Chapter Three
Mathew
"I'm fucking serious, man!" Matt said. "There's some weird shit going on in my neighborhood!"
The other two valets, who were much younger than Matt's thirty-five years, glanced at one another. One of them smirked and barely held back his sniggers.
"Oh, fuck the both of you!" Matt muttered, as he snatched up the set of car keys sitting on top of the valet stand. The keys belonged to a hotel guest, but that person wasn't expected to make their exit for another half hour. Decidedly, the older valet said, "I'm gonna go bring this car up."
As Matt began to stalk away, he was irked to hear the two valets laughing behind him. They were always goading him into saying too much. As soon as his back was turned, they were going to start giggling and poking fun at him like they always did.
It was partly his fault, Matt acknowledged, because he did have a lot of suspicious things to talk about. He was always the guy bringing up the subject of UFOs, because had seen them with his own eyes. Matt talked about evil ghosts and demons, because such things had attacked him before. He talked a lot about government conspiracies too, because historically, there were plenty of those to be found. It wasn't so farfetched in his imagination that much of that stuff was still going on today.
Matt grunted. He was a bona fide loser and he knew it. Once, a long time ago, he was a pretty good athlete, a baseball player with a bright future. He'd been good enough to have scouts come out to watch him play. He'd gotten up as high as Triple A ball before he injured his wrist severely enough to end his promising career. Matt had been that close to making The Big Show. So close! After that, he'd pissed his life away on alcohol, drugs and women, and he hadn't been the same ever since.
Now, he was just a broken, tired man, wearing black polyester pants and a work shirt colored in an ugly shade of red. On his chest, he had pinned a name tag that read 'Hi, I'm Matt!'
Matt trudged through the hotel's large parking garage. Absently and frequently, he clicked on the vehicle's alarm button, both to locate the car and because it made him feel as if he was getting away with something.
Yeah, he was that miserable.
The car turned out to be a late model Toyota Spider. Matt grimaced as he took in the sleek silver paint job, the Pirelli tires that looked as if they'd been doused in Armor-All just that day, and the highly polished chrome rims.
Reluctantly, Matt opened the door and plunked down in the driver's seat. There was a time when he had loved getting behind the wheel of such a sporty car, but really, who was he kidding? He knew damned well that he would never be able to afford one.
After starting the car and shifting it into first, he found that he didn't even have the heart to peel out of the parking spot. He slowly rolled away out of the garage like an old man in a wheelchair.
It was a little past four in the afternoon when Matt's weathered blue pick-up truck, with its fading white camper shell, pulled into John's driveway.
Matt didn't really have a place to stay, ever since he'd lost the least to his last apartment. The pitifully low wages he made from his part-time job prevented him from getting another place. Thanks to the grace of God, John, the bellman from the hotel, had agreed to allow Matt to park in his driveway and to use the facilities, in exchange for a couple of hundred dollars a month. The reason John had gone along with the arrangement was because he was as financially strapped as Matt was, with an exorbitant mortgage payment, plus a wife and three younger mouths to feed. John couldn't even offer Matt a place to sleep, because their house only had two bedrooms. John's teenage son had already claimed the living room for himself, because the teen no longer wanted to share a room with his two little sisters.
Matt didn't like to intrude on the family, either. He'd go in, shower, shit and shave, and gratefully accept any leftover that Connie, John's wife, had to offer him. Afterward, he'd wait for John to get off work and shoot the shit with him over a beer or two. Otherwise, Matt would be out roaming the neighborhood on foot, observing what people that were living actual lives were doing. At other times, he would sit on John's porch and read the latest novels he purchased from the local thrift store. Matt's days off were much better. He would take a drive out to a lake or go climbing up the side of a mountain somewhere. He could lose himself in the wilderness for an entire day.
Every single night, and it had been this way for a few months now; Matt would crawl into the back of his truck and hunker down for the night. As proud as he was, he hated to think that he'd become homeless, but that's how bad things had ended up for him, hadn't they?
Matt did keep his eyes and ears open while he was in his truck. This is how he'd found out about all the crazy shit that was going on in the neighborhood. Margaret's boarder, what's-his-name, had been the first to go. That had been over two months ago. Matt had found out about him through Jenny, the old woman who sometimes hired him to mow her lawn, or to do some other odd chore inside her house.
Matt had always suspected that Jenny was trying to get her own personal bush trimmed by him. Who knows, for an extra twenty bucks he might have even done it, except Jenny had always been too shy to solicit him outright. Matt had also been too shy, since he figured he'd piss Jenny off and lose that little extra income she provided him with.
Then the fateful morning came, after Matt had been forced to take a couple of days off due to a bad cold. Being desperate for a little extra funding, he'd gone over to Jenny's door and knocked. Not only did he discover the door slightly ajar, but he found the interior of the house to be eerily silent. Matt stepped inside, hoping he wouldn't come face to face with a cadaver. Luckily, he hadn't.
What he had discovered was a short note, made out to nobody in particular. Patiently, the note waited for him under a paperweight shaped like a little frog, sitting on a glass-topped coffee table. Jenny and Margaret, the note declared, were going off to a better place. They would not be coming back.
Unnerved, Matt had done the first thing he'd thought of, and that was to call the police. He obeyed the telephone operator's instructions. Matt took a seat on Jenny's couch while waiting for the first squad car to arrive. Two uniformed officers eventually came in and peppered him with questions. Matt answered them as best he could.
One of the cops, a hefty woman with a butchy haircut, eventually made her way across the street to Margaret's place. She returned about fifteen minutes later, confirming that Margaret was also gone. Margaret's refrigerator was in a bad way, the cop had mentioned. The woman also had over two weeks of new messages on her answering machine, including several scheduled and missed doctor's appointments.
"Huh." The other cop had grunted then, before setting a worried hand on his hip. "Just like those other two guys from down the street."
In unison, the two cops turned and looked over at Matt. Apparently, they had both forgotten he was still sitting there. They let him go, after taking down his info, and after that awkward moment where Matt admitted that he lived in the back of his truck. Rarely had Matt felt so insignificant as he had at that moment, when he stepped out of Jenny's place and started down her front walk.
Soon after, the dreams and the nightmares started.
The dreams were pleasant enough. This was mostly because they featured lots of scantily clad women. He imagined a much younger version of Jenny, striding along gaily on the sidewalk and in the company of a voluptuous blonde. Even in his dreams, Matt would do a double-take, until his brain would finally register that the hot blonde was none other than that crusty, old Margaret. Both women were wearing next to nothing; mere gossamer wraps that left nothing to the imagination. Through that nearly transparent material he could clearly make out the fullness of both women's breasts, and the small forests of their pubic hair.
Both women would blow kisses at him and waggle their fingers at him seductively. These actions never ceased to get Matt all hot and bothered, for he had been a much neglected man due to his awkward living situation. In these dreams, Matt was always inside of the back of his truck. He would always find himself scrambling toward the tailgate, hoping that he could get out fast enough so he could jump the bones of both of those provocative women.
Each and every time, the alluring sirens would run and beat Matt to the back of his truck. Before he could begin to open the hatch, they would twist the little T-handles and lock him in. They'd giggle and laugh and run away then. Before they'd gotten too far, Jenny would always give him one last parting shot.
