by Shaun Hamill
After we were alone and I’d helped him to his feet, Jimmy said, “I thought you weren’t allowed to get so close to guests.”
I never spoke when I was the monster, and didn’t start now.
“It was super-creepy, but I don’t know if it was appropriate, you know?”
Later, as we closed for the night, I found him talking to a couple of girls in the break room. He stopped when he noticed me, and both girls glanced at me, and away again. I was reminded of my lunch with Eunice, and my wait in the line at Inferno. In 1999 they’d called me a hero, but that shine had worn off quickly, and been replaced with this. The discomfort, the averted gazes. The keen sense of otherness, of being apart from the group. As though I were a lightning rod for tragedy, and no one wanted to get too close.
I wondered now if maybe it wasn’t The Wandering Dark that was failing. Maybe it was me. Maybe I was tanking it just by working here. My very presence was making people uncomfortable in the bad way.
I waited until the kids had gone home before I left the building. I was surprised to find Miranda standing alone in the parking lot, shifting on her feet and looking nervous.
“Noah Turner?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, thinking I was about to get a dressing-down from a Jesus freak and knowing I deserved it. It didn’t occur to me until later that I’d been wearing my disguise inside, that there was no good reason for her to connect me with the monster. I’d only become inextricably linked with my other skin in my own mind.
Instead of scolding me, she offered a hand. “Megan Gaines.”
We shook. “How can I help you, Ms. Gaines?”
“Megan. And—I have to be honest, I work at another haunted attraction in the area—”
“Inferno,” I said. “I caught your act last week.”
“Right,” she said. “I thought you looked familiar.” Of course I did. How many customers did she see with an eye patch? Also, she sounded like she was lying, and knew that she sounded like she was lying, and that I noticed it, too. What was happening here? I didn’t know, but I felt an automatic instinct to rescue her from her discomfort and set her at ease.
“I was moved by your performance,” I said (true), “and impressed with your whole attraction” (not true). “Any chance you want to get coffee and talk shop?”
She worked her closed lips back and forth over her teeth like someone swishing mouthwash.
“I don’t drink coffee,” she said at last. “But I am starving. Do you like waffles?”
6
We went to a small, brightly lit, and overwhelmingly greasy all-night chain diner, and took a booth by a window looking out on the empty street. Megan ordered a heap of waffles with sausage and orange juice. I ordered an egg sandwich and coffee.
“Was this your first time at The Wandering Dark?” I said.
She nodded. “My mom never let me do Halloween stuff when I was a kid,” she said, hand over her mouth. “She always said it was the devil’s holiday. A pagan celebration of the occult, co-opted by corporate America and made okay by animated TV specials. Said it was proof of Satan’s growing influence in the world.”
“I don’t know if it’s as bad as your mom thinks,” I said.
“Thought. She died a couple of years ago.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” I said.
She looked down at her food. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure.”
“What’s with the eye patch?”
I set my coffee mug down. “You don’t know?”
She shook her head. “Should I?”
I waited to see if she would break and admit she was messing with me. It didn’t happen.
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“Do you have somewhere else to be?”
So I told her the official version, the one I’d delivered so often and so consistently that it was generally considered the truth: how Eunice and I had gotten into a fight; how I’d stolen her car for a joyride; how I was T-boned at an intersection by a man named James O’Neil; how I lost my eye in the crash; how I found the lumpy garbage bag in the man’s van, containing the decomposing remains of Maria Davis and Brandon Hawthorne; how James O’Neil tried to kill me and I narrowly escaped; how it took me all night to wander home, in shock. I left out some details—how law enforcement let me slide on driving without insurance and fleeing the scene of the accident, since I’d inadvertently solved the case of the missing kids, and also because of my sister’s attempted suicide. How, because the prosecution sought the death penalty, I’d had to testify. How I had stared at my lap so I wouldn’t have to look at James O’Neil’s face while I was on the stand. How the prosecution made the case that James O’Neil had also abducted and murdered Sydney, since he’d seen us the day Mom’s car was on fire. About the news vans on our street for a few weeks, and the strange looks I tended to get around town. How, although I was ostensibly a hero, people seemed to get less comfortable around me as the years wore on, as though I carried the onus for both the disappearances and the deaths.
Megan leaned forward in her seat, holding me with her bright brown gaze through the whole tale. When I finished, she said, “I remember seeing something about it on the news a couple of years ago. It’s weird to meet someone that something has actually happened to.” She looked back at her plate, and I had the impression that she had meant to say something else but chickened out at the last second.
“Out with it already,” I said, doing the hurry up gesture with one hand.
She took a big draw from her juice before she spoke. “Did you see anything—strange that night?”
“Stranger than a crazy man with dead bodies in his van?”
She flinched, and I regretted my tone. She was trying to decide whether to tell me something.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I’ve never been close to a crazy person before. What was that like? Did he say or do anything extra-strange?” Again, not what she wanted to say. What was she holding back?
“It felt like a dream where everything looks normal, but you know that something is wrong. Like how you can taste it in the air before a big storm hits. Something felt off about him, but he was acting pretty normal, considering the circumstances, until he pulled a knife.”
She frowned slightly, but said, “That sounds creepy.” It wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear.
She got quiet after that. I filled the silence with questions and put together a thumbnail biography: she’d grown up around here, and after her mother died, Holy Spirit Church had helped her with moving expenses to start in the theater program at the University of Chicago. In return, she came back every year to help with Inferno—she got special permission from her professors, somehow managing to classify the trip as both a religious obligation and an independent study. She loved performing, but had few illusions about a future in the arts. She expected to end up teaching theater at a high school or community college.
Our plates demolished, I paid the bill, and we headed for the parking lot.
“I had fun,” I said, because I wanted it to be true.
“Me too,” she said.
I took out one of my business cards and handed it to her. “If you find some extra time before you go back to Chicago, I wouldn’t mind buying you waffles again.”
She studied the card and smiled reluctantly. “I’ll keep it in mind.” I had little hope that she was telling the truth.
It didn’t occur to me until I got home that she hadn’t asked any questions about The Wandering Dark.
7
During the following days, Megan’s bright stare and calm demeanor lingered in my mind. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was for someone to look at me in a normal way. How starved I was for even that bit of kindness. I checked The Wandering Dark’s voice mail and my
own email, hoping she would get in touch, but also feeling guilty about it. After all, I was with Leannon (whatever that really meant). My one meal with Megan wasn’t technically cheating, but it was close enough to make me uncomfortable.
I didn’t hear anything, so I did my best to move on. I switched flashlight batteries at The Wandering Dark, changed dead fluorescent bulbs, replaced faulty wires in our hidden speaker system—anything that kept my hands busy and my mind off the fact that we were going out of business. I started sending away for college application packets. Maybe I could start over in a new town if I went to school. I also reached out to the men on Hubert’s bachelor party list. I begged Kyle to come along so I’d have someone to talk to, and he agreed. He didn’t talk about it much, but I think he was eager for any excuse to be out of his parents’ house these days. Whenever I tried to bring it up, he shook his head and said, “I don’t know what the hell they’re doing.”
When I finally visited Leannon again, after an absence of nearly a week, she opened the door before I even knocked.
“Leannon si,” she said. “I was beginning to worry.”
I followed her into the house, took off my shoes, and sat on the bed. I’d brought a sack of fast food with me and unwrapped a burger to take a bite.
“You don’t have to wait for me,” I said. “You can come visit whenever you want.”
She sat next to me. “This is your busiest time of the year.”
“Never used to stop you,” I said, around a mouthful of burger.
“That was before I taught you to use this,” she said, touching the black stone around my neck. “And I’ve been busy myself.” She gestured to a new painting on her easel, a companion to the one she’d been working on the last time I’d visited. This one featured several robed figures against a backdrop of grimy blacks and yellows. The figures huddled together beneath a crescent moon, communicating both fear and conspiracy.
“It’s haunting,” I said.
She’d cleaned since my last visit. The broken crockery had been disposed of, the roots hung back on their hooks in the kitchen, the paint cleaned from the wooden floor. Only the painting from last time showed any marks of the earthquake. It leaned in a corner behind the easel, a chip of paint gouged from the upper-left corner.
“That’s too bad,” I said, nodding at it.
“Some things even I can’t fix.”
My dead eye throbbed in its socket. “Have there been any more earthquakes?” I said.
“No.”
“Any idea what might have caused it?”
She stood before the easel and leaned forward so that her nose almost touched the canvas. “What causes any earthquake? Shifting plates or something.”
“What about the musical tones when it ended?” I said.
“I’m as mystified as you.” She pulled the sash on her robe and let it drop. She regarded me over one pale shoulder. “Did you want to have sex?”
I felt strangely reluctant tonight. “Leannon,” I said. “What are we?”
“What do you mean?” she said.
“I mean, are we a couple? Are we married? How does this work, long-term?”
“I’m not sure I understand,” she said.
“I mean, what does our relationship look like in ten years? Or twenty?”
She turned around, and I found myself distracted by the contours of her body. “Why does it have to look any different than it does now?”
“I mean, eventually I have to move out of Mom’s house. People already look at me strangely around town. They’re going to wonder why I don’t date. They’re going to talk.”
“Why do you care?” she said.
“It’s not just that. I’m going to start getting older. Maybe I’ll lose my hair. Maybe I’ll get fat. Life is going to happen to me whether I want it to or not.”
She faced the painting again and dropped her head, as though examining her naked form. “Do you want that?” she said. “A regular life?”
Coming here had been a mistake. Instead of clarifying my feelings, it had muddied them further. I tossed the burger in the bag and stood.
“I’ve hurt your feelings,” I said. “I’ll go.”
She yanked the robe back on and intercepted me before I reached the stairs. “You don’t have to leave. We can spend time together and not have sex.”
“I know,” I said. I wanted to push her hand off but didn’t. “I’m not in the mood for company.”
She let go. “But you and me—we’re okay?”
I couldn’t quite bring myself to look her in the eye. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
8
Mom let herself into my room without knocking the next morning and made a face at all the mess.
“Far be it from me to interrupt your living the dream,” she said, “but I have some errands and I wanted to give you this before I forgot.” She handed me a folded-up scrap of paper. “A message left for you at the box office last night.”
“Thanks,” I said to her retreating form. I unfolded the note.
Noah,
I came back for an encore at The Wandering Dark tonight, but they told me it was your night off. Sorry I missed you. Anyway, if you want, you should come to a get-together with me and some friends tomorrow night. I’d love to talk more.
xoxo—Megan
I touched the valediction with my thumb and my heart did a little pitter-pat.
That night I replaced my usual T-shirt-and-hoodie combo with a collared button-down and sports jacket, and then drove to the address she’d specified. It turned out to be a house in one of Vandergriff’s infinite suburban housing divisions, all the homes as generic and middle-class as you please. Megan stood in the driveway, wearing jeans and a man’s button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar wide open.
“Are you waiting for me?” I said, climbing from the car.
She shoved her hands in her back pockets. “I didn’t want you to get lost.”
“You look nice,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said, and brushed a strand of hair behind one ear.
We stood in the sloped driveway, her position rendering her momentarily taller than me. I tried to think of something to say.
She worked her lips over her teeth in that way I liked. “You’ll be nice, right? You’re a nice person?”
“When I’m not in costume.”
She didn’t look entirely reassured, but led me into the house anyway. It felt like somewhere a grandmother might live: furniture upholstered in out-of-fashion patterns, afghans draped over the couch and easy chair, doilies in bloom across myriad surfaces. A group of teenagers and adults (and one white-haired woman, whom I took to be the owner) were putting chairs in a circle in the living room and setting up snacks on the coffee table. Everyone stopped and stared as we came through the door.
“Hey, everyone,” Megan said, her voice loud in the abrupt silence. “This is Noah Turner.” She grabbed my shoulders as she said my name.
The room’s happy energy didn’t return, but a small woman with frizzy brown hair touched the place below her left eye, as though feeling phantom pain on my behalf.
A broad man with a blond beard and a trucker hat crossed his arms across his chest. “Megan, you know the rules.”
“Come on, Josh,” Megan said. “This is a special case.”
He stroked his beard, and everyone else looked to him. He seemed to be the person in charge.
“I would like for him to stay,” said the older woman.
“Ellen,” Josh said.
“He’s already here,” the woman (Ellen) said, “and in case you’re forgetting, this is my house. So unless you’d like to spend the meeting standing in the street, go find him a chair.”
He sagged a litt
le. “Fine.” He jabbed a finger at me. “But you don’t speak unless spoken to, and you can’t tell anyone about what you see or hear here. Got it?”
Megan huffed. “He’s got it, Josh.” She steered me to an empty chair. “Don’t mind him,” she said, sitting next to me. “Josh is protective of the group. He wants everyone to feel safe, himself included. Himself especially.”
“What group?” I said, but received no answer. A dull panic started low in my stomach. What the hell had I just walked into?
Everyone took their seats in the circle. I counted eight people including myself. Everyone looked to Josh. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he looked calm and sober. He placed a microcassette recorder on the coffee table and set it to record.
“Welcome to the Texas chapter of the Fellowship of the Missing, a group of people who help each other deal with mysterious and inexplicable loss,” he said. “This is usually a closed meeting, but tonight we have a guest. Noah, since you are not a member, we request that you do not speak during the meeting unless we ask you to.”
I gave him a thumbs-up. Seriously, fuck this guy.
“We will now introduce ourselves by our first names only. Hi, I’m Josh, from Denton, and I experienced an inexplicable loss.”
“Hi, Josh,” the room replied. Everyone else introduced themselves in this way: Ellen from Fort Worth, Sarah from Rusk (the small woman who’d exclaimed over my eye), Laura from Athens (a woman with a narrow face and long, straight hair), Hector from Paris (a kid about my age), Eli from Houston (a teenager with spiky green hair), and Megan from Mansfield. Each claimed inexplicable loss.
“The Fellowship of the Missing is a group of men and women who share their experiences, strength, and hope with one another, like any support group,” Josh said. “However, unlike other support groups, which help people come to terms with loss, addiction, or a medical diagnosis, we do not preach catharsis through conversation, and we don’t share our stories to build fellow feeling only. We believe that catharsis may only be achieved by solving the cause of the individual’s loss and confronting the source. We share our stories so our fellows may listen for clues, details that may help us solve our communal problem once and for all.” Here he looked at me again. “Remember your promise of confidentiality: what you hear here stays here. Also, no cross talk or interruptions.” He consulted a clipboard on his lap. “Sarah, I see you’re scheduled to share tonight.”