Division 02 Within This Garden Weeping

by Lee Thompson

  Red whispered, “Help me remember.”

  “Okay.” She squeezed his hand. “But you have to trust me.”

  She toyed with the Band-Aid he wore just above his knuckles.

  Red almost told her, No, don’t do that!

  But he didn’t stop her as she peeled it back slowly and two lightlike pinholes glowed in his flesh. Amy killed the lighter and a soft blue radiance reflected off her eyes and off the ceiling. Red swallowed. She touched his fingertips and said, “Leonora was like Medusa in a way. She bit you and the wounds have never healed. Two years have gone by, Red, since then. After a while even your family chose to ignore the fact that you always had a Band-Aid on, because they thought it had something to do with some pervert abducting us for two weeks. But they were wrong. The counselor you were seeing, he was wrong too. What really happened was Mr. Blue—who I think was some type of guardian angel—caught Leonora, but you and your imaginary friend Pig freed her. But she wasn’t some helpless little girl. She took some of your life, some of your time, and mine too, to give Pig more substance. But we beat her, Red. Even though she stole Pig away to Glory on the Green, and Mr. Blue disappeared.”

  Blue light danced across her palm as she ran her hand over top of his. Amy said, “Magic is real. Mr. Blue—Dream Nothing—well, Leonora and Pig took him away and I know you blame yourself but there was nothing we could do.” She sighed. “We did all we could and I feel horrible too, sometimes. I haven’t been the same since the house burned. But now something else is here, something much stronger and more dangerous than that little princess who took from the living to give substance to the imaginary. He’s a wizard. A Dream Everything. He’s everybody at their best and their worst and he wants you for some reason. And he has you, Red. Tucked away until you find the giant inside you, grapple with the truth, and face him.”

  Red sat up straighter, gooseflesh pebbling the flesh of his arms. “You sound like the raven.”

  “I don’t care what I sound like. I only want you grounded.”

  The word—grounded—stuck in his head, like an old bone jammed between the cogs that handled rational thought, and he wasn’t sure anymore that anything was rational, because certain things were coming back to him, certain memories.

  He shuddered, trying to tuck them back deep inside, because to admit those things existed was to give them more power.

  Amy said, “You’re wrong, you know. Ignoring them, looking the other way, it doesn’t change anything. That’s what they want. You have to figure out what you want, Red. You have to make a stand for it.”

  He sobbed there in the dark, holding her hand, his fingers clutching and loosening over the velvet smoothness of her skin, wanting to kiss her because it was intimate and maybe he wouldn’t feel so lost, so weak, so alone.

  A vision of the dark man folding him up and tossing him into the coin purse kept playing through his head in an endless loop and the harder he tried to bash the scene, the sharper the edges became and the more the pressure grew in his chest.

  Red stood and pulled Amy up with him. “Ash,” he said. “I remember.” And he remembered fighting Leonora on a cliff face in another world that existed inside Mr. Blue’s house, how the gorgon princess had a head full of albino snakes and one of them had bit him before he’d grabbed a handful of them and thrown her over the edge.

  He pulled the Band-Aid back over the wounds Leonora had left him and the shed grew dark, but daylight lit the doorway and he headed toward it, pulling Amy beside him. “I talked to your dad,” he said.

  “The thing you talked to wasn’t my dad, Red.”

  “I talked to a stain. It’s smeared across the walls of your house.”

  “Right.”

  They walked out onto the lawn and both of them stared at the remains of Mr. Blue’s home. Red said, “You asked what I wanted in there.”

  “Yes. You need to know and you need to fight for it.”

  “I know what I want. I want Mr. Blue back from Glory on the Green. I can fight for him.” He met Amy’s eyes and she looked so sad suddenly, so Red draped his arm over her shoulders and pulled her to his chest. “You think he’s dead?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Can he die?”

  It seemed like everything died. Some type of death anyway, and none of them were exactly the same.

  He kissed the crown of her head and blushed. “I’m sorry,” he said, stepping back.

  Amy touched his cheek and said, “It’s okay. I liked it.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. Red smiled. “Good.”

  “Don’t worry about my dad, Red. There is nothing you can do about him. He is who he is.”

  “No, that’s a cop-out.”

  “Worry about Mr. Blue. Get back to him, find the giant, find Mr. Blue, and together you can deal with the Stick Man.”

  “Ash.”

  “Yes.”

  Red rubbed his hands together because for a moment he felt at peace, his purpose clear, what he wanted, the direction he must take, and it opened his senses to everything around them—the sun’s heat, the wind’s chill, the soft grass beneath his feet, filaments of yesterday’s forgotten memories hanging in the air.

  He looked over Amy’s shoulder as something dark moved on top of the shed.

  The raven stood on the ridge, watching them with ebony eyes. It snapped its beak open and shut. It said, “Allow yourself to dream. Allow yourself to believe again.”

  Red reached for Amy’s hand but she was gone, the grass where she’d stood blackened and smoldering. Red swallowed, angry and headed toward rage.

  A butterfly swirled around his head. It landed on his cheek. He felt Amy’s fingertips in its wings, her love as it took flight and brushed a place over his heart and finally came to rest on his shoulder.

  The raven flew from its perch and its velvet wings tickled his neck as it rested on his other shoulder. It whispered in his ear, “None of this will be easy. Hold tight to your courage.”

  Five

  Red sifted through the ashes of Mr. Blue’s house, uncertain what he hoped to find, but a fever heated his bones and he had to keep looking. He thought, I’ll know when I find it. To anyone in town it would look like he’d gone crazy, hunched over, hands and face smudged with soot. To everyone here, he and Amy had been kidnapped by some sicko who hid them away in his attic, slowly driving them mad, bending them beneath the weight of his desires.

  The town had no idea about the truth of spirits and magic, the thievery of life’s greatest substance, and the compulsions that pulsed through Glory on the Green. They all followed and fell into the easy path, their assumptions blinding them to any other possibilities. His counselor, Mr. Mahard, had worked with Red for months throughout the past school year, probing to find out what really happened, and only growing frustrated, saying, “You have to work with me for me to help you.” And Red, sitting in the plush chair, his hands restless, said, “You would never believe.”

  He heard Amy in his head as he dug among the ruined house, whispering, You need to believe again, Red. And his fingers closed over something long and sharp and he jerked his hand back from the charred rubble, dots of blood blossoming on his fingertips. He kicked the debris away, his heart thumping, and stared at the sliver of mirror. His reflection frightened him, because he didn’t look like that at all—blackened, his face full of open, running sores—and the raven on his right shoulder looked like a dragon, and the butterfly on his left like a young girl fast asleep in a crumbling tower with the sun so close above and a dark ocean so far below.

  Not real, he thought. It’s not me. Not me in this world.

  Red bent and carefully grabbed the shard. He straightened and looked out toward the road where a couple of boys from school sat on their bikes. They laughed nervously and then waved and rode away. When he’d gone back to school after the incident, he’d expected a lot of chiding, at least a handful of sick jokes by some of the bullies, but there were only a couple and they were easily deal
t with. Most everyone offered him and Amy pity—which neither of them wanted. They only wanted to free Mr. Blue, to seal shut the doorway between our world and that of Glory on the Green forever. They’d destroyed Mr. Blue’s house and believed they’d closed the doorway, but many times, late at night, Red lay awake yet half-asleep fearing that there was more than one doorway and Leonora would find her way back across, and she’d bring an army of things like her—creatures that took breath and time from the living to give themselves greater substance, possibly endless power, gods made flesh and blood ruling violently over those who lacked faith.

  He sucked the blood from his fingers and limped away from the house thinking he had a long walk home. The sliver of mirror in his hand felt like it weighed a ton. As he marched up the street and passed Amy’s house, he thought about going inside, using the weapon to carve her dad’s stain from the wall so that he could carry it out into the woods and burn it. The thought made him sick to his stomach. Dirty. Perverse.

  He passed their house without stopping, but he heard the screen door open behind him.

  Red looked over his shoulder. Amy’s dad stepped onto the porch, wrapped in shadows, a cigarette in his right hand and a can of Budweiser in his left. He nodded at Red and a strange grin broke across the surface of his face yet never touched his eyes. Red gripped the shard of mirror harder. He stopped and turned around. They stared at each other for a moment, birds in the trees, cars pounding pavement in the distance, but none of it was important. Not like this.

  Red walked back to the edge of the Lafonds’ yard.

  Amy’s dad inhaled some smoke and blew it out through his nostrils. He said, “What you doing with that piece of glass?”

  Red smiled and crossed to the porch.

  He sensed that Mr. Lafond wanted to take a step back, Red picturing a scene playing through his mind—a boy with a shard of mirror walking right up to this grown man, this drug dealer who ruined the lives of so many people, and driving that shard it into the chubby pig’s neck, blood hot on his hand, a horrid gurgle breaking the birds’ song, breaking the subtle violence that happened behind closed doors and dragging its limp body outside.

  But Amy’s dad didn’t cower; he stood a little straighter, a sharp, hard edge to his eyes. He said, “That’s far enough.” Red stopped five feet from him. Mr. Lafond said, “What you doing walking around with that, huh?”

  Blood dripped from Red’s fingertips. He’d forgotten he’d cut them while digging through the burned rubble. He lifted the piece between them, held it flat on his palm. “This is something you should see,” not even understanding why he’d said it, or why the voice spilling out of his mouth was so mature and so calm and so deadly.

  “You don’t have anything I want to see, kid. Take a hike, throw that thing in the trash there.” He nodded toward a brown garbage can leaning against the corner of the house, by the driveway, and then took another drag off his cigarette as he narrowed his eyes.

  “Take a look in here. It’s magic. It’ll set you free.”

  Red took another step closer.

  * * *

  Red took a deep breath, feeling the water chill his skin. He shook his head and stepped from the lake, the muddy bank slick beneath his squishing shoes. He wrapped his arms across his chest, teeth chattering, as the forest stilled. Far up on the hill, the red light began blinking again. His stomach tumbled. He coughed up water that felt like razor blades in his throat, slicing his tongue, filling his mouth with the taste of copper. Red wiped a wet sleeve over his mouth, heart heavy with what he’d been thinking moments before, of slicing Mr. Lafond’s neck with the piece of shattered mirror—bad luck for you, sir, very bad luck—and the emptiness he felt now with the giant gone, the buzz of dragonflies waning into the distance.

  Red thought, I could have drowned, but he saved me. And he died because of it.

  He stumbled around, looking for pieces of the giant’s body, feeling as if he’d throw up again until his stomach settled and he stood straighter, warm again as the sun broke overtop the mountain and the red light dimmed. The butterfly’s wings tickled his cheek. The raven dug its talons into his right shoulder. It said, “Look.”

  He was about to say something about unwelcome passengers but curiosity got the better of him.

  Red scanned the forest and clearing but didn’t see anything abnormal, even though he knew he should since this was not his world. Then something shattered, like glass breaking, far up the hill as the sun rose higher, hours passing in mere minutes.

  Red blinked and looked slightly to the right of the blurring image beneath the steeple and could make out the shape of a building, a castle or church perhaps, that looked as if it’d grown from the moss-ridden boulders and jagged rock. He whispered, “Is that where he lives? In the church?”

  The raven said, “Find the giant first. You need each other.”

  Determined to get the hell out of here before the Dragonfly Man came back, Red ran for the mountain where the church waited high on the hill, full of mystery, full of promise.

  The raven squawked in his ear, “You’re a horrible listener.”

  “Thanks,” Red muttered, his breath coming in shallow gasps as his legs moved like pistons and his arms pumped at his sides.

  “You’re going the wrong way.”

  He took a few more steps before slowing, but it hurt to slow because a hot core inside him blazed like fever.

  Red craned his neck and pointed up the hill, feeling as if he were talking to his little sister, Maggie, even though he knew the raven was much more intelligent than any child could ever wish to be. “The giant said that was the way home. And whoever is up there, I’m going to ask them where Mr. Blue is.”

  “That’s a bad idea.”

  Red looked around. “I need some kind of weapon.”

  “You need more than that.”

  “You’re not much help.”

  “We’ve all got our issues.”

  “No kidding.”

  The foothills tired him out, winding higher, growing steeper and slick with what appeared to be blood but Red knew that couldn’t be right, mountains didn’t bleed, not for lost loves, not for anybody.

  He paused to catch his breath and rub his hands together, unsure how he’d ever be able to climb the actual mountain. Snow swirled above him, high in the sky, like a halo around the castle or church. “Nothing can stay the same here for more than five minutes,” Red said. “Can it?”

  The raven laughed. “It’s a meeting of all things, all seasons, all fears. Your imagination gives it power but you need your imagination to get what you want. Quite difficult to find your way when the world trembles at your touch.”

  “That’s impossible. All things can’t exist at the same time.” He studied the sky, felt the wind dig its cold claws into his back, much like the raven’s talons tightening upon his shoulder, as if it wished to steer him toward a certain destiny only it was privy to.

  Red said, “I don’t think I like you much. And I don’t think I trust you.”

  “But you trust the butterfly. She’s your princess. And she is here with us, a passenger on our journey. And I’ve yet to harm her.”

  “Amy isn’t really here. The butterfly is not her. And if you hurt it, I will hurt you.”

  He turned his head and the raven looked so big on his shoulder, so close, and for a moment his stomach clenched again because the bird could so easily steal his eyes.

  He shivered. “Why do you want me to think she’s this butterfly?” He stroked the butterfly’s soft wings. Part of him wanted to believe that it was Amy’s spirit, that they had such an amazing connection after the things they’d been through that they were never really separable, not by worlds or dimensions or time.

  The raven remained quiet. Red’s pants felt loose on his hips from all his recent exertion so he hitched them up, took a deep breath and climbed higher, fingers cold as he kept his body close to the rocks and pulled himself up onto a ledge. He dusted his trousers off
and stared at a dark hole in the face of the rock.

  A cave, he thought.

  He listened for any movement from inside, and not hearing anything threatening, inched closer to the screaming mouth carved into the mountain. The butterfly batted its wings. The raven said, “Sometimes there are back doors, hidden ways, into places like Ash’s Theater.”

  Red nodded, smiling a little, because part of him thought that a hidden entrance was exactly what he’d found.

  He took another few steps as the air shifted, cooled the sweat on his face.

  Storm heads gathered in the sky, blocking the sun, and the first speckles of rain fell.

  “What if there’s something in there?” he said. “Like a bear or lion, or worse?”

  He imagined the Dragonfly Man standing in the darkness, just inside the entrance, forcing itself to keep its many wings still, striving to be patient. He listened a moment longer as the raven grew morose and sang a jilted melody, the rain falling harder, plastering Red’s shirt to his back.

  Standing out here won’t accomplish anything.

  He looked left, then right, and finally up. There were no good handholds and the rock wall grew sheer, intimidating, impossible to climb. Weariness settled into his bones. He fought against it, taking a few breaths of fresh air, allowing the rain to wake him as the storm mounted and the heavens darkened.

  Red grabbed a jagged rock from near the cave’s entrance and held it tightly as he crossed into the blackness.

  Water dripped deep inside the interior, echoing with loud plops from the cavern walls. It reminded him of the funnel hollowed into the earth beneath Mr. Blue’s shed.

  Red whispered, “I will find you.”

  The raven whispered, “It’s dark.”

  “No kidding.” Red stroked the butterfly gently and then peeled the Band-Aid back. A soft blue light burst from the pinhole wounds in his hand that had never healed. It worried him, knowing he’d been infected by Leonora, and yet a lot of time had passed and as far as he could tell he’d not suffered any noticeable illness.