She began to fold up the sack when she felt as if she was being watched. She stopped and looked around. Nothing but the wooden houses and the wind.
Some birds flew away from a nearby building. Kizzy saw a person was standing in the window. The figure immediately moved out of sight. The hairs on the back of Kizzy’s neck stood erect as coldness spread over her skin.
What was that? Was there really someone there?
Without thinking Kizzy began to walk towards the house. Why was she doing this? She didn’t want to do it. Whatever was in there obviously didn’t want to be found. It had successfully hidden away in this town for a very long time and probably had very good reasons for doing so. But why? Was it something deformed?
Kizzy approached the door. It wasn’t completely shut but stood slightly ajar. She held her breath and pushed it open. The door creaked on ancient, rusty hinges. A strange smell floated out from the house, like burnt hair and daisies. Kizzy couldn’t see very far inside. It was too dark. She stuck her head in over the threshold.
“Hello?” she called out.
The sound of her voice startled whatever was hiding. It sprang from a dark corner of the room, slammed the door shut and ran up a flight of stairs.
Kizzy leaped from the porch and sprinted for the woods. Her back never felt so exposed. She expected a hand to come down and grab her. The wind blew through the trees and she heard the sound of strange music coming from the house. She ran the whole way home without stopping.
When she made it into her house she pushed the door closed behind her and took a moment to catch her breath. What was that thing? She looked out the window towards the woods and shivered. Whatever it was wanted to be left alone.
As she walked into the house something else took her breath away. Her red record player was sitting on the kitchen table.
2
Kizzy was no stranger to stomach aches. Like after she had hit Camilla and was being yelled at. That one was pretty awful. Another time a few years before that she had broken a special vase that her father had bought for her mother back before the plague. There was this look on her mother’s face of pure sadness. It made Kizzy want to crawl to the woods and just stay there forever.
But when she saw the record player sitting on the kitchen table, that was worst by far. It felt as if all her deepest feelings were on display for the whole world to see. It was like being naked. Every piece of her body wanted to be someplace else. But she was stuck there, with her feet glued to the floor.
Her mother sat at the end of the table. She held a cup of hot, black coffee. The steam floated from the mug like lazy smoke. She was painting a tree with long branches that grew forever up into the sky.
The crazy redness of the record player and the bright yellow of the Banshee album seemed to scream against the black and white of their kitchen. Banshee’s dreadlocks and leather pants looked especially out of place.
Kizzy shook her head. What had she been doing? These worlds didn’t belong together. She wanted to jump into that picture with Banshee, into that world, and just listen to him scream. That would have soothed the windstorm that was raging inside her.
“Kizzy, please sit down,” her mother said. She extended her hand to a wooden chair.
Kizzy stood still, her arms paralyzed at her sides. “I’d rather stand.”
“How long has this been going on for?” her mother asked. Her words were flat and unemotional, as if she was asking about the crop report.
“I don’t know.”
“A long time?”
Kizzy just shrugged. The truth would only make her angry. A year is a pretty long time.
“How did you even get this?” her mother asked holding up the Banshee album.
“I found it,” Kizzy said, looking down at the cracks in the floor.
“Bullcrap. This is brand new. How did you get it?”
“It was in one of the supply crates,” Kizzy said.
“Those monsters,” her mother shook her head. She pointed at the record player. “And this?”
“I found it in the ghost town.”
“I told you never to go there.”
Kizzy just looked down.
“Do you know how serious this is Kizzy?” her mother asked. “Look at me.” She glared right into Kizzy’s eyes. She was trying to intimidate her. Her irises were green and intense.
“Why is it even such a big deal?” Kizzy snapped. Her voice trembled. She was feeling desperate, as if her back was up against a wall.
“This is city music,” her mother said. There was a trace of emotion in her voice, the first bit Kizzy had ever noticed. And the emotion was fear. “This is toxic. They broadcast this stuff out here to lure us in towards them. You listen to their music and you start to think like them and you start to see them as humans, and not as the monsters that they really are. And if you do that, then you’re as good as dead.”
“I don’t believe it,” Kizzy said. She didn’t want to admit it, but deep down she knew it was true. The mutants were savages.
“We walled them in because they’re disgusting monsters we can’t trust.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Kizzy said.
“You didn’t live through the plague,” her mother answered. “You won’t ever be able to understand it.”
“But the plague is over,” Kizzy said, flinging her arms up into the air.
“No it’s not. It’s never over. We can still get it from them.”
Kizzy shook her head and wiped her eye before a tear had the chance to form. Outside the late afternoon sun was creeping down behind the trees.
“I’m actually ashamed of the way you’re handling this,” her mother said. She sipped her coffee and looked out the window at the nearby houses. “I don’t want to be known around here as the mother of the girl who died because she listened to the city music. Why can’t you just make some friends? Instead of doing stuff like this.”
“I don’t need friends,” said Kizzy.
“I think you do.”
“Why?”
“You know Andrea in your class? Well, she wasn’t born deaf, when she was twelve her mother found her listening to this music.”
“I don’t believe that,” Kizzy said.
“I’m just telling you what I heard. She didn’t have any friends either.”
“So what are you going to do? Make me deaf?” Kizzy shouted, making sure to emphasize the last word so that it really stuck. DEAF. It felt so permanent.
“I haven’t decide yet,” her mother said absentmindedly, her eyes were still gazing out the window.
Was she bluffing? Would she actually do that to her own daughter? Kizzy imagined her sneaking into her bedroom room in the middle of the night with some sort of eardrum extractor.
“What’s there to decide?” Kizzy yelled. “You can’t do it.”
“Of course I can,” she said, looking back at Kizzy. “I’m your mother. It’s my responsibility to raise you the right way. So that you don’t die.”
“What if I think you’re making a mistake?”
Her mother groaned and turned her tree painting towards her.
Kizzy noticed that each branch had a name written on it. Some of the branches were cut off before they reached the top.
“Do you know what this is?” her mother asked.
“A tree.”
“What kind of tree smart ass?”
Kizzy didn’t know.
“It’s called a family tree. Each branch represents a person in our family. Me, you, your aunts, your cousins, those are the ones that go on forever. These ones that are cut off are the people that died in the plague. You’ll never know them because they don’t exist anymore.”
She pointed to Kizzy’s branch.
“How would you like it if your branch was cut off right here?” she said. “We would all go on forever, and then here you would end. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not,” Kizzy said.
“Well, you have a weakness Kizzy. And it would be better to live forever in deafness than to die forever with your hearing.”
“You can’t do that to me,” Kizzy said. She slumped her shoulders so that she would look real pathetic. Did she really feel sorry for what she’d been doing? Not entirely. But she felt sorry for getting caught, and her insides winced at the punishment that she might be receiving.
“I don’t want to do it Kizzy,” her mother said. “And I probably won’t. I just want you to know how serious this is. You’ll be living on your own soon and you can’t afford to be so reckless then.”
“Believe me,” Kizzy said. “I never want to hear this music again.”
There was a knock at the door. Kizzy turned to answer it.
“Stop right there,” her mother commanded. Leaning back and she took a sip of coffee, she stared at the record player. “Are you genuinely sorry? Are you done with this music? Or are you just telling me what I want to hear?”
There was another knock at the door.
“It’s the truth,” Kizzy said.
“Then I believe you.”
“Good, you should,” said Kizzy. “Because it’s the truth. Can I answer the door now?”
“Go ahead. Who is it?”
“Probably Laura, dropping off my homework.”
“Oh good. She can help you destroy this then.”
Kizzy’s steps hesitated as she walked. She could feel her face become flushed. She hadn’t really intended on quitting the music, but now the end loomed on the horizon.
She opened the door and Laura stood there with an innocent smile on her pale face. The smile turned to shock when she looked into the house. Kizzy turned to see her mother taking the Banshee album from its cover and bending it in half. The black plastic flexed for a moment then snapped into two worthless pieces. Tiny flecks of vinyl exploded all over the kitchen floor. Next she took a pair of scissors and snipped the power chord from the record player. Kizzy watched all this in horror. Now Laura and soon probably the whole neighborhood would know that she had been listening to city music.
All the feelings that the music had given her – the excitement, the vitality, the happiness – evaporated from inside her. Now there was only numbness. She boiled with resentment. Resentment at her mother, at the world, at Laura for standing there with that stupid look on her face. But on top of it all she felt completely alone. The music had been her only friend, her only connection to another person, and now it lost forever. Kizzy crossed her arms. That was her way of telling the world to stay away.
Laura crept into the kitchen with her eyes wide open. “So how are things?” she asked, looking at the record player on the table. “Are you having a little party?”
“We’re not listening to anything,” Kizzy’s mother said. She didn’t look at Laura or at Kizzy. She just stared off into space. “You’re going to help her destroy it.”
“OK?” Laura said, as if it were a question. She was confused. She was confused all the time. In fact, you could say that it was her dominant condition. Her family oversaw the farming operations for the county, but she wasn’t too bright. “And why are we getting rid of it?”
“She was listening to city music,” her mother said pointing at Kizzy.
Laura made a disgusted face. “Ugh – why would you do that?”
Kizzy’s mother laughed and smiled at Laura with pride in her eyes. Kizzy shook her head in disbelief. This wasn’t happening. She would never trust her mother again, she would never trust anyone again. The world was against her.
Her mother instructed them to bury the record player and the broken album out in the woods with the crows. ‘They are just as toxic,’ she said.
The crisp air of the evening was cool on Kizzy’s hot face. A soggy depression floated in her gut. She had disappointed her mother, and now her dirty secret was exposed. She stank with shame.
As the two of them carried the record player towards the woods, she began to grow afraid. That thing was still out there somewhere, waiting. Kizzy slowed down.
“Come on,” said Laura, pulling her towards the forest.
“No, I don’t want to go out there.”
“Why not?”
“There’s something out there. Something strange.” Kizzy pulled the record player towards the barn instead.
“Something strange?” Laura asked with a chuckle. “Like a squirrel or something?”
“No, some sort of creature.”
“A creature?” asked Laura skeptically.
“I don’t know. I just don’t want to go out there. It’s getting too dark now anyway, let’s just take it to the barn.”
They walked across the lawn into the old wooden building. Kizzy turned on the lone light bulb. She closed the door and set the player on the shelf.
“Was the album any good?” Laura asked.
“Shut up,” Kizzy said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“How did your mother find it?”
Why was Laura asking these questions? It seemed so unlike her, she was always such a good, dumb girl. What was she trying to do?
“Well, she walked in while I was listening to it,” Kizzy answered.
“You were listening to it while she was at home?”
“Well, no. She was gone, but then she came in and surprised me.”
“Didn’t you have it hidden?”
“Yeah, in my closet.”
“Well, serves you right,” Laura said. She was quiet for a moment, then gave Kizzy a glance from the side of her eye. “I don’t know what I’d do if my mother found mine.”
“Wait, what?” asked Kizzy. It felt as if the ground beneath her feet wasn’t as solid as she thought it had been.
“You should’ve had a better hiding place,” Laura said. “Then you wouldn’t have gotten caught.”
“Wait a second,” Kizzy said, grabbing Laura by the shoulders. “You listen too?”
Laura shushed her. “The whole world doesn’t have to know.”
“I thought I was the only one,” Kizzy said.
“Me too.”
They didn’t say anything for a moment, they just stood there awkwardly smiling at one another. “Do you listen to Banshee?” Kizzy asked finally.
“Love him,” Laura said with childlike glee. “But I only have a couple of his old records. Ones people from the city had thrown away. But this one’s brand new.” She held the yellow album cover and ran her hand over the plastic. “It’s a shame your mom busted it.”
“Yeah. And too bad this won’t ever play again,” Kizzy said, patting the now cordless record player.
“No, I bet I could find a spare cord at home,” Laura said. She looked giddy with excitement. She ran from the barn before Kizzy had a chance to say a word.
Through the window she watched her run home. Kizzy glanced back at her own house. The lights were all out. Maybe her mother had gone to sleep. She started to clean up the barn, to avoid suspicion. Then she came across the white burlap sacks and remembered that the crows were all still laying out in the field. She groaned, grabbed the bags and marched outside.
She began to fill the bags and brought them to the edge of the forest. Soon a huge pile had amassed and she started to feel stupid for not going out into the woods. There was nothing out there. She had probably imagined the whole thing in the ghost town. She hoisted a bag up over her shoulder and sighed.
‘There’s nothing out there,’ she whispered to herself. She took a step forward and a dark figure moved behind a tree. Was it a person or a shadow? The woods were so dark
that she could hardly tell. She squinted.
“Hey,” came a voice from behind her. Kizzy nearly jumped out of her skin. She turned and Laura stood there smiling, with a backpack in her hand. “I have some surprises.”
Kizzy looked back to the woods. The shadow had disappeared. Whatever it was, it had come closer to her house. She no longer felt safe.
“Sure let’s go,” Kizzy said, dropping the white bag of crows.
They went back to the barn and Laura took the surprises from the backpack one by one. The first was a brand new power cord. The second was actually two things, a couple of older Banshee albums, one was green and the other was blue. Their covers were worn and tattered. ‘But they still played,’ Laura assured her. The final surprise was a bowl of cookies. Kizzy applauded at the show’s climax, and Laura bowed and thanked her for the support.
Laura connected the new cord to the record player as Kizzy blocked the barn door with the lawnmower.
When everything was set Kizzy plugged the cord into the outlet. Laura wasn’t sure if it would work, she wasn’t too handy with electronics, she said. There was a moment’s pause as they waited, but then sure enough, the turn table began to spin. Kizzy gave Laura a thumbs up.
Laura smiled and shook her two fists in the air. She picked up the old green album cover and carefully pulled out the black vinyl disc and handed it to Kizzy.
Kizzy examined it. A whole new world was carved onto that plastic. There was so much magic to discover. She laid it down and set the needle to the groove and turned the volume down to one. They both leaned in close to listen.
A guitar plucked a steady riff. Banshee’s crooning voice came in and weaved its way through the notes.
“It’s amazing isn’t it?” Laura whispered.
Kizzy nodded. “I only ever feel anything when I’m listening to it.”
“Me too.”
“Do you think it’s true that they are trying to lure us into the city with this?” Kizzy asked.
The Enoch Pill Page 2