Page 68 of Plain Sight

The concrete in my bones freezes. That constant sound wasn’t an air conditioning unit. Maybe I wanted it to be one, but it’s not. Mason’s screaming into his pillow, but his voice is all ragged. It only gets quieter when he takes a breath.

I can’t take it. Every time he screams I think it’ll be the time I lose my mind. I need it to stop.

He screams again.

“What did they look like when they died?” asks Remy.

She’s still that awful, ghostly white. Lit up in a storm. Her eyes are black.

“Jameson? Did Mom and Dad look like they were sleeping?”

“I don’t know, Rem. Don’t think about it, okay? It’s time to be in bed.”

“Look what I found.” She bends down, the skirt of her nightgown brushing the floor, and picks something up in her small hands. Only a little baby fat remains. “I found pictures.”

“Remy, no.” I swipe at the photos in her hands, but she’s out of reach. She was next to me a second ago. “Remy. Don’t—give those to me.”

A tiny frown of concentration turns her mouth down, and Remy holds the photos closer to her face. “It’s Mom and Dad. See?”

She holds them out with both hands like a drawing she’d done at school. All the hairs on the back of my neck pull so tight I swear they’re being ripped out. My stomach turns. I want to look away. I can’t.

Remy drops the pictures so she can cover her ears.

“Stop screaming.” I can’t get the goddamn things off my lap. They won’t go. They keep sticking to my fingers, always face up, always so I can see them in perfect detail. Remy opens her mouth and wails at me. “Stop screaming. You’re hurting my ears. Stop screaming.”

I’m not screaming. I didn’t think I was screaming. I understand abruptly that I’ve been screaming since I started begging her not to look at those pictures, but I can’t stop.

Somebody knocks on the door.

It’s a crooked knock, more of a scratch. I stand up against my will. I couldn’t get up before, couldn’t put Remy back to bed, and now I can’t sit. My body drags me toward the door. It’s not locked. There’s no lock. Anyone could’ve walked in.

I open the door.

Gabriel’s on the other side, too thin, his cheeks hollow. He has both hands pressed to a spot on his side. He frowns, forehead creased, like he didn’t expect me to answer the door. “Jameson. Wake up.”

Another voice layers on top of his. Jameson. Wake up.

I have to get out. I have to go.

Gabriel lurches back, out of my way, and I tear down the hall of the apartment building, his voice following after me. Jameson. Jameson. Jameson. It doesn’t look how it’s supposed to. It doesn’t look how it did, and I have the horrible sick drowning choking feeling that I’m trapped. I’m fucked. I can’t breathe.

I run into something solid, and it turns me. Or the wall turns. My knuckles smash against a hard surface. It’s a cracking, bruising pain.

“Jameson.” Remy’s at the next threshold, her nightgown bloody and her eyes dead. “What did they look like when they died?”

“Burned.” I bend down and say it right into her dead, wrong face. “They were burned. They were fucking dead, Remy. They were melted bones and ashes. Don’t you show me those fucking pictures, Remy, don’t you dare. Burn the—the pictures—don’t⁠—”

The apartment’s rebuilding itself around us. Gabriel at the door. Mason screaming. They’re not going to let me out.

In the kitchen, Remy stands on an upside-down milk crate, stirring cake batter. She stops. Pulls out the spoon. Peers into the bowl.

“Look, Jameson.” When she turns, the moonlight catches in the hollow pits where her eyes used to be. “I found pictures.”

I don’t look.

I don’t look.

I go past her to the door. There wasn’t a door in that apartment. There was a wall, and on the other side of that wall was a couple who worked the night shift. They had Thursdays off and spent the whole day drinking and the whole night screaming at each other.