The Returned

by Seth Patrick

“So, Doctor,” he said to Pierre, belligerent. “What’s the diagnosis? Spontaneous resurrection?”

  “Please don’t be so disrespectful,” said Pierre.

  “Come on then,” said Jérôme. “Out with it.” Pierre looked at him, still as infuriatingly calm as he always was. If this didn’t shake the man, what the hell would? “For Christ’s sake, Pierre,” said Jérôme, his voice low. “My daughter’s risen from the dead. What do we do?”

  Pierre thought for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s never happened before. Well, once, obviously…but I imagine you’re not interested.”

  “You’re right, I’m not. Save it for Claire.” Jérôme found his patience at an end. Frustrated, he could feel his aggression toward Pierre growing. “Now answer the question—what the hell do we do?”

  Claire stepped toward Jérôme, holding out her hands to try to calm him. “Why take it out on us?”

  “Because after years of praying for this, I thought you would at least know how to welcome her. That’s why. I’m disappointed you’re not more prepared. I may not know what to say or do, but at least I didn’t pray for this to happen.”

  Pierre, maddeningly, was still unfazed by Jérôme’s outburst. “Claire prayed for her daughter to be returned to her,” he said. “But it was God’s grace that saw fit to answer her prayer this way.”

  “It must be good to be so sure it was God’s grace.” Jérôme felt the tears sting. He turned away and walked to the other side of the room. Claire followed, put her arm around him. Held him. He gave in to it, to the grief and the fear and the confusion, sobbing.

  Pierre cleared his throat. “When she finds out the truth, it won’t be easy. She must be told what happened and that so many of those she knew died. She must be told that she shouldn’t be afraid. What she’s going through is terrifying but also wonderful, and that must be what she focuses on. She has to understand that we’ll be here for her.”

  Jérôme looked at him. “If you think you can tell her that…”

  “No, you’re going to tell her,” said Pierre. “You and Claire. You belong here, Jérôme. With your daughter.”

  Jérôme glared at the man, so impossibly reasonable, so intolerably understanding. He clenched both hands, Pierre’s throat becoming too tempting a target, and spoke through gritted teeth. “Then why are you still here?”

  “Stop it,” said Claire, close to tears herself. “Pierre is here to help us. All of us. Our family.” She looked up to the ceiling, to Camille’s room.

  Drained, Jérôme said nothing. His eyes drifted up to where Claire was looking, and he found himself saying a prayer of his own, praying that what had come to the house today was exactly how it seemed, praying that it really was his daughter lying upstairs in that bedroom.

  8

  After leaving Michel Costa’s home, Julie had waited twenty minutes at the bus stop under the shelter, the rain still coming down and the sky rumbling. The bus was empty when she got on, but as she sat, she was surprised to see a small boy of about nine climb on board and stand by the driver. She’d thought nobody but her had been at the stop.

  She watched the boy. There was something about his clothes that struck her as curiously outdated, but wasn’t that how clothing went? In cycles, where styles from thirty years before could just resurface unannounced?

  The boy didn’t pay—he just stood looking at the driver, standing perfectly still. The driver said nothing and, after a moment, closed the doors and set off. The boy went to the back of the bus and sat in silence.

  As the bus drove on, Julie’s worries about Monsieur Costa distracted her. By the time she reached her destination and got off, the boy had slipped entirely from her thoughts.

  The rain had thankfully stopped, but the night air was chilly. Back in her apartment, she took off her damp coat, then went over to the window to get her patient logbook. She wouldn’t mention anything strange in her paperwork for the visit to Monsieur Costa, she decided. Keep an eye on him, sure, but hope that the disorientation had been a one-off.

  Outside at the rear of the apartment block, far back on the grass four floors below, stood the same boy she had seen on the bus, hands by his side, standing in the patch of illumination from the apartment block’s security lights, just as still as he’d been when she’d seen him earlier.

  Her first thought was concern for the child. On the bus, she’d presumed the driver knew him, that he might even be a relative. She hadn’t noticed him get off the bus at her stop, but there he was, alone. Looking at the building.

  Julie frowned and couldn’t shake the feeling that he was looking at her.

  She watched him. He didn’t move. She shook her head. Not my problem, she thought. She took her logbook over to the sofa, but it was only a matter of seconds before her nature got the better of her and she went back to the window.

  The boy was gone.

  Her doorbell rang. It made her jump slightly, and she swore. She hadn’t realized she was so on edge. She went to the door. When she opened it to find the boy standing there, somehow she wasn’t surprised.

  She should have been, she knew. The distance the boy had covered in so short a time, the entry key code for the building—it wasn’t possible, but it was real.

  “Are you lost?” she asked. The boy just looked at her, calm and still. “Can’t you get home?” Nothing. His face showed almost no emotion, but Julie saw one thing there: a need. He needed help. “What’s your name?”

  The door across the corridor opened. Julie’s neighbor, Nathalie Payet—one of the few people in the building Julie ever spoke to, and then it was hardly by choice. A car crash of a woman, she was the kind who was pushing fifty and still in denial that she’d ever hit thirty, dismayed if anyone should refer to her as “madam.” Horribly overfamiliar, she was chronically unable to keep her nose out of other people’s business. Julie made a conscious effort not to look to the heavens, but a bolt of lightning would always be welcome at times like this.

  “Is everything OK?” asked the woman, then she made a show of “noticing” Julie’s uninvited guest. “What a handsome little boy!” she cooed, crouching down to him. “Hello there!”

  Julie felt the boy’s hand slip into her own and tighten.

  Nathalie Payet stood. “Does he live with you? He’s a shy one. What’s his name?”

  Julie looked at the boy, caught by his gaze. She wanted to get rid of her neighbor—just to answer quickly, shut the door, and then try to get to the truth of her unannounced visitor. Time to improvise. “Victor,” she said.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Mmm,” she said in a way that Julie didn’t like the sound of. “Anyway,” she continued, affecting girl-to-girl camaraderie. She lowered her voice, all smiles, none kind. “A young man rang at your door earlier. Quite handsome, actually. Dark and curly, the kind of hair you can really grip.” She leered. Julie felt the boy’s hand leave hers as he moved into the apartment. She shot a glance after him before forcing her attention back to the woman in front of her. Her unwelcome neighbor took this as a cue to get even more suggestive. “Called himself Simon. He was looking for Adèle Werther.” The leer widened. “Is that your dating name? Don’t be shy; we’ve all pretended to be someone else.”

  “Not at all,” Julie said as stonily as she could manage. “She lived here before me. Whoever he was, he obviously didn’t know she’s moved.”

  Her neighbor’s face dropped with disappointment. Nothing to learn here, as usual. “Ah. OK.”

  “Good night, Mademoiselle Payet.” Julie stepped back, forcing a polite smile. She started to close the door.

  “Good night, Julie,” her neighbor managed just before it shut in her face.

  Julie found the boy in the kitchen, calmly eating from a packet of cookies as though he belonged there. “Make yourself at home,” said Julie, but her sarcasm was lost on
him. He looked at her and gave her the slightest of smiles. “You’re hungry?” she said. He nodded. “I’ll cook you something if you talk to me. Something nice. Just tell me where you live, so I can get you home safe.” She had had enough experience with kids to know bribery was usually the fastest way to get results. He said nothing, however. Julie shook her head. So much for that. “Then you’ll get what you get,” she said.

  For all she knew, the boy could be allergic to everything, but she had some frozen rice in the freezer and reckoned she was safe enough with that. He watched her as the rice heated in the microwave. She watched back, staying silent too in a game she felt she was destined to lose.

  She put the plate of rice in front of him, and he ate without pause. As he ate, Julie wondered about the young man her neighbor had mentioned—presumably, the man she had passed on her way out to see Monsieur Costa earlier. He’d come looking for Adèle. Thoughts of Adèle led, inevitably, to thoughts of Laure. Adèle was an acquaintance of Laure, and that was how Julie had learned this apartment was available when she’d first taken it eight years before. A different time. A different life.

  The apartment had been a bright place, a happy place, for a while. She and Laure had even started making plans. Laure’s job as a police officer had been going well enough for her to hope for a promotion. Then things changed, and everything Julie had was ripped away… Ever since that night in the tunnel, her apartment had been more like a tomb.

  She looked at the boy. Whatever the circumstances, she was glad of the company, but the circumstances were likely to catch up with them both before long.

  “OK,” she said. “I’ve waited long enough. Talk.” Nothing. “You understand me, yes?” He nodded. “And you have the ability to speak?” Nod. “So if you won’t tell me, I’ll call the police. They’ll come for you, and your parents won’t be happy. Shall I call them?”

  There was no reaction. He just kept eating, watching her with that same flat expression. She went to get the phone, to show she meant it. “OK, I’m calling. Here I go.”

  She dialed. When they answered, she said nothing. The boy was watching her, that need in his face, and she couldn’t do it. She tried, but she just couldn’t. If he was running from something, she couldn’t just send him back to it. At least not until she knew what it was.

  She hung up. “Just for tonight then. Tomorrow I’m taking you to the police, you hear me?”

  He ignored her, just continued eating until he’d finished his rice.

  “Was that enough?” she asked.

  He nodded. Julie took his plate to the sink. When she turned, the boy had gone. She went through to the living room. He’d switched on the television, still on the horror channel she’d been watching earlier. Screams filled the room; she hurried over to switch it off.

  “Uh-uh. Not for you.” A clock caught her eye, and she realized how tired she was. “Isn’t it time you went to sleep?”

  The boy said nothing.

  “At least tell me your name.”

  He looked up at her with that same need in his eye. “Victor,” he said, and he smiled.

  For a moment, she was taken aback that he’d spoken at all. Then, she was annoyed at his response. But her annoyance vanished as the boy’s eyes locked onto hers. Julie found herself smiling in return. “Victor it is then. For now. Maybe one day you’ll tell me what your real name is, huh? Come on, shoes off. Sleep.”

  He lay back on the sofa. She fetched a blanket and put it over him. He closed his eyes. She had to resist the urge to put her hand on his head, stroke his hair before she went, but she managed.

  Julie left the room and put out the light. She didn’t notice the boy’s eyes open again as he watched her go.

  9

  Léna had spent the evening the way she usually did—in the Lake Pub with Frédéric and Lucho, away from the house, away from those fretful eyes her mum had worn for as long as she could remember. Well, ever since Camille died and her mother’s overprotection started to go through its destructive loop, growing until Léna couldn’t breathe and she pushed against it hard, and her mum stepped back and sank into whatever state it was she’d found herself in. Depression, anxiety, grief, loneliness: all that and more, round and round in a vicious cycle.

  Her mum close and in her face, shouting and crying and angry and scared, or her mum distant and mute. Whatever state her mother was in, the best option for Léna was always the same: to be out of the house.

  The night had started pleasantly enough, but then it had soured a little.

  “Hey, Léna,” Lucho had said. “Your dad’s seeing Lucy again?” He’d pointed over to the far end of the pub, where her dad was talking to Lucy, offering her a cigarette. “That’s the third time this week.”

  As Léna looked, her father’s eyes met hers for an instant. He looked away, a kid caught in the act.

  “Awkward,” said Lucho.

  Frédéric sighed and cuffed the back of Lucho’s head. “You’re such a prick.”

  Léna ignored all of it and drank her beer. Lucy saw plenty of men. She worked behind the bar, but given the reputation she’d developed, Léna had no idea why Toni Guillard, the man who ran the Lake Pub, kept her on.

  The obvious answer—that Toni was sleeping with her too, perhaps in lieu of rent—was one she didn’t buy; Toni was as straitlaced as they came, a great, hulking man who looked ashamed of himself if he even swore. The thing was, Léna didn’t mind Lucy, and, so far, that was how the rest of the pub’s clientele seemed to feel too. She was a strange one, a woman who came across as confident and outgoing but never actually talked about herself, about where she came from.

  Lucho found it all very amusing, though.

  The night had gotten back on track soon enough. Pool, beer, more pool. People turned up and she chatted and mingled, but it always ended up with her, Lucho, and Frédéric. It had been that way for a long time. They were both in the year below Léna, but she’d known Frédéric since forever. He was only three months younger than her, on the wrong side of the school intake cusp.

  The pair had, Léna thought, saved her life after Camille’s death. Almost every friend she had—and, of course, the closest of all—had died that day. Lucho had been seeing Léna’s classmate Mathilde for a couple of months at the time of the crash, all cloyingly sweet first-love stuff. Mathilde had also been on the bus. Her death had hit Lucho deep and hard.

  And Frédéric…the less said about that, the better.

  But with all three of them in free fall together, they’d managed to take care of one another. Tonight, that meant doing shots until they couldn’t walk. She’d already lost count when Frédéric held his cell phone toward her. “Léna, it’s your mum. Shall I get it?”

  Léna scowled. She wasn’t late, not yet. Sure, she’d turned off her cell phone, but really…trying to get ahold of her by calling Frédéric? Her mum could fuck off. “No, she’s a pain in the arse.” Frédéric nodded and put his phone away.

  Lucho gave her a gentle punch in the arm and pointed to the drink in front of her. “Léna, it’s your turn.”

  She nodded, but she needed a moment. The call from her mum had left her out of sorts. She stood.

  “Giving up?” said Frédéric with a sly smile.

  “Not on your life.” She took the last shot from the table and downed it, feeling more unsteady on her feet than she’d expected.

  “Your round,” she said to Lucho. “I’m going to the bathroom. Won’t be long.”

  Frédéric put his hand on her shoulder, concerned. “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No throwing up!” called Lucho, grinning.

  “Come on.” She laughed. “Who do you think I am?”

  In the bathroom, she splashed her face and then ran cold water over her hands until they ached, looking at herself in the mirror. It had been a long time after the crash
before mirrors had held anything for her but ghosts.

  As she walked back past the bar, a good-looking guy she hadn’t seen before entered and looked around, then headed over. For a moment Léna thought he was coming specifically to her; she allowed herself a little smile. His dark, curly hair was untidy and he looked as if he’d dressed himself in a suit from a thrift store, but she could forgive that.

  Then he veered away and Léna’s smile faded. It wasn’t her he’d been heading for.

  “Excuse me?” the young man said to Lucy, who was behind the bar. Léna paid close attention while trying to look as uninterested as possible.

  Lucy nodded.

  “Is Adèle around?”

  Lucy shook her head. “Adèle? I don’t know her.”

  “She works here.”

  Lucy looked distracted as another customer demanded a drink. “If an Adèle worked here, I would know. Sorry.” She turned away to serve the person waiting.

  Léna smiled again and sat down next to the guy. “I know an Adèle,” she said. “There can’t be many of them.” He looked skeptical, but Léna wasn’t going to give up there. “Tall brunette, pretty green eyes? Works at the library?”

  “She doesn’t work at the library,” he said. “But the rest sounds like her. Adèle Werther.”

  “I don’t know her last name, but she lives near here. Buy me a drink and I’ll take you.” She held out her hand. “Léna.”

  He took it, his grip cold and strong. “Simon,” he said. “So, what are you having?”

  A voice came from beside her. “Haven’t you had enough?”

  She turned to Frédéric with a glare. “Who are you, my mother?”

  “Come on, Léna,” Frédéric said. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m fine where I am,” she said, giving him a run along gesture with her hand. Frédéric shook his head and slunk off.

  She and Simon had a half-pint each; he downed his almost without a pause. Léna shrugged and did the same. As they went outside, she looked around, suddenly regretting leaving the warmth. The ground was wet, and the sky looked as if it could rain again any minute.