Page 10 of When He Calls

She's the reason I leave the apartment at all in October. Without her, the groceries would get delivered, the front door would stay locked from the first skeleton to November 1st. But Bean has to go out and Bean can't go out alone and Bean doesn't care that Ellis's yard is a horror movie set because Bean doesn't know what a horror movie is, and the fact that she pulls toward the foam gravestones like they're the most interesting things on the block is either beautiful or brutal depending on the day.

Two hours of editing. The vineyard novel demands full attention and the attention keeps slipping. A paragraph will catch my attention, the prose settling into the rhythm, and then my brain drops a frame and I'm back on the bathroom floor with the phone against my ear and his voice doing the thing it did, the thing where it held space for me. The way he said I'm here at the start. Not the center. Not we. Him.

Specifically him.

The cursor blinks in the manuscript. I type a comment about comma placement and delete it. The comma is fine. My focus is the problem. It left sometime early this morning when his voice said you didn't fall apart, you just needed someone to listen, and it hasn't come back.

Three more hours of editing. A sandwich at four, standing at the counter, because sitting down to eat is committing to the impending darkness and the darkness is the part that has to be survived. Bean eats her dinner at five, the dry kibble she likes and the wet food she loves, her tail going in circles while I scoop the can into the bowl.

The evening walk. 6:30. Bean is at the door before I am, leash in her mouth. The light is different now. Sun lower, shadows longer, the decorations getting their power back. The foam gravestones throw shadows twice their size across Ellis's lawn. The spiderweb between the porch pillars catches the low light, goes silver. Ellis's yard is worse at dusk. The skeleton's LEDs flare brighter against the dimming sky. The red visible from half a block away. The ghost on the porch beam catches the breeze. The fabric billows. The silhouette against the house is exactly the shape my brain has been trained to fear.

Bean pulls at the leash, nose to the ground, oblivious. My hand is tight. My breathing is in threes. The skeleton goes off as we pass, the four-second laugh, and my body jerks and Bean looks up at me with her ears flat and we walk fast, faster, past the yard and down the sidewalk until the sound is behind us and my breathing goes back to something I can work with.

Three blocks. Bean investigates every lamppost. The neighborhood goes from October to normal and back to October in waves. Decorated houses. Bare houses. Pumpkins and empty porches. A yard on Birch has a new display, a scarecrow slumped in a lawn chair with a hat over its face and a fake cleaver in its lap. I cross the street to avoid it and Bean follows without complaint because Bean follows wherever the leash goes and the leash goes wherever my body can tolerate.

The walk back takes a different route. Longer by two blocks. The long way avoids the scarecrow and the inflatable ghost and the house on the corner that added a strobe light to their porch. The short way is faster. The long way is survivable.

Home. Lock the door. Handle, deadbolt, handle. Bean on the couch. October evenings stretch elastic, the hours between dusk and sleep expanding to hold more dread than daylight. Leash on the hook. Shoes by the door. The deadbolt redone with both hands because one isn't convincing enough.

The laptop on the couch. Streaming service, scrolling without selecting. Each thumbnail assessed for threat level before my brain registers the title. Romantic comedy. Safe. Cooking show. Safe. True crime. Pass. Period drama. Safe but boring. The algorithm thinks I want horror because I watched a folklore documentary last March that got tagged wrong. Nightmare fuel ever since.

A thumbnail. Horror. A man in a mask in a doorway.

Less than a second on screen. My hand jerks, the laptop shifts, the screen jumps, and the trailer auto-plays. Studio logo. A woman walking through a dark house. Music building. Then the sound. The frequency. The specific register my brain has filed under basement. My body goes from couch to floor to hallway without my brain's participation.

Hallway. Back against the wall. The laptop still playing on the couch, too far away to reach. Bean's feet clicking on the floor, coming to find me, her nose pressing against my hand. My vision narrows. The hallway becomes a tunnel. The phone is already in my hand, already open, already on the number.

Three rings.

"Harbor Crisis Center, this is Brantley."

My shoulders drop. Not slowly, not in stages. They drop, two inches, instant, the muscles releasing on contact with the sound. The hallway opens back up. The walls go back to where walls belong.

"It's Milo. From last night."

"Hey, Milo."

The name in his mouth. The ease of it. Not hello, Milo or hi there or welcome back. Just my name, sitting in his voice, already said with a smile coming through the line.

"I know I said I wouldn't call again."

"People say that."

"Does that mean everyone says it, or everyone means it, or neither?"

"Means the line is open."

Down the wall to the floor. Bean in my lap, her weight settling across my thighs, her chin on my forearm. Eyes closed.

"A movie trailer. Auto-play. Jump scare. Couldn't close it fast enough, because apparently I have the reflexes of a fucking houseplant. Sorry. I know this is stupid."

"Where are you now?"

"Hallway floor. Upgrade."

"That is an upgrade. You stayed in an open room and not the bathroom."

My eyes open. He's right. Last night was the bathroom, deepest room, smallest, fewest windows. Tonight the hallway. Toward the front door. That is an improvement.