Flood

by Brennan McPherson

Lamech hoped his father would say nothing of Adah. Noah had been interested in hearing about his mother for years, and Lamech suddenly realized the danger in Methuselah spending too much time in his son’s presence before he and Lamech conversed in private.

  Thankfully, no one said anything, though Noah now observed Methuselah with near manic intensity. Methuselah rubbed his face, yawned, and lay on the hard ground with his eyes closed.

  Lamech cleared his throat. “Father?”

  “I changed my mind,” Methuselah said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Noah chewed his cheek and examined Methuselah as if searching for bits of information to extract from his wizened features. Elina stayed sitting and seemed calm enough, but Lamech did not miss the glint of the bejeweled dagger between her fingers.

  Lamech motioned for Elina to follow him, and they walked outside the light of the fire—just far enough so that the children could not hear them speak.

  Elina kept her eyes trained on Methuselah and whispered, “We can’t let him stay here.”

  Lamech balked. “And how do you propose we get rid of him?”

  “You know how.”

  Lamech’s voice deepened to a near growl. “He is my father, Elina.”

  “What does that change?”

  “Everything.”

  “It doesn’t change that his being here is proof that we are in serious danger,” Elina said. “That we were never as safe as we thought. And you’re hiding something from me, aren’t you?”

  Lamech ran fingers through his beard, but couldn’t deny it.

  “No one was supposed to be able to find us,” Elina said. “I don’t care who he is. I don’t trust him. And now I don’t even know if I trust you!”

  “I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do,” Lamech said.

  Elina studied him carefully. “If that’s true, just ask yourself, is there too much purpose for this to have happened by chance?”

  “It worries me too. But he said he would explain himself. We must give him the chance to do so.”

  “And yet he refuses to speak,” Elina said, and her grip tightened on the dagger.

  “Don’t be unreasonable. He will tell us in time.”

  “And if he refuses?”

  Lamech paused. “We will discuss options if the circumstances arise.”

  “This doesn’t feel right.”

  “Am I supposed to trust your feelings over my own?”

  “If I made a habit of disregarding my sense of danger, you and Noah would have been dead long ago.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “You think you’re the only one who’s protected us? That I do nothing when I sneak off in the evenings?” She spit on the ground and smeared it with her toe. “That old man knows something we don’t. I don’t like being exposed, Lamech. I’ve fought all these years to stay to the shadows, and yet that man, merely by showing up here, has made a fool of us both.”

  “Yet I’m the only one blinded by emotion?”

  “Don’t be a fool.” She grabbed the chest of his robe in her fist and pulled him close. “If he doesn’t explain himself tomorrow morning, he will be dead before the sun sets.”

  Lamech pried her fingers away and said, “How would his death help us? He is my father, and he has no reason to harm us. If he has been sent by others, how does that change whatever danger we might be in? Furthermore, why would anyone send my father here? They would know we would become suspicious, so how could it help them?”

  “I don’t know,” Elina said, her voice overloud. She paused, realizing the children might have heard, then continued in a whisper, “Whatever is happening, it isn’t good.”

  “Let’s hope you are wrong,” Lamech said. “But for now, you will trust me, and say no more. Just let me handle it.” He made his way back to the fire and lay down, trying to quell the sensation that the world was spinning. After a while, Elina returned, and Noah lay down as well.

  Then Methuselah began snoring, and Lamech was fairly certain the only one who slept through the night was his father.

  Chapter 34

  Noah woke the next morning to the red light of sunrise striking his forehead. His first thought was of the strange man he’d dreamed visited them in the middle of the night. The second was of the mannequin he’d stuffed beneath his covers.

  He pulled out the mannequin, thinking it looked like the man in his dream. The others were already gone, so he stuffed the mannequin under his covers, and rose to wash his face in the cold stream behind their home.

  As he turned the corner, he saw the man from his dreams talking with Father in hushed tones, and his veins filled with enough chill water to wake himself a thousand mornings to come.

  The old man nodded toward him, his ancient face crinkling into either a grimace or a smile. He couldn’t tell which, for matted facial and head hair obscured everything but his eyes and the bridge of his nose. Noah nodded politely, turned, and called, “Jade?”

  “Jade went with Elina to gather firewood,” Lamech said. “She’ll be back soon.”

  Noah nodded again, noticed how the old man watched him. “What are you looking at?” Noah said, and the old man shook his head.

  Noah left and returned to sit on his bedding, pulling out his mannequin a second time, though it failed to keep his mind from the newcomer.

  Could it be true? Was that old man really his grandfather? He wiped his eyes to relieve them of the strange pressure building behind them.

  The old man and Father were talking as if they had known each other for years. Perhaps it was true, and he hadn’t dreamed his coming the night before. Only it seemed so strange. Father had been convinced no one would ever find them. That was why they lived so deep in the wilderness, and daily struggled to live.

  “Because the world is burning,” Noah intoned. “And the thoughts of men are only evil continually.” That was why he and Jade had to live here. So that they could be different. Because the Others were evil, but they needed to be good.

  Only he had never felt evil, so how much danger could there really be in living near the Others? He would never let them change him. How could they? He didn’t believe it possible, and neither did Jade. It was one of the few topics that both consistently desired to talk about, so they fell to discussing it frequently. As of yet, he and Jade had been given little choice to see any Others to judge for themselves what danger might lurk in their hearts.

  Now one of the Others had found them. It didn’t matter if he was Noah’s grandfather. The man’s physical exterior was as vulgar as Noah could imagine, so if this man wasn’t evil, who was?

  No matter what happened, Noah knew he had to get the old man alone. He chewed his bottom lip, walked the little mannequin back and forth, and said, “Do you have a heart of flesh or stone?” He pulled back a bit of the bark, clicked his fingernail on the stone, and smirked before shoving it back under his covers.

  Chapter 35

  Lamech stood by the stream with Methuselah. After Noah stumbled upon them looking for Jade, Lamech felt his shoulders tense and took care to make sure Noah walked far enough away before continuing in a low voice. “Just don’t speak about anything having to do with Adah.”

  Methuselah eyed him cautiously. “You still haven’t forgiven me, have you?”

  “Don’t be a fool, Father. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  Lamech shook his head.

  “You’ve done the boy wrong if you’ve withheld knowledge of her for all these years.”

  “You will not come here and tell me how to raise my son,” Lamech said. “Where have you been all these years?”

  “I didn’t explain myself last night because I knew you wouldn’t sleep once I told you.”

  “I didn’t sleep anyway,” Lamech said.

  “You really are paranoid, aren’t you?”

  “And your snores shake the earth.”

  Methuselah laughed. “Just wait until you’ve lived anot
her century. Sleep doesn’t get any easier. You just learn to let go a bit better.”

  “How did you find us?”

  The glitter in Methuselah’s eyes dimmed, then became shaky wetness. “It’s not a happy story. When the devils burned our home, they took me alive, bound my hands and legs, and threw me in a bamboo box on a wagon. We drove for what seemed weeks, and finally arrived at a city I’d never seen, where they threw me in a pitch-black dungeon beneath a hideous tower. There they shackled me to the wall with black iron.”

  “How long were you held captive?”

  “They said I had been in there ten years, though it felt like a lifetime. I can’t begin to explain the madness of the endless dark. A few days and your thoughts simply end. A few years?” He shook his head.

  Lamech stared at his father, letting the meaning of his words take root. “How did you escape?”

  “They let me go.”

  “What?”

  Methuselah’s gray eyes flashed as he poked Lamech with a meaty finger. “And all so that I would come live with you and that boy you’ve been neglecting.”

  Lamech blinked, thinking of the dreams from so long ago, of Adah’s fear of being found. He wondered at the little she’d told him and desperately wished he had asked her more, because all she’d said was that she had been held captive and beaten.

  Had Methuselah been taken to the same city where Adah had been imprisoned? Maybe even held in the same dungeon? It seemed too strange to be unconnected, for both had found freedom, and if what Methuselah said was true . . .

  “Why would they want you to come to me?” Lamech said.

  “Everything those creatures do is backward. They capture women, strip them, and throw them in dungeons, but not for the reasons you might think. They do not marry. Instead, they force normal men to impregnate them. Then the God-King touches them. He does something to the women’s wombs, and at birth, they take the children from their mothers, but they are not normal children. The babies have horns and are inhabited not by human spirits but by the spirits of devils. And the women who are unfit for bearing children are bled so that the devils can drink their life like wine.” Methuselah grimaced and swallowed hard, wiping his watering eyes.

  “But you’re a man, not a woman.”

  “I think I was the only man in the entire dungeon.”

  Lamech ran his hands through his hair and paced to quiet the anxiety rising through his limbs. “Why did you come here? Were you followed?”

  “I didn’t bring them to you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because they brought me to you.”

  Lamech’s anxiety climaxed, and his vision dimmed. “What are you saying?”

  “When they brought me out of the dungeon, I was given a week for my eyes to adjust to the light. In all that time, they treated me with as much kindness as we would treat a king visiting from another land. When I finally received an audience with their leader—he calls himself the God-King—he told me exactly where to find you, and fitted me with supplies before bidding me luck on my travels.”

  “That was it?”

  “That was it.”

  Lamech pulled at his hair and the skin of his throat. Father was right. It didn’t make any sense. “You’re sure the ones who captured you are the ones who released you?”

  “The horns are difficult to miss.”

  Lamech swallowed and nodded. “That they are.”

  “You must believe me. I had to come, if only to know that . . .” Tears welled in his gray eyes. “To know that you and my grandchild were still alive. What do I have left but you and that boy?”

  Lamech set his hands on his hips and kicked at the dirt.

  “Think on it, son. If they really knew where you were living, what danger could I bring by coming to you? And if they lied to me for sport, what could I lose by playing the fool? I lived ten years in absolute darkness. The bitter weather, the difficulties I faced on my travels, they returned life to a dead man. For once, I was free, and maybe, just maybe, so were you.” Methuselah threw his arms around him and wept into his shoulder, and Lamech broke. “I hoped you’d stayed safe, and you have.”

  He smelled the years of filth on his father, the layers of rancid sweat and dust and mold, and thought of the last decade without him. He had missed him, even as he had grown to hate and love him the more, though he hadn’t realized it so completely until that moment.

  “I love you, son,” Methuselah whispered. “You’re all I have in this world.”

  “I know, Father. Now that I have Noah, I know.”

  When they released each other, they wiped their eyes and parted ways, Methuselah to the stream, Lamech to his garden.

  Chapter 36

  Noah stood as he heard footsteps and Jade’s voice soft and close. He wanted to know what Jade thought of his arrival almost more than he wanted to talk with the old man. But as Jade rounded the corner trailing Elina with a bundle of branches in her arms, she avoided his gaze.

  “Jade,” Noah said, but she raised her chin and pressed her lips together as if fighting the urge to speak insults.

  “Noah,” Elina said, “do you know where your father is?”

  “He was speaking with that old man behind our home,” Noah said. “But I haven’t heard them for a while.”

  Jade dropped the kindling in a pile while Elina fed some of the larger branches into the small fire they tended day after day to purify water and cook meals. “They’re not there,” Elina said. “Our visitor is at the stream.”

  Jade was standing with her arms folded, staring at the wall to avoid Noah’s gaze. He approached, but she turned to avoid him again. Noah felt indignation surge through his fingers as he walked to his bedding to find the little mannequin he’d made the previous day.

  Thrusting his hand beneath the covers, he retrieved the figure, spinning it to make sure it was suitable. Satisfied, he brought it to Jade. She looked at it quizzically. Then, when he pushed it toward her, she wrenched it out of his hands and forced a laugh. “You think I’m a child, that I would play with this?” She threw it into the fire and turned her chin up at him again.

  “Jade!” Elina said. “Why did you do that?” She grabbed a stick and flipped it out of the fire, but the heat had already twisted the bark and arms.

  Noah looked down at the mannequin and, despite himself, felt a burning behind his eyes. He kicked it back in the fire and said, “No, she was right. It belongs in there.”

  Elina examined him as he turned out of the shelter toward the stream, swiping the moisture from his face and hating himself for crying. He didn’t know why Jade was being so cruel, and he told himself he didn’t care. He would find the newcomer and speak with the man alone. And he wouldn’t tell Jade what they talked about. Not until she apologized for the way she’d treated him.

  When he found Methuselah bending toward the stream, cupping water and letting it run through his matted hair, the old man ignored him.

  “You claimed you knew me before I was born,” Noah said. “That means you knew my mother.”

  Methuselah stood and gauged him, water dripping from his ears, gray eyes pooling with centuries of experience. “If you want to know about your past, ask your father.”

  “I asked you.” Noah stared, willing the intensity of his gaze to press the man’s words free.

  Methuselah smiled. “If your father won’t speak to you about your past, why would I?” He waved Noah off and said, “Leave me in peace.”

  Noah turned and searched for Father, but couldn’t see him for the hills. “Where is he?”

  “He was walking toward the garden earlier. If he—”

  Noah trudged off, not waiting for the man to finish. He felt as though the fire that burned the mannequin’s arms now burned within his own. His fingers clenched into fists, and as he crested the first hill, he spotted his father bent as if whispering to his plants. “Father,” he said, and Father glanced up and smiled until he caught Noah’s expression. />
  “What is it?” Lamech straightened and wiped the dirt from his hands.

  “Why can’t I speak with the old man?”

  “I never said you couldn’t.”

  The sun bore down until it felt like a physical weight as Noah took a deep, shaky breath. “Why do you always lie to me?”

  “What are you talking about?” Lamech said.

  “Do you think I’m just a child? That you could fool me?”

  Lamech examined Noah carefully. “You are a child, but you are no fool.”

  “What was my mother’s name?”

  Lamech’s face paled.

  “Why do you refuse to talk about her? I just want to know who she was. Sometimes I imagine that I feel her hand brush my arm. But in my dreams, her face is clouded, and always she disappears, and I search and search and cannot find her.” Despite himself, tears blurred his vision, and he cleared his throat.

  “Son, I—” His voice caught, and he shook his head.

  Father’s face was so pale and flat that Noah wanted to strike him. He balled his hands, ground his teeth, and said, “I hate you! I hate you and Jade and Elina, and that old man too!” He turned and walked into the forest, continuing until each breath felt like a thorn in his side, and he collapsed, his body wracked with sobs that came from he knew not where.

  Chapter 37

  Lamech watched his son disappear and felt a sickness chill the base of his abdomen. Noah’s words repeated in his mind, and each time pierced him further. “I hate you . . . I hate you . . . I hate you!”

  Footsteps approached, and a hand lighted on his shoulder. He turned to see Methuselah’s gray eyes. They drooped at the corners, as if weighed down by all he had witnessed in his many years. “Why don’t you just tell him?”

  “Because it would only make him worse.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “He’s been kept from knowing his entire life, and so long as he’s kept his mind occupied, he’s been well.”