“You’re mine forever now.”
And he was.
52
Ben held the phone in his hand, his fingers hovering over the keypad in Customer Service. It had been six days since Ben had spoken to Marty for what he knew would be the last time. Duchaine and his men hadn’t found anything in the woods—nothing but starlight, and when they found that, they suspended the search until daybreak. Clint walked the woods for far longer. Just how long, Ben didn’t know, because his father hadn’t come back home until Ben had already left for work. His father and the police had searched those woods for days, but they found exactly as much as they found that first day, exactly as much as they’d found years before.
Ben had gone by himself once. Not shouting for his brother, not even really looking for him. He’d walked silently and looked for Beverly’s home. He hadn’t found it, hadn’t even found the gravel that seemed to lead in its direction. For the whole quiet journey, Ben thought about what Marty had said about God’s sentry over all things. About that cosmic blink, shielding a divine eye from its creation. And about the possibility that maybe Jacob hadn’t seen Eric, not because he’d simply seen a similar boy, but because there had been no boy at all. Just a moving sculpture of leaves and air that shouldn’t exist but did.
Ben never made the drive to look for Blackwater. He hadn’t been back to talk to Reggie. And even though the ticket was still in his pocket, he still hadn’t gone to pick up the photos he’d had developed. He’d already seen the pictures in his dreams, though—seen him and Eric together, when Eric was still so little, as if the camera had been made with those images already in it. And other pictures too. Arms and legs with unnatural joints. The lipless smile of his brother’s face in the grainy dark.
Ben didn’t trust himself anymore. His mind. His beliefs. He’d been wrong: wrong about Bobby Prewitt, about Eric’s tape, about Marty. Wrong about everything. Ben hadn’t hurt Eric, not in the way Duchaine had said. The man was out of his goddamn mind. But Ben couldn’t stop thinking about it, imagining worlds where Duchaine wasn’t lying, worlds where he’d led Eric into the bathroom and pushed his face into the toilet until he stopped moving.
Even when Bobby Prewitt died, Ben hadn’t felt so trapped, so entombed in his own skull. He could feel his thoughts scratching around in his brain, and he wanted them gone. He couldn’t give his ideas to Duchaine. The man wouldn’t take them even if they were complete, and they were far from fully formed. Whatever message Beverly was trying to relate about Palmer, about Blackwater, Ben couldn’t figure it out. And he knew he wasn’t going to. All he wanted was some kind of guarantee—a real promise that what he said would be considered—and that everything he’d found wouldn’t just sit in some box somewhere. That it would all be used. To do what Duchaine hadn’t ever tried to do. To do what Ben hadn’t managed.
Ben stared at the flyer he’d taken off the board outside the store. Clenching his jaw, Ben dialed the number at the bottom. The line connected almost immediately.
“North Florida Missing Persons. This is Joyce.”
“Hi,” Ben said, “I’m calling about…” Ben searched Eric’s flyer. “Case 152294.”
“Okay,” Joyce said. The sound of shuffling papers was audible even through the muffled connection. “Is there something you’d like to report?”
“Yeah.” Ben tapped the phone against his skull lightly.
“Sir?”
“I can barely hear you. Is there somethin wrong with the line?” Ben waited for the woman to respond. When she didn’t, he continued. “Should I call back?”
“I can hear you fine.”
“Okay. I called once before. A while back…I think maybe it was you I spoke to?”
“I’m sorry, sir. But we can’t—”
“Give out information of any kind. I know. Okay. Listen…” Ben paused. “I know that someone called you this past summer about seein this boy, alright? I know you can’t say yes or no, but you look back sometime in May or June, and it’ll be there. Then someone over there forwarded that information to Lieutenant James Duchaine.
“Now, I have some things I wanna tell you. But when you pass this along…I need your word that you’ll pass it to someone other than that man. Anybody else.”
“Sir—”
“Eric is my brother, okay? I’m his brother, and I got some things. And they matter. James Duchaine don’t care. He doesn’t give a damn about this kid. He didn’t do nothin at all with that information you gave him. You understand? No cops ever came. I want to give you stuff to help. Don’t tell me to take it to the police. I won’t do it. But I’ll bring it to you if you just tell me where.
“Hello?” Ben said after a few seconds.
“Two ninety-five Dunn Street.”
“And you’ll pass this along to someone who will do something?”
Joyce sighed, then paused. “Yes, sir.”
“Okay,” Ben said. He calmed his breathing, then continued. “Thank you. It’s just that I been tryin. I been tryin real hard…I need help. That’s all.” Ben blew a trembling breath through his lips. “I wanna tell…I wanna tell you about a woman named Beverly.”
53
The ringback tone played eight times before Ben gave up. He slammed the phone back on the hook and walked out of his house.
Ben’s street shone brightly in the dark air; hundreds of colored bulbs poured out small puddles of light that coalesced into something much larger against the pregnant clouds. The town felt like it had a low ceiling, making the lights feel that much brighter. Radio stations played songs that were at once familiar and yet distinctly alien to their listeners—words of snow in a place that had never seen it. But the sky would show them something soon. Ben could feel it in the wind as he walked to work.
There was no 295 Dunn Street.
It had taken Ben three days to get ahold of his father’s truck, but he’d finally driven it all the way down Dunn. And then all the way back up. He wanted to talk to someone in person. Ben hadn’t brought the Bible or the graffitied flyer. He hadn’t even picked up the pictures yet. The woman he’d spoken to hadn’t seemed all that intrigued by the things Ben had said. She did a poor job of hiding it, and it took Ben a while to accept that that was his fault. He knew that they got calls from crackpots all the time, intentional pranksters and delusional assholes who claimed to know or have or even be the victim. And he knew that’s what he was to Joyce—another weirdo. Ben needed to let them see and consider him before he unloaded armfuls of sloppy evidence onto some desk. That was fine.
But after 240 Dunn, the road’s name changed to Maple Street. And while there was a 295 Maple Street, it was a Laundromat.
Maybe he’d misheard. Maybe the woman had misspoken. Either way, when Ben called the number and no one answered, it took everything in Ben’s power to resist smashing the phone into pieces. He couldn’t call from home, not if he was going to yell.
Outside the store, Ben checked the phone number on the slip of paper in his hand against the one on Eric’s bulletin board flyer. He checked it three times before he was satisfied that he hadn’t misdialed. Then he flung the clear screen aside and snatched the flyer down, so he could just dial right from the source and stop worrying about it.
If he could show them, they’d understand. It just had to be organized. Intelligible. And complete. There was still one more thing Ben needed to do, one more thing he needed to get out of Palmer’s office.
In the break room, Ben sat and chewed his food while he waited for the store to close. He ate most of his meals there now. It was quieter than his home, but it felt less lonely somehow. Sometimes Ben thought about Beverly as he sat at that empty table.
Chelsea’s soft voice spoke through the intercom, addressing Ben by name. They hadn’t spoken in a while, not since that lingering hug, in fact. It was only just occurring to Ben that she might like him.
Ben spent a lot of his time at the store. More than he ever had. Maybe more than anyone ever had. Sometimes he forgot to clock in or out, or forgot that he had remembered. And sometimes he slept there, just for a few hours, savoring sleep that was dreamless and dead.
Ben’s watch woke him. The side of his face ached warmly from the pressure of his arm during his nap. He stretched his jaw slowly and blinked hard twice. He stood cautiously and unloaded his weight onto his sleep-stiff bad leg.
Moving toward the iron stairs, even Ben’s heavy steps were soundless under the churning heater. The farther he moved down the corridor, the farther he moved from light, entering another part of the store that was plunged into darkness when midnight struck. Ben’s hands swept along the wall for guidance. Mechanical shudders behind him felt like footsteps against the ground. Ahead, a pool of light fell from Palmer’s office, dancing against the wall, quivering.
Everything was still and quiet, save the spindles driving the videotape. Ben flicked on the lights, then sat in Palmer’s chair. He reached into his back pocket and slid out Eric’s flyer, tapping its folded corner lightly on a stack of forms. He unfolded the paper and traced the crease out of Eric’s face.
Every now and then, Ben’s mania at Marty’s house would flash through his mind. Just glimpses. Still frames from an event that Ben could hardly accept had actually happened. It made Ben want to cry, even though he didn’t. Marty had been trying to help Ben since before they’d even met, since before Marty knew that the boy from the flyer even had a brother. Nothing at all had come from when Marty called, and try as he might, Ben couldn’t delude himself into thinking that this call would be any different. But he’d give them everything, and then when he hung up the phone, he’d break Palmer’s filing cabinet and take Beverly’s folder. When Ben took the file, Palmer would likely notice, and Ben would be fired if he hadn’t already quit. And then he could pretend that at long last he’d finally done all he could.
Ben hadn’t decided if he’d look through it yet. Although he’d assigned the task to himself, it very much felt like he was running an errand for someone else. The people at Missing Persons hadn’t asked for anything, but they needed it. Once they saw it, they’d know that. They’d know, and they’d be happy to have it.
But before he could give it to them, he needed a fucking address.
Ben punched in the number. It would be helpful if he could get some sense of anything else they might want. The ringback tone played once. Then it played again. Ben chewed the inside of his cheek. Was this their fucking day off? Duchaine had said that someone was always at the other end of this line, so why the hell wasn’t someone picking up? He hoped Joyce would answer, so they could pick up where they’d left off, instead of Ben having to start from scratch. But that wasn’t likely to happen, because Joyce didn’t exist.
Ben slowly drew the receiver away from his ear. The beginnings of tears stung his eyes.
Somewhere—beyond a wall, through studs and nails, copper pipes and wires—somewhere behind him, Ben could hear a phone ringing.
54
Without thinking, Ben slammed the headset back onto the base, and the muffled ringing stopped. Immediately, his hands fumbled for the receiver and groped at the number pad, his blurry vision flicking from the flyer to the keys. He pressed the buttons carefully. He had to start over twice.
When the noise returned, Ben set the phone down on the desk and stood. He stayed there for a while, listening to the chime, while an acidic taste crept into the back of his throat. He tried to breathe slowly. His legs moved. The ringing was louder in the hallway, loudest to his right. He groped and clawed his way down the dark corridor, pressing his ear against each door. The hallway curved, and Ben followed it blindly. There, in the darkness straight ahead, he could make out a doorframe. Red light blazed through the slim gap at the bottom of the door and then disappeared. Louder. The ringing was louder now. Louder here. Ben moved forward. The red light returned, burning under the door like fire.
Ben felt for the doorknob and found that it turned freely. He pushed the door into the room, and when it pivoted back to him, he sent it crashing violently against whatever fragile thing lay behind it. The phone’s ring was piercing, and for a few seconds, it was the only thing filling the room. Then the engulfing dark was beaten back by a surge of blistering red. As Ben stepped inside, the door shut forcefully behind him.
Another ring. More light coming from the same direction somewhere to Ben’s right. What else? Ben glanced hurriedly. The light didn’t touch everything, but it touched enough. Clothes in piles. Shorts. A dress. Darkness fell. What was that odor? More ringing that the room was too small to contain. Ben spun in the red glow, looking for a light switch. Books on shelves. Stacks of paper.
A wooden pallet. Two pallets. Thin bedsheets balled on the floor beside them. What was that smell? Ben stumbled in the dark, waiting for the light to return; his feet struck something that looked like a jack-in-the-box. His hands fumbled against volumes on an unsteady shelf, thumbing the pages of each spine he grabbed before casting it to the floor. A Bible. A children’s book. A photo album. Smooth, cold laminated sheets brushed against his frantic fingers. The plastic smacked against itself like a dry mouth as Ben rifled the pages.
Children. Adults. All old pictures. Gray. Brown.
A little girl, harelipped. A solemn man.
Loose pictures spilled out of the book, and Ben caught them. A field. A woman with wild hair. Ben shuffled toward the brilliant light, stopped in the darkness, then held the book near the bulb for a better look. A sheet of paper slipped from its pages and hit somewhere near his feet in the darkness. The smell was worse here. White paper stood erect in a bucket. Bending to retrieve it, the smell overtook him. Effluvium dripped from the page as he pinched it out of the container. Excrement and urine fell away like melting ice.
HAVE YOU SEEN ME?
Ben’s breath hung in the darkness. His heart pounded in his ears. The bulb burned again, shining through the paper and turning his brother’s face into a crimson lamp. And that was it. At long last, Ben had found something that he didn’t even know to look for, even though he’d been gaining on it all the time. He didn’t really understand it—he couldn’t possibly—but he still knew. He knew he’d found the heart of this place. And he knew it beat for him.
The bulb erupted again, splashing red light on everything in Ben’s new world. And before him, on the wall, creeping from beneath frantic swaths of indecipherable colors, was a blood moon, smiling, fawning over its exuberant child. Scraped and carved and drawn and scratched and painted, they were everywhere—on the walls, on the ceiling—screaming out with each trill to their new guest, first asking, then demanding, that Ben smile too. That he join them in their forever dance.
Ben’s head was pounding, the ringing telephone a chisel on his skull. He grabbed the phone by its base, wanting to stop the clanging but afraid that it would take the light with it out of spite. Turning, Ben used the bulb on the phone as a spotlight, pulling on the cord and washing the light over the room’s hidden corners.
The shadows were living things that scurried away from the light. And once it retreated, Ben could feel them crawling over his skin, holding him, embracing him. Each scream of the phone was a surprise, despite the rhythm. It was hard to breathe. Ben could see Eric, mangled and chittering across the floor. And then the light would reset the room and he’d be gone.
The phone cord brushed against his hand, a paper label sticking to the filth on his fingers. It said FAX. Following the line with his eyes, he watched as it hid in the blinking red darkness before finally disappearing altogether into the ceiling.
Ben couldn’t move now. The clattering phone stunted the growth of any thought. He might never leave. That’s what the room wanted, right? That’s why it had brought him here, to stay and live forever until he crushed his skull between his own hands. Suddenly, it didn
’t feel like Ben had had anything at all to do with making this phone ring. There was someone else on the other end waiting for Ben to answer.
The phone smacked against the floor when Ben dropped it, but the ringing didn’t stop. It became muted behind the closing door as Ben left the room. His eyes rang with the red light’s memory. He tried to hold the room in his mind, to understand it. Rounding the corner, the soft glow from Palmer’s office illuminated his way. His thoughts and legs both fought for balance.
Ben hung up the phone, and the distant ringing ceased. For what felt like a very long while, Ben just stood there next to Palmer’s desk and his papers. With the filing cabinet behind him, Ben stared through the wide windows at the sprawling aisles of a lazy farm.
There was a fluttering in Ben’s stomach, a kind of weightlessness in his guts. Ben still couldn’t think, couldn’t understand what he had just seen, or what any of it meant, or what he should do. He needed to think, needed time. Vacantly, Ben stared at the pictures in his hand. He hadn’t realized he’d taken them out of that room. Wrinkled and creased, he’d squeezed them so tightly that his hand stung.
Ben didn’t recognize the field. But—
Ben was running. He was halfway down the corridor, hurtling toward the bellowing heater, before he realized where he was. Clumsy feet tangled with each other as he plunged down the iron steps. His hands lashed out at the railing and caught it. Marty never talked to anyone at Missing Persons.
That was the first coherent thought that formed in Ben’s mind as he stampeded through the store. He could feel the urgency of that fact in his panicked chest as he ran and pictured the woman with the wild hair. Marty never talked to anyone at Missing Persons and neither did I.
Not three days ago. Not months before. Someone had changed the phone number, and those calls had gone to that room.
Those calls had gone to Beverly.