At Fear's Altar

by Richard Gavin

  Theo’s mouth widened with a yawn. Joelle hoped he’d fall asleep. He needed it, but before he drifted she needed something too.

  “I have to ask you something,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “You know you were just having a bad dream, right? I mean, now that you’ve seen that I’m fine, you know I wasn’t really pregnant.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I’m serious! I need to hear you acknowledge that you were just confused, that you know you didn’t really hurt me. You were sleepwalking or hallucinating. You must have hurt yourself in your sleep. But I was never pregnant and you never aborted my baby with your hammer, right?”

  “It wasn’t your baby. It was King Him’s.”

  A frigid winter passed through Joelle’s insides. “What?”

  “King Him.”

  “I thought all that was settled a long time ago.”

  “We did settle it, King Him didn’t.”

  “But you said you banished King Him after . . . that you banished King Him the last time.”

  “I did. King Him came back.”

  “Enough!” Joelle turned away. She was shaking, uncertain of what to do or say next.

  “So tired . . .” Theo mumbled, “I’m so . . .”

  Joelle lit a cigarette and went to the kitchen to fix a cup of mint tea while Theo dozed. Mint tea had long been a nightly ritual, though Theo had always prepared it. His special brew had never failed to make her deliciously sleepy.

  She sipped her own blend, surprised at the clarity and mildness of its flavour. It had none of the bitter aftertaste of Theo’s.

  Settling into an armchair, Joelle clicked on the plasma screen; infomercials, a Bollywood musical, cartoons in French. The all-weather channel was, sadly, the most interesting of the lot.

  She poked at the soft flesh of her belly; compulsively, absentmindedly. Now and again she would check her fingers for the telltale globs of red, would study her torso in search of some occult wound. She lit another cigarette.

  Theo’s delusion had been upsetting enough, but another fact was equally disturbing: her cycle, which had run with Swiss-watch precision since she was thirteen, was off by a few weeks. She hadn’t mentioned it to Theo or anyone else, assuming it would resume at any time. She wasn’t one for immaculate conceptions. Nevertheless, she found herself unable to dismiss Theo’s delusion as just that. Had he sensed something?

  The awfulness of their long ago seemed to be reviving itself in their here and now.

  Theo stirred and grumbled something in his sleep. Joelle switched off the TV. The room fell silent for a beat before Theo jerked upright and bellowed. The ceramic mug jumped from Joelle’s hand and burst upon the hardwood floor.

  “You’re all right!” she cried. “You must’ve had another nightmare. Just go back to sleep. You’re all right, Theo.”

  He lifted his knees to cradle his head.

  “Sleep,” she repeated.

  Eventually Theo heeded. When she was sure he was out, Joelle began picking up the glass shards from the floor.

  “Intheshed . . .”

  She froze at the sound of the murmured words.

  “Theo?” she whispered with reticence.

  “In the shed . . . I left it in the shed, in an old rucksack.”

  “What’s out in the shed?” she asked, not truly wanting the answer.

  “The baby. We have to get rid of it. King Him can’t know about this.”

  “Lie back down. I’ll take care of it.”

  Her walk to the rear of the house and the unlocking of the patio door was partly done as a pantomime; a ruse to trick Theo into thinking that she was making good on her promise to take care of whatever he believed was in the shed.

  Had he really gone outside earlier tonight, creeping through her bedroom window like a prowler? Were his superstitions once again becoming dangerously elaborate after all these years?

  The answer came in the form of a backyard shed with its door wide open.

  Joelle stepped out onto the deck. There was a persistent thudding, like an irregular pulse, as the winds pushed the shed door back and forth, pounding it against the jamb. The soot-dark interior of the shed made Joelle feel ill. She forced herself to descend the deck steps.

  An old rucksack drooped over the shed’s edge, its frayed hem rising and falling, lung-like, with each gust of wind. Joelle’s pace slowed as she neared the shed. The door swung back again, but Joelle caught it before it slammed.

  Theo’s ball peen hammer was lying on top of the rucksack. Its silvery head was coated in something dark, thick.

  “No,” Joelle whimpered, “no . . .”

  The fibres of the sack looked to be soaked with the same reddish-black sludge. An acrid stench hung heavy inside the shed’s hull. Bile climbed up Joelle’s throat. She swallowed it back.

  ‘You’re dreaming. I’m fine. Stop this.’ Joelle heard her own words echoing through her head, only this time she was using them in an attempt to calm herself.

  She snagged the rucksack, pulled it out into the fledgling daylight. It was heavy and leaking foul liquid onto the snow. She held the sack closed and stood questioning whether she could even bring herself to glimpse inside.

  She hurled the sack to the ground, repulsed by the possibilities of its contents. She backed away, sure to keep her eyes off the dropped bundle, and tore up the deck stairs.

  Theo was sitting up when she re-entered the living room. He was balancing a stack of junk mail upon his bent knees and appeared to be scribbling on one of the envelopes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to jot something down before I forget it again. It came back to me just as I was falling asleep.”

  She neared him, looked over his shoulder and read:

  KING HIM’S CARDINAL RULES

  KING HIM MAY ALWAYS VISIT, BUT KING HIM MAY NEVER STAY.

  KING HIM MOVES IN ANGLES BECAUSE PEOPLE THINK IN ANGULAR WAYS.

  KING HIM COMES AND GOES THROUGH ‘THE MATHEMATICS OF MAKE-BELIEVE.’

  THINGS ARE WHAT THEY ARE, BUT NOTHING IS REAL UNTIL KING HIM UTTERS ITS NAME. WE KNOW A CHAIR IS A CHAIR BECAUSE EVERYTIME WE SEE ONE, KING HIM SAYS THE WORD “CHAIR” IN OUR EAR. OUR PHYSICS ARE HIS FAIRY-TALES. [SEE MATHEMATICS OF MAKE-BELIEVE.]

  WHAT MOST CALL THOUGHTS ARE REALLY JUST KING HIM TALKING. KING HIM IS ALWAYS TALKING. HIS NEVERENDING LECTURE IS WHAT PEOPLE CALL “KNOWLEDGE.”

  IF KING HIM NO LONGER SPEAKS OF SOMETHING, THAT THING IS IMMEDIATELY BANISHED TO THE BELOW.

  —

  “I think I’ve figured out how we can get through this, Joelle. King Him broke his first rule, see? King Him tried to get a foothold in this place by having a baby with you. When King Him told me that he wanted you . . . in that way . . . I just assumed it was because King Him was attracted to you. Now I think it’s because King Him was trying to gain a physical foothold in this world. But that’s against King Him’s rules.”

  “Theo . . .”

  “It’s okay. Things might work out because even though I crossed King Him by getting rid of King Him’s baby, King Him probably can’t punish me because He broke one of the cardinal rules first. Get it?”

  “Theo, I found what you left in the shed.”

  Theo swallowed. After a time he said, “It’s okay. We can just put it in the Below.”

  “But you told me that the Below was forbidden.” She hoped her tone did not betray her terror, or anything that Theo might perceive as her lack of faith.

  “C’mon, Jo, we made it there and back once; we can do it again. It’s been long enough. I doubt the Below is even being watched anymore.”

  Joelle shut her eyes, feeling their lashes growing dewy with tears. “Theo, the ground is still frozen. We can’t send him there, not completely, not the way we did when you . . . I mean when King Him took Mom and Dad. All we can do is hide it under the porch until the ground thaws.”

  “Okay. But that should be enough.” He was childlike in his
exuberance. “It’s springtime now, so we should be able to send him to the Below soon.”

  “Real soon, yes.”

  “Okay.”

  The siblings made their way to the back yard. They found the section of loose latticework around the deck’s perimeter. Joelle pulled the gate to the Below free. Theo crawled in, dripping sack in tow.

  “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “You know.” She pointed to her belly. “How did you . . . get it out?”

  Theo dropped his jam-slathered toast, lifted his hands demonstratively. “With these.”

  “You didn’t need any surgical tools or anything?” She was almost toying with him.

  “It wasn’t that kind of procedure. I just thought of how King Him would do it. I reached in and . . . took care of the problem.”

  A pregnant silence grew between them as they chewed their breakfast.

  “When did King Him come back, Theo? When?”

  Her brother was visibly reluctant to answer, but eventually admitted that he’d been lying. “King Him never really left,” he said. “You remember how He used to come through the Kingdom in the Corner in my bedroom? Well, He’s been hiding there ever since.”

  “How come Mom and Dad never saw Him? How come I’ve never seen King Him?”

  “You have,” said Theo. “Or you’ve heard Him at least. Everyone has. King Him says that whenever people think they’re just talking to themselves they never pay attention to the fact that there is a second voice that answers them. People hear it and they just think it’s their imagination, the ‘voice inside their head.’ But if they weren’t so stupid they’d understand how the Mathematics of Make-Believe works. They’d know they were really chatting with King Him.”

  “Is that why Mom and Dad had to be banished to the Below, because they didn’t understand?”

  “Sort of. But mainly because King Him said He couldn’t let them take me from Him.”

  “How did King Him get me pregnant, Theo?” Joelle asked, not truly wanting his response.

  “The same way he does anything, I guess,” he said sheepishly. “He talked someone into making it happen.”

  Joelle spent several minutes pacing the house, beginning chores but straying from them half-finished. Her nerves grew tauter, more tangled.

  Once the stores were open she informed her brother that she was going to get some groceries for dinner. Theo suggested they have a roast and she agreed.

  Her departure was accompanied by a soundtrack of her brother’s persistent whispering from beyond his bedroom door.

  ***

  She remembered little of the drive, of the trip to the supermarket. Once there she bought a roast, white potatoes, club soda, a lemon chiffon cake. And a small box from the pharmacy department. This final item she stashed discreetly in her purse.

  Joelle saw the police cruisers as soon as she’d turned onto her street. They were parked four doors down from their home, at the Irwin house. Joelle knew the Irwins to see them, but was hardly friends with the couple.

  Or rather the family.

  Joelle remembered that the Irwins had been in the local paper, it must have been a year ago now, announcing the birth of their son.

  Her mind quickly cobbled together a horrific explanation as to why the police were parked at the Irwin home, as to what exactly she’d hidden for Theo beneath the porch in lieu of burying it in the Below.

  Once home, Joelle handed the bags to Theo, who immediately offered to begin peeling the potatoes.

  She went to the bathroom, extracted the small box from her purse. Her hands shaking to the point of being near-useless.

  The test soon delivered the final cut in the unthinkable assault that seemed to be claiming her minute by minute.

  “Do you want me to make you a mint tea, Jo?” Theo called.

  Joelle slipped back inside the patio door. Theo hadn’t heard her escape into the yard, or her sneaking into the shed.

  “What have you done?” she hissed as she stood in the kitchen entryway.

  Theo jumped and turned around. He tried to conceal the small pill bottle in his trouser pocket. “You scared me,” he said. “I thought you were in the living room.”

  “What did you do to me?”

  Theo’s eyes went saucer-wide. “Please don’t tell King Him,” he blubbered, tears streaking down his cheeks. “I thought I could trick King Him. I thought if He saw the bundle in the Below He’d make your real baby go away somehow. I really thought I could trick Him.”

  Joelle marched to the counter, tipped the teacup, spotted the white powder piled along its bottom. Her palate conjured the bitter tea that Theo brought her nightly. She now knew why the cup she’d prepared for herself that morning had tasted so clean. She now also understood why Theo’s special tea never failed to make her drowsy, to usher her into a deathlike slumber.

  “How long, Theo?” she screamed. “How long has King Him been telling you to do this to me?”

  He slumped down onto the floor. Down there, through a haze of tears, Theo saw what his sister was clutching.

  “I’m being banished . . .” His voice was soft with resignation.

  “Yes,” Joelle managed, raising the silver hammer.

  “I’m sorry! Please, Joelle! Please tell King Him that Theo’s sorry.”

  She sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor, mindlessly chewing her lower lip, whimpering, crying, occasionally unleashing a helpless, furious howl.

  Her shoulders still ached from dragging Theo outside and underneath the porch. The weather channel this morning had said a thaw was near. She could banish both bundles very soon. She might just be okay.

  She rested a spattered hand on her belly, imagining that she could already feel the foetus kicking, squirming, growing into the grotesque it would enter this world as.

  ‘Help me,’ Joelle thought. ‘Please, God, help me. What am I going to do?’

  ‘You can do this. You’re strong. You’ve made it through things that would have destroyed other people.’

  ‘It’s wrong. This whole thing is so wrong . . . so ugly.’

  ‘Could you love this child, YOUR child?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You loved Theo. Couldn’t you love this baby too?’

  “Help me!” she cried.

  ‘You’re not alone, Joelle,’ buzzed the voice in her head. ‘I’ll help you. I’ll tell you exactly what to do.’

  “Theo said you always knew what to do.”

  ‘As long as people listen. Will you listen?’

  “I’ll pay attention. I will.”

  ‘Good. And if the child happens to come out different from we wanted, we can just banish it, can’t we?’

  “Yes,” Joelle said to the vacant house. She fingered the handle of the silver hammer, still lying in a blackish puddle on the tile floor. “Yes, we can, King Him.”

  The Plain

  Whether he’d been roused by the suffocating heat or the ubiquitous pain in his body Dobbs was unsure. So he harboured an odd gratitude for both, for it meant his wits were beginning to restore themselves. It meant he was alive.

  Even with his eyes closed Dobbs was able to surmise that he was still laying face-up on the Plain, in the precise spot where his companions had left him for dead. Judging by the intensity of the sun, he guessed it was about noon. He could feel the sear upon his brow and cheeks, sense it melting his vision into a glaucoma glow. Its rays were seeping in through the dead-fish gape of his mouth in an attempt to bake his lungs crisp.

  Dobbs flexed his fingers, pressed his palms against the earth, which singed him. He tried to hiss but found that his voice had withered.

  It took great effort just to instruct his tongue to jut forward and trace his lower lip. The thirsty muscle emerged slowly, like a snail timidly spying the world beyond its shell. Dobbs’s desiccated lips felt sharp, brittle.

  A blind groping of his hip confirmed that the bastards had taken his canteen. Dobbs absorbed t
his fact without reacting to it. Perhaps on some level he had already assessed and accepted his grave predicament.

  He gave his eyes plenty of time to open. Then he tried to get his bearings.

  The last thing Dobbs could recall was securing his cumbersome pack of gold onto his stead, then, just as he was hoisting himself up onto the saddle, something had lashed around his neck, perhaps a whip of coarse, cutting leather. It had carved his skin as it squeezed the air from his throat.

  It had all happened so quickly. Before he could even attempt to turn his head to see if it was Emmett or Jack who’d attacked him, Dobbs was yanked backward by the neck. His body arced at an unfortunate angle that brought all his weight down on the back of his skull. His crash against the Plain stirred up a tremendous fog of dust, through which Dobbs could see nothing. But he had heard a great deal of shouting before his concussion winked him out of the world for a spell.

  If Emmett and Jack had intended on leaving him for dead, they had failed.

  He tried to sit up, but doing so made the world swoop and spin wildly.

  Dobbs waited until the ground once again felt level before rising. The throbbing pain caused his face to screw up, his stomach to curdle. His eyelids fluttered in order to usher the world in a more tolerable flicker.

  He performed a quick inventory, crushed by the discovery that the only things he’d been left with were the filthy clothes on his back, the boots on his feet, and, in his pockets, a dented tobacco tin that still held a few pinches of chew and a yellow-stained handkerchief.

  ‘But I’m still alive, you bastards,’ thought Dobbs. ‘For now.’

  Before him stretched the Plain. Dobbs had never felt such aloneness. He’d been lonely, yes, plenty of times in fact, but he had never felt like this . . . marooned.

  Using his rage as motivation, Dobbs finally brought himself to his feet.

  He began to walk. The faces of Jack and Emmett filled his mind’s eye, infusing his step with a harsh determination.