by Cote Smith
* * *
The streets were empty. The sky was the same. It was past ten when Lia drove up the long dirt road to the Sinnards’ house. The living room light was a beacon.
No one answered when she knocked, though she could hear the TV inside. She kicked a begonia pot by the front door, frustrated. She knocked louder, until finally the locks clacked and the door opened, revealing a sliver of Mr. Sinnard’s face.
“It’s you,” he said.
“I need to see her.”
He opened the door slightly, but stood in her way. “It’s late.”
Lia ducked under his arm. She scanned the living room and kitchen, before starting down the hall.
“Excuse me. What do you think you’re doing?”
“I can’t wait,” Lia said. Her head and her heart throbbed. Both of the bedroom doors were shut. She opened the first door, an unused guest bedroom.
“Have you lost your mind?”
She opened the other.
Mrs. Sinnard was asleep. A Bible lay folded across her chest. A small lamp cast the room in low light. Next to the lamp were a glass of water, her fanny pack, and several bottles of pills.
Lia sat next to her on the edge of the bed.
Behind her Mr. Sinnard said, “I told you.”
“Mrs. Sinnard,” Lia whispered. “It’s me.” She took Mrs. Sinnard’s hand, cold and clammy.
“That’s enough,” Mr. Sinnard said.
Mrs. Sinnard’s eyes shot open, as if she’d woken from a terrible dream. She coughed. Lia handed her the glass of water.
“My mother is gone. I think she went looking for my uncle.”
Mrs. Sinnard took a slow sip of water.
Lia took the glass back, held it hostage. “Why are you afraid of Emile? What happens when he’s around?”
Her face fell at the mention of his name. “People get hurt,” Mrs. Sinnard said. “It was the same way with their mother. I can’t explain it. Trouble follows that family.”
“You mean my family.”
Mrs. Sinnard stared at the water, her mouth shut. Lia handed her the glass. She sat up and drank what was left in one long gulp. When she was finished, she lay back down and closed her eyes.
“She won’t find him, you know. She’s too far behind.”
“Behind?”
“The people who were here before.”
“Before? What people?”
“Before you and I ever met.” She pulled the blanket up to her chin. “They were in suits. They said it was about the house; they were assessing its value or something. They asked a lot of questions, about the house, its history, about the people who lived there before. They were a lot like you.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them they were wasting their time because I wasn’t selling. But they didn’t really seem to mind. They asked if your dad ever came out here. I said no. What about his brother? they asked, and again I told them no. After those boys left, they never came back.”
“What do you think they wanted?” Lia said.
“I don’t know. The whole thing was odd. Anyway, a few weeks later you showed up. A sign from above that I should sell.”
“Me? Why did that matter?”
“Well, when it was clear your father never even told you about me, I realized I was too old to be caring about a past that didn’t care about me.”
Mrs. Sinnard’s eyes stayed shut, as Lia considered what she meant. Mrs. Sinnard had been holding onto the house down the road all these years, hoping Lia’s father and uncle might return. But her father had lived one town over Lia’s entire life, and he’d never even mentioned her existence.
“Those men,” Lia said. “Did they say they were from the city?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Mrs. Sinnard said. “I don’t think they were.”
* * *
Lia drove to Lost 80. It was late; her dad would be worried, but she needed time to think. She sat under the island tree. If this were a news story, there was not much she could report. Few facts, a lot of speculation, an elderly source a reader would have no problem dismissing. But a part of her also knew that she was heading in the right direction, even if she had no idea what that direction was or where it would take her.
She woke to a hand holding her own, the same way she had jolted Mrs. Sinnard from a bad dream.
“I thought you might be here,” her dad said. He clicked his flashlight off and sat next to her.
“How’d you know?”
“This was one of your uncle’s favorite spots. Back then it was more of a secret.”
Lia flipped her phone open to check the time. It was dead.
“It’s after two,” her dad said, “well beyond the time for me to freak out.” Lia apologized. Her dad squeezed her hand. “It’s funny, when you’re a parent, a part of your brain never stops worrying.”
“I know, Dad.”
“No, you don’t. You can’t, and you shouldn’t. When I was your age—” He let go of her hand, rubbed his eyes. She could still smell the fire on him. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”
Lia patted his knee. Crickets and frogs were out in full force, greeting one another, or sounding the alarm.
“I saw your article,” her dad said. “On the fridge. That was our house, you know. I lived there.”
“I know,” Lia said. She didn’t tell him about Mrs. Sinnard. She wasn’t sure if he would want to know. “Why did you leave them? The Sinnards.”
“We went looking for our mother.”
There was an awkward silence as they both thought about Lia’s mother, also missing.
“Lia, I mean it, I was worried sick.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You can’t just disappear on me too.”
Even with the chirping, Lia could hear the concern in his voice. She tried to put herself in his shoes.
Lia stood up. She found her dad’s shadow and laced her arm in his. He could be the credible source. He was close to it all. But for now, she just put her head on her father’s shoulder and pretended that his feelings were more important than the answers she sought.
She squeezed his hand like he had hers. She was leaving—she had to—but she knew deep down that the questions about her mother, her uncle, and Limetown would always follow her.
“Dad,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I’m going to Australia, not the moon.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Emile
Jacob drove the long gravel road away from the guardians’ house. Neither brother talked about what just happened, what Emile did to those boys at Lost 80, or what it meant for them to leave like they did. Without warning, without telling anyone, and without Jacob finishing school.
They drove west. Once they were on the highway, Jacob turned the radio loud to stay awake, he said, but also to keep Emile out of his head. He listened to country music, sad songs about whiskey and betrayal. Emile decided to respect Jacob’s privacy, considering what his brother had just sacrificed for him—graduation, and the dream that went with it. But this meant that he had no idea where they were going, only that they were looking for their mother, who, despite what she had done, was the only person they could think of who could help them understand why Emile was the way he was.
Emile drifted in and out of sleep. There were no lights, few towns, and little elevation once they made it past the Flint Hills. Outside the world looked as if it were underwater, so far beneath the surface the sun and moon were just memories. Each time Emile woke he waited for a road sign to give him another clue. In between dreams he wondered about the people they left behind, for better or worse. What would happen to Austin? What would happen to the guardians? Would either of them come looking for them or, with a sigh of relief, would they wipe their hands and say good riddance?
“I have an idea,” Jacob said as they cruised Kanorado, a town that was more of a border marker than an actual destination. He turned the radio down between songs and let Emile in.
Emile saw two hands wrapped around a book. His mother’s hands. She turned the page and pointed at a picture. It was a beautiful landscape, mountains all around. Jacob recognized the beauty of the scenery, even though it felt a universe away.
“Where is that?” Emile said.
“Archer Park,” Jacob said. “A small town north of Estes. She used to talk about it all the time.”
“You think she went there? When she disappeared?”
“I think it’s a start,” Jacob said, and he tried to turn the radio up before Emile could peer any deeper. But Emile caught his hand.
“Wait,” he said, “how long have you had this idea?”
“I don’t know,” Jacob said. “A long time, I guess.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Because she left us, Emile. We might have been the ones who ran away that night, but she’s the one who disappeared for good.”
Emile looked at his brother. His face showed no emotion as he stared at the road. But inside there was a cresting wave. Sadness, bitterness, and anger. Emile watched him for a moment, before Jacob finally turned the radio back up, ending the conversation. They drove across the Kansas-Colorado border, through Denver and Boulder, under the cover of night. Emile stared out the window, and every once in a while he caught a glimpse of a mountain silhouetted by the moon, hovering.
He woke at a truck stop just outside Archer Park, a little after dawn. Jacob was outside the car, gazing down at the town blanketed in fog. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” he said. Emile followed his brother’s eyes, which landed on a large white house hanging above the fog. “That’s the Eldridge. Looks like something out of a painting.”
Jacob got back in the car and they descended into town. The Eldridge was a hotel, Jacob had explained. Supposedly haunted. Famously so. He pointed and narrated their entire first lap around Archer Park, as images from their mother’s book came to life. This little park, this quaint pizza place. If there was a plan beyond this for finding their mother, Emile didn’t know it. Jacob seemed content following the landmarks of his memory.
Eventually the sun rose, watery behind the gray sky, and out came the dead, workers stumbling around downtown until the coffee kicked in. Jacob parked at the hotel, tapped the dashboard clock. “We should be in school now,” he said. As if on cue, a yellow bus rumbled by. Emile thought of Ginny’s class. He saw her taking attendance, calling Emile’s name, calling Austin’s, and no one responding. The students would look at one another. Already, the rumors about what happened at Lost 80 would have started to fly. Miss Scott, with her self-proclaimed investigative prowess, would learn the truth. She had not asked the right questions the day she and Emile met.
“I’m going inside,” Emile said, and kicked open the car door. Jacob followed Emile through the visitors’ lot and up the stairs to the front entrance. The main lobby of the Eldridge was a wide-open space covered in wood. The floor, the walls, the beams that held the ceiling in place—every part looked tailor-made to creak in the night.
They were too early for check-in, not that they could afford to stay. The lobby was mostly empty. An old couple sat by an enormous fireplace, its hearth still glowing with last night’s embers. The woman spoke loudly to her nearly deaf husband. She was awake all night, she said, bored out of her mind, while her husband snored by her side. She said she wished a ghost would visit her. At least then she would have someone to talk to.
“What would ghosts want with someone our age?” the old man said with a laugh. “We’re practically their peers.”
Emile found Jacob at the opposite side of the lobby, staring at a framed American flag hung above a large bookcase. With no one to stop them, they wandered the hotel. They took the grand staircase to the second floor, walked its narrow halls, and Emile tried to take in every detail. The yellow carpet, the heavy doors, the doorknobs engraved with the initials SE. They paused at the odd-numbered rooms. A hotel pamphlet Jacob took from the front desk said that out of all the rooms rumored to be haunted, none were even. Emile put his ear to several doors and listened, but most guests were asleep, their rooms quiet. It was the same on the third and fourth floors. At the south end of the fifth, through a small service door, they discovered a large stairwell. If you peered down the well, the pamphlet read, you could see all the way down to the basement.
“A maid threw herself down this stairwell,” Jacob said, “supposedly.”
He quoted the pamphlet: “ ‘Several workers and the occasional straying guest have reported strange sounds coming from the bottom of the well. Some say a low moan, others a sharp cry.’ ”
Emile listened for a moment. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Of course not,” Jacob said. “It’s just a story.”
They continued to stare into the black well. “You think she worked here?” Emile said.
“She didn’t have any other skills. Didn’t finish high school—”
The realization cut him off. Emile wanted to reassure him. He would return to Lawrence whether or not they found their mother here, and finish school. But Jacob’s mind was full of doubt, something that Emile had rarely felt in his brother. “Let’s get out of here,” Jacob said.
Downstairs the lobby had become busy, as guests descended from their rooms. Jacob waited off to the side, by the fireplace, while Emile asked the receptionist if an Elizabeth Haddock worked there, had ever worked there. The front desk apologized, saying that that sort of information was private, and that if Emile wasn’t a registered guest, he should probably come back when the official tours started, around noon.
Outside, the gray parted, revealing a warm sun that accompanied Jacob and Emile as they continued their self-guided tour of the hotel grounds. There was a small barn off to one side of the hotel, where residents could rent an old horse for a scenic trail ride. On the other side sat a large A-frame that once served as a guesthouse for Eldridge’s friends and family, and had been converted into a chapel for guest weddings.
Emile sat down on the chapel steps. He had begun to feel the elevation. His head ached, his body buzzed, and he suddenly felt both exhausted and discouraged.
Jacob stood above him, consulting the pamphlet. “We should check one more thing, then we can go.”
He left Emile sitting there and headed up the hill behind the hotel. Emile followed him toward a fence guarded by trees, enormous pines standing sentry. The path ended at an open gate with a sign that read EMPLOYEES ONLY. Behind the fence were two smaller hotels, or so it seemed. Long buildings with three floors, curtained windows, blinds drawn. A kid around their age exited one of the buildings, carrying a duffel bag.
“This is where they live,” Jacob said.
“Who?”
“The workers.” He pointed to the left, to the right. “Guys, girls.”
Two girls in uniforms, about the same age as the other kid, emerged from the other dorm. Jacob watched them until they disappeared through the gate. Emile heard him think about college, wonder if this was what it would have been like.
“She wouldn’t have worked here,” Jacob said.
“Why not?”
“Look. They’re all teenagers.” He was right. Every worker they’d seen here, even the person they’d spoken to at the front desk, was young.
“But this place must have been important to her,” Emile said. “Why else would she have shown you the book?”
“She could have visited once,” Jacob said. “Or maybe she worked here before we were born. But she wouldn’t have come back here.” The brothers didn’t know the exact age their mother was when she disappeared, but Jacob guessed she probably would have been well into her twenties. His mind turned into a street sign that read DEAD END.
They decided to take a lap around, since they were there. But the dorms were locked, and there was nothing behind them except a solitary bench, where a long-haired teen was smoking brazenly near the forest. He was dressed differently from the others, in slacks, a button-down shirt, and a tie tha
t was too big for his narrow frame. When he saw Jacob and Emile, he stood.
“New recruits?” he said. His name was Max. It said so plainly on his name tag.
A light breeze carried Max’s smoke to Jacob, who shook his head. Jacob disliked cigarettes and anyone who smoked them.
“Then you probably shouldn’t be here.”
“We’re looking for someone,” Emile said. “We think she might’ve worked here once.”
“Never mind,” Jacob said, “it doesn’t matter.”
“What’s her name?”
“Elizabeth,” Emile said, before his brother could stop him. “Elizabeth Haddock.”
“Haddock,” Max said. “Haddock. Nope. Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.” He took a long drag. “But a lot of people don’t last very long. Can’t cut it, you know. Others are just weirdos. Obsessed with the mystery of the place. Ghosts and what have you.”
The word crazy drifted across Max’s mind.
“She wasn’t crazy,” Emile said. He felt his name-calling defenses, honed during high school, go up.
“Who said she was, chief?” Max eyed Emile suspiciously as he puffed the last of his cigarette. He patted his pockets for the pack, but came up empty. “I’m guessing neither of you fine citizens smoke? No bother. I’ve got to get to work anyway. These grounds won’t tour themselves.”
He pulled his hair back into a ponytail, straightened his tie, and started to walk away. He paused at the gate. “Hey, you guys like mountain hiking?”
Emile and Jacob looked at each other. “We’re from Kansas,” Jacob said.
“Ah.” Max thought for a moment. “Well, a few of us are getting together after work, meeting here around midnight. There might be somebody who can help you find what you’re looking for. He’s worked here even longer than I have. Kind of sad, really. Anyway, your call.”
“Thanks,” Emile said.