Thicker Than Blood

I awoke to the earsplitting scream of the stereo system in my living room downstairs, the speakers pumping Miles Davis through the house at full volume. It was two o’clock in the morning. I remained motionless under the covers, in utter darkness, thinking, Someone is in the house. If you turn on the light, you’ll see him standing at the end of your bed, and if you move, he’ll know you’re awake and kill you. Please God, let this be a power surge, or something fucked up in the circuitry. But I don’t own a Miles Davis record.

As the music rattled the windows, I reached my left hand to the bedside table and opened the drawer, expecting at any moment for lights to blind me, followed by the immediate onset of unthinkable pain. My hand touched my new pistol, a subcompact .40-caliber Glock. I couldn’t remember if I’d chambered the first round, so I brought the handgun under the sheet and, pulling back on the slide, felt the semijacketed hollow-point poke out of the ejection port, ready to fire.

For two minutes, I lay in bed, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. Then, squinting so he wouldn’t see the whites of my eyes, I scoped out my room: At a glance, I seemed to be the only occupant. Unless he’s in the closet. Rolling to the other side of the bed, I lifted the phone to dial 911. Miles blared through the receiver. Oh Jesus.

I planted my feet on the carpet and crept toward the door, thinking, Don’t go down there. Orson could be anywhere in this house. I know it’s him. Please be dreaming.

The exposed second-floor hallway ran the length of the living room, with my bedroom at the end. At my door, I stopped and peered down the empty hallway. Too dark to see anything in the living room below. I did, however, notice the red and green stereo lights glowing by the staircase. Through the tall living room windows, I could see the woods, the lake, and that remote blue light at the end of Walter’s pier. I might die tonight.

Finger on the light switch, I couldn’t decide whether or not to turn on the track lighting in the hallway. Maybe he doesn’t know I’m up yet. I won’t alert him to the fact.

There were three open doors leading into black rooms along the right side of the hall, the oak banister on the left. My heart clanged like a blacksmith’s hammer. Get to the staircase. I sprinted down the hall as "So What" masked my footsteps. Crouching at the top of the staircase, freezing sweat burning in my eyes, I stared through the banister at the expansive living room — the couch, the baby grand, the wet bar, the hearth — ambiguous oblique forms in the shadows below. Then there were the places I could not see — the kitchen, the foyer, my study. He could be anywhere. Resisting waves of hysterical trembling, so intense that I kept my finger off the trigger, I thought, He’s doing this for the fear. That’s what gets him off.

Anger displaced my terror. I stood up, charged down the staircase, and ran into the living room.

"Orson!" I screamed above the music. "Do I look scared? COME ON!"

I moved to the stereo and cut it off. The gaping silence engulfed me, so I turned on a lamp beside the stereo, and the soft, warm light it produced eased my heart. I listened, looked, heard and saw nothing, took five deep breaths, and leaned against the wall to tame my renascent fear. Go out through the kitchen and onto the deck. Get away from here. Maybe he’s just fucking with you. Maybe he’s already gone.

As I started for the back door, something in the bay-windowed alcove between the kitchen and the living room arrested my exit. An unmarked videotape stood atop the glass breakfast table. Picking it up, I again glanced over my shoulder at the hallway above and then into the foyer. Still nothing moved. I wanted to search my study and the three guest rooms on the second floor, but I didn’t have the equanimity to roam my house, knowing he skulked in some corner or nook, waiting for me to stumble blindly past.

Returning to the stereo and the entertainment center, I inserted the videotape into my VCR, turned on the television, and sat down on the sofa so I could watch the screen and still see most of the living room.

The screen is blue, then black. The date and time emerge in the bottom right-hand corner: 10/30/96, 11:08 A.M. That’s today. No, yesterday now.

I hear a voice, then two voices, so low and muffled that I turn up the volume.

"Would you like for me to sign it?"…"Would you?"…"Be happy to."…"You got a pen?"…"Shit, I don’t — oh, wait"…"You want me just to sign it?"…"Could you do it to…sign it to my girlfriend?"…"Sure."…"What’s her name?"…"Je

The screen still dark, the sound of a car engine vibrates the television set, and then the first shot appears — through the back window of a moving car and from a few hundred feet away — me walking up the steps to my mother’s house. The screen goes black and silent.

Still 10/30/96, now 11:55 A.M. The picture fades in, and the camera slowly pans a dark room. Oh God. Concrete walls and floor. The objects in the room are the giveaway: two red bicycles, a dilapidated exercise trampoline, a fake white Christmas tree, mountains of cardboard boxes, and several stacks of records — the small windowless basement of my mother’s house.

The cameraman holds on a shot of the fourteen steps that lead upstairs, and then the picture jerks nauseatingly as he ascends. The first hallway door creaks open, and the camera zooms in on my face as I sit quietly on my mother’s couch, watching the muted television. "Such a good son to visit her," he whispers. Then the cameraman closes the door and tiptoes back down the steps.

After placing the camera atop a stack of our father’s records, Orson squats down in front of it, the staircase behind him now, and the screen blackens.

The picture returns from the same position in the basement — 10/30/96, 7:25 P.M. Orson leans into the lens and whispers, "You just left, Andy." He smiles. He wears a mechanic’s suit, though I can’t tell its color in the poor basement light. "I don’t want you to worry, Andy," he whispers. "This following you around thing is quite temporary. In fact, as you watch this now in your living room around two in the morning, I’ll be hundreds of miles away, driving into the capital of this great nation. And when I finish there, I’ll be blending back into the faceless masses for a good long while." Orson sneezes twice.

"Because you can’t keep your mouth shut, I’m considering having a friend of mine visit Walter and his beautiful family. Would that upset you? I think you’ve met Luther." He smiles. "He’s a fan." Orson pulls a length of wire from his pocket. "In one minute, it’ll occur to you that you have this all on tape. Well, you had it all on tape. Remember that. Shall we?" Orson lifts the camera and continues to whisper as he climbs the staircase. "The rage you’re about to feel will liberate you, Andy. Think of it that way. Oh, one last thing — watch the news tomorrow morning."

He opens the door to the hallway. Somewhere in the house, my mother is singing. Orson slams the door, opens it, and slams it again before rushing back down the steps. Setting the camera back on the stack of records, he moves offscreen, somewhere in the semidarkness, amid the i

Silence. At the top of the steps, the door opens.

"Andrew, did you come back in?" My mother’s voice fills the basement, and I begin to tremble, my head shaking involuntarily back and forth. Descending five steps, she stops, and I can see her legs now. I’m muttering, "No" continuously, as if it will drive her back up those steps.