“It’s all still here,” she says, the words breathy and light, more of a gasp than a sentence. “Just like Errol said. There was no Great Flood,” she says out loud, because she needs to hear the words, to repeat them again and again in the hope that, one day, they’ll sink in. For years now, her life has been divided by this marker: Before the Flood and After the Flood. Every story her mother told was based on this story, this mythology.
Sometimes the people who love us most make huge sacrifices for us, Miss Abigail said. They’ll do anything to protect us.
Necco yanks open the door before the car even rolls to a stop and jumps out, stumbling.
“Hey, wait a sec,” Theo calls behind her, shutting the car off.
Necco runs straight for the old workshop, remembering its familiar smell: pipe tobacco, grease, burning coal and hot metal if the forge was going. An aluminum ladder is hung on a rack on the building’s side. A rusted shovel and hoe lean against the side of the building. Necco bites her tongue to keep from calling his name—Daddy!—as she yanks the thin metal door open and steps inside. There’s no trace of Daddy left here—it’s as if she’d imagined the whole thing. No rows of tools, boxes of gears; no mechanical bat circling on a wire overhead, no windup raccoon watching her from a shelf. The place has been completely stripped, the heavy iron forge gone, even the workbench torn away and carted off. She stands for a minute, breathing deeply, hoping to catch a hint of the smell she’d remembered, but this place smells damp and abandoned.
She touches the wall at the far end, remembers the invention her father kept there covered by a tarp on his workbench.
She sees it then, what happened in here that last day.
She’d come into the workshop first, heard a crackling hum. The machine was on. Then the hum turned into a voice. The machine spoke.
Daddy went over to the workbench, pulled back the tarp in one quick movement, like a magician about to reveal his best trick.
There was his machine, his own terrifying version of the Edison invention. The machine itself was housed in a wooden cabinet—about two feet long and a foot wide. It was electric, and had knobs and wires and small glass tubes, which were glowing then, because the machine was on. There was a large, funnel-like piece attached to a thick cord. It reminded her of an old-fashioned record player, like the kind you see in history books in school.
And from the speaker came a soft buzz, like bees leaving a hive, and the buzz built into a sound, a moan almost, then the buzz turned into a word, a word she knew to be spoken by the voice of her grandmother: her grandmother who looked out at them from the old photograph Daddy kept above his workbench. In the photo, she’s looking up at the camera with an expression of surprise, almost alarm, her mouth slightly open, as if she’s about to scream.
Danger, she said through the crackling of the speaker. You’re in danger. Then, He’s here!
And Daddy had sent Necco back to the house, told her to go and lock all the doors, but not to frighten Mama. On her way across the yard, she’d passed Errol. He was hurrying to the shed, his face panic-stricken.
“What is that?” she’d said, because he had something in his hand, something brightly colored, and he didn’t answer, just jogged past her, but she saw what it was: a rubber chicken mask. And she wanted to laugh, because it was so absurd, but she was too scared.
“Everything okay?” Theo is sticking her head into the empty shed.
“Fine,” Necco tells her, the long ago warning echoing in her ears: Danger. You’re in danger.
“What is this place? Like a garden shed or something?”
“It was my father’s workshop. But everything’s gone.”
“Is this where he made the invention I keep hearing about?”
Necco nods. “He made other things, too. One time, he built this windup raccoon out of scrap metal and old clock parts and gears. He used to make all kinds of mechanical creatures; things that walked and talked and had little secret compartments he’d put candy inside. It was a game, to see if I could figure out how to open them.”
“Wow,” Theo says. “Sounds like your dad was a man of many talents.”
Necco’s head begins to pound. She feels light-headed, hears a buzzing in her ears (danger, you’re in danger). She stumbles, leans against the back wall of the shed.
“Necco?” Theo hurries into the shed. “You okay?”
The light pours in behind Theo, turning her into a dark shadow, a silhouette, and Necco remembers her father standing over her when she was very little and giving her the doll he’d just made.
“She’s very special,” he’d said. “Promise you’ll take good care of her?”
And she had promised and clutched the doll tight against her chest.
“She even sings,” he’d told her. “Do you want to hear?”
She’d nodded, and he’d shown her how to pull the cord on the doll’s back to start the tiny recorded voice.
“Daddy,” she whispers now, but he doesn’t appear. No man, no ghost, only Theo, who is right beside Necco asking if she’s okay.
“I’m fine,” Necco says, pushing off from the wall, but her legs feel rubbery and nothing is fine.
She steps out of the shed, crosses the weedscape of a yard, to the front door of the house, sees a No Trespassing sign. She puts her hand on the knob, hesitates, then tries to turn it. Locked. Necco steps to the left, puts her face against the cool, dusty glass of the living room window, cups her hands to block out the light. There is the couch, her father’s chair, the old TV. Everything is wrecked, stuffing yanked out, cushions and pillows sliced open, walls kicked through.
What happened here?
Vandals who came to see what damage they could cause to an abandoned building, or was it something more?
Theo comes up behind her, peers in, whistles. “Pretty wrecked. Guess no one’s living here now.”
“Let’s go in,” Necco says. If being in her father’s workshop triggered memories, she’s sure going into the house will unlock even more.
“Door’s locked,” Theo says.
“I’ll find a way,” Necco says. After all, she’s the Fire Girl. She knows how to get in and out of a place. To look for entrances and exits no one else can find. Hermes taught her how to pick a lock, to break a window safely without making much noise.
She walks around the side of the house, checking the windows, all shut up tight. The back door, the one that leads into the kitchen, is ajar; the edge of the doorframe that held the lock plate has been pried off.
“I’m not sure about this,” Theo says, as Necco pushes the door open; it lets out a long squeak.
“It’s my house,” Necco says, the words feeling like a lie. Like something borrowed from another girl’s life. My name was Eva. I lived in this house. I lived here with my mother and father and brother, Errol. I had a purple room, a closet full of clothes, shelves full of books, and a canopy bed.
Necco reaches down, takes out her blade.
“Stay there and keep lookout,” she orders and steps into the kitchen. The cabinets are open, their contents scattered across the counters and floors. The sink is full of dirty dishes. When Necco turns on the faucet, no water comes. When she flicks on a light switch, no electricity. She goes to the stove, fiddles with the burners. No hiss of propane, no spark of flame.
The floor is filthy with mud, sticky with goo from broken glass jars that litter the floor: maraschino cherries, artichoke hearts, butterscotch sauce. These were things from her kitchen. Things her mother had bought for them at the market in the time Before the Flood. Back when they sat around the table with ice cream sundaes. Errol’s favorite flavor was chocolate. Hers was strawberry. She hasn’t tasted strawberry ice cream in years. Suddenly she finds herself wanting it so bad her mouth waters.
She walks through the kitchen kicking the broken glass away, and into the dining room. The table is covered with books and papers, empty bottles of beer and wine. Candles have been stuck into the necks of bottles, and
burned down to stubs. Cigarettes have left burn marks and sad piles of gray ash on the table. Her family did not leave this mess. Must have been years of squatters, kids looking for a place to party. Amid the mess, she recognizes some of the books stacked there: her father’s sociology and science books, her mother’s art books. The papers strewn all over the table are a mixture of things pulled from file cabinets and drawers: old electric bills, appliance manuals, letterhead from the university. Here and there, a scribbled list or note in her father’s writing: columns of numbers added together, a reminder to buy butter at the store. Nothing unusual, but all of it heartbreakingly normal—the detritus of their lives Before.
She remembers standing in the kitchen that last day. She’d gone back to the house, just like Daddy asked her to, and locked all the doors. Told Mama that they were to meet Daddy and Errol at the boat in fifteen minutes. She didn’t tell Mama about the voice on Daddy’s machine or the strange rubber mask in Errol’s hands.
The rain pounded on the roof. Mama was worried. Frantic. She was busying herself stuffing things into an old duffel bag she’d pulled from the closet: warm sweaters, the wedding photo from the mantel, the doll Daddy had made Eva when she was little.
Then, there was the sound of breaking glass. One of the living room windows being shattered. Mama screamed.
“Run,” Mama told Necco. “Go find your father and Errol!” Mama grabbed a big carving knife from the rack by the stove.
Necco didn’t even stop to get her coat or her shoes. She ran out the kitchen door and went to the workshop to find Daddy. But Daddy wasn’t there. Errol was. And he was busting the place apart. He had a sledgehammer and was smashing the machine. The wooden cabinet was shattered, the tubes smashed. Wires had been ripped out, thrown onto the floor. The speaker they’d talked into swung like a pendulum in front of the bench, still attached by its cord to the ruined remains of the machine.
Necco jumped on Errol’s back, grabbed at the hammer. “Stop!” she screamed. “What are you doing?”
But he was bigger, stronger. He shook her off like an ant. She fell to the floor and he stood over her with his huge hammer.
“Daddy told me to,” he said.
“No! He wouldn’t do that! You’re lying!”
Necco goes up the stairs now, hand on the familiar worn railing. She pads down the carpeted hallway to her room, remembering the purple walls, canopy bed, the string of dragonflies her father had made that fluttered over her at night. She imagines throwing herself down on the bed, burying her face in the pillows. But when she yanks open the white painted bedroom door, the bed is gone. The room has been stripped clean. No clothes in the closet, no books, nothing with her name. Nothing to say she was ever here. Only the peeling purple walls, now covered with graffiti:
Lenore was here.
Eddie Sucks Dick.
Don’t Fear the Reaper.
Necco’s head is pounding now, her breath coming faster. She goes across the hall to Errol’s room and stops in her tracks. There’s a sleeping bag on the bed (why did they take her bed and not his?), a flashlight and camping lantern beside it. Candy wrappers everywhere. Comic books. Newspapers. A neat pile of clothes, a pair of worn boots.
Theo comes in behind her, takes a look around. “Someone’s been staying here,” she says.
Necco should scold her, tell her she should have stayed outside like she’d told her to, but she’s actually relieved to have company.
“It’s my brother’s room,” she says. “Errol.”
“Shit. You think he’s been staying here?”
“Maybe,” Necco says. She looks at the candy wrappers, sees the cellophane from root beer barrels—they always were Errol’s favorites.
“Well, where is he now?” She looks at her watch. “It’s after noon.”
“I don’t know.”
“Necco, don’t you think it’s strange that…well, in all the papers Hermes left you—the newspaper articles and stuff about your family—that they never mentioned a brother? Not even in your dad’s obituary. Just you and your mom and dad.”
“But he’s my brother,” Necco says, blinking at Theo, who now stands in front of the window in her bowler hat and round glasses, her silhouette dark and wavering.
“Are you sure you had a brother? Could it be a story your mother told you?”
“No. I’m sure.”
Necco’s head is swimming. She starts to feel faint again and sits down on the bed hard. She puts the knife back into the sheath on her boot, her fingers trembling. Mama lied about so many things—that Errol was killed, that the house was gone, that the whole thing washed away. But her memories of Errol are from before that.
She remembers Errol’s hands on her back as he pushed her on the swing in the yard.
You wanna go straight up to the moon? he asked. You want an underdog?
There’s a banging sound from downstairs, then footsteps.
“Eva?” Errol calls.
Necco jumps up off the bed, throws Theo a glance that says:
See, he’s real after all.
And she knows this is her brother, and that she should be happy, excited that he’s here. But what she really is is scared. Suddenly, she doesn’t want to be here.
Danger, a voice calls from way back in her memory. You’re in danger.
She looks around frantically for a way out, but there’s only the window and they’re on the second story.
“Where are you?” he calls now.
She remembers yesterday, how he’d told her to come alone.
“Theo,” Necco whispers. “He’s here! Quick, hide!” She gestures at the closet.
“Oh, great,” Theo whispers. “Another freaking closet.” She quickly tiptoes into the closet and shuts the door almost all the way.
“I’m up here,” Necco calls, and suddenly, there he is, standing in the doorway.
But something’s not right. He’s got a black eye; half his face is swollen.
“Oh, Errol, what happened?” she asks, going toward him.
But then she freezes when she sees he’s holding a gun.
“What are you doing with that?” Necco feels all the air leave her lungs. She takes a step back.
“Go sit on the bed,” he tells her, more like an order than a kind, brotherly request.
Necco obeys. She thinks of what Theo said: Are you sure you had a brother?
But she is sure. Once upon a time, they lived here, in this house. He was Big E and she was Little E. They played cribbage. He gave her underdogs.
“Take your knife out slowly and lay it on the floor,” Errol says.
Necco leans down, unclips the blade from its sheath, and sets it on the floor.
“Now slide it over toward me,” Errol says.
Necco gives the knife a shove, and it slides across the floor so that it’s out of her range, but close to the closet.
Errol comes forward and begins to pace back and forth at the foot of the bed. “Eva, we don’t have much time.” His voice is desperate, pleading. “I need to know what Daddy did with the plans.”
“Plans? What plans? I don’t know—”
“He told me they were safe and that you would know how to find them.”
“When? When did he tell you this, Errol, because I have no idea what you’re even talking about.”
“He told me that last day. The day of the flood.”
Errol stops pacing. He holds the gun in his right hand, rubs his face with his left. This bad-guy-with-the-gun thing seems all wrong for him. Not a role he’s comfortable with.
“I tried to warn him,” Errol says, voice whimpering, little-boyish. “But I was too late. And now, now I’m trying to warn you.”
Shit, Necco is thinking. This is bad. Very bad.
“So you brought a gun? Subtle warning, Errol.”
“Eva, the man who’s coming, he’ll do worse. Much worse.”
“Snake Eyes, you mean?”
“That’s what Mama called him.”
&
nbsp; “What’s his real name?”
Errol shakes his head. “It’s not important. All you’ve gotta know is that he’s a bad man, Eva. You’ve gotta trust me when I tell you this. If you don’t tell me where the plans are, I don’t know what he’ll do to you. To both of us. You saw what happened to your boyfriend. This guy doesn’t fuck around. He’s good at what he does. He tricks people. Manipulates them. He puts you in positions where you have no choice but to do what he says. He’ll fuck you up, Eva.”
She’s sure her head is going to explode. How many times does she have to say it? “I don’t have any plans!”
“But Daddy told you how to find them. Think, Eva. He must have told you that last day.”
Necco is shaking her head. “I don’t remember.”
“What do you remember about that day?”
More than I did just a few hours ago, she thinks.
Being here in the house is helping to bring it all back. The gates are opening.
Necco falls onto the bed, closes her eyes. “It was raining,” she says.
“Yes,” Errol says. “Good. And the river was rising.”
“And Mama was worried about a flood. She said we had to be ready to go. To evacuate. And you, you were excited because the road had washed away. You said we were living on an island, cut off from the rest of the world. You always wanted to live on your own island, remember, Errol?”
Errol nods, gives her a sad smile, lowers the gun. “I remember, Little E. Go on.”
Necco continues, “Daddy and I went to check the workshop. You went down the road to see how high the water was. Then Daddy sent me back into the house and Mama was in there packing things up. There was a crash. A window breaking. Mama told me to run. To go find you and Daddy. I went out the back door and found you in Daddy’s workshop.”
“Yes,” he said.
“And you were smashing everything. I tried to stop you, but you threw me off. You sent me away.”
Errol nods encouragingly, shows Necco she’s got the story right so far. “I told you to go back to the house, but you never made it.”
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