Later

33

When I headed out of our apartment on the last day of school, Therriault was once again in the elevator. Grinning and beckoning. He probably expected me to cringe back like I had the first time I saw him in there, but I didn’t. I was scared, all right, but not as scared, because I was getting used to him, the way you might get used to a growth or a birthmark on your face, even if it was ugly. This time I was more angry than scared, because he wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone.

Instead of cringing, I lunged forward and put my arm out to stop the elevator doors. I wasn’t going to get in with him—Christ, no!—but I wasn’t going to let the doors close until I got a few answers.

“Does my mother really have cancer?”

Once again his face twisted like I was hurting him, and once again I hoped I was.

“Does my mother have cancer?”

“I don’t know.” The way he was staring at me… you know that old saying about if looks could kill?

“Then why did you say that?”

He was at the back of the car now, with his hands pressed to his chest, as if I was scaring him. He turned his head, showing me that enormous exit wound, but if he thought that was going to make me let go of the door and step back, he was wrong. Horrible as it was, I’d gotten used to it.

“Why did you say that?”

“Because I hate you,” Therriault said, and bared his teeth.

“Why are you still here? How can you be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Go away.”

He said nothing.

“Go away!”

“I’m not going away. I’m never going away.”

That scared the hell out of me and my arm flopped down to my side as if it had gained weight.

“Be seeing you, Champ.”

The elevator doors rolled shut, but the car didn’t go anywhere because there was no one to push any of the inside buttons. When I pushed the one on my side, the doors rolled open on an empty car, but I took the stairs anyway.

I’ll get used to him, I thought. I got used to the hole in his head and I’ll get used to him. It’s not like he can hurt me.

But in some ways he’d hurt me already: the D- on my math test and screwing the pooch at the swim meet were just two examples. I was sleeping badly (Mom had already commented on the pouches under my eyes), and little noises, even a dropped book in study hall, made me jump. I kept thinking I’d open my closet to get a shirt and he’d be in there, my own personal boogeyman. Or under the bed, and what if he grabbed my wrist or my dangling foot while I was sleeping? I didn’t think he could grab, but I wasn’t sure of that, either, especially if he was getting stronger.

What if I woke up and he was lying in bed with me? Maybe even grabbing at my junk?

That was an idea that, once thought, couldn’t be unthought.

And something else, something even worse. What if he was still haunting me—because that’s what this was, all right—when I was twenty? Or forty? What if he was there when I died at eighty-nine, waiting to welcome me into the afterlife, where he would go on haunting me even after I was dead?

If this is what a good deed gets you, I thought one night, looking out my window and watching Thumper across the street under his streetlight, I never want to do another one.