Denis Ever After

by Tony Abbott

  He would.

  They slid bags out of the back seat. Footsteps ground into loose stone. There was a wide strip of gravel beside the car, I heard shoes slide and crackle through it. A jingle of keys. Were we at a motel? I remember now how I really hoped they thought I was someone else, and once they realized I wasn’t who they wanted, they’d let me go. Why would they want me anyway?

  “Daddy, find me!”

  Their feet left the gravel for a wooden step, and I heard the spring of a screen door. Maybe not a motel. They don’t have gravel-covered lots or steps to rooms or screen doors. Number seven. Last one on the left.

  A cabin?

  In between noises I heard birds. Three or four crows cawing overhead, flying toward the car. They must have lighted on something because they stayed for a bit, making a racket before they flew off. Then it was quiet.

  It had to be early evening by then, or later. It was November and it was getting dark when the amusement park closed down an hour or more ago. But there were people walking here, and cars driving in and out, so it wasn’t crazy late. Then I had a weird thought. Was it bedtime yet? I thought of Matt still being up, wondering what had happened to me. He couldn’t sleep. How could he sleep? But never mind that. It was far more important to remember what I heard and felt every second I was awake, which sure helps me now that I try to reconstruct that day.

  Putting it together, there was a short steel bridge, followed by zigzagging slow roads, then cabins—maybe cabins—ten or so minutes from a gas station, all of which were not more than an hour from Funland.

  Dad is busy driving as I ooze into the back seat and touch Matt creepily on the neck, which I do because I can. He nearly shrieks, then makes it seem like he just woke up.

  “Oh, sorry, Dad.”

  “No, that’s fine. I need to stop for some gas about soon.”

  After a few miles they pull into a rest area, where Dad slides his card into the slot, and pumps.

  “So?” Matt shifts his hair out of his eyes, finding me in a sliver of streetlight. “What did you come up with?”

  “They drove, but not long. Maybe no more than twenty or thirty miles, if that. As far as I remember they never got on a highway. There was a gas station. They paid cash. Then they crossed a short bridge, and soon went to some kind of place where they have cabins or cottages. Sandbag drove, probably because One-Eye couldn’t drive without both eyes. They took me there and maybe spent the night. It was late, the same night, Sunday, and it was getting quiet.”

  Matt shakes his head over and over. “You were seven. You must have been scared out of your mind. How could you remember a single thing?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I needed to, so you could find me.”

  He jams his eyes closed. “Denis, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s over now.”

  But as I say that, I know how wrong I am. I’m remembering what led up to my death five years ago, and these memories are going to hurt me. I feel the razor blade angrily waiting to slice my face, and it scares me cold.

  “Is there anything else? Like did they kidnap you for ransom?” His voice cracks. “Then just decide to . . . murder you?”

  And for the first time, that word—murder—sounds oddly wrong in my mind, though I don’t know why it should. Am I trying to spare myself? The whole world calls my death a murder, so shouldn’t I call it that too?

  “I guess,” I tell him. “But there’s still the shadow. That wasn’t in the trunk. And if the flakes I see are snow, and it first snowed Tuesday, I’m out of the car by then. I still had my tooth, too.”

  “That’s good, real good.”

  “Let’s find those cabins,” I say, then change registers. “Shh. Here’s Dad.”

  He arrives with snacks and says, “I called Mommy and told her we’d be back later.”

  “How did she seem? Mad?”

  “Not too.” Dad smirks, like he and Matt are in this together, which I guess they are. “If we come home in the next couple of hours.”

  Matt nods, wondering how to get him to look for cabins. What is he going to say? How would Matt know about cabins? Then hits on this: “Maybe we could take back roads, though, to make it last a little longer?”

  Dad frowns, and I wonder for a moment if I should help out and simply appear to him and prove we’re on the right track. I get that it won’t be good for me, but as the tension twists tighter and tighter inside him, I realize that no matter how I might try, Dad may not even see me.

  “Sure,” he says finally. “Matt and Dad. The last tour.”

  He starts the car, and we drive off into the falling darkness.

  29

  In the Boondocks

  While Dad motors meanderingly north toward Buckwood, Matt searches his phone for cottages and maps them, then goes to satellite imagery to find a nearby bridge, all without letting on what he’s doing.

  He finds something.

  “There are four motor corns within two hours of Fanland,” Matt says in my head.

  “I love motor corns, but you probably mean motor courts?”

  “Sorry. Trying to get the hand off this thong. Hang. Hang of this thong. Thing!”

  “Four motor courts are too many. Dad won’t go to all of them.”

  “Well, then it’s hopeless,” he blurts aloud.

  Dad has been silent since the gas station. “What is?”

  Matt thinks on his feet. “If they—or he or whoever—kidnap Denis in a car, they could take him anywhere. But maybe it’s too late at night to send any kind of ransom demand, even if they know where to send it. What if they stayed somewhere?”

  “Somewhere. Anywhere. The police set roadblocks and checkpoints, ran credit cards. Some people paid admission with cash. They couldn’t get everyone’s identity or search every home.”

  “But maybe the kidnappers didn’t go home,” Matt says. “Maybe they don’t want to be tracked. Besides, they’d already gone. Probably. But where did they stay? If it was those creepy guys I think I saw, it wouldn’t be anywhere too nice.”

  I have to hand it to the kid. Little by little he’s circling the idea of cabins in the boondocks.

  Dad shakes his head. “Except that trail goes cold, too. The cops never found a direction. Denis was just . . . gone. . . . He vanished until the battlefield three days later. Matt, I don’t know if we’re getting anywhere. We’re not far from Buckwood. Call Mom and tell her we’re on our way. It’ll be better if she hears your voice.”

  “I will,” Matt says, giving me a side glance. “In a bit.”

  He needs more. While he searches his maps for some kind of clue, I slip through the back seat into the trunk again. Being shut in the suffocating space ripples through me, and I’m back outside cabin seven, at the end on the left.

  I still couldn’t shift my body or make much noise. All my energy went into breathing. An hour passed, more. My legs and arms went cold, then numb. No bird calls anymore. It had to have been past midnight at this point. Four cars rolled in over the gravel, two others started up and left, their motors sputtering, but none of them were close enough to hear any sound I might make. Later, a couple of teenagers shouted, and there came a clatter of pots and pans. I’m more convinced than ever that I was taken to a cottage complex far out in the country.

  Sometime after that, I heard clacking in the distance. It was different; not a car or truck, and it wasn’t coming at us, but by us, and it grew louder. Then there came the long, echoing hoot of a train whistle. It moved slowly, and I knew enough about trains to know they blew their whistles when approaching stations they don’t stop at.

  I shudder to remember this, and my bodiless body goes electric, as if my senses blow wide open. There are rails near cabins, near a bridge, near a train depot, near a gas station.

  The train was long. It dragged a lot of cars. They clicked heavily over the point where sections of rail join. There wouldn’t be a passenger train that late at night with so many cars in that part of the state, so it
had to be a freight train.

  Straining my ears, I tried to count the cars. I couldn’t, but when I heard each car clunk over track with a sound that didn’t seem laid on solid ground, I knew the train was crossing a bridge.

  The neighborhood forms in my mind. I have it in front of me as I fly back in the car.

  “Look for a train bridge,” I tell Matt. “Some cabins near a railroad station and probably a river or a creek.”

  Meally?

  “Yes, really. Look for it!”

  He goes back to his phone and pretty quickly eliminates three of the four places. A cottage park called Four Pines Motor Cabins is near a station and a pair of bridges, one a road bridge, the other for rail. It’s so near where we’re driving at that moment, it scares me.

  “Dad,” he starts, “I . . . I . . .”

  My body shifts suddenly to the left, as if we’re turning right, but Dad is driving dead straight. “Matt . . . take a right. Matt, tell Dad to take a right. Soon . . . soon . . . Matt, now!”

  “Dad, turn right!”

  “Matt, what?”

  “Turn!” Matt grabs the wheel and yanks it toward him.

  “What the hell! Matt!”

  The car skids right, then bounces onto a short road, and Dad angrily jerks the car to a stop. “Matt! What in the world are you doing?”

  “Denis was taken here! I know it. They brought him here! There’s a bridge and gravel—”

  “And train tracks—”

  “And railroad tracks. Dad, you have to believe me!”

  Our father’s face reddens in anger and confusion. I glimpse another face in his for an instant before it vanishes. It’s an old woman’s face. White hair.

  “Matt, come on. This is crazy. What’s really going on?”

  “Tell him, Matt, just tell him I’m here.”

  I know this will hurt me, spreading myself wide. You can’t haunt more and more people, set up shop here, then waltz back to Port Haven like you never left. I already feel how haunting thickens you. It leaves a mark. It shows. It’s like any habit. You drink too much and you die early. The more combat missions you go on, the better chance you’ll die. I won’t be able to stop my rush to vanishing, but Dad needs it, Matt needs it, Mom needs it, maybe the most. So, yeah.

  Matt’s jammed his eyes shut, tears rushing out despite himself.

  Dad reaches across the seat to him, takes his shaking hand. “Listen, I get it. Maybe this was a bad idea, like Mom warned us, but something’s going on with you. You have to give me some credit, Matt. A clue so I can try to help.”

  “It’s okay,” I whisper to Matt. “Tell Dad. I’ll be fine.”

  I won’t be.

  “I’ve been kind of . . . seeing Denis. And hearing him. It’s why I was a jerk at school.”

  Dad sets his jaw, swallows. “Where?” he says gently, like a social worker or a teacher. “Matt, where do you see Denis?”

  I wait for Matt to turn his head to me. I shift to catch the moonlight, like I did in his room that first night, so I can show myself to Dad.

  Matt breathes in, then out, twice. “In my mind,” he says. “I hear his voice, too, telling me stuff. I don’t know how. Maybe because we’re twins? We’ve known each other since even before you and Mom did.”

  “Matt, really, there’s no . . .” He stops, readjusts what he’s thinking. “Twins? I don’t know.”

  “The two creepy men I remembered tonight at Funland, they took Denis in their car. He couldn’t move, he was tied up in the trunk. They came here. He’s telling me this stuff in my mind. It’s his voice, I know it. The men stayed in a cabin. Cabin seven.”

  Dad breathes out a long breath. He stares straight ahead. “I saw,” he says. “I saw my grandmother once. I mean, I didn’t, but I thought I did. After she died.”

  Matt sniffs up. “What? Really? When?”

  A shake of the head. “Last year.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “Of course not. She’s been gone for, what, ten years? But there she was in our garage in Buckwood, talking to me. I hadn’t stayed in touch, really. And, now that I remember it, it was more like she was yelling at me. She doesn’t mince words, that woman. She didn’t.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  Dad shrugs. “Something about him. My father. It wasn’t real, of course. It was just me imagining the whole thing. I don’t think about her much, really. That’s why it was strange.”

  Matt glances at me for an instant. “That’s amazing. I guess that’s what I feel with Denis.”

  “Well, I made the mistake of telling your mother. That’s why she secretly thinks I’m a little off.” More deep breaths as Dad looks down the road and then at Matt. “So. Cabin seven, huh?”

  “Or maybe a cottage. I’m not sure, but it’s right around here. We’re close. I feel it.”

  Dad looks at Matt silently for the longest time. Their eyes are fixed on each other, and I see in Matt’s that he completely believes me, loves me, and he’s doing everything he can to spark these feelings over to our father. Dad’s confused, his brain spinning wildly, but a sliver of light suddenly passes between them, and it’s as if a layer of skin falls away.

  “Matt, you have been different lately. Maybe since you found the police file, and I know that’s partly my fault. But sometimes, it feels like you’re blanking out on me, you know?”

  “Blanking out?”

  “Going somewhere in your mind. I do it too. Mom’s not the bad guy here, but she notices. And she worries about you. I do too.”

  Matt swallows hard, trying to think of something to say. Finally, he shrugs a little. “I’m sorry?”

  “No, don’t be sorry. Matt, we’re just concerned, that’s all.”

  “I’m okay, Dad. I just feel these things. And if today is it, no more hunting for clues after we get back, then let’s do this and see if anything happens and if we find something out. Okay?”

  Dad puts his hand on the shift and turns his face to the road ahead. It’s shaded with long patches of moonlight pocking the pavement. “We’re already so late, but . . .” He locks the shift into drive. “Let’s see where this leads. Then we go home. Got it?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. Thanks, Dad.”

  He drives slowly down the road, which rumbles across a low bridge, where a second road crosses it. They stay straight, then right, left, left, nearly into a stretch of ragged fencing, when Dad spots a sudden break in the fence, and he slides onto a gravel path, deeply rutted. He stops the car. The road ends in a field of tall grass and weeds.

  No cabins.

  “But I thought . . . ,” Matt says, flicking his eyes back at me.

  “Matt, it’s okay,” Dad says quietly. “You want to solve this. So do I. But maybe we’ve gone as far as we can, and there just isn’t any more.”

  They both sit there without saying anything for a minute, maybe longer. Then, slowly, as if he doesn’t want to, Dad shifts into reverse. Looking both ways, he drives back a few feet over the ruts, then suddenly slams the brakes.

  “Holy crow, Matt!”

  Far across the field to the left, an old sign tilts under a sputtering spotlight:

  FOUR PINES MOTOR CABINS

  30

  At Cabin Seven

  Dad grips the wheel so hard his knuckles turn white, and he wrestles it, as if he wants to tear the thing right off the steering post. “What the heck? Is this some kind of prank?”

  Matt shakes his head in disbelief. “I . . . I’ve never been here before. How would I know?”

  Staring at the sign, Dad spins through a world of questions in his head, one after another after another, until he rejects the idea that Matt is trying to trick him. That would just be cruel. Matt is not like that. He’s suffering too. All this is what Dad thinks.

  Finally, he lets his hands fall into his lap, tilts his head, looks out the rearview.

  “Well, it’s actually not on this road. It’s got to be on the one we passed just after the bridge. Y
ou got it wrong by one street, and I nearly crashed, but you found it. You actually found it.”

  “I got it wrong by one street,” Matt repeats, swatting the space I occupy.

  “Missed me.”

  Unable to turn around on the narrow road, Dad backs out to where the second road crosses this one. He drives slowly along it. It’s a mess, barely paved, but it widens as we near the cabin park. Seeing it, I become heavy and my veins flood with sadness. The place is pretty much as I had imagined from the trunk five years ago. A wide arc of identical, gloomy clapboard cottages with a drab office building at the foot of the flickering sign.

  “Matt, from here on, maybe don’t repeat everything I tell you. Dad’s already way suspicious. Just play dumb about some things. Which I know is easy for you.”

  He swats the air again.

  Dad parks outside the office to talk to the desk manager while Matt and I get out to look around. There’s not a lot to see. Four Pines is at the edge of a field of high grass and overgrown weeds. Maybe it was once on a well-traveled route, but it sure isn’t anymore.

  We walk down the rutted path to cabin seven. No surprise, it actually is at the end of a lane of one- and two-room cottages like I guessed from the trunk. Like the others, number seven is white with red trim and a peaked roof. The paint is peeling, baring warped gray wood beneath.

  “These have to be way old,” Matt says. “Same era as the Dipper?”

  I almost snicker, but don’t. “One of the thousand, thousand threads.”

  There’s a minivan parked at the side of number seven, and a towel drying on the back of a red wooden chair in front. Two beach chairs are folded up against the railing that surrounds the front porch. There’s no beach anywhere near here. It smells like gasoline and popcorn.

  “People are in cabin seven right now,” Matt says. “How weird.”

  A silver-haired woman in a blue dress from one of the other cabins walks under an overhead light to the manager’s hut, her low heels grinding carefully in the gravel. She’s cursing to herself, and her choice language takes me back five years, to what I heard in that trunk.

  Sandbag and One-Eye had started going at it again near the car, but it was softer now, as if they didn’t want anyone to hear. It may have been deep in the night.