Unhinged

Chapter 1

Chapter 1“I don’t know that I can move.” I looked over at Ernie, who set the last of the boxes down on the hardwood floor. He grinned at me in that way of his, that lazy lopsided smile that never failed to set my heart to fluttering.

“You’re exhausted. It’s understandable. I told you we should have hired movers or at least coerced some of our friends into helping us.”

“I know. I know.” I waved his I-told-you-so speech away with a weary hand. “I just wanted to get it done, and the quickest, cheapest way was just the two of us and a U-Haul.”

“And look at you now.”

I could envision what Ernie saw, me sitting against one wall, legs splayed out before me like a discarded marionette, looking like the act of drawing breath took too much effort, which wasn’t far from the truth. Even my dark brown hair, I was certain, looked wilted. Ernie and I had been at it since early that morning, and now our east-facing windowed wall revealed twilight hues—pink and lavender near the horizon and the dark navy of night at the top. It was a stunning view until it was broken by the screeching, lumbering, sparking form of a Chicago el train as it rumbled by, vibrating the boxes on the floor and making some slide a little on the hardwood. Oh, it was going to be fun living here!

Ernie had thought I was crazy when I told him four weeks ago I wanted to move here. But Ernie indulges me. Whatever Ricky wants, Ricky gets. Ernie’s modus operandi had served our nine-year-old relationship well so far.

“Yes, I admit it. I’m tired. Worn out. Exhausted. We can unpack tomorrow.”

I grinned at Ernie, who had opened one of the boxes and was sorting through it. Unlike me, Ernie’s fatigue had manifested itself in restlessness. “Do you even know what you’re looking for?”

He glanced up, as if caught at something, and laughed. “No. Just keeping busy.”

“I would think you would have had enough ‘busy’ for one day. Come over here and sit beside me.” I patted the floor. Tired as I was, Ernie still looked mighty good. His ebony skin and tall muscled frame were packed into a pair of old ripped jeans and a Roosevelt University T-shirt, darkened at the pits, which, perversely, I found very sexy.

“Said the spider to the fly?” Ernie shook his head. “Don’t think I don’t see that look in your eye. No, I think I’ll run the truck back to the U-Haul place before it closes. Then we won’t have to worry about it tomorrow. I don’t suppose you’d like to join me?” Ernie shrugged into a worn denim jacket.

“I would, but I thought I’d take care of some unpacking while you did that.”

“Right! Right. I’ll expect to see an amazing transformation by the time I get back. Rugs unfurled. Furniture placed just so. Pictures hung.”

He crossed the one big room of our new home and squatted down next to me. He leaned in and kissed me. His lips were warm and his skin felt hot, smelling of musk. I pulled him in closer, hungrily. He almost lost his balance.

I whispered, “The pictures might not be hung, but just be glad your boyfriend is.” He stood quickly, knowing from years of experience how this scenario would end up if he didn’t put the brakes on.

I grinned at him, panting a little. “Go on, leave me here all frustrated.”

Ernie glanced back toward the window as another train went by. “Maybe you can keep the mood alive by playing to the crowds on the train.” He leered and winked.

“Perv. Don’t you have a hot date with a truck?”

“I’m going. I’m going.”

I stared at the door after Ernie left, and then I leaned over and switched off the lamp on the floor next to me. The dark made the window and the railway scene just outside come to even more vibrant life. Would Ernie and I ever get used to living in this fishbowl?

It seemed as though only moments had passed when I heard someone jiggling the doorknob. “Ernie!” I cried out, rousing myself from the floor, where I had just about drifted off into a wiped-out slumber. “We are not going to have the same problem with keys in this place that we had on Eastwood, are we?” I had accused my man of senility more than one time because of his annoying habit of seldom knowing where he had left his keys.

I brushed the dust off the seat of my pants and started toward the door. Before I reached it, though, the door swung open.

Ernie was not on the other side. I sucked in some air.

Instead, a complete stranger stood in the doorway. He was about my age, mid-twenties, and stood about five-foot-four with a too-thin frame that made me want to feed him a few Giordano’s pizzas. The guy had dark, buzzed hair and a matching goatee. His skin, even in this dim light, looked ashen, marred by sores in various stages of healing. He stood just over the threshold and the weird thing was, it was like he didn’t even see me. Dark eyes darted about our new home, as if he were looking for something.

“Hello?” I said, standing still. I think I was too weirded out to be scared at this point. I just assumed maybe he had the wrong apartment. He certainly looked harmless enough. In fact, if I put enough breath behind it, I thought I could probably blow him off his feet.

But he didn’t answer. He continued to look right through me, as though I wasn’t standing there, all six-feet-two inches of me. Other than stacks of boxes, rolled-up rugs tied with twine, and furniture shoved at odd angles, I was pretty hard to miss, even in the orange-tinted light seeping in from our huge window.

And then he came into the room. Walked right into my and Ernie’s new home.

“What are you doing?” I snapped. “Can I help you?” I moved a bit closer, thinking to block further entry. Should I call out for help?

It was as though he didn’t hear me. He continued his progress into the apartment unabated. I was too stunned to do anything but stand and watch, gnawing on a hangnail. He moved into the center of the room and did something really strange—he squatted and felt around on the bare floor, as though he was groping for something. He paused and then the rest of his actions were all pantomimed. To the best of my ability, I could discern what looked like someone taking a pipe in his hands, bringing it to his lips, firing up a bowl with—again—a non-existent lighter, and then blowing out an invisible cloud of smoke. He closed his eyes and whatever his imagination told him he was smoking must have been deeply satisfying. His eyes popped open once more, and he appeared all at once more alert.

It was then he seemed to notice me standing there. I’m sure I was slack jawed and, to be honest, starting to get a little bit scared. I wondered where I had left my cell phone. Would anyone hear me if I screamed? Over the roar of an el train?

He smiled, and there was something winsome and sad in it, something plaintive in those brown eyes. But his teeth were repellent—how did someone so young end up with such badly decayed teeth? He held the imaginary pipe out to me. When I didn’t move, he shook the hand holding the “pipe” impatiently, as though beckoning me to take it.

“What the f**k?” I whispered. I moved toward him.

That’s when I heard the creak of the floor, and I turned just in time to see a shadow cross the wall. It was fast—almost a blur. But the dark shape had a human form. For some reason, the shadow brought with it an icy chill.

I wanted to scream but could not find my voice.

When I turned back, the intruder was gone, as though the shadow I had seen a moment ago had swallowed him up.

“Honey? Rick?”

I swam up from dream to wakefulness all at once, feeling disoriented. I was panting.

I looked up into Ernie’s brown eyes, which focused on me with concern. “Bad dream? I could hear you screaming from all the way down the hall.”

My tongue felt thick in my mouth. What had just happened? It all seemed so real. I shook my head, looking around me, assuring myself that where I was now, in this moment—that was what was genuine.

Had I simply dreamt the little man? But everything that had just occurred had all the earmarks of reality, deeply steeped in the present. He had been here, hadn’t he? The little guy with the bad teeth and the ripped jeans? He wore a Keith Haring T-shirt.

“Huh?” I stared up, dumb, at Ernie. My heart hammered away, hard enough to cause me to worry about it being up to the task. I wanted to pinch myself to ensure I was really here…that it was really now.

Ernie squatted down beside me and gathered me in his arms. “Oh my poor baby. You must have had a hell of a nightmare.”

I gripped him, feeling chilled in spite of the heat radiating off Ernie’s body. Burying my nose in his chest, I whimpered, “Did you forget your keys?”

He pulled back, enough, I suppose, to search my face for a sign that I was kidding. “No. Why would you ask that?”

I swallowed as the spit worked its way back into my dry mouth and throat. “Didn’t you just leave?”

Ernie’s eyebrows came together in confusion. “Yeah…well, about forty minutes ago to be exact. There was some kind of delay on the el and so I went down to Broadway and got a cab.” He paused. “Hon, you were asleep. You had a bad dream. You get that?”

I nodded, not at all sure I did.

“What was the dream?” Ernie put a calming hand to my cheek.

I shivered, remembering the little man who had just been here. Hadn’t he? No, Ernie was right. I had just had a bad dream—yet it was so real. “I don’t know. It seemed like it was really happening. I thought it was you coming back. Someone jiggled the doorknob, and I got up to let the person I thought was you in, but it wasn’t you.” My heart, which had just begun to settle, sped up again as the image of the intruder crystallized once more in my mind. I barked out a short laugh, but there was no mirth in it, just nerves.

Ernie let go, sitting down on the floor close enough so that we still touched. Into the darkness, I related the details of the dream, the man, what seemed to be his pantomimed actions of lighting a pipe, holding it out to me.

When I was done, I suppose it did sound like a dream.

“Weird,” was all my eloquent boyfriend could say. “See what happens when you wear yourself out like that?”

“I see.” I sat quiet for a long time, watching as one northbound and one southbound train passed.

Finally, I let my head loll on Ernie’s shoulder and spoke softly. “What if it wasn’t a dream?”

“What you talkin’ about, Willis?” Ernie loved to use the vintage TV show line. He thought it was a scream. Unfortunately, no one else did. Me, I found it kind of endearing.

“I mean, what if I wasn’t dreaming? What if there’s some kind of leftover energy in this apartment and I just happened to see it? Maybe my being so tired put me in a place where I’d be receptive to such things.”

“Oh, don’t go all Twilight Zone on me now. What do you think? You saw a ghost?”

“Not a ghost. Just a fragment, you know?”

“Um, no.”

“Like maybe someone who lived here before.”

“Hon, you were asleep. I had to shake you awake. You didn’t ‘see’ anything.”

I sighed. I guessed he was right. Shouldn’t I feel relieved? But even if I hadn’t seen a ghost or some misplaced psychic energy, I still had trouble convincing myself I hadn’t actually seen something. Ghost or not, the image of that man coming into the apartment haunted me.

“You wanna go get something to eat? There’s a horrible cheeseburger and hot dog place down the street that looks fabulously unhealthy and just perfect.” Ernie grinned at me, and I knew he was trying to make me feel better by appealing to my taste for fast food.

But right then, fast food and bright lights, maybe some noisy teenagers, sounded very good, very real.

“Let’s go.”