Dismember

THIRTY-THREE

It had taken Trevor a long time to move across the crawlspace above the ceiling. The yellow stuff (or at least what he hoped was the yellow stuff, what he dared not let himself think might be the cobwebs of giant vampire spiders) kept getting on his face and in his hair and itching him. The ceiling joists sometimes bowed and tilted at crazy angles. He almost slipped a couple of times, and although he didn’t know if he was heavy enough to break through sections of ceiling that didn’t have water damage, he didn’t want to test it.

He crawled in the dark until he thought he’d gotten to the other side of the house, where, if he remembered right and hadn’t gotten himself all turned around, the kitchen was. Once there, he waited, listening for sounds from beneath, for some sign that he’d been caught and that the crazy man was waiting for him to show himself.

The only sounds he heard were his heartbeat and sometimes a creaking board from behind him, which was scary because it sounded like a monster chasing after him but also okay because he knew it was really just the house settling. Houses settled down and made funny sounds sometimes. His daddy had told him all about it.

After repositioning himself so he was straddling one of the boards, his feet splayed and resting on the joists to either side, Trevor felt for the lump inside his chest pocket. Good, he thought, still there.

Holding tight to the board beneath his bottom, he lifted one of his feet and tapped it against the ceiling between the joists, moving by feel alone, everything black blurs on blacker blurs. He’d expected the ceiling to be hard, like rock, but to his surprise, it cracked and gave way easily. Trevor kicked a little harder, and his foot went right through.

The yellow stuff tickled his exposed leg just above his sock, and he heard something clap against the floor in the room below. He pulled his foot out of the hole he’d made and tried to look through it.

He saw nothing below. The hole was gray, lighter than everything else up here, and he saw it all right, but he had no idea which room lay below. If it was a room at all. Maybe he’d kicked his way into a closet or a dead space between rooms. Or maybe Trevor had gotten all mixed up and come back to where he’d started, maybe he was staring down into the windowless room and Zach was just below, staring up, wondering how he could be so unlucky, how he could have gotten stuck with a doofus like Trevor.

No. That didn’t make any sense. There were lights on in the windowless room. Unless Zach had turned the lights off—and Trevor couldn’t think of any reason why he might do such a stupid thing—this was someplace different.

He kicked again, and the gray hole widened. Another chunk of ceiling smacked against the floor below.

Still, no sounds came from the house other than those he was making himself, no cries of Hey, what do you think you’re doing up there? and no blasting guns trying to turn him into Trevor jelly. He wondered if the crazy man had left, or if maybe he wasn’t very good at hearing. He guessed if he hadn’t gotten caught yet, he probably wouldn’t, so he poked his foot through the ceiling again and kicked his leg back and forth until he thought he’d made a hole big enough to fit through. Bits of ceiling rained against the ground, and Trevor felt the dust—and of course the yellow stuff—on his bare leg.

He leaned over and squinted through the darkness.

The kitchen.

A dark and shadowy kitchen, but a kitchen for sure. The half-full package of bread on the counter beside the sink proved that. The refrigerator was right beneath him. Or almost right beneath. Close enough he thought he could swing through the hole and onto the top with only a teensy chance of falling to his death. He held a hand over the phone and leaned closer to the hole.

The refrigerator hummed. On top of that sound was the chirping of crickets, though Trevor didn’t know if he was hearing them through an open door or window, or simply through the roof. He wriggled even closer to the hole and positioned himself for a swing onto the fridge.

His arms wobbled, tired—he supposed all of him was tired, but his arms especially. He poked his tongue from the corner of his mouth and went for the fridge anyway. If he fell, at least he could say he tried.

He swung from the space above the ceiling like a monkey from a tree, his body starting off all squeezed together but ending up fully stretched. His toes slid across the top of the fridge, and he let go of the joist. The escape, the chance for a phone call, his life—although it all could have ended right there, Trevor wound up doubled over on the top of the fridge with one arm dangling over the side and his legs folded against a pair of cabinet doors.

He scrambled for a better position and ended up sitting atop the fridge with both legs flung over the front and across the freezer door. The kitchen was dark, but not as dark as it had been in the crawlspace, and his eyes sucked up what little light there was.

The pile of powdery, broken ceiling lay on the floor just beneath him, although in the dark it could have been a pile of sawdust or snow or boogers and Trevor wouldn’t have known the difference. Once the crazy man saw that pile, he would know what happened. There was no way to hide it now, no way for Trevor to fix the ceiling, although he thought his daddy could have done it.

No, the only thing to do now was get outside and make his phone call. And fast.

The fridge was pushed against a wall on one side; there was a countertop on the other. Trevor backed off on the countertop side and slid down the refrigerator until his shoes connected with something solid. He sat down again, flipped around, and this time backed onto the floor beside the pile of ceiling. The phone bounced in his shirt, smacked against his chest. When he moved out of the kitchen, the shirt swayed in front of him, the weight pulling it down in front so that his collar rubbed uncomfortably against the back of his neck. He plucked out the phone and squeezed it between his fingers. His shirt shifted back into place, and the bad feeling on his neck eased.

It had been warm above the ceiling, but it felt better down here, not cold but cool, comfortable. Trevor realized they must be pretty high in the mountains still, like at Daddy’s house. It was summer, after all, and should have been hot. At Mommy’s house, it was hot all through the night—at least, it was hot outside where there wasn’t any air conditioning. Trevor didn’t mind the cold, actually liked it a little. It made him think of snow, fires in the living room, and Christmas.

Last year, Daddy had come back home for Christmas, had brought a bag full of presents and stayed the whole day. Trevor wondered if he would do the same thing again this year, or if he would have to have two Christmases at his two different houses with two trees and two Christmas dinners.

If I make it to Christmas at all.

He walked through the dining room, staying close to the wall so he wouldn’t accidentally bump into the table or the chairs and make a loud noise. He concentrated on Zach’s mommy’s red phone the way he did a new toy, thinking he couldn’t wait to get it open and see what it did.

When he got to the back door, he half expected it to be locked like the bedroom, or to find bars on the windows, or for the knob to be electrified, a reverse booby trap that kept the good guys in instead of the bad guys out, but there was none of that. The knob twisted in his hand, and the door swung open.

Trevor hurried out of the house, flipping open the phone as he moved. Once he’d made it a few long steps away and stood near the front bumper of the bad man’s truck, he stopped and squinted down at the keypad. Zach had turned off the phone before handing it over—otherwise the numbers would have been lit up, and Trevor could have seen them fine. He found the power button and held it until the phone beeped. The welcome screen flashed, and the cellular began searching for service. Trevor pulled the antenna all the way out, not knowing if it mattered.

The screen read: Searching…

Trevor watched and waited.

Still Searching…

When the screen changed and Trevor saw the first little bar in the corner, he almost cheered. But then the bar disappeared, and Trevor frowned. The searching started again.

Trevor looked at the truck and then at the phone. Not bothering to shut it, he stuffed the cell into his shirt pocket and hopped onto the truck’s bumper. He scrambled up the windshield onto the top of the cab, pulled the phone out again, and waited.

Searching…

One bar.

No bars.

Searching…

In another corner of the phone’s small screen, the picture of the battery went from half full to only filled a little. Trevor groaned.

Come on, he thought, please.

The single bar did not return.

Trevor finally closed the phone and crawled off the truck.

Higher ground, Zach had said. Trevor looked around the property, saw nothing but trees and shadows. Which way was higher ground? Most of the land appeared to slope down. It was the kind of yard where you wouldn’t want to play catch, where a ball could roll away for a long time if it happened to go sailing over your head.

He supposed he could have climbed a tree, squirreled his way up to the very top and tried the phone again, but what if he fell? What if he cracked his head open and his brains fell out and he died? Or what if he was okay but he landed on his pocket and the phone snapped in half? He couldn’t risk that. Zach was counting on him. Trevor was counting on himself.

He looked around again and decided he really only had one choice. The trees directly behind the house seemed level with where he stood now, which meant at least they weren’t downhill. Whether the ground got higher beyond the trees or not, Trevor couldn’t tell. For all he knew, there might be a cliff or a gully, a river or a lake. He might walk through the trees and end up slipping into a mudslide and zooming over the edge of a waterfall like something from an action movie. Who knew?

Trevor shrugged his shoulders a little and started for the woods.

He walked with the phone open and held out in front of him, watching the screen for a bar and using the itsy bit of light coming from the thing to help guide his way, pressing the Back button every once in a while to keep the light from shutting off. It was dark inside the trees, almost darker than it had been in the crawlspace above the ceiling. When things clung to his face here, he couldn’t pretend it was the yellow stuff, could only brush it out of his face and hair as quickly as possible and go on.

He did seem to be climbing a little, though more slowly than he’d have liked. Crickets squawked, and owls hooted. Trevor listened for a howling coyote, the growl of a bear or a mountain lion, but if there were things more dangerous than crickets and owls in these woods, they stayed quiet.

Trevor didn’t like that. If something was going to try to gobble him up, he wanted to know it was coming. Maybe, he thought, the wild animals aren’t sneaking around all quiet like, maybe there just aren’t any. Maybe they’re sleeping. He could hope.

Trevor pushed through brush and dead thickets, got smacked in the face by a low-hanging branch and swatted at it angrily. He should have paid closer attention to where he was walking, but his eyes stayed glued to the phone’s screen.

Searching…

He stubbed his toe on a rock or a tree stump and hissed.

Searching…

He circled around another tree and found himself at the bottom of a little hill. He climbed.

Searching…

One bar.

He stopped. The bar didn’t disappear. He climbed a little farther up the hill, and the bar stayed there.

Alright!

Holding the phone in one hand and poking at it with the other, tongue in the corner of his mouth, Trevor keyed the seven digits that had been his phone number since before he was born but that he had only recently forced himself to memorize. He hit Send and pressed the cellular to the side of his face.

It rang. And it rang again.

Answer, Trevor thought. Oh please.

His mommy’s voice came on the line, and Trevor smiled, but then he recognized the words and realized he was hearing their stinking answering machine, hearing his mommy’s voice but not really his mommy while she talked about her computer job and all sorts of things he didn’t understand. He waited for the beep and said, “Mommy? Are you there?”

No mommy. He waited a second and said, “Mommy?” one last time before pulling the phone from his face and stabbing the End button with the tip of his finger.

Where could she be? Sleeping? Going potty? He guessed she might be doing either thing. Maybe if he waited ten minutes and tried again, she’d be there. But what if she was gone? Or what if she was watching a late movie on TV the way she and Daddy used to do, with a big bowl of popcorn on the sofa beside her and the ringer turned off so nobody could interrupt the show?

It didn’t matter. He couldn’t wait ten minutes. Zach was still inside, and the bad man was wandering around somewhere, maybe hunting after Trevor at that very moment.

Something moved in the bushes.

Trevor squatted down a little, as if the something might come flying at his head. Another rustling followed, and a small and furry creature waddled out into the open. A raccoon. Trevor shook his head and straightened.

The raccoon moved along, not looking at Trevor, not seeming to notice him at all, and Trevor returned his attention to the cell phone.

He knew only one other number. He tried it. The phone rang again but then beeped at him. Trevor peeked at the screen. The battery icon flashed.

Oh no. He chewed on the inside of his cheek like it was bubble gum. Please please please please, he thought, please answer please please please answer please.

“Yes?” said a voice that sounded like a scared-little-boy version of his daddy, “Hello.”

When Trevor talked, he did so as fast as he could. If the phone’s battery died before he gave his daddy the directions he’d memorized, he would never have another chance.

The phone beeped mid-sentence, and Trevor somehow managed to talk a little bit faster.

From his place in the bushes, Hank watched the raccoon cross the bare patch of land and re-enter the undergrowth on the other side. He wanted to jump out and stomp it to the ground. A raccoon was a troublesome, dirty little thing.

And so was the boy.

No, wait. That wasn’t right. Davy was a good boy. Davy was a perfectly fine little boy.

The child worried over the phone and then pressed it to his ear. Upon hearing Davy’s awkward progress through the woods, Hank had originally intended to move directly to him, snatch him up and drag him back into the house, but now he thought he’d wait. He wasn’t sure how the kid had gotten loose in the first place. He knew he’d locked the door—the key was in his pocket. Davy was clever, he guessed. Davy couldn’t be chained. He wanted to see what Davy did next.

The boy talked, and Hank extracted a new toothpick from his pocket. The tip slid between his lips and poked him in the gums, but he didn’t care.

His plan had not been perfect, especially the part involving Georgie’s mother, but now, listening, he thought maybe things hadn’t gone as badly as he’d first thought, that his scheme might still be falling into place in an unexpected but wonderful way.

The kid was giving directions, leading somebody here. Good directions, easily followed, though he seemed to babble like a brook. Hank would have been worried, would have thought maybe the kid was yakking to the cops, except for one word the boy had let slip, a word that was so gaspingly magnificent.

The word was Mommy.