That day in the hallway near the locker room, he had hesitated in the shadows, listening to three seniors huddled near the locker room door, football players who took particular glee in terrorizing freshmen. Unnoticed, Seth slipped deeper into the corner and listened. Apparently Raymond was the last person in the locker room, running late and still showering after gym class. They’d been watching him, these three, and waiting for an opportunity to get him alone.
One of the boys pulled a tube of toothpaste from his jacket pocket and held it up like a prize. The others, both equipped with cans of shaving cream, began to laugh.
Seth knew these guys, could probably talk them out of it. He was hardly a popular student himself, but still, they knew him and if he asked them to grant his little brother a break from initiation they might agree.
But he never moved from the shadows. Even when they slipped into the locker room, Seth never moved.
“I always knew that,” Raymond said, bringing him back. “I always had you.”
“Yeah,” he managed, pushing the memories away, “well I should’ve—”
“I’m going to tell you some things,” Raymond interrupted. “Hard to believe things, things you won’t want to believe. But you need to understand that I don’t always know all the answers myself, OK? I can’t always explain everything completely. Sometimes, but not always.”
His thoughts focused on the here and now, his guilt subsiding as memories of that day in high school dissipated in favor of dread more recent. “What happened at the cabin, Ray? What happened to us that night? What’s happening to us right now? Were we just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“We were born in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Raymond paced a bit, one hand running feverishly through his hair again and again, pulling it away from his eyes then letting it fall. “At least I was. You were right before. I knew something was going to happen, and I went with the idea of protecting you. I figured maybe if I knew what was coming I could somehow help to stop it but I didn’t know, not really. I kept hoping the whole time at the cabin would be just what you guys wanted it to be, some drinking and card playing. Spent my whole fucking life hoping…but then Christy showed up and I knew it was all true. I wanted to stop it but I failed, man. I failed all of you.”
Seth left the window and returned to the bed, where he sat on the edge of the mattress and attempted a casual pose. “I’m trying to grasp what you’re saying here, honestly I—”
“You’re not supposed to be able to see them.” Raymond made eye contact that lasted more than a second or two for the first time since he’d entered the room. “I shouldn’t be able to see them either, but I can. And so could she.”
“Who, Raymond? See who?”
“I’m not sure what they are. Not yet.”
Seth sat quietly, determined to make sense of what his brother was so obviously struggling to explain to him. “All right,” he said hesitantly. “Go on.”
“There was a storm that night.”
“The snowstorm, yes.”
“That wasn’t the only storm.” He shook his head with frustration. “There was another one, a different kind you can’t see but some people can feel and are affected by. I don’t understand that much about it myself but it has to do with magnetic energy and solar winds. I’ve been reading up on it and trying to figure some things out. All I know is, these storms help make them more powerful.”
Glimpses of the otherworldly storm flashed in his memories. “These…things?”
Raymond nodded.
“And they’re—what—not human? Come on, what—”
“No, they’re not.”
“Raymond, I don’t—”
“They exist, but not in the same way we do.”
Seth stared at him dumbly.
“Between.” Raymond pulled his hands from his pockets. “Imagine a wall right here in the center of the room, only you can’t see it. But it’s definitely there. Things exist on both sides, but not together. If you’re human and you want to see or move to the other side of the wall there’s only two ways that can happen. The first is if you’re some goddamn accident like me or—”
“Don’t say that.”
He moved closer to Seth in a manner nearly threatening. “The first is if you’re some goddamn accident like me.”
“All right,” Seth said softly. “And the second?”
“If you’re one of them.”
“But…”
“They move in the psychological world, not the physical one. I think that’s why they need us.”
Seth held his hands to either side of his face. “What have they done to us, Raymond?”
“They’re disguised as insanity.”
“You think we’re insane then?”
“Do you think you’re insane, Seth?”
“No, I do not.”
“Then you need to be prepared to believe the things I’m telling you.”
“I’m doing my best, Ray. This isn’t making much sense so far.”
Raymond seemed to deflate a bit, as if the topic itself sapped him of energy. “I know.”
“Who are they, Raymond?”
“I’m not sure. They don’t always look the same. Sometimes they look human and sometimes they look like—like things you don’t ever want to see.”
Seth sighed. “What do they want?”
“In.” Raymond pointed to his temple. “Here. Then they sleep until we let them out.”
Let Them Out.
“I don’t, I can’t—”
“That’s how they move and spread: through our minds.”
Seth tried to catch his breath but the words refused to come for several seconds. “All right,” he finally said, “so we’re being pursued then? By what?”’
“I don’t know.”
“But—”
“I don’t know.”
Seth released an involuntary eruption of nervous laughter. “This is—it’s like—I mean it’s like something out of a horror movie, for God’s sake. It’s not…”
“Reality?”
“Yes, goddamn it. It’s not reality.”
“You’re right, it’s not.” Raymond returned his hands to his pockets; let his shoulders slump a bit. “Not this reality anyway.”
Seth felt his hands go cold. “This madness, this can’t be happening.”
“It won’t stop,” he said sadly. “Christ, it’s only just starting.”
Seth rose to his feet, legs shaking beneath him. “What do we do?” Before Raymond could answer Seth’s cell phone began to ring. He glanced down at the small phone clipped to his belt then pulled it free. Darian’s cell number crawled across the caller ID screen.
“Answer it,” Raymond told him.
“It’s Darian. I can call him later.”
“Answer it.”
Seth swallowed, hard. “Tell me why.”
Raymond glared at him. “Because something terrible has happened.”
With an air of optimistic defiance, Seth answered the phone and brought it to his ear. “Hello?” His expression changed from one of fear and frustration to one that more closely conveyed outright horror. “Jesus. Is he alive?”
“There’s blood all over the walls,” Raymond said, turning away from his brother’s pale face. “Ask him what it says.”
“Darian, is he alive?” Seth listened, nodded. “OK, I’ll—where did they take him?”
“Ask him what the blood says,” Raymond said again.
“All right, we’ll meet you there. I’m more than an hour away but we’ll be there as soon as possible.” He nodded into the phone. “Yes, we—we’re leaving now.”
“Ask him what the fuck it says!”
Seth held the phone close to his ear, eyes fixed on his brother throughout. “Darian, was there blood on the walls?...Just tell me, was there?...What did it say?...I’ll explain later.” Seth reiterated their plans to meet him at the hospital. He disconnected the call but his hands were shaking too viole
ntly to clip the phone back to his belt. “Louis…he…he threw himself out a window.”
Raymond nodded impassively. “Did he tell you what the blood on the walls said?”
“Yes.”
Before Seth could reveal the answer, Raymond did it for him. “Let Them Out.”
“Louis might die,” Seth mumbled. “Will he? Will he die, Raymond?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
“I just did. I don’t know.”
“So this power of yours comes and goes, is that it? What the fuck good is it?”
Raymond approached him again, this time coming so close Seth could feel his breath on his face. “You want a sideshow mystic, find a fucking carnival.”
“How do you…” emotion took hold of him and he stopped a moment. “How do you live like this?”
“Take a good look at me, man. What do you think?”
“Here’s what I think, Ray.” Using one hand to steady the other, Seth clipped his phone back to his belt. “I think that for my own sanity I’m going to follow some basic logic here, and basic logic dictates if you knew all these things then you must know how this all ends.”
Raymond turned away and stood by the window, watching the rain as it hit, spattered and ran the length of the window, blurring the world beyond. “Maybe you’re the one who knows, only you just don’t realize it yet.”
“Not me, you. You know, don’t you,” Seth pushed, though it wasn’t a question and both knew it.
Raymond said nothing, but when he finally turned and looked back over his shoulder at his brother, eyes brimming with pain and sorrow, Seth had his answer.
PART THREE: IN THE NIGHT SEASON
“Terrors are turned upon me: they pursue my soul as the wind: my welfare passeth away as a cloud. And now my soul is poured out upon me; the days of affliction have taken hold upon me, my bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest.”
—JOB 30:15-17
CHAPTER 15
From his position on the bed he could see her in the small adjoining bathroom.
Sleep had not yet fully released him but the soft rays of light peeking through gaps in the window shades signaled morning had arrived.
The rain had finally stopped.
Peggy stood near the doorway, one bare foot on the closed lid of the toilet, a white half t-shirt stretched snugly across the curve of her small breasts. Unaware that Seth had awakened, she took a can of shaving gel from the medicine cabinet and squirted a generous amount into her hand. Working it to lather, she bent over and ran it across her shin, coating her leg with a thin layer of soapy foam. Carefully, she removed the plastic guard from a disposable razor and began to shave.
Seth rolled onto his side, propped himself up on an elbow and let the side of his face rest in his palm. It was little things like this, the intimate moments he missed, and the fact that she hadn’t yet realized he was awake and watching her only heightened the experience. There was something uniquely exhilarating about taking in a scenario while remaining undetected, even when the scenario was, under normal circumstances, somewhat mundane. What was it about that, he wondered, that stirred his senses so?
Seeing without being seen, perhaps there was comfort there, safety—the ability to witness and live in a moment without consequence or direct involvement—like sitting in a darkened theater watching a film. There was something comfortably isolated about it, being alone without really being alone, voyeurs all, watching alternate realities captured on celluloid and playing out before them in the safety of darkness, only to lose it the moment the houselights came up and the story was over.
But what of those being watched? Now that he experienced a sense of this nearly constantly, it held no fascination for him whatsoever. It supplied only fear—unease—his privacy and most intimate thoughts no longer his alone, but shared, displayed whether he wanted them to be or not.
They were peering into his mind and he could do nothing to stop them.
He let the thoughts go, spiral away to nothingness.
Peggy’s hair was pulled back into a ponytail and fastened with an elastic band, allowing a clear view of her face. Seth studied it for a time before dropping his eyes across her stomach, lingering on her navel before continuing to her waist and hips. A thick patch of neatly trimmed brown hair filled the gap between her legs, lips still slightly swollen from their earlier lovemaking visible beneath it. Traces of a milk-white bikini tan line, still evident from the summer prior, offered a contrast to the gold, silken skin along her thighs, calves and finally, the foot of the leg she was shaving. A modest arch, delicate toes and a small rough patch of skin around the back of her narrow heel were the sorts of details Seth noticed, and the things he often visualized when he thought of Peggy. She came to him as much of the world did, in pieces, and though over time those pieces gradually melded to reveal a bigger picture, more discernible, she—like so much of life—remained slightly obscured. As well as he knew Peggy—or thought he did—could any person ever wholly know another, or like an incomplete puzzle, the theme of which is ultimately realized but never quite fully understood, did there forever remain pieces missing, questions unanswered? Seth had always suspected the latter, and in the past year had come to have no doubt.
But he also believed the mysteries and secrets all human beings held did not always necessarily carry with them nefarious or even negative implications. Along with Raymond, if there was one person on Earth Seth felt he could trust, it was Peggy. In many ways, he trusted her even more.
Peggy’s mysteries were whispers. Raymond’s were screams.
She finished shaving both legs. A smile creased his face as she turned for a towel on the edge of the sink. Two perfectly round buttocks returned his gaze, a small red and yellow butterfly tattoo along the slight curve of her lower back. Though well into her thirties, Peggy still possessed a body most women ten years her junior would’ve killed for, yet her physical splendor was still organic—effortless—and she often seemed barely cognizant of it.
Seth visualized the night before, only a few short hours ago, Peggy facing him, riding him slowly, her palms pressed flat against his chest, breasts rising and falling with each breath, her body slumping forward in time and that same breath warm in his ear and along his neck as her lips brushed his, the tips of their tongues gently tangling, slipping in and out of their mouths.
Though separated for months, once intimate it felt like they’d never been apart, and now, while gently caressed by the emerging sun of a new day, he was content to watch her quietly and replay the images in his mind of the night prior, his coming here to her new place, and the subsequent lovemaking that followed.
Peggy had eventually left their apartment in the Back Bay as well, in favor of a small place in Plymouth, the historically famous town just under an hour from Boston where sites like Plymouth Rock still lured tourists each summer by the thousands.
The cottage itself was small, cramped and located at the end of a lonely dirt road that overlooked the nearby Atlantic Ocean. Countless odd works of her art—mostly sculptures and a few paintings—were scattered about in typical Peggy fashion, some completed and others still in progress. Most of her pieces had a dark and ancient look that Seth found curiously familiar and disturbing all at once. Her work had always fascinated and somewhat repelled him, and that had not changed. Beyond the pieces of work lying about, she had furnished the cottage modestly, and it bothered him that her new home had a very personal, individual feel that related solely to her. The woman who lived here might have still been legally married, but her living quarters strongly suggested she had already moved forward, had already reached that new life that no longer included him. No trace of him existed here, no artifact concerning their lives before. Peggy, much like himself, had become a loner, which perhaps explained their need to make love again so quickly. An unspoken recognition of one’s own solitary existence mirrored in the lonely eyes of another was unmistakable. Be
sides, why else would they have risked sleeping together so soon, even before anything in terms of reconciling had been discussed, much less agreed upon?
With all that had happened, Seth knew that softening the agony, even for a short time, was worth the risk of opening himself up to more eventual pain, and could only presume she felt the same. But for now, the anguish and fear had subsided somewhat. Life reverted to the way it had been before the darkness had stolen it from him, and though he understood it was temporary, at that moment he and Peggy were just a couple again, two people in love and sharing space in the waking hours of morning, together; their bond understood and resolute.
Peggy grabbed a towel from the sink, wrapped it around herself and cinched it beneath her waist. Noticing he was awake, she smiled and softly said, “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“I was trying to be quiet. Did I wake you?”
“No, it’s OK.”
She strode into the bedroom. “There’s coffee on if you want some.”
“Thanks,” he said, forcing himself into a sitting position and planting his feet on the floor. For a moment, in the silence of morning, he’d felt a part of this, a part of her, but was already regressing, again feeling like a visitor. “Been getting quite a bit of work done, I see.”
Peggy glanced around the room, revealing subtle signs of self-consciousness. Discussion of her artwork often elicited in her an odd reticence Seth had never quite understood. “I’ve been sculpting a lot lately,” she said a moment later. “I don’t know, maybe I need the physical interaction, the actual feel of the piece in my hands. Painting can be a bit more removed at times. It’s a different experience. Not better or worse necessarily, just different.” She seemed to catch herself, as if suddenly realizing this was not new information to him. She’d explained and discussed her creative processes in detail many times over the years, but this time had done so as if they’d only just met.
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