Disappearance at Devil's Rock (11 page)

Janice shakes her head, as though she hears Elizabeth's unspoken thoughts, and says, “I guess we'll see what we see.”

“If it works.”

“How much did it cost?”

“Enough.”

Janice softens and rubs her face with her hands. “Well, my day was stupid, because, well, I'm stupid. How about yours?”

Later that night Elizabeth and Kate are on the living room couch, sitting with legs pressed against each other, the camera box open on their laps. Janice with her book and cup of green tea sits ramrod straight on the love seat, her reading glasses sliding to the edge of her nose.

Elizabeth tells Kate that she didn't get a demonstration nor did she ask any of the sales associates about the camera. She assumed it would simply record and save everything at the touch of a button.

Kate, without even having looked at the box, scoffs, “Mom, there's no way that thing has that kind of memory, unless it's uploading to some cloud you probably didn't purchase.”

Elizabeth says, “Cloud? I definitely did not purchase any fluffy clouds,” trying to be obtuse enough to get a smile. Kate's grunt of disproval is close enough.

They read the instructions pamphlet. The camera does have a streaming component. Via the phone app you can watch live what the camera sees, but it doesn't record the stream. Through the app you're able to change the camera angle and zoom ratios. It's supposed to adjust from night vision to daylight settings automatically. There's also a motion sensor with sensitivity settings, and if triggered, the camera takes and saves snapshots or a five-second video clip and an alert message is sent to the phone.

Elizabeth: “Snapshots and clips? That's all? I thought it would record stuff.”

Kate: “You can return it and get a better one.”

Elizabeth says, “Nah,” though she does briefly consider repackaging the camera and the twenty-five-plus minute drive back to the box store. “You mean a more expensive one? It's fine. It'll work. You can help make it work right. Right?”

“I guess,” Kate says and then snatches Elizabeth's phone away from her.

They upload the app, pick a username and password. Its configuration and connection to the device is tricky and doesn't work at first. Kate goes to the family computer and calls up a slew of YouTube video tutorials for setting up the device. Kate shouts, “This is way more complicated than it needs to be.”

“Tell me about it.”

Janice gets up and says, “I'm going to bed early. Good luck with the camera, girls.”

Elizabeth says, “Aw, we need you to be our test subject, and do that Bigfoot walk of yours.”

Kate giggles from the computer desk. When the kids were young, Nana told stories about seeing Bigfoot in the woods and wilds of New Hampshire. The kids' favorite game involved Janice pretending to be Bigfoot and she'd stomp and chase after them in the backyard as they screamed. Even as the kids got older, Janice would occasionally and unexpectedly walk through a room like the arm-swinging Bigfoot in the infamous Patterson film for a laugh.

Janice says, “Well, maybe she'll make an appearance later. You never know. Bigfoot usually has to get up in the middle of the night to go pee now.”

Kate whispers, “'Night, Nana.”

Janice walks by, gives her a hug and a long kiss on the top of her head.

Kate says, “Okay,” and pushes the rolling chair away from the desk, and she spins onto her feet. “I think I got it. And hey, looks like you have thirty free days of cloud space to save snapshots and clips, too, if you want.”

The phone and camera are synced. Elizabeth messes around with the app, but it crashes after trying to switch from the live stream to the camera control screen.

“Grrr. What a hunk of junk. I guess I am taking it back.”

Kate says, “Relax. Apps crash. It's what they do. Try rebooting your phone.”

Elizabeth turns her phone off and then on. “Oh, okay. Looks—good, I guess. Let's test the sucker out.”

Elizabeth places the camera on the TV stand next to the stereo receiver that doesn't work anymore. The body of the camera is small, rectangular, and white, with a cyclopean lens in the middle. Elizabeth thinks it looks like a mini HAL from the movie
2001: A Space Odyssey
. She adjusts the view so that the entire living room fills her phone's screen. The edge of the hallway that leads to their bedrooms is a shadow stage left.

“All right. I'm going in the kitchen. You stay out of sight until I'm ready.”

“Yes, ma'am!”

Elizabeth shuffles out of the living room while watching the static video. She announces, “Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Lights out. You get the desk lamp, please.” Elizabeth kills the lights in the hallway, kitchen, and living room. She leans up against the fridge, her hands cupped around the glowing screen of the phone. The night vision is black-and-white, but it's a crisp, detailed shot. She can see the rug, the couch, the whole room, no problem. She brings the phone closer to her face, as though looking for small-scale flaws or cracks. “Wow. I can see everything fine.”

“Weird. Your voice came through the camera. I forgot to tell you there's a speaker and a mic, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You can talk through it and record sound, too. Ready for me to walk in?”

Elizabeth drops her voice into her lowest register. “I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you do that.”

“Um, what was that supposed to be?”

“Nothing. Quoting an old movie. Go. Go ahead.”

Kate hesitantly walks into the shot from behind the couch. That far away, she looks so small, like a toddler, and then she grows exponentially as she approaches the camera.

Elizabeth says, “So weird. Your eyes and teeth are glowing.”

“Hit the Record button. I want to see it.” A little hesitant wave, exaggerated wide eyes, a big-mouthed smile. Light leaks out of her.

Kate runs to the kitchen and watches the recording. She says, “This is so cool.”

“Isn't it?”

Mother and daughter share a look that quickly crumbles as they remember the purpose and point of the camera.

Elizabeth says, “Okay. It works. But I want to test the motion detection part, and then we'll call it a night.”

The app is glitchy again. The motion detection only seems to work when Kate makes exaggerated arms movements. If she walks through the room slowly, nothing is triggered. The same happens when Elizabeth tries. Kate turns the motion sensitivity settings lower, to five feet in front of the camera and they get better results, but still not perfect.

Kate asks, “What do you think?”

“We'll give it a shot tonight, I guess. Maybe I'll return it tomorrow. Go brush your teeth and get ready for bed. I'll meet you in your bedroom.”

Elizabeth adjusts the camera so she gets a shot of the front door and the living room, and nothing of the hallway or kitchen. She meant what she said to Janice about ruling out someone sneaking into the house. She speaks into the phone: “Hello? Hello?” There's a second or two lag from the phone to the camera's speakers, and she hears herself distorted and tinny, like the treble on an old stereo turned all the way
up. Would Kate even know what treble is? She wants to cry that she's already thinking of Kate as being singular and without Tommy.

Elizabeth says into the phone, “Is anyone there?”

Kate calls out from down the hallway: “Mom? Mom? Are you talking to someone?”

“No one. Myself. Testing the speaker.”

“Okay. Come on, let's go. I'm ready.”

Elizabeth follows Kate into her little yellow bedroom. Kate says, “Don't turn off the lights until I'm in bed.” She's still so young sometimes. Middle school almost broke Tommy in sixth grade, as it almost breaks all of us, and Elizabeth can't think of Kate being in that place by herself. Elizabeth slides into wild contingencies and scenarios that don't make any practical sense: Janice moving in and homeschooling Kate for a year (never mind that Mom has no teaching experience), or paying (with what money?) a rotation of tutors to teach Kate what she needs to pass the sixth-grade state exams, or begging the town to let her repeat fifth grade for her own emotional health and well-being and to keep Kate in a safe place for one more year, just one more year.

“You can turn the light out now.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Kate curls up under the covers. She makes Elizabeth promise to wake her up if she sees anything. She also makes her promise not to stay up all night watching her phone. Elizabeth gives noncommittal okays to both.

Kate flips onto her stomach, and with her head turned away from Elizabeth she says, “This is hard, Mom.”

“The hardest.”

Kate says, “I want Tommy to come back home.”

“Me too.” Her words are an exhale and a resignation to play the part, to see this through until the end, whenever that might be, even if it's never.

“Do you believe he will?”

“I'm trying, Kate.”

“Or do you believe he's a ghost?” Kate whispers
ghost
.

“It's awful but—I think I do. I don't know, Kate. I don't.”

“You don't know what you believe?”

“Yeah. Is that weird?”

“No. That's how I feel, too.”

Elizabeth sits at the edge of the bed and rubs Kate's back until her breathing is deep, long, rhythmic. Kate doesn't move when Elizabeth finally lifts her hand away. Elizabeth turns on the camera app and inspects the empty living room and implacable front door, staring into the corners and crevices of the screen, looking for shapes, for shadows. How can she not watch this all night?

Elizabeth tiptoes out of Kate's room and into the hallway. She listens and only hears the hum of the refrigerator. She holds the phone up to her face and whispers, “Are you there? Tommy?” and her digitally transmogrified words echoes back down the hallway. “I'm so scared.” Her pixilated voice limping back to her is the loneliest sound in the world. She can't bear to hear it again.

Elizabeth opens her bedroom door and remains standing in the doorway. She considers spending the night on the couch and having a staring contest with the camera's eye, to see who blinks first, when there's a knock, or bump, and a shuffle, or something rubbing, sliding on the floor, perhaps. The sounds are mixed up, doubled, an echo within an echo, and Elizabeth realizes the noises are coming from two places at once. Muffled, distant, a thunderstorm at least five-Mississippis away, the sounds originate from the living room, it has to be the living room, and those same sounds, compressed and static filled, filter out of the tiny speaker in her phone.

“Hey? Hello? Is someone there?”

Elizabeth runs down the hallway into the living room and finds it
how she left it: dark and empty. She stands in front of the couch and listens, listens so hard, willing those sounds and its unknown source to regenerate, to show itself, or (as she hopes and fears)
him
self. She goes to the app's audio menu, finds that nothing was recorded, nothing was saved.

She falls backward, landing on the couch, and her phone vibrates with the motion detection alert, then a video clip opens of her sitting on the couch, light spilling out of her eyes.

“Elizabeth? Elizabeth? Are you up?”

Elizabeth pulls her head from between the pillows. It's painfully bright in the room. She cocks one open eye to her bedroom doorway. Janice is standing there, but Kate is there, too, peering out from behind as though her Nana is a hiding spot.

Janice says, “Sorry, honey. I'm glad you actually got some sleep, but there are more pages on the living room floor.”

“Shit! What time is it?” Elizabeth sits up quickly and paws around the bed for her phone.

Janice: “A little after 8:30. I was the first one up. Found the pages there. Same spot. I haven't read them yet, but Kate just did.”

“Phone's on the floor. There.” Kate edges halfway into the room and points.