Mark and his twin brother Joey were raised by their Grandpa in the big house their family had owned for generations outside Pittsburgh. The brothers did everything together: playing hide-and-seek in the orchard next door, staying up late reading comic books with flashlights, and drinking heated up grape Kool-Aid, which they pretended was coffee. They loved the sweet, tangy taste, and it made them feel like grown-ups.
In time, of course, the brothers did grow up and were called off to war in Vietnam. Only Mark returned. The Army told him and his grandpa that Joey had been killed in action.
Not long after, Grandpa died in his sleep. A sudden heart attack, the doctors said.
Mark returned from the funeral and drifted through the empty old house as though walking in a dream. He made his way to Grandpa’s room, slumped down on the bed, and held his head in his hands. Though he was now alone in the world, no tears came. He’d learned to keep his feelings inside.
The weight of another person sitting down next to him depressed the bed, even though he’d heard no one enter the silent room. A firm but gentle arm draped itself around Mark’s shoulders.
“Joey’s not here,” Grandpa said.
Mark raised his head, expecting to find himself alone, and probably hallucinating.
There Grandpa sat, looking as he had the day before his passing, his expression calm. “Joey’s not here,” he repeated. “He’s alive. And he’s trapped.”
With a reassuring squeeze of Mark’s shoulder, Grandpa vanished.
The unearthly visitation left Mark shaken. He still chalked up the vision to a trick of his grieving mind.
But as it happened, the next few years found Mark in Vietnam more than once on business. Every time he went over, he would ply his few contacts for any word of his brother surviving as a POW. And every time, he returned to the big empty house emptyhanded.
The next time Mark’s travels brought him back to Vietnam, he didn’t bother contacting his sources. Repeated failures to turn up any evidence of his brother’s survival had convinced him that the strange visitation had been a figment or a dream. But as Mark lay down in his hotel room on his last night before returning home, the ringing of his bedside phone roused him from the grip of exhaustion.
“Hello?” Mark mumbled into the handset.
“Joey’s here.” His grandpa’s voice spoke from the other end clear as a bell. “He’s alive, and he’s trapped.”
Mark sat bolt upright. His mind swirled with questions. And before he could ask “Where?” the line had gone dead.
First thing in the morning, Mark made arrangements to extend his stay indefinitely. This time, he wouldn’t rest until he discovered his brother’s fate – KIA, POW, or otherwise.
Mark sought out additional help to expand the scope of his search. He arranged a meeting with an Eastern Orthodox missionary group known for helping MIA soldiers’ families. The man he met with turned white as a sheet the instant he set eyes on Mark.
“You can’t be here,” the missionary gasped.
Mark asked why not.
“Because you’re lying comatose in our hospital.”
An agonizingly long jeep ride later, Mark came face-to-face with his lost twin at last. As the missionary had said, Joey lay in a vegetative state in the same hospital bed where he’d lain since the war.
It was just as Grandpa had said: Joey was here, and he was alive.
He never fully recovered, though – not even after Mark brought him back home. For the next several years, he cared for his brother in the room they’d shared as boys in the big house that now felt a little less empty.
One day, Joey died. Feeling a sense of closure that lifted a decade-old weight off his shoulders, Mark decided the time had come to sell the old family home. After all, it was now certain he had no family left to occupy it.
The day after Mark moved out, the realtor called him in a state of near-panic.
“Calm down,” he told the agitated woman. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s the doors,” she panted. “I can’t open them – any of them.”
Mark felt in his pocket for the key to the old house, assuming she’d need it. “Did you lock yourself out?”
“I have the keys,” she insisted. “The doors aren’t locked; they just won’t open anymore!”
Mark paused. “What do you mean, ‘anymore?'”
“The front door opened just fine when I was on my way up the front steps,” the realtor said. “At first I thought you opened it for me. But the man who did told me he was your brother, said the house wasn’t for sale, and slammed the door in my face. Now I can’t get in!”
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