The Weight of Night

by Christine Carbo

  Norwegians were a proud, independent group of people where roots ran strong, and suddenly I had become an outcast to this group. After what happened, I felt like a stranger in my hometown. It took me a long time to even find a modicum of enjoyment in anything. For three years I was numb. Everything I did felt like a lie because I felt like a mistake myself, an aberration—“an exception” to human beings in general. Every small task I performed—buying something at a store, eating a meal, or listening to a song—felt like I was only faking trying to be normal. The little things I used to take comfort in didn’t appeal to me anymore: my favorite books, songs, and food. I used to collect snow globes from new places I’d visit, and I used to love to shake them and watch the white flakes fall around the buildings: the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Royal Palace in Oslo. All of that stopped making sense, and at some point—maybe with the help of my therapist in Norway—I knew that if I didn’t at least try to appreciate the nuances again, I’d have nothing.

  Eventually, when I realized the pain was too great for me to remain in the place where it all happened, I left. People, of course, looked at me differently. The whispers never ceased, and I’d even received anonymous death threats claiming that a freak like me should not be allowed to live in public, and if the Norwegian court system wouldn’t lock me up, someone needed to put an end to me. I already lived with extreme guilt, sadness, shame, and terror of what other terrible acts I might be capable of committing, but the added fear of what other people might do to me made whatever raggedy life I patched together rip a little more each day.

  Call it running. Call it whatever you like. But if I couldn’t be a part of Norway, I could at least remain anonymous and relatively safe, if not proud like a Norwegian.

  Ray reached over and turned the air on higher, which snapped me into the present. I forced myself to focus on the road ahead, wondering why I was even entertaining such thoughts in the first place. I chalked it up to the way my lungs hurt and my head floated, my dizziness making it seem like I was hovering. I was glad Ray was driving. Since I had woken to see the stacked books, my guard had been down, and now the incomplete dig had shaken me even more, making me feel raw and exposed. I thought about the bones in the back—about the snapped ribs and the pieces left behind to be incinerated if the line hadn’t held. I made a mental note to call Monty after unloading to see if he knew the status of the fire.

  You’re okay, I said to myself. You’re okay. I glanced at Ray. He started blankly out the window at WingStreet, the chain restaurant that had gone up to replace a failing Sizzler, until the light changed and he pressed on the gas pedal.

  “You were great today, Ray. Proficient. Thank you for your hard work. And thank you for helping Officer Reed.”

  “All part of the job,” he said.

  • • •

  After we reached the Flathead County Justice Center, where our lab and offices were located, and finished unloading, Ray left. I went to a Thai restaurant on Main Street in Kalispell and grabbed some pad thai to go, took it back to the lab where I’d gotten the bones and samples organized, and made my calls to the local coroner and to Lucy in ­Bozeman.

  The coroner would look at what we’d gotten first thing in the morning, while Lucy said that she was studying up on the acidity of the soil in the area the bones were found.

  Then I called Monty. “Gretchen,” he answered my ring. “You’re back at the lab?”

  “Yes, all unloaded. Everything will be run by the coroner by morning and then we’ll ship it all to Lucy in Bozeman. How are things in Essex?”

  “I hate to tell you, but not good. The line broke. Firemen are just trying to save structures at this point. Houses, the Izaak Walton Inn, the train depot. . . .”

  I slumped in my office chair, any last reserves of energy I had completely dissolving at the news. I didn’t say anything, just pictured the grave, our grid, the ribs that were left incinerated, all blackened beyond recognition.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering why everyone kept asking me that, and hoping I hadn’t seemed that frazzled. I wanted it to stop. “Let me know when it’s safe to go out there. I’ll want to see what’s left anyway.”

  “I’ll do that,” Monty said. “And Gretchen . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Get some rest.”

  • • •

  Eventually I wrapped things up and drove home. My house sat on an acre on the east side of Whitefish and was flanked by a field of horses on one side and a small forest of lodgepole pines on the other. A copse of birch trees towered next to the small white farmhouse. It was only a mile-and-a-half walk into town, but I felt like I had the best of both worlds: country and town living. I’d leased it when I first moved to the Flathead four years before. At some point the owners approached me about buying, so I put down seven thousand dollars and made payments to a local mortgage company, which ended up selling it numerous times to national companies that I could barely keep track of.

  The place had gas heat, a view of the Mission Mountain Range, and a bright, cheery kitchen with warm sunset-colored tiles on the backsplash behind the stove and sink. It had a fireplace too, also framed with Tuscan-colored insets. I kept a cord of firewood stacked outside the back door for when the cold rolled around, but often toyed with the idea of replacing the fireplace with a gas unit. It would make life easier, but I had a hard time parting from the smell of woodsmoke that reminded me of my family’s house.

  I pulled into the drive, cut the engine, and went into the dark house. When I entered, I turned the outdoor and indoor lights on and looked at the fireplace perched on the side wall—cheery, but lonely looking. I thought of the books arranged neatly before it and turned away, went and took a hot shower, rinsing all the layers of sweat and grime from the dirt and smoke off me. Then I made some tea, drinking it in silence, my eyes stinging from the smoke exposure and exhaustion.

  My previous doctor in Seattle, a neurologist who put me in a sleep lab and stuck electrodes all over my body to observe my slumber, told me what the doctors had already told my parents and the court in Norway fifteen years before: my disorder is caused by a deficiency of dopamine, a chemical released from the brain into the body that paralyzes you so you don’t act out your dreams. “People who have this,” the Seattle doctor had told me, “are commonly dreaming about running away from demons, evil killers, or wild animals or fighting someone or something harmful. People who have this have actually killed people while remaining in their sleep.” He was a short, stocky guy with a receding hairline and a comb-over, and his eyes had been dead serious.

  I remember looking down at the shiny, waxed linoleum floor when he’d said it, even though he knew nothing of my history or anything about my past. I had sought him out only because I was having trouble sleepwalking again. I had woken up to a pile of torn and crumpled magazine paper in the center of my Seattle apartment living room, the edges of one piece partially burned. And of course my apartment did not have a fireplace. I was fortunate the whole place didn’t go up in flames. I also kept having dreams about freezing, being stranded in a cold place, and needing to start a fire to stay warm. I had nightmares about breaking through the iced-over fjords, dropping abruptly and sharply, like some Tower of Terror ride made of sea ice. I knew I couldn’t go any longer without medication, so I googled neurologists and sleep specialists and found this doctor’s name.

  He prescribed Klonopin, an anti-anxiety medication, the same one I took in Norway and that I had brought over in bulk in my suitcases when I first moved to the States. “It’s not a cure,” he reminded me, pinning me with his round beady eyes. His breath smelled like salami, but I tried not to let it bother me. “But it can help. I also suggest you make it difficult for yourself to leave the apartment when you get into one of your somnambulistic phases.”

  “Difficult?” I asked.

  “Yeah, tr
y a sleeping bag and double locks on your doors, and don’t forget to hide the key.”

  Besides those tactics, my overall strategy was to try not to think about my disorder very much. It’s a catch-22: if you overthink it, it causes stress, and stress, min venn—my friend—is what intensifies the disorder in the first place. But sometimes it hits me in a big, paralyzing way. Usually my work preserves my sanity, gives me purpose, and the methodical nature of it keeps me calm, which is why the uncharacteristic rushing and the craziness of the dig got under my skin.

  Another part of my strategy involves not just diving right into sleep after a long, troubling day. Which is why even though every muscle in my body ached and craved my mattress, I made Sleepytime tea and sat in the kitchen, listening to the crickets outside instead of turning on the news—the worst possible thing for me to watch at bedtime—­before fetching my sleeping bag and mittens. Yeah, that’s right. ­Mittens. Because even though it was hotter than hell out, I needed to bind myself up in the sleeping bag, and the mittens might stop me from opening the zipper. I set my teacup in the porcelain sink and got my sleeping bag out of the hall closet. It smelled of dust and the woody linen scent of the closet. It had been five years since I’d needed it last.

  I know it all sounds crazy, almost silly, and it is. It’s no way to live. I take my medication regularly; it just doesn’t always do the job, which is why I woke to the stacked rows of books. But sleeping with mittens on a summer night is better than jumping through a window or hopping in my car to drive off because I think I’m being chased or, heaven forbid, hurting someone because I’m dreaming they’re a demon.

  I laid the bag out across my bed, climbed in, and zipped it up. Then I put on the lightweight black North Face mittens, tied the Velcro straps tight at the wrists and shoved my arms inside. I felt like a mummy, and all I could say was this: thank God I wasn’t also claustrophobic.

  6

  * * *

  Monty

  BY TEN THERE was still no sign of Jeremy. Night had settled like an angry beast, the western sky glowing red before fading to a murky darkness. The air search was in full swing. The choppers cut in and out of the mountains in quadrants, slicing large beams of light through the still-smoky air onto the dense trees and making them appear ­bluish white. From the helicopters, I knew the pilots and their observers—even through the veils of smoke—would be looking at obscured land that went on forever and spread into a vast sea of rugged mountains. If the boy was out there—injured from a fall or huddled in the forest, lost and confused—he’d be able to hear the engines overhead, their blades beating out the sound of urgency, all directed toward him. Wherever he was, I hoped it was comforting and that he was still alive to be ­consoled.

  So far the thermal imaging had come up with nothing out of the ordinary. I’d been told by the Two Bear director that it wasn’t the best night for a thermal search—the heat from the fires would make the imaging screen harder to read since hot images come across less clearly when found among other masses of warmth. “If he’s out there, though,” he told us, “we’ll find him. Hopefully we’ll come across some hot spots.” I held on to an image of the searchers spotting his red and yellow glimmering form, his little arm like a glowworm waving the pilots down.

  Smith, Ken, and I were at headquarters while the Coreys waited at their campsite, desperately hoping their boy would walk up out of the dark any minute. But the night slowly crawled on without news. By two a.m., Two Bear had finally called back its choppers. Every passing minute felt like another heavy rock piling on my shoulders. Around two thirty, I told Ken to go get some sleep and I stayed for another hour, checking my watch over and over while I finished paperwork and kept one ear to the radios.

  Eventually, around three thirty, I knew there was nothing more I could do for the time being and that I needed to finally go home for a shower and a little sleep before morning hit. I walked back to my dorm, where I’d been living for two years now since my separation—and later divorce—from Lara. She and I were together for seven years until she split because I didn’t want to have children, something she knew and agreed with before we married. Somewhere along the line during our marriage, she changed her mind, and what I considered a rock-solid bond had slowly but surely crumbled.

  The temperature had dropped slightly as I walked home, the night sky still hazy and no stars to be seen. The larch and pines hovered around me on either side of the road until I rounded the corner and saw the Community Building. My apartment—or, rather, my dorm—was on the small side. It was supposed to be temporary, but even after the divorce, I didn’t have the desire to look for anything else because it was incredibly convenient, located down the road and around the corner from headquarters. And as far as I was concerned, I was more than content to have not only an office but a home among the serenity and splendor of Glacier. Plain and simple: on most days, the wilderness gave me peace.

  But not tonight. The forests were quiet. No rustling, no owl hoots, no coyote yips, most likely because of the fires. I didn’t want to think it, and Ken and Joe didn’t want to voice it either: Jeremy might be dead, killed either by nature or by a perpetrator. Or even by the fire, if he’d somehow found himself that far east. Either way, the following morning would bring a busy day of searching.

  When I turned the lights on in my tiny living room, I remembered Tara. I felt bad that I hadn’t called to check on her, but I knew she’d understand under the circumstances. Joe had told me that she was fine, that she’d been under observation for a period of time, then released. I figured I’d see her in the morning, anyway; I doubted she could be talked into staying home to rest when a boy was missing.

  After I peeled off my stiff, dirty uniform and let the shower’s hot water run down my back, I considered the dig. The bones we found were still nagging at me, and even though I was utterly exhausted, a surge of anxiety darted through me. I couldn’t shake the memory of that Halloween night years ago when my best friend, Nathan, didn’t make it home.

  I was twelve when I lost him. Nathan had disappeared in the night after my older brother, Adam, and his friends played a trick on us by leaving us alone at an old cemetery. On the way home, Nathan and I got into a fight. He was blaming me for believing my brother and getting us stuck out in the woods. He stormed off into the dark trees; I tried to catch him, but he was too quick for me. He disappeared into the forest and I never saw him again. The police never knew if he’d been attacked by a mountain lion or a bear or had simply frozen to death somewhere.

  I stood for a while, the hot water streaming over my head and running in rivulets down my chest. Usually, this was all it took to wash away the day’s troubles and snap me out of my worries—a signal to shut off my thoughts by the time I turned off the water—but not this time. My mind was spinning even as I grabbed a towel and stepped out.

  My face looked tanned but tired, fresh stubble dotting my jawline. I headed to bed, where I continued trying to shut off my thoughts. In the dark room, I glanced over to the side window. No moonlight, no starlight. I tried not to think about the boy out in the wild.

  In the early days after Nathan’s disappearance, when the police were coming over for information and the whole town was searching, I couldn’t sleep. My aunt told me to think of nothing but my breath—to trace it. My aunt wasn’t some new-age meditating guru who imagined beams of light spiraling through her, but she was practical—even more pragmatic than my dad, who became less sensible over time by drinking too much booze—and she told me that always, in any situation, the best way to self-soothe was with your breath. She told me to imagine it going in, down my windpipe and into my lungs, even past them and into my lower back and tailbone, then trace it going back up the opposite direction and out. Usually I began to drift off somewhere on the fifth round.

  It took longer this time, but eventually my ruminations subsided and blended into the stillness of the night. That is, until the first ligh
t of dawn came and I rose, frantically checking my phone, thinking I’d missed something. I hadn’t; no one had called and that made me feel even worse. I quickly splashed my face with water, brushed my teeth, dressed, and went to work.

  When I walked out, I saw a pale, blushing stretch of sky—a small reprieve as the wind continued to blow the fires in the opposite direction. Glacier’s tall rocky peaks loomed nearby, their dominant stance impervious to the wildfires at the lower levels. Their demarcation of the park’s borders usually comforted me and made me feel at home, but not this morning. A herd of deer grazed the lawn in front of the Community Building, which made it all seem like a normal glorious Glacier summer day was about to begin.

  Yet today its beauty and its ruggedness felt entirely foreign and left a pit in my stomach. The air still smelled like burnt paper from the fire that dominated the eastern ridges. A boy was still fighting for his life (if we were lucky) in the woods after being lost for eighteen hours. Not to mention, a strange shallow grave had produced unidentified bones. I knew any respite we were experiencing in the west side of the park was being paid for dearly in the east. In Essex, the Ole Fire had not only plowed through the gravesite but had taken two houses, a barn, and a trailer.

  At headquarters, I made some coffee, set up an incident room that we could use through the day until we found Jeremy, double-checked that all the news sources were still posting on him, and began to organize more searches. By seven a.m., I already had ten rangers canvassing the area, sweeping trails, and continuing to interview anyone who might have seen the boy. By eight, the case began to develop legs, but not at all in the way we would have wanted.