Do Not Answer #5
Nobody said anything.
Keller tried the first.
It did not fit.
The second turned.
The chain fell loose against the door.
Mercer laughed softly.
“Never been here.”
Keller left the lock hanging from the chain.
“My father kept it.”
“And you wear it around your neck.”
Keller pushed the door open.
The smell came out first.
Dust, damp wood, old paper.
Something else beneath it.
Not decay exactly.
The smell of a room after somebody has been sick in it.
Mason took a flare from his pocket.
Keller said, “Don’t waste it.”
“Then you go first.”
Keller did.
The main room held a desk, two long tables, metal shelves, and a black telephone mounted on the wall. A hallway led deeper into the building.
Lena stayed near the doorway until her eyes adjusted.
Ruth came in behind her.
“At least it’s dry.”
Mercer touched one of the tables and rubbed dust between his fingers.
“Somebody’s been here.”
Mason looked over.
“Why?”
Mercer pointed.
A clean circle showed where something had recently sat on the dusty surface.
Keller stared at it.
“What was there?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know.”
Ethan crossed to the telephone.
The cord ran down the wall and disappeared through the floor.
He lifted the receiver.
Keller turned sharply.
“Does it work?”
Ethan held it to his ear.
“No tone.”
“Put it back.”
Ethan looked at him.
“It’s dead.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Keller’s mouth tightened.
“The station hasn’t had power in years.”
Ethan replaced the receiver.
Lena watched Keller.
He was not looking at the telephone.
He was looking at Ethan’s hand.
As though he had expected something to happen when he touched it.
Mason saw that too.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
Keller took off his wet coat.
“My father said the place made noise.”
Mercer laughed.
“All buildings make noise.”
“He heard voices on the radio.”
The room seemed quieter after that.
Ruth looked toward the hallway.
“Whose voices?”
Keller hung his coat over a chair.
“He didn’t say.”
“Did he hear them before or after he disappeared?” Mason asked.
Keller looked at him.
Mercer stopped smiling.
Lena’s father said, “Your father disappeared here?”
“His boat was found offshore.”
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
“And you thought today would be a good time to look around?”
“I thought I’d see it from the water.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because that’s what I intended.”
“You brought the key.”
“I always bring it.”
“Why?”
Keller looked down the hallway.
“I don’t know.”
The answer made Lena believe him more than the others had.
A knock came from somewhere inside the building.
Mercer turned.
“That was a door.”
Mason picked up the first-aid kit.
“Probably.”
Another knock.
Then a third.
All three came from the hallway.
Nobody moved.
Lena waited for somebody to say Danny’s name.
Her father did not.
He held the plastic paddle tighter.
Mason stepped toward the hall.
Keller said, “We should stay in this room.”
“Why?”
“The floors back there may be bad.”
Mason pressed one boot against the first board.
It held.
Mercer said, “Could be another person.”
Ruth looked at him.
“You wanted it to be rats on the boat.”
“That was on the boat.”
“And now?”
“Now there’s a footprint and a clean place on the table.”
Mason looked back at Keller.
“Any chance your father’s alive?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
Keller did not answer quickly enough.
Mason entered the hallway.
Ethan followed him.
Lena went after her father.
The hall had four doors. Two stood open.
The first room held bunk beds and collapsed mattresses. The second was a kitchen with rusted cupboards and a sink full of black water.
The third door was closed.
The fourth had no knob.
Mason stopped beside the closed one.
“Anybody in there?”
Mercer whispered, “Don’t do that.”
Mason looked at him.
“You just said there might be someone here.”
“I know what I said.”
Mason knocked.
“Hello?”
Something moved inside.
A quick scrape across the floor.
Ruth stepped back.
Ethan raised the paddle.
Mason tried the knob.
Locked.
Keller moved closer.
“That room was storage.”
“You know that from photographs?”
Keller held out his key ring.
The first key did not fit.
The second was the front door key.
The third went into the lock.
Keller did not turn it.
Mason looked at him.
“Well?”
Keller’s hand stayed on the key.
“There could be an animal inside.”
Mercer said, “Good. We’re back to animals.”
Mason reached past him and turned the key.
The lock opened.
Keller stepped away from the door.
Mason put one hand on the knob.
He looked at Ethan.
“Don’t swing that unless you see something.”
Ethan nodded.
Mason opened the door.
The room was dark.
A metal shelf leaned against the far wall. Boxes had collapsed beneath it. A bucket lay on its side.
Nothing moved.
Mason entered.
Lena could see the floor beyond him.
Dust covered most of it.
A narrow line had been dragged through the dust from the back wall to the door.
Mason followed it with his eyes.
At the end of the line lay a blue plastic whistle.
Ethan pushed past him.
He picked it up.
Lena knew the whistle before he turned around.
Danny had scratched his name into one side with a pocketknife.
DAN. The second N unfinished.
Her father stared at it.
Lena could not speak for a moment.
The room seemed to tilt, though the floor was still.
Mercer stood in the doorway.
“What is it?”
Ethan looked at Lena.
She did not want him to ask.
“Is this his?”
She nodded.
Ruth said, “Whose?”
Lena heard herself answer.
“My brother’s.”
Mercer looked from the whistle to the wet sweatshirt she was wearing.
“How did it get here?”
Nobody answered.
Ethan closed his hand around it.
Lena tried to remember the last time she had seen the whistle.
Danny wore it camping.
He kept it in the top drawer of his desk afterward, mixed with batteries and bent trading cards and two keys that did not open anything.
She had seen it there after the funeral.
She thought she had.
Her father looked at Keller.
“You put this here.”
Keller’s face went blank with surprise.
“No.”
“You knew his name.”
“I didn’t.”
“You had the passenger list.”
“It said Lena.”
“My son wasn’t on it.”
“I know.”
“You talked to Claire.”
“Only about changing the booking.”
“You knew.”
Keller shook his head.
Ethan grabbed his coat.
Mason caught the paddle before he could swing it.
“Stop.”
“He brought us here.”
“That doesn’t mean he put it there.”
“Who else?”
Mason looked at the whistle.
“I don’t know.”
The words sounded small in the storage room.
A telephone rang in the main room.
Everyone froze.
One ring.
Then another.
Mercer whispered, “Power surge.”
Mason looked at him.
Mercer swallowed.
“Old line. Stored charge. Something.”
The telephone rang a third time.
Ethan released Keller.
He went into the hallway.
Lena followed.
The black telephone shook against the wall with each ring.
Ethan reached for it.
Keller said, “Don’t.”
Ethan turned.
“You said it was dead.”
“It is.”
The telephone rang again.
Lena looked at the cord.
It had been cut near the floor.
Not torn.
Cut cleanly.
The loose end lay curled beneath the wall.
Her father saw it too.
Nobody moved.
The ringing stopped.
For a few seconds there was no sound except rain tapping the roof.
Then someone knocked from inside the wall.
Three slow knocks.
Ethan held the blue whistle in his fist.
Lena looked at his face.
He was afraid now.
Not hopeful.
Not yet.
Mason crossed the room and lifted the telephone receiver.
Keller said, “I told you not to.”
“And it stopped.”
“That doesn’t make it safe.”
Mason put the receiver to his ear, listened, then held it away and examined the mouthpiece.
“There’s nothing.”
Mercer pointed at the severed cord.
“No kidding.”
Mason followed the wire with his fingers. The cut end was gray with dust. He crouched and looked beneath the telephone table.
“No battery. No second line.”
“Could there be another wire in the wall?” Ruth asked.
“There could be a whole switchboard in the wall. It still wouldn’t ring this phone without connecting to it.”
Mercer looked at Keller.
“What kind of station was this?”
“Weather.”
“Did they study ghosts with the weather?”
Keller leaned against the desk. Blood had dried in one eyebrow.
“My father said the telephone rang sometimes after the line was taken out.”
“You knew it did that?”
“I knew he claimed it did.”
“And you didn’t think to mention it?”
“I thought he was losing his mind.”
The answer quieted Mercer for half a second.
Then he said, “Convenient.”
Mason unscrewed the receiver cap. He shook the little metal disc into his palm.
Lena watched him because looking at the telephone itself made her uncomfortable. The black casing had stopped moving, but she could still hear its last ring in her head.
Her father stood beside the hallway with the whistle closed inside his fist.
“Dad.”
He glanced at her.
“Can I see it?”
His fingers tightened.
“Why?”
“Because it’s Danny’s.”
“I know.”
“So let me see.”
He opened his hand.
The whistle lay across his palm. The blue plastic had faded almost white along one edge. DAN was scratched into the side exactly as Lena remembered, with the second N beginning as a crooked vertical line and stopping there.
She touched it.
The whistle was cold.
“Did you bring it?” she asked.
Her father looked at Keller.
Keller was watching them.
Lena said, “Dad.”
He closed his hand again.
“Yes.”
Mercer made an impatient sound.
“You accused him of planting it.”
“I know what I said.”
“Where was it?”
Her father ignored him.
Lena stepped closer.
“You brought it onto the boat?”
“It was in my coat.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You put it in your pocket without knowing?”
“I found it this morning.”
“Where?”
“In the kitchen drawer.”
“It wasn’t in the kitchen drawer.”
“That’s where I found it.”
“It was in Danny’s desk.”
Her father rubbed his thumb across the whistle.
“Maybe your mother moved it.”
“She doesn’t move his things.”
He looked at Lena then, and she knew they were both thinking about the car and the sweatshirt and the way none of Danny’s belongings had found a permanent place since he died. His room was still his room, except when something from it appeared elsewhere and nobody admitted carrying it.