“The house is possessed,” I muttered into the pillow.
“Possessed.”
I slanted a glance at him. “It’s going to eat me.”
“The house?”
I nodded. But joking about my terror wasn’t making it go away. After a moment I sat up and found Damian still studying me curiously.
“Seriously, D, you weren’t just knocking on my door?”
“Um, no. You wanted to be left alone, remember? Since when do I bug you when you don’t want to be bugged?”
“All the time,” I said, cracking a smile.
“Well, okay. But this time, no.” He set the device on his desk. “So, you heard someone knocking on your door and no one was there?”
“I’m not crazy! Then there’s that branch, and the door creaks, and…I’m warning you, if I disappear, check the closets. They’re like big mouths.”
I pantomimed death-by-closet with my hands. Damian laughed and pitched a wad of paper at me.
“You’re crazy.”
“Be that way.”
Finally I rolled off the bed, but then I just stood there, rooted, both hands shoved in my back pockets. I could have pulled the coin out right then. I wanted to. Damian glanced at me once or twice, probably wondering why I was still standing there like an idiot, nervous and speechless. I would have to talk to him later. Somehow, at that moment, I just couldn’t seem to find my voice.
I wandered out of his room and slipped into my mom’s. With all the curtains drawn the room was dark and cool, just the way I liked it. But I couldn’t see the coin with all the lamps off, so I switched on the bedside light and sat down by the pillow. For a few moments I just stared at the face gazing back at me from the picture frame on Mom’s nightstand – the face I loved, and missed, more than any other. My dad.
Pictures of him filled every wall in the bedroom. Across from me hung a photo I’d taken myself at our last family reunion, four years ago, on one of those cheap disposable cameras the adults gave us to use. Dad leaned against our old magnolia tree sipping a mint julep. The way the light filtered through the leaves, I’d always thought it looked like some ethereal figure stood behind him, barely outlined by the shimmer of light. I used to make up stories about who or what the figure was. Angel, elf, ghost, the spiritual presence of someone from another world, any number of equally crazy ideas. I didn’t make up those stories any more.
Three months after the reunion Dad had disappeared.
He left the house late in the evening, when he usually sat quietly in his overstuffed recliner, drinking twice re-warmed coffee and reading last Sunday’s paper. I remember the rattle of rain against the windows. It was pouring, a cold and miserable late autumn storm. And there was my dad, throwing on his overcoat and peering again and again out the window. He said he had to go to his office at the university to get a student’s paper, but that didn’t explain his panic. I followed him to the door asking him why he was going, and before he disappeared from the porch light he turned to say something to me. I never got to ask him what. Only the rumble of his mellow voice cut through the shattering rain, his dark eyes sad and regretful, and then he was gone.
I’ve never stopped waiting for him to return. It didn’t matter what the cops said, or how they called a halt to everything, all at once, as if on cue. I remember the day Officer Jankins took my mom aside. The apologies, the tears. The reporters with bulky cameras trying to invade the sadness of our house, the neighbors sending cookies, the university’s condolences. No one whispered, no one spread rumors – none at least that I heard. They just gave up. Everyone did, except Damian and me. We’d made a pledge never to give up hope, and we never did, even though the years had blunted the pain. Sometimes I think my mom didn’t either, though she wore the mask of acceptance for the rest of the world to see.
My heart ached and the room blurred, but I blinked away the tears and pulled the coin out of my pocket. I kept staring at my father’s picture. Part of me didn’t really want to look at the coin. I just had this feeling that it wouldn’t be anything special. Maybe Mr.