Poe (17 page)

“He played punk,” says Lisa. “That’s part of the whole punk
thing
.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

A very tense silence hangs for a moment.

“Daniel was brilliant,” says Elizabeth. “He’d always been the center of everything. He could have done anything he wanted, been anything he wanted. But he made bad decisions. Rash decisions.”

“Keeping Amelia wasn’t a bad decision,” says Lisa with a lowered voice.

“But it limited his options,” says Elizabeth. “And when Lisa got into music school,
his
dream, well…”

Now they both stare at the painting, as if it will speak to them, provide a definitive answer.

“He didn’t talk about the voices at first,” Elizabeth continues. “He just seemed tired, a little withdrawn, maybe depressed. I thought it was because of Sarah. But once Lisa started planning her move to LA, he began drawing on walls. Then the walls weren’t enough—it was like they couldn’t
contain
the voices—so he drew on napkins, his body, the soles of his shoes. The same numbers over and over. He said they protected him, protected us. Then I knew. My father, Archibald Bennet, was a respected artist. Watercolors, some woodblock prints, but he’s most famous for his
Amelia
series. He hit a dry spell in his
forties though, and then he heard voices too, drew numbers on the walls. They sent him to an asylum. But they didn’t have much in the way of treatment back then. He was given a partial lobotomy. He never drew on walls again, but then he didn’t remember who any of us were either. A hard trade.”

“And Daniel knew about this?” I ask.

“Papa’s numbers? I don’t know, maybe. I thought I threw all that stuff out, but he could have run across something in the attic.”

“Wait,” I say. “They’re not the
same
numbers?”

Elizabeth nods. “I think they are. But I’m not sure. I didn’t memorize them at the time, and I tried to get rid of anything that contained them. I remember there were numbers in tables. ‘Magic squares’ my father called them.”

Elizabeth turns to the canvas again. The overhead light casts a shadow on her face, revealing dark circles under her eyes, a few lines of crow’s-feet. Just telling the story seems to age her. “He tried to kill Lisa. One day I had a doctor’s appointment for Amelia downtown, and Lisa was home with Daniel. I never thought—
never
—that he would ever do anything to hurt her.”

“That wasn’t Daniel,” adds Lisa firmly.

Elizabeth stares at her uncomprehendingly. “He stabbed her in the neck with a kitchen knife.”

The scar. That’s where her scar came from.

Elizabeth points to the woman in the painting. “She ran into the field, hid behind the thresher. It was a driver passing by who called police. When they came they found Daniel naked, covered in blood. He’d drawn the numbers all over his body—his chest, his arms, and face. And he was screaming, ‘I release thee! I release thee!’ Lisa almost bled to death.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” says Lisa. “It wasn’t that bad.”

I look at Lisa.
Not that bad?
“Did he say why?” I quietly venture.

Elizabeth shakes her head. “There are lyrics to some of the songs that he was working on that make me wonder, but you know anyone
in punk has a few songs about demons.” There’s something too even about her tone; it sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.

“It’s a disease,” says Lisa. “It doesn’t matter whether he thinks the voices were demons, aliens, or the CIA talking to him through an implant in his head. He’s where he needs to be, getting help.”

“If he’s… getting help, why did you think he was in my apartment?”

Elizabeth looks shocked, and I can tell this is news to her. Lisa gives me a quick kick under the table to make the point.

“Somebody broke some pictures at Dimitri’s,” she says with measured calm. I notice she doesn’t mention the letter. I decide not to either. “I thought maybe Daniel had broken out again.”

“Again?” Knife-wielding crazy brother was on the loose?

Lisa reads the expression on my face. “About a year ago Daniel set off the fire alarms by blowing powdered cocoa under the fire detectors, and he got out.” She is, remarkably, unable to keep a small hint of pride out of her voice. “His IQ is off the charts.”

Now they both turn to me, as if waiting for me to make some excuse, head to my car, maybe run over a few chickens as I speed out the driveway. And it
is
quite the complication. But instead I pick up a crust of cold pizza, take a bite.

“So you going to show me your drums, or is that just a line you use to pick up guys?”

Elizabeth’s face breaks out in a warm smile, the warmest of the evening, and she puts her hand over mine. “It’s always better to know what you’re getting into before you jump into bed.”

Lisa throws her spoon onto the table with a clatter. “Really, Mom. I mean
really
.”

But Elizabeth just looks into her empty ice cream bowl, trying and failing to hold back a laugh.

Lisa is still muttering as we head down the stairs to the basement. “Poking her nose in my business… Can’t she just leave it
alone
?”

The basement is remarkable in that it looks nothing like the rest of the house whatsoever. If there had been Kelly green carpeting, then Lisa must have pulled it all up, leaving a bare cement floor covered by a few white, looped throw rugs. There’s an antique brass bed painted firehouse red, pushed up against the cement wall and decorated with modern pillows and a clean linen comforter. The room’s only window lets in a modicum of daylight. On the other side of the room is a white metal desk, and above it a large corkboard covered with Amelia’s artwork, a few casually snapped photos, a flyer for one of Daniel’s gigs, and some handwritten lyrics on college-lined notepaper.

Impossible to miss, dead center in the room, are the drums. Black and chrome, they’re polished to an almost-obsessive gleam.

“They look expensive,” I say.

“I’m still trying to pay them off,” says Lisa. “One of the reasons I can’t afford a place of my own. But the good thing about being way out in the middle of nowhere is that nobody complains about the noise.”

“I can understand that,” I say. “What made you start drumming?”

“Mom says I was always banging on stuff. She got tired of me pulling the pots out of the kitchen, so she got me my first set.”

I hold up a pair of fuzzy bear slippers, arch my eyebrow. “Little big for Amelia, don’t you think?”

“I wasn’t
expecting
company,” she says, snatching them from me. “And just remember I didn’t make fun of your bamboo coffee table.”

“Why, is there something funny about my bamboo coffee table?” I start to tickle her, and her laugh is infectious, bright, and airy. “It’s not polite to laugh.”

“Then stop,” says Lisa between giggles, and somehow we collapse on her bed.
God
, it feels good to laugh.

“Your bed is so comfortable,” I say with a sigh.

Lisa turns over on her side, puts her head charmingly on her hand. “You know I didn’t think you’d run off because of Daniel. But my
mother
. She’s scared off more than a few prospects.”

I wave my hand dismissively. “Wimps all of them.”

Lisa tugs at a button on the comforter. “So you’re not freaked out?” There is a serious note under her light tone.

“You’re talking to the guy who woke up in a morgue, remember? Plus I seem to be attracting some serious weirdness of late. I’m a spooky-shit magnet.”

“What do you mean?”

I pause but decide to fill her in. A part of me agrees with Elizabeth that you
should
know what you’re getting into before you jump into bed, and now that I know Lisa’s whole story, it’d be chickenshit to omit mine. I start at the beginning, which I consider to be the death of my parents. I find the words to briefly describe my mother, my father—it’s hard to talk about them, but I manage. Then I bring her up to speed about the ripped photographic prints, how I made the connection that one is a shot of the woman who was on the other table in the morgue. I try to explain the woman in my dream that I’m calling Poe—just saying the word causes a shiver at the base of my spine—and my new assignment for the
Devonshire Eagle
to investigate the story. I tell her about the article on Aspinwall with the accompanying altered photo, the dream about Daniel in the woods, the
real
snow in my bedroom, and the equally real footprints, and I end with the $500 leather book that’s sitting on the backseat of my Mustang.

“Christ,” says Lisa. She pulls her hair loose from her ponytail, considering. “But you haven’t said anything about the envelope.”

“Like I’m going to. If I remember correctly, you looked more than a little freaked out when you saw it.”

“I
might
have overreacted.”

“You recognized the writing. You thought it was Daniel’s.”

She nods. “But it couldn’t be, right? If he’s in the hospital?”

“Maybe he sent someone,” I say, immediately regretting it because her face falls as she considers this.

“It’s possible. What did it say?”

“
Race you
.”

“Like your dream,” she says hesitantly.

“Well, I’d just read it before taking some serious sleep medication,” I say with a forced note of cheer. “No wonder.”

She’s obviously not buying it.

“So
are
you freaked out?” I ask.

I can see that Lisa is choosing her words carefully. “You know what I said upstairs about Daniel suffering from a disease? That it wasn’t him, it was the schizophrenia?”

I nod.

“Well, he was also starting to get into some really
dark
stuff. Occult stuff. He used to hang out at Aspinwall alone. Said he could write better there.”

“And you went with him?”

“Sometimes. I was worried about him. How do you think I knew where all the bad floorboards were? But the termites must have got worse over time; the dining room used to be pretty solid.”

An unsettling thought dawns on me. “You were
looking
for something that night. That’s why you crashed our spooky party.”

“Partly. I thought maybe he’d left something behind. Something that would help me… understand.”

“I feel so
used
,” I say in mock hurt.

“I said
partly
. I wanted to meet you too—”

“Sure, easy to say now that you know I’m such a catch.”

Lisa punches me on my arm.

“Ow. First you use me, now you beat me. I think I liked you better when I didn’t know you.”

She gives me a warning look. “Dimitri—”

“Kidding, okay? Just trying to lighten the mood. So did you find anything?”

She sighs. “Nothing but the usual crumpled beer cans, cigarette stubs. But then I found something really weird in an old saltine tin. Scratched my hand trying to get it out from a hole in the wall.”

She leans over the bed and pulls up the tin. It’s rusted, dented, but the colors are still remarkably intact and the name clearly visible, Bremner Wafers. I pull off the top. It smells smoky, there’s ash at the bottom, and inside is a folded sheet of paper. I carefully open it up. A bad Xerox copy with certain words underlined with red marker:

Dark sigil of the sun
,

Numbers end 4, 2, 31
,

Lay out the magic square
,

Light candles, then beware
,

Become a god, become a slave
,

Two sides of the same coin
,

Become a god, become a slave
,

Your soul and his will join
.

“Daniel wrote this?”

“No, that’s what’s weird. I Googled the lyrics, and they’re from an eighties metal song, “Succubi Dreams.” Daniel
hated
eighties metal—said they were fat corporate bands playing at being dark so they could snort coke and pay off their Beverly Hills mansions.”

“But you think it’s somehow related. What’s happening to me and what happened to your brother.”

“I don’t know for sure, but
still
. He was looking for something. Maybe he found it.”

“Look, Lisa,” I say, “a lot of people have listened to this shit. Not everyone—”

“Stabs their sister. I know. But I just think there are some doors you’re better off not opening. And just to be safe, I’d feel better if you threw out that book. Leave it alone. Be happy instead.”

She traces her hand on my face, and for a moment it seems possible that I could find happiness with Lisa in a small farmhouse on the outskirts of town.

But I place my hand on hers. “The only problem is that whatever
it
is, I don’t think it’s going to leave
me
alone.”

A pause. “That’s what Daniel said once. When he was still lucid.” Her voice chokes on the last word.

I lightly kiss her cheek. “Play something for me.”