When We Fall

by Peter Giglio

  After a long period of silence, she asked, “What’s in the boxes?”

  “Memories,” Ben grumbled.

  The storm intensified. The house lights flickered.

  “Aren’t you going to go through them?” she asked. “I can help you if—”

  “In time,” he said, then flopped backward on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Without checking if his mother had walked away yet, he snatched his Walkman from the nightstand, put his headphones on, and pressed play. He’d borrowed the Meat is Murder cassette from Aubrey the night before and was glad to find his favorite song already cued up.

  “I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does,” he sang along, not caring how loud or who listened.

  When the song ended, he looked at the door. It was closed, and he couldn’t help feeling that he now understood—at least in part—the allure of rebellion. By being a thing his mother didn’t want to be around, he’d gotten her to leave and shut the door for him. He rewound the track and pressed play.

  This time he sang louder than before.

  As Friday wore on, other than when he left his room to eat, Ben listened to music. He didn’t say much at dinner, and his mother and father didn’t push. And when daylight dimmed, and he was lying in bed, still listening to The Smiths, he knew he was making progress.

  Johnny hadn’t shown up.

  And he didn’t show up for the rest of the night.

  If only Ben’s dream could have been as peaceful.

  * * *

  Ben stands at the edge of the park and watches a dense wall of green fog roll over the horizon, engulfing trees and playground equipment as it approaches. A small bell chimes nearby as he backs away from the encroaching mist, and he turns in the direction of the noise, the massive birch tree behind him.

  White bark glows eerily through a wispy haze of green smoke, and centered in the tree’s thick base, the open maw of an elevator door awaits. Behind the opening in the tree, a young girl—no more than three or four—stands on her tiptoes with considerable effort, her finger jammed into an unseen control panel. Around the girl, the inside of the elevator is clean and white, radiating angelic flares of light—like lens flares, he thinks—that slice through the burgeoning gloom.

  “C’mon,” the little girl says, though not urgently. “I can’t hold this thing all day, Ben.”

  He hesitates a moment, flicking his attention back to the approaching fog.

  “Don’t make me leave without you,” the young girl warns.

  Stepping into the elevator, he turns and looks at the button the girl’s pressing—the only button on a control panel that’s far too large for the evident singularity of its function. Emblazoned on the button is a big red 4, above which hangs a certificate that doesn’t boast this misplaced contraption’s last inspection; instead, it reads THIS ELEVATOR IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE NUMBER 4 and is signed THE MANAGEMENT.

  Ben laughs. “What is this, Sesame Street?”

  As the girl withdraws her hand from the panel, the doors clang shut. Then, shaking her head slowly, she turns to face Ben, and that’s when he recognizes her.

  Aubrey, but much younger, wearing a black dress, a pained expression washing her face of any joy.

  “Where are we going?” he asks.

  “Up,” she says.

  Then movement, like the sudden jerk and rush of a roller coaster in reverse, wrenches the pit of his stomach. The elevator races upward, faster and faster, forcing him to crouch low and clench his gut. Glancing up and around, he sees the walls surrounding him are now green and transparent. Still crouching, he looks down through his legs, and the floor of the elevator has also become clear and green.

  The ground falls away, his house and Aubrey’s growing smaller as they’re engulfed by the rolling mist, then they’re gone. And something flutters below him—a string attached to the bottom of the elevator, wavering untaut in the wind before disappearing into the haze below.

  Slowly, he stands and tries to take Young Aubrey’s hand, but she jerks away, backing into a corner.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “I…I don’t know you yet,” she says. “And Daddy tells me never to trust strangers.”

  “You know who I am. You called me by name.”

  “I know who you are,” she drones, “but I don’t know you yet. No one does, Ben.”

  He looks down again, and the ground below, beyond the cloud of fog, has been reduced to a network of lines and shapes.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Up,” she repeats.

  “But where? Are we going to heaven?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Then where?”

  “Higher. I’m taking you…higher.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” A wicked grin cracks her face the moment they begin to plummet. “The higher we go…the harder we fall!”

  Ben scurries, seeking something he can cling to, and the ground rushes up fast, the mist below breaking into smaller smokelike plumes that lazily drift from his neighborhood and a new figure standing below.

  Sight telescoping, Ben can see the dark figure holding a spool of string like a kid flying a kite. Then shadows abate, and the figure’s face becomes clear…

  Ryan Barnes grins upward as he yanks down on the string, and Ben feels the pull, the elevator falling faster…faster…

  “What are you doing?” Young Aubrey asks.

  “Bracing for impact.”

  As she cackles, everything around Ben begins to strobe in slow motion. Young Aubrey throws her arms in the air and shouts, “Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

  Cracks spiderweb across the glass behind her.

  And below, Ryan Barnes holds his arms open wide as if he’s preparing to catch a football.

  Green glass shatters and flies, a large shard slicing through Young Aubrey’s neck, a fountain of blood spraying from the stump where her head once rested.

  Unable to close his eyes, Ben glances down, trying to avert the horror show around him. He jumps back when Aubrey’s severed head—not the head of a child, but as she is now—rolls against his sneaker with a wet plop.

  She looks up at him, still smiling, and shouts, “Weeeeeeeeeeeee! Isn’t this fun, Ben?”

  And then darkness becomes everything.

  * * *

  Drenched in sweat, Ben awoke with a gasp. Deep blue dawn peered through the curtains, and the alarm clock read 5:41 A.M. Sitting upright, he took deep breaths, waiting for his pulse to slow to near-normal, then he crept across the room and sat down at his desk. Ripping a blank page from of a notebook, he took a pen from the caddy next to his black-and-white television.

  And he wrote:

  Dear Johnny,

  I don’t know what’s happening but I’m scared.

  PLEASE HELP!!!

  Your brother,

  Ben

  Then, crouching by his bed, he pulled out the Super 8 camera. He folded the note up into a small square, slid it under the protective sleeve of the box, and pushed the camera back into place. From the top of his hamper, he grabbed the cargo shorts he’d worn the previous day, slid them on, and then checked the pockets to make sure his money—a ten and three ones—were accounted for.

  Slowly, he opened the door and left his room. At the end of the hall, his parents’ door hung open, and the sounds of his father’s snores reverberated like machinegun fire through the morning stillness of the house.

  On the toes of his socks, he glided to the other end of the hallway, into the dining room, then the kitchen, where he grabbed the spare house key from a hook on the side of the refrigerator. He pulled a notepad and pen from next to his mother’s AM radio, and below the factory-printed caption that read BLESS THIS MESS, he wrote: Mom and Dad, I woke up early and decided to head down to The Book Rack early.

  He walked or rode his bike downtown every Saturday morning and was accustomed to waking before his parents. Of course, The Book Rack didn’t open until eight
, but he was certain neither of his folks would wake before then.

  The back door didn’t lock from the outside, so he exited through the front after slipping on his shoes. He eased the key into the dead bolt and turned it until he heard the dull clink. Then he ran through the yard and down the street. At the end of the block, he circled around to the alley and jogged to Aubrey’s. After skirting through the tight gap between houses, he rapped on her window, waited, and then tapped his knuckles against the glass again.

  Finally, the curtains parted. Standing there in an Echo and the Bunnymen T-shirt and pink pajama bottoms, her hair a complete mess, she looked confused. Then, after a gentle nod of recognition, she unlatched the lock and pulled the window open.

  “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” she whispered.

  Looking at her dumbly—like a lost child, he thought—he didn’t know what to say. He bit his lower lip, damning himself for coming here like this. Instinct had fueled his actions before, not rational thought, and he wanted to turn back time so he could rethink the whole thing.

  “What’s wrong, Ben?”

  “I had a bad dream.” The moment those words tumbled from his mouth, he realized how insecure they must have sounded. He straightened his posture and attempted to put on his bravest face, then added, “I dreamed something bad happened to you, and I just had to come over and make sure you were okay.”

  She smiled. “Well, isn’t that sweet.”

  “What time do you have to work today?”

  “Noon.”

  “Hey, look, I’m gonna walk downtown to the bookstore. You wanna come with?”

  “The bookstore? When do they open?”

  “Eight.”

  She put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. “It doesn’t take two hours to walk downtown.”

  He shrugged. “Well, I can’t sleep, so I thought I’d just walk around. Maybe I’ll go over to The Jean Shack, too, and see if they have any good used tapes.”

  “I normally go for a jog at seven, but—”

  “Good, that way your dad won’t miss you when he gets up.”

  “All right. Let me put on some jeans while you head around to the front door…like a normal person.”

  * * *

  A few minutes before seven, Ben and Aubrey rounded the corner of Central Avenue, and to Ben’s surprise, Lester, the owner of The Book Rack, was sweeping the walkway in front of his store. He glanced at Ben before dropping his head down (he almost always kept his head down), then, loud enough to be heard, said, “You’re a little early today.”

  “Sorry about that,” Ben said. “We can just walk around till you open up. It’s no problem.”

  Lester swayed back and forth as he gripped the broom handle with both hands. “You can come inside if you want.” He giggled nervously, then added, “The books don’t care how early it is. But don’t be so loud you wake Mother upstairs.”

  “We don’t want to put you through any trouble,” Aubrey said. She glanced at Ben and mouthed, Mother?

  Gesturing at Aubrey by shifting the position of the broom handle, Lester held eye contact with Ben for the briefest of moments. “This your girlfriend?” he muttered.

  “This is Aubrey, my friend,” Ben said.

  “Well, Benjamin, you tell her it’s no trouble at all.” Then he turned, fumbled with his keys for a few seconds, and opened the shop, the bell jangling above the door.

  For the next hour, Ben and Aubrey browsed through Lester’s vast and strangely ordered stock. Although each section of the musty store was categorized by genre, Lester clearly had something against the alphabet. However, if Ben was looking for a specific title, Lester knew exactly where to find it. It was like asking an old townie how to get to the nearest gas station.

  “Move the three bottom rows aside on the south wall of Horror and you’ll find I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, four books down, three stacks from the end of the shelf,” Lester said. “Five rows down on the north side of Sci-fi, eight books from the right, is a really nice copy of Gateway by Frederik Pohl. Terrific book!”

  Lester’s stunning power of recall made Aubrey laugh, which caused Lester to blush.

  Six books in hand, Ben rotated the display rack of new comics in front of the checkout counter. Comics had been Johnny’s thing, and when he used to come here with Ben on Saturday mornings, he would stand by the register and talk to Lester for hours about Marvel and DC. When Johnny had passed away, Lester attended the funeral. Ben had felt sorry for the man, who stood away from the other mourners and wept openly. Although the bookseller had left quickly, Ben had been touched. It was something they never talked about.

  Ben placed his selections on the counter, and Aubrey put a couple paperbacks she’d picked—The Great Gatsby and In Cold Blood—on top of his stack. Lester shuffled behind the register, put on a pair of reading glasses, and eyed the books for a moment. “Looks like an eight-dollar bill to me,” he said.

  Aubrey reached into her purse, but Ben stepped forward and pulled the ten from his pocket. He placed the bill gently on the counter. Once he’d made the mistake of slamming his payment down, which had caused Lester to lecture him for half an hour about why that was rude. In general, there was a certain illogical logic to everything at The Book Rack, which was one of the reasons Ben loved the place so much. Granted, there were used bookstores all over town that were cleaner and more organized, but he liked it here. The place had character.

  Lester slowly counted Ben’s change, two one-dollar bills that he placed on opposite ends of the stack of books. Then he took a plastic shopping bag from beneath the register and, one at a time, put the books in. Ben slid his change into his pocket and took the sack from Lester’s tremulous hand.

  “I’ll see you next Saturday?” Lester asked.

  “As long as you promise to have some books left,” Ben said.

  A crooked smile played on the pale man’s lips. “I’ll try to save you some good ones, but be sure to come at the right time next week. Can’t guarantee I’ll be up so early doing my chores, and downtown is no place for a boy to be wandering around at the crack of creation.”

  “No problem,” Ben said.

  As they started toward The Jean Shack, Aubrey said, “That guy’s a little strange.”

  “I like Lester,” Ben said. “He lives upstairs with his mother.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “She never says anything. But she’s okay, I guess. Very old. Smiles a lot.”

  “He reminds me of Norman Bates from Psycho.”

  “I guess I’ll find out on Tuesday when you bring it over.”

  “Remind me not to go back in there anytime soon.”

  “Oh, I was scared of Lester at first, but he’s great. He knows where every book is, and he’s read most of them. He loves answering questions, and if I ask him about a book he hasn’t read, he reads it by the time I come back in, ready with an answer.”

  “And you think that’s normal.”

  Ben laughed. “No, I think that’s Lester.”

  As they neared George’s Steak House on Division Street, the enticing fragrance of breakfast food hung thick in the air. To Ben’s surprise, Aubrey pulled open the door of the 24-hour diner and motioned Ben to enter.

  “Why are we going here?” Ben asked.

  “You bought my books, so I’m buying your breakfast. Besides, I’m starving, aren’t you?”

  Ben hadn’t thought about it before, but as soon as the sound of bacon and eggs sizzling on the grill hit him, their scent mixing with coffee in that unmistakable aroma of earthly heaven known to places like this everywhere, he was famished.

  * * *

  Although Ben’s excitement about picking up the film on Monday grew, it didn’t overshadow the enjoyment of the weekend.

  Done with her short shift at Beggar’s Video on Saturday evening, Aubrey came by Ben’s house, and they walked downtown to the movie theater. It was a cool and cloudless night, a summer rarity in southwest Missouri. It was Aubrey’s i
dea to walk.

  Ben had told his parents—so they wouldn’t raise a fuss—that tonight was a practice date. That seemed to satisfy them.

  Before Ben left the house, his father took him aside and handed him a twenty-dollar bill. He didn’t offer any advice, just winked and smiled. Even Ben’s mother seemed to be in a good mood.

  Shortly before Aubrey arrived, to no one in particular, his mother said, “It feels like things are finally getting back to normal.” She was in the kitchen, preparing a turkey and two kinds of pie for dinner the following night. When she was in a good mood, Ben’s mom took Sunday dinner seriously.

  Stepping into the house, Aubrey said, “Something sure smells good.”

  Ben’s mother then invited Aubrey and her father over for the Sunday feast. And when Aubrey asked what the occasion was, his mother replied, “It’s just nice to have everyone together.”

  To and from the theater, Ben and Aubrey held hands. They did the same through most of the movie, which wasn’t very scary, even though it had been directed by the same guy who’d made The Howling, one of Ben’s all-time favorite horror flicks. Still, the special effects were cool, and Aubrey liked Gizmo, which made Ben like him, too, even if the character was nothing more than a glorified stuffed animal. The actual gremlins, on the other hand, were slimy and sinister and funny; Johnny would have loved them.

  Ben thought about Johnny a lot that weekend, though not with sorrow or dread.

  And he easily dismissed thoughts of Ryan Barnes, sure that his dreams had been…well, dreams, and nothing more. Life is for the living, Lori Chance had said. And when Ryan did make a visit in his mind, Ben internally repeated that mantra until the dead boy vanished.

  Dinner was at five on Sunday, but Aubrey came over a few hours early. She and Ben played Combat and Pong on Johnny’s Atari console. The games were archaic compared to the Nintendo NES system Ben had received the previous Christmas, but he appreciated their simplicity, which gave him more time to focus his attention on Aubrey.