House of Bones: A Novel

by Dale Bailey

  The movers would be here in the morning.

  And still he hadn’t found the watch.

  The furnace kicked on downstairs. Abel lay back. He picked up the photo, studying it in the faint yellow wash of the streetlight. His father gazed back at him from the frame of the elevator, his face inscrutable: a moment frozen in time, irretrievably lost. And as for the voices—well, he’d been dreaming, that’s all.

  Yet he felt a persistent little tug of doubt.

  He’d heard them once before, after all, the other day in his parents’ bedroom, and that certainly hadn’t been a dream. What’s more, there was something else, something he hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to admit. That half-familiar voice which had floated up out of the babble, the one that had spoken his name—it had been his father’s voice.

  Abel punched at his pillow, pondering this. After a moment, he found himself thinking once again of the party line, those disembodied voices from the house beyond the fence. His father had passed beyond a kind of fence too, hadn’t he? Beyond the fence and into the darkness on the other side. Only in this case, the fence was something else. In this case, the fence was death. Except that the analogy collapsed at that point. There was no telephone. The lines were down.

  Yet the voices had come through, anyway.

  Why?

  He cast his mind back, trying to clear away the last lingering cobwebs of sleep. He had been dreaming. It came back to him now: he’d been holding his father’s watch in one hand, the picture in the other, just staring down at them, pierced by an ache of deep and powerful longing, and then, suddenly, he had seemed to slip forward, tumbling, downward and in, the photo scrolling out to envelop him, expanding first to the size of a television, and then a movie screen—the big one at the Palace Theater down in Sauls Run—and finally to the breadth of the world itself, until he was inside it, at the head of the mine, gazing up into his father’s face as an enormous cacophony engulfed him, the clank and rattle of the ascendant elevator locking into its frame—

  Only what he’d really been hearing were voices, he realized, that swirling chorus of voices. He had rationalized them, worked them into the texture of his dream the way his sleeping mind sometimes worked the clamor of his alarm clock into a dream, or his mother’s voice, calling him for school from the head of the stairs. Which led him to still another conclusion, a disturbing one: that somehow, in some way he could not begin to understand, the voices had been a real sound.

  He glanced down at the photograph again.

  Maybe that was the connection—the telephone, the device that opened the line. Both times he’d heard that strange chorus of voices—that afternoon in his parents’ bedroom with the watch revolving inside his head like a talisman, and just now, tonight, in his dream—both times he’d been looking at the photograph.

  Abel shivered and pulled the counterpane up around his shoulders, chilled suddenly, despite the warm air blowing through the vents. He surveyed his room—the walls stripped of pictures, the boxes stacked by the bureau, the closet door standing six inches ajar on a well of darkness—struck suddenly with a disquieting sense that he wasn’t alone. He eyed the closet warily. It was all too easy to imagine someone standing there, just back of the door, maybe reaching for the knob with one cold hand.…

  He laughed, but it sounded forced and hollow in the silence. The whole thing was absurd, of course—the watch, the voices, the dumb idea about the closet. He should cut this nonsense out, try to get some sleep.

  Instead he found himself staring down at the photograph once again, more deliberately this time, trying to test the theory, to evoke that chorus of voices. He concentrated on his father’s face—the bony ridges of his cheeks, the sunken eyes—the range of his perceptions narrowing. Just looking at it made him feel heavy; his eyes stung, his throat clotted. Unbidden, his lips shaped the name—

  “Dad.”

  —an almost inaudible whisper rising up into the silence around him, like a signal launched into the dark vault of the midnight sky.

  And then, abruptly, he seemed once again to be falling, unhinged from gravity. The bedroom tilted vertiginously, spilling him down and in, the black funnel of the photograph yawning open to receive him. He had a single panicked impulse to try and stop it somehow, to jam a stick into the wheels of whatever process he had set in motion. But he had no idea how, and besides, it was too late. Everything fell away—the stunted apple tree outside his window, the furnace cycling off in the basement, the bedroom itself—and he was there, watching as the elevator clanked to a stop and the figure inside flung back the accordion mesh of the door with a bang—only this time, in some subterranean chamber of his mind, he understood that it wasn’t these sounds at all that he was hearing. It was voices, the first faint stir of whispers, urgent, pleading, building toward some awful crescendo.

  With that recognition, the world-girdling illusion of the photograph also sheared away. He was in his bedroom—he had been in his bedroom the whole time, he understood that now—but it had grown darker, colder, a bone-chilling ebony cold like the cold of the measureless deeps between the stars, and up through all of that fathomless dark and cold surged an explosive geyser of voices, a clamoring whirlwind of grievance and remorse. He shrank into his covers, closed his eyes, and cried his father’s name—

  “Dad. Dad!”

  —hurling it like a harpoon into that cacophony of lamentation. With an almost physical shock, he felt it plunge into something, felt it catch and drag.

  As abruptly as it had begun it was over.

  The voices disappeared abruptly, as though someone had thrown a switch. Silence filled the room. And yet, somehow, everything had shifted, changed. If possible it had gotten colder still, a blue and numbing cold like no cold he had ever felt. And the silence had a charged and waiting quality. He dared not speak or move, dared not open his eyes. He could barely bring himself to breathe. He simply lay there, freezing under the weight of his comforter, wondering what awful thing he had summoned forth from the whirlwind, too terrified to do anything but listen.

  What he heard was an almost subaudible creak, like a hinge badly in need of oil pivoting inside its metal sleeve. Exactly like that, actually, and the thought triggered a nightmarish little montage in Abel’s mind.

  He fought it. A strained, incredulous voice rose up from some remote corner of his mind to protest that it was only his jumped-up nerves playing tricks on his perceptions, that there was nothing there, nothing, the closet was empty, he could open his eyes and see for himself—

  But another low metallic protest from the hinge cut through that skeptical interior patter like a buzz saw of static, plunging him deeper into cold paralysis. He just lay there, staring blankly at the insides of his own eyelids, frozen in place. And the worst thing of all was that he didn’t need to open his eyes. The little snippet of cinema playing inside his head showed Abel everything he could ever want to know about what was happening in his gloomy bedroom. It was all right there in vivid Technicolor—the closet door swinging open, its hinges squealing; the shape emerging from the black well on the other side, attended by a subzero gust that frosted Abel’s breath in the air before his face; the jaundiced glow of the streetlight ascending the shadowy figure as it advanced, to fall at last upon its face—

  It was his father.

  It was his father, carrying his mining cap in one hand, its crown deeply dented, the lamp affixed to the front shattered and dark. It was his father, wearing the same clothes he had worn in the photograph, the clothes he had put on every workday morning for as long as Abel could remember, the clothes he had died in. Abel didn’t open his eyes, couldn’t open them, not yet, maybe never again, but he could see them anyway, those clothes: the spavined work boots, the jeans grimy with mud and coal, the filthy denim shirt, so often and obsessively laundered that it had at last achieved a kind of neutral vacancy, an utter absence of color, like the skin of creatures too long interred in the deep places of the earth. Like the sk
in of dead things. Like the skin of the thing that wore it, mottled and torn from the accident, already splotched with gray patches of decay.

  Abel squeezed shut his eyes, but it didn’t do any good. He could see everything anyway, unspooling on the dark screen inside his mind. A barb of grief pierced him as the thing shambled closer, the heavy work boots scuffing, its sagging face terrible and strange, empty of warmth or recognition, of anything remotely human.

  The mattress gave beneath the thing’s weight.

  Abel cringed from the cold, the absolute zero of the world beyond the fence; he cringed from the noisome stench of decay. But even then—even in that moment of absolute madness and terror—his grief and longing continued to spill through him, carrying the watch endlessly before them, through the deep, covetous wellsprings of his heart.

  “Dad,” he whimpered.

  And then it was leaning over him, its black lips at his ear, whispering its secrets in the cold, dry voice of the grave.

  8

  On days like today, the psychiatrist sometimes reflected that he might have already retired had he gone into private practice. He was young still, in his early fifties, but the proceeds of such a practice could have been substantial. He had no difficulty picturing the secluded existence he’d have chosen to spend them on: a small ranch somewhere in the wine country to the north, afternoons working with the vines, weekend visits with his grandchildren. He already had one—a fourteen-month-old granddaughter named Casey—and another was on the way. It was easy to imagine them summering at the ranch, absorbing the easy rhythms of the season, getting the earth in their blood.

  It was a harmless fantasy, nothing more. In truth, he was more than content with his lot. The school district had given him a supportive network of professional and personal acquaintance; he had a family that he loved and that returned his love. The pay was adequate—he didn’t want for anything, certainly—and the work provided other, and more significant, compensations. There were the children.

  But that just made the tough ones that much harder.

  And this one looked as though it might prove very hard indeed.

  He stood at his second-floor window in a wash of golden California light, and watched a maroon Mercedes pulling into the lot below. It was February, and the sky was a lucid and depthless blue. Two hours to the north, the sun would be bathing the fragrant earth, drawing the first green shoots from the nascent vines. A man and a woman got out of the Mercedes. They looked to be ten years his junior, tan and fit. Their clothes were good, tasteful and expensive, without unnecessary extravagance. They were the kind of people he socialized with. Who knows? They might well have attended the same parties, or eaten at the same restaurants. It would be surprising if they hadn’t.

  He turned to the desk, barren but for a spiral notebook and a manila file folder. The folder contained his notes from several meetings with the boy’s teacher. The notebook contained the documents which had occasioned this conference. He thumbed through it as he strolled back to the window, struck once again by the remarkable sophistication of the prose.

  And by the even more remarkable violence of the imagery.

  The boy might well be a genius of a very limited kind. Certainly he was gifted. Everything about him suggested that he was also deeply disturbed. The psychiatrist called the child’s image to mind: his dark, expressionless face, his almost preternatural stillness. Below, the handsome couple were just passing out of his line of sight, into the building.

  Ten minutes later, gazing at them across the coffee table, he saw that he had underestimated their age. The man had the look of an ex-jock who’d tried to keep in shape, and was just now starting to lose the battle. He was tall, dark-headed, a little remote, perhaps offended that he’d been called in like this. The woman was petite, shapely, carefully put together: makeup, nail polish, the works. Beneath her shellacked exterior, however, she seemed frayed, a little tense.

  The psychiatrist explained why he’d asked to see them. He showed them the notebook and let them look through it. The husband was impassive, the wife nearly so, though he detected a growing tension in the set of her jaw as she flipped the pages. After a few minutes, she closed the notebook and held it on her lap.

  They sat quietly.

  The psychiatrist watched them expressionlessly. The husband fidgeted, clearly ill at ease; the wife sat rigidly, her hands folded atop the notebook, taking measure of the office—the desk by the window, the informally furnished sitting area he’d chosen for their talk, the play area with its pleasant clutter of toys. Her gaze lingered there for some time, and then it came to rest on him.

  “How come his teacher’s not here, anyway?” the man said.

  The psychiatrist hesitated. He recognized both the hostility of the question and the shame it was intended to disguise, but he forced himself to withhold judgment: both emotions could be measures of the man’s hidden reservoirs of affection for his child. Besides, the issue was a delicate one. Normally, the teacher would have been there, but in the end he’d elected to host the meeting without her. She was young, she’d been deeply upset by the notebook, and he had sensed the presence of other issues with this particular child—perhaps ones involving race. Her tension would have complicated matters; he thought he stood a better chance of earning their trust without her.

  Finally, he said, “Miss Hammond couldn’t be here today. Normally, I would have delayed our meeting to accommodate her schedule, but Ben’s situation seemed … pressing.”

  “He’s imaginative.” The man shrugged as he said it.

  “Indeed. His facility with language is remarkable. Ben is quite talented, Mr. Prather. Yet the nature of his journal suggests a history of significant trauma which perhaps jeopardizes those extraordinary gifts. I’d like your permission to spend some time talking with him, that’s all.”

  “He’s had enough trouble. We don’t need the school mucking around in it.”

  The woman shifted in her seat.

  “Well, we don’t,” her husband said, glaring at her. And then, grudgingly, “We can hire somebody if it comes to that.”

  “I’d be happy to refer you to someone.” The psychiatrist paused. “I’d also like to help him myself.”

  The man grunted, and stalked over to the window.

  “Your son’s files indicate that he was adopted when he was five,” the psychiatrist said. “Can you tell me about it?”

  The man turned. “Is this some kind of race thing?”

  “Do you feel that your son’s race is at issue, Mr. Prather?” The psychiatrist watched the woman as he spoke. He sensed that she could be an ally, but a direct appeal would merely isolate the husband, feeding his hostility.

  “Of course it’s an issue. It’s always an issue.”

  And that was no doubt true. The psychiatrist watched the couple, focused on the dynamic between them and how it might have affected their child; yet a small part of his brain had slipped away to his ranch again. He’d spent years constructing it in his imagination, and he could see it clearly in his mind, a rambling structure of stone and wood with high windows and views of the vineyards rolling away to the horizon. He stood at the window and watched Casey cross the green lawn, her small face intent on the still-unmastered trick of putting one foot in front of the other, oblivious to his presence here, smiling down upon her. He ran through the calculations for perhaps the thousandth time, assets versus expenditures, the fieldstone structure of his dreams. A reduction in expenses here, a reallocation of investments there, and who could say, in a year, perhaps two …

  The woman cleared her throat and shot a glance at her husband. “Frank,” she said, “maybe it’s time—”

  “I thought we’d agreed,” her husband said from the window. “The past is done with. He’s better off not thinking about it.”

  Watching, the psychiatrist saw that the woman understood a truth which her husband had yet to perceive: that the past is never done with, never, not if you live a thousand years. It
was a hard truth, but not such a terrible thing in the end. He thought of the vineyards, the hazy golden harvest with the grape ripe and firm beneath your thumb, and then the cutting back that followed and the long fallow months with the rain sweeping in from the coast until the season swung round once again and the vines quickened, new life always springing upward from the rich black sediment of years.

  “No, Frank,” she said softly, “it is time,” and her husband slumped visibly, the fight going out of him all at once. He crossed the room and sat heavily on the sofa, clasping his hands between his knees. He seemed reduced somehow. The wife took a deep breath.

  She looked up. She met the psychiatrist’s eyes.

  “Let me tell you about Ben,” she began.

  Two hours had passed before she finished. By the time they left the psychiatrist felt wrung out. He saw them to the door and returned to his office to file the permissions they had signed. Then he slouched in the chair behind his desk. It was late, the shadows lengthening beyond his window. His wife would be worried. Yet he sat there all the same. The man’s words kept coming back to him—

  —it’s always an issue—

  —but the face he saw in his mind was Casey’s face.

  He closed his eyes, taking a moment’s refuge in his little fantasy of the ranch. He pictured himself walking the rich acres, pausing now and then to test the grapes between his fingers, turning at last in the cool evening to head back to the house. The first lights glimmered warmly in the high windows, beckoning him onward as the purple dusk stole down across the valley.

  He stood and collected his keys. He didn’t bother with his calculations as he walked down the stairs and out to his car. Casey’s perfect laughter chimed in his ears, and he found himself thinking instead of the world he had spent his career trying to summon into being for her.