old man was proud of him, or suspected as much, because how many times had his father tried to reach out to him in his way, and how many times had he been rebuffed? Now it was too late, because it was always too late. Some revelations only came with the sound of dirt falling on a coffin: the ones that mattered, the ones that made for regrets.
So he was painting a picture for his sister, and maybe for himself too. It would be the first such offering he had made to her since they were children, and the most important. He wanted it to be beautiful.
He heard the sound of a vehicle slowing down, and headlights raked the house as Teddy’s truck pulled into the drive. Grady swore softly. Teddy had a heart of gold, and there was nothing that he wouldn’t do for Grady, but he liked background noise in his home: the sound of the TV, or the radio, or music on the stereo, usually something from the sixties or seventies sung by men with beards. Grady thought that it came from living alone for too long while being uncomfortable with his own company. Now that Grady was around, Teddy liked being in his presence as much as possible. He’d insist that Grady watch old sci-fi movies with him, or smoke some weed while listening to Abbey Road or Dark Side of the Moon or Frampton Comes Alive.
The engine died. He heard the doors of the truck opening and closing, and footsteps approaching the house. The front door was unlocked. Teddy always left it that way. It was Falls End, and nothing bad ever happened in Falls End.
Doors, Grady realized: Teddy had brought company. Hell, that meant that any small hope Grady had of working for an hour or two had just gone right out the window. Grady put down his brush and walked to the living room.
Teddy was kneeling on the floor, his head bowed and his hands clasped behind his back. He looked like a man bobbing for apples.
‘You okay, Teddy?’ asked Grady, and Teddy looked up at him. His nose was broken, and his mouth was bloody. Grady wasn’t sure, but even through the blood it looked as if some of Grady’s teeth were missing because there were gaps where there had not been gaps before.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Teddy. ‘I’m so sorry.’
A boy jumped from behind the couch, like this was all just a big game, a game whose main purpose was to scare Grady Vetters to childhood and back, which the sight of the boy had pretty much done. He had the swollen, unhealthy pallor of a cancer sufferer, and his hair was already thinning. There was bruising around his eyes, his nose was swollen, and his throat was distended by an ugly purple mass. Under other circumstances Grady might almost have pitied him, except the boy wore an expression that was simultaneously blank and malevolent, the way Grady had always imagined concentration camp executioners looked after their victims grew too many to count. The boy was holding a pair of blood-stained pliers in his right hand. He made a throwing motion in Grady’s direction with his left, and four teeth landed at Grady’s feet, roots and all.
Grady wondered if this was a nightmare. Perhaps he was still asleep, and if he willed himself awake none of this would be happening. He’d always dreamed vividly: it came with being an artist. But he felt the night air on his face, and he knew that he was not dreaming.
A woman appeared in the doorway behind Teddy, her face partially marred by what at first might have been mistaken for a roseate birthmark but was quickly revealed as a terrible, blistered burn. A patch of gauze covered her left eye. All of these details were incidental, though, next to the gun that she held in her right hand, and the plastic cable ties that dangled from her left.
She pointed the gun at the back of Teddy’s head and pulled the trigger. There was an explosion that made Grady’s ears ring, and Teddy was no more.
Grady turned on his heel and ran back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. There was no lock, so he pushed his bed against the door before he began opening the window. He heard the sound of the doorknob turning, and the bed moving across the floor, but he did not look back. The window was stiff, and he