The dark place, p.16
The Dark Place, page 16
But there was a door in the hallway. What color was that door? Brown, maybe? Or white? It could be white. And off that hallway? My old bedroom, and then another room. My parents’ room.
As I continued to try to pull together the pieces of the hallway, my feet began to tingle, and the feeling crept to my ankles, and then to my knees. My stomach turned a little, my eyes twitch. And then, for the tiniest second, I was there. On the rug…or maybe it was hardwood floors? It was only a second, and I felt my cells breathe me in, but when I opened my eyes, I was at Eilam’s still, and he was propped up.
“You glitched.”
My ears were warm. “I thought I was there. I could almost feel it.”
“Glitching is part of the process.”
I pinched my fingers into the carpet. I didn’t want to glitch. I just wanted to be there. I wanted to talk to my brother.
Eilam noticed my mood shift.
“Hey…hey, it’s a process, okay? You’ve got this. Let’s try again.” He lay back down, and I followed suit. “Try visualizing yourself in that exact same moment again. But don’t just think about your brother, okay? Think about the whole house. Sometimes we have to widen our perspective, shake up our memory. The synapses in our bodies are like jumper cables—we’ve got to give them something to connect to so we can land in the moments we want.”
I whispered, “Okay.” Closed my eyes, and I thought of the hallway again. Bubba stood at the end of it, at the entryway to the living room.
What was the living room like? Hardwood floors. Walls covered in pictures, and two couches. A coffee table. A lamp. But the rest…the rest of the house slipped away.
The tingling came back, some of it in the tips of my fingers now. This time, I heard Bubba say my name. I didn’t know what else was said; just that I heard it. And I could almost feel myself there again, could hear the heat kick on to warm the house.
More tingling.
More feeling like I was going to zap away, but…I didn’t end up going anywhere.
After a while, I opened my eyes, and Eilam was looking at me again.
“Why does this keep happening?”
“It’s hard. You’re working a muscle you didn’t even know you had.”
I sighed.
“My grandpa said that sometimes retracing your steps can help visualize better. Do you have any photo albums you can look at?”
“No.” Then I chewed my lip, remembering that my childhood home now sat empty in the neighborhood. “But what are the chances that I can convince you to go on an adventure with me?”
“Depends on what kind of trouble you’re trying to get me into?”
I smiled, showing all my teeth. “No trouble. Just a little breaking and entering, is all.”
When we turned onto my old street, my stomach tightened like a fist.
We crept up a hill, made it to a stop, and as we rode down it, I felt the swelling in my chest.
In my mind, I kept thinking someone else lived here now, a new family. Three kids. A mom and dad who were protective, but not too hovering. A loyal dog, and two rescue cats. I’d imagine that they’d have a garden in the backyard, a revamped sitting area in the gazebo, and that somehow they’d finally get grass to grow by the sidewalk in the front yard. They’d protect the home with an animalistic urgency, so hungry to keep everything and everyone safe because this would be the haven they’d have many firsts in—whether good or bad.
There wasn’t any of that.
Instead, we pulled into the front of the driveway, and Eilam put the car in park but kept the engine running, as if he were asking if I were sure.
But I couldn’t pull my gaze away from it. Past the tree in the front, there the house sat. Could a house breathe? This one felt like it could—like it had exhaled so madly that it caused the brown shingles to split and crack.
The wooden fence around the perimeter of the house, my old house, was half painted, half tagged with graffiti, and half leaning. The cast-iron fence with the points at the end of the driveway—gone. Vines twisted themselves around the hatching of the gazebo, and bright green weeds pushed themselves through parts of the driveway. The grass was overgrown, and this place looked like it could have been hidden in the woods.
It had been nine years since my family lived here, but I refused to believe we were the last. There were those small changes I could point out, tell you what had been here before and what hadn’t. But I wondered if our past trauma stuck to the walls, and maybe it was that, the haunting of our screams and cries, that pushed out whoever lived here after us. The Afters.
“Will you keep lookout?” I said, opening the door.
Eilam looked around. “You want me to just sit out here with the car running?”
“I guess you could walk if you wanted to.”
He chuckled nervously. “Nah, that’s okay. I’ll be here if you need me.” He grabbed my hand before I got out. “You sure you don’t want me to go in with you?” There was a flicker in his brown eyes, a small smile painted on his face.
I shook my head. “I think it’s best if I do this one alone.”
I walked down the driveway, passing windows on the side of the house that I knew connected to bedrooms. My parents’ had been there, my brother’s up there, and around the corner, here, was mine.
My first thought was to try the window, but when it didn’t open, I ventured farther around the house to the garage. The birds sang somewhere in the distance, and I looked to my left and my right.
There was a chance—regardless of how small—that someone could be living here. If that were the case, what I was doing would absolutely be classified as breaking and entering, and if I got caught, Grandmommy would kill me.
The trees rustled, and I tried my hand at the window, pushing up with all my might until I heard a crack and a release, paint splitting at the corners and particles flying around me.
I opened it the rest of the way, and I pressed the toe of my Nikes into the siding, hiked up the wall, placing one foot through the window and climbing in until I landed on a concrete floor. The garage had two windows, and they lit the space well enough that I could see everything I needed to. There were some old newspapers on the floor, a box in the corner, and plenty of dust and grime.
Daddy used to park his truck in here, and Bubba and I would get in the car and pretend like we were going on a road trip. We’d even bring our blankets in and take fake naps while we took turns driving.
And above me, that small cutout there, that led to the storage space where Mama and Daddy kept the Christmas tree. That Christmas—the last one we had here—I’d climbed up to the attic and helped Bubba get it down, old webs getting stuck in my curls and eyelashes. He’d laughed, called me a witch, and when I saw myself in the mirror, I’d laughed, too.
Directly in front of me was a door. It led to the inside of the house, but when I tried the knob, it was locked. I’d suspected this could happen. I pulled my crossbody bag to the front of me, unzipped the small zipper, and pulled out a butter knife.
Again, breaking and entering.
Again, Grandmommy would kill me, but this was a chance for me to really remember—a chance to experience this home one last time and figure out what happened the night my brother disappeared. Whatever the risk, this was worth it.
It was Bubba who taught me this. You’d wedge the knife between the frame and the little latch that locked the door in place. I was five when I locked myself in the bathroom. I remembered crying so hard, thinking I’d be stuck in there for the rest of my life.
“You have to wiggle it like this,” Bubba had said, moving the knife back and forth between the door and the frame. I could hear the wood splitting, and then the door popped open like magic. We smiled at each other then, and I swear to you, my brother was so damn cool. He gave me a hug.
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell Mama or Daddy,” he’d said.
Now I did just as he told me, getting the door unlocked. I made it look easier than it was, but that was because I’d gotten plenty of practice in the last few years: waking Mama and Daddy up so they made it to work on time, getting Mama out of the closet after a drunken fiasco, getting a cousin out (who’d also accidentally locked themselves inside), and snooping. I couldn’t help myself.
I stood in the dining room now. A window with broken blinds to my left, and a door that was blocked with a wooden bar beside it. I remembered that door. I remembered we’d never, ever used it. I never knew why, but it was still boarded off today.
This room used to have a brown dining room table with matching chairs—plastic still on the part where you placed your butt because it was white, and Mama didn’t want our little fingers to get sauce all over it. We never really used that room, anyway.
And there used to be tall buffets that held Mama and Daddy’s fancy plates and glassware. Stuff from their wedding. Items inherited and passed down. Things we never ate off of, and never touched. A small twinge inside me, knowing full well that all those things went in a dump once the bank took the house back. If we’d known then what we knew now, I wondered if—for once—Mama would have let us eat a meal on those fancy plates.
Today, this room had a few crunchy leaves on the wooden floor, debris and dust, and nothing else. To my left, the back door that led to the porch, and in front of me, two steps that led to the kitchen.
The kitchen was different than I remembered. The brown cabinets were now white. The floors didn’t have the peeling stuff that we used to have—now they were wooden, and I wondered if they had always been here the whole time.
I couldn’t remember the last meal we ate in here, but I remembered Mama spent so much time in the kitchen. Not just to cook, but it was where she hung out with her friends. She’d do hair in the kitchen. She’d write down grocery lists and talk on the phone about awful customers she’d had to deal with. She’d paint her nails at the table that was in here, and I’d join her, painting my toes to match.
Our ghosts were here, breathing through the walls. Could the house really belong to anyone else when it felt like it still belonged to us?
There were two exits off the kitchen, an opening to the living room and an opening to a hallway (which also opened to the living room).
As I considered which path to take, a flash of a memory hit me hard. Me chasing Bubba, round and round. Our exhausted breaths and giggles vibrating through the floor. Mama yelling at us to stop running. Me, with an old baby doll in hand, trying to force Bubba to kiss it.
I entered the living room, my stomach tight. Our older cousin died here. Boom. Boom. The gunshots. Killing Juice immediately. The blood soaked the rug that used to be in here, and now there was beige carpet. A new front door, since the old one had been kicked in. The same windows, and memories of me and Bubba pressing our noses to them, watching a blizzard fill the Kansas streets.
Flashes of blood and darkness. My knees wobbled. I held my frame against the wall next to me. Deep breaths in, deep breaths out. And I pleaded with my body not to take me, but it was just a bad memory. No time traveling. Not yet. I wanted to go on my own terms.
“Bubba, I’m coming for you,” I whispered to the empty living room.
My fingers traced the wall as I moved to the hallway. The hallway. The last time I’d seen Bubba alive. The first time I’d been taken to the dark place. All of it here, in this narrow, dark space.
Pulled out my phone, turned on the flashlight. A creak, and my heart skipped a beat. It was just the wooden floor.
I flashed my light on the doors. There were three in front of me, all closed. The bathroom door, and two bedrooms. One that had belonged to me, and one that had belonged to my parents.
Behind me, the basement door. And it was wooden and white. All of them were white. This was the hallway, and I needed to remember every moment of it because I needed my memory to take me back to that day, so I could get Bubba and bring him back with me. I took pictures of it—literally and mentally. I wanted to sketch this out later.
Of all the doors, I chose to enter my old bedroom.
Turned the knob with a held breath, and more filtered sunlight met me where I was. It smelled like something old and sitting.
I pressed my palm against the walls in here, sweeping past what was once my very first canvas. I’d never forget the time I’d gotten in trouble for drawing life-sized flowers with crayons and markers. Mama bought me my first drawing pad after that, said, You draw on papers, not on walls.
I remembered, behind my bedroom door, Bubba and I had set up a science experiment. We wanted to know if we took an egg from the fridge, kept it warm, would it hatch into a baby chick? We took one of my old teddy bears, placed an egg in its arms (because the baby chick would need a mom), and we set it behind the door, next to the warm vent. Days went by. A chick never hatched, but we eventually found yellow gunk covering the teddy bear.
I leaned against the window that overlooked the back porch, and I slid to the floor, pressed my knees to my chest, and closed my eyes.
Tried to remember all of it. All the times I convinced Bubba to play Barbies with me. All the movies we watched in a fort we’d made. All the times I’d hidden under my bed, in the closet, or behind a dresser.
I remembered our family movie nights, all four of us full of pizza, squished on a couch, watching the big-screen TV. Mama always fell asleep, and we’d laugh, and Daddy would take pictures and show them to her the next day. I remembered all the parties my family had here. The loud bass, and the people congregating everywhere. Daddy used to be the life of the party. We used to have it all.
I opened my eyes, and none of that was here. It hadn’t been for almost a decade. Then I crossed my legs, my hands on my knees, and I tried to narrow in on time and space.
The plan was never to time travel from in the house…but I was here now, fingertips pressing into my dark blue jeans, legs and thighs squishing into the cold carpet. Back against the wall—inhaling, feeling my chest rise and fill. Exhaling—feeling the air leave my body. I had to do it now because what if—what if I can’t when I’m away from this place?
Everything I needed was right here.
Took another deep breath in and deep breath out. I pictured this room I was in, how it looked in the dark place. The shadows spreading like ink in water.
Focus, I told myself. Focus.
The world seemed so quiet after that. I wanted to be there. I whispered that to myself like a chant. I wanted it to be the only thing I focused on. There was a small shift, some tingling in my ankles, a smell different than the place that surrounded me.
And then the horn honked. I jumped, almost.
Shit.
That was it. It was my shot to try to get back to Bubba, and it was all over now. I’d failed again, and it didn’t feel like I’d ever get a grip on this whole time traveling thing.
I climbed into my bed when I got back to Grandmommy’s. Not hungry, the sun still in the sky, almost about to slip away.
If I wasn’t so pissy, I’d stomp back downstairs and demand Grandmommy tell me what happened with Atticus.
Though she wouldn’t want anything demanded of her—because that wasn’t respectful—regardless, she wouldn’t give in anyway. It would be on her terms. Something she made obvious as I walked in, and she refused to look in my direction.
She noted that I should consider calling my parents. That they deserved to know why I’d left the other day. I’d hate to admit it out loud, but she was right, and so as I pressed onward to my room, I texted my parents to tell them that I loved them, and that I was sorry for dipping so suddenly.
Maybe they’d text me back.
And now I lay in my bed feeling hopeless with my feet dangling off the side. I didn’t want lies or secrets anymore; I wanted the truth.
I really thought being at that house would give me some kind of superhero power and launch me into whatever dimension I wanted to be in. But I wasn’t an Avenger—I was just Hylee from Kansas City who missed her brother and who felt betrayed by her family. And I wanted to change that sentence so much. I wanted to be Hylee who has a brother and lives in Kansas City with her loving family.
Anyway, there was no promise that time traveling could make people change.
But…if I could get to the dark place, figure out why Bubba was there—why this realm had a hold on me—maybe I’d feel some relief. I could at least try.
Eilam said I needed to focus on my breathing, feel the air enter and leave my body.
I turned onto my back, placing a hand on my stomach and my chest as he had earlier. Closed my eyes and focused on the sound of the house. I could hear the mumbles from the TV a floor below me. The beeping of the microwave. A car zooming past outside.
And I thought about Bubba; I thought about seeing him on November 9.
We were in our family home.
I was in my room.
I was making my bed.
As the thought came to, a wave of nausea rushed over me. Small chills ran from my shoulders to my feet. I blinked, and I could see it—could see my old room, could see my younger self throwing a pillow on the bed, could hear a bang.
But when I blinked again, I was back here.
I jumped out of bed and kicked it so hard, I hurt my toe. I crumpled onto the floor and screamed into my hands until tears stung at my eyes. I needed this. Please just let me have this.
I let another scream rip out of me, muffling it with my arm. When I calmed down, I forced myself to try again.
Breathe, Hylee. You’ve got this, I said to myself, and I had to believe it.
Another deep breath.
Another rise and fall.
The sound of my breathing vibrated around me, pressing me farther into the carpet. This time, I tried to visualize each moment like a line on paper, creating a shape that would eventually turn into a person or a landscape.
It was almost unsettling how I could hear the charcoal pressing into my drawing pad as I visualized the past, my memory sketching it out for me.
