Lost Boys Read online

  Step tried to make up for DeAnne's preoccupation with Zap by playing games with the kids, but as often as not he was fixing meals or doing laundry while DeAnne napped, and so he wasn't actually involved in what the kids were doing. And whenever possible he closed himself off in his office, struggling with IBM PC assembly language until he finally realized that he could get similar results using the new Turbo C language, which amounted to throwing away all he had done so far and starting over. It was maddening work, in part because the computer was so annoyingly designed and he had to use so many kludges to make the graphics work halfway decently or to get the tiny PC speaker to produce sounds that didn't make you want to sledgehammer the machine into silence. When Step was finding a bug or puzzling out a solution to a particular problem, his concentration was so deep that he'd look up from his computer wondering if DeAnne needed him to help fix lunch, only to discover that it was dusk outside and she was already in the kitchen washing up after dinner.

  Back in Indiana they had already determined that their lives worked more smoothly if she didn't make it a point to call Step to dinner. If he was concentrating so heavily that he didn't notice her calling the kids, then he wouldn't want her to interrupt him anyway.

  So they were both a bit hit-and- miss when it came to the three older children that fall, and when they noticed, as they often did, that Stevie was still involved with his invisible friends to the exclusion of almost everything else, it bothered them, but they were able to console themselves that it didn't mean he was losing his mind or that anybody was out to get him. It was just a trial he was passing through, and in the end it might even strengthen him. In the meantime there was Zap and Hacker Snack and not all that much time left over.

  On the first of September CNN was full of the news of Korean Air Lines flight 007, which had gone down over Soviet airspace, probably shot down by the Russians. Step and DeAnne were complete news junkies- they ate dinner with the TV blaring away in the family room so they could hear it in the kitchen.

  The phone rang. DeAnne was already up getting something from the fridge and she snagged the receiver off the hook, said a couple of words, and handed it to Step. "It's Lee."

  "Hi, Lee," said Step. "You're really something, calling me on the first day of the month. You'll make me into a first-rate home teacher yet."

  "Don't waste my time," said Lee.

  "Sorry," said Step. What was his problem? "What did you call about?"

  "I know all about it," said Lee. "I know what you did. You're the one who has to put everybody under the water yourself, aren't you?"

  "What? I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Don't act innocent with me," said Lee. "I can hear your TV on in the background. You're tuned to CNN

  just like Mother. You put them in the water, all of them."

  "Lee, do you actually think I had something to do with that Korean Air Lines jet?"

  "All I want to know from you is, are prepared for the consequences of nuclear war? Because the Communists won't let you baptize them. They're not Christian, and they won't put up with it. They'll send the missiles. I've studied the effects of nuclear war. I know about nuclear winter. I know what it will be like for the common people. But you're too smart to be trapped. Nobody can trap you."

  Whatever precipice Lee had been walking along all these months, Step realized, he was definitely over the edge now.

  "Lee, there isn't going to be nuclear war."

  Lee laughed. "Did you think you could just lie to me and I'd go away? No, I'm not going to forget you. I'm stuck to you like glue. When you get on that submarine, I'm going to be with you."

  "Lee, are you at home right now?"

  "God is in me now, Step. I'm not even using the phone, what do you think of tha t?"

  "Well I'm using the phone," said Step.

  "I don't need telephones when God is in me. I can see you right now. I can see your whole family."

  "Where are you?"

  "I'm everywhere. I'm in everything. I am love, Step. I am that I am." He giggled. "Moses never did understand what I meant by that."

  "Lee, get ahold of yourself."

  "All of those people under the water, like Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea. You want to be Moses? Parting the water, drowning people? Well, you can be my prophet if you want to. But you'd better pray first. You'd better offer a sacrifice."

  Lee's words had long since gone from strange to disturbing. "Where are you, Lee?"

  "You can't find me," said Lee. "Nobody can, because I'm invisible."

  "Why did you call me?"

  "Because you're the only one who has the power to say no to me."

  "Not even your mother?"

  "Shh." Suddenly he was whispering. "Don't tell her. Promise."

  "I can't promise that, Lee. You need help."

  "No, you need help!" Lee sounded very angry, now, but he was still speaking in a fairly low voice. "You need a lot of help, because I'm going to stop you before you put everybody under the water. I will not allow you to destroy the world again."

  "Lee, I'm just a guy you go home teaching with."

  "I know that," said Lee, derisively. "Do you think I don't know who you are? You must be crazy if you think you can hide from me."

  "I'm hanging up now, Lee."

  "Don't leave without me." Lee suddenly sounded frightened, desperate. "Let me have a place on the submarine! I won't eat much."

  "Good-bye, Lee."

  "Do you really have to go?"

  "Yes."

  "OK." Now he sounded cheerful. "Nice talking to you. Ta-ta for now!"

  Step set the receiver back on the hook. "DeAnne, I need Dr. Weeks's number."

  Before he finished saying it, she handed him a note card with the number written on it. "Her home phone?" he asked.

  "I looked it up," said DeAnne. "I had a feeling you'd be using it."

  When he got her on the phone, Dr. Weeks did not sound at all surprised to learn that Lee had called. "He said he was invisible," Step explained. "He said that he was talking to me without using a phone."

  "Well, he was using the phone," said Dr. Weeks.

  "Yes, I know that." He covered the receiver and whispered to DeAnne, "She thinks I'm crazy." Then to Dr.

  Weeks he said, "Listen, something's wrong with Lee and I wanted you to know, that's all. He's really upset and he's talking about being God and he thinks I shot down flight 007."

  "Apparently you've become a power figure to him," said Dr. Weeks. "These fixations never last and he means no harm."

  "So you've got things under control?"

  "He palms his pills, you see," said Dr. Weeks. "But eventually he has to sleep."

  "He's on medication?"

  "I don't discuss matters like this with nonprofessionals," said Dr. Weeks.

  "Fine," said Step. "Just keep your son from calling nonprofessionals and you won't have to discuss it with them."

  "Thank you for your concern," said Dr. Weeks. "I'll handle things now. Good-bye."

  That was that.

  "What did she say?" asked DeAnne.

  "I guess she's handling it." But he thought of the delusions that Lee was creating about him and his family, and he wondered if Dr. Weeks really had anything under control at all.

  Step was in the grocery store when an insistent voice started calling out, "Brother Fletcher! Brother Fletcher!" It startled him, to hear himself called Brother outside of church. Most Mormons were a bit more discreet than that. Then he saw it was Sister LeSueur, and he understood.

  "How is that lovely family of yours doing, Brother Fletcher?" she asked.

  "Just fine," he said.

  "I've been praying for your family every day," she said. "And I dedicated my Thursday fast to your little baby last week. I fast every Thursday, you know."

  "Thanks for thinking of us," said Step, eager to get away from her. She was speaking so loudly. She must want something from him, but he couldn't guess what it might be.

  "I receiv
ed a witness that you are indeed special unto the Lord," she said.

  "How kind of him to tell you that," said Step. He glanced past her down the aisle, to see if anyone had been attracted by the noise. No one was even there. Or behind him, either. They had the canned soup section all to themselves.

  "But there must needs be a time of testing first," said Sister LeSueur. "That's what your dear little baby is all about."

  Step felt anger well up inside. How dare she attempt to co-opt Zap's tenuous little life. "I think Zap's life is going to be about himself," said Step. "Just like any other child."

  She reached out and touched his arm, beaming. "You are so right, Brother Fletcher. It must be wonderful, to be blessed with so much insight from the Spirit."

  "I really have to get the shopping done and get home, so ..."

  At the end of the aisle, a woman was standing, watching them. Step knew her, but he couldn't place her.

  Was she somebody from Eight Bits?

  "Don't you think it's time for you to bless your child?" asked Sister LeSueur.

  "Don't you think that's a matter for me and DeAnne to decide?" No, the woman wasn't from Eight Bits. It was Mrs. Jones. He hadn't recognized her immediately last' time, either, when they met in the drugstore back when Zap was still in the hospital. She was so nondescript.

  "The Lord expects us to act boldly and with faith, Brother Fletcher," Sister LeSueur said. "That's what I was told in my dream. The blessing is yours by right, if only you have faith enough to demand it. Like the time I was urgently needed to perform compassionate service. There had been an ice storm the night before, and yet I didn't have time to clear the ice off my car. So I told the Lord that if he wanted me to perform this service in his name, he would need to clear my windshield so I could drive. And when I came outside, mine was the only car that didn't have two inches of ice encasing it."

  Mrs. Jones's gaze never wavered. She thinks I'm stalking her, thought Step. With a cart full of groceries and a list in my hand, she thinks I'm here just to pester her.

  "The Spirit spake to me in a dream and told me that it's time for Brother Fletcher to claim a healing blessing from the Lord."

  "We ask for blessings," said Step. "We don't demand them."

  "'I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say,"' she quoted. "Bind the Lord, Brother Fletcher, bind him and heal your child. You are holding his sweet little soul hostage to your pride, saith the Lord."

  Saith Dolores LeSueur, Step answered silently.

  "You must bend yourself to the will of the Lord, and cease rejecting his word to you. Do you pay your tithing faithfully?"

  Still Mrs. Jones stood there. If only I had the tape with me, I could throw it at her and make her stop watching every move I make. He smiled at Sister LeSueur, thinking: I'm faking a smile. Mrs. Jones is watching me like that song by The Police.

  "Go unto your child, lay your hands on his head, and command him to rise up and walk!"

  "That would be a miracle," he said. "He's barely two months old."

  It was as if he had dashed cold water on her. "I know that," she said. "I was sure you would understand that I spoke figuratively."

  I'm sure you'll understand that I speak figuratively when I tell you to go sit on a broom handle and spin.

  "Sister LeSueur, I appreciate your advice. Now I need to finish my shopping." He swung his cart around to head down the aisle away from Mrs. Jones. But Sister LeSueur caught at his sleeve.

  "Brother Fletcher, you cannot resist the Lord forever."

  He turned to face her. "I ha ve never resisted the Lord in my life, Sister LeSueur, and I never will. But I'm not so hungry for dialogue with him that I have to make up his part as well as my own."

  Her voice got a hard edge. "Beware of how the Lord will chasten you for your pride."

  This would be the perfect moment for Mrs. Jones to pull a gun out of her purse and shoot me dead. Sister LeSueur could live off that one event for the rest of her life. But Mrs. Jones wasn't there anymore. She had slipped away while his back was turned.

  "'I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children," said Sis ter LeSueur.

  He pushed his cart away from her. In one moment he had played out in his mind the whole scene of his death at Mrs. Jones's hand. It had been so vivid that he could now remember moments of it as if he had actually seen them. The gun coming out of her purse, pointing at his chest-he could have reached out and touched the cold metal. Was that how Stevie's imaginary friends were to him? How Sister LeSueur's visions were to her?

  Never there in reality, and yet when they came back in memory, so real-seeming.

  "'Unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,"' said Sister LeSueur.

  He turned the corner at the end of the aisle, leaving Sister LeSueur's vengeful doctrine behind him. He quickly propelled the cart through the store, weaving among the other shoppers as if on the freeway. It took a while before he realized that he was no longer running away from Sister LeSueur, he was looking for Mrs.

  Jones. Because she had been watching him. Because she had made him think of the song. He had to know.

  She wasn't down any of the aisles. She wasn't in the checkout lines. Abandoning his cart, Step rushed out of the store and scanned the parking lot. There she was, walking briskly among the cars. He hurried after her.

  Perhaps he should have called to her, but he was afraid that she would run away, since she already thought he was stalking her. As it was, when he caught up with her, just as she was putting her key in the door of the Pinto, she gave a little scream.

  Step made sure to stay well away from her, his hands in plain sight.

  "Mrs. Jones, I wasn't stalking you. I was grocery shopping."

  She said nothing.

  "But are you stalking me?" he asked.

  Her lip curled in contempt.

  "You sent me that record, didn't you?"

  Her face went blank. "What record?"

  "By The Police. That song about watching. Someone mailed it to our house."

  "I don't even know where you live."

  "We're in the book," said Step, "so don't be absurd. Just tell me if you sent it."

  She smiled. "So," she said. "You don't like knowing that some body's watching, is that it?"

  "I never dealt with you anonymously Mrs. Jones."

  "I didn't mail you anything, Mr. Fletcher," she said, "so it must have been one of the other people yo u're blackmailing."

  "Nobody else has persecuted any of my children," said Step.

  "So you think it's me. You blame one more problem in your family on a woman who isn't even your son's teacher anymore."

  She's enjoying this, he thought. She loves knowing that I'm really bothered by that anonymous record. Just as with Stevie, she loves to make somebody else squirm.

  "Your lawyer never called me about a restraining order," said Step.

  She shrugged.

  "But Captain Douglas of the Steuben police thinks that the fingerprints on the envelope the record came in should be enough to make a positive identification that will stand up in court."

  "Don't be stupid," she said.

  "Wore gloves, huh?" he asked. "But you didn't wear gloves when you licked the stamp and pressed it onto the envelope."

  The stricken look on her face would have been answer enough. Her sudden relaxation a moment later confirmed it.

  "That was a relief, I see," said Step.

  "What do you mean?" she said.

  "Remembering that you had the guy at the post office meter it."

  Her face revealed her inner struggle. Had she really let him know that she sent it, or was he bluffing?

  "You never thought I was stalking you," said Step. "You've known all along that you were the one watching me. So I'm telling you now, stop it. I've already given your name to the police as a possible sender of that record. They're watching you. So it's time for you to leave me and my family alone."

  "Leave you alone!" She sounded defiant, b
ut his mention of the police had clearly bothered her.

  "We've done you no harm. I could have reported what you did to the school board and sued the school district and you personally for what you did to Stevie. Your name could have been in all the papers. Instead I tried to be decent and handle it privately. Be grateful for that and stop looking to get even."

  "Grateful," she scoffed. "To you? You're so smart, Mr. Fletcher. You and your clever little boy. You can take away other people's careers. You can make them work as temps and live with humiliation and fear every day of their lives."

  "Just as Stevie did," said Step.

  She glared at him, opened the door of her car, turned her back on him as she slipped inside.

  "I keep almost feeling sorry for you," said Step. "And then you prove to me all over again that you thrive on hurting other people. That's what evil is, Mrs. Jones. That's what you are."

  She hesitated before closing the door of the car, as if searching for some final, clinching retort. Then she slammed the door and started the engine. Step watched her pull out of the parking place and, with a squeal of tires, race for the street.

  At least now I know who sent the record, thought Step. It wasn't from the killer, just as Douglas said. It was from a bully. It was no worse than that.

  When he got inside, someone had taken his shopping cart. No doubt a store employee was carefully putting everything back on the shelves. He sighed, pulled his list out of his pocket, and started over.

  One night late in September, Step was going to be alone with the children while DeAnne was making a presentation on journalkeeping at homemaking meeting. He knew he should be helping to keep the children out of her hair as she got ready to go, but he was in the middle of a complicated algorithm that wouldn't seem to go right, and he kept thinking, In a minute I'll go help.

  Robbie was walking up and down the ha ll, bouncing a ball as hard as he could, a relentless thump, thump, thump that was about to drive Step crazy. Finally he couldn't stand it anymore. He got up and went into the hall to put a stop to the bouncing. At the same moment, DeAnne emerged from the bedroom in her slip, with the same mission in mind. Poor Robbie stood in the hall between them, looking in dread from one to the other.