But impossibly, the knob turns, and the door swings inward to reveal a gaping black pit.
I have to blink. It is like seeing double, although it is so dark I can hardly see at all. He is going through a door from a different time; the door of now is still closed, is still locked, and I can see the door closed at the same time I see it open, like a photograph overlaid with the ghostly imprint of something else. The darkness of his open door reaches out as he climbs inside, into a darkness the feeble moonlight behind me cannot reach out and touch.
Then he is gone, but the doorway remains.
At first I am repelled by that terrible emptiness, as if that complete absence is sucking all light from the world, but I have to know—I have to see.
I hurry down the hall, the seething maw of darkness opening before me like an abyss, but as soon as I reach it, the open doorway vanishes. My hands and eyes meet solid wood, and nothing more.
If only I could arrest my heart. On trembling legs, I descend the staircase all the way down, thinking of cold water, a nip of whiskey, something to calm my nerves.
Instead I discover, again, that I am not alone.
The television is on in the sitting room, and Elizabeth sits bathed in its blue glow in the otherwise dark room, holding a glass of wine.
For a moment I am invisible in the dark. I could go back upstairs, but I do not. “Elizabeth?”
She startles, looks momentarily betrayed, perhaps wondering how long I have been standing here watching her.
“Have you seen him?” I step into the room, but I can’t sit; the vision of the crawling boy is fresh in my nerve endings. I wonder if that’s why she’s down here at two o’clock in the morning, distracting herself with infomercials. “Please tell me you’ve seen him.”
“Seen who?”
In the artificial light, she’s aged by the moonlike glow, as old as she has ever been and older still by the minute. But she is calm, unafraid. I tell myself to be calm, to be unafraid. She lifts her wineglass to take a sip, then hesitates with it inches from her mouth. “The doctor said I can have one,” she murmurs defensively.
“One glass or one bottle?”
“That’s funny.”
The dark figure crawls through the back of my mind. “Look, there’s something I have to tell you.”
She waits for me to continue, then lowers her glass. “Well, spit it out. Or are you going to keep dancing around it?”
Maybe I should just keep dancing. Just dance away, down the halls, and never speak of this again. I don’t know who he is, after all. The boy could be anyone.
And yet, I feel it in my gut. I know who he is.
“I’ve seen Julian.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, I know. You were at the ultrasound.”
“No, I’ve seen Julian. Here, in the house.”
A short round laugh escapes her, and her face invents an expression of bottled annoyance, amusement, contempt—clenched teeth behind closed lips.
“Julian? Here in the house?” she says with determined levity. “How could you possibly have seen someone who hasn’t been born yet?”
“Lizzie.” She scowls at my infantilizing her name. “You know this house. What if …?”
“I don’t believe you.” She takes an angry little sip. “Mother, I can understand. She’s always had a few marbles loose. But please don’t tell me you’ve bought into her New Age mumbo jumbo.”
“It isn’t mumbo jumbo.”
“Please. In any case, how is it you’ve come to recognize my unborn son, when you’ve only just seen a fuzzy little gray picture of him?”
“He called me Auntie.”
“Oh, of course, that explains it.”
We’re at a stalemate. If we continue on in this way, sooner or later one of us is going to crack. I hope it isn’t me.
“I’m afraid there’s something wrong with him.” I look around, wishing for him to appear again. I need him to show himself, to show Elizabeth what I cannot possibly explain with mere words. Maybe she would be able to see his face. “You’ll see.” I look around, half expecting him to come crawling toward us out of the shadows. “I just saw him upstairs, not ten minutes ago.”
“This is just like your ghosts. When you were a kid,” she says, with more wonder and disbelief than spite. “Remember those? You were so scared that we looked through our family’s whole genealogical record, but the people you saw never lived in this house. It was all made up.”
“I’m not making this up.”
“Sure you aren’t. And there really was a man who lived here once who didn’t look like anything, and an old woman with Xs for eyes.” She laughs, but it is a mean sound. “Come on, Sam. You scared yourself because you let your imagination wander away from you, and, well, nobody could blame you, could they? Not in this place. But you have to get a handle on what’s real and what isn’t. When you mix those up, you hurt people.” The words etch a scowl on her face.
“If you open your eyes, you’ll see him too,” I tell her, ignoring her comments on my childhood ghosts. “Just wait.”
I want so desperately for her to believe me that I wait as interminable seconds tick by, waiting foolishly, hopelessly, for the boy to show himself, and every second that he doesn’t I feel my credibility shatter a bit more. But I wait, anxious and eager, because I cannot stand any more of Elizabeth’s condescension. She must, she must believe me. The air crackles expectantly. A minute drags into eternity. The television drones in the background, bothersome and insistent, until Elizabeth snaps up the remote and douses us in an abrupt dark and quiet.
“Are you finished?” she says coldly.
“Why don’t you ever listen to me?”
“Why would I listen to bullshit?” Her voice is harsh and low; I hear the slosh of wine in her glass. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I fumble my way to the light, trailing broken sentences behind me as I go. “I do. Jesus, Liz. I’m trying to help you. So you can … I don’t know … do something.”
“Like what?” she snarls. “Get an abortion?”
I pause beside the lamp. “Well, it’s a bit late for that.”
“You’re still angry with me,” she says. “For kicking you out of my house. That’s what this is about.”
“I’m not angry about that,” I tell her, which is the truth.
I turn the switch and a harsh light pierces the air, glaring on every surface and illuminating Elizabeth’s furious face in a cold white. Her pupils hastily retract into glossy irises. Red wine drips over the lip of her glass and onto her hand.
“You attacked my husband. What else was I supposed to do?”
“I told you, I’m not angry about that,” I insist.
“Then what?”
“I’m not angry about anything.”
“Oh, don’t lie.”
I shred a piece of lint in my pocket until it disintegrates in my fingers. “How could I be angry with you? You only left me there.” The words stumble free, cottony in my mouth. “You only left me out there alone, to get mugged—to be pushed to the sidewalk with a gun to my head, thinking I was going to die.”