Danny Doesn't Live There Anymore


    Danny Nero shot my brother in the belly. I was 9 or 10, so my brother, Mark, was about 11, and Danny was maybe 13. Danny was crazy, but not in the way people like; and though his weapon was a Daisy air rifle, I'm sure if he'd had a real rifle he would have used it. Even before he shot Mark, I knew what he was: I had a dream that he blinded and killed a midget just for fun. When I woke up, I wasn't sure if it was a dream or a memory. I don't know where Danny is now, but if I had to wager, I'd put my money on prison. If I had to hedge my bet, I'd put a few bucks on dead.
    Danny's dad came home from work that day and smashed the pellet gun against a tree. I never met his dad, but other kids said Danny was his father's son, so I'm guessing his dad smashed the gun not because what Danny did was wrong, but because it was dumb, and they both could have got into trouble. I feared for Danny's little brother, David, who was about my age, and his little sister, Danielle, who was maybe six. Normal kids. Some of the scariest people start out as normal kids.
    A few weeks after the air rifle incident, the Neros moved away. It was such a relief, I couldn't adapt to it at first. Their house had been a hazard to avoid when I visited that block. Now I wouldn't have to walk on the other side of the street. I kept telling myself: "It's just a house. It's just a house. Danny doesn't live there anymore." Let's say it was out of habit that I kept walking on the other side, anyway.







    Our best friends, the Welches, lived between us and Danny's house. The Kaliczeks, Rick and Matt, were farther up the hill. They had older ties to the Welches, and they were a little older than Mark and me, so they were friends of ours, but mostly just friends of friends.
    Rick was going places; you could tell. A little before this story happened, Rick went house to house selling raffle tickets for a tie-dye-colored bundt cake he hadn't baked yet. My mom was sick in bed but she bought a ticket, and a few days later he came over to give her the cake. I'm pretty sure he let her win just to cheer her up. That was Rick.
    This was also Rick: He found, in the street, a key that could unlock most GM vehicles. I don't know why it existed. Maybe a car thief made it; maybe GM made it. What's important is that Rick loved to use it, but only because he could. He didn't steal anything--he just liked being able to. He'd unlock a door and lock it again, and walk away smiling because he possessed the key.




    It was a Saturday soon after Danny's family had moved away. I went to the Welches' to see if anyone wanted to hang out. No one was home, but Rick was on their porch, also looking for company.
    "Hey, Rick."
    "Hey, Adam."
    We determined we were on our own and Rick asked if I wanted to see something cool. "OK," I said. Why not? I hadn't hung out with Rick alone before, but he was the best thing going on this vacant afternoon, so I followed him up the street. Halfway to his house, he veered toward Danny's house.
    "Want to see what's inside?"
    "Sure," I said, not at all sure. Danny was gone, but it was still his house. Logic and curiosity won out, and I followed Rick to Danny's back yard. He opened the storm door and fiddled with something and opened the back door. He didn't need a skeleton key for that.
    "Come on," he said. My heart pounded in my throat. Ah, adrenaline: the fuel of my childhood.
    The back door opened into the kitchen, a duplicate of the Welches'. In the corner to the left was a quarter-circle padded bench behind the breakfast table; the fridge to the right, then the sink, and the stove against the far wall. Past the breakfast table, on the left, was the door to the dining room. Strange, seeing it vacant: It looked like the Welches' kitchen, but something was missing, or I was missing something. It was just... off.  I could faintly smell cigarette smoke, and what about strawberries? Before I could figure out what, I was following Rick through the dining room and into the living room. Empty. Into the family room. Barren. The main bedroom. Nothing. The bathroom. Clean. Then back to the dining room and up the stairs to the kids' room. Up the same half-spiral stairwell the Welches had.




    We stood in a familiar but foreign bedroom. Aside from a few stickers on the walls and some old, yellowed curtains, the room was anonymous. Rick opened the drawers built into the wall beside the door. Empty. So were the closets. We went to the bathroom.
    The bath mat was still there, a nudie photo from a Playboy was taped to the mirror; opposite it a smutty cartoon of a museum cleaning lady doing detail work on Michelangelo's statue of David. I examined it closely and for the life of me I couldn't see what the joke was. I still don't, but apparently Danny liked it enough to save it; not enough to take it with him.
    We tossed the rest of the bedroom and found nothing.



    All that remained to explore was the attic. It had been to our left as we came in, so it was to the right on the way out. Two steps led to a short, wide door. Rick opened it and flipped the light switch.
    Toys covered the floor: board games, puzzles, toy guns and rifles, toy cars and trucks, Hot Wheels tracks, stuffed animals, a doll house, a Slinky, Mr. Potato Head, boxes stacked against the walls, and children's clothes everywhere. I could see brightly colored plastic blocks and balls and model airplanes . Paydirt! I started to rummage through this bonanza, but in less than a minute Rick said
    "Let's go."
    "What? We just got here."
    "Ah, it's all crap."
    "Let's take a look. This is what we came for."
    "I don't have time. Come on." He sounded more nervous than I felt when we first entered the kitchen.
    "But..."
    "I'm going. You can stay if you want." Nope. Not alone in Danny's house, abandoned or otherwise. I followed Rick downstairs, through the kitchen where strawberries smelled like cigarettes, and out the back door. We went up the block to Rick's house and upstairs to the room he shared with Matt. It, too, was a copy of the Welch kids' room.
    "I have things to do," he said.
    "Can I hang out for awhile?"
    "If you want to watch me do homework," he said. I didn't, but I did hope to pester him into going back to Danny's house.
    "OK. Whatever," I said. Rick sat down at his desk and opened his math book and started copying problems to his notebook. I watched him for a few minutes, still thinking about all those toys. Rick was right; they were mainly for younger kids, but I didn't care. They were there for the taking; surely some treasure must be buried in the trash. I just needed someone to keep me company in Danny's house, where something was wrong.




    "Let's go back," I said.
    "No. I told you, I have to do homework." I had never seen a kid so eager to do homework, especially on a weekend.
    "Just for a few minutes. We barely got to see what's in there."
    "Go, then. I left the door unlocked. Just walk in."
    "I'm scared."
    "Of what?"
    "Ghosts." I knew it was childish, and I wanted to look cool to an older kid, but that place seriously creeped me out.
    "There's no such thing as ghosts."
    "I know. I'm still afraid of them."
    "Just keep telling yourself, 'there's no such thing as ghosts; there's no such thing as ghosts.'"
    "It doesn't work that way, Rick. Come on, it won't take long, and then I'll leave you alone."
    "Tell you what: Go without me. Give me a few minutes to do some of these problems, and I'll meet you there."
    "OK." No sense arguing, especially with Rick. I went downstairs and out into the sunshine. I knew there were no ghosts; I also knew the place was lousy with them. If I went back alone I could get over my fear of ghosts and also score some points with Rick. I edged down the hill to Danny's house and lurked behind a tree, looking at the house, trying to work up the courage and also kill some time till Rick was done with his math. The sunshine made the ghosts seem less and less probable, so I walked around back.



    A kid about my age was standing on the patio, looking at the door. He scared me for a second, but I thought I recognized him from the neighborhood. His blond hair was buzz-cut, and he wore a white t-shirt and blue jeans: a nondescript kid who must have had strict parents who wouldn't let him wear his hair long like most of my friends did in the early 70s.
    "Hey," he said.
    "Hey," I said back. "What are you doing here?"
    "I was about to go inside," he said. "You want to see something cool? There's a lot of toys upstairs." Well, Hell. Competition.
    "Yeah, I know," I said. "I was about to go take a look."
    "Go on, then."
    I hesitated.
    "What's the matter?" he asked.
    "Honestly? This place scares me."
    "There's nothing to be scared of." I wasn't so sure of that, but I'd had enough of being the coward, so I just said
    "I'm Adam."
    "I'm Danny."
    "That's the name of the big kid who used to live here," I said.
    "I know. He was mean. I'm glad he's gone."
    "Me, too."
    "You gonna go inside?" he asked.
    "If you go with me," I said. The idea of sharing the loot didn't seem like such a bad arrangement anymore. Ghosts will only appear when you're alone; at least that was my theory. Besides, half the fun was in exploring.
    "OK. Go ahead," he said. I opened the door and walked into the kitchen. Danny followed me.




    "I hope my mom likes you," he said. What? I'd just met this kid, and he was already inviting me to his house? I didn't say anything. Again, in the kitchen, something seemed amiss. The image of a strawberry smoking a cigarette flashed through my mind. We walked through the kitchen to the dining room and up the half-spiral staircase to the kids' room.
    "Go ahead," Danny said. "Open it." I climbed the two wooden steps and pulled the door open, reached to the right and flipped the light switch. The toys and boxes and clothes spread out before us. Why would the Neros leave this stuff behind? They could at least have given it to Goodwill.
    I walked into the playroom, Danny still behind me. I waded a few steps into the tide of toys and began to survey. Rick was right; most of this stuff was worthless. Little kids' blocks and trinkets. Dolls and stuffed animals.  Lincoln Logs and Legos. Tinker Toys. And clothes. So many clothes. Maybe the good stuff was in the boxes. I kicked some toys aside and reached the first box. Empty. I knocked it off the box under it and opened that one. Also empty. And the next box, and the next. They were as empty as the rooms of this house. Some boxes had boxes in them. There were probably enough to hold all of these toys and clothes, but for some reason they were unused. Then I saw: each was marked "Toys: Goodwill" or "Clothes: Goodwill." Meaning the Neros never bothered to pack them up? Behind me Danny said
    "We could play in here forever." From what I had seen so far, that didn't seem likely. I returned my attention to the toys. I found some plastic soldiers, like the ones I had at home, and started to gather them up. It was a start. I showed them to Danny, and he said
    "My dad died in the war." I looked him in the eye for the first time since we entered the playroom.
    "That's too bad, man. I know some kids at school whose dads are over there." It wasn't much of a consolation. We all had friends with dads in Vietnam. I was lucky mine got out on 4-F. Danny forced a half-smile and bent down to sift through the jetsam.
    "So, you live with your mom?" I asked.
    "Mmm... Yeah, and my sister. We got some money after Dad died. Mom bought a house and we moved here from Tulsa and we've been here ever since." I didn't say anything. I didn't want to know too much about this kid I had just met, and I definitely didn't want to let him unload on me about his dead dad.
    "It hit her really hard. She didn't know what to do with me and my sister. She sort of... I don't know, I guess she just had to get away from everything and take us with her," he said.
    "Hmm," I said. I picked up a small box and put the soldiers into it. Danny pointed to a rubber Godzilla and said
    "Let's see that." I was jealous: I wanted it. I handed it to him. He made little gestures with it, like it was stomping Tokyo.
    "Cool!" I said. "I wish I had found that!" Danny handed it to me.
    "It's yours."
    "Really? That's the coolest thing yet. Thanks." I put it into the box. I found a pair of glow-in-the-dark plastic vampire fangs, and handed them to Danny. He put them into his mouth and raised his arms like Count Dracula and leaned forward, baring the fangs. We laughed. He handed the teeth back to me. They were dry.
    "All yours," he said. Into the box. We rummaged to the back of the playroom. I found a parking lot of Matchbox cars and put them into the box. So far, Danny hadn't saved anything. I came to a plastic rocking horse suspended by springs from a metal frame. I was too big for it, so of course I sat on it. The springs croaked their protest.
    "Don't," said Danny. "My sister wants that. You'll break it." Fair enough. I dismounted.
    "You know," I said, "I saw some Legos back there. I know someone who would want them." I turned to look back where we came in, and the room seemed different. Less colorful.
    "Here's another door," said Danny. He pointed to a small hatch about two feet high and 18 inches wide, near our feet. It was white with a green knob. Strange, the details you remember. It was white with a green knob at the end of the attic, and Danny said
    "You should see what's in there."
    "Why?" I asked. "What's in there?"
    "I don't know, you should see."
    "My friends have the same door in their playroom," I said. "It's just some pipes and boards and stuff."
    "I bet we could both fit in there," he said.
    "I could barely fit," I said.
    "Show me," he said.
    "My friends found a stuffed eagle in theirs. It almost filled it."
    "A real eagle?" he said.
    "Yep. Mounted on a branch on a board. It was pretty cool."
    "Definitely. I wonder if there's something stuffed in this one?"
    "Why don't you go in there?" I challenged. He dropped it.
    "I'm gonna go find those Legos," I said, and turned to wade through the toys and clothes.
    "OK," he said. "I think I saw a stuffed rabbit over there. Save it for my sister."
    "I'll keep an eye out for it," I said, and negotiated a path back to where we came in.



    I found a rubber spider and put it into the box. A few steps away I saw a pile of Legos and slogged toward them. When I got there, most of what I had thought were Legos turned out to be colored wooden blocks. I picked up the remaining Legos. As I put them into the box, I noticed the plastic soldiers looked different, like they were made of metal. Tin soldiers, not plastic.
    "Hey, look at that," said Danny. He was pointing to a toy rifle leaning against a doll house near me. "That's the kind the Japs shot my dad with. Lemme see it." This was getting annoying. Why did I have to bring everything to him? But I did, and went back to where I had been.
    So many little kids' toys, but not only: About 20 feet of Hot Wheels tracks, and I reached for them, and there in a nest of train tracks, what kids had before Hot Wheels tracks, was a stuffed rabbit, ancient and threadbare, a deep brown stain on one side.
    "Here's the rabbit," I said, holding it by the ears so I didn't have to touch that stain. Then I thought: Japs? In Vietnam?
    "Great! Toss it here." I did. He almost caught it, but it went through his hands. He stooped to pick it up and I tried to find the Hot Wheels tracks that had been there a moment ago, among the train tracks that had not. I gave up and looked for the Mr. Potato Head I had seen near the door. I see his hand, ear, and eye poking up through some board games and Barbie accessories. When I pick it up, it's a real potato, black and shriveled and hard, and the features don't line up right. I can't decide if I like it or not. My ears pop. I smell cigarette smoke.
    "Were you smoking up here?" I ask.
    "Oh, that's my mom. She smokes."
    "Your mom is here?"
    "She's always here. That was her in the kitchen."
    The room spins. As he speaks, I remember a woman sitting at the breakfast table with a cigarette in her hand and an ashtray in front of her. A gaunt, haggard woman with lines in her face, none from laughter. She wears a sun dress, once white, now yellowed, printed with strawberries. I have two memories: one of the kitchen empty but somehow wrong, and another of Danny's mom sitting there watching us without moving her head, smoking.
    "Hey, Danae," said Danny. "Adam found your rabbit." He was looking toward the back corner where a pile of clothes gathered and stood and became a little girl of about six, blond like Danny. She giggled and stepped toward Danny to take the blood-stained rabbit. She cuddled it to her cheek and cast me a sad smile. She mounted the rocking horse and began to hum a song I didn't recognize. The rocking horse was no longer plastic and spring-mounted, but made of wood, on true rockers. I dropped the box and ran for the door and Danny came toward me, he came toward me and the way his feet moved through the toys on the floor of that attic, the way his toes moved through the toys as he came toward me and I reached for the door and Danny was there and I reached the door first and I didn't push his hand away, I put my hand through his.
    I put my hand through his, and that instant I feel decades of loneliness and sadness, and in my head I hear Danny crying in outrage for his sister; he's telling his mother to stop, stop, STOP, MOM! I hear the door bang as I slam it behind me; I hear it bounce back open from the impact, but that's not right; there's a pause between the first bang and the second, and then more banging. I understand: Danny had me open the back door and the door to the attic because he couldn't. He could touch only what I gave him. I remember the door with the green knob, and I'm glad I didn't open it for him.
    In two leaps I'm down the half-spiral staircase, charging through the living room for the front door. No way am I going back to the kitchen where Danny's mom has sat smoking for the past 25 years. The door to the attic stops banging. Footsteps are clattering down the stairs, and from the kitchen I hear her call:
    "Danny, you did it again!"
    The living room is furnished, and I'm about to trip over a coffee table in the middle of it. It's old, from another era, like the sofa and the chairs and the television-size radio against the wall. I'm going to trip over it, but I don't. I kick the table over and across the room; the table stays where it is. I feel nothing. Furniture can be ghosts, too, apparently.
    I'm already familiar with this place by way of the Welches', so it takes me exactly 2.17 seconds to undo the bolt and the chain latch on the front door. I shove the storm door open and lunge across the porch and over the far rail. I almost land on someone beside the porch. I can't breathe, let alone scream, so I just flail. Someone grabs my wrist, and turns me around.



    It was Rick, laughing.
    "What did you see, a ghost?" I could only open my mouth and gasp. Rick looked up toward the front door and his smile faded. He kept the grip on my wrist, turned a little too fast, and pulled me after him, down the hill, past the Welches', toward my house. Before we got to the corner, he stopped us and sat us down.
    "Jesus Christ, did you..." He couldn't finish.
    "I TOLD YOU!" I shouted, and punched him in the chest. He didn't object.
    "Jesus Christ," he said again. We crossed the street and went to my house. My folks were in the back yard; Rick and I went to the kitchen and got some Kool-Aid.
    "What did you see?" I asked.
    "Nothing," he said.
    "Bullshiat. You saw it, too."
    "No, I mean I saw nothing. Inside the house, inside the door, the house went black. Pitch black. Then it faded to nothing. No black, no white, just nothing. And then it faded back to normal."
    "Did you see the kid in there?" I asked.
    "Do you know what nothing looks like?" he asked. I didn't care.
    "Did you see him?" I asked again.
    "I saw a woman, I think."
    "What else do you think?" I asked.
    "Look, I'm sorry, OK? I'm sorry."
    "Sorry for what? What did you do?"
    "I didn't know. I didn't know, OK?"
    "What?"
    "The toys... when I was there before... They were in boxes. Someone came and dumped them after I was there."
    "Yeah, well, someone did. It was Danny."
    "Danny Nero?"
    "No, Danny been-dead-for-twenty-five-years. Danny whose mom killed him and his sister. And herself. You knew, didn't you?"
    Silence.
    More silence.
    "Adam." said Rick, staring at the wallpaper.
    "What?"
    "I think I remember something," he said. He was almost mumbling.
    "What?"
    "I think I might have dumped the toys out."
    "You think you might have?" I said. "How can you not know?"
    "I don't want to talk about it anymore."
    "I bet." That was the one time I felt superior to Rick. He knew it, and he let me feel however I wanted. We sipped our Kool-Aid in silence, not looking at each other. A couple of minutes later my mom walked in from the back yard.
    "Oh, hi, Rick. How are you?" Rick took a long drink of Kool-Aid and said
    "Great. How are you?"
    "Much better, thank you. And thank you for the cake. It was beautiful."
    "You're welcome."
    "A very nice cake."