Nighttime Caller

Something is very wrong.

It starts the way it always does: in the night, sweat soaked sheets clinging like a second skin, waking to the sounds of the water heater shrieking and my brother calling me.

It takes me a minute to locate the wrongness. I am still dreaming, not all awake yet, so my voice is groggy when I answer. “Jack.”

“I think I hurt a little girl, Gracie.”

This doesn’t quite wake me. My dream was of loud things, burning things, the sounds of my house ebbing like a bird cry milked from a tiny porcelain mouth. I sit up in bed, wonder what time it is, check the clock-- 2? No, 3, you read the clock wrong, Grace, you airhead-- and fish for my glasses. On the other end of the line my brother is panting. He sounds like a sick dog. It’s rhythmic, pressed into the receiver, a wet huh-huh-huh. Perfect sound design as if rehearsed.

“Where are you?”

“We’re at the old primary school on Thompson’s road. The one with the-- the yellow playground out front--”

With the sandpit, where we used to bury stuff.

“There’s a cubby house.”

The one with locks on it. I push my glasses back up to rub my eyes. “Yeah, I know the one.”

“It’s bad, it’s really bad. I think she’s locked in there.”

Is there a fire, Jack? She’s locked in there. They both are.

“I need you to come get me. Hello?”

“Yeah, I’m not gonna do that.”

Abruptly, he stops panting. “What? Grace, please. What are you doing? She’s stopped yelling, and I’m just-- please knock it off, whatever this is. I’m really freaked out.”

“Mhm.” When I push my glasses back down, I dare a peek between the blinds. It is still dark enough out that I can barely see my driveway; the streetlights out here have been dim for years.

“Are you coming? Will you get here soon?”

“Nah,” I say, as slow and patient as if I am speaking to a child. I wish I could smile for him, sound kinder. It might calm him down.

“Why?”

“Because that school burned down eleven years ago. You’re just dreaming.”

The line goes silent. It always does. The wrongness comes from his dream things, his violent wrenching into wakefulness over the phone. I take the opportunity to pull my body from bed, one foot at a time onto the chilled hardwood. I stretch my arms in front of me. 3 o’clock, that’s not bad. Maybe not a new record, but better now than in the evening when I’m trying to wind down. I count to thirty in my head and try to remember where I left my joggers last night. It’s not too early to take Maximo for a run, not if I bring my phone to use as a torch.

Eventually, on the other end, Jack starts to cry. I wish he’d just hurry up.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m really sorry.”

“S’okay.” I find my joggers. It’s kind of difficult getting dressed with one hand, but you get used to it. I don’t want to put him on speaker in case he wakes up Maximo and gets him all riled. “You know you don’t have to apologise to me. Remember when we, uh-- remember when we were thirteen and we did that blood pact thing? That’s gotta count for, like, a lifetime of not apologising. You’re fine, man.”

On the other end, he’s still weeping. Behind his weeping is the static of phone silence. He’s mumbling something, a borderline nonsensical slurring of words, but I catch the tail-end of, “-- need to stop calling.” He always does this. I used to think he hated me, wanted to torment me, but now I know better. I haven’t seen him in so long. I think he just misses me.

Because I’m a sucker for routine, I ask, “Where are you?”

The line goes dead. I finish getting dressed in silence.

Maximo tugs so zealously on the end of his leash that it chokes him. He’s a twelve year old Border Collie, but you can’t tell with the way he jumps around like a puppy. I try to reign him back in before we reach the end of the driveway.

I fumble the flashlight feature on my phone until it hits the ugly fluorescents of my shoes. Even with this it’s tricky to see more than a metre ahead. Since the street-lights went out, everyone started keeping their cars locked in their garages overnight, and the result is a winding street that looks abandoned, houses still and silent as stones. Maximo snaps his jaws and lets out a yip at nothing.

While I walk, I think about Jack. I haven’t seen him in eleven years, but each night like clockwork he calls me. It is always the same thing: I think I’ve hurt a little girl, Gracie. It reminds me of when we were kids, when he used to bring back rabbits or possums or neighbours’ cats and get me to help him tie them down. He always seemed so shocked by the blood, by the fact that something so small could bleed so much. I think I’ve hurt it, Gracie! We had an unspoken agreement. I didn’t mention the animals, and he didn’t tell on me for playing with matches.

I miss Jack. I don’t really smile as much anymore. We used to do all the smiling together.

I pat my pockets now, wishing I had my lighter. Though I gave up smoking years ago, even just the weight of it sometimes brings me comfort. I smell the phantom stench of gasoline and decide it’s probably time to head back. A movement in my peripheral makes me stop, and I tilt my head to look for it.

At the top of the hill is a shadow. I turn around and walk back home.

#

By the time evening rolls around, I can hear a storm coming through. I practise smiling in the mirror until I get tired of watching my face twist, until my jaw hurts from baring my teeth. I only succeed in looking savage. The storm is crackling outside. There’s never anything to do around here, so I settle in for the night with a book.

Maximo gets restless in the colder months, and hides now under the footrest of Dad’s old La-Z-Boy. In the Summer we open up the windows and let him catch flies. Now there is only the sound of rain pattering against closed windows, tiny bullets shattering on glass.

Then there is a thump. I set my book down.

Somebody is pounding their fists against my front door.

Maximo barks once from under the chair. I stand and my joints creak, twenty-five and already a fucking old lady. The pounding gets louder the closer I get. It may just be the wind.

It reminds me of a recurring dream I used to have when Jack and our parents first moved away. He’d be at the door every night begging me to let him inside. I never saw his face, just the shape of him through the window. Just the imprint of his hands laid flush to the glass. He was always cold. Let me in, Gracie. I’m cold. Have you got a fire going in there?

I look through the window beside the door, but it’s too dark outside to see. The thumping’s still going strong. I flip on the porch light. There’s nothing but the branches of our Sycamore tree thrashing in the wind. I’m about to turn around and go inside when I hear a low moan. This time the thumping sounds decidedly more persistent, and almost certainly deliberate. I unlatch all four locks and wrench the front door open.

There’s no one outside.

The dog, what a coward, whines when I pass by him again. “Oh, grow a pair, Max,” I snarl. No one outside. No one on the street. Just me, twenty-five years old and going through the motions of turning in for the night. He’ll call me later. It will wake me. When did my life become such a routine?

Rain is coming in through the open window. I shut it and go to bed.

#

When I wake up in the middle of the night, the room is on fire.

It sucks and bites my skin like leeches, peeling me back to expose muscle red as meat. I’m too surprised to scream but I manage to sit all the way up and look around. Paint is shaving off of the walls like fat teardrops. The wrongness of exposed brick and wood hits me, like the wrongness of seeing bone exposed through split skin. Smoke and debris are everywhere, bits of the room curling up, flaking off. The ash and gore is cloying.

I fumble for my nightstand and find my matches. When I strike one inches from my face the fire disappears. It was never there.

I’m breathing so hard that I’ve woken the dog. I hear his tinny whines through the other side of the bedroom door, his nails scratching to get in. I sit with my head hanging between my knees and wait to finish shaking.

I used to have another recurring dream about a little girl Jack used to torment. When we were kids we made a game out of coming up with gruesome things we were going to do to her. Jack said he’d like to stab her. I mean really go wild. He’d wield this big sword like a play-pretend knight and skewer her, open her up-- he’d let me eat her heart right out of her chest.

For me it was always burning.

My phone starts ringing at the same time that the thumping starts again. I startle so violently that I nearly fall out of bed.

I hit answer and hold the phone to my ear. I have to swallow several times before I can get a word out. It feels like I’ve swallowed ash. “Jack? Hello?”

He doesn’t answer. Somebody is pounding their fists against the front door. I can hear it all the way down the other end of the house.

“Jack. It’s Grace. It’s Gracie. Hello?”

Maximo starts howling. I swing my legs over the bed and shove my feet into slippers. I can hear Jack breathing on the other end of the line.

I march to the front door and try to flip on the porch light. Of course the power’s gone out. Of course.

“Jack,” I hiss. He’s started to weep, really cry in earnest, whimpering like a child.

The last time he cried like this we were children. He wanted to lure that stupid girl into the cubby behind the playground. Because it was the kind that locks. He wanted to leave her in there to frighten her, but then he found out I’d brought my matches and stuck me inside, too. Jack was always teaching me lessons.

It must be the storm that’s got me so on edge. I start to yell at my brother.

“For fuck’s sake, Jack! Are you going to say anything to me?”

But he is saying something, I realise. That noise, that feedback, that static. It’s been him talking all along.

“Please,” he whispers. “Please stop calling me. I’m sorry. Please don’t call me anymore.”

Pain bursts in my palm and I rip the phone from my ear with a shout. The plastic has started to melt.

Abruptly, the sounds of the storm outside stop. Maximo’s barking goes quiet. It’s as if someone has pressed pause on the world and made it all go still and silent.

Then there’s a knock.

I drop the melted phone and let it clatter soundlessly to the floor. The knock comes again.

I think I might be dreaming. Jack will be outside, wanting to be let in from the cold. Into the house where I have my fire. When the little girl knocked, she used both hands against the wood until her palms split open and shouted herself hoarse. Shouting is just a way of getting smoke into your lungs faster. I tried to tell her that. I really did. I might have even smiled.

I flip the porch light on, expecting to see Jack, but he’s not on my doorstep.

It’s me out there. I’m smiling.