Little Emmett

by Abe Moss

  The moonlight shined through the window like a spotlight, dousing the bedroom in pale blue. The bed was especially lit. Neatly made, the bedspread glowed in the…

  …the moonlight…

  He swallowed the breath in his throat.

  They weren’t alone.

  This was not their home.

  His mother had lied.

  A dark shadow lay in the bed. Head on the pillow. Face to the ceiling. Still. Dark. Featureless. Dreaming. Sleeping under the covers.

  Rousing… stirring…

  Any moment now…

  His blood turned cold. Suddenly it was too much to hold himself in place. He felt on the verge of tipping over. The figure would lift its head in the dark to see the intruder at their bedroom door. Even now they might sense him. The feeling of being observed. A presence. Awakened by his watching.

  “Oh!”

  A gasp escaped him as the floor rumbled beneath his feet. A bang. A blast. A detonation. The house gave a single shake—thrust out of place and back again. He held himself to the wall, a whimper threatening to betray him in the ensuing hush.

  He waited in that hush for a whole minute, daring himself to peek inside the bedroom, knowing what he’d see. The figure would be sitting up now, he thought. Watching the door. Wondering what that noise had been…

  What was that noise?

  Against his better judgment, he leaned stealthily back into the doorway, just enough for one eye to glimpse the scene…

  The figure lay soundly as before. Still dreaming. Undisturbed.

  Not wishing to tempt fate any longer, he hurried back down the hall on his nimble little mouse’s feet, into the kitchen where he was meant to be all along. He stood before the basement door, the light below still climbing its way up to him. It was quiet there. His mother made no sounds. No whisperings. He peered down those dark wooden steps. It was too quiet, now.

  He slouched with relief as she appeared at the bottom of the steps. Silhouetted against the basement light, she turned her face toward the top of the stairs, searching.

  “Emmett?”

  “I’m here.”

  Though he couldn’t see her well, he detected her smile in the gloom.

  “I’m sorry it took longer than I promised.”

  “What was that sound?” he asked.

  Her invisible smile carried on her voice. “Come down here and see for yourself.”

  He traveled warily down the steps. He trained his gaze on the basement behind her. First he saw the book. It was open on the floor, its strange words large and violently penned across its pages. Then, at the book’s edge… the basement floor…

  “What did you do?”

  He was near enough now he saw his mother’s smile with his own eyes.

  “Quite the trick, isn’t it?”

  The cement was broken up like it’d been met with a falling comet. Somehow, by means of her book, his mother had shattered the basement’s foundation—a ripple of broken rings of concrete nearly six feet in diameter. Even to his imaginative child’s mind, it was impossible. Not magic. It couldn’t be.

  “How did you do that?” he asked.

  “Come take a closer look with me,” she said.

  She walked toward the center of the room, stepping over the pieces of cement which had lifted up in that one, tremendous shake. Hesitantly—fearfully—he followed her, the nail of his thumb pressed between his nibbling teeth. He reached the outer ring of the ripple, standing beside the book. A cloud of dust hung in the air. He tasted it, breathed it. His mother stood proudly in the center of the mess she’d made. Amused, she turned over a chunk of concrete with her foot, revealing more chunks beneath it.

  “What for?” he asked.

  “I told you before. Remember? We’re working on a very important project.”

  Something by his foot caught his attention. He stepped back. Red, on the ground. He swiped his shoe over the dust that had settled there, revealing the red much brighter. Blood. In the shape of…

  He looked to his mother, who watched him carefully as she gauged his reaction, and saw as she moved her hands behind herself in a sly, casual manner.

  “You hurt yourself.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just part of the trick. That’s all.”

  He remembered the knife then, and turned in a circle in search of it. He saw it nested in the book’s spine between the pages. He hadn’t noticed it there at first.

  “Are you ready to help me with the rest?” she asked.

  He drooped. It was so late as it was. The middle of the night. He understood now why she’d been so adamant he nap earlier that day, however little it helped.

  “Do we have to?”

  “Oh, don’t be like that,” his mother said playfully. She crouched before him, one hand on his shoulder, the other clutched in a fist by her side. The bloody one. “Trust me, this is exciting. It’s a bit of work, but it’ll be more than worth it. You’ll see.”

  He cast his doubtful eyes over the disaster she’d made all across the basement floor. His eyes were repeatedly drawn to the blood, fresh but drying. Her blood.

  It was getting worse. Whatever ‘it’ was. He didn’t have much for reference, but he felt it, deep in his fretting little bones. Her interests were more than that, now. It was becoming an obsession. It was becoming everything.

  “A new life,” she said, moving behind him. He faced the broken ground, feeling a bit woozy trying to make sense of it. A book and a knife. She couldn’t have…

  Something grated the cement at his back. When she came to stand next to him again, he didn’t need to look directly in order to see it. His eyes were lost in the pattern of the broken concrete, but in their corners he saw the shape of the shovel in her hand, ready to start a long night’s work.

  “Once this is over,” she said, speaking in a faraway tone he never liked, “the world will be a better one.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  In a sweat, Emmett woke rather softly. He opened his tired eyes, only to see the dark of his veiled cubby. His body, from his neck down to his ankles, ached in the sorest of ways.

  “Emmett?”

  It was Zachary.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought so.”

  That was a funny thing to say, he thought. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been… talking… in your sleep. For a while now. And making sounds. But then you stopped, and I knew you were awake.”

  “Oh.”

  “How do you feel?”

  Emmett rolled over, his muscles crying out.

  “Really sore. Is it morning yet?”

  “Maybe in an hour or so, I think.”

  “Did I wake you up?”

  Zachary’s voice didn’t sound tired, exactly. Perhaps bored.

  “I don’t think so.” A pause. “I don’t sleep much lately, anyway.”

  After the intense dreams he’d woken from, Emmett thought maybe he’d appreciate the drugs they were giving Zachary. Maybe not sleeping wouldn’t be such a bad thing, after all.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Sorry for getting into that fight,” Tobie told Emmett the next day.

  “It wasn’t really a fight,” Zachary said innocently.

  Tobie, scowling, interpreted his words much differently.

  “It’s not your fault,” Emmett added, observing the bruising around Tobie’s throat. “He didn’t give you a chance.”

  “If he had, though… I wanted to fight him.”

  They were making their way outside as they talked, getting away from the crowds of other children in the cafeteria. They pushed through the doors, their skin met with the cold, cloying air of the forest they couldn’t see.

  “If they ever try giving me that stuff,” Tobie said, referring to Emmett’s punishment, “they’ll have to knock me out first.”

  “They’ll do something worse if you resist,” Zachary suggested.

 
“They can try,” Tobie said. “Even if they…” His voice faltered strangely, distracted. “Jackie?”

  She was at the fence, alone, watching them as they exited the facility, the doors falling shut at their backs.

  Her voice, shrill with emotion, cried out, “Tobie!”

  Without a second thought Tobie chased across the lawn toward his sister. Emmett and Zachary exchanged looks of dread—even Zachary’s deadened eyes shared it—before jogging after him. In no time, Tobie was clasped to the fence against his sister on the other side. As Emmett neared them, he heard the distinct sounds of Jackie’s sobbing. Her words were quick and blurred, lost to him.

  “What is it?” Emmett asked. Tobie shook his head. Jackie continued to sob. “What’s going on?”

  Jackie leaned to see him behind her brother. Her face was wet with tears. Her mouth twitched, finding it difficult to repeat whatever she’d told her brother.

  “She says they’re taking her away,” Tobie said.

  “What? Where?”

  “I don’t know,” Jackie cried. “Another asylum.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t have the answer for that.

  Tobie kicked the fence. The muscles in his jaw were knotted.

  “What did they say?” he said through his tempered breath. “There has to be a reason.”

  “The doctor, he just said… ‘based on the tests, we think you’ll receive better treatment at one of our other facilities’ or something like that. I… I don’t remember his exact words…”

  “What tests?” Tobie asked.

  “I don’t know.” She took a deep breath, trying her hardest to calm herself. She wiped her face dry with the back of her hand. “There have been so many…”

  “We just barely found each other,” Tobie said. Now he sounded on the brink of tears. “And now… now they’re…”

  “I know.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense. You haven’t been here long enough. How can they already know what’s best? This won’t help anything. It’ll just… make everything worse… It’ll…”

  Jackie grew quiet as Tobie persisted in his attempts to rationalize it, rambling to himself. Zachary, giving them space, paced idly through the grass on his own not far off.

  “Tobie,” Jackie said in a listless voice, suddenly sobered. “It’s fine.”

  “Fine? What do you mean it’s fine?”

  “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Tobie pressed himself to the fence, trying to meet his sister’s gaze.

  “Don’t act like that,” he said.

  “We can’t… cry, forever. This was going to happen sooner or later.”

  “Tell them you’ll do better here. Tell them you think this facility is helping. Maybe they’ll keep you here if they think—”

  “No,” she said. She was standing away from the fence now, away from Tobie. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  She appeared distracted. She studied the yard around them, behind her, searching for others, or maybe watching for guards.

  “I think they want to split us up, Tobie.”

  “Why would they want to do that?”

  She was struggling to look at him now, to meet his eyes as she spoke. Or any of their eyes, for that matter. She kept scanning the yard, as though waiting for something to happen. Anticipating.

  “My doctor did ask me… recently… if seeing you reminded me at all of… things in the past… Maybe that’s why…”

  “Remind you of what?”

  “Maybe they think, I don’t know… that being here together will keep us from getting better…”

  “That’s bullshit,” Tobie said. “Tell them you’re happier here with me. We’re happier together. It helps us, being together. Tell them you don’t want to leave. Tell them you want to stay with me!”

  Jackie shook her head. “You don’t think that’s the first thing I said?”

  “Well then I’ll tell them!” Tobie cried. “I’ll tell them if they take you away from me, then I’ll… I’ll never do as they say again! I’ll make their jobs hell!”

  Jackie stepped closer to the fence. “Don’t you dare.”

  “I will!”

  “You know exactly what will happen if you do.”

  “What do I care?” Gripping the chain-link with both hands, he put his head against the fence, staring at his feet in the grass. “They want me to be crazy, so I will be. Then they can give me their medicine and I won’t ever have to think about it ever again.”

  Jackie put her hands on his. “Promise me you won’t.”

  “Why not?” he said stubbornly.

  “It’ll kill me, knowing you’re hurting yourself while I’m gone.”

  “I don’t want you to be gone…”

  “Neither do I. But there’s nothing we can do.”

  They were interrupted by a voice. Jackie turned, releasing Tobie’s hands through the fence. At the doors to the girls’ facility, a guard stood facing them, having called something they didn’t hear. The guard cupped his hands to his mouth.

  “Five-oh-nine!” he shouted.

  “That’s me,” Jackie said, turning to her brother “This might be it.”

  Tobie might have tried—it would have been in his character to do so—but he utterly failed to hold back his tears.

  “Don’t let them take you,” he begged her. “Don’t leave me.”

  “It’s going to be fine,” she said.

  Emmett, watching from his own little bubble beside them, recognized her lie for what it was. It wasn’t just a lie for Tobie. It was a lie for all of them.

  “Look at it this way: at least we got to see each other again one last time. It could have been on that street that day, running from the police. But instead it’s here. Where we can actually say goodbye.”

  “I don’t want to say goodbye…”

  “Neither do I,” she said. Disregarding the guard’s continued shouting, Jackie pressed herself to the fence against Tobie, where they hugged each other as best they could through it. “But do it for me anyway, all right? You know I love you. You’ll always be my brother.”

  Tobie wept beyond words.

  “Jackie,” Emmett warned. “The guard’s coming.”

  Jackie hugged her brother for a single second longer.

  “Goodbye, Tobie. I love you.”

  In as clear a voice as he could manage, he said, “I love you, too.”

  “Bye, Emmett,” Jackie said as she stepped away from the fence.

  In another moment the guard was there, guiding her toward the building as he cast an impatient eye at the rest of them. Emmett watched her go, watched Tobie watching her go, and saw the frustration building up inside him, those knots in his jaw clenching tighter. If they didn’t leave soon, Emmett feared he might do something dangerous.

  “Come on,” Emmett said. “We should go inside.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  They never saw Jackie again.

  For two weeks, Tobie insisted they visit the yard after every meal to see if she might be there. She never was. After the fifth day, Emmett noticed the change in Tobie like night and day.

  Defeated.

  The daily routine of discovering Tobie’s depths for disappointment and despair quickly grew to be too much for Emmett.

  “Why don’t we go to the library instead?” Emmett suggested. “I’m kind of tired. Zachary, are you tired?”

  “We all know Zachary’s tired,” Tobie said irritably. “I want to go outside.”

  Emmett always relented. Three times a day they strolled outside and each time Tobie kicked the grass with his bare feet as though he expected anything else.

  “I think she’s gone,” Emmett said.

  “Duh!” Tobie said. “Of course she is.”

  Now it was Emmett clenching his jaw. “Then why do we have to come out here every single day to check if she’s here?”

  “No one’s forcing you to come! Go take a nap in th
e library like a little kid, if that’s what you really want.”

  Despite the temptation to leave him, Emmett stuck by Tobie’s side.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Two-oh-six.”

  Eating silently between Tobie and Zachary, Emmett peered up at the sound of Officer Hollings’ voice behind him.

  “You have an appointment with Dr. Eddy. Follow me.”

  “Dr. Marks?” Emmett asked.

  “The very same.”

  Leaving with Officer Hollings, Emmett told his friends goodbye, neither of whom seemed to notice his departure.

  “Can I ask you something?” Emmett said. Hollings nodded that he could. “Do you know what happened to me a couple weeks ago?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Hollings said flatly.

  “When I was in trouble for fighting that boy in the cafeteria.”

  Hollings shrugged. “Same as what happens to any other child who incites violence, I suppose.”

  Hollings said nothing more on the matter, which left Emmett feeling rather awkward and small. He wondered if Hollings even remembered that day. Perhaps it was common enough to be routine.

  Before long they arrived at Dr. Marks’ door. Hollings knocked and a voice inside instructed them to come in. Only Emmett entered, of course.

  “Emmett!” Dr. Marks exclaimed, a joyous voice for such a joyless face. “Do have a seat.”

  Emmett sat in the same chair as always, deeply dreading what he expected to be the point of their appointment. It had been some time now, since he last wore that special helmet…

  “How are you feeling today?” she asked.

  “Good, I guess.”

  “Really? You look uncomfortable. Is there anything the matter?”

  “No.”

  A twitch at the corner of her mouth. The slightest half-smile.

  “I’m sure you’re anticipating when I ask you to wear that funny helmet again, aren’t you? Does it make you nervous thinking about it?”

  He wanted to lie but she already knew, he thought. Somehow.

  “I understand. It’s not easy, reliving the past. Never is. And what a past you’ve had…” She pressed her lips together in thought, hands on her desk, deciding what the point of their appointment today would be. “You have to know, though, Emmett… you will have to wear it again. Maybe not today. But in time. We can’t move on until we face the things which affect us the most. They have to be confronted. Don’t you agree?”