Brood

by Chase Novak

  She is close to the front door now and she points the flashlight beam at the locks. The main lock, which is engaged by twisting from left to right, appears to have been moved—not by much, maybe ten degrees, but moved all the same. Her heart is beating furiously, destabilizing her, making her worry that she might lose consciousness. She takes the lock’s turner in her thumb and forefinger and twists it until the bolt is more firmly in place.

  On either side of the door is a long narrow window made of thick, shatterproof glass and covered for privacy by thick white curtains. She moves one of the curtains gently to the side, bends, and peers out at the street.

  And that is when she sees him, though she has no idea who she is looking at or if he had anything whatsoever to do with the noises she heard in bed. But there is something about him. He is standing across the street, leaning against the wrought-iron fencing of the salmon-colored Federal with the black-and-gold banisters beside the steep outdoor steps. To further accentuate their house’s pedigree, the owners keep their faux gaslights flickering throughout the night. The lamps create more atmosphere than actual light, but there is enough illumination on the man as he lurks there for Cynthia to note his pale, somehow moist complexion, his short spiky hair glistening with gel. He wears black pants belted high, and a Yankees T-shirt. Everything about him says loner, creep, weirdo, especially the black Bible he holds in his hand—at least, she thinks it’s a Bible. He holds it in his right hand and rhythmically hits his open left palm with it, as if this book were something with which to bludgeon sinners.

  Just then, Cynthia hears a scream—high-pitched, feminine, and crackling with terror. It takes her a moment to realize the scream is coming from inside the house. Alice!

  Cynthia drops the candlestick. It thuds noisily to the floor and rolls back and forth. Taking the stairs two at a time, waving the beam of the flashlight left and right, Cynthia races to the top floor of house. It feels as if the staircase is growing extra steps as she runs toward the twins’ rooms. Her breaths feel as if they are outlined by fire. The screams stop, and when she finally reaches the third floor, she sees the doors to the twins’ rooms are open and the light is on in Alice’s room.

  Adam is there, sitting on the edge of her bed.

  “It’s nothing,” he says to Cynthia. “She was having a bad dream.”

  There is something surprising in his voice, a commanding quality, a depth of timbre. It brings her up short. And what a little man he looks, sitting there in nothing but his boxers. His shoulders are broad, his muscles prominent, his legs sturdy as tree trunks, with a moss of dark hair clinging to them from the knees down.

  When Alice sees Cynthia entering her room, she flings her arms wide.

  “Oh, baby, sweetheart, baby, shh, shhhh,” Cynthia says, enfolding Alice in an embrace. “It’s okay, it was just a dream.” She pats the back of Alice’s head—her daughter’s head! Her daughter! She feels the thick smoothness of her hair, smells the slightly spicy pungency of the girl’s nighttime breath.

  “Oh, oh, oh” is all Alice can say, all that can get through the torrent of tears. For she is crying now, for the first time in who knows how long. Weeping, sobbing, like a poor creature consumed by sheer animal fear and the most terrible human loneliness.

  On the other side of the city, it’s as if Rodolfo can hear her crying. When Toby failed to deliver her to the apartment on Riverside Drive, Rodolfo’s disappointment was so profound and his unhappiness so enervating that he barely reacted to Toby’s disappearance.

  As far as he can tell, he is the only one awake in the apartment. If the others are running wild in the park or after something on the streets of New York, or if they are dancing or eating, their energies are boundless, but if they are inside and well fed, then it’s lights-out—they all tend to fall asleep rather early, rarely making it past ten o’clock. A few of them have sacked out in the front room, having fallen asleep on the floor while watching TV. The others have managed to make it to their beds.

  Rodolfo, however, is unable to sleep, or even relax. He is like a shipwreck survivor on a flimsy rubber raft who cannot cease scanning the horizon, checking the skies, who must at all moments remain alert for signs of rescue.

  “Rodolfo?”

  Rodolfo turns toward the voice. It’s Polly. She is wearing a pair of maroon gym shorts bearing the crest of her old school, and a baggy white T-shirt. Her legs are long, thin, though not very shapely, and her skin is smooth. Some of the other girls, if they want to wear shorts, have to shave or wax every few days, but Polly, already fifteen, seems not to have that problem. Yet.

  With the crew, it’s always yet. What happened to the parents because of the fertility treatments varied greatly from one family to the next. (There are some who went to Slovenia for the shots who are still perfectly normal. There are others—Mayor Morris, for one—who are able to maintain normal and productive lives, confining their rages and their more outré appetites to carefully controlled zones of privacy.)

  What happened to the children varied too. For the most part, the crew consisted of kids in the midrange: fast, furious, and furry, but able to cooperate with one another, kids whose blood is so full of the zizz and vigor of their animal natures that everyday people injecting just the tiniest amounts of it can experience great rainbow rushes of lust and joy.

  But there are also the products of those treatments who, once they reached puberty, began a rapid transformation into wild creatures ruled by appetites and instincts, unteachable by any school, ungovernable by any authority, fierce, powerful, not terribly bright; rampant, unruly little beasts who represent the most extreme behavioral elements in Rodolfo’s New York crew.

  There are even a few kids who exhibited extreme behaviors well before puberty, kids who bit and kicked and clawed as babies, who tyrannized their playgroups as toddlers, exhausted and even frightened their teachers; kids who were (ridiculously, as it turned out) treated for everything from celiac disease to ADHD until they either were “lost” by their parents or ran away of their own accord—usually after accidental meetings with one of the crew, followed by the relieving realization that they were not alone in the world, that there were others out there just like them.

  They were the kids whose blood was without commercial value. If one of the crew’s ever-growing customer base were to consume the merest droplet of blood from the most extreme members, it would result in an overdose, and the whole business might end up in ruins.

  On the other extreme, there were a few in the crew who were, like Polly, seemingly (and as yet) like any other kids, except faster and stronger—and mortally afraid of their parents, who had not fared so well after fertility treatments administered by Dr. Kis. Polly is wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Rodolfo can guess. She has emptied the contents of her stomach. She is not the only one to follow the regime—exercise, nibble, purge. The idea is to keep firing in the nonstop war against puberty. Word is that the body given just enough nutrients to survive will not mature. Secondary hairs will stay locked deep within their follicles. For the girls, breasts will not appear. Hips will remain slender, deprived of the hormonal knowledge that room must be made for a child to pass through. Menstruation will not occur. Even a couple of the boys are playing hide-and-seek with their own puberty. Little Man survives on four hundred calories per day. He is fifteen and looks ten; his genitals are like a cashew nut and two grapes surrounded by down. His breath has a vomity tinge to it; his teeth have lost half their enamel to the constant stream of stomach acids cascading over them.

  Rodolfo decides to throw Polly a bone and not ignore her—he understands that leadership means being a bit of a hard-ass and then, when it is least expected, showing the troops something soft and magnanimous.

  “You’re awake,” he says to her. “You okay?”

  She knows he knows she has been purging, and she lowers her eyes, grateful and shy.

  “I was looking in the refrigerator,” she says. “We’re carrying a lot of hits.” T
he crew call the vials of blood they sell under the brand name Zoom various things: hits, bumps, picadors, bobbies, bubbies, bubbles, and picks. Polly calls them hits because Rodolfo calls them hits.

  “Yeah, we’s multitudinous.”

  “It’s almost twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth, right here.”

  “That’s good,” Rodolfo says. He furrows his brow as she moves a bit closer to him. His nostrils expand as he involuntarily tries to decode her scent. She smells of fresh laundry and mouthwash.

  “Are you waiting for her?” Polly asks.

  “No,” he says, and he is quick to say it.

  She smiles. She can see through his lie and it makes her feel close to him to do so.

  “You want to see what I can do?” she asks.

  “What can you do?”

  “This.” She springs backward, a perfect flip, and again and again, barely moving from her original spot. The abandoned glasses and bowls rattle where they have been left, on the tables and mantelpieces. Her face is slightly flushed. She raises her arms like a circus acrobat at the end of her performance.

  “Neighbors,” Rodolfo says, pointing down.

  “And this,” says Polly. She sticks her tongue out. It’s dark pink and it glistens in the overhead light.

  “So?” Rodolfo says.

  “Wait, okay? Just wait.” She swallows, relaxes her shoulders, and sticks her tongue out again, only farther this time. Her eyes widen. And so do Rodolfo’s—it’s a little startling to see the tip of Polly’s tongue reaches to her chin. But it gets more unsettling. Polly continues to unfurl her tongue and now the tip of it…reaches down to the hollow of her throat.

  “Whoa,” Rodolfo manages to say.

  But she’s not finished. The tip of her tongue sinks lower and lower and now it hangs as a fleshy pink pendant at the middle of her chest. Her mouth strains open to its fullest as she releases more and more tongue, until she can—if she wants to—stick it into her own belly button.

  “Put that shit away,” Rodolfo says.

  She retracts it—the tongue zisses back into her mouth like a metal measuring tape returning to its casing. She dries the corners of her mouth, takes a deep breath.

  “What are we, Rodolfo?” she says. “I mean, really, what the fuck are we?”

  It is past midnight, nearly one in the morning. Cynthia lies in her bed, miles from sleep. She is thinking of that man lurking across the street with his Bible. She is wondering if he had anything to do with those noises she heard. She tells herself she is being foolish. Nonetheless, she keeps wondering.

  The old house’s ruminative noises continue. The later it gets, the more the house has to say. The water pipes have their opinions. The joists have their complaints. The wooden floors are inconsolable. From somewhere comes a buzzing—a dying lightbulb? A chewed electrical wire ready to bloom into hot flame? A stiff summer breeze pushes the branches of the dogwood tree closer to the house, and its twigs and leaves and withered blossoms scratch madly against the windows.

  But there is one sweet sound too. The sound of Alice’s deep easy breaths as the child sleeps beside her. She wears pale cotton pajamas, childish, with a teddy-bear pattern. Her fingers clasp the cuffs of her sleeves, even in sleep. Every button is fastened. She sleeps on her back, her arms crossed over her chest, like a child in a tomb. Her hair fans over the pillow. The reflection of a passing car’s headlights briefly touches her face, her rosy lips, her long eyelashes.

  Cynthia was amazed—and relieved—that Alice was so easily convinced to come down and spend the night with her. With such utter guilelessness, with such perfect trust, the girl had let Cynthia take her hand and lead her to the master bedroom. Silently, Alice slipped into bed and fell almost immediately into a profound sleep.

  “Little Alley-Oop,” Cynthia whispered to her, and the little girl smiled her sleepy little smile.

  But now…something seems out of place. Something is not right, not yet.

  There is someone else in the room.

  Or so Cynthia fears.

  No. This is more than fear. This is not some vexing trick of the mind. This is not worrying that the banging of the pipes is really the clump-clump-clump of an intruder. This is not trying to figure out if what she hears outside might be someone trying to get into the house. This is not fear. This is real. This is as real as real can be.

  Cynthia lifts herself up on her elbows, hoping not to awaken Alice. She peers into the darkness of the bedroom, but it is like trying to see to the bottom of a can of black paint.

  She has no choice but to turn on her reading light.

  There are two worlds, the same but different: the world of darkness and the world of light. They exist simultaneously, they live one inside of the other, yet their realities are profoundly divergent. With a click, the lamp is on, and darkness with all its mysteries and dangers disappears as if it had never existed, and taking its place are bedposts and carpeting, shutters, freshly plastered walls, an upholstered chair upon which the day’s clothing has been deposited, her navy-blue journal that slipped off the bed hours ago. Yet, just as darkness can tease and torture the mind, it also offers hope—a degree of deniability. But now, in the stark light of the room, Cynthia sees something that terrifies her so much, she quickly covers her ears, as if to dull the sound of her own screams. But she is so deeply startled that she cannot even scream—someone is in the room, curled up on the floor, covered by a pale blue blanket.

  She reaches for her phone, wishing it were a gun. She would fire it, no questions asked.

  Yet in that moment right before rising fear turns into uncontrollable panic, she sees something else. Something familiar. His hair. His hand.

  She puts the phone down.

  It’s Adam. Half an hour ago, he was standing in Alice’s bedroom with his arms angrily folded over his chest, watching with great disapproval as Alice allowed herself to be led down the staircase to the second floor. But now it seems as if he’s had a change of heart. It might be more than he can manage to stay up there on his own. Or it might be contrary to his nature to be away from his sister if he can help it. Or maybe the solace that Cynthia has offered Alice is something that Adam wants and needs too.

  Whatever motivated him, he is here. He sleeps on the floor, using his forearm as a pillow.

  It’s quite possible that this is the happiest Cynthia has ever felt in her life—and what a strange kind of happiness it is too. Not a jumping-up-and-down, fist-pumping, throwing-your-hat-up-in-the-air kind of happiness, but the kind that swells your heart and moves you to the brink of tears, a happiness that fills you like the sound of an orchestra, a happiness that reminds you that life is fragile and fleeting…

  Cynthia switches off her lamp and slips quietly out of bed. The house is still basically a strange environment, but she has at least memorized the path between her side of the bed and the bathroom, and she can confidently make the thirteen-step journey without benefit of light—with her eyes closed, in fact.

  She has also memorized the contours of the bathroom, and she lowers herself sightlessly onto the chilly toilet seat and, with a long sigh, empties her bladder.

  There is something strange about it, however, and as she pees, she furrows her brow, trying to puzzle what is different.

  The sound! Not the bright lively sound of her urine stream splashing into the water, but a dull quiet thud, like rain hitting broad, fleshy leaves. She half stands and peers into the darkness of the bowl. She gropes for the light switch, flicks it, floods the room with lumens.

  It’s a bat, a bat in the toilet, her bare bottom was inches from it, and she has peed on it. Like most people, Cynthia has uttered the three-word phrase Oh my God countless times, but now she whispers it and she has never meant it more. Pulling her underwear back up, she leans against the wall for balance, so frightened and repelled that her legs seem practically useless.

  Is it dead? Now and then, a bat used to find its way into her place back in San Francisco. The first time it ha
ppened, she called the police. It didn’t do her any good, of course, but it at least gave the guys in the precinct a laugh. The second time, she threw a coat over her head and fled the house. She had made a point of learning a few things about bats. She learned they were essentially harmless—the greatest danger they posed was bacterial, but they did not suck your blood or like to fly into your hair and scream and claw, and they did not turn into Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee or Gary Oldman or Frank Langella or any of the other gloriously creepy men who’d played Dracula. They were mice with wings. She tried to find comfort in that—but could not. This bat in her toilet had obviously been trapped there while searching for water. Bats could not lift off to fly; they needed to perch on something with a bit of height, let go, glide, and then start flapping. And so the bat (she tries to think of it as the poor thing but she is too disgusted by it to show the proper pity), unable to rise from the water, must have slowly drowned.

  There’s nothing to do but flush it away. But to her dismay, the thing is too big—with its leathery serrated wings spread, it’s about the size of a Frisbee—and it spins and bobs up and down but doesn’t come close to making its way into the plumbing. Hoping for better luck the second time, Cynthia waits for the tank to fill and then flushes again, and this time the water rises. Some of it sloshes over the toilet’s rim and onto the floor. Frantically, she drags a little ecofriendly bamboo mat over with her bare foot, hoping to quickly absorb the tainted water.