Glitch. Part 31

"Oh c.r.a.p." Josh moaned. "Oh c.r.a.p."

Red light everywhere.

I didn't remember this dream when I woke up.

CHAPTER TWELVE: DISAPPEARANCE.

I rang the doorbell, and heard a three-tone ding-ding-dong on the other side of the door.

The sun baked the back of my neck. For the past two days the hot weather had continued. It was making my rounds around the city difficult. I'd cranked up the AC in my car, but it didn't help.

I hadn't been to work in two days. I hadn't called them in two days. Whatever, I could look for better work later. Just now I had work to do.

I didn't know much about the Level Zero crowd; I didn't know where they lived, where they went, or even what they'd eat at McDonald's. This made it difficult to find out what had happened to them.

But I had one memory: Lena Arshun's house. I remembered what it looked like as they'd led me, handcuffed, out of it on that first rainy night when things went f.u.c.ked up.

After scouring my apartment's floor yesterday I'd located an old couple who still owned a phonebook. I'd wrote down all twenty-five addresses for Arshun in the Toronto area. This address was number twenty-three.

No one answered the door. I looked around.

The house was normal-looking for the neighborhood, a bunch of small, semi-detached, red-brick tenements. It had a balcony, a narrow driveway, and roses blooming along the lawn. It looked like it belonged to someone's grandmother.

The lawn of this house was browning. I saw an old sprinkler disconnected from a nearby green garden hose running through the brittle gra.s.s. The roses' petals were limp and brown.

Aside from the sunburn, this house was exactly as I remembered it from my first night in Level Zero.

This was the house I'd arrived at when I first met Josh and Laurent down there.

The door still didn't open. I resisted the urge to scratch away the flaking white paint.

I rang the doorbell again. Lena's parents, if they lived here, were probably at work.

I heard footsteps.

A click in the lock.

"h.e.l.lo?" A woman's voice asked.

At the door stood an old woman. She had graying hair cut short like Justin Beiber and wore a huge white tank-top and men's cargo shorts. She didn't look like she'd throw me out.

"Hi," I said. "I'm a friend of Lena's."

The woman's face sagged. She looked old now: the lines of her mouth deepened, and drew dark patterns around her eyes. She placed her hand on the doorframe and her posture subtly s.h.i.+fted so that she relied on it for weight. Her body language was clear; I'd obviously upset her.

Awesome.

"This is her home?" I asked.

"Yes." The woman said. "Yes, I'm Debbie. I'm Lena's Grandmother."

I couldn't grin, not with this person in front of me looking at me for all the world like I was going to tell her something terrible.

But she remembered Lena. She hadn't just vanished.

"Are you from the police?" She asked. She pointed at my clothes-business casual for good first impressions. "They said they'd send someone."

"No Debbie," I said. Had to say her name, had to look in her eyes, had to look trustworthy so she'd tell me everything.

"I'm a friend." I repeated. "I've been trying touch with her, but I can't find her, or any of her other friends. I finally figured..."

Sound natural, sound like a good guy. "... Well, that I'd just come down and check out what was going on."

"Lena's been missing." Debbie sighed. Her voice wheezed like a squeezing sponge. "So's her boyfriend. We're worried something happened to both of them."

Debbie's shoulder's shook. She wrapped her hands around her sides.

"Uh, uh, can I come in?" I asked.

Debbie made a small noise at the back of her throat. She nodded, and held the door open for me.

The house was exactly as I remembered: it even smelled of the same pot-pourri. Same blue carpets, pictures of boats, family, china figures and doilies.

"Rachel and Arman are both at work," Debbie said as I entered. "I'm at home all day so I've been waiting for news from the police."

She closed the door behind me. "And there've been other people coming to look for Lena."

"What happened?" I asked her.

Debbie wandered past me and into another room. She didn't look at me.

I went to follow her and b.u.mped into a side table.

There was a card on top of the table. The card was emblazoned with the crest for... was that Ryerson?

I picked up the card. It was the Ryerson crest. The name on the card read: Daniel Thornton, a.s.sociate Professor of Philosophy at Ryerson University.

I slipped the card into my pocket.

I joined Debbie in the other room. The lights were off and the light from outside was just enough to keep me from tripping over something. Debbie sat on a floral-patterned sofa like the one I remembered from the bas.e.m.e.nt. I sat on the one facing it. It gushed vanilla scent.

"Lena wasn't here one morning," Debbie said. "We think she went out to see Amrith, but when she didn't come back..."

She shuddered. I tapped my foot. Come on old woman, I didn't have all day.

"Amrith wasn't there," She said, her voice high and scratchy. "She wasn't there. We don't know what happened to them. And we called the police and-"

Debbie cut off. She was breathing heavily like she was about to go into a fit.

"Has anyone else come looking for her?" I asked, thinking for some reason about the card.

"And of her other friends?" I continued. "Any... men?"

Long hair, poor diet, no fas.h.i.+on sense. If I was right...

"No friends. Just you and-there was a man," Debbie choked out. "He was so strange. Fat, with a big beard and dressed all in tweed and-"

Bingo.

"Hairy knuckles?" I asked.

"Maybe," Debbie sniffed. She reached beside her for a box of Puffs tissue with a picture of kittens on it.

"Spotty hands? Sort of a-a loudmouth?" I asked.

"He was very forward." Debbie said to the tissue. She dabbed her eyes and nose with it.

"And what was this man's name?"

"I don't remember. He left his card." Debbie tucked the tissue into her sleeve and wiped a drop from her nose. Thank goodness she was too grief-stricken to care about my questions. "I don't know."

I got out of there as fast as I could, but politely in case I needed something from Debbie later. I made up some story about knowing Lena from school and just being concerned on behalf of the Prime Minister or some bulls.h.i.+t I forgot as soon as I headed out the driveway.

Daniel Thornton, I read again on the card as I drove back to my apartment and to the phonebook that could tell me where he lived.

It looked like one member of the Level Zero crowd hadn't disappeared.

It was nearly sundown by the time I turned off of Bloor street looking for Daniel Thornton's home.

The heat hadn't let up, and I had my AC up all the way so that cold air blasted on my neck like the cold breath of a stalker man.

Professor Daniel Thornton, of course he was a professor-only an educator could be as obnoxious as he was, lived in Mississauga where Bloor street began. There was a school nearby, and one or two apartment buildings. For the most part it was ranch-style houses though, with sprinklers and flower gardens and one or two tasteless lawn ornaments. I even saw a pink flamingo-thing on the way over.

Well, he was an a.s.sociate professor-probably couldn't afford more.

I turned onto McCall Drive; the houses suddenly turned a lot more trashy. The sidewalks turned to gravel sides, the driveways became narrow strips of asphalt cutting across unmowed lawns.

Two kids rode by on bicycles. They were wearing purple hoodies that I'm sure they thought were cool.

Thornton's address was 344 McCall. I was at 232.

I swerved away from a white boat someone had parked beside their house and ground up against the gravel shoulder. A wave of dust kicked up and rocks tapped the bottom of my car.

I didn't know what I'd say to Thornton when I found him. It could be that he knew as little as I did about the disappearance of Lena and the others.

But he didn't know about the red eyes, and about Josh.

I'd probably ask him more about the Stalker Men first.

Maybe I'd ask him why the h.e.l.l a PHD in Metaphysics called himself "Haze."

The numbers rolled up to 340, 342, and finally 344.

344 sat on the curb of McCall and another street called Chatham. It was probably the best of the houses on this street; it had a hedge on the curb side, and the gra.s.s was green and only partially blanketed with weeds and dandelions. A wilting mulberry tree slumped beside the hedge, and the gra.s.s was stained purple around it.

The driveway was empty. The front door was open, revealing a closed screen door.

I pulled in. The car grumbled to a halt.

The house was quiet. No lights on. No sign of movement inside.

I got out of my car and shut the door. I flinched at the noise.

I took a few steps through the lawn. The long, dry gra.s.s tore as I walked through it. As I got closer, the house didn't give any indication of life.

I pulled out the card. I checked the address again. The number was correct, and Google Maps couldn't have lied to me.

Had Haze vanished too? I bit my lip at the thought.

I went up to the door and rang the bell.

"Haze!" I called. "Haze are you in there!?"

I could see a bare hallway through the screen door. No people.

"Haze!" I called. "Daniel!... Professor Thornton!"

No response, no sound. My voice sank into the house like water on dry earth.

The entire street was quiet. There weren't even summer crickets chirping their f.u.c.k-songs.