What he didn't like was walking past one particular spot on Cloverdale, just a few houses up from Coliseum. And he didn't know why he didn't like it. He'd just be walking along, thinking his thoughts or looking at whatever he looked at, and then, just as he passed between Missy Snipe's house and the Chandresses', he'd suddenly feel distracted and look around him and wonder what he had just seen. Only he hadn't seen anything. Everything looked normal. He'd stand there on the sidewalk, looking around him. Nobody doing anything, except perhaps some neighbor in another yard looking up at him, probably wondering why Miz Ura Lee Smitcher's strange boy was standing there dazed like somebody smacked him in the head.
He always shrugged it off, because he had someplace to go. And yet he remembered it, too, and walked on the east side of the street as often as not, sometimes even crossing over, going out of his way to avoid it, only to cross back again afterward.
What am I afraid of? he asked himself.
Which is why, on one day in that hot summer of the year he turned thirteen, instead of avoiding that spot on the west sidewalk of the lower part of Cloverdale, he made straight for it, made it his destination, and found himself standing there wondering what it was that had bothered him so many times before.
He still couldn't see anything. This was stupid.
He decided to go home.
And there it was again. That moment of startlement. He'd seen it. Out of the corner of his eye.
But when he turned to look, there was nothing. He sidestepped, looking between the houses, going up and down the sidewalk, and there was nothing.
Again he decided to go home.
Again, as he passed the same spot, out of the corner of his eye he saw...
It was out of the corner of his eye.
Instead of sidestepping, he now turned his face resolutely southward, looking up Cloverdale toward the place where it jogged to the west at Sanchez Drive. Without turning his eyes to left or right, he took a few steps backward, then forward, and both times he saw it, just a little flash of something to the right, directly between the houses, right at the property line.
Finally he got it exactly right and stopped, right there, with whatever it was holding steady at the corner of his eye.
He knew better now than to try to look right at it—it would surely disappear. Instead, keeping his gaze southward, he took a step onto the lawn between the houses. And another.
The shimmer became a vertical line, and then it became thicker, like a lamppost or a telephone pole—how much could he see, really, out of the corner of his eye? With each step it widened out, shoving the other houses aside.
Another step and it was as wide as any house in the neighborhood. A whole house, directly between Snipes' and Chandresses', and nobody but him knew it was there, mainly because there was no way in hell it could possibly be there. A whole house that was skinny enough to fit between two houses taking up no space at all.
He reached out a hand and touched a bush growing in the nonexistent front yard. He sidled closer to the house and in a few moments he had his hand resting on the door handle and it was as real and solid as any door handle in the neighborhood.
So he slowly turned his head and this time it didn't disappear. It stayed right where it was.
A whole secret house.
Somebody else might have doubted his sanity. But Mack Street knew he lived in a neighborhood where young swimmers could wish themselves inside a waterbed.
He rang the doorbell.
In a little while he heard someone moving inside. He rang again.
"Don't keep pestering the doorbell," a man called out.
a couple of years.
"Can I use your toilet?" asked Mack.
"No," said the man. "Go away."
But Mack ignored him because he knew that the man didn't really mean it. He walked past him and found the bathroom behind the first door he tried.
"Can't you take no for an answer, boy?" asked the man.
"You want me peeing on your floor?" asked Mack.
"I don't even want you walking on my floor. Who do you think you are?"
"I think I'm the only person in Baldwin Hills who knows this place even exists." Mack finished peeing and flushed and then, being a nurse's son, he washed his hands.
"Doesn't do any good to wash your hands," the man said from outside the bathroom. "The towel's filthy."
"I don't know how it could be," said Mack. "It ain't like you ever use it."
"Not all the company I get is as tidy as you."
"How do you ever get company at all, being how your house is only visible out of the corner of your eye."
"Depends on where you're coming from. The Good Folk find it whenever they care to come and visit."
"I don't know that I'm such bad folk. I think the folk of Baldwin Hills are maybe a little better than average."
"Well, nobody would know that better than you, Mack Street," said the man. "But the Good Folk I was referring to aren't from Baldwin Hills."
"You got any peanut butter?" asked Mack.
"I'm not here to feed you," said the man.
"How did you know my name?" asked Mack, now that he realized that's what the man had just done.
"Everybody knows your name, Mack Street. Just like everybody knows my house."
"They know my house because I'm right on the shore of the strongest river of power the world has seen in five hundred years. And they know your name because that river started flowing the day that you were born. It's like your birth sort of popped the cork and let it rip. Like lava from a volcano.
Power flowing down Magic Street and on through the whole neighborhood."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Bag Baby," said the man.
"What do you know about the day I was born?"
"Everything," said the man. "And everything about your life since that happy day. The woman who tried to get you killed that very first day of your life. The boy who almost did it and then spent years of his life in penance for having even entertained the thought."
"You talking about Ceese?" asked Mack. "You expect me to believe Ceese almost killed me?"
"In fairness, no. He didn't almost do anything. He fought off the desire. Do you have any idea how strong he must be, to resist her?"
"I might if I knew who her was."
The man smiled benignly and passed a hand over Mack's nappy head, which Mack always hated but never complained about. "So you're thirteen now. Your lucky year."
"Doesn't feel all that lucky so far."
"Well, it wouldn't to you, being a child, and therefore incapable of taking the long view of anything."
"How do you keep your house invisible?"
"It's perfectly visible," said the man. "It just takes a little work. There's a lot of things in the world like that. Most people just don't take the time to look for them."
"What's your name?" asked Mack.
"Why, do you plan on opening a bank account for me? Send me a Christmas card?"
Mack didn't like evasiveness. He liked it when people answered plain, even if it was to say, None of your business. "I'll call you Mr. Christmas."
"You don't get to pick names for strangers, not in this place, boy. I'm master of my own house!"
"Then give me something to call you."
"I don't want you to call me," said Mr. Christmas. "I've been called enough in my life, thank you kindly."
"I can't help what ignorant people think. The house is mine and it don't take no deed to prove it."
"I'm hungry," said Mack. He was tired of talking to somebody who wouldn't say anything useful.
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Mr. Christmas.
So he wouldn't even share food with a visitor. "What you got here that's so important you got to hide from the world."
"Me," said Mr. Christmas.
"Why you hiding? You kill somebody?"
"Only now and then, and it was a long time ago."