

There was the faintest squeak of footsteps in the entryway beyond the kitchen — how could anyone learn to walk so quietly? Then a frightening thought came to me: if it was your job to walk quietly, you would learn how.

This was not some kid, some vandal; this was not just another house break-in. This was, instinct told me, something else. Someone professional. A cop, maybe? If I was lucky, a cop.

Behind me, on the stove, was a light switch; just a small light, a light by the built-in clock on the stove, not enough to illuminate the room, but enough to throw some light on the subject should I feel the need. With my free hand, the one not clutching my carving-set Bowie, I reached for the little switch, rested my fingers on it, and waited.

If he was moving through the house, he would either cut through the bathroom, which with its doors at either end would lead him directly to the bedroom, where Jill waited; or he would come through this kitchen, with the same destination in mind. What little light was filtering in from outside couldn’t reach the longer-than-it-was-wide cubbyhole of the kitchen, so I was protected in the darkness. I held my breath. Stood there in my jockey shorts like a side of beef preparing to butcher itself. The knife in my hand, held out to my side, blade up and pointing out slightly, quivering. What a man.

The curtains out in the entryway were open; plenty of light from the street was coming in there — moonlight, too. I could see my neighbor’s little bungalow across the street from me with frightening clarity. Then a shape blocked it out.

He was big, rather wide, and had something in his hand.

Something that seemed to be a gun.

Just a silhouette, just a shape, but a shape to be reckoned with. I had to pee. Thank you, God.

He moved toward the kitchen.

He filled the doorway.

Could he see me? The kitchen was pitch black, what light there was was to his back, I was plastered up against the appliances, but could he see me ?

No.

He moved right by me; must’ve stood six-three. He smelled like English Leather. With luck, I smelled like nothing at all. He was approaching the doorway, about to move into the dining room, about three steps away from me, when I hit the little light.

He whirled, a big man in black in a ski mask — hardly the time of year for the latter — and eyes glowed at me, those of a beast caught in headlights on the highway, and the gun in his hand, an automatic with a silencer, just like in the movies, was pointing right at me, and I hurled the knife and it sunk into his shoulder above the arm with the gun in hand and he howled, more like a man than a beast, and the gun pointed down and went snick, and chips of linoleum went flying.

He fell backward, pitching into the refrigerator, and I was on him, using the pain in his shoulder to wrest the gun from him. It was in my hand now, and I stood over him, shaking, grinning, saying, “Take the mask off. Christmas is over.”

It seemed witty to me at the time.

He sat there, glaring at me — quite an accomplishment, since he was doing it through the circles of the ski mask with just his heavily browed eyes, an oddly attractive shade of green, pretty jewels in ugly settings — and pulled the knife out of his shoulder.

I swallowed.

He pushed himself to his feet.

“Don’t do that!” I said. Nothing vaguely witty occurring to me.

He held the knife, blade streaked with his own blood, in his big hand, the hand of the arm ending in the good shoulder, and spoke. His voice was a raspy whisper.

“Give me my gun,” he said.

I found myself backing up. I should’ve shot him on the spot. But I’d never shot anybody in my kitchen before. And I’d never before hurled a knife at somebody and sat him down and seen him get up and take the knife out and lumber toward me, with the grace and, apparently, the pain threshold of Frankenstein’s monster.

“I’ll shoot,” I said. It sounded kind of lame, even to me.

Then he raised the knife in stabbing position and lunged at me, and I shot my refrigerator.