A Debt to be Paid Read online

  “I was chased.”

  “Chased? My god. By who?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. It was too dark.” She looked around for the first time and saw hundreds if not thousands of books lining every surface. There were stacks on top of shelves, most of them threatening to topple over. The front desk itself seemed to be constructed of hard covers. The faint smell of dust and mildew hung in the air. It was pleasant and overwhelming at once.

  An older man came out of a door near the back of the shop. His mustache covered most of his mouth and she would not have been surprised had he pulled out a spectacle and pipe from his pocket. “Brian, is everything all right? I thought I heard someone yelling.” He stopped when he saw Meg. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize we had a customer.”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry,” Meg said. “I didn’t mean to be a bother.”

  Brian touched her shoulder. “You’re not bothering anyone. There’s a fridge in the back. Let’s get you some ice for your head.”

  For a frightful moment, she thought he was talking about her scar, that it had somehow opened back up when she’d fallen. She imagined blood spewing like a river. She turned away and touched the spot behind her bangs. It was shriveled and raised but it was not bleeding. “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”

  Brian led her out back into what looked like an office, employee break room, and basement all in one. He pulled out a chair from an old splintery table, told her to sit down. There were countless more piles of books, most of them on the floor. “I take it that was your father?”

  “That’s him alright. Martin Peterson, the proprietor of Books by the Dozen.” He handed her a frozen bag of peas. “Here. This is the best I can do. Put this against your head. I’d be surprised if you don’t have a concussion.”

  “Thank you.” She closed her eyes against the sudden cold. It made the oncoming bruise tingle with pain.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Brian held up a coffee pot and a mug.

  She wanted to decline but her body temperature had halved in the last few minutes. “If it’s not a bother.”

  “Of course not. I’ve got to warn you. My father likes his coffee blacker than night. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

  “Just what I needed.”

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “Black’s fine.”

  He poured the coffee into a mug and slid it over. It smelled and looked as if it had been on the burner all day long. She took a sip and confirmed her suspicions. It was bitter and strong and it warmed her some. “Listen, I want to apologize for last night. I didn’t mean to come across like that.”

  “You apologize an awful lot. It doesn’t suit you.” He poured himself a cup of coffee, turned the opposite chair around, and sat with his chest against the back. “You had a few too many and you got chatty. Nothing I haven’t done about a thousand times before.”

  She smiled, which seemed impossible after the last couple of days.

  “Now,” Brian said. “About the guy who chased you. I think you ought to call the cops.”

  “Funny you should say that. I actually spoke to a cop not more than an hour ago.”

  “About what?”

  “About a phone call I received for the second day in a row.”

  “What kind of phone call?”

  “I’m not sure exactly but I think it somehow has to do with my mother.”

  “I see.” He sipped his coffee.

  She could sense him slipping away, thinking she sounded just a bit off her rocker. “It would make more sense if you knew the entire story.”

  “So go ahead. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  “Are you sure? Don’t you have a wife or kids to go home to or something? There’s got to be better things to do on a Friday night.”

  “Not in this town. We could go to a bar but look where that got us last night. And besides, I don’t have a wife or kids. I have that guy.” Brian nodded toward someone behind her.

  Meg turned and saw Martin. He put on his jacket and hat. “I’m heading out for the night. Don’t forget to shut off the lights.” His voice was muffled beneath the mustache, as if he wore a mask. He reminded her of her grandfather. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Thank you for the peas. And for the coffee.” She took another sip and tried to hide her reaction.

  “That’s what book stores are for. Good night.” He closed the door behind him.

  “He seems charming,” Meg said.

  “He’s a pain in the ass but he’s okay sometimes. Now, you said you had a story for me.”

  “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “No,” he said. “But it sounds intriguing at least.”

  “Alright. But could you do me one quick favor?”

  “What’s that?”

  She thought of the thing that had chased her—if it had been real. Though it had certainly felt real enough. “Would you mind double-checking the locks?”

  Chapter Four

  For the most part, Meg told him everything. About being woken in the night by her mother, dressing quickly and packing what she could, only the things she absolutely needed, which had been her dolls at the time. About asking her mother where they were going and not getting a straight answer for the first week or so they were on the road. About her mother’s ramblings and rants, dissertations about things that could only be seen by her. About what seemed like endless nights sleeping near abandoned factories and stores, any place the police wouldn’t think to look for them.

  About finally heading home, the night that had changed everything. The night her mother went away and Meg began to understand how sick she really was.

  Meg did, however, leave out two details. First, she didn’t tell him that she’d seen things she couldn’t explain on that trip, things that seemed to come alive from the shadows, things she told her herself were just tricks of the eye or an overactive imagination. Things she’d only recently started to see again.

  The second thing she left out was her mother striking her. She never talked about that, not even to the therapists she’d seen throughout middle school. The scar was reminder enough. She didn’t need to relive pain when she had a permanent keepsake.

  “What made your mother finally turn around and head back home?” Brian asked. He was on his second cup of coffee, sipping away as she told her story.

  “I’m not sure. I know she called my father from a payphone one night and they spoke for a long time. She handed the phone to me and it was the first time I’d spoken to him for the entire trip. If you want to call it a trip. Then we ran to the car and I thought I saw someone chasing after us. I remember a man—maybe two. They were trying to stop my mother. There was some sort of fight just before we took off. I might have dreamt it.”

  “Maybe your dad finally convinced her what she was doing was wrong.”

  “Could be. Or maybe while she listened to me talking on the phone she finally realized she was kidnapping her own daughter.”

  Brian scratched at stubble on his chin. The sound was deafening. Outside, through the one window in the office, the sky was completely black. She looked at the time on her phone and was shocked to see they’d been in the back room of the bookstore for almost three hours. “She was schizophrenic you said?”

  Meg nodded. “Severely. One of the worst cases her doctors had ever seen, I found out later. They said it was an extremely curious case.” She mimed mock-quotation marks with her fingers. “Because she was lucid and aware of her surroundings and she hadn’t lost touch with any other part of reality. She truly believed that she was being followed by individuals because she’d been tricked into it.”

  “Tricked? How do you mean?”

  “This is where her story turns insane. And that’s saying something. My father told me later that she�
��d been receiving pamphlets in the mail regarding some night school. She’d wanted to go back to school for a long time. She dropped out when she got pregnant with me. This place—I can’t remember the exact name—it offered cheap classes and they were convenient for stay-at-home mothers. It seemed perfect. She signed her name on the dotted line and mailed it away. And that’s when it all began. Except I’m almost positive there were no pamphlets to begin with. I think they were all in her head.”

  Brian didn’t talk for a long time. He went over to the coffee maker and poured his third cup. She wondered how fast his heart was beating in his chest. Hers was pounding away and she’d barely finished one cup so far. He sat back down and stretched, cracking his neck. “So how does it all connect to the phone calls? And that person who chased you for that matter.”

  She smiled but it wasn’t out of happiness. It was a sad-looking gesture and she could imagine him pitying her from across the table, though he kept his poker face on. “It connects perfectly. Because schizophrenia, especially the extremely curious kind—” she mimed the quotation marks once more, “—is quite hereditary. Its onset is usually in the mid to late twenties. More common in women than in men.”

  “So you’re saying…”

  “I’m saying I think I’ve caught her sickness because of bad genes and that I’ll be losing touch with reality in the near future. I’ll wind up being roommates with my mother back at her facility.” She finished the bottom of her coffee, wincing at the grainy and acidic aftertaste. “That or she wasn’t as crazy as she made herself out to be.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You mean she faked it? Her schizophrenia?”

  “I mean she was probably crazy but what if she hadn’t lost touch completely? What if some of it was true?”

  “But you just spent hours talking about her sickness.”

  “Yes and I’ve spent hours thinking about those two phone calls, telling myself they were fake. But if they were fake, then why did everyone else hear the phone ringing, and how could someone else answer the calls for me?”

  Brian opened his mouth but closed it quickly. She could tell he didn’t have an explanation for her and she herself didn’t have one either.

  Which made her shiver just a bit.

  “At any rate,” she said. “You probably think I’m crazy either way considering the only two conversations we’ve had thus far. It’s getting late.” She stood up and stretched.

  “I’ll give you a ride home,” Brian said.

  “You don’t have to do that. I live less than ten minutes away.”

  “And what about the person that chased you here?”

  “The person that might or might not have chased me, you mean.”

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t I want to chance it either way. I’m parked out back.”

  She was about to protest when she thought of her burning legs and lungs and how sure she’d been that a shadow was going to drag her away to a dark place. She cleared her throat. “I won’t argue if you insist.”

  “Then I insist.” He grabbed his jacket and hat, so similar to those of his father’s that he looked like a younger carbon copy, minus the facial hair.

  He double-checked everything in the shop and they headed out back into a common parking lot for all the businesses on the street. He led her to his car and she tensed at the passenger door, waiting for it to unlock and wondering how many hiding spots there were back there. Especially in the dark.

  The lock clicked open and she stepped in quickly.

  They drove in silence toward her apartment after she gave him the address. It was not the normal silence she was used to, the kind that arose back home whenever her mother was mentioned. It was comfortable, enough to let her relax some.

  He pulled along the curb out front of her building and put the car in park. “Here,” he said, passing her a business card for the store. He’d written down his cell number on the back. “If you need anything.”

  She was about to ask him if he’d written it down at the bar in hopes of taking her home but she stopped herself short. He’d been nice to her, nicer than anyone ought to be considering the situation. “Thank you. For everything.”

  She stepped outside. Before she was about to close the door, he stopped her.

  “And Meg, be careful, will you?”

  “Does that mean you believe at least a word of everything I told you?”

  “I believe something isn’t quite right here, and you don’t seem all that crazy to me.”

  “Now that’s refreshing.” She shut the door and headed into the front yard and up the stairs to the second floor. At the door she turned around and saw he was still parked there, waiting for her to get in. She fiddled with the lock, waved as she opened the door. Only then did he drive off.

  Inside her apartment something slithered near her feet. She dodged to the right, turning on the light and getting ready to scream.

  It was Dwight. He meowed and purred and walked over to his empty food dish.

  She hurried to the near-empty cabinets and poured him what was left of the food. “I am so sorry, buddy. It’ll never happen again. I swear.” She picked him up and kissed his head and he seemed to forgive her.

  She found small things to do around the apartment, avoiding sleep for as long as she could until it was impossible to keep her eyes open.

  She wanted to keep every light on but her electrical bill was high enough as it was, so she grabbed the flashlight from the kitchen drawer, turned it on, and placed it on her bedside table, so that the beam pointed toward the ceiling. It was still dark but it was something.

  Eventually Dwight jumped onto her feet and made a nest.

  She yawned and almost felt safe.

  For a time, she thought it was over.

  It lasted only a week but it was the best week she’d had in ages.

  On the following Monday she decided she would stop by the bookstore and talk to Brian, an actual conversation, nothing about her past, her pursuer—none of it.

  Except that her heart began to flutter when she neared the entrance, and not because she was afraid of being followed. She chocked it up to the stress of her loans and her bare bank account and walked home.

  The next day, after work, she again walked to the bookstore and again she felt lightheaded. It hit her then as Brian was stepping outside. She realized why her knees suddenly felt weak. “Look who it is. I take it you survived.”

  She nodded. “Just barely.”

  “Anyone follow you here?” He said it jokingly but some part of her still shuddered at the thought.

  “Not that I know of.” Despite herself she looked left and right, saw only shoppers passing by, all of them with faces.

  “Would you like to get dinner tonight?”

  Her heart stopped for a beat or two then sped up. “Yes, I’d like that.”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven. If that works for you.”

  “Sounds lovely.” She didn’t trust herself to say any more, so she crossed the street and headed back home.

  That night, after dinner at an Italian place where she hadn’t been able to pronounce most of the entrees, they went back to her apartment. She introduced him to Dwight and offered him a Narragansett. The best bang for your dollar, she told him. They drank a few and then a few more. They talked about normal things, things she’d always wanted to discuss with people, though she’d always felt she couldn’t somehow, like she was meant to be damaged forever, nothing to her but the past.

  She was laughing at something he said when she slid her head over and kissed him. It had been a reflex, an unconscious gesture, and now she wondered if it had been a mistake. He didn’t say anything and neither did she.

  She kissed him again and he kissed back this time, and so it went, until they were blindly sidestepping toward her bedroom, until they were taking off each other’s
shirts and pants, until they were wrapped around each other under the blanket. It had been nearly a year since she’d slept with anyone. She feared it would hurt or that she would be out of practice. But it didn’t hurt at all. And all things considered, an hour or so later, she thought she did just fine.

  After, they lay quietly, the air cooling the sweat on their skin.

  Eventually she nodded off, rolling away from him. Some time later, she woke to find him watching her. “Taking it all in?” she asked.

  “Sorry. I’m a night owl. It takes me an eternity to fall asleep. You lying next to me isn’t making matters any easier.”

  She felt herself blush and didn’t notice as he reached out and pushed her bangs aside and exposed the old wound until it was too late. She pushed his hand away.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to…”

  “No, it’s okay. I just…don’t like people to see it. My scar, I mean.”

  “I already saw it. While we were…together.”

  “Oh,” she said, feeling suddenly cold and exposed. She pulled the sheet over her breasts and slid against the backboard.

  “Do you mind me asking how you got it?”

  “I don’t mind. But I’d rather not get into it.” The flesh began to itch. She fought the urge to scratch.

  “I understand. You shouldn’t be embarrassed though. It’s just a scar. We all have them.”

  “Some scars are different than others.” It sounded like something her mother would have said, powerful yet meaningless.

  “Well it doesn’t bother me any.” He reached out, tossed aside the last remaining strand of hair so that her entire forehead was exposed. He slid a thumb along the curve of the scar. She winced at first, closing her eyes, but she opened them again when she realized the itch was gone.

  After that she slid that sheet back down.

  The next morning, Wednesday, she woke to an empty bed. There was a note from Brian on the table.

  My father will cut my balls off if I’m late opening up the shop. Call me. Or text me. Or just stop by.