The Dead Husband

by Carter Wilson

  “Buy you a cup of coffee if you tell me everything you know about it,” he said.

  “Coffee’s free here,” Sike said.

  “It’s the gesture that counts.”

  Sike grunted, which Colin took as an affirmation. Colin walked over to the pot, still half-full, and filled two paper cups. He took a sip from one, surprised that it tasted decent.

  He walked back over and handed a cup to Sike, who offered another grunt.

  Sike took his own sip, tilted back in his chair, and said, “Kid went missing on a Friday night.”

  It took about twenty minutes for Sike to tell Colin the story of a missing boy named Caleb Benner.

  Afterward, Colin couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  Twenty-Eight

  October 25

  It’s Sunday night and I yearn for unconsciousness.

  Over a week has passed since Pearson confronted me at Tuli’s, which earned me two more sleepless nights and only a few hours a night since then. Now I’ve reached a point of such extreme anxiety and fatigue that I can barely hold a conversation, which is okay, since I don’t want to talk to anyone anyway. But Max is wondering what’s wrong with me, and all I can manage to tell him is I’m not feeling well. It didn’t take long before my mood seeped into his, causing him to act out more than normal, lashing out whenever I asked him to do anything, even just putting on his shoes.

  I can’t write. I can’t hold any attention at work, struggling to make it through my shifts. I canceled dinner plans with Cora last night and have been avoiding my father as much as possible.

  After dinner, I slogged through a round of Sorry! with Max on the floor of his bedroom, happy to lose. He protested when I made him go to bed by nine (Mom, it’s Sunday!), but I told him he could either read a book or go to sleep, and he chose to get under the covers with the final Harry Potter volume of the series. The world just might run out of books for him to read.

  It’s nearly ten now, and my thoughts drift beyond the mere need for sleep. To the wonder of what Riley felt as he slipped off for the last time. Probably nothing at all. But maybe there was a release, sweet and pure, that gave peace to his troubled soul. Maybe in those last seconds, he became a child again, innocent and uncorrupted.

  I like to think so.

  In my bathroom, I dig out two pill bottles from beneath my bathroom sink. Riley had a second stash of his sleep medications in his sock drawer and I kept them. How macabre is that?

  I scrutinize the labels for the first time. One bottle is labeled diazepam, which I know is Valium. The pills are tiny and the blue of a robin’s egg. The other bottle holds zolpidem—Ambien. The pills are a chalky yellow.

  I take a pill from each bottle and sit on the bathroom floor, studying them. I’ve never taken any kind of medication like these before, though Riley had suggested it every now and then whenever I had trouble sleeping. But I recall what the meds did to him, making him fade into the night, slipstreaming into unconsciousness. He used to take one of each, saying the Ambien knocked him out and the Valium kept him there. I asked if the doctor said he should take them together, and Riley simply told me it was fine. That he’d done it enough times to know it was what worked for him.

  Until it worked more than he expected.

  I suppose everyone has these thoughts now and then. Moments when we think about how easy it would be to make all our troubles go away. A shrink would likely tell me I was normal.

  But what if I confessed I think about death more often than “every now and then”? That it comes to mind a few times each week, sometimes just as passing thoughts, dark clouds that float by after a minute or two. Other times sticking around longer. An hour. Maybe two. And all I can do is contemplate what it would be like to die. To be in a state of death.

  Is that normal?

  And here’s the thing. I don’t think of it as an escape from pain.

  I think of it as a fantasy.

  In those times when the thought lingers, I find myself imagining death as a long walk in a vast cornfield to find the edge of a late-afternoon rainbow. It’s right after a summer rain, and there I am, barefoot and curious. Excited even. It’s all so clear in my mind. In this image, my feet squish on the wet soil, and my nostrils take in the musty, earthy aroma of damp cornstalks. I push through perfect rows of army green, my arms wet with the raindrops coming off the husks, and the only sounds I hear are my own gentle movements as I ghost through the field.

  In this image, the sky in front of me is purple-black, the color of a punishing bruise, and holds within it the storm that just passed over. Behind me, the sky is cloudless, and the brilliant sun illuminates the rainbow toward which I’m walking. The rainbow arches at the intersection of these two opposite skies, between the light and the dark, between the storm and the calm. There is such a defined crispness to this rainbow that it is impossible for it to be anything but tangible.

  I’ll be able to touch it. Seize it. I imagine it having a slightly spongy texture, as if made out of taffy that’s been stretched for miles.

  In this fantasy, death occurs the moment I touch the rainbow. I dissolve into it, am absorbed by it, and I become all those colors, the entire spectrum, forever.

  I don’t know why death occurs to me as such a beautiful thing, but this imagery appears in my mind each time I consider it, and it’s always the same. Maybe there’s so much guilt welled inside me that death represents a relief valve, something to take all that pressure away forever.

  However, in my fantasy, I never allow myself to touch that candy rainbow. Even in my mind, I resist.

  And now, sitting on this bathroom floor, staring at the two different-colored pills in the palm of my hand, my fantasy is to pour a few more from the vials and wash the lot of them down with that four-hundred-dollar whiskey, the top-shelf stuff. I want what Riley experienced, that beautiful drifting, a raft in the middle of a vast sea, the lightest of breezes carrying me slowly, softly, away. In this moment, I’m jealous of Riley. I envy him his death.

  I think about it.

  I can taste it almost.

  And then I do what I always do. I force my thoughts to Max.

  It needs to be about him. Him before me. Always.

  So I take a deep breath, count to three, then exhale. I put the two pills back, place the vials back under the sink, then make my way to my bedroom.

  Under the covers.

  Close my eyes.

  Wait for a sleep that may not come.

  Twenty-Nine

  My eyes strain to see within the dark of the room. I may have been screaming.

  Sweat covers me in a hot, thick glaze, as if my bed’s just given birth to me. I’m not confused as to where I am—I’m here, in this house. And I’m not thankful to be awake after a nightmare—wakefulness is no shield from memory.

  I reach back and wipe a layer of moisture from the back of my neck. Touch my pillow; it’s soaked. Every time I have this dream, I must lose two pounds of water.

  Whatever self-prescribed therapy I thought would work isn’t. Writing about what happened only created more problems. Coming back to this house has only made the memories more vivid. Even sitting there, at the base of the stairs, apologizing to any ghosts willing to listen, hasn’t made me whole. Still the dream comes.

  There’s too much guilt.

  I reach over to the bedside table and grab my phone, squinting at the time. Just before three.

  Grasp for my water bottle, take four huge gulps, replace some of what I lost.

  I shimmy to the other side of the bed, where the sheets and pillow are as cool and dry as moonlight. I’m too awake to fall asleep, and I’m too physically drained to do anything but let my mind have its way with me. I won’t be falling asleep again tonight. I rarely do when this happens, and never when the dream is as vivid as it just was.

  So I lie here and silent
ly scream as the claws of two decades ago reach around and tear me open.

  Part II

  Thirty

  September 18

  Twenty-Two Years Earlier

  Friday night. The digital clock on the kitchen microwave reads 8:19.

  I’m fifteen years old and too exhausted to think about going out.

  I’ve just been dropped off home from a later-than-usual JV soccer practice. I unload my school backpack and soccer gear in the kitchen and set about heating up the homemade mac and cheese left for us by Lucinda, our part-time housekeeper. The house is silent. I know Dad’s not here… His car wasn’t in the garage, and he usually doesn’t even leave his office in Boston until after eight. Cora’s car was in the driveway, but I don’t hear her. Could be out with friends. The front door was locked when I arrived, though the security alarm hadn’t been set. That’s a little unusual.

  All the sweat from the soccer drills has dried, leaving my skin with a salty top layer. My hair remains in a tight ponytail, the matted tip swishing against the back of my neck as I grab a Coke from the fridge. I need to shower, but food takes priority. Dinner, shower, TV, bed. Not an exciting Friday night, but it’s what I want and need.

  I scarf the meal in minutes, going for a second helping. Lucinda always adds bacon to the mac and cheese.

  I’ve eaten too much too fast and sit for a good ten minutes in the kitchen doing nothing but silently digesting. A wave of fatigue washes over me, and I force myself upstairs to shower before I lose all motivation.

  After the shower, I brush my hair out, knowing I’ll sleep on it wet and it’ll be a tangled mess in the morning. I put on an oversize Nirvana T-shirt and heavy sweatpants with the Tufts logo on the left leg. Tufts is Cora’s first-choice college, and Dad bought us both a pair. Cora wants to stay close to home. My ideal school is located anywhere that requires a flight from here.

  I end up choosing a book over a TV show. Stephen King’s Insomnia, which is the latest in my collection of his. Another beast of a novel, nearly seven hundred pages. I’m a hundred in and like it but don’t love it. There’s plenty of story left for that to change.

  The house is silent, and as happens every now and then, I might not see any of my family tonight. I’m completely comfortable all alone, often preferring it that way. I sometimes think I’m going to be like my father when I’m an adult. A solitary animal.

  I’ve read about thirty more pages when that comforting sense of solitude turns into fear, without warning or reason. Nothing has changed except the thoughts in my mind. My coziness is now a chill. The silence has become a weight on my chest.

  Why does my brain have to become a weapon against me?

  I cast an eye down at the book in my lap.

  Damn you, Stephen King.

  I close the book.

  The clock tells me it’s a few minutes after nine.

  I get up, knowing everything is fine but realizing I never set the house alarm. If I’m going to be alone as I fall asleep, I’m setting the alarm. Bury is safe, but I’m not jinxing anything.

  I trot down the stairs from the third floor past the second, my feet cool against the hardwood steps. I catch a sudden scent on the final flight of stairs, a wisp of perfume.

  Cora. She’s wearing Calvin Klein’s CK One, and its aroma is unmistakable.

  Her room is on the second floor. My father’s, on the main level. The fact that we all live on different levels of the house sums up our family perfectly. Comfortable. Distant. Wasteful.

  I stop my descent.

  “Cora?”

  No response. Just the heavy silence from before. Maybe even heavier.

  I wait for a moment. Two. Three. Four.

  I’ll check her room on the way back up.

  Down to the first floor. Night has finally arrived, so I flip the switch for the chandelier that hangs over the foyer. Light pierces, cold and harsh. I make my way to the alarm keypad, just on the inside of the massive front door.

  The alarm. It’s on. Set to Stay.

  I don’t know why this unnerves me. Clearly either my dad or Cora came home and set the alarm when I was in the shower. No one called upstairs or came to my room to say hello, but that’s not a shock. Sometimes I go two or three days without seeing my father.

  I’ll go and see if Cora’s here. Must be her.

  I turn around and start heading back up, leaving the chandelier light on. Someone else can turn it off later; I don’t want to be in the dark anymore.

  Halfway up the first flight of steps, it happens.

  The scream.

  An awful, primal, visceral scream.

  It’s not Cora. The tone is deeper.

  It…it sounds like a man.

  I’m frozen in total and absolute fear. The sound of the doorbell would have been enough to set me off, but the scream exists beyond my ability to reason. This must be a dream. I fell asleep with that stupid King book, and now I’m having a nightmare.

  But I know that’s not really true, which is the worst part of all.

  No dream is as real as this.

  The scream stops as quickly as it started, but it echoes in my mind. I don’t know which way to go. Up the stairs? That’s where the scream came from. Or down?

  Cora.

  Oh my god, something’s happening to Cora.

  I have to move. I have to do something.

  But my limbs are locked, a rigor mortis of fear.

  I squeeze my eyes closed for a second and tell myself this: Push through the fear. This is the kind of moment that defines who you are. Who you’ll be for the rest of your life, no matter how long or short it may be.

  My legs suddenly unlock, as if I suddenly touched a live electrical wire and reanimated. I race up the stairs to the second floor. I pause and flip on the hallway light switch. Five can lights blaze from above, illuminating the long second-floor hallway that ends at Cora’s bedroom.

  I’m thirty feet away from her closed door but can hear a fresh volley of noises coming from behind it. Groaning mixed with short, staccato shouting. It doesn’t sound like Cora. It sounds like…

  Like a monster.

  My fear of opening that door is only quelled by my need to help my sister. I’m just about to race down the hallway when Cora’s bedroom door opens.

  A man.

  No, not a man.

  A boy. Teenager.

  And…I know him. His face is distorted in terror, but I still recognize him.

  He goes to my school. A senior, like Cora.

  He spots me and his eyes widen, then he extends his arms as if he’s bobbing in a stormy sea and I’m a life raft just out of reach.

  His name is Caleb. Caleb Benner.

  His body is soaked in blood. White T-shirt. Bare arms. Crotch of his jeans.

  All blood.

  He lunges toward me. Stumbling on unsteady feet. Bloodied right hand printing the wall as he tries to keep from falling.

  “Help me.”

  His voice is a gurgle.

  The rigor mortis sets in again. I’m unable to move as he scrambles down the hallway toward me.

  Then I see her.

  Cora, in the doorway. Materializes like a ghost.

  And this thing. This tiny little thing that’s scarier than the blood or the gurgling, the lunging or the prints. Even more horrifying than the scream.

  It’s the smile.

  Cora’s smiling. Gentle, genuine.

  As if posing for her yearbook photo.

  Thirty-One

  October 31

  Present Day

  I’m not in a festive mood, but when you’re a single parent of an eleven-year-old who has no friends and a passion for Halloween, you can’t escape trick-or-treating responsibilities.

  In Milwaukee, we always decorated the inside of our apa
rtment and then trick-or-treated in a nearby neighborhood. Max always loved running up to each house and inspecting their decorations. He was fascinated by any kind of special effects, even if it was just a cheap Walmart fog machine. But his favorite thing was a person on their front porch dressed up as a prop who’d suddenly animate and terrify the approaching kids.

  My father doesn’t decorate for Halloween. He never has. Nor does he ever hand out candy. When I was a little girl, I asked him why he didn’t. I was maybe five years old, but his answer stays with me.

  Fuck ’em.

  I think it was the first time in my life I’d ever heard the word fuck. I had to ask Cora what it meant. Somehow, she knew.

  Tonight, we’re again visiting another neighborhood for our Halloween festivities. Cora and Willow are joining, and she suggested Arlington Estates, which she said has become the Halloween go-to area in Bury. I didn’t object. Arlington Estates is where Alec lives, and the thought of him makes me happy. Not giddy, just happy. A simple, pleasant, smell-of-fresh-baked-bread kind of happiness.

  Max is dressed as a classic vampire, and he chews on his plastic fangs as we wait at the agreed-upon street corner in Arlington Estates. Cora finally shows up with Willow in tow. Max and I get out of our car, and the night instantly chills me. The air is so distinct on Halloween night here in Bury. Isn’t that strange? My childhood comes rushing back. Going house to house with Cora, screaming, laughing, screaming more.

  The realization of how we all change injects me with bitter nostalgia, making me wish I couldn’t recall my past.

  Cora rushes up, pulling her coat tighter around her shoulders. “We would have been here earlier if Willow hadn’t been so dramatic about wanting to go out with friends.”

  “Jesus, Mom, I’m thirteen,” Willow says, who, if I had to guess, I’d say is dressed as a zombie slut. Dark makeup around the eyes, mussed hair, and a thin, bloodstained T-shirt that has strategic tears in it, allowing me to see her bra and belly button. “We had plans.”