Shine Your Light on Me

by Lee Thompson

  He wanted to ask Jack: Why did she pick you to share herself with? But to ask that was to also ask himself why she hadn’t chosen him, and he couldn’t do that.

  He’d done it from time to time when he drank a little more than he should have, which wasn’t often, but always ended the same way: in a fight with Rebecca. She hadn’t been stupid. She could read the signs well enough and she felt that he was telling her that she lacked something he wanted, something that somebody else had, and it hurt her as much as it made her angry.

  He’d never been able to explain it to her, couldn’t even do so to himself, and he knew he needed to just drop it, stop dreaming about a life with his stepmother, but then again, who could blame him? No one who had seen her could. And there was more to her than her looks. She was good to everyone and for everyone. He envied his father only that one thing, and it was the only thing he wanted outside of hearing his daughter call him Daddy again.

  He said to Jack, “I’ll give you whatever you want. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You’ve done all you can to me. Since then all you’ve been doing is hurting yourself.”

  • • •

  Jack leaned back into his wheelchair. The van’s heater was hot against his shins and hands. The freezing rain smeared the windshield. He could hear the two kids behind him, unable to talk, but breathing heavily. Mitch stared at him for a moment and then nodded. Jack nodded back. He thought, I understand how much you want to see your kid returned to normal. Whatever happened to my boy, he didn’t ask for it either. And maybe they do need each other right now, more than we can understand. But we’re headed for trouble, you and me, friend. And when it comes to a head, these two innocent children are going to be even worse off. We’re shaping their futures as much as we’re shaping ours...

  And with that, he pulled the van into gear. The headlights were pale against the night. The roads were slick. He lived two miles from the bar, down an old side road that had never seen a drop of asphalt. The trees were old there, thick, heavy and dark. When he’d been a boy he’d read and loved Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, and this stretch of road that led to his house had always seemed haunted. Most people thought a haunting was a bad thing, but the older Jack got, the more he thought the living were the ones who needed pity.

  Here one day, but for a moment, toiling for trinkets, brought low by heart attack, a long line of guilt, abandoned hopes. There was a ghost out here, and it watched the cars passing on nights like this, and it mourned for those in the vehicles, and it wished them a release from the constant state of not-knowing.

  Jack thought he saw a shape on the edge of the trees, something like a man, only taller, a scarecrow form with white blazing eyes. But then he realized he was seeing Aiden’s reflection in the windshield. His son was leaning forward between Jack and Mitch, and the kid was crying, just letting it all out, and his face glistened, red with blood, his breath ragged and sporadic.

  Jack reached out and stroked the back of his head and said, “Hang in there, boy. It’s going to be all right. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

  • • •

  Aiden hated this stretch of road. Their house sat back an acre from the packed dirt which blew dust in the summer from passing cars and was like a shaved ice cube in the winter. The forest around their home had always felt endless. And he could sense things in those woods, always could sense them, hungry things, used to dream of them scratching on his bedroom window and had awoken screaming more times than he could count. His dad and mom had been patient, but they hadn’t ever listened to him express his fears. They assumed they were only the result of an overactive imagination. But there was something out there, he was certain, some force that stepped forward tonight and touched him irrevocably. And what was he supposed to do now?

  He released Jessica’s hand. He’d expected her to clasp it again and refuse to let go, but she didn’t, just dropped it against her lap and leaned her head back against the wall of the van and closed her troubled eyes.

  Aiden moved between the seats and looked at Mitch. This man had hurt his father, changed him. And Aiden knew he’d hurt the rest of his family if Aiden couldn’t give him what he wanted soon enough.

  Thing was, he’d give it in a heartbeat, heal Jessica, and then pray that the light never overtook him again, but he had no control over it, didn’t even know what it was, let alone where it came from or how it was triggered.

  The moments up to the incident were steps he had taken thousands of times. He thought it had to be something to do with the storm and those woods. And then he saw his father look at the side of the road and smile. The part Aiden could never tell his parents about his nightmares, the part he had forgotten himself until that very moment, was that his father was in them, and he took young Aiden by the hand and led him to the things in the woods, like an offering, like Abraham and Isaac, a test of his loyalty. There had never been any hesitation. His dad just offered him up to the creatures, the trees bent and dark over them, the robes the monsters wore like wisps of smoke, and they smelled of sulfur, and their voices were unintelligible and like the voices of all the insects in the forest crying out at once.

  And then Aiden was crying and he wanted God, or the creatures he could not name, to take this curse from him. He didn’t want it. He’d never asked for it. It was putting his family at risk. It was making people crazy, thinking he was some kind of messiah that had been hiding in their midst his entire life.

  How stupid could people be?

  He let his tears fall freely, felt his dad touch the back of his neck and promise it would all be all right, his old man wouldn’t let anybody hurt him... But his old man wasn’t even able to protect himself, how was he supposed to fight the government if they came?

  What about people who might risk doing exactly what Mitch was doing, taking him hostage, holding a gun on his father, their desperation driving them to make choices and take actions they would have never taken otherwise?

  His father slowed the van. The wipers struggled to clear the windshield. Aiden could see his reflection in the glass. It wasn’t really his face, not in a million years. All the youth he had known had been sucked from him. His hair had grayed. His mouth was puckered, his brow heavily lined, his eyes blank and vacant. He leaned back, unable to appraise the ghostly image another second, as his dad pulled onto the long driveway and drove back to the house. When he parked the van near the front porch, Aiden found Jessica’s hand again. He squeezed it but she appeared deep inside herself and didn’t respond. He envied her.

  The men up front were silent, each lost in their own thoughts.

  CHAPTER 3

  Aiden’s house had been a nightmare at times and it figured that the demons in the woods wore a familiar face. Mitch carried the gun in his left hand and opened the van’s side door and beckoned his daughter to him, his concern for her soft, but his gaze hard as he looked at Aiden.

  “Your dad is right,” he said, but Aiden didn’t know what he was referring to. “Come on, kid.”

  The hardness of his stare was accompanied by caution, as if he were worried about upsetting Aiden for fear the thing that lived inside him, or the thing that had channeled through him, might lash out at those who threatened or harmed the boy. And Aiden could feel a low, careening buzz in his muscle tissue and an intense heat gathered in his fingertips. He still couldn’t speak, didn’t know if he’d ever be able to again, and didn’t know how he would communicate with others, or even if he’d want to.

  He stared at the sad, cruel man with his hand gripping his daughter’s shoulders and Aiden wanted to escape. There would be too many people just like this, those who no longer saw him as a person but as some sort of other. And he couldn’t blame them. If he was on the outside looking in, how would he have dealt with someone afflicted with an unknown talent that could change the world?

  The shock would wear off. He would not wake up and find the world exactly as it’d always been... And he wondered what
he was supposed to do about it.

  His father unlocked his wheelchair, turned it around, and looked at him. He said, “Your mother isn’t going to know what to make of this any more than we do. But we’re stronger than her, so let’s show it. Chin up, son. Clear eyes. We’ll have to be strong enough to handle whatever happens. Can you do that? Can you try?”

  Aiden nodded. The tips of his fingers tingled again. He pushed up and guided his father out onto the lift and stood next to him on the ramp, cold and wet in the rain and sleet, felt it melting against his feverish skin. He lowered the ramp and pushed his father through the slush and snow and into the garage and up the wheelchair ramp.

  Mitch and Jessica followed, him holding her tight to his side, his coat wrapped around her. Jack opened the door and rolled inside. Aiden heard his mother washing dishes in the kitchen, the radio playing oldies softly. Mitch led Jessica past him and into the house. Aiden fought the impulse to run—he should have, should have jumped back into his father’s van; the keys were always in the ignition. He should have driven the wet, dark roads as far as the gas in the van would take him. But he couldn’t do that to his parents, couldn’t leave them with Mitch, and by extension, Pine. And there was the little girl who he wanted to heal; only he didn’t know how to ignite that light inside him again.

  He heard his mother’s voice above the din of the wind picking up, the rain pelting the driveway and flowing from the eves. Then he heard his father’s voice, nearly gentle, explaining what had happened at the bar, to her son, through her son, and how it had affected all the others there.

  She called Aiden’s name. The urge to flee nearly overpowered him, but he fought it for a moment, worrying his mom would look at him differently. But he’d always heard a mother will love her son regardless of what kind of trouble he found himself in, and it wasn’t like he was a mass murderer; he’d done something amazing, yet how could she not look at him as if she’d never know him at all? And he couldn’t explain what it was like, the strange, constant buzz in his muscle tissue and bones, the sharpness of his hearing, the thing inside him acting like it wanted to get out again and Aiden afraid that the more often and intensely it happened the greater the chances it would kill him.

  And it was taking something from him as it gave to others, he had felt it. He thought, I’m going to die because of this, maybe in a month, maybe a week, maybe tonight...

  What could he do about it?

  And then she was there in the hall, ten feet away. His mother was a thick woman with streaks of gray in her shoulder-length black hair. Her eyes were hard and skeptical, her lips pale and half closed as if she were scrutinizing everything about him. She did not rush forward and wrap her arms around him like she would have when he’d been younger, and like he wished she’d do despite his age now, she just stood there like Lot’s wife, frozen in that moment. Appraising him, suspecting, maybe, that what her husband had told her was true, working out the possibilities of what it might all mean.

  The theatrical kid he’d been before his father’s crucifixion seemed like a time of innocence and fun he’d never reclaim. And she had aged and hardened as well these past few months. Her voice was soft. “Is it true? What your dad said?”

  Aiden shrugged. He wanted her to close the distance between them, for her to see that he was still himself...

  He raised his arms to her.

  Her mouth opened. Her eyes grew wider. He could tell she was frightened; it was like he’d lifted a gun and pointed it at her. Seeing her fear over him made him angry. He’d never given her reason for alarm; he wasn’t a freak or a monster. He thought if anything, she was as different, as suddenly, as he’d become.

  He rubbed his eyes and when he looked up she was headed deeper into the house.

  He hesitated a moment, with his tears burning his cheeks, and then he followed her.

  His dad was sitting at the dining room table facing the living room. Mitch and Jessica were on the couch. She was tucked tight to his side like a growth and looking around the room she’d never seen before, and that Aiden was seeing with fresh eyes, and he wondered how the poor kid felt when she knew other people still had their moms.

  He sat next to her, uncertain how he could offer her any comfort. He had no toys a little girl would like; he couldn’t joke around like he would have before and make her laugh. The air in the house was stifling but everyone still wore their jackets like armor.

  His mom stood over them. “How long do you think you’re going to stay here?”

  Aiden thought she was talking to him. He opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t feel his tongue, and even if he could have, no words would have issued from his throat.

  Mitch said, “A day. A month. A year. Whatever it takes. Jessica will remain with Aiden at all times. When he flips the switch again we’ll be out of your hair.”

  She looked at the little girl for a moment, too long, almost aggressively, and Jessica buried her face into her dad’s arm. Mitch said, “There’s no reason to scare her. Relax.”

  She walked into the dining room, and Aiden heard his dad say, “I know.”

  Mitch turned to him and said, “Go grab extra blankets and pillows.”

  But they didn’t have any. They never had guests, especially not ones who came to make their home a prison. He heard the phone ring, heard his mother answer it in an irritated tone. A few seconds later she came in and said, “It’s Emmy. If you can’t speak then I don’t see the point of her calling, do you?”

  Aiden wanted to hear her voice. He pushed up from the couch quickly and stumbled into the kitchen. The phone was on the counter. He breathed heavily to let her know he was on the line. She said, “Aiden?”

  He tapped the casing by the mouthpiece with his fingernail. Her voice sounded broken, and he could tell that she’d been crying. She said, “I know you can’t answer me. I just wanted to let you know that I’m worried about you. My family is talking, everybody is talking...”

  About me, he thought. I know. I know. And they’re going to take me from you and from my family, somebody is, and it won’t matter to them whether I want to go or not. The only thing that will matter is what they can take from me...

  She said, “I love you, and I wish I could be there but my dad won’t let me leave the house right now, you know? He says he doesn’t want me around you right now until everyone knows what’s going on. I’d be there if I could, but, you know, I can’t. Not until he’s okay with it. And then all of my friends are calling...” she sighed. “Don’t listen to what people say. What you did there, it doesn’t matter how you did it, it was incredible and it was beautiful, and I’m going to be here as you go through it. If we can find a place to meet where nobody can bother us, that might work, don’t you think? It couldn’t be for too long, but we’d get to see each other, and maybe you need a shoulder to cry on, right? How are your parents handling it?”

  We could meet at the water tower, he thought. He even mouthed it, silently. He tried screaming it but only produced a burning in his throat and the tingle crackling like a steady current of bare electric wire through his breastbone.

  “I have to go,” she said. “We’ll figure something out. I think Elroy is going to come to your house. He could be like our go-between. I mean, we could tell him he’s like a spy or something, he’d love that.” She laughed, but it sounded weak.

  He thought: I love you. I didn’t realize how much before. But stay away, because I don’t want anybody to hurt you.

  “I love you, Aiden. Write a message for Elroy and he’ll bring it to me. Goodbye.”

  After she hung up, he turned around and saw Mitch standing in the doorway of the kitchen. He said, “How do you feel?”

  Aiden set the phone back on the receiver and walked stiffly to the small table his mother used when cooking. There was a notepad and pen there. He pointed for Mitch to sit across from him. Mitch did and looked at the pen and paper. He said, “Write down exactly what happened before the miracle.”

 
Aiden wrote in tiny, neat script: No.

  He turned the pad to Mitch, who read it and shook his head. He frowned and then said, “You don’t know what happened, do you? Not a clue?”

  Aiden pointed at the word he’d written.

  Mitch nodded and looked around the kitchen. He said, “Can I tell you a secret?”

  Aiden wiped his forehead. His fever seemed worse. His sharp hearing seemed muffled, as if someone had dunked him underwater and held him there. He fought for breath. He thought the thing was going to manifest itself again, but Mitch started talking.

  • • •

  Jack was surprised when Mitch came into the dining room and asked him to watch Jessica for a minute while he talked to Aiden in the kitchen. There was a humbleness there, almost as if he were asking a favor he didn’t want to ask. Jack said, “You ask a lot of a man.”

  “No more than anyone else does.”

  “I think you got your wiring crossed.”

  “Will you watch her for a minute?”

  “Sure, but don’t put too much pressure on my son. He means to me what your little girl means to you.”

  Mitch nodded. He went into the kitchen. Jack pushed himself into the living room. Jessica was sitting on the couch with her eyes closed, and for a second he suspected she’d fallen asleep, but then one of her lids opened slightly and he smiled at her. She was a cute kid. He wheeled over by the coffee table and said, “Are you doing okay?”

  She looked beyond him, for her father, and then back at Jack.

  He said, “He’ll be right back. Are you thirsty? Want anything to drink?”

  She shook her head.

  “Have anything you want to say to me?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay.”

  She looked at his wheelchair. Jack wondered if she knew her father had put him in it. He doubted it, but children were usually more observant than the adults in their lives gave them credit for, especially those around Jessica’s age. Her eyes were wide and clear. He said, “It’s not as bad as you’d think, being trapped in this thing. People leave you alone for the most part. You like being left alone, too, don’t you?”