by Scott Hale
“—but it’s like… another language.”
Linnéa raised an eyebrow and glanced at Stephen.
Bethany was biting down on her lips, either enthralled, or about to laugh.
“Where?” Trent asked, his voice walloping the group with its baritone blast. “Where at do you hear her?”
“Everywhere. Home, mostly. I think it’s too quiet for me, too, like Lin said.”
Dario hummed and asked, “Darlene was just in the other room before she went missing, wasn’t she?”
Richard stared at his wife. His face had turned to putty, like most bullies’ faces when faced with the harsh truth of things.
“Yeah,” she mumbled.
“You feel guilty,” Dario said.
“Yeah.”
“She was so close. You feel like you should’ve heard something.”
“God was trying to tell me,” Ellen blurted out, “but I wasn’t listening. He sent his servants. Angels on the walls.” She closed her eyes, seemed to take herself back to that moment. “I can hear her now, what she was saying, then; when she was trying to get my attention.” She wiped her eyes hard enough to knock them from her sockets. “She wasn’t talking right. Like… she had something in her mouth. That’s what I keep hearing these days.”
Richard threw his hands into the air, started to get up, and then, checking for and not getting permission from his wife, he kept his pumpkin ass planted.
“I don’t think it was a… gag.” Just saying the word ‘gag’ made Ellen gag. “It was like she was drunk.”
“Drugged,” Stephen said.
Linnéa stared at her husband. He’d been here a moment ago, but not anymore. She could smell the heat coming off his synapses. He was working things out, running yarn from one theory to another, seeing what connected, finding what was a stretch.
“Tell them why you didn’t go into the other room,” Richard said, spit webbing his mouth like a kamado’s maw. “Even the blind can see god’s light,” he quoted. And then: “Tell them.”
“I was drunk,” Ellen said.
Bethany clicked her tongue against her teeth.
“The second I gave in…” She wailed. “I lost her! Maybe for good this time!”
“For good?” Stephen asked.
But before Ellen could explain what she meant, Dario took the conversation down another avenue. While he went on about grief, loss, and trauma, Linnéa, Stephen, and Trent formed an unspoken agreement between the three of them that something wasn’t adding up. By the end of the session, Bethany had successfully stolen the spotlight from the rest of them to apologize, at great length, for the absence of her husband.
Linnéa and Stephen had taken separate cars to therapy. These days, they did most things alone. For them, it was a way to cover more ground, to see more of what needed to be seen. They had convinced themselves they were just as strong together as they were apart. But as Linnéa crossed the parking lot of Brooksville Community Health Center, going her way as Stephen went his, her stomach took a turn for the worse, and it felt like the hot, trampled pavement she traipsed upon. She wanted to go to him, and she wanted him to go to her. She didn’t want to debrief over the phone, or wait until dinner, when these thoughts and feelings were so covered in dirt they might’ve well been part of the scenery.
She started to call out, but before she could, Trent Resin drove up to him, window down, and started speaking to him. Too far away to hear to him, Linnéa drew closer, keys rattling in her hand, when—
“Hey, Lin,” Bethany said, rolling up in her SUV, blocking her path to Stephen.
Bethany’s SUV smelled of hairspray and winter fresh chewing gum. Each cupholder was filled with plastic diet soda bottles, the dregs of which still sat at the bottoms. The passenger’s seat had a black blanket draped across it. Sloppily sewn into the blanket were stars and planets, and a single spaceship in that lonely, linty dark. “Jimmy” was embroidered in a corner, though most of the name was unraveled. Bethany had one hand on the steering wheel, but the other was over her armrest, holding onto the blanket. She looked pacified.
“That was a good session today,” she said.
Linnéa nodded. Hearing a door shut, she looked past Bethany to see Trent was gone, and Stephen had gotten into his car and was about to take off.
“Can I tell you something?”
“Yeah,” Linnéa said, following her husband’s car until the horizon swallowed it whole.
“I’ve been seeing things, too.”
Now, Bethany had her full attention.
“At night. Once or twice.” Bethany turned on the radio to some steel guitar, country croon fest. She fiddled with the knob, and then switched the radio back off. “When the police were still outside the houses, doing surveillance.” She turned the radio on again, kept the volume real low. “In the front yard. I thought it was Jimmy, or…”
“Did you tell the cops?”
“Yeah. They checked their cameras. They were pointed directly at the house and didn’t pick up anything. Just shadows. Guess that’s what I saw.”
“Yeah, but…” Linnéa cocked her head. “You saw something else, didn’t you?”
Bethany smiled. Her cheeks were bright red. “I think I’m going crazy. Aren’t you?”
Linnéa didn’t respond.
“Oh well.” Bethany grabbed Jimmy’s blanket again. “Do you ever wish this would just… be over?”
“How do you mean?”
“Closure, or something.”
“I want to find them,” Linnéa said.
Bethany’s body went stiff. “Well, yeah, so do I, Lin.” She shook her head, blinked hard. “I have to go.”
Linnéa didn’t go straight home after therapy. She and Stephen each had their own beat. They’d been patrolling it every day for the last few weeks. Initially, they recruited the other parents to help them cover Bedlam, but they hadn’t been consistent, and no one got anything done half as well as they could themselves. Because of the way Bedlam was divided by the river that ran through it, Stephen took the western half of the town, while Linnéa covered the east. To the west went the well-off, and to the east, everyone else. Heaven and Hell some people called it, except it was flipped. Hell was where the high-browed browsed; heaven was for the poor—middle-and-lower-class alike. Closest to the tri-county river, east was where the forgotten had washed up from the dockyards of Bitter Springs and the low-incoming housing of Brooksville. It was the working class and those who worked you over that lived there. East was where Linnéa and the other parents lived, and though it may have been dangerous, especially on the waterfront, it was home.
Stephen had insisted he work the eastern front, but he had supple lips—perfect for laying a wet one on all the pampered asses across the river—and no capacity for violence. Linnéa, however, had hands that still hurt from time to time; it was that old pain from when she’d been young; bones hadn’t grown up right, but then again, neither had she.
It was Sunday, but she gave Detective Mills a call, anyway. It went to voicemail. She didn’t bother leaving a message. He knew what she wanted. She considered calling Stephen, but aside from asking him what Trent had shared with him, what was there to talk about? What they wanted for lunch? Yesterday’s lunch was still sitting on the table. The flies liked it well enough, though. Waste not, want not.
Linnéa made her way through Brooksville and crossed the bridge that spanned the tri-county river. Going under the sign that read “Welcome to Bedlam” made her feel as if someone had just walked over her grave. No matter where she went, she was never far from her problems, but coming back to Bedlam was like trying to live a life in a burned-down building. Everything recognizable had been rendered in the hard bark of char and blanketed in the cruel snow of ash. And to sleep and eat and go on, you had to lie to yourself; say that things had always been this way.
She cruised the town for killers and kidnappers. She became a talk show host, a PTA mom; an augur searching for auspices in the clothes pe
ople wore, or the way they stared at her as she drove by. Like a doctor, Linnéa made her rounds. Her patients were the parks, the public and private schools; the corner stores and the hole-in-the-walls; the sprawling shopping centers and scattered Mom and Pop’s; the tucked away neighborhoods and the overflowing state-sponsored housings. By car or by foot, she carried a clipboard, flyers of the children pinned to it, and doled them out like diagnoses.
Now that you know their faces and their names, she tried to get across to those she came across, they are your responsibility. Treat them well, she wanted to say, and you can go on forgetting them again when this was all over. These four burdens were on Bedlam now, and why shouldn’t they be? Someone here or near had done this to their children. Someone who’d fallen through the cracks and bided their time there. Bedlam-begotten. Begotten of Bedlam. Some young man known for making inappropriate comments to female co-workers, maybe once caught hurting a stray. Some young woman with bright teeth and dead eyes, and dreams of motherhood from a nightmarish childhood. Some old couple with soft hands and pinching fingers, and a hunger they didn’t need dentures for. Some… someone… some… anyone. Opportunistic vultures on a heroin high. Fat necks in sweaters and sweatshirts—rosacea-wracked clowns who got their laughs from others’ miseries.
Or maybe, just maybe… Filipa, Jimmy, Charles, and Darlene were lost. Maybe they’d been unhappy. Maybe they’d formed a pact, and like a pack they roamed Maidenwood, to get away from the unhappiness their young, ten-year-old minds couldn’t yet express, or to chase dreams in the same way Linnéa used to chase dares.
Or maybe the Earth had seen four children unattended and it opened itself up and took them away. That’ll learn you parents, Linnéa imagined the cosmos saying, in her mother’s voice, with that shrill, lilting tone.
By the time Linnéa got to the waterfront, she had to pull over, because she couldn’t see past the tears in her eyes. Truth be told, that was why she and Stephen did these things on their own. She didn’t need him comforting her, spoon-feeding her lies, the same way hot soup was forced upon the sick. She didn’t want his “Everything is going to be okay,” or, “We’re going to find them,” or “We have to be strong for them.” She knew why he said it, because she’d said it to him more times than she had fingers and toes, but it wasn’t any help to either of them. It just gummed things up; fat wads of false hope that got in the way of a good cry.
Facts were her anesthetic, but the well had nearly run dry on those about a week and a half back, and she was jonesing. Before, as she was now, she replayed what she knew over and over in her head, until like tape, it warped and wobbled; became distorted by need and reaching theories.
And what did she know?
She knew that at 11:45 AM, Filipa had gone into the house to fetch her mother and father beers. At some point between 11:45 AM and 12:30 PM, she had gone missing. Forensics had found a muddy work boot print, size 9, in the bathroom, semi-imprinted upon the squares of toilet paper on the ground. They had also found dark hairs, not unlike an animal’s, in Filipa’s room, despite their family not owning any pets of any kind. There were no signs of break-in or forced entry, and nothing appeared to be missing from the house. The police did note the strange smell circulating the house, but were unable to pinpoint its origin. They had yet to receive a ransom note or any calls from the local crazies laying claim to the crime.
Trent Resin’s son, Charles, was estimated to have gone missing at 11:15 AM. Trent noticed his son’s disappearance from the backyard, but thinking he might’ve been in the shed playing, as he was known to do, Trent thought nothing of it. Coming off third-shift like a runaway train, he crashed on the couch until 12:20 PM, until awaking to a strange odor, which he described to the police as earth and rubber. There had been a loud thump, too—a car door shutting, he had thought—and scurrying in the basement. At 12:45 PM, he asked Linnéa if she’d seen Charles. At 1:00 PM, afraid and feral, he took out his pistol, loaded it, and in a sleep-deprived haze, searched the neighborhood up and down for his son. To this day, he’s still searching.
Bethany Simmons’ son, Jimmy, had been playing in his room all morning. He ate breakfast with her and her husband around 9:30 AM. Pancakes and toast. At 10:15 AM, she checked in on him, and seeing that he was absorbed in his video games, locked him in his room via the outside lock. From 10:15 AM until 10:25 AM, she admitted to having a quickie with her husband. Afterwards, she lost track of time in a social-media binge. Until 11:50 AM, she hadn’t heard from her son, which wasn’t all that surprising given that he played shooters for hours a time. She made him lunch around noon, and when she went to his room and unlocked it, he was gone. There was a single window in his second-floor room, and it was open, though it’d been open all day and the night before. The only trace of evidence the police were able to find was a crushed tablet next to the boy’s controller that was later identified as Rohypnol.
Ellen and Richard Cross’ reports to the police of their whereabouts between the times of 8:00 AM, when they claimed to have woken that Sunday, and 12:45 PM are inconsistent. Richard reported during those hours to have spent the majority of his time at home, or running errands. Ellen claimed to have gone to church, but had no witnesses to verify these claims. Their daughter, Darlene, was last seen by the two of them at 11:15 AM, when she came up from her room in the basement for donuts and a glass of orange juice. Ellen had told the police her daughter’s eyes were red. Richard had told the police that his daughter looked uneasy. Both of them reportedly thought to themselves it was merely a combination of allergies and anger—Darlene had been grounded that weekend for poor grades. At 12:40 PM, Ellen, after calling for Darlene and not hearing from her, went down to the basement to check on her daughter. She found plaster on her pillow.
As for the unmarked, white van, the two teenagers who’d been inside it were found at 3:30 PM. They were juniors, and were so high at the time of their interrogation, the police might as well tied string to their legs to stop them from floating away. Their story was the same as the one Stephen had suggested that morning: two horny hellions getting their rocks off in the most conspicuous, inconspicuous way. Their names were Brad and Chelsea; they were from the west side of the town, and their well-off parents were none too happy with them when they came to collect them later that day. Brad had seen nothing, but that wasn’t all that surprising for a boy his age, when girls were his world. Chelsea, however, had told the cops she did notice someone in Ellen Cross’ yard. They had been too dark to make out, though. The police quickly added the suspect might’ve been black.
As for the neighborhood itself, due to local construction and a few road closures, it had become a popular midway point for traffic to pass through. So when the police asked the parents if they had noticed any strange cars or out of place people that weekend, there was no one thing they could point to. Everyone who had anything to do in that part of Bedlam inevitably slithered through Six Pillars. A lot of it was the construction company responsible for tearing up the roads that led to the detour. But Linnéa did remember seeing a truck or two pass through on occasion that seemed out of their way. None of the other parents, Stephen included, knew what she was talking about. And maybe she didn’t, either. If they weren’t so damn negligent…
Linnéa snapped up in her seat and wiped her eyes. Negligent. The word burned like a brand in her hand. She held it with a fist. Negligent. What had Ellen Cross blathered in therapy today? Something about losing Darlene… losing her for good. Like Ellen she might’ve been in danger of losing her once before.
Linnéa drew her cell phone like a six-shooter and loaded Ellen’s name like bullets into the search engine. Nothing.
“Dario knew what you were talking about,” she mumbled to herself. “He didn’t want you bringing it up.”
Linnéa searched for Bedlam’s Clerk of Courts. There, she searched Ellen Cross. A list of Ellen Crosses came up, but she clicked the first on there. The birthday checked out, and so did the address. And at the bottom
the count read: Child Neglect. Disposition: Charges Dismissed.
Before the information could settle, Linnéa was punching in another name. Bethany Simmons. And there she was. Her count? Child Endangerment. Disposition: Charges Dismissed.
Trent Resin. He was there, too. With a count of Child Abuse. And once again, the disposition read: Charges Dismissed.
Linnéa didn’t need to type her name into to know what was waiting for her there, and yet, as she started to…
Stephen sent her a text message.
And it said: Come home. Trent’s found something.
By the time Linnéa made it back home, she’d broken so many driving laws that a judge wouldn’t be able to help but give her an A for effort. She threw the car into park before coming to a stop in the driveway and vaulted out of it. Stephen was sitting on the porch stoop, turning his cell phone over and over in his hands. There was no sign of Trent, though; just the wake of his revelation, and what it’d done to her husband.
Stephen looked renewed. Compared to the drifting ghost he’d been lately, he was damn near radiant. Linnéa’s first thought was that they’d found Filipa, but she tempered her expectations. Stephen wasn’t moving from where he sat, and he hadn’t glanced up at her, either. Excitement was something they kept at a slow drip; only enough to keep them going. Too much of the stuff and they’d become the Bethany Simmonses of the world. High on lies and the ease of ritual.
Linnéa settled in beside Stephen and rubbed her shoulder into his. “What’s going on?”
Biting the inside of his lower lip, he said, “You know that root I found in the garden that morning?”
At first, she didn’t, but then the memory was there, bleeding through the bandages wrapped around her traumatized mind. “Yeah. The red, vein-looking thing.”
“Trent had one in his yard.”
She sighed and stopped herself from shaking her head. These weren’t the kind of facts that she’d been hoping for. These were dead-ends that never ended—busy work for the bored.