by John Hart
He did not look up.
“Julian?” Michael squeezed behind the boiler. “You okay?” Julian shook his head, and Michael saw new bruises, fresh abrasions. He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, then sat; for a long time, Julian said nothing. When he did speak, it was in a broken voice.
“Remember when we were little? Old man Dredge?”
Michael had to think about it. “The maintenance man?”
“He slept in that little room down the hall.”
Julian tilted his head and Michael remembered. Dredge had a small room with a cot and refrigerator. He kept girlie posters on the wall and booze in the fridge. He was old and bent, and Julian had always been strangely unafraid of him. “What about him?”
“I come down here, you know.” Julian said it like Michael had no idea. “He used to help me when I needed it. I’d hide down here and he’d act mean when the older boys came looking. He’d shake that stick he had, talk crazy talk until most boys were too scared to even think about coming down here. He wasn’t really mean, but he wanted to help. He was my friend. When things got bad he would tell me stories. He said there were hidden doors down here, magic ones. His eyes would squint up when he talked about them, but he swore they were here. Find the right wall, he’d tell me. When things get bad, find the right wall, tap it just right, and it’ll open up.”
“Sunlight and silver stairs…”
“I told you about that?” Julian asked.
“A door to a better place. I’d forgotten, but, yeah. You told me.” Michael pictured the old man, his seamed skin and bloodshot eyes, the smell of booze and cigarettes. He’d disappeared two years ago. Fired, Michael guessed. Fired for being crazy or dirty or both. “It was just a story, Julian. Just a crazy old man.”
“Yeah. Crazy, huh?” Julian laughed, but in a bad way. And when he cupped his hands, Michael saw the abrasions on his knuckles, the smeared blood and split skin.
His brother had been down here tapping walls …
“What happened, Julian?”
He shrugged. “They tried to throw me out naked. They tried to throw me out, but I fought.” He sniffed wetly. “They got my shoes.”
Michael studied his brother and realized that his skin wasn’t red from heat, but from cold; and that it wasn’t sweat in his brother’s hair, but melted snow. Then he realized something else. “Those aren’t your pants.”
Julian ignored him. “They locked all the doors but the main one. They wanted to make me come in the front, past all the people. They thought that would be funny, but I beat them. I came in where the bats come in. You know? Right, Michael. The bat room.”
Michael saw it now. He saw his brother running through the snow, naked and cold, then squirming through a gap of rotted wood and collapsed subfloor, headfirst into all those bats, all that shit. “Those aren’t your pants, Julian.”
The pants were stiff with crud and far too big on his narrow waist. They looked like something dug from one of the moldy boxes that littered the basement floor, a man’s pants, old and stained and frayed at the cuff. Julian’s fingers curled on the stiff knees, and his eyes hung open in a face gone suddenly slack. “Why would I wear somebody else’s pants?”
The expression was so familiar, the dull eyes that refused to focus, the open mouth and hint of crazy.
The disconnect.
As much as Michael hated to see it, he understood too well why the look took his brother so often. Harassed at every turn, Julian had been disintegrating for months, so twitchy and pale and hollow-eyed that he barely ate or slept; and when sleep did come, it was as tortured as his days, the dreams relentless. The worst moment came two nights ago when Julian rolled out of bed with a whimper in his throat and silver spit on his chin. He crammed himself into a corner and balled tight, same slack mouth, same nightmare eyes. It took long minutes to snap him out of it, and when Michael finally got him back in bed, Julian remained jittery and glazed and afraid. His words broke as he tried to explain.
Things change in the dark. It scares me.
Things change how?
You’ll think I’m crazy.
I won’t.
Swear?
Jeez, Julian …
You know how a candle starts out all clean and smooth and pretty? How it makes sense when you look at it. Like that’s how it should look.
Okay.
But then you light it, and it melts and drips and goes ruined and ugly. Well, sometimes it feels like that when the lights go out. Like everything is wrong.
I don’t understand.
It’s like everything melts off in the dark. Like the dark is the flame and the world is wax.
The world’s not a candle, Julian.
But how do you know if you can’t see it?
Why are you crying?
How can anybody know?
Just the thought of it made Michael angry. So what if his brother was soft? “Who did this, Julian? Hennessey?”
“And Billy Walker.” Julian started crying again, bright, oily tears. He sniffed loudly, smeared dirt with a forearm.
“Who else?” Michael asked.
“Georgie-boy Nichols. Chase Johnson. And that fuck-head in from juvie.”
“The one from north Georgia? The big one?”
“Ronnie Saints.” Julian nodded.
“Five of them?”
“Yeah.”
Michael stood, even angrier. Furnace heat pulled sweat from his skin. “You have to stand up for yourself, Julian. Once you do that, they’ll leave you alone.”
“But, I’m not like you.”
“Just show them you’re not scared.”
“I’m sorry, Michael.”
“Don’t say you’re sorry…”
“Please don’t be angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“I’m sorry, Michael.”
Julian buried his eyes in a forearm, and Michael stared down for a long second. “You have to stop, Julian.”
“Stop what?” Big eyes turned up. A heavy swallow in his narrow throat.
“Stop mooning around all the time.” Michael hated the words. “Stop singing to yourself and looking lost. Stop running when they chase. Stop flinching—”
“Michael…”
“Stop being such a pussy.”
Julian looked away. “I don’t mean to be. Please don’t say that, Michael.”
But Michael was tired of the worry, the fights. “Just go to the room, Julian. I’ll see you there later.”
“Where are you going?”
“To handle this myself.” He shouldered the awkward door and left so fast he missed the look of hurt on his brother’s face, the diamond tears and determination. He didn’t see the way Julian’s arms shook when he stood, how he pulled the knife from behind his back and squeezed until his hand was bone.
“Okay, Michael.”
His brother was gone.
“Okay.”
Julian glared at the knife, then at his skinny arms and birdcage chest. He didn’t have muscles like Michael did, not the wide shoulders, or the strong blue veins that showed in his arms. He lacked the sharp eyes, the even teeth and steadiness. He had over-pale skin and lungs that burned when he ran; but the weakness went deeper than that. An uneven place lurked behind the bones of his chest, and part of him hated Michael for not having the same, soft place inside. Sometimes that hatred was a terrible thing, so strong it threatened to show on his face; sometimes it disappeared altogether, thinned so much by love that Julian remembered it like a dream.
Julian stood for a long time, humiliated and ashamed, his eyes shiny wet. His mind rolled with the memories of a thousand small hurts: taunts and abuse, Hennessey’s spit on his face, an old man’s pants and the taste of bat shit in his mouth. And he thought, too, of the big hurts, the pain and fear and self-loathing. The disappointment in his brother’s eyes. That one most of all. Julian smeared snot on his face and wondered how he could love his brother and hate him at the same time. They were both so
big.
The love.
The hate.
Julian wanted to be steady on his feet. He wanted people to say hello to him in the hall and to not hurt him just because they could. If he was like Michael, he could have those things, so Julian decided that’s what he would be. Like Michael. But when he stepped for the door, the damaged ankle rolled and he went down so fast and hard his face hit concrete with the sound of cracking wood. The knife clattered away, and he curled in the dirt, lonesome and hurt and wanting to be in his brother’s skin.
Michael …
Julian’s head ached like the bone above his eyes had split, like something sharp and hot had been jammed through the crack. He cupped his face and cried, and when his eyes opened he saw the rust-speckled blade on the floor. His fingers found the handle and metal rasped as he rolled onto all fours, head loose at the end of his neck, vision blurred. He heard a strange noise in his throat, and his face twitched as something in his head gave with a glassy snap. He felt different when he stood, dizzy and distant, limbs heavy. He swayed as the world grayed out, and when his vision cleared, he heard the sound of knuckles tapping the wall, hard, bony thumps as a far part of his mind said: That hurts …
But the pain belonged to some other boy.
Stop being such a pussy, the boy said, and Julian’s feet scraped on the blackish floor. His hand found the rail that angled up, and stairs led past the basement kitchen as the air filled with the smells of sugared tea and fatty meat, white bread and fake butter. Julian climbed another flight, then made a left turn that led to the dining hall where, already, boys had begun to gather. He stumbled past the door, then pulled himself up more empty stairs and down a long hall, knife hard against his leg. He passed a few other boys, and some part of Julian knew how bad he looked, filthy and limping and hurt. Boys stared at his bruises and rotting pants, the swollen knot above crazy eyes. They stepped out of his way when they saw the knife, their backs flat on the rough plaster walls. But Julian ignored the way they looked at him, the pity and the jeers and the odd, kind question.
No, said the boy with Julian’s voice. We don’t need any help.
He found Hennessey alone in the first-floor bathroom at the end of the north hall. He stood at the urinal, and turned when the door swung closed, his disbelief twisting into a leer. “Jesus,” Hennessey said, then turned his back and flushed. The bathroom smelled of bad aim and disinfectant, the lights white and cold behind metal cages on the ceiling. Julian kept the knife behind his back as Hennessey spit once on the floor and stepped closer, the freckles dark as flung mud on the slope of his nose.
“I’m not scared of you,” Julian said.
Hennessey was tall and wide, eyes muddy brown under red hair. Pale fuzz covered the backs of his hands and a single bad tooth marred the right side of his smile. He flicked a gaze over Julian, and shook out another laugh. “Look at you. Girly muscles all bunched up. Got your angry eyes on.” He waved fingers, made a circle of his mouth and said, “Ooh.”
Julian’s head titled, his eyes dark and dull. “I’m not a pussy.”
“Yeah.” Hennessey shoved hard and pushed past. “You are.”
“You take that back.”
“Or what?”
Hennessey didn’t even turn. He got one hand on the door before the knife went into the side of his neck. It slid in with a crunch, and Julian stepped back as the big kid went down thrashing, two hands on his throat, eyes rolling and white. One hand rose, wet and stained, fingers spread. He saw blood and confusion changed to terror. “Julian…”
For that instant, a terrible satisfaction boiled in the place Julian’s fears were normally found, but a deep-down voice cried out that this was wrong. It said call a grown-up. Get help.
Shut up, you pussy.
The words rang in Julian’s mind, so strong they rocked him back on his one good foot.
Such hate.
So loud.
Julian fell into a stall door, clattered inside, porcelain cold and hard on his back. He held his head as Hennessey’s legs thumped twice and grew still. So much pain behind his eyes, like something had torn. He squeezed harder and the room tilted into something foreign, angles all wrong, gravity that pulled sideways. Julian let go of his head and hauled himself from the stall, wretched and hurt and confused.
“Michael?”
His voice this time, small in his own throat. On the floor, Hennessey sprawled over the tiles, the knife a strange and foreign thing that rose between the fingers on his throat; around him, red liquid spread, and with it an emptiness in Julian’s head. He pushed his bloody palms together and blinked as they stuck slightly, then separated with a noise like plastic pulled off meat. He looked at the high, white lights, the mirrors equally bright. The tile floor was black and white, small rectangles with a red tide that rolled along the grout.
“Michael?”
Silence.
“Michael?”
And it was like the third time was magic. The door opened and he was there, his brother, who for all Julian’s life had made things right. He was breathing hard, sweaty, and Julian knew that he’d been running. Julian tried to speak, but had cotton in his head and putty in his mouth. He held up his red hands, blinking, and for five long seconds Michael stood still, eyes ranging from Hennessey to his brother, his brother to the hall, up and down, then back inside. He shut the door, stepped wide to clear the body, and Julian almost cried with relief to see him there. He would make it right. He would make it all better.
Michael’s hands found Julian’s shoulders. His mouth moved and there were words, but Julian couldn’t really understand. He blinked and nodded, eyes dropping from Michael’s mouth to the twisted legs on the floor. Everything was wrong, sound rushing in his ears, the taste of vomit in his throat. Michael led him to a sink, still talking, and helped Julian wash his hands, his arms. He wet a paper towel, and gentle as a mother, wiped bloody spray from his brother’s face. And all the while his eyes were on Julian’s. His mouth moved, and when Julian did not respond, he said it again, stronger, slower: “Do you understand?”
Sound from a long tunnel. Julian felt his head move, and Michael said it was okay, then said something again. It made no sense, but Julian heard the words. “I did this.” Michael’s face was inches from Julian’s, and he was tapping his own chest. “I did this. Do you understand?”
Julian leaned forward, mouth open. Michael looked hurriedly at the door, then stooped and tugged the knife from Hennessey’s neck. It came with a wet sound and Michael held it so Julian could see. “I did this. Hennessey was hurting you and I did this. When they ask, that’s what you say. Okay?” Julian stared. “You can’t handle what’s coming from this,” Michael said. “Julian? Understand? He was hurting you. I came in. I did this.”
“You did this…” Thick words. Disconnect. Julian felt his head tilt, and his eyelids fell once.
“Yes. Me.” Michael looked at the closed door. “Somebody saw you with the knife. People are coming. I have to go. I did this. Say it.”
“Hennessey was hurting me.” A pause. “You did this.”
“Good, Julian. Good.”
Then he hugged his brother once, opened the door, and was gone, blood on his fingers, knife in his hand.
Julian looked at Hennessey and saw eyes as dull as spilled milk. He backed away, blinked, and people came. They shouted and moved a lot, large hands on Hennessey’s throat, his eyes. An ear to his mouth. Julian saw Flint and other grown-ups. He blinked as they asked questions, blinked again.
He looked at the open door.
And did what Michael said.
* * *
Abigail stood at the window of the narrow room, dark sky outside, snow still loose on the wind. Frost rimed the glass and everything was damp and cold: the furniture, her clothing, her skin. She saw movement on the drive, a boy, and could no longer bear the thought of children in this stark and bitter place. A coat flapped as the boy ran, and she wondered why he was outside in the storm, to what pla
ce he was running. She closed her eyes, and asked God to watch over these children, to keep them safe; and when her eyelids rose, she saw that night had come in its fullness, black and shuttered and alive with wind.
She looked for the boy, but he was gone.
Cold wind blew and snow came harder. Her fingers settled at her throat as from beyond the glass she heard a lonesome wail.
Sirens in the distance.
Small hearts beating red.
CHAPTER SIX
Michael had seen this moment so many times: in his dreams and imaginings, in those sweat-filled hours when he could not sleep and the air in Elena’s apartment seemed to have no breath at all. He’d tried to envision a graceful way to tell her the things he’d done, some means by which to speak of regret and hope and aspiration, but there was no window to his soul that wasn’t cracked through or painted black. He was a killer, and could never take that back. What did the rest of it matter? That he had reasons? That he’d never hurt a civilian?
She wouldn’t care, and he couldn’t blame her.
He stepped closer, certain only that in all his imaginings, the moment of truth had never looked like this: blood on his hands and Elena on her knees in the brown, brittle grass. She looked so small and unhappy, one hand splayed beneath her, the other twisting fabric from her stomach. Michael could not know the thoughts that pushed through her mind, only that they must be slippery and wet and cold. Thoughts of betrayals, he imagined, thoughts of lies and violence done.
He put the phone in his pocket and stepped onto the grass. She was five feet away, but could have been a thousand.
“Are you okay?” Her back was warm in the sun, lean under a dress that felt like silk. She shook her head as low wind stirred and the river smell intensified. Traffic flowed past, and Michael heard sirens far away, the sound of the city. To the north, an ugly smoke rose.
“I don’t know you.” Her words came without heat, but tasted of ash and things ruined. She pushed herself up, rocked back on her knees, and shrugged off Michael’s hand. “I don’t know anything about you.”