Darkness My Old Friend

by Lisa Unger

  Jones looked at Jolie. “I know your father.”

  “Good for you.”

  Jones raised amused eyebrows at the girl, turned that assessing stare on her. Bethany was happy to watch the girl squirm after a moment and avert her tough-girl glare to the ground. She looked dirty-dirty under her nails, her hair unwashed, stains on her coat. Who was taking care of this kid?

  “I just wanted to show them what I saw yesterday,” Willow said from the car. She’d rolled down the window.

  “What did you see?” asked Jones. No one seemed to question who he was or what right he had to be asking questions. Even Bethany found herself deferring to his natural air of authority. In the car on the way over, Henry had told her that Jones Cooper was a retired detective from the Hollows Police Department, that he was a part-time PI now. She thought she remembered Dr. Cooper saying something about that. He looked the part, especially now that he was asking questions.

  Bethany told Jones about Willow’s encounter in the woods, about Michael Holt returning her phone and his search for the mine shaft. Jones watched her with keen interest. What she was saying meant something to him; she had no idea what.

  “Of course, now I regret ever telling her what he told me,” Bethany said. “I should have known better.”

  Jones gave her an understanding nod, a low chuckle. “Kids.”

  “Can we go?” said Jolie. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We were going to get Willow back for the late bus. It just took us longer than we thought. There’s nothing back there anyway. It was a big waste of time.”

  Bethany heard Willow roll up the window; she turned to see Willow looking angry and sullen in the passenger seat. When she turned back, she noticed Cole staring at Willow and Jolie watching him watch Willow. Uh-oh, thought Bethany with a thud of dread in her belly. The trouble here has just begun.

  chapter fifteen

  That day, a lifetime ago now, had started like any other day. That’s what Eloise always marveled at. In her life before, there was nothing to indicate that she’d been marked to live the life she was living now. She had been an ordinary girl, born to ordinary working-class parents. She’d married her high-school sweetheart, Alfred Montgomery. She worked as a receptionist at a trucking company, while Al earned his degree at community college. Then she happily gave up her job when her first daughter was born.

  Alfred was a high-school math teacher; he never made much. But for the way they lived, it always seemed like enough. It wasn’t like it is now, where everyone needs to live like a celebrity to be happy. They were just happy; they didn’t know another way to be. She didn’t have any angst about staying home with her kids. That’s what her mother had done. That’s what she wanted to do. Why would she want to punch a clock and sell her time to a company while someone else took care of her daughters? What was so hard about making meals and cleaning house, coloring and singing the ABCs? What was so great about having a career? She never understood all that. The mommy wars? How sad.

  “Alfie, did you remember your lunch?”

  “Yes, yes. Got it.” A quick wave. She could tell by his wrinkled brow that his mind was already on the day ahead. The girls were already in the car. Emily had her headphones on. Amanda had her nose in a book.

  This is what she remembered about that morning. Those words hanging on the air that was cool but with an edge of warmth that promises spring. She remembered how he looked back up at her with a smile, embarrassed that his words might have seemed short to anyone but she who knew him so well.

  “Thank you, darling,” he said. “Yes, I have it.”

  “That’s better.”

  Alfie. Al to everyone else except to Eloise and her mother-in-law, Ruth. They alone still called him Alfie, remembering the shy, nerdy boy who was always kind and never picked on by the jocks because there was something to him, wasn’t there? Something tough beneath those wire-rimmed glasses. Instead they came to ask for help with their algebra.

  And it should have been that, the three of them, her husband and two daughters, off to school. Except.

  “Oh, no! I need the car,” she called.

  “What?” he said. “Why?”

  “I have my appointment later this morning. Darn it all. Just give me a minute.”

  They only ever had the one car. He worked fifteen minutes from the house. If she needed the car, she brought him to work, the kids to school, and picked them all up again at the end of the day. She did that maybe a couple times a week, so she could do the shopping or run errands. Or go to the doctor.

  “Hurry, Eloise. I have papers to grade this morning before class.”

  Ten minutes changed her life. She was tempted to say destroyed, ended, ruined, wasted… something like that. But no, it wasn’t so. Alfie’s life ended. Emily’s life ended. Her adored and adoring husband. Her pretty, smart, quirky, funny, kind little girl who always smiled even when she was sad. Eloise was left behind with Amanda, her serious, loving, introverted, brilliantly creative younger daughter. The two of them least likely to get back up and live again somehow were left behind to do just that. The two of them who were most likely to want to die for the loss of the others were forced to go on together.

  Because Eloise fretted and Alfie laughed it all off. Emily acted out and slept like a log while Amanda quietly worried, lying awake in bed, tiptoeing into the master bedroom to sleep beside her father. It shouldn’t have been the two of them left to hold each other up. But it was. After the accident the world went quietly gray. Eloise didn’t know how to put the color back in the sky, not for herself, not even for Amanda.

  Eloise was in a coma for six weeks, while her husband and daughter both passed and were buried without her. Amanda, who suffered the least of the physical injuries, was cared for by her grandmother, Ruth. When Eloise thought about those six weeks, she hated herself. How could she just lie there, leaving Emily and Alfie to pass without her by their sides? Leaving Amanda all alone with that terrible fear and crushing grief? How could she? It was an unforgivable negligence of duty.

  And then, a few months later, the visions came. Amanda was back in school, doing as well as could be expected. Eloise had taken on some cleaning and baby-sitting jobs offered by neighbors. At first they were pity jobs; Eloise knew that. But then her reputation grew-she was good with children, an excellent housekeeper. They would make ends meet fairly well, with Alfie’s life insurance, his pension, and the money they’d already managed to save. Eloise always made sure she was home when Amanda got home, that dinner was in the oven and all the lights in the house were on. It was the least she could do. She knew that it was not nearly enough.

  It was one of those afternoons, while she waited for the bus to pull up, that she was first struck. That’s what it felt like, a blow to the head. A blow that changed the channel she was receiving, from what was around her to something that was elsewhere-another place, another time, another person.

  Labored, panicked breathing. Dark. The sound of dripping water echoing off stone. And then a horrible keening scream, Help, help, help me! It was a loop, replaying over and over. She didn’t know how long.

  She became conscious again to find herself on the floor with Amanda hovering over her, pale and terrified.

  “Mom,” said Amanda. Her voice was just a whisper. “Mom.”

  Eloise struggled up, struggled to shake off her disorientation. This was the last thing Amanda needed right now.

  “Honey, I’m fine. I skipped lunch. I must have fainted.” Eloise tried for a self-deprecating smile, but she couldn’t shake the vision or the fear. What the hell had just happened to her?

  Amanda stared at Eloise with wide eyes, her carbon copy as Alfie always said. But no, she wasn’t that. She was more beautiful, smarter, and kinder than Eloise could ever have dreamed of being. In her slender, pale face, in her stormy eyes, Eloise saw all their grief and sadness, all their terrible loss. And something else: a simmering anger, a growing rage. Amanda was too young to know how hard and unfair the world
could be; she’d suffered too much pain for her fifteen years. And something inside, the child who’d been asked to grow up too fast, was furious.

  “I’m okay. Sweetie. Look at me. I’m fine.”

  Outside, the wind chimes were wild. She heard the cooing of the mourning doves that had come to live in the eaves. She pulled Amanda in close and clung to her, feeling her daughter’s arms wrap around her middle and hold on tight.

  What had happened to her? Most anyone would question her sanity, would immediately imagine posttraumatic stress disorder or some kind of psychotic break. And, of course, she had considered these things. (The grim diagnoses, the candy-colored rainbow of pills, would all come later.) But even then she knew. She knew she hadn’t lost her mind. She was Alice, slipping down the rabbit hole into some other world, a place she’d never even imagined until she was there.

  Now she had the Internet, the ubiquitous web of information that linked the whole universe together. Now, when she had the visions, she sat down at her computer and started typing in key words like missing women or missing girl. If she’d heard a particular bird chirping in her vision or saw a certain type of plant or leaf, heard an accent or a different language, she’d use that. But that took years, decades of instruction and practice to be so mindful in her episodes. At first she was just reeling, terrified, taking on the emotion, the terror. She couldn’t think straight; it took hours to get her equilibrium back. Back then she had to wait for the news at six and eleven, hope that whatever she’d seen had made it onto the national broadcast. Back then there wasn’t even cable, no twenty-four-hour world news channels at the click of a remote.

  She couldn’t shake it that first night. And after Amanda went to bed, she turned on the news and watched. She couldn’t have said why she did this. But she knew she must. And there it was, a missing girl in Pennsylvania. There was a giant manhunt, a weeping mother begging anyone with information to come forward. She’s in a well. If you don’t call now, it will be too late. She’s dehydrated and cold. She won’t survive the night. It wasn’t a voice-and it was a voice. It was a knowledge that leaked into her consciousness from the air. It had a particular sound-and it didn’t.

  She picked up the phone and called the hotline number.

  A young woman answered. “Do you have information relating to Katie?”

  “I think I do.”

  “Would you like to give your name?”

  “No.” She said it too quickly. She knew she sounded like a crackpot or someone with something to hide. Possibly she was both.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve had a vision.” Eloise was shaking from her core. She couldn’t keep it out of her voice. It was more like a shiver, as if she were freezing from the inside out. Adrenaline was pulsing through her.

  “A vision.” It was the first time she heard that particular tone-disbelief, mixing with annoyance, mingling with hope. She would hear it so many, many more times after that.

  “Katie is in a well. She has fallen. She’s cold and dehydrated. She won’t make it through the night. She’s not far from her home. I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m just asking you to check.”

  “Okay.”

  “She’s wearing jeans and sneakers.” Eloise had had no awareness of this in her vision. Wasn’t even sure why she was saying it now. “And a long-sleeved T-shirt, green and white. It says ‘Daddy’s Girl’ on it.” She didn’t even know how she knew it. But as she spoke, she was certain it was true.

  There was only silence on the line. She heard a muffled voice, someone speaking, a hand covering the phone.

  “Hello?” There was a male voice on the line now. “This is Detective Jameson. Can you repeat to me what you just told the hotline operator?”

  She repeated the information.

  “You need to hurry. Please,” she said when she was done. She could still hear his voice as she hung up the phone. She didn’t have anything else to say, was unwilling to give her name. She was too naïve to know they had already traced her call, that the hotline was set up for that.

  When the phone was in its cradle, she felt a shuddering sense of relief. Only when she felt it did she realize the terrible low buzz of anxiety she’d been suffering. Then she looked up to see Amanda standing in the doorway to the living room.

  “Is it true?” she asked. “Is that what happened today?”

  Amanda came to sit beside her on the couch. She wore one of her sister’s nightgowns. Amanda had been sleeping in Emily’s pajamas since her sister died. It makes me feel close to her. Eloise didn’t mind it. She liked seeing Emily’s things animated, as if she were still with them. Eloise hadn’t touched even one of Alfie’s belongings-his razor, his toothbrush, his slippers under the nightstand. It was as if Emily and Alfie were still here as long as those things remained. Those mundane items tingled with their energy. Even though most days she was just wading through a hip-deep swamp of grief, the sight of something that Alfie or Emily had touched could make her smile.

  “I think so. I needed to call. I know that.”

  Amanda considered her mother in that grave way she had. “What if you’re wrong?”

  “But what if I’m right?” The answer to that was scarier. This was acknowledged between them without words.

  They sat in the quiet dark. The television was on with the sound down, casting its strobe about the room. If Alfie and Emily were there, they’d both be chattering and grilling her about all the details. There would be no quiet, knowing acceptance of the bizarre. Both of them would be skeptical, playing devil’s advocate. But they weren’t there. And somehow Eloise knew if they were, this wouldn’t have happened.

  “It’s not fair. It’s so not fair. None of it,” Amanda said.

  Eloise didn’t know if Amanda was talking about Alfie and Emily, or the vision Eloise had had, or that there was a girl fallen in a well whom no one could find. She suspected that she meant all of it. And she was so right.

  “No. Life’s not fair. We just do our best. Okay? We have each other.”

  “For now.”

  Amanda was too smart to be mollycoddled.

  But Eloise said anyway, “Forever. We’ll be together forever. All of us.”

  Even though she didn’t know if that was true, that’s what she said. She knew they were promised nothing. Now was the only gift anyone was guaranteed to receive. She envied people who had faith in the stories of religion, faith in a heaven where all good souls were reunited with their loved ones. Life would be so much easier if she could believe in all that, so much easier to explain to her daughter. But she didn’t have that brand of faith.

  That night they slept together in Eloise’s bed the way they had since she came home from the hospital. She slept well that night for the first time. She didn’t wake with pain in her back or her hip or her neck as she often did. She didn’t need any medication to get through the night. Amanda slept, too. No nightmares where she experienced the horrible crash over and over, even though neither of them could remember what happened after Alfie pulled from the driveway. Neither of them saw the tractor-trailer that glanced off their car when the driver fell asleep at the wheel and drifted into oncoming traffic. Neither of them remembered rolling five times to be stopped by a great oak tree. Mercifully, neither of them remembered a thing. Except poor Amanda, in her dreams.

  In the kitchen the next morning, they turned on the television to watch The Today Show, each of them pretending that they both weren’t waiting to hear about the missing girl. As soon as the television came to life, they saw the footage of little Katie being lifted from the well on a rescue stretcher, her parents running to her. And Eloise felt joy. Real joy. A thing she’d been sure she’d never feel again. And she felt this until Amanda turned to her.

  “Is this why He took them?”

  “Who? Took who?”

  “Is this why God took Dad and Emily?”

  “Amanda-” She didn’t know what to say.

  “Don’t you think that’s why? Ma
ybe it’s them telling you what they see. You know-from the other side.”

  Amanda’s eyes were welling with tears. “Do you think, Mom? Maybe?”

  “I don’t know, honey. I don’t understand what happened to me yet.”

  “But it’s possible, right? Emily always wanted to help people, right? She was such a good person.”

  “That’s true.”

  “That would be something good, right?” And then her daughter’s face fell into pieces and she started to cry. And Eloise went to her, and they clung to each other weeping in a way they hadn’t together. It was cleansing, washing over and through them. As they stood there like that, the phone started ringing. After that it never really stopped ringing.

  But that was a hundred years ago, or so it felt. Jones Cooper had left, and Eloise was online, searching for information on current missing women. Oliver sat contentedly on her lap. And although it was a bit of a nuisance to have him there-she had to lift up her elbows awkwardly to reach the keyboard over his ample frame-she didn’t have the heart to move him. She cruised the usual news sites, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The Amber Alert site had been a big help in recent years. But today nothing was jogging her frequency; she remained stubbornly tuned in to the present.

  Lots of times, after a powerful vision like the one she’d had yesterday, she’d cruise those sites and see a face she recognized. Then she might get another vision. She hoped for that to happen, that it might be someone else. Maybe it was Marla Holt, the woman she’d seen running. She’d assumed it was, and Ray seemed to think so, too. But maybe not. For whatever reason, Eloise really didn’t want it to be. She hadn’t wanted this case, had tried to convince Michael to let his mother go. But he wouldn’t hear her. Something powerful was driving him. She had a bad feeling about all of it. Scrolling through the faces of the missing, though, she didn’t see anyone she recognized.

  She visited the sites daily. Sometimes later on she’d get a vision or hear something, as if the Internet could connect her to the energy that gave her her peculiar abilities. Then she’d make a proactive call to the authorities. More these days than in the beginning, they worked with her. She had a reputation now. Plus, the whole psychic thing wasn’t such an oddity; it was part of the public consciousness. People thought that it was possible, were more open to it. Occasionally they gave her a hard time, were very rude. She didn’t care. She just did what she had to do.