F. Paul Wilson - Gateways

“What?”

“She looks dead when she’s watchin TV.”

“How do you know?”

“I peeked in last night while I was settin up, and I thought she was dead. I seen my share of dead folks—I’m the one found Mr. Bass dead in a chair on his front porch awhile back, and Miss Mundy looked just like him. Boy, was I glad to see her up and about this mornin.”

“Didn’t you call anyone?”

“Hey, I wasn’t supposed to be there. And if she was as gone as she looked, there wasn’t nothin nobody could do anyhow. Tonight I looked in again, just a few minutes ago, and it was the same thing. Gwon. Look for yourself.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Gwon. See if I ain’t lyin. It’s creepy, I tell you.”

The last thing Jack needed was to get caught acting like a Peeping Tom, but his curiosity was piqued. He crept up to the lighted window that looked in on the front room and peeked through the lower right corner.

Still in her kimono, Anya lay back in her recliner, mouth slack, eyes half open and staring straight ahead. ALaw and Order episode was playing—Jack recognized the music—but Anya wasn’t watching it. Her gaze was fixed on a spot somewhere above the TV. Oyv was stretched across her lap, looking equally dead.

Jack watched her for signs of breathing but she was still as, well, death. His comatose father showed more signs of life. Jack straightened and was about to head around front to knock on her door, when he saw her chest move. She took a breath. Oyv took a breath too, at exactly the same time. Just one each. Then they went dead still again.

Okay. So she was alive. Maybe it was all that wine—she must have put away three liters—that put her into such a deep sleep.

Shaking his head, he returned to where Carl waited.

“You weren’t kidding,” he said. “But I saw her breathe. She’s okay.” He put a hand on Carl’s shoulder. “But you haven’t explained how she can have such a healthy lawn without watering.”

“Magic,” Carl said, looking around as if someone besides Jack might be close enough to hear. “You may think I’m loco, but that’s the only explanation.”

Jack remembered Abe telling him about Occam’s razor earlier in the year. It went something like: the simplest, most direct explanation—the one that requires the fewest assumptions—is usually the right one. Magic required a lot of assumptions. Water didn’t.

“I like water better as an explanation.”

“Nuh-uh. Not when you look at where her green grass ends and the brown begins. It runs in a perfect line twenty feet from her house all the way around in a big circle. And when I say line, I mean it’s got sharp edges. I know, cause I cut it. I may not know much about lots a things, but I know you can’t water like that.”

Jack couldn’t see the line in the low light. He figured Carl was exaggerating. Had to be.

“I think it’s them doohickies she’s got all over her yard,” Carl said. “And that writin on her walls.”

“Writing?” Jack didn’t remember seeing anything on Anya’s walls.

“Yup. You can’t see it lookin at it reglar, but—here.” He handed Jack the camera again. “You look through that while I put my flashlight on. Now I’m only goin to put it on for a second so you look real hard.”

Jack peered through the viewfinder at the blank wall, avoiding the glare of the lighted window. A section of the wall lit as Carl’s flash beam hit it. And there, flaring to life, a collection of arcs and angles and squiggles, very much like the symbols on the homemade ornaments dotting her lawn.

And like the symbols he’d found behind his father’s headboard.

“Y’see em? Didja see em?”

“Yeah, Carl. I saw them.” But what did they mean? He’d never seen anything like them. On a hunch, Jack did a one-eighty turn. “Flash that on my father’s place, will you?”

When Carl complied, the same symbols appeared.

Dumfounded, Jack lowered the camera. “He’s got them too.”

“Hmmm,” Carl said. “They sure ain’t doin nothin for his lawn. Wonder what they’s for?”

“Let’s do a little research,” Jack said.

With Carl in tow, Jack used the same procedure to check out three other nearby houses, but their walls were blank.

Returning to Carl’s original spot, he handed back the camera. That feeling of being watched was back and stronger than ever. He scanned the area and spotted a bunch of dead leaves scattered across the remains of his father’s lawn. Hadn’t noticed them before. Not unexpected, though. He’d seen trees drop leaves in a hot dry spell.

While Carl attached the motion detector to the camera—still no sign of a right hand, just a screwdriver poking from the cuff—Jack turned toward Anya’s house.

He had to admit he was baffled. That strange old lady was the common factor here: She lived next door to his father…visited him in the hospital…the symbols on her house were also on his dad’s place. Jack knew his father hadn’t painted them on his hospital bed. Not while comatose. So that left Anya.

She must have painted them with some sort of clear lacquer so they’d be invisible. But what did they mean? And what did she think she was accomplishing with them?

Maybe he should just ask her. But then he’d have to explain how he knew.

He glanced around again and noticed even more leaves on the lawn. Their number had doubled or tripled since his last look. Where the hell were they coming from? They were small, maybe three inches long; light from the parking area glinted off their shiny, reddish brown surfaces. Odd…dead leaves usually lost their gloss.

Jack looked around for the source but couldn’t see any trees in the vicinity with that kind of leaf.

“There,” Carl said. Jack turned and saw him on his feet, dusting off his knees. He’d duct taped the camera to the slender trunk of a young palm. “All set.”

“Tell me something, Carl,” Jack said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Where’d all those leaves come from?”

Carl was facing the light when he glanced past Jack. Jack saw his expression change from curiosity, to puzzlement, to shock. He turned and looked and knew his expression must be mirroring Carl’s.

No grass was visible. The leaves had multiplied till they now covered every square inch of the lawn.

“Those ain’t leaves,” Carl said in a hushed, awed tone. “Them’s palmettos!”

“What’s a palmetto?”

“A bug! A Florida roach!”

“You mean like a cockroach?”

“Yeah. But I can’t remember ever seein more’n half a dozen palmettos in one spot at the same time.”

Jack had encountered his share of cockroaches—couldn’t live in New York without seeing them—but never this size. These were cockroaches on steroids. His skin crawled. He wasn’t the squeamish type, but these were big, and there had to be thousands of them, all just a few feet away. If they started scuttling his way…

“What’re they doing here?” Jack said.

“Dunno. There ain’t nothin for them to eat on that lawn, that’s for sure.” He looked over his shoulder. “Tell you what I’m gonna do. My car’s parked in the shadows on the other side of your daddy’s place. I’m gonna head around the front of the house and get to it that way.”

“Why don’t you just shine your flashlight at them. Cockroaches hate light. Turn one on and they disappear.”

“Not Palmettos. Light don’t bother them ay-tall. They actuallylike the light.” He turned and took a step away. “Be back tomorrow.”

That step seemed to trigger the bugs. With a chittering whir of wings they took to the air in a cloud.

“Theyfly ?” Jack shouted as he started backing away. “Cockroaches don’t fly!”