The Neighbors (30 page)

And yet that smile failed to reassure him. Andrew felt a dull throb of dread pulse at the base of his throat.

“She’s making me move in. She’s having guys come by.” His tone was desperate, nearly pleading for Red to save him.

“She’s
making
you?” Red smirked, unconvinced. “Like she made you dance with her?”

Drew opened his mouth to protest.

“Like she made you sleep with her? Like she made you tie her up?”

He snapped it closed with a sickening chomp of teeth.

Red squared his shoulders, pushing himself out of his recliner.

“You think I’m stupid? That I haven’t noticed the way she stands next to you?” He exhaled an emotionless laugh. “Fat fucking chance, my friend.”

“I swear, Red...” The panic was crawling up Drew’s throat. “You’ve got to believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Red replied. “She’s a mystery, isn’t she? A heartbreakingly beautiful mystery. But guess what?”

Drew shook his head without reply.

“She’s mine. Till death do us part.”

Red took a step forward as if to make a move. Andrew lifted his hands in surrender.

“Hey,” he said, trying to keep Red at a distance. “I don’t want to take her from you, I swear. I want to get
out
of here. Hell, I was going to go look for you. To help me.”

“To help you,” Red repeated, bemused. “You want to get out of here?” He motioned to the door. “Leave.”

Drew stared at the door, unable to help the questions that were clawing at the inside of his skull: Where was Harlow? Was she hurt? Had he tied her up somewhere?

“But you won’t,” Red said, snapping Drew back to the present. “Because you like it here. Let me guess...” He looked around the living room as if seeing it for the first time—the crisp curtains, the pristine carpeting, the dustless furniture. “It fills some sort of void, right?”

Drew swallowed. His mouth was dry.

“I get it,” Red murmured. “I do; seen it a hundred times.”

“But I don’t want to be—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Red took another step forward, his fingers sliding into the pocket of his pants.

“What matters is that
she
wants you here. And that’s the problem.”

“I’ll just leave,” Drew told him. “Seriously, I’ll just go. Right now.”

“But will that take her desire for you away?”

“She was just upset.” The words tumbled from Drew’s mouth. He struggled for something to say, something to interject some hope into their conversation. “She loves you.”

“Does she?”

“She does,” he insisted. “She told me so.”

Red cracked a smile—and Andrew knew right then that he’d been caught. “That was nice,” he said. “I appreciate your attempt to spare my feelings, but it makes me feel a little guilty.”

Again, Andrew shook his head as if to say he didn’t understand.

“Guilty because I’m not going to spare yours.”

Another forward step.

“I don’t...really know what—”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Red told him. “It’s complicated. And it would be pointless anyway.”

“Pointless,” Drew echoed.

Red’s fingers curled around something in his pocket while Andrew stared back at him, wide-eyed.

Time stood still as the blood drained from Drew’s face. He could feel it happening—heavy with gravity, failing to travel upward because his heart ceased to beat. The room went horrifyingly silent. The music faded. The wail of the wind fell away. There was nothing but the sound of his own breathing in his ears. He was an astronaut. This wasn’t Earth.

He saw the muscles in Red’s arm twitch. Somewhere, in the distance, he heard a siren wail. At first, he was sure it was all in his mind—a figment of his imagination, conjured up by his fear—but it was too familiar. It was a sound he’d grown up with, a warning that danger was ahead. Somewhere in Creekside, the clouds had swirled into a cyclone. The tornado had arrived. It was time to take cover.

His gaze snagged on the safety scalpel in Red’s hand.

He blinked as Red slid the blade out of its plastic cover, unable to process what he was seeing. This wasn’t real. He was dreaming again, asleep on the windowsill. That was why Harlow wasn’t here.

“What is that?” he asked, knowing full well what it was—a weapon, something Red was going to use to do something unspeakable to his wife.

“What, this?” Red lifted the scalpel as if to inspect it for himself. “Just something I found next door.”

Andrew shook his head. What the hell would Mickey do with a scalpel, and how would Red have been inside Mick’s place anyway? Red must have meant another neighbor. Maybe that was where he’d been staying, getting up the courage to come back and get his stuff—or to do what he was doing now, which Drew still couldn’t put together. His mind was rebelling against what it knew was true.

“I don’t know where Harlow is,” Drew confessed. “But you can’t do this.”

Red canted his head to the side, apparently listening to Drew try to reason his way out of the situation.

“She didn’t mean anything,” he continued. “Just...don’t hurt her.”

Red stared ahead blankly. And then he burst into laughter.

Andrew blanched with realization.

That scalpel wasn’t meant for Harlow. It was meant for him.

His nerves hissed and snapped. He made his move.

He lurched forward, dodging Red as he ran for the front door. His sockless feet felt loose in his shoes, as though his feet had shrunk by two sizes. His hands flew out in front of him like frightened birds, slamming against the front door. He fought with the lock, but in his panic, it wouldn’t open.

Veering around with his back to the door, he stared at the man before him.

“I just want you to know that I’m sorry,” Red told him, a strange sincerity crossing his face. “I’ve never done this before. But a man’s gotta do what a man’s—”

“—gotta do,” Drew whispered.

Red vaulted forward. Andrew swerved to the right, but Red guessed correctly and the blade bit into Drew’s shoulder. Stumbling away from the door, Andrew pressed the palm of his hand to his wound, the blood warm against his skin. He blinked in disbelief, perplexed that Red had actually gone through with it, that he actually cut him, that this was real. Instead of running, he stared at the man who had so cheerfully given him a job.

And then the needle on the record skipped. Rosemary’s voice began to warble, the storm siren wailed outside—and reality finally hit him.

Andrew watched blood flow down the length of his arm, detour into his palm, and drip in time with the record’s skip—the first drop devastating the perfection of the room, the second
ravaging the idea of the wonderful life he wanted so badly to be a part of.

How could they do this to him? They were supposed to be flawless—amid the flat Kansas landscape, this was supposed to be Oz.

Red hesitated, as though considering his own treachery. For half a second, Andrew wondered whether he would change his mind, whether he’d realize that he was out of control. Red wasn’t genuinely intending to kill him, was he? No. That was impossible.

But Red lurched forward again, and Drew was forced into motion. As he turned to run, his shin caught the edge of the coffee table. He tumbled, spilling Harlow’s candlescape onto the floor, taking a couple of issues of
Good Housekeeping
and the remote control with him. He groped at the rug with bloodied hands as Red bolted toward him. Frantic, Andrew searched for something to throw. Catching hold of one of the candles, he reeled back, ready to defend himself with little more than a pillar of scented wax, but it was startled from his hand when a deafening crack rang in his ears.

Red froze in place, staring forward, before extending his arms as if in apology. And then, just as Andrew realized what that crack had been—a gunshot, a fucking
gunshot
—he was shoved aside from behind, and Harlow hurtled toward her dazed husband with a guttural scream.

The gunshot made him twitch—an involuntary spasm of muscles before the pain set in. He rolled onto his stomach and exhaled an animal groan; strands of white hair tinged a gruesome scarlet; his nose, mouth, and chin coated in gore.

Mickey Fitch had woken up, looking like he had eaten his captor alive.

Harlow watched Andrew scurry toward the kitchen as she lunged ahead. Grabbing a metal candlestick off the mantel, she marched toward her bleeding husband, Red’s hand pressed over the bullet wound that had pierced his chest. Red was doing the same thing Drew was—using his legs to push himself away, his free hand keeping him upright, his expression a peculiar mix of terror and expectation. But there was no surprise on his face. She had warned him. He had to have known it would come to this.

“So this is it?” Red asked, breathless. “After all this time, you just replace me? With
him
, Harlow? A kid?”

Seeing the corner of the plastic bag peeking out from behind Red’s recliner, Harlow hesitated.

“You think he’ll understand you the way I do?” Red asked her.

But Harlow was distracted. Could it have been? Had Red really dismembered their long-faithful servant the way she’d asked? Her heart swelled at the thought of it. She pressed a palm to her chest.

“Oh,
Red
,” she whispered, turning her eyes back to her husband. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked with a shake of the head, her soft hair bobbing around her cheeks. “If you had just
told
me.” She would have shot him anyway. But it was nice to think that Red had a change of heart, that he had done away with Mickey to keep her secret safe.

But the tenderness between them was fleeting, cut short by Andrew wobbling to his feet on the other side of the room. The sight of her injured beau pushed the affection for her husband from her heart, replacing it with a pang of indignation, of purest pitched hate.

“Were you looking for extra credit, Red?”

Despite his shortness of breath, he forced a smile.

“Gold star, baby.” He closed his eyes, swaying where he sat.

Andrew’s eyes went wide as the candlestick streaked through the air above Harlow’s head. It arced downward, its corner meeting the ridge of Red’s brow, sinking into the hollow of his eye socket, soft tissue muffling its strike. An elegant fan of blood sprayed outward, misting the carpet, the closest wall, and the woman who stood over him.

And then, to Drew’s horror, she pried that candlestick out of the pulp and pulled back again. The wet thud of Red’s death rang in his ears. Too terrified to move, he watched Harlow demolish her husband’s skull, collapsing onto her knees as she hammered away, each swing accompanied by a strangled cry.