The House at the End of the World

by Madeleine Marsh

  Joe’s rejoinder comes from the end of another rack of reds, ‘1971 Mazis Chambertin, Armand Rousseau.’

  ‘Damn!’ Gabe moves to the whites. ‘Okay – Jesus! Montrachet DRC, 2007.’ He’s obviously in awe. ‘This stuff goes for three grand a bottle.’

  Sins forgiven, Luke thinks. ‘How about you two find a few bottles to go with the steak?’ he calls out, following Matt back upstairs. As real as it is, as flawless a copy, it’s still something from their past, their previous life, and it doesn’t feel quite right.

  ‘Sure thing.’ It sounds like Joe’s far away, lost amongst the racks. Whatever, it actually feels good to do something for their little band of loyal followers. The fire is burning away when they get back up into the hall and they drop down into the couch in unison.

  ‘So... we have God-like powers here, huh?’ Matt muses.

  ‘Well, the car, a bar and a wine cellar. What have you done?’

  He grins. ‘Made my dick two inches longer.’

  It takes Luke a second, and a glance down at his brother’s crotch, to get that Matt’s kidding.

  ‘Laugh riot!’

  They sit in silence for a time, listening to the squeaks of excitement from the wine cellar and to the fire as it cracks and pops, watching the embers and the smoke rising to the chimney stack. Matt’s hand settles on Luke’s leg, nails picking at the denim until Luke laces their fingers to stop him.

  ‘We can’t stay here forever,’ he asserts gently. ‘We have to try to work out what’s going on.’

  Matt nods his head against the back of the couch. His eyes close and for a moment Luke actually thinks he’s going to cry. It stuns him because he can’t ever remember seeing him cry and he realises now how wrong that is, how weird, since he’s known him his whole life. Then suddenly he does remember one time, but the memory is too fleeting, gone too quickly for him to place it.

  Matt doesn’t cry. Instead he lifts his head, opens his eyes and locks his gaze with Luke’s. ‘We don’t get to play God indefinitely you mean.’ A tiny smile quirks his lips and Luke mirrors the expression. ‘I get the feeling we’re waiting for something, or something’s waiting for us.’

  ‘Something like what?’

  His smile widens and he moves his head side to side. ‘I have no idea. So we may as well enjoy the wine.’ The conversation’s on hold, that’s obvious by the lightening of his tone and the way his eyes slide away. He follows Matt’s gaze and sees Joe standing in the doorway, two bottles grasped tightly in his hands.

  ‘A 2000 Montrose. Four, in fact. Perfect. Steak’ll be ready in ten.’

  Behind him, Gabe’s carrying another two bottles. He follows Joe into the kitchen while Emilie heads upstairs and Rick seats himself on the arm of the couch.

  ‘That door wasn’t there before you two got back.’

  There’s no point in denying it. Luke explains, ‘This place is shaping itself around us, around our memories and experiences, but we can influence it. The Mustang’s parked around back. Now we have a wine cellar in the basement and a roadhouse within walking distance.’

  ‘Why? How?’

  Luke doesn’t have an answer to either question and while Matt might have got close to something when they were alone, he isn’t putting it forward now and Luke has to respect that. They can talk about it later. ‘We don’t know,’ he replies.

  ‘You found a bar when Gabe and Joe didn’t find anything.’

  Matt sits forward and before Luke can comment, he reassures Rick that it’s nothing new. ’Believe me, Luke can find a bar anywhere.’

  He can’t argue with that. He found The Gates of Hell using a barely legible newspaper clipping printed in 1978 and sheer determination.

  ‘Guys!’ Gabe calls them into the kitchen and they rise but Rick stays put.

  ‘Not eating?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Not hungry.’

  Luke’s starving after those hours spent drinking and playing so he shrugs, whatever, and they leave Rick in the hall.

  Emilie joins them and they perch on stools around the kitchen table. Someone’s found some pillar candles of various shapes and sizes and they’re arranged in a huddle in the centre of the table, flames licking at the semi-darkness, shadows dancing on the walls. Conversation, predictably, revolves around Matt and Luke’s ability to change things, their influence on their surroundings. The question of water into wine comes up and Luke dismisses it, refusing to even try, pointing out that the wine cellar is stocked to the rafters and preventing the idea that they’re gods in this place from ever taking hold. It’s bad enough he’s thinking that way, it needs to remain in the privacy of his own head. They speculate on whether the bar down the road will still be there if just the four of them went out to it without Luke or Matt, and Joe decides they should find out once they’ve eaten.

  The steak’s good. The wine is incredible. They start to bounce theories between them but each one they come up with falls down when they add Grandma Nancy and her knitting in to the equation. She and the wool creatures just don’t fit; a dead relative and old childhood stories made up by two kids trying to scare each other in the dark. Matt and Luke were never that close to Nancy and they both agree that she wouldn’t be their first choice of family member to resurrect from the grave. The only thing that makes any sense at all is the idea that it was a first attempt, trial and error by whatever power is interpreting their thoughts. Emilie suggests one of them could have been dreaming about her at the time and they just don’t remember. Luke supposes that could be right although he doesn’t think it’s likely. He hasn’t thought about her in twenty years and Matt hasn’t mentioned her since the funeral.

  But the suggestion reminds Luke of the dream he did have and does remember; he and Matt standing with knives at each other’s throats. It makes him feel slightly nauseous and he’s glad he’s finished eating the rare and bloody rib-eye. He pushes his plate away and takes a gulp of wine, shifting closer to Matt and putting his hand on his leg under the table. He needs to tell him about the dream, will do as soon as they’re alone, and no sooner has he made the decision than a wave of calm passes over him so intense that he feels his whole body lighten, the load lifting, as if he’s let go of a secret he didn’t realise he was keeping.

  There are no other working theories so they stick with the one they have and talk around it, trying to extrapolate to a sensible conclusion. But there isn’t an obvious one. Why they’re here, where they are, how they got here, exactly how much power and control Matt and Luke really do have; it’s all speculation, at least for the time being.

  True to Joe’s word, he, Gabe, Rick and Emilie head out once plates have been scraped clean and glasses and bottles are empty, leaving Matt and Luke to wash the dishes by candlelight. Luke’s got his hands in the warm, soapy water, Matt’s drying.

  A few quiet minutes pass after the front door closes behind them. Then Luke starts, ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

  ‘Okay….’ Matt’s tone is immediately wary.

  ‘Last night, or this morning, I had this dream. You and me, we were in that room upstairs, I think, and I was holding this knife. It had an ornate handle and a wicked sharp blade and I was holding it—’

  ‘—to my throat.’ Matt interrupts him, finishing his sentence.

  ‘Yeah, how do you...?’

  ‘I had the same dream. I had a knife to your throat and you had one to mine. In your dream, was I...?’ Luke nods. ‘And we were looking at each other like we’d agreed to do it, agreed to cut one another?’

  ‘I think I was going to kill you.’

  Matt nods. ‘Me too.’

  Luke drops the plate he’s holding back into the water and wipes his hands on his jeans, turning. ‘Whatever happens, I’m not about to do anything like that.’ He says it like it’s obvious, like he shouldn't even need to utter the words.

  Matt dumps the cloth onto the worktop and takes a step forward, closing the gap between them, reaching for Luke’s damp hands. ‘
It was just a dream, this place messing with our heads. After everything we’ve been through, if we were going to commit suicide, we’d have done it years ago. We’re stronger than that. Nothing is going to make me hurt you and nothing is going to make you hurt me. We’re fine. Whatever it is, we'll deal with it the same way we've dealt with everything else.’ He sounds so sure, so confident, that Luke nods his agreement without questioning it. This is the way it’s always been; one bolstering the other when they get low. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Matt lets go of his hands and they go back to doing the dishes like they promised Joe they would, finishing them off in silence.

  They take the candles through to the hall, throw a couple more big logs on the fire and settle again on the couch. Matt casts a glance at the door to the lounge, which they keep closed, and asks Luke if he thinks they should make Grandma Nancy a cup of tea or fetch her a sherry. Luke looks at him like he might have finally gone mad. ‘Bro’, she’s not real. She’s just the same as those wool creatures.’

  ‘Joe's been feeding them raw steak!’

  ‘He shouldn’t encourage them. Who knows how many she’s knitted by now.’

  ‘He’s a softy at heart.’

  Luke snorts. ‘Not too soft that he hasn’t wasted a shit load of evil bad things over the last two months. Or given us grief about us.’

  ‘Feeding those things could be his way of atoning.’

  ‘I think it’s a little too late for atonement.’

  Matt turns to him. ‘You think we’re going to Hell?’

  He’s dumbstruck for a minute. ‘Yes, I think we're going to Hell!’

  ‘But we saved the world!’

  ‘We’ve killed things, lots of things. We’ve killed people.’

  ‘People who deserved it. People who weren’t human. Bad people who were threatening others and on many occasions actually eating them. That doesn’t make us bad, it makes us good. We struck out, we did something. That has to count in our favour.’

  ‘I’m not sure there’s going to be a trial with a jury of our peers who decide if we’re sent up or down. I think God plays judge, jury and executioner.’

  Matt’s expression changes from bewilderment to curiosity. ‘You believe in God?’

  Luke gapes at him. ‘You don't? Given everything we’ve seen and everything we know? If there's a Satan, how can there not be a God to balance things out?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure there’s a Satan, and besides he’s just a fallen angel. He’s not God’s opposite, exactly.’

  ‘He’s the leader of the opposition. If there’s the Devil there has to be God, like Republicans and Democrats. If there’s evil there has to be good.’

  ‘What about what that priest told us, the one in White Rock?’

  The Church of the Fallen Saints, Luke remembers it well, and the priest they protected from whatever that thing with claws was that they found living in the rafters of the old building. He'd gone on and on about good and evil being the same thing seen from different perspectives. Depending on what corner you were standing in, he claimed, good could be evil and evil could be good. There was no war except the war that man made. Luke had been pretty damn sure at the time that no man had made the bird-like creature they killed in a hail of bullets and a shower of feathers.

  ‘He was nuts,’ Luke said firmly. ‘It’s simple. Murder’s bad, saving people is good.’

  ‘But what if the act of murder saves someone else?’

  ‘You can’t know for sure that it will, not every time. Okay, if a guy’s got his hands around a kid’s throat, then shooting him in the head is absolutely the right thing to do. But stabbing a guy outside a bar because he tries to steal your cigarettes? That’s wrong. Even if you don't, and he goes on to hold up a convenience store at gunpoint. That priest was delusional.’

  ‘He wasn’t making up the part about the monster in the rafters.’

  ‘No, but he also said he’d seen Death, remember, standing at the altar with his scythe, black robe and everything.’

  ‘Maybe he did.’ Matt shrugs. ‘If you think the Devil and God exist, why shouldn’t Death be real too?’

  ‘Gabe said he sold a car to Satan.’

  ‘He’s convinced himself it was Satan.’

  ‘Just go with me here. Say he’s right, and the guy we saw – the same guy in the black suit on the hill at the end – was the Devil. Satan in a meat suit mixing things up by killing a family with a two hundred thousand dollar sports car is a far cry from the Bergman image of Death in a cloak playing chess for some guy’s soul.’

  ‘Why is it?’

  Luke ignores him. ‘What would Death be doing in a church anyway?’

  ‘I imagine he was there for the priest.’

  ‘You really think he saw Death?’

  ‘Why is that harder to believe than Satan mowing down kids in L.A.?’

  He has a point, and it's a circular argument with no end, so Luke lets it go. He drops his head back and closes his eyes, pulling his brother’s hand into his lap, parting his knees slightly and pressing Matt’s knuckles into his groin. Matt chuckles softly, a surprisingly hot sound, and his fingers trace the denim seam between his legs. It makes Luke wish for an empty movie theatre showing a crappy film, just to be sat on the back row paying zero attention to the screen. He wonders if there's room in the house for a cinema.

  By the time the others get back, they’re spooned together on the couch, Matt’s arm hooked over Luke’s hip, his hand down the front of Luke’s open jeans. They’re awake but they don’t bother moving. The four are drunk as skunks. They make some crude comments about how the ‘boys’ have spent their night before climbing the stairs as quietly as a herd of elephants. Luke overhears an argument about which bedroom is Emilie’s, hears toilets flush, doors slam, and after a good twenty minutes, the house falls silent again.

  ‘Guess they found the roadhouse,’ Matt comments sleepily.

  ‘Guess they did.’

  ‘Want to go up to bed?’

  ‘No.’ He's comfortable and warm. But in the morning they’ll want to have more sex and that might be problematic if the others wake first. ‘Okay, fine.’

  They take the candles with them, the shadows following their progress as they climb to the landing and up the spiral stairs. It’s so spooky but it’s also starting to feel like a home, something they haven’t had since leaving the Airsteam twelve years ago. It's a dangerous thing because it means the longer they stay the less they'll want to leave.

  Once inside the room, with the candles on the dresser and the door locked, Matt steps into Luke's space and runs his fingers through his hair, nails scraping across his scalp the way he loves it. For a second Luke closes his eyes and savours the sensation then he reaches for the buttons on Matt's shirt, popping them one by one.

  ‘You know the last time you undressed me I was....’

  Luke drops his hands, interrupting him. ‘You carry on with that thought and my hard-on's going to wilt faster than spinach.’

  Matt nods. ‘Right. Sorry.’ His expression changes and Luke recognises it, waits for it... ‘You know that spinach wilts?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I thought I was the only one watching the Cookery Channel.’

  Luke ignores the tease. Matt’s fingers are at the hem of his hoodie, pulling it up slowly, the heels of his hands skimming Luke's ribs as he lifts it and Luke has to raise his arms to get it off over his head, T-shirt going with it.

  They don't kiss, they haven't kissed, but Luke sort of wants to just before Matt wrestles him backwards onto the bed. Then he wants to do other things more.

  ~..~

  Rick stays awake as long as he can. He couldn’t eat dinner, couldn’t face steak. Even if he’d asked for his done as black as charcoal the thought of watching the others eat bloody rare meat still makes him feel queasy. Despite not having had any food, he isn’t hungry. He’s being plagued by the distinct feeling that something is close by, following h
im, watching and waiting. He keeps thinking he feels fingers brushing against him, indistinct touches to his back and his shoulders. But when he turns around there's nothing there. This isn't like those wool things downstairs, this is dark and threatening.

  He sits on the edge of the bed and stares out of the window at the strange light outside, moonlight without the moon. He wishes he had the guts to leave, to just walk until he drops dead from thirst or smacks his head on the edge of the world. He's had a bad feeling about this place from the start, but that’s turned into a heavy sensation of dread, sitting in his stomach like bad Chinese food. It's obvious the others aren't experiencing any of this. Emilie, Joe and Gabe seem happy, taking the opportunity for a break. He keeps asking himself what's singled him out, why he's alone in this.

  It was fun at the bar, slamming down tequila shots like they were back in reality, pouring fizzy lager down their throats like he used to before the world started to end. Sitting at a table, taking it in turns to pick someone out of the thin crowd and take bets on which out of the four of them they would prefer to sleep with. In the end they decided everyone would sleep with Gabe and he was more or less happy to sleep with anyone. Joe's still bothered about Matt and Luke, but Gabe doesn't care and, despite her interest in Luke, Emilie thinks it's the hottest thing since Michael Lucas’ Dangerous Liaisons, whatever the hell that is. Rick couldn't give a shit. It’s none of his business. They’re not hurting anyone, they’re grown men. He doesn’t understand Joe’s argument that they shouldn’t because they're brothers.

  ‘The same blood doesn't run in their veins,’ Gabe argued when they were in the bar.

  Joe spouted more garbage than Rick’s ever heard in his life, although he thinks it might have been the whisky talking. As far as Rick's concerned, even if they were actual brothers, given the amount of blood they've undoubtedly lost over the years he doubts there would be any left that they actually shared. It's not as if they’re about to start making mutant babies and frankly he has more important things to worry about. He enjoyed the night out but now he's back here in the house with the scratching in the walls and the vague noises he thinks only he can hear; far away screams and wet sounds of torture.