The Other Mike

IV

"C'mon hon I'm still trying to sleep." Mike's tongue was caught at the back of his mouth, his breath rattling as it passed through his throat.

"Why don't you roll over". Sydney pulled the pillow from under her head. As she swung it down to where Mike's snoring corpus should be, its arc caught only air, then mattress.

"Mike? Mike!" Her eyes sprung open, revealing, where her husband should
be, only tightly stretched sheets. The pillow was goose-down white, and without the divot where a head had recently lain. On her own side of the bed, save where she had hollowed a grotto for her body, the edges of the sheets were folded tautly under the mattress.

There was the rattle again, the rattle that was now definitely not coming from Mike. She propped her body onto one elbow. She was dressed, and must have put her pants on in the night. Her head swiveled around the room. In the corner near the door, a  susurrus  of air was hissing through the stainless steel ventilation grill. Aside from this murmur, her surroundings were silent.

Sydney pushed the covers off, and split the slats of the blinds to read the light slanting through the gray beeches. The rays were falling from high above the trees. She was sure it was no longer morning. Maybe Mike had gone off with Dr. Bergkeller for a morning stroll on the twisting forest path. She pressed her fingertips to her temples and traced them in slow circles. Had she drank too much last night? Had they left her on the bed to sleep through another merlot fugue. No, she hadn't had anything to drink, save for a few sips of water to wash the oxidized taste of the sirloin out of her mouth. She had gone to bed early, and something else. Some other memory was crouching just behind her confusion,  like a cat with protracted claws. She checked her phone, it was 1:00 pm. Mike's duffle wasn't in the closet. She dialed his number, and an automated voice informed her that the line had been disconnected.

Sydney searched the bathroom. Both the shower and sink taps were dry. Mike either hadn't showered, or he had so long ago that there weren't any traces of water left in either basin.

As she made her way through the corridor into the darkened great room, Sydney felt the familiar anxiety creep up through her stomach. The lights were off, and crepuscular rays shot through the windows. The cosmic hand had tired of shaking the jar, now it was pulling off her first leg.

"Mike? Doctor Bergkeller? Doctor Bernhardt? Please, PLEASE COME THE FUCK ON."

The torn wings of her voice flapped through empty rooms. She pushed open the swinging doors of the kitchen. Rows of steel countertops and shelving were stacked with unused culinary supplies. Here the lights were off too. In the walk-in, unopened canisters lined the shelves. Frantic breath materialized in front her.

As she darted from the lodge onto the path, the only sound was the purr of the HVAC system.

Sydney ran through the bends of the path, following the creek and screaming until her voice was a scraped hide. No Bernhardt or Bernkeller, Bergkellen, Bergkelleg, whoever the hell he was. No green eyed Mike, no blue eyed Mike. She ran up the crooked spine of the slope until she reached the twisted maple. The bleached phallus still hung from its web of thongs. She didn't think she could ever be so grateful to see such a thing. The creak of leather in the wind, the lisp of
water sliding over stone, the crackle of leaves, reconfiguring themselves infinitely. These were the only other sounds.

Sydney circled the entire building, then ran down the stone steps to see that the car was still there.

By the time she reached the lodge again, She fished her phone from her pocket, and felt confident in her decision to call the police.
She was immediately informed that a person must be missing for 48 hours before a missing persons report could be filed. The thought of standing in the darkened great room for one more hour seemed untenable to her. She wondered if she should file one for the doctor as well. Now, inserting itself into the cavity between yesterday and today, came the image of her husband, of the fullness between her legs. He had been more attentive and assertive than she had ever remembered him being before. She could feel him there now. And then the eyes, the way that, even through the narrow slats, the black cabochon pits had caught the moonlight. What had he said to her?

Sydney dialed her in-laws, and hung up. She dialed them again. His mother answered.

"Hey, um, you haven't heard from Mike, have you? His clothes are missing, and the car
is still here. I thought maybe Rick or Jim might have picked him up."

On the other end of the line, a noise that sounded like someone blowing bubbles underwater. Was she crying? Mike's mother whispered, or hissed, something Sydney couldn't hear, and the line went dead.

She tried her parents next. Her father answered the phone.

" Hey dad, have you uh, seen Mike? His clothes are missing. Our car is still here, I'm just worried about him. I don't know if he's trying to tell me something. This isn't like him. We are at couple's counse....."

"Sydney, where are you? Are you safe?" A nervous energy crackled in his voice.

"Yes dad, I'm fine. Just at this lodge and everyone is gone. "

"Sydney, I don't know what's going on. You need to find a safe place, find someone who can tell you where you are. We'll pick you up."

"What? Dad, I'm fine. I'm just trying to figure..."

"Sydney, oh god, godammnit. Mike is dead. The crash, he and his brothers. Rick's bachelor party trip. You went out of state to examine the body. Are you at the morgue now?"

To Sydney's father, the sound Sydney made next reminded him most of a squirrel who, one day in the factory, got caught in the machinery.

*****

She didn't remember how she got home. She only remembered fragments of the funeral and wake. Her parents had formed a cocoon of arms around her as she was led back to the SUV.

The next week, she threw up every morning. The week after that, she felt the movement inside of her.

*****
Michelle was a large baby, in many respects a miniature Mike, with more rounded, feminine features. She had his jowly cheeks and his wisps of brown hair. Sydney smiled for the first time in months when she cradled her, fresh from the womb, still dyed with blood and vernix.

At the hospital, Sydney had pushed through the pain of remembering, pushed past the broken mirror of conflicting narratives that her life had become. The lingering pain after being sutured reminded her of her last night with Mike.

Her parents had decided that she should live with them for a while, and in Sydney's state, she could hardly refuse. With Michelle, the entire house took on a wombish quality. Sydney insisted on keeping her in bed with her. She was fiercely protective of the baby, and her parents could guess why. Secretly, they whispered that it was so nice that she should have conceived the week before the accident, that she would always have that piece of Mike. Sydney, for her part, would never talk about where she had been. Mike's parents were bewildered by the call they had received from her. After she hadn't met them at the morgue, they assumed that she just wasn't up to the trip. Sydney had pulled into her parents' driveway, hours after hanging up her phone, the blood leeched from her face and mute for the weekend of the funeral.

One morning, Sydney's parents found her practically on top of Michelle, and they convinced her to turn the upstairs reading room into a makeshift nursery. Sydney argued that she didn't feel that Michelle was safe, but after reading a slew of SIDS literature, finally relented. Michelle was after all, a happy, fat loud baby.

Months went by, and exhausted after Michelle's birthday, she gingerly placed the snoring one year old in her crib, and tiptoed to her own room.

It had been a long, uphill battle for Sydney to regain semi-restful sleep. She pulled the covers up to her chin.

Creak

Her eyes shot open on springs. That hadn't been the creak of a footfall. The entire house was thickly carpeted. That had been the creak of a window struggling against its wooden casing. She and Michelle were on the second floor.

Out of bed before she could remember moving, she exploded the door to the baby's room inward.

The window was open.

Standing in silhouette against the moon were the gray locks, the pinned smile. Michelle was held in the cradle of its arms.

Then both were gone. Just the fat moon outside and the curtains feathering in the breeze.

Sydney screamed for her parents, but they were already dead.