The Mostly Unfabulous Homepage of Ethan Green

Though it was only nine in the morning, the sun already seemed high and hot to me as I climbed into our rental car and headed out for Patrick's apartment. The address Jimmy Bender had given me was on Palm Way, a street that proved easy enough to locate and that fully lived up to its name: it was lined on both sides with towering trees and drooping palms. There were brown fronds scattered here and there about the street like large animals. The sun was not yet at an angle where it would throw direct light onto the street, and that coupled with the ominously overhanging trees cast a sense of gloom over the area.

I finally found Patrick's building in the middle of the third block. I parked the car, got out, and went directly to the front door, afraid that any hesitation would weaken my resolve. The general quiet was enough to set my nerves on edge. Though Palm Way was pretty close to a major thoroughfare, it was extremely quiet, the stillness only occasionally interrupted by the loud crack of palm fronds hitting the street. The building was a two-story square painted Pepto-Bismol pink. To the right of the glass doors was a large crack that ran up the side of the wall like a nasty black vine. The doors gave a full view of the enclosed courtyard which was open to the sky and the elements. A sidewalk snaked around the perimeter of the square and the first-floor apartments opened directly onto it. Instead of the sunniness you might have expected, it was overshadowed by the walkway that circled the second floor. The lock on the glass door was broken, the amount of rust bearing evidence to the fact that it had been in that condition for some time.

The door creaked noisily as I swung it open and slammed with the finality of a cell door behind me after I'd stepped through. I started around the walk looking for apartment number 5. Despite the openness of this courtyard, my footsteps echoed loudly. I was surprised by the general dinginess of the place, convinced as I was that Patrick was making money hand over fist, so to speak.

Each door was covered with cracking paint in a hue just off from the paint on the walls, and each bore a very old, tarnished mock-brass number. I found number 5 in a corner, beneath the stairway to the second floor.

I knocked, but there was no answer. I waited, knocked again, and when there was still no answer I called out, "Patrick, it's me. I want to talk to you." My voice seemed to bounce around the courtyard.

I was rather puzzled because I didn't think he would leave his apartment so early, and that is probably why I tried the door before leaving. To my surprise, it wasn't locked, but swung open readily, banging against the inner wall.

"Patrick, it's Alex! Are you here?"

I was greeted with the kind of silence that rings in your ears. I stepped into the apartment, which was blindingly dark given the general gloominess outside and the cheap, heavy curtains drawn across the one window. I immediately noticed how musty and dank the place smelled, as if decades of moisture had soaked deep into the core of the place and would never be fully extracted.

I called to Patrick again and received no answer. I continued carefully into the apartment, my eyes slowly adjusting to the lack of light. The surroundings were, to be really generous, not palatial. To be less generous, the place was squalid. It consisted of one room and a sort of closet that served as the kitchen. There was a filthy shag rug of indeterminate color, which covered only half the room. The furnishings were early college dorm: there was an extremely old white Naugahyde couch with several slashlike tears across its back, a card table with one chair, and a tiny, ancient television set.

Directly across the room from the front door was the bathroom, the door of which was slightly ajar. I cringed at the thought of the condition the bathroom might be in, but couldn't help myself: I had to look. I pushed the door and it swung open like a curtain going up on a play. There was Patrick. He was naked and lay sprawled in the empty bathtub. There was a bullet hole in his forehead and another in his chest.

In the brief moment before I became paralyzed, I think I half believed a trick was being played on me, like something out of Diabolique. But there was enough physical evidence to convince me otherwise. I froze, unable to move or take my eyes away from the corpse.

It's because of the shock that I didn't become aware of the sound until it was almost upon me, although I realized then that I had heard it somewhere in the back of my mind: there were footsteps echoing through the courtyard. I hadn't shut the door when I came in, and the contents of the bathroom were plainly visible from the front door. I was still frozen when the footsteps reached the door and stopped, but I was jarred from that state when a female voice said in an anxious whisper, "Is he dead?"

I turned and looked at the woman blankly. She was silhouetted in the doorway like an apparition. She was wearing a huge floppy sun hat that had a sheer material over the top and tied around her chin. She also wore some sort of flowing peasant dress type thing that made her seemed swathed in cloth rather than dressed in any particular way and served to hide her shape. I thought I must have just happened into a nightmare. The woman remained motionless, like a phantom that had appeared to herald the death, but at the same time she seemed to pulse with anxiety that somehow seemed to have more to do with discovering me than with the dead body. Though I could see nothing of her face, there was something inexplicably familiar about her. I was so startled I couldn't speak or move.

After a very tense silence, the woman said, "We've got to get out of here!"

And that's when I recognized her.

It was my mother.

Copyright © l998, Fred Hunter.

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