Come Find Me(18)

I’m watching out the window when the police car shows up next door, and my mom gestures for them to follow her inside the house that is not hers. I’m watching as my father paces on the sidewalk, his voice carrying, as I imagine Agent Lowell on the other side.

I feel this urge to just go, and if I were any other kid, in any other family, I would. I would throw this gear into a bag, pack a change of clothes or two, take this car, and leave, and no one would even notice. Until much later. And that’s what has me stuck.

I remember my mom’s face as I shouted Liam’s name into the trees. When I called for Colby, straining to hear the sound of his bark in the distance. When the humor turned to annoyance turned to panic. And then later, when the panic turned to something else, this look of hard resignation that’s become her new permanent existence. I don’t even notice it anymore, usually. I only notice now because it’s gone. In its place is something else. Something worse.

    Hope.

I don’t know what will happen to her next, what sort of place she’ll end up in, when that gets crushed, too.

The house is empty and silent, and for once, I’m alone here. This place is usually the hub of activity. It may seem odd, but it’s still possible, maybe even more so, to feel invisible with so many people around.

It’s only now, when it’s empty, that I wonder if something has been in Liam’s old room all along. If only I’d been listening for it.

I place my hands against the blue wall dividing our rooms, then feel ridiculous. Wondering what I expected to feel—some beat, some pattern, moving through the walls? Some surge of electricity? As if that pattern were some sign that there was a shift in the universe, in what we believed possible, and it was finally within reach.

My steps echo on the hardwood as I walk from my room out into the empty hall, extending in both directions, unlit. My parents’ door is across the hall, closed. Liam’s room is beside mine, door also closed. Usually, when I leave my room, I close mine out of solidarity. Like part of a set.

The knob on the door of Liam’s room feels cold. Has it always been that way? I suddenly can’t remember. I was never focused on the little, odd details that were here. Only on what was missing. As I open the door wide, some things remain the same: the squeak of the hinges as the door swings open; the moss-green paint, the brown comforter, the blanket for Colby at the foot of the bed, the layout of Liam’s furniture. But in other ways, the room has been stripped bare. The electronics are now mine. Even the scent is gone. Liam hasn’t touched anything here in over two years.

    And yet.

As I take a step inside the room, none of those facts matter. I hold the device in my hand once more, but still, nothing happens. I can feel the ghost of the movement in my palm, the way it felt the first time. The mechanism inside the device, the needle moving, like a pulse.

I close my eyes, breathe in, feel a chill. Something was here. It might be gone now, but I’m sure of it: something was here.

“Liam?” I say. The word lingers in the silence.

Something buzzes in my back pocket and I jump, my heart suddenly pounding in my head. I back out of the room, fish my phone from the pocket of my jeans. It’s an email notification letting me know I’ve received a new message from the forum.

I drop my gear inside my room, slam my door, and scroll through the message.

There’s a video attached, only this one isn’t mine—it’s not the one I sent, nothing like it at all. I don’t know what I’m looking at. It looks like one of those hospital heart rate monitors you see on TV. Maybe in real life, too, but I wouldn’t know.

    The message from KJ explains that this is coming from a radio telescope, a satellite dish pointed at some sector in space, none of which means anything to me. The note ends:


Count the time. This is what the pattern from my signal looks like if you let it run. It lines up with yours.



I do as the note says. I count the time. A spike. The pause. A spike. They move in synchrony, the same pattern, the same time.

The note continues:


Tell me everything about this event. Where it originates, date and time, location coordinates, etc, etc.



And the sign-off:


I think we have something here.



From this note I gather that KJ is bossy; KJ is overly excited; KJ and I are not going to be on the same page with this, with all these questions, etc, etc. Who says etc? Professors. Teachers. Random people on SETI message boards with satellite dishes pointed into space.

We’re not looking for the same thing here. The answer to me is obvious, and simple. If (a) my brother disappeared with no earthly explanation; and (b) this signal was coming from my brother’s room; then (c) whatever’s happening here is related. If not exactly proof, it’s definitely a sign. Even if I don’t understand what it means yet.

    KJ wants a list of facts and figures. This house is already full of facts. It’s full of statistics, and documentation, height and weight, hair color, eye color, etc, etc. Everything about my life is Liam etc.

None of it brings anyone back.


Tell me everything about this event.



Well, okay. I hit Reply. Here’s everything:


My brother disappeared. This was coming from his room.