The concierge tells me they’ll call when my taxi arrives, but I’m too agitated to wait in my room. I throw on my jacket, even though it’s probably hotter than hell outside, and I stalk down to the main lobby to wait for my ride. A blue and white cab rolls up outside the main entrance fifteen minutes later, and I climb in without bothering to check and see if it’s even mine. I give the driver the address and then I sit on the backseat, gaze fixed out of the window, unseeing. I think the driver asks me something but when I don’t respond he makes the remainder of the journey across town in silence.
Outside Callan’s house, I pay him with a twenty and tell him to keep the change. I feel revolting inside as I hurry down the pathway towards the front door, trying my level best not to cast my eyes at the building on my right. My old home might as well be the Amityville Horror house. I can’t look at it without panicking and wanting to run far and fast from it; even being in such close proximity to it is making me break out in a cold, terrified sweat.
There are no lights on inside Callan’s place. I hammer on the front door, using the flat of my palm for maximum impact, and the sound of the hollow booming rings outs around the sleeping neighborhood. At this rate I’ll be waking Friday up as well as everyone else on the street, but I don’t care. So long as Callan wakes the fuck and let’s me the fuck in, I couldn’t care less who else I wake up.
Lights go on in an upstairs bedroom three doors down, but the lights remain stubbornly switched off on the second floor of the house in front of me. “Fuck you, Cross,” I hiss, slapping the door even harder.
No lights. No answer. No stirring from within whatsoever. I take a step back and glare up at the place, fuming. Fine. He doesn’t want to answer the fucking door? That’s really not a problem. I’ll let myself in one way or another, and then he’ll have no choice but to deal with me.
Storming around the side of the house, I keep my head down and to the left, still refusing to make eye contact with the place next door. I go on the hunt for a rock in the patch of earth beside Callan’s place—a bare patch of earth that used to be overflowing with flowers and beautiful evergreen shrubs that Jo took such pride in once upon a time. There, sure enough, right where it always was, sits a large, black rock with a metallic blue sheen to it—volcanic, and totally out of place in a flower bed in South Carolina. I pick up the rock, fully prepared to launch the thing through a downstairs window if I need to, but when I squint in the, dark low and behold, there is the same bunch of keys Callan always used to keep there for me. They’re rusted now, the metal loop the keys are attached to completely covered in dirt, but they’re exactly the same.
The sight of them makes me panic. Oh, fuck. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe I shouldn’t be running around in the middle of the damn night, breaking into houses that don’t belong to me. Can I get arrested for this? There’s every chance Callan is going to want to press charges by the time I turf him out of his bed and start threatening him with physical violence.
I consider the prospect of sitting in a communal jail cell at Sheriff Mason’s station for a second, and then I figure fuck it, it will be worth it if Callan gets the picture and leaves. I use the keys, jamming the slimmest into the lock on the front door hard enough that the metal protests and the door swings open, creaking in the exact same way it used to when I was a kid. Strange, the things that remain the same, when so much else changes.
“CALLAN!” My voice rings out into darkness. I enter the house without stopping to think, to prepare myself for the assault to my senses, and the smell of the place hits me like a punch to the gut. Not old or damp or musty, or even like the old house used to smell long ago. It just smells like Callan. At the far end of the hallway, the old Grandfather clock Jo loved so much has been covered with a white sheet. Upon a timid investigation of the ground floor, I see that every piece of furniture in the place has been covered with dustsheets, too. And Callan’s nowhere to be seen.
I jog up the staircase to the second floor, a little hesitant now that I know he’s been here. And recently. The door to Jo’s old room is closed. The bathroom door is ajar, though. Moonlight pours in through the tiny porthole window, casting long silvery fingers of light over the cabinet and the sink, where a single blue toothbrush lays on its side next to a travel-sized tube of toothpaste.