You Were Here

by Gian Sardar

  “Intending to come here isn’t the same as being seen here. People set out to go places all the time and get turned around or lost or—things happen. What matters is that no one saw her here, and won’t if they pay us a visit. We deny. We don’t even know who she is. You don’t know who she is.”

  Back and forth they ask as many questions as they can until finally Ketty appears and requests help. At the top of the stairs, by the basement door, lies the girl. Claire stares at the face and vibrant blue eyes stare back, as if seeing, as if accusing, taking in Claire’s face to remember later. Ketty steps in and closes the lids. The gaze is gone. Claire nods, thankful, and then sees the girl’s eyelashes are dark and glistening. Was she crying? She looks away. Beside the arm the flooring is lifted, a little area at the top of the stairs where a dark line of blood has strayed and settled, slick in the space between the linoleum and the wall.

  As Edith and Ketty carry the girl into the basement, Claire goes throughout the house and shuts off all the lights. There. Now the house is sleeping. Nothing happened here tonight.

  39

  Now

  THE SMELL OF THE BASEMENT is at once sweet and musty, and in a beat Abby knows she’ll forever associate this mix with the scent of secrets. The stairs are wooden and have more than a few loose planks, and the walls are old brick, punctuated with dark lines of missing mortar. On either end of the room are exposed lightbulbs, blaring from their sides but sinking the center into darkness, the territory of a mind prone to rebellion. But strangely, with every step the basement becomes less frightening, not more. For once Abby’s not scared, not feeling the ceiling press or the walls tremble. Instead, it’s wonder that holds her upright and calm, as if rather than an old room tucked into the earth she’s standing in a cavern, walls of amethyst. She nods, feeling affirmed, though by what she couldn’t say.

  “Don’t ask me what I’m feeling, because I don’t think I could say.”

  Aidan goes straight to a trunk in the corner of the room, leather straps and brass rivets. Boxes of Christmas decorations line one wall, a collection of wreaths on the top shelf, plastic holly, glittering gold, pinecones dusted in white. By a boxed train set stands a giant nutcracker keeping sentry, angled eyebrows rendering his expression sheepish, as if he knows he’s failed at his job. Without a doubt the VonDeffners have lavish holiday parties with passed silver trays and kids clad in velvet. Outside, the lake would dazzle in flashes of blue and white, the air an edge of cold.

  But still I see the basement, and still I remember. What had her grandmother been trying to forget?

  Aidan’s kneeling at the trunk. “It’s got stickers from all the countries it went through. Gemany, Norway. Can you read this date?”

  Stepping toward him she gets a chill. Not slow, not gradual, but a full-force blast of cold air from a vent.

  Aidan looks up at her. “What?”

  “It just got really cold.” Already she’s looking for the vent, her mind replaying movies in which someone reaches inside, fingertips brushing an old cigar box, a stack of letters. She scans the walls, but there is no vent.

  He steps toward her, arms out as if testing a radius of air. “I don’t feel—” but then he stops. “Right here.” He looks up at the corner of the wall, searching for an explanation. “Maybe there’s something behind these shelves.”

  The shelving unit is bolted to the wall, crammed with boxes and buckets of paint. One at a time he grabs the items, setting them on the floor, revealing inch by inch more brick. With two more shelves to go, his cell phone rings. Just once, then silence. He holds the phone up, searching for reception.

  Abby turns back to the wall. The revealed brick is brighter, having been shrouded in boxes, shielded from time. There’s a tug within her, a shift in energy. Just two more shelves of boxes to go.

  And there, about a foot above the ground, is a small spot in the wall without bricks. It’s all mortar—and barely, just barely, she sees what she thinks is a handprint.

  “Still nothing?” Aidan asks, giving up on a signal. But then he sees it and is kneeling beside Abby, looking closer. “Here.” He turns on the flashlight on his phone.

  The handprint is dark, almost like a shadow, and right above are initials, crudely imprinted into the mortar as if with a stick. WB + EM.

  A tremble within her, something knocked loose. At once Abby knows she’s where she needs to be.

  “He was having an affair,” Aidan says. “What was your grandmother’s last name?”

  “Walters. Same as me. When my dad left, we went back to it. I don’t know who E.M. was. Someone else.” She stares at the initials—a name that will remain a mystery—and feels her eyes sting with tears. And still I remember. A love affair? Why would her grandmother care about a neighbor’s affair? She has the feeling that this is it—but how? A last testament to a love that will remain forever secret. “He must’ve loved her,” she says, and as she says the words, something inside her splits, a pain so deep it oddly feels like relief.

  But Aidan doesn’t seem to notice. He’s reaching forward and pressing his hand to the spot where long ago someone else had done the same. Fingertips slide into the grooves, the palm snug.

  “He must’ve really loved her,” Abby says again.

  And though she thinks he heard, he keeps his hand in place, eyes closed, as if listening for a different voice.

  40

  Then

  DEAD CENTER IN THE TUNNEL is the hole. Shallow, but deep enough. The girl is covered in the towel she’d had with her, a towel that’s red now, near the abdomen, a few twigs and crumbs of leaves evidence that at one point it was laid on the ground. Scattered beams line the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. Roots jut like gnarled bird claws, and the light from the lanterns sends long shadows across the dirt floor. Claire remembers that it was William’s father who’d insisted on the tunnel’s existence, yet he himself had been reluctant to enter. The War, William once told her. He was with the tunnelers in Belgium for a bit. They fought one another with explosions. To this day there are bodies in the earth.

  Another one now.

  Claire looks for the purse the girl was carrying, and when she can’t find it, the answer comes to her in a sudden recognition that the furnace is on. She glances back at the newly installed Homart Indestructo, currently sending heat and the pungent scent of a dead woman’s possessions into the house.

  She is dead, isn’t she?

  Claire doesn’t want to, but forces herself to lift the towel. The girl’s eyes are still closed. Her lips shut tight, never to open again. Someone has folded her hands atop her chest, a prayerful posture Claire has always associated with the dead.

  “It’ll disintegrate,” Edith says, pointing to the towel that Claire lets fall. “With time. Just about everything will.”

  Claire just nods. Over the girl’s body they say a few words, apologies, prayers for forgiveness, before Claire and Edith hurry from the tunnel, eyes to the basement floor as they hear the shovel’s scraping scoops followed by the soft fall of dirt. Over and again.

  When it’s done, Ketty emerges and Claire sees what look like tears on her cheeks, though as soon as she speaks, Claire decides it’s perspiration.

  “Help me,” Ketty says, motioning to the cabinet. “We use this tonight and then brick.”

  All three women push the cabinet to the opening of the tunnel, blocking it like a mouth silenced, words swallowed within. Then it’s time for Edith to go home, time to pretend it’s just another night of staying up a bit too late, gossip and bridge and brandy.

  When the back door shuts, exhaustion coils around Claire, weighting her steps. She makes it upstairs and falls headlong onto the made bed. Too tired to stand up again, she grabs the blanket from the other side of the bed and pulls it over her, catching a glimpse of the clock in the process. It’s almost three AM. She feels as though she’s been awake for days. Illogica
lly, the thought that she’ll wake up tomorrow and none of this will have happened races through her mind. Is it possible? She’s so tired, maybe her memories are not correct. Maybe she’s remembering a nightmare. Maybe she’s still asleep. The quilt is rough against her neck, her dress tight around her waist, but she feels nothing but unctuous delirium as finally, at long last, she sinks into sleep.

  Minutes pass. Maybe minutes. She jerks awake. Heart pounding, she sits up in bed, the room still dark. Her breath is shallow. After a bit it steadies, and she listens to the silence. Yet seconds ago she heard it, she knows she did—the sound of a foot pounding in the dirt. Shuddering vibrations. That was what woke her.

  Ketty checked, said the mirror no longer fogged, that there was no trace of a heartbeat, those blue eyes still closed. This—the panic—is what she’s always gone through. The same noises in the night that have bumped her awake since she was a child, since her doll Ellie was buried in the basement. Buried in the basement. A foretelling, she sees now. She looks at the clock—only fifteen minutes have passed since she lay down, and yet she’s wide awake, adrenaline coursing through her.

  The truth will be her punishment, she decides. Tomorrow she will tell William. She has to. It will destroy her marriage, her life, but if the girl can’t have him, neither can Claire. Penance. The slightest justice.

  Again she tries to close her eyes, hopeful the plan of action might allow for some sleep—but there it is, waiting and relentless, the feeling that the ceiling is lowering. Faster and faster it descends till it’s pressing, pushing her deep into the mattress and the floorboards and the basement and the soil, pressing harder and harder until she’s so deep within the earth that no one could hear her scream.

  The next morning, William wakes to a lifting dark. The space next to him is empty, the covers smooth. He reaches to the pocket watch on the nightstand and looks at the time. Just after three. But that can’t be right. He brings it to his ear—the watch is silent. He winds it and winds it, but nothing happens. Once again it’s stopped, a useless trinket.

  Downstairs he sees the correct time and makes his oatmeal, planning on sitting on the porch, but pauses the moment he opens the door. On the floor, exactly where they’d left it, is the Monopoly set. He stares at it, their metal tokens—him the race car, her the thimble—each carried and abandoned with a last touch.

  Without disturbing the game he sits in his spot, back against his post, and balances the bowl on his lap. Across from him she does the same, then grins with the spoon in her mouth. He smiles in return till he realizes there’s nothing there. The air is cool and a thick mist at the treetops thins as it reaches toward him. He looks down at the board, all the red hotels of his ambition. Only second prize in a beauty contest? she’d joked when they had last played, the night before Claire told him about the baby, the night before everything changed. Clearly I wasn’t a judge, he’d replied, watching her slip the card back under the stack. With every move her nightgown’s satin’s sheen caught the light. Now he lifts the pile and there it is, at the bottom, the last card played.

  He leaves it all in place, the rocks holding down the cards, their tokens in step. The thought of it existing, undisturbed, is a comfort, as if a part of them is still here, still playing beneath the porch light. Despite everything, he now realizes he’s hopeful that the game can somehow be continued. But how? He broke her heart. And now there’s the baby to think of. Even if he could find a way for them to be together, she would never want to. Not after what he’s put her through. Not in the face of the complications that would await them.

  Before he leaves, he pops into his office, sees yet another stack of paperwork on his desk, and decides he’ll have to come back down to deal with it all. It will be a whole day’s work, he knows. But then he sees something. By the phone, a little piece of paper. One word he recognizes immediately, even from a distance.

  Eva.

  He snatches up the message: Eva called. She’s in Minneapolis and needs to talk. Said she’ll find you. The message is dated yesterday. While he stood in the other room, determined not to go into his office, wanting to leave, wanting to see her, not wanting to be delayed by any work on his desk, this message sat there, unread.

  Pulling out of the parking lot, he ignores the familiar, confused faces gawking at the car they’ve never seen. There’s no time for explanations. No time for good-byes. He’s back on the road. Flying up the state. He’ll figure something out. Eva’s giving him another chance, and he’s going to take it.

  —

  When he arrives home, Ketty’s cleaning in the kitchen, scouring the sink with her usual ferocity. There’s no sign of food or Claire. When he asks where she is, Ketty doesn’t turn around. “Missus in the parlor.”

  But he doesn’t see her there. He’s almost left the room, about to take the stairs, when he realizes she’s sitting in a chair in the far corner, hands folded loosely, forgotten, on her lap. Fear blasts through him as he sees she’s been crying.

  Within seconds he’s crouched before her. She looks at him, straight at him, her eyes unwavering as if she’s trying to find her words within him.

  And then she tells him, and he sits back hard on the floor.

  The basement stairs aren’t given a chance to creak before he’s at their base, staring at the metal cabinet shoved before the tunnel. Ketty helps him move it as Claire sits on the top stair. He didn’t believe her—even when she said the name Eva, a name she hadn’t known, even then he hadn’t believed. Harmless, stoic Claire. But then he learned that Ketty had been involved—Ketty, who was fearless of the tunnel, who’s always had a European’s unnerving acceptance of horror—and he knew it was true.

  He orders Ketty to help him dig, and she does. The tunnel is low and he has to stoop, his movements awkward, his neck cramping. When he sees the top of Eva’s foot, her toes, her red nail polish—the nail polish she knows he loves—a numbness takes over. Her feet. That her feet are here in this tunnel makes no sense. The feet that she’d rest on the tiles above the tub, toes just touching the faucet. The feet that brushed him as she sat in the bough of the cottonwood. The feet that carried her into his arms. He starts to sweep away the dirt, faster, revealing a towel. She hadn’t given up; she came to find him. Even as he thinks this, he’s aware the thought is hollow, that only later will the words be assigned meaning, and that that meaning will crush him.

  He pauses and has just barely lifted the towel when Ketty lurches back and hits the wall. It throws him, this reaction, and he watches her stumble through the mouth of the tunnel, past Claire, who appears at the entrance, curious. Claire takes a few more steps and suddenly her hand clamps to her mouth, her face white. She’s saying something, over and again. Oh, God, oh.

  But then he hears the words more clearly. No God, no.

  He turns back, to the truth of the event before them.

  Eva. Lips the color of a bruise, mouth open as if trying to call him. Her blue eyes open and fixed with fear.

  41

  Now

  IT’S STRANGE to leave the house. The door closes behind them, and for a moment they stand on the front steps, blinking in the sun, adjusting to the sounds. Through the trees he sees the lake. Blue water mirrors the sky, clouds faded in the reflection. The world, it seems, exists as a fold of paper, an imprint left from one side to the other.

  “I’m sorry,” he tells her. He knows what it’s like to need answers, to not get them. They leave the house with no new information, nothing about her grandmother, nothing about Claire, though her husband’s assumed affair could perhaps explain his end.

  “There was something,” she says. “There weren’t gonna be fireworks, I know, but something feels—dislodged. If that makes sense.” She breathes in. “I think it’ll make a difference.”

  His phone beeps with a voicemail. One glance and he sees them: six texts—Report to station—and more voicemails, all piled up from the
time they were in the house. Sure enough, he takes a step back up the path, toward the front door, and the reception fades. “Shit,” he says, heading back to the sidewalk. “I didn’t get service, the entire time. Something happened.”

  Abby points to across the street, a shaded spot heavily overgrown. “I’ll be there. Call.”

  Without playing the voicemails, he calls in, braced for the news.

  “Finally,” Harris says. “When can you get here?”

  “Two hours. Sorry, I didn’t— What happened?”

  “You don’t know? We got him.”

  Aidan turns toward the lake. “Him?”

  “Not a done deal, of course, but damn, this is it. Name’s Carl Sutton. Hardt got a tip this morning after you left. Some woman said this guy humiliated her during sex, tied her up, consensual, but she didn’t like the direction it went. We look him up; he worked in Marshall during those years. Lived in Wilmer at the time, but that’s an hour commute.”

  “High mileage on his vehicle?”

  “Tons. You know that shit’s consistent. So Hardt and I went to ask him some questions. Just questions. Until we saw the bones right inside the door, right fucking there, a partial skeleton, clearly human. Didn’t even have to go in. This long table covered with an American flag with bones on top. Said they washed up onshore. Some crazy story, something about an insane asylum, a girl who escaped in a straitjacket and drowned, one bone washing up every year. The guy’s nuts. Fits the profile to a tee. And get this, Lila McCale’s here—just saw him. She’s met him. A couple months ago in a parking lot when she had a flat. Remembered him because he hit on her. Now we’re going over his lack of alibi, for here and Marshall. Says the nights of Lila and Sarah he was at home. He’s about twenty minutes outside of town, no neighbor for three miles, so no one can back that. I gotta go. You gotta go. Hit the road, man, this thing could be over.”