Lunar Park

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9

29. the attack

Robert Miller had begun the cleansing on Thursday, November sixth, starting with the exterminator he always used in such cases, tenting the house at six o’clock that evening. On the following night of November seventh Miller’s team set up their equipment in 307 Elsinore Lane and left, returning on Saturday night—exactly twenty-four hours later—and once it was understood that the space had been cleaned removed their equipment from the house. This was all relayed to me by Robert Miller in a phone call after my plane landed at the Midland Airport at 2:15 on Sunday afternoon as I was driving the Range Rover back into town. Miller felt confident that the house was “safe.” He mentioned “specific changes” that had occurred after his team returned on Saturday. He assured me that I would be pleased with these transformations. The damage that had occurred during the ISR was not “corrected” (the door that flew from its hinges; the hole punctured in the wall) but he insisted I would be gratified by the “physical differences” in the rest of the house. After this conversation, my need to see the house was overpowering. Instead of heading to the Four Seasons I drove to 307 Elsinore Lane.

The first thing I noticed—and I gasped at this as I pulled up to the house—was that the lily white paint had returned, replacing the pink stucco that had infected its exterior. I remember parking the Range Rover in the driveway and walking toward the house in awe, my hand clutching the keys, and the sheer relief washing through me caused my body to feel different. The regret that had been defining me lifted off, and I became someone else. I walked to the side of the house—now the same blank white that had been there in July—and I touched the wall and felt nothing except a sense of peace that, for once, I hadn’t imposed upon myself. It was genuine.

Inside the house, I felt no fear; there was no trepidation anymore. I could sense the change; something had been freed. There was a new scent, a lack of pressure, a difference that was intangible but still able somehow to announce itself forcefully. I was surprised when Victor came loping out of the kitchen to greet me in the foyer. No longer in the basement kennel at the hotel, he was wagging his tail and seemed genuinely excited by my presence. There was none of the usual glowering reluctance emanating from him whenever I entered his line of vision. But I couldn’t concentrate on the dog for long, since the living room had changed miraculously. The green shag had returned to a flat beige sheet, and the curtains from 1976 that were hanging from a window (only days ago) had disappeared, and the furniture was arranged as it had been when I moved in. I closed my eyes and thought: thank you. There was a future (though not in this particular home—I was already planning on moving elsewhere) and I could think about the future because after becoming so used to things not working out I now, for one moment, believed things could change. And the transformation of the house validated this.

Victor’s licking of my hand caused me to reach for the cell phone in my pocket.

I dialed Marta.

(The following exchange was pieced together following a conversation I had with Marta Kauffman on Tuesday, November eighteenth.)

“Marta?”

“Hey—what’s up?” she said. “Are you back?”

“Yeah, I’m actually here at the house. I drove in from the airport to check it out.” I paused as I moved into the kitchen.

“Well, everything’s been pretty good—”

“What’s Victor doing here? I thought I told you not to—”

“Oh yeah,” Marta said. “We just brought him back this morning.”

“Why did you bring him back?”

“He was freaking out in the kennels, and the hotel told me we had to get him out of there. And since you told me the house would be finished by Sunday, we dropped him off a couple hours ago. Is he okay?”

“Yeah . . . he’s okay . . .”

At this point I had moved out of the kitchen and into the foyer.

I was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and then, with no hesitation, I started climbing them.

“Well, he was completely unhinged over here,” Marta said. “The cages were small, and he just wasn’t happy and of course Robby and Sarah started getting upset. But once we dropped him off at the house he seemed fine. He totally relaxed and—”

“How are the kids?” I asked, cutting her off, realizing how unimportant Victor seemed to me.

“Well, Sarah’s right here with me—”

“What about Robby?”

(Marta Kauffman later testified that I asked this with an “unnatural urgency.”)

“Robby went to the mall with some friends to see a movie.”

(“Who came back to the house when you dropped Victor off?” I do not recall asking this but according to Marta Kauffman’s deposition on November eighteenth, I had.)

“We all did.” Marta paused. “Robby needed to pick up some stuff.”

I do remember, however, that at this point I was heading toward Robby’s door.

“Pick up some stuff for what?” I asked.

“He said he was going to spend the night at a friend’s.”

“What friend?”

“Ashton, I think.” She paused. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he said Ashton.”

(Before walking into the room I murmured something that neither I nor Marta Kauffman could recall on November eighteenth but was, according to the writer: “Why would Robby have to pick up stuff if Ashton lives next door?”)

“Bret, it’s no big deal. It was just some clothes. He was in his room for ten minutes. Nadine Allen’s picking them up from the mall, and he should be back at their place by four—”

“Can you give me his cell number?”

Marta sighed—which pissed me off, I recall that flicker of rage—and gave it to me.

“I’m coming right back to the hotel,” I said. “I’ll see you guys in about twenty minutes.”

“Do you want to talk to Sarah—”

After hanging up on Marta, I dialed Robby’s number.

I waited by his door. There was no answer.

But I wasn’t worried and I didn’t leave a message.

Why would I?

He was at the Fortinbras Mall with friends and they were watching a movie and he had diligently turned off the phone once it began (a scenario impossibly distant from what actually happened that day) and then I would see him back at the hotel, and even though we were not checking out of the Four Seasons and returning to the house (that was never going to be an option), Robby could still spend the night at the Allens’ (even though at that moment I had a shivery premonition about this being a school night) and Jayne would come back on Wednesday and our lives would move on as they were supposed to ever since I had accepted Jayne’s offer and moved to Midland County in July. I thought expectantly about the upcoming holidays even while I stared at the gnawed, cracked door in front of me.

(I don’t remember actually opening the door to Robby’s room but—for some reason—I do remember the first thing that came to my mind when I walked in. It was something Robby had told me when he was pointing out things in the night sky at that picnic in Horatio Park over the summer: the stars you see in the night sky actually do not exist.)

The room was still in the same state it was left in on Wednesday night when we fled the house. An unmade bed, the dead computer, an opened closet.

I moved slowly to the window and looked out onto Elsinore Lane.

Another quiet Sunday, and everything felt okay with the world.

(Is that a sentence you ever thought you would actually write?)

I stood in the room for a long time, taking inventory.

What I had not done: I had not turned around.

I had walked straight into the room. I had stood there. I had contemplated my son and his motives. I did not see what was behind me.

At first I didn’t understand. It took a moment to grasp.

When I turned around I saw scrawled across the giant photomural of the deserted skate park, in massive red lettering:

D I ss a pE AR

HE r e

I breathed in but did not start panicking immediately.

I wasn’t panicking because something on the floor caught my eye and momentarily replaced the panic with curiosity.

It was sitting next to the open door, off to the side.

As I neared it I thought I was looking at a large bowl made from chewed-up newspaper scraps (it was) that someone had placed two black rocks in.

I assumed it was an art project of some kind.

But the black stones were wet. They were glistening.

And as I stood above the bowl, looking down into it, I realized what it actually was.

It was a nest.

And in the nest the black oval objects were not stones.

I knew immediately what they were.

They were eggs.

There was another nest next to the closet door. (And another one was later found in the guest room.)

I flashed on something Miller had warned me about.

Miller had said that fumigation was necessary so nothing living would be left in the house once the cleansing began.

That was why the house had to be fumigated: the spirits, the demons, would try to find anything living to enter so they could “continue their existence.”

A question: What if a doll had hidden itself and waited?

What if the Terby had hidden itself in the house?

What if it had survived the exterminators?

What if something else had entered it?

The connection between the doll and the nests was sane and immediate.

I remember rushing out of the room and tumbling down the staircase, gripping the railing so I wouldn’t fall.

When I hit the foyer I started dialing Robby’s number.

Again, I don’t remember this exactly, but as I waited to leave a message, I think that was when I noticed Victor.

Because of Victor, again I didn’t leave a message for Robby.

(But if I had called a third time—as any number of people did later—I would have been told that the cell phone had been deactivated.)

Victor was lying in a fetal position, shivering, on the marble floor of the foyer.

The grinning dog that had excitedly loped toward me minutes ago did not exist.

He was whimpering.

When he heard me approach he looked up with sad, glassy eyes and continued to shake.

“Victor?” I whispered.

The dog licked my hand as I crouched down to soothe him.

The sound of his tongue lapping the dry skin of my hand was suddenly overtaken by wet noises coming from behind the dog.

Victor vomited without lifting his head.

I slowly stood upright and walked around to his backside, where the wet noises were coming from.

When I lifted the dog’s tail I tried leaping out of my mind.

The dog’s anus was stretched into a diameter that was perhaps ten inches across.

The bottom half of the Terby was hanging out of the dog and slowly disappearing into the cavity, undulating itself so it could slide in with more ease.

I was frozen.

I remember instinctively reaching forward as the talons of the doll disappeared, causing the dog’s body to bulge and then settle.

Victor quietly vomited again.

Everything stayed still for one brief moment.

And then the dog began convulsing.

I was already slowly backing away from the dog.

But as I did this, Victor—or something else—noticed.

His head suddenly jerked up.

Since the dog was blocking the front door and I did not want to step over it I had started moving back up the staircase.

I was moving deliberately.

I was pretending to be invisible.

Victor’s whimpering had suddenly morphed into snarling.

I stopped moving, hoping this might calm Victor down.

I was taking deep breaths.

The dog, still curled on the marble floor of the foyer, began foaming at the mouth. Foam, in fact, was simply pouring out of his mouth in a continuous stream. It was yellow at first, the color of bile, and then the foam darkened into red, and there were feathers in it as the foam continued pouring out. And then the foam became black.

At that point I remember running up the stairs.

And in what seemed like an instant, something—it was Victor’s jaw—had clamped itself around my upper thigh as I was midway up the curving staircase.

There was an immediate pressure, and a searing pain and then wetness.

I fell onto the stairs face-first, shouting out.

I turned over onto my side to kick the dog away, but he had already backed off.

The dog was standing, hunched, three steps below where I was writhing.

Then the dog started expanding.

The dog began mutating into something else.

His bones were growing and then began breaking out of his skin.

The noises Victor was making were shrill and high-pitched.

The dog looked surprised as his back suddenly bent up—and his body stretched another foot on its own accord.

The dog made another pained sound and then started gasping for breath.

For one moment everything was still, and as I wept I reached over mindlessly, foolishly, to comfort the dog, to let him know I was his friend and that he didn’t need to attack since I wasn’t a threat.

But then the dog’s lips peeled back and he started shrieking.

His eyes began rolling in their sockets involuntarily until only the whites were visible.

I started screaming for help.

At the moment I began screaming the dog lurched forward, slamming itself against the wall as it kept enlarging.

I tried to stand up but my right leg was so damaged that I collapsed back onto the staircase, the steps slippery from all the blood pouring from the wound in my thigh.

The dog stopped moving again and started shuddering as its face elongated and became lupine.

Its front paws were manically scratching at one of the steps with such force that they were shredding the smooth, varnished wood.

I kept trying to push myself up the stairs.

The dog lowered its head, and when he slowly looked back up, approaching me, he was grinning.

I kicked at it with both feet, panting, backing myself up the staircase.

The dog stopped its approach.

The dog cocked its head and then it started shrieking again.

Its eyeballs bulged until they were pushed out of their sockets and hanging down his muzzle on their stalks.

Blood began pouring from the empty holes, drenching the dog’s face, staining its bared teeth red.

It had what looked like wings now—they had sprouted out of both sides of the dog’s chest.

They had snapped through the rib cage and were flapping themselves free of the blood and viscera that were keeping them weighed down.

It crept up toward me.

I kept kicking at it.

And, effortlessly, a mouthful of teeth sank into my right thigh again and bit down.

I reared up, screaming, and blood sprayed in an arc across the wall as the thing let go of my thigh.

It was suddenly freezing in the house but sweat was pouring down my face.

I began crawling up the stairs on my stomach when it bit me again, right below the place it had just ripped open.

I tried to shake the thing off.

I began sliding back down toward the dog because the stairs were so wet with blood.

It lashed out again.

The teeth were now the fangs of the Terby and they sank into my calf.

I realized with an awful finality: It wanted to keep me still.

It didn’t want me to go anywhere.

It didn’t want me to rush to the Fortinbras Mall.

It didn’t want me to find Robby.

I became furious and I smashed my hand into the dog’s face as it kept blindly snapping at me. Fresh blood burst from its snout. I smashed my hand again into its face.

The face kept spouting blood, and the dog continued shrieking.

I started screaming back at the dog.

I was sliding in place as I looked up to see how far I had to go before reaching the landing.

It was about eight steps.

I started pulling myself upward, dragging my mangled leg behind me.

And then I felt the thing leap on my back when it realized where I was going.

I whirled over, knocking the thing off me.

I thrashed around in all the blood, trying to kick it away.

I vomited helplessly onto my chest, and then whispered, “I hear you I hear you I hear you.”

But this promise did not work any longer.

The dog gathered strength and reared up like a horse on its hind legs, looming over me, its wings obscenely outstretched, flapping them, spraying us with more blood.

At that moment I lifted my left leg up and, without thinking, kicked it hard in the chest.

It toppled back, trying to beat its wings to keep in place, but they were still too heavy with blood and flesh and it fell backwards, sliding to the bottom of the staircase and landing on the floor, shrieking, while trying to scramble upright with insectile urgency.

On the landing, I began crawling madly toward Robby’s room at the top of the stairs.

Below me, the thing righted itself and started scrambling up the staircase after me, snapping the horribly uneven rows of fangs that now made up its mouth as it neared.

I lunged forward and slid into Robby’s room, slamming the door shut and locking it with a hand soaked in blood.

The thing threw itself against the door.

It had moved up the staircase that quickly.

I lifted myself up and clumsily hopped on one foot toward the window.

I collapsed in front of it and fumbled with the latch.

I looked behind me because it was suddenly so quiet.

Beyond my trail of blood the door was bulging forward.

And then the thing started shrieking again.

I opened the window, balancing on my left leg, and crawled onto the ledge, blood splattering everywhere.

I remember not caring as I let myself fall.

It wouldn’t be a long drop. It would be escape. It would be peace.

I landed on the lawn. I didn’t feel anything. All the pain was concentrated in my right leg.

I lifted myself up and I began limping toward the Range Rover.

I slid into the driver’s seat and I started the ignition.

(When asked, I answered that I did not know—nor can I supply a reason now—why I hadn’t gone to a neighbor after the attack.)

Moaning to myself, I put the car in reverse and pressed on the accelerator with my left foot.

Once I had backed out of the driveway and was stationary in the middle of Elsinore Lane, I saw the cream-colored 450 SL.

It had turned the corner of Bedford and was now a block away.

Watching it glide closer I saw someone in the driver’s seat: grim-faced, determined, recognizable.

As if he had been sequenced into my dreams, it was Clayton who was driving the car.

When I saw Clayton’s face I let go of the steering wheel and the Range Rover, still in reverse, spun backward and then halfway around so that it was blocking Elsinore.

I tried to regain control of the car as the 450 SL kept moving forward.

It was speeding up.

I braced myself as it slammed into the passenger side of the Range Rover.

The collision pushed the SUV over a curb and into the oak tree that stood in the middle of the Bishops’ front yard, with such force that the windshield exploded.

Everything started falling away from me.

The 450 SL extracted itself from the wreckage and backed away into the middle of Elsinore Lane. The Mercedes was not damaged.

It was daylight, I noticed as I began losing consciousness.

Clayton stepped out of the car and started walking toward me.

His face was a red and indistinct moon.

He was wearing the same clothes he’d worn when I saw him that Halloween day in my office at the college, including the sweater with the eagle on it. The sweater I had once owned when I was his age.

Steam was curling from the Range Rover’s crumpled hood.

I couldn’t move. My entire body was throbbing with pain. My leg was soaked with blood. It kept gushing through the bite marks in my jeans.

“What do you want?” I started to scream.

The Range Rover kept shuddering because my foot was locked against the accelerator.

The boy was floating closer, moving steadily toward me, relaxed.

Through my tears I began to make out his features more clearly.

“Who are you?” I was screaming as I sobbed. “What do you want?”

Behind him I could see the house melting away.

He was now standing by my window.

He was staring at me so starkly it was as if he were sightless.

I tried positioning myself so I could open the door, but I was trapped.

“Who are you?” I kept screaming.

I stopped asking that question as his hands reached out to me.

That was when I realized there was someone else who was more important.

“Robby,” I started moaning. “Robby . . .”

Because Clayton was—and had always been—someone I had known.

He was somebody who had always known me.

He was somebody who had always known us.

Because Clayton and I were always the same person.

The writer whispered, Go to sleep.

Clayton and the writer whispered, Disappear here.