24. As Imaginary as Laughter

Coach Brinks would be happy. Lots of carbs tonight for dinner. Homemade spaghetti, garlic bread, salad with the works on it, including thick homemade croutons.

Amazing how food can transport you back to another time and place.

Mom used to make this all the time back in Libertyville. Back when Dad would come home late and immediately sit down and devour his food and wine while Mom tried to get nuggets of talk from him.

Libertyville isn’t just a place I used to live in. Not anymore.

It’s now a life I once had, a place I once belonged, a world I once understood.

I died when I had to move.

But food and the flavors and the aromas all remind me of that past life and past love, even though love wasn’t something that flowed much in our house.

As I finish dinner, I grow conscious of something that’s been at the back of my mind. We’re watching television while we eat, so I didn’t really even notice Mom much until she cleared the plates.

She looks younger, prettier.

I think it’s makeup. And something with her hair. She must have gotten a haircut.

I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say. But I wonder if it’s for her job or maybe for someone at that job.

After dinner, she’s cleaning up, and nothing much is on television except some news shows about celebrities I’ve never heard of doing dumb things nobody really cares about.

“I’m going to take Midnight out,” I say.

It’s cold, and I bundle up. Mom still seems focused in her own little world. She’s sipping wine and busy, and that’s fine. She won’t ask me any questions or notice what I’m doing.

I take a flashlight with me as I put Midnight on a leash. She’s so tiny, not even the size of a football, and the leash seems to weigh her down so much that she just stands there wondering why she’s attached to some chain. When I get out on the deck, I put her in one arm while I turn on the flashlight and walk down the steps to the driveway.

Since our cabin was built on the side of a steep mountain, there’s a story and a half of concrete propping it up underneath the base. The deck has long wooden beams that help hold it up, though my mom said it doesn’t really need them since the primary support is built into the deck and attached to the house.

I’ve never spent a lot of time underneath the deck, looking at the base of the towering concrete wall. But that’s what I’m doing now, scanning it with my flashlight to see if there’s any sort of entry. A door or a window or something, anything.

Because I know I heard a voice. I’m positive I heard laughing the other night.

I spend a few minutes underneath, aiming the light at different sections of the concrete. Nothing. I bundle Midnight up even though it’s not too bad out. It’s cold, but the wind isn’t too strong, so you don’t feel the cold as much.

I do the same on each side of the house, but most of the concrete is in the earth. No door can be seen, no trapdoor in the ground nearby, no lever or handle to pull.

Wait a minute.

I have an idea. Somebody could have built a tunnel into this house the same way they built that tunnel or passageway under the little cabin in the forest above us.

Christopher, come to me.

I hear that voice in the echoes of my memory, and I shiver. The voice I heard when I was at the bottom of the hole.

The voice you thought you heard.

The more time that goes by, the less I think that I imagined it.

I didn’t imagine that hole or that passageway in the ground, just like I didn’t imagine the blood on Jocelyn’s neck and wrists.

Colored syrup, Chris, the kind any halfway decent makeup artist on a movie could whip up in two seconds.

I didn’t imagine that hellish scene around the rocks on New Year’s Eve.

Just like I didn’t imagine any of this, including the laughter I heard the other night.

I feel my body beginning to tremble because of the cold and realize I’d better get back inside. There are only two possible explanations for the sound I heard coming from beneath me in my house. Either there is a passageway leading to the basement from somewhere around the house, or there is an entryway into the basement through the house itself.

At least I can hunt around inside for the latter.

As I walk up the steps and reach the deck, I look out to the woods around me. Somewhere far below is the creek. Somewhere down the road in the distance is the Staunch residence.

And somewhere, maybe, just maybe, lying in the shadows of the trees or maybe even looking at me from somewhere unseen at this very instant, is Jocelyn.

It’s a nice thought. But it’s probably as imaginary as the laughter I heard. And as the sanity I would really like to have.