Bentley Little - The House

He had locked the door to his room, had locked his window, and he quickly looked around to see which one had betrayed him. Both door and window were closed and locked, untouched.

The girl giggled.

He clutched the blanket tightly, pulling it to his chin, sliding back against the headboard, and pulling his feet under him as far as they would go. He was terrified and he wanted to scream, but his brain seemed to have lost all power over the actions of his body and only a dry exhalation of air escaped from between his lips.

The girl bent over, her shift sliding up, and grabbed her ankles. He could see once again her pale buttocks, and she looked between her legs at him and smiled.

He knew then and there that he had to leave. Whether Kristen went with him or not, he had to get out of this house.

He did scream then, and Kristen and his parents were at his door in a matter of seconds, and he rushed around the bent-over girl to unlock and open the door, but of course she was gone by the time they entered the room.

Though his parents roughly insisted that he had had a nightmare and was acting like a child, and Kristen claimed to believe him, he used The Power and understood that his parents did believe it had happened and Kristen, bless her kind heart, did not.

He'd taken off the next morning, telling Kristen and no one else, pretending he was just going into town to meet some friends. Leaving, he'd seen the girl in the dormer window of the attic, white against the darkness, waving at him, and while he could not see the details of her face, he'd known that she was smiling.

"Hey! You okay?"

Mark opened his eyes to see the driver of the Land Rover looking at him. He shook his head, blinked.

"Huh? Yeah."

"I thought you were having some sort of fit or something there. You were thrashing around, kicking the door."

"Sorry."

"Looked like you were having a seizure."

He surreptitiously pressed down on his erection.

"Nightmare," Mark said, shaking his head. "It was just a nightmare."

Daniel Someone had thrown a dead cat into their yard, one of the punks who hung out on the street no doubt, and as Daniel gingerly picked up the stiff body with his shovel he vowed to kick the shit out of the little bastard who'd done this. It was probably random, not personal, but that didn't make it any less offensive, and he found himself thinking that whether they owned their house or not, maybe it was time for them to leave. The neighborhood was going downhill and they should probably get out while they could still get a decent price for their home, before the street segued completely into slum.

Margot wouldn't buy that, though. This was her neighborhood, this was the street on which she'd grown up, and in her mind it was the same now as it had been then. She seemed to see this area through rose-colored glasses, her mind filling in niceties that were no longer there. The houses to either side of them were falling into disrepair, their small lawns little more than dirt patches dotted with weeds, their tenants an endless succession of increasingly trashy renters, but to Margot's eyes they were simply the residences of her childhood friends with new owners.

Grimacing, Daniel held the shovel in front of him, walking through the backyard and out to the alley, where he deposited the cat in a garbage can. He was probably supposed to call the city and report this, have Animal Control come out and take care of the body, but he wanted to get rid of the cat as quickly and quietly as possible. He didn't want to draw attention to what had happened. He didn't want to give the perpetrators the satisfaction.

He glanced up and down the alley before walking back through the gate and was gratified to see nothing unusual, no strange shadows, nothing out of the ordinary. He returned the shovel to the garage and went inside the house, where Margot was finishing her orange juice and yelling for Tony to hurry up and brush his teeth, they had to go. He slipped a quick hand up her skirt, but she pulled away and shot him a look of annoyance.

"Why're you up so early today?" she asked. "You don't have an interview do you?"

"No." He thought of telling her the truth, that he'd had a nightmare and couldn't fall back asleep, that when he'd gone out to pick up the paper he'd found a dead cat in their front yard, but he didn't want to worry her before she went off to work, and he said, "I was going to clean the house today. I thought I'd get an early start."

She looked at him skeptically.

"It's true!"

He was trapped now, he'd painted himself in a corner, so after Margot and Tony left, he swept and mopped, dusted and vacuumed, and it was past lunchtime before he finally finished. He slept most of the afternoon, dozing off during the hottest part of the day, and only a chance call from a phone solicitor woke him before it was time to pick up Tony.

Waiting in the parking lot of Tony's school, the need to move struck him once again. School was not even out yet and there was a group of tough-looking boys smoking openly on the sidewalk in front of the administration building, all of them wearing white T-shirts and identically baggy pants. They were joined by two slutty -looking young girls dressed far too provocatively for their age.

Then the bell rang and the floodgates were turned loose. Hordes of students streamed out from doorways and hallways, walking, running, talking, screaming. Individuals separated from the crowd, moving toward their parents' cars. A large contingent headed over to the two waiting school buses. Others started walking home in pairs or small groups.

He looked for Tony, tried to spot his son's face amid the sea of similar-looking students, and finally saw him walking alone toward the car. One skinhead near the administration building halfheartedly threw a Coke can, yelling, "Pussy! Going to ride home with your daddy and your mommy?" but Daniel pretended he didn't hear it for Tony's sake and smiled as his son got into the car.

"How was school?" he asked.

"Great," Tony said sarcastically.

Daniel laughed at the boy's tone of voice. "Well, at least it's Friday."

"Yeah," he said. "At least it's Friday."

They did not talk on the way home. Daniel got into an old Joe Jackson song on the radio, listening to the lyrics, singing along in his head, remembering when that album had first come out, and it wasn't until they were pulling into the driveway that he realized he and Tony had not spoken since leaving the school. He glanced over at his son. "Is everything all right?"

Tony nodded.

"You sure? Nothing you want to talk about?"

"No." Tony grabbed his books, got out of the car.

Daniel followed the boy into the house. Margot wasn't home yet, but she'd be back from work within the next hour, and he decided to start making dinner. She had a series of stressful meetings today and though she'd told him she'd fix something when she got home, he thought it would be a nice surprise if he made dinner tonight, gave her a little treat.

He looked through Margot's cookbooks, looked through the refrigerator and cupboards to see what they had, and finally decided on a hamburger casserole from Julia Child. The instructions classified it as a "quick and easy"

dish, estimated preparation time fifteen minutes, but he knew himself and he figured he'd be lucky if he finished within the hour.

Tony plopped his books down on the kitchen counter and grabbed a can of Dr Pepper from the refrigerator before heading off toward his bedroom.

"Homework!" Daniel called out.

"It's Friday!"

"Do it today and your weekend will be free."

"I'll do it Sunday."

Daniel thought of arguing with him, but decided to let the boy go. He picked up the books from the counter and carried them into the living room, where he placed them on the coffee table on top of the pile of today's newspapers.