“I used to hang out in Westbrook,” Pete said. “The drunk girls were the ones you had to watch out for the most. They’d kick your ass.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t want to have to,” Sheila said, laughing. Before long Brad and Lisa joined in the laughter. Pete mimed being scared of Sheila and that kicked off another round of braying.
Lisa snorted one last laugh and then set her mug down on the table. “I can’t stay up drinking all night if we’re leaving in the morning. Good night.”
Pete stood with her and showed her to the door. He waved a silent goodbye to Brad and Sheila before heading off towards his bedroom.
“I’d better go check in on Ted before I hit the sack,” Brad said. “I don’t want him to think he’s on his own tonight.”
“Everyone needs to be on their own sometimes,” Sheila said. “In fact, I plan to be all alone with Mr. Bailey for a few minutes before I retire.” She tipped her mug and nodded at the contents.
“I’ll see you in the morning then,” Brad said. He took a candle from the bookshelf and found his way to the coat closet. Hoping to hold on to the warmth in his belly, he wrapped himself in a thick coat, scarf, hat, and gloves—more than he’d need against the night air.
“Take care,” Sheila said eventually. She’d become preoccupied with the view out the windows.
Brad stretched the band of his headlamp over his hood and tested the light before leaving the apartment. He turned the knob to be sure it was unlocked before pulling the door shut.
IN HIS ROOM, with his blankets pulled up to his ears, Robby stared at his bedroom door. Just enough light from the cloudy night filtered through his curtains to allow him to see. He had slid the dresser, filled with the clothes of a husky teenaged boy, against the door before he crawled into bed. Robby did this every night. Logic guided most of Robby’s actions, but not this one—not any of the desperate things he did to feel safe enough to fall asleep.
He counted to forty-three before he stole a glance over his shoulder at the window. No eyes were looking back at him through the window. Nothing he could see was trying to get in.
Robby clutched the visor mirror to his chest. It was the mirror from the Volvo he’d adopted down in New Hampshire. It was the mirror where he’d seen his father’s eyes looking back instead of his own on that night outside the rest stop. When sleep wouldn’t come he knew he could always look in the mirror and see his father’s eyes.
He counted to thirty-eight before he pushed down the covers to make sure the closet door was still shut. Robby returned his eyes to the dresser and reset his count back to one. If he could count past forty-three before feeling compelled to look at the window, then perhaps he could eventually get some sleep.
Four. Five. Six. Seven. There’s nothing in the window. My window is at least forty feet above the street.
More than two-dozen times he’d told his story—recounted to another survivor how he’d ended up living in Portland after the big storm—but he’d never mentioned what happened the first night at the rest stop in the stolen Volvo.
Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven.
He didn’t even allow himself to think of that night except when it crept back in around the edges of normal thoughts as he tried to fall asleep.
Twelve. Thirteen.
It was the curse of his treasured mirror. He held onto it because reflected in the small vanity mirror, his own eyes looked just like his dad’s. But the mirror also reminded him of that night; of what happened when he’d drifted off to sleep while watching his dad’s eyelids slowly droop closed.
Fourteen.
If he could hold off until forty-four, then he was making progress against his compulsion to check the window.
When he held the mirror, Robby heard his dad’s voice in his head. “You’re being silly, Robby. You know that, right?”
Fifteen. Sixteen.
All he wanted was to go to sleep and give himself over to dreams he could easily forget in the morning.
“Yes, Dad,” Robby thought.
Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen.
Robby fell asleep.
THE HALLWAY WAS COLD. It almost felt colder than outside. Brad walked right past the stairwell next to the elevators. Those stairs didn’t have any windows. Going down those stairs at night felt like descending into a deep cave below sea level. At the bottom level he would pause, afraid to open the doors, afraid seawater would rush in and drown him.
Instead, Brad took the walkway to the parking garage and used those stairs. With open doorways at each landing, and big windows looking out to the cloudy night, he wouldn’t need his headlamp to find his way down. Brad brushed a gloved hand lightly down the bannister as he wound down the stairs to street-level. He paused at the second floor landing to look out the window. Across the street, in the direction of the highway, a brief flicker of light caught his attention. It was gone before he could pinpoint the origin.
Before exiting the stairwell, Brad tightened the scarf around his neck—adjusting it to cover the lower half of his face—and braced himself for the wind. The hinge squealed as Brad pushed open the door and stepped out into the night.
Brad walked up the sidewalk and stayed close to the building on his left. Most of businesses had awnings, so the old snow on the sidewalk was intermittent. He crossed in and out, from dry pavement to a thin crust of trampled snow. He and the others had walked the streets dozens of times since moving into the apartment building, so individual footprints were impossible to distinguish except for the odd stray.
Brad stopped when a set of footprints veered from the others and headed off across the street. He stopped and stared. There was something strange about the footprints. The clouds didn’t offer enough light for any detail. Brad looked up and down the street before turning on his headlamp. Once he did, he knew why the prints looked strange. First, the prints were too small. The stride matched his own, but the length of each print was tiny. Brad hunched and followed the prints as they dropped over the curb and headed diagonally across the street. On each left print he could see a perfect print of the sole of the shoe. On each right, the print was twisted; smeared by a foot that turned as it lifted.
Brad shut off his light and crouched in the middle of the street while he waited for his eyes to readjust to the dark. He wondered if Brynn had left the prints. Brynn’s feet would be small enough, but Brad couldn’t remember if Brynn had walked with a limp. He doubted it. Brynn had leapt over the table to get to Lisa’s fresh bread. Wouldn’t he have noticed if Brynn had limped while making the jump?
Brad shuffled across the street and ducked into a doorway. The footprints continued up the street a few feet away from him and then disappeared under an awning. They didn’t reappear on the other side. Either the owner vanished or they entered the building. Given all the vanishings, either explanation seemed reasonable to Brad. The thin layer of snow hadn’t melted or really drifted in the past couple of months, but it had blown around enough to soften the edges of other footprints and tire-tracks. These prints were so crisp. They had to be recent.
Brad looked back towards the apartment building. He could fetch Pete and they could investigate the tracks together, or he could just wait for morning and not wake anyone else up. He glanced in the direction of the highway. Brad took his first step back towards the apartment building.
The sound of a child sobbing stopped him. It seemed to come from the building where the footprints ended, but it was so quiet that Brad couldn’t be sure. He turned back to look, but kept his feet moving in the direction of his temporary home. Warning klaxons fired off in his brain. His instincts told him to run—run from the weird footprints, and run from what sounded to be a child in distress. Brad stayed calm and moved cautiously, back towards his building.