Alex wasn't screaming tonight.
Why wasn't he screaming?
Had he come back to break them up?
Was that Ian's punishment for losing his son, and now the haunting was done?
He'd be fired tomorrow when he came in late.
Did that matter?
He could just stay home.
Take the .22 and blow his brains out.
He would never hear Alex screaming again, then.
His bed swallowed him and he drifted away.
Two hours later, Alex screamed.
Ian sat up, sucked in a giant breath like he was drowning.
Blind panic, madness, gibbered at the edges of his consciousness.
"
Noooooooo!
" the boy shrieked.
"Nooooooo!"
He sounded crazed, feral, but Ian could match him, Ian was mad with exhaustion, and white rage boiled out of his stomach, seized his throat, made him shriek back, "
Alex!
Shut the fuck up!
Shut up!
Shut UP!"
"
Nooooooo!
Help!"
Ian flailed against his blankets, kicked them away, hissing, spitting.
"Shut up!
"
He tripped as he jumped from the bed, smacked his face against the carpet, burst back to his feet on a geyser of fury that rocketed him across the hallway and into Alex's door like a cannon.
"
GOD DAMMIT!"
he roared, hurling it open, "
YOU FUCKING - !"
Leroy Eston crouched in the empty space above the carpet, eyes casting about like a lion on the hunt, his nose twitching, a light dusting of snow on his jean jacket.
Seven feet away Alex was hiding behind a tree, deathly quiet, mouth open, breath pluming.
"Alex!" Eston called.
"Come on out, now!
We'll bring you home!"
Ian's scream died on his tongue.
He froze in the doorway, empty and cold.
"Come on, Alex!"
Eston shouted, still tossing his head back and forth, searching.
"It's okay!
I promise!
If you don't like our games, we'll bring you home.
Let's go!"
He stumbled forward, down the hill toward Alex's tree, and the boy tensed, squeezed his eyes shut, his lips moving silently, waiting -
"
Kelly!
"
Eston called over his shoulder.
"I lost him, get down to the shore, I think he got -"
But the grass was slick, and he slipped; fell back onto his ass and slid past Alex's tree.
His eyes widened as he saw the boy, and he started to shout something else - but Alex leapt on him like a jackal, raging, his hand raking like a claw towards the kidnapper's eye.
"
Alex!
" Ian roared and dove forward to help, scrambling for Eston's gun.
His hand plunged through the kidnapper's arm, and it and Alex and the tree and the gun disappeared, leaving Ian alone in the darkness, scrabbling against the carpet and screaming.
He stumbled out, eventually, like a man staggering out of a collapsed coal mine.
He left the door open.
Because he didn't know where else to go, he retreated back to his bed and curled beneath the tangled skein of blankets, shivering and broken.
He clenched his eyes shut, but behind his eyelids he saw only Alex praying, Eston sniffing at the air -
So he opened them again, and stared down the hall into the black pit of his son's room.
He had fumbled at the light switch as he left, but the bulb was still dead.
He wished he could flood the room with light,
saturate
it - burn it, if he had to, to purge that darkness from his sight.
But he couldn't, so he closed his eyes again, and the cycle repeated - Eston then blackness, screaming then silence - until finally his heart slowed and some glimmer of his rational mind began again to whisper.
He couldn't stand to stare at Alex's empty room anymore, but he didn't want to lose the comfort of his blankets.
So he sat up, clutched them tight around his shoulders and made his way into the living room: a ragged priest, his stole trailing behind him.
The TV pulsed with silent light.
His brain worked over what he had seen, pushing at it from every angle, flinching from it, picking it apart.
But he was too tired.
There was nothing to be gleaned from it but more pain.
He longed to share it with Alina, to attack it together, to make sense of it.
Nothing had been too much for them when they had been together.
But this yearning only amplified the problem, made it twist inside his heart like a shiv.
Finally, blessedly, he started nodding off - sometimes for as long as a whole infomercial.
He wanted to lie down, to sink into the couch and disappear, but he couldn't.
It was almost time to get ready for work.
The very notion made him want to sob.
He had lost his son.
He had lost his wife.
He wanted to
sleep
.
It was the only thing left for him.
He imagined stretching out, leaving the world behind.
It would be worth the loss of his job.
But some remnant of his work ethic drove him to his feet, to the dining room, where he stared at his cell phone and tried to remember how it worked.
"Smartlink Tech Support Specialists, this is Justin."
Ian blinked and looked at the clock.
Justin was in early.
He had expected voicemail - had been
counting
on voicemail.
"Justin?"
"Yes.
Who's calling?"
"It's Ian."
"Oh, Ian."
He sounded glib, almost expectant.
"What can I do for you?"
Ian briefly considered giving it up, saying
Nothing
and forcing himself into the shower, but his exhaustion was so deep that this was never really more than a fanciful delusion.
"I won't be in today."
A long, deep sigh.
"Ian, you know you're on probation."
"I know that."
"If you don't come in to work today..."
He sighed again.
"Look, I'm sorry, I know you're going through a lot.
But if you don't come in to work today, we have to let you go."
Pause.
"Company policy."
"Justin, I am so tired.
I haven't slept in days.
I've been having terrible nightmares that have kept me awake constantly.
I'm looking into FMLA, I just don't have the paperwork done yet -"
"Have you talked to HR about that?"
"No.
Not yet, no, I -"
"Ian, look.
You have gotten more mileage out of our attendance policy than anyone.
We've bent every rule in the book.
I sent you home yesterday with pay.
But you're on written warning.
We can't bend the rules any more.
If you want to keep your job, you need to come in and do it."
Ian gritted his teeth.
"I am physically incapable of doing that today, Justin."
"Well, then..."
He saw Justin from behind his chair, his smart headset positioned perfectly, lifting his palms to say
It's out of my hands.
"You're done.
It's your decision."
"Don't fire me."
Justin scoffed, finally at his wit's end.
"Why not, Ian?"
"Because if you do," Ian snarled, "I'll call your wife and tell her you're fucking Sheila Swanson."
He hung up and went to bed.
He slept dreamlessly - or at least, his dreams echoed so deeply below his waking mind that when he got up to pee in the early afternoon, he remembered none of them.
He stumbled back to bed in an eager haze, anxious to return to nothingness.
Sleep held him until a sudden honking horn on the street outside pried his eyelids apart, and he found himself staring at the wall of his bedroom in the fading daylight, wondering fiercely who Kelly was.
Eston had called for her last night.
While he was hunting Alex.
Ian's brain hunted through memories of daycare, of Rita's friends and relatives, for a Kelly.
Nothing.
It combed through work, and he and Alina's friends.
Through college.
Through
news stories.
No Kelly - or at least, no Kellys that made sense.
Kelly, I lost him, get down to the shore.
Ian sat up, alert and awake for the first time in days.
Who the fuck was Kelly?
"Hi Daddy," Alex said in the dining room.
"Were you taking a nap?"
"Yeah, bud."
Ian answered aloud without thinking.
He wasn't surprised to see Alex out of his room.
He had expected it to happen, once he opened the boy's door again.
"But is your headache... does your head... is your headache all better now?"
Ian stopped at the table.
Alex had a blue plastic bowl in front of him, filled with cut hot dog slices.
A streak of ketchup marred his cheek like a line of war paint.
Alex claimed it was his favorite, but that didn't mean he'd eat it all.
Instead, he'd swing his legs and sing and chatter incessantly while the food cooled and the ketchup congealed.
It drove Ian and Alina nuts.
It used to,
Ian thought.
Not anymore, because Alina doesn't live here anymore.
And neither does Alex,
he remembered.
"Daddy?
Does your head feel better now because of your nap?"
Ian blinked.
"Yeah.
Yeah, actually it does."
"Mommy told me to be quiet.
Did you think I was quiet?"
His cheeks had bright spots of red; he must have been playing outside before dinner.
He was watching his dad intently, waiting for confirmation that he'd done well.
"Alex, do you remember last night?"
The boy screwed up his eyebrows in an exaggerated grimace of concentration.
"Mommy didn't make hot dogs last night.
But she only made icky stuff."
"Leroy Eston was in your room last night."
The name tasted like bile.
"Do you remember - ?"
"Daddy, did you think I was quiet."
It wasn't a question; just an insistent reminder of the question Ian hadn't answered.
"You have to listen to me, Alex.
This is important.
Le..."
He started to say the man's name again, but it conjured images of Eston's stringy hair and jean jacket that made Ian want to gag.
"The bad man, the one that hurt you - he said something about someone named Kelly.
Did you see someone named Kelly?
Did she hurt you?"
"
Mommy
made the hot dog," Alex corrected him.
"Because you were
sleeping.
"
"Alex," Ian started, but bit his tongue.
He'd been down this road.
It never led anywhere.
He said it anyway.
"Honey, I really need you to think about this.
Okay?
You're here for a reason, and I'm trying as hard as I can.
Was there a lady named Kelly, who hurt you?"
The hot dog was gone.
Alex was bundled into his winter coat, a hood low over his eyes, sitting in a booster car seat perched absurdly on the dining room chair.