Toy Cemetery Read online

  The kids exchanged quick glances.

  “Maybe it’s because you’re new in town,” Andy said. “You know how it is.”

  Living in Manhattan, Kelly knew exactly what he meant. But she didn’t think that was the real reason.

  Kelly cut her eyes to a man sitting on his front porch. He didn’t move. He just sat there, looking straight ahead, staring into nothing.

  Then the man turned his head, his eyes locking with the eyes of the girl across the street. But when he moved his head, it was sort of a jerky movement.

  Man and girl stared at each other for a full minute. Then the man moved his head, again with that odd jerky motion. Kelly turned to say something to Jenny.

  But all the kids were gone. She was alone.

  Amy sat on the floor of the bedroom, in a corner, a sheet wrapped around her. She was weeping silently.

  Jay had dressed, then gone in search of a couple of aspirins. His head was pounding with pain.

  He took a glass of water into the bedroom and knelt down beside the young woman. Jay knew, of course, what had just taken place, but it was all so hazy.

  He did not know what to say, so he just said, “Amy, I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She gulped a couple of times and said, “It isn’t your fault.” She took the glass of water and drank it. Jay waited.

  “Sometimes, people do ... stupid things in this town.”

  Jay helped her to her feet. “You want me to leave while you dress?”

  He didn’t know what in hell she was talking about.

  “Why?” She met his eyes. “I sure don’t have anything you haven’t already seen.”

  She let the sheet drop and stood naked before him. She quickly pulled on panties and shorts. “Where is my bra?”

  “You weren’t wearing one.”

  “Oh, God! It’s never been this crazy before.”

  “Amy, I’m going to say something that might make you feel better; or it might make you mad as hell.”

  She waited, her T-shirt in her hand.

  “I know we made love, but I don’t remember it!”

  “That must be the way it is, Jay.” She pulled on the T-shirt. “I have never done anything like this before. I want you to believe that.”

  “I believe it. Would you like to tell me what is going on in this town?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Amy, that doesn’t make any sense! What did you mean when you said, That must be the way it is’?”

  The young woman looked around the bedroom, her eyes lingering on the rumpled sheets. She forced a smile. “You really don’t remember it?”

  “Damn little of it.”

  “I thought it was pretty good, myself. Come on, let’s get out of here; maybe sit on the porch.”

  They sat down on porch chairs.

  “Jay, was this town, well, weird, when you lived here?”

  The old house in the country leaped into his mind, coming hard and with much clarity. It loomed up stark. “My first inclination would be to say yes, Amy. but giving it some thought . . . No. I don’t think so. I . . .”

  The sounds of tires skidding on pavement stopped Jay. Ellis Fletcher jumped out of his car and stormed up the walkway.

  “What the hell are you doing over here?” he shouted at his daughter. “Goddamn you, Amy! This is the last place I ever want to find you.”

  “Now, wait just a minute, Ellis!” Jay stood up and walked to the edge of the porch.

  Ellis walked up the steps, his fists balled. “Goddamn you, Clute!”

  What the hell? Jay thought. Is the whole town nuts? Then anger overrode reason. “Come on, Ellis,” he challenged. Jay lifted his hands and balled them into fists. “I’ll whip your ass all over this yard.”

  Ellis’s shoulders sagged. He lowered his hands. “Jay ... I’m sorry. Jeez, I’m sorry, man. I was just worried about Amy, that’s all.”

  “Speaking of kids,” Amy said, “here’s yours, Jay.”

  Kelly came pedaling into the yard. She threw the borrowed bike down in the yard and stormed past the men, into the house. She slammed the door.

  “I’ll be back, Jay,” Amy said, standing up. “We’ll talk some more then.”

  She walked to her car, got in, and drove off. Ellis looked at Jay, sighed, and turned around. He walked to his car and drove off.

  “What a strange day,” Jay muttered. “Surely, it can’t get any worse around here.”

  He looked across the yard. Old Man Milton was sitting on his porch, staring at him.

  “You asshole!” Milton called.

  Jay muttered, “And then . . . maybe it can get worse.” He turned and walked into the house.

  3

  “They just left me, Daddy!” Kelly said. “Just slipped off and left me. I hate them!”

  Jay felt there was more. He waited. He would have offered the child some milk and cookies, but he hadn’t gone shopping yet.

  He glanced at his watch. Just past noon. Then the naked memories of raw sex entered his mind. Thank God Kelly hadn’t entered the house while he and Amy were in bed.

  “I think, Kelly, the kids were just playing a little trick on you, that’s all.”

  “Well, it was a pretty shitty thing to do!” she flared.

  “Hey, hey, now. Watch the mouth, baby. Look, you go get out of those sweaty clothes, and we’ll go find us a hamburger joint. How about it?”

  She cooled down and grinned. “You still owe me a milk shake.”

  He pointed a finger at her. “You got a deal.”

  * * *

  While Kelly was bathing, Jay found fresh linen and changed the beds and then finished hanging up his clothes. He still was finding what had happened that morning hard to accept. But the rumpled sheets left no doubt about it.

  They found a drive-in café and filled up on cheeseburgers and milk shakes. Kelly was the first to point out that there were no national, chain-type fast-food places in town, and Jay found that odd. But there was not a one, any where.

  Kelly was yawning by the time they’d finished eating. “You want to go shopping with me, baby?”

  “How about just dropping me back at the house and I’ll unpack my stuff and maybe take a nap?”

  Jay hesitated; but the cops had said the house was safe. I’m getting paranoid, he thought. “Okay, baby.”

  He dropped Kelly off, waited until she was inside, and then backed out into the street.

  Then he drove through the streets of the town where he had grown up; at least to the middle of his seventeenth year.

  He finally drove up the street where he had once lived. He did not stop at the house. There was no point. Strangers now lived in the split-level. He wondered if there was a teenager in that bedroom, right there, on the corner of the house.

  All the memories that Jay had been repressing over the years came rushing back, as he had thought they would. He drove to the end of the block and pulled over to the curb, cutting the engine. He felt drained. Get it over with, Jay. Pull them all out into the light of consciousness and review them, one by one, and then put them back.

  He sighed heavily. He wasn’t sure he wanted to do that.

  * * *

  Jay was seventeen, just out of high school, accepted by the University of Missouri that fall. He’d come home that summer’s afternoon to find his parents gone. Just gone. He looked around and called a few places, looking for his brother and sister, but like his parents they, too, were gone. Just gone.

  Jay had waited until full dark before becoming really alarmed. He started calling in earnest. His parents’ friends did not know where they might be. The minister did not know. Jay called the cops. They were concerned, as most small-town cops were then and still are, but they could do nothing until after a time period had passed, then they could file missing persons report.

  Then he called his Aunt Cary. The old gal was plenty pissed-off because she had been the last one he’d called. Later, she ca
lmed down and came over.

  Then she really blew up, almost splitting her girdle when Jay insisted on staying at the house. But the police stepped in and said that since Jay was a fairly mature young man, and responsible, someone should stay at the house in case the missing people should call. Jay could stay for a few days. And nights.

  Jay’s mother and father, sister and brother, were never found. Not one trace of them. They had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. Neither they, nor the family car, had ever showed up. Anywhere. Not to Jay’s knowledge.

  It was a hell of a traumatic period for seventeen-year-old Jay Clute.

  After a time, money was borrowed against the house, and Jay used that to go to school on. His Aunt Cary, the richest person in the county, never gave him a dime. Jay went to school at Columbia, about fifty miles away, north.

  Jay would return to Victory periodically, dutifully, to visit his aunt, but Jay and Cary had never gotten along, and the visits became fewer and more widely spaced as time passed. Jay worked in St. Louis one summer, Kansas City the next, and for the highway department his last summer in college. Jay just lost touch with friends in Victory.

  In his junior year of college, Jay started hitting the bottle hard. He had not been able to cope with the loss of his entire family. He thought he might have some relatives somewhere out on the West Coast, but had never seen them.

  He was just alone. He busted out of college, and the draft got him. Probably the best thing for him, for it turned his life around and gave him a new direction.

  Got him shot, too, but even though the war sucked, it straightened Jay out.

  After seven years, his family was declared legally dead, and Jay came into a nice chunk of insurance money. Married by then, Jay invested it. Markers were put up at the Victory cemetery, but Jay had never gone out there. No point. His family was not there.

  Jay shook his head free of memories and started the car. “To hell with it,” he said.

  * * *

  Kelly heard noises up the hall. She looked at her watch. She’d been asleep about half an hour.

  But what was that noise?

  She slipped out of the bedroom and eased up the hall, stopping when she heard the voices. Muted voices. She could not make out any of the words.

  She wasn’t frightened; that wasn’t the word. She was – kind of excited, she guessed. Yeah. She never did believe in that burglar bit; just humor Pop and go along with it.

  “I hear you,” she called with a child’s interest and naivete.

  The voices abruptly ceased.

  She crept further, staying close to the wall. She reached the foyer. A sound from above her turned her around. She looked up the long flight of steps to the second floor.

  She stared up at the landing. Something was definitely there; but it was so vague and shadowy.

  No! That strangeness thrust hard into Kelly’s brain. No!

  “Why?” the child asked aloud.

  “Not alone. Not ever alone.”

  Then Kelly began to grin. “You shits!” she said. “Jenny, you all come out now. Stop playing games and trying to scare me.”

  The house was silent. Kelly looked up at the second-floor landing. Whatever she had seen, or thought she’d seen, was no longer there.

  She walked into the doll room.

  The first thing that caught her attention was the empty slot, which was no longer empty. A doll was there. She walked into the other room. Same thing. A toy soldier was standing there, filling the spot that had been empty only a few hours ago.

  Jenny and Ange and Carla and the boys had done it and were doing it, she felt. She wouldn’t say anything to her dad. She’d just say that she found the dolls in her bedroom. If she told him the truth he’d just get all weird and probably move them to a motel.

  She’d take care of Jenny and the others. She’d get even.

  * * *

  Jay pulled into the parking lot of a supermarket. He’d seen several in his driving around town, but there was not one national chain. Not that the existing markets were not adequate, because they certainly were. Large and well stocked and clean. He just could not understand why there was no Winn-Dixie or A&P or Krogers or IGA or Piggly Wiggly or Safeway. Because there damn sure used to be.

  A lot of changes in the old town. In more ways than one, he thought, recalling Amy. He still hadn’t fully accepted her explanation for what happened.

  He wondered if she had just wanted a good roll in the hay and then made the whole thing up about people dong crazy things in this town. But he didn’t think so. And Ellis’s strange behavior upon finding her at the house.

  Jay made up his mind right then that if the weirdness continued, he and Kelly were certainly not going to spend much more time in town.

  He concentrated on his shopping, filling the cart to nearly overflowing. As he wheeled the aisles, he furtively inspected the faces of the other shoppers. He felt he knew most of them, but could not put a name to any of them. It was a very odd sensation. It seemed to Jay that he had just seen many of them – recently. And, he hid his smile, of course he had. He’d grown up with most of them.

  At the checkout counter, he looked at the face of the young woman punching the keys. Eighteen or nineteen years old. And Jay knew damn well he’d seen her before; but also knew he’d left Victory before she was born. It was a very odd and disconcerting sensation.

  She’s a little doll, isn’t she? That voice thrust deep into Jay’s brain.

  It struck him so hard, Jay felt weak for a few seconds. He glanced at the checker. Yeah, he thought. She is a little doll, all right. Sure is. And then could not remember any voices at all.

  He paid his bill, over a hundred dollars, and noted that he still had some articles he needed to buy. He’d come back later, or go to another market; might as well check them all out.

  * * *

  He saw the note tucked between storm door and frame as he was carrying the first bag of groceries onto the porch. He sat the sacks down and pulled the paper free.

  Handwritten. Jay, I Stopped By But Missed You. Am Looking Forward To Seeing You. Will Stop By Later This Afternoon.

  It was signed Deva M.

  Kelly must have been napping and missed the knock.

  For a second, Jay felt a moment of panic. Kelly! He jerked open the door just as she was walking up to the door.

  “Need some help with the groceries?” she asked.

  Jay sighed with relief. Oh, come on, Jay! The house is just a house. Nothing more.

  He told her about Deva while they were carrying the bags in.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Kelly said. “I must have really been sleeping.” She cut her eyes at him. “Old girlfriend?” she teased.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. We dated in high school.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “I’m sure she is. She was twenty years ago.”

  “Probably weighs three hundred pounds and has fourteen kids,” Kelly said, straight-faced.

  “Put the stuff away in the kitchen, squirt!”

  Jay reread the note. News travels fast in a small town. Deva Menard. So she had not married. Or maybe she just signed it that way so Jay would be sure he’d know who it was. Whatever.

  The groceries put away, Kelly said she was going to explore the backyard, and it was a big one.

  Jay fixed a pitcher of iced tea and sat down at the breakfast nook, thinking of Deva as he sipped.

  She was two years younger than Jay, but in the same grade level at school. Deva had been jumped two grades ahead early on. So extremely intelligent she had intimidated most boys, older and younger. She didn’t mean to do that, but she did. And for some strange reason, Jay had been drawn to her, drawn to not only her blond, fair looks and those striking black eyes, but to her mind. And she to him. They were, in a very real sense, both somewhat outcasts in Victory’s young society. Jay had played all sports, some better than others, but had never been able to take them seriously, and therefore
never developed the jock mentality. And Deva liked that. They became best friends, and then, almost inevitably, young lovers.

  Jay looked out the back, checking on Kelly; she was sitting in a swing, reading. Thank God she enjoyed books. Jay fixed another glass of tea and went out on the front porch. The day was warm, and the weather report Jay’d heard in the car said the temperature was really to heat up during the coming week.

  As he sat down, he noticed something lying on the edge of the porch. He walked over and picked it up. A tiny musket. Like the one a toy soldier might have.

  He walked back into the house, checking the doll rooms. The missing doll and soldier were back on the shelves.

  “Now, what the hell!”

  He walked out to the back porch. “Kelly? Did you find the doll and soldier and put them back?”

  “Oh! Yeah, I did. I found them in my bedroom. I forgot to tell you. Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. Guess that cleared it all up, kiddo.”

  “Guess so, Dad.”

  Jay went back to the toy rooms and tried to figure out how the musket fitted. He finally gave up and laid the musket at the toy soldier’s feet, walking back to the front porch and sitting down.

  He watched a teenage girl ride by on her bike. Kid looked familiar to Jay. Probably the child of someone he’d gone to school with.

  But the thought kept nagging at him: There sure were a lot of familiar faces in town; faces that were far too young for Jay to have ever seen.

  Not necessarily! That strange voice again.

  And this time, Jay remembered the voice.

  And then he remembered all the other mental thrusts of that day.

  He suddenly bent forward, his head pounding with pain – pain, and the sounds of screaming. He pressed his fingertips against his temples as the voice, a woman’s voice, screamed in agony.

  Jay’s head was hurting so bad he felt like screaming in pain.

  He heard a car pull up and stop, a car door slamming.

  The sounds of running feet. “Mr. Clute! Mr. Clute! What’s the matter?”

  The pain suddenly stopped, the screaming fading into silence. Jay lifted his head and looked into the face of Officer Jim Klein.

  “The damnedest headache I ever had in my life,” Jay said. “Now it’s gone as quickly as it came.”