Photo credit: Theen … on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-SA 

He began appearing in different parts of the house. Still in the basement, but now she saw him in a heap on the attic floor, at the top of the narrow, creaky stairway to the space they used only for storage.

He lay face down, one arm pinned under his rib cage, the other by his side. His legs were thrust out as though he’d fallen on his knees and his weight had forced them to straighten. Had he tried to get up? She couldn’t tell.

It was spring, and Sheila was in the attic putting the winter coats away. As always she took inventory, deciding what to keep, what would still fit the children next year, and what to get rid of.

She seldom got beyond this stage. She waffled over the smallest items—scarves she’d received as gifts and never worn, a glove whose mate had been missing for more than a year, the raccoon earmuffs Chloe had refused to wear. In the end she bundled up the parkas and snow pants she should have discarded last year, and stuffed them in a bag.

She turned again to the coats from this winter. She should wash the kids’ ski jackets, she thought. Nate’s was grubby with grass stains and mud on the elbows. Checking the pockets, she found a note: “You didn’t need to be so obvious about it. Fuck. As if she didn’t know already.”

Sheila didn’t think it was Nate’s handwriting. This was neater, more precise, maybe a girl’s.

She wondered what to do with it. She refolded it and put it back in the pocket, then tossed the jacket onto the pile she would take downstairs.

***

When they moved into the house, they had found bones in the basement. It was a cellar, really, barely five feet deep, with an earth floor and lit by a single bare bulb. In the back, below the kitchen, a cement pad for the furnace and water heater and a half door leading out to the crawlspace under the porch.

They’d wondered if they could lower the floor, and Derek was loosening the dirt with a pickaxe, then dumping it a shovelful at a time into a galvanized iron tub.

Sheila found the first one. “Look!” She plucked it from the pile with her thumb and forefinger, and held it up. About nine inches long, decomposed and hollowed, but unmistakably a bone.

She brushed the dirt off to look at it more closely. The porous surface reminded her of sponge toffee or Alka Seltzer. Something solid that would fizz up and dissolve if you added water.

“It’s not human,” Derek said. “Did you think it was?”

She wasn’t sure. She might have hoped it was, but soon realized this was naive.

And she had the idea to keep it, to scrub it clean, and put it on a shelf.

Sheila is afraid of the body at the bottom of the stairs.

One day, about to open the basement door, Sheila sensed that if she went down the stairs she would find a man’s body. At first she imagined only a lumpish human shape. But then she thought about it long enough to flesh out the picture in her mind. He was lying in a modified recovery position, though more face down than on his side. His left arm extended, his head resting on his bicep; his right arm on the floor in front of him, elbow bent, hand near his face. She couldn’t tell how old he was. He wore a brown suit.

Even as a child, Sheila was not afraid of monsters under the bed or in the closet. But the image lingered, and she thought about the man every time she needed something from the basement.

He wasn’t a ghost, poltergeist or demon. He just lay there, stubbornly present, always in the same position, but not threatening in any way she could express.

Who is he, she wondered, increasingly nervous. She found she hesitated at the top of the stairs. He was real to her, but she didn’t tell anyone. She believed he was communicating — or needed to communicate — something to her. Yet his presence also felt like a judgement.

This happened around the time Derek was away from home for longer stretches, travelling for work, often for a week or more at a time. In fact, the same day Sheila first imagined the body, she expected Derek home after a week away. He was due on a late flight, and it was mid-afternoon when the man appeared to her.

But he didn’t actually appear to her. She remembered it that way, but it was just a picture in her head. Though she had quickly conjured up a physical presence. She felt heat rising off his body, a chill in the musty basement air, and there was a faint sour smell, too, of perspiration.

That day she had hesitated only a moment, then took a deep breath and headed down the stairs, stopping once to peek around the corner and scan the space below. Nothing. Only their basement as she had last seen it — a single room with a low ceiling, cobwebs in the joists and everything where she expected it to be. The washer and dryer, an assortment of sports equipment and half-finished projects. The freezer hummed in the corner. Where she had imagined seeing the body was cluttered with boxes of discarded toys and dishes to sort and give away. No room here for a body, she thought, yet she could see that the position and location she imagined him to be in suggested he had fallen down the stairs, or had been pushed. She made her way to the dryer to retrieve a basket of clean clothes, to take upstairs to fold.

Later that evening, Derek called to say his flight had been delayed. It would be past midnight when he landed, and then he’d have to get a cab. It was a bitter cold Friday night in December. She’d just told Chloe and Nate to turn off the TV and get ready for bed. They’d ordered pizza, the empty box still on the dining room table. She shook the crumbs into the garbage and put the box by the basement door to take downstairs for recycling. When the kids were in bed, she took the dog out, turned off all but one light by the front door, then went to bed and read for an hour, restlessly, knowing she wouldn’t retain much.

Expecting to lie awake in the dark, instead she fell into a heavy, woolly sleep, from which she surfaced occasionally to look at the clock and wonder about Derek. But sleep soon carried her off again, it was warm and delicious, and she burrowed into it, and each time she came to, it was more difficult to climb back up.

Very late in the night she heard the key in the door and Derek’s footsteps on the hall carpet. In her mind she followed him up the stairs, noticed the bathroom light turn on and then off, all the time struggling to stay awake. After some time she felt a cold rush of air — he’s turned back the covers, she thought — then his weight press down, and another gust of air as he lifted the blankets over him. Finally, she heard him exhale.

She reached across the short span of the cool white sheet, found his hand, and placed hers over it.  She slid her foot toward him and realized at once he was nearly frozen. She inched over until the length of her body was pressed against his, and waited. She could tell by his breathing he was already asleep. And she could feel her skin absorbing the cold, and her own body throwing off heat, to restore warmth, and some kind of equilibrium.

For the next three days, Sheila tracked him. It was strangely soothing, watching him move from town to town, staying at motels with friendly names like The Pine Grove Inn and eating at roadside restaurants that managed to evoke in her a sense of home. (She realized later that it’s the sense of summer she’s nostalgic for, not home — lakes, rivers, local bakeries and hardware stores, the smell of Hawaiian Tropic, plunging into a cool, silent lake at midnight — things that likely wouldn’t exist anymore if she ventured there to see for herself.)

Soothing, because she’d confirmed he was okay, although what okay meant now was something different than what it had meant a few days ago. Now, it meant he was alive and able to operate a car and a bank card. She didn’t consider that maybe Derek had been taken prisoner and forced into these actions at gunpoint, though it was on her list of possibilities. It didn’t occur to her that the person staying at motels and eating at diners might not be Derek.

She pulled out a map of Ontario and spread it on the dining room table. If he were trying to hide his activities he would be more careful, she thought. He might, in fact, use only his credit card, or make a large withdrawal and pay with cash. That he hadn’t done this told Sheila that either it hadn’t occurred to him that he could be better at hiding, or he wanted to be found.

The days went by. Sheila stayed put, looking after the children, busying herself with cleaning and chores. Tom called twice, worried. He hadn’t been able to reach Derek and was debating whether to call their mother. Sheila asked him to wait, and explained she had the banking transactions that told her Derek was fine. She didn’t confess to her ongoing surveillance.

On Sunday morning she checked the bank balance and saw that Derek had turned south and east. This was how she learned, in a moment of anxious panic, that he was on his way home. Soon he would walk through the door.

Sheila found herself living alone in Toronto, without a job or close friends, in a  bachelor apartment with a futon, a book case, an electric frying pan, and a small kitchen table with two chairs. This wasn’t what she had planned. She had thought all along (albeit vaguely, she realized) that her life would be larger somehow. More friends, parties, a demanding but satisfying job. Weekends at the cottage. Maybe a pet.

Very occasionally Sheila tip-toed to the edge of wondering what had gone wrong. A recent series of disappointments—another unsuccessful job interview; a disastrous second date with a man who said she was not good looking enough; and a failed grad school application caused her to wonder about a pattern. At the same time, she was exploring the city, on foot and by transit, and on long walks and excursions felt the pulse of discovery, of something wondrous around the corner.

At school, Sheila had been called a daydreamer. “Sheila is not paying attention.” “Sheila doesn’t seem to care about her work.” But this wasn’t true. She could pay attention without watching; she cared about some of her work. She was not really daydreaming. At first, she simply wished she were somewhere else.

Later, she became actively engaged in a conjured space, the present, but with a companion, sometimes a friend, and sometimes someone more like a teacher. She did not imagine herself in the future. Later, she would conclude she couldn’t—that this space she visited wasn’t a product of her making, like a fantasy or a dream, but a glimpse into a parallel life, one in which she roamed freely. It was like being in and watching a movie at the same time.

As she got older, this world receded. In her real present was conflict and drama and a predictable level of angst. High school loomed, and then university. She was called on by her parents, her teachers, and her friends to project herself into the future. Where will you go to school? What are you going to do with your life? Effortlessly, she lobbed back convincing answers. “I’m going to take history.” “I’m going to go to law school.” “I’m planning to travel.” In this way, she painted a believable picture of her future self, but at the same time recognized, with increasing unease, that she could not really imagine herself beyond the age of 25. She wondered if this was a vision, a premonition. Yes, it could be that, she thought, but it might also be a simple failure of imagination.

She wasn’t thinking about this on the subway platform when she first thought that she could jump. Her habit, as she explored the city, was to choose a destination for an errand, either to go to the library or to apply for a job, and afterward spend a few hours wandering around. Then she rode the subway back to her apartment. On this day she arrived on the platform just as a train was leaving. She had noticed she liked the smell of diesel and the hot rush of wind as the trains pulled away, creating a vacuum that drew her closer to the edge.

Over the days and weeks, she stood closer to the yellow caution zone, and now boldly stepped onto it, leaning into the tunnel to watch for the next train. When it came whooshing in, she pulled back only slightly, determined to test her tolerance for risk. And to her surprise, what she felt was a small, sensual thrill—a fluttering of her heart and quickening breath, a feeling of being alive for the first time.

It wasn’t long before she sought out these moments, inched to the edge at every opportunity, gauging any movement behind her, aware she might be shunted onto the track. Sometimes she would wait, as two or three trains came and went, basking in the hot fumes.

In her mind, she saw herself leaping forward. But in this mental rehearsal she didn’t hit the tracks or the train. Instead—like in a dream or a nightmare—she woke from the reverie just before the fatal moment.

At home she relived these moments, complete with racing heart. It became a habit, in fact, to visit the platform in her head, and to think about what it meant. If she was suicidal she was not aware of it. Yet the platform beckoned, inviting her somewhere new. To slip beneath the surface, to disappear.

On a Thursday morning when the kids were quite young, Sheila woke to find Derek in the kitchen, finishing the last of his coffee and placing the empty cup in the sink. She had overslept and rushed out of bed, disoriented. Her mind raced, thinking of all the things she needed to do in the now-reduced time in which she had to do them and still get the kids to school and herself to work on time.

The thing was, Derek almost never got up before her, and certainly wasn’t dressed and ready to go out before she was awake. But he had on a clean shirt and jeans, and his leather jacket. He said, “I have a lot to do today. I’m seeing a new client — or, I hope he’ll be a new client. Not sure how long it’ll take.” Then he left. He didn’t look at her. To Sheila it seemed like he had avoided looking at her. But that might have just been how she remembered it.

It was a cool October morning, and they had quarrelled the night before. She remembered this much later. She had been angry with him but was unable to explain why, even to herself. “You don’t seem to have any interest in life,” she’d said. And she’d had to agree with Derek that this sounded ridiculous, yet it was the closest she could come to describing how she felt. It was like his inertia had a physical form that both attracted and repelled her—a yawning abyss, inviting her to climb inside it and disappear. So when he left, she thought it might be a sign that he’d turned a corner.

Still, she thought she might hear from him at some point in the day, and when he hadn’t called by dinnertime, she felt the first stirrings of worry. He didn’t answer his cell, but it could be dead. He was careless that way. Who would she call? His brother? She thought about what she’d tell him. But then the evening rose up in front of her: homework, dishes, bedtime, a load of laundry into the washer and another one folded. All this before she took out her laptop and opened a half-finished report, due tomorrow.

When do you call the police and hospitals, Sheila wondered. When do you call something a crisis? She searched local news stations for accidents and found nothing. She became more restless, pacing the house and by turns looking out the front window and checking on the children. At 12:30 she decided it was too late to call Derek’s brother, Tom. She went to bed and slept fitfully, waking every hour or so knowing something was wrong, and then remembering what it was.

In the morning she phoned Tom, who agreed it was strange. “But he’s been off lately, hasn’t he?”

Yes, Sheila thought. Off covers it. “I think I should call the police.” But then she didn’t. Tom said he would come over, and she told him not to, that it was good of him to offer but she wanted to get the kids up and to school and try to be normal. Could she call him later, she asked. And could he keep trying to get in touch with Derek himself? Of course, he said. She called work and left a message letting them know she wouldn’t be in but that she’d email the report by the end of the day.

She walked the children to the corner to wait for the bus. “Where’s Dad?” Nate asked. Neither of them had asked at dinner last night.

“He had to go out of town for work. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“Tonight? Will he be back tonight? For my game?”

“He’ll do his best,” Sheila said, surprising herself with the easy lie.

She should call her mother, she thought, but wanted to put it off for as long as possible. Too many questions. She opened the report again, and added a couple of paragraphs. Really, she could do these in her sleep. She finished it quickly and sent it off. She called Derek’s cell. Still no answer. She thought to call a friend, but again, the thought of questions stopped her. She would give Derek a bit more time.

She made a list of the reasons Derek wasn’t answering his phone.

• His phone is dead.
• Derek is dead.
• He needs to be alone and doesn’t know how to tell her.
• He is leaving her.
• He has already left her.
• He is having an affair.
• He is having another affair.
• He has been kidnapped.
• He has been taken hostage.
• He has driven his car off a bridge.
• He is drunk and passed out in a motel room.
• He is in danger. His car is in the ditch at the side of the road. He has hit his head.
• He is bleeding from the head.
• He has amnesia.
• He has assumed a new identity and disappeared.
• He has moved to South America.
• He is hiding in the basement.

Sheila was certain that one of these was the true reason Derek was missing. She started a new list—things she could do to gather information.

• Call the police.
• Call Derek’s old boss.
• Call all of Derek’s former co-workers.
• Call local hospitals.
• Call Derek’s mother.

Then she had a better idea. She took out their household bills folder from the desk drawer, and found his most recent Visa statement. She called customer service and asked about recent activity on the card. Politely, the customer service agent explained that she couldn’t discuss any details of the account with Sheila because Sheila was not the primary card holder. Undaunted, Sheila explained the strange circumstances regarding Derek, and asked again if he had used the card in the last day or two. Again, the agent refused.

Mid-morning, and Sheila was pacing the house again, looking out the front window, checking the kids’ rooms, which were empty, of course, because they were at school. She checked them anyway. She called work to make sure the report had arrived and learned there’d been a mix-up in payroll. She went online to see if her pay had been deposited—a new automatic pay system was apparently causing confusion—and there it was. Her pay deposit, yes, but what made her gasp was the $200 withdrawal from their joint account at a branch in a town a three-hour drive from their home. She scrolled down and saw two more entries. One for gas at a service centre 100 miles north-east, and another for $11.55 at a Wendy’s in North Bay.

“Of course,” she said out loud. “The fucker.”