The Bright Unknown

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

  The giant who had carried Angel away the night before was a woman and not a man, as I had assumed. She walked onstage and performed feats of strength. There were aahs and oohs from the crowd. But I could only see the face of a sad woman. I’d seen that face so many times in the hospital and recognized it well.

  After Golithia’s act she marched her sweaty body offstage and Lazarus returned. The spotlight narrowed so that only Lazarus was lit. Out beyond the stage the sky was black, and the moon was covered by inky clouds, leaving only a small patch of gray in the sky. The poor moon was held as captive behind the haze as I was in the confusion of this new world around me. Another world I didn’t belong in or understand.

  “For those of you who have never seen one of our shows, you may not know my story.” Lazarus walked the stage, and the tap of his cane on the wooden stage echoed in the quiet of the crowd. “You might know Lazarus from the Bible, though.”

  He stopped walking back and forth and turned to face us. He didn’t say anything for several long moments. Not a breath could be heard around me.

  Rosina had told me some Bible stories, and the name Lazarus was vaguely familiar.

  “The Bible says that Lazarus was one of the most beloved friends of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” He looked up into the sky with a dramatic pause. “So loved, in fact, that Jesus brought him back from the grave.”

  Lazarus continued, “As some of you know, I died in the Battle of the Lys. I was nineteen years old and was blown off of my feet.” The crowd murmured. He held his hand out to the crowd. “You don’t have to believe me. It’s all right. Not everyone believed that the Lazarus of the Bible walked out of his tomb either or even that Jesus himself did the same after three days dead.”

  The crowd silenced.

  “I lay on the battlefield for three days, so I’m told. My company and my commander had already listed me as dead. Until I wasn’t—anymore. I wasn’t without wounds and scars across my face, but I had been returned to the living.”

  The crowd whispered loudly this time, and a few men called out that he was a liar and a fraud.

  “Oh, it’s all there in the war records.” He lifted his chin and resumed his pacing. “My own return to life after death opened a door of sorts. I became a mentalist. And can now speak to them—those lost souls beyond the grave where I once was. And tonight I’ll prove it to you all.”

  The murmuring crowd became louder, and a family near me left. A few others went as well. The buzz of voices heightened until Lazarus put his hand in the air. Everyone went silent.

  With that raised hand he removed his hat and tossed it offstage, then put his hand on his head. He closed his eyes. The crowd was completely still. Lazarus hummed. For almost a whole minute we watched Lazarus hum and sway.

  “I see a woman,” he said. “A mother. She’s sick and frail and is mostly kept to bed. A small room. There’s a window—a broken window—in the room. When she was alive she would scratch at the walls, like she was trying to get out.”

  I inhaled and pressed my back against my chair.

  “Woman, what is your name?” he asked out into the air, and I was certain that all of us held our breaths as we waited for an answer. Would we hear it along with him? “She’s not telling me her name yet, but she says she knows one of you.”

  He opened his eyes finally and pointed at the crowd, and my heart thrummed deeply in my chest.

  “She says that one of you here knew her in her life and that one of you was her daughter.”

  There was more than hushed conversation now.

  “Is it my mother?” A woman on the other side of the aisle stood. Her voice quivered. “Her name was Alice. She died last week. She was sick with pneumonia.”

  Lazarus held a hand out to her as if to have her wait and after a few moments answered. “She says her name is not Alice.”

  The woman sat down in a fit of tears, and the man next to her began to comfort her. My gaze snapped back to Lazarus.

  “I see something bright. But it isn’t the sun. It’s a person. She was also in the room. She was the daughter. But she is not dead. She is here”—he paused—“in the audience. Today. This bright daughter is one of you. Woman, what is your name?”

  My eyes began to burn. But I didn’t want anyone to notice me so I didn’t leave. I was like a rock buried in sand with a current of water rushing over me, sinking me deeper. My body was heavy and stiff and unmovable. Was he speaking to my mother? How much of this could I believe?

  “She wants to say something to her daughter. She says that the world is a scary place. That she must find a family to protect her. She is reminding her that there was a nurse who protected her when she was a child—and other women, Mickey, Rosina, Grace—and she still needs protection from the world. To walk alone out in the world will be her destruction—like a mermaid out of the sea.”

  I fought the urge to buy into this, knowing he could’ve learned all this from Angel, but the way he was describing my life strangled my senses, making it hard to parse out what was real and what wasn’t. I pinched my mouth shut, hoping to hold back my racing heartbeat and shallow breathing.

  “There’s another bright one in the room. A bright soul who is alive. She says that he will not be enough to protect her daughter—this daughter who sits among you now.”

  “Who is it?” a man yelled from the audience.

  A woman in the front stood up and turned to face everyone. “Yes, stand up, woman, and show us who you are.”

  “Brighton,” Lazarus yelled. “Your mother is speaking to you.”

  I gasped for air I couldn’t find and ran down the center aisle toward the back. I needed to find Angel. We needed to leave. These were not our people. There was something wrong with a man who would choose to do this to someone else.

  Lazarus was calling out for me to return. “Brighton. Brighton,” he shouted several times.

  Before I got far, Conrad grabbed me from behind. He shushed in my ear that it was okay, that he understood how hard this was. He began walking me back up the aisle, and no matter how I fought him, I couldn’t break free from his grasp. I craned my neck to look at him and he didn’t look the same. His jaw was tight. His eyes had sharpened and even seemed to have grown darker.

  “Brighton,” Lazarus, the Mentalist, called out, “is that you?”

  I looked at the man onstage. His face was red with heat and passion. I could see a forehead vein pulsing.

  He pointed at me. “Are you Brighton?”

  “Tell him the truth,” Conrad hissed in my ear as he held his arms around me. To others it might’ve looked like he was comforting me, but in reality he was my straightjacket. “Then all of this will be over.”

  The shroud between my past and present was so thin that for a long moment I wondered if Lazarus really was speaking with Mother, who was locked away in eternity.

  “Answer him.” Conrad broke me from my doubt.

  “My name is Nell.” I didn’t yell, but I was loud enough to be heard by a few rows around me.

  “Just play along,” Conrad said in my ear. “Let this be your gifting.”

  “No, I will not.” I didn’t yell, but I did break free from his hold.

  Then I ran. I saw the truck where Angel had been and ran to it as fast as I could, throwing off my heeled shoes, but when I yanked open the door to the truck I was sure was his, remembering it had a long scrape along one side, he was not inside. I went to the next one with a red door and it was not his either. I ran farther and opened another with a green door. Angel was not there, but there was a girl about my age in the bed. A small man sat next to the bed. He was not as small as Bitsie; he was a different kind of small. A dwarf, I remembered. We’d had one as a patient long ago. A woman sat on the other side of the bed. She was beautiful with glowing red hair.

  I was out of breath and just stood there not knowing what to do. The younger girl’s arms, neck, and shoulders were covered in black drawings. I knew they were called tattoos from magazines a
nd books, but I’d never seen one, let alone the many this girl had. The red-haired woman looked at me, and her eyes were filled with pain and maybe an entire sea of sparkling water.

  “You’re the new girl?”

  I nodded, still breathing heavily.

  “Find your angel and run away as fast as you can.” Her voice warbled. “Get away from Lazarus.”

  I looked back at the girl in bed who was perfectly still and then back at the woman.

  “Hurry,” she said. “He’s probably backstage.”

  I slammed the door and ran toward the tent. I could hear Lazarus talking again of another spirit that he was conjuring with his powers. The audience was silent again.

  I raced into the tent, and the dark hallways closed in on me. I followed the corridors farther, deeper, until I got to the center opening of the tent. From where I stood I could see the back of the stage. The light seeped through the edges and center of the red curtain. On a wooden platform was a young boy ready to pull the curtains open at the appointed time.

  I took a step closer, and then I saw him. And her.

  Angel and Gabrielle were inside a large cage.

  They were wearing white and faced each other with their palms pressed together. And on their backs were the largest, most beautiful feathered wings I ever could have imagined.

  Gabrielle’s winged back was to me. I moved closer, and Angel’s eyes found me. I was just far enough away that I could see he didn’t know who I was. I had forgotten how Alima had dressed me like a doll and made up my face. I walked closer. I was angry with him for telling Lazarus about us, even though I would do whatever it took to free him. He was caged in a new way now.

  As I drew nearer I could see recognition dawn over his eyes. And as I walked closer still, he shook his head ever so slightly, prompting Gabrielle to turn and see me. Her eyes were on fire, red and passionate.

  “Leave us,” she rasped, then turned back to Angel.

  From the other side of the curtain came Lazarus’s voice. “Not even Mr. Barnum has anything close to my next and last act. My grand finale. He might have the tattooed man and a grand menagerie, but he doesn’t have what you’re about to witness with your very own eyes.” He paused. “Are you ready?” he yelled, and the crowd went wild.

  “I give you . . . the Fallen Angels.”

  The Sirens began humming a wordless, haunting tune as the curtains opened and Angel and Gabrielle’s cage was rolled onto the stage. The audience gasped in wonder.

  1990

  Shifting Light

  The keys are cold in my hands and shouldn’t feel so heavy. It is late afternoon, and the town hall meeting is the next day. Yesterday, when we developed the film, I told Kelly I wouldn’t attend unless I could get inside my building. She’d handed me a set of keys within hours.

  “And what did the mayor say?” I asked, pretending to hold the keys casually even though they burned the palms of my hands.

  “Well, he really wants to create some excitement about the fund-raising and wants the bill to pass for the new community center, and he thinks your—” She cleared her throat with a smile. “Stories will help donators, supporters, and voters to really turn out for the meeting.”

  “He’s agreed to my entry and me sharing the photos?” My heart skipped a beat.

  She nodded. “He’ll introduce you and then you have the floor.” She bit her lip and paused. I wondered what she was about to add. “He doesn’t know you’re going into the building—but because I’ve been in there recently, I know it’s safe.”

  Safe. It’s not safe. It’s never been safe.

  This conversation rolls over in my mind as I park my car near the old iron gates. My camera is heavy against my soft chest, and my heart hammers beneath it, though it feels tinny and empty.

  Seeing the photographs yesterday heightened the bidding from the building. I couldn’t quell it, even in my sleep, seeing visions of everyone I once knew walking the halls. A younger and older Joann bustled around me. And Grace with hair and without. All of them with cloud-like bodies. And I kept wandering the halls, trying to find Angel, saying I wouldn’t leave without him. Even Doc was there, walking the halls. He told me I shouldn’t be there and reminded me to walk right on out.

  As I walk around to the back now, I imagine the grad students cataloging the left items. The spirits of women who had been pulled apart and broken here can never be cataloged. But I can do something for them.

  I stand and stare at the door for so long I almost grow roots. This is the door I escaped out of almost fifty years earlier. Impossible, surely. How can it be that long ago? How am I that old? All of these moments feel so fresh. Time is such a thin and frail thing, I know.

  I pick one of the keys to try, but then I drop the ring. The dull clink on the rough concrete slab spins my nerves. Careful not to let my camera swing out, I pick up the keys and try the first key my hands touch. It doesn’t work. The fourth key on the ring is the one that slips in, and before I turn it I look around, making sure I am alone, even though I know better, before I open the door.

  The knob takes some convincing to turn. But finally it does, and I pull hard to open it.

  I instinctively reach for the light switch and know right where it is—but of course it doesn’t work. Before I completely return to the familiar darkness, I pull out the flashlight from my back pocket and click it on. As strange as it is, I am not afraid. Nothing I will encounter today could compare to what I have already endured in this same space in my past.

  But when I stand there, I hesitate and consider leaving. Not just the building, but leaving Milton completely. But Kelly has all of my negatives, and I will not lose those again.

  I need to do this; there’s no other choice. I need to see my room. My mother’s room. Where she’d lived and where she’d died is all so close now. I push into place a rock big enough to keep the door ajar, then I go inside.

  The light from my flashlight catches the metal rails of several stretchers strewn about in the hall. A few are intact; others are not. One even has a sheet lying on it. But for the dirt and dust, it’s almost as if someone had been on it only moments ago.

  A breeze pushes at the door, throwing slivers of light into the space. I exhale, then bear up my courage and walk past the stretchers and toward the stairs that are to my right. My breathing heightens, and by the time I force myself up a few steps, I am reciting Rosina’s prayer that over the decades has also become mine.

  When I get to the top, the quiet and gloom creep through the broken windows and cracked walls. And the deeper I get, the more unnerved I am to be there alone. I wish I’d agreed to let Kelly come along. But I told her I needed to do this by myself.

  The door at the top of the stairwell is off its hinges and lies sideways. There are marks up and down the inside of the door. Deep, like something metal had been used.

  I step over the door and walk off to the left down a hall, toward the double doors. One is ajar and hangs crookedly, and the other one is closed. I gently pull one open, and the squeal sounds like a greeting. Like it has been waiting for me. I go through the doorway and I am standing in the dining hall.

  Only a handful of tables and chairs remain. Everything is in disarray. I’d eaten so many meals in this room. I don’t go in far or touch anything—afraid memories will swallow me up. But I stand at the edge of the room and close my eyes and I can see it all as it had been and hear the mumbling of voices that stirred through every meal. I can hear the scrape of spoons and the shuffling of cups and plates. And I am reminded of how hungry we were.

  “Are you going to finish that?” I can almost hear Carmen ask.

  “No. You can have it,” I almost answer aloud.

  I didn’t expect to feel any sense of warmth inside this decrepit building, but here I am smiling in the dining hall. Smiling. Because there really had been such love woven through the despair and fear.

  I walk back to the hallway. Words in graffiti about rejection and loss and needing
help litter the walls.

  I’m facing the little Juliet balcony that had been my favorite place in the entire building. I walk up to it, and when I try to open the window, the glass rattles and the hinges creak. When my hand rests against the glass window that is covered in a thick film of dirt, I see that I’m trembling.

  I step back from it and watch as the window moves in the thread of wind that courses through the opening, cooling me in the warm stickiness of these walls. I follow the rest of the hall and dodge a stretcher, mattress springs, and a rolling doctor’s chair—all rodent-chewed. I don’t touch anything but walk past the ruins like I might any historical sacred space.

  Straps of memories begin to wrap around me, and I am eight again.

  Aunt Eddie brought in roller skates that tied to your feet or shoes. All day I skated—back and forth—and then she took them home. They were her son’s. Strangely, I still remember that his name was Wayne. Did he know that for one whole day an asylum patient had used his beloved roller skates? I giggle at the thought, and the sound that echoes weakens the rafters and framework of this house of horrors.

  The small bathroom and some closets are off to my left. To my right is the hall leading to the dormitory rooms. My heart is heavy and light all at once. Like it doesn’t know if it will drop through the floor or float high above me. Maybe I shouldn’t be here at all. Maybe Doc is right—that this gateway of remembering is too much. These stirred-up ghosts, camisoled to the very air inside, might never leave me now that I’ve awoken them. Considering the intensity of my panic attack only a few days ago, I should’ve listened to him. But I didn’t, and instead I keep moving in deeper.

  The dormitory door on this end of the hall is shut. Fear wraps around my courage like a leather restraint. What if after all of this I won’t get inside my room? I decide that if the door is locked and no key on the ring unlocks it, it’s a sign I should leave.