Into the Darkness

by Andrews, V. C.

  More curious than ever, I decided that I had to go upstairs. First, I called for Brayden again, just in case he had been in the bathroom or in his room and hadn’t heard me knock or enter. There was still only silence. I began to ascend very slowly, listening keenly for any sound. I did feel terribly guilty about entering the Matthewses’ house when no one was there and snooping like this, but my curiosity was just too strong. It was like a magnet drawing me up those creaking stairs.

  I paused at the top and turned to what I knew had to be Brayden’s bedroom. Without any lights, the shade drawn closed on the only hallway window, and all of the doors closed, it was as dark as night. Nevertheless, I went forward and paused at Brayden’s bedroom door. I knocked.

  “Brayden? Are you in there? I’ve been calling.”

  I waited but heard nothing except the sound of what I thought to be a stronger breeze crossing the roof of the house and sliding along the windows and rain gutters. It sounded like some giant blowing out his birthday candles. After a moment more, I opened the door of Brayden’s bedroom. His shade was drawn down, but there was enough light leaking in around it to give me a view of the room. I stepped in and slid my hand up the right side of the wall, looking for a light switch. There was none there, nor was there one on the left side. I realized that there was no ceiling fixture in the room. Any illumination would have to come from the two lamps on the night tables beside the double bed, which was neatly made, the pillows looking untouched. I stared at it for a moment, then reached under the lampshade of the closest lamp and turned it on.

  I saw that he had a matching dresser and a computer desk. Unlike the furniture downstairs, his furniture looked too large for the size of his room, but what impressed me the most about his room was how neat and organized it was. Over on a computer desk was a closed laptop. Next to it was a pad with a pen beside it. I could see that there was nothing written on the pad. On the wall above it were some achievement awards, each from a different school. To the right of the table were three wall shelves all filled with books. I went around the bed, saw a pair of slippers on the floor, and turned on the lamp on that side, too. Now that the room was better lit, I could see that unlike the rooms downstairs, it looked cleaned and polished. Nothing had been left packed. I stepped up to the bookshelves and perused the titles.

  There were books on philosophy, economics, and history, and many classic novels and plays. He wasn’t exaggerating about his reading habits and accomplishments, I thought. My eyes went to the dresser. Finally, there was a picture in this house. I looked at it closely. It was a picture of Brayden when he was much younger, maybe ten or eleven. He was standing with two people I assumed were his parents. His mother was a very attractive woman and not anywhere as thin as she was now. She had a beautiful figure, shoulder-length dark hair, and a soft smile that radiated her beauty and intelligence. His father looked much like the man I had glimpsed that first day. He wasn’t even smiling. I saw that Brayden held only his mother’s hand. His father looked impatient, probably wishing that the photographer would speed up.

  I recognized the background. They were in Rome at the foot of what was known as the Spanish Steps. I put the picture frame down and looked at the windows that had their shades down. I wanted to peek out and see what the view of my bedroom window was like from his. I had left my curtains open, and despite the difference in the height between our two houses, there was a good view of most of my room. I tried to imagine Brayden watching me at night. Then I turned and looked at the rest of his room. The closet door was slightly open, so I peered in at his clothes. They were all hung neatly and organized. I remembered what he had told me about that military-style shirt he always wore, how he had many of the same one, but I didn’t see any hanging in his closet.

  It was terribly snoopy of me, I know, but I looked into his dresser drawers, too. Everything was folded neatly in them, but again, I didn’t see another military-style shirt.

  I looked into his closet again and saw a box on the floor next to where his shoes were. All of his shoes looked polished, his sneakers clean. I knelt down and lifted the top of the box and saw all sorts of mementos from places he and his family had gone. There were postcards, brochures, and some maps. I found an album in which there were many pictures of their trips. Turning the pages was like reviewing his aging from an infant to a teenager. It was that well organized. Most of the backgrounds were recognizably famous world sites, such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Trafalgar Square in London, and the Vatican in Rome. I put it all back the way I had found it, turned off the lamps, and left his bedroom. I was going to leave the house but decided instead to look in on what was surely his parents’ bedroom, the bigger one.

  The furniture there looked more as if it belonged. Nothing was too small or too large for the space. There was a king-size dark maple bed with matching night tables and two dressers. I imagined that one was for his father, one for his mother. If it was anything like the dressers for my parents, his mother’s was the larger one. Dad was always complaining about how little space he had in his own house.

  What struck me immediately about his parents’ room, however, was the lack of any pictures of them. There was no wedding picture, no picture of them at any party or even on any trip. Instead, there were at least a dozen pictures of Brayden. They were everywhere possible, two on the walls, four on the top of each dresser, and two on the night tables. I knew that most parents who had only one child doted on that child, but this looked over the top to me. I couldn’t imagine him not being embarrassed if anyone looked in and saw how he was almost idolized.

  I thought that I would leave quickly now, but when I stepped out of the master bedroom, I looked at the short stairway that must lead up to the attic, his mother’s art studio. Did I dare? He had said that the clinic she had gone to was closer to Portland. He couldn’t go there and be back this soon. He was probably not even there yet. I could safely sneak a look at her work, I thought, and headed for the attic stairway.

  This was the darkest part of the house. There weren’t many steps to the stairway, but I could barely see them. When I reached the door, I took a deep breath and opened it. The window shades had been drawn closed up there, too, but again, there was enough light leaking in around them to help me navigate into the attic. Here there was a ceiling light fixture. I found the switch and turned it on. The illumination seemed to cascade down over the easel upon which was the most shocking painting I had ever seen, shocking because it was clearly a portrait of Brayden, but everything about him was distorted. It was as if she meant to depict his face on a raindrop. The shape of it was elongated in places and widened in others. His eyes looked as if they were spilling out of their sockets and running down his cheeks. His cheeks were porous, the skin looking magnified so that each and every pore was clearly seen. His nose was shaped strangely so that it seemed to be riding on a wave, and his mouth, wide open, was cavernous and dark like the inside of a pipe. She had done the head, but the neck was still in a drawing stage, and it, too, looked like liquid, spilling out from under his chin and jawbone.

  I actually gasped and stepped back.

  Why would his mother create such a distorted, horrible picture of him?

  Was this evidence of her mental problems? Was this what he meant when he’d said she’d changed her style lately?

  It looked nothing like the artwork credited to her on the Internet. How could Brayden watch her paint such a version of him and not complain? Was he afraid that it would make her worse if he did? Could he possibly tell her it looked good? This picture belonged in someone’s nightmare and not in any frame on any wall in any house, much less theirs.

  I glanced at the paintings covered with a gray sheet on the floor. Did I want to lift that sheet and see any more of her grotesque work, the babbling of a disturbed mind? No, thank you, I thought. The portrait of Brayden was enough to guarantee a nice nightmare that night. I practically fled the attic. I was halfway down the stairs when I realized that I hadn’t turned o
ff the light. Reluctantly, I turned around and hurried back up. I reached for the light switch but stopped.

  Was my mind playing tricks on me?

  The bizarre portrait of Brayden looked different. The right eye looked as if it had poured farther down the right cheek. I stood there staring at it and then, as quickly as I could, switched off the light and left the attic, this time making sure to close the door. I left the house as if I were being pursued and ran back to mine. Once I was inside, I felt silly. There was no one chasing me. Why was I running?

  I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and then returned to the living room and looked out toward Brayden’s house. I would not tell him what I had done. He might get very upset. I wouldn’t tell my parents, either. First, they would be angry that I had entered and explored someone else’s home like that, and second, once they heard what I had discovered in the attic, they would surely want me to stay away from Brayden and the Matthewses.

  I sat thinking. What had come over me? I would not like it very much if someone had done what I had done and gone through my things the way I had gone through Brayden’s. I never did anything like this. I tried rationalizing away my guilt by telling myself that I never would have done it if he wasn’t so damn secretive. And anyway, I’d had good intentions. I had gone over there to volunteer to go with him. Stop beating on yourself, I told myself. The best thing to do was to try to forget it. I decided that I would go into town and stop at the store after all. The truth was, after what I had seen, I wanted to be around my family.

  I started on my walk, looking back twice because I felt as if I were being followed. When my gaze went to Brayden’s house, I saw that a window shade in his parents’ bedroom was up. I hadn’t done that, and I was almost positive that all of the shades had been drawn, the curtains closed. I stared at it for a moment and then continued walking, only much faster. I was halfway to the store when Charlotte and Ellie pulled up to the curb. I was almost glad to see them, as silly as I knew they could be.

  “Well, her walk hasn’t changed,” Charlotte told Ellie.

  “I don’t know. Don’t you think she leans back a little more than usual?”

  The two laughed.

  “All right, Laurel and Hardy, what’s this about now?”

  “Laurel and Hardy?” Ellie said.

  “They were a big comedy team in the movies once.”

  “When? I’ve watched television since I was old enough to sit by myself,” Charlotte said. “And I never heard of them.”

  “Right after the Treaty of Ghent.”

  “What?”

  “Forget Laurel and Hardy. What’s the joke?” I looked at Ellie. She had that self-satisfied grin embedded in her face, the one that I knew usually accompanied juicy gossip.

  “Cell phones are buzzing thanks to Wendi Allan.”

  “About what?”

  “About walking in on you and Shayne in the guest room in their house at the lake yesterday. Did you know he makes notches in his jockstrap?” Charlotte laughed. “You’re a notch in a jockstrap.”

  I felt the flush come into my face. “She’s lying,” I said. “That didn’t happen. I just used the guest room to change and . . .”

  “I heard he’s already confirmed it,” Charlotte added. She looked at Ellie. “Tell her.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “He told Bobby, who told me this morning.”

  “He’s lying, too. He’s just angry because I wouldn’t go to a house party with him last night.”

  “You’ll need a letter from a gynecologist,” Charlotte said. “You can carry it in your purse and flash it whenever anyone says you’re no longer a virgin.”

  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “She’s just quoting some old movie,” Ellie said.

  “Gone With the Wind. Gone With the Wind. That’s not just some old movie,” I said, and imagined my father standing beside me and smiling. “I don’t care what Shayne and his evil brat sister tell people. They’re both lying.”

  “You know what he’ll do next, don’t you? He’ll claim you were a disaster in bed, and that was why he left you. He did that to Donna Parks, remember?” Charlotte asked Ellie, who nodded. “You’d better come up with some good stories about him.”

  “No one would believe her,” Ellie said quickly. “Not about Shayne. So, what really happened? Were you a perfect Prudence Perfect or what?”

  “Well, let’s see,” I said, putting my hand on my hip and pretending to recall. “I tried to talk to him, but he could only hear his own voice. I tried to kiss him, but he had his lips pressed to a mirror. I reached for his hand, but he was holding his own, and when he realized I had been with him for more than an hour, I had to remind him who I was. Otherwise, it was a Prudence Perfect date.”

  “Sour grapes,” Charlotte quipped, but Ellie just stared at me.

  “C’mon. What really happened, Amber?” she asked. “Why did you mess up your date with Shayne? You decided you’d rather be with your new neighbor? Is that it?” She turned to Charlotte. “She was planning on seeing them both.”

  “Both? I want to see this new neighbor. He compares with Shayne? Maybe I should have another party.”

  “After all that happened, your parents would let you?” I asked, astounded.

  She laughed. “They’ll go away again.”

  “Right. Easy come, easy go. Which reminds me. I have to go to the store. Please do your best to defend my honor,” I told them. “I’d do it for you two, especially you, Charlotte, although I think you’d want it the opposite way, right? You’d want to be that notch in a jockstrap. Almost any one,” I added, and walked away. I could feel the shock on their faces splashing against my back.

  I swear, I felt as if Brayden were walking right beside me and smiling.

  12

  Shadows

  My mother was surprised to see me, but if she was upset about it, she didn’t show it, not that she would have when we were in the store.

  “Guess who came in for a new bracelet this morning?” she told me. “Shayne’s mother.”

  “Right,” Dad called to me from behind his worktable in the rear. “I figure if you go out with ten different boys this year, I’ll sell ten different bracelets.”

  “Stop it, Gregory. Where are you going, honey?” she asked. I realized that her smile indicated that she was anticipating that I had something planned to do with friends.

  “Nowhere special,” I said. “I just decided to take a walk to town and stop by.”

  Mrs. Williams was with a customer on the other end of the store in front of the ring display, but I could see that she was listening to our conversation, too. Maybe she was afraid I would return to work on the weekends and she would lose her part-time position. Mom’s eyes darkened. There was no sense even trying to hide my unhappiness from her. I glanced at Mrs. Williams again, and then I turned and walked a little farther away. Mom followed.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Brayden’s mother took ill.”

  “Ill? Is she in the hospital?”

  “No. It’s more of a nervous breakdown, I think. She checked herself into a clinic. Brayden’s father apparently had set something up in the event of something like this happening.”

  “Clinic? What clinic?”

  “I don’t know the name of it. Just some place closer to Portland. He looked so sad and overwhelmed when he came over this morning to tell me. I felt so sorry for him, just having moved here and all. I’m sure I’m the only one he knows, especially with his mother being the way she is.”

  “Well, maybe now you can invite him to our house to dinner. He can eat with us every night if he wants until his mother can come home.”

  “No, he came over to tell me he would be gone for a while.”

  “Oh. You mean he’ll be with his father?”

  “He just said he had to stay close to his mother. Maybe there’s a place for relatives at the clini
c or something nearby, or maybe his father set something up in a motel for him. He didn’t say, exactly. He just said he had to be with her, near her.”

  She nodded. “Well, he sounds like a very devoted and mature young man. I look forward to meeting him as soon as he and his mother do return. I am sorry we have ignored them until now. Not very neighborly of us and not like us.”

  Seeing how sympathetic my mother was, I was tempted to tell her what I had done, how I had gone into Brayden’s house and gone through it and up to the attic, and what I had seen. I wanted her to understand how seriously ill Brayden’s mother really was. I was thinking now that she would be even more sympathetic, and, contrary to what I had feared, she would not be upset about my seeing him.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” she said as two more customers entered the store before I could say anything about what I had done. I started to go to help her, but she waved me off. “You’ve still got the rest of your weekend to enjoy, Amber. Go on,” she said firmly. “We’re doing fine.”

  I looked at Mrs. Williams, who had finished with her customer and, with a much more comfortable expression on her face, was moving to help Mom. I nodded at her and left the store. Our village was busy. The traffic was much heavier than usual, and the bells on the shop doors were ringing so much it sounded as if Christmas had come in July. I suppose with the added business, other store owners, like us, felt it was like Christmas.

  For a few moments, I stood on the sidewalk looking in both directions. Now that my short, bittersweet romance with Shayne Allan was over almost before it had begun, and Brayden was gone for I didn’t know how long, and I wasn’t working with my parents, it occurred to me how much of a loner I had become. My choices looked so limited. I could repress my intelligence and wallow through the day with Ellie and Charlotte and other girls like them, doing inane things and swimming in the gossip that would most assuredly center on my aborted relationship with Shayne, or I could take a ride myself, maybe go to the mall and look at some new things for myself. But shopping alone was never satisfying for me. I thought about calling someone, but then I thought that it was just the wrong time to seek out classmates to do anything. I was confident that there would be quite a few girls who would go somewhere with me, but it would be primarily to pick up some erotic, smutty little detail they could exploit.