He flicked it off again and back-stepped into the kitchen, not wanting to turn away from the darkened basement until the door was safely shut.
Where else? The shed? No, she would have had to get past him to go out back, unless she'd gone out the front, and he would have heard the heavy front door shut if she'd gone out that way.
Where then? One of the closets?
A stifled giggle signalled her location. Owen followed the sound back to the living room.
"I heard you, you little twerp…" A dark place. There were no dark places in the living room, except… "Aha!" he said, leaping onto the sofa and peeking over the edge. Lori sat crouched in the space behind it, holding the Game Boy. She burst out laughing as he snatched it from her.
"Nice one, wiener," Lori said.
"That's dim, not dark."
Lori stood. "Picky picky."
Owen sat back down and took the game out of pause. Lori hoisted herself over the back of the couch and sat beside him. "Aw, c'mon. Let's play some more, huh?"
He put down the game with a melodramatic groan, loathe to admit he'd had a good time in the short while they'd been playing. "All right, but no more cheating."
"Whatever," she said, rolling her eyes.
For the next twenty minutes, they hid objects from around the house and wrote each other clues. Lori hid a pen in the cookie jar (I am in a sweet place), which he found quickly, and Owen hid one of her My Little Ponies in the laundry hamper (I am in a dirty place). It took her many trips around the house to find it, and after she'd dug it out of his dirty socks and underwear, pinched between two fingers, she slugged him in the shoulder. Because of this, he'd assumed I am in a wet place meant she'd put something in the toilet, but when he'd lifted the lids to the bowl, she'd snickered at him behind her hand.
"I am in a painful place," she read aloud, the two of them now standing in the kitchen. She looked up at him, at a loss.
He shrugged, having saved the best for last. "No hints."
She gave him a shrewd look. "It better not be in a mousetrap."
Owen laughed, wishing he'd thought of it. She took off hunting, peeking under the dining room table and behind the blinds. She came back and reached for the basement door handle. "It's not in the basement," he told her. He avoided the basement when he could, and wouldn't go down there by himself for a stupid game. Lori shrugged and moved on. As she mounted the stairs to the second floor, the telephone rang again. He snatched it off the hook.
"Hello!" Owen said excitedly, but the tone of Darius's greeting told him what he'd already suspected. Darius, a friend since the fourth grade, had somehow propelled to cool status when the two of them transitioned to high school, and he'd since maintained their friendship with obvious begrudging. He had promised to ask Wendy Packer, whose parents were away for the weekend and had planned a big party with no supervision, if Owen could come as his guest.
"Yeah, so uh, Wendy didn't invite you, so it's probably a good idea if you don't tag along," Darius said.
Tag along. Owen had grown tired of hearing those words. In fact, he was pretty sure Darius hadn't even asked Wendy at all. "That's cool," he lied, holding back tears. "I didn't really want to go anyway."
Darius begged off, worried he'd be late for the party, and Owen hung up, swallowing a bitter lump of sadness. It was just like his so-called friends to leave him behind. Everyone left him, eventually.
"Fuck them," Owen muttered to himself, the forbidden word feeling good on his tongue as he threw the pen and notepad at the wall. He slumped back to the living room and took the Game Boy out of pause, before remembering what he'd been doing when the disappointing phone call had interrupted him.
He crossed to the table by the window, where their mother kept potted flowers in the sun, most of them still blooming even in the winter. The pendant and chain were just where he'd left them, draped over the cactus. Owen plucked it off carefully and tucked it in his pocket, then went hunting for Lori.
Not in her closet, not in his; she wasn't under her bed, and she couldn't have hidden under his, because it had drawers. Owen crept into their mother's bedroom, wary of the forbidden territory, and lifted the duvet cover to peer under the large bed. Nothing. Before he got to his feet, he spotted a slat of light on the floor, and followed it to its source: the closet.
"Gotcha," he said under his breath, and approached the closet door.
He tore the door open, startling Lori into dropping the thing she'd been holding. The black book fell on its back, the words HOLY BIBLE in burnished gold glimmering under the bare bulb. Lori looked up from where she sat cross-legged on the floor amid their mother's many pairs of shoes, caught. She breathed a sigh when she saw it was just Owen.
"Mom'll kill you if she finds out you've been in here," Owen warned, looking down at the mess she'd made: an opened shoebox stuffed with papers and old photographs. He knelt down beside her. "What is all this stuff?"
"Just a whole bunch of old pictures and junk. Here's one of Mom." Lori plucked one from the box and held it up for Owen to see. Their mother, much younger, stood in front of an old white house in a winter jacket on a crisp-looking day, squinting from the sun in her eyes. "She was pretty," Lori remarked. Owen shrugged, not wanting to think of his mother in such a way, more concerned with the Bible, anyhow. Considering the time his mother had yanked him out of class, scolding the teacher for subjecting him to "religious oppression," it was surprising to see a Bible in her closet.
"You ever wonder how come Mom doesn't have any pictures of you when you were little? I mean really little?"
"No," he lied. Of course he had wondered. He rifled through the photos in the box, hoping to find some, but they were all of strangers, except the ones that also had their mother, and in many of these she was actually smiling.
"Who are all those people?"
"Mom's old friends, I guess," he said, tucking them back in the box. "How come you came in here, anyway?"
"Your clue said I'm in a painful place. This is where Mom comes to cry."
Owen picked up the Bible. He turned it over in his hand. The cover was worn, and the pages were wrinkled along the edges, as if something had been spilled on it, or it had been left near water.
Comes to cry? he thought. Mom never cries.
She never smiles either, he reminded himself, except in all those old pictures.
"You better make sure you put all this stuff back in the right place," he said absently, leafing through the book. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
Owen read the words again: Let there be light. He thumbed through the pages like a flip-book. It stuck on a thicker page, and he opened the book, revealing an old, sepia-toned photo.
His breath caught. Lori looked up from putting the photos back in the shoebox with a questioning look. She looked at the photograph in his trembling hand. The closet suddenly felt very small, as if the walls were closing in on him, and his vision grew swimmy as the world around the photograph grew dim, narrowing like an iris wipe in an old movie.
"Who's that man?" she asked.
Lori's words snapped him from his trance. He tucked the photo back into the Bible, stacked the book on the photos, and the lid on the box. "Nothing. It's nobody."
"That's him, isn't it?"
"Him, who?" He stood. "You're not making any sense, squirt."
"The ghost," she said, invoking the name she'd given the man Owen had seen the day they'd gone to the beach at China Cove, when Lori had made a run for the water and the man—the ghost—had been standing up to his shins where it had been far too deep to stand. And now, to see the same man in an old photo his mother kept as a place-marker in the Bible they never knew she had...
Was he a ghost?
The squeak and rumble of tires coming up the snowy drive startled them. They turne
d to each other with mortified looks, saying, "Mom's home" in unison, both of them scrabbling out of the closet. Owen flicked off the light, thinking: Let there be dark. He closed the door behind them and they scurried downstairs, back to where this had all begun, on the sofa and the loveseat, trying to slow their panting as their mother stepped in through the front door.
All throughout dinner that night, Owen wondered about the man in the picture. Who was he? Why did their mother have a picture of him? What had he been doing in the lake that day, standing above the water?
Forget it, he told himself. And why not? He'd already forgotten the man before, hadn't he? Until just then in the closet?
But he couldn't seem to put the man out of his mind, even later that night. He'd been playing his Game Boy on his bed, distracted by thoughts of the man in the lake, when Lori knocked on the door.
"What do you want?"
Lori sidled by the doorjamb. "I've been thinking…"
"I thought I heard the little hamster wheel squeaking."
She scowled. "Ha ha." She plodded into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. "I think we should look at that stuff in Mom's closet again tomorrow. While she's at work."
"No way, José. If she finds out we've been in there, we're in big trouble."
"She won't find out." She mimed zipping her lips. "Zip it, remember?"
"I remember."
Lori sat silently, kicking her feet on the mattress, while he pretended to be interested in his game. Finally she said what he suspected had been on her mind: "We need to figure out who the ghost is. I was thinking if we make a photocopy of the picture, maybe we could do a library search—"
"Would you forget about the stupid man?" he yelled.
Both of them looked at the open door. Downstairs, their mother had the TV on, and was washing dishes during the commercial breaks. She obviously hadn't heard him.
Owen seized on an idea, something to get her mind off the ghost. "You never did find what I hid," he said.
Lori scowled, seemingly not knowing what he meant. Then she clued in. "Where was it?"
"In the cactus pot," Owen said.
"A painful place," she said, nodding.
He brought the shiny thing out of his pocket and dangled it in front of her eyes.
"Wowee!" Lori cried. "Is that for me?"
"No, it's for your imaginary friend."
She took it from him, at first holding it by the delicate chain, then grasping the unicorn pendant between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand and twisting it in the light. Owen saw the rainbow prisms it threw on the wall and ceiling.
"This is the best!" she said, unsnapping it and looping it around her neck. "Can you do the clasp?"
Owen made a show of grudgingly sliding over to where she sat. She lifted her hair, and with a little finagling, he snapped it closed. She got up off the bed and rushed over to the mirror, marveling at the shiny unicorn resting above the neckline of her busy sweater. Prisms flickered over the walls from the pendant itself, and from its reflection. "It's so pretty. What's it for?"
"For Christmas, dumb-wit. Zip it, though. If Mom asks, tell her it's a late birthday present."
Lori nodded, dazzled by the gift. She turned to him with a serious look. "I promise I won't talk about the man anymore, if that's what you want. But can I just ask you one more thing first?"
Owen shook his head, but he said, "Fine."
"What if the man's not a ghost?" She approached the bed, holding the pendant in a closed fist. "What if he's an angel?"
But Owen, who'd never in his memory had a thought that wasn't poisoned with pessimism, wondered, What if he's the Devil?
PAR† 2
FATHER
CHAPTER 6
Seek and Ye Shall Find
1
OWEN STOOD on the swaying dock, looking out at the bay. The wetsuit felt snug on his hips and bulged at the waist, giving him a gut.
"Beautiful day, isn't it?"
He started at the voice, and turned to see a man with a white streak of sunscreen on his nose, his bald pate already sunburnt. The man sat cross-legged in the back of a cedar canoe, a paddle on his knees. Below a pair of safari shorts, he'd hiked the white socks he wore over his sandals up to his knobby knees. His fishing vest sparkled with dangling lures.
"Sure is," Owen agreed. "Nice canoe."
The man shrugged humbly. "Thank you kindly. Built it myself. I'm Dink Deakins."
"Dink…?"
"Deakins. You must be Owen Saddler. I've heard a lot about you."
"Word travels fast."
"Actually, I spoke with your sister. Damn shame what happened to her, Owen. Can I call you Owen?"
Owen shrugged. "It's my name."
Dink dipped the paddle lazily. The canoe drifted toward the dock on the weak current, and Dink Deakins grabbed at it to steady the canoe.
"You spoke to her?"
Dink squinted up at him, the sun in his eyes. "Oh, you bet."
"Do you mind telling me what you talked about?"
"Do I mind? I didn't paddle all this way to sell you life insurance!"
Owen nodded. The man looked at him a moment longer before continuing. "Hmm, let's see… Oh. We talked about your mother, though I have to say, I never really knew her. Didn't run in the same circles." He flashed an apologetic smile. "What else, what else? Oh, right. The church. She asked a fair bit about the church, about the Schism, mostly. Wanted to know about the preacher who ran it, but like I told her, I didn't know a lot about the man. Was never big on religion, personally. The only kind of assurance I need pays a steady sum to my beneficiaries, am I right?"
Owen faked a smile and nodded. The man's patter had a false quality to it, the feel of something rehearsed. He couldn't be sure if the man was outright lying, but he suspected he wasn't being entirely truthful. "So she didn't ask you anything about me, is that right?"
"About you? Ha! Well, someone's got an ego, huh? I'm kidding, of course. You know, I don't remember her asking anything about you. Come to think of it, she didn't mention she had a brother at all."
"Well, I appreciate you coming by, but if you don't mind, I was about to—"
"Do some diving," Dink said. "I've got to confess, Owen. I did have an ulterior motive for paddling by."
Here it comes, Owen thought.
"Are you covered? Do you have a plan?"
"A plan?"
"Life insurance!" Dink exclaimed, as if Owen were being obtuse. "The wife told me it'd probably be a little gauche to ask you, after what happened to your sister, but I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to your poor mother if, God forbid…" He gulped dramatically. "You know…"
Owen stepped on the canoe's gunwale. "You might want to consider listening to your wife next time," he said, and pushed Dink away from the dock.
"Roger that," Dink said, dipping the paddle to steady himself. "Ten-four, good buddy, I hear you loud and clear. But if you change your mind…"
"I'll be sure and call you," Owen said. "…An asshole," he added under his breath, waving cheerily.
"You be careful out there on the lake," Dink said, throwing a hand in the air as he paddled away.
"What a prick."
A loud rumble shook the ground, rattling the windows. "What now?" Owen wondered. He stepped off the dock and padded back to the house. When he reached the driveway, a garbage truck had pulled up in front of the house. The buzz of flies and the fetid stink of rotting food struck him immediately. He'd assumed it was the garbage truck, until he noticed that the trash cans had been tipped, their contents torn and strewn across a carpet of pine needles. Flies zigzagged from one piece of trash to another. The pudgy trash man jumped down from the driver's seat to get a better look.
"Cwapcakes!" the trash man said, looking down at the mess with gloved hands on his hips, shaking his head. His pudgy, hairy belly stuck out from a stained black T-shirt. Sandy brown hair fell shaggily from a trucker hat declaring HAP CRAPPENS—which appeared to be a st
atement, not the name of his business, since the truck itself had HOWIE HAUL-IT stenciled on the side. The trash man's eyes goggled at the sight of Owen from behind transition sunglasses, currently midway between light and dark. He laughed uproariously. "Nice muffin top, buddy!" he said with the same lisp Owen had noticed earlier, pointing to the bulge in his wetsuit.
"Thanks."
"Cwazy mess you left here for me," the trash man, likely the Howie of Howie Haul-It, said. Along with a wispy beard, Howie had some of the facial features characteristic of Down syndrome: puffy, slightly downturned eyes, pudgy cheeks and a small chin.
"That's not mine."
The trash man's eyes clouded with suspicion. "Oh, I guess it musta been the ghosts then, huh? Ghosts that eat—" He kicked a can with the toe of his boot, and examined it. "—SpaghettiOs and waw vegan oatmeal?"
"I meant, the raccoons must have done it," Owen said. "And really, it's not my trash. I just got here last night. I don't know who—" He left the thought unspoken. Of course he knew whose garbage it was: the rental's last occupant, Lori.
The trash man blinked. "S'matter? Cat gotcha tongue?"
"I don't know whose trash that is," Owen finished. "How often do you pick up the garbage around here?"
"Oh, so, this is my fault?"
"No. I'm not suggesting… I'm just wondering if trash collection—"
"Wefuse," Howie interjected, hands on hips again.
"What?"
"It's wefuse. Wefuse collection."
"Fine. I'm wondering if refuse collection is once a week, or two."
"Biweekly. Biweekly wefuse collection."
"Is that once every two weeks, or twice a week?"
"Twice a week?" the refuse man said, uproariously. "Who do you think pays the taxes around here? Donald Twump?"
Owen laughed. "It's Howie, right?"
"That's what it says on the twuck."
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