The Ghost of Ben Hargrove (2 page)

I eye the paper distrustfully. What if it's a trick? What if the note is from my captors, and their patience with me has worn thin? I must remain calm. I can't let them see how desperate I feel. So I finish my meal, saving the remaining grapes for last, and then I carefully cup the folded piece of paper in my hand.

Samantha's lips were warm and soft—she was such a good kisser that I hadn't even noticed my mom had walked into the living room until she cleared her throat and said, “Did you finish your history paper, Ben?”

“Working on it.” I flashed a smirk to Samantha, who grinned. All of her lip gloss had been worn off by our make-out session.

From the dining room, my dad grunted and muttered, “He's working on something, but it sure as hell isn't his paper.”

Samantha's grin faltered, her face flushed in embarrassment. As she stood and picked up her books, I grabbed her gently by the wrist and pleaded with her. “Don't go.”

“I have to.” She glanced in the direction of my dad, as if I needed an explanation. Then she forced a smile and brushed my cheek with a peck before heading toward the front door. “See you in school tomorrow.”

I walked her to the door and watched her get in her car. When she was gone at last, I turned back to my dad, the heat of anger crawling up my neck. “You don't have to be so rude to her, y'know.”

“Maybe I wouldn't be if you stopped kissing her long enough to raise your D average.” He shook his head and went back to his newspaper, but not before grumbling, “Really, Ben, when are you going to grow up?”

Footsteps in the hall again. The Hand has returned to collect my tray. The slot opens and I pass the now-empty tray through. The slot closes again without issue.

Still, I don't want to hurry. Nothing different has happened to me in so long. I want to draw out this moment, despite the fact that I am absurdly anxious to open my hand and unfold the note. Even the anxiety feels like something to savor.

Finally, with a deep breath, I stretch out my hand, revealing the white square in my palm.

As I stare at it, I realize what I'm really scared of. What if I open it and it's nothing? What if I read it and the note makes no sense? I desperately want to cling to the new spark of hope that the paper has given me, but hope alone isn't going to help me escape this room. If anything is going to change, it has to start with action.

“Don't open it.”

The words are whispers. They come into my room like a breath just over my left shoulder and send gooseflesh up my arm. The voice is familiar. It sounds like memory.

I turn my head quickly to the left, then the right, searching for the speaker. But my cell is empty. I am as alone as ever. I look at the slot in the door, wondering if someone is standing on the other side. Maybe it's the author of the note, now having second thoughts. The room has fallen silent once again.

Cupping the note in my hand, I move to the door and press my forehead to it. I want to be close to someone. Anyone. But for the Hand, I haven't encountered another living soul in so long. Those three whispered words are valuable to me, even precious. I want to hear them again. I want to hear so much more. My response is a whisper, filled with the hope that the speaker and only the speaker will hear me.

“Why shouldn't I?”

The notion that I am about to engage in conversation with another person after all this solitude causes my stomach muscles to tense. In my mind are a hundred other questions. Who are you? Where am I? What is on the other side of the door? But I don't want to scare the speaker away.

I turn my head slightly, rolling my skull against the surface of the door until my ear is pressed against it. I listen. There are no more whispers. I speak again, this time in a full, unmuted voice.

“Are you there?”

My fingers close tightly around the piece of paper. Heat rises in my neck, my cheeks, my forehead. I am angry now, but I'm uncertain why.

“Don't open it.”

I pull back from the door, stunned. This time, the whisper is definitely coming from the open space behind me. The speaker is in my room.

I turn around slowly, not knowing how someone could have gotten inside my cell without my noticing. There are no windows. Just the chipped, gray door. I search the room, and as I do, I become only more confused. The room is empty.

My lips feel suddenly dry. Licking them, I speak once again. This time, my voice shakes.

“Who said that?”

No one answers.

I stand there, staring at the room for what seems like hours. Was I hearing things? I must have been. Maybe I am finally going crazy.

Crazy or not, I still have the note.

“Don't open it.”

A boy's voice. This time louder. Loud enough to startle me. I drop the paper. It flutters to the concrete floor below. I whip my head around, but again, nothing, no one is there. I am still alone. I wonder if I was crazy before the cell, or if in fact the cell has caused it.

Pushing the voice out of my mind for the time being, I retrieve the note from where it fell on the concrete floor. I pull apart one fold, then the next. The paper itself has clearly been ripped from a pad of pristine white, with no header to indicate who might have sent it, no distinguishing features whatsoever. I scan my treasured find—the black, inky swoops of handwritten letters across the small piece of paper. Relief fills me. It's not a receipt for grapes.

I take my time reading the words, just in case this is the only chance I will ever get. The note contains three lines, and I read them over several times, letting each one sink into my memory, a permanent fixture. I'm not sure I understand what's written here.

There is no freedom.

There are no walls.

The boy is real.

The last sentence certainly gives me pause. What boy? Is the note referring to the boy whose voice I thought I heard, just moments ago? Or is there someone else? A fellow prisoner, maybe?

After reading the note a fourth time, I fold it back into a square and slide it under my mattress. As always, the sheets are crisp and clean—my captors must change them while I am sleeping, but I still haven't figured out how. I am also clean, as are the scrubs that I wear. If I go to sleep with a food stain on my shirt, I wake up to find it clean, pristine. I have no idea how my captors are doing these things without my notice, but they are. I sit back, resting on my heels, and stare at the mattress that now covers the note. Will the note be there when I awake next cycle? Or will they collect it while I sleep? It's a question I let stew in my brain for a good, long while, simmering there with my questions of what this place is, how I got here, and why I'm having such a difficult time remembering things.

Hours later, footsteps in the hall again, right on time for second meal. I half expect (half hope) to find a second note tucked carefully beneath my turkey sandwich, but there is nothing. A deep emptiness fills me, but I push it away. One note does not mean that there will be many notes. One instance of communication does not mean that there will be more. I should be grateful for what I've received, but I'm not. Mostly I'm just confused. And angry.

It surprises me how irritated I am with the sender of the note. I feel entitled. If they wanted to help, why not open the damn door? Why not hide a key instead of a cryptic message? Why not give me a clue as to where I am and why I am trapped here against my will? I am grateful for the note, but bitter over being here. I've tasted something different, and I want more, more, more.

Frustrated tears escape my eyes. Such thoughts make me angry with myself. I'm behaving like a child.

Stop behaving like a child.

Don't be such a child, Ben.

A child. It was a child's voice that whispered into my room, I'm sure of it now. And not just any child. My little brother.

Dad kissed my brother on the head as he entered the kitchen. “Going outside to play today, bud? That sunshine won't last all afternoon, y'know.”

“Ben's taking me to the park today.”

I opened the fridge, mentally kicking myself for having forgotten my promise to him. In my defense, he'd always be my brother. But Samantha might not always be my girlfriend if I didn't go to the lake with her today like I said I would.

“Is he now?” My dad sounded doubtful. Of course. Because I couldn't do anything right.

I grabbed a soda and shut the fridge door. “Can't today. But we'll go tomorrow. I promise.”

I couldn't take the shimmer of tears in my little brother's eyes, so I looked away from him as I cracked the can open and took a drink. The faster I got out of this house, the better.

When Dad spoke, it sounded like it was taking every ounce of his restraint to keep from screaming at me. “Ben, did you say you'd take your brother to the park today?”

“I did, but something came up. Next time, kiddo. I promise.” I ruffled his hair on my way out the door. There would be time for that later. Dad just didn't understand.

He didn't understand anything about me.

I have to strain to remember his name. But then I see it, written in blue thread on his little green backpack: John. I have a little brother. His name is John—
was
John. In my life outside this cell. Of course. How could I have forgotten? It makes me wonder what else I have forgotten about my life before I came to this place. Did I have a girlfriend too? Friends? Where did I live? Why did I leave? Why is my memory so foggy? Is the voice I think I hear simply my mind playing tricks on me?

I finish eating second meal, staring at my mattress the whole time, and the note that's buried underneath it.

There is no freedom.

There are no walls.

The boy is real.

The Hand returns to collect my tray, and then I am alone again in my cell. Alone with my new memories. Out of boredom, curiosity, something—I don't know what—I step closer to the bed and reach for the corner of the mattress. I just want to check on the note, make sure it's still there. If it's gone, then maybe I have lost my mind, after all. Maybe there never was a note, or a little brother, or a life before this cell. Maybe I imagined it all.

“Hello.”

The voice startles me this time, makes me jump. I whip around to face the source of it, and my mouth falls open in confusion. A boy, maybe eight or nine years old, is standing at the far end of my room. He too is dressed in scrubs, only his are dirty and stained. It looks like they were white at one time, but they're gray now, not blue like mine. Maybe his cell is blue, the way mine is white-turned-gray. Clutched in his hand is a teddy bear. Its ear is crusted with something brownish burgundy in color. It's soiled, maybe even rotten. Something tells me that if I were standing any closer, I'd smell its foul stench. I can't stand to look at it, so I look at the boy instead. His eyes are sunk in, as if he's malnourished. His skin is pale. His fingernails filthy. I don't know what the dark stains around his fingernail beds and beneath his nails are, I just know that I don't want to look at them, either. The air about him seems heavy, lost, sad. He also seems incredibly familiar to me. I strain my memory, but cannot recall having ever encountered him before. I swallow, my throat parched from surprise. I don't want to scare him away, so I keep my voice as calm as I can possibly manage, even though his presence unnerves me.

“Hello.”

He lifts the dirty teddy bear and cradles it against his cheek, as if it brings him peace. I understand the impulse.

I say, “How did you get in here?”

When he doesn't respond, I begin to wonder if maybe he can't hear me. Maybe he's deaf. Maybe, like the Hand, he simply will not or cannot respond.

I say, “Who are you? Where are we? You can tell me. I won't hurt you, I promise.”

But he doesn't answer. He just nuzzles that damn teddy bear against his cheek, staring at me the entire time. The bear's left eye has a long scratch across its surface.

I get the strangest feeling that I just lied to him, though I can't explain why.

He doesn't trust me. Clearly he's not being as well cared for here as I am, judging by his filthy appearance. I take a deep breath and blow it out in an effort to calm myself. Shouting questions at the boy won't get me any closer to the answers that I so desperately yearn for. As friendly as I can manage, I force a smile and say, “How did you get in here?”

Nothing. Only more staring. More silence. The urge to slap him is undeniable, but I resist. I just promised him I wouldn't hurt him and now I'm fighting the urge to do exactly that. What is wrong with me?

Hesitantly I turn from him and lift up the thin mattress, retrieving the note. I half expect him to be gone when I turn back, but he's still there, clutching his bear, watching me with a hint of curiosity.

I say, “Did you write this note? Did you send this to me?”

Slowly, as if waking from a dream, he shakes his head.

I'm so grateful for that small movement, that tiny acknowledgment that he can hear me, that I have to resist the urge to pick him up and spin him around. It's strange to me how wildly my emotions fluctuate inside these four gray walls. One moment I am on the verge of attacking a kid. The next I have to fight the urge to hug him. Was I always so emotional? Something tells me that I wasn't.

Something in my gut also tells me that this kid has the answers I'm seeking, and I should demand them right now, but I don't want to scare him away. He got in here somehow. He might be able to get out too. And with any luck, he might be able to take me with him. I want him on my side, but I want information as well. Treading carefully, I look him in the eye, ignoring whatever is on the bear's ear.

“Who wrote it? Do you know?”

His eyes shimmer slightly, and I realize he's about to cry. Maybe I pushed him too far. Or maybe he's just scared of what will happen if he's found here in my room, telling me answers that someone doesn't want me to know. He lifts his left arm slowly and points his finger at the wall behind me. Instinctively, I turn, but nothing's there. Just the wall. When I turn back, the boy is gone.