Resurrection House Read online

  I stayed out back until my fingertips went a little numb and my stomach started grumbling. The sky had turned black, by then, and it glittered with stars.

  Matty already had his face in a dish when I walked in. I hung my coat in the closet and left my backpack at the foot of the stairs. Mom filled a plate for me while I took a fork and knife from the drawer, grabbed a napkin and a glass, and sat down. After two bites of baked chicken I got up and took the milk pitcher from the refrigerator. Matty stuck his cup out for me to refill and I poured it halfway.

  He slurped it down, his mouth half-full of food.

  “Did you see Matty’s new painting?” Mom asked me. She pointed at the water-wrinkled paper pinned by a magnet to the refrigerator and decorated with a colorful collection of crude smears that suggested a house with a dog in the yard. A selection of Matty’s greatest hits from kindergarten surrounded it. “Mrs. Brady said it was the best of anyone in his class.”

  I nodded at my little brother. “Oh, that’s great. Good job, Matty.”

  Matty smiled, and then crammed a giant forkful of mashed potatoes between his small lips. It was almost more than he could handle. I thought he might choke, but then who the hell ever choked on mashed potatoes?

  Dad’s car rumbled up the driveway while we ate, and the engine clanked off. He worked late at the bank, hoping for a promotion to vice president; he’d been passed over twice before and needed to put in the extra time to look good. He hated the idea of being stuck forever opening new accounts and helping people apply for mortgages, and Mom sure wasn’t thrilled with it, either. It was tough, though, because the president liked to hire his family and business was slow with the economy down, making it hard for Dad to get hired at another bank. I don’t think he much liked his job. One time he suggested moving to another town or into the city, and Mom stopped talking to him for the rest of the night. They didn’t discuss it often, but I heard a lot when they thought I wasn’t listening and I understood most of it, too.

  Taking his hat off as he entered, Dad let the side door swoosh shut behind him and slowed to say hello on his way through the kitchen. He rustled around in the bedroom, and when he came back he had removed his tie and his shirt collar hung open. He loaded his plate and sat beside Mom. Right away she pointed out Matty’s artwork. Mustering a look of admiration Dad told Matty he was one talented little artist.

  Matty giggled. He liked it when Dad made a big deal of him.

  Mom asked me if Richie Perullo had been back to school. No one had seen him since Jimmy’s funeral, and word was he’d transferred to some kind of special school with more doctors than teachers.

  “Poor Mrs. Perullo. Her whole life shattered like that,” she said and shook her head. “Richie and Jimmy were close, weren’t they?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Richie beat Jimmy up a lot.”

  “They were brothers. Of course, they were close,” said Dad. He winked at me. “So, big day coming up this weekend, huh?”

  I mumbled something like “I guess,” but I couldn’t help the smile creeping into my face.

  “You guess?” he said, feigning disappointment. “Well, I suppose when you hit the ripe old age of twelve, birthdays start to seem pretty much the same from year to year.”

  “Is everyone coming?” asked Mom.

  “Wilt said he’s coming,” I said. “I think everyone else is, too. There were a lot of other kids I wanted to ask, Mom.”

  “I told you I don’t want an army trooping in and out of the house all day.”

  Matty turned five last June and most of his class spent the day celebrating in the backyard while Dad barbecued. They stayed until it got dark enough to light sparklers and chase fireflies through the bushes. About half a dozen of Matty’s friends spent the night. They took over our room and I slept on the couch.

  “You say that every year,” I said.

  Mom placed her fork neatly on her plate and flashed a cold glare in my direction.

  “Okay, champ, that’s enough of that,” said Dad. “If your Mom says four friends, then you invite four friends. You’ll have plenty of fun. Trust me.”

  I let it drop and finished my meal in silence.

  Later Matty, done with the little kid homework he had to do, sprawled upside down on his bed, sniffling and clearing his throat like a farm animal while I tried to do integers. His action figure army lay scattered around him on crumpled blankets as he staged skirmishes that inevitably ended with his best impression of an explosion and a snapped bed sheet that sent his men flying to the floor. Every minute or so he asked me a question like why was it so cold in the bathroom in the morning or why did Mom give us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch five days a week or what was Richie’s new school with doctors like. I gave up trying to answer and took my books into the bathroom where I spread my homework out on top of the hamper, using it like a desk.

  “For such a talented kid, Matty,” I said, “You got a lot of dumb questions.”

  He went on building forts and sculpting mountain ranges, placing his figures in strategic arrays just to knock them down and start over. I heard him spitting machine gun noises and barking orders in phony voices. A lot of his action figures had been mine and handed down, but I used to take care of them. I cleaned them and kept track of their equipment and weapons and put them away in a special case when I was done playing. Some of that stuff was small enough to lose in an empty room. But then Matty started to play with them and Mom decided I was too old for toys like that and gave them to him. Most of the equipment vanished soon after, and some of the guys lost limbs. Matty’s favorite was the Hulk. He used him to lead the charge every time even though we hadn’t seen his head for weeks.

  I wanted to watch television with Dad when I finished my math, but instead I went down the basement to tie newspapers into bundles for the recycling pickup the next morning and do some other chores Mom made up for me. I heard Matty laughing upstairs in the den, at least until Dad sent him to bed. Man, you should have heard him whine about not getting to stay up even though it was already half an hour past his bedtime. Mom told me to follow him when I finished mopping, but Dad let me watch a detective show he knew I liked. Mom fumed, but she had other things on her mind. Tonight was bill night, one of two each month when she sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by papers and receipts, paying our debts and figuring out how much Dad made and how much we needed. It made her slam things and frown a lot, and she let out little exasperated sighs every few seconds. So, when the private investigator rounded up the bad guys and the closing theme music played, I crept the long way to the stairs through the dining room instead of the kitchen.

  Matty snored and snuffled while I changed into my pajamas and padded into the bathroom to get ready for bed.

  Rising heat hissed and popped in the radiator. A maelstrom of wind swirled outside the window, carrying dry snow from the roof and rustling it against the glass like sand. On a night like this all kinds of sounds filled the house. Creaking boards. Icicles snapping loose from the gutters. So, it didn’t surprise me when I heard the tinny clatter outside. Toothbrush hanging from my mouth, lips flecked with toothpaste and spittle, I lifted back the curtains and looked out. White remnants of paper danced next door. A plastic bag skidded along the driveway. Heavier things like chicken bones and half an egg carton inched forward in gusts. The Pamplas’s garbage cans had spilled over. Trash blew against the side of the house and rolled in lazy arcs across the glaze of their front yard. Mr. Pamplas would have a fit when he saw it.

  His tall shadow fell across the garbage pails and I waited for his rant. Mr. Pamplas was notorious on our block for swearing, sometimes grousing in Greek for ten minutes at a time while he wrestled with his broken down snow-blower or worked in his garage. I figured chasing debris around his house at night in the dead of winter would set him off for sure. He stepped into the illumination of his side door light and looked up where my face must have been perfectly framed in the square of warmth radiating out the windo
w.

  It wasn’t Mr. Pamplas.

  It was Mooncat Jack.

  I’d never seen him before, but I knew it.

  I fumbled back, gagging on toothpaste and spitting my brush onto the floor. My hand flew out to snap the light switch down, and in the dark I crept back and inched the curtain up just enough to peek out with one eye.

  No one was there.

  A loud crackle from the radiator startled me. I pounded out of the bathroom, pouncing on the hall switch and clicking the light on. I lit the bedroom, too, and yelled for Matty to get up, but he didn’t notice. I shook him awake and dragged him downstairs by the hand. He mumbled the whole way about getting ready for school and asking for his Cap’n Crunch. We stopped in the kitchen doorway.

  Mom wouldn’t even look at us. “Why are you up?” she said.

  I didn’t know what to say. My mouth shriveled tight.

  “You should have been asleep an hour ago. What is it?” She set down her pen and checkbook.

  “I saw someone outside,” I said. “He knocked over Pamplas’s garbage.”

  “Who was it? It’s probably just Mr. Pamplas, taking the trash out. I didn’t hear anything.”

  “It wasn’t Mr. Pamplas. He looked at me through the window.”

  Dad roused himself from the den. “It’s late,” he said. “You two should be sleeping.”

  “They say they saw someone outside,” said Mom. “Looking in the second story window.”

  “Not Matty,” I said. “He didn’t see anything. He was sleeping until I got him up.”

  “You know your brother needs his sleep, Adam,” said Mom, watching me now with an acid stare.

  I looked at Dad, and his irritation softened to concern when he saw my expression. “Well, no harm taking a peek outside. Then straight back to bed, all right?”

  I nodded. Matty curled up in a ball on the floor with the top of his Thundercats pajamas bunched up under his arm and dozed off. Dad had to step over him to open the cabinet where he kept his flashlight. He put on his shoes and coat and went out the door.

  Mom tapped the corner of an envelope against the kitchen table and waited for me to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything else to tell her. She didn’t believe me. The clock above the sink ticked off the seconds like a trip-hammer. It could only have been a couple minutes, but it felt like hours before Dad opened the door and stamped his feet against the brick step to knock snow loose from his shoes.

  “No one out there,” he said, coming in. “The wind sure knocked over the Pamplas’s garbage, and there are some footprints that make it look like a couple of raccoons might have been getting into it, but that’s all it was, Adam. I put the cans back and closed them. Wedged them in so they should stay put. Pamplas can clean up the rest up tomorrow. Too cold out there tonight.”

  “But I saw him,” I said.

  “Calm down, kiddo,” said Dad. “I looked around. Nobody was out there. It was just your imagination. You heard the cans fall over and got carried away.” He crouched and lifted Matty, tucking him against his chest, and then nudged me toward the stairs with his free hand. Cold air fell from his shoulders.

  “Why don’t we get you two back in bed, huh? Just a case of the jitters. I’d call it a bad dream if you’d been asleep,” he said.

  Mom turned back to her papers. “Go on to sleep, now. And I don’t want to hear you again tonight. This is what you get for staying up to watch that drivel on television.”

  We kept quiet going upstairs so we wouldn’t wake Matty. I jumped into bed and slipped under the covers while Dad tucked him in. He pulled my comforter around me, rubbed my head and said goodnight.

  “Too darn cold for anyone to be out there tonight,” he said. “Sleep tight, now.”

  I tried, but when I shut my eyes I saw the dark man’s face and knew Mooncat Jack didn’t feel the cold. He stood in the night like a stone figure, wrapped in his thick black coat and knit cap, an otherworldly burglar whose pale face gleamed with moonlight, his eyes like bottomless holes, his mouth a gaping emptiness gated by rotten teeth. Nothing would make him leave. Time meant little to him. He would wait—like Joey Reagan said—until no one was watching, and then he would make his move.

  Unable to sleep I rose shivering and crept to the window, hoping to reassure myself. The empty backyard was a chessboard of light and dark figured by the barren picnic table and the row of shrubs along one side of the lawn. Nothing stirred. No one near the garage or down by the stream, no one in the driveway or lingering by the Pamplas’s house. And when I had watched the stillness and seen nothing move but the wind-swayed branches, I felt sleep tugging and thought of my warm bed.

  I wish I had climbed into it a second sooner.

  The sound of crunching snow crashed through the silence and paralyzed me. Footsteps broke the crusty veneer, their noise climbing on the wind as the thin lamination of ice snapped with each step. A shape wriggled loose from behind a thick tree trunk in the woods and drifted down along the bank toward the stream. The figure splashed into the frigid water and stood there, fluid swirling around his legs like snakes on the trail of mice, his head lifted to drink in the starlight. His face glowed as he eased open his jaw to expose the guttering chasm of his mouth and stretched his arms wide, ready to deliver a chilling embrace.

  My bladder twitched and I struggled to hold back the flood pressing against it. I knew he could see me.

  Mooncat Jack bowed forward like a dancer and breathed a whisper that floated like a dream in the empty dark, rising and falling, twisting, rolling through space until it tinkled rudely through the glass to rattle in my ears.

  He called my name.

  I scrambled away, tripping over my baseball glove and falling onto a pile of prodding action figures. Matty jumped awake when I screamed in pain, and before I could clamber back into bed, Mom came running up the stairs and turned on the light. Dad wasn’t far behind her. I tried to apologize, but Mom shut me down with a cold stare every time I opened my mouth. I wanted to tell her about Mooncat Jack. She sat a couple of minutes with Matty, stroking his hair until he fell back to sleep. When she left I asked her to leave the hall light on, but she said it would keep Matty awake. I tried once more to explain, and she stopped in the hallway, her body tense and her eyes piercing.

  “Well?” she said.

  I wanted to tell her how he said my name and the sound of the words had been so frigid it felt like my heart had stopped pumping blood through my veins. But I knew she wouldn’t believe I had really heard a thing.

  “Nothing,” I said. A spark of anger flickered in my heart. If it were Matty who had something to say, she would listen, and if it weren’t for him, then she’d have to listen to me.

  Mom left, and with the blankets wrapped tight around me, I waited half the night for sleep to come.

  Bleary-eyed and cranky I struggled through school the next day. At recess I looked for Joey Reagan.

  “Man, did you hear about Tommy Smith and Brian Corey?” he asked when I mentioned Mooncat Jack. Brian and Tommy were two older kids from our school. “This guy in a white van tried to pick them up on their way home yesterday. He wanted them to get in for a ride, but they ran home, and the guy took off. They called the cops and everything.”

  “So? What’s that got do with Mooncat Jack?” I asked.

  “Duh! Who do you think was driving the van? I mean sometimes he takes kids people want to get rid of, and Tommy and Brian are a couple of slobs, aren’t they?”

  Laughing, Joey bounced from one foot to other.

  “Yeah. Really funny,” I said. “Come on, Joey, be serious for a second.”

  “What’s the matter? Scared Mooncat Jack’s coming for you?”

  “Shut up, loser,” I said. “I’m just curious. Maybe I think it’s cool, like Freddy Kreuger or Jason or something.”

  “Don’t call me loser, loser,” said Joey, but he stopped bouncing and glanced over his shoulder to see who might be standing around. No one was. “You know
that Center Quogue kid I said Mooncat Jack stole? Well, when they found him, he was all, like, torn up and mangled and stuff.”

  “Mooncat Jack did it to him?”

  “No, it was Inspector Gadget. Duh!”

  “You’re a liar,” I said. “There’s no Mooncat Jack, and no kid got missing in Center Quogue. You don’t know anything, you jerk.”

  Joey sniffled. His smile vanished. “Chill out, Adam. I’m not making anything up. My sister told me it’s true.” Joey’s sister was in high school and Joey seemed to listen to her a whole lot more than his parents. “Mooncat Jack comes around sometimes, no one knows why or when, and takes children away. He picks a place and when he gets enough kids, he just leaves.”

  “What does he do with them?” I asked.

  “How should I know?” said Joey. “He just takes them. Sometimes he, like, kills them and dumps their bodies in the woods. Some kids no one ever sees again. Maybe he locks them up somewhere. Maybe some kids want to go with him.”

  “How many does he take?”

  Joey wrinkled his brow. “I don’t know. However many he wants. What’s your problem, anyway, scaredy cat?” Joey threw his arms out in front of him and twisted his hands like claws. He jumped around me in a circle, chanting, “Oooh, he’s coming for yooouuu, Adam! He’s coming to take you away forever!”