Read Online The People Next Door by Christopher Ransom - Free Book Online

you see? You know the way.’
    Soon they were crossing a dirt lane, moving into a field dotted with thistle and small cacti and rocks, but Mick felt nothing
     under his feet. The clouds moved overhead, letting moonlight glow at Roger’s back. Though theyhad been outdoors for what seemed like half an hour, the dentist’s bathing trunks – pink and chocolate in a flower motif –
     were still dripping, the water running off the hems in rivulets that coursed down his legs, pasting the hair to his hamstrings
     in dark whorls.
    Mick felt a sadness and pity for the man. All at once he felt guilty for severing the friendship in a cowardly way, by cool
     temper and years of neglected invitations to parties, blatant shunning in public places. By all accounts, the man had spiraled
     into addiction and familial despair, and all through it Mick had shed not one ounce of empathy for him. A real friend would
     have told Roger to his face that he was out of control, behaving like an asshole, and that he needed to get his shit together
     for his own health and for the sake of his family.
    ‘I’m sorry, Roger,’ Mick said. They should have reached Boulder Municipal Airport by now, but he saw no gliders or the fence
     or the runway. Apparently there were entire pockets of land back here that Mick had driven by a thousand times growing up
     but never explored. He felt like crying. ‘I’m so sorry.’
    ‘Sorry?’ Roger said without slowing or looking back. ‘What for?’
    ‘I should have been there. I could have done something for you.’
    ‘There’s nothing you could have done for me,’ the dentist said. ‘What do you think you could have done?’
    ‘I should have been kinder to you on the lake, and the other times.’
    ‘Maybe,’ Roger said. ‘But in your own way, you did save me. I’m free of all my addictions. Now it’s my turn to help you.’
    Mick was frightened beyond his adult understanding of fear. Something terrible was out here. Roger was leading him to some
     awful intersection of knowledge and possibility, a place where the ground opened up and showed you the eventual, final future,
     a place where worms fed on dead prairie dogs and dried-up birds and gray-muzzled raccoons who died without anyone to comment
     on their departing souls, where there were no pretty flowers or fond memories, only the absorption of the decaying carcass
     into soil.
    ‘Where are we? Roger?’
    The dentist did not respond. Mick hurried, head down for a while, and when he looked up again Roger was standing against a
     white wall that extended hundreds of feet in either direction. It was his new neighbor’s security wall, and the house stood
     lightless on the other side. What should have been a walk of only three or four minutes and covered less than an eighth of
     a mile had taken an hour or more. The house seemed to tilt toward him, leaning like a parallelogram, a shadow of itself.
    My demons caught up with me. Soon yours will too
.
    ‘Who are they?’ Mick said.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Roger said, and in the dark his eyes were soft, almost childlike. ‘But they are very interested in you and
     your family. They have been searching for a long time and now they are here. They want to be yourfriends, but they aren’t anybody’s friends. They will do anything to get what they want. They use other people, make them
     do horrible things.’
    ‘They did this to you,’ Mick said.
    ‘What happened to me has already happened,’ Roger said, his tone suggesting that he did not like to be reminded of his condition.
     ‘It is no longer important. This is about you.’
    ‘I don’t understand. None of this makes any sense.’
    ‘True, but it’s happening. They found you, Mick. If you’re smart, you’ll get away, move, take your family some place far from
     here and hope they lose interest.’
    ‘I can’t leave,’ Mick said. ‘This is our home. The restaurant …’
    The dentist took what was supposed to be a deep breath, his face