The Dark Above Read online

  I need to take a break now. I will wait for the pain to subside.

  * * *

  William read the letter twice, his hands trembling.

  He was not the first of his family to disappear in the woods behind their homes.

  Flipping to the next page, he saw distinctly different handwriting, as different from Freda Stanson’s as possible. There was a practicality to it, written without flare.

  Nov 1, 1951

  Lynn,

  This is foreign to me. I am a man who writes only for purpose. Receipts. Plant orders. Bills. I have had no use for it in my life. I barely finished high school, after all. I attempted to write your mother a love letter once. She read it, corrected my spelling, and folded it in her Bible. In the same place she keeps a lock of your hair.

  Kept. She kept it there.

  It is still hard for me to think of her as gone.

  As I write this, I am watching you sleep. You resemble her so much, with your long eyelashes and curls. When you sleep, it is one of the few times when I can get close to you. My heart breaks a bit more every morning when you wake and look at me with confusion. But it is the fear that hurts the most. You do not believe me when I tell you that I am your father.

  Dr. Martin isn’t a medical doctor, but he’s a very smart man. He tells me that in time your memory might return. That whatever they did to you could be reversible. I truly, though, just want you to remember your mother.

  And that is why, my girl, I write this. Because I want you to know who your mother was and what she did to save you.

  When you disappeared that night, we were in such a panic. We looked all night. We were waiting for morning to ask for help, as we didn’t dare leave the trees. Then a truck pulled up in the drive. You have to know how strange that was. We don’t get many visitors out here except for customers.

  Your mother ran to the truck, and that’s when the strange man with glasses stepped out. I remember thinking I had misunderstood him. He asked something about if lightning had struck near our house.

  This is harder than I thought. The words don’t come easily to me. But I will do this for you. I will do anything for you, my girl. And I will wait as long as it takes for you to call me father.

  Love,

  Daddy

  CLASSIFIED SSA AUTHORIZED READERS ONLY LYNN STANSON FILE

  October 27, 1951

  YUCATAN, MEXICO

  Terrible pain. The pain medication helps, but today is difficult. Keep writing, Freda, they tell me. It will take your mind off it. I know why they tell me that. They want a record of it, while it’s still fresh in my mind. What they really want is for me to tell it just in case I don’t survive. So be it.

  We’d searched all night. Nothing. No trace of her. Only the shoe. Bud had gotten his shotgun and entered the woods while I just stood and cried, calling for her until daylight.

  There was nowhere to go for help. We agreed Bud would leave at dawn. We didn’t know our neighbors well, and we were really scattered far apart. But I’d stay here and look while Bud tried to wrangle some people up. That’s when the old Ford pulled into the drive.

  I ran over in desperation, begging the man who stepped out to drive to the police or find the county sheriff and report Lynn’s disappearance. I must have sounded insane, saying that our phone lines were crackling so badly that I couldn’t get through last night and we didn’t dare stop searching to go drive for help.

  He’d introduced himself as Dr. Rex Martin, and asked us a singular question that I remember stopped me in my tracks: had my daughter vanished after lightning struck?

  I’d remembered it, then, the flash of light. I must have stammered that I’d seen it.

  He was so calm.

  I think I know where your daughter is, he’d said.

  * * *

  William’s brow furrowed. The letter from Nanna’s mother ended suddenly, as if the rest of it had been cut and replaced. The next page was another letter from Nanna’s father. Why had they removed—

  Then he remembered what Rudd said, about how they had been placed in chronological order.

  The letters obviously came from different sources and were written about a year apart. His great-grandmother’s letters were labeled “classified” with that acronym—SSA. Both Blue and Rudd had mentioned them in correlation with agents in black suits. Her letters even bore an official stamp. His great-grandfather’s letter, however, had no such distinction.

  Nov 2, 1951

  Lynn,

  Not a good day for us, baby. You were especially skittish today. I know it’s so hard for you, not knowing who I am and just the two of us here at this house. I keep showing you the picture of your mother and me on our wedding day. I keep pointing out how much you look like her. I think you see it, too, but you’re still not convinced. If it takes a lifetime, I’ll point it out every day.

  It’s especially difficult to see you look so afraid. It’s an almost identical expression to your mother’s on the night you disappeared and that morning afterwards, when that man showed up in the driveway.

  He gave us his name, Dr. Rex Martin—a professor from some university in St. Louis. Said he had been fishing up at the Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky when he was listening to radio reports of storms that passed through Nashville and how farmers on the west side of the county said that the lightning continued after the rain had passed. He kept talking about how he broke every speed limit to get here, stopping at every house to see if they’d seen any lightning actually touch down.

  Your mama told him that there had been lightning when our daughter disappeared.

  I’ll be honest with you, I started getting mad. The man said he needed to make a call, and I’d pointed out that we’d tried to use our phone but the reception was so bad we couldn’t get through. I told him that he needed to get in the car and go for help. He kept saying he had to make a call right now. I said any phone call that worked would be used to find my girl.

  He then ran back to his passenger seat and pulled out a map, flattening it out on the hood. He motioned us over, showing us a map of the gulf. He pointed to what looked like the flipped-up tail of Mexico. He said something about a town not on the map, called Olvidar. He said if he was right, that’s where our daughter was.

  I’d put my arm in front of your mama, getting her to back up. I suspected, at that moment, that he’d had something to do with your disappearance. I started walking towards him, demanding to know what he’d done with our girl. He held up his hands, talking real fast, repeating that he was a meteorology professor, and that he’d been working with a man in the Yucatan to document cases of people vanishing after lightning strikes when storms are over.

  I was about to swing when your mama said something about the girl’s gravestone in the woods.

  * * *

  The letter ended suddenly, and when William flipped to the next, someone had typed at the top of the next page, “Continuation of Freda Stanson’s recollection from October 28, 1951.”

  Dr. Martin had explained how he was doing research, with some man in the Yucatan, of all places, about how people disappeared after strange lightning following storms. I know my husband: he was ready to pounce. Bud had always been scrappy, and it was really what first attracted me to him. At that moment, Bud was exhausted, scared, and now very angry at this man who came out of nowhere. But when Dr. Martin mentioned the lightning, I remembered something. About the girl, and her gravestone in the woods.

  I must have said it quietly, the name Amelia Shrank.

  I’d watched my husband’s face, ruddy from hours of yelling and hurrying through the trees, drain to pale.

  Dr. Martin had asked who Amelia Shrank was. Bud hadn’t interrupted me, and that let me know that he must have passed her gravestone in his frantic searches and tried not to think about what it meant for Lynn.

  I’d explained that there was a gravestone in the middle of the woods. For a little girl named Amelia. Bud had found it by accident while deer hun
ting two years ago. I’d asked Martha Jacobs about it. She lived a few farms over, and she told me that the girl’s parents had put it there before they packed up and moved away. Martha said it had been so long since the girl vanished that she didn’t remember the details, something about Amelia going into the woods after her dog when it got loose after a big rain. But Martha did point out she remembered quite clearly how another man, Josh Stone, had died in the woods about ten years ago. He drowned in the creek after a storm, she said. They think he got struck by lightning and fell in. They never found his body.

  Dr. Martin had taken a deep breath. He spoke about how his colleague in Mexico said that in the town there, when lightning strikes after a storm, people show up on the beach. People who have no memory. It’s happened for so long that the town actually took its name from it. Olvidar means, “to forget” in Spanish.

  I’d looked at Dr. Martin. Call it a mother’s intuition, call it a lack of sleep or quiet desperation, but I’d motioned him for him to follow. Bud looked to me with anger, but I’d held up my hand to him to stop. My husband knows not to push me. And the truth be told, I wanted to see for myself if the phone was back working so I could start making calls for help.

  We ran inside, Bud practically right on top of the man. I picked up the phone, and found the static gone. I’d told Dr. Martin that I needed to have the operator call the police, but he’d practically begged me to try to make the call first.

  It hadn’t been easy standing there. I quickly grew frustrated at the minutes ticking by as he’d argued with the operator about how to make an international call to Mexico. Bud banged the wall. Just when I’d finally demanded that he give me the phone and stop this nonsense, he held up a finger, saying there was a connection.

  CONTINUATION OF LETTER BY BUD STANSON

  Dr. Martin let your mama and me gather close to listen when a man answered, with a thick Mexican accident. Dr. Martin was relieved, and covered up the bottom of the phone for a moment to explain it was his friend in the Yucatan. His name was Antonio.

  The man sounded frantic to me. Said he’d been trying to reach Dr. Martin at his house and office for a few hours. That there had been a storm there that morning and he’d found them. He kept saying that: I found them.

  I remember Dr. Martin telling him to slow down. Who did he find?

  The white people, the man said. On the beach. Three adults, one child. The adults don’t remember anything. They don’t know their names. But the little girl does. She knows who she is.

  I don’t think I breathed, baby girl. I was so confused, but even my simple mind started to dare to hope.

  Dr. Martin asked what the girl said. His friend said that she’d been up in the sky with scary people and she wanted her Mama and Daddy. That she had blond curly hair and overalls.

  She said her name was Lynn.

  CONTINUATION OF DOCUMENTATION OF FREDA STANSON

  I just screamed. Over and over again. Asking where was my daughter? Where was my daughter?

  The man, Antonio was his name, said he’d gathered them up and told them he was taking them to get help. They were in the other room at the apartment he had been renting.

  I demanded to talk to her, and I heard him call out for her, to come to the other room.

  I’ve never cried tears before that burned my eyes, but they came, hot and gushing, when I heard my little girl get on the phone and ask for me.

  I’d asked her if she was all right. She said she was, but she was scared. She asked where her daddy and I were.

  I told her to stay right there, that Daddy and I were coming right now to get her. I told her that I loved her and not to be afraid. That we were coming for her.

  Antonio had gotten back on the phone and said that Lynn appeared just fine aside from some kind of pain on the back of her head. I begged him to keep her safe, which he promised to do.

  Then, he paused. I heard it too, even over the phone. The loud knocking on the door.

  CONTINUATION OF LETTER FROM BUD STANSON

  And then he got you on the phone. I heard your voice and I couldn’t help but cry in relief. We told you we were coming for you. Then we heard something at the door.

  The Mexican man whispered that someone was outside. He went to go check and came back and said there were men in suits at the door.

  Dr. Martin told him to hide, right now. To take you and the adults and hide.

  We just stood there, waiting. I shouted for him to tell us that you were OK. But there was only silence.

  I need to stop now. I’ll write more tomorrow, if my heart can take it. I pray, maybe tonight, you’ll dream of your mother.

  Love,

  Daddy

  CONTINUATION OF LETTER BY FREDA STANSON

  To have that kind of hope, that kind of relief, of knowing that your missing child is alive and apparently well, and then in the next moment have it all plunge into deeper fear and confusion, is an experience I would not wish on the devil himself. But that’s exactly what happened. Antonio had gone to check to see who was knocking, said it was men in suits at the door, and then nothing.

  We’d frantically had the operator call the number again. But each time, she said the line was dead. The glimpse into the welfare of my daughter had closed.

  Bud had exploded, and I hadn’t blamed him. Shouting, demanding an explanation for what the hell just happened, ordering me to go pack a bag and that Dr. Martin would get in his truck and drive us to our daughter right now.

  Dr. Martin tried to remain calm, explaining that the man on the phone was a journalist he trusted who had grown up near Olvidar and had heard stories of people showing up on the beach without memories after lightning storms. That he’d moved there to write a book about the town, but when he started inquiring about it, his house had burned down.

  I kept fighting the urge to do as Bud instructed, to throw our things together and just get on the road. Mexico, I kept thinking. How will we ever get to Mexico?

  Dr. Martin could clearly see we were panicking and cut to the chase: Antonio had read an article he’d written, about his theory that lightning strikes were incinerating people and making them look as if they disappeared. Antonio had written him about the strange occurrences in Olvidar, how he thought the theory was wrong. That they’d begun to talk by phone. And together, they’d come up with the idea that people weren’t burning so quickly that there was nothing left of them, but rather vanishing. And reappearing in Mexico.

  I am going to ask for some more of the medication and try to sleep now. It’s the only time I have peace, when the drugs deafen the pain and rid my brain of the ability to remember.

  CONTINUATION OF LETTER FROM BUD STANSON

  Nov 10, 1951

  Lynn,

  You smiled at me when you woke today! It was a real breakthrough. You asked for honey on your toast. I told you I would get you anything you wanted. Could it be that maybe—just maybe—that there is hope for us as a family?

  Every time I start feeling bad, feeling sorry for myself and missing your mother so much that it hurts, I think about how your mother heard your voice on the phone and that it went dead. I thought that it would be the last time we would ever hear or see you. But now, you are in your bed asleep and I can reach out and touch you. You are real and here with me. It is worth reliving this so you can one day know what your mother did to bring you home.

  I know what Dr. Martin must have thought of us that morning. Practically kids ourselves, just nineteen when we had you. Could we even begin to understand what he was saying? I’ll admit, my mind is like a fog sometimes, it takes me a minute to understand some things. But not your mama. She is as sharp as a tack. He learned that fast.

  CLASSIFIED SSA AUTHORIZED READERS ONLY LYNN STANSON FILE

  October 30, 1951

  YUCATAN, MEXICO

  Sometimes they allow me to leave my windows open for a brief amount of time, so I can feel the breeze off the ocean. It’s never for long—they worry it will get too humid in the
room despite the fans, that I will sweat too much under all these casts and bandages. It’s one of the first things I ask for each day, to open the windows. It reminds me of the first day we landed in Mexico, when I still had hope.

  They ask me to detail as much as I can about Dr. Martin, and the organization he belongs to. But the truth is I know very little. He never discussed them by name, and I was never privy to his quiet phone conversations with them. I only know they must have had a wealthy member, or maybe several, otherwise we wouldn’t have had access to the small propeller planes that took us from Nashville to New Orleans. And finally, to Mexico, after an agonizing two-day wait, while Martin’s colleagues scrambled to find another plane.

  We landed, and headed directly for the beach at Olvidar. I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t some sort of lagging nightmare, that this was all really happening. That my little girl was here somewhere, taken from our woods and dropped somehow in this poverty-stricken piece of the world.

  Bud had grown so quiet at this point I knew he was at the breaking point. Most of our communications were had when I reached out for his hand, and he held it with a fierceness that renewed my strength.

  In broken Spanish, Dr. Martin repeatedly asked anyone if they knew Antonio Borges. Even I, who could not comprehend their words, could tell by watching their faces that they didn’t want to answer.

  We made our way to the beach, a sprawling stretch of emerald and blue spilling onto white.

  It was empty. No people, no witnesses.

  Then I saw the children. They were sitting in the shade of several palm trees, watching us. I gave them a small wave, and they didn’t respond.

  Dr. Martin approached them. I feared they might sprint at the sight of three strangers approaching.