I head in the opposite direction from my house, over the split-rail fence, to the other side of the fields. There’s a development here, mostly modest two-story homes with landscaped backyards and two-car garages. Marco’s house is the third on the right from the way I enter—from the field, not the road. His car, an old green sedan, is parked in the driveway, and I’m assuming one or both of his parents’ cars are in the garage.
I ring the doorbell, hear footsteps before his mother opens the door in workout clothes. Her face is makeup-free, her hair brushed up into a messy bun. Like this—relaxed and casual—she reminds me so much of my mom that I instinctively look away at first.
“Hi,” I say. “Is Marco here?”
His mom has that look of surprise and sympathy, which eventually merges into a painful smile. “Kennedy, how nice to see you! Did you call him? I think Marco’s still sleeping.” Then the sympathy and surprise swing in my favor, which I’ve grown used to with teachers and parents alike. She pulls the door open before clearing her throat. “Well, go on up.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” I say, to reassure her.
I knock once, wait to the count of five, and then let myself into Marco’s room. He pushes himself to sitting in his bed. From the noise that escapes his throat, he must be nursing a hangover, not that I’m surprised. But he doesn’t even question what I’m doing here, just flops down on his back, lifting a hand at me in greeting. He’s so disoriented by my presence I feel my stomach do that flip from the first time I was in his room last September, working on a school project, when I knew he liked me and he knew I liked him and the anticipation was so all-consuming I could only think of things in proximity to Marco.
Current calculation: five steps from Marco’s feet.
“Marco,” I say, and he flings an arm over his eyes. “Last night, did you guys mess with the telescope?”
“The…what?” He rubs his eyes, pushes himself to sitting again, folds his legs up under the sheets. “Hi, Kennedy,” he says, like we’re starting over.
I take a step closer. “The radio telescope. The satellite dish. Did you do anything to it?” Current calculation: four steps from Marco’s bed.
“We didn’t touch it,” he says, now fully awake. He blinks his dark brown eyes twice, frowning. “How’d you get in here?”
“Your mom. What were you doing out there last night?” I ask.
Marco lifts one shoulder in half a shrug. “It was Lydia’s idea.”
And this is where my affection for Marco wanes. Nothing is ever his fault, or his idea. He’s painfully indecisive, even more so in hindsight.
“And why did Lydia want to go there?” I ask. Lydia is Marco’s best friend, and Sutton is usually kind of her boyfriend, not that they like the label. But that’s the best way to describe them. They all live in the same sprawling neighborhood behind my house.
“I don’t know, we were at Sutton’s, and his parents came home, so Lydia said we should go there, and I don’t know, I couldn’t think of a reason not to, really.”
And that, in a nutshell, is Marco. He runs his fingers through his messy hair, and no part of me wants to do the same. It’s been six months since I touched him last, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it since. Six months, it seems, is enough. “You swear you didn’t touch it,” I say.
“I swear,” he says.
I turn around and leave. He calls my name. I don’t look back.
* * *
—
Back at Joe’s, I look over the data again. I’d ignore it, except there’s definitely a pattern. A spike every three seconds or so. And it repeats. On and on it goes. I log on to the amateur SETI forums, and I compose a message:
Anyone ever register a signal at a negative frequency? I’m picking up a pattern of pulses. Interference probable.—KJ
I post it.
I wish Elliot were here.
It’s quiet now, which means it’s finally safe to venture out of my room. Dad is cooking, which is marginally better than the days when Mom cooks, but unquestionably worse than takeout. He stares at the pictures of the missing while he stirs the pasta. “How’s the studying, Nolan?”
“It’s all right,” I say.
“Listen, can you help out tomorrow afternoon until Mike shows up? Someone needs to supervise the new volunteers. I’ve got a meeting downtown, and you know how your mother is with the phone,” he says, lowering his voice conspiratorially.
“How your mother is with what?” Mom says, pulling out the earbuds and winding up the wires.
“With cooking,” I say. “No offense, Ma.” How my mom is with the phone is actually like this: She takes it all too personally. She becomes too invested. And that’s saying something, seeing as the baseline for normal here is the downstairs of my house covered in pictures of other people’s missing children.
“Mmm,” she says, ruffling my hair as she passes.
Dad raises his eyebrow at me in question. I nod, admitting defeat. And they wonder why I don’t come out of my room more often.
* * *
—
The maps aren’t really making any sense. Or maybe it’s just that they’re not coming together like I’d hoped—nothing registering outside the range of any normal household appliance, it seems. But then I think maybe I’m expecting too much, that I should be looking for the subtle. For tiny fluctuations; the unpredictable. I have a map with all the ghost stories and legends (and missing brother) pinpointed as much as possible. I’ve got another map with EMF, ELF, and Geiger readings, but they don’t seem to overlap in any meaningful way. I need to dig into the details.
I couldn’t spring for the top-of-the-line digital EMF meter, so I’ve got one with a dial that looks kind of like the speedometer in my old car. After I hear my parents’ footsteps on the wooden staircase, I decide to take some baseline readings around the house, for comparison. I wait an extra hour, just to be sure everyone’s asleep. They’re not exactly aware of my extracurricular endeavor.
I leave the stairway dark but turn on the kitchen light and take readings of the refrigerator, microwave, and anything else that seems to be functional, jotting them all down in a notebook. Back in my room, I add the computer and my cell. As I get ready to compare all the readings, I toss the EMF meter onto my bed, but it ricochets off the wall beside it, and I cringe. Please don’t let it be broken. For consistency’s sake, I really should use the same device for all readings. Also, I can’t exactly afford a new one.
It looks intact, but before I even touch it, I can see I’ve screwed something up. Surprise, surprise.
It’s sitting on my bed, beside the wall, and the dial keeps jerking down past zero. I pick it up, turning away from the wall, and the dial settles to zero. Okay, maybe it’s fine. I hold it to my computer again—same reading as before. Phone—same reading. Okay, everything’s fine. No problem. I set it back on the bed, facing the wall, same position as before, and the dial starts diving below zero again.
There’s nothing on the other side of that wall anymore. Nothing electronic, anyway. Just Liam’s old bed, same comforter, same clothes in the closet, same notes from Abby.
His computer is mine now, along with anything else of perceived value. And I’ve been through his drawers enough to know there’s nothing of interest anymore.
Still. I let myself into his room, flipping the light, shutting the door behind me. Even after two years, the silence and the emptiness catch me by surprise each time. The worn blue blanket at the foot of the bed is the spot where Colby used to lie, even when Liam wasn’t home. It sits there now as another reminder of all the things that are still missing.
In my hand, the meter continually bounces back and forth from neutral to below zero. I check under the bed, in his drawers, in the closet—but find nothing.
Must be something in the walls. All the pipes and wires and ducts running through, creating an electric current. Maybe there’s some faulty wiring. Well, one way to find out.
I head down to the basement and open the circuit breaker, and impulsively flip everything off.
Impulsively, because now I’m standing in the pitch black, in the basement, with nothing but an EMF reader, and I suddenly don’t want to look at the readout.
Impulsively, because it’s hard to research the paranormal without letting your imagination run wild. Because if it’s possible for one thing to exist, it’s therefore possible that other things do, too.
The display is backlit, and everything appears normal. I walk slowly, using the meter as a flashlight. Back upstairs, I return to Liam’s room, and every hair on my arms and the back of my neck stands on end. The dial keeps moving, in a pattern—to negative, back to neutral, over and over again.
It’s giving me the creeps.
And then it’s just me and the stories, and the dark. And the dark whispers that there’s something in this room, and the room whispers the stories it remembers, and my stomach aches for my brother, all at once.
I’m seventeen. My parents are down the hall. I shouldn’t be afraid of the dark anymore.