Echoes of the Dead (5 page)

“Sorry sweetie,” Sarah said. “Hibachi Hut closed last spring. A Buffalo Wild Wings moved into its building.”

Johnny groaned. “Now that hurts. I used to love those huge burgers, the half-pounders.  What did they call them?”

“Wasn’t it the Mauna Loa?” Kelsey offered.

“No.  That was the one with the hot sauce.” Sarah frowned. “I can’t remember the half-pounder. It’s only been a year… We used to eat there all the time.”

Johnny closed his eyes and dropped his head to the pillow.  The two women exchanged a look. Kelsey hadn’t seen Sarah since Sarah dropped out their senior year.  One semester until graduation, and she just stopped going to school.  They’d fallen out of touch after Sarah started vomiting on command and spent a short stint in the hospital. Johnny—the same man they’d both secretly fought for all those years ago—brought them together again.

“Everything changes,” Johnny said. He didn’t open his eyes. “I come back, and I hardly recognize the place. Four years isn’t so long.”

“Almost five. Long enough,” Sarah said. “Long enough to miss you. Why haven’t you come to visit us?”

Johnny’s eyes opened, and he titled his head toward Sarah. “Why haven’t I visited?  I don’t know.  The Army ran my life for a while.”

“I almost forgot… So you’re on leave?” Sarah suggested. 

Kelsey imagined a desperate taint in her voice. Still pining for Johnny, but wasn’t she doing the same thing?

“I’m done,” Johnny said. “Discharged.”

“What now?” Kelsey asked. “What are your plans—coming back to Manhattan?”

“I don’t know. I spent most of my leave time driving. It was like I didn’t belong anywhere. Now…”

“Where?” Kelsey asked. “Where did you drive?”

Johnny’s gaze fixed on the hospital room’s ceiling. “Anywhere. The coast mainly. Out west. I bought a Charger, one of those new, slick ones that looks like a muscle-car throwback, and I just drove. You give a twenty-something too much disposable income and a reason to escape… Not to mention a speedometer that tops out at 180.”

Kelsey realized she’d been standing near the door since her surprise at seeing Sarah, so she moved to a chair at the foot of the bed and sat. She’d thought about escape, too. She’d thought about escape every time she woke with a nightmare, almost every night now, almost as though something was coming closer, something big and dark and hungry—something which had devoured Jared without a trace. Being with Sarah and Johnny brought back thoughts of Jared, the memories she’d tried to file away but kept surfacing in her dreams. The last time they were all together, they’d been with Jared. Then the police. The reports. The strange, frantic search.

“It’s good to see Kelsey still tunes out from time to time.” Johnny smiled. “What’s rattling around in your skull, Kels?”

“Oh. Nothing really. Just thinking about old times. Some of the fun we used to have together in school.  Some of the crazy stuff you and—” She caught herself before saying Jared’s name.

“Jared.” Sarah said. “Remember when you two stole all those sporks from KFC and stuck them in the lawn by that awful statue by Willard Hall?”

Johnny grinned. “The King of the Sporks. Yeah. Believe it or not, that one was Jared’s idea. He played the quiet type pretty good, but once you got a few beers in him, bye-bye inhibitions.”

The cold came back, radiating from Kelsey’s stomach into her skin, her fingers and toes. It clogged her throat. For a moment, she thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe again. How could they talk about Jared and smile and laugh like he was still with them? Like he wasn’t—missing? The word dead didn’t enter her thoughts, but she understood the reality. No one goes missing for almost five years and miraculously reappears. 

“So.  What made you play the hero last night?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know.” Johnny’s eyes tuned out again, losing focus like he was staring through the ceiling. “I just saw the gun and thought, fuck no. I mean… Over there was one thing, but in Manhattan? No.”  He touched his bandaged arm. “I guess I wasn’t thinking. I could have been killed.”

“But you weren’t.” Sarah said. “And I wouldn’t have known you were back if you hadn’t gotten yourself shot. This is fucked up, but I’m glad it happened.”

“Yeah, that does sound a little fucked up. And I wouldn’t say back. Not exactly. I’m just… Visiting.”

“I saw you last night,” Kelsey said. “At Tremors. I saw you by the door and tried to catch you but you’d gone.”

Johnny nodded. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Tremors was a familiar place with so much change. I just figured… I don’t know.”

“What do you mean visiting?” Sarah asked, shifting the subject.

Johnny closed his eyes and lay back again. “Meeting somebody. Another blast from the past. I’m sure you two know he’s in town, right?”

“Who?” Kelsey searched Sarah’s face and found the same question.

“Ben.  Ben Wormsley.”

“Ben?  What’s he doing here? I thought he was out in California, rolling in cash.  Venture capital or whatever. What’s he doing in Manhattan?” Kelsey asked.

“He sent me a letter. I thought maybe one of you might have gotten one, too. Said he has a business proposition for me. He included a number with a few zeroes.”

“What’s a war hero need with a stack of cash?” Sarah asked.

Johnny’s lean face whitened. His gaze disappeared in the ceiling again. “Everybody has bills.”

“Ben Wormsley.” Kelsey’s head wagged back and forth. “I haven’t seen him since—”

“Jared disappeared?” Sarah stood and moved to the window.  They’d been sitting in a dark room, so when she pulled open the shades, morning sun flooded into the room, momentarily blinding.

“Yeah, well it seems he’s loaded now and wants to share his good fortune. I just happen to need a little good fortune. I can’t say no at the price he’s offered.”

“But what does he want?” Kelsey asked.

A knock sounded at the door before Johnny could answer. 

“Nurse,” a voice said.

“Now I’m in trouble. Caught by the nurse with two women in the room.” Johnny grinned.

Kelsey took the stairs later that morning rather than waiting for the single working elevator in Bluemont Hall. She took the stairs because of Sarah—she’d never admit it, of course. Sarah’s thin frame always made her jealous.

The psychology offices were on the third and fourth floors, her faculty advisor on the fourth, so she was rather winded upon rounding the final flight. The morning visit with Johnny and Sarah—a rather unexpected visit with Sarah—had dredged too many memories from her brain’s sludgy depths. They were dark memories, memories with faces she’d rather forget and a friend she struggled to keep alive, at least in her mind.

Various papers, diagrams, and charts littered the fourth floor walls, each covered with the special, statistical social science vernacular. Kelsey’s contemporaries laid their latest findings on the bulletin boards for recognition and verification. Several studies were underway involving the industrial/organizational department, a unit focused on how best to make workers work harder and more efficiently. Kelsey never had much interest in the effect of paint color on motivation.

She was more interested in fear.

Her shoes tapped against the polished hallway floor, a floor much like the pristine white tiles from the hospital. In some ways, with its doors and halls and small rooms filled with old, hunched and unhealthy-looking men, the psychology department was more hospital than Mercy Health Center. She found Professor Cohen’s office, 413, and knocked.

“Come in.” Gregory Cohen’s voice was a heavy thing, not unlike his massive body. His clothing always looked ready to split open, spilling his wormy white flesh onto the floor. Funny this man should advise Kelsey in her quest to complete a dissertation on fear. He frightened her.

“I hope I’m on time,” Kelsey said as she adjusted the strap on her black messenger bag. “I was at the hospital.”

Cohen didn’t look from the paper he held ten inches from his nose. “It wasn’t anything serious, I assume.”

Kelsey tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. “Oh—the hospital wasn’t for me. It was an old friend. Someone I hadn’t seen in a few years.”

Cohen grunted and continued reading.

Kelsey never knew what to do when he was engrossed in a paper. The feeling stuck in her chest, like she shouldn’t be there despite their appointment. He had one open chair in the over-stuffed office; piles of paper and books littered the other “guest” chair. Stacks of paper and books dominated the small room’s landscape.  Kelsey wondered on more than one occasion how the old man accomplished anything despite his top-notch reputation as a psychologist expert in living organisms’ physiological response to fear.

Fear brought them together. Funny to fear a man who helped her study fear…

Cohen laid the papers on the nearest stack, folded his hands in front, and said, “Please have a seat Miss Sullivan.” He always called Kelsey “Miss” as though she was a small girl and not a twenty-seven-year-old woman. Maybe he didn’t consider a woman of twenty-seven a woman. Maybe he thought she was a little girl.  She clutched her bag strap as she slid into the open chair.

“Thanks,” she said. “I got your message about the change in meeting time.”

“Obviously.”

Her tongue felt heavy. Something was wrong; Professor Gregory Cohen was being difficult, even for Professor Gregory Cohen.

“I regret to inform you we’ve lost funding for your research.” He brought his folded hands to his mouth and rested the tented index fingers against his lips.

“M-my research? But we’ve just started the second phase.” Kelsey’s stomach had melted upon hearing the word “regret” and now spilled onto the floor in a thick puddle. Lost funding. “I don’t understand. We already have the rats and most materials. How can funding be an issue?”

Cohen cleared his throat and shifted his massive weight in his chair. “It’s a lab space and the cost of keeping your little friends alive and healthy issue. We have limited room, and well, you already know about the cuts coming down from the state. Most of our animal programs are coming to an end if we can’t secure alternate funding sources.”

Kelsey started to shake her head. “But… But this is a university. We don’t rent space in our own building. Do we? The rats can’t eat that much—I’ll feed them.”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, Miss Sullivan.  And the cost is very well more than you could afford, I’m afraid.”

The tears forced their way into Kelsey’s eyes, but she held them back. She wouldn’t cry in front of Gregory Cohen. He watched her, his two beady-black eyes focused on her face like he studied her, like he was searching for a crack, just a crack in her façade. For a moment, she felt like a rat in her own experiment—better yet, a rat in an experiment conducted by Cohen. What will the little girl do, cry her eyes out? She pushed her shoulders back and took a deep breath. 

“I see.” Kelsey forced herself from the chair. She fought the urge to run from the room, instead took three steps, paused at the door, and said, “Thank you, Dr. Cohen.”

“You have until the end of the semester, dear. I don’t want to build your hopes, but if we can find a grant, perhaps your work can continue. Money is scarce everywhere, especially for more esoteric research such as yours, but if you search… Maybe.”

The word “esoteric” sank into Kelsey’s back like a freezer-chilled knife. She nodded and hurried into the hall. She couldn’t hold the tears anymore.

~

Sarah checked the time on her cell phone and ran the final ten yards from the parking lot to the employee entrance at the back of Hastings, the entertainment store where she worked. Hastings, with its aisles of videos, books, and ever-shrinking music department, felt like a glamorous place to spend her time when she hadn’t been employed there, but since taking the job as a book department lackey, Sarah had learned the truth: Retail sucks. Hard.

As she strode down the aisle tying her store issue apron around her waist, she spotted Debi, the department manager. Debi, a plump woman in her mid-fifties, was leaning on the book information desk and squinting over the top of her bifocals at the store computer. Her eyes shifted to Sarah.

“Oh, Sarah. No hurry.”

“I’m sorry about being late.  I really—”

“Like I said: no hurry. I tried to call you earlier. Your phone went straight to voice mail. Didn’t you check?”

Sarah shook her head. “Sorry… It was charging.”

“Yeah, well we had a big meeting yesterday. One of the big-big ones with guys from corporate headquarters all the way from Amarillo. Amarillo.” Debi chuckled and pushed her bifocals up her nose.

“How are the suits doing?”

“They’re nervous about the company.  What with the economy, ebooks, iTunes, people aren’t buying as much stuff as they used to. The stock has been dipping—I swear those guys checked their phones every five minutes to see what was up. We’re one of the most profitable stores in the chain, but it seems they want us to be a little
more
profitable. I think they need to change their business plan if you ask me. Of course nobody did.”