Sleepwalker

by: Laura Engler 

*Content Warning: Physical violence or abuse — depiction of death or terminal illness* 

          Jeremy had been sleepwalking again, waking up underneath the sprawling willow tree in the far north corner of his property instead of his own bed. He didn’t realize it at first, shivering in the chilled spring air, reaching over to steal the covers back from his wife. But there were no covers, there was no wife, only moist earth and a sense of dread clutching his stomach, distress gripping his heart. Why did this keep happening?

          Working out the kinks in his neck, trying to goad his spine back into alignment, Jeremy eased his body back up from the twisted, gnarled roots. Age had been sneaking up on him lately. He wasn’t even that old, but his body seemed to think otherwise. This sleepwalking didn’t help, either. How long had he been out there, curved around the base of the tree? With how his body felt, it must have been hours, if not years.

          Rip van Winkle, he thought. He stroked his chin, finding only the usual stubble, no great, cascading beard. Maybe he would still return home to find everyone he knew dead, passed on as he slumbered undisturbed for the better part of a century. He’d find carbon copies of his kids, his grandchildren, spitting images of their parents with little kids of their own, and a world so far gone in technology, he’d barely recognize it.

          As he stumbled across the large, dew-dappled lawn, Ophelia emerged from the back door, clutching her robe to her body, calling out his name. When she found him, he thought he saw more irritation flash across her face than relief.

          “Jeremy.” She stepped out onto the back porch, the screen door clattering in its frame behind her. Her hair was a fuzzy mess around her face, and she bit her lip. “Again?”

          “Again,” he confirmed, climbing up the steps, wincing as the splintering wood pressed into the bare soles of his dirty feet. “I just don’t know what’s wrong.”

          The irritation never stayed for long. Ophelia wanted to be frustrated, but his weariness chased her anger away. At least he was safe. At least nothing bad had happened. She opened her arms to draw him in. “I’m calling Dr. Albarr today,” she said. “Maybe she can fix it.”

          He groaned, but it was difficult to protest while in her arms. “But why?” he asked. “What can she do, besides prescribe some junk pills and tell me to change my diet?”

          They pulled apart, Jeremey still on the last step so they wee level with each other’s imploring eyes. Her hands rest on his shoulders. “Please, Jeremy.”

          Those dark eyes could completely drown him, and he was helpless against them. “Fine, but I’ll call her. I’m a grown man. I can make my own doctor’s appointments.”

          She pulled him the rest of the way up the stairs, gently pushing him forward into the house. “You need a nice, hot shower,” she said. “I’ll get some breakfast started. The kids’ll be up any minute now, so go before they get a chance to catch you.”

          In the warm cocoon of the shower, Jeremy washed away the dirt and the grime and the chill that clung to him after his nocturnal excursion, but he couldn’t shed away his persistent thoughts. He had never been a sleepwalker before, only recently, within the last month, the beginning of spring. Stress could be a factor, but there hadn’t even been that much of it lately. The weather had been good for planting, old Bess had just given birth to two healthy twin calves, and the kids were doing well in school. There had been a couple incidents with Annie acting out with her friends, but she was that age, trying to figure things out with a little bit of natural rebellion. Nothing too worrisome, nothing nearly as bad as some of the tangles he’d gotten into at her age. Things had been going well, a peaceful existence he’d settled into when his dreams of football didn’t quite pan out the way he’d hoped they would. Maybe it was just his encroaching old age.

          Just as Ophelia predicted, the kids were up and out of bed by the time he emerged, fresh and ready for a new day. The spacious kitchen came alive with the smell of breakfast and the bustle of preparation. Bacon, scrambled eggs from the very chickens in their coop a few feet away, toast from the fluffy, crusty bread Jeremy had made the day before. And a full pot of strong, black coffee, which he made a beeline for, ruffling his son’s hair in passing.

          “Dad!” Paul chirped wildly, twisting in his chair to follow Jeremy’s progress toward the life-giving fuel. “Dad! Mom said after school today, we can go to Aunt Ellen’s to play. I want to show her my science thing. Can I?”

          “Only if you’re good,” Jeremy said. “Listen to Mrs. Abrams and try really hard on that spelling test, and then you can take whatever you want to Aunt Ellen’s.”

          “Me, too, Daddy! Me, too!” Charlotte’s chirping inevitably followed her twin brother’s, riding on his coattails in life just as she’d done during their birth. “I want to bring her the storybook we made about the princess and the dragon!”

          Chuckling, Jeremy turned the conversation toward his eldest, an act of pure masochism. “And what are you going to bring, Anna Banana?”

          Her pretty little face twisted into a sneer as she looked up from her magazine. Annoying a teenager was as easy as pie, sure, but it never ceased to amused him. She was a good kid at heart, and what kind of father would he be if he didn’t give her a hard time? “Nothing,” she said with a pointed turn of a magazine page. “I’m not going. I have practice.”

          “Planning on going to Carmella’s with the girls after?” Ophelia asked, putting the final touches on their lunches. She would never admit to it, but Jeremy knew ow much pride she poured into those lunches, little things that too often went unappreciated and unnoticed.

          Annie shrugged, the universal teenage response to everything in the galaxy.

          “Just be home before it gets dark,” Jeremy said. “You’ll need to finish your homework and get some rest. I don’t want anything to happen.”

          “Dad,” Annie muttered, “we live in the middle of nowhere. Nothing ever happens.”

          He indulged his daughter with a smile that shed a shadowy light on his own experiences, moving around the kitchen island to plant a kiss on the top of her head. “Be that as it may,” he touched up the end of Annie’s braid, the one that desperately tried to hold in the wild frizz of her hair, “better safe than sorry. And eat your breakfast. You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry.”

          Jeremy enjoyed his breakfast amid the flurry of prepping the kids for school. The troubled events of the night disappeared in the warm buzz of his life, not exactly perfect, but perfect enough for him. When he first met Ophelia in college, a snarky sharpshooter in his American History class, a regular feature at both the boho coffee shop and the house parties he frequented, he was a complete goner. He still marveled that he’d been lucky enough to snag her. When they discussed their aspirations in the early years of getting to know each other, he admitted to his little dream of taking over his dad’s small farm, continuing the generational legacy, with trepidation and embarrassment. Here was this bright, beautiful woman from a bustling city, working on a PhD in biochemical engineering. There was nothing for her back on the Reynolds family farm. But Ophelia Achebe was full of surprises. She fell just as hard for this awkward country bumpkin and his romanticism, claiming that she’d never had the experience of living on a farm before. It was new and exciting for her. She latched onto that future with as much vigor and enthusiasm as her own pursuits in researching human genomes and plant cell structures. She could even lend her knowledge to his agriculture, helping their small, sustainable enterprise thrive.

          “Don’t forget,” Ophelia dropped a kiss on his cheek as she bustled the kids out the door. “Call Dr. Albarr! See what she has to say.”

          “Yes, dear,” he cooed, turning his face up to receive a direct kiss. As soon as the car doors slammed, Annie carefully edging the Subaru out of their driveway under Ophelia’s watchful supervision, the house descended into an eerie, although not unpleasant, silence. Jeremy relished in it a moment as he finished his coffee, constructing his checklist of things to do that day. First, he would get that damn call out of the way, but not until after clearing up the breakfast mess and setting up a pot roast in the crockpot for dinner that evening. With the kids at his sister’s place for a bit, maybe he and Ophelia could even have a little romantic interlude to themselves, see if Reynolds Spawn Number Four was on the horizon.

          Dr. Albarr had an opening in her schedule later that afternoon, giving hi time to check on the animals and do some crop-tending before heading into town, where he could run a few other errands. The new part for his tractor was in, and he had to check in with Andrew Olsen about this year’s soil conservatory fundraiser. He had to see Mary Ann Nelson about the cake for the twins’ birthday next week and drop in on Tom Iverson about that hay he wanted for his daughter Carolyn’s horse, then grab a quick beer at the Moonbeam Tavern before his appointment. A beer at two in the afternoon might have seemed strange anywhere else, but not in this quiet little town. Two in the afternoon was probably the Moonbeam’s best hour outside of a Friday night, that nice slice of time between morning chores and the evening ones. It was a time to relax, just a little bit, and catch up on all the local gossip. It wasn’t usually anything substantial, though, every so often, there was something that stuck, just as it did that afternoon before he went to his appointment with Dr. Albarr.

          “You hear about that Oscars girl?” Farmer Miller, whose first name actually was Farmer thanks to some dizzyingly unimaginative parents, croaked over his beer. “Turned up missing. Her dad reckons she up and ran off to Vegas with some fellow she met on the Internet.”

          Nearby, Nick Everson snorted into his pint. “No surprise there. That girl’s always been itching to get out of here. Guess she just couldn’t wait for college like everybody else.”

          That Oscars girl. Amelia. She was a year older than Annie, but they had been friends through high school, thanks to their involvement in track, field, and basketball. Had Amelia told her friends of her escape? Did the girls hold it tightly to themselves like a secret in their hearts, rooting for the fearless one who got away? The more he thought about it, the more his stomach twisted into a heavy knot of unease. Did Annie feel that itch, too? Would she ever feel the need to scratch it?

          By the time he pulled into Albarr’s parking lot, he was feeling morose and anxious. He should have taken the time to calm down before he walked in, but he wanted to just get it over with> Dr. Albarr picked up on his nervous energy immediately. He wondered sometimes if she and Ophelia were such good friends because they were practically the same person. Both could read more of him in an instant than he even knew about himself. There was a cursory physical examination, a couple of blood samples drawn, and then it was all questions and talking, starting with medical history, how he’d been feeling lately. He couldn’t imagine any of it was very helpful; most of his answers were a variation of “No, I’m fine, actually,” which often caused the good doctor to purse her lips as she jotted something down. They were all clues to a different puzzle, ones that didn’t fit well with his sleepwalking issue.

          “Everything seems okay, Jeremy,” Albarr sighed slightly, hinting at her frustration. “Everything checks out, and you seem to be doing well, no more stress than normal.” She frowned at her clipboard, mouth moving slightly as she considered the options. She soon gave up, shaking her head. “If it happens again tonight or the next night, come back, and I’ll write you a script that might help. Until then, take care of yourself. Hopefully, these episodes are just random flukes and not the start of something much more serious.”

          So it hadn’t been so bad. There was nothing severely wrong with him, at least not on the surface, but then what was happening? The rest of the day went by as usual. When they got home, the twins babbled about their exploits with their aunt, and Annie got home early enough after pizza with her friends, though she was a little quiet. Was it just typical teenage brooding, or something else bothering her? Ophelia asked about it, but, of course, she said everything was fine and retired to her room without saying much more.

          “Did Annie say anything to you?” Ophelia asked. “Something seems wrong.”

          “No,” he admitted. “Nothing. Maybe something happened at school She’s probably not going to jump at the opportunity to tell her parents about it.”

          “Well, it’s not her grades,” she reasoned. “She’s been doing great there. You don’t think it’s a boy, do you? Maybe something from track. Or one of her friends.”

          The rumors from the Moonbeam drifted back into Jeremy’s head, the low, gravely speculation about Amelia Oscars’ disappearance. But that was all conjecture and hear-say, and, while he felt suddenly certain that Ophelia had landed on the crux of the issue, he didn’t want to get his wife needlessly worried. He gave her a warm smile, leaning in to kiss her cheek.

          “All of the above?” he ventured. “I’ll go talk to her.”

          He slinked past the living room, where the light of a cartoon movie shined on the twins’ faces and held them transfixed, and climbed up the creaking, slightly-too-steep stairs to the main hallway, past the doors of most of the bedrooms, to the second stairway leading up to the attic space that had been converted into Annie’s room. It was quiet, save for a muted, dramatic peal of music from the cartoon downstairs, but the bottom of the door glowed softly. He hesitated, feeling out of his element and ill-equipped to continue, but he exhaled, lifting his fist, lightly rapping on the door that she had covered with stickers and magazine cut-outs.

          “Honey?” he asked, flinching as he added, “It’s me, Dad,” as if it could have been anyone else. “Is everything okay?”

          A deep chasm of silence followed, and he was tempted to crack the door open and peek his head in. Thankfully, just as he was starting to feel as though she wasn’t going to respond, she answered. “Yeah, Dad, I’m fine.” Her voice was soft but strong enough to carry the constant, exasperated affliction of her age. “Just not feeling very good, that’s all.”

          “There’s some aspirin in the bathroom if you need it,” he offered. The vague attempt to heal all of her wounds was a bad one, though, and he knew it. He also knew there wasn’t much else he could do. But he wanted to do something.

          “I know. I already got some. Thanks.”

          He hadn’t expected the small shock that raced through him, that suddenly his little girl was sufficient enough to help herself to drugs previously administered only by his knowledgeable hand. But she was fifteen, for crying out loud, what had he expected? The days of her dependency on him for every little thing were long gone, but every reminder of it felt like a new pinch in his aching, aging heart. He had no choice but to leave her alone, wishing her a good night and reminding her that he loved her.

          The next morning, he awoke among the roots of the willow tree once more. The morning sun burned through the nighttime fog., bringing him out of sleep slowly, a groan of realization escaping him. Two nights in a row. He pulled his aching body up and leaned against the trunk of the tree, wishing he knew what the hell was wrong with him. Why did he end up here? Why was he sleepwalking to begin with? And he supposed now he really would have to see Dr. Albarr about getting that medication, if it would even help.

          As he headed back to the house, eternally grateful that Ophelia was still asleep this time, his foot caught on a small divot in the ground. He stumbled forward with the utter lack of grace one would expect from a groggy man freshly risen in his yard. The hitch in his step might not have been anything noteworthy, but he had actually tripped on a small, slightly-rusted trowel that had been stabbed into the ground between the roots, right where his back had been. Ruefully, he rubbed the spot, sore and bruised because of the old instrument. The handle was wood, smooth and well-worn, and bits of earth still clung to the trowel’s sharp edges. He looked down at the ground, wondering if someone had been digging there. Had he been digging here in his sleep? He thought he could detect a faint outline of displaced dirt.

          Someone had buried something here, he realized, the outline becoming more obvious. He couldn’t explain why, but he started to feel panic rising up in his gut. Had he done it? What could be buried here? He just about reached for the trowel to start digging and find out for himself when Ophelia’s voice carried over the yard from the back porch, calling for him. He didn’t take his eyes off the outline as he shouted a response, promising himself to return to this spot later with a shovel.

          Ophelia didn’t say anything when he reached the porch, but she didn’t need to. He just nodded a silent agreement to try and fix this as soon as possible, gave her a kiss, then went to wash the soil and loam from his hair. Then getting the kids ready, getting them off to school, then outside to tend the farm. The temptation was there to investigate the willow tree, but he willed himself to go feed the chickens and the cows, weed the garden, and prep some fertilizer for the hay field before he ventured that way again, eager to pursue it with a clear head in the near-noon sun.

          As he neared, there was a movement behind he drooping certain of the willow branches, and he slowed down cautiously. Reports of coyote activity were down this year, but perhaps it was a deer. Whatever it was heard him coming, though, and it stopped. A voice drifted out from the shadows. “Jeremy? Is that you?”

          “Mr. Peterson.” Relief washed through him as he didn’t quite feel ready to take on a scavenging coyote just then, and, really, he shouldn’t be surprised that it was just his elderly neighbor. The tree was just as much on his property as it was Jeremy’s. “How’s it going?”

          “Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve been better.” Peterson stepped out from behind the curtain, rubbing his dirty hands on his dirty overalls, mouth pulled down in a frown. “I was over here yesterday tending to the wild roses, and I think I’ve gone and dropped my wedding ring. Can you believe it? Forty-six years and I’ve never lost it, not once, until now. Mrs. Peterson’s not going to let me hear the end of this one if I don’t manage to find it soon. You seen it around anywhere?”

          “Can’t say I have,” Jeremy said. “Sorry, Ivan. I’ll keep an eye out for it, though. Is this where you last saw it?”

          “Heck,” Peterson rubbed the back of his balding head. “I can’t even remember. Thing’s been like a second skin so much I barely notice it anymore. For all I know, I lost it last week and only just now realized it.”

          “If that were the case, then I think Vera would have noticed it already,” Jeremy pointed out. “Do you need help? Two sets of eyes and hands are better than one.”

          “No, no.” Peterson waved a hand. “Don’t trouble yourself. It’s my problem I’ll handle it. No doubt you’ve got a lot on your plate as it is, Jeremy.”

          “I guess so.” He didn’t really, but he could tell the old man was a bit embarrassed. He would put his investigation off, at least until the ring was found or Peterson just gave up looking for it. “I was just walking the perimeter, checking for any raccoons. Evans has a ton of them in his wheat, he said. Hope you find the ring, though, Ivan. I’ll keep an eye out.”

          When he returned, later that afternoon, the trowel he found that morning was gone. Signs of Peterson’s search had disturbed the line he saw before, too, making him wonder if it was all just a hazy half-dream upon waking. He considered digging, but it was nearly time to pick the kids up from school. The mystery would once again have to wait.

          On the way home, the twins rowdy beside him in the pick-up truck, he caught a familiar name on the news report and hushed them as he notched the volume up. “Amelia Oscars,” the voice was saying, “was last seen Monday at her school’s track practice. Speculation points to evidence that Oscars may have run off with her boyfriend, twenty-two-year-old Hank Stratford of Madison County, but her parents suggest foul play.”

          “She just isn’t the type to run away.” Jeremy assumed the next desperate voice on the broadcast belonged to Amelia’s mother. “She was very happy. Content. I just can’t see why—”

          Despite wanting to listen for details and ways to help, Jeremy switched the radio off as his stomach twisted unpleasantly. He just couldn’t listen, Annie taking Amelia’s place in his thoughts, which made him feel angry, scared, nauseated, and helpless. “Happy and content,” he muttered. “How content is a sixteen-year-old with a twenty-two-year-old boyfriend?”

          The twins, oblivious to the heavy reality of the world, seized the opportunity to fill the silence left by turning off the radio. “Disney!” they cried out, practically in unison. “Elsa! Can we listen to Elsa?”

          Jeremy cringed a little, wondering if they would ever outgrow that damn movie soundtrack, but he obliged, letting their off-key, off-kilter rendering of the music drive away some of his worries. He would promptly deny it if anyone asked, but he may have sung along a little himself. Just a little.

          When Ophelia returned home without Annie in tow as usual, fear struck Jeremy in the chest like a lightning bolt. Surely, his wife had heard about the Oscars girl by now, but she wasn’t in a panic or concerned at all, waltzing in with a paper bag full of groceries in one arm, jabbering on her phone like she’d never left work at all. Though it killed him, Jeremy waited, taking the bag from her and setting it aside, divvying up a few items while she finished.

          “Ugh,” she ended the call with a particularly exasperated sweep of her finger, “that Wendell Oakes does not know the meaning of business hours! I’m so sorry, honey. You know how clients can be sometimes.”

          She moved in for the overdue kiss on his cheek, though her brows fell in concern at his overly anxious disposition. “What’s up, babe?”

          “Was I supposed to pick up Annie from practice today?” he asked. Was the sleepwalking messing with his brain so much that he would forget his own daughter?

          The look of concern on her face deepened. “Didn’t she tell you? Lara Wood got her license the other day, so she’s been driving everyone and their mothers home after practice lately. I think they went to get pizza and flirt with the baseball team a little bit beforehand, too.”

          He felt a stab of devastation and betrayal in his heart. “No,” he said, “she didn’t tell me anything.”

          She placed a palm against his cheek, sympathy flashing across her face. “Don’t worry about it, love,” she said. “She’s a teenager. She loves you, but you’re probably the last person she wants to talk to about things like this, especially if boys are involved. Take it from me. I’ve been a fifteen-year-old girl before.”

          Not even her graceful attempt at humor could penetrate through his worry. “Do you think that’s safe, though? You’ve heard all the news about Amelia Oscars, haven’t you?”

          At first, she laughed, until she saw the damaged look on his face. “Oh, sweetheart,” she gushed, “you don’t think Annie’s going to go run off with some guy, do you? She’s too smart for that. School and track are way more important to her than boys at the moment.”

          “If that’s what really happened,” he said. “Everyone thinks that’s what happened, but what if it isn’t? I don’t want her out too much until this gets solved.”

          “Jeremy, things like that don’t really happen around here.”

          “That’s what people always stay until things like that actually happen.”

          She grunted in irritation. “You’re worried. I get that. I love that you’re concerned. Call her if you want, but that’s the first step toward being the kind of overbearing father that drives countless girls like Amelia Oscars to rebel. I know you don’t want that, so just try to relax, okay? Help me get dinner ready for the twins.”

          He acquiesced, still nervous but grateful that he had such a patient wife willing to keep him grounded, and they whipped up some mac’n’cheese, potatoes, and chicken nuggets, a favorite of the twins’ that he had to admit to being pretty fond of, too. It made him feel better, even if he did spend a good portion of the meal considering Paul and Charlotte with a bit of lingering sadness. Just stay right there, he begged of them inside his head. Don’t change. Don’t grow up. Don’t ever leave me. Just stay right there where you are forever.

          Near the end of the meal, which was enhanced with a story from Paul about a tiger in the classroom that he insisted was one-hundred percent true, Ophelia’s phone rumbled and jerked on the table beside her. The phone was always near, in case of emergencies, but she always felt a bit guilty about answering it when those wide-eyes looked at her expectantly, to see what she would do. She bit her lip, reluctant to interrupt the meal with potentially unpleasant news, but there was no point in delaying the inevitable.

          She picked up the phone, peeking in on the text message with instant relief. “It’s just Annie,” she explained. “She’s going to stay at Lara’s tonight.”

          She set the phone down again, returning to her forkful of potatoes, and Jeremy felt his heart jump into his throat. “On a school night?” he asked. “No, I don’t think so. Tell her to come home. If she wants a sleepover, she can do it on a Friday.”

          If looks could kill, Ophelia’s was a fully automatic shotgun. “Oh, for God’s sake, Jeremy, lighten up. Overprotective father is not a good look on you.”

          “Yeah, Dad,” chirped Charlotte, always quick to mimic her other when given half a chance. “Lighten up!”

          He knew she was struggling to hold down a grin, but it was his turn to fix her with a sour expression. She swallowed down her amusement and lifted her chin, defiant and proud. Knowing he’d be outnumbered, even if Paul joined him in the fray, he felt it was wise to listen. “Fine,” he said, “It’s fine this one time, but I want to talk about it. I don’t want her getting in the habit of going out on school nights and making a ton of last minute plans without consulting us first.”

          A compromise, then, and the twins helped with the clean-up, then Jeremy heled them get ready for bed. As Ophelia read them another chapter from Charlotte’s Web, one of Annie’s favorites, a copy so dog-eared and worn that it was a miracle it hadn’t fallen apart yet, he went through his own nocturnal preparations. With his stomach still tied in knots, he just knew he’d be sleepwalking again that night. From his bedroom window, he could see the willow tree out there against its backdrop of corn fields. The ominous, worried feeling in him grew, a dark, vicious shadow spreading across his chest. He tried to push it away with humor, thinking that he should just grab a sleeping bag and head out there right then.

          The jokes didn’t do much good. Neither did making love to Ophelia later, which he hoped would distract and exhaust him to the point where he would just stay put. But he didn’t. He woke up once more back in the corner of his lot, underneath that damn tree. His hands were covered in dirt, the soil beneath him moist and disturbed. Had he been digging in his sleep now, too? What for? He looked around himself, realizing that, if he had dug something up last night, he filled it right back in before morning.

          After returning to the house, after kissing his wife and taking his shower and poking at a bowl of oatmeal while the twins scarfed theirs down, he made sure to call Dr. Albarr for that prescription and arrange a psychological evaluation as well. This had to stop.

          The phone called out into the now empty house. “Mr. Reynolds? This is Amy Reinhart, calling from the high school. We just wanted to check in, because we haven’t seen Annie yet today. Is everything alright? Usually, your wife calls if she’s not feeling well, but we haven’t heard anything from her.”

          There was a sledgehammer, smashing into his soul. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, until the school secretary prompted him. “Mr. Reynolds? Are you there?”

          “Y-yes,” he finally managed. “I’m here. Sorry, it’s just…as far as I know, she’s not sick. She stayed over with a friend last night. They’re not the types to play hooky, though, you know that. Is it against policy or whatever for you to tell me if Lara Wood is also absent today?”

          It might have been. It probably was. But at a small school like theirs, Amy Reinhart knew nearly each and every one of those kids and cared for them immensely. With the desperation in his voice, she began to share his sense of dread. “I’m so sorry, Jeremy,” she said. “Lara definitely checked in with her homeroom this morning.”

          Darkness filled every corner of his perception. He was certain his heart stopped beating. Amy’s voice cautiously filled the silent rift left behind. “Should I contact the sheriff?”

          Jeremy struggled to get his mouth to move. “N-no,” he murmured. “No, that’s okay. I’ll call them. Thank you, Amy, for letting me know.”

          “I’m sure she’ll be fine, Jeremy. I’m sure—”

          But there was nothing she could say or do to lift this heavy weight that attached itself firmly to his insides. He hung up the phone and then just stood there for a long, long time, unable to think, unable to move. He should call the police to look out for her. He should call Ophelia to let her know. He should call the Woods and ask them when they’d last seen Annie. There were so many things he should have done, but he was too horrified to do anything. He could only stare at the front door, willing it to open, to reveal Annie sheepishly stepping in with a quiet greeting and a million apologies.

          How long had he stood there? He had no idea, but he finally shook himself out of it and wiped away the tears on his face. If something was wrong, Annie would need him, and he needed to get his shit together. He was her father, perhaps he would be her savior, too. He picked up the phone and made his calls. The police put out the word. Ophelia must have been in a meeting, because he was forced to leave a gut-wrenching voicemail, and, worst of all, Patty Wood told him that, no, none of the girls had slept over last night.

          Patty had asked if everything was okay, and he wanted to tell her that, no, nothing was okay, nothing would ever be okay again, but he surprised himself by calmly explaining the situation as best he could. From Patty’s gasp, he could picture her clutching her phone in one hand while the other held her chest as she promised to keep an eye and both ears out for more information. He was grateful for that in particular; Patty Wood was a central hub of the community. She would get word spreading like wildfire. But no amount of flame could burn away the darkness inside of him, the persistent shadows of Too Late and Not Enough.

          Then a thought crept into his brain from seemingly nowhere, presenting itself in the eerie calm that followed all the frenzied, terrified calls. The tree. The willow tree in the far back corner of the lot, straddling his property and Ivan Peterson’s. The tree that called to him now as it had been calling to him in his sleep. It seemed absurd, but he couldn’t shake the compulsion to go out there now. Could this be the reason he had been drawn there so often? It seemed as good a place as any to start searching. Annie had always loved that tree.

          Outside, the sun was impossibly bright, causing him to wince and shade his eyes to scan the yard, stupidly hoping Annie had just been there the whole time. No such luck. A breeze ruffled the thick green grass, rattled the siding on one of the barns, prompting him to think to himself on how he needed to fix that soon. And, of course, the branches of the willow tree swayed gently, beckoning him forward. As he moved across the yard, the song of cicadas rushed up and blared in his ears, making his head throb.

          Inside the cavern created by the old willow tree, Jeremy felt transported. The shade was cool, the noisome buzzing muted, but his anxiety surged into overdrive. He was sweating profusely, but not because of the heat. Because of some feeling, sick and terrible, spreading through him. The faint lines he’d noticed before were more distinct, creating two separate patches of recently dug dirt. A guttural groan emerged from somewhere deep inside of him as the possibility rushed to his brain, clinging tightly with claw-like fingers. He refused to accept it. It couldn’t be true. It was too horrible to fathom.

          “No,” he whispered, kneeling down beside the darker, fresher patches. He had no tools, so he started to dig with his bare hands. How long would he have to go before his suspicions were confirmed? He thought of the trowel sticking in the dirty. Had he been the one diffing these holes in his sleep? Was his sleepwalking more than just a relocation? What had he been doing in those restless, slumbering hours?

          “No, no, no…”

          The trowel had disappeared, though; it hadn’t been his. Jeremy stopped digging, his hands black with soil, as more thoughts crowded into his reeling mind. He sniffed, realizing he’d been crying, and wiped the back of his hand against his cheek, which only smeared soil there where his tears had been. With an unexplainable certainty, he knew what he would find down there. The desperation he felt a moment ago was replaced with a cold, hard anger. He tried to swallow but couldn’t force the nearly choking lump in his throat down. He stood up, wiping his hands on his pants, and went to fetch a shovel from the barn. But he didn’t have to dig long before he found it, catching in a spot of light leaking through the branches as he dumped a shovelful of dirt to the ground. He could have missed it if he hadn’t been looking for it. A small circle of tarnishing, yellow gold metal. A wedding ring. Ivan Peterson’s lost wedding ring.

          “Son of a bitch.” Jeremy bent over to pick up the ring, holding it in his flattened palm. It seemed to burn into his flesh, while his cold anger began to simmer towards a steady boil. What else would he find in these holds? Did he even want to find out?

          As soon as he turned, he saw something dark rushing toward him, too quick to avoid. A dull thud, the cracking of the cartilage of his nose, the fracturing of his jaw, all of them burst in his skull as stars danced across his vision. The pain was so immense that he had to bellow out in an attempt to contain it, staggering back with his hands covering his face. Blackness threatened to overtake him, his head pounding, blood gushing from his nose, but he had to fight it, he had to stay strong. His legs shook underneath him, and he swiped the back of his hand under his nose as he tried to stand up tall. He could barely see, but he didn’t have to know that Peterson stood there, wielding a shovel of his own.

          “You son of a bitch!” Jeremy shouted, blood and a few teeth praying from his mouth as he charged forward, tackling Peterson before he could take another swing. The old bastard had t know he was no physical match for Jeremy, strong and in his prime and half his age. The moment the shovel failed to knock him out, he had to know he was a goner. Jeremy pinned him easily, straddling the cowering degenerate as his unhinged rage drove punch after punch into Peterson’s face. “What did you do? What did you do to them? You mother fucker! What did you do?”

          “Stop!” Peterson writhed underneath him, failing to deflect the blows, whimpering and pleading. “Please, God, stop!” But Jeremy had no intention of showing an ounce of mercy. He wasn’t going to stop until the old man’s face was nothing but a pulp beaten down by his fists.

          “Jeremy, stop!”

          It took a moment for him to realize that the begging was no longer coming from Peterson. Peterson was still, his face starting to swell and discolor from all the bruises. It was Ophelia pleading with him, hands on his shoulders, trying to pry him away. “What the hell is going on? Jeremy?”

          “Oh, God, Ophelia.” He allowed her to pull him away, but he couldn’t stand. He only fell back and stared at his beaten neighbor, hardly believing what had happened. He shook his head, trying to find the words to explain it to her. Perhaps he couldn’t. Maybe he shouldn’t. All he could do was say her name, over and over again. “It’s Annie, Ophelia. Annie. Annie, she’s…oh, God.”

          He just couldn’t get the words out. He couldn’t say them; saying them would be like admitting it was true. She held him as he sobbed, whispering assuring platitudes while she stroked his hair, rubbed his back, gave the area a look to try to understand what had just occurred.

          It didn’t take her long. She’d always been quick to figure things out. And though he didn’t want her to leave him, he was still grateful when she pulled away and announced, “I’m calling the police.”

          So the police came, flashing lights and yellow tape stretched across the yard, four squad cars, because what else did the county police have to do on a Thursday afternoon? The detective stood flabbergasted at the scene, discussing in low tones the possibility of bringing in someone from elsewhere, someone better equipped to deal with this nightmare. The willow tree was torn up from the ground to better excavate the bodies. Annie, her corpse so fresh it had barely begun to pale, along with her cell phone and the false text Peterson must have sent last night. Was she dead already when he made up the story? Amelia Oscars, beginning to rot, worms crawling through her hair. And some other, third corpse, unrecognizable, but the best guess was a woman who had gone missing two counties over about a month ago. Peterson was detained, though he was barely conscious, suspect number one. And then they approached Jeremy.

          “I didn’t kill my own daughter,” he told them when they said he’d have to come with them, too. Just the fact that he had to speak those words out loud made him feel as cold and dead as Annie and the others, his insides withered, trying to retreat into themselves as much as possible. He could no longer see their faces for the tears that kept returning to his eyes.

          Still, Detective Grimes was sympathetic, even though he couldn’t say that he was. “It’s just protocol,” he said. “Since there were no witnesses, we have to consider you both suspects until a trial can come together.” And all the professional strength he was trying to maintain melted away, just enough. “I’m so sorry, Jeremy.”

          Sorry. The word thrummed and echoed in the emptiness of his chest, and he buried his face in his hands, sobbing again. He was surprised there were even any tears left, and they let him cry it out, strong and steady, Ophelia doing her best to comfort him and keep her own tears at bay. Always the strong one. In the privacy of their dark and empty bedroom, though, she would let it all out, but she could never bring herself to be weak in front of others, not even at a time like this when nearly anyone would understand.

          His detainment truly was a formality; it didn’t take long at all for the trial to swing in the direction of Peterson’s guilt, all the evidence piling up against him, and Jeremy’s numbness only gave way to a fierce hatred for the man. The only remorse he seemed ot show was for having been caught. Jeremy wanted to leap across the courtroom and strangle the monster, and he might have tried it if Ophelia hadn’t been gripping his hand tight like a vice the whole time.

          But the sleepwalking stopped. At first, he thought it was merely because he couldn’t sleep at all, but, after letting Dr. Albarr prescribe him some sleeping aides, he stayed safely, if fitfully, in his bed. For a mnth, he couldn’t even go into the backyard. Some of the crops ripened and wasted where they stood, because he couldn’t go back there and see where the earth had been churned up to spit his daughter back out into the world under the open space of the sky where the tree had previously been. The tree that had called him there to discover the truth, by some power he would never understand.

          They said goodbye to Annie in a beautiful ceremony, struggling with the idea of how to get the twins to understand. There was a touching and emotional memorial for the three girls at Annie’s school, and a strange bond formed between the parents of the victims that would last for a very long time. Summer passed and autumn arrived, and Jeremy harvested what little remained. It wasn’t much at all, so thank goodness for Ophelia’s income. He contemplated selling all the animals, but caring for them helped heal his soul, even if he occasionally thought of Annie in the barn with him, helping him with the feeding, the milking, brushing down a steer she would take to the county fair. She’d always loved the animals, so he would continue her love in that barn. Then winter came, cold and bleak and dreary, with the most somber Christmas Jeremy could remember. It was at that time that things seemed to finally catch up with Ophelia, taking her down her own dark path of regret, remorse, and infinite sadness.

          One morning during the following spring, not long after a discussion about possibly moving out of the old place with all its heartbreaking memories, Ophelia woke to find her bed empty, like so many mornings last year around that time. Her first thought was one of dread, thinking that Jeremy had returned to his sleepwalking ways again, even with all the drugs and therapy and the lack of a murderous neighbor next door. She wrapped her robe around herself tightly as she travelled downstairs, out to the porch, and across the lawn to the corner of the property where the willow tree used to be.

          “Jeremy.” She watched wide-eyed as he cleaved into the dirt with a shovel, widening and evening out the gap created by the removal of the tree. He stopped when he saw her, wiping sweat from his brow. “What in God’s name are you doing out here? It’s not even six o’clock in the morning yet.”

          “Couldn’t sleep,” he grunted. He set the nose of the shovel into the ground, leaning on it as he looked over at her. He couldn’t see her without feeling that powerful thrum in his heart again, because Annie had taken after her mother so much, those dark eyes and that wild, untamable hair. But after that sad tug came a warmth, a marvel that the two of them could survive something so terrible and still be strong. He knew Annie was now a rock in their hearts, heavy but keeping them anchored, keeping them grounded.

          He sighed, taking a moment to soak in the view from his daughter’s shallow grave. Peterson’s house loomed over the field between them, dark and empty, as Peterson’s wife, devastated and shocked and thoroughly unraveled, had left and moved herself into a home. Jeremy almost wanted to tear the thing down, but there were all sorts of legal troubles there. Eventually, maybe, a nice family would move in, breathe a new, positive life into a place that was shrouded with such darkness. Until then, he would plant another tree, a few feet away, to permanently blow the view from this soon to be hallowed, consecrated ground.

          “I’m building a gazebo here,” he announced. “Right here, in Annie’s honor. Amelia and Felicia’s, too. Remember how Annie would always beg me to build a gazebo here? She always wanted one, wanted to have her wedding here at home, get married in one. Well, I think I’m overdue for getting that done. Maybe Charlotte could get married here now, or Paul, I don’t know. I just think she’d like it.”

          As the morning’s light hadn’t gained its full strength yet, it was difficult to see Ophelia’s face, but her thick brows furrowed at first. She’s going to think I’m crazy, he thought. She’s going to break down again. It’s too much. I am crazy. I’ve completely lost my damn mind.

          But then he thought he saw her smile, though she let out a faint sob and wiped her cheek. “Hold on,” she said. “Let me get another shovel.”

About the Author

L.S. Engler writes from outside of Chicago, though she grew up weaving words in the woods of Michigan. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of journals and anthologies, with hopefully many more to come.