Chapter 26
it was just past two in the morning when Grant turned the key in the ignition and slowly pulled out of the dark alleyway behind Jas’s bar, following the blue Nissan Leaf that was driving east on Cordova.
He checked his mirror twice, unsure about the blind spots in the nondescript carshare he had picked up.
His Audi was far too noticeable for surveillance.
For two hours that night, he had watched Jas and his staff through the open kitchen door, washing dishes, mopping the floors, taking out the garbage.
The chef and servers had left first, leaving Jas to lock up, using two different keys on the solid steel door, lit from above by a floodlight.
Grant could see he had changed out of his faded jeans and apron into dark designer denim and a spotless white henley.
There was only one reason to change at two in the morning.
If Grant’s guess was correct, Jas would follow Cordova to Powell Street, then turn south on Clark Drive before turning right just before Kingsway.
There, on a street lined with mature cherry trees, he would stop, preferably in a shadow far from a street lamp, and park before walking half a block to the old grey house Grant once owned.
Grant knew the way. His body remembered.
He turned off the radio. He needed to focus, to use his eyes and ears to make sure he made the right decisions, down to lane changes and keeping three car lengths between them.
He almost felt vindicated as Jas followed the exact route Grant had predicted.
Funny how being right felt so sour in his mouth.
Grant turned right into an alley, half a block before Alice’s street. He cut the headlights and inched forward past rows of garages and garbage bins until he came to the house two doors down from where Alice was sleeping. Or where she was awake, waiting for her boyfriend. Naked.
“Focus, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered to himself.
This particular house was vacant and had been for as long as Grant could remember.
The lawn was overgrown with clover and burdock and morning glory, with a shed in the back that leaned at a precarious angle.
Most importantly, this lot had a gravel driveway that ran from the back alley to the street.
Grant turned into the driveway, as slowly as possible, wincing at the noise his tires made as they crunched over the gravel.
He just had to nose up to the sidewalk and from there he could look to the right and see his old house, its front and side paths, even the front porch if he craned his neck far enough.
He turned the key, and the car was silent.
He saw the lights of the Leaf to his left.
Then Jas walking in the dark past Grant’s carshare, up the sidewalk.
Grant turned his body to look at the house and there on the side path stood Alice, facing the street.
From his position, he could only see her in profile, but he knew her long straight hair, the pointed angle of her shoulders, the line of her alert, anxious posture.
He recognized the old white nightgown she was wearing, the one she had bought when Luna was born, made of a loosely woven thin cotton, something that was easily pulled up to nurse in the middle of the night.
He thought she had stopped wearing that after Luca turned one. Strange.
When Grant first started dating Alice, every time he saw her he felt his whole body open up, as if his chest was growing transparent and his heart was on display for everyone, but especially Alice, to see.
He felt that familiar opening now as he saw her standing there, branches sweeping the top of her head, waiting for Jas.
He wished that if he called out to her, she would turn and smile at the sight of him.
Grant blinked the tears away. When he opened his eyes again, he could tell that his pupils had enlarged in the darkness.
She turned her head in his direction, looking down the street, expecting Jas, of course.
As she scanned the street, he thought he saw a flicker move across her face.
He leaned forward a little further, the top of the steering wheel digging into his chest. He could see her entire face now, and as the wind shook the leaves of the rhododendron that towered over her, the shadows shifted.
Two seagulls flew past, squawking in what sounded like terror. Why were the birds flying in the dark? What were they fleeing? He could see. He could see what they were afraid of.
Alice had no nose, as if her face was caving in from the middle, dragging skin and tissue down into a gaping black hole.
He thought he could see it pulse like a heartbeat, expanding and contracting ever so slightly against pale purplish skin.
A long skinny tongue unrolled from her mouth (lips full and bowed like Alice’s but grey, so grey) and flicked at the air, as if it was trying to taste Jas’s presence as he walked closer and closer.
Then she turned her head and, in profile again, she was the same Alice he had always known, the same woman he used to sleep beside.
She turned back, and her face flickered, the tongue snaking out, tasting, tasting.
That wasn’t Alice. Or it was, which was an even worse possibility. Did Jas not see?
Fuck. Jas. That thing could eat him alive.
How easy it would be to see what might happen, to offer Jas’s body up as a test, to see what this creature might do to him.
Maybe it would kill him. Maybe it would scare him so much he would never come back.
Maybe Grant could win this game and return home to his wife.
Jas was crossing the next-door neighbour’s lawn now, headed for the side path.
Alice stepped backward behind the gate and pushed it shut without making a noise. Grant could no longer see her.
He leaned over the steering wheel, turning his neck at an unnatural angle, trying to get a better view of the gate to the backyard.
His chest hit the horn, and a long, distressingly loud honk filled the air.
He jerked back, but it was too late. Jas stopped and turned, his eyes searching the night for the car, for movement.
He had no choice now.
Grant opened his door and shouted across the lawns. “Jas! Watch out! There’s something in the yard.”
Jas stared straight at Grant, and a wave of recognition, then disgust, passed over his face.
“Fuck, it’s you. Get a life, man.”
“Go back to your car. It isn’t fucking safe!”
“Are you threatening me?” Jas waved his hand in dismissal. “Go home, asshole.” He turned back to the house and stepped on the side path. He was a few feet from the gate.
Grant ran from his car and sprinted across the two lawns as fast as he could. His shoes hit the ground like rocks, the pounding as fast as his heartbeat. Jas turned to look back at him, the gate now half open. Grant lunged forward and grabbed him by the sleeve.
“What the fuck, dude? Let go of me.”
“Just come with me. Don’t go in there.”
But just as Grant got the words out, Jas was pulled out of his grasp with such force that he stumbled sideways to the ground.
Grant reached and grabbed hold of Jas’s sleeve again.
As he twisted the fabric into his fist, Grant could see a thin pale hand with long nails curled under in grimy loops wrapped around Jas’s other arm.
The nails were sharp, ending in points that pierced through the white fabric of Jas’s shirt.
Red blooms of blood spread through his sleeve, and Jas cried out, trying to pry the claws out of his flesh, but they only dug in further, as if his skin and muscle were nothing more than soft butter. Grant would not let go. He would not.
Jas righted himself and spun around, wrenching himself free of both grips.
Drops of his blood flew through the air, and Grant felt them on his cheeks as he stumbled backward into the rhododendron.
When he stood up straight, Jas had his back up against the side wall of the house.
He was staring at his bleeding arm, breathing heavily.
“Jesus, what the fuck was that?” He was whispering, all anger leached away by what Grant knew was fear—simple, cold, and creeping fear.
Grant didn’t answer the question. Instead, he whispered, “Come this way, to the front yard, where there’s light.”
They stood under the street light on the lawn, Jas propped up by the trunk of the willow tree, and Grant looked closely at the long gash on Jas’s bicep. “We’ll have to get that disinfected.”
“Why are you so calm ? For fuck’s sake, something just attacked me.”
Before Grant could answer, before he could go inside the house and find the first aid kit that he knew Alice kept in the bathroom—he was going to be gentle, he was going to be a good guy and help—he felt a cool breath on the nape of his neck, as if someone was standing behind the tree, just inches away.
A heavy weight came crashing down on the back of his head.
He felt as if his spine was crumpling, vertebrae being crushed one into the other, and he fell forward face first into the grass.
He knew he was losing consciousness, and a part of him wanted nothing more than to fall asleep on the cool lush lawn so he could forget the pain.
How nice that would be. But he rolled onto his side, shouting as lightning bolts of pain crackled through his neck and back.
He willed his eyes to stay open as he turned his head upward, to where Jas had been standing a moment before.
He was kneeling on the grass, reaching out to Grant, whispering, “Come on. I’ll help you up.
And then we’ll get the fuck out of here. ”
Grant pivoted his upper body by pushing at the ground with his hands, half sitting up so he could grab Jas’s hand. The old solar lights he had installed were glowing dimly along the perimeter of the garden. He squinted and shook his head, trying to fight the deep dark sleep he knew was coming.
Just then, Jas shouted, and before Grant could even blink, he saw Alice dragging Jas by the foot with one hand, as if he wasn’t a six-foot-tall man, through the open gate and into the backyard.
Using his hands, Grant half dragged himself, half crawled after them, yelling wordlessly.
As he got closer to the gate, he could see that she was taking Jas into that far corner where nothing grew.
Alice’s parents had placed a pile of stones there years and years ago, for a dead cat or something, Alice had told him, and it was a dead spot, a place where the leaves of hostas fell and faded, which Grant had always ignored.
They were so close to that spot where everything died, no matter how hard anyone tried.
The weight on his eyelids was too much, and the pain in his head felt as if it was cracking his brain in half.
He started to cry as the blackness descended, as the sleep he both wanted and feared enveloped him and he could no longer see the demon.
He cried out quietly, then dropped his face to the grass one last time.