by DW Gillespie
You go. You sit. You talk.
“They’ll get you fixed up,” I told him about twelve hours before he died. “They know what they’re doing.”
I spent the entire day sitting next to his hospital bed, occasionally holding his hand when he cried here and there. He didn’t think it was the end. Neither of us did, but he had passed beyond something in his mind. The days of living one moment to the next were over, because he knew that soon enough, there would be no more moments. The last day would be two days away, then tomorrow, then today. I could see him working it out in his mind. I won’t say his life flashed before him, but he was more wistful than I could ever remember him being. Growing up, it had always been about pushing forward, charging into the next moment, making sure that Andy and I were full of food, that the lights were still on, that the bills were all paid. Now bills didn’t mean anything. I was paying my own way and Andy was…well, he was behind bars, the family secret that everyone knew about.
We talked about Mom, and he told me about meeting her, the way she laughed at all his jokes. He told me about what a wonderful mother she had been, and he made sure to change the subject when he saw how uncomfortable it made me. And then, as I knew he would, he talked about Andy.
“I don’t know what I did wrong,” he said, tears on his cheek. “If I had it to do again, I…I just don’t know what I could have done different.”
I never told him about what happened that summer, beyond what he already knew, what everyone knew. There were parts of it that he surely guessed at, the secret that Andy and I shared, but he never knew the truth. How could he? But in that moment, for the first time, I came dangerously close to telling him everything, because I wanted him to know that it wasn’t his fault.
“Dad…what if I told you that there wasn’t anything you could have done?”
He turned, stared me in the eyes, the look of an expectant child waiting for you to give them the answers to every question they’ve ever had.
“What do you mean?”
I stumbled, unsure of how to answer. “I mean that…what if Andy was…too far gone? What if something…changed him?”
The grief in my father’s face deepened. “I know what you’re thinking. And you’re right. I feel like my life has been a jigsaw puzzle, and every time I move a piece, another one falls to the floor. Gone.”
“No,” I said, realizing where he was going.
“Yes,” he replied, shushing me. “If your mother had never died, Andy might not have turned out like he did.” He raised a hand to my cheek and added, “But I never would have gotten you.”
I let him cry. Let myself cry. Then I let the moment die and fall into the rearview mirror of the past. Maybe, when we were both old enough to believe in crazy things again, I’d tell him the truth. Maybe I’d get Andy to help me. Between the two of us, we might even convince him.
‘Maybe’ never came, and Dad was dead the next day. They buried him beside Mom. Three times a year I put flowers on their graves: once on each birthday, and then on their anniversary.
* * *
The shattered pieces of the snow globe flew, raining down upon the stones like springtime hail. All I could do was watch the glistening shards of glass as they tinkled to rest on the cave floor. I couldn’t quite grasp what I was seeing, and from the look on his face, neither could the Thief. Only Andy seemed in complete control of himself as he defiantly sneered at the creature, whose chest was heaving, his nostrils flaring, his mouth open and soundless. That sight – of a hopeless, desperate thing staring at the aftermath of Andy’s temper – that was what brought me back. I didn’t say a word. I only grabbed Andy’s sleeve and began dragging him back down the hall of toys.
For a moment, Andy resisted, keeping his eyes locked on the Thief, the grim, awful satisfaction of what he had done shining on his face. Then, like cutting a thread, whatever held sway over my brother released its grip, and he turned to run.
The glowing, multicolored eyes of a thousand toys stared at us as we clambered back toward the exit, while behind us, the Thief’s deep, ragged breathing was beginning to break. The sound changed, morphing into something else entirely, a whine that rose to a whistling, high-pitched scream. It reminded me of a mother bird watching her eggs being devoured. I risked a glance back, just enough to see it frantically scraping the pieces together, pulling them into a pile even as they sliced into his bare hands. It was useless of course. What Andy had done would never be fixed, and the whine broke into an insane cry of miserable pain and anger. It would be coming for us, very soon and very angry, and I knew we’d never get out of there unless we did something to slow it down. We hit the edge of the aisle, back into the gloom of the cave, and I grabbed Andy and spun him around next to me.
“Why?” I said through my teeth as I slid off my backpack. “Why? Why? Why?”
“What are you doing?” he asked as I dug frantically through my supplies.
I ignored the question and continued asking my own. “Why, Andy? Why? Why? Why, Andy?”
I kept asking it, over and over, my voice like a record stuck on a scratch. I didn’t want an answer, not yet at least. I just had to ask the question. It was as if my body were filling with pressure, a frustrated steam that could only be released through my mouth.
“I don’t know,” he said, peering back down the aisle. “I don’t know. I really wish I knew.” His voice was on the edge of breaking. “Just hurry. We have to get out of here.”
The Thief was screaming now, a wild yowling like something out of a horror movie, and I knew our time was almost up.
“What are you doing?” Andy asked, but I already had the answer in my hands, the bundle of roman candles in my left, the lighter in my right.
“No!” Andy hissed. “He’s already mad enough to kill us.” His voice was as frightened as that of a child who had broken his first rule. “If you do that—”
“You smashed it!” I barked. “If I don’t do this, we’re already dead.”
He opened his mouth to say something else, but the first wick was already lit. I turned toward the stack of toys and mashed the roman candle into a hollow of board games and began to light another. This one I tossed on top of the pile. Andy had stepped to the edge of the aisle, and he grabbed me just as I lit the third.
“He’s coming!”
I turned into the aisle and aimed as the sparks began to fly. The sight of the ball of white flame flying toward it made the Thief dive instantly into the row of toys for cover. I didn’t see where he went, but I let the candle finish as I showered the path in front of me with sparks. Beside me, the first two had already burned out, but I could feel the heat as the wall of ancient toys began to catch fire.
“That’s enough,” Andy said, pulling at me. “Please, let’s go.”
I couldn’t see the Thief anywhere, but I doubted my attack would be enough. There were three more candles left, and I evaded Andy’s grasp, rushed to the right-hand stack of toys, lit them, and mashed all three candles into a pile of dried-out Beanie Babies. By the time I stepped away, the cave was glowing as the right-hand stack caught with a whoosh.
I knew how old this stuff was, knew how amazingly dry this section of the cave had been, but nothing could have prepared me for how quickly it all went up. Suddenly, we weren’t trying to stoke a fire; we were trying to escape one. I slung my backpack across my shoulders, and as one, we turned and dashed up the slope toward the exit. Pieces of old cloth, bits of paper and burlap, and flaming wisps of cotton began to rain down on our heads and shoulders. Andy was in front, and once, a withered slip of baby-doll pants landed smoldering on his shoulder. I had to slap it out.
We hit the steep slope that would lead us out, and both of us began to clamber up. That was when I heard the screams. They were no longer screams of fear or anger, but of pure anguish. They were the screams of an old man watching his childhood home burn. I turn
ed back just long enough to see the Thief silhouetted against the blazing fire. I can’t imagine how he could stand so close to it, how it wasn’t charring the flesh from his bones, but he refused to leave. He was crying, wailing, begging for the flames to recede as his clothes caught fire. It was a purely pitiful sight, and the only thing that took my eyes away from it was the smoke. It was building up overhead, billowing across the roof above us and pressing down like a wall of black death. I swooned and coughed, threatening to pass out on the spot, but I refocused on the climb, reaching for a solid handhold as Andy caught the lip of the tunnel overhead. He was able to pull himself up, and then, after balancing on one foot, I caught his outstretched hand. As he dragged me to the relative safety above, I heard a deep breath of air from behind me, and I dipped my head to see both of the giant stacks tumbling into a flaming heap where the Thief had been standing. I didn’t see the body get swallowed up in the wreckage, but I felt certain that it had been.
We fell on top of each other in the tunnel, faces slick and black with soot as the thunder rolled outside and within. Neither of us had the energy to move for a moment or two, but the growing stench of burning toys finally got us on our feet.
“You okay to walk?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I gasped. “You?”
He nodded. I wanted to ask him what had happened down there, why he had acted the way he did, what the last twelve hours had been like. But that was a conversation for another time.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
“Yeah. Dad’s waiting for you,” I felt compelled to add.
The tunnel was lighter now, thanks to the flames, and though the smoke was beginning to rise, it would be some time before it filled the tunnel completely. We moved carefully, watching our steps, so as not to twist an ankle in one of the knotted holes.
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” he said after a moment of silence.
“You don’t mean that,” I replied.
“I do,” he said without hesitation. “We shouldn’t have made it out of there. I think you know that.” His face in the semidarkness was wracked with a mixture of relief, fear, and something I couldn’t quite place. “I can’t believe you found me,” he added, his voice breaking.
“The jelly beans,” I said. “They were in your pockets, weren’t they?”
He didn’t speak, but he nodded his head, sniffling. He reached for me, and I did the same, and all at once, I realized that look on his face had been pure, unabashed love for his sister.
A charred hand shot up from a hole in the rock just next to my feet and grasped my ankle. I screamed, shook free, and fell to the cave floor as it swiped the air blindly for me. I didn’t need to see the white, scabby hands or the fresh burns to know who it was. I tried to shake him off, but he had me, his grip like cold iron. Andy was yelling something, but all at once I couldn’t hear him. My ears were filling with the sound of that voice, the one from my dream of the man made of darkness.
You…
There was a pressure on my leg, a warmth that spread up to my knee, that grew and bloomed, changing from a gentle heat to a fire, a blaze within my skin.
It’s you…
It was baking me, singeing the flesh off my muscle, the muscle off my bones, and boiling the marrow within. Somewhere high above me, I could hear Andy screaming – far off, inside of a tunnel miles away, as I swirled into a murky pit of darkness. I sank into it, and shapes seemed to rise in the blackness: silhouettes of people, moments frozen in time.
Children, reading an ancient book, something they know they shouldn’t, making a game out of it as they speak the old words aloud. What are they doing? Why are the shadows upon the firelit wall moving, almost dancing? One of the boys, a blond, shaggy- headed preteen, begins to writhe as one of the shapes solidifies and slips from the wall, a shape like a half spider, half rat spilling into him, covering his face with black tendrils before disappearing behind his grim smile…
Another scene rises from the dark, this time an old man, hunched over a table, his son watching him paint the faces onto wooden toys, his hands careful, dexterous, and clever. The boy wants to be like him, and he will be, but not in the way he imagines. Something is watching them, a weak, gangly creature that hides in the planks above like a giant spider. It wants the boy, needs the boy, because the body it hijacked, the body that’s been its home, is giving up, even after the changes, even after the long dark of the cave it calls home…
Now a boy with a soft face, listening to his mother read him stories as he gazes into a snow globe, her gift to him, the only possession that he can remember. Neither of them sees the face leering from the window, another body now spent, used up, ready to be discarded. In a flash, the mother is gone, and the boy is lifted from the bed, never to be seen again…
“No,” I heard from some far-off place, the voice of a girl’s brother fighting for her life across some unimaginable gulf of space and time. But his voice pales in comparison to the voice within that blackness – a rumbling hum that is all around her, inside her, is her.
This feeling, the voice moaned with obscene longing. After all this time. I’ve never known this feeling…
It was me. I was that feeling, something ecstatic to taste, something unknown and new after countless years of boredom. I was nothing more than a new prize.
Pressure. A light hand on my face, pulling me back from that edge, and another voice.
“Let her go!”
Never, it moaned. Such possibilities…
“You son of a bitch, let her go!”
Your brother bores me. I think I’ll have you instead…
The grip on my bare leg was broken, and I shot back into reality so fast my head spun. My first concern was my leg, and I looked down, afraid to touch what must now be bare, empty bone. But I saw nothing more than my own skin, spotted with a light red handprint. Andy was holding a rock, and the skeletal white hand was bleeding from where he had been pounding on it. Andy slid under my arm, lifting me, and the two of us limped farther up the tunnel, away from the small hole, which was now filling with black smoke.
Just once, Andy and I looked back to see the Thief pushing his head through the hole. He was red, half-covered with horrific burns, the skin peeling around the pink eyes. All that was bad, but it paled in comparison to the mouth. The lips were gone, burned away, and all the madness in that thin frame seemed driven into that gaping wound of a mouth. We both gasped aloud as the arm receded and the face pushed forward, but there was no way he could make it through a hole that size, a hole smaller than a basketball.
Then an awful thing happened as the face crept closer and closer, edging through the impossibly tiny hole. The shoulders, wide and bony, seemed to hinge and split, slipping through – first one, then the other, as if the horrid creature were being born before our eyes.
I remembered a strange thing in that moment, one of those weird facts that kids pick up from their parents, the kind of thing you stow away and forget that you ever knew. My dad had told me about mice one year. We had found a bunch of little brown pellets in the pantry. Mouse shit. It looked just like rice. We were laying traps out, and he told me about mice and rats, how they could sneak in just about anywhere. Their bones were flexible, and they could shift them around if they needed to fit into a tiny space. Ribs could flatten out; shoulders could float freely. Basically, if they could fit their heads into a hole, they would figure out a way to get the rest in too.
I didn’t know if it was true or just another one of Dad’s stories, but when I saw the Thief squeezing through that hole, his face a ragged mess, his eyes filled with murder, I knew it was the truth. Bit by bit, he was making it through, driven by sheer, unparalleled malice, and the sight seemed to lock every one of my joints in place. Once again, it was Andy who peeled me off the floor, got me moving, got me out of the side tunnel and into the cooler, fresher air beyond. We tumbled out o
f the cave and landed on the carved stair steps of the mine, and for the first time, I actually heard the drone of the storm outside.
“Come on,” I said, my senses finally returning to me. I led us down the darkened stair steps of rock, taking them two at a time. Andy tumbled down behind me, catching one of the steps wrong, and we both fell down the last one, expecting to break a rib on the rock floor. Instead, we splashed into knee-high water that drenched us from head to toe. Sputtering, we helped each other to our feet, and I saw the absolute amazed confusion on his face.
“Where the fuck are we?” he screamed.
“The rain,” I answered. “Flooding the place. We gotta hurry.”
I clutched his hand and pulled him down the slope, into the dark, deepening water. The stone-cut room, half-lit to begin with, was now nearly black as the rising water blocked both the tunnel and the light outside. The water passed our waists, and I felt Andy pulling me back.
“No,” he said, a look of pure terror in his eyes. “I can’t.”
He’d never liked closed places, a fact that I used against him on multiple occasions, daring him to go into closets or to get into a car trunk. The thought of it alone was enough to make him violent, but this wasn’t the time or place to hesitate. I could hear the Thief somewhere in the dark behind us, spitting and shrieking. If we waited for another minute, we’d both be dead.
“You can do it,” I assured him. “All you have to do is hang on to my hand.”
“Please,” he begged, “there has to be another way.”
“It’s a straight shot. One path. And you’re a better swimmer than me. All we have to do is stick together.”
“No! No!”
I grabbed both sides of his face, forcing his darting, nervous eyes to lock onto mine. He wasn’t a person at that moment; he was some kind of animal that had just realized it was locked in a cage.
“You can do this,” I told him. “Just hold on to me.”