Hellworld

by Tom Leveen

  It hadn’t been a great five years. We’d even lost the cat.

  Sitting alone in my tree house after eating my bowl of Mrs. Brower’s pasta, I shook myself out of yet another reverie about Mom. Nothing to gain by moping. Besides, Dad had cornered the market there.

  I rested my head against my raised knees and tried taking deep breaths. I didn’t want to be angry at Dad, but it had been getting harder lately. Knowing he’d quit yet another job wasn’t helping my emotional stamina.

  Once my thoughts shifted to my current frustration with Dad, I couldn’t switch them off. Trying to get him into this last job had been hell. He’d finally gotten some low-level data-crunching job, or at least that’s what he called it, and possibly only because I’d driven him to a Supercuts before the interview so he’d look mildly presentable. The job had lasted two entire months, as of today. His record so far? A whole year. Things had gotten worse again.

  You’re not supposed to parent your parent. Not when you’re eleven or twelve—or sixteen. It wasn’t fair. The truth is, I hadn’t ever really cried over Mom because I hadn’t had time thanks to Dad’s depression. Plus, what could I cry over? No body, no casket, no last words. Nothing beyond photos on our old laptop and my DVDs of The Spectre Spectrum.

  Dad didn’t know I still watched them sometimes. Watched Mom’s hairstyle and once-stylish blouses slowly drift out of fashion as she stayed the same age year after year, and the rest of the world moved on, like some kind of godforsaken eternal life.

  Sometimes, that’s what bothered me most. The whole world just moving on, like it didn’t care where my mother went or that she wasn’t coming back. What kind of world was this? Mom was kind and good and smart and awesome, and it was no wonder Dad tanked when she disappeared. I sort of wished I could have reacted like he did, except I think we would have starved to death.

  Once the sun had set, I climbed down from the tree house and went back inside. Dad had fallen asleep, collapsed on the couch with a book-on-CD playing over our antiquated DVD player. The book, called something like How to Get Off Your Butt and Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself, sounded identical to the others he’d tried. I didn’t think they’d helped. Probably we should have returned them for a refund, or resold them on Amazon. The cash would help.

  I got out of my smelly work uniform and took a long and very hot shower. Once you get french-fry scent in your skin and hair, it’s almost impossible to get out. Gone were the days of natural herbal shampoos and frankincense soap bought by the ounce from natural-foods stores. Now we bought the cheapest stuff available at Walmart. And didn’t use much of it, at that. We had to conserve.

  After dressing in real clothes, I pulled out a Saucony shoe box from beneath my bed, a remnant from when we could afford actual running shoes.

  I took out the box sets of seasons one and two of The Spectre Spectrum. Mom and John Prinn glared defiantly at me from the back cover, arms crossed, faces set in Prove it! scowls.

  Where were they now? Thanks to Mom, I had no real belief in any kind of afterlife, but sometimes I imagined I could still feel her watching us, telling us to get up and get on with life. I was trying, or at least I thought I was, but Dad . . .

  Restless, I walked back out to the living room. Dad’s CD still spun in the player. The stereo dated back to before Mom’s disappearance. Just like everything else in this house: clothes, books, movies, electronics. Our relationship.

  I sat down on the coffee table, watching him. Dad, out cold, lay with one arm draped over the edge of the couch, his face mashed up against the cushion.

  “What can I do?”I whispered to his sleeping form.

  He’d been to doctors, but never for long enough. He’d been on meds, when we could afford them. I didn’t know a lot about pharmaceuticals, but I felt sure the yo-yoing back and forth between being on and being off couldn’t be a good thing for his brain.

  My eyes drifted to a family portrait on the wall behind the couch. The three of us, smiling and posed, but also relaxed because when that picture had been snapped, we’d all been laughing at how unnatural we looked. “We aren’t a formal people,”Mom used to say, meaning we didn’t have things like “good china”or pointless knickknacks cluttering every free space. Our bookshelves were crammed with science books and ancient magazines that Mom always swore she’d organize someday but never did. Mom and Dad had been both pragmatic and relaxed: urging me to study hard but not above calling out sick for me so we could all go on an impulsive road trip to the science center, a day trip to an observatory, or just a hike around a lake. One advantage to their atheism was their quickness to embrace taking opportunities and chances as they came up, wanting to enjoy life as best as possible.

  One disadvantage was it didn’t help me know how to live without them—Mom physically and Dad emotionally.

  I looked over my shoulder. More books surrounded the TV in the media case. The newest of them, of course, dated back five years. When Dad woke up, they would be the first thing he saw: memories of Mom glaring pointlessly back at him.

  For someone who hadn’t been seen in half a decade, Mom was everywhere in this house. How could she not be? Her books, the DVDs in my room, her clothes still in the closet and dresser because Dad couldn’t bring himself to donate them . . .

  Dad mumbled and whined in his sleep. Right then, I made up my mind.

  It was time to move on.

  5

  Now

  * * *

  The path through the cave, or what passes for it, begins sloping steeply uphill. That’s good news, on the one hand, because every step forward and up is another step closer to the entrance of the cave. On the other hand, it’s a lot harder to walk.

  “Should we rest?”Charlie says. He’s breathing a little hard. Not winded, not yet, but it’s coming.

  My own lungs feel constricted in the darkness, clogged up in the fathomless depths of the cave. How deeply into the earth did we go? Deep enough that it made breathing harder, anyway. Or maybe it’s just fear. An entire mountain stands above us, pressing down. Despite not being in any tight spaces, the claustrophobia from just knowing how deep we are is enough to push my panic button again.

  We check the time on Charlie’s phone. Seventy-eight minutes since we left the pit behind. Not even an hour and a half. A day’s walk still ahead of us. A day. A day without sun, without fresh air.

  “No,”Selby says, and her breath is strained. I wonder how many cigarettes she usually sucks down, and how much it must be affecting her stamina. “Let’s just keep walking, okay?”

  “Won’t do us any good . . . to collapse,”Charlie says, and grunts a little as we hit a steeper part of the embankment.

  They’re both right, but saying so won’t make any difference. I get the feeling they’re waiting on me, though. Waiting for me to break the tie.

  I say nothing until we breach the ramp and reach somewhat level ground again. All three of us take a natural pause there, hands on hips, breathing hard. Or are we breathing harder? Is it getting worse?

  “Let’s take a break, but just three minutes or so,”I say, knowing the three will likely be five or more.

  Selby sits slowly straight down where she is. So Charlie and I follow. He passes around the bottle Selby drank from.

  And we finish it.

  “Know what?”Selby says, crunching up the plastic bottle between her hands. She chucks the bottle down the slope. I hear it crackling as it tumbles away. Selby peers down the incline, looking smug. “I’m just gonna fucking litter.”

  I can’t say that we laugh, but that ridiculously minor act of defiance somehow cuts through the darkness for just a moment. Maybe it’s enough.

  Two bottles left.

  After a few minutes—we don’t count them, though—the three of us stand and keep trudging ahead. We don’t talk anymore. Talking only dries out my mouth, which I try to remember to keep closed as we hike. We stop a few times to match up Dr. Prinn’s notes in his book with the markings on the cave walls,
and get a small rush of exhilaration each time we spot a chalk mark. We made them as we strove deeper into the cave, thinking at the time we were a pretty gosh-darn bright group of kids! So much for that.

  Six hours pass. Six exhausting hours of walking, hiking, some climbing, resting, and drinking water. That’s when the last of Charlie’s camera batteries dies. I expect myself to panic as we fall into darkness again, but I don’t. Being relegated to blindness once more feels anticlimactic at this point. Plus, we made good progress; there were twelve symbols from the book that we’d followed, and now there are only four left. Four ancient signposts of a sort, leading us out of this place and into a world I can only hope will be recognizable when we reach it.

  Now that we’ve stopped, my thirst comes raging back. In the light of Selby’s tiny pink lighter, Charlie weighs the battery in his hand as if he can feel if there is more charge in it.

  “These are kind of heavy. I’m trying to think of any reason to lug them out of here with us.”

  “Leave ’em,”Selby says.

  I agree with her. Charlie drops the battery to the stone floor. It thunks solidly. He takes the other two out and drops them behind as well.

  “Should’ve thought of that a while ago,”he mutters.

  “Cell phone next?”I say.

  Charlie nods and activates the little flashlight on the back of his phone. It’s brighter than the viewfinder glow had been, which is nice. I also wonder how long it will actually last.

  “All right,”Selby says. “Let’s get the flock out of here.”

  If it’s a joke, I don’t get it. Selby stuffs her lighter into her pocket and charges ahead, pressing a hand against her side again.

  “Selby, slow down,”I say.

  She makes some noise, the beginning of a comment, before disappearing from sight with a shout.

  Charlie and I, not thinking, rush forward as Selby disappears from the light of Charlie’s phone. A torrent of rocks and pebbles rains down after her. I can hear her shouting, sliding, scrambling . . . then screaming.

  Charlie barks a curse as we reach the steep slope where we’d lost her. He shines the light down. Now that we’re here, I remember it from . . . what, almost a day ago? It had been the only access to continue our trek through the cave. Now, from the top, Charlie’s light doesn’t reach far enough to see Selby.

  “Can you see me?”Charlie calls.

  “Yes!”Selby shouts back, but it comes with the lisp of clenched teeth. “I think I’m bleeding here.”

  “We’re coming down,”I say, rather stupidly, since there’s no choice but to go down. I sit and slide my legs over the edge. It’s not exactly a cliff, but the floor tilts down at more than forty-five degrees, like a natural playground slide. There had been several places like this, sloping upward of course, as we’d hiked in. Dammit, we should have been paying more attention, anticipating these hazards on the way out.

  “Take the light,”Charlie says, handing me the phone. “I’ll follow you.”

  I shine the phone’s flashlight down, lean back on my free hand, and begin inching down. Inching lasts about ten seconds when gravity and loose stone take over, and I’m skidding down the embankment on my rear, screaming. For a second, I’m sure I will fall forever, fall in darkness till the universe ends.

  Instead, I hit the ground, my back abraded by the rough stone. The landing rattles my spine, vibrating my skull under my scalp.

  Charlie lands a second or two later, beside me.

  “You okay?”

  I nod and examine my hands. Scratched up but not awful. I pick up the cell phone, which I dropped during the trip, grateful it didn’t shatter.

  That was close. Way, way too close. Another wrong move like that could cost us the flashlight in the phone. Then we’d be done. Our lives now rely on a sixteenth-inch bulb mass produced in China. Not exactly comforting.

  “Selby?”I call, shining the light.

  I find her sitting on the ground, holding her side. Her teeth are clenched tight together, and she’s trembling.

  “Sells?”I say, and scoot closer.

  “Pretty sure some shit got broke,”she says, not unclenching her jaw.

  “What, like bone?”

  “I don’t know. . . . Jesus, it hurts.”

  Charlie and I surround her. Again I pick up her shirt to look at the bandage. There’s more blood now. Fresh blood.

  “Charlie, do we have anything else?”

  “No. The kit got lost in the . . . thing. Here.”

  Charlie whips off his shirt. And, so help me, Selby and I both steal looks at his torso. For as stupid as it is, maybe it makes a morbid sort of sense. Who knows how much longer we’ve got? Might as well savor the little things.

  Through Selby’s grimaces and groans, Charlie ties the shirt around her midsection. “Best I can do.”

  “It’s fine,”Selby says, wincing. “Let’s just go. Come on, we’ve got to be close, huh?”

  “Closer,”I say. That’s the best I can do.

  Charlie takes the cell. We stand up and form a single-file line behind him with Selby between us.

  Closer. We are closer, I tell myself. And we haven’t run into any of the things from the pit. Maybe we’ll make it. Maybe we’ll really make it.

  Then I smell smoke.

  6

  Then

  * * *

  Leaving Dad behind on the couch, I went into their—

  No. No, I went into his bedroom. It wasn’t theirs anymore; nothing was theirs. It was his or mine or ours. But none of it, none of it belonged to Mom anymore, because there was no Mom anymore.

  I yanked open the closet doors in the master bedroom. Mom’s blouses and shirts hung where they always had, neat but in no particular order. I pulled the long sleeve of one shirt up to my nose, and inhaled deeply.

  Nothing. Not so much as the barest whiff of any of her Mom scents, scents I’d forgotten years ago. She was gone, really gone, and keeping all this . . . this shit here wasn’t helping me or Dad. Especially Dad.

  He’ll be mad, I told myself as I pulled her clothes down and laid them across the unmade bed. He’ll completely freak out.

  Yeah, but then maybe he’ll get better. Keeping all of her things obviously hadn’t helped, so maybe this would.

  I piled the shirts on the bed, then moved to her dresser. I yanked out shorts, socks, everything, barely aware that each handful got flung with greater force until I looked like a dog digging a hole, throwing clothes out behind me. Five years of frustration boiled over until I found myself smacking and punching at the jumble of my mother’s clothing. But I didn’t make a sound.

  Opening the bottom drawer was when I found the book.

  Myth of Gods: The Reality of No Higher Powers, by Dr. John Prinn.

  I recognized the cover because we had a copy on one of our shelves in the living room. He’d written the book before The Spectre Spectrum ever got started. Apparently, it didn’t bother Dad that a book of someone so closely associated with Mom and her disappearance sat there staring at him day in and day out. Or maybe it did bother him, and it just went to show that I had the right idea to purge the house of everything associated with Mom and The Spectre Spectrum.

  The cover of this particular copy of the book had been defaced by a black marker. It wasn’t Mom’s neat penmanship, so I thought at first that Dad had done it. But it didn’t match his handwriting either. Flipping the book open and scanning the pages, I saw more notes—scrawls and drawings, like a junior high textbook defaced.

  Was it John Prinn’s handwriting? If it wasn’t Mom’s or Dad’s, then who else could have made the marks? Mom had joked more than once about being unable to read his handwritten notes in the outlines for their shows, and the things scrawled in this copy of Myth of Gods definitely matched that description.

  But why would he draw two thick black lines crossing through the title in an obvious X? And underneath the title of the book, Dr. Prinn—or whomever—had written a word:

  W
rong.

  I sat on the edge of their . . . of Dad’s bed, crossing my knee with my ankle. Mom must’ve shoved this into her dresser, but why? The book hadn’t been a big hit or anything, not to my knowledge. I opened it up to a random page, and felt my face go scrunchy. Dr. Prinn, if it was him, had written so many notes and drawn so many odd-looking symbols that the white margins were totally full.

  I turned pages, slowly, then at a flip. More of the same. Almost every page had handwritten notes or drawings. Arrows pointed at certain words or phrases in the text. I expected highlighter marks as well, but all of Prinn’s notes were in plain black ink, using underlines and circles to draw attention where he wanted it. It appeared as if he’d written them all in one long brainstorming session with whatever writing utensil he happened to have lying around. Some of the words could have been from ancient Mesopotamia, or something from Tolkien, for all the difference it made; words like “tebah”and “sunteleias”and “skotos.”

  Tebah = lifesaver, one note read. Another read, Pains? and another, Ask Riley re: Patayan!

  “What on earth,”I muttered. The text itself made sense; I hadn’t read it when Mom started the show because I’d been too young to really get it. Looking at it now, the book seemed compelling enough. The premise, it seemed, revolved around deconstructing myths from around the world and showing how they all had a common source, back before modern man ruled as the only hominid on Earth, and that the entire concept of God was nothing but an evolutionary meme. Most of it struck me as sort of scholarly, but readable, something I might even enjoy now.

  The handwriting, however, looked like something from a crime TV show. The kind of crazy evidence Mom might have studied at a scene when she used to be a CSI. The notes looked insane.