We continued on in silence, road rumbling beneath us, bare trees reaching to the sky with bony fingers.
***
"Walk with me somewhere," she said.
It was early Sunday, a bit past six. I was looking out the kitchen window noticing the sky was brightening with only a thin hazy layer of gray that would probably burn off come midday. Liz sat at the table, already dressed in her black slacks and yellow sweater, her hair freshly washed and styled, her face soft and white. She'd not had her morning coffee and had awakened long before I did. I'd asked her why she was up so early, and she'd only kissed my lips, saying she'd had a restless night.
"Walk where?" I asked.
"Anywhere," she said, almost in a whisper. "I want to walk with you."
"Okay," I said, nodding and smiling. "We'll go for a walk."
We put on our scarves and our coats.
We walked out the front door and locked it behind us.
We stepped onto the street. Down Jay Street. Up Gemini Street. Onto Crow Street.
We stopped in front of Leed's.
She turned away from me. Then faced me again, eyes and nose reddening. She stepped back. Two steps. Three steps. Four. Five.
She reached up with her right hand, her fingers perfect as porcelain as I'd always remembered.
I stepped forward, reached out.
Then there was the searing burn, the blinding flash, the concussion in my chest, the whip crack and explosion in my ears, the darkness swallowing me as my feet lifted off the sidewalk, my last thought wondering if she had said something just as I'd reached out to her.
***
Days later, there was the hospital room.
Days later, there was the empty house.
Days later, the air, the wiring, and the circuitry came alive with Elizabeth's electricity.
Chapter Fourteen
The house was cold, drafts creeping from the open basement door. I stood in the living room, the loveseat, the chair, the television undisturbed. The coffee table had a stack of mail at its center.
"We brought in the mail," Maria said behind me. "The mailbox was full, and it was—it was kind of hanging out."
"Thank you," I whispered, limping slowly to the kitchen, my right leg and foot numb, damaged nerves firing and misfiring in my back and calf, random impulses like ants crawling over my skin. My head and body ached, the muscles knotty and twitching.
"Can you walk okay?" she asked, following closely.
"I think so," I said, my voice phlegmy and worn. All of the cupboards and the kitchen closet were open. I looked down the hallway and saw every door had been left opened.
"We searched every space. Every closet, every room, you name it. We kept an eye on the house in case if there was any activity, but aside from some flickering lights, nothing. You should get the wiring checked when you get a chance."
I stood beside the kitchen table, looked down at the chair where Liz sat before we'd walked out the door that Sunday morning. "Where is she?" I asked the air.
"I wish we knew." Maria walked around the table, leaned against the counter, and thrust her hands into her heavy coat's pockets. "I don't think she's with us anymore, Milton." She tilted her head, eyes looking deeply into mine. "I think she's . . . gone."
"Gone," I said.
"Gone, Milton." She sucked air through her teeth and let out a quick sentence: "I think she died, Milton. I'm sorry, but there's no other possibility."
I ran my hand over the white tablecloth. "You can't believe that."
"I do. I believe it was just one of those horrible things like tornadoes dropping out of the sky without warning or trains derailing in the middle of the night."
"Lightning out of a clear sky?" I said.
She sighed. "It was a bit . . . overcast."
"We're not meteorological experts, Maria, but we both know lightning doesn't come from that."
Maria pushed off the counter, walked over to me, and placed her hands on my shoulders. "I know, but there's just no other explanation, and I just don't know what else to do, Milton."
"Please find her," I whispered. Her face blurred from the tears in my eyes. Maria put her arms around and held me.
"We're trying, Milton."
I placed my left hand on the table to hold me up, and wrapped my right hand around Maria, my face sliding over her police coat's stiff nylon, cold air whirling through the kitchen, through my hair, and over my skin. She held me up as I cried in gasps. "Please find her," I said again. Maria only held me tighter as the house creaked and the kitchen light over our heads flickered.
***
After Maria had left and the sky darkened, I sat in the living room listening to breezes brush against the windows. I waited on the loveseat, staring at the front door.
I slowly slid onto my left side and lay my head on the armrest. I smelled Liz on the armrest and in the air. Her shampoo. Her perfume. As the painkillers saturated my bloodstream, my eyelids grew heavy, and I fell asleep, serenated by a low hum in the wall behind me.
Liz never walked through the front door that night.
***
I awoke with redness and creases on my face, my hair mussed on one side, my eyes sore and dry. I pushed myself off the armrest, and sharp pain crept through my neck to the base of my skull. I sat up, rubbed my neck and my eyes then sat looking at the floor. Sometime during the night I'd pushed the shoes off my feet and had pulled the throw blanket around my body. I wrapped the blanket tightly around my shoulders and blew air into my hands to warm them, then looked up.
The television was on, tuned to a dead channel, static and hum bars rolling over the screen. I looked for the remote control, grabbing at the pile of mail on the coffee table, searching the room with my swollen eyes and the loveseat cushions with my hands.
I got up and limped to the television. The remote control was sitting exactly where it had been left before Liz and I walked out that Sunday morning. I'd no memory of turning the television on, or of having watched anything in my painkiller stupor. I grabbed the thin, black remote control and pulled away dust that had covered it and the television in a single, unbroken layer. I stared at the dust, wiping at it before pressing the power button and turning the television off.
Upstairs, something whirred to life. Four soft musical tones drifted down the stairs.
The computer in the study had been turned on.
I dropped the remote on the television and walked up the stairs, my right leg tiring after only three steps. By the time I got to the study, the computer had completed its start-up routine, loading up its operating system, checking its internal memory. The study was otherwise empty, the room's closet left open by the police, the curtains drawn to a rising sun, Liz's books still sitting undisturbed on her bookshelf. The upstairs rooms were warmer than those downstairs, but I kept the throw blanket around my shoulders as I walked to the desk.
The computer stopped whirring, and its screen glowed brightly, hurting my eyes. I stepped up to the computer, and the air around me hummed like bees. The computer screen changed: a square window indicating the word processing program had been opened. The window transformed into a white field beneath a long ruler.
The word processing program stayed opened, a black line blinking at the top of the white virtual paper. The hum intensified around me, vibrating the walls. The overhead light began to glow, its intensity rising as if controlled by a dimmer switch until the hum stopped and the light bulb popped. I ducked, shielding my face with my hands.
The computer screen continued to glow.
I moved my hands from my face, looked around the room, then back at the computer.
In bold, black lettering, a line of text sat at the exact center of the white field:
Find me, Darling. Find me.
***
I stared at the computer screen for twenty minutes, brushed my hands over the keys then reached over for a pad of paper and a pen and w
rote down the text and the time. The words floated on the screen, unmoving, unchanging. I touched the screen, then deleted the text.
I turned away from the computer but stopped when three electronic tones chimed behind me. I whirled around, looked at the screen again: Please find me.
I hobbled down the stairs, pains shooting up my right calf and thigh, my head and neck pounding with aches, and walked to the kitchen. I lifted the telephone handset to call Maria at the police station, put it to my ear, then immediately dropped it as the earpiece screamed with static and squeals. Crosstalk and chatter exploded over the line before fading into soft buzzing, and I picked up the handset again, rubbing my ear before carefully holding it several inches from my head. Through the line came a voice like wind over water:
"Darling, please find me. Look for me."
There was a sound like deep breathing followed by more static. The voice repeated again and again and again, louder and louder, a woman's voice that phased in and out like tunnel echoes.
"Find me."
I spoke into the mouthpiece, a whisper: "Liz?"
"Milton," she said, "Find me."
And the line went dead.
***
"She isn't dead, Maria."
I could hear Maria sighing through the phone, and I imagined her placing one of her hands over her eyes and shaking her head.
"Milton—" she started to say before I interrupted her, told her about the television, the humming in the walls, the exploding light bulb, the computer, the voice on the telephone. "Jesus," she said. "Milton, someone's playing a game with you."
"A game," I said.
"A game. Someone's messing with your house and your phone line. Remember I told you to get the wiring checked out?"
"Her voice was on the phone. Maria, I know Liz's voice. I heard it every day for the past few years."
"Someone could be imitating her, someone could have audio samples of her voice."
"Maria—"
"Wait," she said. "I'm not saying you're lying. I believe you. But you have to do something for me."
"What?" I said.
"Get in touch with the phone company. Have them put a trace on your line. Anytime you get one of those calls, you punch in a number, and the computer tells you what to do next. Takes seconds. They'll send the information to us, and I'll start up a report right now saying you called about harassing phone calls so I can get them a case number—"
"But—"
"Please, Milton, just do this. We need to make sure what it isn't before we try saying what it is. Put a trace on the line. I'll write up the police report. We'll trace the calls coming in, and if they continue, we'll file another report. Then I want you to call an electrician. Have them check the wiring. All that should tell us what I think it is."
"And if it isn't what you think it is?" I asked.
Maria was quiet for several seconds. "Then we're both going to have to figure out what the next step is."
The line was quiet except for the usual distant buzzing.
"Milton?" Maria asked.
"Yes?"
"Are you okay? I mean—"
"I know what you mean, Maria," I said while rubbing my forehead, closing my eyes, and shaking my head. "No, I'm not okay. I spent last night staring at the front door. Just staring at it, as if she was going to walk through any minute. Don't even remember what time I fell asleep. Then I wake up, and all this started happening. Stupid, right?"
"No, Milton," she said. "It's not stupid. It's just . . . disturbing."
***
After we hung up, I sat at the kitchen table. I thought about how, at this time, I'd usually be at the Banner, working on an essay or putting together a layout. I thought about how I'd look out at the town and spot my house at the southern edge and think of Liz's car pulling into the driveway in the evening, of Liz stepping through the front door, of Liz putting her backpack on the floor and kissing me, her lips cold from the night air. And when I'd think about her coming home, my heart would lift, my mouth would smile, and I'd continue my work, knowing what the end of the day would bring.
But now I sat at the kitchen table, the house hollow once again, the hallways and rooms silent, the air colder than it had ever been.
***
My right leg kept burning with nerve fire and numbness. My face felt swollen and ached when I opened my jaw. My back felt scraped by steel claws as it buckled and weakened.
But I walked into the bedroom closet, stared at her clothes hanging on the rack, smelled her scent in the air, and touched her shoes with my toes. I ran my hands over the sweaters she'd folded and placed on the shelving, felt soft and coarse wool, saw yellows and reds and blues and grays. I picked up a thick red cable knit sweater, held it to my nose and stood there, breathing her in.
I knelt down to the floor, my body shaking with the effort, and slid out a small gray box that I'd almost forgotten about. I opened it, pulled out the emergency hand-crank radio that had sat there for two years, turned the power crank, then turned it to the weather band.
The radio blared with a mechanized voice reading humidity, wind, and temperature readings at the Avoca airport. I stood up and left the closet, carrying the radio in one hand and the sweater in the other.
***
"And you hear her?" Claire asked, her green eyes narrowing. She sat on the living room chair, cautiously eyeing the static-filled television screen flickering to her right, and the emergency radio tuned to a quiet AM channel to her left.
"I think it started when I was in the hospital," I said, rubbing my eyes. I'd taken two painkillers before Claire had shown up at the front door with a large floral bouquet in her arms that looked like a yellow and green firework detonation erupting from her chest—another get well gift from the Banner and from Bentley. He'd not shown up with her, but that didn't surprise me. Bentley didn't seem to show up anywhere much those days. He attached a note about getting better and about contacting him as soon as I could.
"How so?" she asked.
"When I woke up. Got these weird phone calls, all filled with static and whispering and thumps. I heard the same voice on the line, but I think I was so drugged up I couldn't make the connection until I heard her today."
"What do you mean by thumps?" Claire reached for the cigarettes in the breast pocket of her denim shirt, but slid them back in place, probably remembering that she wasn't at home.
"Remember those thumping noises back when the phone company used mechanical relays? Something like that. Maybe a bit louder, but sort of the same."
"Maybe someone calling from outside the country where they still use them?" Claire asked.
"No idea," I said. I reached for the radio, placed it in my lap. "Maria says they're still searching for her, but nothing yet."
Claire shifted in the chair, crossed her legs, uncrossed them again, then took a deep breath. "Milton, you do know what happened, right? It was a lightning strike."
"That's what they say," I said.
"Milt, I saw the camera footage. That's what it was."
"Camera footage.
"You can see plain as day what happened—"
"You saw the camera footage?" I asked.
She nodded. :"I did. It's only a few seconds, but you can see everything. The two of you standing there, and then, boom, she's gone and you're through a window. You know it blew out most of the front windows of Leed's?"
"Can you get me the footage?"
Claire leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. "You think that's a good idea? You just got out of the hospital, Milt. You're still processing all this—"
"Please," I said.
She sighed. "Milton, I can get you the disc, that's not a problem, but I'll tell you what it shows. It shows you and Liz. It shows lightning hitting her. It shows you flying through a window and landing on the floor of Leed's Clothing Store, and that's it. Milt, she just—disappears. She d
idn't run because she couldn't, and there wasn't anything left behind. She was just. . . ." Claire stopped and stared at me, wanting me to fill in the blank.
"Vaporized," I said. Claire nodded. I put the radio on the coffee table. "You've known Bentley for a few years, Claire, right?" She nodded again. " You've been in Blackbridge for a little while now, know the town, what it's about. If Bent didn't tell you all about it, I know you do know enough. You see it and hear it everyday. You and Bentley up on The Heights, just the two of you, and all of us down here see the lights in the old hospital, the lights that circle your house and the whole hilltop at times. I know what you see and hear every night because I see and hear them too. Maybe you've heard those whispers behind your back when you walk into the Banner offices, or maybe you've heard those moans that seem to come from nowhere. You know the things that happen here, the things that could happen here, and one thing that could happen is that Liz is out there, or that she's in here"—I pointed to the wall behind me—"and she needs me to find her. She wants me to find her."
Claire sat back, crossed her arms. "Of course I've thought about that, Milton. We all have, but did you ever think that maybe that what you're hearing, if it's her voice, is an echo of her? Like the vapors? Something just locked in a loop. If that's the case, then she's still gone, Milton."
I looked down.
"You say you keep hearing the same thing, the same phrase," Claire said. "She keeps wanting you to find her. Okay, let's assume the voice is real, that she's pushing through the phones and the lights and the computers and the televisions and that somehow what she is now floating through wires and circuits and through the air. What then, Milton?"
I rubbed my arms, cold draft sweeping over my skin.
"I hate saying that she's gone, Milton. It's only been a few days since you found out what happened, but she is gone. If that's her voice on the phone, and if that's her sending messages through your computer, then that's not the Liz you remember."
"I'm going to find her," I said. "I'm going to find out what happened to her."
"Okay," Claire said, "I understand." She held out her hands as if trying to calm me. "I'll do what I can to help, Milt, and I'll ask Bent to do what he can to help, but do yourself a favor. Do what Maria told you to do. Make sure someone's not playing a game with you."
"Fine."
"And then I want you to think about something. Are you listening? Okay. What if you find the answers you're looking for? And what're you going to do if you don't like them?"