Page 22 of Middle of the Night

I go numb. Thereisnews. Important news, from the way Ragesh sounds. And for a second I allow myself to think that what I felt last night and what Mr. Wallace saw were real. That the impossible has indeed happened.

Billy’sback.

“I haven’t heard anything,” I say. “What’s going on?”

“Yesterday morning, human remains were found in the area.” Ragesh pauses and the whole room tilts. “A boy. Probably around ten years old. They’re still checking dental records, but I’m pretty sure we found him, Ethan. We found Billy Barringer.”

SIX

Billy is dead.

While I’d assumed that was the case, it feels different when that assumption is confirmed. Because deep down, I never wanted to believe it. For decades I’d harbored faint hopes and what-ifs. Now that I know I was wrong all this time, it feels like I’m floating. A strange, weightless sensation that hit the moment Ragesh broke the news on the phone and that has stayed with me the rest of the day.

From the way the others look, I can tell they feel the same. Russ keeps a tight grip on the side of the sofa, as if he’s afraid of sliding off. Ashley, squeezed between the two of us, simply looks nauseated.

The only person seemingly unaffected by today’s news is the bearer of it: Ragesh Patel, who volunteered to stop by with more details when he got the chance. At 7:30, he finally arrived and now speaks calmly and slowly, a far cry from the teenager with the cruel voice and mocking laugh of my memories. He’s changed so much that when he came to the door, I barely recognized him. He’s larger now, thick in both chest and stomach, and strands of gray pepper his hair and his full beard. Back when he was the neighborhood bully, his face was angular and clean-shaven, all the better to show off his perpetual sneer.

“I can’t talk long,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t even be talking to you at all. We haven’t told the media yet because Billy’s family still hasn’t been notified. We reached out yesterday to the state hospital where Mrs. Barringer is being cared for. They said a doctor would tell her, but that it’s highly unlikely she’ll comprehend what he’s saying. As for Andy Barringer, he’s MIA. The last contact information anyone seems to have for him is more than ten years old. He was in a brief relationship with one of his mother’s nurses back then. She’s tried to reach out, but I’m not sure if she got ahold of him or not. So this is all very classified information—which doesn’t leave this room.”

He doesn’t need to explain further. It’s clear this is a favor to me, Ashley, and Russ.

“What about the rest of the neighborhood?” says Russ, who’s shrunken himself so the three of us can fit on the sofa. It makes him look oddly fragile. Just a boy getting bad news. “The others should hear this, too.”

“And they will,” Ragesh says. “Very soon. But we don’t want this news leaking to the press before we locate Billy’s brother. So you can’t tell anyone. Not that I can share very much. The state police’s Criminal Investigations Bureau has taken charge.”

I study Ragesh’s face. If he’s annoyed about being pushed aside, he doesn’t show it.

“All I’m allowed to say is that yesterday morning, a set of human remains were found in the area. A forensic anthropologist examined them and concluded that they appear to be the remains of a male juvenile.”

“Are you certain it’s Billy?” I say, clinging to the idea that Ragesh could be wrong.

“Dental records now confirm it’s him. Which we already knew. Based on the condition of the remains and where they were found, it was clearly Billy Barringer.”

All the air leaves my lungs, taking with it that last bit of hope. Fora moment, it feels like I’m drowning. I force myself to inhale before saying, “Where was he found?”

“The base of the falls at the Hawthorne Institute,” Ragesh says with the abruptness of someone ripping off a Band-Aid. With good reason. The institute sits just two miles away, separated from my backyard by a stretch of woods.

And Billy had been there this whole time. So close yet so beyond rescue.

The weightless sensation grows worse, to the point where I press my feet against the floor just to make sure I haven’t lifted off the sofa. To counter it, I close my eyes and picture the falls. Rushing water colored a turbulent white pouring over a granite cliff into a lake of indeterminant depth. All of it created not by nature but by man more than a hundred years ago.

Growing up, I’d heard rumors that the lake was bottomless. That, long ago, people would jump in and never resurface. That their ghosts haunted the falls, floating like strips of fog around the cascading water. Suburban legend, but apparently with enough truth to it that my parents forbade me from ever going there. To this day, I’ve only seen the falls once.

With Billy and the three other people in this room.

On the afternoon before Billy disappeared.

“How did Billy end up there?” I keep my eyes closed as I say it, as if that will make the question easier to ask. It doesn’t. Because part of me doesn’t want to know, even though I need to, if only to see if it’s better or worse than my imagination. “Do you think he could have fallen in and drowned?”

As the words still hang in the air, I realize the unlikeliness of such a scenario. While it’s possible that Billy returned to the falls on his own, sneaking away under the cloak of darkness, that isn’t the case. The side of the tent had been sliced open, which is reason enough to think Billy didn’t leave of his own accord. What seals the deal for me,though, are his sneakers. They were still in the tent when I woke up the next morning. If Billy intended to walk two miles through a heavily wooded area, he certainly would have put on his shoes.

“That’s unlikely,” Ragesh says. “Both the forensic anthropologist and investigators at the scene found evidence that suggests foul play.”

A pall settles over the room, during which I hear nothing but the dull hum of the central air unit and a blue jay screeching from the elm tree in the front yard.

Foul play.

“I can’t share any details, but it’s believed he was killed first and that his body was weighed down and tossed from the top of the falls into the lake below.”

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