Alex

by Adam J Nicolai

  "Come on, Alex!" Eston shouted, still tossing his head back and forth, searching. "It's okay! I promise! If you don't like our games, we'll bring you home. Let's go!" He stumbled forward, down the hill toward Alex's tree, and the boy tensed, squeezed his eyes shut, his lips moving silently, waiting -

  "Kelly!" Eston called over his shoulder. "I lost him, get down to the shore, I think he got -"

  But the grass was slick, and he slipped; fell back onto his ass and slid past Alex's tree. His eyes widened as he saw the boy, and he started to shout something else - but Alex leapt on him like a jackal, raging, his hand raking like a claw towards the kidnapper's eye.

  "Alex!" Ian roared and dove forward to help, scrambling for Eston's gun. His hand plunged through the kidnapper's arm, and it and Alex and the tree and the gun disappeared, leaving Ian alone in the darkness, scrabbling against the carpet and screaming.

  71

  He stumbled out, eventually, like a man staggering out of a collapsed coal mine. He left the door open.

  Because he didn't know where else to go, he retreated back to his bed and curled beneath the tangled skein of blankets, shivering and broken. He clenched his eyes shut, but behind his eyelids he saw only Alex praying, Eston sniffing at the air -

  So he opened them again, and stared down the hall into the black pit of his son's room.

  He had fumbled at the light switch as he left, but the bulb was still dead. He wished he could flood the room with light, saturate it - burn it, if he had to, to purge that darkness from his sight. But he couldn't, so he closed his eyes again, and the cycle repeated - Eston then blackness, screaming then silence - until finally his heart slowed and some glimmer of his rational mind began again to whisper.

  He couldn't stand to stare at Alex's empty room anymore, but he didn't want to lose the comfort of his blankets. So he sat up, clutched them tight around his shoulders and made his way into the living room: a ragged priest, his stole trailing behind him.

  72

  The TV pulsed with silent light.

  His brain worked over what he had seen, pushing at it from every angle, flinching from it, picking it apart. But he was too tired. There was nothing to be gleaned from it but more pain.

  He longed to share it with Alina, to attack it together, to make sense of it. Nothing had been too much for them when they had been together. But this yearning only amplified the problem, made it twist inside his heart like a shiv.

  Finally, blessedly, he started nodding off - sometimes for as long as a whole infomercial. He wanted to lie down, to sink into the couch and disappear, but he couldn't. It was almost time to get ready for work.

  The very notion made him want to sob. He had lost his son. He had lost his wife. He wanted to sleep. It was the only thing left for him. He imagined stretching out, leaving the world behind. It would be worth the loss of his job.

  But some remnant of his work ethic drove him to his feet, to the dining room, where he stared at his cell phone and tried to remember how it worked.

  "Smartlink Tech Support Specialists, this is Justin."

  Ian blinked and looked at the clock. Justin was in early.

  He had expected voicemail - had been counting on voicemail.

  "Justin?"

  "Yes. Who's calling?"

  "It's Ian."

  "Oh, Ian." He sounded glib, almost expectant. "What can I do for you?"

  Ian briefly considered giving it up, saying Nothing and forcing himself into the shower, but his exhaustion was so deep that this was never really more than a fanciful delusion. "I won't be in today."

  A long, deep sigh. "Ian, you know you're on probation."

  "I know that."

  "If you don't come in to work today..." He sighed again. "Look, I'm sorry, I know you're going through a lot. But if you don't come in to work today, we have to let you go." Pause. "Company policy."

  "Justin, I am so tired. I haven't slept in days. I've been having terrible nightmares that have kept me awake constantly. I'm looking into FMLA, I just don't have the paperwork done yet -"

  "Have you talked to HR about that?"

  "No. Not yet, no, I -"

  "Ian, look. You have gotten more mileage out of our attendance policy than anyone. We've bent every rule in the book. I sent you home yesterday with pay. But you're on written warning. We can't bend the rules any more. If you want to keep your job, you need to come in and do it."

  Ian gritted his teeth. "I am physically incapable of doing that today, Justin."

  "Well, then..." He saw Justin from behind his chair, his smart headset positioned perfectly, lifting his palms to say It's out of my hands. "You're done. It's your decision."

  "Don't fire me."

  Justin scoffed, finally at his wit's end. "Why not, Ian?"

  "Because if you do," Ian snarled, "I'll call your wife and tell her you're fucking Sheila Swanson."

  He hung up and went to bed.

  73

  He slept dreamlessly - or at least, his dreams echoed so deeply below his waking mind that when he got up to pee in the early afternoon, he remembered none of them. He stumbled back to bed in an eager haze, anxious to return to nothingness.

  Sleep held him until a sudden honking horn on the street outside pried his eyelids apart, and he found himself staring at the wall of his bedroom in the fading daylight, wondering fiercely who Kelly was.

  Eston had called for her last night. While he was hunting Alex.

  Ian's brain hunted through memories of daycare, of Rita's friends and relatives, for a Kelly. Nothing. It combed through work, and he and Alina's friends. Through college. Through news stories. No Kelly - or at least, no Kellys that made sense.

  Kelly, I lost him, get down to the shore.

  Ian sat up, alert and awake for the first time in days.

  Who the fuck was Kelly?

  74

  "Hi Daddy," Alex said in the dining room. "Were you taking a nap?"

  "Yeah, bud." Ian answered aloud without thinking. He wasn't surprised to see Alex out of his room. He had expected it to happen, once he opened the boy's door again.

  "But is your headache... does your head... is your headache all better now?"

  Ian stopped at the table. Alex had a blue plastic bowl in front of him, filled with cut hot dog slices. A streak of ketchup marred his cheek like a line of war paint.

  Alex claimed it was his favorite, but that didn't mean he'd eat it all. Instead, he'd swing his legs and sing and chatter incessantly while the food cooled and the ketchup congealed. It drove Ian and Alina nuts.

  It used to, Ian thought. Not anymore, because Alina doesn't live here anymore.

  And neither does Alex, he remembered.

  "Daddy? Does your head feel better now because of your nap?"

  Ian blinked. "Yeah. Yeah, actually it does."

  "Mommy told me to be quiet. Did you think I was quiet?" His cheeks had bright spots of red; he must have been playing outside before dinner. He was watching his dad intently, waiting for confirmation that he'd done well.

  "Alex, do you remember last night?"

  The boy screwed up his eyebrows in an exaggerated grimace of concentration. "Mommy didn't make hot dogs last night. But she only made icky stuff."

  "Leroy Eston was in your room last night." The name tasted like bile. "Do you remember - ?"

  "Daddy, did you think I was quiet." It wasn't a question; just an insistent reminder of the question Ian hadn't answered.

  "You have to listen to me, Alex. This is important. Le..." He started to say the man's name again, but it conjured images of Eston's stringy hair and jean jacket that made Ian want to gag. "The bad man, the one that hurt you - he said something about someone named Kelly. Did you see someone named Kelly? Did she hurt you?"

  "Mommy made the hot dog," Alex corrected him. "Because you were sleeping."

  "Alex," Ian started, but bit his tongue. He'd been down this road. It never led anywhere.

  He said it anyway.

  "Honey, I r
eally need you to think about this. Okay? You're here for a reason, and I'm trying as hard as I can. Was there a lady named Kelly, who hurt you?"

  The hot dog was gone. Alex was bundled into his winter coat, a hood low over his eyes, sitting in a booster car seat perched absurdly on the dining room chair.

  "Daddy, I don't like that black hat."

  He felt an instant of sharp frustration, but then Ian's heart quickened. "My ski mask? The one I used when I was shoveling?"

  "The eyes are scary on that black hat. Will you leave it inside, please?"

  His mind groped for explanations, desperate. "Did Kelly have a ski mask? Is that what you mean?"

  The bowl returned; the car seat disappeared. Alex was smiling. "I'm glad you're feeling better, Daddy."

  75

  He went downstairs and went through every file he had from the time of the investigation, looking for a woman named Kelly or any sign that Eston hadn't acted alone. He Googled "Kelly Eston," "Leroy Eston Kelly," "Kelly Shakopee Minnesota," even "Kelly Eston black hat" and "Kelly" by itself. He scoured Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, WhitePages.com.

  If he'd found nothing, it would have been easier.

  There were dozens of possibilities, hundreds of permutations of the name and location. He pored over all of them for some sign of a person who could kidnap and murder a little boy, but of course that was far too broad a criteria. None of them were related by blood, as far as he could tell, to Eston. None of them appeared to have a public criminal record. He couldn't place any of them in Shakopee on the day Alex was found; not with the tools he was familiar with. Some of them were even men, a possibility he hadn't considered before he sat down.

  Every hit eroded his resolution, made him doubt what he had heard the night before.

  I'm so desperate to believe his spirit is here, and here for a reason, that now my mind is making things up, he realized. It's my subconscious, or something. I was already seeing things, but I was trying to get away from it, and now it's given me something to look for. Something to believe I can affect, so I'll stop trying to get away.

  He imagined going to one of the women's homes, demanding to know where they had been the first week of April. Maybe he'd see Leroy Eston again while he was there, insisting that she was the one, that she had helped kill Alex, and then Ian could sneak in through her window the next night with his gun -

  His stomach lurched. Oh god. The thought was sobering as a bucket of water to the face. He closed the search windows, shut down the computer. As the monitor fell dark he saw his own face reflected, with the utility room door standing behind it.

  76

  Despite sleeping all day, he was yawning as he came up the stairs. He grabbed a banana and a yogurt from the fridge, and ate them both at the table as he fought to stay awake awhile longer.

  Okay, so he wouldn't go to anyone's house. That would be crazy. But did that mean he had to forget what he had heard altogether? What if it really meant something? What if Alex had shown it to him for a reason?

  Alex didn't show it to you. You are seeing things, and your brain made that up.

  Fine, maybe. But even then. Even then. He still heard the name. What if it meant something?

  He fought past his own raging skepticism and stubbornly explored the idea.

  There was nothing in the stuff Ian had saved about Eston possibly having an accomplice, but that didn't mean the police hadn't had their own suspicions. Maybe he had seen the name somewhere, during the investigation, and his subconscious was trying to remind him of it. An off-hand comment during a news report, or a scrawled post-it stuck to a police report. Maybe he could call Detective Olson, the chief detective on Alex's case, and ask him -

  What?

  Ask him what?

  I'm not going to tell him that I saw the ghost of Leroy Eston in my son's old room. And if I don't tell him that then I have nothing to say.

  "Fuck," he muttered. He put his elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand. He stayed that way for several minutes as endless scenarios played through his head, all of them ending in madness.

  Finally he sighed and stood up. The clock on the microwave read 11:34. It was getting late, and Alex hadn't started screaming. Ian regarded this information with a sharp sigh of relief. He hadn't wanted to go back to seeing his son everywhere he went, but if it meant being able to sleep at night again, he would accept the tradeoff.

  That meant, of course, that he had to decide what to do tomorrow.

  The sudden memory of that morning's conversation with Justin made his stomach turn. Part of him wanted to crawl into his room and hide. The job market was horrible right now. There was no guarantee he'd find anything else quickly enough to keep the house without Alina's support. He couldn't afford to lose his job, yet surely that was what happened this morning?

  A moment ago he'd been pondering his growing madness; now, he considered the very real possibility that he'd end up on the street. The two ideas had a dreadful synergy.

  He had to hold on to his job.

  There was no reason to believe that Justin was actually having an affair with Sheila. And he'd hung up too quickly to determine whether his threat alone had had any effect.

  But it might have. Justin was many things, but at his heart, Ian was sure he was a wuss.

  Ian hadn't meant to threaten him. It had just come out. Now it was there, and he was either going to own it or run from it.

  Fuck it, he decided. If Justin was really going to fire him, Ian would find out about it as soon as he got to work. It would hardly be the most embarrassing situation he'd ever encountered at a workplace.

  Go in, go to my desk, work like nothing happened. His stomach roiled. He ignored it and went to bed.

  77

  The alarm went off at 6:30. He snoozed it until 7, then got up, took a shower, and got dressed. He didn't see Alex. He got to work about ten to.

  The roiling in his gut from the night before had become full-fledged somersaults. When the elevator passed him and went down to the basement like it always seemed to do, he was grateful for the delay.

  The sensation of the floor falling away was amplified; as the doors slid open on his floor, he felt a clammy wave of nausea wash over him. He forced his feet to carry him down the row toward his cube, his eyes glued to the floor.

  Don't look at Justin's cube. Just walk past. Don't look. Don't look up.

  He looked up.

  Justin was in his cubicle, one of the supervisor ones with the clear walls. His eyes met Ian's for just an instant. Then he looked back to his computer screen, the color draining from his face.

  Ian averted his eyes as if he'd just caught the other man picking his nose.

  "Wow, Colmes," Sheila said. As usual, she wasn't on a call. She was dressed modestly, for a change: a loose skirt that hung to mid-calf, and no cleavage. "Not just on time, but five minutes early." She was smiling, like it was a joke, and for the first time he wondered if maybe she wasn't the bitch he always treated her as. Maybe she was just teasing, trying to be friendly and fit in.

  If so, she wasn't very good at taking hints.

  "Morning," he answered. He pushed the power button, tapped in his username and password, and watched the screen go dark. He didn't realize he had been holding his breath, waiting to see if his access had been revoked, until his desktop popped up. Four faces from last Halloween, pocked with little icons.

  Brown eyes, brown eyes, brown eyes, blue.

  He blew out a long, slow breath and logged into his phone.

  78

  Lunchtime.

  "Hello, you've reached Shauna Douglas. I'm not available at the moment, but please leave your information and I'll return your call. If you have your session number, that would help me as well. Thanks."

  BEEP.

  "Hi, Shauna, this is Ian Colmes from your Wednesday night counseling session at the junior high in Champlin? I'm sorry, I don't have the session number. But I'm sure..."

  I'm sure you'll remember me,
I'm the guy who got into a huge fight with his wife and accused her of essentially murdering her son through negligence.

  "...ahm, you probably remember me. I just wanted to check with someone, and if you wouldn't be the right person, maybe you could let me know... but I am looking into FMLA at work. I have been having these extreme bouts of... I don't know, depression I guess, and it can get really bad. It's making me miss work and now I'm in trouble because of my attendance, basically."

  He rubbed his temple. He hadn't intended to go into this much detail.

  "I just... so basically I just need, um, someone to sign this form about my situation so I can get approved and hopefully not lose my job over this. I'm hoping you can help me with that, if not, maybe you can point me in the right direction? I'd appreciate any help you can give me."

  He left his cell phone number and hung up, feeling like an awkward jackass.

  79

  He glanced at Justin's cube as he left for the day, but it was empty. The man hadn't so much as e-mailed him. Ian wasn't sure what that meant, but whatever it was, he was willing to accept it.

  A small crowd was milling quietly at the elevator. It was Friday, and no one could wait to get out of this place. Ian joined them, wondering what he would do with his weekend.

  He deeply regretted the things he'd said to Alina; he yearned to ease the pain he'd given her, but didn't know how. If she wanted to end their marriage, he wouldn't stop her, but he didn't want her believing that he'd meant anything he'd said on Wednesday. He hadn't. He had agreed to let Alex walk home. It didn't matter whose idea it was. Obviously, it had been a mistake, but it was as much his as it was hers.

  If she wouldn't listen to him on the phone, maybe he could write her a letter. Try to explain. But that prospect was quickly swept into an eddying current of clashing questions.

  How much should he tell her? Should he mention Alex, or Eston? Should he gloss over the reasons he couldn't sleep? He could take the dream angle, as he had with Derek. But he hated the idea of lying to her. He wanted to share the truth with someone. And he trusted her. God, it would be good to hear her talking about this problem, working with him to figure out the best way to handle it. Maybe she even saw Alex too. Maybe she -