Woods

by Finkelstein, Steven

  When Daddy spoke again, all the humor, all the whimsy, had gone from his voice. It dripped with a bitterness and a dry, seething anger that made Tad feel physically sick. “Warn me? Who are you, stripling, to warn me? What can you hope to do to me? How do you plan to protect yourself and your loved ones? Do you think that you and your peasant family are safe from me, in your little farmhouse? I, who need no key to come and go as I wish? I, who can go traipsing through your charming sister’s mind whenever I so desire?” He was advancing slowly along the bank. The frogs had begun sounding to Tad as if they were screaming, now, their urgent croaks a protest against the glove clad hands that throttled them. “And you,” Daddy continued. “Forever and ever you will feel the need to come back to me, do you understand? Can you see living your life that way? Feeling that way, knowing that any moment of any day, regardless of where you are and what you’re doing, I can put my mark on you? Can you imagine it, explaining to your date on prom night that you can’t let Jack out of his box because you’ve got ants in the pants? Eh? Trying to sit in class and learn about the Battle of the Bulge and having to fight your own battle all the time, one that you and only you are even aware of?” He chortled, that mirthless, ugly laugh that was the antithesis of humor. As he had been speaking, the voice he’d chosen for the evening had been melting like icicles on the first day of spring. Now little of it remained, and the insanity underneath was rising to the surface, racing along the surface of those bulging eyes and tightening the corners of the mouth into that jokers’ smile. Tad turned to look for his father and brother, but they were gone, gone. He was alone again, only he, and the silent, watchful woods, and Daddy, always Daddy. He could not remember, at that moment, what life had been like before the man in white had entered it. And he would never know that life again, he was sure of it now. The horror of this revelation had been dawning on him, and against it he was powerless, and terrified, and unbearably tiny and exposed. He could feel his body wanting to shrink up and lie fetal on the bank. A whimper forced its way from between his lips.

  “Who are you?” he said. “Who are you?”

  A smile split Daddy’s face again, so wide that in Tad’s vision there was nothing but a hovering blot of red gums and white teeth. “Who am I? Who am I?” He spoke now with a sort of maniac glee, as if this was the very question that he’d been waiting for all along. “Surely you know by now that I have many names. Who am I? I am the man among men, that’s who I am. I am the Demonic Psychotic, the Master Manipulator, the Sly Agitator, and the Grandest of Charlatans. I am the Swift Sinner and the Grim Chancellor, the Great Potentate of Opulence and Depravity. I’m the one your mother warned you about, the face outside the window, the Boogey Man under the bed. I am the moonbeam-nightmare of the mind, the absurd and the tragic, the neglected and envied, the hated and feared. I’m the wind in the branches, the rustle of the leaves. I am the beetle-black insect,” he said, leering at Tad and rocking back and forth with his upper body, keeping his legs still, “that creeps along your floor, and whose incessant chirping will not let you sleep.” Tad thought of the cricket, and shuddered. He couldn’t help it. “I am everything and nothing, your salvation and destruction; of that you can be sure.”

  “How long did it take you,” Tad said, his voice shaking in his anger, “to come up with that grandiose list of titles? You’re the world’s biggest egomaniac, that’s what you are. You’re a human scab, completely without a redeeming feature. You’re cruel, and deceitful, and deranged, and petty as an infant. You know what I think?” he said, as all that been churning in his head for the past weeks began now to spew unchecked from his mouth. “I think you are one of two things, and I am not sure which. You are either a psychopath, in which case you don’t know or understand the consequences of your actions, or you are a sociopath, and you simply don’t have any conscience at all. In either case, you are dangerous and I want you out of my life.” And then he felt a huge surge of anger rise up in him, and he screamed out “I want back everything that was taken from me! You took it all! You did! I don’t know how you did it, but you did!”

  “Yes,” Daddy said happily, and it was impossible not to hear the pride in his voice. “I did.”

  “You can’t treat people this way. You can’t treat me this way. You’re going to have to pay for what you did to me. I will hold you accountable.”

  Daddy threw his head back and roared with laughter. “My dear boy,” he said, when he was able, “in this game we’re playing, you aren’t even holding any cards.”

  Tad spoke again, more slowly and distinctly, as if explaining something to a person with a limited grasp of the language. “You’re going to have to pay for what you did to me.”

  “You little twit,” Daddy said, shaking his head as if incredulous that Tad had not picked up on this yet, “there’s simply nothing you can do to stop me.”

  “You’re wrong. You will be held accountable for your actions. I don’t know how, but you will.”

  Daddy’s smile was fading, being slowly replaced once more by a look of impatience. He isn’t used to not getting his way. It’s like he doesn’t know how to process that someone is refusing to do what he wants. It’s as though he never learned in life that sometimes we simply don’t get what we’re after. “I didn’t believe it was possible,” the man muttered, “but it seems that even after tonight, more is needed to convince you of the intractableness of my position.”

  “And I warn you once more. Call an end to this and leave me and my family be.”

  “And I tell you once more, my dear lad, that I always get what I want. Sooner or later, you will submit to me. Once my eye is on you, it never goes away.”

  Tad didn’t know what more to say. He felt that the anger and sadness that filled him were too much for his single body to contain. When one is confronted by an enemy possessing powers that seemingly cannot be countered by any known means, when one is robbed of the fragile, harmless illusions that have sustained them for all their lonely lives, then it becomes practically impossible not to submit to despair. Tad felt that despair, certainly, but he was feeling something else along with it, something that had actually wounded him far more. He thought he had determined something now concerning that new, private excitement that had been growing steadily within him since it had been kindled, the seedling of an idea and a lifestyle that had been planted somewhere deep inside. He thought it had all been shown to be a falsity, and all that had been hinted at by a man whom he had genuinely thought to be his friend had come to naught. And then, deeper still than that, even, there was yet something more, a final aspect that he did not want to think of, to examine too closely. It was the suspicion that just the opposite was actually true, that all that he’d ever imagined and much that he had not were close enough that he had only to reach out and touch it, that all could still be revealed. And this desire in himself he did not understand, and so he hated it, even as he had come to hate Daddy himself. And because there did not seem to be anything more that could be done, and because he was concerned for his sister’s life, he walked away and left Daddy standing there, that shit-eating grin on his face, but Tad did not think but knew that it was only a matter of time before they would be seeing each other again.

  Conspirators

  Daisy did not die. Though the foul muck of The Bottoms had folded her tightly in its cocoon, probing and creeping in through all her passages and gripping her tightly for several unenviable seconds before her hand had found her fathers’, she survived. The discomfort that she felt, however, was more than any child should ever be asked to endure. The ooze had gotten into her ears, her mouth and throat. Her eyes. When Walt and Casey had returned, Walt still carrying his precious burden, Marta had been beside herself with worry. It was just as well for Tad that he had not seen her in such a state. He arrived back at the house some minutes after the others, but no one noticed the discrepancy. They were otherwise occupied. Dismissing Casey, who promptly returned upstairs and went back to sleep without any diffi
culty, Marta ran a warm bath in the downstairs bathroom adjacent to the master bedroom, where she lay her daughter, first having removed the soiled rags that had once been her clothes. Then she proceeded to wash each part of her body, carefully, gently. And as she did so, Marta said many things, small tender things that had little meaning, and sang very softly little songs from Daisy’s childhood, that the girl likely would have recognized, had she been listening. She was not. Though she seemed to be conscious, and her eyes were open, she was not responsive to her mothers’ touch, and even when the blackened bathwater had been drained and Marta had carried her into the master bedroom and lain her down on the soft coverlet, Daisy did not speak, or stir, or even blink. It was as though the experience had struck her deaf and dumb.

  When Marta came out of the bedroom, the first thin and tenuous light of morning was drifting through the living room blinds, painting the drab furniture colorless and forlorn. Walt was sitting in his accustomed spot, in his chair. For once the television was not on. It was quiet in the house, but outside the birds had long since begun to stir. Tad was crouched by the wall, halfway down the stairs between the second and the first floor. Having stripped out of his clothes on the front porch, mechanically, his face as blank as Daisy’s, he had gone upstairs and after a bit of perfunctory washing in his own bathroom, he had changed into an old pair of gym shorts and a more or less clean undershirt. Then he’d sat in the living room, waiting for he knew not what, some word of Daisy’s condition, maybe, though it could have been that he knew instinctively that he would not be able to sleep just now. Sleep. The very notion was laughable. When his father had emerged from his room, also in fresh clothes, he had told Tad to go to bed. Tad had made as much noise as he could, walking heavily up the stairs, and then he had crept part of the way down again, to sit and wait, miserably, for his mother to come out. Now that she had, he strained to listen to the conversation between his parents. “…need to get her checked out,” his mother was saying. “This is the second episode in the past few weeks…and she’d been doing so well.”

  “She seems to be alright,” Walt’s voice said. Marta must have given him one of her looks, for he went on hastily. “But I agree with you we should have her looked at. We was lucky this time; we need to keep a closer watch on her.”

  “There doesn’t seem to me to have been any kind of external injury, but still, I want Doc Horowitz to take a look at her.”

  “I’ll let her rest for a spell, and then I’ll drive her in.” Then there was silence from the living room, and after waiting for a few more minutes, Tad slunk back up the stairs. He walked down the hall, past the bathroom and the closed door to Casey’s room. Back in his own room he closed the door and lay down on the bed. It was still that time just before true dawn, when the darkness was gone but the color of the world was blanched and false. As the details of the objects around him gradually sharpened, he closed his eyes, feeling wearier in the very core of his being than he’d ever imagined possible in his short life.

  It did not seem as though any time had passed, but when he opened his eyes it was fully daylight, and hot again. As he lay there, he thought about how in a very short space of time he had come to despise the sun. But even though he craved the night and the relief it brought, nighttime was a time for mischief, and he had a special dread of it now too. He rose and hunted down a pair of relatively unsoiled jeans that could pass for clean, and he threw them on. Then he went hurriedly downstairs, hoping that Daisy and his father had not left for town.

  They had not. Walt was just finishing breakfast, and he could hear his mother moving about in her room. Of Casey there was no sign. “Where’s Daisy?” he asked, seating himself at the table.

  “In there with your mother. In a minute I’m goin’ to drive her on into town.”

  “To see Doc Horowitz?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can I come?”

  Walt regarded him suspiciously. “What for?”

  “I wanted to stop at the library.”

  Walt scratched at the stubble on his chin, seemingly taking a moment to give this request the consideration it deserved. It was a bit strange, coming from Tad, who, while not completely opposed to recreational reading, wasn’t in the habit of asking for rides to the library often. But likely Walt’s mind was on more important matters, for after another couple of seconds he consented. “I don’t care,” he said. “Just you go on get ready then. We’re leavin’ directly.”

  Ten minutes later the four of them were in the battered green pickup, rolling along the curving drive through the trees on their way to meet up with the Willow Road. Daisy sat in the front between her parents, and Tad rode on the flatbed in the rear. He had been hoping that she would ride in the back with him, but Marta had been feeling understandably protective, and she didn’t want her daughter to leave her side. Funny, he thought, how a near-death experience is what it takes to bring this family together. But it was like that in most families, he mused. We take the ones we love for granted, and we don’t acknowledge them as much as we should. He was thinking how if she had died, if his father had not found her hand and pulled her from out of the very mouth of danger, that he would have never forgiven himself. Not only for the part he’d had to play in the whole affair, but also for how he hadn’t been able to tell her that he loved her one last time, and appreciated the person that she was. He had resolved, last night, when he had been stumbling back to the house after his latest confrontation with Daddy, nearly blinded by anguish and fear, that if Daisy lived he would tell her everything that had happened and was happening, all that he knew, and he would hold nothing back. He had tried to handle it all on his own. He had let his pride and desire blind him, and for that, he was truly penitent. But remorse for his actions was not enough, and he knew that. He was not out of the woods yet.

  They took a left at the Willow Road and headed for town, slowly, the truck bouncing as Walt steered it around the worst of the potholes as they approached the limits of the town proper. Tad had spoken a partial truth, when he’d said that he wanted to go to the library. He did, but it was not actually the library itself that interested him, but the building to which it was adjacent. Tad was going to the Hall of Records for the city of Feral.

  As they moved closer to the concentration of buildings that represented the hub of Feral’s commerce, Tad could feel himself growing less anxious. Maybe it was partially due to the idea that by being in the proximity of a larger group of people, innocents that knew nothing of the events in the Surrey household, there was less chance that Daddy might want to enact any more of his malicious mischief. Tad didn’t know if there was any credence to this, but allowing himself to think it enabled him to be a bit calmer and more collected on the outside than what he felt on the inside. When he had seen Daisy in peril, there in The Bottoms, he had experienced a feeling of such magnitude that he still didn’t feel nearly right from it. It had been a feeling of the most utter helplessness, and terror, and anguish. Looking back on it, he remembered thinking that at any moment it might have killed him where he stood, or turned him to stone, or made his head explode in a shower of pulp to litter the forest floor as he’d so often wished would happen to Casey, or possibly one or two of his teachers. It was the strength of the feelings, even more so than the feelings themselves, which had affected him so. He remembered thinking of himself, for that moment, like a conduit through which a powerful current was being run, a being composed of pure emotion, and everyone nearby should have been able to see him glowing and pulsing with the energy of it all. In that moment, when he saw how it could all unfold, when he had seen the life that he had known slipping away from him, then he had known for just an instant what it was to be racing along the edge of the cliff and to look down at the drop toward the dark and unseen depths below. It had been devastating. And exhilarating. He wished that it wasn’t so, but it was. He never wanted to feel the like again, but then he also needed to feel it again, and telling himself it wasn’t so did noth
ing to diminish that need. And thinking of this he was troubled yet again by what he had come to. By what had been done to him.

  The doctor’s office was on Larkspur, by the post office, but the library was just off the Willow Road, so Walt stopped there first. Tad hopped down from the back and walked around to the driver’s side window. “Do what you come to do,” Walt said “and then walk over to meet us. Don’t take too long now, y’hear?”

  “Yes sir.” As Tad stepped back from the truck, he caught Daisy’s eye. She looked very serious, or so he thought, and he wanted very much to smile at her. But he found that he couldn’t. Under her stare, his facial muscles refused to obey him, and he was actually glad when the truck continued down the street, Walt rolling up the window again. The cloud of dust cleared, leaving Tad standing in the middle of the Willow Road. He took the silver watch from his pocket and glanced at it. It was a quarter past ten in the morning. The heat truly miserable. He stood for a moment looking up and down the road in either direction, absently rubbing at the back of his head. Though he must have slept, or at least not have been conscious for a few hours, he was still immensely weary. He was facing the barber shop, and he found himself staring, eyes unfocused, at the red and white striped circular post, some two and a half feet in length, that rotated continually next to the door. He watched it, not moving, and as he did so the heat from the sun fell on his shoulders. He could feel the first drops of sweat beginning to form on the back of his neck and under his arms. There was something the red and white was reminding him of, and for a few long seconds he couldn’t place it. And then he realized that the colors looked like the wider-than-natural smile of his tormentor, he of the many names, and he shook his head from side to side so hard it hurt, in an effort to dispel the man’s awful grin from his mind. He turned away, and walked up the steps of the library.