In Things Unseen

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  Flo went back to her reading, the obligation to converse with Allison fulfilled for another night. Allison tried to return her own attention to revising her resume, but found herself unable to concentrate. Her mind kept drifting back to Betty Marx’s anonymous schoolteacher, and the little boy the woman was convinced had risen from the dead.

  Allison turned to Flo again. “Do you think this Betty Marx would give you the teacher’s name if you asked?”

  Flo barely registered the question. “What?”

  “I’d like the teacher’s name. Do you think you could get Marx to give it to you?”

  Flo addressed her with a frown that was becoming all too familiar. “No. And why on earth would I ask her to, Ally?”

  Ally. She used to call Allison babe.

  “I don’t know. Because I’m still a reporter at heart, I guess. It sounds like a possible story to me. Maybe something I could turn into a feature for The Times or—”

  Flo raised an eyebrow. “The Seattle Times?” The idea clearly struck her as outlandish.

  “Can you ask her for me, please?”

  “Ally. . . .”

  “It’s important to me, Flo. Seriously. No one will ever know I got the info from her, I swear.”

  Flo’s annoyance did a slow thaw. Allison didn’t ask for very much these days, and this was an attempt to do something potentially profitable.

  “Okay. I’ll ask. But don’t expect her to say yes, I’m practically a stranger to her and she’s probably posted more on the subject than the school district would prefer, as it is.”

  “Fair enough. Thanks, babe.”

  Allison leaned in for a kiss, received one in return, Flo actually taking it on the lips for a change rather than deflecting it to a cheek. Encouraging.

  But from there, they went their separate ways again, Flo tapping out the promised request to Betty Marx while Allison went back to her resume, newly energized. She had a feeling she was on to something. Something big. The story of an elementary school teacher experiencing a psychotic episode in front of a roomful of second-graders didn’t sound like much on the surface, but Allison sensed there was more at play than that.

  Had someone asked her why she thought so, she would have had no ready answer. She couldn’t remember her instincts as a journalist, as good as they often were, ever affecting her quite this way. She only knew the teacher’s story was a potentially huge one. More importantly, Allison was sure of something else.

  It was her story, and hers alone, to write.

  WEDNESDAY

  NINE

  IT WAS SHORTLY AFTER six a.m. when Michael called Diane. He hadn’t gone home at all the night before. He’d simply grown tired of driving in circles and parked the car, indifferent to where he was, and fallen asleep as soon as his racing mind allowed.

  “What did you do, Diane?” he asked when he heard her voice on the line. “The truth.”

  His wife answered with the tranquility of a nun. “I didn’t do anything, Michael. All I did was pray.”

  “Bullshit! I said I want the truth!”

  “I’m telling you the truth. You saw it for yourself last night.”

  “No. No.” Standing outside the car, his clothes a wrinkled mess that felt like a rain-soaked blanket against his body, he ran a hand through his hair. “What I saw was a little boy or. . .something made up to look like a little boy. But—”

  “It was Adrian, Michael.”

  “No. It wasn’t. That’s impossible and you know it.”

  “You used to believe in the impossible once, remember?”

  “What I remember is asking for something that I never received. Because I was asking it of someone who either doesn’t care or doesn’t exist. That’s what I remember.”

  “He does exist,” Diane said. It seemed there was nothing Michael could say to dislodge her from a state of infuriating calm. “And the proof is still in our bed, right where you saw him last night. I’ll have to wake him for school in about an hour. Did I tell you he went yesterday?”

  “Stop it. Just stop it! Don’t you hear what you’re saying? Don’t you know what you sound like?”

  “I don’t care what I sound like. All I care about is our son. He needs you, Michael. I need you. We’ve been given the chance to become a family again. All of us.”

  “Christ.” Michael shook his head for the benefit of no one. “You really are insane.”

  “No, I’m not. Adrian’s teacher will tell you. Miss Laura. No one besides us remembers, but she does.”

  “Remembers? Remembers what?”

  “The accident. Adrian’s death. No one else at his school has any recollection of any of it, but Miss Laura does. I’m not sure why.”

  Michael’s head was spinning. What was she saying? That she’d sent some child who resembled their dead son—or whatever it was he’d seen in their bed eight hours ago—to Adrian’s school yesterday? Causing one teacher, at least, to think their son had been returned to life? Was Diane really as mad as that?

  “I have to go,” he said, completely spent. “I can’t hear any more of this.”

  “Don’t hang up! Please.”

  “Diane. . . .”

  “If what you’ve seen with your own eyes can’t convince you, there is one thing I know that will. Forest Glade.”

  The cemetery where Adrian was buried.

  “Go there. Right now. Look for Adrian’s grave. I promise you it won’t be there.”

  She hung up.

  Michael considered calling her back, only to realize there would be no point. Diane had lost her mind. That much at least had just been firmly established.

  He checked his watch, saw it wasn’t yet six-thirty. There wasn’t time to go home first for a shower and a shave, or a badly needed change of clothes, but he could still get to the recording studio by eight if he got a move on. He jumped in the car and started out.

  He didn’t really believe he was going to Forest Glade instead until he was following the curve of the freeway off-ramp that would take him there.

  * * *

  Laura woke shortly after seven with no intention of going to work. Elliott seemed relieved.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  Nothing had changed. Nothing. She had drifted into unconsciousness the previous night clinging to one faint, desperate hope: that the dawn would bring an end to the nightmare she was having. But the nightmare was not only still in force, it wasn’t a nightmare at all. What had happened yesterday at school was real—Elliott’s delivery of her principal’s phone message was proof of that—and so the new day was nothing but an extension of the last. A little boy she knew to be dead and buried had walked into her classroom, as alive and healthy as she could ever remember him being, and she was the only one in the entire world who seemed aware of it.

  How could she go back to school?

  They would ask her the same questions they’d asked her yesterday, and all her answers would be the same. Even if she wanted to recant everything she’d said about Adrian Edwards, she’d never be able to do so convincingly. She still believed every word to be true. And if Adrian was there in her classroom waiting for her, the sight of him would terrify her no less now than it had then. As it was, the very thought of him chilled her to the bone. She could imagine no circumstance under which she could ever share a school campus—let alone a classroom—with the boy again. Or, more accurately, the boy’s ghost. Because he was a ghost, whether or not anyone besides Laura recognized him as such.

  “What are you going to do?” Elliott asked. He was dressed for work, travel mug of coffee in hand, itching to get out the door.

  “I’m not going to do anything. I’m going to stay right here in bed until”—she searched for an end to the sentence—”until I understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “Why this is happening.
What it means.”

  “We talked about that last night. It simply means—”

  “I am not overworked. This is not a nervous breakdown.”

  Elliott let a beat pass before speaking again. Treading lightly. “Don’t you think we should let a doctor determine that? I mean, that’s what doctors are for, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t need a doctor.”

  “The man said you’ve got to see one before you can go back to work, Laura. Whether you think you need one or not. I think—”

  “I know what you think. You think what Howard thinks, and everyone else at school. That I’m crazy or something. Well, I’m not. Adrian Edwards is dead. He’s dead, Elliott. An old man ran him over in a park last March and killed him. I don’t know who or what that was at school yesterday but. . .it couldn’t have been Adrian. It couldn’t have been.”

  Elliott just looked at her, finding the restraint somewhere to keep what he wanted to say to himself.

  “I’m all right,” Laura said. “Go to work and leave me alone. I’ll be okay.”

  “To hell with work. I’ll stay home if you want me to. Just say the word.”

  “No. Go. Get out. Please.”

  He wasn’t a man so easily dismissed. At times like this, he was prone to ignoring all her protestations to show her some affection: a hug, a kiss, a hand gently stroking the hair away from her face.

  But not today.

  After he was gone, Laura did exactly as she’d promised—lie in bed with no intention of moving until she had some understanding of what in God’s name was going on. But it was hopeless. The minutes went by without changing a thing. Her memories of Adrian’s death, and all the days that had followed, remained as undeniable as ever. She could neither drive them from her mind nor reconcile them with all the evidence she had that they weren’t real.

  Her cell phone rang around eight-thirty. Howard Alberts, checking up on her. She didn’t answer.

  Eventually Laura had to face the truth, the only one that held up under scrutiny: she was sick. Elliott was right. Her great affection for a special child in her class had spun out of control somehow, driven her to fixate on him to the point of inventing a false history for him, complete with death and resurrection. It didn’t matter how genuine this false history felt to Laura; it had to be imaginary. What else could it be?

  The district psychologist, a woman named Karen Nakashimi, had given Laura a referral for an independent doctor in town. Laura left the bed only long enough to dig the doctor’s card from the bottom of her purse and retrieve her phone. She forced herself to make the call and schedule an appointment: the next day at three, the earliest the doctor had available.

  She turned the television on and did her best to forget everything else.

  * * *

  Howard Alberts’s phone was ringing off the hook. As he had expected, the second graders in Laura Carrillo’s class had gone home the day before and told their parents about her breakdown in far greater detail than Alberts and the school staff had offered, and now those parents were flooding the principal’s office with calls.

  He did what he could to reassure them, giving his word Laura would not be allowed anywhere near their children again until he was satisfied she posed no threat to them, but not everyone was buying it. Several of Laura’s students had been traumatized by her actions and their parents weren’t happy about it. Almost half the children in Laura’s class were being kept home, some indefinitely.

  It was almost laughable. If these people knew the part of the story Alberts wasn’t telling—that Laura Carrillo had gone berserk because she thought a boy in her class was a dead child walking—they’d probably never send their children back to Yesler. The way Laura had looked, the conviction with which she’d repeated over and over the same fantastic explanation for her behavior, would have convinced these parents she was unfit to be a teacher, at Yesler or anywhere else, and that any principal who had failed to recognize this fact earlier had no business being a principal in their school district. Alberts would have felt exactly the same way had their positions been reversed.

  He had tried to reach Laura hours ago, to confirm she’d received the message he’d left with her fiancé, but she wasn›t answering her phone. The last thing Alberts wanted was for her to show up at school today, determined to teach her class. It seemed safe to assume that wasn’t going to happen now—it was well after eight o’clock—but the idea still made him uneasy. He’d feel better if he could talk to her, hear her say she understood and would follow his orders to go see a district-approved doctor.

  But that wasn’t the only reason he’d been hoping to talk to her.

  Nagging curiosity was the other. Could Laura have woken this morning in the same delusional state she’d been in yesterday? Did she still believe all that insanity she’d spouted about Adrian Edwards? Alberts hoped to God it wasn’t true. Because one isolated incident of mental instability was something Laura’s young career as an educator could probably survive; Alberts had known of teachers who’d suffered similar lapses and remained in the classroom for many years. But an extended detachment from reality would brand Laura a safety risk for all time. If she persisted in this talk of Adrian’s death and resurrection, even for only another day or two, Alberts would be hard-pressed to justify any decision to return her to active duty at Yesler.

  He wondered if he should feel similarly uncertain about Adrian. Not about the boy having died, of course, but whether he knew more about what had happened yesterday than he’d admitted. Ironically, unlike some of his classmates, Adrian was in school today. Alberts had seen his mother drop him off in the carport and had rushed out to greet them before Diane Edwards could drive away.

  “How is he?” he’d asked her after Adrian had hurried off to class.

  She spoke through her open window, the car’s engine running. “He’s fine. A little confused, but fine. Thank you for asking.” She added, “How is Miss Laura?”

  “I can’t really say. I haven’t spoken to her yet today. Naturally, she’s taking some time off.”

  “Yes. I’m sure that’s very wise.”

  Alberts found it interesting that she’d brought Adrian to school without asking about Laura first. If anyone could have been expected to keep their child at home until Laura’s actions could be fully explained, it was Diane Edwards.

  “Did you ask Adrian about what happened yesterday?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you mind if I ask what he said?”

  “Not very much. He said Miss Laura just started screaming. I asked him if he knew why and he said no.”

  “Does he still think she was screaming at him?”

  “No. We talked about that and he understands now that she couldn’t have been.”

  Alberts considered that a curious choice of words. “Couldn’t?”

  Diane Edwards shrugged. “Well, I can’t imagine why she might have been screaming at Adrian. Can you?”

  Without sharing Laura’s reasons for her outburst, Alberts had to admit he couldn’t. He thanked Adrian’s mother for her time and wished her a good day.

  He had already decided to check in on Laura’s students later in the day. They were with a substitute who was likely to be their teacher for some time. He hadn’t planned to pay particular attention to any one of them; they all bore watching for indications of fallout from their harrowing experience the day before. But Alberts had just changed his mind.

  He went back to his office, committed to having another talk with Adrian Edwards during the lunch break.

  TEN

  IT WASN’T THERE.

  Michael had visited his son’s grave dozens of times. He knew the names on the markers to the left and the right, behind and in front of it. He recognized the cedar tree at the crest of the hill above, and the hard cement bench with a crack down the middle that sat in its shade. Everything
that should have been there was there.

  Except for Adrian’s grave.

  The entire plot was gone. The familiar markers that used to encircle it were now crammed together with nothing but old grass in between.

  Michael stood at the site for a small eternity, trying to believe what his eyes were telling him. The obvious conclusion demanded his acceptance, but even now he couldn’t bring himself to acquiesce. Finally, he jumped in his car and drove down to the cemetery’s main office, where he blew through the doors and marched to the service counter.

  “What have you done with my son? Where the fuck is his grave?”

  He heard the words come out of his mouth, knew what they sounded like, but he was powerless to stop himself.

  Perhaps because they dealt with distraught, grieving people all the time, the two women behind the counter did not panic. The older of the pair, gray-haired and plump as a Thanksgiving turkey, wound Michael down until she could understand his ramblings, then tried to assure him no one by the name of Adrian Edwards had ever been laid to rest at Forest Glade. He must have the wrong cemetery. He ordered her to check her records again and again, cursing her refusal to believe what he was telling her, and she humored him for a while. But all the data at her disposal told the same story, and that story wasn’t going to change no matter how many times Michael rejected it. Eventually he gave the woman no choice but to threaten a call to security.

  Michael crashed out of the office the same way he had bulled his way into it.

  He went out to his car and shut himself inside. He tried to clear his head but couldn’t. He was locked in battle between what he knew to be impossible and what he now wanted with every fiber of his being to be true. His son was alive again. The world had been remade so that his death had never happened, just as Diane had said. All Michael had to do to make it real was join his wife in believing it. Find the faith in God he used to have before that terrible day last March, when the sight of Adrian’s broken and bloodstained body had stripped Michael bare and cold and left him sick of living himself.