The Keeper by Sarah Langan Page A

terrified him, and he knew, suddenly, that he’d been tricked. She stood and walked toward the door. He grabbed her torso as gently as he could and pulled her back, “You need to put some clothes on,” he whispered.
    She sank her pearly whites into his arm. He howled and let her go. She left the apartment. Cradling his arm, he followed her. Thinking, because he could not help it, because he was a monumental shit, that Rossoff would see her and they would know. All of Bedford would know the dirty things Paul Martin did to sick women behind closed doors. She faced him, stark naked, at the top of the stairs. Her heels teetered over the edge and she smiled. Her face was flushed.
    He heard the same buzzing sound he’d heard before, only now it seemed to be coming from Susan. Only now he thought he could hear his own voice in the din, too. What the hell was happening? Too drunk. Way too drunk.
    Behind her, he saw a housefly. It buzzed around Susan as if attracted to her scent, then flew back over the steps that rose fifteen feet, way up in the air, and then it descended. He no longer heard it buzz. It went out the door or into Rossoff’s apartment. Or maybe its wing broke and it fell to its death. It was the fly that made Paul remember that though right now was very close to a dream, though, by rights, it should not have been happening, it was real. It was that fly that made him understand.
    Susan lifted her hand. She waved. He tried to grab her arm. She jumped back, stepping into nothing but air. She tumbled down. It happened almost in slow motion. Smiling, she fell backward. When she first came into contact with the stairs, she hit the underside of her head, the swell of cranium where the spinal cord ends and the cerebral cortex begins. Then she tumbled, limbs splayed, until she hit the landing.
    He ran down after her and checked her neck for a pulse but none was present. When he tried to lift her, her head rolled parallel to her shoulder. It reminded him of that ghost story about the girl with the black ribbon around her neck. Her husband unties it while she is sleeping and her head rolls off.
    He walked back up the stairs. At first, he could not find the phone. He couldn’t remember where it was. And then he couldn’t remember whom to call. He started to dial his own number before he realized what a bad idea that was. And then he was going to call the hospital because maybe it wasn’t so bad, maybe she wasn’t really dead and they could fuse some things and put her together like Humpty Dumpty, except all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty back together again, and she really was dead. Humpty dead.
    He replaced the phone on its receiver. He took a deep breath. That didn’t help. He looked at his shoes. They needed polish. Humpty needed polish. No, Humpty needed the police. He thought he was going to vomit. He sat down on the bed she had been lying on only a few minutes before, closed his eyes, and opened them again. He could not stop shaking. He noticed the way the room was kept: crap all over the floor, a layer of cigarette ash coating all the surfaces, the bottle of whiskey he should not have been drinking, and he knew he should have seen this coming.

HINDSIGHT

 
    T hursday was a big day in Bedford.
    Most had dreamed of senseless things that they could not remember in the morning. There were dark woods and smoldering paper mills and lost, pretty girls turned ugly.
    That afternoon, so many little hands reached out the windows of the Bedford School to feel the rain that an observer might have thought that the building was about to set sail. At three o’clock, the younger ones climbed onto their buses, taking their seats in one of eight rows. Some of the younger children pressed their ears to the windows and let the motion of the bus tickle their skin. Some laughed and talked. Others watched the rain. Some were teased. Some did the teasing. Matthew O’Brian and his best friend huddled