Something's Not Right

By the first Friday in October, Sean had begun to suspect his boss was a vampire.

He didn't have proof. Roger had never bitten anybody, at least not in Sean's presence, and he ate the occasional sandwich. But he was seventy-one years old and looked forty-five. Lately, closer to forty. Six months earlier, the office had thrown him a birthday party, complete with supermarket cake, which Roger had declined to eat.

Sean, meanwhile, was thirty-four and developing lines around his eyes that suggested he might not make it to thirty-five.

Roger owned HouseCall Computer Services, which sent technicians across northern New Jersey to rescue lost files, replace batteries and explain why printers that had worked yesterday weren't working today. Usually you turned the thing off, turned it back on, and voila, problem solved. Sean liked the driving and the occasional satisfaction of solving a problem. He could have done without Roger.

"You're late," Roger said when Sean came in.

"Three minutes. There was an accident on Route 17."

"Four minutes. Leave earlier tomorrow."

Roger stood in his office doorway wearing a black sweater. Behind him the blinds were closed, as usual. He disliked sunlight on his monitors, he said, though Sean had never actually seen him open the blinds.

"Mrs. Heller first," Roger said, handing over the day's tickets. "MacBook. Probably a quick job. And call me when you're finished."

"Sure."

"You look tired."

"It's been a long week."

"Try getting some sleep."

Sean took his bag and left before Roger could offer further medical advice. Through the glass he saw Gary coming out of Roger's office, pale and slumped, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Roger, by contrast, looked almost cheerful.

The thought occurred to Sean that if Roger really was feeding on the staff, he had a remarkably sustainable business model.

Outside, the air smelled of wet leaves. Maples along the parking lot had gone a vivid orange, and Sean paused in the sun longer than necessary.

***

Sean's imagination had been well supplied since childhood. He loved horror movies and owned nearly every Stephen King novel, though he had finished considerably fewer than he'd purchased. Once, at a signing, he'd brought his battered copy of The Stand and asked King whether he believed people could see the future.

The question had been personal.

Sometimes Sean dreamed things that happened a day or two later. Small things: a red-haired woman in a yellow scarf waiting at a bus stop; a song drifting through an open window at precisely the lyric he'd heard in his sleep; a green bicycle lying across a driveway, one wheel still turning.

He'd also seen Trump, P. Diddy and the war with Iran coming, though that probably required nothing more supernatural than reading the news.

The little dreams unsettled him more because they were so exact and so useless. He'd considered writing them down, but the prospect of keeping a journal of coincidental bicycles was embarrassing.

For three nights now, he'd had a different dream. A man stood in a doorway, his face hidden by the darkness behind him. Sean never saw the man approach, yet knew with the unquestioning certainty of dreams that he was coming to change Sean's life.

He never learned how.

***

Mrs. Heller lived in a large colonial in Ridgewood, with clipped hedges and pumpkins arranged on the porch steps. She opened the door before Sean could knock twice.

"Oh, good. Come in. I've been waiting."

She was a round-faced woman in her sixties, wearing a flowered apron. The house smelled of apples, cinnamon and something faintly medicinal.

"Coffee?" she asked.

"No, thank you."

"I've got pie in the oven."

"That I might take you up on."

She smiled and showed him into a sitting room. The MacBook sat on a desk beneath the window. Sean started his diagnostics while she stood close enough to watch his fingers.

"Is it bad?"

"Mostly unnecessary programs. We can clear those out."

A dull thump came from the back of the house.

Sean glanced toward the hall. Mrs. Heller looked that way too.

"Old house," she said.

He went back to work. A few minutes later something scraped against the floor, followed by what sounded like a man's voice, too faint to understand.

"Is somebody else home?" Sean asked.

"My husband. He's not well."

"Sorry to hear that."

"He gets restless. How much longer do you think?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe less."

She pressed her lips together, then went down the hall. Sean heard a door open and her voice, low and firm. Another voice answered. The door shut hard.

When she came back, her smile was in place again.

"All right in there?" Sean asked.

"Oh, yes. He just needs to rest."

The computer was packed with applications promising to speed it up, several of which were slowing it down. Sean removed them, checked the storage and ran another test. Behind him, Mrs. Heller kept glancing at the hall.

A sharp knock sounded from the other side of the closed door.

"Almost done?" she asked.

"Just about. The battery's getting old, but you can still use it plugged in."

"So you don't have to take it away?"

"No. You're all set."

She appeared relieved, although not, Sean thought, for the usual reason. She hurried him toward the front door, carrying his bag as if he might change his mind about leaving.

"What about that pie?" he asked, mostly to be polite.

"Another time, dear."

From the hallway came a heavy crash. They both stopped.

Mrs. Heller tightened her grip on the bag.

"My husband," she said. "He can be difficult."

She handed him the bag, opened the front door, and wished him a lovely afternoon.

Sean walked to his car and glanced back. She was standing at the window watching him. He wondered, absurdly, whether her husband was really free to leave that room.

He decided not to dwell on it. At the rate things were going, he'd have an entire Stephen King collection by dinner.

***

By one o'clock Sean was hungry enough to stop at a diner off Route 17. Paper bats hung above the counter, and a handwritten sign advertised pumpkin pancakes. The place smelled of bacon grease and fresh coffee.

A waitress with reddish-brown hair brought him a menu. Her name tag read KERRIE.

Strange.

He ordered a cheeseburger, fries and coffee, then checked his phone. Roger had left three messages asking if the Ridgewood job was finished and why Sean hadn't called. Sean sent a reply and put the phone facedown.

At the counter, four young men were making enough noise for twice their number. When Kerrie approached with their drinks, one said something that made the others laugh. She gave a strained smile and set down the first glass.

"We're only kidding," another told her.

As she turned, somebody caught her sleeve. The tray tipped. Red fruit punch splashed down the front of her pale uniform and onto the floor.

For a moment she just stood there, staring at the stain.

A man in a white apron emerged from the kitchen.

"What happened now, Kerrie?"

"Someone grabbed me."

The manager looked at the broken glass. "Get this cleaned up, please. And change that apron."

The men began laughing again. Sean felt embarrassed for her. He'd never understood what was entertaining about humiliating somebody who was paid to be pleasant to you.

Kerrie knelt with a towel to wipe up the spill. Her face was bright red.

Sean heard a soft clink and looked down.

The salt shaker on his table had moved several inches toward the edge. He was fairly sure it had been beside the pepper shaker a moment ago.

Across the room, a spoon fell off the counter.

The fluorescent lights flickered. On the men's table a coffee cup trembled against its saucer, then another. One of them looked down and stopped laughing.

Kerrie raised her head. She wasn't crying. She was watching them.

"Kerrie?" the manager said.

The lights steadied. The rattling stopped, and she got up to fetch a mop.

When she brought Sean his lunch a few minutes later, she'd changed her apron.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"It's fine. Happens all the time."

"It shouldn't."

She shrugged. "Anything else?"

Sean glanced up at the ceiling.

"Something's not right with the lights in here."

"They've been like that for years," she said, and walked away.

He put the salt shaker back where he remembered it and tried his burger. It had gone cold.

***

Danny had been Sean's best friend since seventh grade. They'd spent whole weekends playing video games and watching movies their parents wouldn't have approved of. Twelve years earlier, a car accident had left Danny using a wheelchair. It had changed a great deal about his life, though very little about his ability to give Sean a hard time.

Sean arrived shortly after six. Danny was in the living room with a baseball game on low volume and an open beer on the side table.

"You look like hell," Danny said.

"So I've been told."

Sean settled on the couch and told him about Roger, Mrs. Heller and the waitress named Kerrie. Danny listened, smiling wider with each episode.

"So your boss is a vampire, the lady's holding someone prisoner, and the waitress moves stuff with her mind?"

"When you put it together, it sounds worse."

"It sounded pretty bad separately. You've been watching too many horror movies."

"Probably."

Danny looked toward the darkening backyard. "I've been restless myself lately. I sit around here too much."

"You should get out more."

"I know. Sometimes I just want to get away from everyone. Go somewhere out in the woods, stay out all night. Just go wild for once."

"You can come hiking with me. I'll find an easy trail."

"Maybe," Danny said. "You want another beer?"

"Sure."

Danny transferred onto the stairlift and descended to the lower level where he kept a second refrigerator. As the motor hummed, Sean noticed a pair of heavy boots beside the back door. Dried mud covered the soles, with little pieces of leaves caught in the treads.

That was unusual. Danny was fussy about dirt in the house, and Sean hadn't seen him wear boots in years.

A flicker of movement beyond the kitchen window caught his eye.

A man was running across the backyard, heading for the garage. Sean saw him only for a second, but the broad shoulders and dark sweatshirt looked exactly like Danny's.

Sean stepped to the window. Nobody was there. A few leaves skittered across the grass.

He heard the stairlift coming back up.

Danny appeared with two bottles in his lap.

"What are you looking at?"

"Thought I saw somebody out back."

"Probably one of the neighbors."

Sean took a beer and pointed to the boots. "Those yours?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"They're covered in mud."

"Went fishing last weekend. Friend took me down by the river."

It was a perfectly good explanation. Sean had no reason to doubt it.

Something scratched against the outside wall. Both men turned toward the sound.

"Raccoons," Danny said. "They've been getting into the garbage."

He turned up the television. Sean watched a batter foul off three pitches without taking in any of them.

There was one thing he couldn't stop thinking about. Danny hadn't asked what the man in the yard looked like.

***

By nine, the roads were quiet and a thin mist was gathering above the lawns. Sean drove home without the radio, sorting through the day's oddities.

Roger might have had cosmetic surgery. Mrs. Heller's husband might have been ill and difficult. The diner tables might have been uneven. Danny's neighbor might have resembled him in poor light. Each explanation was ordinary enough. Taken together, they bothered him.

Then again, people saw what they expected to see. A man who spent his evenings with horror novels was bound to find monsters in the neighborhood.

At home he left his keys on the counter and switched on the living-room lamp. His old copy of The Stand sat among the other books on the shelf. He pulled it down and opened the cover to King's signature.

He remembered the bookstore, the long line and his question: Could people really see the future?

He no longer remembered King's answer. After all these years, he wasn't entirely sure he'd heard it correctly in the first place.

Sean closed the book and looked at the clock. Nine seventeen. He was considering ordering Chinese food when someone knocked on the front door.

Three slow knocks.

He wasn't expecting anyone.

Through the peephole he saw a man in a dark jacket, perhaps sixty, with thinning hair and something small in his left hand. Nothing about him was remarkable, except for the sudden certainty Sean felt that he had seen him before.

Sean opened the door a few inches.

"Can I help you?"

"Sean?" the man asked.

"Yes."

"I hope it's not too late."

"Depends what it's about."

The man glanced toward the street, then back at him.

"I've been looking for you."

Sean knew the voice. The words, too. He'd heard them somewhere he couldn't quite place until he thought of the dream: the dark doorway, the stranger whose face he never saw, the conviction that everything was about to change.

He felt the cold October air slip through the opening.

"Do I know you?" Sean asked.

The man regarded him for a moment.

"Not yet," he said.