Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

Downstairs, I was jerked back into the present. I knew why Tuta Sunderson had refused to come to work. They were there, out on the road, waiting like vultures.

Because that is what they resembled, vultures, sitting in their cars just past the walnut trees. I could not see their faces. They had switched off their motors. I imagined them assembling at the prearranged time, each pulling up on the road before the house, coming from all over Arden, all up and down the valley. Somehow, they had heard about Candace Michalski’s disappearance. My throat dried. From where I was standing at the kitchen window I could see perhaps twenty of them, each alone in his car, all men.

At first, like a child, I thought of calling Rinn — of invoking that safety.

I swallowed, and went into the living room and opened the door to the porch. Now I could see them all. Their cars filled the road. Some of them must have gone down to Duane’s driveway to turn around, because they were bunched in a thick pack, all facing the same way, three abreast in places where I could see only the tops of the farthest cars glinting light. From them rose wavy lines of heat. Menace came from them like a physical force. I stepped backwards into the dark of the room, and saw them still, framed in the doorway. The men in the cars visible to me sat twisted sideways on their seats, looking toward the porch.

One more impatient than the rest honked his horn.

And then I knew they would not leave their cars, for no one answered the single horn blast with his own: they were just going to sit out there.

I walked out onto the porch where I would be visible. Another car honked, one of those nearest the house. It was a signal: he’s out : and I could see some of the hunched figures in the cars swing their heads sideways to stare at me.

I went back into the kitchen and dialed Polar Bears’ office. A voice I recognized as Lokken’s answered me.

“Hell no, he ain’t in here. All hell’s broke loose since last night. He’s out with two of the others, lookin’ for that girl.”

“The news got out.”

“It was that damn Red Sunderson did it, he and a lot of the boys called on the family last night, and now they got all stirred up, runnin’ around and demandin’ things and holy man, we been workin’ — hey, who is this, anyways?”

“Get in touch with him fast and tell him to call Miles Teagarden. I’ve got some trouble here.” And I know who did it, I said silently. “And I might have some information for him.”

“What kind of information would that be, Teagarden?” I had ceased to be Mr. Teagarden.

“Ask him if a doorknob could have been used on those two girls,” I said, and heard my heart thudding.

“Why, you lose a doorknob, Teagarden?” came Lokken’s insufferable yokel’s voice. “Whyn’t you call up your friend Larabee and ask him to find it for you? You outa your skull or something? The Chief ain’t gonna do you no favors, Teagarden, don’t you know that?”

“Just get him over here,” I said.

Some of the men could see me telephoning, and I held the receiver for a few moments after Lokken hung up and stood directly in front of the window with the black cone of plastic to my ear. Two of the cars in front of the column came to life, and drove off after their drivers had tapped their horns. Two others crept up to take their places. I juggled the hook and then dialed Rinn’s number. I could see the man nearest to me watching my arm move. He too tapped his horn and drove off in the direction of the highway. The front end of a blue pickup appeared in his space. Rinn’s telephone trilled and trilled. I didn’t know what I expected from her anyway. I hung up.

I heard cars gunning their engines and tires crunching the road. My throat felt looser. I took a cigarette from the pack in my shirt pocket and lit it with a kitchen match. Cars were still moving off and turning around out on the road, and as I exhaled I saw the blue truck move past the frame of the window, then two cars at once, tan and dark blue, then a gray car with spectacular dents in its side. For two or three minutes I waited and smoked, hearing them wrangle their way out, backing up onto the lawn, noisily bouncing on the drive to the garage, turning around.

When I thought they were all gone I saw the nose of a dark Ford pull into the frame of the window and stop.

I went out onto the porch. Three of them had stayed behind. When I pushed open the screen door, not really knowing what I intended to do, two of them left their cars. The third, whose pickup was nearest the drive, backed his truck around the last of the walnut trees and came about five yards up the drive. When he hopped out of the cab I saw that it was Hank Speltz, the boy from the garage. In front of the house, the lawn had been ripped into muddy tracks.

“Go on up that way, Hank, and we’ll jump the ditch,” called one of the two men out on the road. The boy began coming warily up the drive, his hands spread.

One of the men jumped the ditch and began coming through the line of walnut trees, the second following a little behind. They looked like the men I had seen outside the Angler’s Bar, the men who had stoned me — big middle-aged, roughs, with bellies hanging over their belts and plaid arid tan shirts open past their breastbones. A circle of red just below the neck, and then the dead white skin visually covered by undershirts.

“Hovre is coming here,” I called. “You’d better get out with the others.”

A man I did not recognize called back, “Hovre ain’t gonna be here in time to stop us doin’ what we’re gonna do.”

“Where you got the Michalski girl?” shouted the man hanging back.

“I don’t have her anywhere.” I began to sidle toward the garage and the path to Duane’s house. Hank Speltz, his face hanging open-mouthed like a wrestler’s, was coming up. I tossed the remaining two inches of cigarette onto the torn lawn, and went nearer the garage.

The man in the plaid shirt who had spoken first said, “Come at him slow,” and Hank Speltz halved his pace, shuffling like a bear from side to side. “Get the hell on up here, Roy,” he said. “Where you got her?”

“He’s got her hid somewhere inside. I tol’ you.”

“I’ve never seen her.” I kept moving to the side.

“He’s going to that garage.”

“Let him go. We’ll get him there.” He had a red hook-nosed face with deep lines, a bully’s face — the face of the schoolyard terror who had never grown up. The two of them were coming at me slowly across the lawn. “Keep an eye on him in case he runs toward that Nash,” shouted the man in the cap.

“Whose idea was this?” I called.

“Ours, smartass.”

Then I was close enough to the garage and I hit the clip off the lock and opened the door. I looked at the curl of smoke coming from my cigarette and knew what I was going to try to do. “Go in there and we got you cornered,” the leader crowed. Knowing that any sudden movement would make them rush me, I backed into the open garage and went into its gloom. The three -gallon gascans were where I remembered them from the day I had broken open the sea chest. I picked one of them up: full. With my back to them, I bent down and screwed off the cap. When I emerged carrying the heavy can, one of them guffawed. “Gonna put gas in your car, Teagarden?”

Only the man in the plaid shirt saw what I was going to do. “ Shit ,” he yelled, and began to run at me.

With as much force as I had, I threw the gascan toward the curl of smoke. I supposed that the odds were no worse than they were if I’d bet on a horse. Fluid began to spray out in wheels and loops.

For a moment we were all standing still, watching the gasoline come spraying out of the sailing can, but when the crump of the explosion came I was already running up the path toward Duane’s house. I heard them shouting behind me. A bit of flying metal whizzed past my head. One of them was screaming.