23. the phone call
It was my cell phone ringing. It was lying on my desk, waiting for me to pick it up.
My mind was still picturing the field out by the interstate, and I answered the phone in a daze.
“Hello?”
I could hear someone breathing.
“Hello?”
“Bret?” I heard a voice say faintly.
“Yes. Who is this?”
Another pause.
“Hello?”
The sound of wind and static interspersed.
I pulled the phone away from my face and checked the incoming number.
The call was being made from Aimee Light’s cell phone.
“Who is this?” I didn’t even realize I had fallen into my chair. My heart was beating too fast. I thought clenching my fist would control it. “Aimee?”
“No.”
Pause, static, wind.
I leaned forward and said a name.
“Clayton?”
The voice was ice. “That’s one of my names.”
I stood up. “What do you mean? Is this Clayton or not?”
“I’m everything. I’m everyone.” A static-filled pause. “I’m even you.”
This comment forced the fear to adopt a casual, friendly tone. I did not want to antagonize whoever this was. I would play dumb. I would pretend to be having a conversation with someone else. I had started shaking so hard that it was almost impossible to keep my voice steady. “Where are you?” I moved to the window. “I never got to see you again after you stopped by my office.”
“Yes you did.” The voice was now oddly intimate.
I paused. “No . . . I mean, where would that have been?”
“Did you get the manuscript?”
“Yes. Yes, I did. Where are you?” For some reason I reached for a pen, but it dropped from my trembling hand.
“Everywhere.”
The way he said this was so ghastly that I had to compose myself before returning to my fake clueless demeanor. The voice had scales and was horned. The voice was something that had emerged from a bonfire. The fear it caused was unraveling me.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Yeah, I think I did see you again. Were you in our house on Sunday night?”
“ ‘Our’ house?” The voice feigned bewilderment. “That’s an interesting phrase. One highly open to interpretation.”
I closed the blinds. I sat in the chair again and then stood up just as quickly. I suddenly couldn’t help it. I decided to play along, my voice thick with urgency.
“Is this . . . Patrick?”
“We’re a lot of people.”
“So . . . what were you doing in our house the other night?” I asked casually. “What were you doing in my son’s room?”
“That night it wasn’t me, Bret. That night it was something else.”
“What . . . was it then?”
“Something that is not an ally to our cause.”
“Your cause? What cause? I don’t understand.”
“Did you read the manuscript, Bret?”
“Are any of you responsible for the boys?” I shut my eyes tightly.
“The boys?” I had interrupted his question with another question. The voice was on the verge of not behaving anymore.
“The missing boys. Are you—”
It was as if the voice hadn’t anticipated this question. It was as if the voice assumed I knew where the particular truth of that situation led. “No, Bret. Again, you’re looking in the wrong place on that one.”
“Where should I be looking?”
“Open your eyes. Stop groping for things that aren’t there.”
“Where are the boys?” I asked. “Do you know?”
“Ask your son. He knows.”
The fear curled into quick anger. “I don’t believe that.”
“This will be your downfall.”
The writer had left. The writer was scared and had run away and was now hiding somewhere, screaming.
“What do you mean by that? My downfall? Are you threatening me?”
“I see that a Detective Donald Kimball visited you,” the voice said airily. “Did he tell you about me?”
“What happened to Aimee Light?”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Where is she?”
“In a better world than this one.”
“What did you do to her?”
“No, Bret. It’s what you did to her.”
“I didn’t do anything to her.”