Todd

by Nicolai, Adam J

  "Like... a place you go when you die?"

  "Right. That's the idea. They say Heaven is a place where you're always happy and you get to see everyone you love, even the ones that died. And Hell—"

  He cut himself short. Why talk about Hell? Why even put the idea in the kid's head, when he already had so much to worry about? It was just a power enforcer anyway, a way for the religious to abuse people into doing what they wanted.

  But I could tell him Mommy and Allie are in Heaven, he thought. There's no harm in that now. He and Brenda had been agnostic Humanists, at least on paper. They'd agreed to answer the kids' questions about the origin of life and the nature of death with what truths they knew for sure, and an exploration of the suite of human beliefs on the subject. They hadn't wanted to say Heaven existed for certain, because they didn't know that. And if it did exist, the question became: how do you get there? Which religion is right?

  But now there were no religions. No one could try to convince Todd he was living his life wrong, or he should give them his money, or he'd go to hell if he masturbated, or something equally ridiculous. I could just say I know about Heaven because everyone does. I could make up anything. It might give Todd some comfort, and comfort was at a premium—but it would violate everything he'd agreed to with his wife.

  Did that still matter?

  "It's like... a bad place?" Todd pressed. "Like the opposite of Heaven."

  The opportunity passed. Alan felt it go with a twinge of regret, wondering if he'd done the right thing. But if Todd had already heard about Hell, Alan couldn't just pretend he hadn't. "Yeah. But it's not real. It's just an idea people use to hurt each other."

  Used to use, he realized. He looked at the empty street, and a snatch of John Lennon lyrics drifted through his mind. No religion, indeed.

  Todd looked confused, so Alan went on. "Like, if someone wanted me to give them all my money, they could tell me that I'd go to Hell if I didn't. Or if someone wanted me to do something really bad—like kill a bunch of other people they didn't like—they could tell me I'd go to Heaven if I did."

  "So Heaven's not real either?" Alan couldn't see his face—he was staring at the ground—but his voice was tortured.

  There simply wasn't any evidence to support the hypothesis of an afterlife. The near-death experiences that some people quoted for their vague beliefs were just too anecdotal; none of them had ever been repeated in a controlled environment. And he and Brenda had agreed not to tell lies.

  But there was a line between honesty and cruelty. Even Brenda had wanted their kids to believe in Santa Claus.

  There's no harm in this. Don't take it from him.

  "I don't know, Todd." He managed a lame smile. "I've never died, you know? And that's the only way to tell."

  Way to go, he berated himself. Talk a little more about your own death, that's great, that's really getting to him. Then he saw something terrifying: his own depression, creeping into his son's eyes like the shadows of storm clouds.

  The jolt of urgency he felt overwhelmed him. "I can tell you this much," he said, racing against those shadows, refusing to let them take hold. "I can tell you people have believed in Heaven for thousands of years, almost as long as there have been people around. I can tell you that some people who have died and then been brought back by doctors have reported seeing a light and hearing the voices of their dead relatives."

  It was a fundamental betrayal of the memory of his wife. Sure, people had reported near-death experiences where they saw a tunnel and a light and all their dead friends—but some had also reported endless emptiness and horror. Disembodied voices mocking them from the darkness. Why wasn't Alan talking about that?

  Scholar Alan said, You shouldn't be talking about either one. Neither instance is verifiable or repeatable. They don't pass the sniff test.

  Dad Alan said, He doesn't need to hear that right now.

  "Really?" A cautious hope had dawned in Todd's eyes, crowding out those horrible shadows.

  "Really," Alan said. "And I don't know what it means. It could mean there is something beyond death that we just can't understand or see while we're alive. Or it could mean—"

  —that the brain just imagines happy things right before it dies. Alan thought this was an equally comforting narrative. There was little difference in his mind between an eternity of paradise and an illusion of the same thing concocted by his own mind an instant before the end. But Todd would see it differently, so he shut the scholar down before it could say it.

  Todd thought he was prompting him, the way Brenda always had. "That Allie and Mommy are in Heaven." The darkness in his eyes vanished completely, replaced by curiosity. "But how do we know—"

  "We don't." Alan squeezed his shoulder; the motion felt awkward and forced. "I won't lie to you. It is one of the hardest things about life. But we just don't know. But that can be an exciting thing, too. It's almost like an adventure. Everyone gets to find out. It's new to every person who experiences it.

  "And hey, if Heaven is real, then just imagine how excited Mommy and Allie were to find it."

  32

  It was twenty minutes to Fast Gas by foot. They got there to find a mess of melted candy bars, the result of three days sans A/C in a Minnesota June. The licorice and the gummy candies were in good shape, though.

  Alan left Todd to pick whatever he wanted and walked to the far aisle, with the batteries and miscellaneous car supplies. The station was a lot smaller than Crown or even the hardware store, and one entire wall was made of glass, so there was a lot more light. Alan kept his flashlight out anyway, but it was nice to be shopping in the equivalent of early dusk instead of midnight.

  As he walked, he noticed a chill radiating from the cooler glass. "Hey, hey."

  "What? Hey-hey what?"

  "This glass is cold." He opened the door and rested his hand on the side of a gallon of milk. Chilled condensation had never felt so good. He gave his son a victorious grin, feeling like he'd just won the Powerball. "How does real milk with dinner sound?"

  "But I thought all the milk went bad!"

  "Not here. Not yet, at least."

  "But the power went out!"

  "They must have had some kind of emergency generator." He couldn't hear anything going now, but maybe it had switched on for a couple days and then run out of juice. Fast Gas had a generator, and Crown didn't? Weird. Or maybe they had, until it was taken out by a suddenly-vacant car? He shrugged. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

  "A horse... what?"

  "It means—" Crap. Where did that one come from? It wasn't the Trojan horse, he knew that, but he was drawing a blank, and of course he couldn't use his smartphone. The Trojan horse was an interesting story, anyway, and the kid would never know.

  Never mind, he started to say, but it hit him like a ton of bricks: if he didn't explain, Todd might never know. And it wasn't just the colloquialism, it was the very concept of the Trojan horse. The history of human literature and mythology. If Alan died before telling him, it would all be lost.

  Even if I tell him, it's lost. He'll die too. We're the only two left.

  The world suddenly felt even heavier. Alan shook his head, trying to force the thoughts away. He was sick of them. "I'll tell you on the way home."

  He looked behind the front counter for the expected pile of empty clothes, and dug through them for a set of car keys. A few minutes later they'd loaded some dead guy's Dodge full of cold milk and frozen pizza, yogurt and ice cream bars. He wasn't sure they'd have enough room for it all at home. He wasn't even sure they'd be able to drink that much milk before it went bad, but by God, they were gonna try.

  He explained the Trojan horse as they drove home. He told Todd about the Greek gods and how weird they were, always growing out of each other's heads and banishing each other to the underworld and stuff. Todd laughed. The sound was a tether, holding Alan to Earth instead of letting him float off into that old, suffocating darkness.

  As they pulled
into the driveway Alan caught another glimpse of blue, vanishing around the corner of the house.

  33

  "All right." He was suddenly furious. "Enough." He threw open the car door and shouted, "Hey!"

  Todd got out behind him.

  "Hey!" Alan pelted toward the corner and saw it again, this time behind and to his left. He whirled around and saw nothing.

  "Dad?"

  "God dammit, there's something there!" He cast about, snorting like a bull. "Did you see it?"

  Todd shook his head.

  "I saw you!" he roared. "I know you're there, I saw you!" The wind rustled the trees. Otherwise, the cul-de-sac was silent.

  He darted around the front yard maple tree, saw nothing, and abruptly felt like an idiot. A litany of curses exploded in his head, but he kept them there. He sucked air through his nose and rubbed at his cheeks and chin, feeling three days' growth of prickly beard. You sound like a lunatic, he told himself. You probably look like one, too. Calm down.

  "You didn't see anything?" he demanded.

  Todd shook his head again. "What did you see?"

  "Just—a flash. A flash of blue. Over here." He gestured. "And over there."

  Todd followed his finger with his eyes, looking pensive. "Sorry."

  Alan blew out a breath. "It's all right."

  He knew he'd seen something. He also knew he would've sounded crazy to anyone other than his son. "It's all right," he repeated. "Help me get this stuff inside."

  They managed to find space for most of the frozen goods. Afterward, Alan sat down on the couch, his mind reeling. He was still stiff and aching from digging the graves earlier in the day, and the walk to the gas station hadn't loosened him up. Now his right eyelid was twitching. It felt like someone had glued an epileptic mosquito to the bottom of his eyebrow.

  Flashes of blue. He wanted to Google it, to find out if it meant anything: a sign of stress, a precursor to mental breakdown, a symptom of migraine? Again he had that sensation of being severed and cast adrift. We really were on our way to a hive mind, he thought. Just like the Borg.

  Todd scored himself an ice cream bar. He came into the living room and held a second one out, wordlessly, to Alan.

  "Thanks."

  "You're welcome," he answered, dutifully.

  You'd better enjoy this, he ordered himself. It might be the last one you get. His tongue registered something sweet and cold, and they were wonderful sensations in the stuffy house, but he couldn't focus enough to really enjoy them. He was too worked up, too anxious.

  "Remember when I found that flashlight?" Todd said. His eyes were fixed on his dad; he was trying to cheer him up. Alan sighed.

  "Yeah, I do." And weirdly, it worked; he remembered the light flicking on, the sudden rush of success, the feeling that they could get through this. He nodded. "I do. Why don't you get your DS and play for awhile, okay?"

  "Okay." He started walking away, then paused and turned back. "I love you."

  Alan's heart hiccupped in his chest. The day had left him raw; the words might've been a zap from a defibrillator. Ridiculously, he had to blink back tears.

  He flashed back to the moment Todd was born. He'd looked like a little alien. Alan remembered holding him, looking into him, each trying to fathom the other. He remembered using those words all the time—I love you. I love you, Todd.—because he had so badly wanted to do it right, and his own father had never said it.

  It had been easy when the boy was small and vulnerable. It had gotten harder when he started talking. When he started reminding Alan of himself.

  Alan had known he was pulling away from his son, and hated it; had watched those precious, intimate moments grow so infrequent that they vanished. But Brenda had never shied away from admitting her love to her children, and so they were able to stay in the habit of saying it back.

  And now the boy was eight. Eight. It was an impossible age, towering and wizened—older than the redwoods. Old enough to start chafing at his old man's controlling hand, but still young enough to say I love you without shame.

  Alan had planted those seeds when Todd was young, and Brenda had nurtured them, and here they were, blooming. They were Todd's words, but they were Brenda's, too, and Alan's; the life they'd tried to give him, coalescing into a person they could be proud of.

  "I love you, too," Alan managed, fighting to hold it together.

  Todd nodded and darted into his room.

  Alan sank into the couch, drained in every way possible: mentally, emotionally, physically. The muscles in his back and thighs moaned. He let his eyes slip closed.

  We'll get through this, he thought.

  You won't, something in his head said.

  We've got food and a refrigerator, the water and gas are running, we're doing pretty well. I'll paint a sign on the roof. Someone will come.

  No one will.

  We'll still be okay. We've got everything we need.

  Except you're going crazy. You're seeing things.

  That's gotta be normal. I'm probably in shock.

  When you go crazy, what'll happen to your son? He can't survive without you.

  He probably could. He's smart and resourceful. We taught him how to say I love you and mean it. He's empathetic.

  His father scoffed. Empathy's not a survival skill.

  He was still arguing with himself when sleep dragged him down. The world disappeared, replaced first by memories of Brenda and Allie laughing, then by vague, empty nightmares. There was nothing concrete about them, no definite horrors. Only the sense that he was missing something, that he needed to do more, that his life depended on it.

  "Dad."

  Alan's eyes slid open, seeing nothing. The living room was black.

  "Dad," Todd said again. He was whispering.

  "What?" His voice was remarkably lucid; to his own ears, it sounded wide awake.

  "I just saw it. The blue."

  Whispering? Todd never whispered.

  "It's outside."

  34

  Alan jerked up, disoriented by darkness and clinging sleep, but electrified by Todd's words. "Now? You mean it's—?"

  Then he saw the glow.

  Hazy and dim, just visible through the glass deck door. A steady, muted blue. If the TV had been on, or even one of the electric lanterns, they would've missed it.

  Alan rolled to his feet. "Okay. Shhh. Stay behind me." His heart thundered. Was it a rescue? Was it the attackers, whoever they were?

  He crept toward the deck door, staying low and keeping one hand behind. Todd obliged, staying where he wanted him. Alan reached the glass and peered out, the rumble of the generator in his ears.

  There was something outside the Ngs' place.

  At first it just looked like a writhing blue blur, flitting across the Ngs' wall. But as he watched it more closely, he made out what he thought were two legs. It was walking. It might have had arms, too, but they flashed around so quickly that he couldn't tell how many, or even whether "arm" was really the right word. It might have been feeling along the wall of the house. And it was tall.

  "What is it?" Todd whispered, and Alan shushed him.

  Watching it strained his eyes, like he was trying to read a book in low light. His mind wanted to classify it, but couldn't—its constant changing shape and uncertain outline made it impossible. He couldn't tell which way it was facing. He couldn't tell if it had a face.

  It vanished around the corner of the Ngs' house. Part of him was relieved to see it go. Part of him wanted to follow it.

  Wait here, he almost said. He imagined leaving Todd to chase the thing down, only to find the boy gone when he came back. But the alternative—bringing Todd along—wasn't any safer.

  "What was it?" Todd said again.

  "I don't know." Alan craned his head both directions, but the darkness was absolute now. He couldn't see two inches in front of his face. He reached for Todd and heard him creeping back through the living room.

  "Where are you going?"
/>
  "I want to turn on a lantern."

  Don't, he started to say. He was worried it would see them; then he realized it probably already had. The flashes of blue he'd been seeing—what else could they have been?

  The lantern clicked, sending Todd's shadow leaping up the wall behind him. He looked scared, his eyes pits of shadow in the lantern light.

  Alan didn't think to comfort him. The reality of what they'd seen was ripping through him like shrapnel.

  What was that thing? Oh, God, what was it?

  It could've been anything, he tried to tell himself: some experimental invisibility suit, or a projection of light from... from...

  It came here looking for us. I responded to that text and it came here. OH GOD WHAT IS IT I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS

  "Daddy?" Todd hadn't called him that in years.

  "We're leaving," Alan said. "It's not safe."

  Todd's eyes widened. "It's gonna hurt us?"

  "Come on." Alan took his hand and led him to the front door, where the boy balked.

  "I don't want to go out there! That thing is out there!"

  "That's exactly why we have to leave, Todd." An afterimage of its arms crawled through Alan's memory, squirming like a nest of worms. He didn't want to see it again. He didn't want to think about what it was, or what it meant.

  It did it. It made everyone disappear. Somehow it did it and now it's setting up shop, taking over. That was crazy, it had to be crazy, but what else could it be?

  The world had turned into all those nasty religious stories rolled into one: judgment and rapture and hell. You worried about telling him about hell? Alan's father sneered. He already knows, Alan. It's right outside.

  Alan opened the front door. Todd kept fighting him.

  "No!" he screamed. "I don't want to!"

  Alan flinched, then leaned into his son's face, hissing. "You want that thing to hear us? Are you trying to get us killed?"