by Lee Thompson
The worry turned to curiosity, but he pushed it away and walked deeper into the cave, his gaze working left and right, waiting for something to pounce from the shadows.
Something scurried across the floor, the noise ricocheting from the stone walls. One minute it seemed as if it were moving toward him and the next minute away.
The raven said, “Stop.”
Red stopped, imagining that he’d walked straight into some horrible creature’s open mouth and that the lips would smack together and deepen the darkness until he was lost to the world he loved, the girl he loved, the future.
He gripped the rock tighter. His eyes strained to penetrate the darkness just beyond the reach of light jetting from the back of his hand. Red said, “What do you see?”
The butterfly curled against Red’s neck.
The raven said, “A multi-armed monstrosity.”
Red held his breath and tried his best not to imagine a multi-armed monstrosity moving silently toward them in the dark.
Okay, he thought.
He backed up slowly, hoping the creature the raven could see was asleep.
Near the entrance, mud sucked at his shoes. He cringed, hating how loud it seemed, hating that he didn’t have anything but a stupid rock, some strange bird, and Amy’s spirit nuzzled up to his neck.
He took another step back and nearly slipped, his shoulders soaked as he moved around the edge of the lip and braced his back against the wall, struggling to catch his breath.
Red waited for the thing inside the cave to peek around the corner at him.
He held the rock up.
The raven slapped its wings as if it wished to fly away but its talons dug burning grooves into Red’s shoulders. He winced against the pain, tears in his eyes. He grabbed it by the throat and squeezed, hissing, “Sit still!”
The mountain itself seemed to tremble as the butterfly crawled up Red’s neck and tickled his ear. A roar built inside the cave, and though Red wanted to make a stand, he saw the future flash before his eyes, having to jump over the side and tumble down the foothills, a couple hundred feet of agony. No. He shook his head and let the raven go. If I take the plunge, it’s going to kill me or hurt me bad enough that the thing in there could just eat on me without having to do any work at all.
More rocks littered the ledge.
He pulled his shirt off and gathered about ten stones roughly the size of his fist and placed them by his feet. The raven said, “You’re not David. This thing is not Goliath.”
Red shrugged.
The raven’s eyes looked so large.
Red said, “I’m not running anymore.”
The butterfly whispered in his ear, its voice the odd sound of lips brushing and leaves caught by the wind, and Red’s heart swelled with love, for all that Amy had done for him, and all he would miss in the future if he didn’t make a stand and find Mr. Blue and return home for good, no more of this slipping back and forth between realities.
“We’re making a stand.”
The raven said, “Here it comes.”
Something clawed at the cavern floor and lights pulsed off the walls—greens and whites and blues, so many mixtures it hurt Red’s eyes. He knelt and grabbed the first wet stone and put it in his shirt sling. “Come on.”
Rock broke and plunked from the roof of the mouth as something dark filled the opening, like a giant slug tearing free of the earth, black eyes shining in its soft skull, its mouth nearly as wide as its body. It screamed, revealing teeth the size of Red’s arm, yellow ooze dripping from the points, body squirming against the opening.
He shuddered and took a deep breath, thanking God that what he’d imagined a few moments ago hadn’t happened.
He swallowed and pulled the sling back and twirled it, thinking, Jesus Christ, this isn’t going to hurt it at all.
He let fly, but the rock flew far to the left and bounced off the mountain’s face.
The giant worm screamed again and it twisted, trying to force its bulbous body through the opening.
Red thought, It must have fed recently, and he shivered as he bent and scooped up another rock, willing his hands to still, to get one accurate sling shot throw before it freed itself and squashed him.
He swung the shirt, feeling the weight of the stone trying to pull it free of his hand. The sluglike creature writhed against the entrance, its body slick with sweaty mucus, and Red let the rock fly, at first believing that it’d puncture the worm’s skin, but it glanced off and plunked against the ground.
The creature stilled, then snapped its jaws. It watched him and Red watched it for a moment, not really thinking anything, just feeling the ground vibrate beneath his feet, the sweat dry against his skin.
He moved forward a few feet, his head cocked, the raven whispering in hushed tones so subdued, as if in prayer, that gooseflesh riddled Red’s back.
Its lips glistened with broken pieces of dragonflies’ wings, blood, and skin.
Red said, “Did you eat him, the Dragonfly Man?”
He waited for the creature to answer, hoping it would tell him, Yes, I devour devourers.
But it stared at him a moment longer before the stillness broke and it thrashed against the cave’s mouth, hundreds of fingers as large as Red’s face squeezing their way between its bulbous body and the rock.
Red stepped back.
The raven said, “We better go.”
“Yeah,” Red said, thinking that with any luck the giant slug had eaten the Dragonfly Man. He headed back the way they came, careful at the lip of the ledge as he lowered his legs over and found his footing. The creature stilled again and they stared at each other until it groaned, sounding disappointed, and wiggled back into the darkness.
Red studied the sheer face of the hillside above him, thinking that if there was only a way to reach the building from here.
The raven said, “The greatest men always knew when to sidestep, if only to circumvent whatever obstacle stood in their way.”
“Will you shut up?”
“I’m only trying to help.”
Red climbed back down. It took him hours or days. His body was exhausted, his hands raw and sore by the time he reached the bottom and set foot on solid ground. He felt like crying again. He almost said, I’m never going to get out of here, but looking up he saw the church jutting from a cloud, mist swirling around it, bright gold threads with strands of red webbing, as if a giant spider worked its magic around the castle to protect it from intruders.
Red said, “What’s happening now?”
The raven cocked its head and said, “Nothing good.”
Six
Red blinked and the world around him shifted and Amy’s dad stunk of sweat and fear.
Red held the piece of mirror out in front of him and said, “Take a look.”
But Mr. Lafond backed up until he bumped into the door of the house; this big drug dealer, this man, looked frightened.
Red said, “Don’t be scared. I only want to show you what the future holds.” He didn’t understand the words coming out of his mouth, but he knew they were true, and though he was scared that something else was working through him, he let it because another truth was that he hated Amy’s dad for making Amy suffer, and he hated her dad for making the world a worse place.
Mr. Lafond held his hands out because they were bleeding, his mouth a gash of surprise and pain, and red drops fell from his fingertips and dotted his shoes.
His face screwed up uglier than normal and Red didn’t understand how such a cruel-looking man could birth something as sweet and beautiful as Amy.
He thought, You hurt her? That it? It’s not your blood at all, is it? It’s never your blood.
Red tensed, the mirror cutting his hand, and they both bled there together on the Lafond porch.
Thinking about Amy made him want to push by her dad and go to her door and knock, voice croaking out, I love you. I have for a while but it scared me. You scare me, because you’re too cool and too smart a
nd I’m just a dumb jackass. But he couldn’t move because Mr. Lafond was crying, shoulders shaking as he dug his elbows into his stomach and held those bleeding hands out, like some modern-day Christ, only he wasn’t anyone’s savior, just another damned soul who’d paved the way to destruction with his own selfishness.
A raven landed in the single stunted tree in the front yard.
Red looked up and down the street to make sure no one was out, no cars were coming either way before he closed the distance between them. He held the mirror in front of Mr. Lafond’s eyes and said, “Everything you’ve done has affected someone. You’ve imprisoned your family. Look into the mirror.”
Amy’s dad sobbed and rubbed his hands over his chest, smearing blood on his shirt.
“Your tears don’t make up for it. And you’re not even crying for anyone else. Just yourself. Look into the mirror, Mr. Lafond. Look into the mirror, you goddamned monster. You aren’t going to be able to hurt anyone after this.”
This strangeness composed of light and darkness built in Red’s chest, his head full of visions that made him want to take that piece of glass and stab Amy’s dad in the throat, but he couldn’t do that, he didn’t have to, because Mr. Lafond was on the path to destroying himself, he already had, and he only had to look to see it.
“Look,” Red ordered him, almost on his toes.
Amy’s dad leaned forward, even though his whole body said he didn’t want to do it.
He gazed into the mirror and Red watched with him as smoke swirled inside the glass and images took shape…
It was Mr. Lafond’s body, sort of. He was fatter, he wore a diaper, a big fat baby, but he had the head of a dragon and his hands were buzz saws and they destroyed everything he touched. Amy sat at the kitchen table with a textbook open in front of her, her face full of concentration as she studied, but she screamed as he moved behind her, and blood hit the walls when he touched her head…She was listening to music in her room, and he came to the door and wood splintered and she cried because everything about him drowned out the song that took her away, drowned her escape. And they were at her mother’s funeral, the poor mother so weak in life and only a tad bit weaker in death, with her eyes open looking at the sky, and then he came to close her eyes, to send her into the cold hard earth, and Amy was old enough to move away, old enough to go to college but she couldn’t because he needed her, she was all he had left. And the police were at the door with their guns and shields and the house filled with smoke and yelling, Amy in her room, crying as they hauled her father away, and they took his stash and the story was in the newspaper, until something else took its place, and then there was only Amy on the outside of the prison walls, not sure how to live her life because her parents never taught her, and there was her father inside the prison walls sick and dying because he kept trying to hang himself with his bedsheets, this man who destroyed his family, trying to get other prisoners to hate him so that someone would stick a shiv in his kidneys and leave him bleeding on the hard cracked concrete of the rec yard, because there was no peace for him in what remained of his life.
Amy’s dad fell to his knees, hands to his chest, his face turning blue.
That’s right, Red thought. Die. Disappear before you can destroy her completely, before you rob her and others of any more of their futures.
With a sputtering last breath, he did, falling to the side with his arms still pressed to his heart. His head bounced off the ground. Red stepped back because he never meant for this to happen. He told himself, No. I meant it. I just didn’t expect it. And he struggled with these conflicting emotions as he turned to look at the road to see if anyone had seen what he’d done, and then back to the house, hoping that…
Amy stood on the threshold, her face paper-white and her gaze went back and forth between her father on the ground and Red standing above him.
She opened and closed her mouth several times, and finally said with a voice much older than a fifteen-year-old, “What happened?”
Red bit his lip and told her the first and last lie he’d ever offer her. “I don’t know. He called me and when I came up to see what he wanted, he fell over.” Red looked down at the corpse, then at the piece of broken mirror in his hand, then back to Amy. “I think he had a heart attack.”
Amy crossed her arms over her chest and he wanted to grab her, pull her close, and tell her that he slayed the dragon, he did it, and those buzz saw hands couldn’t cut into her anymore, there wouldn’t be any wounds tomorrow, or the day after, because her dad was headed to a freezer until they threw him in the ground.
He shook his head, confused for a moment, sickened and unsure why.
Amy touched his shoulder and said, “What really happened, Red? What’s that in your hand?”
Red held it up to show her. “Just a piece of mirror from Mr. Blue’s.”
She studied her father for a moment as if searching for any sign of a wound, gouts of blood spraying a fine mist and turning the lawn red. When she turned back, tears twinkled in her eyes with the sun beating down on them and the wind stirring her hair around her head, and she smelled so good but the wind smelled of death so he grabbed her hand and squeezed.
Amy shook her head. “No, Red. You have to get out of here. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“It was only a heart attack or something.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Her voice cracked. “Don’t fucking lie to me.”
He stared at his feet until she sobbed. Red tried to reach for her again but she stepped away and ran back in the house. He wanted to kick her dad but knew it wouldn’t make him feel any better, it wouldn’t heal whatever had broken inside the girl he loved. He’d done what he could; Mr. Lafond wouldn’t be poisoning anyone with the drugs he sold anymore, he wouldn’t be able to make Amy sell them to the kids at school, and she would be better off.
Red clenched the shard of mirror tighter and winced at Amy crying as she came back out, talking on the phone, her face screwed up with grief, and he shifted his weight, this great monster on his back because he only wanted to save her, but she didn’t look saved, she didn’t look better, happier—she looked devastated, devoured, broken.
He whispered, “I’m sorry.”
He turned away with so much anxiety building inside him that he felt it might split his chest wide open and reveal his black heart to the world. He thought, I was only trying to help. I was only trying to protect her, as he put one foot in front of the other, cold and numb, headed home with the sound of a siren piercing the afternoon stillness and the raven in the tree watching him.
His limbs felt heavy, leaden, exhausted, as he trudged down the shoulder of the M-46, past the park, the bank, and the school, until he cut off into the ditch, weeds tugging at his pant legs, and Red disappeared into the forest beneath the whispering wind.
* * *
The forest he entered wasn’t the one he’d always known but an alien landscape of black rock and two onyx suns. He wiped sweat from his forehead as the butterfly wept on his left shoulder and the raven cawed on his right, saying, “Not good, my boy. Not good.”
Red curled up at the base of a tree and wept as thunder rumbled and the mountain hummed with the chorus of a thousand tortured voices.
Sunlight hit the path beside him in concentrated slivers that he knew could cut right through him because light burned away the darkness. He cried harder.
The raven said, “Your darkest moment might destroy you.”
The butterfly tickled his cheek and all he could think about was Amy coming back out with the phone, her face full of grief that he painted there; it was like he’d taken a knife and gutted her and left her next to her father and he didn’t know how he could make it right, he didn’t know how to fix it. His head felt like it’d burst. He clenched his hands and opened them, unsure where to put them or what to do with himself.
Please God, help me! I’m sorry!
He pulled handfuls of grass free and a tore his shirt, wanting to hurt
himself because he lied to her, he’d let her down.
The raven whispered, “Open your eyes, boy. Find the giant and break his chains.”
Red wiped his eyes. “I don’t know how to find him.” He was glad for the distraction, even though his heart felt shattered and evil and he only wanted to go home. He said, “I just want my mom and dad, and my old life.”
“Every day is a new day,” the raven whispered, its feathers tickling his neck. “A chance for a new and better you. It’s really that simple. It’s all in your attitude, in the perspective you choose, whether from forest, plain or mountaintop.”
“I killed him.”
“Free the giant. Be brave. The girl’s father killed himself, you only showed him what he’s done in his heart, in hers, in the mother’s. Get up.”
He found the strength to stand from somewhere deep inside.
Screams filled the forest. Every voice sounded like Amy’s.
Red scanned around them, searching for the source of the screams.
The raven said, “Trickery, son. Don’t let it get you.”
Her voice pounded inside his head—Don’t lie to me. I like trusting you. I never thought you could hurt me like this... It echoed off the black stone trees, his bones vibrating with it, and for a moment he wanted to lie back down, or find the lake and swim to the bottom and stay there trapped beneath his guilt until his last breath rang a note that ended the song of his short and sad life.
Red closed his eyelids, the raven singing him to sleep, telling him a story that played out in his mind with a lyrical lilt yet rained inside him with the sound of impending destruction...
In this garden, a father sits weeping, his hands bound behind his back, leaning against the fountain where the devils dance beneath the crimson moons, carried by wind from another place, a thing of substance and purpose and intent.
There is a ruined and forsaken city in the forest behind him but he can’t find the strength to stand and cast his gaze upon it, for the children he once loved and the woman who bore them sit upon his throne. It had not been an easy task for them, taking his place of power, or at least it shouldn’t have been, but he’d helped them. He’d given it up for the love of his sister in another world, your mother.