”
Debra raised
a hand, cutting him off. “Don’t, don’t tell me,” she shuddered. “It’ll just
give me nightmares. I try to keep my mind clear of those kind of things. Just
the times I felt it when I visited Ben were enough for me. Sounds like you got
a good dose of it yourself.”
“That’s a
good way to put it,” Steven said. “Listen,” he continued, “the last time I was
here, I really don’t think I was ready to hear what you had to say. My
apologies. After what I’ve seen and been through since then, trust me, I’m
ready. It’s just that, my father and I, we’re struggling for answers. I can’t
afford to just move and abandon the place. He’s dead set on continuing his
trances in the house, to try and figure it out. I’m not sure there’s anything
to figure out, it might just be unsolvable and I’ll be forced to live with it
or take a financial loss. But I did think, after remembering our conversation
from Monday, that I had stupidly cut you off before you could tell me something
important. Something about your father-in-law. I might be grasping at straws
here, but I’m hoping you can share some more with me, something that might help
us figure things out.”
Debra lit a
cigarette, took a long drag on it.
“Anything,”
Steven continued, “anything that might help, even if it seems irrelevant.”
“The only
thing we didn’t talk about when you were here before,” Debra said, “was Ben’s
decline. The problems at that house developed over time, they weren’t the way
they are now, when Ben first moved there. Things all went downhill for him
after Little Tony disappeared. Little Tony was Ben’s youngest son. They called
him Little Tony because Ben had a brother named Anthony that Little Tony was
named after. Anyway, he was six years old when he went missing. Ben always let
him play in the yard with neighbor kids, and always he’d come in for dinner,
just like the neighbor kids. This one day, he didn’t come in.”
Steven
leaned back in the couch, afraid of knocking something over, but needing to
adjust. “He disappeared?” he asked.
“Literally without
a trace,” she replied. “Of course Ben talked to every single neighbor, and all
the kids, asking them if they’d seen Little Tony that day. No one had, or if
they had, they didn’t say anything. Ben put up posters all over the
neighborhood. Cops were involved, but after a while, with no leads, and after
deciding that Ben wasn’t the cause, the cops just dropped it. Another missing
child case. Apparently it happens a lot.”
Steven
listened intently. The information was like manna to him, giving him new
options he desperately needed.
“Ben spent
all of his time searching,” Debra continued. “He was constantly in his car, for
weeks, driving up and down streets. He bought maps of the city and was methodically
searching through parks and fields. Sometimes people would help him, we did
many times, but most of the time he did it himself. Then one day he stopped. We
thought he’d given up, exhausted from all the hunting. But instead of looking,
he became paranoid. He’d invent all kinds of crazy theories about what had
happened to Little Tony and he’d try to convince me and John of them. We
weren’t having it, but we weren’t going to tell Ben he was crazy, either. I
think John half believed some of his ideas ‘cause John was a wreck too. There
was a big age difference between John and Little Tony, but they loved each
other and John spent a lot of time with him. John was just as devastated as Ben.
I figured the best thing was to let them both work through it in their own way.
John eventually came out of it, but things never improved for Ben. He seemed to
become more and more obsessed with theories.”
Debra pulled
out another cigarette, chain-lighting it from the first. “At one point we
thought he had made a turn, that maybe he was recovering from the grief and
starting to return to some kind of normal life,
Debra raised
a hand, cutting him off. “Don’t, don’t tell me,” she shuddered. “It’ll just
give me nightmares. I try to keep my mind clear of those kind of things. Just
the times I felt it when I visited Ben were enough for me. Sounds like you got
a good dose of it yourself.”
“That’s a
good way to put it,” Steven said. “Listen,” he continued, “the last time I was
here, I really don’t think I was ready to hear what you had to say. My
apologies. After what I’ve seen and been through since then, trust me, I’m
ready. It’s just that, my father and I, we’re struggling for answers. I can’t
afford to just move and abandon the place. He’s dead set on continuing his
trances in the house, to try and figure it out. I’m not sure there’s anything
to figure out, it might just be unsolvable and I’ll be forced to live with it
or take a financial loss. But I did think, after remembering our conversation
from Monday, that I had stupidly cut you off before you could tell me something
important. Something about your father-in-law. I might be grasping at straws
here, but I’m hoping you can share some more with me, something that might help
us figure things out.”
Debra lit a
cigarette, took a long drag on it.
“Anything,”
Steven continued, “anything that might help, even if it seems irrelevant.”
“The only
thing we didn’t talk about when you were here before,” Debra said, “was Ben’s
decline. The problems at that house developed over time, they weren’t the way
they are now, when Ben first moved there. Things all went downhill for him
after Little Tony disappeared. Little Tony was Ben’s youngest son. They called
him Little Tony because Ben had a brother named Anthony that Little Tony was
named after. Anyway, he was six years old when he went missing. Ben always let
him play in the yard with neighbor kids, and always he’d come in for dinner,
just like the neighbor kids. This one day, he didn’t come in.”
Steven
leaned back in the couch, afraid of knocking something over, but needing to
adjust. “He disappeared?” he asked.
“Literally without
a trace,” she replied. “Of course Ben talked to every single neighbor, and all
the kids, asking them if they’d seen Little Tony that day. No one had, or if
they had, they didn’t say anything. Ben put up posters all over the
neighborhood. Cops were involved, but after a while, with no leads, and after
deciding that Ben wasn’t the cause, the cops just dropped it. Another missing
child case. Apparently it happens a lot.”
Steven
listened intently. The information was like manna to him, giving him new
options he desperately needed.
“Ben spent
all of his time searching,” Debra continued. “He was constantly in his car, for
weeks, driving up and down streets. He bought maps of the city and was methodically
searching through parks and fields. Sometimes people would help him, we did
many times, but most of the time he did it himself. Then one day he stopped. We
thought he’d given up, exhausted from all the hunting. But instead of looking,
he became paranoid. He’d invent all kinds of crazy theories about what had
happened to Little Tony and he’d try to convince me and John of them. We
weren’t having it, but we weren’t going to tell Ben he was crazy, either. I
think John half believed some of his ideas ‘cause John was a wreck too. There
was a big age difference between John and Little Tony, but they loved each
other and John spent a lot of time with him. John was just as devastated as Ben.
I figured the best thing was to let them both work through it in their own way.
John eventually came out of it, but things never improved for Ben. He seemed to
become more and more obsessed with theories.”
Debra pulled
out another cigarette, chain-lighting it from the first. “At one point we
thought he had made a turn, that maybe he was recovering from the grief and
starting to return to some kind of normal life,
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