Justin said, "Ian."
Ian whipped around. His boss was standing behind him.
"Do you have a minute?"
"I actually have some running around to do, I can't really -"
"Just a minute," Justin insisted, and gestured to the nearest quiet room.
Shit. Here it was. Ian clenched his teeth, trying to keep his hands from trembling. Just let him talk. Don't open your mouth. Don't say anything stupid.
"Sure."
It was the same room as Wednesday, where Ian had had to sign his name. Justin closed the door behind him and sat down, staring at the table.
Ian wanted to say, What is this about? or Look, I'm sorry about what I said, I was just so exhausted I wasn't thinking clearly. But he forced himself to stay quiet, to wait the man out.
"I didn't go to HR," Justin finally said. He was still staring at the table. "And I won't. Okay? But seriously... even if I don't, eventually Barb's going to ask me some questions. Eventually she's going to do it, even if I don't."
Barb was Justin's boss, the director of phone operations in the Minnesota office. When Ian opened his mouth, he meant to say, I understand.
What he said instead was, "Well, you'd better make sure she doesn't."
Justin flinched as if he'd been whipped. Ian's heart pounded.
"How...?" Justin started, then shook his head. He grabbed his temples with both hands and leaned against his elbows. Ian remembered doing something very similar the night before. "It's only been a few times. I had already told her it couldn't keep happening, before you even said anything. It's... history, over and done with."
Ian kept silent. The back of his mind was crowing in disbelief.
"Don't tell my wife. I can't control what Barb does. But please, I'm asking you man-to-man. Don't tell my wife."
"I'm working on FMLA," Ian said. "When that's done, Barb won't be able to do anything. You keep her off me until then. Or Daney will be finding some very interesting pictures in her e-mail."
Justin nodded, pale as death, his head bobbing like a jack-in-the-box. Ian left him like that, and walked away feeling like he had just won the World Series of Poker.
He cackled most of the way home.
80
Best Buy had a huge display for the new XBox 360 thing that let you play without using a controller. Ian walked past it and browsed the movies instead. Finally, as usual, he bought nothing.
As he was walking back to the car, Derek called.
"Hey," he said. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm all right." He hesitated. "Sleeping better. Sorry for freaking you out on..." What night had he called Derek? Tuesday? Monday? Most of the week had been a blur. "Earlier."
"That's okay, I'm just sorry I couldn't tell you to come over."
"Don't worry about it. I can take care of myself."
"Yeah, well, I felt like an asshole. You sure you're doing better?"
"Yeah. It comes and goes, you know? This last week was really ugly. Hopefully the weekend will be better."
"Have you... signed up for, like... sessions, or anything?"
"Like a psychiatrist?"
"A counselor, or something."
Ian debated. "Yeah, I guess so. I made a call."
He could feel Derek's relief emanating from the phone. "Good," he said. "Good, I really think that'll help."
Ian got to the car, swung inside. "Maybe. I think it's just shit I need to work through."
"What?"
"Just shit I need to work through."
"Well, that's what they do. Help people work through shit."
Ian chuckled. "I suppose they do."
He started the car. The conversation tapered off. It was weird.
"You need a tank tonight?"
"I don't know," Derek said appraisingly. "You want to come along again?"
"Yeah," Ian mused. "Yeah, I think so. If you got room."
"All right. Shoot me a tell around 7."
81
When he came in the front door, Leroy Eston was kneeling over Alex in the darkness of the living room.
Alex had his clothes on. That was the first thing Ian noticed. He wasn't being raped. But Eston was leaning into his face, his stringy hair brushing the boy's cheek, catching on his gag. The killer's voice grated in the silence.
A flare burst from Ian's heart, igniting his limbs with rage. He bounded forward, a roar at his lips, and forced himself to stop.
No. Listen. Listen.
Eston had given him one clue already.
" - understand?"
Alex nodded, his cheek scraping against the floor.
"Even if you get through the door somehow, there's nothing around here for miles and miles and miles. No phone. No police. No help. You can scream and scream and no one will hear you, no one will come. Do you understand that?"
Another nod. Alex's face was streaked with grime and tears above his red turtleneck.
"And let's pretend that you get away somehow. You make it back home. Do you know what will happen then?"
A whimper.
"That's the worst thing. The worst thing you can do. You're really fucked, then. I will come to your house, and I will kill your mom and dad. Because I know where you live. You know that, right?"
Alex shook his head, clenched his eyes shut.
"I will come in while they're sleeping, and I'll kill both of them." His voice was weirdly soft, a knife draped in velvet. "They won't even know I'm there. And then I'll come in your room, and play my games with you in your own room. You don't know about my games yet, but you will. And you won't want to play them in your room, Alex."
The boy was sobbing around his gag.
"Leave him the fuck alone." The command hissed between Ian's teeth, steam from a teapot. Eston glanced suddenly towards the wall, as if he'd heard a noise from that direction.
Alex disappeared.
Every muscle in Ian's body coiled like a spring. He clamped his lips shut, waiting as Eston glanced at the other wall, then the near wall again, trying to figure out where Ian's voice had come from. Then he looked down, where Alex had been a moment before, and was gone.
82
Ian gasped, grabbed the knob of the still-open front door to keep his balance. He reached for the light switch and flicked it on. The living room was empty.
"Fuck," he wheezed. "You fucking..."
He closed the door and stumbled forward, his hands shaking. He sank to his knees where Alex had been, his eyes scouring the carpet.
Inside his coat pocket, his cell phone buzzed. He fumbled it out, gazed at it like it was an alien artifact.
Shauna Douglas was calling. He stared at her number until the phone stopped making noise, then he looked back at the floor. Alex was still gone.
"Alex!" he shouted, and climbed back to his feet. He went into the dining room, then into Alex's room. "Alex! I need to talk to you! Are you here?" They were both empty.
He looked in his own bedroom, looked in the bathroom. Then he stalked through the kitchen and opened the door to the basement.
"Alex! Come on, can you hear me? I need -"
"Hi, Daddy," Alex said. He was at the bottom of the stairs. He looked nervous, like he'd done something wrong. "I was playing on your computer, but I didn't mean to."
Ian started down the stairs, but backtracked to flip on the light. "That's okay," he said, breathless. "Hey, that's all right. Don't worry." He hurried down the stairs. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, but I was only playing Super Why." Relief at his dad's reaction radiated from Alex's face. He smiled. "You want to see?"
He was here: whole, unharmed, still innocent. The horrors that had transpired a minute ago with Leroy Eston didn't exist for this boy.
Ian wanted to weep.
"No," he said. "No, not right now. Maybe later, okay? Can you show me later?"
Alex was disappointed, but he nodded. "Sure, Dod."
The word stabbed Ian in the heart, and he grimaced.
But he smiled
, too.
"I'm 'Dad,'" he said.
"Okay, Dod," Alex answered, his impish grin shining.
"That's 'Dad' to you," Ian insisted.
"Okay, Dod!"
"All right. Alex?"
"Yeah, Dod!"
"I love you," he whispered fiercely.
"I love you too," Alex said back, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
83
The frozen pizza needed to bake at 450, so he set the oven to pre-heat and started hunting for the pizza cutter. It was always dirty, because he was having frozen pizza for dinner far more often than was probably healthy. He had considered buying a second one, but had rejected the idea at once. If he was too lazy to clean one goddamn pizza cutter, he'd be too lazy to clean two. Where did it stop? He'd end up with a sink full of filthy pizza cutters. The image made him recoil. It reeked of craziness.
While he dug through the dirty plates and bowls in the sink, he thought about Leroy Eston.
Seeing Alex again was hard, but he was beginning to think he could come to terms with it, maybe even resolve it, somehow. Seeing Alex's killer was something else entirely.
Part of his mind was simply babbling uncontrollably, gibbering with rage and grief. It wanted to destroy Eston, to finish gouging out the man's eyes, at the same time that it wanted to curl up in the corner and wail. But after weeks of direct confrontation with the horrors of his son's final days, he was getting used to those feelings. He could set them aside and let the other part of his mind work.
That part was wondering, Why am I seeing Eston now?
The typical responses took their places. Speaking for the prosecution was the hotshot upstart, Alex Is Haunting You. And tasked with the defense was the aging, but ever stalwart, You're Fucking Crazy.
Alex wants to show you more, Alex Is Haunting You argued. There's something about Eston that he wants you to know. Maybe some kind of clue about Kelly that you haven't seen yet.
You're Fucking Crazy mounted a strong defense. You had it figured out downstairs the other night. You're making the hallucinations more elaborate and more horrible as a way to make sure you don't escape them. Your own brain won't let you put this behind you.
If that's true, a little therapy will take care of it, or you can work the issues out in time. But if Alex is trying to tell you something, don't you need to hear it?
Ian shook his head. He didn't care about the underlying motivations. He wanted to know what the new appearances meant.
They mean your illness has advanced, You're Fucking Crazy asserted. Eston is a powerful symbol for you. If you continue to treat him like he's real you'll eventually do something stupid and possibly dangerous trying to hurt him.
Alex Is Haunting You scoffed. It means there's something you missed, something critical. Even if my colleague is correct, even if it's all in your head, that doesn't mean you have nothing to learn from it. It could still be your own mind trying to work through some kind of unprocessed clue. Either way, you need to pay attention.
But Crazy wasn't having it. If that were true, therapy could help you figure out those clues just as well. Better, even. And without the risk of dissolving completely into some fantasy realm where your son is still alive and you have the power to kill his attacker. If you -
Haunting cut him off. Without risk? You promised Alex that you would always be there for him. Think of what he's done, the barriers he's broken, to reach out to you. If he's somehow found a way to call to his Daddy even after he died, wouldn't the greater risk be to ignore that call?
Ian remembered Alex saying, "I'll just call for you." What if he hadn't meant it as a recrimination? What if he was trying to explain why he was appearing?
Jesus, what if he had meant he was calling now?
It was Crazy's turn to scoff. Everything he says can be interpreted that way. Of course it can, it's your own brain creating his dialogue. That's why it's never anything new. Your mind is just replaying scenes from when he was alive. It lacks the courage to create something new. And it even punishes you for failing to play along. These are warning signs, Ian.
Spoken like a true fatalist, Haunting rejoined. But what if it's the other way around: what if Alex is simply restricted to showing you pieces of his life? "More things in heaven and earth." You don't understand the rules here. That doesn't mean you can afford to ignore what's actually happening.
The oven buzzed, signaling that it was done pre-heating, and Ian gave a start. He still hadn't found the pizza cutter. He'd been staring into the sink for the last ten minutes.
84
"Brutus!" a voice crackled from the computer speaker. "Good to see you again, man! How have you been holding up?" It was EpicGodwin, a mage who raided with Derek often but hadn't been around last week when Ian played.
Ian pushed the left Ctrl button on his keyboard, activating his mic. "Oh, you know. Not easy. Time helps. But it's still not easy."
"Yeah, I can't even imagine. I'm so sorry about what happened. At least they caught the guy."
A lot of people said this. Not just the I can't imagine part, but the at least they caught the guy part. Like it fucking mattered that the guy had died. Alex had died. That was the only part that mattered.
Ian stared at the fantasy characters milling about the bank of Brutus's digital home city, and fought to not say anything abrasive. "Yeah," he finally answered. "I would've preferred to get my son back alive. But yeah."
Silence greeted this response. In the chat window on-screen, someone said simply:
: (
Ian tried again to remember why he had decided to raid tonight. Some kind of act of defiance against Eston? He was reminded of a David Cross bit, something about people forging on with their irrelevant plans in the wake of 9/11, trying to make sure that the "terrorists didn't win." Cross had made them out to be delusional morons.
Which is pretty much what I am.
He started to type out a whisper to Derek - Sorry, this just isn't going to work for me tonight. Sorry to leave you in a lurch. - when Epic spoke again.
"Well, I'm glad you're here. We missed you. And doing something just for fun will help, I bet."
How badly could anyone he only associated with in a digital fantasy world really have missed him? He bristled. For a second.
Then he realized he didn't care.
"Yeah," he said into his mic. "Thanks. That's what I'm here for." He hit Escape, cancelling the message to Derek, and settled stubbornly in to tank.
85
A red light pulsed on the side of his cell phone when he emerged from the basement three hours later, and he remembered suddenly that Shauna had called.
"Hi, Ian, this is Shauna Douglas returning your call. I'm sorry to hear you're not sleeping well. I'll sign your form if you like, but my guess is that you would need a doctor's signature. You may want to check with your HR on that. If that is what you need, I can certainly recommend some very good psychiatrists in this area. If you're coming to the meeting Wednesday night, we can talk about it then. Hopefully I'll see you then." A heartbeat, then she added: "You would still be more than welcome."
He made a noise partway between a snort and a chuckle, and closed his phone.
Hopefully I'll see you then.
He hadn't even considered going back to the weekly sessions. He'd been going for Alina, really, and there was no way she'd be there again this week. Not after what he'd said to her, or her response later that night.
He felt a sudden lurch, as if he had just dropped ten feet. He sat down hard on the couch.
Was it really over? Was it... was that even possible?
The woman who had laughed at his sarcasm, who would sink into his arms when he embraced her from behind - the woman he could talk to for hours, into the night, even after ten years of marriage.
People said you had to work on a relationship to hold it together, and he and Alina had learned that was true. But their relationship was founded on communication - it had started on the phone, for Chr
ist's sake - and they had always been able to work everything out. They'd been able to talk through anything.
He should be able to call her, and talk through this. But he couldn't. He ended up yelling, every time, and she was sick of it. How many times had they gone down that road? How many times had he made her think they would work it out, like they always used to, only to change the rules on her midstream and start blaming her, screaming at her, clamming up on her? Of course she was done with him.
You used to be so strong.
People grew apart, sometimes. That didn't happen to them. He had forced them apart, because he was so goddamn weak that he couldn't move on. He had forced her out, just to find air to breathe - but she still hadn't left him, not really. She had called. They had talked. She tried for months to get him help. Why? Because she still loved him? Because she learned she was pregnant? Maybe both?
It didn't matter now. He had fucked it up.
He didn't want to hurt her. He missed her - ah, God, he missed her. When he could quiet his thoughts enough to picture it, he could imagine the two of them recovering: wounded, yes, and more cautious - who wouldn't be, after what they had been through? - but still able to laugh, eventually. Still able to whisper to each other in the dark at night, still able to be them.
It dawned on him that he hadn't just pictured it. He had expected it. Taken it for granted. They had survived so much: of course they would survive this. And he'd forgotten that it wouldn't just happen. It took work.
He'd been waiting for her to save him.
He grabbed his phone, flipped it open -
I have to tell her this.
- ignored the voice saying it wouldn't matter, that it would sound just like everything else he had said to her -
1, SEND.
- determined to explain, to make her understand that he really did get it, that he really was still here.
"You have reached. ALINUH. COL-MES. Leave your message after the tone."
BEEP.
He hesitated, unsure whether to leave a message or try back later, and had the revelation that she may never answer a call from him again.
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