by Sara Clancy
“Maybe,” Nicole mumbled.
“What changed?”
“Don’t you think they’re a little dry?” She tried her best to sound casual. A bit too much, apparently, because she didn’t fool her mother for a second.
Dorothy heaved a sigh, hooked one thumb lazily around her gun belt, and rubbed her forehead with her free hand. “Who said that?”
After numerous attempts to shy away from her mother’s attention, she offered a weak smile. “Benton Bertrand.”
Instead of the teasing she had expected, Dorothy’s attention took on a laser-like focus. “When did you meet the Bertrands?”
“When I was coming back from Vic’s place. Their car had broken down so I gave them a lift.”
“You went to see Vic? How is he?”
Nicole swallowed thickly as she hurriedly went back to arranging her muffins. “I think he’s still sick. And still really into his girlfriend. I didn’t see his parents, though,” she rushed on before her mother could ask any questions that she wasn’t ready to answer. Even just the memory of the hands made her shiver. “Why are you so interested in the Bertrands?”
“I never said I was.”
Dorothy might have had the tough cop persona down, but she had schooled her daughter well. Nicole prided herself on her showdown glare. She didn’t know if she won out or not, but her mother picked up one of the muffins and began to pull off hunks, eating a few mouthfuls before asking.
“What was your impression of Benton?”
Nicole shrugged, her lips quirking as she finally found a spot for the tray. Now that her hands were free, she found the few loose strands on her apron oddly fascinating. She toyed with them restlessly.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s pretty socially awkward and seems to be constantly on edge.” Her smile grew a little more and she pushed at a patch of flour. “But he seems nice, although he tries hard not to show it.”
A moment later, she noticed that her mother wasn’t asking any questions. She lifted her eyes and frowned.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Whatever Dorothy was going to say was replaced with a scoffed huff and another bite of the muffin. She hummed pleasantly and, as she chewed, pointed to the muffin and gave her daughter a thumbs up. Nicole made note of which batch it came from.
“Have you heard about Miss Williams?” Dorothy asked after swallowing and before ripping off another bite.
“No, not lately,” Nicole said. “How is she feeling?”
Dorothy swallowed, her eyes turning soft. “She passed this afternoon.”
“Oh,” Nicole said meekly. It wasn’t exactly a shock. Poor Miss Williams had been sick for a while now and everyone knew she wasn’t going to get better. “I thought she had more time. How is her family taking it?”
“As well as can be expected.”
“I’ll have to take them a casserole,” Nicole didn’t know what else to say. “Who was with her when she passed?”
“Benton.”
“Say again?”
“Benton was with her when she died. He was actually the only one in the room with her.”
“Why? I mean, it was good that someone was with her. I’d hate for her to have been all alone. But Aspen’s office isn’t anywhere near Miss Williams’s room.”
Her mother made a noncommittal noise that Nicole knew could mean a thousand things at once.
“You don’t actually think that Benton had something to do with it, do you?”
“No, of course not,” Dorothy said. “But it is a bit odd.”
“He never said anything about it.”
That got Dorothy’s attention and, once again, Nicole had the sinking feeling that it might be in her best interest to call a lawyer.
“I thought you just gave them a lift to the hospital.”
“Well, they still needed to get to their new house,” she said as if it were obvious.
“Do you often give complete strangers lifts to isolated properties in the middle of the night?”
“I don’t often meet strangers. And it wasn’t the middle of the night.”
“I’m not comfortable with this,” Dorothy said before waving a hand over the array of muffins. “Or any of this. But I am way too exhausted to get into what will undoubtedly be a long and tedious battle on both fronts. We will discuss both of these matters in the morning.”
Nicole nodded that she understood and her mother headed for the door. Just before Dorothy slipped out of sight, Nicole called after her.
“Did Benton say why he was in that part of the hospital?”
“He said that he was aimlessly exploring.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
Dorothy sighed and fixed her with a weary look.
“Oh, come on, mom. Don’t make me waste a day figuring it out.”
“Some of the nurses had spotted him staggering around the halls. They said it looked like he was following something but they couldn’t see what.” Dorothy released a jaw-cracking yawn and again waved a hand out to indicate the entirety of the kitchen. “All of this is going to be clean when I come down in the morning, right?”
“Of course.”
Nicole held her smile until her mother had disappeared from sight. Then she just stared at the empty doorway, the traces of happiness melted from her features, the silence of the kitchen overpowering, her baking forgotten. Her mind was consumed with shadows and claws and the unmistakable feeling that there was something unseen lurking just behind her spine.
***
Since only the bare basics of their stuff had arrived before them, the Bertrand’s new house stood cold and barren. The bare walls, made of raw slate stone that ran the spectrum of charcoal back to snowy white, echoed every sound like the hollow recesses of a tomb. The layout of the house embraced two key concepts. Windows and limited walls. The near entirety of the bottom floor was one massive room, with only what Benton assumed was the laundry, hidden from view. Sliding glass doors opened out onto the wide porch that surrounded the building. In places, the ceiling was high enough to accommodate two huge windows stacked upon each other. The combination meant that anyone could stand just about anywhere, inside or out, and see almost every inch of space. The sense of utter exposure worked on Benton’s nerves until they were raw.
It didn’t help that the world seemed to drop out of existence a few feet from the house. Benton had only ever known night to be something that clung to the sky but couldn’t compete with the constant strum of the city below. He had never realized that it could be so dark. So completely and utterly impenetrable.
Sitting on a rickety chair, he stabbed at the soggy remains of his Kung Pao beef and tried his best not to ask a question he knew he didn’t want to hear the answer to. His parents were city people. They hated gardening, detested small talk with strangers, were infuriated with any store that closed before eleven pm, and used the sound of traffic as a lullaby. They didn’t pick an isolated house in the middle of oblivion for themselves.
Over the years, they had clung stubbornly to their belief that his nightmares were nothing more than a misfiring of neurons. But they hadn’t been able to keep their growing doubt from showing in their eyes, reverberating in their words. This move stood as unrelenting proof that they no longer believed him to be innocent in the growing pile of corpses that followed him. This house, a ship set adrift in a void, wasn’t the peaceful refuge, like they claimed. It was a prison. He knew it. And they knew he did. But he doubted that the actual words would ever be spoken aloud. Instead, they clearly expected him to play his part in their little masquerade. To smile and laugh and join in on their fantasy that everything was normal. That he was normal.
Benton snapped out of his thoughts when the motion sensor lights clicked on. The stark white glare of the floodlights poured through the windows and, with no curtains to fight against it, turned the room into a mockery of midday. He winced against the sudden blinding light and poked at his dinner again.
“I do not understand your father’s fascination with those damn lights,” Cheyanne sighed.
Theodore had spent most of the evening putting up an expensive and elaborate light system around the house. When completed, it would be impossible to set a foot on the porch without alerting everyone inside, no matter what room they were in. Even the growing chill of the night wind wasn’t enough to break his father from his task. Benton let the statement pass without comment. He knew exactly why Theodore was so obsessed with them and was too tired to play along with Cheyanne’s smokescreen. This didn’t sit well with his mother and soon, she tried to start the conversation again.
“Someone tells him that there are coyotes around here and he acts like they’re going to break down the door.”
The lies were just getting insulting. For once, just one time out of his miserable existence, he wanted to hear her tell the truth.
“Maybe he’s more concerned with people sneaking out.”
Cheyanne’s hand stilled, her fried rice momentarily forgotten, and Benton released a long sigh. He couldn’t go through with it. He might be ready to leave the delusion, but she wasn’t.
“What? You think I haven’t heard about the parties that bored country kids have? Refusing to let me get my driver’s license before we left Toronto was subtle, but this…” He spiraled his fork to indicate the light that still burned the room like a personal sun. “It’s a little too on the nose.”
Neither one of them believed the other’s explanations. But pretending to believe them was a whole lot easier than admitting that the security system was designed to keep him locked inside. Suddenly, the chicken tasted stale and sour. He stood and thrust the container towards her. She blinked up at him and slowly raised her hand to take it. “I’m going to bed.”
“Okay, honey,” she smiled weakly. “You’ve had such a hard day. Do you feel like taking one of your tablets tonight?”
His attempt at a calming breath was choked off by his rising frustration.
“No.” The word came out as a growl and he stormed across the vastly empty room to the stairs. “Why don’t we just soundproof my room?” he snapped without looking back.
She steadfastly refused to acknowledge the insult. Instead, she called out in that infuriatingly pleasant tone that his room was the one at the top of the staircase.
Benton was yet to explore the house. After Nicole had left, he had stayed in a corner and written down his dream. It was a habit, a compulsion, not as strong as his urge to warn the people, but a strong one, nonetheless. It had distracted him well enough until the food had arrived. He had yet to venture upstairs.
The insides of the rustic ranch home had been gutted and replaced by a sterile modernized arrangement. The carpet was new and thick. It squished under his feet with every step and made the trek up the long staircase a little easier to bear. His eyelids drooped and his muscles grew lax. It didn’t matter that his box spring was still en route. He was going to be asleep the second he hit the mattress. Benton finally reached the top of the stairs. He could see his bed through the open doorway and it was like coming to Valhalla. A moment later, his sleep-deprived brain reminded him what was missing.
“Mom!”
She appeared behind him before he had even made his way through the doorway. She had been following him, waiting for the fallout. Benton surveyed the room as she hovered behind him. His mattress was pressed against the opposite wall, the end turned towards the doorway, making him clearly visible from the hallway as he slept. The room itself was huge, longer than it was wide, with an enclosed fireplace separating the space. Beyond it was a large, modern bathroom. With sandstone tiles, a huge tub, and a shower built for two.
“Amazing, right?” Cheyanne said. “There is no way we could have afforded a place like this in the city. You even have your own bathroom.”
“And a distinct lack of doors,” Benton snapped.
“It’s open plan, honey,” she said with exaggerated patience. “Just like downstairs. No unnecessary walls to clutter up the place. Doesn’t it just feel liberating? Honestly, I don’t know how we didn’t feel claustrophobic in our old apartment.”
“There isn’t even a privacy wall for the toilet.”
“Now you’re just nit-picking.”
Benton turned to her, his jaw clenching tight enough to hurt. “Where is my bedroom door?”
“What do you mean?” She looked behind her and gasped. “Oh, would you look at that. Maybe there isn’t supposed to be one.”
“You can see the holes where the hinges were!”
“Do not raise your voice at me,” Cheyanne snapped. “You should be thankful. Look at the space you have. How many other kids do you think have this?”
“I think they have more privacy than an average prison inmate.”
Cheyanne threw her hands up. “There is no pleasing you!”
“I can be easily pleased. With a door.”
“I’ll talk to your father and we’ll see what can be done. But I doubt there is a good carpenter in Fort Wayward. It might take some time.”
Benton gnashed his teeth and balled his hands. This was against the rules. The unspoken but long-standing rules that they all had to abide by. They didn’t trust him, he didn’t trust them, but neither party ever made it blatantly obvious. That’s how it worked. How they had coexisted without a civil war.
“Right.” He ran a hand over his face. “Until then, I’ll just pin up a sheet or something.”
“Benton, this house is an investment. I don’t want you ruining the paint with tapes and tacks just yet.”
He met her eyes and all pretenses faded away from them like a retreating tide, leaving only the raw brutality of the truth lingering between them.
“So, I can’t have a door?”
“Of course you can.” She smiled, a reflex movement that held no warmth or meaning. “You just have to be patient.”
His neck ached as he forced himself to nod. The outside floodlights flicked on and filled the room with a tainted but searing glare. Cheyanne took the silence as a victory and, with that smile still solidly in place, turned to leave the room.
“Out of curiosity,” Benton waited until she met his gaze before he continued, never attempting to keep his simmering resentment from his voice, “Do you and dad have a door?”
Cheyanne’s eyes widened. For a moment, he reveled in snatching his mother’s supposed victory away from her. But the sensation didn’t last and, when it faded, all that remained was the crippling knowledge that, on some level, his mother was afraid of him. Shoulders slumped, he moved to brush his teeth. She left without a word, the soft shuffle of her feet across the carpet sounding slightly faster than it had before.
***
The cold seeped into Benton’s veins. It numbed his limbs until the throbs of pain pulled him from sleep. He wavered on his feet, barely able to keep upright. Sweat beaded across his skin and drenched the thin material of his Chicago Cubs tee-shirt. Ravaged by the night air, it felt like a layer of sleet. He wrapped his quaking arms around himself, seeking warmth but only adding to the burning chill. Grains of damp earth crumbled from his finger. He stood, alone in the cold, unable to see anything in the surrounding darkness. The frost-covered mud cracking slightly under his bare feet.
Light exploded over him. It hit his eyes like a thousand needles and he reeled back as much as his frozen limbs would allow. It wasn’t very far, but it was enough to prove to him that he was in his own skin. His own body. This wasn’t a dream. The realization rocked him more than his body’s sway.
Where am I?
He blinked rapidly but couldn’t discern anything around him. With a feeble wince, he attempted to raise his hand to shield his eyes. He could barely move. Blood rushed through his ears. It roared like crashing waves and muffled the voices that rose up from within its depths. He couldn’t pinpoint where the sound was coming from. Hands grabbed him. The touch like fire against his raw skin. They tried to pull, to get him
to move, the staggered motion clearing his head enough for the waking world to seep in.
“Benton! What have you done?”
He blinked and turned towards the sound. Cheyanne stared at him, eyes wide with fear, her panted breaths turning to mist as they left her mouth.
“Get him out of here!”
The voice belonged to his father. It came from his feet. Benton shifted to look at him but got distracted by the dirt that covered his hands. It took only a moment for his vision to shift beyond his grime covered digits. A corpse lay at his feet. It was still half covered with dirt, its skin mangled and lips shriveled from years of rot. His mother pulled at him, but he continued to stare at the gaping holes that had once been eyes.
“Go!” Theodore ordered as he covered the sight with his coat.
Cheyanne’s sobs and repeated question became a constant background noise that he couldn’t understand. She yanked on him, hard enough to make him stagger. His head lolled back and he caught a glimpse of the symbol formed in faded paint on the side of the barn. Then the security lights flicked off and he plummeted back into darkness.
Chapter 5
Benton trudged down the stairs, mumbling to himself as someone continued to pound on the front door. He felt every blow like it was thumping against the inside of his skull. He hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after finding the body in the barn and everything that followed. It had taken more than an hour to convince his parents that he had nothing to do with the corpse. Even longer for him to get them to agree to call the police. By that time, the cracks that always existed in the foundation of their relationship, the ones that they painstakingly ignored, had become a gaping gorge.
Despite the fact that it was still pre-dawn, Constable Dorothy Rider had arrived looking clean cut and alert; a picture perfect officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Benton had felt the lack of sleep. The RCMP officer had asked the same questions his parents had and a few more creative ones. There wasn’t much Benton could tell her. She cordoned off the barn with bright yellow tape that reflected light like a mirror. It looked too polished for such a dirty task. Thankfully, it had been a lot easier to convince Constable Rider of his innocence than it had been to convince his parents. But then, without the fuzz of hysteria, it was pretty damn obvious that the body had been in the earth longer than he had been alive.
