I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. I lay there in the darkness and listened to Billy snoring beneath me. We had bunk beds, and it was a familiar sound—sort of comforting. One of those noises that you hear every night, the ones that tell you everything is okay—your big brother snoring, your little sister in the room across the hall, your Daddy’s footsteps as he tiptoes down the hall in the middle of the night.
But tonight, there was just Billy. Daddy wouldn’t be tiptoeing down the hall. He’d left just as soon as we went to bed. I heard the car pull out of the driveway. He was gone, out to fulfill his urges. He’d told me and Billy that he’d always had them, but he’d been able to control them until Mom died. After she was gone, they’d gotten stronger. He knew the urges were wrong, but he had to do what he had to do.
It’s almost midnight now, and I still can’t sleep. Daddy’s not back yet.
Tomorrow, another little girl will be missing.
But at least it won’t be Betsy.
Betsy is buried in the ground, safe from Daddy’s urges.
***
***
The idea for this story took root during a conversation with my then-second wife. We were discussing how, when I was a kid, my parents let me ride my bike all over town and stay gone all day, coming home only for dinner. Back then, they didn’t worry about some nut abducting me. It saddens me that things have changed. I want our son to enjoy the same freedoms I had as a boy, but I also want to protect him from the bad people out there. “Burying Betsy” grew out of that. At first, the father was just burying his daughter to keep her safe, but halfway through the first draft, the twist suggested itself to me and the story became something quite different from its original premise.
This story previously appeared in Cemetery Dance magazine, and was re-printed in my short story collections Fear of Gravity and A Little Silver Book of Streetwise Stories, both of which are long out-of-print. It was also adapted for a graphic novel.
DUST
Two months later…
She still jumped every time she heard an airplane.
The sound never left her. In her sleep, at lunch, in the shower, watching TV—Laura relived it over and over again.
Emerging from the subway into the warm September day. Thunder crackles overhead; a stuttering, staccato sound. White noise. The thunder is loud (so loud—everything in the city is loud but this drowns it all out) and she stares upward in startled amazement (but not fear—not yet). The thunder is a plane, roaring toward the towers. Then the sky is falling and there is fire and now comes the fear because that is where Dallas is working.
The panic and chaos that ensued after the second plane were distant events; detached from reality. Only that first sound, the sound of the plane overhead, was real.
She’d been on her way home from the night shift. On a normal day, Dallas would have just been getting up. Laura would have arrived at the twelfth floor apartment they shared, and she’d tell him all about her night while he shaved and dressed for work. They’d discuss their plans for the weekend, when neither had to work. They did this every day. On a normal day.
But none of these things happened because Dallas left her a voice mail on her cell phone. He was going in early, anticipating a telecom rally when the market opened. Grubman said it was going to be big, and you could trust Grubman. Grubman knew his shit.
Dallas went to work early. He crossed the street. Bought a cup of coffee and the Post. Got on the elevator and scanned the headlines on the way up. Adjusted his tie. Walked into the office. Sat at his desk.
And never came home.
Neither had Laura; not since it happened. She never arrived home because of the sound, that terrible jet engine sound. The bottom fell out of her world that day and the center did not hold, did not pass go, did not collect two hundred dollars.
She’d spent the first few nights with some friends in Brooklyn, before moving to her sister’s house in Jersey. She couldn’t go home, they told her. The area was unsafe. They had to determine if the structure was sound.
Dallas had no funeral because there was nothing to bury. She waited. Eventually, she returned to work. She waited.
Then she waited some more.
Finally, the call came. They told her she could go back to get her valuables. There was still a lot of work to be done; windows to be replaced, apartments to be cleaned. Cosmetic work, the lady on the phone had said. But she could collect her things at least, and hopefully move back in within a month.
Now here she was, back at the place where they’d lived—a place she no longer recognized. Her neighborhood was a monument to sorrow. Its geography was forever altered.
The first thing she noticed (after the wreckage) was the birds. Like any other place, the concrete and steel canyons of the city had their own form of wildlife. Squirrels and rats. Dogs and cats. Flies and pigeons. These were common.
But turkey buzzards were something new.
Laura watched one soar overhead; its black, mottled wings outstretched to catch the breeze. The bird reminded her of the plane. Her breath caught in her throat. The frigid November air encircled her, and she was afraid. The shopping bag in her hands grew heavy, and its contents sloshed around inside.
The buzzard joined the other scavenger birds, circling the devastation from above. She wondered if it was the smell that attracted them, or some deeper instinct. Perhaps they waited on the promise of more to come?
She edged her way around the site, shifting the weight of the bulky, misshapen shopping bag from arm to arm. Workers called to each other from across the rubble. Heavy machinery roared to the accompaniment of jackhammers and the white-hot hiss of acetylene torches. Somewhere beyond it all, where the city still lived, came the echoes of traffic; the comforting, familiar chaos of horns and sirens. The sounds were muted, though. The mood here in the dead zone was palpable, and for a moment, Laura was convinced that the circling buzzards didn’t ride the wind currents, but instead, floated aloft on the waves of despair rising from the wreckage.
She continued on to her building, and found something worse than the carnage. Something worse than the circling scavengers or the noisy silence or the twisted girders or the smell coming from the ruins.
Dust. The sidewalks and the building itself were caked with dust. Her feet left tracks in it as she slowly climbed the steps. It coated her palm when she pulled the door open. The haggard security guard in the lobby was covered in it. Dust floated around him like a halo as he solemnly studied her letter of permission. He had her sign a dusty piece of paper on a dusty clipboard.
It’s the towers, she thought, and everything that was inside them. It’s dead people.
She felt a moment of panic as the doors closed behind her and the elevator lurched upward. She set the bag down on the floor, grateful for a moment’s respite. The soft whir of the motor and the cables sounded like the plane.
The dust was even here, inside the elevator. She brushed at the control panel with her fingertips and they came away white and powdery.
Dead people.
With each step, I’m breathing in dead people. I’m breathing in Dallas.
The elevator halted, and Laura froze for a moment, unable to go on. The bell rang impatiently, and she picked up the bag, grunting with the effort. She took one faltering step forward, then another. The doors hissed shut behind her.
The dust was much worse here on her floor. The hallway was covered in it, and the beautiful red carpet was now buried beneath gray ash. It clung to the paintings on the wall and coated the mirrors.