Under the Surface

Under the Surface

But that was before they found the second body, a whole four blocks away from the first, under Mr. Galloway’s house. They followed the crows. I remember waking up to a loud knock on the door. By the time I made it downstairs my mama had her hand cupped over her mouth, shaking her head at the police officer standing in my doorway. Daddy had the look on his face that he gets the few times Daddy gets scared and I hid behind the living room wall, peeking my ear out enough to catch the conversation. 

“Same time, yeah, no, no, a boy this time, looks around the age of twenty-two.” The officer answers my parents’ inquiries with a serious look on his face, a notepad in his left hand, occasionally pausing to check his radio. 

A warm hand grasps my shoulder.I gasp probably a lot louder than I should and spin on my heel. 

My twelve-year-old brother, Connor, stands in front of me, his red hair dangling in front of his eyes, which have not yet fully opened. He’s wearing jeans and his blue Nike hoodie, which means he slept in what he wore to school yesterday. Gross. He scrunches his eyebrows together at the sight of our guest.

“What do they want now?” He walks past me and makes himself a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

I ignore him and go back to eavesdropping, and eventually he and his milk mustache join me. 

“Do you think we should leave?” my mom asks the officer. She’s shaking now and fighting back tears. 

“Nah you’ll be fine here. The remains all indicate that this happened years ago. Probably some dumb kids playing around in the construction sites.”

This answer seemed to shock my parents.“I thought y’all said it was…done on purpose,” my father questioned. 

“The autopsy already came back on the girl,” the cop explains. “Funny thing is, they didn’t find anything. No cause of death, not even suffocation. Just dead. Hard to claim a homicide when there wasn’t anything wrong. Guessing the boy’s will be the same.”

On that cheerful note the cop bids us farewell and leaves. Mama sinks into our pink cushioned arm chair and looks at Daddy. 

“Two, Robert!” she stutters. My dad kneels in front of the chair with his arms on her shoulders, trying to calm her. “Two in a week! Two within five blocks of us! For heaven’s sake, Missy and Connor pass by them on their way to the bus everyday! My kids have been walking by corpses since we’ve been here!” 

My dad tries to reassure her but eventually sees it’s pointless and goes to the kitchen to make her some tea. The problem with that is we’re still in the living room doorway. My hand closes around Connor’s wrist and I drag him back up the stairs as fast as our legs would allow us to go. I shove him into my room and slam the door. We gasp for breath and stare at each other. Connor’s eyes widen every few seconds as he connects more and more pieces of the conversation.  

“The body!” he says in between breaths. “They found more?” I nod and look out my bedroom window as a pit grows in my stomach. 

“But they said… I thought… the girl wasn’t…” 

He’s unable to complete a thought and frankly, I wouldn’t be able to respond even if he could. We both heard the officer. There is nothing else to say that the other doesn’t know. My eyes are still burning through the glass of the window and I try to imagine this neighborhood as it was a week ago.  I was finally starting to feel at home and would wake up every morning with the tingly feeling of nerves almost gone for good. But it wouldn’t leave now. Not ever again. Because this was a neighborhood of dead things now. Death had come and taken our homes for himself and we could never get them back.

Connor stares at me for a while before slipping out of my room when it becomes clear I won’t talk anymore and I stand there. I stand there in my tan room with my white bedspread and cream closet, feeling rug beneath my bare toes. I stand there and look outside where all the cookie cutter houses smile back at me and tell me to come inside. To come inside where it’s safe. And then I stand there and let death engulf me.

That night I had a dream that I was dead. I remember the crows being over me as I lay inside a coffin of mirrors. I am buried and I can see crows circling in the reflection of the top mirror. With every breath I let out, the mirror fogs up, covering up the crows slowly. I begin to struggle to breathe and somehow know that the breath fogging up the final crow will be my last. I try to scream for help but all that comes out of my mouth is fog. The air becomes thicker and thicker until the last crow is about to be covered. But as the final breath is let out, I wake up crying. I heave huge breaths and sob the entire night through. 

The third body came three days later and the fourth two days after that. The black birds always seemed to be at the scene of the crime. Some people packed up and left, always with murmurs of how could anyone stay. Mama wanted to go. She told Daddy once a day and sometimes more. But Daddy always insisted on staying. Said they couldn’t get anything for the house now and we had no choice but to stay. Connor and I take the back way to and from the bus stop now. We prance through the field behind the houses or in the middle of the streets. As far away from any actual houses as possible. 

People at school look at us weird too. In fact, I’m pretty sure I heard Mally Wrench whisper I was a murderer in Lily Golden’s ear. We’re not the only ones though. All the kids from the neighborhood seem to be suddenly excluded from friend groups, kickball teams, and lunch tables. Someone even started a rumor that if you talk to one of us, then you’ll be the next body found.

“Nope. Not me,” I tell them. “I just moved here, see. I hardly even live there.” 

But they never listen and with each day that passes, it seems like there’s one more person crossing the hall to avoid me. 

They don’t find anything on the bodies. They’re all in various states of decay depending on where they were found. The boy in the concrete was almost fully intact but the girl in the dirt was reduced to bone. They’re working on identifying them and police think they have some leads, but it’s been almost two and a half weeks since the first one was found. Daddy says the police gotta get their heads out of their rear-ends. 

“Most places woulda done had this solved.” He sits crossed legged on the puffy chair with a pipe hanging from his mouth that he only moves when he makes a good point. “But not here.” He cocks his pipe to the side. “Here they take their damn old time while we’re sittin’ pretty on a graveyard.” 

Mama distracts herself by decorating our morning pancakes with blueberries or chocolate chips and cutting out tiny paper stars for our school’s PTA. She refuses to even talk about it. 

Connor and I drape ourselves over the computer every night until we fall asleep looking for answers. I don’t know why we think we know better than the police, but we’re convinced we do. We’re convinced if we google enough that eventually we’ll figure it out and life can go back to normal. Obviously we have no such luck. 

The news came in when we were least expecting it. I was doing my homework at the dining room table and Connor was playing Mario Kart in the living room. My mom was dusting the same spot over and over behind me and my dad wasn’t even home from work yet. 

Then the phone rings and Mama answers it. I hear various “Oh my god”s and “How terrible”s but nothing else. My homework’s been pushed to the side as my eyes pierce the phone in hopes of making out the conversation. Even Connor has pulled away from his game. 

Finally, she hangs up the phone with wide eyes like someone just told her their biggest, darkest secret. I jump out of my seat and dart over. 

“Mama who was it?” I gasp. “What’d they say? Please tell me!”

She snaps out of her trance and puts a hand on my shoulder with a beaming smile. 

“Don’t worry baby.” She takes my chin in her hand and squeezes it so that my lips pucker. “Just… grown up stuff.” Then she ruffles my hair and walks out of the kitchen.

Connor walks in, concerned, and my cheeks grow hot. I want to yell back at Mama that I’m not a baby. That I’m already in my top year of middle school and can even drive soon. But Mama’s always been like that. Not quite focused, I mean. 

Connor’s glance follows Mama out of the room, then snaps to mine

“Look,” he whispers. “They don’t belong to anyone.”

“Connor, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Look!” he says again, shoving his phone in my face. 

My eyes fall on the article. Connor was right. My eyes lay on the phone screen for almost five minutes. 

“The DNA didn’t match anyone. For any of them! They’re all just bodies of people who never lived.” Connor pulls his phone away and walks out to settle back into his game. 

I stand in the kitchen in shock, unable to imagine how four bodies couldn’t belong to anyone. That’s impossible. They have to be someone. Yet they weren’t. My brain starts racing as it tries to make sense of how someone who wasn’t even alive could be killed. 

But that’s when I see them. Through the kitchen window I could see them clear as day. Going around and around, right above my tool shed. My legs turn to jelly as the tiny black figures dart around the sky. Circling and circling and circling.

Author

Abbie Amatucci is a junior in high school who recently discovered her talent for writing. She is excited to see where her writing takes her in her final year of high school. 

Jailbird Artist: Olivia Phelan