The Disappearance

by Gillian Chan

  Then I heard the voice again—that rusty, whispering voice—but this time, I was positive it was coming from Jacob’s bed.

  “Danny killed Jon,” it said. “Danny killed Jon. Something burst in Jon’s head. It didn’t hurt but a second.”

  A convulsive shiver shook my whole body. Jacob was talking. He was talking about things he shouldn’t know about. I could buy that I might have shouted Jon’s name out in my sleep, but not Danny’s. I can hardly bring myself to say his fucking name. Saying it, or rather shouting it, to my mother had physically hurt, like a lump of gristle was being ripped from my throat. Now, I felt like I was paralyzed and all I could do was lie there while that strange little voice said these things over and over again. I should have been scared, and maybe deep down I was, but most of all I wanted the voice never to stop.

  Speaking was difficult, but finally, I forced out some words. “How do you know that?” I asked. “How can you say that and sound so sure? How do you know about Jon and Danny?” I didn’t think I’d get an answer. Hell, this was Jacob the mute actually talking.

  Jacob’s voice cut off and the only sound left in the room was my ragged breathing.

  I wasn’t going to give up. I kept on repeating my questions, whispering as loud as I dared, and adding, “How do you know about my brother, you little bastard?”

  Finally, I heard his bed creak, and in the dark I sensed movement as he came and stood by the side of my bed.

  “Jon was here,” he said, as casually as I might have said, “It rained today.” He reached out a hand and patted the mattress next to my shoulder. “He sat there and looked at you. Then he told me. He told me about Danny. He’s gone now.”

  I could feel a whirlwind building inside me, a whirlwind of questions, of emotions. The questions poured out, but now Jacob was silent again. There was a strange look on his face. It was only later, when I calmed down and thought about it, that I realized he looked guilty and almost frightened, as if he had done something he shouldn’t have. He skittered away and climbed back onto his bed, but he didn’t return to his usual position. Instead, he curled into a tight little ball, hands clasped protectively over his head, eyes squeezed shut. Nothing I said got any reaction, not even when I went over and shook his shoulders as if I was trying to shake answers out of him. When I saw I was getting nowhere I just stood there looking at him. I hadn’t realized I was crying, but my cheeks were wet and my nose full of snot.

  Jacob remained in that cowering ball, but now he lowered his hands from his head and opened his eyes. He smiled. It was a sweet smile, but it was also a knowing one.

  Then I was scared.

  Chapter Four

  I returned to my bed, but I couldn’t sleep with all the thoughts that were churning inside me. What the hell was going on? Was Jacob telepathic, or psychic in some way? Whatever it was, it scared me shitless.

  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not some wuss who freaks out over horror shows. Hell, my life is one big horror show, with me taking the starring role as monster. I’m not sure that I believe in life after death exactly, everyone going to a happy place or the other place, but I kind of believe that a spirit may hang around, you know, particularly if they . . . shit, I hate even thinking this, let alone saying it, in case I lose it again. . . died violently. It’s okay. People seem to think that ghosts usually haunt a particular place, but I don’t see why that should be so. The kitchen where Jon died means nothing. Mom doesn’t even live in that house now. Why would his spirit want to linger there? I’m where he would want to be: I’m the one thing that was stable in his life, the one person who loved him. Or maybe he was hanging around because in the end I wasn’t able to protect him. If I was making the right connections, then what did Jon want? Was it revenge, or was it that he couldn’t leave?

  I just lay there, scared but thinking. I heard Jacob’s breathing change and knew that he had fallen deeply asleep. Later, near dawn, I tried to make my mind blank to see if I could somehow sense if Jon was there, in our room, but I got nothing, just a headache. By the time the morning came, I had a plan. I had to get Jacob talking, and maybe, just maybe, I could talk to Jon through him, tell him that I had tried, that Danny had been punished.

  I didn’t waste any time. As soon as I heard the gong’s unholy racket, I was on my feet. I positioned myself in front of the bedroom door, figuring that if I disrupted Jacob’s little patterns he might talk to me.

  “Jacob?” I said as he got up off the bed and moved toward the door.

  He didn’t look at me or give any acknowledgment that he had even heard me, but he stopped inches away from me and stared down hard at his feet, watching his toes as he curled and uncurled them.

  “Jacob, last night . . .” It was hard. How do you ask someone if they have been talking to your dead brother? I took a deep breath and tried again. “Last night, you said that Jon told you what happened. Can you talk to Jon all the time?”

  He was breathing heavily, swinging his arms a little. I wondered if he was going to throw a punch at me, or maybe get up enough momentum to try to push me out of the way.

  “Well, can you?”

  He looked up then. Those brown eyes stared straight at me. A little smile quirked his mouth. He took a step forward and I found myself moving out of his way.

  I stayed where I was and listened to the door click shut and the steady patter of Jacob’s bare feet down the corridor.

  I flopped back down on my bed, sat there with my head in my hands. I hadn’t got what I wanted, but I knew now that I registered in Jacob’s world. He had not only looked at me, but he’d also reacted, just a little. This was a start. I wasn’t going to give up.

  It was Wednesday, and what with school, homework, and people milling around, I didn’t get a chance to try again until after dinner. I headed for our room. Jacob usually went up earlier than everyone else. When I came in, he’d typically be lying flat on his back in that weird pose of his, fully clothed.

  That was the one bone of contention that Chaz had with Jacob: his reluctance to change his clothes. Jacob never bothered to put on pajamas or anything at night; he’d just lie down in the clothes he had been wearing all day. It was a major effort to get him to change at all. He washed okay, but after a few days his clothes got that musty smell. It didn’t help that they were often splattered with mud, or sometimes with what looked like food that someone had maybe thrown at him. Chaz didn’t press Jacob too much, but once the clothes reached the point where they were more dirt than cloth, he staged an intervention (boy, have I learned from those social workers who haunt my life). He’d march into our room with a set of clean clothes, hand them to Jacob, and then stand watching him with his arms crossed. Sometimes Jacob wouldn’t move at first, but Chaz was patient and would start chatting to me or do this kind of monologue thing with Jacob that passed for a conversation because it was addressed to Jacob all right—questions about his day, speculation about how he was feeling—but didn’t feature any participation from Jacob at all. This usually worked; after about five minutes, it would become obvious that Jacob had had enough. He would mooch off down the corridor to the bathroom and come back wearing the clean stuff. I didn’t envy Chaz having to take the used clothes down to the laundry.

  Fuck me, wasn’t this the time that Jacob didn’t come up early! I felt like spitting. Rather than go looking for him, I settled down to read, only I wasn’t, not really. I was waiting.

  The little bastard drifted in just before lights-out. He looked scared when he saw me.

  “Jacob, I want to talk to you,” was what I said. Duh! He knew that, and wasn’t that just what I was doing! He was obviously avoiding me.

  No answer.

  His face was blank as he lay down on his bed, carefully stretched his arms out, and stared up at the ceiling, unblinking. I could sense that something was off. His breathing was fast, not slow and regular like usual. He was blinking a lot,
too.

  I wanted to wring his scrawny neck. He was playing me. I was thinking about what to do about it when Chaz rapped on the door and told us that we had five minutes before lights-out. I stomped off to the bathroom, getting rid of some of my frustration by elbowing Matt away from the sink he was using when I got there.

  “Hey,” he protested. “Use one of the other sinks. There’s no one else at any of them.”

  I gave him a look.

  “Why are you like this? I’ve never done anything to you!” Matt sounded plaintive, like I had hurt his feelings.

  I thought this was a bit rich, since he hung out with Paddy, who was even worse than me. “Maybe it’s the company you keep,” was all I said, and took a stutter step toward him, fists raised.

  It was enough. He moved. Sometimes I wonder why I do the stuff I do. Instead of a nice clean sink, I now had to use one covered with a mixture of Matt spit and toothpaste. Lovely.

  When I got back nothing had changed. Jacob was in exactly the same position, staring at the ceiling. I was at a loss. Then it hit me. The only times he had spoken, the room had been in darkness. Flipping the light off, I threw myself down on my bed, pulled up the covers, and waited.

  I waited until all I could hear was the faint rumble of Chaz talking to Luce downstairs. There were no kid sounds at all. The inmates were resting easy in their cages that night.

  “Jacob?” I hated the way my voice sounded so tentative, like I was begging for his attention. Since my voice broke, I’ve perfected a deep growl that serves me well, but it was missing in action.

  He didn’t answer right away, but I heard the rustling of his bed covers as he moved.

  I glanced over and in the dim light that came under the door from the hall I could see that although he was still flat on his back, he had turned his head to one side and was staring at me.

  God, it was spooky. An image of Jon lying on the kitchen floor flashed into my mind. I had to fight down an urge to run from the room and join Chaz and Luce down in the kitchen. “Jacob, you said that Jon talked to you. Who is Jon?”

  I hadn’t really been expecting him to answer, so I couldn’t help gasping when he did.

  The voice was still whispery, but it sounded stronger this time, like he was getting used to talking. “Jon was your brother. Mine was Caspar.” The words came quickly and he winced as he said them, even cowered a little, as if he expected me to hit him. When I just lay there looking back at him, I saw him relax just a little.

  I was so shocked that I couldn’t speak. There were thousands of things I wanted to ask him, but the thoughts and words were whirling so fast that I couldn’t string them together in a way that would make sense.

  In the end, it didn’t matter because old Jacob started up again all on his own. “Jon was like Caspar. He liked stories. Caspar read the best of the two of us.”

  This was edging beyond bizarre. How did he know that about Jon, and what the hell was up with this brother called Caspar? Chaz had said that no one had come forward to claim Jacob even though they’d been searching like crazy for any family he might have had. Nothing could be found about him; Luce said it was almost as if Jacob had just appeared out of thin air. You know how when something spooks you and you feel like if you were a dog the fur on your back would be standing on end? Well, that’s how I was feeling then. Keeping my voice low, because I didn’t want either Chaz or Luce coming in to see what was up, I said, “You’ve been talking to Jon then? Do you see him, too, Jacob?”

  “He watched you when you were asleep. That’s when I saw him.” The matter-of-fact way that Jacob talked about my dead brother was chilling. “I get lonely sometimes so that’s when I talk to them.” He looked around. “I know I shouldn’t—that it’s bad, evil—but sometimes it is good just to hear a voice, to have it answer you. I don’t mean any harm with it.” He sighed. “The only thing I like about this place is that Foda ain’t here to wallop me if he catches me talking to them.”

  I was seriously freaked out now. Jon, I could just about handle, but this talk of them. I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed so I was sitting fac­ing Jacob. It was so I could see him better and, okay, I’ll admit it, so I could make a run for it if I needed to.

  “Who do you mean by them?” I gave the word the same emphasis that Jacob had. I was pretty sure I knew what the answer would be, but I wanted to keep him talking.

  “The dead ones,” he said, his voice flat like he was talking about the kids in the room next to us. “I’ve always seen and talked to them, but my foda don’t like it when I do, not even when they tell me helpful stuff, like when my Grootfod told me where to find his watch that had got lost. Foda tells me that I am not to do this, not ever. That this is the work of the devil, making me think that I can do such a thing. He calls me sick in the head and tells me that he will beat the sickness out of me.” His shoulders hunched up protectively.

  I hardly dared ask my next question. “Are there any of them here now?”

  Jacob laughed, a dry little sound. “No, don’t be silly. I’m talking to you now. I don’t need to talk to anyone else.”

  I don’t know why, but I believed him, and I felt myself relax a little. It was hard, so much to process. Maybe his foda, whoever or whatever he might be, was right—that this was all made up, a sick game Jacob played to make himself seem important. I had to find out. “You said you’d talked to Jon. How do I know that you’re telling the truth, that you just haven’t overheard Chaz and Luce talking?”

  Jacob shifted in his bed. “You believe me?” There was a hopefulness in his tone that was almost painful. He remained silent for almost a minute. “Jon said you’d be suspicious so he told me to tell Mutt that Robin Hood got more candy than Little John.” I saw his face scrunch up, and he sounded petulant and aggrieved. “I asked him what that meant, but he wouldn’t tell me. Will you tell me?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  I don’t know how long I sat there. I think I might have zoned out for a while because by the time I came back into myself, Jacob’s whispers were urgent and more than a little pissed off.

  “Well, do you believe me? I did talk to him. I swear.”

  I could see tear tracks on his face. This puzzled me. Why was it so important to him that I believed him, so important that he was actually crying? Despite all the shit that got thrown his way on a daily basis, his face had always been like stone, like he had no emotions at all.

  “Yeah, Jacob, I believe you.” The funny thing was that I did. Telling it like this is weird, because when I look back none of it makes sense: a boy who never speaks not only suddenly starts talking, but also claims to commune with the dead, and I believed him.

  I took a deep breath. I could feel a shiver starting deep inside me. I had to control it; if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to speak, and I had one more thing to ask Jacob.

  “Jacob, I need to talk to Jon. Can you let me talk to him through you?” Even as I was asking, I shut my eyes and was conscious of holding my breath. I wanted the answer to be “yes” with every fiber of my body.

  “I can’t.” Jacob’s tone was flat. “Jon’s not here anymore. He’s gone.”

  “What?” I could feel my voice getting loud. “I’ve got to tell him that I tried.”

  Jacob straightened his head so that he was no longer looking at me but was staring at the ceiling again. “Jon told me he was going away because I’d told you everything that he needed to say.” His voice was fading as he spoke, as if he had used it all up. “He had to go . . .”

  Jacob might have had more to say but I never heard it. I stood up, bellowing over and over again, “You have to let me speak to him! I’ve got to tell him!”

  Jacob flinched and curled up into a ball again as I got up from my bed. He needn’t have worried; I wasn’t going to hurt him. If he could do what he said he could, then I had to get him to do it again. He
was safe, but I’ll admit I lost it anyway. I felt like I had been offered an amazing gift and then it had been snatched from me. The familiar urge to lash out and hit things washed over me. The drapes came down in one swipe. I shoved the cheap desk across the room, thudding it against the foot of Jacob’s bed. The chair I threw against the wall and watched a huge dent bloom. When I had nothing else to throw, I stood there and howled.

  I didn’t even stop when the door flew open and Chaz and Luce pounded in. Chaz hit the light switch and the brightness hurt my eyes so I scrunched them shut.

  “Mike, Mike.” Luce’s voice was gentle, soothing. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s a nightmare, Luce,” I heard Chaz say. “I swear, he’s having some kind of nightmare. He’s asleep on his feet. Let me deal with him. You get rid of the audience.”

  I didn’t have to open my eyes to know that there would be a semicircle of kids around the doorway, all craning for a better view of what was going down.

  I felt a breeze as Luce moved away. “Are you sure, Chaz?” She was obviously thinking of my performance the day before, when my mother came to visit.

  “Yeah.” Chaz’s breath was close to me as he spoke. “Just check on Jacob, will you?”

  Luce snorted. “It’s weird, he’s not lying flat on his back like he usually does—he’s turned to face the wall—but it looks like he’s sleeping through all of this. Man, is that kid something!”

  Chaz didn’t answer. I could hear him moving around and picking up the things that I had thrown. There was a scraping sound as he dragged the desk back into position. I wanted to stop wailing, but I couldn’t.

  “Mike, it’s all right.” Chaz was whispering almost right in my ear. “You’re dreaming. That’s all it is, a bad dream.”

  I wanted to believe him so badly.

  I felt his hand on my arm, not gripping or pulling, just resting there. That was what did it. The howls stopped, and I found myself sobbing. My knees gave way and I sank to the floor.