How insanely funny it was, he kept on thinking, that no one besides himself had any idea of the cataclysmic internal struggle that was taking place only inches away from them. Despite how incredibly uncomfortable it was, he felt a deeply resonant sense of importance that he among them had been chosen to be turned on to the invisible, undetectable broadcast that he felt sure was intended for him alone, the sole receptor. And just as quickly he was struck by how wrong and how foolish that sort of thinking was, and he was ashamed of himself for it. The very idea, that he should welcome this attention that was in fact an invasion by a hostile and malevolent force! For that is how he had come to think of it. There was no denying, that was the way it felt now. He tried telling himself mind over matter, it’s only in your head, and all such similar notions, but as before, back when he had welcomed the sensation and embraced it, he simply didn’t know how to turn it off. He sat squirming like a worm on a hook, sweating now. There was a noise in his ear, we-ow, we-ow, rising and falling like an air raid siren. Black spots, each one vibrating in a slow, persistent circle, hung in insect-like clouds around the upper corners of the room. He was unable to stop smiling, and the corners of his mouth were stretched tighter than piano wire. He was holding his breath. He felt a pain in his abdomen and realized his urethra was clenched like a small child trying desperately to avoid an accident. His whole body a tensely quivering fist.
“What,” Casey said, “are you smiling about?”
“I’m a naturally happy guy,” he said, through clenched teeth. It was all he could do, all he could do, not to dash for the door. His body jerked as the thought slammed into his head, come now, come now, come now, come now! Looking across the table along the base of the wall, his eye was attracted to a sudden movement. It was a cricket of a kind he sometimes ran across down in the basement or out in the barn. It was shiny black, bulbous. He could see the tiny hairs that sprouted along each of its powerful hind legs. As if it could feel his eyes watching, it turned in his direction. “Oh God,” he said, staring at it. His seeking hands found each other and began to scrub together in a rapid motion as if he was trying to kindle a fire in his palms.
“What?” Casey said irritably. “What is it?” Tad felt rather than heard an absence of sound in the room and realized his mother had stopped telling his father whatever it was she’d been speaking about for the past few minutes, or possibly hours; he really couldn’t have said. It seemed that time had chosen this moment to go funny again, and each second crashed down on the one that had come before it like a hammer raining down on an anvil. By not leaving the room, things were happening to his body that had never even occurred to him as being possible. The siren in his ears had been replaced by a low, flat howling, and now it became a kind of extended groan, the only note left available to a human throat that was incapable of speaking of anything but its own suffering. It no longer knew a language but did not need any, having surpassed it and rendered it forever more unnecessary. Tad understood it, and now to his horror he realized that he was making it too.
“What is it?” Marta asked, alarm in her voice. “Are you sick?”
“God,” Tad said again. He was looking at the cricket, whose head had swiveled around so that it was perfectly aligned with his own. It was motionless, but he had the idea that it was sitting like a coiled spring on its powerful haunches, ready to bound across the table toward him at any moment. It was a messenger, and he feared the dread tidings that it brought. “I’m not well,” he said. “May I be excused?” Before any answer had been given he was already pushing his chair back from the table, and at that moment the phone rang. Walt made as if to rise, but Marta had already sprung to her feet, fluttering a hand at her husband and the rest of them as if her motions could prevent whatever it was that seemed about to happen.
“I’ll get it! I’ll get it!” she almost shouted, her gaze flying from one face to another, as if afraid one of them would protest her right to answer the phone. As she crossed the floor in the direction of the living room, the shrill braying sliced through the assembly again, and two things happened. The cricket bounded onto the table, as if a signal had been given, landing in front of Tad’s plate, and Daisy slithered silently off her chair. She landed on the floor in a sitting position before tipping over onto her left side, where she lay nearly motionless. Only one of her eyelids blinked rapidly. The rest of the room had sprung into action. Tad had thrown himself clear when the cricket had closed the distance between them, and when Daisy went down he reached his hands out to her in an instinctive, protective gesture, but he did not dare to do more because of the proximity of her body to the cricket. Instead he continued moving backward, away from the table, his arms still thrown out in front of him. The others were also on their feet, Walt bending down toward Daisy, Tad momentarily forgotten. When Casey had stood, his knees had collided with the underside of the table and he’d knocked over Walt’s beer, most of which was now dripping onto the floor. Marta hadn’t quite reached the living room when these new disruptions occurred, and now she flew to her daughter’s side, leaving the phone to continue ringing and adding to the general commotion. Within a split second it seemed that the chaos in Tad’s head had managed to free itself, and now it was running amuck in the dining room. Despite his concern for Daisy, in those moments he was almost glad of it. It had taken the attention off his peculiar behavior.
“Daisy,” his mother was saying, speaking in a high, breathy voice. She shook her daughter’s limp shoulder. Tad was looking from the cricket to his sister and back again. He wanted so badly to run, to obey the sensation, heed the call, and yes, to get away from what was happening here. He was the cause of all this, he was aware of that, even if they didn’t, and it would only end when he rushed to the door, threw it open, and ran to it, ran to him, as quickly as he could. He was standing off balance, in danger of being pulled over, so much was he being compelled, pushed toward that side of the house. His parent’s voices sounded garbled, as if they were speaking underwater. The phone sounded its brassy note again and again, as if trying to contribute something to the resuscitation efforts. Tad had removed his shoe, and was edging toward the cricket. His father looked up and made eye contact, and he gave a violent twitch.
“Will you answer the God damn phone?” Walt barked. Tad sidestepped Daisy and his mother and hurried toward the darkened living room. As he did so one of the voices in his head awoke and added itself to the din. It’s him, it’s him, it’s him, it squealed, the voice of a lunatic floating over the asylum wall. He did not, in fact, know who was on the other end of the line. But before he bent down to pick it up, as he allowed it one final ring, he did something that he had not been planning ahead of time. He reached out for it, much as he remembered doing with the aura that had accompanied and enclosed him at Decadence, that angelic cocoon in which the Essence had enfolded him. It was different this time. Before, he had been mingling with the auras of other living, breathing entities. This time he was trying to lock onto the person on the other end of a phone line, an unknown distance away from him. And something happened. Not precisely what he had attempted, at any rate, but something none the less- he felt it, heard it in that last ring, the presence of not someone, but something on the other end, a presence, brooding, and aquiver with anticipation for him to pick up and speak to it, for it had been waiting a long time. He raised the phone to his ear.
“Hello,” he said. All fell instantly silent. The voices in his head died away and all that could be heard was his mother entreating Daisy to move, to say something. Tad listened intently, the phone pressed against his ear. For a few seconds there was nothing, then there was a crackling and a whistling, that, if it had not sounded so mechanical, might almost have been taken for someone clearing their throat. “Hello,” he said again. He was watching through the doorway as his father lifted Daisy up in his arms. Her neck hung limp and her head bounced, once, as Walt straitened up, causing one of her eyelids to fall open for a second. It closed again, as if winking at
Tad, before Walt carried her limp form into his bedroom and out of sight. Marta and Casey followed, both of them still speaking excitedly, leaving Tad alone. From where he was standing he could see the cricket still perched on the table. Its antennae were wriggling back and forth. He said hello a third time, and then he heard something. At first it was barely audible, but gradually it grew a bit louder, and he could hear it more easily. For a moment he thought what he was hearing was the ocean. There was a kind of heave and crash to it, similar to an ebb and flow. But it did not sound like water. It sounded like gusts of air whipping along, and as it grew louder, he realized that it was coming not only from the phone, but from around and over the Surrey household too. And he could not allow himself the luxury of thinking that it might only be in his head. He realized, with a kind of stunning clarity, that it was the wind that he heard, and it was a lost and a lonely voice that it spoke with, for it was not just any wind, but that most miserable and chilling of winds. The one that rattles the low branches under the trees at twilight, that buffets lustily against the bushes in the swamp and the mire, and sends a chill down the spine of every traveler, whether in summer or winter. He stood there listening to it, and as he did so he thought he could hear too the creaking of the trees as they swayed back and forth, the bark chafing and the roots churning silently underground, and every tree, as he thought, a soldier in his army arrayed against Tad and positioned like enemy troops all about his house. Beware, Private First Class Surrey. He thought that it was the very voice of the woods themselves that he heard on the other end, the ever restless, shifting heart of the soil, the timber, timeless and powerful and uncontestable. As he allowed the noise to flow through him and out into the room, he thought that he could almost detect not one voice but many, an infinite number of voices that made up the greater one, giving it a rich yet fragile texture and harmony. But it was not a language that he was ever meant to know, and he realized that if he ever came to understand it he would surely go mad. He was equal parts hypnotized and frozen in fear. His father was crossing through the dining room on his way to the kitchen. He turned in Tad’s direction. Tad saw him as a bright yet tiny figure at the end of a long hallway.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Someone fooling around,” Tad answered, his voice almost a whisper. He replaced the receiver, and the wind was gone. It fell silent outside. He returned his gaze to the cricket, which still sat there, not moving. All this time he’d been holding his sneaker in his other hand. Now he raised it and walked back into the dining room. But the cricket was too fast for him. It saw him coming and sprung first to the seat of Tad’s chair, then to the floor. He charged at it and it hopped into the kitchen. When he pursued he came face to face with Walt, a cool washcloth in his hand, who shook his head with an open expression of doubt and mistrust at the son who appeared to have no problem playing one of his silly games rather than helping administer to his sibling who had just collapsed. Walt stepped around him, allowing Tad access to the kitchen, but the cricket was nowhere to be seen. It had vanished.
Night came on. Daisy had regained consciousness after a few anxious moments, and her father had carried her to the living room, despite her demands to be taken back up to the attic. Marta had taken her temperature and found it to be a bit high, but beyond that was unable to find anything physically wrong. She bombarded Daisy with questions about how she felt, but the answers failed to produce any new revelations. The decision was made, however, that for one night at least the youngest Surrey child would sleep downstairs, where Marta would be only a few feet away, should Daisy need anything. Tad, meanwhile, sat on the back porch, thinking grim thoughts. Every time the wind blew he clutched his knees to his chest and stared with hot, stinging eyes at the moving of the grass, fearful that he would be able to hear again the many perilous voices that sang to him from the other end of the phone line. He harbored no delusions about the trouble he was in, but there was just so much that was still unknown. And if he didn’t find out, fast, who knew how Daddy might choose to strike at him next? He had the idea that the man’s methods might be virtually limitless, like the rows of fanciful costumes hanging on their dusty racks in the rambling upper floors of his home. He could not allow himself to think that anything that was happening, or would happen from this point on (for he was certain that there was more to come) could be attributed to anything other than the man himself; yes, he was responsible, it was his doing. It had his mark on it, his stench. And it would only escalate, until he got what he wanted, like a child throwing a temper tantrum. But what was Daddy capable of? What other tricks did he have up his sleeve? Tad didn’t know. He didn’t know, and he was afraid.
It seemed that for the time being there was nothing to be done. He prepared himself for bed just to be doing something, but he was sure he’d be unable to sleep. It seemed to him that there were other steps he should be taking, to fortify both the Surrey household and his mental defenses. But he simply couldn’t think of anything, short of a general vigilance. Again he entertained the notion of telling his parents. But what would their reaction be? He didn’t know that they’d even believe him. He tried putting himself in their shoes, imagined himself springing this on them, telling them that he’d been fraternizing with costumed freaks, communicating with voices that even now refused to leave his head. They would accuse him of confusing his childish games with reality, if not outright lying. Or worse yet, if they perceived that he actually believed what he said, they might send him away to some sanitarium, pump him full of drugs, give him electroshock treatment. It was all too implausible, and he had no proof, no physical evidence of any of it. He desperately wished that it was all his imagination, just another game, but that simply wasn’t so. A game it might have been, but one that it seemed he could not stop playing.
This night brought little relief from the heat. The air hovered about the house with all the weight of a physical object, a mass of burning ions that scorched the lungs with every breath, and Tad had no fan in his room. The window was open, and through the screen could be heard the teasing voices of the black cricket and its myriad brethren. Nature itself has turned on you, one of the voices informed him. You face not one, but a host. The night, and the trees, and the wind, and the animals, they all do his bidding. What hope can you have against their onslaught? How can you hide from their ever watchful eyes? “Who’s hiding?” he said. “I’m right here. I’m not hard to find.” He was naked, lying on the bare mattress. He’d stripped the blankets from the bed, the sheets. They lay in a heap on the floor. He ran a hand along the new hairs on his forearm, matting them down and watching as they slowly rose back up, like blades of grass trampled by the sole of some careless passing boot. There was nothing to do but wait. I’ve spent my whole life waiting. I can wait a little more.
In their bed downstairs, Walt and Marta looked as though they’d been having a dispute about something, even though they were both asleep. Marta was as far away from her husband as she could be, without falling off the mattress. She was turned, facing the wall, her knees pulled up toward her chest. Unbeknownst to her, she looked a little like her middle child, at the times when he’d curled himself into a ball on the shower floor and allowed his mind to carry him back to another time. In the moments when a parched wind blew past the window, she shifted uneasily, moaning softly and shaking her head. Walt was the opposite, taking up as much of the available bed space as he could, his arms spread out as though he were making a snow angel or being crucified. One of his hands was clenched into a fist, and he was frowning, the wrinkles of his forehead bunched together. If Tad could have seen the expression on his face, he would have recognized it as the one his father got whenever he’d been forcibly shaken from his routine to have to deal with some sort of trouble one of his two younger children had gotten into. The expression of a man who long ago had decided the best type of love he was capable of bestowing on offspring such as his was a steady, measured indifference.
Daisy was firmly trapped in t
he murky shallows between asleep and wakefulness. Her head was propped up with an overstuffed throw pillow; her matted hair obscured one eye. Both hands were clasped together at her chest, like some iconic figure at prayer in a stained glass window or a corpse arranged in its coffin. She was as pale as a corpse, yet the expression on her face was one of resolve. Her chin was jutted fiercely out, like the prow of a tiny ship. Every once in a while a noise would reach her from the dining room or kitchen, one of those unidentifiable noises in a house at night, and when this happened she would scowl and twist her body against the couch. A square patch of moonlight crept slowly along the carpet nearby.
Woods Page 31