Exit Read online

  WARNING

  All Suspicious Persons and Activities

  Are Immediately Reported to

  Our Police Department

  NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH

  We Look Out for Each Other

  Rayne's third cigarette of the day dangled between her two fingers. She allowed herself exactly three cigarettes per day, and knew she needed to quit. She could hear the wind rattle the tree leaves outside her open window in a steady rhythm. A breeze came through the wire screen, swirling the smoke. She thought of a genie issuing from a magic lamp. Tonight, a magic lamp would be useful. She really needed some magic.

  The plastic security camera was a wall clock. The clock face was built into the round lens. When she stared into the camera, she got the time. Tim, a man with an offbeat sense of humor, had given the clock to her as a gift.

  "We're all under surveillance," he had said with a dark smile, "why fight it?"

  Tick…tick…tick…

  Her eyes dropped to the last line on the right-hand sign:

  We Look Out for Each Other

  She looked at the time inside the camera: 1:38 a.m.

  Tim. Where are you?

  Tick…tick…

  On the coffee table was a picture of them standing together at the end of a pier on Boston Harbor, looking down at dead jelly fish floating in the water like soggy, fried onion rings. The two looked ready to jump in. In a sense, they had. That day they had jumped in over their heads—they got involved with their filmmaker friend, Alex Portland, regarding a project for a short film festival. Rayne and Tim would write the script, act in the two leading parts, and kick in half the cash. Alex had the equipment, and would cover the other half of expenses. Where this endeavor would lead, the three didn't know. It was simply time to make a move.

  One, two, three…jump.

  In the meantime she waited tables at Voltage Café, after having quit her job at an advertising agency. She preferred working nights, a flexible schedule. Most of the wait staff were artists of various stripes, escapees from the nine-to-five. In her experience, a joyless job always felt like a small suit she’d be forced to squeeze into each morning. The suit, two sizes too small, would restrict her every move. Like a pinstriped straitjacket. Or a giant tourniquet. Too tight around the shoulders. Sleeves too short. The collar a hangman’s noose, prompting facial discoloration. No, thanks. She valued a whiff of freedom over the security of a fat paycheck. Never again would she sit amid the crew at the conference table and listen to her boss warble, “Rayne, you’re the only one here who isn’t smiling.” It was a miracle she had never gouged his eyes with a Sharpie and drove his head through the fifth floor windows. Whatever. If she got sick of Voltage, maybe she'd join Tim as a professional target, otherwise known as a substitute teacher for high school students.

  Two struggling screenwriters? Translation: a waitress and a sub.

  On that sunny afternoon on the pier, she and Tim looked like a handsome young couple whose future was wide open to possibilities, as vast and deep as the blue harbor behind them. She wore a long, chestnut-colored scarf that matched her straight hair cut below the shoulders. The scarf rippled in the wind behind her, animating the photo. Tim, steely blue eyes cast down on the water, looked so serious, as if seeing a shark under the pier. The sun highlighted his blond hair. His friends nicknamed him 'the yellow crow.' Both could be quite serious and somber. The idea of opposites attract did not apply to them. On a sunny afternoon on the pier, both could see the shadows.

  Tim. Where are you?

  Rayne leaned over the side of the couch to the end table, and pressed the play button on her home phone, and listened to the message for a third time:

  "…stopped at the movies…be back in a couple of hours…sorry for being such a pain in the ass…miss you."

  He had chosen to leave a message on the landline and not disturb her at work. It was unlike Tim to be late, this late, and not call her. That would be out of character. Moreover, he had an appointment with his eye surgeon early in the morning. So he should have returned by 10:30 or 11:00 p.m., certainly before midnight. She lost count of how many times she tried to reach him on his cell. Something had happened along the way; she was sure.

  She listened to the recording for a fourth time. She listened for location. Where was he? He habitually went to see a wide range of movies. Enjoyed many; loved some. Cambridge and Boston had many theaters.

  Rayne kept thinking it through. Tim had eye surgery and couldn't drive. So he walked or took the subway to a theater.

  Rayne didn't listen to the message, blocked it out as best she could. She focused on the recording, the ambient sounds, however vague, which required far more concentration. She hit the button again and again. She detected two sounds in the background, traffic notwithstanding. She looked at her window screen, saw her curtain lightly billow, and nodded to herself. The recording, she was fairly certain, caught the sound of trees stirred by the wind. Windblown leaves sounded like applause. Tiny clapping hands. She imagined a roomful of elves rising from their mini-chairs. A standing ovation.

  Tim had been standing on a street outside, near or beneath a tree.

  The other sound was harder to identify. Rayne hit the button a fifth time. Sixth, seventh. She looked into the security camera. The time: 2:03 a.m.

  That's when she deciphered the sound in the background: guitar, singing.

  Rayne processed the information. A street busker by a theater narrowed the possibilities. She knew the areas where street musicians preferred to set up. There were sections of town where you didn't play with an open guitar case by your feet for fear of being robbed or harassed. Other areas were more amenable—storefronts, corners, city parks—where at least you had a chance of making money.

  Tim's last known whereabouts were coming into focus. The list shrank as she thought it through.

  She played the recording once more, focusing on the song. Until now, she had heard, "ICQ." Or "I screw you…in the morning." But this time the words fell into place. She knew the melody and the odd lyrics. "Eye seek you in the morning…Eye seek you at night."

  She glanced at her sketch pad on the end table. Last week she had made a pen and ink drawing of Sleeping Beauty lying on a dusty bed—cobwebs covered her face, hair and dress; but she slept with one eye open. Tim had asked her if it was a self portrait.

  Tim, she thought for the hundredth time, where are you? I seek you.

  Rayne had two choices: stay home and wait for the phone to ring, or reach for her car keys.

  At 2:30 a.m. she parked her candy-apple red, death-defying 1988 Buick LeSabre in front of a convenience store, Store 24, in Cambridge. Inside she bought the Boston Globe and a cup of coffee, then returned to her front seat. The car’s interior was so red it suggested a bloodbath. She put the overhead light on, pushed the seat back, and turned on the radio to a classical music station. Debussy’s Clair de lune drifted through the speakers. This piano piece was one of her all-time favorites. Finally, she thought, something had gone right today.

  She unfolded the newspaper to the movie listings. She spread it open against the steering wheel, took a felt tip pen with blue ink from her purse, and read the listings, one by one. She crossed out those that featured family films, animation, musicals. She drew a thin line through comedies (Tim's unpopular idea of comedy was a fake security camera on the living room wall). She circled the theaters whose movies would appeal to Tim. Dark, edgy movies.

  She combed the list twice, honing it down to the most probable venues. With a red pen, she circled the theaters that were within walking distance or a short commute on the subway. With his surgically repaired eye, she thought he'd be disinclined to take a long commute on the train.

  Soon two theaters rose to the top of her list. One was in Kendall Square, Cambridge, near MIT. This week they were featuring a science fiction/horror film festival to celebrate Halloween. She drove there within ten minutes, and exited the car. She stood and viewed the area, which included h
igh tech companies and a courthouse, but couldn't recall seeing street musicians here. Not enough foot traffic.

  She got back behind the wheel and drove to option two. Harvard Square had buskers throughout the year, above ground and in the subway, especially in the dead of winter. Street entertainment included musicians, jugglers, acrobats, and delusional egomaniacs who couldn't carry a tune in their pocket. Rayne turned off Mass Ave and parked on an empty side street. No pedestrians in sight. The Square was dead. She walked over to the Gateway and looked up at the dark marquee.

  Gone

  She stepped up to the box office booth, glanced through its dark window and saw an empty stool. She moved a few feet over to the curb. Across the street were three trees ablaze with leaves of orange, yellow and green. A Halloween haze of colors. When the ebb and flow of the wind rattled the leaves, she closed her eyes and listened.

  Where are you, Tim?

  CHAPTER 3

  A noise at the mouth of the alley made him look up.

  Crowe half closed his bad eye and focused with his right—a silhouette appeared in a circle of gray light at the end of the tunnel, and advanced, as if he were running through a telescope. The sound of footsteps soon blended with labored breathing. Hard heels pounded concrete. The pace quickened.

  Backlit by the streetlight, the silhouette appeared to be Tim's size and weight, six feet and lean. But his outline was unusual. He wore a dark cape that billowed behind him as he ran. A romantic desperado barreling down a back alley.

  With his bad eye, Crowe didn't want to encounter a caped stranger in a narrow passageway at this hour. So he stepped back beside a dumpster and crouched down, smelling the fetid odor of rotting trash, his elbows and back flush against a brick wall. If the runner didn't turn his head as he passed, he wouldn't see Crowe.

  The runner flew by, his cape flapping, shoes slapping pavement. His hard breathing suggested fear. This wasn't a typical jogger, not down a dark alley where you could barely see in front of you and easily stumble on debris. Despite the dark, the man's most salient feature was his bright white face. White and smooth as a shiny moon.

  Crowe kept still. The footsteps faded, as did the runner's outline. Then the runner stopped on the concrete, his shoes sliding and scraping on pebbles or sand. What followed gave Crowe a start. The runner stood by the theater's rear exit, banged on the heavy door with the sides of his fists. A dull, thumping sound of flesh against metal. He beat it like a tympani drum. As Crowe listened, a single word came to mind: desperation.

  The runner cried out to no one, "Back in. Let me back in." From afar, he suggested a deranged moviegoer. Mad for movies.

  The pounding continued. A half minute later, the scene shifted. Crowe sensed that he and the runner were no longer alone. Something else had entered the top of the alley, heading toward the theater. It moved unseen in the darkness, like a wisp of wind, making an almost indiscernible humming sound.

  The runner ceased his barrage on the door. From fifty yards away, Crowe could hear the runner taking gulps of oxygen, until something spooked him. The stranger left the theater and raced toward the other end of the alley. Footsteps faded.

  Crowe listened intently, heard nothing. He stepped out from his hideaway by the dumpster and headed up the alley, past a row of trash cans, toward the streetlamp. The blue bubble bounced inside his eye as he walked. He needed to see Rayne, or just get home. He needed to exit this dark, depressing tunnel.

  He hustled up to the lamp set on a tall post. The gray light illuminated a short cross street that bordered a cemetery dating back to 18th century colonial America. In the daylight, the engravings on some of the weather-beaten headstones were barely legible. A visitor could scarcely read the names and dates, like decades-old coins too long in circulation. Mother Nature could be unkind to the written word. At night the thin stone slabs beyond the iron fence were simply gray disks in the dirt beneath skeletal tree branches. Tim saw macabre surfboards stuck in the sand, imagined a corpse riding a wave on a tombstone, bony arms extended.

  Crowe walked alongside the spiked fence toward the intersecting street. Cars rumbled by, their headlights piercing the night. The sweet scent of moist earth and decaying leaves lingered over the grassy graveyard, but that soon gave way to exhaust fumes punching the air. When he reached the corner, he noticed something in the distance and stopped in his tracks.

  He flashed on the eerie cashier perched inside the theater box office. This—this had to be a Halloween stunt. An elaborate prank.

  The object approached him from down the street. It flew through the air, just above the telephone poles, at the speed of an unhurried boy on a bicycle. At first he mistook it for an enormous black bird, larger than a California condor. It closed the gap from where he stood, reminding him of a dinosaur, a flying reptile with a wingspan of at least twelve feet. It appeared to be gliding on extended wings, sailing directly above traffic.

  Two teenage zombies in torn clothes rocketed off the sidewalk and knelt down, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the middle of the street. The blood-spattered couple looked up at the oncoming object. They waved with the enthusiasm of stranded shipwreck victims signaling a plane. Another undead couple joined them. Now eight arms waved in the air.

  One of the zombies pumped his fist, raised three fingers in the air, and shouted a word. It sounded like "Darwin."

  Tim thought of Charles Darwin. He considered the connection between evolutionary theory and kneeling zombies. The object loomed closer. He watched it fly silently overhead with a logo on its belly: DR1. He remembered seeing that same logo in the trailer at the Gateway.

  Pedestrians glanced upward without alarm. Some waved. Traffic continued to move. The batlike creature banked slightly in the air, turned at the next corner and drifted out of sight.

  Tim stood still on the sidewalk. The last two minutes had a hallucinatory quality.

  Across the street was a neighborhood tavern called O'Henry's, one of the few bars remaining in the Square that hadn't been bought out and born again to attract an upscale crowd. O'Henry's was an unapologetic dive in the midst of Yuppie heaven. Looking through the plate glass window in front, Tim could see a packed bar.

  The entrance door was open. Tim heard a mix of excited voices from where he stood. A buzz rippled through the crowd, the kind you hear at a sports bar during post-season games. He thought of the strange flying creature, then drifted across the street toward the window. He stopped by the curb and peered inside. Chrome jukebox. Sawdust on the floor. Pitchers of beer on tabletops carved with sharp objects. Free peanuts and hard-knocks wisdom.

  Across the room, the crowd, one by one, turned toward the TV set. No one glanced at the door or window. From afar, Tim focused his good eye on the screen and saw a man behind a news desk whose gelled hair could withstand a tornado. A rectangular sign hung on the wall behind the newscaster, big silver letters the color of chrome on a black background:

  Jumper Cable TV

  Tim thought, jumper cable? He'd never heard of cable television calling itself that. Whatever the newscaster was saying, it drew the attention of the noisy crowd. Now, at the bottom of the screen, these words were flashing on and off:

  Got a tip?

  Earn reward!

  Call #1-800-JUMPER$

  Tim squinted to make sure he was seeing correctly. The last letter in 'jumpers' was actually a dollar sign. Curious, he stepped into the doorway, turned slightly to see the TV screen at the other end of the bar, which was lined with customers, standing or seated on stools. He could smell beer and cheap perfume. The televised picture and locale changed. A woman in a stylish leather jacket appeared on the screen with a microphone. The reporter, standing somewhere outdoors on a city street, said:

  "Thanks, Jack. This just in. It's ten o'clock and we have another jumper added to the list."

  The O'Henry's crowd erupted with shouts and whistles. The room cheered as if the Boston Red Sox had just clinched game seven in the World Series. Every eye was riveted to the
screen. Both bartenders froze by the liquor shelf.

  Tim had watched the evening news before leaving Rayne's apartment, seeing a rundown of the usual mayhem. An ongoing search for a hijacked plane. A bomb exploded in a monastery. Peace talks break down for the 500th time. Terrorists abduct nuns. He wondered what had happened while he sat inside the Gateway and watched Gone. What news story would elicit this kind of reaction?

  Tim advanced a half step inside the door, leaned forward and focused on the TV screen. The bottle-blond reporter, with flawless skin and perfect teeth, rolled her shoulders inside her leather jacket like a lipsticked prizefighter ready to deliver the knockout punch.

  "The photo has been sent to both DR1 Corporation and EyeSoar Unlimited."

  Leaning against the bar by the TV set, a young townie in a hoodie raised his fist in the air. "DR1! My money's on DR1!"

  Tim thought, DR1? A vague connection began to form between the Gateway's trailer on the screen and the unfolding drama here. The trailer had showed the legs and feet of a crowd, but no other telltale signs. Something was happening, but he couldn't connect the dots. Not yet.

  A woman seated at a table cupped her hands and countered, "No freakin' way. I soar-ta think not!"

  That comment elicited laughter until the bartender yelled, "Shut up!"

  "Here we go," the reporter said. "The alien is described as a white male, late twenties, maybe thirty. Long blond hair…"

  Tim Crowe watched as a familiar, rectangular face appeared on the screen. The head was tilted back, one blue eye looking up at a camera. One glassy red eye squinting.

  "Let the countdown begin!" a woman cried out.

  It must be my damaged retina. I'm freaking seeing things. I must be.

  A man in the middle of the room declared, "Gonna bag the maggot myself!"

  Tim froze in the doorway, a statue with one good eye, and an electric feeling in his gut. A sense of unreality zigzagged through him. He knew, deep down in his primitive brain where the dark lizard pulls the levers, that he was seeing himself on TV. Indecision was not an option. This was flight or fight. But fight what? Fight the whole bar? Fight everything he'd seen and heard tonight?