He pauses again. The train seems to glide. The musicians play soft, simple chords, back and forth, back and forth.
When Dean talks again, she hears tears in his voice.
“One day or night, who can tell, I woke to the sound of the kids laughing. You’d think this is a good thing, right? Any time two kids can laugh after months of living in complete darkness, shitting and pissing in buckets, you’d think that’s a good thing. But it didn’t sound right to me. Didn’t sound happy. I sat up quick and stared long into the darkness, thinking maybe I’d dreamt the sound of them. But I heard them again. Wide awake. They were somewhere deeper in the house. I called out and they just…laughed some more. I got up and left the bedroom, feeling my way along the walls, thinking I was going to find them in the living room. Macy would tell me what she was laughing at and what was making her little brother laugh so hard, and that would be that. Right? Well, when I got to the living room, they sounded deeper in the house still. Way into the house, way back by the laundry room. I passed through the living room, blind, arms out, calling for them, and when I got to the laundry room, I heard them laughing behind me. Way back into the house. As if they were back by the bedroom I’d woke in.”
The train shakes, a single bump. Dean goes on.
“So I headed back through the living room, into the hall again, into the bedroom. I’m calling, ‘Macy! Eric! You’re scaring Daddy! Where are you guys?’ And the laughter came again, back behind me. As if…as if I kept passing through the place they actually were, if that makes sense. As if they were laughing in the living room and I simply couldn’t find them there.
“So I went to the basement. Even though that’s not where the sound was coming from. I took the steps, calling out to them, sweating by now, thinking, over and over, They’re playing a game, they’re playing a game. Because that’s what I wanted, isn’t it? Didn’t I want to discover that, despite the sealed windows and doors, despite the plain food, the lack of light and exercise, despite the fact that Daddy was obviously scared, despite the perpetual darkness, didn’t I want to think my kids were having fun? When I got to the basement, I heard them laughing upstairs. So I went right back up. By now I was yelling. ‘Macy! Eric! This isn’t funny, dammit! You’re scaring Daddy!’ Then I heard them whispering. And I knew what this type of whispering meant. I guess you could call it conspiring, though usually when parents put it that way they’re trying to be funny about it. This wasn’t funny. I couldn’t find my own kids in the darkness of our own home and they’d gone from laughing to whispering. And I recognized the type of whispering, too. I’m sure you’ve experienced it with your own kids. The sound of little ones daring one another to do something. Something they hadn’t ever done before.
“So I ran. All through the house. Most of the furniture was out of the way because we’d set it up like that, because we lived in darkness. But I clipped my hip on the fireplace pretty bad and I bashed the side of my head against a wall. None of that mattered at the time except that it slowed me down. I got across the house again and heard them whispering behind me. So I turned and went back, and there it was again, the two of them, whispering behind me again. I was screaming by then. Howling their names, demanding they tell me where they were hiding and now. And they did tell me. But not with words. The next thing I heard was a dull…hitting sound. Sounded like it does when you drive a knife into a melon. I just…I…”
Malorie doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to express what she feels.
“I found them then,” Dean says. “Beside the very bed I woke up in. The two of them dead from having stabbed one another with knives from the kitchen drawer. The knives I’d used a thousand times to cut up their canned meat and fruit. They didn’t cry out when they did it. They didn’t make any sound at all. They laughed and laughed and then dared one another to do it. I’ll never know exactly how it was done. But the day my two little ones went mad and killed each other, that’s the day I unsealed the back door. To carry them outside. To bury them. And even then, racked with despair, completely fucking destroyed, I kept thinking, They saw one, despite everything you did, Dean, they saw one anyway. And you know what, Jill?”
“What?”
“I never found the sliver.”
Malorie doesn’t ask him what he means. She knows what he means.
“I never found the hole in the wall, the space between boards, the infinitesimal spot they must’ve looked through, looked outside, to have seen what did that to them. Oh, I tried. You can trust me on that. I looked everywhere with a flashlight, no longer caring if I saw one myself or not. Just moved through the darkness of that house for six weeks, searching. Mostly on my knees. Looking for that sliver of light, that Goddamn little space, overlooked, that they, as children, who saw the world different than I did, must’ve found.”
“My name is Malorie,” she says. Because she doesn’t know what else to say.
Dean laughs. It’s strained, and it’s loaded with tears.
Malorie reaches across the table but doesn’t find his hand right away. For a second it feels as if she’s on her knees, aping the walk of children, looking for light in a house of darkness.
Then she finds it. Or he finds hers. Either way, she grips his hand.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yep. But hey, it’s the day I decided to start looking again. And that means something.” Then, “Thank you, Malorie. For trusting me with your real name. And for listening to the worst thing that could’ve happened to a man. Shit. And look at me now. I’m the guy who got a train running again. In the new world. No small feat. But I’ll tell you what…every run we make, day or night, it still feels like I’m searching for that sliver of open space, that tiny hole, that speck in the universe I didn’t cover up. The point in space and time that my kids found. The one that drove them mad.”
SIXTEEN
“Mom’s gonna kill you if she catches you,” Olympia says.
“How’s she gonna catch me? She’ll be blindfolded.”
Olympia knows this is true. And Tom’s not the only one with his eyes open.
She watches her brother pore over the pages he’s taken from Malorie’s bag, the census papers that excite him more than any other written word she’s ever seen him hold.
“Indian River,” he says. “Did you read about that place? Did you read about Athena Hantz? These people are unreal.”
Olympia doesn’t answer. She’s looking in the mirror. The man Dean was right; this is a nice space. The bench, the bed, a high ceiling even. But the sensation of moving without using her own two feet is so foreign that she places her fingers on the counter, for balance.
It almost feels like she’s holding on to the only life she’s known. Because Olympia has no doubt things have changed. Whether Tom knows it or not, they’re never going back to Camp Yadin.
“Listen to this,” her brother says, crouched over the papers right beside Malorie’s open bag so he can shove them back in the second they hear her coming. “Athena Hantz claims to have lived with one for two years. You hear that, Olympia? Two years! She told the census man that the thing never bothered her. It just ‘stood in the corner of the kitchen for a while, then did the same in the living room.’ Unreal!”
Olympia doesn’t like when Tom talks like this. It’s not just that Malorie would freak out if she heard it. It has something more to do with herself. The way she sees the world. On her own. She likes that he’s excited by something, anything. She’s read about enough characters who need moments like these in their lives. Yet, hearing Tom, it feels like she’s not only on a train, but that there’s a second one, barreling toward her, an incident on its way.
“Why not go through the papers with Mom?” she asks.
“Are you kidding? She’d be afraid the letters are shaped like a creature. She wouldn’t get this at all.”
“But s
he brought the pages. Did you think of that? Her parents’ names are in there.”
“I hear you, but no. Ha. Not a chance. She doesn’t get it like I do. That’s just so not…Mom.”
Olympia doesn’t argue this. But she wants to. There’s a part of her that just wants the two of them to sit still until the end of this experience, all the way to Mackinaw City. There, Tom can say all the crazy stuff he wants to, and Malorie can either get upset with it or not. But if anything jeopardizes Malorie’s chances of seeing her parents, finding out if they really are alive, Olympia might go mad herself.
She gets it. She isn’t sure Tom does. The magnitude of this moment. The fact that Malorie has raised them for sixteen years, believing herself to be alone in the world, no family or friends to help. It’s harrowing. At turns, it sounds almost worse to discover they are alive, as if Malorie was not only robbed of the life she thought she was living but had been fooled into sorrow as well.
“What’s wrong?” Tom asks.
Olympia looks to him in the glass. Did her face reveal heavy thoughts? Jesus, sometimes it feels like Tom can hear her thoughts.
“Nothing.”
“Okay,” he says. But it’s the mocking way he has of saying certain things. She sees him reach to his bag, his eyes still on the pages. He fumbles inside until he removes what she knew he would.
His glasses.
His special glasses.
Tom explained them to her in great detail a month after he made them. And while Olympia was frightened by the philosophy he espoused, she was much more scared of him using them.
He wears them now, as he reads.
“Get this,” he says. “A family in Pennsylvania built helmets the size of ‘wardrobe boxes’ so there was room for food and water inside the helmet. I mean, this stuff is unbelievable!”
Olympia eyes herself. She wants to feel the excitement Tom feels. She wants to give in to the rush of being on this train, of moving, of heading north without being forced to lead her mom through woods, along empty roads, in a boat. She wants so badly to be sixteen like sixteen used to be. It sounds like it was once an incredible thing, a magical thing, being a kid. Hanging out with other teens your age. Learning how to drive a car. Sneaking out of the house. Going, walking, looking anywhere you wanted to.
Did people realize how good they had it back then? It wasn’t just a matter of being able to see or not. She’s read of plenty of blind characters who lived brilliant lives. But it’s the fear—of what’s out there. And the constant ringing of a mother’s voice, reminding her and Tom, demanding, commanding, Do you understand? Do you understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
“What’s wrong?” Tom asks again.
When Olympia looks to him in the glass she sees herself, reflected in the lenses of the glasses he’s built. For this, two mirrors face each other, and her own form is repeated, over and over, into infinity.
“Athena Hantz says we’re allowed to look,” Tom says. “She says it’s all a matter of us accepting them. Living with them.”
Olympia thinks of the predominant theory that a creature drives you mad because people can’t fathom what they are. Malorie’s told her about the man Tom was named after, and how he was sure that the entities outside their house, the house Olympia and Tom were born in, simply couldn’t be understood.
But what does this mean for those who can look? For those who are immune? Does it mean those people are smarter? Does it mean they look at the world in a different way, just different enough to save themselves without realizing they’re doing it? Does it mean those people are already mad, and no amount of unfathomable information can change that, speed it up, bring it to a bloody end?
“Indian River,” Tom says again. He shakes his head, flipping through the pages.
Her brother is enamored with making progress. For as long as she can remember, he’s proffered ideas, theories, inventions.
She wishes he would stop thinking this way.
But is that just Malorie talking? Is Olympia’s worldview only Malorie’s and nothing of her own? What if she’d been raised by her blood-mother? What if she and Tom had been raised by their namesakes instead?
Where would they be right now? What would they know?
What would they believe?
And if people are right, that the creatures cause harm because they are beyond human comprehension…then what would someone like Tom the man make of people who were raised with the knowledge of the creatures’ existence? What about the people who do fathom them because they’ve lived with them their entire lives?
Olympia looks to Tom just as he looks up, quick, to the door, a half second before a knock rattles her reverie.
Tom quickly shoves the papers back into Malorie’s bag. He removes his glasses and hides them in his lap.
“Hello?” a man says. “Anybody home?”
Tom looks to Olympia. Do they speak? They know they shouldn’t. They know Malorie would kill them if they do.
But Tom does. And Olympia knew he would.
“Yes,” Tom says. “Who’s there?”
“Ah!” the man says. “My name is Henry. We are neighbors. Insomuch as everyone on board lives in the same traveling neighborhood.”
He sounds older than Mom, Olympia thinks. Maybe as old as Sam and Mary Walsh. Did somebody think this man was dead for years, too? Has he survived the new world in anonymity like Olympia and Tom’s grandparents might have?
“Nice to meet you,” Tom says. He smiles Olympia’s way. This is all so incredible. First, leaving home. Then, making the train. Now, on the train and here a man, a stranger comes to say hello.
“If you don’t mind,” the man says, “I’d like to slide your door open. I’m old-fashioned in that I like to look at the people I speak to. And here, on this train, we’re allowed to.”
“Allowed to what?” Tom asks.
“Allowed to look!” The man laughs.
Tom and Olympia exchange a glance. Olympia’s excitement is tempered. Was the man listening to them? Or is the word “allowed” fashionable in the real world?
“I don’t know,” Olympia says to Tom.
She’s worried about Malorie discovering they’re talking to a stranger. She’s scared to open the door for him.
And is she really considering doing that? Opening the door? Is entering the real world such a slippery slope?
It doesn’t matter if she’s considering it or not. Tom is already up, crossing the cabin, sliding the door open.
Olympia thinks to close her eyes. Because that’s what she’s been told to do her entire life. Despite what the man Dean says about this being a safe place.
The school for the blind was considered safe. The home they were born in was considered safe. Why should this train be any different?
But it is different. She can’t deny this. And, again, she feels a sense of having shed her skin, of having stepped, clearly, into a new phase, a second life.
“Hi,” Tom says. “I’m Tom.”
And now, giving out their actual names.
“Tom.” The man smiles. “What a wonderful appellation.”
The man, Olympia sees, is much older than Malorie. He has gray hair and white stubble on his chin and face. Olympia hasn’t seen someone this man’s age in ten years, not since the school for the blind.
“And you?” Henry says, raising his eyebrows her way.
It chills her that they’re doing this. And more. Something more. Something similar to leaving Camp Yadin behind. That feeling of never getting something back again.
“I’m Jamie,” Olympia says.
Henry smiles. He wears a sweater, despite the heat, and sweat drips down his cheeks.
Does he know she’s lying about her name? He looks like he does.
“Well,” he says. “I just wanted to introduce myself and to let y
ou know…if you want to learn anything about this train, anything at all, feel free to knock on my door. I’m what people used to call a regular. My good friend Nathan and I are just a couple cars that way. Cabin Sixteen, I believe.”
He points up the hall as the train shakes, and for a second he looks blurry to Olympia. Out of focus.
Then he bows. He holds one hand to his belly and extends the other arm out, as if he’s just wrapped a performance.
Olympia knows the word: theatrical.
“Thank you,” Tom says.
Henry winks.
Then he steps out of sight, and Olympia hurries to the door and slides it closed.
“What’s wrong with you?” she says. “Giving him your real name.”
“Oh, stop it,” Tom says. “Mom doesn’t have the same hold on us out here.”
“What does that mean?”
But she doesn’t feel like arguing. Instead, she looks to the closed door.
Her stomach swirls uneasily.
“There are bad people out here,” she says.
“Come on.”
“I mean it, Tom. And that one…”
“That one what?”
“That one acted just like the kind of person Mom says we need to watch out for.”
“Oh, really? You think so?”
“Yes, I do. She’s told us a million times to watch out for theatrical people. Mom says those people wear masks.”
Tom scoffs. “Now you sound like her.”
“Oh? And what’s so bad about that? You really need to think about what you’re saying before you say it.”
But Olympia’s eye is on the closed, sliding door. Her ear, too, listening. Is the man Henry still on the other side? Did he go back to his own room yet? Can she hear him moving up the hall?
“Hey,” Tom says. “I’m not gonna freak Mom out. Don’t worry about it. Okay? I just…there’s a lot more to the world than Camp Yadin. And we’re seeing that for ourselves. Right now.”
It doesn’t matter what Tom’s saying. Olympia’s listening to the hall.
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