Keepers

ONE

I pulled up in front of my house, killed the engine, and ran inside, slamming the door closed behind me and locking it.

The sound of massive, pumping wings flew over the house. The force of the downdraft from them shattered a couple of windows.

I leaned against the door, shaking.

Jesus Christ, what now?

It wasn’t long before I had the answer.

A pair of bright headlight beams cut a path through the darkness. I pulled back the curtain to see a large tan vehicle shaped like an old bread-delivery truck crawl past my house, its driver sweeping the street with a handheld searchlight. The truck came to a stop and the driver killed all lights. It took my vision a moment to adjust afterward-the light had shone directly in my face at one point-and by the time I could focus clearly the driver was out of the truck and looking in my yard. It was already dark so I wondered how he could see.

He adjusted a strap on something he’d just put on his face, then reached up and hit a switch between his eyes. It wasn’t actually between his eyes, of course, but that’s how it looked. I caught a flash of a small green light glowing where the bridge of his nose should be and realized that he’d just donned and activated a pair of night-vision goggles. I wondered if they were Starlight technology like the scopes soldiers used in Vietnam. I wondered how expensive they were and how Cedar Hill Animal Control could afford such high-tech gear.

An SUV came around the corner, its headlights shining on high, enabling me to both see the driver and read the name on the side of the truck.

Neither came as a surprise.

He was impeccably dressed, expensive suit, tie, bowler hat on his head.

The side of the truck read: KEEPERS.

Still, my legs began to buckle, my chest felt tight, and my heart once again tried to squirt through my ribs; my breath came up short as I pressed my back against the wall and slid to the floor, a hand over my mouth.

I held my breath, listening to his footsteps as Magritte-Man made his way up the walk, then to one side of the front porch before turning around and going back to his truck; I continued holding it until the sound of his engine faded into cricket-song and streetlight buzz. When I finally allowed myself to exhale, everything inside me became miasma and dissipated into the twilight.

– grabbing my shirt through the bars of the cage and pulling me toward him, blood seeping into the cotton of my shirt as I lifted the bowler and showed him that it was undamaged, looking into my eyes, lips squirming in a mockery of communication because his vocal cords had been cut out long ago, sounds that were a burlesque of language, but there was something there, something that drew him to me or me to him, and he turned his head ever so slightly to the right and pulled me closer to the bars – I shook my head and pulled away from the wall. A thin layer of perspiration covered my face, neck, chest, and hands; my arms were shaking, and for a moment I feared I was going to vomit. This last, at least, proved to be a false alarm.

Pressing a hand against the front door, I eased myself onto my sponge-like feet and dragged in a few deep breaths to steady my nerves and my balance. Grabbing my shirt through the bars of the cage? Where the hell had that come from? I never get my memories mixed up in that way, one bleeding over into the other until the seams couldn’t be spotted.

(Are you sure about that one, pal?)

Christ.

Rubbing my eyes, I made my way into the downstairs guest bedroom before I even knew where I was going or why. Ever notice how there are times when your body’s memory and will operate independently from your own? Synapses take a detour and you’re left wondering, Why am I here? / Doing this? / Looking for… what?

I reached for the light switch but at the last moment my body’s will took over again and wouldn’t let me turn it on. This room had to remain dark; I’d have to rely on the light spilling in from the other room to see things.

I moved the bed several feet to the right, then yanked away the cheap throw-rug that lay underneath to reveal the area of flooring that had been torn up and then replaced with a 3? 3 trapdoor-an addition the plumbers suggested in the event that the new pipes running underneath needed to be accessed during an emergency. A padlock held the door firmly closed. I retrieved my keys from their hook by the front door and flipped through until I found the one for the padlock, opened it, but did not pull up the door. Not yet.

Trying to look as casual as possible, I made my way through the downstairs, turning off a few more lights but not enough to slide everything into darkness; the light over the sink in the kitchen, the table lamp in the living room, and my desk lamp remained on. They would give me plenty of light for what I needed to do.

I went into the linen closet for the second time that day, pulling out all of the hand towels and wash rags on the top shelf, then reaching back and flopping my hand around until I felt the curved brass handle on a wooden box; pulling it out and setting it on the floor of the closet, I turned the dials on the combination lock until the lid popped up with a soft click. I hadn’t opened this thing in years, hadn’t really wanted to, but now I had to. My body’s will commanded me.

The 7.65mm Deutsche Werk semiautomatic pistol looked just as it had when Mom gave it to me after Dad’s funeral, along with his medals. He’d taken this gun from a dead SS officer in Austria near the end of World War Two. He’d kept it cleaned and oiled and had insisted on firing it at least once a year to make sure it was still in good working order. When I was much younger and still thought of guns as something powerful and romantically alien, Dad would sometimes let me fire it in the air at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The gun was small but its recoil packed a wallop. Dad used to laugh every year when the thing’d knock me on my ass after I fired.

I jacked back the slide to make sure it was empty, then loaded the clip, chambered a round, set the safety, and shoved it into the back of my pants. (I’ve always hated movies where some guy shoves a gun into the front of his pants to hold it in place; sneeze, trip, or bump into something and it’s hi-diddle-deedee, the eunuch’s life for me. I hadn’t been with a woman for a very long time, but it seemed a good idea to keep the package attached, just in case. It’s the little fantasies that keep us going.)

From inside the lid of the box I removed the serrated SS dagger in its ankle-sheath and strapped it on. After double-checking to make sure it was securely in place, I reached under the closet’s lower shelf, shoved aside a few mid-sized storage boxes, and pulled out the one weapon that hadn’t come from my father: a Mossberg 500 pistol-grip, pumpaction twelve-gauge shotgun. I took down the box of shells and fed it until it was full, then pumped a load into the chamber, stood up, and kicked the closet door closed behind me. I still wasn’t sure why I felt compelled to arm myself like a road-company Robert DeNiro in the penultimate reel of Taxi Driver, but my body told me I’d know soon enough.

A few moments later I was back at the front door, peering through the window.

Magritte-Man was back with at least two others of his ilk. The three of them stood, all bowlers and dapperness, on the sidewalk, night goggles at the ready. I stood up straight and looked right at them. I wasn’t sure they’d seen me, so I waved at them.

Magritte-Man returned the gesture, but neither he nor the others made a move toward the house. At least there wouldn’t have to be any sneaking around now, dim light or no.

They might -mark that- might know about the crawl-space, but not the trapdoor.

I started back toward the guest bedroom, moving the shotgun from one hand to the other and shaking each empty hand in turn because my fingers had gone numb.

Not you, I thought, hoping some small part of the universe would scatter the thought Magritte-Man’s way. She will not go with you.

I will not allow that.

I will bury her here.

You won’t get your hands on her, not you, not you, not you…

I’d kill all of us before I let that happen.