Where the Dead Sit Talking

by Brandon Hobson

  The swing set was outlined in a strange armature of blue light. Outside in the elements of the winter night, I was drowsy and sensitive to everything around me: the moonlight, the chill, the rustle of trees in the wind, the vast darkness that stretched past the yard into the woods. I sat on the cold seat of the swing and gripped the chains, where a fringe of frost gathered and made my hands even colder. Slowly I began swinging myself back and forth, kicking my feet as I swung higher and higher, and soon I was swinging as high as I could. The swing was squeaking and my head buzzed.

  I’m not sure how long I kept swinging that night, but thinking back it seems like only an instant. I remember feeling overwhelmed with joy and secrecy, as if the whole world was asleep, and I was alone in the country, the only person, elated. When I came to a stop, I walked through the yard drowsily and slipped back inside. I locked the sliding door and quietly made my way upstairs, stepping lightly through the hall and back into my room, where George was still sleeping with his mouth open. I walked over to him and looked down at him. He was sleeping really heavily, I could tell. I wanted him to jolt awake and felt a strange thrill at the thought of scratching him or grinding my thumb into his face. I started to reach for his mouth but stopped myself.

  Back in my bed, I breathed heavily and my heart raced. Soon I grew sleepy again. I saw a grainy shape flash across the ceiling. I saw patterns of light that looked like small children dancing on the dark walls.

  The next day when George and I returned home from school, Agnes was sitting on the couch. “Rosemary’s not home,” she said. “She hasn’t come home and she doesn’t work today.”

  “Do you have her work schedule?” George asked.

  “I know she doesn’t work on Wednesdays.”

  We were all silent a moment, and I could tell they were both worried. “It could be trouble,” George said. “But maybe not. But probably so.”

  “It’s nothing to worry about right now,” Agnes said. “We had an argument. Actually, she and Harold had an argument. It doesn’t matter what it was about.”

  “Maybe she’s in the woods drawing,” George said.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I shouldn’t have said anything, I guess.”

  “We’ll go to the woods,” I said.

  “Follow the trail north if you go,” Agnes said. “George knows where it is. I know she walks that way sometimes. She has before.”

  “North,” I said.

  “The trails lead down a hill. She goes down there to paint sometimes. You have to be careful if you’re with George.”

  I looked at George, who was rocking back and forth, nervous. I was damaged in spirit, more so than George. I could tell he didn’t want to go. It was freezing outside, but nothing was coming down and there was still plenty of daylight left.

  “George gets nervous in the woods,” Agnes said. “But you need to go, George, and see if you can find Rosemary.”

  He agreed, and after he put on his coat, George and I went out and walked north from the house, past the creek and into the woods, through the fierce cold wind. The trees around us were silent and motionless. George lagged behind, stopping for a moment to brace himself against the bark of a tree, and I had to turn around and go back to him.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “You’re too cold? It isn’t so bad.”

  “It’s not the cold,” he said. “It’s just that maybe I should wait here while you go on.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like the hill ahead. I don’t go down it.”

  He looked frightened all of a sudden. He stood with his back to the tree, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat. I didn’t keep questioning it. I’d learned soon enough not to keep questioning such things with George.

  So I walked on, through the trees, and followed the hill until I realized there was another hill across the way that was too steep for me to try to climb. All around me were twisting branches, dead brush, patches of old snow on the ground. I knelt down and took a cigarette from my coat. There was movement nearby and my heart jumped. A rabbit ran away. I lit the cigarette and exhaled a long mixture of smoke and cold air. I smoked the cigarette and thought about what I was doing, sitting alone at the bottom of a hill in the woods, looking for Rosemary. Why had it come to this, after all, as though her life depended on my saving her from something or someone? What was I doing here?

  I flicked the cigarette into the dirt and started back up the hill I’d just come down. Sunlight streamed down through massive trees. In the cold wind I trudged through the brush until I saw George standing at the same tree. When he saw me he started waving his arm. I waved back. Once I reached him he told me he’d heard a voice calling his name and asked if it was mine.

  “It sounded like it came from far away,” he said. His mouth was quivering from the cold. “I wasn’t sure, I thought it was you.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said. “You’re sure you heard someone calling your name?”

  “They called my name.”

  “Maybe it was the devil,” I said. I leaned down and picked up a stick. Then I threw it to the ground and started stomping on it with my foot.

  George seemed frightened, even more than before. He stepped away from me, his shoes crunching in the twigs and brush, and slowly his expression changed and I saw tears gather in his eyes. I wasn’t sure what was happening. I didn’t know whether I should try to cheer him up or calm him down. He stepped backward, watching me. The silence hung there in the air before us, when I suddenly realized George was afraid of me.

  “Let me go home,” he said.

  “All right,” I said. “All right, we’ll walk back to the house.”

  But he pulled himself further into his coat, lowering his head, stepping backward until he fell and cowered against the gnarled, twisted root of a tree. I was afraid he would start screaming.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “Everything’s fine. Hey, George, let’s go back to the house.”

  He wouldn’t move. He remained in this position, not looking at me as I tried to talk to him. Soon I gave up and sat down across from him. We sat there for half an hour.

  Finally we heard footsteps crunching and Agnes arrived. She was able to calm George down enough so that he could stand and walk back to the house. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I explained everything to Agnes on the walk back.

  When we arrived back inside, Rosemary was still gone.

  That night it took an hour for Agnes to calm George’s anxiety about going into the woods. I had no idea he would be so shaken by it, but Agnes was patient about trying to help me understand.

  “You can’t take it personally,” she said. “There are some things in his past that can be triggered. It doesn’t matter now, of course. But it’s good for all of us to know for future reference. It’s not anyone’s fault.”

  George was sitting cross-legged on the floor by the fireplace, wrapped in an afghan. He rocked back and forth as though swaying to slow music in his head. I apologized to everyone. I didn’t even know what I was apologizing for, but my head was hurting and I needed to be by myself, which is what I told them.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Agnes said.

  I asked not to be disturbed and went upstairs to be alone in my room. I stopped at Rosemary’s door in the hall and picked the lock. I already had a story that I was looking for a specific drawing she did in case someone came upstairs and caught me. I went to her closet, where there was hosiery on the floor. I picked up a pair of black hose, wadded it up and slipped it into my pocket. I don’t recall why, exactly, I did this—I knew I wouldn’t wear it; maybe I wanted to keep an article of her clothing close to me, and a pair of hose seemed arbitrary enough that maybe she wouldn’t miss it, like a dirty sock.

  I pulled off my T-shirt, then my pants. I stood in her closet in my underwear, running my hands over her clothes: her skirts and j
eans, her shirts, her sweaters and jackets. In the closet mirror I saw myself standing there, thin as a rail, the burns on my face swelled in the reflection like a bad disease. I was not attractive, was neither handsome nor charming in any way. Had I tried on any of her clothes I would’ve been disappointed, because I would never have a body like Rosemary’s.

  Standing there, I considered pulling all her clothes from their hangers and covering myself with them like blankets. I wanted to sleep on the floor of her closet, among the clothes and shoes and tiny boxes and loose hangers on the floor. Such a small space brought safety, comfort. I recall a few things specific to this moment. I recall the dizzying atmosphere in the space, how beautiful and isolated and psychedelic it all felt, as if I were living inside the body of Ziggy Stardust or some obscure coke-snorting, heroin-shooting glam rock star from the seventies. I recall the urge to vomit and thrust myself into the wall. I recall the desire to become someone else completely. I wanted to put on those clothes, then immediately had an impulse to tear them from the hangers and rip them to shreds, stretch the fabric and stomp on them like fire. I felt high, but I wasn’t high. Slowly, then, I pulled on my shirt and jeans. I left the room, locking the door as I closed it.

  That night we stayed up late waiting for Rosemary to come home. At almost midnight, as I was going to bed, I asked George why Harold and Agnes didn’t call the police.

  “She’s left before,” he said. “It happened once last year. She left for a day and came back. Maybe they think she’ll be back tomorrow.”

  I wished I knew what she was going through. It was all so confusing back then. That night I dreamt of my mother, whose hands were cold and shaking as she lifted vegetables from the sink. In my dream I stood in the Troutts’ kitchen, watching my mother clean vegetables and wash dishes with a sponge. Neither of us spoke. I looked at an open window, where a flock of blackbirds flew in and perched themselves all around the room—on the curtain rod, on lamps, on the TV set—and I remember watching them as they preened themselves; it was as if something bad was about to happen.

  “Any second now the windows will shatter,” my mother said without looking up.

  In the dream I was unable to speak. Immediately, I began separating the silverware on the kitchen counter. I felt a sense of urgency to separate, one by one, each fork, knife, and spoon. At this point my mother reached for one of the forks and held it out in front of her like a relic, as if it were a work of art she’d created.

  The next day, Liz called on the phone and asked how I was doing. I told her about Rosemary leaving and how we hadn’t heard from her.

  “Sounds like she needs help,” Liz said. “Does her caseworker know?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I’m sure Harold and Agnes called her. But it’s only been a day. It’s just weird that we haven’t heard from her.”

  “That’s not like her, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re worried about her,” she said. “But that’s understandable since you’ve become so close to her. She’s your friend, someone to talk to. She means a lot to you, right? So it doesn’t make any sense why she wouldn’t try to contact you.”

  “I’m starting to wonder if something bad happened,” I said. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Make sure her caseworker knows about it. Maybe the police should know. Has anyone called them?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

  “Go talk to Harold and Agnes about it.”

  Agnes drove us to Nora’s house to see if she was there. We got out of the car and stood looking at the old house, which appeared to be empty and deserted. Trees cast shadows along the street. As we approached their front porch I noticed the rosebushes and thought of Nora falling from the second-story window into them. I had an image of her falling, arms outstretched, tumbling into the bushes, knocked unconscious by the impact. In my mind’s eye Nora seemed so empty, so lifeless. Wind chimes rang solemnly with a gust of wind as we waited at the door after ringing the bell. We waited and waited and no one answered.

  “I don’t even know Nora’s parents,” Agnes said. “How do I not know them? How has this happened?”

  We drove to Farah’s house across the railroad tracks on the west side of town. Farah came to the door wearing black lipstick and a Cure T-shirt.

  “I haven’t talked to her since last week,” she told us.

  “You don’t know where she could be?” Agnes asked.

  “She could be anywhere,” Farah said. “Have you talked to Nora? What about V.J.?”

  “Who’s V.J.?”

  “Oh,” Farah said. “Oh, he’s a guy who plays in a band. I don’t know him. I don’t know how to get in touch with him. Sorry.”

  “Can you call me if you hear anything?” Agnes said.

  “Sure,” she said. “Sure, no problem. Good luck.”

  We drove to the CD Sound Mart, where Rosemary sometimes liked to shop for music. We drove to the lake. We drove to the East Side Mall and asked the girl who worked at the Orange Julius, another friend Rosemary had mentioned. We looked in clothing stores, in shoe stores, in bookstores. We couldn’t find her anywhere in the mall.

  “Someday technology will make it easier to find people,” George said as we rode down the escalator.

  “That’s not likely to happen in our lifetime,” Agnes said.

  As we passed the movie theatre, I saw a poster for Rain Man, starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, and I remembered seeing on the local news that parts of it were filmed in Oklahoma the previous year. “There’s that movie that was filmed in Oklahoma last summer,” I said. “Guthrie or El Reno or somewhere.”

  Agnes and George both looked at the poster as we walked past.

  “Tom Cruise sucks,” George said, staring straight ahead.

  After we got back home, when George went upstairs, I told Agnes about the secret place in the woods where Rosemary had taken me on our bicycles.

  “Where is it?” she asked. “Can you take us there?”

  “I don’t know, I followed her that day and didn’t pay much attention. I can try.”

  “We have to try,” she said.

  When Agnes called for George he decided he would stay there, too tired from all the searching, so it was only Agnes and I in her car. We drove slowly down Comanche Road, down the hill as I looked out the window, trying to find places that looked familiar. All the woods looked the same to me. I saw no clearings, no familiar trails. Then I noticed the low-hanging branch with the pink bandanna tied to it, and I told Agnes to stop.

  “It’s here,” I said, pointing to the trail through the woods.

  She pulled over to the side of the road and looked. “Are you sure?”

  “This is it. I remember the bandanna in the tree. That’s her mark. We have to walk a little ways though.”

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Agnes said. “How far is it?”

  “It shouldn’t take long.”

  We got out of the car and started down the trail. Leaves crunched as we walked, and I found myself walking ahead of Agnes, who walked slowly anyway. I tried not to think about wildlife roaming around, though I knew in the back of my mind they were there, coyotes and bobcats and snakes. I tried to remain focused and alert, a protector to Agnes and even, possibly, Rosemary. We came to the fork in the road and I remembered we had turned left.

  “It’s right up here,” I said, Agnes following behind. I heard crackling noises from her steps and grew worried. I couldn’t see Rosemary anywhere. We came upon the area near the small hill that sloped down to the creek, and there was no sign of anyone.

  “This is the spot,” I said.

  Agnes called out for Rosemary then, which made the woods come alive. I thought I heard sounds from the trees, wind in leaves, the crackle of leaves and branches from small, frightened animals. I hurried to the slope and looked down a
t the creek, but Rosemary wasn’t there.

  “Rosemary!” Agnes called again. We stood in the dim woods, feeling ridiculous, as if she would suddenly appear from under a blanket of leaves, or jump out from behind a tree and laugh at us. That’s how it felt, as if everything were merely a game of hide-and-seek, some prank she’d decided to pull. Yet we both knew this was no game.

  “She’s not here,” Agnes said. “We better head back before it gets dark.”

  We started back, and this time I walked slower, beside Agnes. I thought I saw something dark move in the trees but I didn’t say anything. My mind has always been susceptible to brief flashes of light at night, or movement in dark places. I don’t know how many nights I’ve started to drift off to sleep only to be awakened by some movement in the room, something that dropped from the ceiling or darted across the wall. I’ve never been able to pinpoint whether these things are real or imagined, or what, exactly, it means. As we walked back along the trail that evening, as the sun leaned west and the woods grew darker, I saw things like that, movement in the trees.

  “It’s getting dark,” I said, but Agnes didn’t answer, and I knew she was deep in thought about what was happening to Rosemary. I assumed she was more afraid than she was letting on.

  When we got back home, Harold was standing on the porch. We hoped he had good news.

  “She’s not back,” he said as we got out of the car.

  “You haven’t heard anything?” Agnes asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Did anyone even call?”

  “No.”

  We went inside where it was warm. Agnes made hot chocolate and we all sat at the kitchen table. Harold took a sip and told me he was proud of me.

  “You’ve shown a lot of courage,” he said. “Taking the time to help look for Rosemary. That’s a good thing. Are your headaches any better?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Maybe we should have the doctor check it out,” he said.

  He looked out the window. We all sat quietly at the table, sipping our hot chocolate and staring out the window into darkness.