Hidebehind

Forty-Three

Returning to Great Grandma's wasn't anything like it had been after my previous stay in the hospital. I was different, now. I had been sick all along, I felt, and only now was I beginning to feel better. There'd been a monster in my heart, one that had been hiding behind me, and I'd let it hide. I'd felt safer with it hidden, there, deep within, but now that I'd met it, it had left me, and at last I began to believe that I could get better.

I stayed home for three weeks, this time, not because I was particularly unable to return to school, but because I think Great Grandma feared I was too fragile. I let her fret and fuss; she seemed pleased to do it. And if I argued with her, she just insisted even more. Penny stayed, too, the first week, and we watched movies and played board games.

Teachers sent home work. Alex brought some almost every day, although he came even when there wasn't work to bring. I learned that he and Maisie had started to run back to Great Grandma's after I'd separated myself from them; they'd been scared something would happen to me. But before they'd even gotten halfway back, they'd met Grandpa on the path. He'd been determined, Alex said, like something was driving him on, and he hadn't even need to ask them where I had gone. He'd just hurried to the house and gone immediately to the cellar. As if he'd known, Alex said. Like he'd known exactly where we were. And he'd gone directly into that water, pulled me out, gone back and pulled Penny out, and then, unfathomably, returned to the black darkness of the cellar, where his heart had stopped. Maybe he hadn't realized he'd already gotten both of us out. Maybe he was too confused to even really know what he was doing. But as I lay unconscious and everyone around me was frantic, he died quietly, alone, in the cold waters.

The police and paramedics that came afterward retrieved his body from the cellar. They wrapped me and Penny in warmth, and they took us to the hospital.

Grandpa had saved my life, but I couldn't even thank him for it.

It was about a month after everything had happened, after we'd held Grandpa's wake and funeral, after I'd returned to school calmly and quietly and somehow changed, that I received answers to the many questions troubling my mind. Two things happened that week. First, a construction company razed Luther's house.

The dilapidated structure, having sat complacent for so many years, was finally deemed a danger, though it had been exactly that for some while. They tore down all its crushed windows, its sagging porch, its empty halls and rooms. And nothing was too strange about any of that. But when they got to the bottom, where so much had happened with two children and an old man, they discovered something they hadn't expected to find.

They'd had to clean out the cellar. To pump the water out in order to make the land relatively safe again, and in doing so, they discovered the remains of a boy. A boy identified as Grandpa's friend from so many years ago: James Clark.

When Great Grandma told me this news, I wasn't shocked. I was relieved. It made sense, now, why Grandpa had gone back in. Why Jay had dragged us there. He'd wanted us to find him.

And we had.

He had no remaining family, Jimmy. His parents had died long ago, and he'd been an only child. No one mourned for him. His name and the discovery of his water-logged bones were a sensation in town for a while, but that was it. The mystery of what had happened to Jimmy was solved—somewhat—with the exception of no one knowing how he'd gotten where he'd been found, and the one person who might have known was dead.

In any case, the house was destroyed, and I've never since gone to see where it used to be. Nothing about that house made me want to go near it again, whether it still existed physically or not. I let the news about James being found sink into me, not just into my mind, but into my soul. It was difficult for me to believe, after what had happened, that I'd ever even seen Jay. Jay for James. Jay for Jimmy—whatever I called him, his image was blurry in my mind, and as I hung out more with Alex, I began to feel more and more distant from him.

But the second thing that happened that week—that month after I'd almost died—brought it all back to me.

I was sitting outside, on the patio. It was cold out, and I was bundled up in a coat and some other outdoor things like mittens and a hat. I didn't mind the cold, actually, because no matter how low the temperature dropped, it could never match what I'd felt that night in the cellar. I was waiting for Alex and Maisie to come over with a couple other kids from school so they could play capture the flag with me and Penny, and as I stared at that disgusting, still incomprehensible tick jar and pet the three-legged dog, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

I jumped out of my chair and spun around, and there he was—Jay. Standing there in the same old summery clothes he'd always worn, looking as real as I'd thought he was. He was just staring at me, although there was something different in him. He was much older, much, much older. He wasn't a kid.

My breath was loud. "Hey," was all I could think to say.

"Hey," he replied. Looking at me a little sorrowfully, he added, "Sorry for what I did. For how I did it."

I bit my lip. My chin shuddered. "You almost killed us. You could have just told me where you were."

His head of sandy hair shook slowly. "It wasn't for you to find me."

Understanding sunk in. "Grandpa?"

He nodded. "He'd been hiding too long behind all of it. He knew, but he couldn't bring himself to do anything."

"What do you mean?"

"Was his dad killed me."

"What?" I was incredulous. "Luther?" What Grandpa had said had been right—there were monsters. Real ones.

"Tom and I were too scared to camp out. Came home. His dad drank too much and was driving crazy up that road. We were just getting back here when he . . . it was so dark . . . he forgot his lights . . . we, we couldn't see him, and he couldn't see . . . couldn't see me." He turned to look at the carport, and even though he was already dead—long dead—he seemed afraid.

My eyes were probably wide enough to show white all around. "He put you there? In the cellar?" I whispered.

He looked back at me, gravely. Said nothing. Did nothing to indicate an answer, but I knew. "People can't hide behind it all, not forever. It always haunts them. It always gets them in the end."

His words were close enough to my heart that I couldn't find a response.

"Goodbye, Rob," he said softly.

My chest swelled. "Bye, Jay," I said even more quietly.

And then faded and was gone.