Authors: Cam Rogers
They dropped Amy off a block from her house, then Nick drove toward Jack’s old place.
Jack had known only one home. It was several hectares of what had once been a turn-of-the-century horse farm, torn down, built up, and refurbished in the 1960s to serve as home to Jack and Will’s newlywed parents. Warm old wood and airy rooms repainted every few years, with the exceptions of the kitchen doorframe. That the family kept for the notches carved there, each one bearing Jack or Will’s name, and the date it was made, measuring their growth from children to loudmouthed teens to …
Jack was nine when the family routine ended. His mom and dad had died. As the eldest, Will had taken over the task of raising Jack, while continuing his scientific work.
Will had never been well. While their parents were alive a certain order had been maintained, allowing Will to function at high efficiency while focusing on what interested him. Maintained by medication and regular meals, Will did well. His scientific papers were received with interest, even acclaim. His future was bright. But the loss of their parents changed that.
Will couldn’t look after himself, let alone someone as volatile and needful as a newly orphaned nine-year-old boy. Will replaced the organizational influence of their parents with a series of spreadsheets, allowing him to ensure Jack was maintained while maximizing the amount of time Will could spend in the barn, working.
For the first three years not an evening went by that Jack didn’t hear the Dodge crackle up the driveway and feel his entire body leap with “Dad’s home.” This was followed by the immediate reminder that Dad was gone and Will was driving the truck.
Jack finished high school while working two or three jobs, managing the household, paying bills, and making sure they both ate regularly. Will’s focus was on the world beyond Riverport, the span of history, the greater good. Jack’s had been on the home.
Dates with girls were missed. Friends were few. Dances came and went. Neither Jack nor Will attended Jack’s high school graduation: Will because he forgot, and Jack because he knew Will would forget. A glance at the kitchen corkboard told him that it hadn’t even rated a mention on the spreadsheet.
The farm had been a great place for four people, a sad place for two.
Now, standing at the gate, headlights illuminating the family name on the gate plate, Jack couldn’t bear the idea of returning to it as a family of one.
The smoke from the burning library was a faint blemish on a horizon turned morning-silver.
Jack had asked Nick to stop at the gate. He had been standing there for almost ten minutes, eyes on the roof of the old house, past the maple trees, past the barn. Nick wasn’t in a rush, just leaned against the hood and smoked. The cabbie’s eyes were closed, head back, not tired just—not running for his life.
“You want breakfast?” Jack asked.
Nick shrugged. “I don’t feel like eating a damn thing, but sure. You think Amy’ll be okay?”
“Not for a while.”
“I’m sorry. About your brother. I’m sure he was solid.”
“He was self-absorbed, unreliable, and way in love with the smell of all his burning bridges.”
“But.”
“But toward the end I think he was trying to do some good.”
“Solid dude. Nobody’s perfect.” Nick closed his lighter, flicked his cigarette onto the asphalt. “What about Thailand? They might be watching the airports.”
“They might be watching the house.”
Nick shot a glance at the red-tiled roofline. Nothing suspicious.
“If they were,” Jack said. “We’d know about it by now.” Jack thought of his worn-out little apartment. The rusted key that fit the battered door. They may as well have belonged to someone else. “No,” he said. “I’m staying.”
Nick flipped his key ring in his hand, gunslinger-style, and got in the car. Jack found the white-painted latch flipped smoothly, but the gate stuck. He remembered the trick: lifted the gate, then pulled, and it swung just fine. Nick rolled the Charger over the hump and Jack got in.
The cab rolled in quiet and slow, lights off.
“Follow the drive.” By the fence was a dilapidated toolshed, unused and kept for color, next to which a shallow wooden boat sat gathering age under an orange tarpaulin. That had been his father’s, and something neither brother had wanted to be rid of. Grass grew wild and uncut around it, still green despite the fall weather.
The drive wound past a stand of four aged sycamore trees, each having dropped a flame-orange shadow of turned leaves, bringing the house and barn into full view. The last time Jack had seen the place it had been white-sided with dark-brown detailing. Since then Will had clearly decided it needed a paint job. Half of one side of the house was painted haphazardly sky blue; next to it a scissor-lift sat unattended and partially rusted.
“Jesus Christ, Will. Follow through man, or just hire someone.”
It hurt his heart to see the place like this. Some windows were obscured with grime. Others had been soaped opaque or covered in newspaper.
“This place looks abandoned.”
“No, pretty sure Will was living here.”
“While time-sharing with bears?”
“Paul…” The name stuck in Jack’s throat. “I was told Will may have gone off his meds.”
Nick switched off the engine and the car rumbled to a stop.
“Come on,” Jack said, getting out. “It’ll be an adventure.” He climbed out, booted feet touching down on home soil. The early morning air smelled like way back when.
An uncertain laugh made the hairs on his arms stand up.
Will spoke, attempting to make light of something. “… you can’t just…”
And there he was, but not really, at the foot of the wooden porch steps. It was happening again. Will was younger, bearded, wearing glass frames Jack hadn’t seen since Jack was, what, fourteen or fifteen?
“Hey! Hey! Shut it!” someone snapped, but Will didn’t react. His nervous smile was still there, as if waiting for feedback he could interpret. This abuse didn’t parse.
Someone else cut in, and Jack saw them now, two men who had been dead for six years, blown away at Bannerman’s Overlook: Princess and Aberfoyle’s second-in-charge. They were younger, too. Leaner. Better hair.
The second-in-charge cut in, more reasonable but no less intimidating. “You’ve had three months. No payment. No payment means we take the house.”
Will wasn’t making eye contact. “You … you don’t get the house. I … I dealt with Mr. Aberfoyle.” Will was talking to himself, the way he did when he worked, when teasing loose some complicated theoretical knot. He wasn’t present. Those fuckers were totally taking advantage of him. “Mr. Aberfoyle is the one … the one … who…” Will twitched, blinked hard, once, twice, three times.
Jack knew that tic. He wiped his eyes. Whenever this was, Will had been in a deep hole.
Will shook his head, blinked hard, shook his head again. He used thumb and forefinger to readjust his glasses. He still wasn’t looking at the men, his eyes on the steps or the trees. His tics were getting the better of him. Jack whispered his brother’s name, to no effect.
Princess glanced at the second-in-charge, smiled that prehistoric fish smile, then scowled at Will. “We make you nervous?”
Something hit the gravel, grassy and clattering—groceries—and a kid twelve years away from where Jack stood barked, “Hey!”
Jack felt himself surrender, déjà vu dragging him around again.
Princess didn’t even look at the new arrival. “Fuck off, kid.”
The knees were gone from his jeans; those thrift-store sneakers had lasted four years. Jack had forgotten that he once had a T-shirt with
NOT
blasted across the chest and he had loved that jacket. He thought that jacket made him look like serious business: khaki canvas, two big pockets, plenty of zippers.
Jack knew those groceries in the drive were paid for by three hours of collecting cans after school. He remembered buying them from a supermarket owned by Orrie Aberfoyle.
Will was a caricature of good manners. “Jack. Welcome home.” He swept his arm toward the door, a cartoon maître d’, still not looking anyone in the eye. “Why don’t you go upstairs?” Will never had any real idea what he was doing when it came to the human race. He had gotten better as time went on, but it still beggared belief. The poor bastard.
Jack Joyce, aged fourteen, got between the two wide-bodies and his brother, hair hanging in his eyes. “What’s the problem?” The size differential was shocking. The eye lines of Princess and the second-in-charge dropped toward this kid like two safes being lowered from a twelfth-floor window. The kid met their gaze unflinching. He raised his eyebrows helpfully—can I assist you?
Princess looked right at the kid, and said: “That smart mouth is gonna get your little brother hurt, Will.”
The kid’s eyebrows dropped. His voice was very level. “If I was being smart with you, dickhead, you’d never know it.”
Jack laughed, his hand slapping over his mouth. His eyes prickled.
Princess snapped his fist skyward—intercepted by the second-in-charge. “Dude. He’s a kid.”
Princess hesitated, eyes beaming death. Then he lowered that broad fist. “We’ll be back,” he promised.
“I’ll be here,” the kid said.
You magnificent little shit,
Jack thought.
The goons exited stage right and literally vanished. The kid watched them go.
Vibrations took hold of the kid’s legs, and Jack watched as he hit the dirt—first those shredded knees, then his hands as well. They curled in the gravel, hard. The kid’s breath was staccato. He was shaking.
Will said, “Foul language is unacceptable, young man. Mom and Dad would have been appalled.” It sounded as if he were talking in his sleep.
The kid’s head snapped toward Will, wild-eyed and furious. Will didn’t move. He was doing that fiddly thing with his fingers, eyes on the gravel, or the trees. The kid’s fury shaded to fearful, to outraged, then to disbelieving. Then contained. Then the kid was coping. Business as usual.
Will’s tics were subsiding, but he still wasn’t moving. “Appalled…”
The kid got to his feet and slapped white-dusted hands against his serious-business jacket. Looping Will’s arm over his shoulder the kid turned his brother toward the house.
“Privileges revoked, mister,” Will mumbled.
“You’re right, Will. I’m sorry.”
“Your grades are suffering. Bad grades are unacceptable. Your education—”
“Is my future. I know, Will. Steps.”
The brothers climbed the steps to the porch.
“Let’s get you to bed,” the kid said.
“No, too much work.”
“Let’s get you to bed.”
“All right.”
The kid moved his brother to the front door and then opened it for him. “How much do we owe?”
“Owe?” Like he was talking in his sleep again.
“Mr. Aberfoyle.”
“How do you know Mr. Aberfoyle?”
The kid escorted him into the house. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“All right.”
The ghost door closed behind them, and the world came back into focus.
Nick was looking at Jack weird. Which was fair enough.
“I guess you’re wondering…”
“Pretty much.”
“A lot of memories.”
“My grandmother used to do that. Talk to the air. God, specifically.”
“Did she get answers?” Jack said it as a joke.
“The good Lord told her when she was gonna die, right down to the minute. Were you communing with something just then?”
Communing.
Man, everybody in Massachusetts had some story about the life beyond. Jack had called an electrician out, years ago, to fix a light socket that wouldn’t stop flickering. The guy hadn’t been able to fix it and had advised Jack that it was most likely a spirit thing and to just make friends with it.
There was no point complicating things. “No. It’s just been a bad night.”
Jack climbed the bowed porch steps. He fished out his keys, looked for the one he never used. There it was, still stamped with the name of the shoe repair place on Ducayne where he’d gotten it cut when he was fifteen. “You know, Nick,” Jack said. “Ghosts don’t hang around because they can’t let go of us. They hang around because we can’t let go of them.”
“You’re a surprising man, Jack.”
“That’s not one of mine.” Jack turned the key, the lock clacked. “Something an electrician told me.”
The door opened, shoving aside a loose bank of uncollected mail. The cold air inside was stale, faintly rancid. Nick commented that it smelled like his old dorm room.
The date stamps on the mail were at least a week old, some dating further back. “The power might be off.”
The door opened straight into the living area, staircase angling up and behind the fireplace. The kitchen was through an entry to the right, and before that was space for the dining table and china cabinet. A bay window looked onto the drive and sycamore trees.
When Jack lived here he had managed to keep back Will’s piecemeal encroachment onto a house that was a memorial to his parents. So much of the interior character existed because of choices their mother and father had made; echoes Jack wanted to keep hearing for as long as he could. They were silent now. The place had changed.
Minor things remained as they had been: powder-blue walls, framed pastoral oils by some anonymous gas station artist, and homemade shelves where Jack had often set up action figures to be blasted down with dart guns. He smiled for a moment, before the memory of the previous few hours and the ghost-weight of a real gun in his hand fouled the recollection.
Atop that base layer Will had made the place his own. A whiteboard balanced on top of the mantle, gone smudge-blue from countless scrawlings and erasures. The china cabinet had been cleared and the dishware replaced with haphazard arrangements of scientific periodicals. The dining table was a work space, piled with papers and correspondence, the four chairs stacked in the corner, replaced by a single threadbare ergonomic saddle seat on four casters.
It hurt to see the place like this, faded and dusty and wrong.
“Your brother really believed in taking work home with him.” Nick crossed to the plastic-sheathed sofa—moving with a pronounced limp—and rested there.