Josh didn’t reply, instead allowing his mother to pull him toward the house. His emotions, his entire soul, felt pliable, muddy.
They entered the house and the pleasing sounds of playful discussion filled his ears. His mother led him into the dining room, where the oak dinner table—a staple in the Benoit home for as long as he could remember—was surrounded by people. Gail cleared her throat and the chatter stopped. All eyes turned to him.
Josh felt his walls crumble as he stared at those in attendance. His father sat at the head of the table with Sophia beside him. Colin and Bobby sat opposite them, craned in their chairs so they could look at him. His Aunt Peggy and cousin Sean sat between them on one side, with James Conroy—the janitor, and Josh’s best work friend before the collapse of everything—on the other. Josh sniveled as he gawked at each of them, snot flowing over his quivering lips.
Don, his father, stood up. He approached the empty chair beside Sophia and pulled it out, gesturing for him to sit. Josh just stood there, dumbfounded and unsure.
“Honey,” said his mother, “go sit down.”
As if on instinct, Josh did as he was told. All eyes were still on him as he maneuvered his way around the table on shaking legs. He lowered himself down and noticed that the cushions that his mother only brought out on special occasions had been placed on the chairs. The feather-filled pillow greeted his ass with a sigh, and Sophia placed a hand on his knee. He cried even harder and covered his face. Sophia tilted her head, a look of distress on her face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Josh couldn’t answer.
After a few minutes of respectful silence, Josh felt his nerves re-gathering. He sucked in a stray rivulet of mucus and put his hand atop Sophia’s. When he finally allowed a smile to cross his lips, his father stood up and raised his glass.
“Josh,” Don said, “this meal is for you.”
“Prepared in your honor,” added Gail.
“To congratulate a person who added so much to our lives, though he doesn’t think so,” said Colin.
“To wish him well on his journeys to come,” said Bobby.
“And to show you that always, you will be loved,” finished Sophia.
In response to this, his aunt, cousin, and Mr. Conroy clanked their glasses together and proclaimed, “Here, here.”
Josh’s brain, only moments earlier beginning to come to grips with this strange show of solidarity, once more descended into disbelief. Everything seemed unreal, too perfect to be genuine, and his inner cynic rejected the revelation. His vision became hazy, his mind spun. He would’ve fallen from his chair if Colin hadn’t placed a hand on his shoulder for support.
“Whoa, big guy,” his friend said with a mischievous smirk. “You’re gonna hurt your fat ass.”
That was enough to throw him over the edge. Josh bolted from his chair, shrugging off Sophia and Colin’s comforting touches in the process, and ran for the back door. He burst out into the sun-bleached day, only to see storm clouds gathering on the horizon. They moved in fast, much faster than real clouds ever could, blotting out the sky and threatening to bathe the land in blackness. It’s because of me, he thought. It’s all my fault. He collapsed to his knees and rocked back and forth, punching himself in the side of the head, trying to wake up. Once again, he cried.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeated, over and over. He felt eyes upon him and knew that if he turned around he would see those from the dinner party, his family and friends, standing on the front porch, staring. Against his better judgment he did turn, and saw that he’d been right. Their gaze drove him mad: the loving, accepting visages that breathed unconditional love. It was a façade, a way to trick him into giving up. It had to be. Suddenly his despair turned to anger. He rose up on one foot, then two, and faced them.
“What the fuck do you want?” he bellowed. Salty tears flowed into his mouth. “I said I was sorry! I know I fucked up! Just leave me alone! FUCK!”
They stood there like granite and didn’t respond.
“What the fuck to you want?”
“They want you to know they love you.”
The voice came from behind him, soft and feminine. Josh turned and spotted a little girl standing barefoot on the grass in front of his childhood swing set. She wore a flowing yellow sundress that complimented her wavy red hair, which was tied into pigtails. Her eyes were sea-blue; her cheeks round as a chipmunk’s. She couldn’t have been more than seven years old.
“Who are you?” asked Josh. He felt disarmed by the girl’s presence, and his anger washed away. The black storm clouds retreated, and once more light suffused the land, making everything appear bright and appealing.
“You have forgotten me already?” the girl said with a frown. Her voice was mature, aged, differing from her youthful appearance. It was familiar to Josh, and the recognition washed over him like the tide.
“Isabella?”
The girl blushed and shyly curtseyed, nodding. Josh’s feet lost their weighty feeling and he approached her. She swayed from side to side, humming, her sparkling, intelligent eyes locked on his. He knelt down in front of her and took her hand. The air shimmered around them and his breaking heart reassembled, as if she’d sealed him in a bubble of good tidings.
“It’s been so long,” he said. “I thought you’d left me for good this time.”
“I would never do that,” replied Isabella. “I will always be here. Always.”
With that, the little girl took his head between her hands and turned him to face the house. His parents were still there, as were Sophia and Colin and Bobby and the rest. They weren’t frozen in place any longer; instead they were milling about on the back stoop, chatting like people who share a common bond often do.
“They are waiting for you,” whispered Isabella. “Go to them. They do not want to hurt you.”
His head in a daze, Josh allowed Isabella’s gentle hands to drop before rising to his feet. Colin and Sophia led the charge in stepping to the side, and the most important people in his life formed a line on either side of the porch. They became knights, he lost royalty, and with one last glance over his shoulder at the still-smiling Sophia, he walked back into the house.
The entire experience felt like old times again, and this time Josh allowed events to take their course. He was ushered into the living room, hand-in-hand with his sister. His father took his place in his favorite recliner, his mother her spot on the couch with Sophia on the floor between her knees, while Josh, Bobby, Colin, and Mr. Conroy sat on the ground with a cribbage board between them. Colin began his usual routine of mimicking his favorite comedians—badly—while his mother twirled the curls that hung to his shoulders between her fingers.
They played games and chatted amongst themselves for quite some time, all the while listening to Don Benoit rant about how when they rebuild society, they need to remember to leave the bureaucrats behind this time. Sophia made her way over to Josh and reclined against him, her head resting in his lap while he giggled like a schoolboy with his friends. Then things began to change. Josh sensed an atmospheric shift. Objects began to flicker, as if a sputtering projector had cast the images. Josh took that as a sign and abruptly rose from his place on the floor. Strangely, he felt no fear, only the tension that came from his desire to see the little girl outside before the vision petered out for good.
“I have to go,” he said to his friends and family. “Thank you so much for doing this for me.”
Without waiting to see their responses, he pivoted on his heels and marched for the back door. Someone caught him from behind and he twirled around to see Sophia standing there, a sad smile pasted on her innocent, gorgeous face.
She leaned into him and wrapped her arms around his back. Josh felt her breath on his neck, and he remembered the way she looked that final night, the night he ended her life after she’d murdered their parents. That peculiar, debilitating sadness he always seemed to carry with him began to rise up on
his gut. Sophia’s lips pressed to his ear.
“I thanked you,” she said, and then released him.
“You did? For what?” he asked.
She backed away, a roguish grin on her face, and disappeared around the corner. “Think about it,” he heard her say. Josh stood there for a moment, dumbfounded, before hurrying outside.
Isabella was still in the backyard, perched upon the old metal swing set. She swayed back and forth, the rusted metal o-rings softly creaking while the legs of the old thing lifted slightly off the ground with each swoop.
“I’m glad you’re still here,” he said, watching her swing with his hands in his pockets. “I wanted to see you before I go.”
Isabella grinned as she slowed her swinging down. “You are not distressed this time?”
Josh shook his head. “No. I’m just…sad.”
“Why?”
“I’m never gonna see them again, am I?” he said, feeling the tears coming.
Isabella rose from the swing and looped her tiny hand into his. “That all depends on you, Joshua. If you forget their faces, then they will be lost forever. But if you remember, if you hold them in your thoughts, then you may visit them any time you wish. It may not be like this,” she swept her arm toward the house, “but it is at least something.”
“So is this all a figment of my imagination?”
Isabella giggled, for the first time sounding like the little girl she appeared to be. “No, silly. You always think that way, always doubt what you feel in your heart. When you love someone, when you let them inside, they leave a small piece of themselves behind. These are the pieces that you see in your dreams, the pieces that allow them to live on through you. It has been this way since the beginning of time, Joshua. Unless you turn your back on them, they will always be there. Always waiting, always comforting, always loving.”
Josh glanced back at the porch and saw his family and friends standing there, waving. He waved back. “I feel it,” he said. “It’s just so hard sometimes.”
“I know. I feel it too.”
They walked in silence for a while after that, heading across a field that seemed to stretch out into infinity. The black clouds from earlier were all but gone now, and even though the forest on either side of him blinked in and out of existence, Josh felt calm, at ease.
“You’re not coming back to me, are you?” he asked finally. “That’s why you showed me this.”
Isabella shrugged. “No. Not like this, at least. But I will always be there with you in some way, forever. Of that I promise.”
With those words she walked away, bringing the shimmering pool of air with her. Josh stood exposed to the elements of his mind, but he didn’t run from them. When the black clouds reappeared he held up his hand and held them at bay with the sheer power of his own will. His heart seemed to vibrate in his chest, causing a reverberation that shook the fabric of the in-between existence he found himself in. And when Isabella turned and waved before disappearing into the void, he smiled wide, knowing that he was experiencing a sensation he hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.
Josh Benoit was happy.
* * *
That night, while Josh was working through his issues and coming to grips with his past, Kyra was reliving a part of hers.
What came to her in her dream was an event she’d virtually forgotten about, to the point where it seemed like she was experiencing it for the first time right inside her head. But everything about the encounter—the backdrop, the conversations, the feel of the sand under her feet—told her it was as real as anything else in her big, bad, crazy world.
She was ten years old, and the Kyra Holcomb she would become—the tainted, broken woman—was but a speck of reality in her ocean of memory. In this instance she was simply Kyra Flynn, who worshipped her older sister Stacey, two years her senior. Their father had already fallen into despair by then, and so the two short, spunky redheads became as close as any two sisters could be.
Along with their friend Julie Newman, a girl from down the street with hair so blonde it almost appeared white, they formed the Jefferson Street Trio, who in the future would be the subject of many a teenage boy’s wet dream. But that was far-off as well, virtually nonexistent in the place Kyra found herself in. So she focused on the immediate, feeling her new bellbottoms swish against her ankles while taking in the scents and sounds around her.
The summer was little Kyra’s favorite time of year, and with Dover being a stone’s throw from Hampton Beach (kidspeak for a fifteen minute drive), she regularly joined Stacey and Julie as they wandered the New Hampshire shoreline, digging in the sand and trying to avoid the masses of beached jellyfish. But in this particular instance it was not daytime, and she was not at the water’s edge. Instead she was on the boardwalk, heading for the cluster of folks gathered at the pier’s end. It was the Independence Day Carnival, an event Kyra had looked forward to since roughly Christmas.
The boardwalk was cluttered with people. A Ferris wheel loomed above everything, its blinking red, green, and blue lights acting as a beacon for those looking to release the stress of their daily grind. The air stunk of rotting seaweed, fish, stale beer, and vomit, but to little Kyra, the combination was almost appealing. These were the smells of her favorite time of year, after all. And if she loved one part, she wanted to love it all.
The Beatles were playing on the PA system, piped through speakers attached to telephone poles, but you could barely hear the music over the clatter of raucous laughter. Small groups gathered on picnic tables while others watched people take part in the strong-man competition. All around there were wooden shacks covered with canvas, and still more people congregated in front of those, trying their best to win a cheap stuffed toy by throwing a ring over a bottle, shooting a cardboard duck, or trying to toss a beanbag into a small hole. Both successes and failures were greeted with the same response—cackling and back-slapping. Kyra’s grin stretched across her face. She was in heaven.
“Oh shit,” muttered Stacey as she licked the last of her cotton candy from its cardboard tube. The three girls had been sitting on a brick cascade, staring out at the darkening water.
“What’s up, sis?” Kyra asked.
Stacey glanced desperately at her watch. “Julie’s mom said she’d be here at eight, and it’s freaking seven-thirty. Why eight o’clock, anyway? Can’t it be a little longer? Julie, why’s your mom gotta be such an asshole?”
Julie grinned while she swung her skinny legs back and forth. “Dunno. She’s my mom.”
“Well, looks like no Scrambler today,” Stacey said with a huff. “Look at the friggin’ line! By the time we got on she’d be here.”
“Can we just walk?” asked Kyra. She didn’t understand why her sister got upset and swore all the time. It didn’t make sense, and besides, she was getting a little tired.
“That sounds good to me,” said Julie, rolling her eyes.
Stacey shook her head. “Fine. Whatever. There ain’t nothing else to do in this shithole, anyway.”
The three of them strolled down the boardwalk. Stacey kept to the front, her head swiveling from side to side, her expression dour. Kyra and Julie followed a few steps behind, walking hand-in-hand. They passed the booths and the smiling people who stood in front of them. Kyra’s mood started to change. Perhaps it was a result of her sister’s irritation, or maybe the fact that her stomach was rumbling, seeing as Stacey had hijacked her tokens and spent them all on herself. Either way, it didn’t matter. All she knew was that the carnival goers didn’t seem so jovial anymore. Their smiles took on dark, sinister qualities, as if each and every person was hiding a deep, threatening secret. She noticed many older men glancing in their direction and quickly turned her head, leery of the odd, invasive look in their eyes. A shiver racked her body even though the evening was hot and muggy. All of a sudden she just wanted Julie’s mom to show up, and quick.
They circled around and crossed the walk, heading back for the parking lot.
At that point there were still many people flooding into the party and very few leaving. The farther they moved away from the carnival, the thinner the crowd became, which served her just fine.
Everything grew quiet, with the exception of the roiling waves and the wind. Even Stacey had ceased her tireless stream of obscenities. She stared out at the ocean as she walked, squinting. Kyra followed her sister’s gaze, and caught sight of something strange.
At first she thought it was a sand dune that had sprouted up in the middle of the beach, but as they got closer she noticed it was actually a small tent. Kyra stopped in her tracks and her eyes locked on it. Her head tilted sideways as the moonlight slowly diffused, bringing the tent into focus. The canvas covering the sides appeared brown and torn, as if it’d been left out on the beach for too long. There was an entrance in the front, a gap in the fabric covered with strings of beads that clattered with each gust of wind. Turning her back on her sister and Julie, Kyra hopped over the concrete divider. Sand poured over the sides of her flats, grinding against her feet. She took a step forward and spotted a makeshift wooden sign affixed to a stake just outside the entrance. Madame Rhodan, it said.
“Hey guys, lookit this,” she said, but no one answered. She glanced to her left and saw Stacey and Julie walking away from her, leaving her behind. After an instant of panic, Kyra shrugged off her fear. They were only a few feet away from the parking lot. She’d meet up with them in a few minutes, right after she satisfied her curiosity.
Though she usually loved the feel of the sand between her toes, as she crept across the beach it felt intrusive, unwelcome. Everything around her seemed strange—the breeze was too sharp, the waves crashed too hard, the moon above shone too brightly. The tiny voice of the survivor within her—the voice that would grow to prominence when she got older—whispered warnings into her brain. Kyra ignored it and kept moving. The twinkling light coming from inside the tent was too much for her young mind to ignore.
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