Symmetry's Shadow Chapter 4

IV

The only thing worse than being lost, Paul thought, was being lost in a driving downpour. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen it rain like this. It was coming down so hard that when he looked up, he couldn’t see through the rain to the other side of the street. He had considered asking his dad for the keys to the car but he knew that his dad would have objected to the car being used for such a short trip. Besides, one of the main reason’s for this expedition to the store was to get out of the house for a little bit. But if he had known it was going to rain like this...
He had been wrong about the location of the Gas and Go. He had thought it was on the corner but all that was there was a mail box. He knew he had gone in the right direction because he remembered passing the Gas and Go when they had arrived in the neighborhood. That was what it was called right? Gas and Go? They didn’t have Gas and Gos in Lehigh Furnace; they had Easy Stops. The difference in names seemed fairly meaningful to Paul.
Before coming up here, Paul had been a bit concerned that he would be seen as some sort of a hillbilly but soon enough he saw that Caladagia wasn’t a very big city itself. The population was only about 10,000. Granted, that was still over ten times the population of Lehigh Furnace, but it still wasn’t a whole lot. He didn’t know how many people had to live somewhere before that place could be called a city, but he didn’t think it was a number much lower than 10,000. He got the impression that Caladagia had just made the cut-off. His senior year was starting in a few days but he wasn’t as concerned about it as he thought he would be. He had broken up with Tammy a couple of months ago and he had already dated the other two attractive girls from L.F. High. And even though he did genuinely like his friends, when all things were considered he could take them or leave them. He was looking forward to meeting new people and even in the worst case scenario if everyone in his new class saw him as a clueless hayseed, then he would only have to put up with it for nine months. He had already been accepted at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York so he could always start there with a clean slate.
Still, he did have some trepidation about the upcoming school year. He had been through a move before when he was about seven, and that seemed to have gone pretty smoothly, but he had no illusions about what this experience was going to be like. By senior year, networks of friendship had already been formed. Everyone had already established their identity in the larger student body. Their roles were, if not completely solidified, then well on their way to being so. Paul had a very off-beat sense of humor to say the least. Sometimes, people who didn’t know Paul well were confused or put off or even occasionally offended by his dry, sardonic take on things. In the past this didn’t bother Paul because he already had a circle of friends who understood him and his sense of humor. Although Paul expected to miss his friends, he didn’t expect that to be unbearable. What he did expect to miss during this time of transition was the sense of personal identity he got from them. As vain as he knew it sounded, Paul was a little worried about losing his sense of self.
Not that he would ever share this with anyone. He had barely articulated these feelings to himself over the past few weeks. He saw what Randy was going through and he felt a duty to remain his own regular semi-irritating self with his brother throughout the entire ordeal. He could see the increasing anxiety all over his brother’s face and hear it in everything he said even if Randy wasn’t really aware of it himself. He thought it was probably like when a dog goes blind. Everyone knows it except the dog.
However, he had allowed himself to open up to the doofus a little bit earlier that day when they had talked about Paul’s transition from the Walnutport school to the Lehigh Furnace school. That conversation had been a bit of a rarity for the both of them. It was at a time like that that Paul realized the unspoken reciprocal bond that the two of them shared. Whatever else happened, they could depend on each other. It would be far too embarrassing for either of them to state this explicitly, but it was still true.
Whatever concerns Paul had about himself or his brother and the problems they might face in adjusting to life in a new town, he always retained a positive attitude. This was nothing that he consciously chose; it was just the way he was. Paul always felt that things were destined to turn out all right for him. This often led to procrastinating, but Paul equated too much preparation with too much worrying.
The rain continued to pour and even seemed to be coming down harder. On top of that, a strong wind was developing. What next, he asked himself and he was immediately answered by a flash of lightning. He looked up at the sky and just as he was considering aborting his mission to find the batteries, he spotted the Gas and Go. He could have sworn he remembered it on a corner but there it was in the middle of a block. And the name was actually Gas ’n Go. He trotted past the pumps and in the front door to a dry fluorescent-lit haven from the rain.
Brushing the wet hair from his face, Paul looked around for the batteries. He picked up two packets of “Black Cat” D batteries. He looked at them for a moment wondering if he had ever even heard of this kind of battery before. Up at the counter, he stood in line behind a woman who was in the middle of reciting a well-rehearsed litany of scratch-off lottery games she wanted to purchase. The girl behind the counter was being gently coached by the manager who only appeared to be a few years older than her.
“The Quick Picks are right here above the counter. Just tear one off the roll and-”
“I said I wanted Quick Picks and three Scratch ‘n Wins,” the woman rasped.
“Okay, yeah, two Quick Picks and three Scratch and Wins.” The manager smiled at his own unbelievable error while the woman started to nervously pat herself down.
“And I’m gonna need two packs of Old Kings. There’s no way I’m driving to the Casino in this weather.” She had a short spasm of wet coughing. The girl behind the counter, who Paul noticed was wearing a nametag that said Alice, finally united the short-term pleasure items that the woman required. She rang up the total while the manager, whose name didn’t interest Paul enough to do a nametag investigation, looked on paternally.
“That’ll be eight seventy-five,” Alice said giving a smile that helped Paul forget how drenched he was. After she handed the bagged items to the woman she said, “maybe you’re a winner.” The woman, who had started to turn away from the counter stopped and looked back at Alice.
“You’re not anything until you look,” she said and winked at Paul before shuffling out the door and into the storm.
After purchasing the batteries, Paul stopped on his way to the door when he realized he still wasn’t sure how to get back home. If the sky wasn’t pouring rain and shooting lightning, this wouldn’t bother him at all. Even if it were just raining, Paul wouldn’t have minded wandering around until he stumbled on Hubbell Street. But not tonight. He was going to have to ask for directions. Either that or get out of the store. He couldn’t keep standing there in front of the magazine rack like the village idiot trying to make up his mind. He casually swaggered back to the counter. Alice was alone now studying the two slices of plain pizza slowly rotating in the heated glass bin on the counter.
“Uhhhh-say can you tell me how to get to Hubbell Street?”
She turned to Paul and gave him a smile that said she’d be happy to help him with any questions she knew the answer to but the question he had just posed was not part of that group.
“Hubbell? Hubbell Street? There’s a Hubbard Street not too far from here but I don’t think there’s a Hubbell Street.“
Paul’s thinking sped up. It was Hubbell Street wasn’t it? Their new address was 105 Hubbell Street. He couldn’t have gotten that wrong could he?
“No, it’s Hubbell, I’m sure it’s Hubbell,” he said feeling unsure. Alice stated drumming her blue painted fingernails on the scanner. She looked at him. She looked back at the open door to the stock room that the manager had disappeared through. She took a deep breath.
“Are you new here?” She looked at him with a deeper concern than she had had for gathering lotterey tickets. Paul started to answer but was cut off by the manager as he stepped through the door from the back room.
“Sir, I don’t think there’s a Hubbel Street anyewhere in the city.” His forehead wrinkled in sympathy for the guy who was so lost he didn’t even know where he wanted to go. Paul noticed his nametag now. It said “Bob“. They sounded so sure of themselves, maybe they knew what they were talking about.
“OK, could you tell me how to get to Hubbard Street?”
Bob looked at Alice. The wrinkles in his forhead shifted as he tried to recall exactly how to get to that street. He raised his forefinger next to his head.
“You’re going to take a left on the street out here,” he said bringing the finger down to indicate the world outside the front door. “You’re going to walk - I think its three, maybe four blocks and then you’re going to make a left on Howell. You’re going to go down Howell, I think it’s about six blocks, and Hubbard will be on your right.” Bob’s forehead smoothed out and his mouth smiled. Paul considered the directions. They didn’t seem like they would take him anywhere near where he had been but he really didn’t want to extend this conversation.
“Well, thanks,” he said deciding to give Bob’s directions a try. He turned around to head out the door when he bumped into Alice. How did she get there? She was holding a small peice of paper.
“You forgot your receipt,” she said and then stuffed the receipt into the bag in his hand that held the batteries.
“Alice, someone’s at the pump,” Bob said pointing out the window at a pickup truck. She immediately spun and hurried behind the counter to turn on the pump under Bob’s supervision. Paul thought it was a lot of trouble to go through just to make sure someone has their receipt but maybe that was just the way they did things here in Caladagia. He stuffed the bag with the batteries and the receipt into his paocket and set his hands on the pushbar of the front door and looked out into the rain. It was a dense smothering downpour that would drain his will to live. Maybe if he waited here Mom and Dad would come to pick him up. He discarded that idea immediately because it would entail more interaction with Bob and Alice and he felt that he had finally achieved some kind of closure with them. Shoving the door open, he plunged out into the storm.
With his head down and his hands stuffed in his pockets, Paul jogged across the small parking lot. He hadn’t gotten far when he saw a light hit his feet and heard a car horn directly in front of him. He looked up and saw some sort of SUV swerve past on its way to one of the parking spots in front of the store. The driver, a heavy bald guy called him something like “Doober.” Paul looked back down and started following the sidewalk.
Following the directions back to the house onn Hubbard/Hubbell Street, he noticed that there didn’t seem to be a lot of people out. He didn’t expect to see many pedestrians because of the weather but he was surprised that there were so few cars. Lightning swallowed the darkness for a few flickering seconds and Paul thought maybe he was just reading a lot into everything that was happening.
Last year in his Social Studies class, they had talked about culture shock. Mr. Dolbini had gone to Seoul, South Korea the summer before with his church group. He said how just about everything that he took for granted in the United States was different there: food, clothing, language, driving, customs. He said the place had even smelled funny. The strangeness of the situation had forced him to be constantly aware of everything that was going on around him and try to figure things out by starting with something familiar and to try to recognise patterns. The experience had made him look at himself a little differently because he was outside of his regular context. He had had to approach things in a more neutral way without any of the preconceptions that he normally applied to his day to day life.
It was the first time that Paul had ever seen Mr. Dolbini imply that he was a human being who was not born knowing all of the answers to all of life’s questions. Paul was beggining to suspect that he might be going through a mild version of culture shock. Not that he would ever admit to Mr. Dolbini that he had actually learned something in his class and had applied it to life.
After going four blocks, Paul reached Howell and turned left. He was completely soaked as if he had just gone swimming with all of his clothes on. He was still keeping his head down but ocassionally he would look up to see if there was anything familiar around. So far there was nothing he remembered either from the car ride in or from his walk to the store. His normally glowing positive attitude was beggining to dim a bit.
As he reached each intersection along the length of Howell, Paul would glance up at the signs in the hope that he had arrived at Hubbel/Howell early. No such luck. It actually took seven blocks through the opressive downpour to get to the street that his home was probably on. It turned out to be Hubbard. His hopes rose a little bit and he picked his pace up to a long striding trot. As he made his way down Hubbard he thought he saw a few familiar houses, but he couldn’t be sure. He was so disoriented that he didn’t even know which side of the street he should expect to see the house on. He would look at the far side of the street and get the feeling that that was where the house was but after crossing over he would realize that he wasn’t so sure. Maybe the side he had been on before was actually the side of the street he wanted. After crossing back and forth several times, he bagan to think that the block was longer than he remembered. He came across a narrow street called “Park” that was attached to Hubbard at a perpendicular angle. He had no recolection of this street from earlier.
Then he saw it. Finally. Unlike the other houses on the street, it was folded among its own shadows. There was still no electricity. A corner of the small front yard was illuminated by a street lamp. Paul bounded up the front porch stairs, grabbed the door knob and pulled. Nothing happened. It was locked. Godammit, why would they lock it when they knew he was out here? He pounded on the door taking narrow solace in the knowledge that he was now as wet as he could possibly be. There was no getting wetter. He peered through the window next to the door with his hands cupped around his eyes and saw nothing. He should be able to see light from the candles or flashlights. Shouldn’t he?
He pounded some more. First on the door and then on the window - hard. He looked up and down the street. There were lights on at every house he could see. He pounded on the window harder now. If he hit it any harder, he thought it would break. That would make two in one day and Dad would be pissed. Well, if he was worried about windows being broken, he shouldn’t be locking the front door while his oldest son is out running errends on a stormy night. He put his face up to the window and cupped his hands around his face.
“Come onnnn! Open uuuup! I’m getting soaked out here!”
Next, he put his ear up to the window hoping to hear footsteps or something to indicate that someone was alive inside. They couldn’t have all gone to bed. He didn’t know exactly what time it was but it couldn’t have been later than eight thirty or quarter to nine. Could they have all gone out looking for him? He didn’t think so but that seemed like the best explanation at this point.
He jogged around to the garage and looked in the window. No car. This was getting bizzarre. He knew his family and he knew that at least one of them would have stayed behind to let him in in case he showed up. He mounted the back porch and tried that door. Locked.
Then he remembered the double doors in the back of the house that led down to the basement. Would they be locked? He jumped off the porch and ran around to the doors and paused. Standing in the pouring rain he realized he now feared the doors wouldn’t be locked and he would be able to get into the house. Once inside he would discover what was going on. It was getting harder and harder to believe that there was an explanation for this that was normal and wasn’t bad. He tried to make himself belive that once inside he would find a note from his mom stating that the three of them went looking for him or they had to go out to find the moving truck or something rational that he hadn’t thought of. The house was new to them, maybe the last one out had accidentally locked the door. Maybe maybe maybe.
He bent down and squeezed the latch. It yielded. He pulled the door upward and open with a creak that was audible even through the thunder that rolled across the sky at that moment. As he started down the dark stairs, he eased the door downward to close it but then thought it would be better to push it back up so it stayed open.
Descending the stairs, he wished he had a flashlight or, thinking of a movie he had seen about some guys who had plundered the tomb of some ancient Egyptian king, a torch. He moved slowly with one hand against the dirty, rocky wall and the other probing ahead clearing thick clusters of dusty cob webs. He considered calling out for someone upstairs to come down with a flashlight, but thought better of it. He didn’t know what was going on upstairs and even though he didn’t have an imagination like his brother’s it was starting to get pretty active. He tried to stay focused on getting down the stairs safely. The darkness grew deeper and blacker the further down he went. Before he reached the basement floor he looked back at the open doorway a couple of times and considered going back up and asking a neighbor for help. What a way to get introduced to the neighborhood that would be. Hey Florence, guess who moved in next door? The McDoofusons. They like to lock themselves out of their house.
In spite of his fear, he smiled to himself. Randy would get a good laugh out of that one if he saw him again.
If?
Once in the basement, he could see small squares of faint yellowish light near the ceiling and it took him a moment to realize that they were the windows. As he cautiously slid across the dirt floor he noticed that his eyes were adjusting and he could see the outline of the stairs to the kitchen. He wished he had come down here while it was still light earlier in the day, at least then he would have a sense of where everything was. Of course, how could he have guessed that he was going to end up in such a weird situation.
Climbing the stairs, Paul’s confidence in his ability to see in the dark and manuever without tripping or bumping into something grew. However, at the same time, his confidence that this whole strange situation was going to end happily shrank. He reached the door to the kitchen and noticed for the first time that he was trying to be quiet. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt it was in his best interest to be stealthy. He didn’t feel at all like he was in his own home. He felt like an intruder. His hand was trembling as he put it on the doorknob.
Was he going to find his family? What condition was he going to find them in? He couldn’t allow his thoughts to continue down that course. He opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. In the darkness he could see it was full of furniture. Not the furniture he recognized from his home in Lehigh Furnace but furniture no less. The chairs appeared more modern and the table had a glass surface. There were some pots and pans hanging on the wall and a bulletin board with pieces of paper and a few photographs pinned to it. He stood frozen.
This wasn’t right.
Paul opened his mouth to call out to his family but thought better of it. This wasn’t his home. It was his home but it wasn’t. It had to be his home. Could he have possible gone into the wrong house? He slid his hand along the wall searching for a light switch but when he found it the same thought that kept him from shouting kept him from turning on the light. He quietly edged into the dinning room/living room area. More strange furniture. Stepping into the middle of the living room floor he almost tripped on something. It was a floor lamp lying down. He crouched down to examine more closely . The ceramic shade was a shattered pile at the end. He stood up quickly. What was going on here?
He slid back into the kitchen and looked out the window at the backyard. Rain beat down in unforgiving waves and the tree swayed with the powerful gusts of wind. That was his backyard. A flash of lightning illuminated everything confirming this thought for him. He slid open a drawer next to the sink. Utensils. He slid open a drawer next to that. Junk. His fingers explored the dark shapes inside. Rubber bands, paper clips, pens. The kind of junk you would expect to find in a junk drawer in anyone’s house. A flash light was near the back of the drawer. He pushed the button forward. Nothing. He banged it against the palm of his hand. Still nothing. He didn’t like the idea of turning on a light but he could live with sneaking a few peaks with a flashlight to try to get some clues.
After several slaps against his hand, Paul got a dim flicker out of the bulb before it went dead. If only he had-
He fished the bag from his pocket and dumped it out on the counter. He was moving quickly and clumsily now. He was anxiouse to find out what was going on. A situation this strange just doesn’t last in real life. Getting the batteries in the flashlight the right way took a little trial and error. There was enough light coming in the window so he could see the positive ends but when he put them in so they were pointed toward the bulb end, it didn’t work. He could’ve sworn that that was the way that all flashlights worked. The flashlight finally went on after trying the opposite configuration with the batteries. Now to find out what was going on.
He went over to the bulletin board and examined the photos and scraps of paper that adorned it. There wasn’t much. He looked closely at a group portrait. A guy, his wife and a little kid that couldn’t have been more than a year old. He didn’t recognize any of them but the woman’s smile did look a little strange somehow. There a doctor’s business card with an appointment time scrawled on it.
What is going on?
Who are these people? Could he be in the wrong house? No. That was impossible. It was time for some answers. He swept the light switch on the wall. It worked.
“Hello! Is anybody home?” He called. His only answer was the ongoing sound of rain striking the house. He walked through the downstairs repeating his call. He went up the front stairs and walked through every room yelling for someone to answer. He saw no one but he continued to encounter the evidence of strangers in what he thought was his own house. Strange furniture, strange smells, a crib in one of the bedrooms, a set of golf clubs in a closet. Part of his screamed that he was an intruder and that he should get out immediately. Part of him felt like a victim. A victim of what he wasn’t sure but a victim no less. His face grew warm with rising panic. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. These things do not happen.
He came back to the kitchen. He picked up the phone with the intention of calling the police when he saw something on the counter that he hadn’t noticed before. Hanging the phone back up, he picked up a note hastily written on a small rectangular piece of paper.

You have not gone crazy
try to stay calm, there
are others like you. Don’t
tell anyone what you are
going through - we will
contact you and help you.
You must stay away from
your home. Above all don’t
trust the police!!

Who had written this? He flipped the paper over and saw that it was a receipt for batteries. The batteries he had bought. The note had come out of his pocket when he got out the batteries. It had been written by that girl at the Gas ‘n Go. It had seemed as though she thought it was very important that he get his receipt and this was why. She knew what was happening to him. He read the note twice, set it down, walked to the front door and back, picked it up and read it again. The letters were small and tight to fit on the receipt. The note did nothing to calm him - it only seemed to confirm the nightmare that had swallowed him. He stared at the note in his shaking hand, occasionally turning it over to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.
As he leaned against the wall, the front entranceway was pierced by light from the outside. Someone was on the front porch with a flashlight. Maybe it was someone who could tell him what was going on. Maybe it was his family. He stuffed the note back in his pocket and strode forward. Just before he entered the probing cone of light, Paul recognized the silhouette of the figure outside. It wasn’t anyone from his family. He slowly started walking backwards away from the reach of the stranger’s flashlight. He stopped when he heard footsteps, several sets of footsteps, on the back porch. The unmistakable sound of a patrol car radio found his ears through the steady buzz of the rain.
It was the police.