The Year of the Storm

by John Mantooth

  Here’s the thing: I’ve spent the last sixteen years trying to fashion the events I’ve been telling you about into pieces of a larger whole. But no matter how many times I try, no matter how thoroughly I analyze things, I can’t make some of them fit. I get ideas, fleeting images; sometimes I wake in the morning with the maddening sense that I had it all figured out in my dream, but the dream is always gone, leaving me with the tantalizing feeling akin to having a name on the tip of my tongue, except this is not a name—this is my life.

  When I become frustrated with this conundrum—pieces of a puzzle that never quite interlock—I tell it back to myself, much like Pike telling the story of his time with Seth not only for my benefit, but also for his own.

  And when I tell it, this is how it goes.

  —

  I know what my therapist thinks. Dwight doesn’t say it, but he thinks it. I can read his face. It’s an easy face to read, lacking true guile. His face tells me that he believes I’m delusional. The way he hesitates, the way he parses his words just so, the way he scribbles on his pad to fill the uncomfortable silences, the silences he wants to cover up with words. But he doesn’t. Not yet. He leads, mostly, and it’s almost funny to watch him try to lead me to places I’ve already been, places I’ve already considered, turning them over like found things, artifacts from the imagination. I’ve touched them all.

  When I told him the part about the story, about how it helps to tell it back to myself, he smiled. He tried to hide it, but I saw his lips break their flat line and crease ever so slightly. I saw something like the shine of satisfaction in his eyes.

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. Continue.”

  “No, you were smiling.”

  He pushed his glasses up and looked at me directly then. His face turned smug, superior, and this was the only time I hated him. When he was so sure of himself, so unwilling to even consider for just a moment that there could be truth to my story. It must be how people who have seen ghosts or claim to have been abducted by aliens feel. It’s a hateful, frustrating, alone way to be, and it makes me sympathize with every last one of the poor bastards who carry either the reality or the delusion of something the rest of the world won’t accept.

  “Why were you smiling?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just from my perspective, your words make it so clear.”

  “So clear?”

  “What you’re doing. How you’re coping.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Maybe it would be better if you just continued. I think the discoveries you make on your own are the ones that will stick. Anything I say right now will be of lesser value.”

  I leaned forward, gritting my teeth to keep from raising my voice. “Tell me.”

  Dwight held out his hands, a gesture of supplication. “Sure, okay. You have a right to know where I’m coming from. It’s just that the things you’ve told me are so unbelievable that you can’t even justify them. Seriously, you can’t. Instead you’re using the storytelling, the narrative itself, as a kind of coping mechanism.”

  “Not following.” I felt mean and ornery. Ready to snap.

  “You don’t believe what happened to you, but facing that means you’d have to accept some other things you’re not ready to accept, so you cling to the story. The story as some magical boon—a tool, if you will—a tool capable of tying all these impossible things together. You lift the narrative above the fray, so to speak.”

  “So to speak?”

  He grinned, this time his fake grin, the patronizing one.

  “Maybe we should slow down. Not push things. Sound fair?”

  I nodded despite myself.

  “Please,” he said, holding his hands out. “Continue.”

  So I did.

  —

  When I came out of the shelter, the woods were flooded. The water came up almost to my knees. That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing that struck me was that Pike’s cabin was still standing. The roof was there, the structure still intact. No—I saw that this was different. This cabin had a porch, crooked and slanted, but a porch, nonetheless. The roof was pitched differently, and a warm orange light bloomed from one of the windows.

  I stood for a moment, completely stunned, trying to make my mind understand how I could have been so confused. I turned, pacing back my steps to the shelter only to find more murky water.

  These days, I wonder how I could have been so damn slow to realize what had happened, but I think I forget how truly confusing a situation like that can be. To realize that another world, totally different from the one you’ve known your entire life, had emerged from the shadows, and that it had been there all along, you just failed to see it, is so disconcerting, it’s a wonder I dealt with it as quickly as I did.

  It was the trees, really. They were unharmed, not a one of them crippled by the straight-line winds and the tornado that was almost certainly an F5. They were the same trees too, but different. These were swarming with Spanish moss, cloaked in kudzu, their limbs grown out at odd angles, holding things in their shadows—perhaps the other woods, the ones I’d grown up playing in. Likely others too.

  Then I remembered the photos of the cabin, the ones of Pike and Seth standing in the water. I must have stood there for a long time, staring at the cabin in front of me, mentally checking it against the one he’d showed us. It was like all truly great successes—at first I wouldn’t allow myself to believe I was actually there. But there was no denying the cabin. It was real. Somehow, without even meaning to do it, I was here. If Pike was right, and I believed he was, Mom and Anna were here too. I’d check the cabin first. What if I found them inside with Pike? What if he smiled and said, “What took you so long, Danny-boy?”

  I was overcome by the image and felt my legs go weak. I sat down right in the water and began to sob.

  I’d slipped. I had started in another world, my world, and I’d found my way into this one. Now all I had to do was get them and go—

  Suddenly I remembered what Pike had said about the hatch. It moves. Getting in is the easy part. It’s getting back out that can be a challenge.

  I took off on a run, sloshing the swamp water as I went. I kept my head up, surveying the swamp as I moved, looking for that hatch, knowing it had to be somewhere. That’s when I nearly ran into them. And even if I hadn’t, seeing them would have made me break my stride. They were breathtaking.

  What I saw could only be properly called ghosts, but I think that’s more a failure of the language than an apt description of what they were—evanescent sunbeams cutting through the dusk. I immediately thought of my earlier visits from Anna. Anna had been different, more like a vision or a trick of the shadows, a messenger from my subconscious. These girls were simultaneously not there, yet more present than anything I’d ever seen. Hadn’t that been how Pike had described them? He was right. Damn, he was exactly right.

  Their spirits burned and shone with a dim light, and when they moved, they left the scent of mossflower and the tinkling sound of tiny bells.

  They watched me, their eyes wide with something—hope? I thought it was.

  They wore dresses, old and pleated. Their shoes were leather and immune to the dirt and grime of the swamp because they floated, their toes dangling just inches above the silt. Each of their dresses was torn at the hem, and a single piece of fabric hung down, dragging the water and causing the tiniest of ripples, like anchors keeping them moored. Without these loose hems weighing them down, I could imagine the girls floating away or dissipating into the dusk, becoming one with the mist.

  Neither spoke, and I wasn’t sure if they could. I pointed to the cabin. “I’m here for my mother and sister. I want to help you too.”

  The girls didn’t answer me, and for a moment I thought maybe they couldn’t. Then I realized their attention was fixed on something just behind me. I star
ted to turn when I heard him laugh.

  It was a high hollow sound, like the scream of a bobcat that used to wake me up late at night.

  “We got another one, girls,” the voice said. “He’s slipped down the rabbit hole and now he’ll never climb back out.”

  I turned around slowly.

  Sykes was different than I’d imagined him. Taller, his head a wilder shade of red than I’d pictured. His face was locked into a garish smile; his eyes carried the wide, bugged look of a madman. This didn’t surprise me, but his presence did. Unlike the girls, he was completely here, as if his body had been hauled, wholly resurrected, out of the swamp. His feet were sunk into the water as deep as mine. His face was lined with scars, the skin of his cheeks and lips loose against his skull from where Pike had pulled on it for so long. He walked with a stoop, tilting toward me, and his feet stirred the water, causing the fish to scurry for more remote parts of the swamp.

  Up to this point, I’d felt every emotion I could imagine: joy, despair, grief, blind hope. Every emotion, I realized, except fear. Not the brain-numbing kind anyway, not the Oh shit, here comes pain in my face right now kind of fear. I couldn’t react. Finally, when he lunged at me, his face—God, I’ll always see that face—contorted into that crooked grin, my paralysis broke.

  I made it to the porch steps before he caught me, his hand falling on my calf and pulling me back. He lifted me in the air, dangling me face-first over the swamp water. He was strong. Sixteen years later, I still marvel at his strength.

  One of the girls screamed, a high, pure note of misery. Sykes laughed.

  I do not know why evil exists in the world. Like many other people before me, it’s a question I’ve pondered on sleepless nights, and I’ve yet to find a satisfactory answer. But I know what evil is. Even today, I can see it in the faces of certain politicians, talk-show hosts, and those that seek power at the expense of others. I know it, and I think the moment I heard Sykes laugh at the girls’ terror was when I learned what it looked and sounded like. It was a lesson I would not forget.

  Filled with rage, I twisted my body and reached for him, grabbing his crotch and squeezing for everything I had. He groaned and let go of me. I dropped headfirst into the swamp, the world going from a shimmering haze to a dank, slick blackness in an instant. I might have been in the storm shelter again, it was so dark.

  I pushed myself up in time to see Sykes lunging at me. I rolled over, making him fall into the water. My hand found the bank and I pulled myself to the porch steps for a second time, my determination growing inside me like a ball of ever-expanding energy. I was too close to stop. Inside my mind, I heard Pike’s voice cajoling me on as he had on the way to the storm shelter.

  Halfway up the steps onto the rickety porch, my ankle gave way and I fell in a heap.

  Sykes was standing over me, the loose skin of his jowls hanging inches from his skull, swaying gelatinously.

  He tightened the skin into a smile. His eyes were so damned big, and I noticed that he never blinked. Maybe Pike had ripped his eyelids off in the struggle.

  “Do you really think you can go in there?” Sykes said.

  I didn’t answer; instead, I scooched myself away from the steps, away from Sykes.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Try it.”

  Warily, I worked myself to my feet and reached for the door handle.

  Somewhere out in the swamp, I heard bells and worried murmuring.

  I reached for the door handle—an old, rusted knob. It turned easily in my hand. I pushed it.

  The door wouldn’t budge.

  —

  Sykes laughed, a wet cackle that rang out through the trees. Have you ever been walking in the woods, alone, around dusk, when one world starts to settle down and another begins to wake up? Have you ever heard a sound—some shrill and distant sound—that you don’t recognize as a whippoorwill or a loon or anything else that would be in your woods? It had happened to me dozens of times before I visited the swamp and dozens since, and after hearing Sykes cackle like that, and having the benefit of sixteen years to mull it over, I think I understand that sometimes sounds—like people—slip through.

  I was about to lunge at him, thinking my best shot was to bring the fight to him, when I heard a click behind me.

  I turned to see the door open just a hair. I fell over trying to move so fast and hit my head against the door. Before I could get myself back to my feet, two things happened almost instantaneously—Sykes grabbed my ankles, trying to haul me back off the porch, and I reached for the door frame, clutching it with both hands.

  For a moment, I felt like I’d be split in two, but Sykes won out. He was too strong, and he ripped me away. However, in pulling me back, he lost his balance on the steps and tumbled backward. I hit the steps pretty hard, my knee colliding with the edge of one of the bottom ones, my chin against the top.

  But I was free.

  The door was still open, and I saw Anna there, just inside, and that was all I needed. I pulled myself to my feet and lunged inside. I hit the floor again and heard the door slam shut behind me.

  Sykes began to bang on the door, shaking the entire cabin. He rattled the handle and must have thrown his body into it because it sounded like something big hit the door. None of it helped. I heard his footsteps clomping across the porch and back down the steps.

  Then a silence, followed by the sweetest words I’d ever heard.

  “Danny? Say ‘Brady.’”

  “Brady,” I said, still lying on the floor, facedown.

  Anna giggled. “Say ‘Brady Bunch.’”

  “Brady Bun-ch,” I said, hitting the last ch hard like Anna liked. For the first time in nine months, I smiled the kind of smile that I felt deep inside, the kind of smile that a person can forget if he’s not careful.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Where’s Mom?” I asked, standing up, brushing the mud off my jeans. If this was a dream, it didn’t feel like any dream I’d ever had.

  “Say ‘Mama.’”

  “Mama. Where is she, Anna?”

  She giggled.

  I wanted to embrace Anna, to squeeze her tightly and nuzzle her neck, but those weren’t things you did with Anna. Another thing you didn’t really do with Anna: ask her questions. Well, you could ask all the questions you wanted, as long as you didn’t expect an answer.

  I looked around. It was mostly bare here: a single half-finished wooden table, two chairs, a worn-out dirty couch.

  I stepped past the table. There was a short hallway and then a back room. A rug lay in the hallway. It was red and green, and the image of a deer gazed back at me. I tried to remember if there had been a rug in Pike’s cabin, and I couldn’t. Didn’t matter. Two sides of the same page. Isn’t that how Walter said Seth explained it?

  “Mom?” I said, stepping over the rug. I knocked lightly on the door.

  I pushed the door open. The room was empty except for a single bed. A window on the other side of the room framed a cluster of shadowy trees, and through their weblike branches, the full moon.

  I sat down on the bed.

  Confused, I tried to think of some possible explanation. How could Anna be here without Mom? I don’t know how long I sat there just thinking. I hadn’t panicked yet, but I think it might have happened soon if Anna hadn’t walked in.

  “Danny?” She stood in the doorway, on top of the rug.

  “Hey, Anna.”

  “Say ‘dark.’”

  “Dark.”

  “Say ‘in the dark.’”

  “In the dark. Jesus, Anna, where’s Mom?”

  “Dan-dan, say ‘dark.’”

  There was no stopping her sometimes. For this I both admired and hated her.

  “Dark,” I said with a sigh. I could sigh all I wanted. It wouldn’t bother her in the least.

  “Say ‘in.’”


  I stood up, planning on forcing her from the room. I used to do it all the time when we were younger. There was only so much a person could take.

  “Say it, Dan-dan. Say ‘in.’”

  I swear if she hadn’t been like she was, I would have socked her right in the arm. Hell, maybe I still should’ve. Maybe then she’d shut up and give me some peace.

  “Say it, Dan-dan.”

  I yelled at her. “Shut up.” Right in her face. She didn’t even flinch. I wanted to keep yelling, but why? The message would be worthless, incomprehensible to her, and I’d only be inflicting my anger on her to no purpose. I shook my head and lay back on the bed, resigned to just play along until something else struck her fancy.

  “Say it, Dan-dan.”

  “Say what?” I’d already forgotten.

  “In. Say ‘in.’”

  I’d never heard that one. “In.”

  “Say ‘the.’”

  “The.” Brady Bunch, my mind added automatically.

  “Say ‘dark.’”

  “Huh?”

  “Say ‘dark,’ Dan-dan.”

  “Dark.”

  The word was already out of my mouth when something clicked into place. It was more physical than mental. A leap in my gut. I sat up, not fully aware of why. Then it hit me. “Did you say ‘in the dark’? As in Mom is in the dark?”

  She giggled.

  I stood up and walked quickly back out to the hallway. Kicking the rug away, I saw what I should have thought of before, another hatch.

  I knelt down and tried to twist the little steel nub that held the door to the cellar shut. It was stuck. I twisted it harder. It barely budged. I bore down, nearly cutting my fingers as I worked the nub, until I finally made it move and the door popped loose.

  I turned to tell Anna I was going down, but she was already gone.

  —

  That was something I thought about a lot later. Anna. Her ability to come and go as she wanted. I think in the end that may have been the most important thing of all. More important than my belief, my hope; more important than Pike’s brokenness that made him seek me out, more important even than Seth finding the place to begin with. In many ways, Anna is the bravest person I know. Or maybe she doesn’t even understand what it means to be brave. Either way, she’s a miracle.