Silence (11 page)

“Eric!”

His knuckles whitened on the wheel, and she watched as the shed and the car converged. The car passed right through it, leaving no wood, boards, or broken glass in its wake. She turned to look over her shoulder; there was nothing at al behind them but a two lane residential street.

He glanced at her once, but said nothing.

“I’l just stick with directions,” she said, shakily. “Sorry for screaming.”

One-way streets made the drive more difficult. Eric attempted to folow her directions, but told her curtly that he found having a driver’s license convenient when he was forced, by street signs, to ignore Emma. “It would help,” he added, as his phone began to ring again, “if you knew any of the street names.”

She did. She just didn’t know these streets. “Eric, can you answer the damn phone?”

“No.”

“Then give the damn thing to me, and I’l answer it.”

“Then give the damn thing to me, and I’l answer it.”

“No.”

She rubbed her temples. It didn’t help, but it gave her something to do with her hands other than try to strangle Eric.

Given that Emma didn’t have her license, strangling the only driver in an increasingly unfamiliar part of town seemed like a bad idea. As if to argue with that, the phone started ringing again immediately after it had stopped.

Eric ignored it. Emma gritted her teeth and tried to do the same. “Has it ever occurred to you that it could be an emergency?” she asked, through those gritted teeth.

“Just keep your mind on the road.”

She did. She found it easier as the driving continued. It wasn’t that the light, and the quality of its shifting images, lessened; the opposite happened. But as those phantasms grew more concrete and she could hold the images in the center of her vision as if they were just another part of the landscape, the pain decreased.

And the voices dimmed as wel, until there was only one voice, screaming to be heard against the cracking of timber and the roar of fire.

Emma said, “Here, Eric.”

But the car had already roled to a stop.

The phone rang.

It was pretty difficult, in the city of Toronto, to find any patch of land that did not have a building on it. This one was a partial exception; it had what looked like the remnants of several buildings, with partly blackened wals, a total lack of glass in buildings, with partly blackened wals, a total lack of glass in window frames, and boards over where the doors would have been.

Emma experienced, for a second time, the sudden cessation of noise and light. This time, though, she could feel the movement of al of these things as they left her in a rush, condensing, at last, to a single point that existed outside of her head. She shook her head, partly to clear it, and partly because sitting this close to a row of burned out townhouses wasn’t something she did every day.

Eric turned the engine off and glanced at her.

“Here,” she said quietly. She started to tel him that she no longer had the headache and then gave up; his expression made clear that he knew. And that, unlike Emma, he wasn’t happy about it.

She opened the car door and slid out of the car. “Do you want to wait here?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Eric replied. He opened his door, and his phone rang. Again.

“Look, if you don’t want to answer it, and you don’t want me to answer it, why don’t you just throw it away or step on it or something?”

He looked as if he was considering it, and then shrugged. “I’l turn it off.”

Emma’s phone had only ever been off when she’d forgotten to recharge the batteries. She grimaced. “Or that,” she said.

She made her way off the road, over the dead patch of lawn that was usualy bracketed by sidewalk and curb, and onto the that was usualy bracketed by sidewalk and curb, and onto the sidewalk itself, and then she began to walk toward the second house from the end.

“Where are you going?” Eric asked, folowing her.

She pointed to the house. “Do you know what street we’re on?”

“Rowan Avenue.”

Emma took her phone out of her pocket, and made a note to herself.

“It’s two words,” Eric said, raising a brow. “You’re not going to remember two words?”

“Probably not.” She slid the phone back into her pocket and headed up the walk. “Do you think this is safe at al?”

Eric said nothing. It was a lot of nothing. And to be fair, the obvious answer was No. “Emma, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “But I think—I think the child’s in that building.”

“He’s dead.”

“Very funny.”

“Only by accident,” he replied.

“Stay here.”

“Emma—”

“Just let me check the floor.” She moved very slowly up the walk, and then detoured to the lawn, to get closer to the ruined building. It was at least two stories in height; a third floor might stil exist, smal rooms cramped beneath the peak that was suggested by the buildings, farther down, that seemed in better repair. The fire must have occurred recently; the building was stil standing. There was no evidence of buldozers; no evidence of people’s handiwork beyond the haphazard boarding that had been put up. As she approached what had once been windows —the facade was damaged enough that the frames on this floor looked a lot like big, black holes—she felt heat and saw, for a moment, fire.

They weren’t ghostly flames; they were hot, and high, and adorned by bilowing smoke as air moved from the outside of the house toward them.

She heard, again, the screams. But she heard them at a distance, and she turned to where Eric was standing, expecting to get a glimpse of the woman—for it was a woman’s voice— that had once been capable of uttering them. The street, except for Eric and a couple of cars, was quiet.

“Eric?” She waved him over.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked slowly toward her.

“Pretend that you won’t have to kil me if you answer my questions.”

“Emma, do you understand how serious this is?”

She looked up, to the second story. “Yes. I need to know something about the dead.”

He waited, and after a minute of silence, she said, “I saw a student in the cafeteria the other day. He looked alive to me. I realized something was realy wrong when Alison sat through him.”

him.”

“Go on.”

“But he seemed to notice me. He smiled at me,” she added, “just before he disappeared. I can see the fire,” she added softly.

“I can feel its heat.”

“You’re right. It has to be recent.”

“What I need to know is if the child—”

“The dead child?”

“The dead child. Wil he be able to see me and react to me?”

The silence was longer and more marked, but Eric eventualy said, “Yes.”

“Wil he be able to see you?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone else?”

“Not unless you touch him.”

“Why?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Is he stuck there?”

“He’s dead.”

“Eric.”

“Emma, it may come as a surprise to you, but I’m not dead.”

He took his hands out of his pockets; they were fists. He relaxed them slowly, but it looked like it took effort. “But yes, there’s a good chance that he feels he can’t come out.”

“Can we make him come out?”

“Why?” The word was sharper, and harsher.

“Because he’s stuck in a burning house, and he’s four years old.”

old.”

The phone rang.

Emma’s eyes widened. “I thought you said you shut it off?”

Eric shrugged. “I did. Welcome to my life.” He slid his hand into his jacket pocket—school jacket, for formal day—and took the phone out. “I can’t talk right now,” he said, as he lifted the phone to his ear. “No. I left early. Someplace downtown.” He roled his eyes. “Rowan Avenue. No, I’m with another student.

Yes. No.” He glanced at Emma, and then said, “It might not be a problem. Look up Rowan Avenue. No. Because I’m not near a computer. Look, I can’t talk right now. I’l cal you as soon as I can.”

He hung up and slid the phone back into his pocket.

It started to ring again. Eric raised a brow in her direction and she grimaced and threw up her hands. “You win,” she told him.

“Ignore it.”

“Why, thank you.”

She walked up to what was left of the house and raised her arms to shield her face as the flames leaped out of the windows, driving her back and into Eric. He put his hands on her arms to steady her. “Fire?”

“You can’t feel it?”

“No.”

“See it?”

“No. You may need to wait this out,” he added softly. It was loud anyway; his lips were beside her ear.

“If you can’t see it,” she told him, gritting her teeth, “it’s not “If you can’t see it,” she told him, gritting her teeth, “it’s not real.” She shook herself free of his hands, and approached the building again. She forced herself to approach the fire. It singed her hair, and she jumped back again.

“Emma—”

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“The fire is real, in some way, for you. It’s not real for me.”

He exhaled sharply and then said, “In twenty years, you’l see it, but it won’t sustain the ability to burn you. Or it shouldn’t.”

“Twenty years?”

“More or less. Come on, let me drive you home.”

“You mean that child is going to be trapped in a burning building for twenty years?” She turned to face him, and grabbed one arm to prevent him from walking away. “Eric, if the fire isn’t real to you, you can enter the building.”

“If the building has any structural integrity, yes.”

“If you can make it in without feeling the fire, I might be able to go with you. And if I colapse because of smoke inhalation, you can drag me out.”

She heard the screaming again and turned. Street and cars.

Nothing else. Frowning, she said, “I don’t think the voice I can hear is a dead person’s voice.”

Eric said nothing, which was starting to get old.

“I think—I think it might be his mother’s voice.”

“Emma, let it go. Please. If it’s strong enough that you can hear her voice, he is too strong for you.”

“He’s four.”

“A living four-year-old and a dead four-year-old are not the same. Trust me.”

“I can’t.”

Silence. Then, “No, I don’t suppose you can.” He looked away, toward the house. “Even if I get you into the house, I probably won’t be able to get you up the stairs. I don’t think enough of them are left standing to support my weight.”

“But enough is left standing to support mine?” The quality of his silence was as good as an answer. “Because it was standing, or almost standing, when he was trapped there. I’m where he is, when I approach the house. Some part of me is walking to where he is.”

“Yes. And no. You’re here,” he added softly. “This isn’t like the hospital.”

“No. In the hospital there were two of me.” Her eyes widened slightly. “The one part sees the dead,” she said softly, as if testing the words. “And the other part sees the living. Why aren’t there two of me now?”

“You only get that dislocation at the beginning,” was the quiet reply.

She looked at the burning house carefuly and then said, “Al right. We need a ladder. A big, solid ladder.” And she turned and walked back to the car.

“Why is he trapped in the house?”

“He’s not.”

“Why is he staying in the house?”

“Why is he staying in the house?”

“Better question. I honestly don’t have the answer.”

“Why are any of the dead here at all?”

Eric glanced at her in the mirror, but otherwise kept his eyes on the road. He had to, since Emma had no idea at al of how to get home. “Where should they be?” he asked at length.

He was testing her somehow, and she knew it. She had always been good at tests, but this test was decidedly unfair; she didn’t even know what the subject was. “I don’t know. Heaven?

Hel?”

“I’m not dead. I don’t know either.”

“And you don’t care.”

“No. I care. But there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“There must be something I can do about it.”

His silence was long, and she watched the way his jaw tightened into it. “If this is your idea of trying to stay out of things,” he told her, “you fail.”

“Ful of fail. That happens when a four-year-old is going to be trapped forever in a burning house, reliving the moment of his death.”

The phone rang, but it had been doing that on and off since they’d gotten back into the car. “You could change the ringtone,” Emma suggested.

“This is the shortest ring I could find.”