Caretaker, p.7
Caretaker, page 7
When he saw what his father was wearing and how he was acting, Ian knew exactly where he was.
No. I don’t want to be here!
He was taken back to the very moment he had tried so hard to put out of his mind for years. He turned to leave, but the door was gone. Panic took over as his eyes surveyed the room, trying desperately to find a way out of this living nightmare.
There was nowhere for him to go. He had no choice but to face what he knew was about to happen.
His father stormed over to his mother, demanding she tell him why she had to do this every year. He despised Thanksgiving and anything that didn’t revolve around him simply fueled his rage. Ian watched, powerless to help, as his father followed on her heels, harassing and taunting her with every step.
She had become immune to his tirades by then and ignored him as she continued to set the table. But then she did the unthinkable. She turned her back to him to reach for the matches so she could re-light the candles.
He snapped.
“Don’t you turn your back on me!”
The words filled the room just like they had all those years ago. Ian turned to watch the young version of himself he barely recognized—innocent and unaware of what was about to happen.
“Mom, let me help you,” young Ian offered, as naïve as he was excited about the holiday.
All of Ian’s muscles tensed as his father lunged at his younger self, hitting him so hard he flew backwards onto the ground. The smell of alcohol hit Ian almost as hard as the slap.
His mother quickly came to his defense.
“What are you doing?” she screamed. She rushed to young Ian, who was still lying on the floor, blood dripping from his nose and the ear he had scraped on the table on the way to the ground. He was shaken by the punch, but as his vision cleared, he saw his sobbing mother in front of him. He reached out to embrace her, but before he could wrap his arms around her for comfort, his father grabbed her by her hair and lifted her from her knees, then forcefully turned her around to take his abuse head-on. As he reached around her head, old Ian tried to turn away—he knew what was coming. But it was like his own head was being held as well. He watched as his father smashed his mother’s face into one of the plates, shattering it. He watched as his younger self shuddered when his father threw her to the ground.
She climbed to her knees, blood streaming down her face, and young Ian ran to her. His father stomped out of the room. They had no idea what was coming next. Ian desperately wished he could step into this scene, change the story. Make things right.
Seconds later, his father stormed back into the room and grabbed his mother by the neck, bringing her once again to her feet.
“Ian, run!” she cried out, her voice muffled by the hand around her neck.
Run, Ian, his older self echoed. He knew what the younger version of him didn’t yet. His father was holding a gun to her head.
With a rush of adrenaline, young Ian lunged out to try to help his mother. His father threw her to the ground again and pointed the gun at him.
“Watch it boy or I will kill you.”
Ian’s mother began rising from the floor behind his father. He tried to not look at her or make any sudden moves that would tip his father off to her actions, but when the floor creaked ever so slightly, he whipped around and pointed the gun back at her.
Young Ian lay on the floor, bleeding. His mother lay bloodied across from him. His father stood between them, looking back and forth with wild eyes, unsure who to kill first.
He turned toward his mother and fired three shots.
“NO!” both Ians cried out in unison.
Young Ian ran toward her but before he could reach her, his father swung at him, hitting him on the side of the head, knocking him back to the ground.
When his father finally stumbled away, he slurred under his breath, “You think you’re better than me boy? You’re just like me.”
I’m nothing like you older Ian wanted to scream at his drunken father, but he was frozen and unable to move. It was like a barrier stood between him and what he just watched unfold.
When young Ian came to, he went to his mother’s side. Two of the three shots had hit the wall behind his mother. One had hit its intended target. She was bleeding from her stomach.
“Mom, it’s going to be okay,” young Ian whispered.
He ran to the phone to dial 9-1-1 and as soon as he hung up, he fell to his knees next to his mother’s side, humming to her. He held her head in his lap, rocking back and forth, repeating, “Please don’t leave me.”
Older Ian mouthed the words along with his younger self.
The scene suddenly began to fade. The room darkened. Only the light from a single candelabra remained. Ian felt his chest tighten; he couldn’t breathe. He needed to get out of there. The walls were closing in on him. He reached for the candelabra and shouted, “Let me out of here, let me out!” When his cries went unheeded, he leaned his head against the wall and said again, this time with an exhausted whisper, “Please let me out of here.”
The door reappeared. He pulled it open and fell to his knees in the hallway, gasping for air. The door closed behind him without a sound.
“Dad, where have you been?” Zach practically tackled him as he tried to catch his breath.
“Zach? What are you …”
“Dad, she’s doing it again. We need help!”
Gathering himself, he lifted the candelabra to light the way and they rushed through the darkened house back to the living room where Lyana stood frozen.
“How long?”
“A few minutes,” said Zach.
Ariel was crying and barely able to speak. “She just kept mumbling and staring out the window, and next thing we knew she was gone,” she said between tearful gasps.
The house was still dark, but the few candles Lyana must have lit were enough for him to see her.
He reached out for her.
“Be with me, Lyana. Be with me …”
As he awaited a response, he looked out the window and noticed a bright light at the front gate.
They had been without power for hours—how has it been hours? Ian wondered—yet the lamp-post shined so bright, it was practically blinding.
It must have a different power source.
Ian stared, pondering how it could be. The power came back on, the lights flickered, then stayed on. Lyana blinked twice.
She was back.
Fifteen
“That was weird, wasn’t it?” Zach said the next day as he and Ariel were outside cleaning up debris from the storm.
“I was so scared,” Ariel said. “I mean, the storm was scary, but then the thing with Mom …”
Zach tossed the branches he’d collected onto the growing pile.
“I’m worried about her, Zach,” she added.
“Did you write about it?” Zach knew how much she liked to spend time with her journal. It was off-limits to him, of course, but she didn’t try to hide the fact that her journal was important to her. Kind of like numbers were to him.
She nodded.
“Did you see the lamp-post?” Zach asked.
Ariel brushed it off. “Yeah. But what’s the big deal with that anyway? I don’t get it.”
“How did it stay on when everything else lost power? If the main line coming to the house was down, there’s no way it should have been on.”
“Um, news flash. I don’t care.” Ariel folded her arms across her chest. Zach had noticed she was doing that more often lately. “Stop talking and help with these branches so we can go back inside.” She sighed, then softened her voice. “Why aren’t you wearing your snake bracelet?”
“Huh?” Zach looked up from his pile of sticks. “Oh, it’s a little big. It’s in my display case for now.”
“Where you keep all your trinkets,” said Ariel, the snark back in her tone.
“They’re not trinkets! They’re valuables!”
Ariel shrugged. “Whatever.”
As Zach gathered more branches from the back yard, he tried to organize his thoughts about last night’s strange events. The lamp-post. His mother. He couldn’t shake this feeling the two were connected somehow. He knew that didn’t make a lot of sense, but he was curious enough to try to find the connection.
Zach liked to look at the deeper meaning of things. Where surface level information might suffice for most people, he needed details about everything—the fog, the house, his mother, the world around him. Exploring all the ways in which things were connected helped him to feel safe in a world that often didn’t know exactly what to do with someone like him.
From the time he was very young, he had a way of empathizing with everyone around him—he could truly feel what others were feeling. He was the kid who would rescue wounded animals and befriend the new kid at school others were ignoring. Younger kids naturally gravitated towards him, too, sensing that he was a safe friend. Someone who wouldn’t look down on them. He didn’t fit in a neat box, and while he knew that brought challenges, he also knew his parents loved him just as he was.
He was seven when everything changed. Ian and Lyana had been called to school and at the request of his teacher and principal to talk about Zach’s behavioral “quirks.” This led to a visit with their pediatrician.
From the minute they heard Asperger’s Syndrome his parents vowed he wouldn’t live his life imprisoned by labels or expectations. Instead, they simply allowed him to be exactly who he was and embraced everything about him—the way his mind works, how he experiences the world around him. It wasn’t always easy, especially in moments when his emotions would overwhelm him or when he would get frustrated because he didn’t have the answer to something, but the difficult moments were always countered by a brilliant observation or beautiful sentiment about the world.
The way his family embraced him allowed Zach to thrive, but school and friendships became difficult and often left him feeling unfulfilled and lonely. Loneliness followed him through elementary and into middle school. It was in middle school that he discovered the importance of numbers. Numbers were facts that provided stability in his life, unlike people who were full of ever-changing perspectives and opinions. Counting calmed him. Gave him a sense of peace.
“Ariel, I found eight branches so far. What about you?” He went back to counting before she could even answer him. “… 9, 10, 11 …” His voice trailed off.
Ariel and Zach, although as different as two kids could possibly be, still competed over silly things like who could pick up the most branches from the yard the day after a storm. And although she found herself annoyed with her brother on most days, deep down Ariel loved his ability to remain true to who he was and the innocence that came with that.
She was three years old when he was born and from the minute he arrived, she embraced being the protective big sister. Early on, she resented not having the full attention of her parents, but the friendship she developed with her brother eventually outweighed any of that. When he was diagnosed, she noticed a shift in the dynamic and rather than embrace Zach in the same way her parents did, she started to retreat. She loved him, but deep down felt like she wasn’t special. Maybe it was the way her parents treated him, or maybe it was all in her head. But that feeling of inadequacy drove her to excel in everything she did. She became the most popular girl. The star and captain of the soccer team. She got involved in everything. A quest for perfection became her outlet, but she would sit in her bedroom at night longing to have the same freedom allowed to her brother. She just wanted to be herself.
Her journals allowed her to do just that. They were her safe place.
During the three years before Zach’s arrival, she was the center of her parents’ world. Ariel only had vague memories of that time. Another very specific memory from that season exists for her only through the stories told by her parents: there was another Keane child the world would never know. The baby girl who was lost to a miscarriage in the years between Ariel and Zach. Ariel often thought about the little sister who she’d never meet.
“I bet I can find more than you!” she challenged with a competitive smirk.
• • •
Inside the house, Ian and Lyana stood staring at the candelabra Ian had discovered in the now missing room, comparing notes from the night before.
Ian recalled every vivid detail with trepidation. He told Lyana how he found the door and the secret room that appeared, and then went on to describe the scene that played out before his very eyes.
Lyana couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had heard the story before, of course, and knew everything about Ian’s past, but to think about the possibility of a secret room taking him back to that horrific moment was just too much. She couldn’t help letting her eyes wander over to the bottle on the shelf. Had it been opened?
“A secret door? Are you sure?”
He led her to the hallway and together they searched the wall for a seam or any clue that a door might exist.
“I swear it was here!” Ian said. “This candelabra proves it. Doesn’t it? It was on the table in there!” He pointed to the blank wall.
Lyana didn’t want to doubt Ian. His breath didn’t smell of alcohol and she was looking at the candelabra with her own two eyes, but it was still incomprehensible, and she was still reeling from her own episode. She had no explanation for what was going on with her. She was confused and disoriented. Unlike Ian, she could barely remember what happened.
“I’m really scared Ian. It’s not just about the missing secret room. I’m worried about me. What is happening to me?”
Ian wrapped his arms around her and the two stood in the hallway, her head resting on his shoulder. She felt safe in Ian’s arms, but they still had no answers to the questions that surrounded the events of the last twenty-four hours.
She whispered, “Ian, I saw …” She paused before allowing herself to say the word.
“Saw who?”
“Her.”
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. She could pinpoint the moment when he realized who she was talking about. His own eyes began to tear up.
“She was holding the stuffed lamb we got for her.”
“Lyana, that’s just not possible. It’s not real. She’s gone.”
The words echoed, it’s not real.
The line between what was real and what was not had become so blurred, Lyana was beginning to question her own sanity. It felt real. How could it not be real? She knew what she saw, but was she dreaming? Was she creating something in her mind that didn’t exist? Was there something more happening here or was she truly losing her mind?
Ian pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head.
“It’s all going to be okay, Ly. I promise, it will.”
His words offered some comfort, but she heard the uncertainty in his voice.
Sixteen
“I think it was right here.”
Zach had convinced Ariel to go exploring, a distraction from cleaning up the rest of the yard, or maybe it was Zach’s way of avoiding dealing with the fact that she had a bigger pile of sticks. Ariel was up for the adventure, though. She was tired of fetching sticks. They ventured past the back yard into the woods.
“I didn’t realize how big it was!” she said as she looked around. It was the first time since they had moved that Ariel was exploring beyond the backyard. As she followed Zach, she tried to take it all in—the fog that seemed to perpetually hover at the tree line, the infinite rows of trees. It was all just so vast. It almost felt like walking into a different dimension, the real world fading behind them, just out of reach. But her sense of awe faded, replaced by a rapidly growing sense of unease. She had only known life in the city and preferred quiet moments in her room buried in her notebooks to exploring strange, spooky woods.
“Let’s head back, this is creeping me out,” she said.
Zach didn’t stop.
“Come on! I need to show you the door in the dirt. You have to see it, Ariel. You just have to. And who knows, we might even run into Marshall.”
Ariel wasn’t so sure she wanted to run into Marshall, but Zach was insistent, and she didn’t want to leave him out here alone. “Okay, fine, but then we need to head back.”
Zach started counting the steps between trees, then paused, turned in a different direction, and repeated the action. He looked back at Ariel. “I swear it was just over here,” he said, pointing.
“Okay, now can we head back?” said Ariel.
“Ten more minutes. I know I’ll find it!”
She knew not to argue with him when he was on a mission. Lyana and Ian were patient with him in a way she was unable to be, and that awareness pushed her to keep exploring with him hoping it would soon come to an end. Looking behind her and trying to recall the path they had taken to get this far, she noticed something in the distance.
Zach was on his hands and knees, feeling the ground, insisting the door must have gotten buried by the storm. Watching him from the corner of her eye, Ariel moved toward what looked like a small clearing. The fog was dense, but just beyond the trees she could see what looked like a building.
“Zach, over here!”
Her voice echoed and Zach looked up. He stood up and ran over to her. “It’s not over that way it’s …” he began.
“Look, there,” she interrupted. She pointed at the barely visible building.
“I said I wanted to show you the cellar door,” he said, adamant. The two argued back and forth for a few minutes.
“Zach! Stop! Don’t you see it? There’s something over there. I know a potential secret hideout can’t possibly compete with your stupid cellar door, but if I’m wrong, I’ll help you look for it.”
