Ding Dong Dead

20

He gazes curiously up the street, not that he can see the house from where he stands. He’d have to walk two blocks, then over one more if he wants to stand right in front of it.

His cherry pipe tobacco, the first bowl of the day, catches the flame from the matchstick. Smoke swirls upward on this gray morning, the first overcast sky in weeks. Let it rain for a change, really come down in buckets. He likes when the earth can’t take the load and water runs in streams, flooding streets. Weather reporters in Phoenix have a mundane job. The same old, same old. Pollen counts aren’t interesting for long. But rain, that’s something to start a conversation.

Traffic-cars and pedestrians-hurries along. Already, early this morning, he has waved to some, called out to others, listened patiently while neighbors griped about this and that, pollution, smog, neighborhood pets, you name it.

All the while his thoughts bubble like a shaken can of soda, ready to explode. Especially now, with what he’s just heard.

“Mr. B.,” she says, calling him back from wherever his mind has wandered. “Want one?” Cramming Dunkin’ Donuts into her piehole. Offering friendship. He waves it away without transferring his eyes from up the street. Nice try, but no thanks.

He hears a growl from inside a bag on her shoulder. Ratlike thing with beady eyes stares out at him. Growls again. They exchange glares. The dog looks away first.

She’s finished with the tale, but he has questions. “Skeleton in the closet, you say? Imagine that.” Everybody has ’em, only this isn’t what she means. These are real bones. He wonders what they look like. “Anybody get a picture?”

A vigorous shake from her, whole body a big negative. “No,” she says. “My friend? You know the one who dresses to match her dog? She had a camera, but she didn’t pull herself together in time after the shock. It isn’t every day you find a skeleton.”

“Too bad. Convenient that she had a camera with her, though.”

“They were trying to get photographs of a ghost.” She has crumbs on her lower lip. Brushes them away. “Instead they found a dead body. The place is haunted, you know?”

“I can see why.”

What’s her name again? Starts with an A. After a month. August? April? That’s it. “You sure have the details, April.” She’s been spewing them at him, along with donut crumbs, one after another, like she knows what she’s talking about. Wasn’t even there. If he hadn’t volunteered the use of his building for their event, he’d miss out on all this action. Living right upstairs helps, too, makes him feel part of things.

“They found a headless doll body in the closet, too, with the headless skeleton.”

“How old do you think the bones are? Did anyone say?” The house has been vacant for what? A decade? Two? What a perfect place to stash a body. In a house nobody wants.

April chews a chunk of donut.

“Could be only a few months, I think,” she says, like she knows her corpse decomposition facts.

April bounces away from the street corner and disappears inside the banquet hall. Pretty soon more of them will show up. He’s still exchanging greetings when the shakes start. Like ground tremors along a fault line, his body begins to tremble and all the self-will in the world can’t control it.

A group of women in the cast walk toward him, crossing the street against the light, oblivious to traffic. A car honks and they step it up. One of them looks directly at him, right into his eyes.

He’s almost sick on the sidewalk.

When will she stop tormenting him?

Every last one of them looks exactly like her.