“We were just kids.” Seth toyed nervously with a small napkin on the table. “But did those things have anything to do with what happened at the cabin? That was only a year ago.”
Raymond held his mug of coffee, cupping it with both hands and holding it before him like a chalice. “It helped me and cursed me all at once.”
“What did?”
“The change in me when I was a kid. They’ve tortured me for years, these things in my mind. But it helps me to see. Whether I want to or not, it helps me to see.”
“To see what Raymond?” The napkin tore in Seth’s hands. “Something happened at that place, and whatever it was it’s still affecting all of us. Louis has been acting strangely ever since, and Darian—he’s not himself either. None of us are. We’re all…”
“Yeah.” Raymond’s expression revealed the extent to which his mind had wandered into the past. It also revealed the extent to which he feared it. “Me too.”
“Tell me what happened out there, Ray. Tell me what you know.”
He pushed his mug aside and brought trembling hands to his eyes, covering them as if hoping to block it all out.
Seth reached across the table and touched his brother’s hand. “Whatever happened to you wasn’t your fault, Ray. Something happened that night at the cabin that was beyond our control.”
“Nana used to call me special,” he said again, dropping his hands and no longer concerned with masking his tears. “But it took me a long time to understand what that meant. I’d hear things, see things and—I was sure I was crazy—and maybe I was. Maybe I still am.”
“But the night at the cabin,” Seth said, bringing him back from his childhood memories, “something happened to you, something—”
“Nothing happened to me at that cabin.” He wiped the tears away but had regained the look of a caged animal recently freed and not quite certain what to make of it.
“Raymond, you disappeared in that storm for—”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then help me, Ray. Help me to understand. Please.”
Dull morning light bled through the windows on the far wall, the wintry gray sky casting the small kitchen in a mélange of shadowy silhouettes and ashen hues. Through the unexpected silence, the soft ticking of a nearby clock became more apparent then receded the moment Raymond began to speak.
“What happened out there didn’t happen to me,” he said, voice splintering with emotion. “It happened to all of you.”
CHAPTER 10
Startled to silence, Seth watched his brother squirm about in the chair across from him like an interrogation victim in some low-budget crime drama. The posture took him back to their childhood, when Raymond often looked that way, confused and troubled, scared and uncertain. How had he dismissed so much of his brother’s pain during those years? How had he simply looked away and paid little or no attention to Raymond’s torment the way one considerately ignored a nervous tick or obvious physical handicap? Little Raymond, with no friends, a pariah— disregarded and labeled a “freak,” he was a strange and isolated little boy haunted by nightmares and who claimed the ability to know certain things before they happened. And no one believed him, not even his trusted older brother.
Seth had challenged him once when they were boys. “If that’s true then prove it,” he’d demanded. “Show me.”
“It’s not like a magic trick,” Raymond explained. “It’s feelings I get. I get them sometimes and then—then I know something’s going to happen.”
“Like what?”
Raymond shook his head, as if to deny the thoughts even then. “Bad things.”
“You’re making it up,” Seth told him. “It’s just the bad dreams you have.”
All those years before he hadn’t been so sure, but like a strange noise in the night better left uninvestigated, Seth had convinced himself that Raymond did not possess the ability to see the future—and in time began to believe it, to no longer fear or take seriously the things that so clearly upset his brother. And in his denial, he found a sense of safety. False as it may have been, like a child hiding beneath blankets during a thunderstorm and insisting he was not afraid, it got him through, and more importantly, it separated him from Raymond. He was not the one with problems. He was fine.
My parents took him to doctors, even a psychiatrist and sleep disorder specialist, but nothing worked…
Did your parents ever do any of those things for you, Seth?
Focusing again on the here and now, Seth said, “Ray, you were the one who went out into the storm in the middle of the night. You were the one who went missing.”
“I think we should go see Nana,” he said suddenly. “I need to talk to Nana.”
“Try to focus, Ray. You said—”
“I know what the fuck I said.”
“Then explain yourself.”
“I need to see Nana.”
“Why?” Seth asked, though he already knew the answer. Their grandmother was the only one who had believed. Even when Raymond was a child, she’d believed him, and now he was grasping for anything he could lay his hands on.
“She’ll understand,” Raymond said. “She’ll know what to do.”
“She’s our grandmother, and I love her, but she’s an eccentric old woman who believes in a bunch of antiquated mystical nonsense, Ray, nothing more.”
“You used to believe in a lot of that nonsense.”
“I used to believe in the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny. What’s your point?”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her.” Raymond settled a bit, his nerves evening out. “Over a year.”
“I haven’t seen her in months myself,” Seth said guiltily.
“Shame on us.”
“Yes, shame on us.”
Raymond turned away and stared at the shadows along the wall like he could see what lay behind them, like all the answers were playing out right there in front of his eyes if only he’d look hard and long enough. “Whatever it is I’m able to do, to see and sense, it helped me to see something that night at the cabin, Seth. Something I shouldn’t have seen. Something I wasn’t supposed to see. So I ran.” The words caught in his throat and as his nerves fractured again, his eyes filled with tears. “I left you there, and I ran.”
“What are you—I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Pieces of the dream he’d had that night in the cabin—the nightmare about a storm, an otherworldly storm, at once so violent and beautiful—blinked in memory.
“I ran, don’t you get it?” Raymond slammed a hand on the table so hard Seth was surprised the entire thing didn’t collapse. “I ran.”
“You left the door open and the cold air woke us, we went looking for you,” Seth stammered. The sounds. Somewhere beneath the wail of the storm in his dreams there had been sounds. Horrible sounds. “You went looking for Christy, you—”
“No. I ran. Like a coward.”
The memories receded and floated from his grasp, tendrils of fog slipping through his fingers. “Why were you running, Ray?”
“Because I knew what was coming,” he said gravely.
“But nothing happened to us. You went outside, we were all asleep.”
“That’s when things happen.” He grimaced and wrapped his arms around himself as if cold. “In the dark, in the night, that’s when things happen.”
Seth drew a deep breath, held it a moment, exhaled. “What things?”
“All that’s out there in the night,” he said. “Deep night. That’s when we’re most vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable to what?”
“Those...things.”
“What things? There’s nothing out there,” Seth said squarely.
“You trying to convince you or me?”
“There’s nothing out there,” he said again. “This is all in our minds.”
“Yeah.” Amidst the tears, a smile twitched across Raymond’s face. “But what’s the difference?”
“You tell m
e.”
“I never asked for any of this. I never wanted it, never wanted to see these things.”
“Just relax and tell me what—”
“I don’t know what they are.”
The response threw him. “What?”
“What I saw that night, what I’ve seen ever since. I don’t know what they are.”
“Since that night…” Seth forced a swallow, realizing only then how dry his mouth had become. He tried to continue but the words lay wounded in his throat. Maybe Raymond was right. Maybe they both really were insane. “Since that night,” he eventually managed, “nothing makes sense. I don’t understand, Ray. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Neither do I; not completely. But I do know this. They’re a disease.” Raymond’s gaze met his. “And you’re all infected.”
The fingers of an icy chill swept across the back of Seth’s shoulders like a scurrying spider, reminding him of the cold winds that night in the woods. “Infected?” He folded his hands and held them tightly together to prevent them from trembling. “Infected how?”
“Maybe I am too, I don’t know. Maybe sooner or later we all are.” Raymond pointed to his head. “This is where it starts. That’s all I know.”
Seth forced the emotion and terror down, did his best to bring forth some sense of logic and reason. “Illness, is that what you’re saying? Some sort of mental illness?”
“Something terrible is going to happen,” Raymond said, “Soon. Something terrible.”
“You said ‘they’ before. What…” Overwhelmed, Seth struggled to sort his thoughts. Something had happened to Raymond as a child, something had happened that night at the cabin to him and everyone else there, and now, according to his brother—who may or may not have gone completely out of his mind—something else was going to happen soon. “Are you suggesting we’ve all gone collectively insane—you and me and Darian and Louis—or—”
“You’re not listening. Insanity’s subjective.”
“But you said—”
“This is where it starts.” Ray stabbed a finger into his temple. “Here, in our minds. That’s what I said.”
“If it’s in our minds then it’s some form of insanity, it—”
“I wish that’s all it was, man. I really do.”
Memories of the deafening storm in Seth’s nightmare continued to muffle the hideous sounds still echoing through his mind, sounds of skin ripping and splitting, wrapped in screams, ungodly shrieks of inconceivable agony. “It’s too much, it’s—this is crazy—I—why can’t I remember, Ray? Why can’t I remember what happened that night? What could just wipe out my memories like that? What could do that?”
Raymond shook his head with a defeated air. “I don’t understand it either. Not completely. Not yet. But then, I never have.”
Silence returned to the apartment as both men wrestled with their thoughts, fears and suspicions. After what seemed a very long time, Seth said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“We go see Nana.” Raymond wiped the tears from his eyes, pushed away from the table and stood up. Despite the dark bags under his eyes, the wear and tear on his face and body, the discernibly profound expense this had taken on a thirty-one-year-old man, the expression he assumed was the closest thing to resolve Seth had seen him express in years. “She can help me clear my head, see things straight. I need to see Nana.”
Seth felt himself nod. “OK, Ray,” he said numbly. “OK.”
CHAPTER 11
After nearly an hour of driving, Seth and Raymond reached the Sagamore Bridge, one of the two enormous structures that connected Cape Cod to the mainland. Though Seth had been over the bridge countless times, he’d never cared for heights and always found himself nervously staring straight ahead, eyes fixed on the road and hands firmly gripping the steering wheel at the ten and two o’clock positions.
“The bridge still scares you, doesn’t it?” It was the first time Raymond had spoken since they left Boston.
“I get a little nervous, that’s all.”
Seth noticed a large sign posted just before the beginning of the bridge, an advertisement for the Samaritans. It included a toll free phone number and the words: Feeling Depressed? A slogan for the suicidal, he thought. How many potential jumpers had walked right by that sign on their way to death? A final warning, a final chance ignored. In these recent days, Seth felt he could relate. There were warning signs everywhere and, yet, he could not change the direction of his fate. Not his, not anyone else’s. Like the jumper destined to plummet to the deep waters of the canal below, destiny had already set the stage and written the script.
As the car climbed the initial slant of the bridge, Raymond made it a point to sit up and crane his neck so he could look down over the edge, through the metal bars and cables to the distant coastline, canal and tiny landscape. There had been a time years ago—before he’d needed anxiety pills and high blood pressure medicine, before he’d gotten frequent nosebleeds from the pressure in his head—when he’d enjoyed the kind of basic thrill crossing an enormous bridge like the Sagamore could provide. Like being on a roller coaster, it gave him a buzz, an adrenaline rush that was actually fun, something he rarely had the opportunity to experience anymore. He embraced the escape for a moment and imagined what it might be like to freefall from such a colossal height. “Do you ever wonder what it would be like to fly?” he asked.
A memory of Raymond as a child blossomed in Seth’s mind. Little, pre-nightmare Raymond, skipping through their house with a small blanket tied around his neck to resemble a superhero’s cape as he jumped along the furniture in the den, arms flapping furiously. “No,” Seth said flatly, “I don’t.”
Once over the bridge, they were greeted by mile upon mile of identical two-lane highway carved into what remained of old forest terrain. This was ancient land, but like much of modern America, it retained little of the rustic appeal it had once possessed, as rest areas, exit signs and other manmade intrusions interrupted the otherwise natural setting with distressing frequency.
The forecast had called for more icy rain, and the further they ventured from Boston the darker the skies became. Just over the bridge, they encountered a belt of fog rolling in off the Atlantic that stretched across the road in thick, gray, slow-moving vapors.
“Haven’t been out this way in a long time.” Raymond slumped down in the passenger seat but continued to stare out the window. “Still get that same feeling whenever I cross the bridges.”
Seth nodded but said nothing. He knew what his brother meant.
“Brings back a lot of memories, I guess,” Raymond continued. “Always felt like I was crossing over into another world whenever I was on-cape. Still does.”
All those years ago, after the death of their parents, it had felt like crossing into an entirely new world. Driving these lonely roads with the knowledge that once they reached their destination, it would be Nana waiting for them, a woman who had outlived her only child, her son, and yet, she had been expected to restart her life, or to at a bare minimum continue on with it, despite all that had happened. It was something with which Seth and Raymond could identify in their own way. Though most people lived with the realization that one day they would bury their parents, no one expected them to be taken prematurely or violently, and when these things did happen, the surviving family members instantly became something akin to small-town celebrities. They were the two sons everyone had heard about on the local news, the ones who had lost both parents in a terrible automobile accident. They were the people others looked at without actually seeing, regarding them instead with side-glances and nervous smiles, or pitiful eyes and hurried, uncomfortable, overindulgent friendliness.
For a time, their mere presence could alter the mood and feel of an entire room. Adults or children, it made no difference, when the Roman boys walked through the door, everyone stopped and immediately began scurrying for ways to occupy themselves, to appear to have not noticed, to seem unaffected. But
Seth had always felt their discomfort, and knew Raymond had as well—even that of their own grandmother’s.
Though he and Raymond had done nothing wrong, they were often initially treated like exiles. Their very existence seemed constant unpleasant reminders of how vulnerable and ultimately fragile human beings were, how close everyone could be to death at any given moment. Those poor guys, people would whisper, poor, poor guys.
But their pity held little meaning. Please take our sympathy, everyone seemed to say, and go.
“You sure this is a good idea?”
Raymond faced the window, watched the trees zoom past. “I need to see her, man.”
They drove on in silence for a while, lost in their own thoughts.
“Are you afraid?” Seth asked.
The hot air from the car heater was stifling. Raymond cracked the window and dug his cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “All the time.”
* * *
Darian awoke in a heavy sweat, but couldn’t be sure if it was from the nightmares or because Cynthia had the heat turned up too damn high. Regardless, he rolled out of bed with an overwhelming need to bathe, went immediately to the bathroom, showered and returned to the bedroom to dress.
He could hear Cynthia moving about downstairs amidst the faint sounds of the television in the living room. He pictured Debra sitting in front of the TV like she did every morning before school, watching cartoons while devouring a bowl of cereal, and wondered if he’d still be alive to see her grow into a young woman, to one day marry and have children of her own.
Faraway screams called to him from distant corners of his mind, and blurred images of thick forest covered in abundant darkness swept past his vision like a movie projected through his eyes and onto the wall before him. Someone or something was running behind those trees…screams…tears…horrible sounds of things ripping and shredding. Someone screaming for help…Help me, God—God help me!
As the hallucinatory images and sounds slipped away, Darian drew a deep breath and attempted to focus on the day ahead, on the mundane tasks awaiting him at work. His job had once been one of the more important and defining elements in his life, but now served as little more than an occasional necessary distraction, a respite from the intensifying madness.
Deep Night Page 12