by Watts, Peter
One thing’s for sure, the trip would’ve been a hell of a lot more tolerable at night. It isn’t eleven yet and the temperature is hovering near the high eighties, even with the cloud cover. Clothed as you are, you feel like you’re encased in a portable sauna. Sweat pours off you, runs down the sides of your face, the back of your neck, down your chest and along your spine. Your clothes cling to you as if you’re wrapped in wet cotton, and they trap your body heat, making you feel as if you’re a tinfoil-wrapped hunk of meat roasting in your own juices. Your head aches and your stomach roils, but you refuse to let the discomfort get the better of you. Sweat is simply one more way the sun tries to drain the life from you. You’ll make sure to replace the fluid when you get home.
Ridgeway is usually a busy road, and even this early on a Saturday the cars whip by at a steady pace. So when you hear one slow and pull over to the curb next to you, your first thought is that the driver plans to make fun of you. “What are you, a vampire?” You get that kind of thing a lot, especially in summer. But when you glance toward the vehicle—an SUV—you recognize it, and you know that the driver has stopped for a different reason.
The passenger side window rolls down, and the driver, a man in his thirties wearing a red polo shirt, khaki shorts, and brown sandals, leans across the seat.
“Hop in, Jake.” He smiles. “You look like you could use some air conditioning.”
“Jake? Who’s that?”
The driver’s expression goes blank, and for a second, it looks as if he doesn’t know what to say. Then he grins.
“Smart ass.”
Behind your face mask, you smile, and then you get into your brother’s car.
~
“Sorry I wasn’t home when you got here. It took longer to pick out a card than I thought it would. They make a lot of cute ones for kids. Makes it hard to choose.”
As you talk, you put the drugstore bag on your dining table—a worn, scratched thing you picked up from a secondhand store—and begin to peel off your sweaty clothes. Ball cap, sunglasses, and face mask first, followed by the hoodie and the mock turtleneck underneath. You leave your undershirt on. Rick may be your brother, but you doubt he’d be comfortable watching you strip naked in his presence. He already thinks you’re weird enough as it is. Then again, given what little he’s wearing, he’s practically naked himself. You drape your clothes over one of the mismatched chairs and then sit down.
“No biggie. When you didn’t answer the door, I figured you’d gone to the drugstore. Thought I’d drive around and see if I could find you and give you a lift home. Get you out of the heat, you know?”
He says this last part too casually, but you can hear the subtle strain in his voice. He is your brother, after all. He’s worried that you’ve given yourself heatstroke, but he doesn’t want to say so.
“You know, you do have a car. . .”
“The doctor put me on new meds. I’m not supposed to drive while taking them.”
You bend over and begin unlacing your boots.
Rick’s nose wrinkles. You smell of sweat and coconut-scented sunscreen. Lots of it.
“You look like you could use a drink,” he says.
He goes to the refrigerator, opens the door, grabs a bottle of water, and brings it over to the table. He twists off the cap before setting the bottle down in front of you. You wait for him to say something about how little food you have in the fridge, but he doesn’t.
Once your boots and socks are off, you let out a sigh. If Rick wasn’t here, you’d rub the cold plastic bottle on your feet to cool them, but you know it would disgust him. Besides, the cap’s already off, and you’d risk spilling water. The thought of wasting water—one of your primary defenses—almost makes you physically ill. You drain half the bottle, pause, then chug the rest. You put the empty on the table.
“Thanks.”
Your brother grins. “Don’t thank me. It’s your water.”
His smile falls away. You sense that there’s something he wants to talk about, but he’s reluctant. He was supposed to just stop by and pick up Hannah’s card and present, but he shows no sign of being in a hurry to leave. You’re really not up for any meaningful discussion today—especially if it’s about your “condition”—and you hope he’ll just take Hannah’s stuff and leave.
Rick’s thirty-three, younger than you by two years, but he looks like he’s in his mid-forties. His tanned skin is so tight it’s shiny in places, his forehead is lined, and there are wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. You can practically hear his skin screaming from all the sun damage it’s sustained.
“It’s kind of gloomy in here. Can I open one of the curtains. . . just a little?”
You suppress a sigh. “You know I have to keep the curtains closed.”
“But you were just outside, and you’re fine.”
“I was protected.” Even so, you likely sustained some minor damage. You’ll check yourself in the bathroom mirror after Rick leaves, search your skin for signs of reddening or moles with indistinct edges.
“You can stay out of the direct light,” Rick says.
You don’t answer.
He sighs, pulls out a chair, and joins you at the table. You notice he doesn’t sit too close, though. Maybe you stink worse than you thought.
“You still seeing your therapist?” he asks.
“Twice a month. And before you ask, I’m taking my meds regularly. All of them.”
“But things are still the same.” He tries to keep his tone neutral, but you can hear the disappointment in his voice.
“Medicine and therapy aren’t going to help because there’s nothing wrong with me. I only do that stuff to make you feel better.” You smile.
He doesn’t return your smile. Instead he looks at you, his gaze moving from your face to your skinny pale chest, then up again. You think your skin must look so white to him, almost as if you’re carved from ivory.
He ignores your dig. “What does your therapist think about your. . . theory?”
“It’s not a theory. It’s fact.”
According to her, you suffer from heliophobia, a morbid fear of sunlight. But there’s more to it than that. Lots more.
“Besides,” you add, “she’s a psychologist, not an astrophysicist.”
“Neither are you.”
You have no job. As far as the state is concerned, you’re just a nutcase who lives on disability checks. But that doesn’t mean you can’t think, can’t reason.
“The sun—”
“—drains energy from planets,” Rick interrupts. “It devoured all the life that once existed in the solar system, and now the only life left is on Earth. I know, Jake. We’ve had this conversation before. But the sun gives life; it doesn’t take it.”
You shake your head. “That’s what they want us to believe. It’s important that cattle don’t know they’re cattle, after all.”
“And who’s part of this vast conspiracy? Scientists? World leaders? Teachers? I’m a teacher. Do you think I’m one of them? Do you think Terri is?”
Rick teaches junior high science, and his wife teaches elementary school.
“Of course not. But teachers only teach what they were taught. Who knows how and where the lie began? But that doesn’t change the fact that it is a lie. Think of how often the sun has been worshipped as a god throughout history, how many people made sacrifices to it. . . They were feeding it.”
“Many religions use light as a symbol of goodness and purity.”
“Propaganda. It’s the same reason darkness is portrayed as evil: to conceal the truth.”
“Jake. . .”
“Look at what happens to people who spend too much time in the sun. Their skin is damaged to the point where they appear to age prematurely. Well, that’s because the sun is aging them. It’s draining their life force to fuel itself.” You try not to stare at your brother’s sun-damaged skin as you say this.
“So if someone stays out of the sun they’ll live forever?�
��
“No, but they won’t die sooner than they have to.”
The two of you fall silent for a time after that. Your brother is the first to resume speaking.
“Look, I don’t care what you believe. Far as I’m concerned, you can fly your freak flag as high as you want. But I do care that your beliefs are keeping you from living a full life. Aside from brief supply runs, do you ever get out of this place?”
You don’t say anything.
“When’s the last time you came over to the house for a visit?”
“Christmas,” you say, almost whispering.
“It’s Hannah’s tenth birthday, the day she hits double digits. She’s very excited. We’ve invited some of her friends over for a small party, but do you know who she wants to come over the most? Her Uncle Jake.”
You feel a surge of anger. “That’s low, using Hannah to guilt me like that.”
“I don’t care how blatantly manipulative I have to be, just as long if it gets you out of this damn apartment for a couple hours. Come on. This way, instead of having me deliver your present, you can see the look at Hannah’s face when she opens it.”
You would like to see her reaction to Hoppy Birthday, especially after all the time you spent picking out just the right card. She’ll probably smile, and she might even laugh.
You hesitate, but then you make your decision.
“Okay.” You glance at your sweat-soaked clothes hanging over one of the chairs. “But give me a couple minutes to take a quick shower first.”
~
Fifteen minutes later, you’re sitting in the passenger seat of Rick’s SUV again. You’re wearing the same sunglasses and ball cap, but you’ve put on a new face mask, a different hoodie, a fresh shirt, and clean underwear. The jeans are the same, but they didn’t get too sweaty, so that’s okay. The white plastic sack containing Hannah’s cards—both signed—rests on your lap. You forgot to buy wrapping paper at the drugstore. Rick said Hannah won’t mind, and you hope he’s right.
The cloud cover has thinned , and the sunlight’s stronger than it was before. Not blazingly bright yet, but heading that way. You’re tempted to ask Rick to turn around and take you home, but you don’t. Partly because you don’t want him to think you’re more of a coward than he already does, but partly because you’re afraid he’d refuse. For your own good, of course. And maybe he’d be right. You don’t leave your apartment often, and your therapist has been urging you to try and get out more, at least take some short trips to places where you feel safe. And you do feel safe at your brother’s. Mostly.
Even though you’re encased in your self-made armor and sealed inside Rick’s car—which thankfully has tinted windows—you can still feel it up there. The sun. It sits at the center of the solar system like a vast flaming spider crouching in the middle of an invisible web. Not a web formed from strands of silk, but rather from lines of gravity generated by its own obscene mass. Pulling, tugging, draining. . . Always hungry, always feeding. Burning through stolen life energy like a wildfire raging across a field of dried grass.
It’s so ironic. The thing that’s supposed to serve as a symbol of purity, that’s been portrayed in myth and legend as the arch nemesis of the undead and the unclean, is in truth the ultimate vampire.
You look out the passenger window and see a pair of women jogging on the sidewalk. One blond, one brunette, both in their twenties, lean and fit and tan, clad in only sports bras and tight shorts. Once you would’ve admired the way their leg muscles flex, noted how the tight fabric of their sports bras contain their breast flesh, making you wonder how big their boobs would look free and unconstrained. But all you can think about is the sunlight enveloping them, slowly searing their skin, penetrating it, how each exhalation of breath, each drop of sweat that oozes from their pores feeds the baleful orb above them. And they think they’re exercising, for God’s sake! Making themselves healthier, when all they’re doing is killing themselves, one step after another.
“When did it start?”
You’ve both been quiet for so long that your brother’s question startles you.
“Huh?”
“When did you first realize. . . you know. About the sun.”
You think for a moment before you answer. “In some ways, I guess I always knew. I never liked playing outside, remember? I only went out when Mom made me, and even then I stayed in the shade whenever I could. I hated the way the sun felt on my skin. It stung, like I was being pricked with hundreds of tiny invisible needles. And I hated that sticky feeling, too. You know, when you’ve sweated so long that it coats your skin like syrup?”
You look at your brother to see if he understands, but he keeps his gaze forward, focusing on the road.
You continue.
“But the moment when it first hit me—when I understood what the sun actually is—happened when I was six. I’d seen a cartoon where a mean kid was using a magnifying glass to concentrate sunlight into a beam, and he’d used it like a laser to fry an ant. I was fascinated with the idea that you could turn a simple magnifying glass into what basically amounted to a ray gun, and despite my dislike of being out in the sun, I decided to try it. Looking back, I think what appealed to me most was the thought of controlling sunlight. Making it work for me instead of against me, you know? Anyway, I found a magnifying glass in Dad’s desk, and I went outside. It was. . . May? June? Something like that. I went outside, picked a spot on the sidewalk, sat down, and started looking for ants. It wasn’t long before I spotted a couple crawling around, so I positioned the magnifying glass over them and waited for the sun to do its work. It wasn’t a very hot day. There was a cool breeze blowing, but the sky was free of clouds and the sun was shining strong.”
You pause. You’re sure the sunlight didn’t seem sinister to you back then, that while it hadn’t been your favorite thing as a child, you hadn’t feared it. But try as you might, you can’t remember ever feeling that way. It seems inconceivable to you now, and you’re surprised to feel a vague sense of loss at the thought.
“I don’t remember you doing that,” Rick says. “But I was what? Four at the time? You probably went out by yourself because you didn’t want your pain-in-the-ass little brother tagging along.” He smiles when he says this, and there’s no resentment in his voice. “So, did it work?”
“Yes. Not like in the cartoon, though. No sizzling yellow beam emerged from the glass to vaporize the ants in a puff of smoke. It did, however, make a circle of concentrated light on the sidewalk, and that circle enclosed the ants like a circus spotlight. I imagined the ants beginning to do tricks for me, as if they were performers and I was the audience.” The memory brings a weak smile to your lips, but of course your brother can’t see it behind your face mask.
“At first the ants didn’t react, and I figured I was doing something wrong, like maybe holding the glass at a bad angle. It never occurred to me that the cartoon might’ve been wrong. What six-year-old doubts cartoons? But eventually the ants started moving faster, and I realized they were trying to crawl out of the light circle. Excited, I moved the magnifying glass to keep the circle on them, and eventually they slowed down, stopped and. . . just kind of curled in on themselves. It was horrible to watch, but I didn’t do anything to stop it. I just kept watching. They didn’t burn, didn’t smoke. They just shrank into tiny curled husks, as if all the life had been drained out of them. And that’s when I understood.
“There’d been a thunderstorm a week earlier. I asked Dad why lightning comes down from the sky. He told me it didn’t. It goes up into the sky. It happens so fast that to the human eye, it only seems to come down. Looking at those dead ants, I understood that something similar had happened. It looks like sunlight comes down, but what we think of as light is really life energy leaving Earth and being pulled toward the sun. See, the sun only looks like it’s made of fire and light, but that’s just on the surface. At its core, it’s really a cold dead Nothing, desperate to steal whatever warmth it can find.
”
Your story’s finished, but Nick doesn’t say anything right away. He just keeps looking straight ahead and driving. You were so caught up in your tale that you don’t know your current location, but now you look outside and see you’re in Rick’s neighborhood. You’ll be at his house—and Hannah’s birthday party—in a few minutes.
Rick finally speaks. “You never told me that story.”
You shrug. “Guess I never had any reason to.”
“So your thing about the sun started then, and not after Kate’s death.”
Kate’s your wife. She died two years ago. Melanoma.
“That’s right,” you say. “It started when I was six. Definitely.”
~
“Can I get you something to drink?
You turn toward Terri, smile, and say, “Just some water, thanks.”
You’re standing in the kitchen, a few feet away from the patio door and the sunlight filtering through the glass. Outside, children are sitting at a picnic table on your brother’s deck, eating cake and ice cream. Rick’s out there, making sure they have enough to eat. Hannah sits at the head of the table, on top of her head a conical cardboard hat with the words Birthday Princess on it. Her straight blond hair has been bleached nearly white from the sun. Rick and Terri are outdoors people. They do it all: boating, fishing, swimming, picnicking, hiking, jogging, softball, soccer, lawn work, gardening. . . They hate being stuck inside, and Hannah’s the same way, as the swingset, slide, and sandbox in the backyard attest. The sky’s almost completely free of clouds now, leaving the children without any protection from the sun. And their parents—clueless to the point of criminal negligence—have sent them to the party wearing only T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. They might have well just stripped them naked and offered them up for sacrifice.