The Dead Circle (7 page)

Chris shook his head again. Frank knelt down and leaned in to him. He was so much bigger than the six-year-old boy. Frank’s size felt overwhelming, impossibly powerful. He smelled like onions and sweat. Chris tried to place the odor. It wasn’t the type of sweat smell he would get from running around the playground, it was the type of sweat he got when he was really afraid.

His mind raced.
Why would the man be scared? He was an adult. Adults never get scared. Besides, he was smiling. Who smiles when they’re scared?
Chris just felt more confused.

“I’m… I’m… just looking for Daddy.”

Frank put his hand on his shoulder. It felt heavy and strong. It felt hard somehow, like he was almost flexing it. Chris was now truly frightened. He couldn’t even put his finger on what was scaring him so much, but something deep and instinctual told him to be very wary of this man. It was a feeling he had never felt before.

“Well of course you are. Your daddy told me he was going to load up the car and he wants me to take you out to the parking lot to meet him.”

Chris did not know what to do. He was supposed to do what adults said, but he really didn’t want to go outside with Frank.
But maybe Daddy
is
out there and will be mad at me for not doing what the adult said?
He was completely lost. He felt tears coming.

The hand on his shoulder tightened and he felt himself being pushed towards the door. He wanted to scream, but his father had told him ‘under NO circumstances do you shout and make a scene in a public place.’

He was being pushed hard now. They were moving towards the exit at a fast walk. Fast for an adult, it was almost running to a child. Chris was trying to keep up, but his feet felt clumsy. He was so confused. He was sweating. He felt a warm wetness starting in his pants. ‘
Oh no! Not that! I’m a big boy now I don’t-’

“Chris! There you are! Damn it! What did I tell you?”

The sound of his father’s voice, even as angry as it was, filled Chris with an overwhelming sense of relief. The hand on his shoulder disappeared immediately.

 Chris saw his father walking briskly down the aisle towards him. He looked back for Frank, but somehow he was already three aisles away. Just a blue and tan blur. Gone.

“I told you to stay on the bench! What were you thinking?!”

The tears poured out of him. Chris could barely get words out between sobs. “I…I’m… sorry… Daddy. I got… lost… I didn’t mean to.”

“Who was that guy with you?”

“I… I.. don’t know.” Chris wiped the snot dripping out of his nose with the back of his sleeve. “He… he said he worked here.”

His father’s face twitched. Was that fear that Chris saw?
Was Daddy…scared too?

“The hell he does.” His voice seemed ice-cold. Chris didn’t think he’d ever seen him this angry. “That guy doesn’t work here.”

Chris was now sobbing loudly. He’d lost all sense of self-consciousness. A few other customers milled around looking very interested in the discount blazers next to where Chris and his father stood. They flipped aimlessly through the jackets and pretended not to listen.

“What you did was incredibly stupid. You could have been killed. Or worse.”

Chris didn’t really know what that meant, but it was scary. But it wasn’t as scary as the fear in his father’s voice. Not knowing what else to say, Chris just nodded and choked out “I…I’m sorry.”

His father seemed to soften just a bit. He knelt down to the boy and gave him a long hug. Chris felt his sobs start to slow down and he felt the terror draining out.

After a bit his father released him and put his hands on his shoulders. They were face to face. His eyes were misty, like he might have cried a bit too.

“You wet yourself.”

“I’m… I’m sorry Daddy.”

The embarrassment of hearing it out loud is too much for Chris to even process, especially in front of all of these people. He knew his pants were wet. His socks were wet too. He was too upset to feel the shame, but the shame and embarrassment would come soon enough.

“What have I told you about keeping control Chris?”

“I was so… so… scared. I didn’t know what to do.”

He shook his head for a moment as if he considered yelling some more, but thought better. Somewhere in his father was a shred of compassion.

“No, it’s OK. We’ll get you some fresh clothes. It’s alright.”

Chris took a deep breath.
It’s almost over. It must be.
He wanted more than anything just to go home and never come back to JCPenney ever in his life.

“Listen, Chris. Do you know whose fault this was?”

Chris didn’t know what to say.
Was this a trick question?

“It was
your
fault.”

Chris swallowed but didn’t say anything.

“There are all sorts of dangers all around us. People, things, behaviors. They can all hurt you. Kill you even.” He paused for a second to let it sink in. “You have to be
smart
. What happened today was that you did something stupid. I told you to stay on the bench and you left. Whatever happens after that is your fault.”

Chris felt the tears coming again. He started to feel increasingly guilty for what he did. Anger started to percolate. Anger at himself.

“Do you understand me? This is very important.”

“Yes Daddy.”

Chris did not understand at all, at least not yet. But, not knowing what else to do, he nodded and wiped his nose with his sleeve again.

“OK. Let’s go home.”

***

“Chris.”

“Chris!”

“Huh?” Chris wakes up next to Sarah on the couch. He’d fallen asleep with his head in her lap. “How long have I been out?”

“About an hour. I think we need to give up on having food delivered. I’ll make some sandwiches.”

“Do you need help?”

“I just need you to get off my leg before it falls off.”

Chris gets up. “You could have moved me.”

“You’re adorable when you sleep. Like a puppy. At least until you ripped one that made my face melt.”

“Lies!”

Sarah gets up and goes downstairs. Chris picks up the remote and switches back to live TV. There’s nothing on. Even the national stations are just showing a black screen. No static, no test signal, just blackness.

“Fuck Time Warner.” Chris grumbles to himself. “TV’s out.” He shouts downstairs to Sarah.

“What?”

“TV’s out.”

“What? I can’t hear you.”

Chris gives up and checks the news on his phone. According to the CNN homepage, there’s nothing much interesting happening. No mention of Detroit at all.

“What were you saying?”

Sarah climbs up the stairs from the kitchen holding a plate with two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and some sliced cucumbers.

“Cucumbers? What about chips?”

“You have to eat actual food every once in a while husband. No matter how much you want to keep pretending that you’re fifteen, you’re on the wrong side of forty now.”

Chris shrugs. “Look at this. The TV is out. All of the stations, not just the locals. I guess Time Warner is shitting the bed tonight.”

Sarah frowns, disconcerted. “What if it’s something more serious than that? Terrorism or something?”

“I checked CNN online and there’s nothing at all about Detroit. I figure they’d mention something like terrorists. Besides, look out the window, its dead quiet out there. Unless you count the rain.”

*

Six hours later, Chris is woken by a noise. Or rather, the absence of noise. Downtown Detroit is usually relatively deserted at 3:00 in the morning. Unless someone is a prostitute, drug dealer or someone in need of their services, there is not much reason to be out. But anyone who lives in an urban environment knows that within a city limit, there is a perpetual drone of noise. It’s not always loud, but an ambient level of sound is inevitable and endless. Chris and Sarah have grown used to the hum of traffic, the wail of sirens, the screeching hydraulics of a garbage truck, the clanging of a maintenance crew working on some pipe below the street or just the distant rumble of the elevated train. No matter the hour, complete silence, like complete darkness, is unachievable.

Chris, who had initially struggled to sleep in the city after growing up in rural northern Michigan, has now adapted to the noise and finds it strangely comforting while he sleeps. As if the real world keeps a foot in the door, reminding him that it exists, making his nightmares seem less real.

It was the impossible quiet that woke him up. He had been dreaming of trying to climb down an uneven ladder in pitch black silence. He couldn’t see or hear anything, but he knew he was in danger. Deprived of his senses, he felt powerless to protect himself. He put his foot down expecting to find a step that hadn’t been there and he started to slip. He flailed out wildly trying to grab hold of something to stop his fall, but his arms were heavy and dull. He could not seem to get them to move fast enough to catch the ladder and he continued to plummet.

When he wakes up, the blankets are completely twisted around him.

Chris hates the sensation of not knowing exactly where he is and what is happening. He finds disorientation embarrassing as if the loss of awareness, however fleeting, not only unnerves but actually emasculates him. Attempting to regain his bearings, he reaches out for Sarah who sleeps to his left. She’s not there. This is not unusual. Sarah suffers from occasional insomnia, and Chris is no longer that startled by her not being there. But tonight he is especially disquieted, by the quiet itself.

Throwing on a t-shirt, Chris exits the bedroom and heads up the stairs into the library. No lights are on, but a streetlight’s glow through the window creates a soft outline of Sarah.

“Why don’t you turn a light on? You look like a Bond villain plotting to laser the White House from space.” Chris walks toward her, trying his best to remember where the coffee table is and not stub his toe for the third time this month.

Sarah ignores his joke. “Something is wrong.” She doesn’t turn to greet him. She remains still, staring out the window.

“What do you mean?”

“Listen.” Her voice carries more than a hint of anxiety.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly.  Where is the street noise? The cabs, the drunks, the sirens. The city is completely silent.”

“Yeah. That’s what woke me up I think.”

“I haven’t seen a single car go by. Or anybody.”

Chris puzzles for a second. “Well, it is the middle of the night. Anything on the news? TV?”

“The cable’s still out.”

Chris grabs a blanket from the couch and sits down on the window-seat with Sarah. The large upholstered alcoves are one of his favorite features of the library. He imagines they were originally designed for kids to sit on while they read story books.

“Weird. What about online? I only checked CNN.com, maybe the local news sites will have something.”

“I checked the Detroit Times, but there’s nothing there.”

Chris picks up Sarah’s phone and clicks on the Detroit Times website.

“What do you mean? Did it crash? It looks fine to me.”

“Look more carefully. It hasn’t been updated since 5:00 yesterday afternoon. It’s the same with all the local news sites.”

“Still nothing on the national news? You check the New York Times?”

“They all look normal. But, there’s no mention of what’s happening here whatsoever.”

Chris stares out the window for a moment. His troubled feeling starts to intensify. He feels that strange pull in the pit of his stomach that he remembers from the time he spent in New York City in the aftermath of 9/11. He hadn’t been there on the infamous day—he arrived almost a year later, and there were no bombs going off or terrorists running around—but he remembers the city having that intangible feeling that something was
off
. He could feel an ominous cloud, an ethereal something, created by the shared background anxiety of millions of rattled but resolute New Yorkers as they stubbornly went about their day despite the fearful cacophony of politicians, media and out-of-town relatives.

“Maybe we should go look around? See if we can find somebody who knows what’s going on?”

Sarah stares at her husband as if he had sprouted a second head. She was already worried, but now Chris is really scaring her. Her fear bubbles over into anger.

“Is there something about having a penis that makes men idiots? We don’t know what’s going on out there. Something is terribly wrong. And you want to just walk out into it!?”

“What are you talking about? Do you see any explosions? Did I miss Godzilla walking by? There’s no reason to believe there’s any danger. Think logically. You’re overreacting.”

Chris immediately regrets saying that. He knows he’s stepped in dangerous territory. Sarah does not like to be told she’s overreacting.

“And you’re acting like the guy who ends up being chum in the horror movie!”

“I’m sorry I said you were overreacting. I know you just want us to be safe. I want that too.”

Sarah catches herself and softens. It’s time to prioritize. Their safety is more important to her than scoring a point in an old fight. “Chris, listen. I love you very much and I want you to do something for me: take this seriously. Humor me. If it turns out to be nothing, I’ll owe you one. I’ll make it up to you.”

Her tone gets his attention. He can tell she is genuinely terrified. Sarah, while not immune to a bout of anxiety or two, is rarely scared.

“OK. I’m with you. What do you want to do?” 

“Do you still have your hockey stick?”

“Sure. I think it’s in the hall closet.”