Bone by Bone

'You have to see this for yourself,' said Hannah. 'That's why I stopped his medication when I knew you were coming home.'

'You mean your medication-the prescription I filled at the drugstore, right?' Oren got up from his chair and left the kitchen. As he walked down the hall, Hannah was close behind him.

'He won't go to a doctor,' she said. 'So I go. It doesn't matter much if the doctor sees him or me.' She spat out the word, 'Doctors. They can't agree on anything. One tells you it's not psychological-and another one says it's all in your head. And your father believes it's all in my head.'

The judge stood before the front door, pulling on the knob, then jerking it. His eyes were vacant and so at odds with his urgency to get out of the house.

Hannah looked up at Oren. 'This morning I changed his decaf for regular coffee, real strong and lots of it. Caffeine is one of the triggers that brings it on, and the medication keeps it turned off. It's like working a pharmaceutical light switch.'

The old man twisted the knob with one hand and banged on the door with the other. Oren took his cue from the housekeeper, who showed no sign of alarm. This was something witnessed many times.

'Your father doesn't see the locks. The door he's looking at doesn't have any yet. I got locks on the windows, too, but he's never tried to get out that way. I don't know why. Only doors.'

'The window wasn't locked when I came home last night.'

'No need. I was waiting up for you. Must've fallen asleep in my chair.'

Her second job as the sleepwalker's watcher would explain why the judge thought she seemed sluggish at times, and this must be why she took naps in the afternoon.

His father began to cry, and Oren came undone. He had never seen the old man in tears before, not even after Josh went missing.

'He wants to get out of here so bad,' said Hannah. 'He's got the night terrors.'

'How long does this go on?'

You don't have to whisper,' she said. 'It's real hard to wake him. This can last a few minutes or half an hour, sometimes longer.'

The judge gave up on the door. Oren and Hannah followed him down the hall and into the kitchen. The housekeeper motioned for Oren to take a seat as she poured their whiskey. She pushed one of the shot glasses to his side of the table. 'You'll need that.'

So spake Hannah the Oracle, and he knocked back the whiskey with unconditional faith.

His father had found the back door and struggled to open it. His obstacles were three strong bolts, but he never tried to undo them, not that he could-not without a key.

Hannah watched, almost bored by this. 'It began after Josh went missing, but it only happened a few times. You were never around in those days-always out in the woods, looking for your brother. Then the night terrors started up again when the judge sent you away at the end of that summer. The sleepwalking went on for a long time, but then it finally stopped. Years and years went by.'

'And then the bones started turning up on the front porch.'

'Anxiety.' Hannah rewarded him with a smile. 'That's the key.'

Oren looked up to see the judge staring at him. 'Sir?'

'Don't get fooled,' said Hannah. 'He's looking your way, but you don't know who he sees in your chair.'

'You should've told me this was going on. You didn't have to go through this alone.'

'I promised your father I wouldn't worry you with this silly notion of mine-that he walks in his sleep.'

The desperate need for escape was forgotten. The judge opened the refrigerator, perused its contents and pulled out a jar of pickles. Next he raided the breadbox, and then he stood at the counter, using a fork to smear one slice with the juice from the jar.

'He thinks that's mayonnaise,' said the housekeeper, shaking her head. 'There's as many theories about what's going on here as there are experts who think they know what they're talking about.'

'He's acting out a dream?'

'Some say yes.' She riffled the papers in the stack on the table. 'Others say he can't be dreaming. Sleepwalking happens in non-REM sleep.' She laid one of the printed sheets in front of him. 'But according to this doctor, he can sleepwalk in a dream state. When you deal with more than one medical opinion, it's always a crapshoot.'

The judge sat down with them. An invisible object was cradled in one arm, and now, with great care, he set it down on the table. After lifting a latch that only he could see, he stared at the contents of a box that was not there.

'I've seen that before.' Hannah shook her head. 'I mean to say-'

'I know.' Oren also stared at the nonexistent box. 'Any idea what it is?'

'Wish I knew. It drives me nuts. No sense in asking him. His answers don't always work with the questions. Watch this.' She leaned toward her employer and raised her voice. 'What's in the box?'

The judge turned to her without expression and said, 'The soup was burning on the stove.'

'Nothing to do with my question.' Hannah sat back in her chair and turned to Oren. 'But you heard his answer clear as can be.'

He nodded. His father might be reliving a night months after Josh had vanished. Oren had come home from the woods, dirty and exhausted. The judge and the housekeeper had waited up for him long past the dinner hour. Distracted and frazzled, Hannah had allowed the soup to bubble over in its pot and burn. Now Oren could see it, and he could smell it, too. A trace of that same broth lingered in the air tonight, mingled with the stale odor of lamb cooked for dinner. He had a collection of scents that triggered strong emotions. In combat zones, the stench of burning flesh called up the adrenaline rush of a man standing out on a ledge. The smell of Hannah's soup conjured the helplessness of a teenage boy in freefall.

The housekeeper held up a sheaf of papers clipped together. 'This doctor says a sleepwalker's speech is incomprehensible gibberish. That's how I know the fool phoned in his research. He for damn sure never talked to anybody who lives with a sleepwalker.' She crumpled these sheets into a ball and tossed them over one shoulder as she pushed the rest of the stack to Oren's side of the table. 'It's not like any of these idiots talk to each other, either.'

Oren touched his father's arm, asking, 'What's in the box?'

'Our child is lost,' said the judge. 'I need another miracle.'

'Well,' said Hannah, 'now we know he's talking to your dead mother.'

'Another miracle. What does that mean?'

'The stuff of dreams,' she said. 'Nothing more. You know your father doesn't hold with miracles when he's awake.' She pulled the pharmacy bottle from her pocket and set it on the table. 'He sleeps through the night when I slip Lorazepam into his whiskey. It won't cure him. Nothing will- and that's the only thing the experts agree on. But the drug keeps him out of mischief, and I can get some rest.'

Oren watched the old man close the lid of the dreamed box. 'This is why you hide the car keys in a tea tin.'

She nodded. 'One night, I found him behind the wheel. He was almost to the end of the driveway when he woke up. He can do lots of things when he's sleeping. My big fear is that he'll get out of the house one night and go for a walk in the woods.'

'Answer the phone,' said the judge, though the telephone was not ringing.

Hannah leaned toward him, saying loudly, 'It's not my call! It's for you!' She turned to Oren. 'Sometimes he can understand me-so long as it works with what's going on in his head.'

The judge rose from his chair and walked to the telephone mounted on the kitchen wall. He picked up the receiver and held it to his ear. After a few seconds, it dropped from his hand and swung from its cord. There was surprise in the old man's eyes, as if he were seeing his surroundings for the first time. He looked down at his bare feet, not wanting to meet the eyes of his son and the housekeeper. Shyly, he slipped out of the kitchen and padded off down the hall. They heard the cowbells ring as the bedroom door closed behind him.

'Your father gets embarrassed when he wakes up that way.' The housekeeper retrieved the dangling receiver and set it back on the wall cradle. 'But he won't remember any of this in the morning.' Hannah returned to the table to pluck another paper from her stack. 'This expert says it's dangerous to wake a sleepwalker.' She laid it down and covered it with another. 'And this one says it isn't dangerous at all.' She crumpled both of them. 'You see why I get frustrated?'

'What do you think, Hannah? What's going on with him?'

'Well, what's in a nightmare? It's the intolerable thing. You remember your dreams, don't you? He never does. I think he's struggling with something that can't be said out loud. This unspeakable thing, it's something he can't deal with in a wide-awake brain. Sleepwalking is like his safety valve. His worst thoughts come out at night, and he never has to remember them when he wakes up.' She sat back in her chair, downed her shot glass in one gulp, and then she poured another. 'That's why I used to take him to the seances. Things slip out there. Sometimes things bypass your brain and just pop out on the witchboard.'

'It's a scam.' Oren filled his glass again.

Hannah smiled. 'I remember a time when you thought different. How old were you when Mrs. Underwood died? You know who I mean-the old lady who used to live down on Paulson Lane.'

'Our Good Samaritan duty.'

'Right. I guess you were eleven and Josh was nine. That woman was very old, close to ninety. The judge was real surprised when you boys took her death so hard-all those nightmares.' Hannah's grin spread slow and wide. 'But you and I both know what caused those scary dreams. It was the witchboard you hid behind the washing machine. Did you boys really believe that I never cleaned behind the washing machine?'

Oren smiled. With the destruction of that old Ouija board, Hannah had ended the midnight conversations between two children and a dead woman in the dark of a cellar. Most of Mrs. Underwood's communication from the grave had been simple yes or no responses, but whole words had also been spelled out. Cold drafts of air had sometimes blown out their only candle, causing the boys to stifle screams of fear and delight. And all through that winter, Josh and Oren had believed in magic.

Kid stuff.' He shook his head. 'This is different. Alice Friday is a con artist. That Ouija board of hers is just a cheap trick.'

It is, and it isn't,' said Hannah. 'Nothing magical or supernatural about it, but it does work in a way. You used to have an open mind.' She laid one small hand atop his. 'And then you grew up.' This was said with a small measure of pity.

Oren poured himself another shot. 'I've dealt with lots of psychics in homicide cases. They turn up at the funerals so they can meet the grieving relatives-and fleece them. Bloodsuckers.'

'But there's no charge, Oren. The seances are free. So where's the crime?

'It's fraud.' He made no distinctions between the fakes who charged and the ones who did it for attention. In his experience, they all did real damage to the families of victims.

Hannah sipped from her shot glass. 'A witchboard can only tell you what you already know. That's my take on it. Most of the time, the board spells out nonsense words. You have to work at it to force out a meaning. More like therapy than magic, but it's way more interesting than that. And you'd be surprised at who turns up out there in the woods.'

'Like the judge? That surprised me.'

'At first he went on my account. I told him I was scared to go alone.'

'And he believed that? You're not afraid of anything. He knows how you drive a car.'

Ignoring this, Hannah continued. 'So your father, always a gentleman, escorted me out there one night. He only watched for a while. The little wooden thing-a heart with a hole in it? Well, none of the players could believe they were moving it around the board.'