Things Not Seen Read online

  Mom says, “Has there been any word about my husband?” I can hear the strain in Mom’s voice. She’s worried these people are going to bump into me.

  The lady doctor has a kind voice. “I knew you’d want to know about Mr. Phillips, so I had one of my interns call downstairs and check. Dr. Porter?”

  The man is standing near the foot of the bed. He’s wearing brown shoes. It would be so easy to tie those laces together.

  He shifts his weight and clears his throat. “Ahem, well, the operating room nurse said that the surgeon was very happy with the way things went. Apparently the force of the impact from the left caused a compound fracture, which means that the bone fragments—”

  “Yes, that’s fine, Dr. Porter.” Dr. Fleming cuts him off. “All we need to know is that things went very well, and that her husband is going to be right as rain before we know it. I think you can rest now, Mrs. Phillips. If your head starts hurting again, ring the nurse and someone will come right away. In the morning we’ll take another look at your nose. Now, don’t worry about a thing. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Is there anything else we can get for you?”

  A pause, then Mom says, “What we talked about earlier, about my son, Bobby? Well, I’ve heard from him, and his aunt Ethel is going to be able to take care of him until I can go home.”

  “You’ve heard from him?” Dr. Fleming is annoyed. “I told everyone that you were not to be disturbed. Who brought you the message?”

  Mom pauses again, but I’m probably the only one who notices it. “No one brought a message. He called me himself—my cell phone is there in my purse.”

  “Ahh yes.” Now the doctor’s voice is smiling. “The cell phone. It’s impossible to be out of touch these days, isn’t it? Well, I’m glad that’s settled. Your son was a little shook up when I called with the news, but he snapped right out of it. Sounded like a great kid.”

  “He’s a wonderful boy. And thank you for calling him.”

  “You’re very welcome. You’ve got enough to think about without worrying about your son. Now, you get a good rest, Mrs. Phillips, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Like a drill team, three pairs of feet turn and march out the door.

  I’m glad to stand up, because the way I had scrunched up my legs under there was starting to make my toe hurt. I say, “Very smooth, Mom. About Aunt Ethel.”

  Mom grins, and then grimaces from the pain. “It seemed like an easy way to get that issue settled. And I really do have my cell phone, so there’s no excuse for you not keeping in touch with me.” All the time, her eyes are searching the air for me. Her eyes get watery again and she says, “I can’t get used to this. I hate not seeing your face.” I haven’t seen Mom all soft and weepy like this since my first trumpet recital back in Texas. She loves music. We both do. Dad listens and enjoys the sound waves, but Mom really hears the music.

  She waves her hand around, a motion that includes the room, the hospital, the whole day. “It’s like a bad dream, all of this.”

  I nod in agreement, even though she can’t see me. “Tell me about it. Do you know where Dad is? I should go see him too.”

  Mom shakes her head. “He’s in no shape for company, Bobby, probably won’t even be really awake until tomorrow sometime.”

  Then it’s like somebody flipped a switch and the old Mom is back, giving orders.

  “Hand me my purse.”

  She opens it and digs out her billfold. She finds three twenty-dollar bills and holds them up for me. “This is all I have with me, but it should be enough until I get home—I don’t think they’ll keep me here long. Also, there’s plenty of food in the pantry because we just got a delivery on Saturday.”

  Saturday. Three days ago. A million years ago.

  “There should be a line of cabs down in the circle by the front entrance. Choose the nicest taxi, Bobby, one of those big ones. And go right home, and be sure to set the alarm the minute you’re there, all right?”

  While she talks, I’m rolling the bills into a tight cylinder, and Mom’s watching me. I close my hand around the cash, and it disappears, ready to be carried away. I open my fingers, and the money roll reappears.

  Mom’s eyes follow the floating dollars as she keeps talking. “I hate you being home by yourself, but there’s nothing we can do about it. And tomorrow I’ll have your dad call you if he can. And you can call me if there’s any problem…or if you just want to talk, okay?”

  “Yup. I’ll be fine.” I don’t sound very sure about that, and I don’t want her to worry, so right away I say, “But like Dad said, there has to be some reason this happened, something that caused it. I know we can figure it out…or…maybe we could just open a circus and get really rich.”

  That makes her smile, and again I remember that smiling hurts her.

  “Seriously, Mom, I’m all right. And I’ll call you when I get home, okay?”

  She nods and holds up her right hand for me, and I take hold of it again. “Now give me a kiss, if you can find a spot that’s not bruised.”

  And I do. And then I let go of her hand.

  “See you, Mom.”

  “I’ll be home in just a few days, Bobby.”

  I’ve got the door open now. The old woman in the other bed is wide awake. Her tubes flop around as she looks from the door to the curtain around Mom’s bed and then back to the door. She’s confused, and she has a right to be.

  Mom is looking at the door too, leaning forward as I start to leave. “And Bobby?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “Sure thing, Mom. Bye.”

  chapter 7

  FIRST NIGHT

  Working my way back to room 1007, getting into my clothes again, walking around to the front of the hospital, finding a nice big cab just like my mommy told me to, and then riding home—all that happens without a hitch. Except my toe starts throbbing again.

  Coming home to an empty house. I mean, I’ve done it plenty of times, but tonight it’s different. Alone is one thing; alone at night—all night—that’s something else.

  Dad has some timers rigged up, so a few lights are on. Still, the place looks like a big old funeral home.

  This kid at school named Russell, his dad runs a funeral home on Kenwood. His family lives on the second and third floor of the place. At lunch one day Russell tells me they’ve got a big cooler down in the basement next to the room where his dad gets the bodies ready. He says sometimes they have three or four corpses in the cooler at the same time. And then Jim Weinraub says that when he slept over at Russell’s once, they sneaked down to the basement in the middle of the night and looked at a dead woman.

  After I heard that, I didn’t eat lunch with Russell for a month. Stuff like that creeps me out.

  I don’t go in the front door of my house because the front porch has a light that goes on whenever anyone walks up the steps. If I go in that way, I’m almost sure Mrs. Trent would see me. She lives next door, and she sits in her big bay window all day and most of the night. She would see me, and then she would probably waddle over to tell me that the police were here earlier. Mrs. Trent is the nosiest woman on the planet, and it doesn’t help that the buildings in my neighborhood are only about fifteen feet apart.

  I let myself in at the driveway door on the east side of the house, the side away from Mrs. Trent. This side faces a big duplex apartment house. It’s loaded with college kids. Their place is all lit up, and somebody’s music system is blasting away. I wish I was going there for the night.

  First, before I set the alarm system by the back door, before I turn on any other lights, before I even take off my coat and scarf, I go around and shut all the shades and curtains. If Mrs. Trent gets one good look at my empty clothes walking around the house, it‘ll mean the end of life as we know it.

  With the alarm set and my coat and stuff dumped by the back door, it’s time to eat. I’m starved again. I watch as I feel my hands throw a peanut butter and jelly sandwich toget
her, and I think how I’d give anything for a double cheeseburger right now. Then this thought: Unless things change, my fast-food days are over. Unless someone else does the buying. Great—I can’t even get a Happy Meal unless my daddy or mommy buys it for me.

  Mom!

  I grab the kitchen phone, and then I grab a paper towel to wipe the strawberry jelly off it.

  I promised Mom I’d call when I got home.

  One ring, two rings, three rings. Maybe she’s already asleep. Or in the bathroom.

  Four rings. It’s a deep purse. Ringer’s probably set on low.

  Five rings. Six rings. Dead? Bad word. I mean the battery in her phone—dead battery.

  Then it goes to voice mail. I try not to sound worried about her, but I am. “Mom? Mom, it’s me. I got home fine, and now I’m fixing some food…it’s about nine, I guess. So…say hi to Dad, and I’ll call you tomorrow. Or you can call me. Bye.”

  I’ve been at home by myself plenty of times. Tons of times.

  But not like this. Never with both my folks away all night. And no one else coming.

  I don’t like scary movies, especially the kind where people are alone in a big old house. And I’ve always been a little afraid of the dark. Which is not a bad way to be in this part of Chicago. Even with the cops and the university police all over, there’s still plenty to worry about after sundown. The streetlights are on, but there are shadows. Lots of shadows.

  So I turn on more lights. In the TV room I set up a tray table. Then I get some milk and my sandwich.

  I should know better than to just turn on the tube. It’s still set to WGN, and it’s a movie preview, the one where Jack Nicholson is holding the ax and trying to push his face through a door. I punch the changer, and it flips to Cinemax. Some teenage vampires are having a meal.

  I turn off the set, but then the house feels too quiet, and bad pictures are bouncing around in my head. All three lamps are on, but it still feels dark. So I grab the other remote and turn on the FM. The room fills up with jazz. I concentrate on the trumpet line because that’s my instrument. The trumpet breaks into a high solo, and it’s a bright sound, shiny and clean.

  And then I remember my sandwich. I eat it, but it doesn’t feel right in my mouth. It doesn’t feel right when I swallow. And the milk tastes strange. Nothing feels right.

  Because when fear begins to crawl, it just keeps coming.

  Light is good, light is very good. But the windows behind all the curtains are dark, and behind every curtain there’s a horror story, a real one. It’s the real ones that come crawling at me through the night.

  The alarm system is blinking. That’s supposed to make me feel safe. It’s blinking next to every door. The alarm system has eyes and fingers all over the house. It senses things. The system will shriek when something outside starts to come through a door or a window.

  But fear doesn’t need doors and windows. It works from the inside.

  I hurry to the study, flipping on other lights as I go. I swivel the big computer monitor around so I can sit and not have my back toward the doorway or the big curtained window. The jazz keeps coming from the TV room, but it’s a different tune now, and a saxophone starts wailing.

  The computer boots up, and then I’m online and I’ve got a messenger window open, and I tap in Kenny Temple’s screen name, Gandolf375. Kenny’s a Tolkien freak, which is why we’re sort of friends. So this’ll be good. I can talk to Kenny online, just talk a little. Like about jazz band. Because jazz band practiced today after school. Without me.

  No response. I key his name again. Nothing. I try a few other names, kids I ask about homework sometimes. Like Jeff. I can ask Jeff what I missed in biology today. Or maybe Ellen Beck. She lives over on Blackstone—practically a neighbor. She’ll know. And I can ask her about English too.

  Nobody’s online.

  Then I remember. Midterms are coming. Nobody’s online.

  A digit changes on the clock at the upper corner of the computer screen. It’s now 9:11. I shut the box down. The hard drive whines to a stop, the screen gives a static crackle and goes dark, and it hits me that it’s so early. Eight, maybe nine more hours before dawn. The lights are burning here, but darkness is all around me—in the alley, in the attic, in the basement, in every closet. The night is everywhere. Hours and hours and hours of night.

  I’m sitting at the desk in the study, and I see my clothes reflected there in the dark computer screen.

  If I could see my eyes there where my face should be, what would they look like right now? Would they look uneasy? More than that. Maybe haunted? Would my eyes look haunted? Were that lady’s eyes open? The eyes of that dead lady down in the basement cooler at Russell’s house? What did her eyes look like?

  I’m running up the front stairs, flipping on lights as I go, and I get to my room and turn on the lights, and I shut the door, and I lock the door, and I sit on my bed, and I grab my pillow, and I hug it against my stomach. Because of the fear. It’s cranked up. It’s up past terror, past panic. I’m thinking this must be dread. Except I’m not thinking. There’s no room for thinking, just feeling, feeling like the dread is oozing up through the cracks between the boards on my floor. Bubbling up through the heater grates. I can feel it rising. Like water. Like black blood. Like the fluids. Like the fluids. The fluids that Russell’s dad pumps into the dead bodies down in the basement of the funeral home. The dread is filling my locked room and my mouth and my nose and my ears and my eyes and my lungs, and I’m drowning in it.

  But I sit there and I don’t. I don’t drown. I’m breathing so fast, I feel faint. I have to yawn. But I’m getting a thought. It’s a real thought, a memory. About fear. And I’m thinking it. And the thought is simple. It’s simple: nothing to fear but fear itself. From a history class. Just words. Until now.

  And then it’s like I’m five feet away. And I’m looking at me, at this guy sitting on a bed. And I can see he’s not under attack. There is no danger. And I can see that the fear is the thing. It’s just fear.

  Another memory, another thought. I’m walking out of the library about a year ago behind two college girls. And one of them says, “I am so upset, I am just so upset! And the thing that upsets me the most is that I’m so upset!” That’s what she says, and I listen to this and I think, How stupid is that? If you don’t want to be so upset, just stop being upset!

  And now it’s the fear. It’s the same. Like being upset because you’re upset. It keeps feeding itself. And then it gets you to feed it. And you just have to stop it.

  I have to stop it.

  I stand up and toss my pillow back onto the bed. I take deep breaths. I go over to my dresser and look in the mirror. I wonder what my hair looks like. So I grab a comb and pull it across my head, patting my hair with the other hand. Feels right. It’s Bobby, the well-groomed spook. What a clear complexion he has.

  Then I walk over and unlock my bedroom door, and I go downstairs. I shut off the radio, and I take my dishes from the TV room back to the kitchen, and I scoop myself a bowl of chocolate chip ice cream. I go back to the couch, and I pull the blue fleece blanket around me, and I turn on Nick at Nite. It’s I Love Lucy, and it’s funny. I start laughing, and I am eating ice cream, and I am not afraid.

  Still, when I finally go upstairs, I lock my bedroom door again.

  And I sleep with my lights on.

  I mean, I know I can get past the fear. I just did it. But I don’t kid myself.

  The bogeyman isn’t really dead, not forever. He’s just not here. Not tonight.

  chapter 8

  MY LIFE

  Wake up. Shower. Eat. Read. Talk to Mom. Watch TV. Talk to Mom. Eat. Nap. Listen to jazz. Read. Talk to Dad. Watch TV. Go online. Talk to Mom. Eat. Practice my trumpet. Worry. Watch TV. Read. Talk to Mom. Nap.

  So that’s Wednesday, my second thrilling day as Bobby the Missing Person. It’s weird not having anybody around. It makes it so easy to think. Too easy. Because unless the tube is on or there’s music pl
aying, it’s just me, thinking. Until Mom calls again. And again.

  When she calls in the morning, she wants me to tell her everything I’m doing, like every second. Starting with the cab ride home from the hospital last night. And she hopes that I remembered to turn on the alarm system. And why didn’t I call her, which I did, but she was too messed up to remember to turn the phone on. And have I remembered to water the plants? Because the ivy in the front hall needs a half cup of water every other day or it droops. And did I do my homework? What do I mean, I couldn’t get the assignments? So if no one is online, then you just call them on the telephone. Have kids today forgotten how to use the telephone? What do I mean that I didn’t want to talk to anyone last night? Am I feeling all right? Am I eating nutritious foods? I’m not just eating junk, am I? Because that’s the worst thing for my complexion.

  Fifteen minutes of that, and I’m ready to scream and yank the phone out of the wall. The only good thing is that she doesn’t have a charger there in the hospital. I’m guessing the batteries on her cell phone give out pretty soon. But then she’ll just get a regular phone put in her room. So there’s no escape. I’m missing the old Mom, who would show up once or twice a day, give an order, and then get on with her busy life. Suddenly, it seems like I’m her life.

  Dad sounds all right when he calls me about noon. And I’m glad, because I need Dad’s help. I mean, like, what if the accident had messed up his head? But that clearly has not happened. Because first he explains exactly how he’s hurt. Exactly, like he’d been the surgeon himself, or like he was awake the whole time, taking notes. Then he tells me how he’s been thinking about my “situation.” I can tell there’s another person in the room with him because he’s not being specific.

  He says, “Regarding your, um, situation, Bobby, I’ve been running through some possible cause scenarios.” Possible cause scenarios. That’s vintage Dad. He says, “The second I get out of here, I’d like to run some tests at the lab. Maybe put a sliver of your fingernail under the electron microscope, maybe try to get a reading from a spectrometer, things like that. Plus, there are dozens of very fine papers in the journals of the past ten years—things about light and energy, subatomic refraction, ideas that could give us some good science as a starting point, you know, so we can generate a theory about what’s going on here. Sound good?”