Hosea lingered as the townspeople dispersed, staring at the dome. He didn’t care about the hole and the light coming through. He was tracing the runes again. He was memorising everything. It occurred to him that any night could be his last in town, even tonight, he thought. He was sad about it and walked slowly, circuitously home. The last people out watched him and shook their heads.
His mother sat as though waiting patiently, but her body was rigid with anxiety. She tried to control her tone as she asked, ‘What kept you?’
He shrugged and smiled. ‘Nice night.’
She took a measured breath with her eyes closed before responding, ‘No, it is not a nice night. There is a hole in the dome. You should be home.’
He shrugged again. ‘Well, I wasn’t going to sleep on the street.’
‘Is that sass?’ she demanded.
‘Sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to sass you.’
She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Very well. Keep your shutters closed tonight. Keep that crystal on while you sleep.’
Without thinking, Hosea clutched at his shirt. His mouth hung open and his eyes darted around.
‘You haven’t lost it, have you?!’
Hosea stammered. He could have so easily lied had he been ready, but now he was caught.
‘Oh, Hosea!’ his mother wailed.
He became angry. Why should he have to lie about such a thing? He thought the truth was an honourable one, so he told it, ‘I gave it to Hannah.’
‘Hannah!’
He smiled dumbly. ‘Well, sure, Mama. It was pretty. And girls like pretty things, don’t they?’
Berenice’s eyes were wide with dread. My son really is too stupid to take care of himself. She saw no point in berating him. She knew no instruction she provided would take. It was up to her to save her son. ‘Go to bed,’ she ordered.
Berenice left her shutters open. She sat up in bed, waiting for the light to creep into her room. On her nightstand lay the hammer and several shards of cinnabar. She felt taut and worn. She was weary. She had slept little the night before and her day was filled with worry. But she would not relent. Here was her chance to revenge herself against the walkers in the pale night; this was the night she showed them that she could hurt them and that she would kill them if they came for her son. So she waited, every breath hissing through her teeth. When her head lolled, she grabbed the hammer and vigorously worked her fists forward and back on the handle.
She saw a glint on the window frame, like an eye peeking in. In another minute the light steadied as it began to pool sideways across the wood. Slowly, terribly slowly, the light moved.
‘Wait,’ Berenice counselled herself, ‘Wait until it is in the room.’
The shaft of light split as part of it cascaded to the floor. Berenice watched it reform, drawing itself after itself, becoming the solid, hand-sized oval that had violated her the previous night. She rose from her bed with grim determination. She grabbed a shard of crystal from the nightstand and padded slowly across the room, barefoot on the wooden floor, as though a creaking board might frighten the light away before she could get to it. She kneeled beside the light. She bounced her hands, planning the strike. She would have to put her hand in for a second, but she was unafraid; I’m awake, after all. But she wanted to stab the light, to pin it to the floor and make it suffer. She realised that if she positioned the hammer over the ‘head’ of the crystal, it would remain in shadow until she moved her hands away, with the crystal already embedded in the floor. She gripped the hammer high up the shaft to more tightly control the motion, and moved her hands into the light. The light felt warm on her skin of course—it is sunlight, after all. But not only that. She didn’t doubt an intruder hid out of seeing, reaching for unwary dreamers. She twisted the point of the crystal, making a tiny divot in the wood. Then she tapped lightly. Though particles like dust fell away, the crystal did not shatter. She tapped three times more, a little harder, until she felt the crystal was snug in the wood. She pulled her hands back out from the light.
The light on the floor wobbled. Where it hit the crystal it fractured across the crooked facets, sending slivers of red light around the room; pin-pricks of glowing shrapnel shimmered on the walls and ceiling. Berenice was disappointed. She thought what she saw was exactly what she should expect to see. But then the white light on the floor and the red points on the walls began to shiver more and more violently. She felt a tremor through the floor. There was a sound in her head, a sound out of hearing but felt in thought, a moan of anguish. Then the crystal leapt free from the wood and smacked off the ceiling before dropping harmlessly on the bed. The small pool of white did not resume its tranquil state, however. The light zipped over the room frantically as though blind and searching for the exit. Berenice saw that the shaft of light had pulled back through the window but the spotlight somehow remained, cut off. Finally the scuttling oval pulled up from the floor and flitted through the open window. Berenice rushed to the window and looked up towards the hole in the dome. She couldn’t find it, though she knew where it should be. No light came through. And then, it did: A shock of brilliant white caught her full in the face; the anguished moan was a terrible, angry roar, and she collapsed against her bed. The sound dissolved. The light had returned, but she knew it was sunlight now, only sunlight, tracing its lazy course.
I hurt it!
She thrilled at the pain she’d inflicted. She laughed. She knew their weakness now. She had the tools and the means to hurt them. She had the tools and the means to stop them. She had the tools and the means
to save my son.
Berenice knew the idea was not ridiculous, not unthinkable; on the contrary, it was absolutely necessary. She had given her son the correct ward but he had tossed it away, given the charm to a girl without a second thought. He didn’t understand the danger. His mind is weak. I must put the crystal where it will do the most good. Now, while he sleeps—I must not delay another night!
She took up the hammer from where it had fallen. She picked through the slivers of cinnabar on her nightstand and selected a candidate, the one most like a needle.
I don’t want to hurt him. But I must be quick—one hit. Perhaps she could pound the crystal through his skull with repeated strikes, but, naturally, he would never allow it, even if he wanted to be obedient. She thought she would have to get it in his brain some other way. But how? Through the ear or the eye? She’d leave him half-deaf or half-blind. Going through the back risked paralysis. I’ll have to put it up his nose. If she broke his nose, no matter: it would heal in time. She was decided.
The hinges on his door squealed meekly as she eased it open. She waited before approaching his bed, but he showed no signs of waking. Berenice had hoped her son would be flat on his back, but he lay on his side, facing away. She would have to assume he was asleep. If he was not, she would say she tracked a mouse into his room. It was ridiculous to hunt a mouse with a hammer when a foot would do (and a broom would do better), but it was a sufficient lie. Emboldened, she crept across his room. She leaned over Hosea’s bed and saw that he slumbered peacefully. It would be a difficult strike: she’d have to angle her swing up from his chest and somehow generate ample force without bumping the wall during wind-up. She bent over him. She tried to steady her shaking hand as she put the point of the crystal just within the rim of one nostril. His nose twitched. Berenice knew she must strike immediately. His eyes opened; he saw her.
‘Mama?’
She brought the hammer back and it hit the wall. His eyes darted down and he saw the head of the hammer rushing towards his face. He snapped his neck around; the hammer cracked his jaw. Pain exploded in his mouth and blood flushed from his tongue where he’d bitten it. He threw his body over and howled into his hand. His mother saw her opportunity to get the crystal through his nose was gone. She thought she had one chance left: a quick shot to the top of the head. She flung herself on top of him and tried to line up the point on his crown. Hosea panicked. He didn’t k
now what was happening. Instinctively, he pushed his mother away and sprang from his bed. The flailing strike missed its target and clipped him just above the eye. He took his hand away from his mouth as his mother crumpled to the floor. Blood spilled over his chin as he again cried out and hid his head in the crook of the opposite elbow.
His damaged eyes flooded with tears. He couldn’t see her clearly. ‘Why?’ he cried.
Berenice saw what she had done to her son and gasped. Her son was bloodied and crying and she was the cause. It was inconceivable. The shard of crystal bit into her thumb. She threw it away in disgust. Now she was crying. The question for her was not ‘why?’ She knew why—she wanted to protect her only son. The question for her was ‘how?’—how could she have misjudged her actions so awfully?
The answer came to her. ‘Wake up!’ she commanded. She hit her fists on her thighs. ‘Wake up!’ she cried. She slapped her face. ‘Wake up!’
But she was already awake.
No one questioned Hosea’s new injury. It was easy enough to imagine a dozen ways he might have done it. If anyone was curious, it was to find out if he had hurt himself in a way no one could imagine. Hosea was unusually sullen and his smile was gone, but everyone had expected his calamities would catch up and overwhelm him someday. What few words he said the next morning were almost unintelligible, but that just made people feel unusually sorry for his mother, convinced that her only son was devolving more quickly every day. Her anxiety at his condition was easily noted. Though none would call her pleasant, she was clearly distracted with inner turmoil; as her thoughts were unfocused, so was her typically reliable criticism.
The opening of the dome that morning was deliberate, requiring greater diligence and more men in the effort to patch the small hole. Hosea was not asked to help. Reuben, up from his sick-bed, was on hand to direct the two women who hastily sewed the patch into place as the men strained to keep the ribs stable. When the work was done, a great shout went up and everyone congratulated each other that everything was as it should be and the town’s safety had been restored. But Hosea did not feel welcome or safe. He could not sleep another night in the bed where he was attacked. He thought it possible the temporary insanity that had gripped his mother resulted from her belief in the lore, that she had made herself ‘sun-sick’ from fear and, the cause of the fear removed, she might return to normal. But it didn’t matter to him if she was normal or contrite. To him, it didn’t matter to him what she thought or what happened to her for the rest of his life.
He sulked on the fringe of town throughout the morning, embarrassed that he didn’t quite know how to leave. He planned exactly what provisions he would take but didn’t return to his house to pack. He both hoped and dreaded to see Hannah again, not sure if he should say goodbye and thereby alert her (and possibly the rest of the town) to his escape attempt, or if he should try one last time to convince her to go with him, or if he should just forget about her completely. And so he dallied, bitterly consoled by the thought that at least he needn’t worry about losing daylight.
In the early afternoon, the truck arrived, laden with supplies, from housewares to bolts of cloth, but primarily flour and cornmeal and bottles and cans of food. The appropriate people scurried over the footbridge and up the rise to the flat drive to unload the delivery. Curious and unoccupied onlookers gathered on the town side of the footbridge, excited to catch a look at the wares, wondering if the things they hoped for had come in this shipment. Carts and hand trucks were loaded for the townspeople to carry across the bridge; the delivery men stayed on the road. Hosea knew once the truck was emptied, it would be partially reloaded with an export of honey. He saw a column of men bringing the honey towards the bridge in five-gallon buckets. He noticed several carts were ready for transport into town.
Hosea trod across the river and up the embankment towards the truck. He heard the commotion he expected: the convergence of two-way traffic over a narrow bridge with a congested choke-point at one end. It would be a simple, polite matter to sort out, but it drew everyone’s attention, leaving him unobserved for the moment.
A chubby man in a baseball cap stood near the rear of the truck. He chuckled as he smoked, watching the ‘excitement’.
‘Hello.’
The man gave Hosea a quick appraisal. ‘Jesus, kid,’ he said, ‘what’d you do? Wrestle a damn caribou?’ He laughed hoarsely.
‘I guess I look pretty funny. Where do you come from when you drive here?’
‘You mean where do we pick up the stuff?’
Hosea guessed, ‘Yes.’
‘There’s an airfield outside of Denton with a supply depot.’
Hosea didn’t know what that meant. ‘How far is that?’
The man rubbed out his cigarette on the side of the truck. ‘Fifty miles, maybe. East and a little south.’ He regarded Hosea coolly. ‘Don’t really matter, does it?’
Hosea smiled. ‘Just curious.’ He knew there was no point in asking if he could go with them, but he was satisfied. He had a destination in mind; at the very least he had a direction and distance. He did not know if Denton was where the elders went to trade their gold, but it seemed to him a logical conclusion. Somebody below noticed him by the truck and called his name. He turned and went back to town the way he’d come.
Though he guessed his mother was not at home because of the activity by the bridge, Hosea was careful to be as noiseless as possible upon entering. Even after ascertaining he was alone, he worked quickly and stealthily, packing his clothes and his two jars of gold into a satchel. He took only food enough for five days (he thought he would make it in four even if he had to walk the whole way) and a small hunting knife from the back of one kitchen drawer that had sat unused for as long as he’d known it was there. He left his house unhindered. He hid the pack behind a pile of rocks a short distance from town. He knew he was going to go into the wilderness but he could not yet announce to himself, ‘This is what I am going to do and I’m going to do it now.’ The occasion was significant, formative, and Hosea felt obliged to acknowledge it deferentially. He stood on a low rock and looked back at the town, and though he was still well within the valley, he tried to survey the town as part of a separate world, a single unit encompassing his life to that point. He breathed and tried to feel the moment. He sat.
After a long while, he noticed the women dispersing throughout the town and going indoors to begin preparing dinner. He realised that he would be missed if he didn’t show up for dinner. He thought his mother should expect his absence after what she’d done; anyone else might think he’d got himself invited to another table. But his mother might expect something else: she might expect him to do exactly as he planned, even if she never would have suspected him of planning it. She might raise the alarm and convince the other townspeople to look for him and retrieve him. If it happened too soon before the cover of night was put over, they might succeed. But if his absence was not noted until late—as late as he returned two nights before when he went walking with Hannah—then he would be farther away than they would be willing to look. He felt he had no choice but to return home.
To his surprise, his mother was nowhere to be seen. No meal was in any state of preparedness; in fact, Hosea noted no sign of activity at all for the day other than his own furtive work. His room was still in a shambles. The spattered blood had dried on the floor. His bed was as he’d left it, unmade. The only thing amiss was a tiny pile of glittering dust and red splintered crystal on a baking stone in the kitchen. Hosea deduced it was related to the cinnabar charm his mother had offered him, but did not understand the presence of the debris on the stone.
Hosea was perplexed. He thought he should be happy to avoid seeing his mother again, but, having planned his exceptional activity based around the routines of others, he was made nervous by the disruption. He ate a biscuit topped with strawberry preserves. A little later, he ate some jerky and drank a glass of milk. Still his mother did not return home. When it was nearly the end
of the dinner hour, Hosea got up and made to go out of his front door. He was surprised to discover someone about to knock; likewise was Hannah surprised when the door swung open.
‘Oh!’ she gasped, then louder, ‘Oh!’ as Hosea grabbed her wrist, pulled her into the house, and shut the door behind her.
Though he hadn’t expected to see her there, Hosea acted instinctually. He wanted to talk to her and he wanted to do it in private. Hannah would never have entered if he knew his mother wasn’t there.
She seemed to understand right away. ‘Is your mother . . . ?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know where she is. I don’t care. But I’m glad you’re here.’
She thrilled again at his intensity. She was with the man she loved and she was afraid. It seemed like a fateful moment.
He noticed the crystal dangling from her neck and was touched that she wore it. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said, ‘Tonight.’
‘No!’ she cried. She grabbed his arms and buried her face in his chest. ‘You mustn’t!’
‘Come with me,’ he said, though they both knew she would not.
She looked up at him with red eyes. ‘Go tomorrow: Walk as far as you can from the breaking of dawn until mid-day and come back. You can leave the valley and still be home before the cover of night! Please—walk in the day!’
He smiled. ‘It is all day. There is a world outside I have to see. I must dream while I am able. I am not afraid to sleep—only to sleep too much.’ He thought he said the right things, that his pithy summation was apposite and true.
‘But the Tornit!’
Hosea saw that she was honestly afraid for him and he hated to see her suffering. He thought about explaining the supposed purpose of the crystal and asking for it back, but, since he held no value in its supernatural power, he preferred to leave it with her to remember him by. Then he was struck by another idea.
The Hidden Back Room Page 19