Hurt: A Novel (Solitary Tales Series)

by Thrasher, Travis

  “That’s good?”

  “Yeah. It means she’s not dead.”

  “Spoken with such emotion.”

  My uncle curses. “Don’t give me that. I didn’t have to drive back down here, you know. I’ve saved your life twice now. I’m not cut out to be anybody’s guardian angel, especially yours.”

  “I didn’t ask you to be.”

  He laughs at me. “What a sad look.” Again with a curse. “You’re just like your mother.”

  Robert stands and turns off the stereo. He glances around the room. “There was a time I thought I’d never see any of this again.”

  “Why?”

  He pats me on the shoulder as he passes. “Come on—let’s go downstairs. You hungry for some lunch?”

  “No.”

  But actually I am pretty hungry.

  “Well, I’m thirsty, and if we’re going to talk, I’m going to need a drink.”

  Robert has that unhealthy look that Mom was starting to have when she drank too much—pale and thin and messy. He holds a can of beer in his hand, and I wonder where he got it from.

  “You sure you’re not hungry?” he asks as he sits on the couch across from me.

  “Are you staying here now?”

  He shrugs. His eyes look at me, but they don’t really connect. They seem distant and busy.

  “I don’t know what’s happening. I tried, Chris. I really tried.”

  “Tried what?”

  “To keep you guys okay. To look out for you.” He sips his beer, and then somehow the can seems to be empty. “I’ve been looking out for people ever since I came to this place.”

  Those same eyes are now glassy, and I can’t tell if it’s from sadness or from the booze.

  “You want to know something? I was the one who put that gun in your locker.”

  For a second I forget that it ever happened. But then I remember being called into the principal’s office and getting kicked out of school.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Because—the very thing you needed was to draw attention to yourself. To not fit in. I knew they’d find out it wasn’t yours. It was like I was sending them a message.”

  “What? That I was going to shoot someone?”

  Robert laughs. “No. That I’m just as serious as they are. Plus—I needed you and your mom to bond.”

  “So you got me kicked out, huh?”

  “It worked, right?”

  I recall Mom taking my side and threatening the principal and teachers.

  “Yeah, I guess so. In a weird way.”

  “The thing they wanted from the very start was for you to fit in. To make friends and have a good ole time and feel nice and comfortable and then begin to learn the truth. But …”

  “But what?” I ask.

  “Well, you chose to fall for pretty much the worst person you could have fallen for.”

  I get a small fire going in the fireplace and then sit on the hearth. Uncle Robert grabs another beer from the fridge.

  “Do you know everything that’s happening?” I ask.

  “I thought that moving here would give me the answers I needed.” He leans back on the couch and sighs. “Boy, was I wrong.”

  “Why did you move back here?”

  “Because I wanted to know what happened to my parents. Why my mom died when I was just a kid. I wanted to find out what happened to her, because I’ve never bought the whole car crash thing. Just like I never believed Dad was shot by some random thug when I was in college.”

  “Did it have something to do with this place?”

  “Ya think?” He takes a long draw of his beer, then wipes his mouth and curses. “It all comes back to this place. And back to our family. Really majorly sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “But why did you disappear?”

  “If you could vanish now, would you? Knowing that nobody would get hurt? Knowing that everybody would be okay? Would you?”

  I think about it and nod.

  “But I—it’s been confusing. I came back here and didn’t have anybody else. I wanted answers, and I wanted to fix things. But instead I got shackled down. In the end, it all went away.”

  I’m not following him. “Are you talking about Mrs. Marsh?”

  Robert groans and crinkles up the beer can, then tosses it into the fire. “Please. Don’t call her that. I mean, like ever again.”

  “Okay, then—Heidi.”

  “I tried to rescue her. I just didn’t know how hard it would be. I was doing something good, but it killed me inside because I also knew I was doing something wrong. But I loved her.”

  “She’s still around.”

  “I know,” Robert says. “But she made it clear. She chose to stay. We were going to leave, but she just couldn’t. That monster has some kind of hold on her.”

  “Staunch?”

  “Marsh. The little leper-healer. That’s what I call him. The whack-job with the glasses. That guy—I’m telling you, you stay away from him.”

  “Did they tell you about everything? About our—your grandfather?”

  “They wanted me to become like them, and I said no way. But then—they really thought they’d gotten rid of me. But I wasn’t going to leave Heidi. I can’t.” He pauses, looking into the fire and watching the crackling wood. “Then you guys show up and ruin everything.”

  “How?”

  “They destroyed my family. Our family. This sickness—this evil. And they wanted to do the same with you two. All because what? Because your mom had to get some answers. Just like her big brother.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  He stands and then leans over the couch. “Do you really want to know? I spend every hour of every day wondering if I’ve lost my mind. I drink to keep the nightmares away. You know that, right? That’s why your mother came down here and started drinking like a fish. She couldn’t help herself. And you …” He examines me for a moment. “You don’t drink, huh?”

  “Not really,” I say.

  “I want to say don’t start, but—but look. I have no suggestions for you.”

  “You have to help me.”

  “How can I help someone else when I can’t even help myself?” Uncle Robert curses, then goes to the fridge again. “The things I’ve seen—you don’t want to see them.”

  I sit there, watching this man I barely know, wondering what I’m supposed to say or do to help him.

  I’m seventeen and unsure how to help myself.

  Another voice tells me to shut up, that I’m different.

  You’re stronger, Chris. You’ve always been strong.

  “What’s going to happen?” I ask Robert when he sits down again.

  “I don’t know. But it’s something big. And I don’t want to be around here to find out.”

  “I have to do what they tell me.”

  He only nods.

  This guy is the nodding man. And it’s really making me angry.

  “Aren’t you supposed to, like, help out a little?” I ask.

  “Don’t get annoyed at me. Listen, I was here sorting all of this out by myself. Okay?”

  “So I’m supposed to just do what I’m told by those guys?”

  “For now.”

  “Until what?” I ask. “Until you finish enough beer not to care anymore?”

  Uncle Robert yells at me and tells me what I can do with my frustration, then he sighs and apologizes.

  “Listen, Chris. I thought if they didn’t know I was around … I didn’t realize that they’d given up on me. I’m a lost cause to them. But you—you’re their last hope. You’re like their Luke Skywalker.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—I think they know how strong y
ou are.”

  I shake my head.

  “It’s true, Chris. Look at all this you’ve been dealing with. By yourself. Just a kid. I would’ve freaked out if this all happened to me at sixteen. But you managed. And you’re still managing. And that’s why—-you keep it up. Okay? Until we know Tara is okay.”

  “And then?”

  “We’ll figure it out then,” he says.

  “And what happens if she’s not?”

  “We’ll figure it out then.”

  7. Like a Disney Movie

  I don’t need to ask if Uncle Robert is going to spend the night. He’s passed out on the couch where he was watching television all day and I was watching him drink beer. He’s as lifeless as that mannequin still in the laundry room with nowhere to go. I leave one light on as well as the fire fully stoked to make it through the night. If it somehow spills over to the rest of the cabin, well, I might get out, but Robert is a goner.

  In the bathroom I examine my face, which doesn’t look bruised or touched in any way. I wonder if Iris was using the magical mystery water from Marsh Falls. This makes me think of a dozen other questions, all of which give me a headache and force me to avoid answering any of them.

  My room is extra cold tonight. Normally Mom would make sure I had an extra blanket on nights like this. Even after she’d been drinking so much. Now I’m forced to look for another blanket, and then I just give up and go to bed.

  I wonder what sort of dreams my uncle has. Or maybe he doesn’t dream anymore. Maybe the booze completely coats over the dreams and drowns them out.

  Maybe he used to dream of Heidi Marsh.

  I want to ask him more about her. I know they were living here for a while. What were their plans? Why didn’t they just run away together?

  Then I think of Jocelyn and know that life isn’t always so simple.

  The wind blows outside. It’s January.

  I wish I could close my eyes and wake up in July. To know I’ve made it past The Big Whatever that is going to happen. To know that I’ve graduated Harrington and I’ll finally be able to leave this place. Hopefully with Mom. And maybe even Uncle Robert.

  I think of school. Then of Kelsey.

  Sweet, adorable, likable Kelsey.

  The girl that I definitely should not be with.

  What will these next few months look like?

  My eyes close then open then close again.

  I awake hearing something.

  Birds. Lots of them.

  And something else.

  I must have slept in, since the sun is already coming up. I glance out my window and just see the drab emptiness of the surrounding woods. Sometimes it seems smothering, this wilderness that never seems to want to go away.

  The sounds keep coming from downstairs, not from in our cabin, but outside.

  The deck.

  It sounds like people shuffling. Or like animals. I get up and sprint down the steps.

  The couch is empty.

  I check Mom’s bedroom, but the bed is untouched.

  “Uncle Robert?”

  No response.

  I hear tapping on the window. More birds.

  I go to the window and look out.

  No way.

  The bird that was pecking at the window flies off, but on the railing of the deck are maybe fifty or a hundred others. All different kinds. Just sitting there, some moving and making noises, some just sitting there.

  Like that Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds.

  But that’s not all.

  I see more animals shuffling on the deck itself. There’s a groundhog—no, there are several—and a dog. Several cats. Other animals that I have to study to see what they are. A woodchuck maybe? I see a possum. A skunk.

  These animals are having a party on our deck.

  “Uncle Robert?” I shout out.

  Nothing.

  I look out the bedroom window down on the driveway to see if his car is there. Then I remember I never saw one yesterday.

  Like a ghost, he’s disappeared.

  I go back and look out to the deck again. That’s when I see it. Right dead in the center of the action, as if guiding them all in this craziness.

  Iris’s bluebird.

  It’s like she told them where to come.

  But why? What’s with the animals?

  I bang on the window, and the bluebird flies off the railing and heads toward me, then swoops up and away.

  Suddenly all the birds follow.

  They’re gone.

  I hear the stampede of animals shuffling away down the steps and around the deck to the other side of the house like they might in a Disney movie.

  I wait for a second, then open the door. There’s not an animal in sight.

  The wind is freezing and makes me quickly go back inside. I check my cell phone to see if there are any messages, then look around the back of the house for my uncle. Maybe he had more to drink last night and fell off the deck, like I always used to worry about Mom doing. But he’s nowhere to be found.

  Uncle Robert is gone.

  8. Ray of Light

  I finally found the answer to your life’s biggest problem.

  The text is somewhat shocking because it comes only an hour later from Kelsey.

  How does she know?

  Then, like I usually do and will probably continue to do until the day I die, I wonder if she’s with them.

  That blonde hair is really just dyed and that whole cute shy girl thing is an act and maybe she’s secretly an international spy.

  What’s that? I quickly ask her.

  Check this out.

  She sends me a link. Guys with my luck should never, ever open links.

  But of course I do so anyway.

  And after a few minutes of checking out the site on my phone, I laugh.

  Secret to my biggest problem, huh? I ask her.

  You still need your license, right?

  She does have a point.

  Yes. Among other things.

  There you go. No more saying you don’t know how to get it.

  That’s nice. Thanks very much.

  I’m just being selfish, she writes.

  Why?

  Well, someone has to drive me around on dates.

  Even on cold, dark mornings, there’s a ray of light not too far across town that never hesitates to shine on me.

  When the phone rings and I see that it’s Dad, I know I’m going to tell him about Mom. I have to. There’s no way I can keep this from him.

  “I just wanted to give you an update on what’s going on the next few months,” he tells me after greeting me.

  Yeah, me too.

  “I’m going to be taking a couple of courses at Covenant College.”

  Of all the things I imagined him saying, this isn’t one of them. “Okay.”

  “I’m still looking for a job. Trying to make connections. But my sole focus is on my spiritual walk, Chris. There’s a lot I need to know.”

  Do you know anything about the spaces in between and great-grandfathers who lurk in tunnels?

  “The classes go till May,” he continues. “They’ll give me some knowledge of the Bible.”

  “Great.”

  I guess my answer comes out a bit too strong, because Dad asks me what’s wrong.

  This is my chance to tell him everything.

  Yet I’m suddenly reminded where I’m at. The eyes and ears and fingertips of the wicked and whacked are all over me.

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “Can I talk to your mom?” he asks.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Okay.” He pauses for a minute.

  Tell him, Ch
ris, do it. Now.

  “You know if there’s anything you need, just let me know,” Dad says.

  I want to cry. Like a serious mushy cry a middle-school girl might do after her favorite vampire couple has a baby or something.

  “Sure,” I say.

  I know they’ll kill Mom. I think back to Staunch nearly killing me in town.

  I can’t take that chance.

  “I’ll keep in touch,” Dad says. “Remember, call me for anything you need.”

  I tell Dad good-bye and stare at the phone. I’m tired of holding back and not saying everything and not asking for help when I desperately need it.

  I’m tried of being forced to keep quiet in order to keep someone I love alive.

  9. M&Ms

  I awake in the middle of the night in pitch black in an empty cabin that has suddenly been invaded by a silent monster.

  His name is fear, and he steals through the locked door without a further thought.

  He casually climbs the stairs and slips under the crack of my doorway and then sits cross-legged on a chair across from my bed. Then he begins to whisper slow and steady thoughts to me.

  “Your mother is going to die in Solitary, Chris.”

  The voice is strong, low, fearless. And very, very real.

  “Your father will die alone and miserable knowing he abandoned all of you.”

  I close my eyes because I want to go back to sleep, then I wonder if I’m still dreaming.

  “You will never amount to anything, and this silly, stupid faith of yours will never mean anything.”

  I grip my hands and force them into fists. I can feel the sweat on my forehead and face.

  What’s happening to me now?

  “This is your life, and I will be here by your side for the rest of it, Chris.”

  The voice is as real as the burning heat filling my body. I tear off the cover and just rest there, eyes opened but not seeing anything.

  “It’s only going to get worse. And you’re only going to be more frightened and freaked out until everything splinters away into ashes.”

  I get out of bed then and kneel on the cold carpet.

  “It will do you no good,” the voice says right beside me.

  I start to pray, folding my hands and bowing my head.