Lost Signals (46 page)

“My bones are singing,” Dylan said.

Brian Sr. stepped back and sized him up.

“You weren’t electrocuted, were you
 
?”

“I don’t think so.”

“No, of course not.” Brian Sr. put an arm around the child. “Believe me, if you were electrocuted, you’d know it. It does NOT tickle.” He led Dylan to a chair and got him a glass of water. “Drink this. You’ll feel better.”

Dylan took the tiniest of sips and retched, emptying his stomach onto the floor. A droplet of spittle clung to his lower lip.

“I think I’d like to go home now,” he said. The droplet fell.

“Of course. Brian, get my keys. I’ll give Dylan a ride home.”

***

Dylan wasn’t in school the following day. When Brian got home that afternoon, he tried calling his house. No one answered. Dylan’s dad worked late, but his mother rarely went out. A fist formed in Brian’s stomach as he hung up the phone.

Dylan was absent the next day as well. After school, Brian helped his father replace the light bulb in the tree house and test out the gear. Everything seemed to work fine.

“KDK 12 to KDK 1,” Brian Sr. said into the mic. The words made the fist in Brian’s stomach clench and unclench.

By the time dinner rolled around, anxiety had shot Brian’s appetite to shit. He stared past his dad, out the window and across the backyard. The tree house, normally obscured by the woods, stood out like a movie set, lit up from within.

He jumped as the jangle of the phone interrupted his reverie. Like most of the technology in the house, it skewed analog. His father owned an electronics shop downtown and never bought anything new.

“Hello
 
?” his father said into the receiver. Brian hadn’t seen him get up. He could tell by his father’s demeanor that whatever the news, it wasn’t good.

“Uh huh. Uh huh. Sure. We’ll be there right away.”

He hung up the phone and looked at his son. Brian’s throat went dry.

“Dylan’s in the hospital. They want you to go down and get checked out.”

They left without clearing the table. Dinner’s awkward silence took the ride with them to the hospital. Brian didn’t even bother turning on the radio. He didn’t want to fill the airspace with unnecessary noise. A million questions already bounced around in his head. Questions he knew his father didn’t have the answers to.

After three hours of testing they still didn’t have any answers. Brian had been poked, prodded, stuck, bled and scanned, but no one told him why. When he tried to ask the nurse, she told him the doctor would explain everything. When he asked if he’d be able to see Dylan, she made a face like a thief caught in the act and beat a hasty retreat. The whole time his father sat there and held his hand, just as nervous as Brian. Their frustration peaked by the time the doctor finally showed up.

“And how are we this evening
 
?” the doctor said, oblivious to the flippancy of the question.

“You tell us.” Brian Sr. said.

“Right.” The doctor looked down at his chart. “Everything checks out. You’re free to go.”

Brian got up to leave, but his father held him back.

“Just like that
 
?”

“Better than the alternative, wouldn’t you agree
 
?” It sounded like a taunt.

“What about Brian’s friend
 
?”

“Yeah, what about Dylan
 
?” Brian chimed in.

“I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to discuss your friend’s case with you. Doctor patient confidentiality and all.”

“Can I see him
 
?”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

Brian hung his head in defeat, but his father didn’t give up so easily.

“Now wait just a minute. I was told the kid had some kind of infection. Obviously you thought my son might have the same thing, so I think we’re well within our rights to ask.”

The doctor mulled it over.

“All I can say is your friend seems to have come in contact with a mild pathogenic bacteria. Chances are, this occurred before your little slumber party.”

“It wasn’t a slumber party,” Brian said, more to himself than anyone.

“So then why all the secrecy
 
?” Brian Sr. said.

“We didn’t want to cause a panic.”

Brian’s dad opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Luckily the effects of the bacteria seem to be benign,” the doctor said.

“Seem to be
 
?” Brian Sr.’s voice rose in pitch.

“Absolutely.” The doctor tousled Brian’s hair. “The boy’s fine. We’ll just need to see him for a follow-up next week. Make sure he hasn’t sprouted any extra limbs.”

Brian Sr. shook his head.

“So why can’t I see Dylan
 
?” Brian asked.

“Dylan’s not here,” the doctor said, already on his way out the door. “He’s been transferred to another facility.”

***

Brian kept waiting for Dylan to return to school, but he never did. The phone company had disconnected his phone and someone had hung a “For Sale” sign in front of his house. Small town rumors ran amuck, but in reality no one knew what happened. It made Brian feel guilty for ever having questioned their friendship.

His guilt blossomed into a full-on stumbling block, inhibiting his ability to make close friends. He dropped out of high school and enrolled in an out-of-state telecommunications program. After that he spent eight years in the military as a COMSEC Repairer. It wasn’t until after his father got sick that he finally returned home.

“I missed you so much, I went and got cancer,” his father would joke. Brian smiled through gritted teeth whenever he said it. His father went through a slow, steady decline, and it took its toll on both of them. By the time the man passed, Brian figured he might as well finish out his life where it began. He thought of it as a closed circuit.

The funeral was a low-key affair. Not a lot of people turned out, but they didn’t live in a huge town. Mostly regular customers from his father’s shop—the kind who used the excuse of a twenty-cent part to hang around and shoot the shit. Brian was surveying their faces for the umpteenth time when he noticed someone familiar in the back row. He looked bigger and balder than when he’d seen him last, but Brian recognized Dylan right away. His old friend gave a slight nod, as if to confirm his identity.

“Sure was sad to see your old man go like that.” A wrinkled face popped into Brian’s line of sight, blocking his view. Brian tried to look past the old-timer, but the man possessed ninja-level eye contact skills. He locked on like a heat-seeking missile.

“Thanks, Raymond. I appreciate it.”

Raymond just stood there smiling like an idiot. Brian pulled him in for an impromptu hug so he could see past him. The back row was empty.

Other than that, the evening passed uneventfully. After the priest said a prayer and the stragglers finished straggling, Brian found himself standing by his car in the parking lot. He stared up at the sky as the last of the taillights receded into the night.

“It sure is something, isn’t it
 
?”

Brian didn’t have to look to put a face to the voice.

“I thought I’d seen a ghost.”

“Who says I’m not
 
?”

Brian could hear the grin behind the words. He turned in their direction. Dylan stood a good twenty feet away. Brian resumed his stargazing. He couldn’t bring himself to devote more than one sense to the possible apparition at a time.

“Those stars are the real ghosts,” he said. “Their light traveled millions of years just to let us know they existed.”

The two men lapsed into silence.

“I guess I owe you an explanation,” Dylan finally said.

“I don’t know if it even matters at this point.”

“Fair enough. How about a drink
 
?”

“Everyone’s headed over to the Hat Rack.”

Dylan pushed some gravel around with his foot. “It’d be better if no one knows I’m in town.”

Brian looked at his friend—
really
looked at him. His face was haggard, unshaven. He wore loose fitting clothes with worn elbows and patched knees. A weariness framed his eyes. He resembled a hungry dog, looking for a handout, willing to bite if necessary.

“You need a place to stay
 
?” Brian motioned towards the car. “You can crash at my place.”

Dylan didn’t move.

“If it’s okay with you, I think I’d rather walk.”

Brian studied him some more, but couldn’t glean anything further from his appearance.

“Suit yourself. I’ve waited this long . . . ”

Brian unlocked the car and got in. He watched Dylan in the rearview as he pulled away. Dylan didn’t start walking until after Brian had turned out of the parking lot onto the road.

He didn’t expect Dylan to show up, but he left the porch light on anyway. After pouring himself a cold cup of coffee he went into his dad’s room and booted up the old computer. The dial-up modem roared like a prehistoric beast. When it finally connected to the ISP, he did a simple Google search. Even at 56 Kbps, it didn’t take long to find the info he wanted. He fell asleep in his chair waiting for the police report to load.

He tried not to think about Dylan in the days that followed. He distracted himself by attending to his father’s affairs, minding the shop and cleaning up the house. The garage alone housed floor to ceiling broken equipment and spare parts. He hesitated to use the “H” word, but his father had never been one for throwing things away. Sorting through the detritus helped him feel more connected to his father, which in turn made it harder to get rid of anything.

A few nights later he found himself staring out the kitchen window, drinking a bottle of beer. The trees behind the house had crept closer over the years, encroaching on the backyard like Birnam Wood. Their shadow obscured the old tree house.
When was the last time anyone had been out there
 
?
He grabbed the rest of his six-pack and went to investigate.

As he approached he saw the dilapidated condition of the place. Its angles had warped like a funhouse as the tree grew, causing half the roof to cave in. Luckily the ladder remained intact. He assumed he’d have to lay into the door, but it took only a gentle push for it to swing open. Brian stood at the threshold and looked back in time. The place looked as though it had been hermetically sealed. He flipped the light switch and the bulb surprised him with light. The ancient radio equipment looked like it had seen regular use.

“I cleaned the place up a bit.”

“Jesus, fuck
 
!” Brian whirled around, dropping the beer. Glass cracked and brown liquid spread across the platform like sea foam.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Dylan said from the ground. He looked somewhat better than the last time Brian saw him. He had recently shaved, and wore layers of weather-appropriate clothing. Adrenaline flooded Brian’s senses as Dylan climbed up the ladder.

“What are you doing out here
 
?”

Dylan bent to inspect the mess. He came back up with two unmolested bottles. He held one out to Brian.

“We were gonna have a drink, remember
 
?”

“Right.” Brian said it slow, willing calm into his voice. He extended a timid hand and accepted the beer. He popped the cap on an exposed nailhead and went inside the tree house to sit. Dylan did the same.

Brian gulped down half his beer. Dylan took a patient pull on his own. The wind through the trees provided ambient noise. An owl hooted its call sign.

“So . . . ” Brian picked at the label on his bottle.

“I thought you said it didn’t matter
 
?”

“I guess I changed my mind.”

Dylan exhaled slow, as if the weight of his confession had been preemptively lifted.

“Where to begin
 
? Did you know I’m allergic to radio waves
 
?”

Brian blinked. “Like those people who’re afraid of cell phones and wear tin-foil hats
 
?” Even before the words left his mouth, he wanted to cram them back in. Dylan took it in stride.

“Ironic, isn’t it
 
?”

“I’m sorry,” Brian said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“That’s okay, I’m used to it. But the fact of the matter is, electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a real disorder that affects thousands of people every day. Some of us can’t use cell phones or listen to the radio. Others have to live completely off the grid.”

Brian connected the dots. “That’s why you wouldn’t get in the car with me.”

Dylan nodded.

“You know, you could have just asked me to turn the radio off.”

“I didn’t want to risk it. A few residual waves is all it takes to make me violently ill. Disorientation, nausea . . . sound familiar
 
?”

“Are you saying that’s why you got sick that night
 
?”

Dylan took another slug of beer, shrugged his shoulders. “I wound up in the hospital with a hundred and three fever.”

“Was that the hospital’s diagnosis
 
?”

“No.” Dylan shook his head. “EHS hasn’t been formally recognized by the mainstream medical community. They said I contracted a bacterial infection. But guess what
 
? Bacteria transmit their own electromagnetic signals.”

“I . . . wasn’t aware of that.”

“On a lower frequency than radio, but yeah, they do. Their DNA acts as an antenna. It’s like wireless internet.”

“Oh. Well, you know me. I never had a mind for computers. I still use Dad’s old dial-up.”

“I remember that machine.” Dylan smiled. “We’d wait forever just to see one measly pair of tits.”

Brian smiled back.

“Your dad was a good man.” Dylan raised his beer.

Brian met it with his own. The two men locked eyes.

“Thanks.”

And then the moment passed.

“Anyway,” Dylan said, “my parents had insurance, so of course the hospital ran every test in the book. They hooked me up to an EKG and the thing went haywire. Next thing I know, I’m being air-lifted to a military hospital three states over.”