by Patrick Ness
Had the tubes been connected to him?
Why?
He crouches down, shining the torch underneath. The coffin sits on four short rounded legs, and from the very middle of the bottom of it, a small pipe goes straight down into the floor. Seth touches it. It seems slightly warmer than the rest of the coffin, like there might even be power running into it somehow, but he can’t be sure.
He stands up again, hands on his hips.
“Seriously,” he says loudly. “What the hell?”
He angrily flips up the blind on the skylight. Annoyed, he looks down again to the street below.
To all the houses that line it.
All the houses that look as closed up as this one.
“No,” he whispers. “There can’t be.”
The next instant, he’s running back down his stairs as fast as his exhaustion will let him.
He heaves a garden gnome as hard as he can at the front window of the house next door. It flies through with a satisfyingly loud smash. He clears away the remaining shards with the torch and climbs inside. He remembers nothing about the people who lived here when he was a child, except maybe they had a pair of older daughters. Or maybe just one.
Either way, there might have been people here who died.
Their front room is as dusty and untended as the one in his own house. The layout is more or less the same, and he walks quickly back through their dining room and kitchen, finding nothing out of the ordinary, just more dusty furniture.
He runs up the stairs. There’s only one landing in this house – the owners not bothering to make the attic conversion – and Seth is in the first of the bedrooms before he can even stop to think.
It’s a girl’s room, probably a teenager. There are posters for singers Seth’s distantly heard of, a bureau with some tidied-away makeup on it, a bed with a lavender bedspread, and an obviously much-loved and cried-upon Saint Bernard plush toy.
No coffin, though.
The story is the same in the master bedroom, a stuffier, overcramped version of his parents’. A bed, a chest of drawers, a closet full of clothes. Nothing that shouldn’t be there.
He uses the torch to push open the access hatch to the attic. He has to leap a few times to catch the lower rung of the ladder, but it finally clatters down. He climbs up, shining the torch into the open space.
He falls back rapidly from a congregation of surprised pigeons, who coo in alarm and flap wildly out through a hole that’s come open in the back roof. When it all calms down – and Seth wipes the pigeon mess from his hands, suddenly less happy to discover there are birds here – the torch and the light from the hole reveal only packed up boxes and broken appliances and more startled pigeons.
No coffins with anyone inside.
“All right,” he says.
He tries the house across the street, for no particular reason taking the same garden gnome with him to smash through the front window.
“Jesus,” Seth says as he climbs inside.
It’s phenomenally messy. Newspapers piled in every corner, every clear space heaving with food wrappers, coffee cups, books, figurines, and dust, dust, dust. He picks his way through. Each room is the same. The kitchen looks like something from a hundred years ago, and even the staircase has things piled on each step.
But the rooms upstairs, including the attic, only have mess in them. No coffins.
The house next door to that one was clearly owned by an Indian family, with brightly colored cloths draped over the furniture and photographs of a bride and groom wearing traditional Hindu outfits.
But nothing else, no matter how many rooms he checks.
He begins to feel a harsh desperation as he heaves the same gnome through the house next door to that one. And the house next door to that.
Each one dusty. Each one empty.
He is growing more and more tired now, the exhaustion getting harder to fight. In what could be the tenth or twelfth house – he’s lost count – he can’t even throw the gnome hard enough to break the window anymore. It bounces to the ground, its eyes leering up at him.
Seth leans heavily against a white wooden fence. He is filthy again, covered in the dust of a dozen houses. A dozen empty houses. Not a single one even making space for a bafflingly shiny coffin in any of their rooms.
He wants to cry, mostly out of frustration, but he checks himself.
What has he found out, after all? What new thing has he learned?
Nothing that he didn’t think before.
He’s alone.
However he ended up here, wherever that coffin came from and however he ended up inside it, there aren’t any for his father or his mother or his brother. There aren’t any in the houses up and down the street. There are no signs of anyone in the sky or on the train tracks or on any of the roads.
He really is alone in whatever hell this is.
Completely and utterly alone.
It isn’t, he thinks, as he trudges back toward his house, the most unfamiliar feeling in the world.
“Shit, Sethy,” Gudmund said, his voice as serious as Seth had ever heard it. “And they blame you?”
“They say they don’t.”
Gudmund rolled up on one elbow in the bed. “But that’s not what they think.”
Seth shrugged in an offhand way that more or less answered the question.
Gudmund lightly placed the palm of his hand on Seth’s bare stomach. “That blows,” he said. He ran his hand up Seth’s chest, then back again to his stomach and carrying on farther down, but gently, tenderly, not asking for anything more again just yet, merely letting Seth know how sorry he was through the touch of his hand.
“Seriously, though,” Gudmund said, “what kind of country builds a prison next to people’s houses?”
“It wasn’t really next to our house,” Seth said. “There was like a mile of fencing and guards before you got to the actual prison.” He shrugged again. “It’s gotta go somewhere.”
“Yeah, like an island or the middle of a rock quarry. Not where people live.”
“England’s a crowded place. They have to have prisons.”
“Still,” Gudmund said, his hand back up to Seth’s stomach, his index finger making a slow ring on the skin there. “It’s pretty crazy.”
Seth slapped the hand away. “That tickles.”
Gudmund smiled and put his hand back in exactly the same spot. Seth let it stay there. Gudmund’s parents had gone away again for the weekend, and a stinging October rain swarmed outside, spattering the windows and raking the roof. It was late, two or three in the morning. They’d been in bed for hours, talking, then very much not talking, then talking some more.
People knew that Seth was staying over at Gudmund’s –Seth’s parents, H and Monica – but no one knew about this. As far as Seth knew, no one even suspected. And that made it feel like the most private thing that could ever happen, like a whole secret universe all on its own.
A universe that Seth, as he did every time, wished he never had to leave.
“The question, of course,” Gudmund said, idly pulling at the hair that tracked down from Seth’s belly button, “is whether you blame you.”
“No,” Seth said, staring up at Gudmund’s ceiling. “No, I don’t.”
“You sure about that?”
Seth laughed, quietly. “No.”
“You were just a kid. You shouldn’t have had to face that by yourself.”
“I was old enough to know better.”
“No, you weren’t. Not to have that kind of responsibility.”
“It’s just me, Gudmund,” Seth said, catching his eye. “You don’t have to pretend to be all wise. I’m not a teacher.”
Gudmund took the rebuke with grace and kissed Seth lightly on the shoulder. “I’m just saying, though. You were probably as weirdly self-contained back then as you are now, right?”
Seth nudged him playfully with his elbow, but didn’t disagree.
“And so your parents
were probably happy they had this strange little kid who acted like an adult,” Gudmund continued. “And your mom thought – against her better judgment, we’ll give her that – she thought it’s only a few minutes and it’s an emergency, so our little Sethy can watch our little Owen for just a second while I run back to the whatever –”
“The bank.”
“Doesn’t matter. It was her mistake. Not yours. But it’s too big and awful to blame herself, so she blames you. She probably hates herself for it, but still. It’s a bullshit bad deal, Sethy. Don’t buy into it.”
Seth said nothing, remembering that morning more clearly than he wanted to or ever usually tried to. His mother had delivered a curse word so loudly when they got back to the house that Owen had grabbed Seth’s hand in alarm. It turned out she’d managed to walk all the way home without realizing she’d left a thousand pounds sitting on the counter at the bank.
Seth wondered now, for really the first time, what that money could have been for. Everything was done electronically, even then, cards and PINs and debits from your bank account. What was she going to do with all that cash?
“I’ll be right back,” she’d stressed. The bank wasn’t the one on the High Street, it was off of it and up, a lesser bank his mother had never taken them to before on any other errand. “I’ll be ten minutes tops. Don’t touch anything and don’t open the door to anyone.”
She’d practically sprinted back down the hall to their front door, leaving Seth holding Owen’s hand.
Ten minutes came and went, and Seth and Owen had only moved from their spot to sit down on the floor beside the dining-room table.
Which is when the man in the strange blue jumpsuit knocked on the kitchen window.
“I let him in,” Seth said now. “She specifically said not to open the door to anyone, and I did.”
“You were eight.”
“I knew better.”
“You were eight.”
Seth said nothing. There was more to the story than just the opening of the door, but he couldn’t tell even Gudmund that part. He could feel his throat straining, felt the pain rising up from his chest. He turned away and lay there on his side, shuddering a little at the effort of crying and trying not to.
Behind him, Gudmund didn’t move. “I gotta tell ya, Sethy,” he finally said. “You’re crying and I don’t really know how to handle that.” He stroked Seth’s arm a few times. “I really don’t know what to do here.”
“It’s okay,” Seth coughed. “It’s okay. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s just . . . I’m an idiot about these things. Wish I wasn’t.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Seth said. “Just the beer talking.”
“Yeah,” Gudmund said, agreeing even though they’d hardly had four bottles between them. “The beer.”
They were quiet for a second, before Gudmund said, “I can think of a few things that might make you feel better.” He pressed his body against Seth’s, his stomach against Seth’s back, reaching around to grab parts of Seth that responded with energy.
“That’ll do,” Gudmund said happily into Seth’s ear. “But seriously, though, why does there even have to be a problem? He survived and they caught the guy and Owen’s a nice kid.”
“He’s not the same, though,” Seth said. “There are neurological problems. He’s all1 . . . scattered now.”
“Can you really tell that about a four-year-old? That he was one way before and a different way after?”
“Yeah,” Seth said. “Yeah, you can.”
“Are you sure, because –?”
“It’s all right, Gudmund. You don’t have to fix it. I’m just telling you, okay? That’s all. I’m just saying it.”
There was a long silence as he felt Gudmund’s breath in his ear. He could tell Gudmund was thinking, working something out.
“You’ve never told anybody else, have you?” Gudmund asked.
“No,” Seth said. “Who could I tell?”
He felt Gudmund hold him tighter in acknowledgment of the importance of the moment.
“It’s nothing I can change, right?” Seth said. “But imagine there’s this thing that always sits there in the room with you. And everyone knows it’s there and no one will ever say a single goddamn word about it until it becomes like an extra person living in your house that you have to make room for. And if you bring it up, they pretend they don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“My parents found the wrong gender of porn on my touchpad last year,” Gudmund said. “Guess how many times they’ve talked about it with me since?”
Seth turned to look at him. “I never knew that. I’ll bet they went ballistic.”
“You’d have thought so, but it was just a phase, wasn’t it? Nothing that churchgoing and pretending it never happened wouldn’t make go away.”
“Aren’t they suspicious about me coming over all the time?”
“Nah,” Gudmund said, grinning. “They think you’re a good influence. I tend to play up your athletic abilities.”
Seth laughed.
“So we’ve both got messed-up parents who just don’t want to know,” Gudmund said. “Though, I admit, yours are a bit worse.”
“It’s not anything, really, good or bad. It just is.”
“It’s enough of an anything to make you cry, Sethy,” Gudmund said softly. “And that’s not something that can be any good.” He squeezed Seth again. “Not something I like to see anyway.”
Seth didn’t say anything, didn’t feel like he could without his voice cracking just that second.
Gudmund let the silence linger for a moment, then he said, brightly, “At the very least, it made you guys move out here from England. And if you hadn’t, I’d never have learned about this.”
“Quit tugging on it,” Seth said, laughing. “You know what a foreskin is.”
“In theory,” Gudmund said. “But to think that I used to have one of these and someone had the nerve to chop it off without even asking –”
“Stop that,” Seth said, smacking Gudmund’s hand away again, still laughing.
“You sure?” Gudmund moved an arm underneath Seth and pulled him back into a full embrace, nuzzling his neck.
“Hold on,” Seth whispered suddenly.
Gudmund froze. “What?”
“Just that.”
“Just what?” Gudmund asked, still frozen.
But how could Seth explain it? Just what?
Just Gudmund’s arms around him, holding him there, holding him tightly and not letting him go. Holding him like it was the only place that could ever have existed.
Just that. Yes, just that.
“You’re a mystery, you are,” Gudmund whispered.
Seth felt Gudmund reach for something off the bed and turned to find Gudmund holding his phone up above them.
“I told you,” Seth said, “I’m not taking any pictures of my –”
“Not what I want,” Gudmund said, and he snapped a picture of the two of them from the shoulders up, just together, there on the bed.
“For me,” Gudmund said. “Just for me.”
He brought his face around to Seth’s and kissed him on the mouth, taking another picture.
Then he put down the phone, pulled Seth even closer, and kissed him again.
Seth opens his eyes on the settee and can barely breathe from the weight on his chest.
Oh, Jesus, he thinks. Oh, no, please.
Once more, it was so much bigger than a dream that he puts his hands to his face to see if the scent of Gudmund’s body is still there. That it isn’t – but that he can remember the smell, of salt and wood and flesh and something intensely private – makes the weight feel so much heavier.
“Shit,” he says, his voice cracking as he sits up. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” He leans forward into himself and rocks slowly back and forth, trying to bear how bad it feels.
The ache of it. The ache of missing Gudmund is so great he ca
n barely stand it. Of missing how safe being with him felt, how easy it was, how funny and relaxed. Of missing the physical stuff, of course, but more than that, the intimacy, the closeness. Of missing just being held like that, cared for.
Maybe loved.
But also the ache of missing something that was his own. His own private, secret thing that belonged to no one else, that was no part of the world of his parents or his brother or even his other friends.
Gone.
Isn’t dying once enough? he thinks. Am I going to have to keep doing it?
But then he thinks, No. Because you can die before you’re dead, too.
Oh, yes, you can.
So why not after?
He had been with Gudmund again. And waking feels like death, like a death worse than drowning.
I can’t take this, he thinks. I can’t take this.
He’s slept through the night again, it seems. The light around the blinds has the bluish tint of early dawn. He doesn’t want to get up, feels like he can’t, but the pressure on his bladder finally forces him up the stairs to the bathroom. Yesterday, after the episode of housebreaking and trying to avoid just exactly this kind of dream-filled sleep for as long as he could, he’d gotten the creaking pipes to work in the sink and shower. He’d then refilled the long dried-out toilet with glasses of water, and it had worked on the first flush, a victory that made him almost embarrassingly happy.
He goes to it now and does his morning business. Then he washes himself in the cold water of the shower, using the hardened block of dishwashing liquid from downstairs as a sticky bar of soap. He gasps as he sticks his face again and again into the brutal coldness of the water, trying to snap himself into wakefulness.
Snap him hopefully from the weight still pressing down on him, ready to crush him if he lets it.
He dries himself off with one of the new T-shirts and heads back down to the main room to put on a clean set of clothes. He’ll need to get more of these, too, ones more suited to warm weather, and maybe some lanterns for nighttime. He needs more food as well. He’ll unload the cart from outside and then refill it, taking more time to get better things.