The Gone Away Place

by Christopher Barzak

  I swallowed the hard lump that had been sitting in my throat for days, and I waited for it to hit me. I thought that at any moment I’d melt down into inexhaustible sobbing like I did after coming home from the lighthouse. But instead, an eerie web of calm seemed to settle over me, and I looked up from my laptop and over to my mom, who was working on her own computer across the room.

  “All of them,” I said very quietly, then shifted my eyes to the bookshelf next to her, where an old mantel clock my grandmother handed down to my mom ticked within its wooden frame.

  Mom heard me and, without having to ask, she knew exactly what I meant. Immediately she came to sit beside me on the couch, pulling me into her chest.

  “Oh, honey,” she said, putting her cheek against mine. We stayed like that for a long time. And then, probably in a way she thought might console me, probably in a way she thought might help me recognize I wasn’t alone in all of this, she said, “The Barlows next door are having a terrible time right now, too. I spoke with them yesterday. They lost poor Timothy.”

  I stiffened a little in my seat, but didn’t say anything. How could the Barlows have lost Timothy? I’d seen him right after I’d gotten home from the lighthouse, dribbling a basketball on his family’s back deck.

  I shook my head, slightly confused and suddenly scared in a different way than I’d been all week. I kept thinking, How can that be? I saw him. I saw him.

  Rattled, I got up a second later, breaking away from her embrace. When Mom asked where I was going, I said I was just going up to my room to be alone for a while. I knew if I stayed any longer, she’d start to talk about them. She’d say their names—Becca, Adrienne, Rose, Noah—and right then I couldn’t stand to think about them yet, let alone speak about them. Right then my head was filled with the screaming I couldn’t let out.

  “When you’re ready to talk about this, Ellie,” Mom said, “you know I’m here for you.”

  I nodded, then continued up the stairs. I couldn’t talk about anything yet. My insides were completely hollow. It felt as if a gaping hole had opened up in the center of my chest, where everything good used to be. And now? Now nothing was there. It was just empty. I had barely enough strength to say meaningless things, let alone talk about the people I’d lost, and contemplating whether I’d seen the ghost of my neighbor was beyond me.

  I shook my head as I went into my room, as if I could shake the static out of my thoughts. All I wanted to do was find the flannel shirt Noah had left in my car one night, the one that still held the scent of his cologne. I wanted nothing more than to stay in my room, holding that shirt against me like a blanket, closing up, curling inward, retreating from a world that had suddenly become impossible to live in.

  And that’s exactly what I did in the days that followed. Until nearly another week had passed and I saw him again, this time from my bedroom window. The next-door neighbors’ kid, Timothy. He was out on the back deck again, nodding his head to music, the wires from his earbuds dangling on either side of his face.

  “But, Timothy,” I whispered, leaning closer to the window, fogging it with my breath. “You’re dead.”

  And that’s when Timothy Barlow—or Timothy Barlow’s ghost, I should say—looked up, noticed me in the frame of my bedroom window, and smiled brightly, offering me a friendly wave.

  I didn’t tell anyone I’d seen Timothy’s ghost listening to music on his back deck. I figured, why worry my parents more than I already have? I figured, why tell any of the people who had survived the outbreak and were trying to pull their own lives back together, who already had their own losses to deal with? A total of forty-seven tornadoes had torn across this corner of Ohio over a forty-eight-hour period, a record, according to one reporter, and in the following days, the president declared the region a federal disaster area, sending in the National Guard to help. Hundreds of families had lost homes. Whole streets and neighborhoods were leveled, the houses pulled apart brick by brick, plank by plank, their contents tossed into the sky and scattered for miles and miles across the Pennsylvania border. Debris was everywhere you looked: twisted pieces of metal that might otherwise be mistaken as sculptures, toilets and sinks surreally appearing in fields and ditches, bottles and wrappers and egg cartons from garbage cans littering the streets. Downed power lines slithered on roads for days, jumping and snapping out showers of yellow-hot sparks. A hundred and fifty-three people’s lives had been claimed, and that was just in and around Newfoundland. After nearly two weeks, there were still people missing. With all of the fallout from the loss and death and destruction, I decided no one needed to hear from a girl who thought she’d seen the ghost of her dead neighbor boy amid the chaos.

  Instead, I played a game with my parents and myself. It was a game I didn’t realize I was playing then, but later I came to understand I’d invented it just to get me through each day. It was a game in which I had to act like nothing had gone terribly wrong, in which I would have to pretend to be well rested and perfectly fine rather than admitting to anyone, including myself, that I hadn’t slept for days. It was a game in which, whenever my mom or dad asked how I was feeling, I’d turn to them and say, “I’m fine. Really.” And then I’d do something incredibly ordinary, like set the table or wash dishes or pick up the remote and turn on the television to stare at the local news like it was the most interesting thing in the world, even though I no longer registered the images of ruined buildings and roads that had been pulled right out of the earth like loose threads, all scrolling across the screen in front of me.

  This went on for a number of days, both before and after the funerals started. I played the I’m fine, really game like a pro after I saw Timothy Barlow’s ghost on his back deck listening to music, then waving up to me in my bedroom window. And I continued to play it the day my mom interrupted my very normal-seeming TV watching to say, “Ellie, I’ve spoken with a number of people for you over the past couple of days, honey. Noah’s parents. Rebecca’s and Rose’s folks. They’re going to have calling hours for them all soon. I don’t know if you’re up for going to them, but I think it might be something you should do, if you feel you can.”

  “I’m fine, really,” I said, blinking up at my mom, who stood in the hallway between the living room and dining room with her arms folded across her chest, looking anxious and doubtful, as if she were waiting for me to finally break down in the big way that I sensed she wanted me to. Bigger than the intermittent sobbing I’d done on that first day, after the shock of returning home began to wear off. Big enough to encompass all of the death that surrounded us like a fog that refused to burn off when the sun came up.

  I couldn’t give her what she wanted, though. I couldn’t let myself face everything that had just happened. I was afraid that if I let enough of that reality into my head, I might not just break down sobbing. I might break down for good.

  So instead I said, “When are they?” as if she’d informed me of a series of graduation parties I’d been invited to attend. Graduation parties that would never happen. Graduation parties for dead friends. And though Mom frowned a little at my answer, clearly disbelieving my calmness, she listed off the days and times, many of which were back to back, due to the large number of the dead the local funeral homes had to process.

  Process was a word I’d heard my dad use when he talked about the aftermath of the storms, about how much there was to clean up, to fix, to rebuild. It all felt overwhelming. “It will take a long time for us to process all of this,” he kept saying. It was a word that felt safe, and it was the word I now chose to use when thinking about what I was being asked to do, because it made everything feel mechanical, and mechanical things could be used for something, or fixed if they happened to be broken. Mechanical things could be controlled.

  The last thing Mom said before she left me to stare vacantly at the television again was “Ellie, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I’m
worried about you, honey. This is a whole lot…it’s a whole lot to handle. Noah and Rose and…it’s awful, I know. But you’re not alone in it. Your dad and I are here for you, okay?”

  “I’m fine, really,” I said, hands trembling, gritting my teeth as I turned away, clenching them so tightly, I felt like I could have ground them down to powder.

  * * *

  On the day of the first two funerals—Noah’s and Becca’s—Timothy Barlow made another appearance. He’d been popping up every now and then, once I’d seen him from my bedroom window and understood what he was. Mainly I’d spot him out of the corner of one eye. I’d see a flicker of motion, then I’d turn to find him going around the corner of his house, or pulling up the Barlows’ garage door, or bouncing up and down on the old trampoline that sat rusting under the tall pines in their backyard before letting himself finally fall flat on his back and lie still, like he used to do as a little kid, playing dead.

  Then I’d blink and he’d be gone.

  I’d put my fingertips to my temples and rub them a little, wincing, whispering to myself, “Ghosts aren’t real,” and hoping that I wasn’t losing any more grip on myself than I’d already lost that day up in the lighthouse.

  When Timothy appeared on the day of Noah’s and Becca’s funerals, I was standing on our own deck, staring out at the woods that lined the edge of our backyard. I noticed the flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye that usually accompanied Timothy’s appearances, and slowly I turned my head to find him listening to music on his deck again. He was nodding to the rhythm of whatever song was playing on his phone, and the long black curls that fell over his forehead and ears swayed a little in time.

  I was wearing the black dress my mom had bought for me to wear to my grandfather’s funeral a year earlier. And around my neck, half of the heart-shaped Best Friends charm Becca had given me back in sixth grade shared a chain with Noah’s senior-year ring, which he’d given me on the six-month anniversary of our first date. I’d be leaving for the funerals in a little less than an hour, so I shouldn’t have done what I did, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d been seeing Timothy’s ghost far too often, and he was disturbing my concentration. I needed to maintain all of the illusions that had been propping me up or I’d never make it through the day. And every time I saw him, I thought of Noah or Becca or Adrienne or Rose. Saw their faces next to his, dissolving, as if they were made of smoke, within seconds. And afterward, all I could do was crumple up, knees to chest, in my bed, with the corner of a pillow stuffed into my mouth so my parents wouldn’t hear me screaming.

  Like I said, I shouldn’t have done what I did, but as soon as I saw Timothy Barlow, I knew I had to do something to stop him. So I went down the steps of our back deck in my heels, wobbling a little as I crossed the yard, until I was standing at the foot of the Barlows’ deck.

  I waved up at Timothy, but he had his eyes closed as he rocked out to whatever song held his attention. It reminded me of when he was ten and I was twelve, and his mom and dad sometimes paid me to babysit him so they could have dinner somewhere fancy in one of the nearby towns. Timothy had loved music back then, too. He played the saxophone in the school band. But even when he was ten, he couldn’t get enough of listening to his dad’s jazz collections. I always thought it was odd, a little kid liking jazz the way Timothy did, especially when everyone else listened to whatever was popular. But it also made him easy to babysit, since I knew he’d zone out on music for most of the time I had to watch him.

  “Timothy,” I said now, after my wave didn’t catch his attention. He looked up, startled to see me at the bottom of the steps, as if I were a ghost appearing to him.

  “Oh hey, Ellie,” he said, smiling after his initial surprise. “What’s happening? Why are you dressed like that? Is there a dance tonight or something?”

  Cocking my head to the side to stare at him even harder, I asked, “Are you real?”

  A funny look came across his face then, like he thought I might be joking and he wanted to laugh. But because I didn’t smile back, he knew I wasn’t kidding. “What do you mean?” he asked in a voice that sounded like he was suddenly afraid that he might be in trouble.

  I felt bad now, hearing that flicker of fear in his voice, like it was me who was messing with his head and not the other way around. “Forget it,” I said, and then I put one foot on the deck steps and started toward him.

  He backed up a step for each one I took, as if he feared I meant to hurt him. And I suppose I may have looked like I might, because as soon as I took my first step up to him, I had decided I’d try to pass my hand right through his chest, and that would prove to us both that he was dead, and he’d go away instead of haunting me occasionally.

  “What are you doing, Ellie?” he asked suspiciously, with his back pressed up against the sliding glass doors that led into the family’s kitchen.

  “I just want to see something, Timothy,” I said, trying to sound non-scary, trying to reassure him, the same way I once had to approach him when he was little and had gotten a sliver of wood stuck under his nail. “I just need to look at it,” I’d told him, then quickly pulled the sliver out with tweezers. He’d yelped in surprise, and I lifted the tweezers up to his eyes and said, “See? All done and over.”

  He could sense this was some kind of moment like that one, the sliver one, so I had to act fast, before he could escape. I reached out to put my hand through his shoulder quickly, curling my fingers inward to grasp the nothing I expected to find….

  And found that his flesh was as solid and firm as my own.

  “Ellie?” he said, his mouth slightly parted, speechless.

  “I’m sorry, Timothy,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.”

  Then I turned and hurried down the steps, stopping at the bottom to take off my heels, and jogged the rest of the way across the yard and back to my house, gasping for breath as soon as I got inside and closed the door behind me.

  “Ellie?” My mom’s voice floated down the stairs and into the kitchen to find me. “Are you ready, honey?”

  I took one more deep breath, wiping sweat from my forehead, before I shouted back, “Of course!”

  * * *

  We left ten minutes later. It was just me and Mom. Dad had been working overtime for the past week, coming home only for eight-hour breaks to eat a quick meal with us before falling asleep. He’d started to look as ragged as I felt, with red-rimmed eyes and lines creasing his forehead. Neither of us were taking care of ourselves, but at least Dad had work to blame. He had to deal with clearing the roads of downed power lines and restoring service in places still so devastated, the National Guard had barely been able to get through to them. Me, though? No real excuses. I just couldn’t stop thinking about my friends and Noah long enough for my brain to quiet and go to sleep.

  The roads, while mostly clear, still looked bad. With pavement torn up in spots, as if a particularly severe winter had left humongous potholes dotting the landscape. Trees that had been cut up and cleared away still littered the sides of the roads. It felt like Mom was driving me through a foreign country as we left Newfoundland and headed for Cortland, the next town over, where Becca’s family had arranged for her memorial service to be held. The two funeral homes in Newfoundland couldn’t process the dead fast enough on their own.

  When we pulled into the parking lot fifteen minutes later, Mom turned to me and said, “Ellie, if at any time you think you need to leave, just tell me. It’s okay if that happens.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything. Now that we were so close to Becca, whose body I knew was waiting inside the old Victorian house that served as a funeral home, I found that I couldn’t play the I’m fine, really game as easily as I could in the comforts of my own home. I bit down on my lower lip gently, as if to pin my mouth closed, then unbuckled my seat belt and got out of the car to prompt
Mom to stop talking about it.

  The parking lot was filled with cars, and a line of people had already formed outside the funeral home, stretching from the front doors into the viewing room around one side of the house. As we got in line, Mom whispered, “So many people have come to say goodbye to Becca. Oh dear, her parents must be having such a hard time.”

  Stop talking, I thought. My mom meant well, I know, but there was something in her personality that gravitated toward vocalizing feelings, especially sad ones. I was more like my dad, maybe. I preferred to keep my feelings to myself, especially the hard ones. And in this case, there were so many hard feelings that it felt better not to acknowledge any of them at all. If I just pretended they weren’t there, they might go away. Like I hoped Timothy Barlow’s ghost would do eventually.

  Mom continued to whisper more sad thoughts as we moved toward the front doors, which looked a little bit like what I imagined the witch’s house in “Hansel and Gretel” might look like—quaint gingerbread trimmings, minus the candy and frosting decorations. And the closer we got to those doors, the more I wanted to tell my mom to wait in the car for me. She was messing with my ability to go through with this, because she couldn’t stop narrating her own feelings. I needed to be able to walk through that viewing room like a ghost—unseen, invisible—say goodbye to Becca, and move through the back entrance before getting trapped by anyone who would want to talk at length about the tragic loss of Becca Hendrix, my best friend since elementary school. I didn’t want anyone to show me to a room where others had gathered while waiting for the memorial service. That, at least, was how things had gone for my grandfather’s funeral a year ago, and the small talk and sentiments were more than I could handle.

  I made it to the front doors without bolting from the line, just barely, and as we pushed through into the foyer, I bit down harder on my bottom lip, hard enough to hurt, trying to create a different pain, a physical pain, so that the one inside me would go away for at least the next fifteen minutes.