The Disappearance

by Gillian Chan

  I didn’t say anything, just reached down, grabbed Matt’s arm, and hauled him to his feet. He flinched away and I could feel how much he was shaking. Dropping his arm, I grabbed some paper towels and handed them to him, then turned to leave the kitchen.

  I had to leave before my anger blasted its way out. How come Matt’s ghost talked to him? Jacob had said that Jon spoke to him. Why couldn’t I hear him, if I had been able to hear the other voices? I was almost out of the room when Matt spoke again. “Shit, you heard them, too, didn’t you, when you found him? Which of those voices was speaking to you?”

  That did it. I turned and ran back, ramming him hard against the wall. I grabbed his shirt tight in one hand and twisted it up. “What are you, some kind of weirdo? Voices? What fucking voices? You’re sick!”

  Matt didn’t say anything, didn’t even struggle, just kept looking at me. Nothing I was doing was convincing him that he was wrong, that I hadn’t heard the voices, too. Only he didn’t know it all. He didn’t know that I wanted to hear them. There was one voice I needed to hear, but it wasn’t speaking to me. That’s why I needed to talk to Jacob. With one last shove, I let go.

  Chaz was in the hallway, shrugging on his coat, car keys in hand. “Mike, Jacob’s asleep. Try not to wake him up when you go to bed.” I nodded, even though I was set on doing exactly that. “Keep an eye on him. No heroics: get a staff member if you think something is wrong.”

  “Okay,” I answered. I didn’t want to waste any more time, just get up there and find out what was going on.

  Chaz gave me a weary smile. “Mike,” he said, “man of few words—only, I’m beginning to think it’s all a bit of an act.” He put on this obviously fake, syrupy voice, sounding like one of those greasy game show hosts announcing the crap prizes. “Beneath that rough, tough exterior beats a heart of gold.”

  Whatever. I turned and walked up the stairs.

  Asleep, my ass!

  I’ll give Jacob credit. It was passable. He was lying on his back like he usually did. He was doing the regular, gentle breathing thing, but if you looked closely you could see that his eyes weren’t completely shut; he was looking at me through his eyelashes.

  “Chaz has gone,” I said.

  There was no response at first. Then Jacob slowly sat up, the pain from his bruises obvious on his face with each movement. He put one finger to his lips and pointed with his other hand to the clock on the bedside table, tracing a circle twice, then nodding.

  Later, he meant. Two hours would take us to lights-out. I refused to let him see how much the wait bothered me and nonchalantly got out a book and pretended to read it, but really I was watching Jacob. He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Every so often he scrunched up his face as if he was trying to remember something, or trying to pass a particularly big turd.

  When the call for lights-out came, I quickly went to the bathroom and by the time I came back Jacob had rolled over onto his side so that he was facing my bed. I flicked the bedside lamp off and waited, listening to the sounds outside die away until all I could hear was a muted television.

  “Mutt,” I heard. That papery voice creeped me out. Who was this speaking to me? “Mutt, he said you would come. Jon said you would save me.”

  My heart felt like lead—it was Jacob talking.

  I couldn’t help it: the words burst out of me. I sounded like a whiny little kid. “You said that Jon had gone away, that I couldn’t talk to him! That was a fucking lie.”

  “He did go, but he came back because he is my friend and I was in danger. If he came, then he knew that you’d come to help me.” I heard the rustle of bedclothes and saw the gleam of Jacob’s eyes as he turned to face me. “Jon knows you did not let him down. He knows you tried to protect him. You must believe that. No one is to blame but Danny. That’s the truth and nothing will change it.” He sighed and his voice was sad. “I do not know why, but it is hard for our own dead to talk directly to us. Perhaps the connection is too strong. They fear we will beg them to stay and then they will be powerless. I see and hear everyone else’s ghosts so clearly, but never my own. It’s part of me, like breathing. There are others like you and that boy Matt, who can hear them in times of great danger or great feeling, but it does not last.” His expression was dejected as he added, “Me, I have no choice but to hear them—I don’t know if I should be glad or if I am cursed, like my foda says.”

  I wanted to cry. Jacob reached out a hand, hesitantly, like I might lash out at him, and touched my sleeve. “Jon must go. His pull to you is too strong. You loved him so much. He knows that in time, you will believe what he says. The knowledge is there in your heart, but you deny it.”

  I shivered. Did I dare believe what Jacob was telling me? That it wasn’t my fault? It would be so easy to do that.

  Jacob’s face crinkled up like he was going to cry. “I loved my brother, my Caspar, as much as you loved Jon. I wish he had known that I was on my way back to him. I would have fought for him, even though Foda is a man and I’m just a boy. Didn’t I fight back when he hit little Kat? Caspar did, too—we held Foda back so she could run from the dairy.” He started to sob. “Foda killed Caspar and I could do nothing. I was not back in time. I felt the blows. I bled with him. I ran away when the killing blow came.”

  I was so lost in my own reverie that at first I didn’t respond to his words. Finally I registered that Jacob was actually talking, and not just talking a little; now he wouldn’t shut up. The mention of Caspar and Kat made me sit up and take notice. This was serious shit. If I’d got it right, this Foda (his father, maybe?) had hit his sister and then killed his brother, and Jacob had run away after being beaten himself. Could this be right? Surely something like that couldn’t be hidden, but if no one had come looking for Jacob, maybe it had.

  “Jacob,” I said, keeping my voice as quiet as I could. “Are you saying your brother is dead? That someone called Foda killed him?”

  His sobs broke off and he lifted his head. Almost impatiently, he said, “Yes, yes, that is what I said.”

  You know how the hair along a dog’s spine stands up when the dog feels threatened or scared? Well, I had that feeling then, that something was about to happen and that it wasn’t going to be good.

  Jacob had gotten into a loop now talking about Caspar, and I heard him mention Kat a few more times, too. He kept talking about being in the other place and how he needed to tell Caspar that he had been coming back for him, but he had not been fast enough. Over and over he said this, not making any sense.

  It got to me. “Jacob,” I said. “Jacob, listen to me. I want to show you something. Maybe it will help lead us to your Foda guy. Maybe we can tell someone about Caspar and what Foda did to him?” God, I realize now how dense and obtuse I was being here.

  Jacob was having none of it, though; he had curled up, hands around his knees, and was rocking back and forth as he muttered to himself.

  In desperation, I turned the bedside lamp on. “Jacob!” I whispered forcefully. I couldn’t shout because I didn’t want whoever was on duty to come running. “Shut the fuck up!”

  Whether it was the sudden light or the urgency in my voice I don’t know, but it worked. Jacob slowly straightened out his body and stared at me, his mouth hanging open in surprise.

  I heard something then—a rustle outside our door. Shit, I must have been louder than I thought. The last thing I wanted was Bob or Larry coming in to see why we were still awake. I put my finger to my lips—not that I thought Jacob was about to speak, but I wanted the element of surprise—and pulled the door open.

  Adam. He was sitting cross-legged, hunched up against our door like a little rock. I grabbed his arm and hauled him inside, closing the door quietly.

  “What the fuck are you doing here again? Don’t give me the ‘I’m frightened of Paddy’ crap. He wouldn’t try anything with your roommate there.”

  Adam
didn’t say anything, just started to cry. He made no sound, but I could see tears rolling down his cheeks.

  I sighed, wondering how long he’d been out there and how much he’d heard. “Look, just get out of here, okay? This doesn’t concern you.” I was frustrated because I thought that I might have been getting somewhere with Jacob. “I’ll watch and make sure you get back to your room.”

  Between sniffles, Adam whispered, “I wanted to be here when you told Jacob what we found.”

  No. I wasn’t having that. “Come on, get going,” I insisted. When Adam didn’t move I pushed him toward the door. I was gentle about it, but I really didn’t want him in our room just then.

  “No!”

  Both Adam and I stopped in our tracks. Adam was surprised, I think, because he had never heard Jacob speak. Me, I just couldn’t get my head around why Jacob might want Adam to stay.

  “He helped you, yes?” Jacob was leaning forward now, sitting on the edge of his bed.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I admitted grudgingly.

  “He should stay.” There was determination in his voice. “He is one of the lost ones, too.”

  This was spooky. Who were the lost ones? Was I a lost one?

  I felt Adam relax, and he took advantage of the pause to wriggle away from me and sit next to Jacob.

  “I see her,” Jacob said, as matter-of-factly as if he was talking about the weather. “She watches him and tells me about this boy. She is sad that she had to leave him. It wasn’t planned. She loves him so much. Not since my own mutta has a mother loved her son so hard. Too hard.”

  Adam’s eyes had widened. He grabbed Jacob’s arm. I could see how hard he was gripping it. “Mummy. You see and talk to my mother?”

  Jacob nodded. “She has told me how she always kept you safe. How scared she was that people would take you away from her. She said that perhaps this made her do some wrong things.”

  Adam’s eyes were closed now. I hadn’t really thought too much about his past before—mainly I was just irritated by his constant references to his mother—but there was obviously a hell of a story there. Still, I didn’t want to hear it now.

  “Enough!” I said, my voice harsher than I had intended. “You can stay, Adam. Jacob, you were talking about Caspar and Kat . . .”

  Jacob seemed to be in as much of a daydream as Adam. My words weren’t getting through, so I thrust the last page of the pamphlet at him. His eyes grew wide as he stared at it. When he spoke, his voice cracked. “This is me, but I am old. Why did you draw a picture of me like this?”

  “No, no, I didn’t draw it, Jacob,” I said, a bit exasperated. “I’ve been looking in the library for information, trying to find your family, to get you out of here if I can. This is an old pamphlet written by a woman called Katerina Mueller, about her brother who was called Jacob like you, and she had a brother Caspar, too. So, I thought these people must be related to you: the names are probably family ones used over and over again through the years, see?” I could tell from the mulish look on his face that he wasn’t buying this at all.

  Adam piped up. “We found this at the library this morning.”

  Still no reaction from Jacob, just the stubborn look on his face. I tried again. “She had daughters and one of them married a man from Kitchener.” His face remained stony.

  Adam interrupted “Kitchener used to be called Berlin. They changed the name during World War I.”

  That was news to me, but Adam was the kind of smart-ass who would know something like that.

  Jacob stirred slightly, so I continued. “I found her married name, and maybe we can trace the rest of her family, her descendants, to see if they know who you are.” I rested my hand on my forehead, not daring to look over to see if he was taking this in.

  “Katerina is my sister, and Caspar was my brother,” he whispered.

  “No, goddamn it! Read it and you’ll see. These people are dead. They died a hundred years ago!” It was cruel, but I had to get through to him. I flipped the pamphlet over so he could see the front cover and pushed it into his hands. He let it fall onto his lap. Shit, I’d forgotten how rudimentary his reading was.

  “Okay,” I said, grabbing it back, “I’ll read it to you.” I could see this was going to be a long night.

  Jacob leaned forward again and shut his eyes.

  I felt ridiculous. He didn’t seem to be paying much attention to old Katerina Mueller’s flowery beginning, but his eyes opened and he sat bolt upright when I got to the bit about where and when she and her brothers were born.

  A wide smile, one that was happy, even eupho­ric, spread across his face. “Katerina is my sister and Caspar was my brother. I am Jacob Mueller, and I am fifteen years old. I was born in 1850 on the farm of my foda, near Jakobstettel.” The smile vanished as quickly as it had come. His whole face crumpled in on itself and he began to cry in earnest. “Katerina is dead, too, like Caspar?” He looked straight at me, his eyes begging me to tell him otherwise.

  I can’t describe what I was feeling at that point. I was beyond weirded out. Adam’s face mirrored my reaction. He had both hands up to his mouth like he was trying to stop himself from shouting out. His eyes were wide and shocked. He turned to me, but didn’t say anything, just nodded as if to let me know he was thinking the same as me. People talk about how they have gut feelings. My gut was talking to me big time. It was like I had a big neon sign in my head that was flashing “1850!” The little things added up: Jacob’s weird likes and dislikes, his fear of cars. Even though my rational mind said it could not be possible, there was something deep inside of me that said it could, and if it was, then I had found Jacob Mueller’s missing family, only they hadn’t been missing for three or four months; they had been missing for a century and a half!

  I hesitated, skimming the newspaper article. “She died in 1925, Jacob, almost a hundred years ago. She was an old lady, in her sixties. She lived most of her life in Hamilton.” I was looking for things to say, trying to ease the pain that was etched on his face. “People loved her and came out to her funeral . . .” My voice trailed away.

  He was rocking back and forth again now, a look of horror on his face. “This book, it says that I am dead, too? This cannot be, because I am here, even if it is the other place. Ah, I lost Caspar in the real place; now I have lost little Kat, too. She was three. Now you tell me she grew up and lived for so many years and I was lost to her!”

  I sensed that he was on the verge of tuning out, melting down—that it was all too much for him. I had to keep him with me somehow. In a sudden burst it came to me: if I could trust the pamphlet, then I could give him hope. I reached out to touch his shoulder, but he pulled away.

  “Jacob, listen. You went back.” I searched for a way to put it so that he would understand. “You left this other place and you went back to the real one. You saw your Kat grow up. You grew up, too. You lived with her and you traveled together until . . .” I tried to swallow that last word before he heard it.

  Jacob’s sobs had stopped and he was looking at me like I had offered him a lifeline, which I suppose I had, in a way. “Kat wrote about your life together. She says that you disappeared for months, then came back, and that you lived with her and what I think was her mother’s family.”

  Jacob’s face lit up with hope. “Yes, yes, that was where I was taking her: to her mother’s family, to make her safe from Foda. But . . .” He paused, the joy fading from his face. “I am still here, in the other place. How can I go back?” After a moment’s pause, he continued, his voice different, buoyant. “You!” His face broadened into the biggest smile I had ever seen from him. “Jon said you would help me. You will get me back to the real place.”

  Shit.

  I had no idea how this was going to happen, but I knew that I had to try my damnedest to find a way. Jon had said I would, and there was no way I could let him down, not again.


  Chapter Ten

  It was a hell of a long night.

  Some key had turned inside Jacob, unlocking him. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that everything was suddenly normal. He wasn’t talking a mile a minute, but he was talking, even if it sounded bizarre, what with his odd diction, slight accent, and habit of repeating himself if he thought I didn’t understand him, which a lot of the time I didn’t.

  I mean, come on: a kid, and one who could talk to the dead, falling sideways through time? How much fucking sense did that make? There were so many questions and no goddamn answers. How, why, and what the hell could I do to get him back to his “real place”? That was the one thing he was adamant about, that I could somehow make this happen. None of the objections I raised would move him. Mutt had the answer to everything because Jon had told him so.

  I tried getting details from him—believe me I tried. Adam tried, too, but he kept sneaking in questions about his mother. Jacob sidestepped those by insisting that Adam’s mother was not here now. When Adam’s lip started to quiver, Jacob told him that she would come back eventually, to tell Adam something he wanted to know. I wanted to know stuff, too. I wanted to know what Jacob remembered, but direct questions shut him down and prompted more weeping, silent tears now rather than sobs. All I could do was wait for him.

  In the end, it was reading Katerina’s pamphlet to him in its entirety that filled in some of the gaps. I didn’t want to do it, because I was going to have to tell him about his own death, which was something I was having real trouble getting my head around. The way I look at it is that we start to die from the moment we are born, but we choose not to think about it. Yeah, if you’ve got some illness there may come a time when the doctors will tell you that you’re going to die soon, but that’s like a short period to know. Can you imagine knowing from the time you’re fifteen that you are going to die when you are forty? What does that do to the way you think, the way you live your life? Would you be able to let a day go by without thinking about that? Hell, the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want to read him that thing at all because it was telling him how he lived his life, a life that had already happened, so it couldn’t be changed, right?