Killer's Cousin (16 page)

There was no sound. I don't know why I suddenly knew Lily was in the kitchen behind me. I turned slowly and looked at her. I kept my face impassive. Down the hall I could see the open door to her bedroom; it had been closed when I'd come past before. Had she been in there in the dark? I was a fool, there was no doubt about it.

“My parents went out to a movie,” Lily said politely. “Can I help you?”

I did not yell. “Why?” I said to her.

The tiniest smile curled the corner of her mouth. “Why what?”

“You trashed my computer.”

Lily smiled fully. “You're crazy.”

“Why did you trash my computer?”

“You're
craaazy
,” sang Lily. “My parents think you're
craaazy.”
She hugged herself.

Involuntarily, my eyes flicked to the row of drinking glasses standing on a shelf. “Spying again, Lily?” I said.

“You're going to have to leave,” said Lily. “They think you're nuts. Making stuff up. Imagining things about me. Plus, I'm scared of you. I told them so.”

I looked into her fearless face. Slowly, finally, her words penetrated fully.
Crazy. You're crazy
.

I swallowed. The slight unease I'd felt since telling Vic what I thought about Lily filled me again. In my mind's eye I saw Vic take a step back away from me. I heard him say,
Uh-huh
.

“You trashed my computer,” I said stubbornly. “Why?”

“Why would I do a thing like that?” Lily leaned a little closer to me, and her voice dropped to a whisper, “I'm just a kid. I wouldn't even know how.”

“You trashed—”

“What are you going to do?” Lily asked. “Dust for fingerprints?” She rocked, slightly, from side to side.

I clenched my hand on the key. “Get out of my way,” I said. “And keep out of—” I could not say,
my place
. “Keep away from my stuff.”

For a moment I thought she wouldn't move, would just go on rocking gently. Then she said, quite softly, “Make me.” Her smile grew wider, became a grin. She whirled and sprinted back down the hallway, holding her arms out from her sides as if she were pretending to fly, brushing her hands against the walls as she ran, laughing. “Make me!” And her bedroom door slammed behind her. I heard her giggling.

I went back upstairs to fix my computer. I was careful about backups, so it wasn't as bad as it might have been. I reloaded all my programs and data and put password protection on. I would make backups even more carefully in the future. It was the best I could do.

I pondered what Lily had said.
They think you're crazy
.

I would need to talk to Vic again. I had to try, even though I knew it would do no good. It would do no good because, about this, Lily had not been lying. They did think I was crazy.

And when I caught myself looking around the apartment for the shadow, listening hard for the humming, hoping, hoping … well. I wondered if maybe I was.

O
ver the next two weeks I became aware that there was something new between Lily and me. I had a peculiar
awareness
of her. For example, when I was in the house—anywhere in the house—I always knew if she was there too; I even knew where she was. Or, if I saw her face, I felt that—if I just tried—I would be able to read her thoughts. I didn't try. These feelings unnerved me horribly. But they were absolutely real. And that this awareness was mutual, that Lily felt it as strongly as I did … well, of that I had not the smallest doubt.

It was like that moment just before a summer thunderstorm, when the sky is dark and hot and airless, and you're waiting for the relief of that first explosive clap. But it didn't come.

Perhaps it was this tension that caused Lily to take action. More action. I began to find nasty little surprises in the apartment. Lily, it was clear, had another key.

First, the heap of college catalogs disappeared. On the next day, all the frozen dinners were ripped out of their cardboard containers and thrown into the sink. On the next, the battery was removed from my alarm clock. And after that, incidents mounted rapidly, sometimes more than one a day. Several were merely annoying, like when the glasses and plates switched places in the cabinets, or when the ink cartridge from my printer turned up in my dirty laundry. I actually
expected
the salt in the sugar bowl and the short-sheeted bed. But others were more malevolent: kitchen trash strewn on the floor; the leg of a pair of jeans severed.

They were relatively minor tricks. But cumulatively they upset me even more than the computer incident. Whenever I came back to the apartment, I'd mount the stairs to the attic as if I were approaching a rabid dog. Immediately, I'd search for booby traps; things out of place. Sometimes the Lily-tricks were obvious. But sometimes—like when a rubber band was placed on the spray faucet in the kitchen sink—they weren't obvious at all.

It got so that whenever I was away, at the back of my mind I'd be worrying about what Lily was up to. And when I was in the attic apartment, I'd be tense, wondering what would jump out at me next. By week two, I'd developed a sporadic tic in my left leg.

I knew I ought to do something. But what? Tell Vic? In my head I kept hearing Lily saying,
My parents think you're crazy
. Also, no matter how angry Lily made me, I could not forget that she was only eleven. And that anger was the wrong thing for me to feel. A dangerous thing for me to feel.

I'd been angry at Greg, and Emily had died.

Help Lily
, Kathy had said. She was probably right. But she was talking to the wrong guy, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I couldn't even help myself.

Surely Lily would get bored? Surely this would all go away if I waited?

But one evening I came home to a prank that really hurt, and I boiled over. I pounded down the stairs and barged into the kitchen, where they were all eating dinner.

The smell of Julia's roast chicken was strong, almost overpowering. I stood, a few CDs in my hand. For a long, long moment neither Vic nor Julia seemed even to notice me. Vic absently licked his fingers. Julia cut a green bean in half, her knife clinking decisively on the plate. Lily smiled secretly. I knew
she
knew I was there.

“Vic,” I said. “Julia. I have to talk to you.”

Julia raised her brows. Vic said, a little uncertainly, “Right now?”

“Yes.”

Vic wiped his hands on a paper napkin. “You've been so quiet lately. I was saying to Julia a few days ago that it was almost as if you weren't here …”

“I am here,” I said. There was a little silence.

“What do you want?” Julia said, pushing her chair back.

I didn't need to look at Lily; I could feel her avid interest. I looked at Vic. I thought of the last time we'd talked. I had believed then that he'd heard me.

I handed Julia the CD cases and she took them reluctantly. Her fingers hesitated over Beck, flinched with
distaste at Barenaked Ladies, relaxed in relief on Mozart. She tried to give them back. “I don't understand—”

“Open one of them. Any one. They're all the same, and there's more upstairs.”

“David—” Vic began.

I was too aware of Lily. I said rapidly, “None of the CDs will come out. They're glued in their cases. Superglued. Ruined.” My voice cracked a little. I steadied it. I looked right at Vic. “Lily did it. I told you, she needs to see a therapist. She's sick. You've got to make her stop doing this stuff.”

I expected them to look at Lily then, but they didn't. They looked at me. They kept looking at me. There was no sympathy in their expressions, and I panicked. “Lily did it,” I said again. “She ruined my CDs. And she wiped my computer's hard drive, too. And she …” I knew it was a mistake. But I couldn't stop myself. I related each of Lily's recent acts of terrorism. With each accusation, I watched for a reaction from Vic and Julia that simply did not come.

At the end I stared, finally, straight at Lily. And she stared right back at me.

She heaved a great sigh. She pushed herself away from the kitchen table, and then at last her parents did turn to her—fondly. She took her plate to the sink. Then she said to her parents, “May I be excused, please?”

“Yes, run along,” said Julia and Vic, simultaneously.

Lily edged past me in the doorway and, sheltered from her parents' sight by my body, rapidly and
harshly rammed her elbow into my lower back. And with that stab, any hope I'd had of being believed left me.

Lily was too clever for me.

She was right, too. I did look nuts.

We heard the soft sound of Lily's bedroom door closing. Vic stood up. He said cautiously, “Are you mad at Lily, David? Or at us? Because of the girl downstairs, maybe? You don't seem to be seeing her anymore.”

I gathered my thoughts. There had to be a way to retrieve the situation. Now that Lily wasn't there, maybe I could make them understand … “It's true I haven't been seeing Raina. But this isn't about her, it's about—”

Julia interrupted, but not to speak to me. “Victor,” she said to her husband, “we talked about this. I told you my feelings. It should be very clear now that I'm right.” Her chin was up. Her mouth was set tight.

“Dear …” Vic's voice faltered. Slowly he nodded.

Julia turned to me decisively. “David,” she said, “the only way for this to work is for you to simply lead your own life. We must see as little of you as possible.” Her voice grew fierce. “And you
must
keep away from Lily. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

The injustice of it took my breath away.

“Do you understand?” Julia insisted.

“Oh, yes,” I said. I could not keep the bitterness from my voice. “I understand.”

Julia's mouth tightened. “I had my doubts to start with, but I let you come here, because—despite what your mother would say—I am not without family feeling. But now I'm beginning to think …” She
stopped. She looked at me then like Emily's parents had, when the trial began. With hate.

Hate, not fear. Fear I would almost have understood. Fear was what I felt every day. “Think what, Julia?” I said quietly.

“That you made your own troubles,” said Julia. “Like your mother.”

I began to turn away then, but she grabbed my arm. “One thing more,” she said. “And listen, because I mean it. If you keep it up—if you keep making trouble here—then you will need to leave this house. Immediately. I will not tolerate any nonsense.”

I ought to have expected it, but I hadn't. I felt as if the floor had just dissolved beneath my feet. I did not like this house. I had never wanted to be here. And still my stomach lurched as I panicked. What would I do? What would my parents say?

“Now, now, Julia, don't overreact,” Vic was saying. He turned to me. “I'm sure that things won't get to that point. Now that we've all talked, and we understand each other.”

At that moment my peculiar awareness of Lily kicked in again. She was in her bedroom; I could almost see her. She was seated cross-legged on her bed, and she could hear us perfectly. She was not smiling. She was holding her breath as she waited for my next words.

So when I spoke, I spoke not to them, but to Lily. “If you think that things would go back to the way they were, just because I'm gone, you're wrong. They won't. They never do.”

There was a silence. And then Julia said, “I believe
that
you
—not Lily—would benefit from consulting a therapist.”

I couldn't help it. I didn't mean to do it. But I burst out laughing, and I didn't even really know why. They stared at me. For a few seconds I was truly out of control, and I wondered if I would be able to stop. But then I did.

“Julia,” I said, and I wiped my eyes. “If it would help, I'd be on the couch right now. But
my
personal problems”—I looked at Vic then—“have nothing to do with Lily's. Don't you see that? She really does need help.”

They kept staring. Implacable.

Finally I shrugged. I turned and went back upstairs, to Kathy's attic apartment.

S
till, it itched at me, what Julia had said. Was there some truth in it? Did I make my own troubles? Was I crazy? It seemed—I don't know—it seemed plausible.

After school the next day, I went to the stacks of the public library and found a book on abnormal psychology. I located a list of the behaviors and symptoms often exhibited by those with a less-than-perfect grip on reality.

Stress. I had been under considerable stress for a long time. Stress can put people over the edge, the book stated, using many words of multiple syllables.

Paranoia. I had decided that Lily wanted something from me; maybe hated me; was out to get me; was
capable
of getting me. Was this a sane way to feel about an eleven-year-old girl?

Guilt. I almost laughed. I was qualified to write the Five Books of Guilt.

Visual hallucinations. This was a more reasonable explanation for those sightings of Kathy than believing in the shadow, in the ghost.

Aural hallucinations. The humming. And then in Baltimore, Kathy had talked. Now, if it really was Kathy, why wouldn't she have stayed in Cambridge where she belonged? The answer was obvious: Because she was a hallucination,
my
hallucination. When I moved, she—that is, it—moved also. Not to mention talked.

Clearly, if I was insane, then I was getting worse. The hallucination had changed from a hum to a message. Perhaps it wouldn't be long before the
message
changed—to something less benign. Like, for instance,
Kill Lily
.

I remembered with stunning immediacy the rage that had descended on me the moment I saw Greg punch Emily, just before I threw myself toward him and—