Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

She picked up the phone and called the hotline number.

A young woman answered. “Do you have information relating to Katie?”

“I think I do.”

“Would you like to give your name?”

“No.” She said it too quickly. She knew she sounded like a crackpot or someone with something to hide. Possibly she was both.

“Okay.”

“I’ve had a vision.” Eloise was shaking from her core. She couldn’t keep it out of her voice. It was more like a shiver, as if she were freezing from the inside out. Adrenaline was pulsing through her.

“A vision.” It was the first time she heard that particular tone-disbelief, mixing with annoyance, mingling with hope. She would hear it so many, many more times after that.

“Katie is in a well. She has fallen. She’s cold and dehydrated. She won’t make it through the night. She’s not far from her home. I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m just asking you to check.”

“Okay.”

“She’s wearing jeans and sneakers.” Eloise had had no awareness of this in her vision. Wasn’t even sure why she was saying it now. “And a long-sleeved T-shirt, green and white. It says ‘Daddy’s Girl’ on it.” She didn’t even know how she knew it. But as she spoke, she was certain it was true.

There was only silence on the line. She heard a muffled voice, someone speaking, a hand covering the phone.

“Hello?” There was a male voice on the line now. “This is Detective Jameson. Can you repeat to me what you just told the hotline operator?”

She repeated the information.

“You need to hurry. Please,” she said when she was done. She could still hear his voice as she hung up the phone. She didn’t have anything else to say, was unwilling to give her name. She was too naïve to know they had already traced her call, that the hotline was set up for that.

When the phone was in its cradle, she felt a shuddering sense of relief. Only when she felt it did she realize the terrible low buzz of anxiety she’d been suffering. Then she looked up to see Amanda standing in the doorway to the living room.

“Is it true?” she asked. “Is that what happened today?”

Amanda came to sit beside her on the couch. She wore one of her sister’s nightgowns. Amanda had been sleeping in Emily’s pajamas since her sister died. It makes me feel close to her . Eloise didn’t mind it. She liked seeing Emily’s things animated, as if she were still with them. Eloise hadn’t touched even one of Alfie’s belongings-his razor, his toothbrush, his slippers under the nightstand. It was as if Emily and Alfie were still here as long as those things remained. Those mundane items tingled with their energy. Even though most days she was just wading through a hip-deep swamp of grief, the sight of something that Alfie or Emily had touched could make her smile.

“I think so. I needed to call. I know that.”

Amanda considered her mother in that grave way she had. “What if you’re wrong?”

“But what if I’m right?” The answer to that was scarier. This was acknowledged between them without words.

They sat in the quiet dark. The television was on with the sound down, casting its strobe about the room. If Alfie and Emily were there, they’d both be chattering and grilling her about all the details. There would be no quiet, knowing acceptance of the bizarre. Both of them would be skeptical, playing devil’s advocate. But they weren’t there. And somehow Eloise knew if they were, this wouldn’t have happened.

“It’s not fair. It’s so not fair. None of it,” Amanda said.

Eloise didn’t know if Amanda was talking about Alfie and Emily, or the vision Eloise had had, or that there was a girl fallen in a well whom no one could find. She suspected that she meant all of it. And she was so right.

“No. Life’s not fair. We just do our best. Okay? We have each other.”

“For now.”

Amanda was too smart to be mollycoddled.

But Eloise said anyway, “Forever. We’ll be together forever. All of us.”

Even though she didn’t know if that was true, that’s what she said. She knew they were promised nothing. Now was the only gift anyone was guaranteed to receive. She envied people who had faith in the stories of religion, faith in a heaven where all good souls were reunited with their loved ones. Life would be so much easier if she could believe in all that, so much easier to explain to her daughter. But she didn’t have that brand of faith.

That night they slept together in Eloise’s bed the way they had since she came home from the hospital. She slept well that night for the first time. She didn’t wake with pain in her back or her hip or her neck as she often did. She didn’t need any medication to get through the night. Amanda slept, too. No nightmares where she experienced the horrible crash over and over, even though neither of them could remember what happened after Alfie pulled from the driveway. Neither of them saw the tractor-trailer that glanced off their car when the driver fell asleep at the wheel and drifted into oncoming traffic. Neither of them remembered rolling five times to be stopped by a great oak tree. Mercifully, neither of them remembered a thing. Except poor Amanda, in her dreams.

In the kitchen the next morning, they turned on the television to watch The Today Show , each of them pretending that they both weren’t waiting to hear about the missing girl. As soon as the television came to life, they saw the footage of little Katie being lifted from the well on a rescue stretcher, her parents running to her. And Eloise felt joy. Real joy. A thing she’d been sure she’d never feel again. And she felt this until Amanda turned to her.

“Is this why He took them?”

“Who? Took who?”

“Is this why God took Dad and Emily?”

“Amanda-” She didn’t know what to say.

“Don’t you think that’s why? Maybe it’s them telling you what they see. You know-from the other side.”

Amanda’s eyes were welling with tears. “Do you think, Mom? Maybe?”

“I don’t know, honey. I don’t understand what happened to me yet.”

“But it’s possible, right? Emily always wanted to help people, right? She was such a good person.”

“That’s true.”

“That would be something good, right?” And then her daughter’s face fell into pieces and she started to cry. And Eloise went to her, and they clung to each other weeping in a way they hadn’t together. It was cleansing, washing over and through them. As they stood there like that, the phone started ringing. After that it never really stopped ringing.

But that was a hundred years ago, or so it felt. Jones Cooper had left, and Eloise was online, searching for information on current missing women. Oliver sat contentedly on her lap. And although it was a bit of a nuisance to have him there-she had to lift up her elbows awkwardly to reach the keyboard over his ample frame-she didn’t have the heart to move him. She cruised the usual news sites, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The Amber Alert site had been a big help in recent years. But today nothing was jogging her frequency; she remained stubbornly tuned in to the present.

Lots of times, after a powerful vision like the one she’d had yesterday, she’d cruise those sites and see a face she recognized. Then she might get another vision. She hoped for that to happen, that it might be someone else. Maybe it was Marla Holt, the woman she’d seen running. She’d assumed it was, and Ray seemed to think so, too. But maybe not. For whatever reason, Eloise really didn’t want it to be. She hadn’t wanted this case, had tried to convince Michael to let his mother go. But he wouldn’t hear her. Something powerful was driving him. She had a bad feeling about all of it. Scrolling through the faces of the missing, though, she didn’t see anyone she recognized.