Authors: David Pandolfe
“Really, I have to hold your hand?” Nikki smirked at me.
“Don’t worry, I won’t get lost.”
“Yeah, but I might. Wherever it was they took Bethany,
I’ve only been there once.”
Nikki hesitated, then reached for my hand. “Fair enough.
Just don’t get the wrong idea or I’ll kick your butt.”
I had to smile. “Deal.” I turned to Jamie. “Are you in? I
need your help too.”
Jamie grabbed onto our locked hands just in time.
~~~
Despite what I now thought about Curtis, apparently he’d
taught me how to get where I needed to go. A few seconds later, we touched down
outside the cabin. We stood looking around at the forest surrounding us, then
peering through the trees at the mountains.
“Anyone know where we are?” Jamie asked.
“I’m thinking the middle of nowhere,” Nikki said. “But,
no, I’ve never been here before. It’s so isolated. Sorry, but it kind of gives
me the creeps.”
“Which makes it a perfect place to hide someone you
abducted,” I said.
At the same time, there was something familiar about this
place. Not so much the cabin or anything nearby—I’d seen my immediate
surroundings, more or less, the night before. Instead, it was the mountains
visible in the distance. I felt like I’d seen them before but I didn’t know how
that was possible. Then again, I had no idea where we were geographically.
“Let’s go inside,” Nikki said.
I took a few steps toward the cabin, then stopped.
“What’s up?” Jamie said.
“There’s something I forgot to tell you guys. Last night,
for some reason, I got, well, sort of sucked out of here. The next thing I
knew, I was at the pond. I have no idea how I got there or why. I don’t know,
it was like something just took control of me. The whole thing was freaky as
hell.”
Jamie and Nikki exchanged glances but neither spoke.
“What?”
“Not good,” Jamie said.
I wondered how many decades it would take to actually
join their club and stop feeling confused. “Please explain.”
“This is too intense for you right now,” Nikki said.
“Yeah, it’s intense. I get that.”
Jamie stepped closer. “What Nikki means is that normally
you have more time to get used to things. Like Transitioning’s not stressful
enough. But you barely adjusted before this other thing happened to your
sister.”
“Sorry,” I said, “still not sure I’m entirely with you.”
“It was just too much for you to handle,” Jamie said.
“That must be why you chose the pond. It must have been a place where you felt
safe.”
“Exactly,” Nikki said. “You needed a place where you
could protect yourself from what was happening. So, you went someplace safe
inside your mind. A place that brought back good memories.”
I shook my head, not willing to accept what they were
telling me. “No, I couldn’t have. You’re saying I ran away?”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Nikki said. “There’s no way you
could have known. Besides, look at it this way—it gave you time to think so you
could come up with a plan. Feeling guilty isn’t going to accomplish anything.
Just be sure to tell us if it starts happening again.”
I tried to process what they were telling me. That, on
top of everything else, if I got too confused I could hide someplace inside a
memory without even knowing it. Just one more thing to add to the list of
things that seemed impossible.
“Sure, fine,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I feel myself
getting vacuumed into outer space. Let’s try to find my sister.”
Inside the cabin, we started passing through walls
searching for Bethany. The cabin was small and we found her almost immediately,
in one of the bedrooms where she lay curled up on the bed. The room was dark,
the only light coming from a small lamp on the bedside table. The walls and any
windows were covered by corkboard, which must have been put there for
soundproofing. That’s why the room was so dark. In that moment, I realized this
was the place I’d seen in my dream. I’d kept telling myself it was just a dream
but I couldn’t do that any longer.
Bethany’s eyes were glazed and her mouth hung partly open
as she stared into space. I stood next to her. “Bethany, are you okay? Did they
hurt you?”
Bethany didn’t look at me.
“Bethany, I’m right here. Can you hear me?”
Bethany still didn’t react.
“Is she okay?” Jamie said.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“Look,” Nikki said. “That just pisses me off. I just so
want to kill those bastards now.”
I hadn’t noticed before, but Bethany still wore the
handcuffs, being used now to chain one of her wrists to the headboard. I took a
deep breath, hoping not to lose it entirely. “Those two freaks can think
whatever they want about themselves,” I said. “But they’re still barbarians.
Where the hell are they?”
“I didn’t spot anyone,” Jamie said.
Nikki made a sound I could only describe as a growl.
“Please tell me they didn’t go somewhere and leave your sister here all alone
like—”
Just then, we heard a door creak open down the hall, then
the sound of what had to be Will and Karen heading toward the kitchen.
“We’ll be right back,” I told Bethany. I know it made no
sense, but part of me wanted to believe she knew we were there with her.
When we first entered the kitchen, I thought there had to
be some sort of mistake. The two people just taking seats at the table didn’t
look like anyone I’d seen before. But then I realized what had happened. Will
was cleanly shaven now, his hair a short bristle across the top of his scalp.
Karen was no longer blonde, her eyes no longer green. Now she had short brown
hair, freckles and brown eyes. She must have been wearing a wig and contact
lenses when they’d abducted Bethany. I kept staring at their faces to be sure
it really was them.
After a moment, Karen sighed. “I don’t know, maybe I’m
just getting nervous. Are you sure they won’t know where it came from?”
Will glanced at the ceiling, exhaled, then looked back at
her across the table. “Maybe if you weren’t stoned half the time, I wouldn’t
have to go over all this again. But, okay, fine. Basically, it’s spammer code.
The email hacks into open proxies and bounces around the globe. We’re talking IP
addresses like Lithuania, Peru and China. But unlike spam, it never replicates.
There’s only one recipient. Which is what makes it so beautiful. It seems like
you might be forgetting what I do.”
Karen shook her head, then lit a cigarette. “No, it’s not
that. I know you’re good. But things were different before, you know? I mean,
this is real now.” She pointed to a laptop sitting on the living room coffee
table. “Why wouldn’t they be able to trace it to that?”
Will rolled his eyes. “Do you ever listen to me? They
can’t. I wrote the code to randomly scramble the origin addresses. Basically,
it’s a needle in a haystack—and we’re talking one huge international haystack.
But even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. Technically, I never owned that
machine or any accounts associated with it. Besides, I’m going to wipe the hard
drive completely before I burn the thing. Let me know if I missed any steps.”
Karen blew out smoke. “Okay, like I’m ever going to
completely understand all the tech stuff. But you email them, telling them what
we want, and attach video of Bethany.”
“Exactly. We have her read from that day’s newspaper so
they know she’s alive. Sure, it’s a little cliché, but that’s how it’s done.
Then, after they wire the money, we drop her at the place we talked about.
Simple as that.”
Karen stubbed out her cigarette. “What if they don’t send
the money?”
“They will. They have two options as far as they
know—send the money or never see their daughter again. They won’t risk it.”
“God, it seems so much creepier now.” Karen looked off
across the room, toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms.
Will shrugged. “Yeah, well. What can you do?”
“When is all this going to happen?”
“Just be patient. Soon, okay?”
Karen sighed again. “And he can really come up with that
much?”
“Well, it’s not like he won’t feel it,” Will said. “Even
to him, a million is a pretty big chunk of change. But he has the resources to
make it happen.”
I turned to Jamie and Nikki. “Who the hell is he talking
about? That can’t be my father. He works at a college and my mother sells
insurance. They don’t have anything like that kind of money. Nikki, what’s he
thinking? Can you read him at all?”
Nikki shook her head. “Not right now. He’s just thinking
about the money. That’s the only thing he’s focusing on. I’m sorry.”
Karen’s chair screeched at the floor as she got up from
the table. She went into the kitchen, got some things from the refrigerator and
started making a sandwich. “And the bank account?” she said. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely,” Will said. “No one in the Grand Caymans is
the least bit worried about where the money comes from. They run their banks
the way banks should be run. Completely impersonal. Totally secure. God, stop
worrying. Why don’t you go outside and sketch or paint something. Okay, smoke a
joint too while you’re at it if it calms you down.”
Karen cut the sandwich and picked up the plate, then went
to leave the kitchen. She stopped and got a can of Pepsi from the refrigerator.
“I’m going to check on her.”
It surprised me when Karen knocked on the bedroom door. I
just assumed you wouldn’t think twice about barging in on your prisoner.
“Bethany, can I come in?”
Will chuckled as he walked toward the living room. “I
don’t know why you keep doing that. It’s totally soundproof.”
“It’s still the decent thing to do,” Karen said. She
knocked again, then opened the door as we passed through the wall.
Bethany barely looked at Karen as she held out the plate.
“I made you a ham sandwich,” Karen said. “I know you
don’t like mayonnaise so I didn’t put any on it. Just a little mustard.”
It seemed strange that Karen would know that. But maybe
Will had found out that sort of thing before, when he’d been planning and
pretending to be someone else.
Karen set the sandwich and Pepsi down on the bedside table.
“Listen, I’m sorry about the drugs. I keep telling Will to cut back but he
thinks it’s the best thing right now. You know, to keep you from being scared.”
I looked over at Jamie and Nikki to see if they’d heard
that too, wondering if it was me, but they didn’t look back.
“Okay, I’ll leave you alone,” Karen said. “But promise me
you’ll eat a little.”
Bethany just barely nodded, still not looking at Karen as
she left the room.
As soon as Karen was gone, I crouched in front of
Bethany. “Total B, it’s me. I’m here with you.”
I waited for Bethany to react. When she didn’t, I tried
to think of something that might get through to her. “Do you think you can
still talk Mom and Dad into buying you your own car when John gets his license?
It seemed like maybe they were starting to cave.”
Bethany had been working that plan for months, keeping
her grades up, being helpful around the house, the whole deal. And while John
and I had been able to see right through her act, it had seemed like my parents
might actually go for it.
That didn’t get a response. Bethany just stared straight
ahead. So, I tried again, this time with something I felt sure she’d react to.
While I’d been trying to keep things upbeat and comforting, it didn’t seem like
I had much of a choice.
“Bethany, listen,” I said. “I was with you at the
Starbucks. I saw everything that happened. I was in the van with you all the
way here. I don’t know where we are, exactly, but I managed to come back here.
Can you hear me?”
Even that didn’t get a reaction.
“Come on, Bethany. I’m right here! At least, look in my
direction. Something, okay?”
Nikki crouched down next to me. “She’s not hearing you,”
she said. Nikki’s expression was different than I’d seen before. Softer, more
thoughtful, as she stared at Bethany. “Her mind is really slow, kind of empty.
It has to be the drugs they keep giving her.”
I thought back to the things Karen had said before that
caught my attention, just now making the connection. I turned to Nikki. “How
long was I gone?”
Nikki hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m
sorry.”
“Come on, you must have some idea.”
Nikki glanced down at the floor, then back at me. “I’m
really sorry, Henry, but I just can’t be sure. When I found you at the pond, I
had the feeling you might have been there a while. Maybe a few days?”
Jamie walked over to us. “Like we said, Henry, it’s
totally not your fault. You just—”
“This can’t be happening!” I looked back and forth
between the two of them. “I’ve been gone for days?”
I felt sick realizing I’d left Bethany alone while they’d
kept pumping her full of drugs. Now I didn’t have a chance of getting through
to her. My mind raced while I tried to figure out what to do. All I could think
was maybe I could get through to someone else. I had to make it happen again, no
matter what. That was the only chance I had. That was the only chance Bethany
had.
I looked Jamie in the eye, then Nikki. “You both said
you were willing to help me. Is that still true?”
“Sure, of course,” Jamie said.
“Then can you both stay with Bethany until I get back?”
“Absolutely,” Nikki said.
That was going to have to be good enough for now. I
needed to get moving.
Banished
It was in my father’s home office that I learned how little
my family knew about Bethany’s disappearance, as well as how long I’d stayed by
the pond I’d conjured from my imagination. In the time that had passed, my
parents had tacked newspaper articles about Bethany’s missing person case
across an entire wall. While there were lots of articles, I learned only that
she’d been missing for five days and no one had any helpful information.
Nothing I didn’t already suspect.
At the same time, the articles were a reminder of just
how different things were for me now. Again, days had gone by in what for me
felt like almost no time at all. I had to remind myself of what Jamie and Nikki
both told me—it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have known about the possibility of
shutting things out the way I had. Still, it was hard not to blame myself.
I’d been home about an hour when I heard the front door
open downstairs. I dropped through the ceiling just as my brother walked toward
the kitchen. I know it’s kind of petty, but all the years of big brother versus
little brother stuff came back to me in that moment.
“Dude, did you not just see that? I can totally walk
through walls now.”
John kept walking, having no idea that I was there next
to him.
“Hey, Johnny, forget weightlifting, okay? Check this
out—I can fly. Seriously, like through the sky over cities. Are you hearing
me?”
I needed to be totally sure John could hear me before
telling him about Bethany. I didn’t want him to miss anything if I got through.
But if John heard me, he gave no sign of it. I followed him into the kitchen
where he started warming leftover pizza in the microwave.
“How about getting me a piece?” I said. “Kind of hungry
here.”
Technically, this didn’t matter since I couldn’t eat
anything in this realm. Still, it was the kind of thing I would have said to
him before.
John started chomping pizza and it seemed almost like he
was deliberately ignoring me. Kind of like he would have before, actually. I
wasn’t sure how else to try getting through to him. Then I thought about all
the time he spent working out, staying in perfect shape to play sports.
“Are you really going to eat all that? You’re getting
totally fat.”
John suddenly looked distracted. He put the pizza down
and went into the bathroom, where he lifted his shirt to check out his stomach.
He whispered to himself, “I’m not getting fat. Weird. What was that all about?”
Bingo. I’d definitely gotten through to him. I decided to
switch out of antagonistic mode. Come to think of it, that hadn’t gotten very
good results in life either. “Dude, you’re not getting fat. Sorry, I was just
trying to get your attention. Listen, I need to tell you about—”
John grabbed his iPod from his pocket and popped in his
earbuds. He started singing along to
Life Is A Highway
. Only my brother
would have that one in his music library. Seriously, he has the taste of a
six-year-old.
“John, come on! Listen!”
John left his pizza on the counter and went upstairs to
change. He put on running shorts and a T-shirt. He kept singing and I thought
my ears would explode. A minute later, he took off out the front door and down
the street jogging.
~~~
Maybe an hour went by before my father came into the house
from the garage, carrying newspapers and talking on his cell phone. He walked
straight through the kitchen and then down the hall, still listening to whoever
he was talking to. I followed him as he went upstairs.
“No leads at all,” he said. “They keep going over the
surveillance tapes from the Starbucks but they’ve got nothing on the guy. Yeah,
that’s right, a gray van. Some people said it was a Toyota but no one got the
plate or anything like that.”
He stopped in the hall and listened for a moment. “I
know. I keep thinking the same thing. But they’ve gone through her computer
over and over. He never slipped up. Everything was fake, all of it. The police
said, whoever this guy is, he’s no amateur around computers. Most people leave
a trail of some sort. Not this son of a bitch.”
He walked toward the guest bedroom he’d turned into an
office. “Thanks, Richard. I appreciate that but I’m still not so sure about the
private detective idea. The police specifically asked us to let them do their
job. The last thing we’d want is for—”
My father nodded, tossed the newspapers onto his desk,
then dropped into the chair. “I totally understand but it’s not about the
money, believe me. Listen, you’ve always been a great big brother. I know how
much you care about us.”
Maybe it was because Uncle Richard and Aunt Anita didn’t
have any kids, but he was always offering help of some sort. He had his own
company up in New York, something to do with banking or investing money, so he
made a lot more than my father. Still, my father never seemed to take it the
wrong way—he and Uncle Richard had always been really close.
“Of course, if there’s something you can do we won’t
hesitate,” my father said. “We just want to be sure we don’t make any mistakes.
The police are working their tail off on this. We wouldn’t—” My father paused
again while my uncle said something. “I’ll keep it in mind, okay? I’ll call
right away if we hear anything.”
Once he was off the phone, my father looked through the
newspapers one at a time. Most of them he threw into the trash. From one, he
cut out a small article from the very back. He crossed the room and pinned it
to the wall. The article wasn’t about anything that mattered. The police had
found an abandoned pickup truck somewhere in town and wanted to know who owned
it. No sign of a crime or even anything particularly suspicious. Straw to be grasped
at, basically, although my father couldn’t know that.
He logged into his computer but the internet showed him
nothing new, I could tell. The media had already moved on to stories about war
and terrorism and weather disasters. One missing daughter wasn’t holding
anyone’s attention. My father sat staring at the screen, then after a while
closed his eyes and started to cry.
“Hello, are you upstairs?” My mother must have just
gotten home.
My father wiped his eyes.
“Tom?”
“Yes, I’m up here.”
“John’s down here too,” my mother said. “He just got back
from running.”
My father nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Tom, are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you hungry?”
My father let his head fall forward. He closed his eyes
again.
“I was thinking maybe salmon and rice. Maybe some
broccoli. Does that sound good?”
“I’ll be down in a minute. Yes, that sounds fine. Thank
you.”
My father got up from his chair and walked toward the
door.
I followed after him. “Dad?”
He paused for just a moment.
“Dad, wait! I need your help. I know where Bethany is!”
My father stopped and I felt sure he’d heard me. My heart
started beating faster. But then he raised both hands to grasp his forehead,
his face pained. “I must be going insane,” he whispered. “Now I’m hearing
voices. I don’t know how much more of this I can take!”
He took a deep breath to collect himself, then left the
room. In that moment, I felt sure my words were something he’d already imagined
a thousand times—someone who could tell him where to find Bethany when of
course that wasn’t possible. He had no need for me at all. I was just another
voice inside his head, haunting his already haunted life.
~~~
I trailed my brother and father for days, trying to get
through to them. At times it seemed like they heard me but not the same way Bethany
had. Not with actual belief. They seemed to think my voice was something they
were imagining. I was just a nuisance, nothing solid enough to be consciously
acknowledged.
Each time I tried getting through, my brother tuned me
out with something. Television, music, a phone call, whatever. Meanwhile, he
ran, lifted weights, did pushups, anything to keep busy and ignore the voice
inside his head.
My father turned to alcohol instead. The more I tried
talking to him, the more he drank. He bought a flask and started carrying it
with him, filling it each morning with vodka. I knew I had to leave him alone
or something really bad was going to happen.
Still, it seemed like my mother’s suffering was the most
intense so I kept putting off trying to get through to her. She’d always been
an outgoing person, ready to tell a funny story or listen if you had problems.
These days her expression remained frozen most of the time, her eyes distant.
She broke down crying a lot, as long as she felt sure no one could see her. She
still went to work each day and made dinner at night for my brother and father
but she was just going through the motions. I could tell she was barely hanging
on. I wasn’t sure how she’d react if my voice suddenly jumped into her brain.
But strange things were starting to happen to me. For one
thing, I couldn’t sleep. The Rule held firm, the one I’d learned about that
first night after I drowned. I couldn’t sleep in my old home. I could lie down
and close my eyes, but that was it. My brain never shut off and dreams, good or
bad, didn’t come. Each time I opened my eyes again, I felt that much more
tired. After a while, I started to feel delirious, like I had a high fever.
Part of me knew I was totally losing it. But another part
of me—which seemed to be growing stronger as I got weaker—kept telling me to
stay. More and more, I started to believe it wasn’t so much that my family
needed to know about Bethany but instead that they needed me next to them.
Sleep didn’t even matter. All that mattered was staying home. Wasn’t this
really where I belonged? Wasn’t this really my life? And if my parents and
brother were suffering, then didn’t it make sense that I stayed and suffered
alongside them? My mind kept entertaining these kinds of thoughts. Even though
I knew what Martha had told me about people becoming trapped souls, I kept
staying on.
The times when my mind felt clear were getting farther
apart. During one of those times, I realized I had to try getting through to my
mother. It seemed possible that soon I might stop trying altogether and remain
a silent ghost haunting my old home.
I found her sitting in the family room late at night with
no lights on, alone in the dark while moonlight beamed through the windows. I
stood next to her, afraid to speak but feeling I had no choice.
“Mom? It’s me, Henry. I’m here with you.”
When I’d expected my mother to pretend not hearing me,
she looked up and stared right at me. “Henry?”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m right in front of you.”
“You can’t be, honey. I wish you were.”
“It’s me,” I said. “Try to believe me. Mom, I’m right
here!”
My mother started rocking back and forth. She closed her
eyes. “You were such a good boy. What happened? What did we do wrong?”
“Nothing, Mom. You didn’t do anything wrong. That’s not
what happened, I promise. But right now, I need to tell you something. Can you
hear me?”
“You’re not here. You can’t be. Why did you do that to
yourself? We loved you. Why did you?”
“Mom, we need to talk about Bethany.”
Tears flowed from my mother’s eyes. “No! We can’t talk
about Bethany. You’re dead. You killed yourself. I’m sorry. We’re sorry.
Whatever we did, we’re sorry. But we need to find your sister! Leave me alone!”
“Mom, please listen! I can tell you where she—”
A beam of light shot into the room, dropping in from above,
as if the roof and ceiling had just opened to the full moon outside.
Curtis stood next to the fireplace, glaring at me. “What
do you think you’re doing?”
I kept my eyes on my mother. “Trying to help my sister.
Go away.”
Curtis swept his hand through the air. The curtains
behind my mother billowed. Glass fell and broke in the kitchen. My mother kept
crying and didn’t look up.
“Can’t you see you’re torturing her?” Curtis said. “Don’t
you understand that? You’re driving them insane, so stop!”
I flew at him and we stood face to face. “What are you
talking about? You’re the one who refused to help!”
“We need to talk. Come outside for a minute.” Curtis
turned and walked through the wall. I followed and we stood outside on the
front lawn, the sky above bright with the light of the moon.
“You need to leave them,” Curtis said. “Go away from
here.”
I shook my head, “I can’t. I have to at least try getting
through to them one more—”
“Then that’s it. You’re done.” Curtis pointed at me, his
arm outstretched. “Consider yourself Banished from here. Martha, listen. I’ll
do what you asked. Banish him!”
I ignored Curtis and walked toward my house but found
that I couldn’t pass through the wall to get back inside. I tried again, then
ran around the house trying other walls for no reason that made sense. Then I
ran to the front door and tried pounding on it but no sound came. I couldn’t
even feel the door against my fist. I didn’t know what had suddenly changed,
but somehow I knew that I couldn’t do anything about it. There wasn’t any way
back in for me. The next thing I knew I was shooting through the sky, Curtis
tightly gripping my wrist.