Outcasts

by Nick Wisseman

  Like tonight: surely Ethan wouldn’t mind contributing something to a project that revolved around family history? Of course not…But Caroline still wasn’t sure what she wanted that contribution to be. Slumping into Sire’s Seat, she set the all-but-completed diorama on her lap and studied it to figure out what was missing: the three walls were painted as accurately as she could manage; the furniture looked reasonably familiar; even the figurine was a passable rendition. It was her living room—her living room of five years ago—with her dad slouched in a miniature Seat, reading a book.

  Close to her best work, and yet…it felt incomplete.

  Shifting carefully so as not to upset the diorama, Caroline reached into her pocket and pulled out the watch. Staring at it proved unproductive: the original inspiration inspired no further. Stymied, she began absently twiddling its two knobs, winding them sporadically while her eyes roved over Ethan’s shelf again. Maybe she just needed to sleep, rest the five hours until school and reevaluate tomorrow. She did have that social studies quiz tomorrow, and a big—

  The watch squirted out of her grasp and tumbled into the diorama. Caroline swore, started to reach down to remove the tiny clock, and froze, unable to do anything more than blink in a vain attempt to wipe away the impossible with her eyelids…

  * * *

  …The attempt failed: the tiny figurine was still STARING back at her when she reopened her eyes. Not sure whether she was stifling a scream or a laugh or both, Caroline locked her jaw shut.

  But the figurine opened his. “Hey.”

  Even Caroline’s eyes felt paralyzed now.

  “I’m all right…You?” The miniature body was beginning to move, slowly but surely, as if it were thawing out from the neck down…

  The crack of a pointer smacking her desk jerked Caroline back to attention, shattering her reminiscence of the scene in the attic last night and replacing it with Mrs. Pearson’s disapproving mask of wrinkles. After quashing the class’s snickers with a look, the earth science teacher resumed her lesson as if it had never been interrupted.

  Shivering slightly, Caroline started copying the bullet points on the blackboard into her notes. She’d already been reprimanded twice for daydreaming. It was nearly impossible to concentrate…which was why she’d wanted to stay home, but that morning her mother had actually put her foot down about faking illness; nothing could dissuade her from making sure Caroline got on the bus.

  So now she was drifting through fourth period, unable to focus on anything but what had transpired just a few hours ago on Sire’s Seat…

  …Caroline finally managed to slam her eyelids down and back up again, but it didn’t change anything: the tiny man was still there, looking just to her left now, at a point near her limp forearm. His features had sharpened enough to form a wary expression.

  “Why are you here?” he asked suddenly as one little arm began to bend at the elbow, haltingly at first and then more smoothly. The other followed suit shortly thereafter, and eventually both limbs were crossed over his miniscule chest, which was beginning to rise and fall in tiny, breath-like motions…

  A foot nudged the back of her calf. Caroline nearly jumped out of her seat before she realized it was just Janice. Her best friend since first grade smiled and motioned with her eyes towards the blackboard.

  Caroline nodded numbly, noted how far behind she was, and began taking notes again. But within a few seconds she was back on autopilot, the motion of her pen slowing with every stroke…

  …The urge to knock the box off her lap was overwhelming, but her body wouldn’t comply.

  Furrowing his little brow, the figurine cocked his head and stared again, still at something in the vicinity of her forearm. After a long moment of silence, he extended one of his arms, opening a hand so vividly detailed that the lines of his palm were visible. The pocket watch appeared in his grasp, sized to his scale, and his arm dipped to accommodate its weight. “Wow…”

  Caroline gasped, finally capable of motion and sound. The figurine’s voice had risen in volume, coming into being at the same gradual rate as the rest of him; now the one-sided conversation was reverberating around the diorama with a bass that made Caroline’s nose hairs tingle. It felt…wonderfully familiar. “Dad?”

  His gaze stayed fixed on the watch as his fingers caressed it slowly. “You know this doesn’t change things,” he said wearily, drained of his earlier hostility.

  Caroline’s lips twitched with indecision, unsure what words to form, what questions to ask.

  “But…Thank you.” He sighed heavily, and then raised his eyes back to their former level. “I think it would be best if you left now…”

  “Ms. Thornburn!” Her name and the crack of Mrs. Pearson’s pointer ripped through the air almost simultaneously. “See me after class so we can discuss methods for improving your concentration.”

  Caroline murmured an apology and began scribbling down the latest slew of bullet points. As soon as Mrs. Pearson’s back was turned, Janice flashed Caroline a sympathetic (and slightly guilty) look. She answered with a weak smile before turning back to her shoddy notes…and the memory she couldn’t shake, no matter how hard she tried…

  …She blinked again, and the third attempt finally did the trick; when she reopened her eyes, everything was as it had been a few minutes ago. The figurine was motionless, in its original, static position; the furniture was rearranged per her design; and the watch was life-size once more, resting in the corner where it had first fallen, its hands advanced exactly five minutes.

  * * *

  “Oh, Uncle Cliff says hi.” Caroline said this as if she and her mother had been talking continuously for hours, rather than sitting in silence through the news and much of Entertainment Tonight.

  “He picked you up from school again?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her mother shook her head. “That man…but you never could fault his heart.”

  The quiet resumed, and Caroline went back to searching for an opening.

  “What’s bothering you, honey? You’ve been so out of it lately, and I can’t remember the last time you just sat and watched TV with me.”

  “Who did Dad get the watch from?”

  Frowning, her mother gave Caroline a searching look. The tiny tennis scar just above her graying temple darkened slightly, as it often did during a mood shift. “You’re really fixated on that ghastly thing now, aren’t you?”

  Caroline didn’t respond; she was too busy regretting the way she’d blurted out yet another question after hours of agonizing over the right approach.

  Rolling her eyes, her mother changed the channel to CNN. “Uncle Cliff did.”

  “But…” Caroline pursed her lips before continuing. “Didn’t they…hate each other?”

  Her mother began drumming her manicured fingers in the center of the compass shape formed by the remote’s channel- and volume-buttons. “They never hated each other. Did your brother tell you that?”

  “No…I just sorta…thought everyone knew.”

  “Well, everyone was wrong.” Her mother started flipping channels, resting on each new station for no more than two seconds before moving on. “They didn’t hate each other…They just never really grew up in some ways.”

  “But why did he give Dad the watch?”

  “What is so god-damned fascinating about that hideous, broken piece of junk? Do you even remember what it looked like?” Her mother glared for several seconds before groping with her free hand for the martini glass on the end table. “I’m sorry…Although it’s actually appropriate; Cliff was apologizing for something when he gave the watch to your dad. But it’s been so long now, I can’t remember why…Except that your father wanted that watch ever since Grandpa first showed it to them, and it killed him when it was left to your uncle…It meant a lot to your father to have it.”

  Nodding slowly, Caroline got up to leave. “Thanks.”

  “Sure, babe.”

  Caroline trudged upstairs, wondering if
she’d ever outgrow turning red when she lied; her mother certainly hadn’t.

  * * *

  The box was still where it had landed after Caroline knocked it from her lap: topside up, a few feet from Sire’s Seat. Its contents were jumbled but intact; her delayed spasm of panic after the scene reset had done remarkably little damage. And everything was already lightly coated with dust, a testament to how truly filthy the attic was…and a sign that there had been no further movement since the night before.

  Caroline hesitated, the hastily crafted figurine of Uncle Cliff dangling from her grasp. She was fairly certain that the watch was the catalyst, that she’d probably have to manipulate it again, pick it up, touch it in some way…But maybe nothing more needed to be done than adding another character.

  As carefully as she could manage, Caroline knelt, righted the fallen props, positioned her father and uncle a few inches apart, and whipped her hand back as soon as the little models looked stable enough to stand on their own. The two representations rocked slightly, upset by her hasty withdrawal…But nothing else moved.

  Caroline slumped backwards and exhaled heavily. She’d only spent two hours on her uncle’s figurine—compared to the four she’d lavished on her dad’s—but the end product was still vaguely recognizable; the minor dip in quality probably didn’t have much to do with the lack of animation. She needed to get over herself…Just get over herself and handle the damn watch.

  Swearing steadily, Caroline scooped up the timepiece in her left hand and almost immediately dropped it when the skin of her forefinger began to sink into the small dent on the thing’s back. Readjusting her hold, she looked determinedly at the watch’s motionless hands, impossibly advanced to 4:17 PM…Five minutes ahead. Squeezing her lips tight to wall off further obscenities, she twisted the time back to 4:12, and with a supreme effort, placed rather than dropped the timepiece in the diorama’s corner.

  Her hand cleared the box’s confines at the same instant the watch winked from sight, as if both were crowded out by the pair of resonant voices filling the diorama.

  * * *

  “Hey, Uncle Cliff?” Caroline spoke louder this time, hating to repeat herself but needing more volume to overcome the old Toyota’s radio.

  “Yeah, Cary?”

  She swallowed and asked the latest question to ricochet around her mind all through school. “Why did you give my dad the watch?”

  Her uncle stopped humming along to Paul Simon and darted a look at her before refocusing on traffic. “You mean Granddad’s old watch?”

  “Yeah…” Inserting him into the scene last night had revealed disappointingly little: his figurine’s only words had been an initial “How are you?”; his only actions offering the watch and leaving.

  Uncle Cliff chewed on the side of his cheek for two blocks before replying. “It was…time for him to have it. He deserved it more than I did…Why? Did you hear from him?”

  “No…” Caroline turned to stare out the window. His greeting in the diorama had been charged with the same shame, and suddenly it was hard to study her uncle’s face like she’d meant to. “Just wondering…Mom mentioned it the other day.”

  “What did she say about it?”

  “Just that you gave it to him.”

  He chewed his cheek again until the light changed. “All right, then.”

  * * *

  Shaking off her indecision, Caroline removed her father’s figurine from the box and set it aside, leaving her uncle’s representation alone with the watch. As she’d expected, nothing happened. But she still paused to reweigh the potential consequences of continuing.

  The straps of her backpack were starting to chafe her shoulders, rubbing skin made sweaty by her aggressive climb up the oak tree; upon clambering into her room, she’d only stopped to touch the low-limb high mark on her way into the hall, up to the attic, and onto Sire’s Seat. Her hunch had come just as Uncle Cliff pulled into the driveway, and she’d felt compelled to act on the idea immediately…Until she stood before her little theater again, struck by the question of whether she really wanted to know, if she’d really be better off after viewing whatever scene she was somehow meant to see next.

  Then her eyes idled over Ethan’s shelves, and her resolve returned.

  Gritting her teeth, Caroline reached both hands down to the watch, holding it fast in her left while she wound with her right. She rotated the timepiece’s tiny black arms through a full twelve-hour cycle with no effect…But she was still in the scene.

  Pursing her lips now, Caroline began making incremental advances, removing her hands every time the minute marker edged a notch further. The strain of holding this pose made her shoulder and neck muscles ache, but she refused to stop and put the box on her lap, or even take off her backpack. Stopping meant starting again, and she already knew how hard that was…

  At 3:42, her uncle came to life. The rhythm of wind, withdraw, and re-enter had become so ingrained that Caroline nearly put her hands back in the box, stopping just short as she saw Uncle Cliff plunge both of his into tiny pockets. She noted without much surprise that the watch had vanished…Although more unexpectedly, so had all the diorama’s furniture, painted walls, and every other representation of her old living room.

  “Sharon.”

  Swallowing, Caroline pulled her arms all the way back and wrapped them tightly around her ribs.

  “Sharon,” her uncle continued, “I know you’re unhappy…But we can’t do this. It’s not…” His voice trailed off as a vertical indentation appeared over his lips…as if an invisible finger was pressing against them. Pulling one hand out of its pocket, he made a warding motion that was quickly intercepted by the same unseen force. His arm glided back down until it hung limply at his side, and his other hand began to rise like a puppet’s. When his fingers emerged, they were loosely clutching the watch. A slender gold chain dangled from the tiny hoop crowning the timepiece’s apex.

  Caroline’s breathing doubled in time and force as her uncle slowly let go of the watch and let it hover unsupported just below his waist. After a moment of this stasis, the timepiece began levitating away, arching up and then settling back down as the chain spread into a slightly crooked oval.

  “Sharon…” Her uncle murmured something else to the tiny clock floating barely a centimeter away from him, but Caroline couldn’t hear it over the pounding in her temples.

  Then the watch rushed forwards without warning, crushing against her uncle’s chest as his arms closed in a circle and he fell backwards. Halfway to the diorama’s floor, he stopped, suspended in midair, his hands caressing the emptiness as his mouth began to open and close hungrily.

  Caroline screamed and slapped the writhing figurine, sending it skittering around the diorama. But when her uncle’s momentum dissipated, he was still kneading the space in front of him while the watch rubbed back and forth along his sternum. As the back of his shirt came un-tucked and started to slide upwards, Caroline reached in with both hands, grabbed her uncle, and twisted. Then she flung his now lifeless, plastic torso into the farthest corner of the attic, hurled his lower half out the opposite window, and ran downstairs, hot tears blurring her descent.

  * * *

  The model of her mother had been the easiest to construct. Maybe seeing her daily—however briefly—had helped this form flow the smoothest, shaped it closest to the pretty, black-haired original…despite Caroline’s secret wishes to the contrary.

  Maddeningly, Ethan’s image had been the hardest to recreate, a representation she wanted to be perfect but which kept moving further away from her memories the more she fussed. In the end, though, it probably didn’t matter. The figurines were infused with her intent, and that had been enough so far…

  Not that it had been easy.

  Her mother had come home the night before and found Caroline’s room locked and silent. Her share of Don’s best entrée—the sesame chicken—was still in the fridge; she’d only left her bed to use the bathroom and empty her tras
h. In the morning, her mother had prompted her briefly and halfheartedly before calling in an illness excuse. At 10:30, Caroline had forced herself to reach for the phone. Uncle Cliff picked up on the third ring. Still alive; still in one piece. Her breath had caught when she heard his voice, and she’d hung up without saying anything. After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling, she’d smashed the crystal unicorn he’d given her two Christmases ago. Shortly after 11:00, she’d swept up the pieces and begun modeling, convinced that she was ready…but still hoping Ethan would show her how.

  Fetching the diorama from the attic, she held it at arm’s length the entire trip down the stairs, even when the turn at the bottom made it almost impossible to do so. After removing the miniature furniture from the scene—including the few pieces that hadn’t been damaged the night before—Caroline took a moment to think about the order in which she wanted to proceed. But she couldn’t decide, and the inactivity was slowly stealing away her momentum, so she ended her internal debate by grabbing the two models closest to hand: Dad and Ethan.

  Caroline ground her teeth harder than she would have thought possible as she wound the watch minute-by-minute, pulled back, waited, and wound again, over and over and over. Until it happened: without warning, her dad was instructing a distraught Ethan that he was the man of the house now, that he had to look after his little sister as well as himself. And then the watch changed hands, relinquished from father to son so impersonally that Caroline gasped and looked away. She turned back in time to see the scene end, to witness Ethan chasing after their dad as he walked through the diorama’s wall and disappeared.