You’re not dreaming.
I’m so cold and the voice sounds so real and maybe I’m not dreaming, maybe I’m really outside talking to myself or whoever this is.
It’s me.
I go to touch her, but she pulls back.
Don’t. Just—just look at me and listen.
“You’re so beautiful.”
Listen.
“What is this?”
There is a place that is somewhere between every day and every dream, a place like this.
This doesn’t feel like either every day or every dream.
Not everybody can see it, but when you can, you have to take the light with the darkness.
I shake my head and reach out to touch her, but this time she shouts an emphatic no!
I can’t help you in any way or give you anything you don’t have or don’t know.
As I glance at her, I can’t help thinking that of course she can’t give me anything I don’t have or don’t know because this is a dream.
Your mother needs you.
I nod. That’s nice to hear. The whole world knows that.
No, she really needs you, Chris. Don’t.
I wait for more.
“Don’t what?” I eventually ask.
Don’t.
I’m still waiting.
It’s good to see you.
“Is this all—is this happening?”
Don’t let anybody tell you you’re not.
“I’m not what?”
She smiles, reaches out her hand, and goes to touch my lips with her finger.
Then I blink, and just like that, she’s gone.
But I felt something, a slight little tap on the edge of my mouth.
I don’t wake up in bed.
I’m still here, standing on the edge of the deck. I stay there for a while, watching the moon and feeling the chill and desperately longing for Jocelyn to come back.
17. Reaching Out
“Have you thought about getting a job?” Mom asks me the next morning as I’m wolfing down a bowl of cereal.
“Sure,” I say.
“Have you thought long and hard about it?”
I nod, but we both know I’m lying.
“You’re going to have to start saving money, Chris.”
“For what? A car? Gotta get a license first. And I’m still waiting to take a driver’s ed class.”
“You have to plan things out.”
Oh, like you plan anything out.
“Yeah,” I say.
“I want you to start looking, okay? It’d be good for you.”
Oh, okay, and you know what would be good for you? Sobriety.
As I get ready to head out the door, she asks me where I’m going.
“Just out. Hanging out with a guy from school.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jerry,” I say.
Yeah, that’s a lie. Kinda maybe. I mean, maybe Jerry is short for Jared.
“What are you going to do?”
“When did you get home last night?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Late. Brennan’s was packed.”
“Did you stay later?”
She looks at me with a confused and hurt and slightly irritated look. “Chris—”
“Questions are great, aren’t they?”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Then you don’t,” I say.
“I’m just asking what you’re going to be up to.”
“I don’t know. Maybe just hanging out.”
“Be careful,” she says.
My mother has never been the type to say things like that, not with me.
But Solitary has changed everything.
The sun seems to be helping melt some of this snow and ice. The temperature from the middle of the night/morning when I had whatever sort of thing I had with Jocelyn seems to have been a dream. I walk on the street just like I’m supposed to and wonder when everything’s going to get nice and mushy.
I’ve been walking for a while and see that it’s ten minutes after ten, and I’m just wondering if I’ve gone down too far and should turn back when I hear a vehicle—the first I’ve heard today.
A blue truck pulls up next to me. Sure enough, I see Jared at the wheel. I open the door and get inside.
“How’s it going?” he asks.
As if we’re going into town to shoot some pool and pick up some chicks.
“Haven’t been threatened yet today, so things are looking up,” I say, trying to sound like I’m taking all of this with humor and coolness.
Jared doesn’t smile.
He probably knows that deep inside, underneath this really cool and composed exterior, is a teenager who is pretty much freaking out beyond anything his mind and heart can comprehend.
“You have breakfast?”
“I could eat more,” I say.
“Good. There’s a little diner that serves awesome food.”
“But?”
“But what?”
“But there’s gotta be a catch. Around here there’s always a catch.”
“The catch is that it’s cheap and I’ve been eating there all my life and their omelets are to die for.”
“That’s not my favorite expression.”
He glances at me and chuckles. “You’re a witty one this mornin’, aren’t you?”
“I used to be a lot more witty.” I think of my mother and of our last conversation and realize she’s not the only one who’s changed.
“Just relax, okay? We got some talkin’ to do.”
He turns up the radio, and a country singer belts out a loud and wild song about a loud and wild night.
When I grow up I want to be this singer and have his life. I want to sing about the ladies and the long nights.
Maybe I’ll move to Texas. Or Alabama. Or Tennessee. Or Georgia. Anywhere but here.
Anywhere but this tiny ugly town.
I guess I’m hungrier than I realized. The meal isn’t just food. In some weird way, it’s relief.
“You like grits?” Jared asks.
“With butter on them, sure.”
“Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I had never tasted grits. You ever think about things like that?”
“Grits?”
He shakes his head. “Life. Destiny. The big-picture stuff.”
“What’s that have to do with grits?”
“If I’d been raised in California or New York, I wouldn’t know the wonderful and mesmerizing thing called grits.”
What is he saying?
“Do you ever think what life would have been like if you’d been raised around here?”
I swallow and laugh. “Maybe I wouldn’t know any different. Maybe I’d be like the rest of them.”
“I don’t think so.”
I wait for him to say more, but he just sips his coffee and watches me.
“Tell me about school.”
“You’ve been there,” I say. “You’ve seen the place.”
“I used to go there. What I mean is—anything strange going on?”
I tell him about Rachel’s disappearance, though I don’t tell him about her letter. I mention that Poe is blaming me for her two friends disappearing. “They don’t know that she’s dead.”
“Want to hear a story, Chris?”
I shrug.
Honestly, I’m not sure, because stories around here are not the warm and fuzzy kind that make your heart go boom boom.
“I never bothered to go to college, but I read a lot. You don’t need school to learn. I was reading this book about World War II. Did you know that a lot of Germans—the good Germans, the ones who weren’t with the Nazis, the ones just trying to live their lives—still knew what was happening in their backyard?”
“With killing the Jews?”
“With the Holocaust. People who couldn’t do a thing about it. People who had to just keep living.”
“You can always do something,” I say. “I don’t belie
ve you just sit by and watch something like that happen.”
“That’s what heroes say.”
“Is that bad?”
“Heroes end up dead.”
I’m about to snap back at his comment when a heavyset woman interrupts our conversation to pour Jared more coffee. He lets her walk out of listening distance.
“Look—I can’t say it’s bad,” he says. “But foolish, well … it’s something that my father probably said. And now he’s missing.”
“What was he trying to do?”
“I don’t know. Have you found anything on him in that house? Any information?”
“Lots of eighties records,” I say.
Why don’t you mention the other things?
“Any clues will help. I know that somebody was helping him, giving him information.”
Why don’t you also mention that lady in the shades who picked you up in the expensive SUV and told you she was a friend of your uncle?
But again, another voice, or maybe not a voice, but a feeling or premonition prevents me from saying anything.
This guy across from me seems trustworthy enough.
But I need more time to make sure.
That woman, the movie-star lady who gave me a ride and directions to the clearing in the woods on New Year’s Eve, said she wasn’t sure where Uncle Robert went. Nobody seems to know.
“I’ll keep looking around,” I say. “But what should I look for?”
“Names. Addresses. Details. He just disappeared.”
“Do you think—?”
I don’t want to finish the statement because uttering it seems wrong.
I want to ask if Jared thinks his father might be dead.
He nods, glances around. There is only one other patron in this restaurant, an older guy eating his breakfast and reading the paper. Nothing too suspicious.
“I think that if he’s alive he’s in trouble. Maybe he’s like me, hiding. I don’t know. I just know that if he’s still alive and can come back to this town, he’ll do it. And he’ll contact you.”
“Why me? Why not my mom?”
I receive another hard look from the guy across from me. “Would you contact your mother?”
Does he know about my mom’s condition, about her state of mind?
“I don’t know,” I say.
“If my father is going to reach out to anybody, it’s going to be you.”
18. The Discovery
This place feels cold.
Maybe it’s me and my imagination. But my skin is not making this up. I can feel the prickles all over my body as I step through the doors into the large foyer. A voice keeps telling me to avoid the creepy pastor at all costs, to sprint and get out of there if I see him coming. But of course I don’t always heed my voices, and there he is, the guy with the frosted and spiked hair, zeroing in on me with his beady eyes behind the black-frame glasses.
I freeze, both my legs and the half smile on my lips.
I’m not fooling anybody with that look. I’m probably white as a ghost.
“Good morning, son,” he says to me.
“Hi.”
“Is it just you today?”
The way he glances at me really feels weird. Creepy in a way I can’t explain. Not creepy in an axe murderer way, or creepy in a guy-living-next-door-doing-icky-things way.
It’s just …
Creepy.
“Yeah, just me.”
“I’m glad you came, Chris. I really am.”
Then I wait for something new. Something else. Something bizarre. Something like “I will be roasting the cat in five minutes, son” or “I will dedicate the Marilyn Manson song to you.” Something like that.
“The tension will go away eventually,” Pastor Marsh says. “It’s a battle of spirits, Chris. You might not understand this—you might not believe it—but it’s true. Maybe someday I’ll be able to show you.”
I wait for something else, for something more, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he goes to greet someone else.
He’s just like any pastor, you idiot.
But I don’t buy it.
I’m not making this up.
And I’m here this morning because I want some answers.
I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, going with the flow. Ray’s invited me here because he wants me here. Or maybe they want me here. For some reason. So I’m here.
Maybe I’ll discover that this church is really covering a secret network of terrorists that oh yeah also happen to be undead.
I stop my ridiculous thoughts and go to find a restroom. I see a set of wide steps going downstairs. Couples and families are walking up and down them. I follow suit, curious.
And going with the flow.
There is nothing sinister or even mildly strange in the church basement. A large hallway opens up to two more, where there are rooms for the nursery and for Sunday school or whatever they call it. Dad brought me to a few churches like this in Illinois. Once I sat in a big, open room that had several hundred high school students singing and praying and hanging out. I felt really out of place and told my dad afterward that I wasn’t about to go back.
If only you could have known what would await you in Solitary.
I find a restroom and then get turned around when I walk out of it. Instead of finding the steps, I find a door that leads down another hallway. This one is different. There are no tables with pamphlets and sign-up sheets. No paintings and crafts from kids adorning the walls. No pictures or friendly messages like “God Is Love” or pictures of Noah and his big boat. This hallway is stark, even with the lighting. There is one door at the end of it.
For a minute I consider going back. I know I’m not heading the right way.
But what’s behind this door?
I’m curious, and I’m safe because I’m not a cat. Right?
I get to the door and try the handle. It opens easily.
For a brief second, as my eyes see nothing but darkness in the room in front of me, I picture figures in robes standing in the dead of night.
Stop it, Chris.
It’s very cold inside. I take a breath and can taste the musty air, as if nobody has stepped foot inside here in a while.
I move to the edge of the doorway and feel against the wall. Nothing. Then I try the other wall and find a light switch. Dim fluorescent lights fill the space before me in a strained glow.
It’s a large room, apparently used for storage, though the first thing I see isn’t extremely comforting.
It’s a long black coffin.
I do a double take, thinking it’s just my eyes playing a trick on me. But no, it’s really a coffin, placed on some kind of stand that looks like an antique.
Okay, enough seen, now it’s time to go bye-bye.
The door closes behind me.
I look around with wonder and fascination and quite a bit of fear.
I suppose the stuff in this room could be found in a church anywhere, though I’ve never heard of keeping a spare coffin on hand, but then again it all feels just a tad bit off.
There are several thick wooden pulpits all in a row. A painting on its side, about as big as I am, that depicts what looks like a couple being interrogated by an angel. A bunch of chairs, all different types from different years. Some instruments.
What is that?
Beyond the coffin in the dim light of the corner of this room is some kind of—
Is that a statue?
I squint my eyes and try to make it out.
I think of crazy Aunt Alice who Mom and I visited, and remember that mannequin sitting in her living room.
This isn’t a mannequin or a statue. This is more of a wax figure.
How do you know it’s not real?
But the hands are outstretched and not moving and it looks exactly like Pastor Marsh.
I laugh. Who would make a wax figure of the pastor? And why?
I step closer to the thing. It’s standing in the corner, the arms firmly in place
as if he’s making a point, the smile just like the one I saw a few minutes ago, the black glasses the same.
I inch forward a little more, expecting to see the smile bend or the hands shift.
Get out of here, Chris.
I reach the thing and touch it, expecting to feel warm skin. But it’s just hard plastic or whatever the material is.
I study it, trying to see if this is some kind of joke, wondering why someone would go to the trouble of making this.
Behind me something shifts.
Then I hear a sucking sound, and I turn and see motion behind me. A few feet away, the top of the coffin is open—
And that’s when I bolt without seeing or hearing anything else.
My shirt gets stuck on something, and I howl because I half expect it to be the wax figure grabbing me. But it’s just a coat rack.
The sucking sound, it’s someone gasping it’s someone choking desperate for air.
I reach the door and tear out of the room without shutting off the light. By the time I reach the end of the hallway, I try to get composed and calm.
But I’m soaked in sweat and probably look like a possessed man.
I go back into the bathroom and close the door to a stall and stand there for a few minutes, breathing in and letting my heart slow down and shaking my head in disbelief.
19. The End of the Road
This road is called Heartland Trail. I wonder if the founders were playing a practical joke with that one. Or if it has a deeper, more sinister meaning.
Or maybe it’s just another street name.
I’m walking to warm myself as I head away from the church, away from the pastor and the greeters and the music and the smiles and whatever the heck I just saw downstairs in the storage room. I’m walking down Heartland Trail, the opposite way from where it comes in through the forest off the main road. If I were forced at gunpoint to show on a map exactly where I was, I’m pretty confident the gun would end up going off. I don’t know if Heartland Trail leads to anything other than a dead end. But I don’t want to chance heading the other way and being picked up by someone asking me why I’m leaving.
The road drops away from the cleared-out section of trees and the hill the church stands on. Soon I find myself following the road through dense forest again, leafless trees that are massive and ancient looking.
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