by Patrick Ness
Any chance to get away. Any chance to feel not quite so trapped. Even for a little while.
He’d take it.
Five minutes later, he was dressed and in the kitchen. “Hey, Dad,” he said, taking down a box of cereal.
“Hey, Seth,” his father sighed, intently studying the wooden frame for the new counter, a frame that refused to fit, no matter how much sawing went on.
“Why don’t you just hire a guy?” Seth asked, stuffing a handful of peanut-butter-flavored granules in his mouth. “Be done in a week.”
“And what guy would that be?” his father asked distractedly. “There’s peace to be found in doing something for yourself.”
Seth had heard this sentence many, many times. His father taught English at the small, liberal arts college that gave Halfmarket two-thirds of its population, and these projects – of which there had been more than Seth could count, from the deck at the house in England when he was just a baby, adding a utility room in the garage here, to this kitchen extension his father had insisted on doing himself – were what he swore kept him sane after swapping London for a small coastal American town. The projects all eventually got finished, all eventually pretty well, too, but the peace, perhaps, had less to do with the project than with the medication his father took for his depression. Heavier than the usual antidepressants that some of his friends took, heavy enough to occasionally make his father seem like a ghost in their own house.
“What have I done wrong now?” his father mumbled, shaking his head in puzzlement at a pile of off-cut timber.
His mother came into the kitchen, thudding Owen’s clarinet down on the table. “Would someone mind telling me how this ended up in the guest room?”
“Ever thought of asking Owen?” Seth said through a mouthful of cereal.
“Asking me what?” Owen said, coming through the door.
And here was Owen. His little brother. Hair curled up in a ridiculous, sleep-messed pile that made him look way younger than his nearly twelve years, a red Kool-Aid stain around his lips and crumbs from his breakfast still stuck to his chin, wearing regular jeans but also a Cookie Monster pajama top that he was about five years too old and too big for.
Owen. As scatterbrained and messy as ever.
But Seth could see his mother’s posture change into something that almost resembled joy.
“Nothing, sweetheart,” she said. “Go wash your face and put on a clean shirt. We’re almost ready to go.”
Owen beamed back at her. “I got to level 82!”
“That’s brilliant, darling. Now, hurry along. We’re going to be late.”
“Okay!” Owen said, blazing a smile at Seth and his father as he left the kitchen. Seth’s mother’s gaze greedily followed him out the doorway, as if it was all she could do not to eat him.
When she turned back into the kitchen, her face was disconcertingly open and warm until she caught Seth and his father staring at her. There was an awkward moment where no one said anything, and she at least had the good grace to look a little embarrassed.
“Hurry up, Seth,” she said. “We really are going to be late.”
She left. Seth just stood there with his handful of cereal, until his father, without a word, started sawing slowly on the counter frame again. The familiar yearning to get away rose in Seth’s chest like a physical pressure, so strong he thought he might be able to see it if he looked.
One more year, he thought. One year to go.
His final year of high school lay ahead of him, and then he would go off to college, (maybe, hopefully) the same one as Gudmund and possibly Monica. The location didn’t matter so much as long as it was as far as possible from this damp little corner of southwest Washington State.
Far away from these strangers who called themselves his parents.
But then he remembered there were smaller escapes closer to home.
An hour of clarinet, he thought. And the weekend’s mine.
He thought it more angrily than he expected.
And at the same time, he realized he wasn’t very hungry anymore.
Seth wakes up on the larger of the two red settees, and once more, it takes him a moment to re-emerge from the –
It really can’t have just been a dream.
He’d been asleep this time, he knew, but like the last one, it had been far too vivid, far too clear. None of the shifting vagueness of a dream, none of the changes in scene or inabilities to move or speak properly or lapses in time or logic.
He had been there. Right there. Again. Living it.
He remembers that morning, as clearly as if he’d just watched it on television. It had been summer, months before the Baby Jesus incident, just after he’d gotten his first part-time job waiting tables at the local steakhouse. Gudmund’s parents had flown to California for business, leaving Gudmund to watch over a house that looked out onto Washington’s cold, tumultuous ocean. H and Monica had come over for a while, too, and they’d all done nothing, really, except drink some of Gudmund’s father’s forgotten beer and shoot the shit and laugh themselves incoherent at the dumbest things you could think of.
It had been amazing. Just utterly, utterly amazing, like that whole summer before senior year had been, when everything had seemed possible, when everything good felt like it was just within reach for once, when if he could just hang in there, it really would finally all come together –
Seth feels his chest tighten with a sadness that threatens to rush in like the waves that drowned him.
It had been amazing.
But it was gone.
And was gone even before he died.
He sits up, putting his feet on the dusty hardwood floor of his childhood home. He scratches his fingers through his hair and is surprised to find how short it is, almost military short, way shorter than he’d ever had it in real life. He stands and brushes away the dust from the big mirror hanging over the settee.
He’s shocked by what he sees. He looks like a war refugee. Hair buzzed down to almost nothing, his face alarmingly thin, his eyes looking like he’s never slept in a safe place in his life.
This just gets better and better, he thinks.
He had come back into the house after peeling the bandages from his skin. By that point, the exhaustion was overwhelming, settling on him like a heavy anesthetic. It had been all he could do to get to the larger settee, shake the dust off the blanket draped along the back, pull it over himself, and fall into a sleep that felt more like being knocked out.
And he had dreamed. Or relived. Or whatever.
It tugs again at his chest as he stands there, so he wraps the blanket around himself like a beach towel and goes into the kitchen again, with a vague thought of trying to scrounge dinner. It takes him a moment to notice that the light from the back window has changed.
The sun is rising. Again. It’s another dawn outside.
He’s slept through almost an entire day and night. Then he wonders again about how time might pass here in hell.
If it did at all. If this just wasn’t the same day all over again.
After an easier time with the can opener – he’s feeling a little stronger for the rest – he opens a can of beans. They taste unspeakable, and he spits them out. He checks the cabinet for more soup.
There isn’t any. In fact, there isn’t much of anything, unless he starts eating mummified pasta. Not feeling very hopeful, he turns the knobs on the stovetop to see if he might be able to boil some water, but no gas comes through the elements, and there’s no electricity either when he tries to power up the dusty old microwave. None of the overhead lights come on when he flicks the switches, and the refrigerator has a faint smell even with the door tightly shut, so he doesn’t risk opening it.
For lack of anything else, he drinks from the taps again. Then he makes an annoyed grunt and gets a glass from the cabinet. He fills it with water that looks almost clear now and drinks it down.
Okay, then, he thinks, trying to keep the fear from ris
ing again. What’s next? What’s next, what’s next, what’s next?
Clothes. Clothes are next. Yes.
He still can’t face going upstairs – he doesn’t want to see his old bedroom just yet, not the one he shared with Owen, not in this house – but he goes back to the main room, remembering a cubbyhole under the staircase. Behind the dining table, two small swing doors in the wall lead to a lifeless washer and dryer, silent as sleeping cattle in their stalls. He lets out a cry of delight when he finds a pair of gray sweatpants in the dryer. They’re baggy but they fit. There are no shirts to be found, and nothing at all in the washing machine except a smell of ancient mildew, but he finds a sports jacket hanging on a hook. It’s tight around his back and the sleeves barely reach past his elbows, but it covers him. He scrounges around on the dark shelves built into the cubby and finds one well-worn black dress shoe and one giant tennis shoe that don’t come close to matching but are at least for opposite feet and big enough to wear.
He goes to the mirror in the main room. He looks like a homeless clown, but he’s no longer naked.
All right, he thinks. Next thing.
Almost exactly at that thought, his stomach rumbles unpleasantly, and not with hunger. He finds himself rushing out back again to a corner of the tall grass for some far more disgusting bodily functions. He cramps painfully, more than what would come from chicken noodle soup and a mouthful of spoiled beans. It’s a huge gnawing hunger, so big it’s making him sick.
Waiting out the stomach cramps is bad enough, but he feels increasingly uneasy out here in the back, with the pile of bandages still coiled on the deck, the unreasonably tall grass, the barbed wire fencing up on the embankment.
The prison beyond.
As soon as he’s able, he gets back inside and manages a halfway-decent wash with some solidified dishwashing liquid and cold water from the tap. There’s nothing to dry himself with, so he just waits, wondering what to do now.
Here he is. In a dusty old house with no food left in it. With clothes that are a joke. Drinking water that’s probably poisoning him.
He doesn’t want to be outside, but he can’t stay stuck in here either.
What’s he supposed to do?
If only there was someone here to help him. Someone whose opinion he could ask. Someone he could share this weird burden with.
But there isn’t. There’s only him.
And he can see the empty kitchen cupboards.
He can’t stay here, not without food, not in these inadequate clothes.
He looks up at the ceiling, thinking for a moment that he could explore the rooms above.
But no. Not that. Not yet.
He stands there, silently, for a long, long while, as the rising sun farther fills the kitchen.
“Okay,” he finally says to himself. “Let’s go see what hell looks like.”
As he pulls open the front door, he notices that the switch that keeps it from locking is flipped. He’s been in the house all night with an unlocked door. Even though there’s no sign of anyone else here, this worries him. He can’t let it lock when he leaves, though, or he’ll never be able to get back inside. He steps out into the low sunshine, pulling it closed behind him, hoping it at least looks locked.
The street is the same as yesterday. Or whenever that was, probably yesterday. He waits and watches. Absolutely nothing changes, so he walks down the steps, down the path where he – Where he what? Woke up? Was reborn? Died? He hurries past the spot and reaches the small gate to the sidewalk. He stops there.
It’s still quiet. Still empty. Still a place stopped in time.
He tries to remember more of the neighborhood. To his right is the train station, where there was nothing much more than the station building itself. But to his left is the way to the High Street, where there used to be a supermarket. There had been clothes shops there, too, he thinks. Nothing fancy, but better than what he’s wearing.
Left it is, then.
Left.
He doesn’t move. Neither does the world.
It’s either go left or stay inside and starve, he thinks.
For a moment, the second choice seems the more tempting.
“Screw it,” he says. “You’re already dead. What’s the worst that can happen?”
He goes left.
He hunches his shoulders as he walks, shoving his hands into the pockets of the jacket, even though they’re uncomfortably high. Whose jacket was this? He doesn’t think he saw his dad ever wear one like this, but then again, who remembers clothes when you’re that young?
He looks around furtively as he walks, turning often to make sure nothing’s following him. He reaches the street leading up into town. Aside from the huge sinkhole across the middle of it – ablaze with a weed forest of its own – it’s the same as everywhere else. Cars on deflated tires, covered in dust, houses with paint peeling off, and no signs of life anywhere.
He stops at the edge of the sinkhole. It looks like a water pipe ruptured somewhere and the ground opened up like you saw sometimes on the news, usually with journalists in helicopters hovering over, saying nothing much for very long spaces of time.
There are no cars down in it and none stopped along the edge either, so it must have happened long after the traffic ceased.
Unless the traffic never started, he thinks. Unless this place didn’t exist until I –
“Stop it,” he says. “Just stop it.”
He has a fleeting, almost casual thought, about how there is so much plant life in this place, all these weeds and ridiculous grasses, all growing completely out of control and unchecked, like down here in this really quite huge hole.
So you’d think there’d be –
And before he can even think the word animals, he sees the fox.
It’s frozen there, down at the bottom, tucked in amongst the weeds, its eyes bright and surprised in the morning sun.
A fox.
A real, live, living fox.
It blinks at him, alert, but not quite afraid, not yet.
“What the hell?” Seth whispers.
There’s a small bark, and three baby foxes – pups? No, kits, he remembers – climb playfully over their mother, before freezing, too, when they see Seth standing there above them.
They wait and watch, looking ready to run, ready to respond to whatever Seth does next. Seth wonders what he’ll do next, too. Wonders also at the reddish brown faces and the bright staring eyes of the creatures. Wonders what they mean.
It’s a long time before he moves away from the sinkhole, but the fox and her kits never stop staring at him, even as he heads back up the street.
Foxes, he thinks. Actual foxes.
At the very moment he thought about them.
Almost as if he’d called them into being himself.
He hurries up toward the High Street now, his head still down, eyes glancing around even more suspiciously. Every moment, he expects something to come jumping out of the bushes, out of the unkempt lawns or weedy cracks in the pavement.
But nothing does.
He feels himself tiring again, quickly, too quickly, and when he reaches the High Street, he almost collapses on a nearby bench, panting from the effort of walking up a short hill.
It makes him angry. He spent three years on the cross-country team at Boswell High, the hobby and habit of running having been picked up from his mother, something that should have brought them closer together but had somehow not. Granted, he wasn’t a particularly serious competitor, Boswell regularly got beaten quite badly, but still. There’s no way he should be out of breath walking up one stupid road.
He looks around. The High Street is really just a long, skinny town square, blocked off at each end by metal posts. His mother would shop here with him and Owen when every square inch was covered in stalls selling sugared almonds and popcorn; homemade candles and bracelets that were meant to cure arthritis; ethnic clocks and paintings even toddler Owen thought were ugly.
There’
s nothing here now. It’s a vast, empty space, with the now-familiar proliferation of weeds and abandoned-looking buildings lining either side, just like any other street.
Seth waits a moment before getting up from the bench.
He didn’t create the fox. He didn’t. It was just hidden there in the weeds, and he saw it, that was all. He’s thought of plenty of things since he’s been here, his parents and Owen, Gudmund and H and Monica, even his uncle when he saw the painting over the hearth, and none of them had suddenly appeared.
There were wild plants, and this seemed for all intents and purposes to be England, so why wouldn’t there be foxes? Foxes were English. He remembers seeing them when he lived here, sloping across the street with their oddly adult air of detachment. So of course, there’d be foxes. Why not?
But foxes had to eat. Seth’s eyes pore over the trees that grow from brick boxes up the High Street, looking for birds, maybe, or squirrels or rats. They must be there. If one fox was here, there had to be more animals, more something.
Didn’t there? If he just didn’t actually create –
“Hey,” he says, stopping this line of thought but feeling unsatisfied.
“Hey,” he says again, not sure why he’s saying it, wanting to say it once more.
And louder this time.
“Hey!” he says, standing up.
“HEY!”
He shouts it again and again, his fists clenched, his throat raking from the effort. He keeps screaming until he’s hoarse, until his voice actually breaks.
It’s only then that he realizes his face is wet from more crying.
“Hey,” he says, whispering it now.
No one answers.
Not a bird or a squirrel or the fox or her kits.
No one answers from any quarter.
He’s alone.
He swallows against the pain in his throat and goes to see what he can find.
