The Hidden Back Room

by Jason A. Wyckoff

  Berenice stared at it. She wanted to spit on the white spot profaning her bed, though she knew it would do no good towards dispelling its repellent presence. The seemingly-innocuous, wicked, silent light would pass as it pleased through her room and out again.

  ‘What if I had been asleep?’ she hissed.

  A terrible din filled the room as nails squealed and timbers cracked and splintered. The unmistakable rubbing groan of the taught ropes coiling on the turning spools surrounded Berenice, though she knew it shouldn’t have sounded so loud and so close. The ceiling of her bedroom buckled as the roof peeled back and crumpled to one side in disordered accordion folds; plaster flaked and fell in clumps as boards snapped one by one. Daylight streamed in. Berenice was so occupied dodging falling debris that the roof had folded halfway back before she noticed the light revealed another presence only a few feet away along the wall. She would not have been within arm’s reach of a normal person, but this was no man of normal stature. He filled the corner of the room, bending slightly at the knees and bowed forward to fit under the low ceiling. He raised one long arm at the shoulder and reached towards Berenice. She screamed. The harsh shadow hiding the tall figure lifted as the roof collapsed, moving up from his bare feet black with clay, along his strong calves, up over crude breeches and naked chest. And his leering face came into view and Berenice screamed again and woke. She shivered under sweat. She looked down her body and saw a small patch of light on her leg. Whimpering with fear, she tore the sheets from the bed and hugged the wall, just as she had in her dream. Several minutes passed before she was able to calm her heartbeat and breathing. It was a tense hour longer as the light crawled up her bed, disappearing behind the wall of the house just before it would have touched her pillow. Her fear turned to hate as she watched it go. I should have known, she thought, I should have known the light would come back for me.

  Hosea woke with the first bell, but pretended to remain asleep. No one had ever accused him of sloth, but it seemed to him particularly stupid for anyone to require additional notice to rise, and he hoped in all actions to promote an image of stupidity. He believed his campaign of fatuousness was succeeding. His mother was at least disappointed with him on a fairly consistent basis, and he expected only some lingering matriarchal pride halted her from calling him an idiot to his face. Today might be the day, he thought, and pulled the covers over his chin to hide the smile he could not suppress. Summer days were always busy; today was no exception. He was to assist the beekeepers that morning. The potential for disaster loomed large in Hosea’s mind. This one will hurt. But he was sure it would be worth it. He hoped to prove his incompetence in every available task save one and to reassure his mother of his utter reliance on others. He knew he was going to grow to be a large and imposing man, to be taken seriously as a physical threat by outsiders even if not taken much at all seriously by his neighbours. If he displayed an aptitude for driving the truck (he had yet to figure out how to display wild incompetence in other endeavours yet garner sufficient confidence to be let behind the wheel), then his expected contribution would be obvious: He would be one of the elect party that left the town to trade its abundant gold.

  Growing up, it had been easy to believe the teachings of the elders. The valley seemed blessed by God. The river deposited an endless supply of flecks and specks of gold in the broad, shallow expanse covering the valley floor. From this alone, the town had money enough to buy the foodstuffs and modest supplies it required from the outside world, but this was not its only blessing. An apiary outside the town ring hosted a stable colony of honey bees that happily gorged themselves on fireweed and unfailingly produced a generous annual flow famous for its quality. When he considered the good points of the town, Hosea thought it unsurprising that none before him (as far as he knew) had wanted to leave. But he knew he had something different in him—a yearning that might well bring his doom, but one he must yield to or suffer a fate worse by far: stagnation. He didn’t know why he was different, but he looked at the people around him—even the girl he thought he might love—and he was surer every day that his path led elsewhere. Hosea was aware of this feeling from an early age. When he was young he asked questions, but learned that challenge met resistance. He realised that the path of least resistance was one where intention was obscured, leaving the resultant action unimagined. And so he decided to become a fool in the eyes of the townspeople to avoid suspicion until he could effectuate his plan.

  The two simplest means of escape Hosea had rejected long ago. He could walk away from town at any time; however, he would then be deep in the Alaskan interior with no particular idea where to go or how far he would have to go to get there. He could follow the road, but what if the road intersected with another? He would have no idea which direction to take towards civilisation. Having seen only one truck arrive at the town on an intermittent basis, Hosea had no idea of how well- or infrequently-travelled any of the roads might be. Though his concept of space began with the small world he knew, he had been taught that Alaska was a very large, very sparsely populated land, and he had no cause to disbelieve it. And he had every reason to believe an encounter with a bear or a wolf pack might be as common in the wilderness as happening upon another human—and he had no experience of gauging the trustworthiness of a stranger in the wilderness. (Hosea hated to admit even to himself, but he was as much afraid of meeting a person from outside his village as he was anticipating it.)

  The other possibility was simply to ask the men the town traded with to let him accompany them. This they obviously would never consent to before he came of age. Even after then, Hosea was not sure they would take him. He knew the commercial relationship would matter most to those outsiders, and if the town elders told them that if they took Hosea with them, they needn’t bother returning, then he would be left behind, humiliated and closely watched. Young Hosea’s questions about leaving the town had always been met with incredulity and concern bordering on alarm. Having dropped the open approach, he had never learned if simply asking to leave upon reaching adulthood was an option. He didn’t know whether the incredulity he’d encountered stemmed from a lack of empathy that could acknowledge such a consideration, or whether the suggestion was simply not to be tolerated and any attempt to leave quashed. He knew of no precedent and no discussion and he felt disinclined to handicap his effort by probing the possibility.

  So Hosea developed the plan to become one of the men who occasionally left town with the blessings of all therein. Other men might come to town to pick up the honey or to deliver goods, but the town’s gold had to be taken to an official place to be sold directly by the owner. Hosea once asked one of the elders why the town didn’t just give it to the men they traded with to handle the transaction—weren’t they trustworthy? The elder’s reply was, ‘They are like most men: given no advantage, they are honest.’ Hosea didn’t know where the trading happened, but he imagined it must occur at some town or settlement where people were always coming and going. There he could escape from his contingent and secure passage elsewhere—anywhere at all as far as he was concerned. Of course, he could not go into the world naked, but he had planned for that, as well. Though it was expected, for the good of the town, that all gold recovered from the river be turned over to the elders, there had never been a strict prohibition from keeping any for oneself. Nearly everyone in town kept some small piece they’d recovered, often their first big find. There was simply no reason to keep any more than a token, as the gold was not traded in the town itself, general modesty prohibited adornment, and personal status was measured by worth to the community. Hosea therefore had no reason to consider himself a thief for keeping more than was usual. He didn’t know the worth of his stash, but he had accumulated enough to completely fill a medicine bottle and a small jelly jar, and he thought that was enough to provide him a start in the world outside. He had read Moby Dick and he thought it might be a great adventure to become a whaler.

  Hosea wondered why his moth
er didn’t try to rouse him. He had woken in the night to the sound of her bleating meekly as she tossed in her sleep. The phenomenon was common enough that Hosea was unconcerned. In generous moods he had worried about her and wondered what thoughts disturbed her rest; times as now he concluded she suffered a surfeit of unassigned scorn, so that her troubles were her own invention. He sighed broadly and sat up. There was no point perpetrating the charade if she also slept in. He thought he would instead count three before responding to anything she might say at breakfast. The first calls of ‘Hup! Hup!’ bounced through his window.

  Because Berenice was late to rise after her restless night, by the time she called on Jemimah, Adam had already left. As Adam was an elder (and acquiesced to suffer the connection of what his timid wife termed her ‘friendship’ with Berenice) she intended to bring to his attention the matter of the hole in the cover of night. As she knew the light was sure to again visit her room in particular, she was determined not to leave the problem unaddressed. Having missed Adam, she complained instead to Jemimah, though it was only a rehearsal. Jemimah was duly alarmed and readily agreed that an elder should be notified immediately. Though fixing any hole in the dome was a concerted undertaking, it had to be done without delay—even if only one hand of light reached through, it could not be allowed to touch any sleeper.

  Berenice was appreciative of her friend’s ardent support. Though she had every reason to expect the town’s swift response to the problem, she knew her meek friend’s panic was sure to carry greater weight convincing others to check for the hole than she could elicit with edgy impatience. Having Jemimah on her side implied a reciprocal sisterly feeling; perhaps that is what prompted Berenice to ask, ‘Does Adam ever speak of the lore?’

  ‘Oh!’ Jemimah was taken aback. ‘Some . . .’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘He is an elder. And your husband.’ The former meant that he might have knowledge of things often left unmentioned; the latter implied he might have shared some of this knowledge with his wife.

  Jemimah could hardly argue the assertions. ‘Well, of course.’

  ‘Has he said if anyone was ever cured of being sun-sick?’

  Jemimah went white in an instant. She had no idea how to answer. Her chin trembled.

  Berenice caught the implication behind the silence. ‘I was never sun-sick, Jemimah.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘My vision was ever clear, though my mind was affected.’

  Jemimah bowed her head.

  ‘I was not seduced,’ Berenice affirmed.

  Because of her delicate sensibilities, Jemimah dreaded her friend concluding the sequence aloud, ‘I was raped.’ Some in town believed it true, though most that did believe it thought the perpetrator was no supernatural agent but rather a neighbour Berenice either could not or chose not to reveal. Some believed her claim entirely baseless of origin, and that Berenice concocted the story of the rape to protect her shame. None denied her mind was affected by the ordeal; she struggled with a terrible brain fever for ten days. When she emerged, she told what little she could remember. At first, most thought her ‘experience’ the result of her fevered imagining—until she began to show. A dark time in the town followed, as people argued and became distrustful. In the end, it was Berenice’s unwavering commitment to her story that allowed the town to move on—even if many could not believe her story, to generally pretend it to be the truth calmed the discord.

  Because Jemimah had to, because she could not resist her friend’s stronger will, she believed Berenice as strongly as her faint heart would allow. ‘I’ve never heard of a cure,’ she said.

  Berenice grunted.

  Jemimah wondered at the point of the question. ‘You don’t think Hosea . . . ?’

  ‘No!’ Berenice almost shouted. ‘But—we must think of our children, Jemmie. My son is good, but . . . oh, he is good.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You saw how late they came back. They are becoming incautious, as youth often will.’

  Even behind closed doors, Jemimah could not recommend the children marry; Berenice could; Hosea could; even her husband could; she must leave it to one of them.

  Berenice inhaled deeply and confessed, ‘My son has a rare combination of exuberance and foolishness.’

  Jemimah thought it was a fair and respectful summation.

  Berenice continued, ‘Those forces run stronger in him than Hannah’s calmer virtues.’

  That was a bit of an insult, applied both to the children and their progenitors, but the upshot of the analysis was clear: Jemimah’s daughter was likewise in danger if her heart belonged to Hosea. ‘We must think of the children,’ she affirmed.

  Berenice nodded. ‘Which is why I hope to know if there’s anything we could do if . . . if the worst were to happen.’

  ‘Reuben might know,’ Jemimah volunteered. ‘I would expect if anyone knew, he would. But he’s sick in bed.’

  Berenice sensed an opportunity. ‘And so he may be more willing to talk about such things.’

  Reuben was a widower. He lived with his daughter’s family. Though his illness was not life-threatening, it had left him bed-ridden, and the added burden of his care was exhausting his daughter. She was only too happy to tend to other concerns while she left her father in the company of others, even if one of them happened to be Berenice. Reuben lay on a cot in the corner of the family room, propped up by a stack of pillows. Periodically he would retrieve a small glass of water from a nightstand and sip only enough to wet his lips, which he would then lick and smack for several seconds as his red-grey beard rolled. In perfect health, his mind was not as sharp as it once was; wearied by illness, he wasted no effort censoring himself or ordering his thoughts.

  ‘Though the Tornit are giants, they are afeared of night!’ Reuben tried to bellow with the authority of one imparting a lesson, but his support was weak and his voice wavered and broke when he held a syllable for effect. He was quoting the lore directly. His audience knew it well, but received it uninterrupted with hopes of more information to follow. ‘Even by day they are cautious and stay well-hidden. But in full summer sun they walk in dreams.’ Reuben sipped his water and worked his lips. ‘In daylight, they see all, though their eyes are fogged with waking dreams. Their night-vision is bad, and so they fear dogs and the Adlet. The fog they see in, they take those . . .’ he was floundering now, misremembering, but it was still old knowledge to the women at his bedside. ‘Those that see in their fog can be taken . . .’ He shook his head and pulled his eyebrows together. He took another sip of water.

  Berenice forced an indulgent smile. ‘Thank you, Reuben. You have been very helpful. We were wondering, though—do you know if anyone has ever been cured of sun-sickness?’

  Reuben continued to shake his head, staring indeterminately through tightly squinted eyes, trying to remember the correct phrasing. ‘They steal women in fog . . .’

  Berenice’s body went rigid. She’d never heard any part of the warning against infection and abduction specify women. ‘What?’

  Reuben looked up and seemed startled he was not alone. Embarrassed at his confusion, he took another sip of water. He glanced dartingly between the women’s faces, trying to deduce their agenda.

  Seeing Berenice frozen, Jemimah leaned forward and offered sweetly, ‘You were saying, Reuben, whether you’d heard of anyone cured of sun-sickness?’

  Reuben grunted and searched his thoughts. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes?’ the ladies asked in unison.

  ‘Yes, you can kill them,’ Reuben affirmed.

  ‘But—’ Jemimah began before Berenice stayed her with a grip on her arm.

  ‘The Eskimo tell how a boy killed one with a crystal drill. That is why the Tornit fled inland from the coast: They became afraid of the Eskimo. My father told me it was because crystal is clear and ordered, so it destroys their brains. That is how you kill them.’

  The grip o
n Jemimah’s arm slackened. She wondered if she should ask again about the cure. The information they’d received was certainly new to the women, but it was not what they sought.

  The front door opened and Reuben’s daughter entered the house. Reuben was once again roused from his thoughts and looked suspiciously at the women seated beside him. ‘Eh? Go on, then! Let me sleep!’

  As they crossed back towards Jemimah’s house, the women heard a commotion behind them. The turned to see three men approaching: Adam, young Phillip, barely an adult with barely a beard, and between them, led by them, Hosea. Phillip was hooting with laughter despite terse chastisement from Adam. Hosea tried to laugh along with Phillip, though the effort was difficult and the sound from his mouth was more like loud gargling. The men stopped.

  Adam released his grip with a small shove. ‘He didn’t put any vinegar on his gloves, didn’t put his netting down, and didn’t wait for the smoker.’

  Several welts distended Hosea’s face. One eye was nearly swollen shut; two lumps on his nostril and mouth were growing together. Though tears trailed down both cheeks, Hosea looked at Berenice with his one good eye and smiled as broadly as he was able.

  ‘I’m fine, Mama,’ he said.

  Berenice grumbled as she pulled the flat wooden box from beneath her bed. The men had darkened her mood to pitch. Hosea’s carelessness was becoming an embarrassment. Even a stalwart, steady wife—more so than Hannah, she thought uncharitably—would not be able to keep her son safe. Berenice was bound to Hosea until one of them died.