House of Sighs

by Aaron Dries

  My baby.

  Her head filled with noise. Static so loud it burst her eardrums.

  And then silence, a blown fuse. She was deaf and blind but not alone. Somewhere in the cave there was light.

  Twenty-Eight: Camp

  Diana awoke that morning to the sound of seven gossiping friends. Two older teenagers slept on the other side of the cabin. She liked the counselors, idolized them in a way—they didn’t judge, or bicker as much as she and her friends. They respected each other. Diana liked that.

  It would be her final year at summer camp.

  She planned to go for a swim, to help the younger visitors at meal times and take part in whatever activities were scratched onto the chalkboards. Breakfast was in the dining room at eight. Large, wooden tables covered in toast and fruit. Diana played with her food and laughed when a slice of orange hit the cheek of a girl next to her. The culprit was nowhere to be seen. By nine o’clock she and the girls were in the canoes, life jackets around their necks. The girls talked about how cute the male counselor was. Twelve thirty rolled by and lunch disappeared down hungry mouths, boys made farting sounds, counselors huddled together and commented on the children. Their afternoon was filled with artwork and swatting flies. Diana looked at the splashes of paint on her butcher paper, feeling the heaviness of the brush in her hand. It had no shape, no form. Just splashes of random color. She was very much a unicorns-and-flowerbeds kind of girl, despite her scuffed knees and willingness to play catch with the boys. Something inside her was shaking and she didn’t know why; her world was colors and mud. She felt disturbed. There were insects on her easel. By afternoon tea the feeling had passed.

  Back in her cabin the girls exchanged stories and told each other what they wanted to be when they grew up. Some wanted only to have children, which shocked her. Diana wanted to travel, to see places she never thought were real. The others laughed at her and she playfully wrestled them to the floor.

  At six they sung songs in the Lodge, a room she always loved. It smelled of old books and chimney smoke. People played with their homemade wooden nametags, which they kept around their necks. Diana had painted hers with stars and glitter but some of it had fallen off, leaving behind dark glue stains.

  When the music stopped, she could hear the river over the hushed gossip of who-kissed-who and who-saw-a-scorpion-in-the-girl’s-restroom. Then came the clanging of the courtyard bell. Dinnertime.

  Halfway across the lawn there was a gentle touch on her shoulder. It was Heather, the counselor who slept in her room at night. She asked Diana to come for a walk with her. They passed the Lodge and continued towards the Gate House, a building she hadn’t visited since check-in. Heather looked awkwardly at her feet and silenced her walkie-talkie when it squawked, “Have you got her?”

  Diana was not afraid, just curious and a little excited to visit the management’s quarters. Was she going to receive some kind of award? She couldn’t help smiling, despite the violent rolling of her stomach and the return of that strange feeling from before, when the brush had trembled in her fingers and the painting stopped making sense.

  Heather took her into a room, past a large, empty desk. It unnerved her to see it unmanned, the telephone receiver off the hook. They approached a door. It opened.

  Her father was there, his eyes burnt out. Where they should have been there were black and red scribbles. She felt two feet tall. Her dad wrapped his arms around her. He whispered in her ear how sorry he was.

  So sorry. So sorry.

  “Why are you sorry, Dad?”

  She pulled away from him but he held her in a tight grip. Everyone else had disappeared.

  Blood ran the lengths of the walls. Leaves danced about her feet. She needed to pee. Bad.

  “Why are you sorry?” she asked again, noticing that her voice was different. Deeper. Womanly. She looked into his face. It was hollow. His eyes were no longer messy paint splashes. They simply were not there. His jaw swung wide and loose. Dislocated.

  He trembled, pulling at her clothing. His cheekbone bulged like a leg under silk sheets. A thin stream of bile ran from his mouth, splattering her knees. From where his eye should have been there emerged a beak, black and strong. With a sickening tear, the head of a crow broke free of her father’s face. The bird squawked, its feathers matted.

  She fell through the air; the world around her imploded into color. Through the light she could see herself standing over a coffin. She could see herself outrunning the tourist cart down the Astoria embankment, because she thought she had seen her mother there among the faces and cameras. Diana watched a younger version of herself looking at her dad’s new girlfriend, felt the predictable spite towards her.

  She fell through time and hatred and forgiveness until she landed—

  Twenty-Seven

  —hard against the floor of the bus. The pressure in her bladder was incredible.

  Around her there were screams, familiar and almost a part of her world now. The old woman, whose name she couldn’t remember, had her hands over her eyes and was kneeling in the aisle. She looked so sad. Diana was scared for her but not for herself.

  The man with the big veins in his arms ran past her and jumped.

  Jack landed hard on his feet. The faggot was screaming and running wildly around the back of the bus, thumping against the seats and windows. Jack had known the guy was gay the moment he first saw him, could smell it on him. The faggot was everything that was wrong in the world. His eyes might look sympathetic but Jack saw him for what he really was: the conspirator in all things weak and lost. The faggot was his enemy, more than anything else. The faggot was the driver and the dead kid, splattered and in pieces. He was the brother, was everyone but Jack, the only sane person left in the wasteland. The faggot was an actor and was in fact not really screaming at all. No, the faggot was laughing.

  Make a fist, the voice told him. At first the voice had scared him but not any more.

  Smash it into the face of the faggot.

  Jack knew the voice from somewhere. He wracked his brain.

  Do it, Jack-o.

  “I know you,” he said aloud.

  Yes you do. Now do what I tell you. Do it and then maybe later you can use the scissors on him. You like the scissors, don’t you, Jack-o?

  Thoughts and memories flew like pieces of a shattered mirror.

  “Where?”

  The pieces fell to the ground in perfect alignment. He saw his own reflection.

  The kid is to blame for all this. He’s the devil. The faggot always is.

  The voice was his own.

  Twenty-Six

  Jack drove his fist into Michael’s face, watched the kid crumble to the floor and then jumped on him, arms thumping away. Michael kicked out in defense, one foot connecting with the base of his attacker’s jaw. It was luck alone.

  The sound of a hundred busting soda cans under the heels of a hundred drunken men, followed by the tinkle of glass, exploded through Jack’s head. He faltered, clutching at the already forming welt, and watched the faggot wriggling out from under his knees.

  Jed stood on the hood of his destroyed pickup. In his hands he held the hammer, ribbons of hair clotted on its head. He pulled himself up onto the roof of the bus.

  The roof was white and reflected what little light was left in the day. The clouds were at the point of breaking. The wind shook the trees. As Jed slid across its surface he left a snail trail of gore in his wake. Dirt blew against his face, although it was no longer a face, it was a mask. He scuttled, the hammer scraping as he moved towards the end of the bus, towards the emergency exit hatch.

  It was open a crack. If he could get the end of the hammer in, he might be able to lever it open. The vehicle rocked under him.

  Jack preempted the brother’s move and leapt off Michael, squeezing a shout of pain from him as he jumped. He slammed a bloodied hand on a handrail to help himself up. Above him the roof creaked. Jack ran to the emergency exit, saw gray clouds through the ga
p, grabbed the handle and pulled downwards with all his weight. The hatch snapped shut and he fell, thumping his head on the floor.

  “Fuck you!” Jed screamed at the emergency exit. The echo of its closing mocked him. Frantic, he tried to get his fingers into the small divot but there was no leverage, not even the teeth of the hammer would fit. He stood, bolts of energy filling his body. The murdering monsters had to die and so help him God, he would be the one to do it. His pain gave him power.

  Jed snapped to his right, scooted to the lip of the roof, reached over and swung the hammer, aiming for the window.

  Sarah watched it splinter in a web. With each impact she could see flashes of her husband.

  He was leaning in to kiss her.

  SMASH.

  He was crying into her lap on the day he found out he was going to die.

  SMASH.

  He was in a coffin, stuffed and stitched. This was the way she had always imagined she would see him last. Only now it was her in the coffin, and he was beside it, crying.

  SMASH.

  After a number of blows against the glass, the laminate held the shattered pieces together like a frosted blanket. The hammer was twisted up in the mess and as Jed pulled the remains from the window bay, both glass and hammer dropped out of sight.

  A moment later a hand reached inside, swung and clutched at nothing. Jack ran to the front of the bus, searching for what he knew must be there. His heartbeat was so loud it hurt his ears.

  He saw what he had come for. It was easy to find, as though someone had left it there for him.

  It was me, said the voice.

  Near Diana, who was terrified into submission on the floor, he saw the X-Acto utility knife. He picked it up and thumbed the blade, not pushing it too far, worrying it might snap or chip.

  Don’t be too eager, the voice cautioned. Hold it tight.

  Jack did as he was told.

  Yep, that’s it, my man. That’s it.

  He smiled. Flies landed on his face and he didn’t shoo them away.

  Now, Jack-o… That man on the roof is wondering what it feels like to be cut.

  “Charles,” he said.

  That’s right, just like Charles wondered what it was like.

  Jack leapt at the intruding hand, screaming like a warrior going into battle, and stabbed. The blade slit through flesh with ease and hit the bone beneath. The tip of the blade snapped off and the man outside started screaming, just as Charles had screamed that day. Only the man didn’t run away like his cousin had—the man held his ground and reached in again, swinging at him. Blood rained over his face, over the seats. Jack slashed out again and again. On the fourth stroke the hand retreated.

  Felt good, didn’t it? inquired the voice.

  Everything was silent.

  Jack’s grisly hands started to shake.

  Michael sat up, held himself strong and told himself to be brave, that he could do this. This is it, he thought. It’s all coming down. It’s now or never. No, no, don’t think of the ocean. No!

  The ocean. Heavy waves crashed down over him.

  Diana continued to stare into a world in which her father had scribbles for eyes, where her sister was laughing next to her during a screening of some stupid movie called Clueless.

  The windshield blew open. It had been a single shot.

  White noise and static filled their ears. The shape struggled with the smoking shotgun as it climbed the nose of the bus.

  When Wes had wiped the tears from his eyes, he left streaks of his daughter on his face. His nose was freckled with gunpowder.

  Sarah ducked out of sight.

  Diana had barely flinched when the windshield had been shot out, even though diamonds of glass had carved a game of tic-tac-toe into her face. She did not feel Sarah’s hand, nor hear her voice when her arm was grabbed.

  “Move, baby,” Sarah told her.

  There was no reply.

  Leave her, you got to. You tried to help the poor girl but you can’t kill yourself saving her. You have a husband. You have children, grandchildren. They are supposed to be at home right now. They are waiting for you. You never should have left. It was wrong to go. Sarah ran to the back of the bus.

  Trying to move someone who’s already dead is like trying to outsmart death itself. You always lose, honey. Try as she might, she could not reassure herself. She threw herself behind a seat opposite Michael.

  Jed’s upturned face appeared in the empty windshield. Blood rushed to his head, filling his veins. He swung down onto the dashboard just as his father pulled himself into the driver’s hub. He knocked the small, broken fan down the stairs. It clattered and broke into pieces.

  Jed landed, his knees threatening to give in. He held himself steady and looked at the pathetic creatures in front of him scurrying about like frightened mice. He reached out towards them, his hand bigger than them all. In his grip he strangled them, crushed the little vermin with their wild eyes and sharp, sister-killing teeth.

  “Murderers!”

  He hacked phlegm up from the back of his throat and spat on the floor.

  At the rear of the bus Jack held the utility knife ready.

  The survivors were backed into the corner like blindfolded peasants awaiting the firing squad. Jack hated them all, fellow passengers included. He hated them for making him so futile. They should have fought while the going was good and attacked the driver when she was on the road. He would never forgive them. When he was free, he would tell the world what cowards they were and that it was he alone who saw the situation for what it really was: something that could have been prevented if only they had come together under his wing.

  Wes scanned them, shotgun in hand. Jed was on his right. They scoured the faces of those who took his daughter, his sister—the people who had robbed them of the opportunity to apologize for being a lousy father, a deadbeat brother.

  It was easy to hate them. It was the most natural thing in the world.

  Diana sat in a seat close to father and son, unblinking.

  Jed gagged. He knew it was not the time for flinching. “Jesus, Dad, the smell—” he said, gesturing towards the dead man in the aisle. The man covered in flies.

  They’re animals, Wes told himself. “We bury the bastard face first,” he said. “The rest, chicken feed.” A smile. “Bones for the birds.”

  Diana slipped from her seat. Her head was cocked to one side.

  Sarah yelled at her to sit down from the back of the bus. But she did not sit. Diana pulled herself erect, the bones in her back snapping into place. A long strand of sweaty hair fell over her eyes.

  “I really,” she began, monotone, “need to go to the washroom.”

  Wes looked at the woman, surprised both by her accent and by how twisted it was: an inbred cousin of cultures. It unnerved him.

  Somewhere deep down, he felt a tiny spark of pity for her. She was skinny just like his Liz.

  Nothing but skin and bone. I’ve seen scarecrows with more stuffing.

  The front of the woman’s jeans grew dark. The smell of urine filled the air, just another gut-churning odor. Jed’s stomach tightened again but he kept himself composed. A tingle went through his body, the blood-splashed hairs on his arms rising to attention. He found himself laughing.

  The pity in Wes disappeared when he saw the flow of never-ending piss running down the inside of the woman’s leg.

  Diana felt the weight inside her slowly slip away. A space was vacated and she felt alone. Bereft. She had almost come to love and trust the pressure as though it were a constant hand on her stomach. Relief, sweet and pure. She was no longer afraid. Her eyes closed. Something emerged from the dark. She began to grin, the grin of someone far younger. A taste filled her mouth. Diana had no idea where it came from or why it should flitter over her tongue just then.

  But it was there. And it was lovely.

  Olives.

  Her chest bloomed. A gigantic rose.

  Wes watched her fly through the smoke;
the shotgun recoiled in his hands. The stupid creatures at the back of the bus screamed like the cowards they were. He hated them for their predictability, if nothing else.

  Diana slammed against the floor, her hands thumping on the floor above her head. Surrender.

  Jed’s mouth flapped open. Watching the woman die was like watching his sister die again. When he saw her body spitting blood into the air, he saw the stupid boy he had shot earlier in the day. He had shot him near the Christmas cutouts, the kid’s splattered brains against the angels. Repulsed, he wanted the blood off his skin. Jed wiped his face. It was sticky. He caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye and snapped his head towards the driver’s window.

  It was his mother. Reggie was dragging her daughter’s remains over the doorstep and into their home.

  He bent over and vomited on his shoes.

  Wes stepped forward, furious. “Into the fucking house, now!”

  Twenty-Five: Home

  Jed burst through the door of his house, trembling and out of breath. It was the smell that hit him first, offending and displacing him. It smelled like the butcher shop: blood and raw meat. He realized that it wasn’t just the room that smelled. He stunk too.

  He saw his mother in the far corner, holding Liz in her arms.

  Violent afternoon cartoons played too loud on the television. It was getting dark quick and the first hailstones started to pelt against the corrugated roofing, filling the house with hollow, pot-and-pan rumblings.

  The curtains billowed, signaling the arrival of rain behind the hail.

  Reggie was near the door to the kitchen, with Liz between her legs. She hugged her from behind. It was an awkward bundle of limbs rocking to and fro. She was conscious of the flesh in her hands, the sensation of her skin pressing against her daughter’s, but her mind was empty.

  Once, she’d entertained the thought of being a teacher but it never happened. Instead she bounced between office work and retail, never quite happy. As a child she had dreamed of owning a horse, just like every other girl her age. Some of her friends had horses. In the end Reggie never got to ride her own Shetland, or brush a horse that knew her touch. She no longer remembered the desire.