by Kevin Lucia
“Please. I need to find my husband. Can you help me, please? If I could only find him!”
Shane hit end, cutting the call. He stared at the dead Nokia for several seconds, and before the lady or the store or whatever could call him again, he dropped it to the floor, where it fell and clattered with a plastic rattle. As he walked away, he heard its buzz amplified against smooth ceramic tile.
***
Shane had no idea how long or how far he’d walked since tossing the Nokia aside. He’d taken several left and right hand turns, walking slowly down halls filled with odder and odder mixes of old chairs, recliners, sofas, end tables, lamps, bookshelves, and dining room tables. They were in rougher condition than the other pieces he’d seen, more befitting a Salvation Army or Thrift Store than an antique furniture store. Also, they’d been arranged in a more haphazard fashion, shoved against each other and the lockers . . .
thank God
. . . crookedly, jutting out into the walkway, in some cases tipped sideways, stacked upon each other in tumbleweed fashion, as if they’d been dumped there carelessly by bored workers.
As he walked, he saw more open classrooms. From his peripheral, he sensed they lay in similar disarray as the halls, not like the meticulously arranged showrooms he’d seen before. He also again sensed shadows flickering in those rooms, dancing among the jumbled piles of old furniture, but he refused to look at them, somehow resisting the temptation to see them for what they were.
He told himself maybe he’d wandered into a storage wing of the store. These old pieces of furniture were all donations not meant for show or active display, but had been stored back here rummage-sale style. A deeper part of his mind whispered otherwise, however. He’d wandered to a part of the store which was dead. A place where the “glamour” making it so attractive had long since faded. He refused to look at the jumbled piles of furniture directly. Quick, sidelong glances caught layers of dust, cobwebs, jagged ends of broken table legs, and ripped fabric spilling white, puffy innards. Maybe he was finally seeing the store as it was: A graveyard for broken and discarded things. Like the woman on the Nokia (if she’d been a woman at all) and her husband. Like maybe countless other couples.
Like him and Amanda.
This, more than anything else, made him believe everything which had happened to him, despite its surreal, nightmarish quality. This was a cast-off place for broken and used-up things, disguising itself—how, Shane couldn’t fathom—in order to lure discarded and broken people desperate for a new future, trapping them inside, maybe forever, if the woman on the Nokia had been a person trapped here since 2006, and not part of the glamour.
How, then, was he getting out?
Could he?
He slowed to a stop. Shoved both hands into his pockets, bowed his head, closed his eyes, and thought.
A place for broken and discarded things. What he and Amanda were. No matter what he’d tried, he’d been held at arm’s length since Benjamin died. Amanda had been by turns cold, distant, dismissive, passive, empty, and withdrawn. Not crying or raging. Not angry, vengeful, hysterical or depressed.
Dead.
Cut off.
Broken.
He, of course, had felt the same. All his grand gestures—gifts, helping around the house, surprise visits to her favorite restaurants—had felt forced and empty because they were gestures, after all. Reflexes. The things you’re supposed to do to support and comfort your loved one.
Still, he’d always loved her. Didn’t want to be without her. Therein, of course, lay the problem. He loved her and didn’t want to leave here without her. She didn’t love him anymore but she couldn’t leave him, because then she’d be more lost than she already was.
He didn’t want to leave her.
She couldn’t leave him.
“But I could leave her,” he whispered, pain twisting his stomach into broken glass shards, “I don’t want to. But I could.”
A kind of numb peace filled him. Shane breathed deep, opened his eyes and looked up. Where there had been nothing but an infinitely long stretch of hallway cluttered with old and broken furniture ahead now stood two double-doors with push-bars, like the kind which had led to the auditorium filled with stacks of mattresses.
These doors seemed different, however. He couldn’t say how. Somehow he knew these doors didn’t lead to the auditorium, but somewhere else, perhaps.
The gymnasium.
A strange, quiet determination thrummed through Shane. Pulling his hands from his pockets, he flexed his fingers and approached the gymnasium doors. Grabbed a push-bar, pressed down, pushed the door open, and walked inside.
***
For a moment, Shane couldn’t tell what he was looking at. A wall of different colors and kinds of fabric. After a moment, his eyes adjusted and he understood: Racks upon racks of hanging clothes. Shirts, jackets, slacks, dresses, suits, jeans, overcoats, skirts, sweaters. All kinds of clothes indiscriminately arranged on racks filling the gymnasium. The racks were pressed so close together all the articles of clothing formed one surging entity. They stood abnormally high, clothes hanging slightly above eye level. Walking through would be worse than the mattress maze; it’d be like navigating rows of corn. Shane’s increasingly flexible mind wondered if, inside this sea of clothing, it would indeed be possible to wander around for miles and never find his way out.
On a hunch, Shane pulled his iPhone out, swiped the screen, pulled up “contacts” and tapped a thumbnail of Amanda, hair windblown, smiling, from a much happier day long ago. Though he’d heard her cell—or, at least, a cell—ringing in the hope chest and maybe ringing in a locker, he had an idea.
It rang, twice.
Distantly, he heard a muffled ring in the sea of clothes. Then, the phone clicked and he heard Amanda’s stiff voice, the one he’d heard every single day since Benjamin died. “What do you want? Please don’t tell me you’re lost, Shane. I’m not in the mood.”
Shane stood at the edge of the clothing racks as a man standing on the shore of an endless sea. He didn’t doubt he was speaking to Amanda, however. He recognized the flat tenor of her voice, devoid of spirit, all too well.
I love her
no matter what
“Shane, are you there? You’ve already called and hung up twice, trying to spook or prank me or whatever. I’m seriously not in the moods. Are you going to help me or not?”
He loved her.
He would try to help her, but not how she meant. He was going after her, even if it meant maybe drowning in the process.
“Sure,” he said, doing his best to sound casual and affable as he moved forward, “be there in a sec.”
He reached out, parted the clothes and stepped into a fabric sea, dresses and coats swishing closed behind him.
***
As Shane made his way blindly through hanging dresses, coats, suits and jeans, something whispered among the clothes. He wasn’t sure what—clothes rustling as he passed through, or maybe (an unnerving thought) clothes rustling as countless others passed through, all wandering, alone and lost in this sea of clothes, cut off from each other, ignorant of each other, also. Or maybe it was the store whispering, or echoes of all the other lost people talking on their cells about meaningless trivia while they wandered away from everything.
“So like you Shane, to wander off. I swear, I . . . ”
“ . . . can’t take me anywhere,” Shane finished as he wound his way through stands of coats and shirts, smiling in spite of the bizarre, frightening unreality of it all. The catch-phrase had been the only bit of levity remaining between them after Benjamin died. Shane was a handful sometimes. A big kid, and she couldn’t take him anywhere. It was a holdover from better days, when they joked with each other in good fun. It had soured a bit, however. Hadn’t it been only a little while ago—hours?—when he’d anticipated her using it disdainfully when he’d first found the Nokia?
“I swear, Shane. You’re a large child.”
Shane came
to a small clearing—again the illusion of walking through a corn field struck him—and glanced around. Before him, racks of suits crowded together. To the left, trench coats and overcoats. To his right, puffy winter jackets. “See. We don’t need kids. You’ve already got one. And I’m never growing up, baby.”
He paused, listening. The joke was an old one from before Benjamin. Half a dozen times he’d thought of using it after Benjamin’s death (as cruel and heartless as it seemed) if only to shock any kind of reaction from her. A response showing some anger, some life. But he never had. Maybe now, it would work, jar Amanda awake.
“Oh, God. You’re not one child, Shane. You’re like ten.”
The dry response mimicked Amanda’s pre-Benjamin responses perfectly. Not a hitch of sadness, no hint of outrage or anger. Only her usual, sardonic self, something he hadn’t heard in months.
And yet, a curious deadness lingered below her words. The mindless recitation of a seasoned actor running through lines memorized long ago. Amanda, trapped and made to forget? Choosing to forget? Or was this the store? Another glamour, a lure, like the lady on the Nokia, leading him deeper into the clothes, so he’d get lost too. Then years from now, when another couple fell prey to Save-A-Bunch, some poor soul would find his iPhone—in a locker, on the floor, or in trunk marked Benjamin, or some other dead child’s name—and then the store would use his voice to lead someone else astray.
Screw this. Let’s go for the throat. “Y’know. Ah, hell.”
“Language. Want our kids to have a mouth like yours someday?”
God. It’s like she, it, whatever is reading off a script written by Amanda herself. Now Playing, the Greatest Hits of Shane and Amanda! “Yeah. Sorry. Anyway, I was saying. I’ve wanted to bring this up dozens of times the last few months. I should’ve. God knows, I should’ve. If I had, maybe we wouldn’t here, in this situation.”
“Shopping for cheap junk to furnish the apartment in Utica? Where else would we be?”
Shane chewed on his tongue, thinking, choosing his words carefully. The apartment in Utica. Seven years ago, before their house. Either the building or Whatever knew their history or had gotten it straight from whatever was left of Amanda, or Amanda herself had fled back to those simpler, happier times.
“It’s Benjamin, Mandy. Ben. Our son. Who died. The day we went away to have some time alone. Our baby boy who died. I think—God, I hate to say this—but I think both of us died then, too. Part of us died. I know it. Died, and is maybe never coming back.”
Silence.
A slight rustling against fabric, to his left. And then a flat, toneless, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Shane. Bad joke. Really bad joke.”
More rustling to his left, past crowded racks of raincoats. Shane eased after the sound. “I hate to bring this up, Amanda. Here, of all places, now, while—whatever this is—is happening.”
He turned sideways and slid between two racks of coats, following a narrow path. Ahead—though he couldn’t be sure—he thought a red sleeve (Amanda’s) slipped out of sight into the sea of coats, jackets and dresses.
“What’s happening is I’m here for deals,” Amanda—or at least, her voice—said, in an approximation of good humor, tinged by the same strange, rote flatness.
“Yeah. I know.” Shane eased between the two racks he’d thought he’d seen Amanda’s sleeve slip through, and came again to a clearing. Before him, racks of bathrobes, pajamas and sweatshirts. To his right, more suit coats. To his left, sweaters and hooded sweatshirts. “Where’d you hear about this place again?”
The suit jackets twitched, and without hesitation, Shane ducked between the two racks. Ahead, he thought Amanda’s black heels flashed into a sea of hanging pant legs. “I honestly can’t remember. One of those deal emails I’m always getting, from who knows how many deal websites I’m always signing up for.”
I bet, Shane thought, brushing aside suit coats of all sizes and shapes, color and material. Do ghost stores send emails? Tweets? Do they text about their great deals? “We can’t dodge this anymore, Amanda. We need to talk about Benjamin, He died of SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. You know how many infants die of SIDS every year? In 2010, more than two thousand, Amanda. Two-thousand. I researched it.”
Any fake humor vanished from Amanda’s voice, leaving only her eerie, robotic flatness. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Something silver—her bracelet, the one he’d given her for their anniversary a few months ago?—flashed past coat sleeves. Shane brushed by the increasingly claustrophobic racks quicker, checked from running by a strange fear of slipping, falling, and drowning in this sea of clothes. “Yes you do, Amanda. You’ve got to face it. We’ve got to face it. I don’t want to, God knows. But it’s killing us, Amanda. We can’t move forward until we put him to rest. Put it behind us. Accept it, move on and try to live.”
“Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.”
Shane thought he saw a flash of auburn hair disappear to his left, through several crowded racks of more bathrobes and pajamas. On an instinctual level he hated the raw desperation hissing in Amanda’s voice, the simmering pain. But it also showed a crack in the cheerful, toneless facade, making him think it was her after all, and not the store.
“I want to stop it, Amanda. God, I want to. The pain. The misery. The guilt. The long, awkward silences at dinner, when we can’t look each other in the eye. I want to stop it all. But I can’t. I can’t, unless you stop running away, or I leave you here.”
Shane passed through racks of clothing to find himself, unbelievably enough, back in the first clearing he’d found. To his left, trench coats. Ahead suits, and to his right, winter jackets.
“It hurts. Stop it.”
The trench coats to his right shivered. Shane plunged in, shoving them aside, their hangers rattling on the racks. “I know it hurts. I know. But we can get past it. I believe it. For the first time, I believe it. But I think we have to say goodbye. We have to say goodbye to Ben, Amanda.”
The word goodbye sent an image flashing through his mind. Of the trunk marked Benjamin, the one about the same size as an infant coffin.
“We never said goodbye, Amanda. We never had a funeral, for God’s sake. My parents were so pissed at me for not insisting on a funeral, but I thought it was too much, that it’d break us, figured it would be better to let it go quietly.”
He came to another clearing, but this was different. All around him, an insane mishmash of coats hanging with bathrobes and spring jackets hanging with T-shirts and slacks and jeans and shorts. He had no idea which way to go. Panic closed his throat tight, making it hard to breath, but he forced himself to speak, to get it all out, before it was too late, because somehow he knew soon it would be too late, and they would never get out of here, ever.
“No,” Amanda rasped, her voice a thin, ragged whisper, “no, no, no, no.”
Shane turned and, scanning the random swathes of clothes, fought off dizziness and vertigo, blackness spotting the edges of his vision. He forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly, before saying, “Amanda, I was wrong. The funeral wouldn’t have broken us. It would’ve freed us. We would’ve said goodbye to Benjamin, we would’ve been freed, but now we’re trapped and lost because we never said goodbye, and dammit, I can’t be trapped anymore. I’m getting out, right now. With or withoutyou.”
His final words tumbled from him in rush, and all the energy left him. He sagged, legs trembling, arms weak and rubbery, his iPhone loose in his grip. His thoughts sputtered and came to a stop as he sank to his knees and closed his eyes.
A hush fell.
The whispering stopped.
Something had changed. And yet, he couldn’t open his eyes right away, afraid he’d find himself back in the hall filled with blood-red lockers, kneeling, and as he watched the lockers would open slowly, one by one.
“Shane?”
No.
It was a trick.
Another glamour of the store’
s. He wouldn’t fall for it. He wouldn’t open his eyes.
“Shane?”
The frantic urgency in his name broke him. Alone, frightened, imploring. He no more could’ve kept his eyes closed than he could’ve stopped breathing.
He opened his eyes.
To see Amanda standing before him. Eyes wide and shimmering, chin quivering, face ghostly white and drawn.
“Shane? What is this place? Why are we here? What’s happening?”
Somehow, Shane gathered himself and stumbled to his feet. He swallowed and managed, “We got lost. That’s all. We got lost.”
Amanda’s gaze darted from him to something over his shoulder, then back to him. She pointed, her hand shaking. “What’s that?”
Shane turned, and was somehow not surprised to see the other end of the gymnasium, open double doors leading to a hall beyond. Also, he wasn’t surprised to see what Amanda was pointing at, about five feet away.
A hope chest.
And from his angle, he could barely read Benjamin stenciled on top.
“Shane. What-what is that?”
Shane glanced over his shoulder and held out his hand. “Our way out, I think,” he said simply.
She stared at his outstretched hand. Blinked once, slowly. Then, taking a timid step forward, her lips pressed together tightly and her face a rigid mask of fear, she slowly took his hand.
Her flesh felt cold and dry. Regardless, Shane gave her hand a small squeeze. He turned and led her to the chest. Knelt before it, still holding her hand, as he reached out with his other to the latch on the hope chest marked Benjamin. This time, he didn’t hesitate, but flipped up the latch. Fit his fingers under the lid’s edge and gently lifted it open.
His breath caught.
Amanda stood in silence behind him as he stared at what lay inside the chest. Benjamin’s baby blanket. Powder blue, with birds on it. The blanket they swaddled him in since birth. The blanket he’d died face-down on, eight months later.
And it lay over something.
A body.
It could only be a body. He could see, at one end, the vaguest suggestion of a gently sloping brow, depressions which could be eye sockets, and the slight bump of a small nose.
