“He won’t listen,” said Fry.
“Then how do we explain it?” said another.
“As I’ve said,” said Fry, “we have to show him.”
“Do we have evidence of his death?” said the boy whose glasses would not stay on. “Can we hold up a mirror and make him see how dimly he flickers?”
Fry shook his head. He held up both hands to quiet the room.
“If a ghost is wounded,” said Fry, “he believes he feels pain. He understands that what is happening should be painful, and it is then experienced as pain, even if his nerves are corroded. Just as, bound, he believes he cannot move.”
I squirmed, and the binds abraded my wrists.
“A ghost is memory granted form,” he said. “But what is missing when a ghost is wounded? What is something that cannot be produced from memory, but exclusively by the beating hearts of the living? What separates us from this hollow shell we have bound to our dining hall chair?”
“Blood,” said Nick, rubbing his wrists.
Fry nodded. He looked to Nick. “Blood,” he said.
“What does that mean?” said one of the smaller boys.
“We have to show him that his veins are simple shadows,” said Fry. “We have to open them, spread the curtains of his forearm, and reveal the empty stage beneath.”
It was really too much, the way he was carrying on, but it didn’t change their horrid intentions.
“Get a knife,” said Anders.
“We’ll get knives,” said the twins.
I screamed into the gag, and no one looked my way.
How had it come to this? Was I getting what I deserved or was I stuck in some spiraling nightmare, a surreal pageant of pseudo-rationality wherein the worst parts of our nature wore wigs of reason and sense? The twins, of course, had left for the kitchen to find the sharpest knife. Could these boys truly want what was about to happen? Did they have any idea how it would go? Had they talked themselves into it, or had they merely masked their basest desires in an attempt to blend in with those they perceived as loving and thoughtful humans? I have said it before, but I must restate it as it occurred to me in light of those recent events: Young boys are barbarians.
Each held a conversation with the person closest to him, and there was a moment, in the glow of the dining hall lights, when the sound of those voices echoed the sound that always followed our meals, when we were done eating and collectively waiting for recess to begin, when the conversations were trivial in nature and the room was swollen with the electricity of boys anticipating a flash of unbridled play. I found myself lost in that echo, feeling throughout my body the momentary comfort of anonymity and normalcy, the routine of our early days together, wherein I was nothing and no one to any of them and the only matter at hand was when recess would be called, when our legs would stretch and the room would fill with the padding of our heeled shoes, which we would pile outside the door after we’d spent thirty minutes running in the mud, tackling in the mud, screaming into the mud, as we had once loved to do, long before any corpses had been unearthed, before any devastating accidents had occurred or any dark secrets had been revealed. I could hear the twins arguing in the kitchen. I shut my eyes, anticipating the crack of the braided door as it blew open and then the crowd heading my way.
When the sound did not come, I opened my eyes. There was shouting, followed by a scream, and a twitch worked its way around the room as each boy startled and grew silent. They looked to me to confirm that I was still bound and gagged, and then they looked in the direction of the sound from before, toward the kitchen, wherein the twins had surely been testing the knives in some gruesome fashion.
The first twin burst through the braided door with only the time to shout, “Grab him!” before the other twin, still shirtless, entered in pursuit.
I watched with horror as the shirtless twin plunged one of the wooden-handled butcher’s knives into his brother’s back. That twin shrieked as I saw the glint of the knife’s pointed end emerge a centimeter or so from the front of his body. The second twin removed the knife and plunged it in once more.
“Look,” he yelled. “Look!”
Several boys set upon him and wrested the knife from his hand.
“Look at his wounds,” shouted the stabbing twin. “Let me go!”
The other twin was covering the wounds with his hands, as if trying to catch the blood that would soon come spilling from them. The blood that had not yet come spilling, I realized, only a second or two before the other boys began to understand what was being presented. My lead on the thought did nothing for me, as I was still bound and gagged, still their prisoner, still helpless in the face of whatever was about to unfold, but I found myself feeling a sense of pride nevertheless at having gotten there first. I held my realization in my head like a pearl, knowing it had value and knowing I was without a clue as to what I might do with it.
“It’s him!” someone shouted. “It’s the ghost!”
“Yes,” said the shirtless twin. “Grab him!”
“No, grab him!” said the first.
“Untie me!” I muffled into the gag.
The twins were grabbed and held apart by several boys each. Fry stood on the edge of the scene, alternating between watching me and watching the twins and the other boys. He had an almost disappointed look on his face, which less observant parties might have taken for concern, but which confirmed nonetheless my suspicion that it was not the truth he was after but any excuse at all to bring me harm. I could see the aggravation welling up in him as the reality of our situation announced itself to the room. His blame had been miscast. The steps he’d taken to assure the others would go along with his plan, however elaborate they’d been, did not account for this unexpected disruption. This sudden and unwelcome revelation. My salvation at the hands of two nightmares with the same face. It was eating him up.
Whether or not he was a true enemy, one set against me beyond all means of recovery, in that moment I felt that Fry embodied all I objected to most in the world. No good would ever come from him, only harm and misinformation. He was a snake, I realized, concerned only with himself and the perversion of others. I would have to be the garden hoe that chopped his head.
The garden hoe. I might have laughed if the gag weren’t so strongly pitted against it. It was as if my subconscious mind operated at twice the speed of my impulses, anticipating where they would lead me, the actions I might desire to take, and had therefore oh so casually dropped a loaded object in my path to disrupt me. The garden hoe. I was a better person than I knew.
The last time I had taken action without thinking it through, I’d accidentally robbed poor Thomas of his life with that very implement. It couldn’t have been a good life, Thomas’s, but that was for him to discover through the process of living it. That is one of the great tragedies of any life, I thought, watching Fry, thinking of Thomas, that you can’t know it is a tragedy until you have experienced it in full. You might anticipate its being tragic, but there is always the possibility that things will shift in your favor and go suddenly, unexpectedly your way. There is always the possibility that all the things you’ve ever dreamed of will wind up in your lap, either through great effort on your part or by simple chance. It is also possible, perhaps even more likely, that the tragic circumstances of a particular period in life will wear themselves out and you will find yourself with some semblance of peace among the ruins. Life consists of extremes, I told myself, screaming into the gag, so there is always the possibility that what is being experienced at any given moment is actually the worst it will ever get, and there is only room for improvement. So those with low expectations go on living, anticipating nothing but tragedy but living nonetheless, all the way up until the moment when the fullness of that tragedy is realized, when all the pieces that have been in play for years finally come together and you are faced with your great humbling. The bedro
ck bottom. Where, from out of the mud and muck of your life, out of the peach pit of despair that has replaced your heart, comes the impulse to die, to be done with it all, to no longer have to think of anything related to life or how you’ve failed yourself and all those around you. Or so it seemed to me was the case in that moment, tied to the chair and gagged while the room conspired against me. So I imagined my life would go, as would the lives of all these boys, who were wrestling now, either with the twins or with the predicament they were in, torn between the reality that the twins had now presented and the information Fry had delivered so floridly only a few moments before. Fry, however, did not seem torn. He seemed put out. A little sour and a lot exhausted. Like a boy without a prize.
The twins were being processed, and each was protesting the presentation of the other, arguing for the accuracy of their personal account of what had happened in the kitchen, but I could only watch Fry as he set himself down on one of the benches before the table on which they’d placed the Headmaster, roughly at the dead man’s hands, covering his own face so the others wouldn’t see his dissatisfaction at the recent sequence of events.
I am not always as strong as I would like to be. I have a great deal of will, but it is fragile. Seeing Fry there, possibly my mortal enemy but in a moment of weakness, I found that my heart did wince. I did imagine him being comforted in some way, though by a force I could not grant definition, and I can admit it was a pleasing thought. There is something that binds humans to one another, however awful we can be in our lesser moments. I don’t know what it is, but I was nonetheless happy to feel something like compassion for my enemy. My heart went out to Fry in that moment, and, in that it did so, it moved me. To my unexpected satisfaction, I was reaching out to him from behind my gag and wishing him well. The energy in the room had turned yet again.
“I’ll take out the gag,” said one of the boys. I didn’t recognize him at first, but as he approached, I realized it was the boy who had stuck his hands in my armpits to help me up after I was pushed on the night of the fire alarm. He looked tired, maybe even sick. He had black circles under his eyes, and he was wet with sweat.
I nodded. Yes, I thought, please do. The gag, yes, please.
“He’ll curse us,” said the twin who’d been stabbed but still wasn’t bleeding.
“Enough,” said Nick, who held the stabbed twin in place with the help of several other boys.
I watched that twin, who wasn’t bleeding, and realized the wound itself would require examination before I could come to any real conclusions. It was dark in the dining hall, despite the light, and I was so far away. The blood might have been there after all, hidden in the shadows of his shirt or behind his palms. Or maybe he wasn’t much of a bleeder? I needed a better look to understand exactly what had happened, but unfortunately no one there shared the priority.
The boy who had once lifted me from the floor did soon approach, however, untying the rope that held the gag in place. My jaw screamed with pain as it closed my mouth for the first time in what felt like hours.
“My God,” I said, “that was terrible.” The bone at the hinge of my jaw popped as it opened and shut.
“Are you not the ghost?” said the boy.
“No,” I said. “Of course not. Remember, I was pushed in the hall. You helped me. I was bloody then.”
He nodded, but I saw no recognition in his eyes.
“After the fire alarm,” I said, as he stepped away.
“Wait,” said the stabbed twin. “You have to understand that I am being set up. If anyone is the ghost in this room, it is my brother, who fell upon a broken lightbulb in the kitchen and came up without a scratch.”
“No,” said his brother. “You fell on the bulb.”
“You did!” said the first twin. “Which is why I came bolting in here like I did.”
“You came bolting in here because you knew I was going to tell them,” said the other.
“And then he stabbed you,” said Nick. “We all saw it. Yet here you are, alive and healthy enough to go casting the blame on whomever you like, including your own brother.”
The stabbed twin paused for a moment. He looked to his brother. Was he smiling?
“But why did you tell them?” he said.
His brother seemed taken aback. I could already see the grief in his face. Maybe it had always been there. A well of suffering we had all mistaken for malice.
“I don’t know,” he said, as if he were discovering the words for the first time. “I acted without thinking.”
How broken was I that I began to feel pity for these two monstrous twins as well? The most bloodthirsty of the bunch, yet their appeals to one another raised goosebumps underneath my restraints.
It was true they had angelic faces. They shared one angelic face. With the same small nose, roughly the size of a fingertip, and icy blue eyes that made you think of the sky in bright winter.
We were all emotional that night. I wasn’t the only one crying.
“Brother,” said his brother, as a tear fell from their shared chin, “have I left this world already?”
His brother shrugged. There were tears in his eyes as well now, or perhaps it was a trick of the light from across the room. Either way, it was obvious from the way he spoke that he was torn up.
“I don’t want to go anywhere without you,” said the stabbed twin.
“You won’t,” said his brother, accepting back his shirt, my former gag, from the boy who’d helped me.
Dressed again, that same twin turned to the crowd of boys, who were still not ready to hear it. “Open both of our veins,” he said, “and let us know the full truth once and for all.”
“Wait,” said Nick. “Let’s think this through. It can’t be both of you, can it?”
Fry was still at the table, his head in his hands, and I was confident I heard him yawn.
“It’s better this way,” said the twin who’d done the stabbing. “If he has to go, however and wherever it is that he goes, I’ll go with him.”
“I won’t do it,” said Nick. “I get sick at the sight of blood.”
“Assuming there will be blood,” said the twin who was not bleeding.
“Assuming,” said Nick. “Yes.”
“I’ll do it,” said Fry, standing abruptly and knocking his knees against the table. “I brought us all here. This was my grand presentation. I was ready to do it to this one.” He gestured at me without looking. “I should be man enough to do it to these two.”
Already Fry was getting back on my nerves. Man enough. How could he possibly have the stomach for all this? He’d dreamed up the ghastly punishment, inspired everyone to believe in its necessity, and now he wanted to perform the act himself, not just on one boy, but on his brother to boot. There was something horribly wrong with him, I had no doubt. It is one thing to dole out justice after it has been decided upon by the group, but it is a different thing entirely to conjure such a twisted event and then volunteer to do the carving. No, I decided, as pitiable as he might seem in certain moments, he had to go. I didn’t have to feel good about it, and it didn’t mean I was without guilt. But I’d thought it through enough to understand what had to be done. I could save the world a great deal of suffering. I could save myself a great deal of suffering. I could maybe even help these twins, who had disturbed me before, it was true, but who were now growing in my esteem.
Slowly, the other boys brought the twins together, and which was which faded from my mind. I knew there were differences between them, but those differences fell away, as I looked from one to the other, failing to set them apart.
Fry walked the length of the dining hall and lifted one of the knives from the brick floor.
“Are we all in agreement?” he said.
“It doesn’t matter what they think,” said one of the twins.
“Just do what we ask,” said
his brother.
“Where is all this coming from?” said Nick. “You two have always had a lust for life.”
“He is my only family,” said one of the twins. “And we’ve done everything together. I’ve only ever known a world with him in it, and there’s nothing we haven’t shared. If he’s a ghost, then it stands to reason that I’m a ghost too. There’s no way I would have let him die without me. And if he hasn’t in fact died, if there is some other explanation for all this, I won’t remain alone on this earth to discover it without him.”
“Nor will I,” said his brother. “Wherever we go, whatever we know, we do it together.”
They clasped hands.
Nick shook his head but no longer spoke in protest.
What kind of place was this? What had I entered into? Would the communal thirst for blood be sated after the butchering of these two doppelgängers? Maybe for a semester. Possibly two, given that they were twins. But then what? Who would be next?
“May this bring you peace,” said Fry.
“Wait,” I said, from across the room.
He drew the blade across their wrists, one after the other, and the room held its breath.
Had the rain stopped? I hadn’t heard it in what felt like hours. I watched the dark window and saw nothing.
“Oh no,” said one of the twins. He had not let go of his brother.
“Now would you look at that,” said the other.
Together, they raised their clasped hands and presented the skin of each, flapping like flags in the breeze. Not a drop fell, to my eye, and they were smiling.
“I wonder when it happened,” said one of the twins.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” said his brother.
They turned toward the doors then, hand in hand.
“Wait,” I called.
The door did not open. They did not pass through it. They simply vanished. The backs of their heads were replaced by the decorative braids that traced the edges of its wood. Or maybe I’d blinked as they’d stepped through a small opening, a thin crack in the nearly closed door that I couldn’t make out from where I’d been placed. It was only a moment later, and I was already uncertain as to what I had seen. If I could have rubbed my eyes; if they had let me move closer.
The Job of the Wasp Page 12