***
For Maya
1. ABOVE
The reason Jamie moved away from the comfortable two-story brick nest he'd grown up in wasn't because a twenty-six-year-old ought not to still have his mother doing his laundry, cooking his meals, and chastising him for bedroom mess. In fact, those things (and even the same tired, ridiculous arguments replayed nightly between his parents), were an ideal tonic, with a sweet taste of normality. Comfortable, familiar. Stifling too, but so are bandages and splints.
He'd been through something, something not normal at all, but that was almost all he knew. Whatever it had been, no one in the world would believe it possible, except maybe those locked in mental wards (who may well be right about what they themselves saw and heard, for all anyone really knew). Whatever Jamie had been through had been real, actually real. It had changed and injured him, made the world and its reality a much less certain picture. The supernatural existed, he knew it in his bones. Maybe every tale about vampires and other dark things had some grounding in truth, safely hiding in plain sight behind "it's just a story."
To hear his father wailing in despair at the TV while his football team lost, like the TV itself were some unfair god which might show mercy and change the course of things . . . that was tonic too. There were people, in fact most people, whose gravest concern was a scoreboard at a stadium somewhere, their receding hairline, a hated boss, money, and all the usual everyday junk. Whatever Jamie had been through had no place in their world, even though some of them—his parents certainly—had seen hints and clues: that night the cops picked him up in a clown suit with blood on the oversized red shoes.
No, that was not part of their world . . . and so Jamie tried to be like them. He grew outraged at bad movies and poor service, howled in grief with his father when certain sport teams lost, went to his job and got drunk on weekends, just like everyone else. And yet . . .
Just as a deep part of Jamie knew better, knew that something had happened, a part of his parents knew it too. A glance when he entered the room, home from work, a glance with doubt and suspicion flashing in his mother's eyes for just one moment. From his father, gazing over the top of his newspaper at breakfast, studying his son's profile, as if seeking the first hint of peculiarity surfacing . . . then back to the paper when Jamie noticed him watching. The whispered conversations falling to silence and awkwardness as he came within earshot, when they may as well have screamed at him from a megaphone we are talking about you, our weird son. you are a puzzle we are afraid to solve.
It all said pretty much one thing: You did something, didn't you?
Jamie knew as well as they did, beneath the thin veneer of strained normality: the answer was yes. Hell yes. He'd done something, all right. But what?
•
According to the phone calls—they had started out sporadically, sometimes three in a day, sometimes nothing for nearly a month—he was a murderer. The first calls were nothing but breathing, deep and angry breathing, presumably from the same caller who mysteriously hung up if anyone but Jamie answered the phone. With time the breather worked up the courage to talk, or more likely, worked up the blind fury to talk. "You killed him. You killed my boy. Where is my boy?"
Of course it was Mrs. Rolph, Steve's mother. The disappearing Steve. The problem of course was that for all Jamie knew, Mrs. Rolph was quite right—maybe he had killed him. "I wish I could help you," he'd told her the first time, then said what he'd repeated so often to disbelieving cops, investigators, psychiatrists, and the occasional journalist, so often that the words actually felt dishonest: "But I have no idea what really happened that night, or before that night. No memory at all, I swear. Maybe Steve's still okay, still out there somewhere. Maybe he'll turn up any day now. I wish I knew."
"Tell me what you know," the hoarse voice growled through the phone. "Where's my boy? You were with him. They found blood on you, blood on your clothes, blood all over you . . ." The growl dissolved into sobs and choking gargles.
"I'm sorry," Jamie said. "I wish I knew, but I just don't remember. I was . . . driving home from work, from the Wentworth Club. And then . . . headlights, by the road side . . . wearing a clown suit . . ." he trailed off, looking back to that night and seeing almost nothing. All that remained was the clown outfit, now neatly folded in a box at the bottom of a cupboard upstairs. And the little velvet bag which had sat in its pants pocket.
"Murderer," the growl hissed, sizzled, spat. "Murderer. Killer. You bastard. We'll never forget."
"I'm sorry," Jamie said, then did what he would do every other time that same caller called, accusing, begging, or just weeping. He hung up.
•
The day he knew he had to leave the nest at long last was when he picked up the phone one Friday, lusting for pizza, and heard his mother's voice on the other end of the line. She'd not heard the click of the upstairs phone being picked up and he hung on the line a second or two, instinct telling him he was being discussed.
". . . and he wakes up screaming. No, not every night but often enough. Won't ever tell me what's wrong. Thrashing on the bed, you should hear it sometimes, those bed springs creaking. I had to check that he hadn't snuck a girl in there."
The other voice said, "Does your son have a relationship, Mrs. McMahon?"
"Only with his hand. And they're very close." Jamie winced. But it got worse. "When can you come and see him?" said his mother.
"Tomorrow," said the other voice, firmly.
"Oh, thank goodness."
"Whatever has caused memories to be repressed must be significant trauma. It's very unusual for an adult to block out memories like this. Is it just the dreams?"
His mother's voice lowered. "Well he's . . . since that time he disappeared then came back, he's different. It's hard to say why or how, just sometimes a look in his eye. Or it seems he's holding some private amusement, and occasionally he will make jokes that are just entirely inappropriate."
"There must be more to it than that," said the other voice gently. "You can't simply be concerned about bad taste jokes?"
"He never used to do this! I think of that clown suit they found him in—it's almost like sometimes he is trying to be like a clown. And that friend of his who vanished. I just don't know him anymore. There's someone else in there with him, I sometimes think."
Jamie shook his head in bewilderment, no longer able to wait for this conversation to end before hanging up. He eased the phone gently into its cradle. Fine, then. He would put the old girl—the old man too for that matter—at ease and get out of here, because he heard what she hadn't said: her son scared her.
Right away he texted Dean, an occasional drinking buddy from work and asked if he still had a room for rent. The reply came quickly: yea. furnished. beer in fridge. move in!!!
In an hour, Jamie's stuff was almost completely packed and his parents were clued in over breakfast. "Oh," said his mother, sighing in disappointment but hiding—he knew it—no small amount of relief.
The counselor came and got no more from Jamie than resentment and the repetition of "I'm fine" and "I don't remember." She asked him about nightmares. He just shrugged and hid the weird disquiet that squirmed in his gut like a snake uncoiling. Nightmares? Oh, yes there were nightmares . . . somehow familiar harsh voices, threats and curses over a backdrop of demonic creatures snarling and biting at the ground their feet slashed and pounded, attacking the earth, each other, and all the while carny music playing sugar sweet, carny rides and games flashing colors gaudy and more obscene than blood red . . .
"Really, I'm fine," he said again. "I don't need counseling, I'm getting on with my life and you just stole half an hour of it. Bye."