Spirit

by John Inman

  “Probably.”

  Sam nodded. “The problem is we won’t. Isn’t that right? We’ll never be able to put this behind us until we find out the truth about what happened inside this house. It’ll tear us apart, Jason. I’m not even sure our love could survive it. Are you?”

  “No. No, I’m not. But I’m not entirely sure our love will survive the truth either.”

  “Don’t say that,” Sam said, hurt shining bright in his eyes. “Don’t even think it.”

  I didn’t answer. He didn’t give me time.

  “Jason, I keep going back to what Paul—to what the ghost—said the other day when he was channeling Bugs Bunny.” He spat up a wry chuckle. “Christ, I can’t believe I just said that.”

  I grinned. “Neither can I.”

  But Sam wouldn’t be deterred, no matter how ridiculous he sounded. The moment he started talking, our smiles evaporated. “I keep thinking about what the—the rabbit—Jesus—said about Timmy being ours now. Remember? Remember when he said that?”

  “Of course I remember. I still can’t believe that happened.”

  “I know, Jason. I can’t believe it either, but right now I’m trying to get past the event and concentrate on the words. What did they mean? Why did he say the boy now belongs to us?”

  A rustle of sound made us turn. Timmy stood in the doorway with Thumper at his side. They both looked solemn. Timmy was rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  His voice was scratchy from sleep. “It means Daddy wants Mommy to go away. It means Mommy won’t be able to take care of me anymore.”

  I stepped to Timmy and squatted down in front of him, gently caressing his shoulders. “You know that’s not true. Maybe it’s a dream you just had.”

  Timmy gave me his stubborn look. “It is true. Daddy told me.”

  “Is he here now?”

  “He’s always here.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, because I knew he was right. Suddenly, I knew it beyond all doubt.

  Finally, I asked, “Doesn’t it make you sad? Won’t you miss Mommy if she leaves?”

  “She’s not leaving. She’ll still be here. Just like Daddy’s still here. Just like you and me and Sam will still be here. Mommy and Daddy will just be in the other here.”

  “The other here?”

  Timmy nodded. “Yeah. You know. In the walls.”

  I blinked at the certainty in Timmy’s words, in Timmy’s demeanor. It wasn’t a mystery to him at all, I realized. He had it all figured out. Every bit of it.

  Then the kid did a little tap dance and wiggled out of my grasp. His inherent good humor blossomed like a flower, petals opening wide to catch the sun.

  He gave himself a little shake, suddenly filled with energy. “I gotta pee. Then we’ll go find Daddy. Okay?”

  I nodded, torn by emotion, unable to speak.

  Sam picked up the slack for me. “Yes,” he said. “You go pee, and then we’ll look for Daddy.”

  “Yippee!” Timmy squealed, running off toward the bathroom with Thumper arthritically trundling along behind, trying to keep up.

  Still squatting at Timmy’s level, I gazed up at Sam hovering over me. “He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand what he’s saying. What it all implies.”

  “Do you?” Sam asked.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to.

  “It’ll be all right,” Sam said softly, reaching out to lay a comforting hand at the side of my neck, stroking my jawline with his thumb.

  I tried to smile at the touch, at the words, but my cheeks were nailed in place.

  “For who?” I quietly asked. “It’ll be all right for who?”

  Chapter 13

  TIMMY SAT perched on the pile of broken concrete in the corner where we could watch him. We had given him a coloring book and crayons to keep him occupied. He had not cracked open either one of them yet, not the book or the box of crayons. In fact, he had looked at us like we were idiots when we handed them to him.

  Thumper lay in the dirt at Timmy’s feet, head on her paws, watching Sam and me with a worried expression and occasionally casting her eyes up to Timmy to see what he was doing.

  Neither dog nor child looked particularly happy.

  Sam and I had stripped down to shorts and tennies. It was hotter than hell in this closed-off section of the basement. Since the windows were painted shut we dragged a fan downstairs and aimed it through the hole we had knocked in the wall to give us a breath of air as we worked, but it didn’t do much to cool the place down.

  If I had been uncertain before about what we were doing, my conversation with Sally had cured me of it. My sister was hiding something. I was sure of it. Now I wanted to know what had happened inside my house as much as Sam did.

  Yet there was still a brick wall inside my head, not unlike this earthly one we had just broken through in my basement. The wall in my head was still sound. There wasn’t a chink in it. I had not crashed through it yet to discover its secrets. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. There were things lying hidden behind that wall inside my head that scared the pants off me.

  Sam’s single-minded persistence was a tsunami of sheer will that swept me along in its wake. And he was right about one thing. If something bad had happened inside this house, we needed to know about it. Let the cards fall where they may. We owed that much to Paul.

  I had a rusty pick, and Sam had a rusty shovel. Happily, the ground was soft and dry beneath our feet. We dug slowly so as not to raise too much dust, Sam at one end of the space, me toward the middle. As we worked, the hours passed and the light through the painted basement windows dimmed. It grew dark outside. The night settled around us, thank God. Maybe the evening hours would be cooler.

  When the space grew too dark to work in, Sam lugged the floor lamp from my bedroom down to the basement and strung an extension cord to the nearest outlet. Now we had light. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between us that we would keep digging until we found something, no matter how long it took.

  I wouldn’t allow myself to conjecture what it was we were looking for. I figured I wouldn’t think about that until my spade or Sam’s shovel actually pried something out of the ground. Only then would I deal with whatever the hell it was.

  The most unnerving aspect of the whole enterprise was the silent pact Sam and I had suddenly forged. For the first time, we were both convinced we were on the right track in our quest to solve the riddle of Paul’s disappearance. And while our certainty was shared, our reactions to that certainty were not shared at all.

  Sam was wary but excited, committed to finding the truth and convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt there was a truth to be found. Here. Right here, in this dusty, dark hole beneath my house.

  I was quite simply scared to death. Scared of what that truth might turn out to be.

  And what it would mean to the people I loved.

  Thanks to Timmy, Sam and I now had the good sense to wear gloves. Our bodies were streaked with grime in no time. We wore bandannas tied about our throats to periodically wipe the sweat from our eyes. Occasionally, I wore mine across my nose and mouth like a bandit to keep the dust out of my lungs. Once, when the heat became almost unbearable, we sent Timmy upstairs to fetch back Cokes. He brought along a bag of cookies too, and Sam and I ate those while we worked. Timmy happily gnawed on his fistful of cookies as he sat on the pile of broken concrete in the corner. Thumper dined on offerings from the boy, wagging her tail in gratitude with each new donation.

  Every time my spade hit a chink or a stone, my heart shot up into my throat. I wondered how human bones would sound when struck by the blade of a shovel. I wondered how much flesh would remain on a human cadaver after three years underground in an unmarked grave. I wondered if Paul was watching us from another tier, some far off celestial bleacher, staring down, gnawing the ends of old memories, old injuries, rooting for us to discover the truth about his death, and in discovering the truth, setting up the groundwo
rk for avenging it. I wondered what other lives would be ruined when we succeeded. If we succeeded.

  Sam and I were digging haphazardly; excavating here, finding nothing, excavating there, finding nothing again. Sam stayed as far away from me as he could get. He saw how ineptly I flung my pick. I was more geared to the finesse of an electronic keyboard, not big butch tools that required manly strength and brawn and considerable aim. More than once he told me to watch what I was doing before I drove the damn thing into my foot. Or his.

  Timmy always giggled at these exchanges. And when Timmy giggled, Thumper perked up her ears. Once, Thumper grunted her way to her feet and without asking permission from anyone, sauntered over to a corner to pee. Then she returned to where she lay before. Not long after that, Timmy did the same, sauntering off to the corner, and with his back to us, relieving himself against the wall. Neither Sam nor I complained. It was a dirt floor. What harm would it do? We were grateful the kid was being as patient as he was. We weren’t about to give him any grief for not trundling all the way upstairs just to take a whiz. Timmy’s short life had been imbued with enough grief already, and Sam and I both knew it. Even if Timmy didn’t.

  The sudden clang of metal on metal from Sam’s shovel made everybody freeze.

  Sam tossed his shovel aside and dropped to his knees in the dirt. Timmy and I both approached and gawked over his shoulder to see what he had found.

  Sam dug through the loose dirt with his hands, sweat dripping off his nose, hair wild and tangled from the heat and dust. He looked so handsome squatting there with rivulets of sweat dripping down his lean back, his hairy legs splayed wide as he hunched into the dirt, digging, digging. Handsome and kind of insane.

  With a grunt, he pulled a crowbar out of the ground. He held it up to better examine it in the light.

  The house rattled and shook above us. Timmy clapped his hands over his ears.

  “Oh crap,” Sam said, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, no doubt wondering if it was going to come crashing down on our heads. “What’s going on?” he asked the darkness.

  It was Timmy who answered. “Put it over there,” Timmy said, pointing through the hole in the wall to the basement proper. “For the police,” he added with a sigh.

  Sam and I both turned to stare at him. When he saw us gaping at him, he put his two hands up in the air, palms up, looking surprised. “What?”

  “Did Daddy tell you that?” I asked.

  Timmy nodded. “It’s important.”

  “Then we’ll do it,” Sam said. “Here, put it over by the stairs.”

  With a horrified expression on his face, Timmy shook his head and backed away. “No. I don’t wanna touch it.”

  Sam merely nodded, but his eyes skidded over me on his way across the dirt floor. I gave him a shrug, as confused by the boy’s reaction as he was. He tilted the crowbar against the handrail at the side of the steps leading up to the service porch.

  Sam stared at it for a moment, then tore his bandanna from around his neck and wiped the sweat from his face. Stuffing it in his back pocket, he rejoined me and grabbed up his shovel.

  “Okay?” he asked Timmy.

  Timmy nodded and gave him a thumbs-up, all business.

  “Why was the crowbar important?” Sam asked the boy. “What was it used for?” He asked the question as if he already knew the answer.

  Timmy buried his face in Thumper’s side. At first I didn’t think he was going to answer. Then he said, “You don’t want to know.”

  I cringed away from a sudden explosion of pain. My hands flew to my mouth as I gasped. It was my teeth. My front teeth. It felt like they’d been wrenched from my mouth. The pain disappeared as quickly as it came. I stuck dirty fingers in my mouth to make sure my teeth were still there. I tugged at them, prodded them. Christ.

  Sam was giving me a funny look. “Are you all right?”

  My heart was racing. I was still stunned by that blast of agony that had hit me out of nowhere. It had shaken me to the core. But I knew it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. “Yeah, Sam. It… it’s nothing. A phantom pain.”

  I glanced at Timmy and was surprised to see him grinning at me. He gave me a knowing wink, as if we shared a secret. And perhaps we did. He was rubbing his front teeth too.

  “You felt it too,” he said. I nodded.

  And suddenly, unless we were all crazier than bedbugs, I knew what the crowbar had been used for. I knew it as well as Timmy did. A chill shot up my spine. I waited until Sam was once again digging with his shovel before grunting the pick onto my shoulder and driving it full force into the dirt at my feet. Periodically, I dragged my tongue over my front teeth, still reassuring myself they were there.

  Two words kept rumbling through my mind. Over and over again. Murder weapon. Murder weapon. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to make the two words go away. In their place, I tried to concentrate on not stabbing myself in the foot with the pick.

  Gradually, things went back to normal. Timmy hummed a song while Sam and I worked. Softly. Barely audible. He had a pleasant timbre to his voice. Surprisingly sweet. Surprisingly on key. And while Timmy hummed, Thumper snored.

  The house above our heads resumed its silence. I could feel it like a perilous weight hanging over my head, barely suspended, ready to fall at any moment. Expectant. Leery. I looked over at Timmy. He seemed unconcerned, the pain in his teeth forgotten. He was still humming, now coloring in the coloring book perched on his lap. All of his attention was centered on what he was doing. His little tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. His hands were so small, the crayon he held looked huge. He seemed to have forgotten that stab of phantom misery as soon as it was over, while I still reeled at the memory of it. Once again, I was amazed by the boy’s powers of recuperation, his ability to set horror aside as if it were just another toy. I found myself smiling as I watched him, so proud of his fearless strength, almost overwhelmed by the love I felt for him. I watched him giggle at what he was coloring, lost for the moment to everything around him. Then I turned back to my work.

  By nine o’clock in the evening, Sam and I had torn up a stretch of dirt about twenty feet long and three feet wide, and Timmy was nodding over his coloring book, trying to stay awake but not succeeding very well.

  I tapped Sam on the shoulder. As weary as I was, the feel of his sweat-soaked skin still sent a rush of desire burning through me.

  “Let’s stop and put Timmy to bed,” I said. “He’s conking out.”

  Sam ran the bandanna over his face and peered at Timmy in the corner. “You’re right,” he said. “I could use a break anyway.”

  We dusted ourselves off as best we could, then Sam gently plucked the coloring book out of Timmy’s hands and lifted him into his arms. The boy didn’t argue. He merely laid his head on Sam’s shoulder and closed his eyes. “Don’t forget Thumper,” Timmy drawled, half-asleep.

  “I won’t,” I assured him, lifting my sleeping dog into my arms. Slipping our filthy tennis shoes off at the foot of the stairs, Sam and I carried our charges up two flights to deposit them in Timmy’s bedroom.

  At the last moment, I said, “No, Sam. Not here.”

  His eyes opened wide in surprise. “How could I forget?” he asked. He closed Timmy’s bedroom door and backtracked to his own room just a few feet away.

  He laid Timmy on his unmade bed, and I did the same with Thumper. I tried to straighten the tangled bedclothes but didn’t do a very good job of it. Didn’t matter, though. The night was warm, and Timmy was sound asleep the second Sam eased the boy’s head onto his pillow. As we stood back to look down at the two of them, Thumper pried open her eyes long enough to drag herself to the boy’s side and burrow up against him. After that they didn’t make another move.

  Sam and I tiptoed from the room. Before securely closing the door behind us, I went to fetch the baby monitor off the nightstand in Timmy’s room and set it up in Sam’s room instead. That chore finished, we closed the door securely behind us.<
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  We took a bathroom break, grabbed more sodas from the kitchen, and gathered up the receiving end of the baby monitor off the kitchen counter. Lugging it all downstairs to the basement, we went to work again. Digging. Always digging.

  Just to put some variety into the endeavor, we switched tools. Sam now wielded the pick and I wielded the shovel. It didn’t take me long to realize it wasn’t any more fun this way than it was the other.

  We worked until late in the night. At one in the morning, our backs screaming, our hands sore, we dropped our tools in the dirt and called it quits. It took all the energy we had left to climb the stairs, shower, and get ourselves ready for bed.

  Like Timmy, we were asleep the moment our heads hit the pillow.

  It was the first time we had slept together without first making love. An oversight thoroughly remedied the following morning.

  THE NEXT day was hotter than all the days that had come before. We spent the day lounging around, playing games with Timmy, and waiting until evening when the air was cooler to pick up our tools and recommence the search. The house showed no impatience with us, and except for a couple of telemarketers, the phone did not ring. I could only assume Sally was silently seething. What Jack was doing I neither knew nor cared.

  There were six days left before Sally was supposed to return. I didn’t think it would be that long before she showed up at my door. And I knew it wouldn’t be pretty when she did. Poor Sam. He was about to get a taste of my sister’s fury. So was I, but I was used to it. He wasn’t.

  We lay together on the hammock in the backyard while Timmy rode his tricycle up and down the driveway and circled us in the grass, all the while wailing like a police car. Sam’s hand rested atop my chest, his head tucked comfortably onto my bare shoulder. We were lying in the shade of my pepper tree, which stood at the corner of the house. We were dressed in only cargo shorts. It was too hot for anything else. The only breeze that touched our faces came from the swaying of the hammock. Thumper was asleep beneath us in the grass. When we spoke, we did it softly so Timmy wouldn’t hear.