Hitchers (13 page)

People from my grandparents' generation ridiculed my generation for our reliance on therapists, our namby-pamby navel-gazing, but it was astonishing to me that a couple could be as dysfunctional as my grandparents and never seek help.

When Grandpa had first taken control, he'd spoken directly to me, knowing I could hear. Now I felt the urge to reciprocate. I inhaled to speak, feeling vaguely moronic, but pushed on.

“What will it take, Grandpa? What do I have to do to get you out of me?” I paused, as if expecting him to answer, but this wasn't that sort of conversation. It was more like the conversations NASA used to have with astronauts when they were on the moon—one side talked for a while, then waited half a day for a reply.

“I was wrong, okay? Is that what you want to hear? I shouldn't have resurrected
Toy Shop
.” Again I paused, waiting. Maybe that's all he wanted; maybe he'd leave me alone if I apologized. “Okay?”

Who was I kidding? Grandpa wasn't going to give up his foothold
on a second life without a fight to the death. Shouldn't I at least try to negotiate, though? Weren't you always obligated to attempt diplomacy when the alternative was war? I had an uneasy sense that this was already war, and that the worst was yet to come.

I
jolted upright in bed, my heart pounding.

Lorena.

If Grandpa was back, and thousands of others as well, couldn't Lorena be back?

If I could have just five minutes to talk to her
. How many times had I thought that? One of those pointless, impossible wishes that fill the dark hours after you lose your life partner. That it might actually be possible made me want to run through the city knocking on every door. I wanted to search for her, now, this instant. Whatever it took, I'd do it to have those five minutes. There must be some way to find her if she was out there.

I got out of bed, went into the living room and paced, thinking. If she was back, she could be anywhere in the city, and she was nothing but a disembodied voice repeating random pieces of her past. Of course assuming everyone with the voice would follow the same path as me, Lorena would eventually be able to contact me. I didn't want to wait, though. If she was out there I wanted to find her now and be there when she came out.

I wandered into my studio, sat at my drafting table. My heart was racing, keeping me from thinking clearly. Drawing calmed me.

I drew Wolfie clutching a magnifying glass, searching for Lorena. Then I drew Lorena's face in the upper margin, then Little Joe, peering upward, a bladed hand shading his eyes. Where was she? She was outside the boxes of their little world, just as she had been outside my world until the anthrax attack. But if she was here, she was a needle in a haystack. A speck of dust in a smokestack. I'd have to talk to everyone in the city.

I stopped sketching.

I stared at the page, not seeing it, letting an idea take shape.

If Lorena was out there, she could be inside anyone in Atlanta. How many Atlantans read
Toy Shop
, or had friends or family who read
Toy Shop?
What if this person read in my strip some of the words that were bursting unbidden from her or his mouth? If Lorena was out there, there were certain words she must be repeating.

Finn,
I jotted in the margin beside my sketch of Lorena, underlining it twice.
Snakes. Lightning. Annie. Chile. Toy Shop.

I could have gone on, but I wasn't sure how I could work even those words into a strip without making it awful.
Toy Shop
was the only easy one—that would be on the masthead. I pulled out a clean sheet of Bristol board.

I winced as I read over the finished strip, reminding myself that I was doing this for Lorena, that if she was out there this was my best chance of finding her. But I hated making a joke out of her death. Before the strip was published I'd have to contact Lorena's family in Chile and explain why I'd done it, just in case they saw the strip. They'd be mortified, but I thought they'd understand, assuming I could convince them the dead were returning, and she might be one of them...

I put my pencil down. They'd think I was insane. Everyone who read it would be horrified, and if I tried to explain why I'd done it they'd have me committed.

As long as Lorena understood why I'd done it, let the rest of the world think I was crazy.

A
thirty-foot-tall Jeff Bridges held a sobbing twenty-eight-foot-tall Rosie Perez, right in my back yard.

When we were deciding what movie to order three days earlier, Mick had lobbied for
Planet of the Apes
, but in the end I'd won out with
Fearless
, about a guy who walks away from a fiery plane crash without a scratch, and is profoundly changed.

A year ago it seemed like the most amazing thing to screen movies on the drive-in screen—both awesome and somehow terribly frivolous. Tonight it was a minor diversion, a way to take the edge off the cutting reality of what was happening to us.

In the papers and on TV the feds were maintaining that the voices were part of a new mental illness dubbed Post-Traumatic Stress Vocalization, but stories were running on CNN and FOX about people who swore the vocalizations were the voices of dead friends and relatives.

A story of a missing nine-year-old girl whose body was recovered after twenty-five years was getting a lot of attention. Her mother claimed the daughter's fourth grade teacher (who died in the anthrax
attack) was speaking through her, and told her right where to find the body.

Mick, sweating profusely and blurting incessantly, looked like a man waiting to be led to the electric chair. He had already put a substantial dent in the bottle of Glenlivet he'd brought.

“You okay, Mick?” I asked.

“Mm hm.” He stared at the movie, but I knew he wasn't seeing it.

I pulled out my laptop and checked my email. Most of the messages were from people I didn't know—fans of the new
Toy Shop
. I got more of them every day, lately more than I could possibly answer.

Some of the subject lines were amusing:

I came to a message from my Aunt Therese. The subject line was
How could you???
I really, really didn't want to open it, but I knew it would just eat at me until I did.

I really couldn't blame her. From the outside it looked like I'd used the circumstances of my wife's tragic death for comic strip fodder. That would be reprehensible, no question about it.

I considered replying, explaining why I'd run the strip, but it would make me sound insane. If I found Lorena she could call Therese and set the record straight. Of course if Lorena was able to use a phone she could call me. Maybe I would be the only one who would progress that far.

Another message halfway down my email list caught my eye. The subject line was
Are you looking for me???

I opened it.

I leapt to my feet, stared at the message as if it might disappear if I took my eyes off it. “Oh my God.”

Mick turned. “What?”

“Lorena. My wife. I think she's—”

I punched the number, pressed the phone to my ear and jammed my finger in the other. The ring sounded so far away. Two rings. Three, and then to voice mail. A woman's voice—a low, throaty timbre.

I left a frantic message for Summer to call me back as soon as possible. With Mick standing beside me I Googled Summer Turnbull, hoping to find her address. My heart was drumming. Every moment it took to find this woman was going to be excruciating. Was it possible? Was Lorena back, or at least her voice?

My phone rang.

In my eagerness I lost my grip on it, sent it clattering across the floor. By the time I retrieved it, it was on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

Mick sidled up to me and pressed his ear near the phone.

“Hi. You just called me?”

“Hi,” I said. “This is Finn Darby.” I didn't know what to say. “I—. You—.”

All that for a kiss?
Summer croaked.

All of the strength drained from my legs and I slid to the floor. It was her. I remembered the exact moment she uttered those words. “Lorena?” I whispered into the phone. “Can you hear me?” I knew
she could. Just as Grandpa could hear all of this, because now I knew with perfect certainty that this was no delusion, that my grandfather was really and truly possessing me.

Mick stood over me, his face questioning.

“It's Finn,” I whispered to Lorena. I almost expected her to answer, to storm her way out and blurt my name.

“Who are you talking to? Who's Lorena?” Summer demanded, her voice shaking.

“She was my wife. She died two years ago, on the Chattahoochee River.”

Summer's breath hitched. “I don't understand. What are you saying? Are you trying to say I'm
possessed?
Please tell me you're not trying to say that.”

Mick handed me a glass filled to the brim with scotch. I nodded my thanks and took a lavish gulp. Nothing would ever be the same. I felt like I'd been pulled inside-out. “I'm sorry. That's what I'm saying. The same thing is happening to me, and to all those people on the news. I'm pretty sure we're all possessed.”

She tried to speak, but couldn't. I waited patiently while she got hold of herself. “Well, can you please tell your wife to
get the hell out of me?
” Her nose was badly plugged. She sounded so lost, so desperate.

It was hard to think of Lorena terrifying someone, even when she sounded like she was speaking from the bottom of a swamp. But I knew what it was like to have the voice. It had scared the hell out of me, too.

“I'm sorry. I know what you're going through.” I felt guilty, because I wasn't sorry—I was elated. I'd found Lorena. Maybe I'd be able to speak to her eventually. There were so many things I wanted to say. “Look, can we meet? I know how hard this is for you, but...” I left it hanging there.

“I've still got it in me. I'm sure of that much
, ” Mick blurted.

“What was that?” Summer asked.

“A fellow sufferer. Friend of mine,” I said.

“Oh.”

I waited, hoping Lorena would say something else. Summer was probably a week or two behind us, like most of the afflicted, so Lorena probably didn't speak often. Yet.

“Look, can we meet?” I repeated.

She seemed hesitant. “Will you help me? Will you try to get her to leave me alone?”

“I'll try. But she's just echoing things she said when she was alive. I can't have a conversation with her.” Not yet, at least.

“But if I meet with you, you'll try? That's all I'm asking.”

I said I would. What else could I say? I'd been focused on the possibility of talking to Lorena; I hadn't considered how the person she was haunting would feel.

Mick wanted to come along, but I told him I needed to do this myself.

“How do you know it's her? What was that she said? ‘All that for a kiss?'”

“I'll explain when I get back,” I said as I swept up my keys.