J.T. Warren - Remains

“If it doesn’t matter to you what I do,” I asked, grabbing his arm and stopping him; he didn’t turn around, “then why take me there? Why let me talk to her?”

His head hung down for a moment. He raised his eyes to mine, and I almost let go of his arm; something powerful and very old was in them. “because you asked me to.”

“What?” I asked. He shook free of my hand and continued toward the door. I followed after him. He opened the door, his keys jingling. I started to follow him inside, but he stopped. His arm was on the door, and his body blocked the doorway. He said, “You should go back to your parents house and think about it, Mikey.”

“How did I ask you to take me there?”

“Who else have you talked to about any of this?”

“Nobody,” I said, after a time.

He nodded, straightened, and closed the door. The click of the lock felt like a punch to the throat. I stepped backward off of the porch, and my shoes nearly slipped in the wet grass.

Every time a car passed me on my way back to my parent’s house, I expected it to be the Sheriff. Somehow, I just knew it would be. Every time it wasn’t, I exhaled again; but something still felt strange. I knew that he was watching, even if he wasn’t using his eyes to do it. My sister would call that ridiculous, but I knew. I wanted Kevin. I wanted Susan. I wanted someone , so that the sounds of my shoes on the asphalt wouldn’t be the only sounds.

The key in the lock was loud, and I was sure I’d wake someone as I came in. No lights were on, though. I closed the door behind me, and toed out of my shoes. I picked them up and crept up the stairs. Halfway up, I thought about eating something; I wasn’t hungry, though. It was an old habit. Coming in from my night rides to the field, I’d always get a glass of milk and whatever was left over from dinner before going to bed. Something didn’t feel right about it, though. The house looked the same, but everything had changed. I thought, just like me. I wanted to talk to my mother, to ask her what Kevin meant, and if what Mrs. McPherson said was true.

I stopped at the top of the stairs with the sudden realization that I believed it. That no matter what my mother would say, I believed what Kevin told me. I looked toward the door to my parent’s room. It was closed, as it had always been. Their room was off limits at all times growing up. The door remained closed. If any of us needed to speak to them, and that door was shut, then we simply had to wait.

When Katy had gone, Sarah had woken me up. She’d found it when she’d rolled over in her sleep and fallen out of bed. That couldn’t have happened if Karen had been in it. She’d read the note, and come to get me. “Door’s closed,” she’d said, and handed me the note. I read the note and cried. Thing is, I remember crying more because something so big was happening, and I couldn’t tell mom or dad. I knew I better not even knock on that door.

We knew because the last time something big happened, it was Katy. She’d just gotten her first period. I didn’t know it at the time; a few years passed before anyone told me. She was scared, and even though it was three in the morning, she knocked on mom’s door. I didn’t come out of my room, but the strange noise woke me up. I peeked out from the crack in my door. Katy was crying, and shaking. They finally opened the door after she’d been knocking for about forty-five minutes.

Mom was disheveled, and her makeup was all over her face. There was a large red mark on her neck, too. For years I tried no to think about it, but sometime after the third shrink I was seeing, I had to admit that mark was a hickey.

She closed the door immediately behind her, and began to whisper-cuss Katy. She never once asked what was so important as to break the central rule of the house. She just kept talking in that steady, forceful whisper. The only time she paused was when Katy would say “Yes, ma’m.” After a few minutes, I heard Sarah crying in her room. I noticed that my eyes had gotten blurry. I went back to bed. I don’t know what happened the rest of that night, but the rule had been solidified: there was no such thing as a good reason to bother my parents if the door was closed.

I went into my room, and shut the door behind me. The quiet, the alone came crashing down on me. I sat my shoes down next to my suitcase. I didn’t need to look; I knew that everything in it had been folded neatly. I sat down on the bed, and even with no lights on, I could tell my vision was getting blurry.

I cried. Something I hadn’t done in a few years. I wanted Kevin, or Sarah—I wanted someone so that I didn’t have to carry all this alone. I thought about how Kevin had carried this alone for so long, and that made it hard to breathe. I doubled over myself, my head near my knees. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be away from this house, this town. I knew that, down in the suitcase was a ticket I could exchange at any time for a return trip. I could go in the morning as soon as the airport opened, in fact. I looked at my watch; six hours until eight a.m. Six hours. I could sleep six hours, get up, get a shower, and go. I wouldn’t even have to say goodbye to anyone. I could just leave.

I was able to breathe, again. The crying slowed down. I kept thinking ‘six hours’. I took my socks off, and thought, I can patch things up with Susan. If I got home that early, I could catch her before she left for work.

I’ve hear a lot of people say ‘I was asleep before my head hit the pillow’. I always thought it was a stupid expression. That night, though, I honestly don’t remember laying down, or the thirty-minute shifting and re-shifting that I normally do. I went from thinking I could catch Susan before she left for work to the dream. I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t had that dream. I want to call it something other than that, though.

It was like a telephone call from Randy.

What I remember is this:

I was standing in a room with only one light. It was a big, upside down, round metal dish with a light inside. The dish hung from a long cord that went somewhere into the darkness straight up. It was at head level, so that if I wanted to see inside it, I’d have to duck a bit.

At about waist level, underneath the light, was a long metal table. It was about seven foot long. Don’t ask me how, but I was sure that was its measurement.

The rest of the room was shrouded in darkness. I could tell from the shapes of the shadows, though, that this room had more than one sink on the wall, and that there were many small tables surrounding this bigger one. There were odd shapes of various sizes on those other tables. The walls were made from tile; I could tell from the way the light was bouncing off of them. From time to time, water would drip, and the echo made me more certain that the room was tiled.

On the table in the center was a large, nearly clear plastic bag. It was about four and a half foot long. A zipper ran straight up the middle. Either I whispered the word ‘body bag’ or someone else did. I found myself staring at it for a moment. I wanted to turn and leave, but I couldn’t. For some reason, my legs weren’t moving.

All around me, other sounds were echoing off the tiles. Sounds of a child pleading with someone to stop what they were doing. The sounds of a dentist-office drill bounced around for a time. There was a sound like a buzz saw, only smaller.

I could make out something sort of pale-peach in color inside the bag. I knew it was a body. I knew it.

I started to walk forward, even though I didn’t want to. I was sure that whatever was in that bag was going to wake up any moment. I was sure of it. I knew it was going to wake up and destroy me, somehow. I kept expecting to see its arm move, its fingers reach for the zipper. The sounds all died away to faint echoes, and I was standing an inch from the table. I kept thinking ‘no, no, no’, but my hands reached for the zipper. Even at that point, I was still waiting for the arm to move.