The Chalk Artist

by Allegra Goodman

  She prayed now, as she drove through the maze of hospitals—Children’s, Beth Israel Deaconess. Her hands were cold inside her gloves, her car’s heater was still warming up, and she shivered as she prayed for her own children.

  Diana was secretive, but she followed rules; she did her homework and her chores. Trusting Aidan was an act of faith. Some days were easier. He said hello, or washed the dishes. He came downstairs and looked awake. Other days he didn’t even glance at her. His games consumed him and he had nothing left. What would become of him? How would he get into college? She berated him and he listened in silence, waiting for her to leave. At those moments she hated home as much as he did. She would drive to the Star Market on Sidney Street, and wheel her cart through the white aisles, and cry.

  Driving across the BU Bridge now, she felt a rising dread. The river spread before her, icy near the banks, but lively in the center, gold water dancing in the morning light. She had loved the drive on other mornings. Today her back tightened and her shoulders ached. She tried to breathe and fogged the windows.

  Please, she prayed as she wiped the glass with her knit glove. I know you work in your own ways—but could you send me a sign that this year will get better? She didn’t ask for a miracle. She’d nearly given up on those, but please, she thought. Just something small?

  Slowly, she eased her car between the snowbanks in her shared driveway and picked her way up icy steps. Anxiously, she stepped inside the door. All was quiet; the twins were at school. Of course they were. Even so, she peeked into their rooms. She gazed at Diana’s rumpled bed. Briefly, she ventured into Aidan’s cave. He had covered his window with aluminum foil so that not a crack of light could penetrate. He’d stripped the walls of posters, and wedged his computer desk into the corner. Kerry reached out to touch the monitor and then drew back. He would know.

  Tiptoeing through her own house, she retreated to wash dishes, to take down a load of laundry, to sort the mail, to read The Boston Globe. Finally, she took her little photo album to bed with her and flipped through photos of the twins when they were small. She looked at one picture of her children coming down a slide. It was a little slide and they were wearing overalls. She had forgotten about those overalls. They couldn’t have been more than two, laughing Aidan first, his hair white gold. Dark-haired Diana peeking over his shoulder, apprehensive, as she slid down after him. Those days had not been easy, but they had been happier. For one thing, Kerry’s parents had been alive. She had moved in with them after her ex left. Her parents had watched the children in North Cambridge while she worked night shifts. Her father had built a sandbox for the children, and a little table with matching stools. Later, her parents left her a small inheritance, which she’d used for the down payment on the house.

  Now she wished that she could travel back in time. She wouldn’t go far. She had no interest in history or adventure—the recent past was all she wanted. Her mother’s voice, her father’s patient carpentry, the playground with the green slide, the twins at six, learning in school that vitamin A was good for your eyesight. Venturing down to the basement, they held carrots like torches. She had found Aidan and Diana standing in the dark, nibbling the tips.

  Hours later, Kerry woke in pale winter light. A creaking, clicking sound, the tick of the gas burner on the stove. “Diana?” Kerry called.

  No answer.

  “Diana?” Kerry descended to find her daughter in the kitchen. “Diana!”

  “What?” Diana shouted. “Stop calling me over and over.”

  “Start answering!”

  “I did answer.”

  “I couldn’t hear you.”

  Diana opened three packets of instant oatmeal.

  “It’s only twelve-twenty.”

  “Early dismissal.”

  “Because of the lockdown?”

  “I guess.” Diana felt for her mother. Kerry’s face looked pallid; even her blond hair was dull and fuzzy, not gold, as it had been. Stand up straight, you’re a beautiful girl, Diana thought. It was no use. Exhaustion beat Kerry down. Her delicate features had faded, her hands were raw from washing at the hospital.

  “Where’s your brother?” Kerry asked.

  “Where he always is.”

  —

  Upstairs, in his room, Aidan was turning a BoX over in his hands. The BoX was black and beautifully smooth, a perfect cube of plastic. He knew what was inside, but he could not find a way to open it.

  The cube was compact, small enough to fit into a backpack, but heavy enough to strain the straps. Kneeling, he ran his fingers over the surface, pressing for a secret spring. Gently, he tapped each side. Nothing happened. He shook the BoX, and shook it harder. “What’s wrong with you?” He could not open this inert console, although he’d been trying since he got home from school. He’d snatched up the parcel, marked PRIORITY MAIL, and now, like a prisoner, he pried its edges, paced the floor, threw himself down onto his bed, dreamed and despaired of his escape—except that most prisoners imagined getting out. Aidan wanted to get in.

  He’d checked the package a hundred times and found no instructions, no note from Daphne, no code, no Web link. He’d searched online, typing “UnderWorld,” “black BoX,” “new platform.” He’d only turned up articles he’d seen before. Now he sat with the BoX on his lap and entered EverWhen, roaming across the screen, sending Tildor over snowfields to search for Daphne.

  ???, he typed into the chat box.

  Nothing.

  Gotit now what?

  Nothing.

  how does it open???

  Nothing.

  Comeon

  Nothing.

  Help me open it.

  Nothing.

  Its fake, he typed in rage and in frustration. soru. bitch.

  Watch your language.

  The answer came so fast he jumped, and the BoX slid off his lap and crashed onto the floor.

  He was afraid he’d broken it. Kneeling, he found a hairline crack, but as he turned the BoX, he saw the surface wasn’t cracked at all, but subtly divided. As with a Rubik’s Cube, you could twist the top half of the BoX away from the bottom. As with a child-safe medicine bottle, you twisted while pressing down. Oh, I get it, he thought, even as the top popped off in his hands.

  The room went dark.

  Frantic, Aidan gasped for air in what looked like smoke. In fact, he could breathe easily. The air in his room was just the same; only his perception of the atmosphere had changed. He was crouching in a stream of dust motes. These were aeroflakes, imperceptible on their own, flying together in a cloud.

  His room was not his room. His ceiling was dissolving, his walls warping, rippling. A mist rose up around him. Fog that wasn’t wet; dry ice that wasn’t cold. For a long time he was afraid to stand. Bed, desk, and chair had disappeared, the floor seemed to slide beneath him. Faintly he heard the trickle of water, the rustle of leaves. He imagined a deep forest, but he could barely see. He reached for the light switch on what had been his wall. Aeroflakes shifted and resolved themselves, illuminated by Aidan’s ceiling light. He felt for the door of his closet and opened it, groping for the light switch inside. Once more the accumulating mist began to shift and change. Filtering and reflecting light, the particles responded to Aidan’s movements and to one another, projecting a multidimensional landscape, deceiving and delighting the eye, coloring the air, even transmitting sound.

  Now Aidan perceived bare branches and jagged pieces of blue sky. A forest floor carpeted with leaves, bracken crackling underfoot, trees looming overhead. This was no tableau framed by a computer screen. Without glasses, headset, or joystick, he was standing in a world expanding and deepening every moment.

  He tried to take it all in, the piles of leaves and patches of snow, the ancient trees, the bright sky where his ceiling had been. A sunny afternoon, a winter wood. This was where he found himself. Literally found himself, his avatar, a knight in chain mail, taking shape before his eyes, no flat cartoon, but a shifting, sculptural figure c
ast from his own body, conjured like the woodland from a cloud of dust.

  He raised his arm, and the knight raised his in turn. He pivoted, and the knight pivoted as well, so that Aidan couldn’t see his alter ego’s face. He took a step in place, and the knight began walking through the rustling leaves. As in a dream, Aidan watched himself, his motions fluid, his body long and strong.

  Playfully, motes mapped themselves onto the ordinary features of his room. As his knight walked on, Aidan saw his bed take the shape of a great boulder and then a fallen log. Veiled in cloud, illuminating a vaulting winter sky, Aidan’s ceiling light shone with the complexity and brilliance of the sun. The knight was just Aidan’s height and build, carrying himself as Aidan did. Light-headed, Aidan watched his knight venture deeper. The trees grew closer, stockading against the sky.

  Snap of a twig. An animal. No. Something else. He sensed some creature stalking him. Heard it breathing behind him. No, above him. Something in the trees. He wanted to stop, but his knight kept walking. He sensed the creature coming closer. “Stop,” he whispered. Then he stamped his foot. His alter ego stopped immediately.

  Aidan lifted his arm, and his knight drew his sword. He heard the creature hiss. Snake? Dragon? Spitting monster? He lunged, but he guessed wrong. The thing pounced, screaming, tackling him from behind. Whirling, he fought a leopard, sinuous and dark. He slashed, but could not wound the massive cat. He attacked again, but didn’t hit. The leopard sank her teeth into his shoulder, and he saw his own blood showering, drenching his tunic and his arm. Shocked, he fell to his knees and his avatar plunged to the forest floor. The leopard came in for the kill, gold eyes shining, long body undulating. She bit his neck and pinned him down, drinking his blood. She was gentle now, teeth no longer penetrating, claws no longer bared, her tongue almost caressing his raw wound.

  As the leopard lapped him up, he felt himself unmoored. He shed his sword and shield, and then he shed his body, legs, arms, head, torso. Whitening like toppled statuary, the corpse of Aidan’s knight lay on the forest floor, but the knight’s ghost floated free, a weightless spirit-version of his venturing self.

  Now the leopard released him. She seemed to purr as she drew back into herself, and he saw that she’d begun to change as well, black velvet lightening to a tawny glow. At first her spots stood out boldly; then they too began to shift and fade; the animal’s gold eyes darkened, her head and body turned elfin, white and delicate, claws changing into tapered fingers, great cat changing to a girl in transparent silken robes.

  Daphne’s voice. “Let’s go.”

  He forgot he’d ever called her fake. He forgot his anger altogether. She was not an elf, nor was she a warrior. She seemed herself, luscious and three-dimensional. She had never seemed so real. “This is the most amazing place I’ve ever been.”

  “You haven’t even seen the Gates.”

  “Take me.”

  “You have to cross the river first.” She brushed his phantom body with her hand, and he had to imagine what he could not feel. This world could represent the subtlest exchange, a word, a sigh, even a breath, the smallest gesture, the quirk of an eyebrow, the tremble of a lip—nothing was lost, except for touch.

  He couldn’t touch her, so he followed her instead. He took the first step, and his knight broke through bracken and forded streams, clambering after Daphne.

  Gradually, the river revealed itself. At first he saw nothing more than a shimmer between trees. The shining water unfolded like a ribbon, then a banner. As Daphne led him from the forest, the river opened further, a watery valley, a realm unto itself between steep banks.

  Silver, heavy, vast, the river looked like liquid mercury, so slow it scarcely seemed to move. Aidan picked up a pebble and tried to skip it across the surface. The rock sank without a ripple. No birds flew overhead, no fish surfaced, no reeds or plants grew on the dull clay bank. Aidan threw a bigger rock. In this water nothing splashed. Absorbing each stone, the sluggish flow healed itself.

  Weird river. Amazing place. Aidan drew his sword and dipped it in the water.

  Even Daphne gasped as heavy silver wicked up the blade and continued up his arm as well, cloaking him in metal to his shoulder. He dropped his sword on the riverbank and the liquid metal stopped rising. Ghostly still, he faced Daphne with a silver arm. He flexed his silver fingers, clenched a gleaming fist.

  Drumbeats. Thunder. An incessant pounding in the distance.

  “What’s that?” It took him a moment to realize the pounding was his mother at the door.

  “Do you have to go?”

  “No,” he whispered.

  Outside, Kerry watched the strip of light beneath the locked bedroom door. She saw the light brighten, shifting from gray-green to silver, heard her son’s whisper and his shuffling feet. No tapping noise. No typing at all. She stopped knocking and stood still, straining to listen.

  “Why not?” she heard Aidan say, and then in a louder voice, “I did everything.”

  Kerry held her breath.

  A long pause, and then he said, “I can’t.”

  “Aidan!” Kerry called out. She started banging all over again.

  On the other side of the door, Aidan saw a black speck on the water. Slowly, slowly, a boat emerged, an ancient ship with long oars and a black sail. The oars rowed themselves across the heavy river, but hovered mid-stroke just before they reached the bank.

  “Stay,” begged Aidan.

  Lightly Daphne jumped into the boat, which began rowing her away.

  “Come back!”

  “Let me in!” Kerry called outside his door.

  “I need more,” Aidan called out.

  Now Kerry couldn’t make out the words. She heard her own heart beating faster, but she tried to calm herself. Aidan was in his room. He’d gone to school, as usual. Surely the vandalism was some other gamer’s work. Aidan had never defaced anything. She took a deep breath and sat down on the stairs.

  On the other side of the door, on the far banks of the silver river, Daphne told Aidan, “This time, make it silver.”

  “I can’t!” he answered, but his knight held out his arms to her.

  The pull and slap of heavy water, the rhythmic stroke of oars. Make it silver. Kerry heard and yet she didn’t hear. Sitting on the top stair, Kerry leaned her head against the wall.

  At the hospital she had seen parents waiting for diagnoses. Cancer, tumor, genetic disease. When doctors came to speak to them, the parents knew what was coming, but couldn’t bring themselves to ask. Kerry had seen mothers do this, holding still, afraid to speak. They weren’t cowardly; they weren’t lying to themselves. They clung to uncertainty in order to survive. She held still now. She would speak to Aidan; she knew she had to speak to him—but not today. She closed her eyes.

  Like a dreamer who didn’t want to wake, Aidan played and replayed UnderWorld’s opening. The nights his mother slept at home, he slept. The nights she worked, he took the black BoX from his desk drawer under a pile of old school papers. He unscrewed the top, and his room filled with aeroflakes, those lively flecks scattering and gathering into UnderWorld’s barren landscape. He played through the night, his movements increasingly fluid, his reflexes faster, his consciousness expanding so that his knight no longer seemed a projection, but a real person. Aidan’s ordinary body seemed a dim reflection of his gaming self.

  Every morning before dawn, he closed the BoX. He had to put his whole weight into it when he turned the lid. Yielding slowly, the lid attracted aeroflakes. The silver river faded, its barren cliffs collapsed into themselves, as, like metal shavings aligned by a magnetic force, the particles flew in.

  He closed the BoX, but he could not shut UnderWorld away for long. He explored the river’s edge in every light. Darkness, and pale morning, cloudy afternoon.

  Aidan collected stones and threw them in the heavy water. He tried throwing several at once to watch them sink together. Then, with a stick, he dug a shallow trench in the clay at water’s edge. Silver oozed
up to fill the hole. He was still trying to find a way across, even though he knew there was no way, unless he obeyed Daphne.

  He decided to do the thing she asked. Sometimes fear caught him by surprise—a falling sensation, just as he was drifting off to sleep. A sudden chill walking to school. He did not change his mind. Instead, he tried to judge his dread dispassionately. His anxiety, he thought, was superficial, like a nosebleed. He looked down and saw his fear, but hardly felt it. Hour after hour, the river in his room worked its strange magic, inciting him to cross.

  Wonderful to await the next installment of his secret life. He became calm, efficient, pleasant, sitting at the kitchen table, catching up on geometry, glancing discreetly at the clock, which looked like a red apple cut in half, with seeds marking the hours. He solved one problem after another, writing out his answers with a sharp pencil. You’re so bright, his mother always said. “Now is the time,” Mr. Allan had told him at his college counseling meeting. “Your test scores are outstanding. If you do your work, you’ll have options. You could compete for scholarships.”

  As Kerry cooked spaghetti and meat sauce, she turned to look at Aidan. “You see.”

  “See what?” Aidan asked.

  She didn’t answer. She was thinking, Here you are, working at the table. Here you are, returned to me. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d prayed for? She wished. She hoped—and doubted.

  Aidan kept working, and Kerry talked about how he only had to try, and said the thing she always said about how more than half of life was showing up.

  “How much more than half?” Aidan asked and she pretended to whack him with her spoon. He looked at his mother with that mixture of love and pity he felt when they were closest, and he had no idea she suspected him. In fact she had spent all afternoon online on gaming-addiction message boards. She had Googled UnderWorld-related vandalism, and found one case in Seattle, one in Austin, in addition to the one in Cambridge.