“Absolutely,” Will said. “No one in the Grand Caymans is the least bit worried about where the money comes from. They run their banks the way banks should be run. Completely impersonal. Totally secure. God, stop worrying. Why don’t you go outside and sketch or paint something. Okay, smoke a joint too while you’re at it if it calms you down.”
Karen cut the sandwich and picked up the plate, then went to leave the kitchen. She stopped and got a can of Pepsi from the refrigerator. “I’m going to check on her.”
It surprised me when Karen knocked on the bedroom door. I just assumed you wouldn’t think twice about barging in on your prisoner.
“Bethany, can I come in?”
Will chuckled as he walked toward the living room. “I don’t know why you keep doing that. It’s totally soundproof.”
“It’s still the decent thing to do,” Karen said. She knocked again, then opened the door as we passed through the wall.
Bethany barely looked at Karen as she held out the plate.
“I made you a ham sandwich,” Karen said. “I know you don’t like mayonnaise so I didn’t put any on it. Just a little mustard.”
It seemed strange that Karen would know that. But maybe Will had found out that sort of thing before, when he’d been planning and pretending to be someone else.
Karen set the sandwich and Pepsi down on the bedside table. “Listen, I’m sorry about the drugs. I keep telling Will to cut back but he thinks it’s the best thing right now. You know, to keep you from being scared.”
I looked over at Jamie and Nikki to see if they’d heard that too, wondering if it was me, but they didn’t look back.
“Okay, I’ll leave you alone,” Karen said. “But promise me you’ll eat a little.”
Bethany just barely nodded, still not looking at Karen as she left the room.
As soon as Karen was gone, I crouched in front of Bethany. “Total B, it’s me. I’m here with you.”
I waited for Bethany to react. When she didn’t, I tried to think of something that might get through to her. “Do you think you can still talk Mom and Dad into buying you your own car when John gets his license? It seemed like maybe they were starting to cave.”
Bethany had been working that plan for months, keeping her grades up, being helpful around the house, the whole deal. And while John and I had been able to see right through her act, it had seemed like my parents might actually go for it.
That didn’t get a response. Bethany just stared straight ahead. So, I tried again, this time with something I felt sure she’d react to. While I’d been trying to keep things upbeat and comforting, it didn’t seem like I had much of a choice.
“Bethany, listen,” I said. “I was with you at the Starbucks. I saw everything that happened. I was in the van with you all the way here. I don’t know where we are, exactly, but I managed to come back here. Can you hear me?”
Even that didn’t get a reaction.
“Come on, Bethany. I’m right here! At least, look in my direction. Something, okay?”
Nikki crouched down next to me. “She’s not hearing you,” she said. Nikki’s expression was different than I’d seen before. Softer, more thoughtful, as she stared at Bethany. “Her mind is really slow, kind of empty. It has to be the drugs they keep giving her.”
I thought back to the things Karen had said before that caught my attention, just now making the connection. I turned to Nikki. “How long was I gone?”
Nikki hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Come on, you must have some idea.”
Nikki glanced down at the floor, then back at me. “I’m really sorry, Henry, but I just can’t be sure. When I found you at the pond, I had the feeling you might have been there a while. Maybe a few days?”
Jamie walked over to us. “Like we said, Henry, it’s totally not your fault. You just—”
“This can’t be happening!” I looked back and forth between the two of them. “I’ve been gone for days?”
I felt sick realizing I’d left Bethany alone while they’d kept pumping her full of drugs. Now I didn’t have a chance of getting through to her. My mind raced while I tried to figure out what to do. All I could think was maybe I could get through to someone else. I had to make it happen again, no matter what. That was the only chance I had. That was the only chance Bethany had.
I looked Jamie in the eye, then Nikki. “You both said you were willing to help me. Is that still true?”
“Sure, of course,” Jamie said.
“Then can you both stay with Bethany until I get back?”
“Absolutely,” Nikki said.
That was going to have to be good enough for now. I needed to get moving.
8
Banished
It was in my father’s home office that I learned how little my family knew about Bethany’s disappearance, as well as how long I’d stayed by the pond I’d conjured from my imagination. In the time that had passed, my parents had tacked newspaper articles about Bethany’s missing person case across an entire wall. While there were lots of articles, I learned only that she’d been missing for five days and no one had any helpful information. Nothing I didn’t already suspect.
At the same time, the articles were a reminder of just how different things were for me now. Again, days had gone by in what for me felt like almost no time at all. I had to remind myself of what Jamie and Nikki both told me—it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have known about the possibility of shutting things out the way I had. Still, it was hard not to blame myself.
I’d been home about an hour when I heard the front door open downstairs. I dropped through the ceiling just as my brother walked toward the kitchen. I know it’s kind of petty, but all the years of big brother versus little brother stuff came back to me in that moment.
“Dude, did you not just see that? I can totally walk through walls now.”
John kept walking, having no idea that I was there next to him.
“Hey, Johnny, forget weightlifting, okay? Check this out—I can fly. Seriously, like through the sky over cities. Are you hearing me?”
I needed to be totally sure John could hear me before telling him about Bethany. I didn’t want him to miss anything if I got through. But if John heard me, he gave no sign of it. I followed him into the kitchen where he started warming leftover pizza in the microwave.
“How about getting me a piece?” I said. “Kind of hungry here.”
Technically, this didn’t matter since I couldn’t eat anything in this realm. Still, it was the kind of thing I would have said to him before.
John started chomping pizza and it seemed almost like he was deliberately ignoring me. Kind of like he would have before, actually. I wasn’t sure how else to try getting through to him. Then I thought about all the time he spent working out, staying in perfect shape to play sports.
“Are you really going to eat all that? You’re getting totally fat.”
John suddenly looked distracted. He put the pizza down and went into the bathroom, where he lifted his shirt to check out his stomach. He whispered to himself, “I’m not getting fat. Weird. What was that all about?”
Bingo. I’d definitely gotten through to him. I decided to switch out of antagonistic mode. Come to think of it, that hadn’t gotten very good results in life either. “Dude, you’re not getting fat. Sorry, I was just trying to get your attention. Listen, I need to tell you about—”
John grabbed his iPod from his pocket and popped in his earbuds. He started singing along to Life Is A Highway. Only my brother would have that one in his music library. Seriously, he has the taste of a six-year-old.
“John, come on! Listen!”
John left his pizza on the counter and went upstairs to change. He put on running shorts and a T-shirt. He kept singing and I thought my ears would explode. A minute later, he took off out the front door and down the street jogging.
~~~
Maybe an hour went by before my f
ather came into the house from the garage, carrying newspapers and talking on his cell phone. He walked straight through the kitchen and then down the hall, still listening to whoever he was talking to. I followed him as he went upstairs.
“No leads at all,” he said. “They keep going over the surveillance tapes from the Starbucks but they’ve got nothing on the guy. Yeah, that’s right, a gray van. Some people said it was a Toyota but no one got the plate or anything like that.”
He stopped in the hall and listened for a moment. “I know. I keep thinking the same thing. But they’ve gone through her computer over and over. He never slipped up. Everything was fake, all of it. The police said, whoever this guy is, he’s no amateur around computers. Most people leave a trail of some sort. Not this son of a bitch.”
He walked toward the guest bedroom he’d turned into an office. “Thanks, Richard. I appreciate that but I’m still not so sure about the private detective idea. The police specifically asked us to let them do their job. The last thing we’d want is for—”
My father nodded, tossed the newspapers onto his desk, then dropped into the chair. “I totally understand but it’s not about the money, believe me. Listen, you’ve always been a great big brother. I know how much you care about us.”
Maybe it was because Uncle Richard and Aunt Anita didn’t have any kids, but he was always offering help of some sort. He had his own company up in New York, something to do with banking or investing money, so he made a lot more than my father. Still, my father never seemed to take it the wrong way—he and Uncle Richard had always been really close.
“Of course, if there’s something you can do we won’t hesitate,” my father said. “We just want to be sure we don’t make any mistakes. The police are working their tail off on this. We wouldn’t—” My father paused again while my uncle said something. “I’ll keep it in mind, okay? I’ll call right away if we hear anything.”
Once he was off the phone, my father looked through the newspapers one at a time. Most of them he threw into the trash. From one, he cut out a small article from the very back. He crossed the room and pinned it to the wall. The article wasn’t about anything that mattered. The police had found an abandoned pickup truck somewhere in town and wanted to know who owned it. No sign of a crime or even anything particularly suspicious. Straw to be grasped at, basically, although my father couldn’t know that.
He logged into his computer but the internet showed him nothing new, I could tell. The media had already moved on to stories about war and terrorism and weather disasters. One missing daughter wasn’t holding anyone’s attention. My father sat staring at the screen, then after a while closed his eyes and started to cry.
“Hello, are you upstairs?” My mother must have just gotten home.
My father wiped his eyes.
“Tom?”
“Yes, I’m up here.”
“John’s down here too,” my mother said. “He just got back from running.”
My father nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Tom, are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you hungry?”
My father let his head fall forward. He closed his eyes again.
“I was thinking maybe salmon and rice. Maybe some broccoli. Does that sound good?”
“I’ll be down in a minute. Yes, that sounds fine. Thank you.”
My father got up from his chair and walked toward the door.
I followed after him. “Dad?”
He paused for just a moment.
“Dad, wait! I need your help. I know where Bethany is!”
My father stopped and I felt sure he’d heard me. My heart started beating faster. But then he raised both hands to grasp his forehead, his face pained. “I must be going insane,” he whispered. “Now I’m hearing voices. I don’t know how much more of this I can take!”
He took a deep breath to collect himself, then left the room. In that moment, I felt sure my words were something he’d already imagined a thousand times—someone who could tell him where to find Bethany when of course that wasn’t possible. He had no need for me at all. I was just another voice inside his head, haunting his already haunted life.
~~~
I trailed my brother and father for days, trying to get through to them. At times it seemed like they heard me but not the same way Bethany had. Not with actual belief. They seemed to think my voice was something they were imagining. I was just a nuisance, nothing solid enough to be consciously acknowledged.
Each time I tried getting through, my brother tuned me out with something. Television, music, a phone call, whatever. Meanwhile, he ran, lifted weights, did pushups, anything to keep busy and ignore the voice inside his head.
My father turned to alcohol instead. The more I tried talking to him, the more he drank. He bought a flask and started carrying it with him, filling it each morning with vodka. I knew I had to leave him alone or something really bad was going to happen.
Still, it seemed like my mother’s suffering was the most intense so I kept putting off trying to get through to her. She’d always been an outgoing person, ready to tell a funny story or listen if you had problems. These days her expression remained frozen most of the time, her eyes distant. She broke down crying a lot, as long as she felt sure no one could see her. She still went to work each day and made dinner at night for my brother and father but she was just going through the motions. I could tell she was barely hanging on. I wasn’t sure how she’d react if my voice suddenly jumped into her brain.
But strange things were starting to happen to me. For one thing, I couldn’t sleep. The Rule held firm, the one I’d learned about that first night after I drowned. I couldn’t sleep in my old home. I could lie down and close my eyes, but that was it. My brain never shut off and dreams, good or bad, didn’t come. Each time I opened my eyes again, I felt that much more tired. After a while, I started to feel delirious, like I had a high fever.
Part of me knew I was totally losing it. But another part of me—which seemed to be growing stronger as I got weaker—kept telling me to stay. More and more, I started to believe it wasn’t so much that my family needed to know about Bethany but instead that they needed me next to them. Sleep didn’t even matter. All that mattered was staying home. Wasn’t this really where I belonged? Wasn’t this really my life? And if my parents and brother were suffering, then didn’t it make sense that I stayed and suffered alongside them? My mind kept entertaining these kinds of thoughts. Even though I knew what Martha had told me about people becoming trapped souls, I kept staying on.
The times when my mind felt clear were getting farther apart. During one of those times, I realized I had to try getting through to my mother. It seemed possible that soon I might stop trying altogether and remain a silent ghost haunting my old home.
I found her sitting in the family room late at night with no lights on, alone in the dark while moonlight beamed through the windows. I stood next to her, afraid to speak but feeling I had no choice.
“Mom? It’s me, Henry. I’m here with you.”
When I’d expected my mother to pretend not hearing me, she looked up and stared right at me. “Henry?”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m right in front of you.”
“You can’t be, honey. I wish you were.”
“It’s me,” I said. “Try to believe me. Mom, I’m right here!”
My mother started rocking back and forth. She closed her eyes. “You were such a good boy. What happened? What did we do wrong?”
“Nothing, Mom. You didn’t do anything wrong. That’s not what happened, I promise. But right now, I need to tell you something. Can you hear me?”
“You’re not here. You can’t be. Why did you do that to yourself? We loved you. Why did you?”
“Mom, we need to talk about Bethany.”
Tears flowed from my mother’s eyes. “No! We can’t talk about Bethany. You’re dead. You killed yourself. I’m sorry. We’re sorry. Whatever we did,
we’re sorry. But we need to find your sister! Leave me alone!”
“Mom, please listen! I can tell you where she—”
A beam of light shot into the room, dropping in from above, as if the roof and ceiling had just opened to the full moon outside.
Curtis stood next to the fireplace, glaring at me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I kept my eyes on my mother. “Trying to help my sister. Go away.”
Curtis swept his hand through the air. The curtains behind my mother billowed. Glass fell and broke in the kitchen. My mother kept crying and didn’t look up.
“Can’t you see you’re torturing her?” Curtis said. “Don’t you understand that? You’re driving them insane, so stop!”
I flew at him and we stood face to face. “What are you talking about? You’re the one who refused to help!”
“We need to talk. Come outside for a minute.” Curtis turned and walked through the wall. I followed and we stood outside on the front lawn, the sky above bright with the light of the moon.
“You need to leave them,” Curtis said. “Go away from here.”
I shook my head, “I can’t. I have to at least try getting through to them one more—”
“Then that’s it. You’re done.” Curtis pointed at me, his arm outstretched. “Consider yourself Banished from here. Martha, listen. I’ll do what you asked. Banish him!”
I ignored Curtis and walked toward my house but found that I couldn’t pass through the wall to get back inside. I tried again, then ran around the house trying other walls for no reason that made sense. Then I ran to the front door and tried pounding on it but no sound came. I couldn’t even feel the door against my fist. I didn’t know what had suddenly changed, but somehow I knew that I couldn’t do anything about it. There wasn’t any way back in for me. The next thing I knew I was shooting through the sky, Curtis tightly gripping my wrist.
9
Ghosting Out
As soon as we touched down, I pulled away from Curtis and stood glaring at him. Part of me wanted to punch him in the face while the rest of me suddenly felt too weak to do anything. I looked around but couldn’t make out very much. By the light of the moon, I saw we were in an open area that might have been some sort of park. I saw what looked like a kid’s play structure not too far off, as well as some picnic tables and streetlights in the distance.
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