It was enough to keep me from going to my room, sliding open the window, and crawling inside. Some deep-buried instinct. It was like, even then, I knew.
“When I reached the house, I looked into Elliot’s room first—where the light was on. His desk chair was empty, but the light over the desk was on.” The headphones had been sitting beside his laptop, like he’d just been sitting there a moment ago. His bedroom door was open, and I could see the hallway. “Out in the hall, I could see the handprint on the wall. Red, a streak of blood below.” I shiver, and Joe closes his eyes. “And I could see Elliot, crouched down, but I didn’t know what he was doing. I hit the window with my palm.” Fast, an open slap, to get his attention. “When he stood up, he was holding a gun. He was covered in…his hands were…And he was pointing it straight at me.”
Joe doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe. I want to come back from the shadow house, but I need to say it all now, or I never will.
Elliot’s eyes were dead. His face was pale. There was so much blood I thought he would’ve passed out.
I didn’t know if he could see me, in the dark. Or if it was just his own reflection in the bedroom window. I like to think he didn’t know it was me, standing on the other side. That it was just a reflex.
“I ducked down quick, and I ran. I hid in the shed.” Not yet processing. The blood, my brother with a gun. The shots I’d heard. My phone was still in my room, left behind in case my mom checked my location, and the other houses were too far away, and I knew we needed help. He was Elliot, and he was not Elliot.
I picture the headphones on his desk and wonder what he was listening to. If there was something that made him…if there was some other explanation. Because there has to be. He’s my brother, and he wouldn’t do this.
Joe grabs my hand. He doesn’t ask first, he just does it. I squeeze back.
“I tried to call for help. The Internet was hooked up. But Elliot built everything. I didn’t know how to do it. I tried. Joe, I tried.”
“I know you did,” he says, his voice barely a whisper.
“I stayed there until I heard his footsteps racing past. I could tell he was heading for the park. I counted to two hundred, just to be sure. Then I went inside.” I crawled back through my own window, got my phone off my dresser, and called 911. “I never left my room, Joe. I didn’t open the door. I didn’t see. They asked what made me leave the room when I climbed back inside, but I didn’t. Not until the police arrived. And even then, I never looked.”
The police believed I saw them on the stairs and called for help, but I didn’t. From outside Elliot’s window, I could see the handprint, out in the hall. The one we’ve now covered with fresh paint. And I could see Elliot. There was so much blood. That, I could see.
I don’t know if I could’ve saved them. If I lost my mother because of my own fear, my own inaction. I don’t know if it was too late from the start. But I didn’t leave my room until the woman on the other end of the phone told me the police were at the front door. I kept my eyes closed, my hand on the other wall, as I made my way to the front.
It will always be a shadow house, kept hidden from my memory. Full of the horrors I can only imagine.
The net is closing in, everything slipping from our grasp. I can feel it, like something coming for me. In the email, tracked to the library, where I was supposed to be. In Kennedy’s words, echoing back in the signal. Like we’re stuck in a loop. Like the circle is us.
* * *
—
I sneak in through the side door behind the kitchen without my parents noticing. But I hear them talking to Agent Lowell in the dining room. Snippets of conversation filter up the stairs. Nolan’s computer. Library. Evidence. Official statement.
It’s wrong. It’s all gone so wrong. I can’t explain any of it. I am sure of nothing. None of the things happening in my house, surrounding my brother’s case, make sense.
But this is what I am sure of: My brother’s image appeared to me in the living room at the same time Kennedy was making that call for help. Her words reached me. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. That connection is the proof; yet there’s also nothing I can hold in my hands and show someone. Just this feeling, and December fourth. Everything circling around it.
I don’t know where to go from here. How to prove all the things I believe.
There’s only one lead remaining, and we have to follow it.
My room feels empty without my computer, and I keep looking for my phone, thinking I’ve misplaced it, before I remember that it’s gone. I pack a bag, stuffing it full of clothes, a toothbrush, the essentials. I sneak out the side door and drive off before they notice I’m home and take my keys. Before they bring me in for some sort of official questioning.
At least without a phone there will be no way to trace my path. I can disappear for a bit. I’m used to no one noticing the things I do, but now their focus is turning on me. Now they’re looking closely. They’re wondering what they’ve missed, these last two years, when they were looking for Liam instead.
* * *
—
It’s the kind of dark where even the animals have gone silent. The moon is covered by clouds, and the streetlights have gone dim in the haze. I worry, at first, that nobody’s home, but then I recognize Joe’s car in the driveway.
I’m not sure which window is Kennedy’s, but there aren’t too many options. There’s a light on in one of the rooms, and I’m going to have to take the risk that this one is hers. The blinds are pulled shut, but they’re vaguely familiar, like I’ve seen them on a video call, from the other direction.
Still, I tap gently before ducking below the glass, so I can pretend it was the wind, or some giant bug, if Joe looks out through the blinds instead.
But it’s Kennedy’s eyes peering out from between the slats, shifting side to side. I stand from my hiding spot, raise a hand sheepishly, hoping she’ll smile.
She frowns, raising the blinds. She pushes the window open so I can feel a gust of the air conditioning from inside, but the screen still separates us.
“Nolan?” she asks, even though of course it’s me.
“Hey, hi,” I say quietly. Then I’m at a loss. I don’t know what I expected, what I wanted. “I just wanted to tell you, I’m going to North Carolina.”
Her face scrunches up. “What?”
“North Carolina. The photo on the wall, of the missing kid. Hunter Long.”
She shakes her head sadly. “What’s the point?”
“Excuse me?” I say. The point is answers. The point is there was a signal, sent to both of us. The point is my brother, whispering across some impenetrable divide. And Kennedy’s voice, filling up the classroom.
She lets out a long sigh, resting her chin in her hand. Her gaze shifts behind me, but I can’t figure out what she’s looking for in the darkness. “Have you heard of the Fermi paradox?” she asks. I haven’t, but she must know that, because she continues. “In the history of the universe, there’s been more than enough time for life to develop somewhere else, and to advance. But there’s no evidence that any exists.” She frowns. “A scientist postulated years ago that the reason nothing has made contact with us in four billion years, the reason that there is no evidence that anything has colonized the universe, ever, in fourteen billion years, is simple, really.” She waits for that to sink in. “It’s because nothing else exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist. We’re a fluke, and we’re alone.”
“No,” I say, “my brother.”
But she continues as if she hasn’t heard me. “We’re in an echo chamber, Nolan.” I remember, then, her own voice echoing back. “A vast expanse of nothing, nothing, nothing. There’s no one out there. This is it. Even my call for help. It just…bounced back.”
But that’s not true, because it reached me.
Kennedy has changed somehow, like something’s been taken from her today. Some belief. I don’t know how to give it back to her, except with the truth. I need her to see.
“December fourth, my brother appeared.”
She brushes the comment aside. “I know, you told me.”
“And I couldn’t make out what he was saying,” I continue, my voice growing more animated. “Just the end. He said: Help us. Please.”
Her gaze shifts from the empty night, back to me. She blinks slowly. “What?”
“It sounds crazy, right? I had a dream, and he came to me, and he spoke in the corner of the room. Help us. Please. Just like you said at the end of the transmission. I think the signal was reaching out to me, even then.” Not just the signal. “I think it was you.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not possible.”
I place my hand on the screen between us, leaning closer. “None of this is supposed to be possible. That’s the point.”
“What’s the point, Nolan? I think I’m missing it here.”