Denis Ever After Read online

  In his nasally way, One-Eye came out with, “Momma-May’s just too sick. Even if we get money for the kid, the home’ll know we got it of a sudden and call the cops.”

  “They won’t find out nothing. For a brother you’re a joke.”

  “Well, there’s too many things wrong about your ‘plan,’ and I ain’t doing it. Heck with this. Heck with you always hittin’ me, too.”

  Sandbag swore at him for “being a coward, just like in Eye-Rack” and smacked him again.

  One-Eye stomped away. He stomped away from the car, from the cabin, from me, saying, “You finish up this mess. I don’t care how. I’m hopping the next freight to the Lincoln. Meet me if you want to, I don’t care.”

  And One-Eye’s footsteps receded in the gravel until Sandbag slammed his fists, both of them, hard on the trunk. It boomed in my ears. He kept doing it again and again. “You’re dead now, pixie!” he hissed. “You hear me? Deeeaaaad.” He stretched out the last word like a song lyric.

  After One-Eye left I didn’t hear his voice again. In fact, nothing happened for a long time. No cars came into Four Pines. As starving as I was, aching all over, I fell asleep in the trunk.

  When I woke up—this was Monday—acid was burning a hole in my stomach. I was shivering. I didn’t bother holding it in, and I peed again, which was warm, then cold. There was frost on the ceiling of the trunk.

  The sun couldn’t have been up yet, I reasoned, because I still heard the hum of the lights over the porches. A cabin door opened and shut with a soft click. A single set of footsteps approached across the gravel. The back door of the car eased open and stuff was thrown inside. Sandbag’s gear. A few seconds later the trunk lid popped open over me.

  I still couldn’t see, but I smelled cold fresh air and felt no sun on my limbs. It was still dark, maybe overcast. I tried to shout. My voice was muffled.

  “We’re going for a teensy ride now,” Sandbag hissed. “Don’t make no more messes in Jenny!”

  Then I sensed him lean over and crack me on the side of my head.

  I just had time to realize that he had called the car Jenny, when everything was black again.

  31

  I’m Sorry for Your Loss

  Dad tramps down past the cabins, whispering into his phone—to Mom?—then stops short to end the conversation before he walks over to Matt, rolling his shoulders.

  “So the joker in the office laughed when I asked about five years ago. ‘Like we keep records of that stuff,’ he said. And he didn’t actually say ‘stuff.’ But he doesn’t ‘give a good gosh darn’ if we ask the guests to look inside. Also not what he said. I wanted to smack him. You want to come with me?”

  Matt stares at the cabin, as if he’s trying to etch it in his mind, then shakes his head. “No.”

  Dad nods. He gets it. He climbs the steps and knocks on the door.

  “Look, Matt,” I whisper. “One-Eye left me with Sandbag and took the train out of here. Monday morning Sandbag drove me off again.”

  The door opens and Dad is invited inside.

  Matt frowns. “So you were never inside the cabin anyway? You were in the trunk all night?”

  “In the car all night. I was hurting everywhere and kept wiggling my tooth, not thinking that if it actually came out, I’d be in trouble. I had to keep swallowing puke or I’d suffocate. I was starving. I went . . . I wet my pants a couple of times. Then Sandbag knocked me out again.”

  Matt’s eyes water up. “I’m so sorry, Den. I’m so sorry you were in there. . . .”

  These are the times I wish I could just put my hand on his shoulder. I try to now. He can’t feel anything, but he leans into it, as if he does.

  “You don’t remember any more?” he whispers. “Like where Sandbag took you? Maybe not Gettysburg yet, but back over the bridge? Somewhere you saw the tall thing in your eye?”

  I shrug. “One-Eye said he was taking the train ‘to Lincoln,’ wherever that is.”

  “I’ll check. On the train line?” While Dad is in the cabin, he opens his phone. “Uh-oh, a text. It’s from Mom. To call her.”

  “In a minute,” I say. “The car is bothering me, too. Sandbag called it Jenny. But if it was stolen, I mean, who gives a name to a stolen car? I don’t know if Jenny even is the Honda. I never saw it. It doesn’t fit somehow.”

  “Please,” he groans. “Not two cars.”

  I feel my empty stomach of five years ago. “Find anything?”

  “Lincoln is in Allegheny County. It’s not far away, I guess, but it’s not on the same train route, so I don’t know how he was planning on—”

  “Wait! Not Lincoln. The Lincoln. One-Eye was going to the Lincoln. Search on that.”

  More tapping and swiping and head shaking, until finally, “Ha, found it! The Lincoln Inn, on Broad Street in Evanton. Right near the tracks, no more than a half hour from here—”

  Dad steps out onto the cabin porch. “Thank you. So much.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” a young man says from inside. Two small boys come up behind him and look out. They must be four or under. “Are you the twin?” their father says to Matt.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry you lost your brother. Gosh, if either of these . . .” He puts his hands on his sons’ heads, as if to protect them.

  Matt purses his lips tight, reminding me of the way Mom looks when she can’t say what she’s feeling. He can only nod before he has to turn away. We walk slowly to the car, and it’s minutes before he can find it in himself to speak.

  “So. Dad. What now?”

  “I’ll phone Ed Sparn when we get home. He’s the detective. You’ll see his name in the file. Look, I believe you, and I don’t know how you’re finding these things, but after five years, this probably won’t go very far, you know? In the meantime . . .” And I can suddenly tell Dad is working on something in his mind and trying to find a way to make it sound normal. He finally gives up. “Look, Matt, I don’t want you to be surprised when we get home”—he checks his phone for the time—“but Mommy’s going to tell you that . . . we’re going to counseling.”

  “Counseling? For what? You and Mom? Dad, no. You guys are okay—”

  “No, Matt. Not just us. All three of us.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “For this. For Denis, for what it’s doing to us. It’s not just you. I’ve been stuck on this for years. I can’t do that. It’s hurting us. It’s really hurting you, whether you know it or not, though I suspect you do. You’re hearing things, seeing things. We’re doing this trip now, you and me, because, well, I want to. But your mother is right. This is serious—”

  “Dad, no. I’m okay. Really. Let’s just keep going—”

  “Matt, wait. It might actually help us,” I interrupt him, and he flicks his eyes toward me. “If you agree to this, let them get all questiony with you, you can start asking them things.”

  “See, like just then,” Dad says. “You sort of zombied out on me.”

  Matt tries to object, but his thoughts and whatever he feels are caught between me and Dad. “Yeah, but . . .” He seems suddenly to lose air. “Who? And when?”

  “Monday. After school. I don’t know who the counselor is. Mommy found somebody.”

  Matt breathes out the last little bit of oxygen. “Okay. Okay. I’ll go. I’ll be real open and say lots of stuff, and all that, but there’s one last stop.” His finger shakes as he swipes his phone open at the map. “Evanton. The Lincoln Inn. It’s between here and home. You have to take me.”

  Dad leans over Matt’s phone. “You think Denis was taken there, to this inn?”

  “Not exactly . . .” Then a sudden spray of white sparks fall from him, from his face, like he’s shedding water, or crying, and he covers his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Denis was kept in a trunk. He was beaten up. He peed on himself. He . . .”

  “Matt.”

  And Matt falls to his knees, or almost, but Dad picks him up, holds him up, barely able to do that himse
lf, and I want to fly away. I shouldn’t be here with them. Matt begged me to come, but now I see what I’m doing to him. Dad said they’re all hurting. Yeah, and I’m the one hurting them. Me in the past. Me now.

  “Matt, I should go—”

  “So let’s find this place,” Dad says, patting Matt on the back, leading him to the car. “An inn, huh? Final last stop.”

  “Matt, really. I should go back.”

  But the way Matt jumps into his seat and slams the door, I wonder if he heard me.

  We drive on.

  Twenty minutes later we’re stopping at an intersection, where one slow route crosses another, and I don’t know, maybe it’s the road signs, pointing to different towns, but I suddenly remember Kittanning and that Trey couldn’t discover anything much about it.

  Neither Mom nor Dad lived there in the census years. But as Dad punches the gas to start up from the stop, I nudge Matt to ask him.

  “As long as he’s here with you, maybe he’ll tell you.”

  Matt sucks in a breath. “Dad, have you ever been to Kittanning?”

  “Kittanning. Kittanning. I don’t think so. If I was, I don’t remember it.”

  “What’s there?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. The usual. It’s about an hour from us. From Buckwood. Why?”

  “I just, I don’t know. Do you know anyone who lives there? Or who used to?”

  Dad thinks about that for a mile or so before he shakes his head. “I can’t think of a soul. And I’m not sure I ever actually passed through it. Why are you asking?”

  “Funny name, I guess.”

  Dad laughs. “Oh, Pennsylvania’s got them. Punxsutawney, Petrolia, Coraopolis, Zelienople. I lived in Zelie with your great-grandmother.” He laughs again, only it’s a cold laugh. “I don’t think much about those times anymore.”

  And that’s it from Dad. He doesn’t say any more about the past, and Matt doesn’t press it.

  “If that was GeeGee’s junk in the suitcase, she knows about Kittanning. The vaccination slips, remember?”

  “Of course I poo.”

  It’s then I realize I haven’t thought of GeeGee for hours.

  Less than fifteen minutes after this conversation, we are there, rolling slowly in the car on a dark street in downtown Evanton. The nearer we get, the more my temples begin to throb.

  The Lincoln Inn is a five-story pile of crumbling brick and stone surrounded by wire fences and draped with nets to catch falling debris. The word DEMO is sprayed on the boarded windows on each side of the main doors, which you can barely read since the sun is gone and the streetlight in front of the place is, of course, out.

  The instant I see it, I know it’s what I was warned about. An encampment, the souls of the lost trapped inside a hotel of misery. Also, I hear wailing.

  “Looks empty,” Matt says.

  “Yeah, except no.”

  “What do you expect to find here?” Dad asks.

  Matt shrugs, then half turns to me. “Yeah, what?”

  “Souls,” I say. “Maybe they know something.”

  Exiting the car, Dad scouts the street, which isn’t deserted, but isn’t exactly alive, either. A car passes. Minutes later, a police cruiser rolls by. Then nothing for minutes.

  “Tell him to drive to the back of the building.”

  Matt does, and Dad slowly pulls down the side street to the rear. Security fence wires that off too. The rear facade is black, the windows glassless. Three pickups are parked up on the sidewalk, several cars, and one motorcycle with a tarp on it. A backhoe sits chained on a trailer.

  Dad sizes it up. “Too bad. No one to talk to. We can take a picture at least.”

  Matt gets out. I do too, when there is the sudden whoop of a siren. Dad turns, looks both ways.

  “Dang! We’re on a one-way street!”

  “Go! Go!” I yell to Matt, and he follows me down the street.

  “Matt, get back here!” Dad yells, but freezes when the police car pulls up.

  We are away in a shot. The officer exits the cruiser. Matt hurries behind the trailer to where a pile of wooden pallets is stacked inside the fence. “Should we try to get in this way?”

  “Kind of your choice,” I say. “I can float in anywhere.”

  He gives me a face. “Lucky.”

  “Said no one, ever. Hurry up.”

  Looking both ways, he grabs on to the wire with both hands and scrambles up, toeing his sneakers into the holes. Once he’s at the crest, he swings both feet around and lowers himself onto the top pallet, then jumps to the ground.

  The wailing from inside the building spikes, and I feel a rush of cold air from the souls gathered there. I don’t want to go in, don’t want to see a pack of stranded laggards, but the purpose of this is to solve my stupid death so my family can stay together. While I rip apart.

  But no, it’s fine. It’s all fine.

  There isn’t much of a lock system, and before you know it we’re inside the dank, dark lobby that smells overwhelmingly of mold and rats. Matt has trouble seeing me as his eyes adjust, but I have no trouble seeing the other ghosts. Dozens drift around the lobby, wandering among the columns, stuck between here and where they’re supposed to be, having stayed too long as minglers, sliced in half so many times they can no longer connect the parts of themselves.

  The thought of it makes me ill right down the middle.

  “Anyone here?” Matt whispers.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  32

  Thass Me. I’m Melrose.

  One spirit, an older lady in a neat green dress, sits on a ratty old lobby sofa, surrounded by photo albums. She jumps up when she sees me.

  “Qiang! Oh, Qiang! It’s so good to finally see you. Qiang, you’ve grown so tall!”

  “I’m . . . I’m not Qiang,” I tell her.

  “No, no. I would know my nephew anywhere.”

  “I’m really sorry. I’m not Qiang. Maybe he’s not here . . . yet.”

  She blinks, hustles back to the sofa for a photo album. “But I’m sure it’s . . .” She looks at a picture, then does a double take at me. “Oh, I see . . . it’s not you. Qiang is . . . I’ve been waiting so long. . . .”

  “Your nephew ain’t coming, lady! I tode you!” shouts a raspy voice from the darkness off the lobby. “He don’t remember you, why should he? He moved three years ago to Hongo Kongo. I seen him move. You seen him move. Buh-bye!”

  “That’s not nice!” I call back. “And it’s racist, too.”

  “Come here and say that!”

  I don’t.

  Shaking, the woman thrusts her hands to her face and shouts so loud that Matt jerks back.

  “We got a fader!” somebody yells, and instantly, spirits swarm out of the shadows like a flock of vultures. But as swift as the souls mass, what happens to the woman seems to unfold in slow motion. She goes rigid and lets out a wail that shakes the room. Her eyes grow huge in her face. The mass of heavy souls in the lobby is suffocating me, but Matt has a different reaction.

  “I . . . hear something. Denis, I . . .”

  “Her,” I tell him. “A soul. Her nephew forgot her. She’s dying again.”

  “I feel them around us! Hundreds. They’re staring . . . gawking at her!”

  More than gawking, the souls cheer the woman on, like crazed bystanders at a schoolyard fight. The poor lady begins to rock on her heels, screaming and blubbering, until with one great wail, she comes apart. Her face splits, her chest breaks open wide, her whole body comes apart down the middle with a sound like the ripping of heavy fabric that sprays something wet on my cheeks. Inside her is emptiness, a black nothing. The crowd roars vulgarly, as the nothing pours from the gap and folds around her, until suddenly, shriekingly, she is gone. Gone. Not there.

  There is nothing where she just stood.

  “She mingled too much!” one old man howls, forgetting that the same thing must happen to him and to all of them. But no, it was someone else this time. That’s all that matte
rs.

  “You’re next, sonny!” a young woman snarls to someone.

  “Nuh-uh, you!”

  “You’re both next!” calls a third.

  And more like that. I’m sick in my chest and throat, I feel like vomiting.

  Matt wears an expression of terror on his face. Of terror and crushing sadness. “She . . . exploded, didn’t she?” he whispers. “She did. I know she did. Denis, is that what you . . .”

  He can’t finish.

  I close my eyes, see only darkness inside. When I open them the crowd of souls has dispersed, sullen now that the show is over. Only one figure remains, a strange, wavering shadow of a man. He is very thin, his face is sort of squashed at an angle, and he hops, almost, on one foot, over to us. The leg? Again? I wonder what it all means. He wears what was once a camouflage jacket but is shreds now. A newspaper is folded high in his armpit.

  “Kid, kid, kid,” he rasps. “You’re new here.”

  Matt’s eyes are riveted on the approaching shadow, sensing it more than seeing it. As much as he is able to, he tries to nudge me with his elbow, then backs away, though the ghost is clearly not interested in him. He shuffles up and pushes the newspaper at me.

  “Read it out.”

  We hear the police car roar loudly down the street outside. I take the yellowed paper.

  “Matt!” Dad calls from outside the building. “Are you in there?”

  “It’s the Butler Eagle,” the ghost slurs. “Five years ago. Page nine. Read it out.”

  Even before I read the date, I realize I’ve seen the paper before. It’s one Matt had in his room when I first visited him. The headline screams at me.

  COMMUNITY MOURNS LOST TWIN OF PERRY STUDENT

  It’s dated the Saturday after Thanksgiving, three days after they found me. I turn to page nine. The small photograph of a face above the fold has been thumbed so often the ink has worn away. I can’t make it out. Next to it is a short article. “Local Hit-and-Run Victim Dies.”

  “Read it out,” the shadow says a third time, shifting from one foot to the damaged other one. “They won’t anymore. They say they tired. Read it out.” The voice grates in my head. His throat has obviously been damaged, but there is something odd about it that pinches my memory as I read.