by Robert Levy
“I’m sorry,” Jason said. “Who are you talking about?”
“Daniel Jessed. He was one of the police officers who came by the night Blue and Elisa went missing. He introduced himself, didn’t he?”
According to Maureen, Detective Jessed’s mother had taken off after Gavina died, leaving the boy on the doorstep of a convicted felon in North Sydney presumed to be his father. After the man was later arrested for drug trafficking, eleven-year-old Daniel was taken in by a local family, the Jesseds, whose name he eventually adopted. As a teenager, he ran into all kinds of trouble—underage drinking, disorderly conduct, breaking and entering—before he straightened himself out and joined the police academy.
Maureen wasn’t clear on the details, only that Gavina had been left in her brother’s care and had drowned. But what was Jason supposed to do about it? If there was anything he knew from being raised a black kid in New York, it was that messing with the police was never a winning proposition. The mere possibility of a connection between Jessed and his sister’s death—between the officer and Blue and Elisa’s disappearance—was enough to set him on edge.
Later that afternoon, he got tired of being alone in the house and sped off to the Gaelic College. Inside the main building and past an archway strung with a banner that read Ceud Mìle Fàilte—“A Hundred Thousand Welcomes” in Scottish Gaelic—he found the Great Hall of the Clans and its exhibits of Scottish clan history, as well as the stories of the first families that settled in the region. It wasn’t long before he found William MacLeod’s name on a set of artifacts, including the pastor’s yellowed and well-thumbed Bible. According to the display copy, MacLeod founded the once-powerful Christ Church and was a fanatical religious leader who ruled over the community with unyielding tyranny, as teacher, preacher, and judge. There was no mention of his supposed disappearance into the woods, only that he was believed to have set sail for Australia with his infant grandson in 1826 after his daughter and her husband died in a fire. Nothing in the exhibits about superstition or changelings or missing children; this was the official record, after all.
The farther Jason walked inside the Great Hall, the closer the events recounted in the exhibits approached present day. Following the immigration of Highland Scots on the heels of the English came an influx of other settlers, including many Irish immigrants seeking better fortunes than their homeland could provide. It wasn’t until Jason reached one of the final exhibits, however, that he was brought to a halt. The 1960s–1970s, the accompanying placard read, Back to the Earth. Among the photographs reproduced behind the glass display was one of a gathering in front of a large brick building. The colors were so bold and deeply saturated that the print resembled an inked animation cel or a pop art canvas, and for a moment he wasn’t sure he was looking at a photograph in the first place, let alone one of the Colony.
But there it was. The Starling Cove Friendship Outpost and Artists Colony in the days before it was rendered uninhabitable by fire, its exterior brightly painted and bursting with Day-Glo color. Its front steps were still intact, wide pine planks leading to a carved archway. A pair of broad doors were decorated with an enormous image of a praying mantis, the tibiae of the insect’s forelegs curving around the iron door handles. Spread out along the steps in an insouciant sprawl were the commune’s two dozen or so denizens, most of them in their twenties with a smattering of babies and toddlers, Blue perhaps among them. Maybe the black-haired one racing across the lawn at the bottom of the frame, rendered as a blur of motion. In the center of the small crowd and planted between two comely young women was a proudly smiling Donald, a good three decades younger but wearing the same familiar style of square-framed glasses, a book resting upon his knees.
It took Jason far longer to place Maureen. She stood in a second-floor window, her youthful face pressed to the pane so that her features were distorted, cheek mashed against the glass like an overripe tomato. It was her, wasn’t it? It had to be. Her eyes had that same hooded shape, her nose the same gentle curve, narrow and regal. He brought his face close to the display. The glare from the overhead track bulbs spotted the print through the glass so that it appeared as if stars were shining among the trees behind the brick building. Pinpricks of light dappled the leaves and branches, the photograph shimmering like one of those 3-D winking Jesus pictures that shifted depending on your perspective. He began to dizzy and had to turn away.
The Great Hall fell silent. Jason withdrew to find a bench on which to rest, the enormity of the room lending the impression of being inside the hull of a ship, accompanied by a resultant seasick sensation. He dropped his head into his hands and drew slow and deep breaths, performing the practice he had clients execute if they found themselves overcome by anxiety.
The whole intrepid sleuthing bit—canvassing the cove, hunting down Fred Cronin, questioning Maureen, even—it all seemed more futile than ever. None of these people wanted to help him, not really; possibly because they had something to hide. Certainly Daniel Jessed did. Learning of the detective’s personal connection to the case had triggered Jason’s paranoia, already uncomfortably heightened since Elisa and Blue first went missing. Obsession and distrust were exactly the kind of red flags Jason had tried to ignore in his sister, Deirdre, before she was first institutionalized, almost twenty years ago. That he might share her same demons, and after all this time, was simply not allowable. Which was why he had rarely discussed his sister with Elisa, nor the circumstances behind his mother’s death. It was too much for him to share. He, whose entire profession was built on sharing, on excavating the events of his patients’ pasts in order to manage the present.
He placed his palms on the hard wood of the bench and willed his breath to slow. I am not my patients, he told himself, as he often did at his lowest moments. And he had never been lower. I am not myself sick, in the head or otherwise. I am my own person, free from irrationality and fear. I am not my patients, not my sister, not my parents. I stand free of them. I stand alone.
So move on, he thought, the secret words a force command inside his head. Move on, move on, move on.
Jason stood, ignoring his queasiness as he strode toward the exit. He wanted to make it back before nightfall.
Never much of a drinker, Jason had already put away an entire six-pack of beer and was well into a fifth of scotch by midnight. The side of his face itched from no-see-um bites he’d suffered in the woods that morning, one irritated patch in particular that he scratched at until the skin broke. A filament of blood blossomed beneath the tip of his fingernail, and he stared at its shocking bright color in amazement.
With Gabe nowhere to be found, Jason had the house to himself, alone in night’s silent embrace. All alone, except that intolerable feeling of being watched from the woods. Alone, but never alone, haunted by all-too-familiar ghosts. He stood and stared out the windows, into the blackened pitch; all he could see was the dim outline of pine trees, casting shadows upon the moonlit lawn. He’d had enough of waiting.
Flashlight in hand, he slipped out and down the porch steps and rounded the side of the house to the hiking trail. Though it was a temperate night, there was also a steady breeze, which kept the insects off him as he made his way into the woods. After a spell of wandering he left the path, and not long after heard the familiar sound of water rushing through the trees. He realized with a start that he was nearing the creek where he’d found Gabe and Fred Cronin earlier in the day, where they had spotted Donald weeks earlier. He was back behind the burned-out brick walls of the old Colony building.
He approached the circle of stones where he’d seen the pile of effects in proximity to Cronin and Gabe: an apple, a plate of meat, the knotted-up bandanna, and more. The flashlight’s beam crossed the ground. The circle was empty now, the collection of offerings gone, nothing there but dirt and a spray of pine needles. “Where are you?” he whispered. He stepped inside the circle of stones, cut the flashlight, and listened.
“Where are you?” Jason screamed
it now, the flashlight cast aside. He took hold of one of the circle stones and flung it in the direction of the creek, the sound of rock on dull wood. A moment later he picked up another stone and threw that one as well, then another, and another, pelting the black corners of night. Rock hitting water, trees, brush, a shower of baseball-sized meteorites crashing to earth.
“Where!” he howled, throat raw and voice hoarse. “Show yourselves! Show me where you are! Show me!”
He cried out, over and over, until he could scream no longer, out of breath as the mosquitoes found him and began their inevitable working over. He dropped to his knees, brought his hands together, and began to pray. He prayed for Elisa, and for Blue, for his sister and his mother as well. For all of them to find their way, to let in the light of the Lord, on Earth as in Heaven. But not for himself. Never that. If you pray for yourself, he thought, then God will never listen. It was something his mother had once said, the only thing he remembered her teaching him. It was a lesson he dared not forget.
“It really is okay to pray for yourself, you know.”
Blue’s voice, measured and present. Jason turned, and even in the dark he could tell there was no one there. Were the words inside his head?
“Don’t be afraid,” Blue said, and now it sounded like many voices, many Blues. A hundred thousand welcomes. “We’re trying to tell you our journey has been set in motion, so you can take leave before what is to come. Because soon, you’ll have to face us. And that would make us real. Which would make you unwell, wouldn’t it? By your very own criteria, that is. Delusional. Paranoid. Schizophrenic. Are you prepared for that awareness? Better to take your own journey home first, no?” The disembodied chorus of words threaded through the air, weighty inside the broken stone circle.
“I have nothing to say to you.” Jason was most assuredly awake, and knowing that made it far worse. “You’re not real. And I’m not crazy. So fuck off.”
“Keep on cursing the dark, then.” Blue’s voice alone, closer now; Jason could feel breath upon his cheek. “Better to switch on a flashlight, though, isn’t it? Better to see our true face. If not, maybe it’s time for you to move on.”
The last two words echoed loud enough to rattle Jason’s teeth, and he flinched. It’s not him, he thought wildly, it’s the woods. Whatever it is that lives out here, it’s trying to make me leave. But the thought was fleeting, dissipated by the sense that he really was losing his mind. It’s time, he thought. It’s finally time.
Footfall sounded in the underbrush nearby and Jason fumbled with the flashlight. He turned it back on just in time to catch a figure emerging from the woods, on the opposite side of the shallow skip of water.
“Gabe?” Jason said as the boy crunched through the leaves, jacketless and pale with his own flashlight in hand, though his was switched off. “What are you doing out here?”
“I followed you. What goes around comes around, I guess.” He squinted and shielded his eyes from the beam, until Jason lowered his flashlight. “You okay? I heard you . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence.
“I’m fine.” Jason got to his feet. “Just needed to get something out of my system.” He brushed himself off, the knees of his khakis wet with mud. “So.” The darkness around them was too heavy for silence; it demanded to be broached. Still, it took him some time to ask what he really wanted to know. “Care to tell me what you’ve been up to out here with Fred Cronin?”
Gabe exhaled. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Try me.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I can.”
“This is about the Other Kind, isn’t it? Fairies, or ultraterrestrials, or whatever. Cronin’s been putting ideas in your head.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about what went on up here. With the Colony, the missing kids, even before all of that. This place is special.”
“So I’ve heard.” Jason laughed, the bitter and hollow sound reverberating through the trees. “I was talking to Maureen earlier. She told me some interesting things. Like how Gavina Beaton was Detective Jessed’s sister. Maybe you heard that one already?”
“I was going to tell you,” Gabe said quietly. He flicked his flashlight on, then off, and on.
“When? What the hell were you waiting for?”
“I should’ve said something, I know. But there’s all sorts of things you don’t know about. Starting with Elisa.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Gabe looked down at the flickering glow of his light. “There are things you don’t seem ready to hear.”
It was exactly what Dream Blue had said. “Gabe.” He blunted his worn voice. “Come on. It’s me.”
Gabe lifted his eyes. “Elisa is pregnant.”
Jason opened his mouth but nothing came out, not for a while. “How do you know?” he managed to say.
“She told me, a few days after we got here. She made me swear not to tell anyone. Not even you.”
“She’s pregnant.” So it was true. He knew that already, knew it in his heart, though he’d tried so hard not to believe. But there was no more running from it. “I just . . . She told you that? Why?”
He shrugged. “I asked her.”
“Did she—did she say how far along she was?”
“A couple of months, maybe. I am so, so sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay. The baby, it wasn’t his. It couldn’t be. And Gabe probably had no clue. To Jason, it was like hearing he didn’t matter, or even exist.
They stood unspeaking for a long while, their flashlights’ circles upon the earth the only evidence of human presence in the dark until Gabe broke the silence. “ ‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.’ ” After his recitation Gabe smiled kindly, his flashlight now winking on and off of its own accord. “We should head back. We don’t want to get stuck out here.”
“Sure,” Jason said, “sure,” though the word sounded as if it had been spoken by someone else, from the other end of a tunnel. “Let’s go home.”
They circled back to the house in silence. But there were voices in Jason’s head as they went. Words from the trees, the wind, the ground beneath their feet, a chorus of voices struggling to be heard.
Go home, he heard Blue say, the way a neighbor might speak to an errant youth caught playing in the streets after dark. We’re a part of something greater now. We’ve created life from nothingness, and now we can never be undone.
Fly home, his patient Walt Kerner said. I’m worried I’m going to do something bad.
Come back, his sister, Deirdre, said, her affect flattened from years of psychopharmaceuticals. You need to make sure I’m being taken care of.
Move on, they all said, separately and together. Move on, move on, move on.
Jason poured himself another tumbler of scotch, turned off the porch light, and took the drink upstairs to his bedroom. Everywhere he looked were remnants of Elisa, her possessions rendered artifactual: a hairbrush on the dresser, thick with dark brown strands; four pairs of shoes lined up between the twin windows, their toes pressed neatly to the baseboard; two plastic bags, still stuffed with used clothing from Frenchy’s; a pair of jeans tossed thoughtlessly on the bedpost, atop the safari hat she’d bequeathed him. She wasn’t coming back, was she? Not after this long. How could she? No matter what had happened, he didn’t see a way.
He pulled their suitcase out from under the bed, began to gather his clothes from the closet and dresser drawers, checked under the bed to make sure nothing had been neglected there. He took a slug from his drink, wiped a stray trickle of whisky from his chin, and tried not to grieve for all that he had lost. His father to another family, his mother to suicide, his sister to insanity, colleagues to a cataclysm of smoke and twisted metal. And now Elisa. When would it all finally end? When you’re dead, he thought. Not until you’re dead. Maybe Mom had t
he right idea after all.
Go on, then. His own voice, plain as day. Wouldn’t be such a great loss. Who would even miss you once you were gone?
He didn’t know. He actually didn’t know.
Then do it. You know you’ve been wanting to all this time. It’s time for you to move on.
Maybe it would be easier that way. If he drove up Kelly’s Mountain and peeled off into the guardrail, the rental car flying free from the road in one brief and final moment of beauty and weightlessness. Then he would be free, at last.
He began to cry. Silently at first, but then in a low sorrowful wail, the dim lamplight of the pink room gone jagged and crystalline. He knocked back the rest of his drink and tossed the glass aside. The tumbler bounced on the crumpled bedspread, rolled off the side of the bed and across the floor, too heavy to break.
Jason wiped his eyes and staggered into the hallway to stand at the entrance to the tartan room, the room Blue had once slept in but Gabe had since adopted. He leaned against the closed door and pressed himself to the splintered grain, the surface rough beneath his large hands.
“Gabe,” he whispered into the wood. His voice had cracked, he’d said it too quietly.
But “Yes?” a voice whispered back, from the other side.
“If I—if I were to go . . .”
He couldn’t finish; there were no more words. A few moments later the door slowly opened. Gabe stood there in an oversized T-shirt, baggy soccer shorts, and a pair of too-big Vans, all of which made him appear slighter than he already was. He was dressed head to toe in Blue’s clothing.
