The Devil says, “Things just get better and better nowadays. But—try to remember how it was. The person who disappeared, only they didn’t. You’d see them from time to time, peeking in at you through windows, or down low through the mail slot in your front door. Keyholes. You might see them in the grocery store. Sitting in the backseat of your car, down low, slouching in your rearview mirror. They might pinch your leg or pull your hair when you’re asleep. When you talk on the phone, they listen in, you hear them listening.
The cheerleader says, “Like, with my parents—”
“Exactly,” says the Devil. “You’ve had nightmares about them, right?”
“Not really,” the cheerleader says. “Everyone says they were probably nice people. I mean, look at this house! But, sometimes, I have this dream that I’m at the mall, and I see my husband. And he’s just the same, he’s a grown-up, and he doesn’t recognize me. It turns out that I’m the only one who’s going backwards. And then he does recognize me and he wants to know what I’ve done with the kids.”
The last time she’d seen her husband, he was trying to grow a beard. He couldn’t even do that right. He hadn’t had much to say, but they’d looked at each other for a long time.
“What about your children?” the Devil says. “Do you wonder where they went when the doctor pushed them back up inside you? Do you have dreams about them?”
“Yes,” the cheerleader says. “Everything gets smaller. I’m afraid of that.”
“Think how men feel!” the Devil says. “It’s no wonder men are afraid of women. No wonder sex is so hard on them.”
The cheerleader misses sex, that feeling afterwards, that blissful, unsatisfied itch.
“The first time around, things were better,” the Devil says. “I don’t know if you remember. People died, and no one was sure what happened next. There were all sorts of possibilities. Now everyone knows everything. What’s the fun in that?”
Someone is trying to push open the closet door, but the cheerleader puts her feet against it, leaning against the back of the closet. “Oh, I remember!” she says, “I remember when I was dead! There was so much I was looking forward to. I had no idea!”
The Devil shivers. He’s never liked dead people much.
“So, okay, what about monsters?” the cheerleader says. “Vampires? Serial killers? People from outer space? Those old movies?”
The Devil shrugs. “Yeah, sure. Boogeymen. Formaldehyde babies in Mason jars. Someday someone is going to have to take them out of the jar, unpickle them. Women with teeth down there. Zombies. Killer robots, killer bees, serial killers, cold spots, werewolves. The dream where you know that you’re asleep but you can’t wake up. You can hear someone walking around the bedroom picking up your things and putting them down again and you still can’t wake up. The end of the world. Spiders. No one was with her when she died. Carnivorous plants.”
“Oh goody,” the cheerleader says. Her eyes shine at him out of the dark. Her pompoms slide across the floor of the closet. He moves his flashlight so he can see her hands.
“So here’s your story,” the cheerleader says. She’s a girl who can think on her feet. “It’s not really a scary story. I don’t really get scary.”
“Weren’t you listening?” the Devil says. He taps the flashlight against his big front teeth. “Never mind, it’s okay, never mind. Go on.”
“This probably isn’t a true story,” the cheerleader says, “and it doesn’t go backwards like we do. I probably won’t get all the way to the end, and I’m not going to start at the beginning, either. There isn’t enough time.”
“That’s fine,” the Devil says. “I’m all ears.” (He is.)
The cheerleader says, “So who’s going to tell this story, anyway? Be quiet and listen. We’re running out of time.”
She says, “A man comes home from a sales conference. He and his wife have been separated for a while, but they’ve decided to try living together again. They’ve sold the house that they used to live in. Now they live just outside of town, in an old house in an orchard.
The man comes home from this business conference, and his wife is sitting in the kitchen and she’s talking to another woman, an older woman. They’re sitting on the chairs that used to go around the kitchen table, but the table is gone. So is the microwave, and the rack where Susan’s copper-bottomed pots hang. The pots are gone, too.