Apparition (8 page)

I know he’s headed back up the road toward the Telford property. The sky is clear of clouds and full of stars, and the moon is about three-quarters and bright. I run across the front yard to the road and start up the hill. Within a minute or so I can see a silhouette ahead of me, approaching the crest of the 12th Line hill. I call Jack’s name, and I see him stop and slowly turn around. He’s waiting for me. He’s laughing quietly to himself, but he also looks impatient. I’m hurrying, walking as fast as I can, and when I finally reach him I’m winded.

“Jack. What’s up? Where are you going?”

“Nowhere, Amelia. You should get back home.” Now he sounds irritated.

“I’ll go back home if you come with me.”

“I can’t. Now why don’t you take off? It’s late and too cold for you, little sis.” The tone of his voice is strange. He doesn’t sound like himself.

He walks on, and I do too. He stops, looking back down the road and then up at the crest of the hill. The Telford farm isn’t far from here.

“I’m meeting someone,” he says, “and you can’t come.”

“Who are you meeting?” I venture a guess. “Are you meeting a girl?”

“Amelia, you’d better get lost. Get the hell out of here and go back home.” It’s like he’s threatening me. He’s still smiling, though.

“All right, you win. I’m going home. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I turn and start walking back down the hill toward our house, but I’m panicking. This is way too much déjà vu for me. Should I
go and wake up Joyce? We could come back with the car. I check my pockets for my cellphone. Damn, I left it at the house. I look around for other farms on this stretch of the road. There aren’t any.

I hear Jack heading back up the hill, taking large strides now, moving quickly. When I can’t hear him anymore, I stop and turn around. He’s over the brow of the hill and no longer in sight. I don’t have time for anything else. I turn around and head up behind him. It takes forever to get to the top of the hill, and now, in the distance, I can see the old farmhouse, dark and desolate. At first I don’t see a barn. But as I get closer it appears behind the farmhouse, like a charcoal monster in the moonlight. It’s one of those really tall ones, probably a hundred years old. The kind with boards that are dry and grey, some of them loose or missing. They always look like a stiff wind could bring them crashing down. I’m trying not to think about what happened here only five weeks ago. I’m focusing on Jack. That’s the only way I can do this.

He must already be inside. I cut across the front of the farm property, toward the far side, and get to the barn door as quietly as I can. It’s busted where there used to be some kind of bolt. I can just about poke my head inside. I move in slowly, carefully. I don’t want to startle Jack, and I don’t want to aggravate him.

The barn is gigantic. It looks even bigger from the inside. Moonlight is peeking through cracks between the boards, thin vertical lines of light reaching up into the rafters. There’s a stale and musty smell. Lower down in the shadows I can dimly see stalls on one side and a kind of loft along the other, a platform running the length of the right wall, about five feet above the ground. As my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, I see old junk stored underneath the platform and a few broken ladders leaning up against posts. In the centre the barn is empty from floor to roof; it feels like a medieval church. Jack is nowhere in sight.

I’m not sure I want to go any farther in. I listen. I hear a faint
shuffling on the dirt and hay floor, coming from one of the stalls. I squeeze inside and whisper, “Jack?” The stall door swings open, making me jump. But I can’t see him there.

I’m trying to control my fear. “Jack, grow up,” I hiss. There’s no response. I’m going to have to be patient. I’m going to have to wait him out. I listen again, and something like a cobweb brushes past my face. It’s cold. My arms flail in an involuntary spasm. “Ugh, I’m getting out of here.” But then I hear another noise, coming from a far corner. “Jack?”

Nothing.

Oh God, don’t tell me there are animals in here. I’m staring hard into the shadows, looking for movement. But I’m not taking another step. I’m staying here by the door.

A gentle moan comes from somewhere high in the barn, and it draws me in. I’m looking up, turning slowly, straining in the darkness to see where the sound is coming from. I run my eyes along a major beam, a massive tree trunk that runs across the width of the barn at the top of the walls, some twenty feet up. It’s Jack. He’s crouching on the beam high above me, his head in his hands. He’s crying.

“Jack? Jack, what’s wrong?”

He doesn’t answer.

“What are you doing up there? You should come down.” I can’t tell if he even hears me. There’s something bunched up on the beam beside him.

It’s a rope.

“Jack, please come down and talk to me.”

He continues to moan and cry, and then his tone changes. He’s still crying but he’s also shouting, sputtering, angry. It sounds like “She said she’d come. She said she’d come.” He sounds like a child having a tantrum.

What the hell? Now he’s wailing—a tortured cry like nothing I’ve ever heard before. I’m stunned. This can’t possibly be my brother. He seems completely mental. Or is he on drugs? I look around. Who is he talking about?

“Jack, you aren’t thinking straight. You’ve got to come down. Right now!” I’m trying to sound tough, but he acts like he doesn’t even hear me. “I’m going to call Joyce if you don’t come down right now.”

I’m standing directly below him, looking up. He’s still crying and muttering, but now he begins to edge along the beam toward the rope. I watch, thunderstruck, as he ties the rope around the beam, leaving one long end dangling down. He tugs at the dangling end, pulling it up, and begins to loop it into some kind of slipknot.

“Jack, what the hell are you doing?” He drops the loop and it hangs from the beam. I try to sound calm, not to be hysterical. “Jack, listen to me! Can you just come down from there and talk to me for a minute? That’s all I’m asking. Just come down for a minute.”

How can I get up there? How fast can I climb?

He’s straddling the beam, almost right over the loop. He’s ignoring me. He’s crying, saying, “She’ll be sorry.” That’s all I can make out. He’s going to hang himself! He reaches down for the rope. I scream his name.

Suddenly the knot in the rope comes loose. The rope drops from the beam, falling smack down on my shoulder as I duck my head, and then to the ground. I look up and see Jack staring down at the rope at my feet, staring right through me, a look of rage on his face. His eyes look psycho. He bares his teeth, glaring at the rope on the barn floor.

“Jack! Come down! Can you hear me? It’s me, Amelia.”

He rises to his full height on the beam and closes his eyes. His face looks frozen.

He starts to lean backwards.

Oh my God! “Jack!” I scream.

He falls backwards from the beam, landing with a sickening crunch only a few feet away from me. The straw sends up a cloud of dust in the moonlight. His eyes are closed, his body bent, lying still, as if he’s dead. I collapse over him, screaming and crying his name, touching his face, frantically searching for a pulse in his wrist, his neck. It’s faint but I can feel it.

Somewhere behind me, there’s shuffling. Jack’s eyes open wide, looking over my shoulder, and his mouth opens. Then his eyes close as if he’s fallen asleep. I’m afraid to move him.

“I’ll be right back, Jack. Stay here. Stay right here. I’ll get help. You’ll be okay.”

As I run for the door I feel something cold and light brush over me. I beat the air but I don’t slow down. I reach for the door. Just as I get through the narrow opening, I catch the letters
D-O-T
carved in the wooden frame.

Leaving Jack unconscious on the barn floor, I stumble along the dark country road, running for help.

J
oyce is stony cold and focused. It’s the way she’s always been, in every crisis I can remember. Ethan and I are in the car with her, and she’s got the engine in overdrive as we head up the hill on 12th Line. She’s already called 911, and the ambulance and police are on their way. Ethan says I look like I’ve seen a ghost.

In two minutes we’re turning into the Telford farm property, up the drive and over the rough field toward the old barn. Car doors fly open and slam shut, then we’re out and running in the dark. Ethan carries a flashlight and its beam jerks violently in front of us as he runs. He’s excited. Even the worst catastrophe has its entertaining side for him. I, on the other hand, am still crying. Joyce says nothing for now. The moonlight casts pale and wild shadows of us along the ground.

We get to the barn door, still open the six inches I had squeezed through, and together we push it open all the way. It creaks and moans and scrapes along the straw-covered dirt floor. In the moonlight that peeks down through the rafters, we can see Jack lying in
a heap where I left him, and we run to him. His eyes are closed. He is warm—still breathing. We all talk to him at once.

“Jack. We’re here!”

“Help is coming!”

“You’ll be all right. You’re going to be all right!”

We don’t dare move him ourselves. Something might be broken.

“The ambulance is coming, Jack,” I whisper, hearing the siren a long way away. “It’s almost here. Hold on, Jack.”

There is no response from him. I’m looking at him lying there almost dead. I’m holding his limp hand, my whole body shaking. It feels like a dream.

Joyce finally asks me what happened. I try to think.

“He had too much to drink, and I saw him leave the house after he got home from the party. I was worried about him, so I followed him.” I’m struggling to get the words out. It’s hard to breathe, there’s so much pain in my chest. “I followed him here. He was horsing around up in the rafters when I found him. He was … horsing around.” I hear myself lying. I’m not sure why, but I don’t feel I can tell the truth right now. I remember the rope—that will give it all away—but when I look around, I realize that it isn’t here anymore. It’s disappeared. I didn’t move it. Jack certainly didn’t move it. I
know
I didn’t dream it. I saw it fall—it hit me hard on the shoulder—but now it’s gone.

“He just had too much to drink. I was telling him to get down when he slipped.”

My heart pounds in my ears as I hear myself desperately trying to make what happened sound less scary. They wouldn’t believe me if I told them the truth. The sirens get steadily louder until they’re right on us. Then they cut out, car doors open and shut, and paramedics and two policemen appear at the entrance and run toward
us. We scramble to our feet and back away to reveal Jack. Someone takes his pulse in his neck, shining light in his eyes and gently checking him over. Someone else runs back to the ambulance for a stretcher. One of the policemen has his notepad out and begins asking questions. Any witnesses? Who was here?

“Just me. I … I saw him fall.”

“I’ll need you to stick around for a statement, okay?”

I nod. I think I’m in shock.

Joyce is talking to the other officer. “Jack—Jackson Mackenzie. Seventeen years old. I’m his grandmother. His legal guardian. Joyce Stewart. These two are his brother and sister. We live a half mile down the road. Just moved in last week.” The officer is listening, nodding.

We watch as the paramedics gently work on Jack, putting a brace around his neck, carefully straightening him out, rolling him onto a stretcher. I can’t see any blood. Maybe he’s okay. But when they move him, he doesn’t wake up.
Open your eyes, Jack. Say something. Do something
.

Then they are gone, taking Jack with them, Joyce and Ethan following them out the barn door. The policeman asks me to stay behind. He says he’ll drop me off at the hospital if I’d like. I’m left standing over the place where Jack fell while the policeman makes a phone call.

“Yeah, an accident in the Telford barn, on 12th. Jack Mackenzie. Looks like he fell. Yeah, they just left. The Mackenzie girl, the sister. Yeah, thought you might be interested.”

The policeman finishes his call and says, mostly to himself, “This barn’s seen a lot of action lately.” Then he asks me to start from the beginning so he can take notes. I tell him how Jack arrived home from Halloween partying, then I realize I’ve got to mention that he and his friends were here earlier in the evening. He’ll hear it sooner or later.
The officer looks around with his flashlight and catches something in one of the half-open stalls. Beer cans. A twelve-pack and empty beer cans, some in the box, some lying nearby. “Go on,” he says.

I tell him what I told Joyce. The policeman looks up, flashlight in the rafters, the light moving slowly along the big timbers. I look around too as I speak, trying to control myself, trying to calm down. I feel so afraid.
Jack will be okay. He’s okay
. The policeman scribbles something down, then looks up at me, waiting for me to continue.

“He was up there, kind of talking to himself—nothing I could make out. Gibberish, you know? Then he stood up and … and I was begging him to come down. I … I was terrified he was going to fall. I kept asking him to come down, but he ignored me.” I start to cry again.

“Is that when he slipped?”

I nod and cover my face with my hands. He puts a hand on my shoulder.

“That’s fine for now, that’s enough. I’ll take you home. Or to the hospital. Whichever you prefer.”

“To the hospital, please.”

I take a deep breath. I wipe the backs of my hands against my brows and hold them there for a moment, pressing my knuckles into the inside corners of my eyes.

“Are you going to be okay?”

I nod weakly and we turn to leave the barn.

That’s when I see the rope, in a dark heap on the floor against the far wall. Standing beside it is Matthew, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching me.

I
hear voices and open my eyes. I’m outside the emergency entrance of the hospital, being lifted onto a gurney. I see the officer talking to someone nearby as I’m wheeled through the glass doors of the entrance. I close my eyes again and feel the movement of the wheels rolling along a corridor, stopping, then starting again. And I hear my grandmother’s voice.