The Gone Away Place

by Christopher Barzak

  “Ellie?” Mom said. “Honey? Are you okay?”

  And even though I knew how to keep my sobs stuffed down inside me like a pro by then, I couldn’t stop the tears. I just kept shaking my head in answer to her question, my tears falling hot and fast. I kept my mouth set firm, though, so that the howl from that hollow place inside me—that gone away place—couldn’t escape.

  Mom got up and came over to sit in the chair beside me. She put her arms around me, pulled me to her, held me tight, her chin resting on top of my head. And because she held me so tight, I felt like I could let go of those sobs I’d been holding in. Soon she was rocking me back and forth, saying, “Oh, sweetie. Oh, my poor girl, it’s going to be okay. I promise you. Just let it out. Don’t keep any of this inside you.”

  I couldn’t admit it to her, not right then, but I wanted to correct her. I wanted to say, Nothing. There’s nothing inside me. It’s all been taken from me now. It’s all gone away. I’m nothing. I’m no one without them.

  When it was finally over, when I’d released all of my tears in a slow but orderly fashion, as if I were a professional releaser of body-convulsing howls, I lay still in her arms for a long while, breathing in her scent, wishing I were a little kid again, before I knew how awful the world could be. Before I knew how horrible it would be to lose the people you love more than anything.

  * * *

  Afterward, Mom took the photos and letter, and put them back into the envelope, saying, “I think I’m going to hold on to these for you for a while, unless you want to keep them with you. I can write to Margery for you, too, if you want.”

  “No,” I said, wiping the last film of tears from my face, shaking my head. “I can keep them. I want to. I need to. And I’ll write Margery, too. You’re right. What she did was really nice. I just wasn’t prepared for it, that’s all.”

  “That’s understandable,” Mom said, holding the envelope out to me. I took it and set it on my lap, looking down at it before looking back up at Mom and thinking about how beautiful she was, about how strong she was, about how she was my best friend. Not just now, either, after I’d lost all of my friends, but before anything horrible had happened. I don’t think I had ever recognized that, to be honest. I don’t think I’d understood how fierce her love for me was until a nightmare descended on us, snapping us out of the illusion that life would go on as it always had. And right then I was grateful that, despite everyone I’d lost, she was still here with me.

  I got up and hugged her, as tight as she’d held me, and kissed her cheek before I let go.

  “What’s all this for?” she said, laughing a little.

  “Because you’re wonderful,” I said. “That’s all. Thank you. For everything.”

  Then I plucked my car keys from the rack on the wall behind her, and headed out the side door.

  * * *

  I drove aimlessly at first, just circling around old roads I knew by heart. I still knew where they went to, of course. But after the outbreak, some roads had been closed off, the detours making everything feel unfamiliar. Some were completely unrecognizable. Roads that had once been lined with ancient maples and silver oaks were now lined with freshly turned soil, and where the fallen trees had been removed, the earth had been tamped down afterward. Roads where gray-green stunted stalks of corn littered the fields on either side, when instead they should have reached to several feet tall—waving their fronds at passersby—this late into spring. Baseball diamonds, where dugouts and backstops had been leveled, lay empty and silent as I drove by. I thought of how, in summers past, it seemed I could never drive by a baseball field without hearing the crack of a bat or the gruff voice of an umpire.

  I’d never been interested in baseball, to be honest. It’s the most boring sport in the world, I would have answered if anyone asked. But as I drove past those fields, I wished so hard to see people filling them, hurling and hitting balls, no matter how boring I may have found the game.

  Eventually, I found myself driving toward Noah’s house. In the back of my mind, I knew I’d been headed there from the start, even though I didn’t want to admit it. I’d been avoiding the place for over a month. At first, because I couldn’t bear to see his parents, their faces weighed down with a grief even larger than my own. And then, after going to his funeral and learning that his parents were going to leave Newfoundland to stay with his mother’s sister and put themselves back together, away from this place, I’d stayed away out of respect and out of fear of Mrs. Mueller seeing me from across the road and calling the police on me for breaking and entering. Because, technically, that’s what I’d be doing if I went there.

  But a few minutes later, the Cadys’ house came into view, and then I was turning into their driveway, parking in the turnaround area by the garage, which sat behind the house a little, hoping my car wouldn’t be visible to anyone driving past, or to Mrs. Mueller. When I got out, I immediately looked up at the second-story back window, the one directly above the kitchen. That window was in Noah’s bedroom. I’d been up there a few times in the last few months, but only briefly. His parents didn’t like leaving us alone in there; they were old-fashioned like that, so the door always had to be open, and occasionally one of them would make an excuse to come upstairs to use the bathroom, even though there was one downstairs, just so they could pass by and look in on us, like patrol officers. My parents weren’t much different. That’s why Noah and I would go to the lighthouse, at least in decent weather, to be alone.

  I stared at his window for a while, hoping that if I looked long and hard enough, the curtains would suddenly pull back to reveal his face behind the glass. But no, nothing like that happened, no matter how much I willed it to, so I headed for the back door.

  I knew where the Cadys hid their spare house key: in the flowerpot next to their back doorstep. I’d seen Noah sift through the potting soil once before, when I’d driven him home from school because his car broke down and he’d forgotten to bring his keys with him in the morning. And I found the key still there, the metal cold in my fingers as they curled around it.

  I slipped the key into the lock and turned the knob of the back door, letting myself into the house, where the only thing I could hear was the sound of their old grandfather clock—handed down from Mrs. Cady’s mother—ticking in the hallway. I hesitated for just one moment, telling myself I shouldn’t be in there, that what I was doing was wrong, that I should leave. But in the end, if I could find him here, in the place that had been his home all his life, doing something wrong would be worth it.

  So I moved further into the house, taking light steps, as if I might wake someone. I walked past the entry to the kitchen, where the prep island with the granite countertop sat empty, except for a blue glass vase of withered funeral flowers that Mrs. Cady must have forgotten to throw out before she and Mr. Cady left town. Then past the grandfather clock I went, brushing my fingers across the glass panel of its door briefly, until I came to the living room, where I stopped and stared at the couch where Noah and I had sat and argued the night before the outbreak.

  Don’t even think about her, Ellie.

  That’s all in your imagination.

  You are so insecure.

  His words still stung a little, but now not for the same reasons they did when he’d said them. Now they stung because they might be among the last words I’d ever hear from him, if I couldn’t find him.

  I turned away from the couch and went upstairs, letting myself into his room, the first door on the left, which squealed a little as I swung it open. And then my mouth fell open as I stood in the doorway, looking into a room where the bed was unmade, the comforter hanging down the side of it, the pillows in disarray. A room where three pairs of shoes, some for soccer and others for everyday use, were still out on the floor, instead of being packed away in the closet. And the closet door itself left halfway open, revealing the arms of shirts and sweaters li
ned up under the glare of the light above them. A glass sat on the nightstand next to his bed, with a shadow of whatever Noah had been drinking still left on it. All of it, everything, left how it had been over a month ago, on the morning he’d left for school, where we’d argue in the parking lot. On the day when he and all of my closest friends would die while I was safe in the lighthouse, watching it all happen, hypnotized.

  I gasped for breath, as if someone had hit me in the stomach, as if all the air had been sucked out of me while I remembered moments from the day my friends and so many people I’d known for my entire life were taken away. The room seemed to spin around me then, slowly at first, but moving faster with each passing second. My heart climbed into my throat, beating hard, pulsing over and over, and I began to whisper, “Please, please, please. Oh God, please. Why won’t he come to me. I miss you so much. I need you so badly. Please, Noah. Please.”

  And then, before I nearly passed out from vertigo, I saw him. Right there. Right in front of me.

  He blinked into view, as if by magic or teleportation, wearing his soccer jersey—the one my dad had seen him wearing as he walked into the woods behind our house nearly a month ago, haunting us, haunting me without me knowing it—and when I nearly retched at the sight of him, putting my hand to my mouth, he came over and put one hand on my shoulder, the other on my waist, steadying me, looking into my eyes before saying, “Ellie, stop this. You need to stop this right now.”

  I could feel him. I could feel his touch. The pressure of his hands on my body. Just like when he was alive. Just like I’d felt Becca’s weight dip into the bed beside me. I managed to do it, I thought. I’d managed to call him to me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “for forcing you to come here. But I need you. I need to say things to you.”

  I didn’t get the chance to do that, though. Not really. Because as soon as I opened my mouth to say those things, he disappeared, leaving nothing but open air right in front of me.

  I fell to my knees, gasping for breath, thinking I might pass out, realizing that my desire to find him had made me delusional. I was seeing things, imagining things, I told myself.

  But I made myself get up a moment later, and soon I was frantically running from room to room, swinging doors open, calling his name, hoping I was wrong, that what I’d seen was truly him and not my mind playing tricks on me.

  But wherever I looked, he wasn’t there.

  When I went back down to the living room, I stopped in front of the picture window to peer out at the house across the road, where the grass had started to grow high again without anyone around to cut it.

  There was only one thing I could do now, much as I didn’t want to. If Noah wouldn’t come to me. If he wouldn’t let me see him.

  I would have to visit Ingrid Mueller’s mother.

  “The mind and spirit have a way of giving us everything we need,” Dr. Arroyo said as she stretched out her hand, palm up and open, and waited for me to respond.

  It was a test, I knew immediately, the way psychologists and therapists are always testing to see “where people are” with whatever troubles them. I went through all that after my husband, August, died nearly a decade ago. An outstretched hand, though, an offering of intimacy, that’s a different test from any of the ones the therapists I saw back then put to me. I knew what it was, and looked down, considering her hand carefully, to show that I was at least someone she wouldn’t need to “track” for however long she’d be in Newfoundland. She could rest easy about me, if I said and did the right things, despite having lost the last remaining member of my family. A daughter this time, instead of my husband.

  I put my hand in Dr. Arroyo’s and let her gently squeeze. “Thank you, Dr. Arroyo,” I said, and immediately she shook her head.

  “Eva,” she said, smiling. “Please call me Eva.”

  “Eva,” I said, testing the name in a way I thought would sound polite, soft, and hesitant. “Thank you, Eva.”

  “Do you believe what I’ve just told you, Callie?” Dr. Arroyo asked. “Do you feel what I say is true inside you?”

  I looked around the room, a plain, white-walled makeshift office in what had previously been a vacant downtown storefront, and thought about how that room and its starkness, holding only the bare essentials of a desk and several chairs, were how I truly felt inside.

  I nodded anyway, and continued to lie.

  “I do,” I said, and she offered a fast, supportive smile. “I’ve been through all this before,” I said. “I know what hurdles to expect in the long run. I know what I’ll have to do to move on from this. From losing Ingrid.”

  “You are such a strong person,” Dr. Arroyo said, eyes slightly widened, shaking her head slowly. “Many people here haven’t had to deal with this kind of damage in their lives, like you have. Where your bones were once broken, now they are strong. I sense that you really do know what you have to do to get through this. But tell me. Isn’t it harder, losing a child?”

  She was smarter than the therapists I saw after August died. That much I could tell right off. They’d been easier to lie to. Maybe because they were men, and they’d assumed losing a husband was the ultimate devastation a woman could face in her lifetime. They’d coddled me, they’d given me prescriptions for a variety of anxiety pills. They’d looked on as I spoke of my grief with such sympathy, the same way the rest of Newfoundland had responded, with an overflow of support. I was always grateful for that support, but I do wish I hadn’t had to lie in order to receive it. I wish I hadn’t had to lie about how grief-stricken I was after August died, because in reality, losing him had been a relief.

  It’s more difficult losing a child, like Dr. Arroyo suggested. She understood that, she said, being a mother herself. She had a family she’d left behind in Columbus in order to tend to the troubled souls of Newfoundland as a trauma specialist. When I asked if she had any pictures, she showed me several on her phone. She had two girls of her own. Dark hair like hers, tidy pigtails, pinkish-brown skin, bright smiles, and an attractive husband who, she’d told me earlier, taught history at Ohio State.

  “I’ll be honest,” I said, even though that was another lie. “It’s definitely harder to lose a child. It was terrible to lose my husband, it was. But losing Ingrid…Well, even though I know how to work through this doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.”

  “It’s hard to say goodbye to a child,” Dr. Arroyo said, nodding, releasing my hand to lean back in her chair. “It’s the worst thing in the world.”

  “Especially when that child was the only good thing you’ve had in your life for nearly a decade,” I added. I met her eyes so she could tell I was clear-sighted about everything, so she could see I wasn’t another small-town sort of person who didn’t understand the gravity of her own situation.

  “I think, Callie,” she said, “that someone like you could possibly be of great use to others as Newfoundland tries to heal itself.”

  “Me?” I said, pulling back a little, narrowing my eyes. This was a test I didn’t immediately know how to pass. “How? I haven’t been useful to anyone in a long, long time.”

  “You could show others how to deal with their grief. You already know the path forward. Others, you may have heard, are having a much more difficult time.”

  “You mean the ghosts,” I said, and waited to see how she’d respond to that.

  After a long pause, Dr. Arroyo nodded, her lips pursed. “The ghosts,” she said, as if we were on the same team, sharing a secret. “Yes. Many are claiming to see the dead lately.”

  “But I don’t know anything about dealing with ghosts,” I told her.

  “No,” said Dr. Arroyo. “Because you’ve learned to manage the trauma of your loss in other ways. Other people don’t have those skill sets in place. Your friends and neighbors have had such a large hole ripped in the fabric of their reality that the ghosts the
y’re seeing are nothing more than delusions born of grief.”

  I pursed my lips and nodded now, too, to show that we were on the same page. “That’s definitely sad,” I said, blinking hard, as if I were trying to push away simmering tears. “It’s real sad. It’s sadder than anything I experienced after August’s death, I have to admit. But it’s also understandable.”

  “Consider it, Callie,” Dr. Arroyo said, before she started to wrap up our session a few minutes later. “If you think you might want to help out in the near future, come see me again, and I’ll take you to some of the community workshops I’m planning to hold.”

  * * *

  I left her office the same way I’d come to it: bitter, angry, clear-eyed to the point that I couldn’t concoct a delusion even if I’d wanted to believe in something unbelievable. Just down the street, though, lay the ruins of the high school, where one wing had been reduced to blackened rubble. And just down the street in the opposite direction were the remains of the town hall, now mostly a razed space—like a construction zone—with fencing put up around it. And here and there, down side streets, a few abandoned vehicles still littered the sidewalks, waiting to be hauled away. The only businesses in town that seemed to be doing well after the tornadoes came through were the two funeral homes that, over the last month or so, had become far too regular gathering places.

  There was nothing in the world I could look at and lie to myself about, even if I could lie easily to other people. Everything in this place was ruined. Everything this place was had either been torn up or lifted up and flown away. There were no delusions my mind could invent to deny the reality of that.