Limetown

by Cote Smith

  “But we could live here. We would have a place to stay.” Emile wouldn’t admit it, but already he’d let himself imagine a life at the Eldridge. Working mornings in the hotel, smiling warmly as he completed menial tasks like cleaning rooms or washing dishes in the kitchen. Then, at night, he would join the others. He could help them in their work, listening. He still wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, what it looked like, but if there was one thing he was good at, it was listening.

  And what if what Max said were true? What if there were people who were like Emile? Who possessed gifts like him. Felt alone like him. What if these were people he could talk to, listen to, learn from? Or, better still, none of the above. What if these were people he would never have to explain himself to, because they were naturally more like him than Jacob or Austin could ever hope to be.

  “We came for Mom,” Jacob said.

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t get it. Or maybe you do and you’re just trying to be nice. They don’t want me.”

  Emile slid down the starched sheets. He didn’t bother lying to his brother, pretending what he said wasn’t true. Instead, he tried to imagine that same life, staying here, working at the Eldridge, without Jacob. The two of them giving up, it seemed, on ever finding their mother. Suddenly, he felt very alone. He sat back up, and was startled when he caught himself in the mirror. How afraid he looked.

  * * *

  Jacob was gone when Emile woke. His bed was made and there were no signs of his belongings.

  Emile got dressed and went downstairs. A few guests had descended to the dining room for the complimentary breakfast, staring through bleary eyes at plates of bacon and eggs. Emile recognized the servers from last night, flying from table to table, bright as the new sun. A waitress waved at him, and a busboy threw him a nod, but when asked, neither had seen Jacob. Both said Emile shouldn’t worry. Eat, they told him. Free of charge, of course.

  Emile pushed through the dining room and into another lobby, with another fireplace, in front of which sat another old couple. The déjà vu dizzied him. Or perhaps it was the elevation. He ran through the second lobby, through another set of double doors, dreading another fireplace. Instead, he found a single door, and through that door a long hallway that reeked of chlorine. No one had mentioned a pool. He looked for a sign, but there weren’t any. The hallway stopped abruptly, as if the architect had made a mistake. There was a window at the end, and a door on the side that was locked. When Emile looked out the window, he didn’t recognize any of the landscape. There were steep green hills lush with trees, more scenic and beautiful than anything in Kansas, but nothing he could attach any meaning to. He looked out the window for a while, not knowing where his brother was, and for the first time since they drove away from what had been their home, he felt lost.

  He managed to find his way back to the second lobby. The old couple had vanished. In their place was a young man kicking his sneakers in front of the fire. Max.

  “You look bewildered, Haddocks. Like you’ve come to a fork in the road, picked it up, and jabbed yourself in the eye.”

  “I was looking for my brother.”

  “Did you check the lobby?”

  “This is a lobby.”

  “This is the east lobby. You want the west. Or maybe it was the north?” Max grinned to himself. “Your brother doesn’t want you to stay, Haddock. He’s speaking to the big man right now.”

  “Vince?”

  “No, not Vince. The big man. You got corn growing out your ears?” Emile didn’t understand. He opened his mouth, but was shushed. “Not here,” Max said. “Follow me.”

  They went down to the tunnels, to the limestone. “The wonderful thing about being so far below the earth,” Max said, “is that no sound can make its way in or out. Eldridge, for all his genius, was quite paranoid. He conducted all his meetings underground, even though it’s damn near impossible to heat.”

  They wound their way through the tunnels, and the deeper they went the more Emile felt he was going the wrong direction. They emerged into a different space from the night before. The lighting was better and there was more room. There were a few picnic tables, some stools, and what looked to be a full bar.

  “Coffee?” Max asked. He stepped behind the bar and poured himself a cup. Emile was too anxious to sit. “Your brother found me this morning,” Max said. “He told me what was plaguing him. And he’s not wrong. Not completely, anyway. They don’t want him. They want you.” Max leaned on the bar. “And his concerns aren’t without merit. There’s a lot going on here, Haddock. And from what I can tell, it’s not all paradise.”

  “You’re here.”

  “For now,” Max said. “But I’m about to age out.”

  Max took his mug in both hands, blew away the steam. Emile looked down at his own hands, which held nothing.

  “Ah, don’t go all mopey on me. I’m off to college! The best years of my life, isn’t that what they say? I’m going to meet a beautiful girl, fall in love, make some babies. Everything goes right, I’ll be changing the world and diapers by the time I’m thirty.”

  Emile paced the bar. Max’s plan reminded him of his brother’s, which reminded him that if he chose to stay here, he would be starting over, alone.

  “What would I do?” Emile said. “If I stayed.”

  “Depends on your talent. Right now I’m into parapsychology. You know, paranormal phenomena. But as you can tell, I’m really good at talking to people. Helps a ton when I’m interviewing. A lot of these people, they’ve been laughed at their entire lives. They need to believe I’m someone they can trust.”

  “Are you?” Emile asked.

  “Most of the time.”

  Emile didn’t know what to do. “I want to talk to my brother.”

  “Of course you do. The thing is, he’s with the big man now, and the big man has the gift of gab. Or at least, he can when he wants to.” He drummed his fingers on the bar. “Why don’t we go see a movie? There’s a small theater in town that shows old movies sometimes. Maybe they’ll play The Wizard of Oz for you.”

  “I’ve never seen it,” Emile said.

  “Really?” Max laughed. “And yet you walk around here like a twirling tornado dropped you out of the sky.”

  “I don’t want to see any movies,” Emile said. “Either take me to my brother, or show me your work so I can make up my mind.”

  “I can’t,” Max said. “There are rules, Haddock. Consequences.” His mind flashed to a young woman in tears, dragging her packed bag down the dorm hill and through the open gate, Vince locking it behind her. Max leaned over the bar. Emile could feel Max’s mask slipping. “Remember, there’s nothing you have that can’t be taken away. You might think you don’t have anything. You might say to yourself, how can they take away something that isn’t there? But they’ll find it. Whatever it is you have. And they’ll make it disappear.”

  He held Emile’s stare. Finally, Max leaned back from the bar and took a casual sip from his cup, readjusting his mask.

  “Show me,” Emile said.

  Max shook his head. “All right, fine. You want us both kicked out, that’s up to you.” He dumped the mug into the sink. “You know, for someone who doesn’t know anything about Oz, you sure are interested in what’s behind the curtain.”

  * * *

  Max made Emile change into his hiking boots. Emile didn’t understand why until they got in Max’s jeep and started driving into the mountains. In a matter of minutes Archer Park was fully behind them. It was a clear, chilly April day, too cold to be riding around in an uncovered vehicle. The air roared around them, making it impossible for Emile to ask any questions, which, he supposed, was probably the point.

  Twenty minutes later Max pulled off onto an unassuming dirt road, which stopped at an unmarked trailhead. Max cut the engine. “All right,” he said, “let’s hoof it.”

  “There’s nothing out here.”

  Max got out. “That’s kind of the idea.” Em
ile stayed in the jeep. “What’s wrong? You afraid, Haddock? Big brother’s not around?”

  Max slapped the hood and set off down the trail. Emile kicked the door open and ran after him.

  Max laughed at each question Emile asked along the way. No, they didn’t conduct any experiments at the hotel. Would be a bit risky, don’t you think? A guest wanders through the wrong door and, whoops, there’s a secret lab.

  They came to a shack, what looked like a rest stop for weary hikers. Max detached a nest of keys carabinered to his hip. “Pretty high-tech, huh?” He opened the door to the shack and disappeared inside. “Come on, Dorothy,” Max called. “Toto is waiting.”

  Emile peered in vain into the darkness. He told himself he wasn’t afraid, that he didn’t wish his brother were there.

  They spiraled down a surprisingly noisy metal staircase. At the bottom there was a desk, and at the desk sat the young woman who waved at Emile back in the dining room. She eyed him suspiciously. “Relax,” Max said. “He’s with me.” Max led Emile down a long, poorly lit hallway. Emile didn’t notice the doors at first, or their windows. He passed room after room, keeping his head down, until he remembered that he was here to look.

  Max stopped at a door. He slid open a window. A woman approached. She looked old enough to be Emile’s mother.

  “Don’t worry,” Max said. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  Emile resisted the urge to put his hand to the window, afraid of the level of despair he would feel if he got too close. “Who are they?”

  “These are my percipients.”

  “These are the people you listen to?”

  “Of course. This here’s Brenda. She’s from Florida. Big fan of musicals. Once she’s done here, we’re going to fly her to New York so she can see a real show on Broadway. Isn’t that right, Brenda?”

  The woman didn’t answer. Emile was reminded of an animal shelter, the desperate creatures locked away, waiting to be rescued, for a stranger to walk by, point, and bring their salvation. He felt an instinctive responsibility to help, despite having just seen Brenda for the first time.

  “You keep them here? Locked up like this?”

  “Don’t worry,” Max said again. “They knew what they were getting into. It’s all in the paperwork.” Max eclipsed the window, blocking Brenda from Emile’s view. “C’mon. Let me show you where the real magic happens.”

  Another door. Another young person, this time a boy, at another desk. When they were buzzed through, Emile could taste the worry in his throat. Max ushered him into a small room with mirrored glass on three sides. In the center of the room were two tables facing each other. Max invited Emile to sit.

  “What is this?” Emile asked.

  “Ah ah, I ask the questions here. Remember?” He winked at Emile. “Now, percipient, tell me about your dreams.”

  “My dreams?”

  “Yes. You said that the visions only come to you in your sleep, correct? These ‘warnings’?”

  Emile thought of his dreams. There weren’t many as of late, perhaps because he did most of his dreaming during the day, imagining what it would be like to find his mother.

  “I don’t have any dreams,” he said.

  “Oh, c’mon. Don’t be shy, Brenda. If you didn’t dream you wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be taking care of your family’s staggering amount of debt thanks to your husband’s gambling problem in exchange for your participation. And you’d never get to see Phantom on Broadway!”

  Emile didn’t answer. He looked around him, at the mirrored glass. There was no one on the other side. He would’ve felt them. But that didn’t mean they weren’t present during a regular session. Jotting down notes in lab coats, laughing to themselves when a subject, a percipient, said something out of the ordinary.

  “Stop messing around, Max.”

  Max didn’t break character. “Who’s messing around?” He looked down at his pretend folder, Brenda’s case study. “One dream,” he said, “and then you can go.”

  Emile swallowed the burning in his throat. He pictured the real Brenda here, wanting to be heard and not judged. But that wasn’t what was going on. Max’s tone was all wrong. It wasn’t the open mocking Emile had suffered before, in high school, but it was similar somehow, in the way it made Emile feel. Trivial, dismissible.

  Emile dug his fingers into his palms. If Max didn’t understand the importance of listening, the power of it, then perhaps Emile could show him.

  He recalled the images that flashed through Max’s mind when Max brought up his parents the day before, when he was explaining the Eldridge’s mission. A living room, a fight, a falling glass. Emile could piece the rest together since then. First, when he found Max sitting in front of one of the hotel fireplaces. Then again, when Max described the life he hoped to lead after college. They were always floating on the surface of his mind, the family he’d left behind, the family he feared he’d never be able to re-create.

  “Okay,” Emile said. “I’ll tell you.” He leaned forward. “There is this one dream. This dream I’ve had since I was a child. You want to call it a vision? I don’t know. To me, it’s a record on repeat.”

  “Good. Tell me everything you remember.”

  “I’m a child, playing in the backyard. Through the back window I see my parents fighting. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but their mouths are opened big like alligators’, wide enough to swallow each other. I know they’re fighting about me. They’re always fighting about me. What to do with me. I’m a handful. I get into trouble. I disappear and the police bring me back. Send him away, one of my parents says. We don’t have the money, says the other. One of them storms out. Sometimes it’s my mother, other times my father.”

  “That’s horrible,” Max said. Emile felt the rush of thoughts behind Max’s calm face. Max’s parents. His past.

  “That’s not all.”

  “No?”

  Max cleared his throat. He’d started to sweat.

  “There’s more,” Emile said. “Would you like to hear it?”

  “No,” Max said. “I mean—shit.” He stood up, pushed his chair in. He walked up to the mirrored glass. “Didn’t think you had it in you, Haddock. No wonder they want you so badly.”

  * * *

  They were silent on the drive back. Emile needed to find his brother. He needed to tell Jacob he was right. There was something off about this place, what they were doing. They needed to leave.

  He checked the haunted hall, both lobbies, their room. Nothing. He asked bellboys, receptionists, concierges. No one had seen Jacob. They had seen guests. The guests had seen ghosts. But no one had seen his brother.

  Emile walked out the front entrance. A valet stood at the bottom, surveying the long hill for cars. Emile thought nothing of her, until she turned around. It was the young woman from the facility’s first desk, the dining room server who’d eyed him suspiciously.

  “Check the chapel,” she said. “People always run there when they don’t know what to do.”

  Emile glanced at her, her dark eyes. “You have a lot of jobs.”

  “I go where I’m told.” She nodded at the chapel. “You might try the same.”

  A car wound up the long driveway. A middle-aged couple exited. The husband handed the keys to the valet, who waited until they were in the hotel before rolling her eyes.

  “Hey,” Emile said. “You’re not wearing a name tag.”

  The young woman turned. It was an attractive face, Emile thought, the kind of face that would have looked straight through him in high school.

  “What does it matter?” she said. “You’re leaving, right?”

  * * *

  He didn’t go to the chapel. Jacob wasn’t religious. Instead Emile went to his room. He would wait there. He was tired from the day, from the trip up and down the mountain, from the drastic changes in elevation. He shut the curtains and lay down. He didn’t sleep but he wasn’t fully awake either. He stared at the ceiling fan and imagined its
blades as different paths his life might take. On one blade he left here with Jacob, and after a few weeks more of searching, they found their mother. She was better now. She apologized and took them in. On another blade they went home and told the guardians everything that had happened. The guardians, feeling guilty for never welcoming their nephews into their hearts, made a few phone calls to find Jacob a scholarship at a small Christian university with a strong track program, and in the end, all was forgiven or forgotten.

  These futures hovered above him, until a switch was flicked and the fan began to whir, turning the different paths into one indistinguishable blur. A sharp chill struck Emile’s chest. He sat up, expecting to see the ghost in the mirror. Instead, he saw his brother.

  Jacob sat at the foot of the bed, his back to Emile.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Emile said.

  “Sorry,” Jacob said. “I went to find Vince, to tell him we weren’t staying.”

  “Good. I mean, I agree. There is something strange about this place.”

  Jacob lifted his head. “Someone else found me. Someone higher up.”

  Emile remembered what Max said earlier about the big man.

  “They know things,” Jacob said, his voice forlorn. “About us. I don’t know how, but . . .” He lowered his head again.

  Emile leaned into his brother for warmth, but Jacob felt just as cold.

  “Mom came here, a long time ago. I wasn’t even born yet. But she was pregnant.” Jacob rubbed his legs, trying to steel himself. “She was worried. I guess her own mom had been taken away from her when she was little.”

  “Taken away,” Emile said. “Why?”

  “They think maybe she was like you. And that her family thought she was crazy. I don’t know. But Mom was worried the same thing would happen to me, if I was gifted. She had heard about this place, somehow. The people here wanted to help, but there was nothing to do. Not then anyway. She was supposed to come back after I was born, if I turned out to be, you know, like you. But she never did.”