Текст книги "The Lost"
Автор книги: Sarah Beth Durst
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
I can’t read his expression. I can’t even see his face. I see him as a shadow in front of the dining room window, the moonlit desert and the hills of trash outside. He’s silent for a moment, and I have no idea if he’s angry or amused or confused or doesn’t care at all. “You don’t need to worry. I’ll protect you.” He says it with such casual certainty, as if protecting me from a crazed mob is no more complex or heroic than unclogging a toilet, and I feel...safe. It’s such a staggering feeling that for an instant, I can’t breathe. I hear the crinkle of plastic—he’s unwrapping food. He talks as he chews. “I can’t wait to see his expression when he comes back and discovers you’re here thriving! Never had a chance like this before.”
My mouth feels dry as the illusory feeling of safety shatters. I force myself to swallow and say in an even voice, “I don’t want to be used for your personal vendetta. I have to leave as soon as possible. My mother needs me.”
“Aw, vendettas are fun. Come on, everyone loves a good vendetta.”
“She’s... I have to leave.” I try to sound firm.
Peter heaves a sigh, stuffs another cracker into his mouth, chomps, and then swallows. “This is exactly why I don’t fraternize with the lost. All the whining.” He levels a finger at Claire. “You promised she’s different.” My eyes have adjusted again, and I can see his silhouette, the curves of his face and the shape of his shoulders. In his trench coat, he’s an imposing figure, exactly the type you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. Or dark dining room. I don’t know why I want so badly to trust him, except that I want to trust someone and my choices are severely limited. He scoops another lunch box off the table and tucks it under his arm. “You’re all the same. I can’t imagine what the Missing Man saw in you.”
“Oh, don’t go, Peter!” Claire jumps to her feet. I hear her food spill onto the floor. There’s a glug as if a drink has poured out. “Please! She is different! I can tell!”
He ducks out of the dining room.
I follow him out of the dining room and halt in the hallway. “I didn’t mean...”
But the hall is empty.
At least, I think it is.
I peer into the darkness. I don’t see any movement. I touch the front door. The dead bolt is still locked. He couldn’t have left, at least not that way. “Peter? Are you here?”
He doesn’t answer. I step into the kitchen. The refrigerator is a hulking shadow in one corner. It hums, and I think about opening it for the light. But no. Can’t risk it.
I skirt around the kitchen table, and then I head for the living room. All the bookcases are shadows, as are the couch, the chairs, the coffee table. I don’t see his silhouette anywhere. I check both bedrooms as well as the bathroom. He could be in a closet or under a bed or hidden in one of the darker shadows in the corners of the rooms, but why would he be? “Peter!”
He can’t be upstairs. I would have heard the stairs creak. Still, I feel my way up the stairs, one step at a time, kicking each one before I step. It’s darkest in the middle of the stairs where the moonlight from windows above and below don’t quite meet. At the top of the stairs, I look around. The stuffed rabbit still sits in the middle of the floor. A small shadow, he looks lonely. The attic room is otherwise empty, and the window is still locked. I pick up Mr. Rabbit and carry him downstairs.
“Claire?” I return to the dining room.
“Did you find him?” She’s behind me. I jump.
I shake my head, then remember she most likely can’t see me. “He must have left.”
“But the door is still locked.” She’d noticed that, too. Smart kid. “Maybe he’s playing hide-and-seek! Olly olly oxen free! Come out, Peter!” She scampers through the house. I hear cabinet and closet doors open and shut.
After a few seconds of listening, I have an idea, born of supreme paranoia. I enter the kitchen and feel my way to the refrigerator. For the barest of seconds, I crack open the fridge enough so that light spills into the room. I see what I need: a mop. I shut the door, plunging the room into darkness that feels more complete than before, and I feel my way through the thick blackness to the mop. It leans in the space between the counter and the trash can. By the time I reach it, my eyes have adjusted to the darkness again. I leave Mr. Rabbit on the kitchen counter and take the mop.
With the mop, I follow the sound of Claire’s footsteps and join her in the second bedroom, her bedroom. She opens the closet door, and I jab into the closet with the mop and wave it back and forth. I hit only clothes. No one shrieks. We repeat the procedure under the bed and then we progress from room to room until we have swept every closet and cabinet large enough to hold a tall, muscular man.
In the hallway again, Claire says, “He really left.”
“He’ll be back in the morning. I’m his personal vendetta, remember?”
“Maybe he’s in the void. He enters it at least once a day to search for lost people.” She frowns prettily, the faint light from the front window falling across her face. “Or maybe he really doesn’t like you.”
I feel a pang at that thought but push it aside. I don’t care what he thinks of me, so long as he helps me get home. I don’t need to make friends, even with shockingly handsome and strangely fascinating men who might as well have walked right out of my subconscious. “Also possible.”
There isn’t much more to say or do after that. Feeling my way to the kitchen, I lean the mop against the wall where I found it and then I return to the hallway. I’ll clean up from dinner in the morning when there’s light. Or not, since I have no plans to stay here and it’s abandoned anyway. Besides, there’s a massive junk pile outside. Any mess inside pales in comparison.
To Mom’s chagrin, my half of the apartment isn’t known for its neatness. I hate the trip to the Laundromat so I divide my clothes into fresh, passably fresh, and doomed. The fresh clothes are in the closet and drawers. The doomed are in the laundry bag. But the passably fresh are stacked on the dresser, draped over a chair, and piled in the corner. At least I know what’s there. I don’t really know what’s in the corners of this house, even after prodding them with a mop. At best, spiders. At worst... “Guess we should sleep.” Granted, I can’t imagine how I’ll sleep here, knowing where I am, knowing what’s outside...or worse and more accurately, not knowing. But the doors are locked, the broken windows are fixed, and I can’t stand around in a dark hallway and worry the entire night.
I look at the door to the master bedroom. I can tell from the angle of the shadows that it’s halfway open. I think I left it that way when we searched the house, but I’m not certain.
“Good night!” Claire bounds into her room with more enthusiasm for bedtime than any six-year-old I’ve ever heard of. Maybe she’s excited to have her own room and her own bed. I don’t know for certain, but I bet she’s already slept in far more doorways and on far more benches than I ever have.
I stop by the bathroom first. Windowless, it’s so dark that I have to feel my way to the sink. I turn on the water, but I can’t see whether it’s clear or sludge. I don’t drink it, even though my mouth feels dry. Instead I splash my face and then use the toilet, all the while listening for other sounds—footsteps, breathing, anything. I’ll have to find toothpaste and a toothbrush, as well as clothes I can sleep in, if I’m stuck here any longer. I hope I don’t have to. Maybe I’m being a stupid optimist, but I hope this will be the only night I spend here.
Returning to the master bedroom, I run my hands over the sheets. I don’t feel anything like a snake or a rodent or a handsome, enigmatic, and infuriating man who seems like he shouldn’t be real and maybe isn’t.
I kick off my shoes, slide off my pants, climb into bed in just my men’s shirt and my underwear, and close my eyes. I can’t sleep. Of course.
I try every trick I know:
Think of something boring.
Think of something nice.
Count to one hundred.
Count backward from one hundred.
Curl on my side.
Lie on my stomach.
Flop on my back.
Twist. Turn. Flail.
I even hug Mr. Rabbit...but then I can’t remember when I moved him from the kitchen counter to the bed, and that makes me even more awake. I must have picked him up before the bathroom. I remember returning the mop...yes, I must have taken him then, though I don’t remember doing it.
I can’t relax. Every muscle feels as if it’s listening. I wait for a closet door to creak, for a window to break, for the front door to unlock, for the stairs to groan.
I wonder where Peter is. He must have returned to his apartment. Or gone to perch on more fence posts inside a dust storm, looking for more people like me. I wish he hadn’t left. He said he’d protect me, but I don’t feel at all protected. Eyes wide-open, I stare at the shadow of the dresser, the moonlit window, and the bedroom door.
The door creaks open. I freeze. My heart thuds louder. I don’t know what to do. All my waiting and listening and worrying, and I never planned what to do if anyone came in...
“Lauren?” It’s Claire. “Are you awake?”
“Yes.” I think I sound normal. I can still feel my heart race inside my rib cage. It’s as fast as the flutter of butterfly wings inside a trap. I think of the horror movie scene this would make: little angelic girl in a tattered pink princess dress, barefoot at midnight, knife in her hand. “Claire, out of curiosity, do you have your knife?”
“I left it with Prince Fluffernutter. He was scared.”
“Good. Can’t sleep, either?” I prop myself up onto my elbows. In the moonlight, her princess dress looks like it’s shimmery white, making her look ghostlike. Her face is in shadows, but I see the silhouette of strands of hair flying in all directions.
“It’s not that. I just thought you’d want to know that Peter is here.”
“Oh.” I process that information, trying to decide what it means that he came back. He wants to help me. He doesn’t hate me. Or he’s bored again and has nowhere else he wants to go. Or he plans to murder me in my sleep and display my head as a trophy on top of the eagle on the post office in the center of town... That last one seems unlikely. I decide I’m relieved that he’s back, whatever his intentions. “Thanks for telling me.”
“You’re welcome,” Claire says, always polite. “See you in the morning.”
“Good night.” I listen to her pad out of the room.
I lie awake a few minutes more, and then I dream of darkness and unfamiliar stars and my mother in a crisp, white hospital bed with calla lilies around her.
Chapter Eight
“Wake up, sleepyhead.”
Peter squats at the foot of the bed like a raven perched on a post. His feet are bare and so is his chest. I stare, my eyes feeling thick and gummy, at the swirled tattoos on his chest.
He’s as beautiful as an angel.
Over his shoulder, I see Claire tiptoe into the room. She then lets out a squeal and launches herself at him. He whips around, and she tackles him in the stomach. The two of them tumble to the floor beyond the end of the bed, his coat flying around them like black wings. Both of them are laughing.
I feel an ache inside my ribs. It hurts like a fist clenched inside my chest. I can’t remember when I last laughed like that, free and wild, and for an instant, I wish I could forget home and Mom and work and my life and learn to laugh like that again.
I turn my head and look out the window. It’s streaked with dirt, but I can see the pale barely dawn sky outside. The horizon beyond the houses is tinted with lemon-yellow.
Of course I can’t stay. Stupid to even think it. Mom needs me, and a mob tried to kill me. I don’t need any more incentive than that to find a way home as quickly as possible.
Sitting up, I look around the bedroom. It’s coated in a layer of reddish dust—the dresser, the chair by the window, the headboard. The door to the closet is ajar, and I try to remember if it was open last night. I swing my legs out of bed and cross to it. The closet has a few suits and dresses hanging in it. I push them aside and reach in to touch the back wall of the closet. I don’t know what I expect to find. Secret passageway maybe. Narnia. The closet is large enough to hold someone, and there’s a pile of blankets at the base, curled like a nest, and I have a sudden—and crazy—suspicion. “Did you sleep in here?” I ask Peter.
Peter looks at Claire. “No?”
Claire giggles.
He’s like Peter Pan. A dark, mysterious, sexy, grown Peter Pan, who can somehow be dangerous and charming at the same time. I don’t know if he’s teasing me or Claire.
“You didn’t because that would be creepy,” I tell him firmly.
“He’s not creepy!” Claire cries. “Take that back!”
As graceful as a gymnast, he springs to his feet. His speed and strength are both clear in that single movement. “It’s all right, fierce princess. You don’t need to defend my honor. At least not before breakfast.”
Jumping up next to him, Claire claps her hands. “Ooh, breakfast!”
Peter shakes his head. “I’m not supplying breakfast—Goldilocks is, if she can find our porridge.” He grins broadly at me, looking as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. “Ready to begin your training?”
Standing, I tug down my shirt. The wrinkled white business shirt hits midthigh, thankfully, but I’m aware of his eyes on me as I glance out the window. I see houses that look as if they washed up on shore, jumbled together without streets. Debris is piled between them. I could have sworn this view was empty desert yesterday. “Ready to go home. And that’s not a whine. You want revenge on the Missing Man. What could mess with him more than sending home someone he didn’t want to send home?”
“Stayed up late thinking of that argument, didn’t you?”
“It’s a sound argument.”
“I told you, I’m the Finder. The Finder and the Missing Man, two sides of a coin, not the same. I bring them in, and he sends them on. I can’t send you home. But I can keep you alive.” He holds out his hand. “If you trust me.”
I don’t take his hand. “Did you sleep in my closet last night?”
He keeps his hand extended. “Do you trust me?”
It’s a line from a dozen romantic movies, and if I were the romantic sort, this is where I would swoon, take his hand, and pledge my devotion. I’m not romantic, but I’m also not stupid. So I take his hand and lie. “Yes.”
His face widens into a smile, and it’s like seeing the bright, spring sun after a dark, dismal winter. It washes over me, and I feel myself smiling back, even though I don’t intend to. He’s looking at me as if I’m all he sees in the world. If his smile is the sun, then his eyes make me think of the stars last night, spread like a million jewels across the sky. And then the moment is broken as he turns to Claire and asks, “Think we should have her kill a pig?”
I hope he’s joking. Please, let him be joking. “There’s a reason I live in the city. How about we hunt breakfast food? Like bagels. Or cereal.”
“Bacon?” he suggests.
“She’s not ready for the pigs.” Claire looks at me with her wide, guileless eyes. “If you see one of the pigs, climb. They can’t climb.” She’s serious.
He’s still holding my hand. His hand feels warm and strong—safe. I worm my hand out of his and remind myself that I’m not safe in any way. “Okay, you have feral dogs and feral pigs. What else should I watch out for here?”
Peter shrugs. “Everything. The void likes to deliver surprises.” He mimes a bomb shooting into the air and then exploding violently in front of him. “Of course, the worst is the void itself. Once you enter it, you can’t escape. Stay in it long enough, it will shred you like lettuce. Your very essence will fade to nothingness. Unless I find you first.”
Great. Just...great. I think of how I drove through it and shiver. Guess I’d been lucky.
“Treat it like quicksand,” he suggests. “Or a black hole. Never, ever enter it.”
“Let me shower first before I face black holes and hostile pigs.” I rifle through a dresser drawer. I take a blue shirt with spaghetti straps plus a pair of jeans. The jeans are three sizes too big, but I can roll up the legs and cinch the waist with a belt, if I can find a belt.
“Good idea. Can’t have you frightening away breakfast.” He teases as if he’s known me for years, as if he is someone I can trust. But he isn’t. I don’t know him. Or Claire. And I don’t—can’t—want to stay with them, even if I’m more afraid of facing what will happen at home than facing the mob in town.
Cradling the clothes like they’re fragile, I head to the bathroom, fleeing Peter, Claire, and my thoughts. Towels, neatly folded, dotted with mold, hang on the racks. The walls are mottled with mold as well, especially on the wallpaper nearest to the bathtub. But in the daylight the toilet and sink are okay. I turn on the sink faucet. Brown water rushes out. I wait for it to clear and then I splash water on my face.
I look like a ghost in the murky mirror, and for an instant I wonder: Is this real? Am I real? Taking the least molded towel, I wipe the mirror until I can see myself clearly.
I’m real.
This is real.
I don’t know if that conviction makes me feel better or worse. Double-checking the lock on the bathroom door, I turn on the shower. Miraculously, it works, too. I strip off my clothes and step in. I let the water slide over me and feel as if yesterday is sloughing off me. I think of Mom and her daily shower affirmations as I tell myself, Today is a new day. Today I will find my way home. As Peter “trains” me, I’ll look for exits and loopholes and escape routes.
Out of the shower, I squeeze my hair to wring out the water, and I dress, still wet. The clothes cling to my skin, but at least I’m clean and that makes me feel one thousand percent better. I check the medicine cabinet and the vanity drawers. There’s a toothpaste tube, old medicines, and scattered emory boards, as well as sticky goop under the sink plumbing. I try the toothpaste, but it’s hardened. I wish I had my hair gels and makeup. I’ve always worn makeup. As a teen, I’d apply black eye goop as if it were Egyptian kohl. Now that I’m a professional woman—which makes me sound like an assassin or a whore, either of which have to be more interesting than my actual job—I use “natural” colors, dusting them over my cheekbones and eyelids. Either way, it feels like donning a protective shield. Without my usual bathroom supplies, I feel exposed. But clean. Clean is nice. It’s enough, I tell myself. I look at myself in the mirror again, fogged with steam and streaked from the swipe of the towel. I’ll be okay.
Deep breath.
Stay focused.
Don’t think about failure. The Missing Man can’t be the only way out. There has to be another way, and I will find it.
Rah-rah-rah. Go, me. Or whatever.
I leave a trail of water behind me, dripping from my wet hair, as I follow the sound of voices to the dining room. The table has been pushed against the china cabinet, and the lunch boxes have been tossed in a pile in the corner. In daylight, the stash of kids’ lunches looks like trash, and I wonder again about the kids they belonged to.
In the center of the room, Peter stands in front of Claire. He positions her arm to block her chest. She’s holding her knife. He adjusts her grip and then releases her and steps back. She strikes fast at a chair leg. Her blade bites into the wood.
I can’t think of a word to say. “Good morning” seems banal in the face of a six-year-old on the offensive against a vicious inanimate object. Her face and Peter’s are starkly serious.
Claire hops to the side as if evading a counterstrike. She then darts forward again and slices into the back of the chair. She’s fast. I don’t think the chair stands a chance.
As if snapping on a lightbulb, Peter grins at me. “Want to learn?”
“Um...I’ll just... Breakfast.” I kneel next to the lunch boxes. Pawing through them, I watch Claire. She jabs and lunges and twists and twirls. Only half concentrating on the food, I sort out what’s edible and what’s not. Rotten bananas, no. Expired juice, no. Packet of Goldfish crackers, yes. Molding peaches, no. Fruit chew snacks, yes. Ham sandwich, no. Claire swirls and slices through the dining room as I sort. When I finish, I rock back on my heels and examine the edible stack. It’s pathetically small. It won’t last long, less than a day between the three of us.
I look up at Peter and see he’s grinning at me. Again, or still. I don’t know why he finds me so funny. I wish I could pretend he were laughing near me, not at me, but I have the sense that the latter is more accurate. He holds out his hand to me. “Can’t scavenge in your own dining room. Where’s the sport in that? Come on, newbie. Let’s go.”
“But the mob... It’s not safe...”
Claire tucks her knife into a sheath and then shoves it through a loop in the ribbon on her princess dress. She skips toward me, smile beaming, and takes my hand. “I’ll take care of you.” She pulls me through the dining room door and then out the front door.
Clearly amused, Peter says softly behind us, “The calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.”
“I’m hoping that I’m not the fatling,” I say.
“Can I be the lion?” Claire asks as she claws the air. “Roar?”
“You lead,” Peter says. “You’re the child.”
Outside, it’s already desert warm, with the wind sucking the moisture out of my skin. I lick my lips; they feel dry. The sky is crisp blue, cloudless, and so bright that I wince.
I start toward the junk pile, but Claire pulls me back.
Peter strides past me. “You want this place to look abandoned, right? Then don’t pilfer from your own yard. Consider that lesson number one.”
“Okay. What’s lesson two?”
“Watch and learn, Fatling.” Peter vaults over the fence. “Just watch and learn.”
* * *
On the outskirts of Lost, the expanse of houses stretches farther than I’d thought. Mile after mile of house after house, many packed close together and others spread far apart. All of them look as if they were blown here by Dorothy’s tornado. A few are damaged so badly that they look as if they’d collapse if I blew on them. Others are pristine, freshly built with cheery paint and flowers in the window boxes, the kind of flowers that shouldn’t be able to grow in the desert. I imagine primly dressed little old ladies tottering onto the porches to water their geraniums or fetch their mail from cute duck-shaped mailboxes, but I see no one.
The houses are so silent and still that it’s like walking through a cemetery. I walk faster, trying not to look in the windows, trying not to feel as if the windows are watching me. But the curtains in the windows are motionless, and the lights are off.
Peter and Claire bypass several dozen houses without pause. They scamper over junk piles and climb over fences and race through the spaces between the abandoned buildings. I try to memorize which way the little yellow house is, which way the center of town is, which way is out of town—but it’s hard enough to keep up with the two of them. Often, they turn a corner, and I lose them for a few seconds as I race to catch up and I think, What if they’re gone? What if I turn the corner and I don’t see them and I’m alone and it’s all a trick to lure me away and abandon me where the feral pigs will savage me as if I’m an errant ear of corn, or whatever pigs eat...
But they’re there.
And I don’t see any feral pigs or dogs or people.
Waiting for me, Peter stands on a fence post on one foot. He balances with his other foot on his knee like a crane in the water. So still and silent, he looks not quite human. I can’t read the expression in his eyes as he watches me. Claire crouches on the ground beside him. Her nose twitches like she’s a fox as her gaze darts right, left, and up, looking for...I don’t know what. Whatever we’re hunting, I guess. Or whatever’s hunting us.
I catch up, and we go on.
At last, the two of them halt. Hidden by a half-dead bush, they crouch in front of a ranch house with wind chimes on the wraparound porch and a pile of newspapers on the front stoop. The chimes clink discordantly. Peter opens the mailbox. It’s stuffed with letters and magazines and flyers. He checks the postmark on a few. “Recent. Very recent.” His face lights up as he looks at me. “Ready to break and enter?”
“How do we know there’s no one inside?” I don’t think there is. There’s been no one anywhere. But we can’t be the only ones in this weird, silent world. I peer at the windows. The shades are drawn. I don’t see any lights.
Claire darts across the lawn and onto the porch. She presses the doorbell and then she runs back, her plump legs pumping. She skids to a halt and hides with us behind the shrubbery that chokes the mailbox.
No one comes to the door.
“Someone could still be home,” I point out. I don’t always answer the door if I think it’s someone selling something or wanting a signature on a petition. And then of course I worry that I’ve just alerted a burglar that my apartment is empty, and someone will break in while I’m home and then panic because they didn’t expect anyone, which is how most thefts-turned-murders are reported, so statistically...
Claire and Peter are already jogging toward the house. I lag behind as they veer left at the porch and circle the house. In the backyard, there’s a barbecue grill on the patio and a swing set with three faded plastic swings and a slide.
Even in the wind, the swings don’t move.
I feel goose bumps prickle up and down my arms, even though the air is as hot as someone’s breath. Weeks, months, or years ago, a family had a barbecue here. Kids swung on the swings, played catch, chased each other around, while the adults gossiped and ate burnt burgers and drank lukewarm beers that had been sitting in the sun. I don’t know how they lost their house, or why they left their things behind. But I decide that abandoned playgrounds score high for spookiness, even considering the fierce competition in this place for Most Spooky. I hurry after Peter and Claire.
The sliding glass door on the back patio is broken. Peter steps over the shards and ducks through the hole. His coat brushes against the broken edges but doesn’t catch. Claire shoots looks left and right and then darts through the hole in the door. I hesitate for a moment, but then the wind blows harder and one of the swings squeaks as it swings back and forth, as if a ghost child were pumping her legs. I step over the broken glass into the house.
“Don’t look at the couch,” Peter says.
Of course, I look at the couch.
And I scream.
There’s a dead man, white T-shirt, briefs, stomach exposed with hair curled around his belly button. He has a rifle in one hand, resting against the couch. His other hand is coated in reddish-brown. It rests over a stain of more red-brown-rust...blood. Oh, God, he’s covered in dried blood. His eyes are open and sightless.
Peter claps his hand over my mouth. “Shh.” His breath is warm and soft as a feather against my ear. I feel my body shake. He holds me tight against him, stilling me. His warmth comforts me, even if I shouldn’t feel comforted looking at a dead man. Peter lowers his hand. “Food will be in the kitchen.”
I’m not screaming anymore. I force myself to stop looking. “We should...” I try to think. I can’t think. There’s a dead man on the couch. What do you do when there’s a dead man on a couch? “Call the police.” Yes, that’s it. I feel as though I have had an epiphany, the thoughts stirring up through the murk of my mind. “Get out and call the police. We don’t know...who did this. Or why. Or if they’re still here.”
“Hence the ‘shh.’ Come on.”
He tugs my arm, and I follow him numbly through the house. I think the death must be recent, or the house would smell. Oh, God, what a horrible practical thought: the smell. But the house only smells a little like Lysol, a little like potato chips.
Claire is already in the kitchen, standing on a stool, an array of food spread out on the counter in front of her: cans of tomato sauce, black beans, peas, tuna fish. There’s a box of Uncle Ben’s rice. “Jackpot!” she crows.
I feel stuck in the doorway. “Shh!” To Peter, I say, “Does she know? Did she see?”
Claire looks up from her treasures. “It’s been more than a few hours but not more than a day. You can tell because the blood has dried but it doesn’t stink yet.”
She sounds so nonchalant that I can’t even process her words. “But there could be... Whoever killed...” The words feel caught in my throat. I go back to the first thing I said. “We need to call the police.”
“There aren’t any,” Claire says.
“But the killer...”
“Probably isn’t lost, either,” she says.
“How do you know?”
“No one can leave without the Missing Man,” Claire says as if this is a perfectly clear explanation. “If that man had been killed in Lost, he wouldn’t be only a dead body. He’d still be here. And he wouldn’t like us taking his stuff. So someone must have killed him somewhere else and then lost the body. Silly thing to lose.” She opens another cabinet. “Ooh, raisins!”
“You mean...you can’t die here?”
“Noo.” Claire rolls her eyes. “Of course you can die. You just can’t leave. Not without the Missing Man.” She enunciates each word, as if I’m hard of hearing. “If you die here, you can’t ever go back to the world. You can only go...wherever dead people go. Also, I’m told that it hurts a lot. Other than that, it’s kind of hard to tell the dead people from the not-dead people.”
Peter swings open the refrigerator and begins tossing out items. Salsa. Ketchup. Containers of Chinese food. “Fetch a bag, newbie.”
Mechanically, I check a few drawers. Under the sink I find a box of trashbags, the sturdy black kind. I pull out one, and Claire and Peter begin stuffing it with their finds. I feel numb.
“Can we leave now?” I ask.
“You don’t want to check the bathroom? Toothpaste? Mouthwash? Shampoo?” Peter asks. “Rare to find a recent, intact house like this. Usually they’re empty or old.”
“I don’t want to use a dead man’s toothpaste.”
Claire tilts her head quizzically. It’s an endearing expression. It would be even cuter if we weren’t talking about a dead man. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”
