The Fallen Boys

by Aaron Dries

  Marshall watched them stare each other down, their breathing synced together, inhaling each other’s air. He could see the resemblance in their lanky frames, their broad shoulders and narrow hips. They had similar brow lines. And of course, the same eyes.

  “You going to go, Sam, or are you going to lie there, wrigglin’ about like a white maggot?” said the father, who seemed to be taking delight in his power. His face was more animated than ever—even more so than during the kidnapping. It was plain to see that nothing pleased the man more than belittling his youngster. “Sam, you white maggot.”

  Sam.

  His name is Sam. It sounded so simple, so innocent. Marshall swallowed hard. He wanted to say the name, to give the boy some courage—

  (You’re not the only one trapped here. We can make it. God, I hope so—)

  —but he was too scared. The moment he spoke out loud was the moment he challenged the father’s word, and if he did that there was no telling what the man might do.

  It might be a mercy, said a small, nasty voice inside Marshall’s head. He might make it quick.

  The boy backed up the stairs. Halfway up the flight, he turned around and ran, slamming the door behind him. He left his crumpled shirt atop the flag.

  Marshall watched the man right himself, brushing dust off his kneecaps. He ran those thick fingers through his hair. His mannerisms indicated that what he had just done was of little insignificance, or out of the norm.

  The man turned to Marshall and smiled, shrugging. “Kids,” he said and laughed, as though his captor knew all about such discipline. Marshall hated him most for that—more than anything else, involving him in his motivation was the most criminal of all his acts.

  “Little pussy shits. That’s all they are,” he said as he lumbered towards him. The man’s swagger and casual way of talking was unnerving. Like a man without a care in the world, Marshall thought. A shiver ran through him, delighting the twitch in his back.

  “Can’t even spoon feed a stranger,” continued the man. “White maggot.” He nudged the shattered bowl and its contents with a dismissive kick.

  The man smiled, transforming his face into a network of wrinkles and deep lines. He looked as though carved from wood and just as hard. He stood before Marshall, bathed in color and looked at him with the same curiosity his son had. “Give me a second,” he said.

  Marshall watched him go behind the stairs again and return with a faded lawn chair. He opened it and dust rained over the concrete. The man lowered himself down into it, sighing as he sat. The old chair let out a whine.

  “I’ll get the boy to bring you more food.” His intonations were smooth—almost hypnotic, and yet beneath it all was a harshness that made Marshall want to hurl. “But not until later.”

  Is that a slight Southern lilt? Marshall wondered. There was something about his accent which didn’t fit with those he’d heard in town, but he had no idea of how to place it. The thought slipped away.

  “I’m going to tell you things you’re not going to like,” the man said, stroking his chin. “They may frighten you and for that, well, I’m sorry.” He threw up his hands in a “can't help you there, buddy”, kind of gesture, and then cleared his throat. “The name’s Guy Napier. I’d put out my hand and shake yours if you…well, you know.”

  That smile again, the lines in his face.

  “And I want to shake your hand. Even though you might not believe me; and boy howdy, from the look on your face, you don’t. But it’d better for you to believe, Marshall Deakins.”

  He knows my name. Marshall blinked.

  “You are going to die down here.”

  Marshall said nothing. The words glazed over him like the shadows of clouds.

  “I know all about you, and it seems only fair that you know who I am. See, I’m a fair man, Marshall Deakins.” He seemed to say the name with a degree of relish. “Secondly, I want to say thank-you because you’ve been brought here to help me on my mission. I guess that there word fits just as good as any other. My mission. Now, I know you didn’t ask to be a part of The Forgiveness, but nonetheless, here we are. And for that I’m grateful; in fact, you’ll never quite understand just how grateful I am.”

  The pipes in the walls began to groan. Something scurried in the shadows.

  “I’m sure you’re curious about what all this means. Some of it we’ll get to later. Some will be evident; as plain as the nose on our faces. But because I’m a fair man, I’ll tell you a part of it. And then I’ll give you a demonstration, so you’ll know what I’m spouting is true.

  “Marshall, you’re a part of a great event. The Forgiveness. And I’m its creator. You’re my sacrifice. You’re not the first and, well, I’m a-hopin’ you’re not my last, either! Ha. Who can tell with these things? But I’m gonna treat you as though you are the last. I’ll treat you with a special hand.

  “I’ve got to admit, Marshall, you came to me unexpectedly. Boy howdy. I fantasized about your arrival but I never thought it’d happen; not like this. But we can talk about that later. I’m sure there are things you’ll want know, and as I’m a fair man, I’ll tell you. Even though some of those things you won’t want hear. I imagine some of it’ll be painful. But then again, that’s the point.”

  Napier smiled at him for ten seconds. He was nothing but teeth and lines, one hand touching his chest, toying with his singlet top.

  “Your purpose here is to feel pain. You’re going scream, just like the others screamed. He will hear you.”

  Napier drummed his fingers on his kneecap. He closed his eyes and ground his teeth together. A pause, and then Marshall watched him go limp in the chair. When Napier began speaking again, his eyes remained shut, his head tilted towards the ceiling.

  “God has turned His back on me and forgotten my name. You are here to scream. He can ignore me, but he can’t ignore you. You are bringing me closer to Him.”

  Marshall sat, unblinking. Numb. He watched Napier pull himself out of the lawn chair, fold it up and lay it against the wall, all with a cool detachment. He then crossed the room and approached one of the mattresses to the left of the stairs—not far from where Sam had cowered.

  Napier reached up and took the mattress in his hands and shuffled it to his right, the barbed wire at its top pulling taut. A shard of stained glass fell from the wall and shattered against the concrete.

  Revealed was a door.

  Marshall tried to swallow but found it impossible. His thirst was unfathomable. He didn’t think he even had the water to sweat anymore.

  Napier looked so tall and ungainly with his hunched neck and pot-belly stretching the stained front of his white singlet top. He smiled at Marshall from across the room as he pushed on the door. It swung inwards, a dust-cloud catching in the purple light.

  Napier cracked his knuckles and began to sing. “‘And it breaks me, it breaks me, it breaks me to say, time’s put the end in my Endsville, a steak in the heart of the USA…’”

  He stepped into the second room, leaving Marshall alone in the basement.

  The house groaned in the wind. The barbed wire continued to quiver against the mattresses.

  All was silent until Napier re-emerged through the doorway, walking backwards, his body bent over something. He continued with his singing.

  “‘…Where the sick and the sad have drawn up next door. My old street ain’t a street no more. Just a place for the mad to live without law…’”

  Guy pulled a wheelchair over the threshold of the second door. It snagged against the frame and he fought to dislodge it. The handles were wrapped in Scotch tape and the Queen of Hearts was snapped to the wheel frame with a wooden peg—it flicked against the spokes.

  Chi-chi-chi-chi-chi.

  “‘…I’m waltzing with the wrecking ball, ’cause this ain’t my home anymore…’”

  Marshall grew pale as Napier spun the wheelchair around with such an abrupt flick of the wrists that the card came loose and fluttered to the floor. It landed face
down. The basement filled with the stink of unwashed skin and excrement.

  It was almost impossible to tell his age, yet the full head of hair and the sculpture of his muscles led Marshall to believe he was in his early twenties. But the naked man tied to the wheelchair looked far older. His skin was dead grey, punctuated by a spectrum of bruises ranging from purple to green. The right arm ended in a blackened stump, the bone burnt black from makeshift cauterization. Knives of varying size stuck out of his chest at odd angles and they moved in a syncopated fashion with every long, labored breath. The man’s lips had been cut off and two teeth ripped out, leaving behind fluttering strings of flesh. A rusted nail protruded out from his upper gum, the flat end rubbing the rim of his nostril raw. His nipples, eyelids and foreskin were gone and looked to have been cut off in impulsive, inarticulate slashes. Strings of staples outlined jigsaw pieces across his stomach and thighs. Around his head he wore a crown of barbed wire, his face red from all the spilled blood.

  Marshall saw all this.

  Marshall saw none of this.

  These were random images projected in front of his eyes like a soundless, emotionless film.

  “Like I mentioned before,” Napier began, “we weren’t expecting you. We still hadn’t finished with this young fella here. I thought you’d like to meet him. His name’s Brian. He’s twenty-two. Oh, to be that age again!”

  Twenty-two. The age registered somewhere in Marshall’s brain.

  “We picked Brian up just under a week ago, late at night, at a bridge not too far from here; a young-lovers-necking-spot. Almost got his little girl, too; a Jap. They let anyone into this country. But she got away, didn’t she, Brian? Ran like a rat up a water pipe. Poof and gone! And come to think of it, was it a week ago? Maybe it was less than that… Time gets all funny down here in the basement, doesn’t it, Brian? I’m sorry, Marshall; Brian’s not all that chatty no more, but I think that might be because I cut out his tongue. I ate it afterwards. ’Twas bittah.”

  Napier smiled, his face folding into its hundred lines until it looked like a well-worn road map; and each wrinkle, each varicose vein a route down which people travelled and never returned. Guy’s face was a dead end. It swallowed people up—it cut stories short, stole futures. His face was a widow-maker.

  The eyes burned black again, soaking up the dark from the room.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Napier said as he bounced to the foot of the stairs. “I’ll be right back. Don’t you two go running off, or anythin’, you hear?”

  And with that, the man with a road map for a face left the basement.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Brian no longer knew what it was like to live without pain, or to process rational thought. He could remember times—some not so long ago—when he was happy and prideful. But those times were gone and whatever memories were clinking around in his head like the remaining pennies in a piggy bank, were slipping away.

  He faded in and out of consciousness without will or want; his nervous system sometimes showing him a form of mercy that The Man would not. There were times when he blacked out when things got nasty. And there were times when he was awake.

  Awake and living through what no person should live through.

  Feeling, watching, smelling himself coming undone. Being torn apart. Reconfigured into something hateful. Monstrous.

  Brian had read about old people in nursing homes begging for enough morphine to put them asleep forever—and had never understood why someone would choose to die. No matter how bad things got, they could always get worse; death was never the answer. He no longer believed this. The pain was like cancer, consuming him up, with whatever had once been his fading away.

  And what was left behind?

  Brian didn’t want to know—to know was to acknowledge what had happened and he didn’t have the energy, or the cognitive strength to do that. All of his power went into breathing, into willing those periods of merciful blackness into being.

  Brian was blind in one eye and what little he could see, was seen through a milky haze. It reminded him of fog, which in turn, reminded him of home, of North Bend. Fog banks and mist in the evening were just some of many small triggers that sent his mind caterwauling back into his childhood.

  Hide and go seek.

  Murder in the dark.

  Playing with his brothers, with his friends. Playing with Jenn.

  Jenn. He could still see her through the haze. He could see her brown, Japanese eyes. Her smile. She was wearing her oversized hoodie, obscuring her body. Brian hated that she did that. She was such a hottie. He’d seen the cleft of her breasts one afternoon after playing tennis on his Wii system. It had turned him on, and that night when he’d jerked off, he’d thought of her.

  Only he knew he wasn’t supposed to think of Jenn that way. That had been the deal between them. Sex messed up everything—just look at the couples they knew! None of them seemed happy. Well, not really.

  Jenn.

  He hoped she’d gotten away. The thought of her down there in the basement with him, or in one of the upstairs rooms made him want to scream. But he couldn’t scream. Screaming took energy. It took courage.

  He was drained of both.

  Brian had no more tears left in him, either. He was drained of water, too. He’d pissed his last piss, shat his last shit. Vomiting had been futile, but his body enforced the desperate act upon him, as though it were an ill-aimed exorcism, leaving the real demons to run free. To continue tearing. Biting. Cutting. Burning.

  There was so much pain he couldn’t tell it from pleasure.

  His smiles looked like scowls. His moans of agony were indistinguishable from the noises he made when he felt the darkness sweeping in, and he was thankful. Everything had become uniform. He was a snake that had been fed its own tail, and now he had no choice but to continue eating. ’Round and ’round the pain went, swallowing and defecating, defecating and swallowing, until it grew fat and placid.

  That was where he was almost at now. Placid.

  Almost at peace.

  Only he didn’t really know it.

  Brian could sense that he’d been moved from the second room and back into the primary part of the basement. He hated that place. That chamber, as he came to think of it. The torture chamber; the place where The Man had done his work. The room reminded him of pictures he’d seen in school of bombed Krakow churches, the ceilings caved in and the pews draped in gutted worshippers. Brian had never been a good student, but history had interested him. Only he didn’t show it. He wished he had now.

  He hoped he would be remembered.

  Are my parents looking for me? he wondered so many times, down there in the basement, down there in the dark, whilst he sat bleeding, his body searing with pain. He hoped so.

  Where’s Jenn?

  I want Jenn.

  Yes, Brian hoped he was remembered.

  He felt a surge of consciousness and saw the hazed room. There must be a mirror in here, he thought. I can see myself sitting there, strapped to my chair. I can’t see my face, but I can tell it’s me by the way I’m breathing. Fast. As though I’m scared.

  I’m always scared. Now.

  Brian knew he was beyond hope, but it didn’t stop him from making wishes; only now those wishes were not for his safety, they were for small, silly things.

  I don’t want my parents to see my body without my clothes on.

  I don’t want them to see what he did to my dick.

  I don’t want them to find the porn on my computer.

  I don’t want Jenn to think I didn’t want to be with her.

  He saw her on the bridge, the furry frill of her hoodie was white in the moonlight; a glittering eyelash dissolving into black. Brian had looked back over his shoulder as he’d walked away from her that night, only he didn’t think that Jenn knew that.

  His final wish was for her to know that he had.

  Please.

  Something moved in front of his good eye, blocking out hi
s reflection. It was big and white and unfocussed, but that was changing. But God, it took so much effort.

  So much energy.

  Brian wanted to know what it was. He’d been a curious boy. As a child, he’d always wanted to know what things were, where things went—all of which annoyed his parents in a wonderfully unique way—it both infuriated and made them proud. As an adult, he’d hungered to know what was around the corner… Where would he be in six months? How would he have changed?

  And so he dipped into his dwindling energy reservoir and drank. But it came at a cost. The energy that would draw his one good eye into focus was the same energy that fuelled the pain lying dormant in his wounds. The pain was a living thing, curled up under his scabs, in his cuts and gashes; there it waited like a patient spider until something new snagged in its web so it could feed.

  But Brian wanted to know what it was.

  Curiosity killed the cat; he heard his mother’s voice. He missed it.

  The pain exploded through him, bursting out of its hiding places to rip and feed and tear. The pain was The Man. The pain had knives and hammers and scalpels and barbed wire.

  He hated it all.

  But he wanted to know what was standing in front of him more. If he could just make it out…it would be a small victory—something he set out to do, and accomplished. Nobody, not even The Man, could take that away from him. No matter how small and insignificant it was.

  The white mass in front of him took form. Much of the haze drifted away.

  As soon as he saw it he wanted the darkness to come back. Brian wanted mercy. A face hovered close to his, so close that even an uninjured eye would have to strain for focus.

  Joy.

  Chapter Forty

  The man who had identified himself as Guy Napier had come back down the stairs in a white dramaturgical mask. He shuffled around the room, singing his song

  (“‘And it breaks me, it breaks me, it breaks me to say…’”)

  and bounced from foot to foot like a child on a sugar high. He didn’t hold himself with the same composure that he had minutes prior. This man didn’t seem capable of softly-spoken, controlled sentences, or to have the ability to form words such as “fair”. No, this man brimmed with an inner energy, almost sexual. Immature. Uncontrolled. Marshall watched Guy’s body shake and quiver; he listened to him squeal and slurp air beneath his mask. The man—who had leapt behind the stairs to retrieve a machete, which he displayed with a theatrical flourish—was a husk.