Whisper Down the Lane

by Clay Chapman

  A black pillar of smoke snakes into the sky, winding its way over town. The column is close enough to see it roil and contort from the tree line. It looks as if it’s coming from behind the school. Along the bike path. Toward the houses just on the other side.

  Our house.

  DAMNED IF YOU DON’T

   RICHARD: 2013

  I hear Tamara before I see the fire. All other sound is drowned out by her sobbing, no matter how loud. Not the sirens from the fire trucks. The roar of the blaze. Not the low murmur from the onlookers standing at a safe distance. These sounds mean nothing to me.

  All I hear is Tamara, her throat raw from wailing.

  “Where is he where is he where is he…” It’s meant to be a question—and at one point I imagine it had been. But not anymore. Not with the answer burning before her.

  Tamara keeps repeating the words anyhow until they lose their shape.

  A fireman wraps his arms around her waist, holding her back from breaking the perimeter. Tamara gives in and leans back against the fireman’s chest as they stare at the flames, the soft orange glow playing across their cheeks.

  There isn’t much of the house left by the time I reach our street. The hipped roof has collapsed. The pillars along the front porch have buckled. Sheets of flame lap at the windows.

  The garage is gone. It must’ve burned down first. The walls of the studio are cindered ribs, a few boards stubbornly standing up like the chest cavity of some prehistoric beast.

  The volunteer fire department does what they can, but there’s no containing the blaze.

  Let the fire burn itself out. Let the flames eat their fill.

  I stop before Tamara. She won’t look away from the house, searching for her son.

  I say her name. Quietly at first. I try again, but there’s no tearing Tamara’s attention away from the fire. The flames have her undivided attention. She won’t let them go.

  I grip her arms. The fireman releases his hold and her legs buckle. She’s free-falling through her own nightmare now. Nothing will ever be the same.

  “Tamara,” I say again, louder. Squeezing her arms. Her eyes break away from the fire. She doesn’t recognize me. I’m just another stranger standing between her and her son.

  “They won’t let me.” Her voice crumbles. “Won’t let me…”

  “Tamara, please…”

  “He’s in there. I have to…have to get him back.”

  All at once, her muscles snap taut. She pulls out from my grip, suddenly seeing me for the first time. “What did you do?”

  “Tamara, I didn’t. This wasn’t—”

  “Get away from me.” Tamara turns and marches toward the embers of her house.

  “Tamara!” I race after her, catching her before she walks into the fire. She would have climbed those melting steps if she could.

  “I have to get him back.”

  “Tamara, stop—”

  As soon as I get my hands around her, pulling her away from the fire, she screams and starts digging her fingernails into my skin, clawing at me.

  It takes two firefighters to pull her back. She nearly overpowers us all, her sheer determination to save her son filling her with adrenaline. But it’s too late.

  “He’s still in there! He’s still in there! Please, someone, save my son my boy please…”

  I let her go, watching as the firefighters drag Tamara away from the flames. Her voice carries. There’s no escaping it.

  A group of onlookers stands at a safe distance. They gather together to watch the fire devour our house. These are our neighbors. But I don’t recognize them. Not anymore.

  They want this. This is what they want to see.

  What if…? The gnawing thoughts whisper. What if they had wanted Elijah all along?

  In order to make mothers and fathers despair, they need a child. Someone innocent. To make the world weep.

  This is all my fault. If I hadn’t come into their lives, if I hadn’t led them right to Elijah, none of this would have happened. He would still be alive.

  Look at them, I think. The flames reflect in their obsidian eyes, like marbles. Doll’s eyes. They’re basking in the flames. Rejoicing. It won’t be long before they’ll be dancing, all of them locking arms and circling the blaze, their voices lifting higher, higher as they all sing. They’ll rip their clothes off and dance around the inferno, naked, their wrinkled bodies writhing.

  The world is burning. The devil has won.

  “Is this what you want?” I shout.

  Everyone’s attention turns to me, snapping away from the fire.

  “Is this what you’re after?” My legs give out and I find myself on the ground. My mouth opens to sob, but there’s nothing there. No sound. I’m empty. Completely empty.

  Eli’s gone. The thought echoes through my head. Eli’s gone.

  The devil has won.

  My eyes settle upon a hand in front of me. A woman’s hand, palm facing the sky.

  I look up to see Sandy’s mother reaching for me. She smiles warmly, like Mom once did.

  “Time for a road trip.”

  DAMNED IF YOU DON’T

   RICHARD: 2013

  Elijah is fast asleep in the back seat of Miss Levin’s Honda Accord, completely lost to the world and all the chaos conjured up by his absence. He knows he’s not supposed to talk to strangers. Then again, Miss Levin isn’t exactly a stranger—is she? Not with Sandy at her side. There she is, too, fast asleep in the back seat, buckled in right beside him.

  The car is parked a few blocks away, hidden within the shade of a paper birch. How long have they been asleep? How could the sirens not wake them? How could Elijah not hear his mother shrieking?

  “Get in,” Miss Levin says.

  “Fuck you,” I say, summoning my last iota of defiance.

  “Get in, Sean.” She slides into the driver’s seat. The engine turns, humming to life. Her hands rest on the wheel, glaring at me through the passenger window.

  I’m not letting her drive away with Elijah. I open the passenger door and climb in beside her.

  Miss Levin pulls out a thermos from the footwell. There’s a chipped picture of Papa Smurf on its side. Most of the paint has faded, leaving behind a blue phantom. I had a thermos just like it when I was a kid. “Hi-C,” she answers before I ask. “Hope you like cherry. I couldn’t find orange.”

  I turn to the back seat, taking in Eli, I notice his lips are stained a deep pink. So are Sandy’s. “No.”

  “We’re not leaving until you drink,” Miss Levin says.

  “I won’t.”

  “If you don’t, you’ll never know what happened to your mother.”

  “I know what happened.”

  “Do you? I’m sure you’ve told yourself all kinds of things so you can sleep at night. No matter who it hurts…Everyone around you is nothing but collateral damage to your lies.”

  She’s relying on my sense of curiosity to see this through. To understand.

  Of course she’s right. I’ve come this far. Can’t stop now. I have to know. Have to see this through to the bitter end. She doesn’t need to put a gun to my head. She knows I’ll follow her.

  We’re playing a game.

  Simon says…drink.

  I take a deep pull directly from the thermos. A flood of artificial flavoring spreads through my empty stomach, much too sweet. I haven’t had Hi-C since I was a kid.

  “That’s not so bad, is it? Drink it up.” She’s treating me like a child. I notice a chalky undertaste on my tongue, a hidden bitterness lingering in the juice.

  “Why burn down our house?”

  “You think I did that?” She almost laughs. “Talk to your neighbors, not me.”

  “I didn’t do anything. None of this—none of this is true. This—this isn’t—”<
br />
  Isn’t me.

  “Sounds familiar,” she says. “People will believe anything when they’re afraid. Especially when it’s their own children at risk. And when you put a face to their fear? Give it a name of someone they know? Someone from their own community, maybe? Well…that person becomes a monster in everyone else’s eyes. It doesn’t matter if he’s innocent or not. Not anymore. Because all anyone will ever see when they look at that person again is a monster.”

  She offers this up so casually, so matter-of-factly, as if we were merely having a conversation between friends and she’s giving me some sage advice. A helping hand.

  “Who are you?”

  She looks over at me and smiles. It’s not threatening in any way. Just hurt. It stings her somehow. “You don’t remember me, do you? You don’t remember anything at all…”

  I know her. That’s what she’s insinuating. I know her from somewhere. Where? When?

  “Jenna.”

  Jenna. Had I known Miss Levin’s first name was Jenna?

  “Jenna Woodhouse. You knew my father. Levin was my mother’s maiden name. I took it when she changed it back, but…Levin never fit. Jenna Levin. It never felt quite right to my ear.”

  He is survived by his estranged wife and daughter…

  Had she gone to Greenfield, too? Was she in my class? Had she always been there and I never realized it? Never remembered?

  Jenna shifts the car into drive. Before I can protest, we’re heading down the road.

  Away from Tamara.

  Shadows start to take shape in my mind. I’m beginning to see.

  See her.

  Jenna Woodhouse.

  The girl in the background…

  Jenna Woodhouse.

  The little girl in the pictures on my teacher’s desk, smiling between her mom and dad…

  Jenna.

  The girl staring back at me…

  I see her now. See her everywhere. In Mr. Woodhouse’s classroom. The courtroom. The studio audience. Wherever my memory takes me, I spot Jenna Woodhouse hiding in the crowd.

  “You took my father away from me,” she says.

  “I didn’t…I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was—”

  “He couldn’t stop people from believing. Even after he was exonerated, after everybody knew it was all just a hoax, people never stopped whispering about him. They still believed.”

  “I—I was just a kid.”

  “Just a kid? I’m sorry, but why does that matter? Just a kid.”

  “Kids—kids make things up for no reason.”

  Liar.

  “They believed you. They listened to you. You could’ve stopped everything, if you’d just spoken up and taken it all back. You could have saved him.”

  “Take me,” I say. “We’ll go wherever you want, but—please. Leave Eli out—”

  “It’s my turn to talk!” The outburst sets both children shifting in the back seat, but neither wakes. “Nobody took pity on me. Nobody tried to protect me like they protected you. Everywhere I went, everyone made sure I knew who my father really was.”

  A daughter. I keep repeating it to myself. Mr. Woodhouse had a daughter.

  “I didn’t…” My words fade away. The car accelerates, pushing us toward the county line.

  Over the river and through the woods…

  Danvers disappears. There’s nothing but a canopy of trees wrapping around Route 3.

  “My life wasn’t like yours,” she says. “I wasn’t allowed to forget who I was. Even after my dad killed himself, people wouldn’t let him go. Wouldn’t let him be at peace. They needed someone to take his blame…so they blamed me. I became the scapegoat for all of your lies.”

  Scapegoat: a person blamed for something someone else did.

  A sacrifice.

  I study Jenna’s face. When I look in her eyes, Mr. Woodhouse stares back.

  “I knew you’d need help remembering…We have to finish what you started.”

  I can’t focus on her words. Something roils in my stomach.

  “The devil doesn’t exist, Sean. But I got you to believe, didn’t I? Believe your own lies.”

  My head grows heavier. My chin dips to my chest. My neck snaps back up. The world outside my window spins—the trees, their branches, the leaves won’t stop spiraling.

  “You were so willing to believe. Believe everything. I barely had to do a thing.”

  “I was just…” I have to dig deep and shovel the words out. “Just a…kid…”

  “What about me?” Jenna shouts. “I was a child, too. What did I do to deserve this? What did any of us do to deserve the hell you put us all through?”

  The trees thin down to my right. I peer out my window and see the crystalline sheen of the Rappahannock. The sun hits the water’s surface, striking my eyes. I wince at its brightness.

  We’re about to cross the bridge.

  “How many families did you tear apart? How many lives did you demolish?”

  I fumble for my door’s handle. My fingers wrap around it and pull, but my hand slips. The door won’t open. Child safety locks.

  “You were never punished for what you did. You never had to say you were sorry. You just got to move on with your life and start over! A clean slate! Like nothing ever happened…”

  Afresh start.

  My skull rolls over the headrest. My eyes skim across the blur of water outside. We’re coming up on the bridge too quickly. Two narrow lanes suspended over the water.

  “I saw you. I saw you following in my father’s footsteps…and you didn’t even realize it!”

  The past is never through with us. The stories I created as a child took on a life of their own. I lied—and those lies reverberated into the lives of everyone surrounding me. My stories devoured entire families. They destroyed my family, they destroyed hers.

  “Look at me, Sean. Look.” She slaps me across the face, waking me up. “Remember me. Remember what you’ve done. You have to live with your lies. I am your lie. Sandy is your lie.”

  Sandy? What about her? What did I do to her?

  The river swells around the car. I see blue on both sides now. The Rappahannock’s glassy sheen shimmers with the sun’s reflection. The bridge’s rusted abutments undulate, warping outside the windshield as they wrap around the car, as if the metal is embracing us.

  “Do you remember now, Sean? Do you remember me?”

  Yes—yes, I remember now. I remember everything.

  “Do you believe?”

  I believe.

  I’m five years old again. I’m back in Mom’s station wagon, barreling down the highway. The world blurs beyond our windshield, nothing but speed, as Mom tries to escape the clutches of that invisible presence always at our backs, always in the rearview mirror, always closing in.

  I grab the wheel. I have to make her stop. Stop the car. Before we—

  Before—

  “What are you doing?” Jenna pulls the wheel in the other direction. The two of us struggle for control over the car. Her foot presses on the accelerator. The engine heaves from the sudden thrust. The speedometer quickly climbs to sixty-five miles an hour, seventy.

  Someone screams. The sound of it fills the car, singing along with the screeching tires.

  A boy.

  It sounds like Sean, like me, but it’s coming from over my shoulder. From the back seat. Eli has woken up. He lets out a single cry before the car smashes into the bridge abutment.

  To bear witness to the water.

  DAMNED IF YOU DO

   SEAN: 1983

  “Keep your seatbelt on,” Mom instructed. “No matter what happens, don’t take it off.”

  Taking his head in her hands, she firmly pressed her lips against his brow. She examined him closely, combing his hair with her finger
s. She took him in, all of him. She patted his head. Fussed with his clothes one last time. Making him look perfect. She had packed his Sunday best before they abandoned their home in the middle of the night, a lifetime ago. He had his fancy shoes on, polished until they shimmered, even in the dark. Obsidian black. Just like the gray boy from Miss Betty’s picture.

  “There. That’s good. That’s good. Now, how about some music?”

  Before Sean could answer, Mom flipped the stereo on. Static seeped through the speakers as she surfed from station to station, sonic waves crashing against their car. She eventually settled on the pulsing chords of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.”

  “I love this song.” She bobbed her head along, searching for the rhythm with her neck. She turned the volume up until it was difficult for Sean to talk over the music. “This is nice. Isn’t this nice? You can sing along, even if you don’t know the words.”

  She shifted the car into drive, humming along to the song. Her rhythm was off. Mom couldn’t keep up, distracted by some more prominent thought. She was struggling to avoid it, whatever it was. Pretend it wasn’t there. That it didn’t exist.

  The song was meant to distract them but it wasn’t working. Mom was lost. Lost in her thoughts, that expansive cloud forming in her head. No one, not even Sean, could reach her.

  “Mom?”

  Nothing. No answer. Mom continued to hum along to the song, nodding.

  Sean tried again. “Mommy?”

  Her focus was on every chord, every lyric, every breath, dut-dut, dut-dut, dut-dut, every move, every vow, dut-dut, dut-dut-dut, while turning the car onto the highway.

  “Mom!”

  Mom cranked the volume even higher. The song stung Sean’s ears. Something about how she was acting behind the wheel compelled him to unbuckle his seatbelt—even though Mom always told him not to—sliding quietly across the sticky leatherette.

  Mom was talking to herself now. Even when she spoke, it was as if she were talking to someone else. Not Sean, but some other version of him.

  “Almost there,” she said into the rearview mirror. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”