The Night In Fog
David B. Silva
Copyright ©1998 David B. Silva
Originally published as a chapbook by Subterranean Press in 1998.
Also appeared in the collection, Through Shattered Glass,
published by Gauntlet Press in 2001.
Other Books by David B. Silva
All The Lonely People
Through Shattered Glass
The Many
1.
I’m going to tell you this story and you might believe it, and you might not. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. I’ve been carrying this around for nearly twenty years now and even though it’s Rick’s story and not mine, if I don’t let it out it’s going to eat a hole in me. So I’ll tell you as much as I can ... you believe as much as you want ... and maybe that will be the end of it.
2.
This was how it all came up again:
“I need to see you,” Rick said.
It was the first time I had talked to my brother in nearly five years. I’m ashamed to admit that. Family ought to stand for something. But life has a way of taking you where it will. It had taken Rick and me down strikingly different roads.
“Can you come?”
I glanced at the calendar pressed against the side of the refrigerator and held there with a Hersey’s magnet. It was Friday, October 30th. Tomorrow would be Halloween and I had promised Traci I would take the kids on their rounds. Then on Sunday there was dinner with her parents. I flipped the page and glanced at the following weekend. “When?”
“Tonight.”
“Christ, Rick.”
“It’s important, man.”
“I’ve got a full weekend already. Can’t it wait?”
“She’s back.”
It had been such a long time since he had talked about her that it nearly went right past me, unnoticed. My first thought was ... she? Then it registered, the tone that had been in his voice as he had said that singular, difficult word ... she ... and a sick, dreadful ache stirred inside me. Not again, I thought. Please, not again.
“We’ve been over this,” I said. “A thousand times.”
“It’s different this time. It’s happening to someone else.”
3.
This was how it all came up in the first place:
Rick, who was twelve and still doing time at Buckeye Junior High where I had done my own stint two years earlier, said, “You won’t believe what happened today.” We didn’t have much in common. Never had. Rick was one of those kids who for the life of them couldn’t seem to fit in. He was the square peg: bad jokes, glasses, kind of a geeky-looking kid who spent most of his time alone.
“Probably won’t, so don’t bother me.”
“I ate lunch with a girl.”
“So?”
He said her name was Jude Fairclough. She had transferred in only two weeks earlier from some school down in the Bay Area, and she sat in front of Rick, two rows over in English. Her hair was reddish-brown, he said. Her eyes light blue, her face sprinkled with freckles. He never said it out loud, but it was easy to tell he had a crush on her.
I guess I thought that was okay.
At least until I began to wonder if Jude Fairclough even existed.
4.
“Just this one last time,” Rick said over the phone. “I’ll never bother you again, Bryan. I promise.”
I knew that wasn’t true. There would always be one more time. It was never going to end. Not in Rick’s mind. And I hadn’t missed the significance of the date, either, though he probably thought I had. October 31st was tomorrow. Halloween. That was the first time the real monster in Rick had come out.
“Where are you?”
“I’m renting a place in Weed.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, digging around in a drawer for a pen and a piece of paper. I didn’t know what I was going to say to Traci, but when she heard it was Rick, she would probably be okay with it. She had always been concerned about my relationship with my brother. I found a pencil instead, and an old envelope from Pacific Gas and Electric. “What’s the address?”
Softly, he said, “Thanks, Bryan.”
“It’s okay.”
After that Halloween night, Rick had spent the next nine years behind bars. I had visited him only twice. Both times shortly after he had been sent to the Youth Authority. Both times in the company of my parents. My mother died two years later from a heart attack, no doubt largely due – at least in my mind – to the living hell Rick had put her through. I never went for another visit after that. Dad went alone, struggling hard to hold onto what little family he had left, even in the face of what Rick had done.
5.
From my brother’s letters over the years:
Jude Fairclough ... she was a truly beautiful girl, Bryan. You’ve got to remember, when you’re twelve, you scare easy. The dark scares you. Being alone at night scares you. But most of all, pretty girls scare you. I wouldn’t admit it then, but she really stirred up something in the pit of my stomach, something I’d never felt before. It wasn’t a feeling I liked much, Bryan. Not then, and not now. But it was a feeling I didn’t want to lose, either. Kinda like riding the roller coaster even when you know it makes you sick.
That first day, like I told you before, I caught up with Jude in the cafeteria, maybe twenty minutes into the lunch hour. She was sitting alone at a table in the back. There was a banner on the wall behind her with huge red-and-black letters announcing the Halloween dance, which was only a week away. I remember that as clear as can be. She looked tiny and lost sitting there beneath it, and I remember thinking how hard it must be transferring into a new school already a couple of months into the year.
“Hi.”
She looked up from her plate, where she was still working through her peas and carrots. Her smile was like sunshine, warm and bright. “Hi.”
I sat down across from her. “So what is it you want to show me?”
“It’s right here.”
I watched her rummage around in an old canvas tote bag that looked something like the reusable shopping bags old ladies take to the grocery stores these days. It was the size of a small painting, with wide straps that she curled back as she peered down inside. I thought of a magician, you know, reaching into his top hat and pulling out a rabbit, that old routine? And like she had read my mind, she came out with ... not a rabbit, but an old cigar box.
She placed it on the table between us.
There was a moment of truth, Bryan, when I thought she was seriously giving thought to whether she should share it with me or not. Looking back on it now, you’ve gotta know that I wish it had never happened. I wish to God she would have thought long and hard, then shaken her head and said, “No. This isn’t right.”
Maybe that would have been the end of it.
Right then and there.
Maybe none of the rest would have ever happened.
But we both know it didn’t go like that.
I looked at that box, Bryan, and it reminded me of Granddad. He used to love to smoke cigars. You remember that? The same brand. Dutch Masters Palmas. I used to keep a collection of his cigar boxes at home at the back of my bedroom closet, on the floor. Used them for baseball cards and marbles and stuff. There wasn’t anything fancy about them. Dutch Masters was printed in red across the front edge and in black, bold letters across the top. Next to the label was a portrait of four men wearing those wide-brimmed Pilgrim hats they were always wearing in our early U.S. History books.
I looked at her. “Yeah, so?”
“What’s your favorite season?”
“I don’t know.”
“Spring? When the flowers are in bloom? Or maybe Fall, when it’s still warm, but the sky�
�s gray?”
“Winter,” I said, thinking of snow. It never snowed much in the valley, but remember the snow on Lassen and Shasta? What was it? Maybe an hour’s drive, maybe a little more, to either place? I doubt I ever told you, Bryan, but I always liked the snow. There was something about the crisp air and the pure whiteness everywhere. It always made me feel alive.
She nodded, then motioned to the box. “Go on. Open it.”
It was too late not to open the box by then. I mean, it had probably been too late the moment I had found Jude sitting in the corner by herself. But this is the God’s honest truth, Bryan: some roads in life don’t allow you to turn back.
I raised the lid, which was hinged with nothing more than a thin sheet of cardboard, and up out of the box came a huge breath of cold arctic air. It felt as if I had opened the freezer door at the Holiday Market. I know this sounds incredible, but it was actually snowing.
White, crystal flakes swirling around the edges of the box.
Frost in the corners.
Cold enough to make you shiver.
Snowing! It was snowing!
It was like nothing I had ever seen before, and I stared at it, couldn’t move a damn muscle, for a good long time before I looked up at Jude.
“Like it?”
I nodded.
“Thought you would.”
“How did you do that?”
“It’s the way you imagined it, isn’t it? The cold wind ... the snow ... like opening your bedroom window in the middle of winter?”
“Yeah, but how did you--?”
“Close the lid. I want to show you something else.”
The cigar box had turned cold in my hands. Across the front, a thin film of ice had formed, the white crystals making it nearly impossible to read the words: Dutch Masters. But the moment I dropped the lid, in an instant, I mean no longer than a snap of your fingers, the ice was gone.
“Now, open it again,” she said.
I gave it some thought, Bryan. I swear I did. Not much, I admit, because I was curious, just like you would have been curious. But I gave it some thought, then I raised the lid, and I watched a thick, syrupy blackness rise up like a cloud of volcanic ash. Inside the box, it was suddenly as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff looking up at the sky. Far in the distance, I could see a quarter moon, and beyond that ... the glitter of billions of stars.
I snapped the lid closed.
“Something, isn’t it?” Jude said.
It was something. I didn’t understand it, but it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen.
I opened the box again, and this time I did one of those stupid things you do on a dare. I reached into it, past the brim, and found myself buried up to my elbow in the darkness. It was as if I had dipped into a pool of water at night when the surface and everything beneath is as black as oil.
“It feels cool,” I said, wiggling my fingers. “How deep is it?”
“How deep is the sky?”
“I mean ... what would happen if I fell in? Where would I be?”
“It’s a cigar box. You can’t fall in.”
“But if I could?”
“Then I guess you’d be ... lost.”
But I was already lost. I just didn’t know it. I wouldn’t know it for another week, and by that time, it would be too late to do anything about it. That was, of course, if I had wanted to do anything about it. Everything in life is a choice, Bryan. The choices we make are a reflection of who we are and what we want. But it’s the choices we don’t make that tell the true story. The moment I opened the cigar box, I never even thought of turning back.
“How do you do it?” I asked.
“It’s the box,” Jude said. “It’s all the box.”
But that was a lie.
6.
I had gone up to the attic, to the old steamer trunk in the far corner, where Traci kept what she liked to call ... our memories. On the outside of the trunk, blue ink on white construction paper, she had attached a handwritten sign that read: Things Not To Be Forgotten. Inside, the dark corners were filled with things I had spent a good part of my life trying to put behind me. Mostly old newspaper articles about what had happened. But there was also the stack of letters from Rick.
They were sitting on the seat next to me now, as I headed north on I-5. It was a little past two in the morning. The sky was crystal clear, the night air cool and crisp. I had rolled down the passenger window to keep me from drifting off to sleep, but the truth of the matter was I didn’t need it. One by one I was revisiting those letters, hearing every word Rick had written, and trying to understand what had gone wrong inside his head.
Weed was still another six hours away.
7.
From my brother’s letters over the years:
I couldn’t get it out of my head, Bryan. After dinner that night I went to bed early, afraid that if I stayed downstairs and watched television with the family eventually Mom would take a good look at me and she would know. She would know what Jude had shown me. And even worse, she would know that I wasn’t frightened by it.
I thought about Jude all night. I thought about her maybe as a girlfriend, since I’d never had one. But mostly I thought about the magic in that box of hers and what it would be like if that box belonged to me. I suppose that’s a terrible thing to admit, but when you’re twelve, you’re always looking for shortcuts, and Jude ... she seemed like my only chance to finally make people take notice of me.
You know it, Bryan. You know I’ve always been a nobody. A goof. This was the first time in my life I ever had a chance to be someone.
At lunch, I found her sitting in what had already become her regular spot at the back of the cafeteria. She looked lost sitting beneath the huge Halloween banner by herself, and believe me, I knew how she felt. I had felt the same way almost all my life.
“Hey.”
“I knew you’d be back,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“It’s the box, right?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You want more, don’t you?”
It should have been obvious to me right then, I suppose. She had dropped the first bread crumb and I had picked it up exactly as she had known I would. But shortcuts don’t always lead where you think they do, and in all honestly I should have been paying more attention. I missed the obvious, Bryan. And I’ve paid dearly for it.
“You want to see something really scary?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“That depends. What scares you?”
I remember this so clearly in my head. The first thing I thought was: You, Jude. You scare me. It flashed like lightning across the screen behind my eyes, then I saw the image of an old woman cloaked in a black robe, then that creature from the movie Pumpkinhead, then suddenly I found myself thinking how immune I had grown to the things that scared me when I was a kid. It wasn’t the monsters that scared me now, I thought. It was--
“You’re wrong,” Jude said.
“What?”
“About the monsters. They do scare you.”
I swear, Bryan. I never said a word about what I was thinking. Not a single word. She just ... knew.
“Trust me,” she said. “They scare everyone.”
I watched her dig around in that magical tote bag of hers until she brought out a plain, brown-paper sack. It had been folded in half, then half again, and I sat there, nervous as all get out, as she painstakingly reversed the folds.
“Where’s the cigar box?”
“I didn’t bring it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I brought this instead.” She flattened the bag against the table, and then slid it across the smooth surface at me. “Go on. Open it.”
I took the bag, shook it out, and set it back on the table between us. It was full of air now, standing upright on its own.
“You’ve never really been scared before, have you, Rick?”
“Nope.”
“Bet I
can scare you.”
The bag made a rustling noise.
I stared down at it, not frightened, but surprised.
The brown paper walls expanded, then contracted, then expanded again, as if they were alive and breathing.
Jude grinned. “Go on.”
“What?”
“Reach into it.”
“No way.”
“Scared?”
“No.”
“Then do it. I dare you.”
It was only a bag, I told myself. A brown paper bag. Nothing more.
But it was more than that, Bryan.
I raised myself up and stared down at it, all the way to the bottom, where I could see the flaps folded and pressed one over the other in a perfect fit. The bag was empty. I found a tremendous sense of relief in that fact, and sat back again, feeling confident as I finally reached in with one hand.
Now, this is the weird thing, because I can’t explain it, but I felt my fingers brush up against something. I don’t know how to describe it exactly. lt felt thick, I suppose. Stringy. Like a ball of yarn. But in my head, there was another flash of lightning and I caught a glimpse of something so ... gruesome, so scary...
I couldn’t pull my hand back fast enough.
“It won’t hurt you,” Jude said.
“What is it?”
The bag rustled again.
Hot air rose out of its paper walls, the smell reminding me of the stench that sometimes came up from the garbage disposal at home when Mom made us do the dishes.
“Trust me,” she said.
And I did. I don’t know why, Bryan. I still don’t understand that part of it ... how I could be led so easily to do the things I eventually did ... but this was one more step in the process, I believe. It seems so unreal now, looking back. Blurry around the edges, like a dream. It was almost as if I wanted to see how far I could take it before I woke up and it was over.
I did it all in one quick move. My hand dropped inside the bag ... my fingers wrapped around what felt like a clump of long, coarse hair ... I pulled ... and up came the head of this ... this creature. It had deep-set, bright-golden eyes. Huge nostrils spewing out hot, sour air. A sloped, Neanderthal forehead covered in a thick mat of brownish-black fur. A mouth that seemed almost too big for its head. Incisors that reached halfway down the creature’s chin.
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