Dwellers (4 page)

The sad thing about pain is that you can’t share it or pass it on, no matter how willing the next person is. No one can take agony away from you, no matter how many times the people you
love tell you,
I know exactly how you feel
. You know they really don’t. You suffer alone, in the end.

8

LOUIS DIGS A hole near the porch the next morning, drops the planner in, and covers it carefully with a layer of soil and fertilizer. He stands up. I watch him look through the
potted plants beneath the bougainvillea bushes and pull out a clay pot carrying a pale yellow chrysanthemum plant. He brings this to the hole. He takes the flower along with its roots out of the
pot and places the plant into the soil. There are other flowers lining the porch—geraniums, peonies—but the chrysanthemum stands out, its petals pale against the lush pinks and purples.
I don’t see it from my bedroom window, but when I roll out onto the porch and lean forward, it stares back at me like an infected eye.

The TV in the living room has been largely ignored ever since we got here, but Louis watches the news now every night. I know what he is waiting for. I don’t listen, choosing, as always,
to stay in my room or out on the porch with a book until I get sleepy.

For a few days, we almost—almost—made ourselves believe there was no dead body in the basement.

IT IS THURSDAY, three days since the planner was buried. Since it’s drizzling, I decide to go to my room instead of out on the porch. “What are you reading
today,” Louis asks idly, sinking into his usual spot on the sofa in front of the TV, but I never get to answer because the evening news has begun and up on the screen is Meryl’s big
smile.

The decomposing body believed to be that of Meryl Angela Solomon, an 18-year-old college student reported missing last January, was found by police in an abandoned building on university
grounds.

Louis freezes for a second, then sits up, and leans forward, as though a closer look at the screen will help him understand the story better. I wheel myself around the sofa.

There are shots of a dark one-story building surrounded by tall grass; policemen walking, windows, cobwebs, graffiti on stone walls.

Solomon’s body was found wearing a white shirt and jeans. A backpack filled with her belongings, including several of her IDs and a silver necklace, was also found with the
body.

Shots of a purple backpack, covered in grime. Her IDs on a table. Some books. A silver necklace with a sapphire teardrop pendant. A body bag on a gurney.

Police began an on-site investigation following reports of a foul smell emanating from the old Fine Arts building. The building has not been used for five years and is generally avoided by
students as it sits on a remote, unlit field.

The building has been the site of on-campus crime in the past.

Due to the body’s advanced decomposition, investigators relied on the contents of the backpack to identify the body. Forensic analysis will follow but investigators admit identification
might be difficult.

Cause of death is still unknown.

Solomon’s family expressed doubt about the identity of the body, but agreed that the backpack and its contents belonged to the 18-year-old.

A middle-aged woman with curly hair and beads of sweat on her forehead wipes her eyes but continues to cry in front of the camera. Her eyes are pink and swollen. Meryl’s mother.
“The necklace was a gift from Meryl’s grandmother. She can’t wear it because she says it makes her skin itch, but she always brings it with her.”

Solomon was due to start her last year at the university’s School of Economics in June.

Louis and I, dumbfounded, stare at the TV as the anchor moves on to another news item.

“If that’s Meryl,” I say, “then who is—”

Who is that girl in the freezer.

Louis looks at me. “You know what this means, right?”

“What?”

“We’re safe,” he says.

Safe.
Now there’s a word. But he is right. No one will come looking for Meryl in this house now, because Meryl has been found.

“But there’s still a body in the freezer,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “I’ll keep an eye out for any news about missing persons.”

After a moment, Louis says, “I still think it’s Meryl, though. The one downstairs.”

“Did we cover up our own crime?” I say. We kill a girl in the basement, and to stop people from looking our way, we plant a fake body with genuine Meryl articles far, far away from
the actual scene of the crime.

Louis massages his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

“Who
are
we?” I say. But who can answer?

9

WE
CAN ANSWER, but there is no one and nothing left to investigate other than the objects the brothers left behind. Before we found the planner, I’d rummaged
through Jonah’s drawers and cabinet. Now I survey the things I found. An old wallet. A box of assorted business cards. Receipts, folded and forgotten, some already frayed and yellowing. A set
of keys that don’t open any of the rooms in the house. An expanding plastic folder filled with handouts, brochures, and IDs from several conventions.
Exploring IT @ the SMX Convention
Center. Information, People, Tech. International Conference on Web Information Systems. International Conference on Advances in Information Technology.
A strange 3 x 5 index card that says
Big business is a sociopath—manipulative, remorseless, grandiose, entitled
on one side and
I love the way you think
(written by another hand) on the other. A photo collage from
a company Christmas party, more than two years old. Jonah stares straight at the camera, his arms around some friends. Head canted at an angle, a smile like he knows something. I face the mirror in
the cabinet and try to mimic the pose, the glint in the eye. I can’t do it. I look terrified of myself.

I am in the middle of unfolding the bigger brochures and convention maps when Louis checks in on me.

“What in the world are you doing?”

I pause, my lap covered with glossy photos of buildings.

“Investigating,” I say.

Louis sits on the edge of the bed and looks through the folder. I hear paper rustle as he rifles quickly through a handbook. “We taught at the University,” he says.

I stop reading. “What?”

“I found a syllabus on his computer. My computer. Louis’s computer.” He shakes his head, trying to get his story straight. “Louis and Jonah taught at the university for a
semester last year, and for a couple of months the year before that. We were invited by a former professor to teach a course or two. Business units.”

“Meryl was a student of ours?”

“She’s an Econ major. It’s possible.”

“I don’t know how that fits in her story.”

Louis sighs. “I don’t know either. But I found something else. An itinerary receipt.” I must have looked confused because Louis elaborates. “An electronic plane ticket.
I’m basing the travel itinerary on his social networks and his email. We flew to Cebu on Jan. 16 to attend a friend’s wedding, then took a ferry to Bohol to give talks at an IT seminar.
We were out of this city for weeks. Our return ticket was dated Feb. 1. It can be an alibi.”

“If we can figure out when Meryl actually died,” I say. “She’d been missing since January. We could have killed her and flew out of the city on the same day.”

“Remember her entries,” Louis says. “She mentioned her weight. That near-skeleton in the freezer is nowhere near a hundred and seventy pounds.”

“We locked her up?” I shake my head. I’m too confused. Too many parts of the puzzle are missing.

I CAN FORGET the body in the freezer for hours at a time, but when I remember her, I remember her with the jolt of a terrifying dream you thought you’d forgotten, and I
feel myself falling.

I used to be able to sleep in absolute darkness, but since Louis discovered Meryl, I have asked Louis to leave the porch light on so I can have light coming in through my bedroom window. This
soon proves to be a mistake. That night—I don’t know if this happens in a dream or in real life—I see a girl’s silhouette pass by from the corner of the house to the front
door. The shadow walks on the porch right in front of my window and the slice of darkness falling on my face wakes me up so abruptly I almost fall off the bed.

It is just a flicker, gone in a moment. I think,
I am seeing things.
I try to go back to sleep, turning my head the other way, even though the square of light falls across my bed and on
the opposite wall.

It happens again. I see the dark shape on the wall. I see the shape of the medium-length hair, the shoulders. The shadow doesn’t move this time. It stays there, facing my window.

I am terrified, but I spare a glance to my right. There is a shadow standing outside my bedroom window. I turn away and shut my eyes. I want to call Louis’s attention, but there is no
phone in my room and the only way to get his attention is to scream. I am trapped. Can’t sit up, can’t walk out to get help, can’t run. Can’t even lie on my side to banish
the shadow from my field of vision. It lingers in the periphery. I am helpless. I will the shadow away. It remains there for what seems like hours.

I am sorry. I am so sorry.

Finally, I say, “Is that you, Meryl?” and I feel a hand shaking me and light fills my eyes, as sudden and as brutal as a car crash.

Louis is in my room and the bedroom light is on. “I was just getting water,” he says. “You were moaning. I thought you needed your pain medication. Bad dream?”

Bad dream. My shirt is soaked with sweat. Louis hands me a new shirt and leaves after making sure I am not in pain. I am not. It is just a bad dream.

I can’t sleep after that.

“You look like hell,” Louis says over breakfast.

There is fried rice, sausage, and eggs on the table between us, but neither of us eat. Louis eventually lifts his mug and takes a sip of coffee.

“Do you dream about her?” I ask, and then realize how vague my question is. “I mean, Meryl. Do you dream about her?”

“Last night I dreamt I was in the basement, sitting next to the chest freezer,” Louis replies. “She was standing in one corner of the basement. I can’t see her directly
but I know she’s there. Still, for some reason, I talked to the chest freezer. I can’t remember what I said.”

“I wish we can ask her what really happened,” I say.

We fall silent. Louis sips his coffee. I tug on a thread of thought that’s been bothering me for days.

“Where are our parents?” I ask.

Louis looks up, surprised. “You asked me that at the hospital. Don’t you remember?”

There are a lot of things I don’t remember. I shake my head.

“They’re dead,” Louis says. “But we seem to have relatives abroad. While you were in surgery, I received a call from Canada. A woman, maybe an aunt of ours. She was
screaming in my ear. It took thirty minutes to placate her.”

“What did you find in your room?”

Louis seems a bit confused by the topic change, but he answers. “I found the same convention packets. Passport. Driver’s license. Voter’s ID. Business cards. Our
business’s business cards, actually.”

“I also found business cards from other contacts and they all look old,” I say. “Except for a set of keys, I found only old things. An old wallet. Old receipts. An old picture.
The kind of things you leave behind. There is no passport, which is strange because both brothers have clearly been abroad. Nothing current or important. There’s the closet full of clothes,
but not a lot of clothes, when you think about it. Most of the shirts I’ve worn smell like mothballs.”

Louis puts down his mug. “What are you thinking?”

I’m thinking of the cleaning lady, how she held Louis’s hands and told him how kind he was to take care of his brother. “I’m thinking,” I say, “that Jonah
doesn’t live here. He used to; one of the rooms was clearly his. Maybe the brothers shared the house while still in college, and Jonah eventually moved out.”

“Makes sense,” Louis says. “I only went to the address on Louis’s driver’s license and just assumed that Jonah lived here, too.”

“So this is your house,” I say.
And the body in the basement is yours.

“And out there is a house with all of your belongings,” says Louis. “Evidence we haven’t inspected yet.”

We can’t find Jonah’s physical address and the keys offer no clues. Jonah didn’t write it down on a page for his brother. It is not in Louis’s emails, or in his phone.
But really, why should it be? Nobody sends out letters anymore. They have the Internet. And if Louis has a package to send, he can just drive out and meet up with his brother.

“I never knew your address outside the estate,” I say. We’re both hunched over Louis’s laptop, though we both know there’s nothing to see there.

“You have no reason to,” Louis says.

That’s right.

“Do you think Louis is capable of murder?” I ask. “From what you’ve learned about him?”

Louis shrugged. “What do we know? He has this house and he likes to garden and doesn’t seem to like to mingle with the neighbors. He doesn’t have a lot of friends, or the
friends he does have know enough to leave him alone, even after a serious accident. He seems a decent enough guy. He’s very proper in his emails. He pays his bills on time. It’s hard to
gauge a person’s character based on what he does online, and that’s the bulk of what we have, really. I can’t judge him based on his search history. Do you remember the online
searches we made at the estate? If your mother ever saw what we—”

He starts to smile but then he catches himself. He clears his throat. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t talk about it.”

“Do you think Jonah is capable of murder?” I ask, and Louis sighs.

“I never,” he says, “in all of my years believed we were capable of murder.”

Yes. “And yet here we are,” I say.

10

THE GIRL IN the costume is back. I haven’t seen her for days. The pink fairy wings are gone, and now she is wearing a white dress and a blue-and-gold falcon mask. She
stands there on the other side of the street, doing a little dance. I feel the urge to wave at her, but the front door opens—Louis out to do some gardening—and she runs away.