Bone by Bone

"I've seen that before." Ha

"I know." Oren also stared at the nonexistent box. "Any idea what it is?"

"Wish I knew. It drives me nuts. No sense in asking him. His answers don't always work with the questions. Watch this." She leaned toward her employer and raised her voice. "What's in the box?"

The judge turned to her without expression and said, "The soup was burning on the stove."

"Nothing to do with my question." Ha

He nodded. His father might be reliving a night months after Josh had vanished. Oren had come home from the woods, dirty and exhausted. The judge and the housekeeper had waited up for him long past the di

The housekeeper held up a sheaf of papers clipped together. "This doctor says a sleepwalker's speech is incomprehensible gibberish. That's how I know the fool phoned in his research. He for damn sure never talked to anybody who lives with a sleepwalker." She crumpled these sheets into a ball and tossed them over one shoulder as she pushed the rest of the stack to Oren's side of the table. "It's not like any of these idiots talk to each other, either."

Oren touched his father's arm, asking, "What's in the box?"

"Our child is lost," said the judge. "I need another miracle."

"Well," said Ha

"Another miracle. What does that mean?"

"The stuff of dreams," she said. "Nothing more. You know your father doesn't hold with miracles when he's awake." She pulled the pharmacy bottle from her pocket and set it on the table. "He sleeps through the night when I slip Lorazepam into his whiskey. It won't cure him. Nothing will- and that's the only thing the experts agree on. But the drug keeps him out of mischief, and I can get some rest."

Oren watched the old man close the lid of the dreamed box. "This is why you hide the car keys in a tea tin."

She nodded. "One night, I found him behind the wheel. He was almost to the end of the driveway when he woke up. He can do lots of things when he's sleeping. My big fear is that he'll get out of the house one night and go for a walk in the woods."

"Answer the phone," said the judge, though the telephone was not ringing.

Ha

The judge rose from his chair and walked to the telephone mounted on the kitchen wall. He picked up the receiver and held it to his ear. After a few seconds, it dropped from his hand and swung from its cord. There was surprise in the old man's eyes, as if he were seeing his surroundings for the first time. He looked down at his bare feet, not wanting to meet the eyes of his son and the housekeeper. Shyly, he slipped out of the kitchen and padded off down the hall. They heard the cowbells ring as the bedroom door closed behind him.

"Your father gets embarrassed when he wakes up that way." The housekeeper retrieved the dangling receiver and set it back on the wall cradle. "But he won't remember any of this in the morning." Ha

"What do you think, Ha

"Well, what's in a nightmare? It's the intolerable thing. You remember your dreams, don't you? He never does. I think he's struggling with something that can't be said out loud. This unspeakable thing, it's something he can't deal with in a wide-awake brain. Sleepwalking is like his safety valve. His worst thoughts come out at night, and he never has to remember them when he wakes up." She sat back in her chair, downed her shot glass in one gulp, and then she poured another. "That's why I used to take him to the séances. Things slip out there. Sometimes things bypass your brain and just pop out on the witchboard."

"It's a scam." Oren filled his glass again.

Ha

"Our Good Samaritan duty."

"Right. I guess you were eleven and Josh was nine. That woman was very old, close to ninety. The judge was real surprised when you boys took her death so hard-all those nightmares." Ha

Oren smiled. With the destruction of that old Ouija board, Ha

Kid stuff." He shook his head. "This is different. Alice Friday is a con artist. That Ouija board of hers is just a cheap trick."

It is, and it isn't," said Ha

Oren poured himself another shot. "I've dealt with lots of psychics in homicide cases. They turn up at the funerals so they can meet the grieving relatives-and fleece them. Bloodsuckers."

"But there's no charge, Oren. The séances are free. So where's the crime?

"It's fraud." He made no distinctions between the fakes who charged and the ones who did it for attention. In his experience, they all did real damage to the families of victims.

Ha

"Like the judge? That surprised me."

"At first he went on my account. I told him I was scared to go alone."

"And he believed that? You're not afraid of anything. He knows how you drive a car."

Ignoring this, Ha

"Somebody moves it, and it isn't my dead brother."

"Oh, Josh, the spirit guide." She nodded and smiled. "Now that part's fake. When Alice asks if his spirit is there, the wooden heart just settles over the letter Y for yes. The witchboard never spelled his name. But one night, the board spelled out the words red comb. It helps if you know that the judge took Josh in for a haircut the day before he disappeared, and the barber gave the boy a red plastic comb."