Brother

by Ania Ahlborn

  He slid one bowl onto the kitchen counter while taking the other to the large pot on the stove. He dipped the ladle into the stew and spooned out a fresh helping, then pivoted on the soles of his shoes and returned to the table, sliding a second serving in front of Michael with a smile.

  “I’m goin’ out,” Reb announced.

  Michael stared down at the steaming bowl before him, nausea tightening around his neck like a noose.

  “Goin’ out where?” Wade asked.

  “It’s a secret.” Reb fished the car keys from his front pocket, the eight-ball keychain catching Michael’s eye. There was something there, along with the keys . . . a square of paper that Reb was quick to tuck back into his pocket.

  “You need me to come?” Michael asked, standing from his seat, but Reb placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. “Eat up. Relax. Listen to records with Misty.”

  Michael gave Misty a questioning look. She shrugged and continued to fan herself, sweat glistening on her forehead.

  “I told you,” he said. “It’s a secret. You can’t come.” Rebel stepped out onto the back porch without another word.

  “Maybe it’s for your birthday,” Misty said after a moment.

  Michael stared down at his bowl and willed himself to stay in his seat. He listened to the Delta’s engine roar outside, thought about long walks and shovels and wolves. And then he took another bite of stew, not because he was hungry, but because it was the only thing to do.

  19

  * * *

  ONLY DAYS AFTER Lauralynn’s disappearance, seven-year-old Michael wobbled into his and Ray’s shared bedroom, dragging a weatherworn Pearl Lager cardboard box behind him. Ray watched his little brother in silence as Michael piled what little possessions he had into the crate, stripped his bed of its dirty sheets, and hugged his pillow to his chest before stalking down the hall. Tailing him out of curiosity, Ray found Wade and Misty in Laura­lynn’s old room. Misty had her own box and was filling it with items from Lauralynn’s closet—dolls and books and clothes. Ray couldn’t help but sneer at the fact that the boy responsible for his sister’s death would now be sleeping on her mattress and drawing pictures at her old desk. Laura­lynn was being erased and neither Misty nor Michael seemed to care.

  Ray tried to comfort himself with the fact that at least now, with ­Michael down the hall, he’d finally have some privacy, but loneliness came on fast. Before long, Ray started sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to steal Wade’s bottles. He figured if whiskey numbed the pain of a broken arm, it could probably dull the ache of a broken heart. He was right, and two years later, Wade presented Ray with a case of cheap gin for his thirteenth birthday. He had tied a shoddy bow around the box and muttered, “Now you can stop stealin’ my stuff,” as he pushed it toward his son with the toe of his boot.

  By fourteen, Ray had changed his name to Rebel, though nobody except Michael cared. Reb and his parents would square off every other day. Sometimes he’d think about outing them to Michael and Misty. He’d tell his siblings about what he had seen that night years ago, explain that they couldn’t go visit Lauralynn, not because Claudine hated her own parents, but because Lauralynn had never set foot in North Carolina at all. But Reb continued to hold his tongue. Because, when it came down to it, it hadn’t been Claudine or Wade who had sealed Lauralynn’s fate. It had been Michael, and Reb wanted vengeance.

  Rebel began to stalk the woods with Michael during his hunts. It gave him the opportunity to push his now-ten-year-old brother around without Wade glaring from across the yard or Misty protecting him with her pleas and sheltering hugs. But Reb soon acquired a taste for killing, and it wasn’t just watching Michael shoot at birds with that old kiddie rifle.

  With leaves and twigs crunching beneath their feet, Michael spotted a family of pheasants, took to a knee, aimed, and pulled the trigger. Reb scoffed when they flew away. He was ready to ball his hand up into a fist and sock Michael in the shoulder for being such a lousy shot, but the bird Michael had been aiming for wavered in the air. The bullet had grazed it. It did a weird death roll in mid-flight and dropped.

  “You’re lucky,” Reb told him. “’Cept that thing ain’t dead, so it hardly counts as a shot.”

  Both boys rushed toward the spot where the bird had fallen. Rebel was right. The bird lay wounded on a bed of autumn leaves, its wings frantically flapping about its body as it struggled at their feet. Michael took a few backward steps and looked at it through his rifle scope, but Reb grabbed the barrel of the gun and shoved it away.

  “Whatcha doin’?” Michael asked. He was still too young to read into the predatory glint that flashed in Rebel’s pale green eyes.

  “I’m gonna help it,” Reb explained, his words empty of emotion. He squatted in front of the pheasant, picked it up by its wings, and yanked in opposite directions. Michael yelped and stumbled backward when one of the wings came free of its body. The gray-spotted bird didn’t make a sound. It only thrashed against the ground as blood spouted from where the wing had once been. The other beat wildly, as if, by some miracle, the struggle would allow the bird to somehow fly away.

  Rebel snorted out a laugh as it flopped around, spraying his sneakers and jeans red. He laughed even harder when he saw the horrified look on Michael’s face. That night, Reb feasted on roasted pheasant while his little brother stared at his plate, green in the face.

  Reb’s bloodlust solidified something unspoken between him and Claudine. He still hated her guts, but he liked the sudden attention. And he loved the fact that Michael’s hunting trips were almost completely phased out after Reb had proven he was a far more ruthless hunter.

  “I like it when they squirm,” he told Claudine one evening. “I like hurtin’ ’em.”

  Claudine looked up from her knitting and stared at her son for a long moment, as if considering his words. And then she smiled.

  The next afternoon, Wade and Rebel parked along the highway in Wade’s beat-up pickup truck. An hour later, a girl walking the soft shoulder came into view. Wade leaned into the steering wheel and pointed her out through the cracked windshield.

  “She lives down the road,” Wade explained. “What we call an Appalachian ghost.”

  “What’s that?” Reb asked.

  “Means she ain’t really alive anymore,” Wade told him. “She’s doped up. Doesn’t even know where she is half the time. A good for nothin’ junkie. Nobody’s gonna miss that when it’s gone.”

  Reb licked his lips and nervously waited for her to come closer.

  “That’s the trick you gotta remember,” Wade said. “Nobody can know ’em, and if somebody does, nobody can care.” When she was less than a few yards away, Wade stuck his head out the window of the truck and smiled. “Need a ride?”

  She didn’t think twice, didn’t even answer or check who was offering. She simply crawled into the bed of the pickup and lay down, as though all she wanted to do was sleep.

  Rebel didn’t get it. Even as he helped Wade pull her out of the back and drag her across the yard, he didn’t see the point. There was no fear in this girl, which meant there was no fun. Claudine took one look at her and muttered for Wade to tie her up in the basement.

  “Let her sober up,” she said. “She won’t care she’s dyin’ unless she knows what’s goin’ on.”

  When Wade got her out of the cellar two days later, the girl’s eyes were as wild as any animal’s Rebel had ever seen. Dry vomit crusted the front of her T-shirt. The crotch of her bell-bottomed jeans was damp. Reb stared at her in disgust, unable to pull his gaze away from the circle of stained denim between her legs. Claudine gave her water, and after drinking it, the girl looked a little more alert. Reb watched his mother like a kid would watch a magician at a birthday party, trying to figure out the trick before she did it. Claudine met her son’s eyes, and for a moment she wore nothing but a blank stare, as if there was nothing behind her gaze but a long stretch of darkness. After a moment she gave him a maternal smi
le. Don’t worry, son, it said. Watch and learn. That was when she pulled the glass from the girl’s grasp, placed it on the railing of the back porch, and nodded at her husband. Wade stepped behind the girl without a sound. Reb could tell the girl hadn’t noticed him from the way she was staring at Claudine with question marks for eyes.

  “You’re probably wonderin’ why you’re here,” Claudine told her, wiping her hands on the front of her apron. “You ever wanted to be a teacher?”

  At first, the girl didn’t respond. Her skin was a weird yellow color. She looked sleepy and sick. But eventually she spoke. “You’re crazy. I ain’t no teacher.”

  “Well, you are today, honey,” Claudine said.

  Wade’s hands clamped down on the girl’s biceps.

  The girl started in surprise, but her shock soon shifted to realization. And with that realization came the widened eyes, the quickening of breath, the struggle for freedom.

  “Go ahead, darlin’,” Claudine nodded, urging her on. “Fight ’im.”

  Reb ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth, dry like the Sahara. The girl let out a yell, desperate to jerk her arms clear of Wade’s hands. She began to scream, and something stirred in the pit of Reb’s stomach. It was dark and delicious, the same dirty feeling he got when he snuck old Playboys out of Wade’s army footlocker when nobody was looking.

  “Nobody’s gonna hear ya,” Reb whispered to himself, his eyes fixed on the struggling girl. “Nobody’s gonna save ya. Nobody’s gonna remember. I’m gonna wipe ya out.”

  She screamed harder—terror meshing with desperation. The strained sound of her fear gave Rebel goose bumps. His pulse quickened. His pants were suddenly uncomfortable. When he reached down to tug at the fabric, he felt a hard lump behind his zipper. His eyes jumped to Claudine to see if she had noticed. Her dark look of satisfaction assured him that she had indeed.

  Claudine drew a roll of silver duct tape from the pocket of her apron and held it out to her son.

  “Go play,” she told him.

  The sight of the tape made the girl scream even louder. She thrashed wildly, her cries a hysterical aria tearing itself from her throat. The closer Rebel got, the easier it was to make out the peppering of infected dots along the inside of her left arm. Claudine held the girl by one of her ankles while Reb wrapped tape just above her crummy old sneaker and then pulled it toward her other leg. As the girl screeched above them, Reb felt a pang of what must have been love swell up in his heart for his mother. She was giving him a gift. This was her apology.

  Wade jabbed the back of the girl’s knees with his own and she folded up like an accordion, falling to the ground. Wade stepped away from the girl and his son, but not before dropping a switchblade next to Reb’s feet. Wade had a lot of stories about that knife. In one, he stole it off of a dink during his leave in Saigon. In another, he found it on a mama-san who had come wandering into their camp. Rebel didn’t know which story was true, but the letters etched into the handle proved that it came from Vietnam. Something about the feel of the knife assured Reb that the blade had tasted blood; his quiet, pensive father had a darker past than Reb had ever considered.

  Rebel kept her tied up in the yard for two days. Wade would have preferred the basement, but Reb liked being able to see her from his window, and Claudine liked seeing her too. Sometimes the girl cried, other times she begged. She shrieked when he carved his name into her belly, bucked and prayed and implored him to kill her when he tried to cut off the pointer finger of her right hand. The blade of the knife was too dull to do the job, and she passed out shortly after he made his attempt.

  He caught Michael staring out onto the yard from Lauralynn’s window only once. Misty Dawn was at his side. They held on to each other, their eyes wide and glassy as Reb looked up at them from his crouch above the girl. When he met their stares, Misty turned away, but Michael’s gaze was fixed. It felt like a challenge, one Reb decided to call him out on when he grew bored with the half-dead girl at his feet.

  Claudine finished her off while Rebel locked himself in his room. He touched himself as the girl gave a final scream, replacing the junkie’s sallow face with Lauralynn’s inside his head. After he was done, he went back downstairs and made an announcement.

  “I think Michael should finish the job. He knows how.”

  Wade dragged Michael across the yard toward the basement as the boy carried on and tried to pull away. And for a moment Wade hesitated, as if thinking about sparing his youngest son.

  Claudine eventually lost her patience—probably because Michael was hollering as loudly as the girls did. Or maybe it was because she hated seeing Wade vacillate between doing what needed to be done and what he thought was “right.” Abandoning her post at the kitchen window, she shoved Michael down the stairs after the dead girl who had Reb’s name etched into her skin.

  Rebel sat outside the locked cellar door for hours, grinning to himself. He stabbed at the dirt with Wade’s old knife, listening to Michael pleading to be let out in short, gasping wails. Knowing that nobody would let him out until he did what he had to do. Thinking about how, if it was up to him, he wouldn’t ever let Michael out at all.

  20

  * * *

  AFTER REBEL LEFT the house, Michael and Misty Dawn listened to records in Misty’s room. Misty played everything from Nancy Sinatra to the Monkees. When she spun the Beach Boys, Alice’s sly smile crept into the corners of Michael’s mind. But rather than taking pleasure in the memory of her saying the band was “for shark bait,” he felt his stomach pitch. He was unable to stop picturing that nefarious grin crawling across his brother’s mouth.

  He excused himself while the Beach Boys sang “Good Vibrations,” ducked into his room, and slid onto his bed. Lying there, he tried to put himself in the worst possible scenario—Reb showing up in the middle of the night with a screaming, terrified Lucy. Or maybe she wouldn’t be terrified at all. Maybe Rebel would show her up to his room, close the door behind them, and Michael would listen to lustful moans until Reb had had enough. Then the screaming would start, because no matter how stupid Reb thought Michael was, he knew one thing for sure: a visit to the Morrow farmhouse was a one-way trip.

  He rolled over and pulled his blanket up to his chin despite the heat. Staring at the peeling wallpaper through the moonlit darkness that filtered in through his dirty window, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to sleep. Just as he began to drift off, his eyes darted open at the sound of something simultaneously strange and familiar. It was the soft thump of bass, the accompaniment of a weird, watery guitar, the odd warble of melancholy vocals muffled by the wall between Misty’s room and his own.

  Misty was playing Alice’s Cure record, low, but still audible.

  The sound of it made his stomach churn.

  He considered getting up, and asking her to either turn it down or off completely—he was trying to sleep so that his mind wouldn’t be wandering in circles around the Dervish. He didn’t want to think about the girls, about Dahlia, about where Reb might have gone. But before Michael worked up the ­energy, his door creaked open. A slash of hallway light illuminated the wall for a beat, then was gone. He glanced over his shoulder, and for the briefest of moments, he swore he was seeing a ghost. A nightgowned figure swayed in the shadows to the dampened music that slithered through the wall.

  “Miss?” He squinted, propped himself up with an elbow, and brushed away strands of long unruly hair so that he could see her better. Misty scampered barefoot across the hardwood floor. She crawled onto his mattress, her knee-length nightgown skittering up her legs, revealing the tops of her thighs.

  It all came back to him in a flash. The record. Misty dancing. Rebel in the doorway. Misty hitting the wall. Reb’s fist smashing into Michael’s face. His tongue drifted across the healing cut along his bottom lip, and he remembered Reb’s most recent warning, the one his brother swore was the last Michael would ever receive. If he screwed up again, Reb would dump his worthless carcass deep in the
mountains, where no one would find him.

  “What are you doin’?” Michael asked, reflexively scooting away from her, pressing himself flush against the wall.

  “Makin’ sure you’re okay. Why’d you leave?”

  “I’m tired.”

  Misty went quiet for a moment. Her head was on his pillow. A finger of moonlight played across her neck. She sighed, tilted her chin up enough so that he could see her face despite the darkness of the room. “Tell me about this girl,” she said.

  “What girl?”

  “Oh please.” She waved a hand over her head, dismissing his feigned confusion. “Ray told me all about her.” Her nightgown pulled up at the bottom hem by an inch. Michael’s eyes darted to her legs. They were almost ethereal in the moon’s glow, so pale they could have belonged to Alice—Snow White personified. “You went to the movies, took her out to eat and everythin’.” Her bottom lip formed a childlike pout.

  “Reb’s gonna be back any minute,” Michael croaked.

  “He ain’t gonna be back for hours,” Misty said, still frowning. “And besides, I thought we were friends.”

  “We are friends,” he insisted, “but you can’t be in here. You know what’ll happen.”

  She rolled onto her side to face him, so close that he could feel her breath lingering across his lips. She placed a palm against his chest while he remained glued to the wall, willing the house to make him disappear. “You protect me, don’t you? Because you love me.”

  He swallowed.

  “Tell me,” she urged. “Because you love me.”

  “Because I love you,” Michael repeated, tensing when Misty’s bare leg drifted atop his own.

  “So how come you don’t treat me that way?” she asked. “There somethin’ wrong with me? I ain’t as good as she is? I ain’t as pretty? How come she gets to go to the movies and I don’t? I ain’t never been to the movies before. Ray never offers.”