by J L Aarne
It lived in the house he had grown up in with his mother, a constant threat hanging over her head, and he still couldn’t do it.
Lorrie was waiting for him when he arrived and opened the door before he even reached it. She hugged him, and it was a little too tight, it lasted a little too long. She knew something was wrong. He could kid himself all he liked, but she knew. She had probably known it way before Wyatt figured it out.
She wouldn’t think of monsters, though, not his down-to-earth mother. She would think dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, amnesia, brain damage, or anything other than possession. She would want Aaron to go to the doctor again and again until he was diagnosed with something.
Maybe he had been.
“Mom are you okay?” Wyatt asked when he pulled out of the hug. “You seem kinda… upset.”
“No, no, I’m fine,” Lorrie said. She lowered her voice as she ushered him into the kitchen. “It’s your father. He’s just… I don’t know. The doctors don’t know either. They say his brain looks fine. It’s healthy. He’s healthy.”
Wyatt went with her to the table where his mom had already made tea and set it out for them. “So, what’s the matter?” he asked.
She put a cube of sugar into her tea, stirred it and stared down into it. “He’s not himself,” she said. “He’s not my Aaron.”
“Mom,” Wyatt said.
“I know,” she said. “I know how that sounds. I do.”
“What do the doctors say?” he asked.
“That it’s most likely psychological,” she said. She sipped her tea.
“Okay.” Wyatt frowned down at his own untouched tea.
He hesitated to ask her his next question because she was his mother and it was awkward. They had never had that kind of relationship. She was his mother and he loved her, but they were not friends.
“What is it?” Lorrie asked.
“It’s just… is he seeing a therapist?” he asked.
She surprised him by laughing. “Oh, honey, we both are.”
“Oh.” He didn’t understand what was funny about it, he had always found therapy frustrating and embarrassing.
“Your doctor called here to ask about you,” Lorrie said, reminded by his question.
“Kat told me,” Wyatt said.
“You quit going?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He didn’t immediately answer because it was one of those questions he knew was just asking to start an argument. An argument that would begin with pointing out to him how irresponsible and ill-advised it was for him to stop going to therapy. His mother wouldn’t mean to be, but it would be patronizing. He had never quit therapy before, but there had been times when he was growing up when he had wanted to. She wouldn’t be angry, she wouldn’t want to fight, but she, like Kat, firmly believed after all these years that he did not know his own mind.
He did know it. He knew it very well. It was a minefield. A wet sack full of screaming cats. Maybe that made him crazy, but it didn’t mean that a doctor could ever fix him.
“I’ve been in therapy since I was little,” Wyatt said.
“You were three, I think,” Lorrie said.
“That sounds about right,” he said. “So, I’ve been in therapy for twenty-five years. Not always the same therapist, but I think I saw Dr. Graham for five years. Maybe six. And you know… I’m not better. Or, I guess I am, in a way, but not because of the therapy. It’s why I quit the therapy.”
“You know how this sounds, don’t you?” Lorrie asked. She had dropped the happy, loving mother face she usually wore when he visited. She was now the “concerned mother” and she meant business.
He chuffed out a soft laugh and took a drink of his tea. He hadn’t added anything to it, so he added a couple of sugar cubes. “I know exactly how it sounds. Or, well, I know how it can be made to sound. How you can choose to hear it. It can sound like I’m making excuses for myself to justify leaving therapy when really I’m still delusional and absolutely should keep going to therapy because that’s what you do when you’re a lunatic.” He took another drink of his tea. Better. “I’m not doing that.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked.
She did not catch her breath or scold him for calling himself a lunatic and he loved her for it.
“You know, that’s how they get you,” he said, smiling over the rim of his mug. “There’s no cure, there’s only treatment, and the treatment never ends. I’m not a drug addict. I see things. What if they’re actually there? Did you ever think they might be?”
“Of course not,” Lorrie said. “Honey, I don’t know why you see… whatever it is you see, but I don’t think you should quit therapy completely. That doesn’t seem like the answer.”
Wyatt shrugged. “Maybe I won’t. I might go back later. I’ll have some interesting stuff to tell Dr. Graham if I do.” He set his tea down and reached across the table to take her hand because she needed it. “It’s not going to work though. It’s never going to fix me. The thing that’s wrong with me isn’t the same as the thing that’s wrong with Dad.”
She squeezed his fingers gently. “I know, baby,” she said.
“Is Dad here?” he asked.
She took her hand back to put them both around her cup. “He’s watching TV.”
“I need to talk to him.”
She nodded, but she didn’t get up to walk with him to the living room as she usually would have. It was a small thing, but a lot of small things had been stacking up since Lorrie and Aaron returned from their camping trip. Those little things were gradually tearing her apart.
Wyatt left his tea on the table and went into the living room to find the thing pretending to be his father.
Aaron was sitting in the chair that Wyatt’s father had always liked best, watching a Toyota commercial with complete fascination. He held the remote in one hand and sat hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, staring. He smiled when the woman in the commercial smiled and it was a good imitation.
“Dad?” Wyatt said.
Aaron looked around at him and smiled. It was the same as the smile worn by the woman on the TV.
“I’m not doing it right,” Aaron said at Wyatt’s grimacing expression.
“No, you… You do. It’s just, I watched you doing what she did,” Wyatt said.
“And that makes a difference?”
“I know that it’s fake.”
“Oh. Hmm.”
Wyatt could almost find the situation amusing. “It’s fine. Work on it. Look, can we talk?”
Aaron considered him and his question seriously as Wyatt sat down on the sofa to his right. “Will you run away this time?”
“That depends, I think,” Wyatt said.
“On what?”
“Are you going eat any tree frogs or—”
“No. I apologize for that. I didn’t realize…”
“That people don’t eat frogs. Not usually. I mean, there’s a French restaurant in Bellingham we went to when I was a kid that had frog legs on the menu, but it’s weird. And they would be cooked.”
“I see.” Aaron put the TV on mute and set the control aside. “Wyatt, we know one another for who we truly are, wouldn’t you say?”
“I know what you are. I don’t know if you know much about me though,” Wyatt said.
“All right,” Aaron said. “Then why do you want to talk to me? You understand I’m not your father?”
“I know you’re not. You killed my father,” Wyatt said. His voice shook, and he took a moment to get himself under control. “But since you killed my father, you’re what I’ve got instead of a father. So, let’s talk, Dad.”
Aaron spread his hands invitingly. “What would you like to talk about, Son?”
“My friend, Silas, do you know him?”
“Why would I know him?”
“Everyone seems to. Everyone like you… like me.”
“I do not know him. Why?”
“I think he�
�s one of you. I think he always has been.”
“Perhaps he is. Why do you think he’s like me?”
“He as much as admitted it to me. I don’t understand.” Wyatt paused and looked down at his hands, clenching and unclenching between his knees. “He’s like me. That’s how we met. He sees what I see, he… kills things like you, so how can he be one of you? But he is. So, if he’s one of you, did he just come find me, become my friend so he could… eat me like you ate my dad? It’s pretty elaborate if he did. He could have killed me a hundred times. He didn’t have to pretend, I couldn’t have fought back. I just don’t get it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and I feel like an idiot for asking you about it because you’re just like him, but who else is there?”
Aaron sat back and studied him for so long in silence that Wyatt had to pick his head up and look at him. When he did, Aaron’s face wore an expression he had never seen his father make; something between calculation and genuine pity. There was a surreal moment during which Wyatt saw for the first time that the man in the chair across from him was not his father, not even a little, but someone else. Not only something, but someone. There was a soul inside the meat sitting in his dad’s favorite chair.
“We do not eat them,” Aaron said finally.
“What?” Wyatt stared at him, confused.
“I did not eat your father. We don’t eat people. Not usually. Not for moral reasons, in most cases, you understand. Human flesh doesn’t taste very good and eating part of it would make the rest of the body uninhabitable.”
“Oh,” Wyatt said. His skin began to crawl as Aaron was speaking and he shifted in his seat. “Good to know, I guess. So, how…?”
“In the woods, we have flimsy physical form and we can’t leave the shadows. Our bodies depend on other creatures to perceive them, but most creatures don’t. Humans do. More intelligent lifeforms do. We can live that way, but not long. If humans cross our path, we can infect their minds with memories that make a place for us in their lives and thus give us form. It never lasts though. It always falls apart. Someone else in their life asks about us or points out that we’re strangers or the memories simply collapse and don’t stand up to scrutiny. If we allow them to go, they leave and return to their cities and we fade back into mist and smoke and nothingness.”
Wyatt swallowed and there was a dry click in his throat. “And if you don’t?”
“And if we don’t, we walk into them,” Aaron said. “Their nerves become our nerves. Their muscles and bones become ours. Their blood pumps through our bodies pushed by our hearts and after a time there is no distinguishing us from them. If you cut me open right now, there would be nothing inside but organs and bone.”
“What happens to the people then?” Wyatt asked.
“I don’t know,” Aaron said, like it was a question he hadn’t given much thought to. “I suppose they die. They’re pushed out to make room.”
“So, he’s not still in there? My dad?”
“In here? You mean in my mind?” Aaron smiled. This time it was a real one. “If he is, I haven’t heard a whisper.”
Wyatt felt the tickle of tears on his cheeks and wiped at them. “Okay,” he said. He had known that his father was gone. He had been dead for months. It was sometimes hard to believe it when he was the only one who knew, but it was getting easier. “Thanks for… well, for explaining it.”
“I am sorry that I killed you father,” Aaron said.
“Why?” Wyatt asked. “Isn’t that what you were supposed to do? Kill my dad, get close to me, do… whatever it is you’re supposed to do?”
“I’m not supposed to do anything,” Aaron said, frowning at him. “He was there, he’d strayed away from the campfire and he was weak, so I took his body.”
“You’re telling me it’s just a coincidence that you ended up taking my dad’s body?” Wyatt demanded.
“You night people think you’re so special,” Aaron said. “From what I’ve learned being your father, most people think they’re special. But you’re not really. You’re people. Humans like patterns, they search for them in everything. If you look, you will find it even if it isn’t there. You will see conspiracy where there is only coincidence.”
“It was a coincidence that you killed my dad and ended up here? That Silas became my friend?” Wyatt asked.
“It is a coincidence that I killed your dad and ended up here,” Aaron said. “How would I know anything about you? I’ve lived in the forest and mountains for… oh, a thousand years.”
Wyatt didn’t believe him. It seemed like too much of a coincidence to be one. For it to happen the way it had just as the serpent was attempting to break free and rise, it seemed far too much of a coincidence to him.
“Why didn’t you take a body before?” Wyatt asked.
“I was happy where I was.”
“But then you weren’t anymore. Just when my parents decided to go camping. Just when the serpent started to stir around again, suddenly you wanted a body after all that time.”
“The serpent,” Aaron said with disgust. “Yes, we’re drawn to its power. It gets inside our minds, tempts us with beautiful pictures and promises. Many of us believe its lies. Some of us do not, but when temptation doesn’t work, it can push. That push is very hard to resist.”
“Are you resisting it?” Wyatt asked.
He couldn’t let a fleshgait that served the Midgard Serpent continue to live with his mother. She knew nothing, and she would die without even thinking to try to defend herself. Whatever she believed was happening with her husband, she would never believe that he would hurt her.
Aaron looked at him like he knew exactly what he was thinking. “It’s much easier to resist when we have bodies.”
Because they were human, not fleshgait, was what he was saying. With a human body, they were less connected to the serpent because they weren’t bound by blood. “Except my dad had serpent’s blood, didn’t he?” Wyatt asked.
“Yes, that is irritating. I can still feel it trying to draw me in. Not like I would without a body though.”
“Are you really sorry? Or is that just something you want me to believe? Like learning how to smile?”
“It matters to you, doesn’t it?” Aaron asked. “If I mean it or not?”
“Of course, it matters,” Wyatt said. “If you don’t know that, then you’ve still got a lot to learn about being a person.”
“I am sorry, but probably not for the reason you would like me to be,” Aaron said.
They sat quietly for a few minutes. Wyatt heard the door open and close and his mother’s footsteps on the kitchen floor. She had gone outside. They hadn’t noticed, and they hadn’t been keeping their voices down, so he was glad that she hadn’t been sitting in the kitchen listening. That was careless and he gave himself a mental slap for it.
“What happens now?” Aaron asked.
“What do you mean?” Wyatt asked.
“Well, as I understand things with your kind, this would be the point where you kill me and destroy the body and make up some story for your family… or none at all and let them think Aaron Sinclair has gone missing. People go missing all the time.”
“And you’d just let me kill you?”
“No, but you could try. You might succeed. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a fight.”
If he killed Aaron now, Lorrie was in the kitchen. Wyatt could hear her moving around in there, putting a pot on the stove, turning on the burner, getting ready to make supper. If Wyatt attacked Aaron, Aaron would fight back and the mask of humanity he had carefully crafted in the past months would dissolve and Lorrie would see her son trying to kill her husband, her husband or the monster wearing him would be trying to kill her son and she would never be able to unsee it. If Wyatt killed him, he would be his father’s killer, no matter the truth. No one would believe it. If he waited and did it later when no one was looking, his father would be a murder victim or a kidnapping victim. A missing person his family wou
ld grieve over and wonder about for the rest of their lives and he would have to see it and keep the secret to himself.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Wyatt said.
“Why not?” Aaron asked.
“Because it would destroy my family.”
“But that means that I’ll be here. I’ll be your mother’s husband. Your sister’s father. You will have to see me occasionally and you can never say a word about it. Can you live with that?”
“Yeah,” Wyatt said with a shrug. “Better than I can live with the alternative. I’m not the smartest person in the world. I’m not even the smartest person I know, but I don’t think there are always right and wrong choices. There are choices, and this is the one I can live with.”
“All right, and then what happens?” Aaron asked.
“Then I become the keeper of a terrible secret. Your secret,” Wyatt said. “Here’s the thing though; you suck at being my dad. You have to do better. Watch home videos, visit my dad’s friends and listen to stories, whatever you gotta do, do it, because my mom doesn’t believe you’re her husband. She’s a long way from admitting it to herself, but that more than anything you ever did before you figured shit out is what told me what you really are. Fix that. Do what you do and learn who Aaron Sinclair was and be him.”
Aaron’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded. “You will always know that I’m not,” he said.
“I know a lot of things now I wish I didn’t,” Wyatt said. “I’ll survive. Mom wouldn’t.”
Wyatt stood to go but paused when Aaron said his name.
“About Silas,” Aaron said. “We’re all different. Each of us. The simplest answer is that he is a skin-thief and he is still your friend.”
“How do you know that?” Wyatt asked.
“I don’t,” Aaron said. He picked up the TV remote and turned it off mute. “But if he wasn’t your friend, you would be dead.”
Chapter 21