Seth grabbed him by his wrist. “Raymond, stop it. We can’t keep running from this. I know what you’re going through, I—”
“You don’t know shit about what I’m going through,” he said evenly, his expression changing, shifting from one of panic and terror to one more closely resembling menace. “But you will.”
Seeing the look on his face, Seth released his brother’s wrist. Over the years he had felt many things when it came to Raymond, but until that moment fear had never been one of them. “Ray,” he stammered, “I—”
“I got to get some air, man, I’m suffocating in here.”
“We can’t keep running; we have to help each other.”
“Don’t you get it? There is no help.”
As Raymond turned and left the restaurant, Seth yielded to the alcohol and his tired, frayed nerves. Closing his eyes, he felt the room spin and wished sleep would take him right there.
* * *
Darian stood at the window and watched the night. The street was slick from recent rains, the black asphalt glistening as if polished. He cocked his head for a better view of the far end of the street and the other townhouses that lined either side of it. The neighborhood was quiet, as it always was this time of evening. But for the rare pass of a car now and then, no traffic moved and the only noises were those common sounds of the city one grew so used to they barely registered, distant and removed but occasionally trickling in from far-off corners and alleys. Much the way someone in the suburbs learns to tune out the constant buzz of crickets, he thought.
“What are you doing?”
Cynthia’s voice brought him back. Lights from the television painted the walls in alternating patterns of light and shadow. He vaguely remembered she’d been watching a program, a documentary. They had gone to bed together earlier, and he’d done his best to feign interest until she’d fallen asleep, but the compulsion to watch the street, something he’d been doing more and more frequently of late, had overwhelmed him as it did near every night these days, and he had slipped from bed to his position at the window, standing there surveying the neighborhood like some deranged sentinel awaiting attack. Later, he would make the first of perhaps half a dozen trips before sunrise down the hallway to their daughter Debra’s room, where he would crack the door, and with the help of a small nightlight next to her bureau, check on his little girl to make certain she was still in her bed, still breathing, asleep, safe and unharmed.
Darian looked back over his shoulder. Cynthia lay in bed beneath flannel sheets and a comforter. Even after years of marriage, he still thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. More importantly, she was the best person he’d ever known, a woman of substance, intelligence and compassion, also blessed with statuesque beauty. She was his wife, lover, best friend, and the mother of his child, yet he’d never felt more alone in her presence than he had these last several months. It was as if whatever bonds had held them together were slowly dissolving without his consent, his world unraveling and spinning out of control despite his best efforts to stop it. “Just think-ing,” he said quietly. “It’s all right, go back to sleep.”
She rubbed her eyes and sat up a bit, bringing the covers with her, her movements delicate and graceful. She squinted at the television in the corner, recognized the tail end of the documentary she’d been watching. “Damn it, I wanted to see that.”
“You nodded off about halfway through.”
She stifled a yawn. “Baby, don’t you feel well?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you ever planning on telling me why you do this every night now?” When he stared at her without answering she said, “Stand at that window, I mean. What are you looking for? Are you expecting some-one? You’ve been doing it every night for a week or more.”
His stomach clenched, and a slow wave of nausea drifted through him, settling at the base of his throat like a marble lodged in his windpipe. “I’ve got a lot on my mind, that’s all. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Maybe you should take something. We have some Tylenol PM in the medicine—”
“I’m fine.” He turned back to the window, adjusted his eyeglasses and continued to study the street. “Go back to sleep.”
“I know you didn’t just dismiss me like that.”
He nodded without turning around. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s time we talked about it, Dar. It’s time we talked about what’s bothering you.”
Screams. Horrible sounds. A storm. Snow. Fear. Relentless fear.
“I was thinking this weekend maybe we could all go to the movies,” he said. “It’s been a while since we’ve gone.”
“Sounds like fun,” she said matter-of-factly. “But I won’t hold my breath.”
Darian fought a sudden swell of tears. He’d become so emotional of late, able to cry at the drop of a hat, often without even knowing why. The simplest thing could set him off, a commercial on television, someone on the street—nearly anything. Like some overly emotional basket case, he thought. What the hell’s wrong with me?
He focused on the street beyond the window until the tears receded.
His thoughts turned to his parents, and how deeply he loved them both.
They’d both worked at the same public high school for decades, his mother as a math teacher, his father as assistant principal. Darian had been raised in a happy, comfortable home, and had gone on to college where he majored in accounting and earned his degree, finishing near the top of his class. He was not a black kid raised in the projects of Dorchester or Roxbury, rather a middle-class kid from Hanover, a small, predominantly white and relatively affluent town on the south shore, a stretch of coastal towns between Boston and Cape Cod. Though most of the people he knew were white, including most of his friends, he’d always been aware that things were rarely as they seemed, not always quite as liberal and open-minded as many suggested they were. And he heard it from both sides: The quiet racism from some whites who smiled when he was looking but secretly despised him, bigots who considered him an uppity, self-impressed negro trying to play the big-shot, along with the slurs from some blacks who accused him of selling out or trying to be white. He’d heard it his entire life, and knew what it was to be alone, to be in a position where no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to win. That sense of isolation and the unfair disrespect leveled by some black and white people alike was a point he and Cynthia shared early in their relationship, since she was the child of a mixed marriage. But these other feelings…this darkness he’d experienced for some time now, was not something she could experience with him—and for that he was grateful. His feelings of helplessness and seclusion; his fear that at any moment his mind might tear and come apart at the seams was not something he wished on his worst enemy. Yet there were others who understood. He knew that. Seth hadn’t acted right for months, and neither had Louis. They had all been affected, yet they were all so alone, it seemed.
In a tone that signaled her patience was nearing its end, Cynthia said, “Tell me what’s going on, Darian.”
How do I tell you I’m losing my mind? How do I tell my wife her husband is breaking into pieces? How do I tell our daughter her father is not the rock of strength and stability she thinks he is?
“Is there someone else?”
His heart dropped and he again fought the rise of raw emotion surging through him. He moved wearily to the foot of the bed and sat down. “Of course not.”
“You never lay a hand on me anymore, and—”
“There’s no one else,” he said. “Don’t be absurd.”
“You’re so far away,” she whispered, as if to herself.
“I love you, you know that. You and Debra are everything to me.”
“What is it then? Are you in some sort of trouble?”
“I’m so tired,” he heard himself say, voice trembling. “I’m just so tired.”
“What’s happened, Dar?”
The screams rose in his mind, ripping through his br
ain and bringing with them an uncontrollable terror. Flashes of snow, night, the woods, a storm—blink and they were gone, leaving in their wake a sense of dread he experienced so often these days he had nearly grown accustomed to it. Do the insane know they’re insane? He wondered. Do they become used to how it feels? Perhaps. But do they feel they might contaminate others close to them with their disease, their madness? If not, then this isn’t insanity I’m dealing with, Darian thought, it’s something else, something pretending, masking itself as insanity but something far worse.
When he saw the look of confusion and concern on his wife’s face, he drew a deep breath and pulled himself together as best he could. “Everything’s going to be OK.”
“I’m not the only one. Our daughter’s been asking questions and she has a right to answers the same as I do. She’s only nine. She’s still a little girl who needs to know her father’s all right. She needs to know he’ll be there for her. We both do.”
He rose slowly from the foot of the bed as his heart sank into his guts. “It’s all right. I’m all right.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Everything’s going to be OK,” he muttered.
Though he felt her eyes on him, felt her frustration and anguish hanging in the air between them like a gossamer curtain, neither he nor she said another word as he crossed the room and slipped into the hallway, gripped with the sudden and overwhelming need to check on their sleeping daughter.
* * *
The ride back to the apartment was filled with uneasy silence. Without discussing things again, Seth and Raymond turned in for the night, agreeing to continue their conversation in the morning.
Later, Seth lay in bed, swathed in total darkness. In those strange and soundless moments, he could not be sure if sleep had claimed him or not. All the thoughts from the day flooded to the forefront of his mind at once, slowly dissipating until only memories and flashes of childhood remained.
Tell me what you see, Seth. Doc’s voice echoed in his head, only it wasn’t Doc’s voice, not really. It was a counterfeit version, a creation of his mind whispering to him from somewhere between the worlds of consciousness and sleep. Tell me what you see.
“There was something more,” he heard himself say. “Before Raymond and I were running in the snow.”
You said you saw movement.
“Yes.”
And you saw someone in the room.
“I saw…something.”
Then you and Raymond were outside running in the snow.
“Yes, but…”
Do you remember something else, between the two instances, Seth?
“Yes.”
What do you remember?
Fear hit him like a sucker punch to the back of the head. The terror rose so suddenly and with such ferocity Seth was certain he could actually hear it exploding in his brain before wracking his entire body with violent tremors. The sound of fear tearing him apart—the literal shriek of personal demons—was deafening.
“Help me—Christ almighty, please—help me, there’s something here, something in the room, please—”
Who is in the room, Seth?
“There’s something in the room, it—”
Breathe.
“Help me, help—us—please, God—”
You’re crying, Seth.
“I—please—please—”
Who is this person, Seth? It’s all right, you can tell me. Who is this person?
“It’s not a person.”
Seth bolted upright in bed, feeling the bile rise from the base of his throat. He choked it down and turned to the window, seeking it out through the darkness. But there was nothing, no one there, no one peering into the room. Trying to catch his breath, he rolled over and looked to the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was nearly midnight.
Had he and Peggy still been together, he knew she’d be there, snuggled against him, her body soft and warm, quiet mewling sounds escaping her now and then as she settled deeper into sleep. He lay back, pulling the blankets up tight under his chin and tried to picture her in his mind, her eyes blinking slowly, watching over him, protecting and loving him as she once had. Though his heart still pounded and the memories or nightmares continued to play in his mind, the liquor took hold, his eyes grew heavy and he eventually descended into sleep. Losing his grip on the visions of Peggy, the dark room, the world—everything—he fell away from it all slowly, weightlessly, an astronaut broken from his tether, gliding gradually into an endless sea of twilight.
CHAPTER 8
The darkness offered artificial comfort, a flimsy shroud he hoped might hide him from all that existed beyond its scope. Snowflakes fell, dotted the black sky and distracted him from a subtle, moaning wind. Somewhere not so very far away he could see a form, a woman, moving awkwardly near the edges of darkness. The woman, or what looked like a woman, walked with a strange, otherworldly stride, and the closer she drew, the slower and more sluggish her stride became. When she finally came to a halt, Raymond realized the woman was standing with her back to him, huddled over a bit now and slowly rocking back and forth, as if in prayer.
The snow stopped. Only darkness remained.
Turning, the woman looked back over her shoulder, and Raymond gazed directly into her eyes. Christy’s eyes, but eyes not entirely her own. They revealed the madness trapped within, the fear, revulsion, helplessness and all else that had infected this young woman before...before what?
“Christy?” he asked; voice slow and drowsy, incomplete. “What are you doing out here? Why did you leave the cabin?”
Draped in a dark and heavy blanket she wore like a cloak, Christy slowly extended her arms, holding them up like a great bird unfolding its wings. As she turned around, her robe fell open.
Faint cries called to Raymond from the surrounding night, cries similar to those of a baby. But they were not completely human sounds, rather squeals, like the noises of frenzied pigs.
Beneath the robe Christy was nude, her skin pale and taut in the cold night air. Along the side of her head, a large tumor protruded from her temple, moving in spasm-like twitches and stretching the skin and skull at impossible angles as if bubbling beneath it. “This is how it starts,” she said gravely, her voice sounding as if she was speaking to Raymond from the far end of a tunnel. “Do you understand? This is how it starts.”
The skin along the tumor began to split with a quiet ripping sound, releasing a gelatinous fluid that dripped across her cheek and neck onto the snow-covered ground. The pain seemed to disorient her, and she dropped her arms, the blanket again concealing her nudity. She doubled over and brought her hands to her head, one of them gripping the tumor. Her legs buckled a bit, unsteady as she grunted and groaned and stared at Raymond weakly.
As the side of her head burst, spraying blood, skull fragments and various fluids through the air, she screamed in agony, and her body vaulted suddenly backwards into the darkness, twisting and turning as if boneless. Plucked away by unseen hands, the night swallowed her whole.
* * *
Seth awakened in a haze. Had he heard Raymond scream just then?
He rolled out of bed groggily, listened. Nothing.
He found Raymond asleep on the sofa in the living room, the large comforter he’d given him the night before kicked away to the floor. Seth retrieved it and carefully covered him.
On the coffee table he noticed an empty glass and another plastic prescription bottle. Moving quietly, he grabbed the bottle and read the label. Anti-anxiety pills. He gazed down at his sleeping brother. High blood pressure, anxiety attacks, what next?
Madness, something whispered to him.
He returned the bottle to the table, swatting away his own demons as he slipped into the adjacent kitchen.
Seth turned the coffeemaker on, listened to it gurgle and belch, then returned to the living room and took up position in a chair across from the couch. He hadn’t thought it possible for Raymond to look so peaceful, yet there he was, asleep li
ke a child without a worry in the world. If only it were genuine rather than drug-induced, he might be able to believe it the way he had once believed in other things. But that ability had long since abandoned him.
Poor Raymond, he thought. Poor lost Raymond. I’m so goddamn sorry.
He watched Raymond sleep a while, uncertain as to why he felt compelled to do so. Perhaps it reminded him of how not so very long ago he’d watched Peggy sleep in the early morning hours, his favorite time, before the world awakened and all the chatter began, when all that mattered was the woman lying next to him, warm and trusting and still. Those moments of quiet certainty and affection had meant something once.
Maybe they still did, though like so much else now, he could no longer be sure.
His attention returned to Raymond. His expressionless face—the delicate rise and fall of his chest and the way his hair fell across his shoulder—revealed nothing. Yet even now, in the narcotic slumber Raymond had escaped to, when he saw his brother’s face, Seth saw glimpses of the tears that so often streamed down his cheeks in their youth. And the terror, he still saw the terror, as if it were still close by, gone but not so very far after all.
Flashes of night surged through his mind, filled his eyes with rapid-fire glimpses—memories—of him and Raymond running through the snow. Like strobe lights, they temporarily blinded him, consumed him with a feverish cadence that revealed in frantic pieces another night, the night at the cabin a year before. But it vanished just as rapidly, a blur at the corner of his eye, gone the moment he turned his head.
Forcing himself to focus, he summoned the images back.
Beneath charcoal skies filled with snowflakes the cabin loomed at the outskirts of Seth’s mind. The sound of labored breath and furious footfalls echoed faintly in his ears like distractions from a distant room, but he knew these things were all in his head, murmuring specters faded to nothing, come and gone as quickly as lightning rips across canopies of night.
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