These Nameless Things

by Shawn Smucker

  I did know it, but in the way you can know something with your head and not your heart, the way you can know a calculation is correct but still feel you’ve not done the work quite right. I was always second-guessing myself, always wondering why.

  The breeze shifted direction, now blowing out into the plains, away from us, and it was suddenly cooler. There was an ominous feeling in the dropping temperature, the shifting of the wind. I might have suspected there was more change on the way than simply Mary’s leaving.

  I should have seen it coming.

  The wind was trying to tell me.

  The air charged around the house in gusting swirls. The long grass panicked, spinning, and out on the plains it billowed and rolled like waves in the sea, flashing white when it bent over and dark green when it stood up again. The movement was hypnotic.

  I wanted to say something to ease the tension, something like, “I’m sorry” or “I know” or “Of course, you’re right.” I didn’t want to spoil Mary’s upcoming departure, and I didn’t want her leaving to change anything about us or the village. It had been a long time since anyone left—I had begun to believe no one else would go, that the nine of us would spend eternity here, together.

  I gently pulled my hand out from under Miho’s and stood up. I stared out at the plains again, and the breeze burst around the house, this time colder and carrying drizzle. I pushed my hand back through my wet hair and it stood on end. I imagined I was a wild man setting out. The wind ripped at my shirt.

  “What if he never comes over the mountain, Abe?” My voice felt empty, and the two of them felt far away. “What if I wait and wait, and he never comes?”

  It was a hard question, one I ignored most days. But not on that day, and the question tied the knot inside of me tighter and tighter until my breath was hard to find.

  “Did I ever tell you the one memory I still have of him, from when we were boys?” I asked. I had, many times. But they didn’t stop me. “Adam and I were standing beside the creek bank, looking out over the water. The creek was swollen and fast after days of spring rain. He started climbing one of the trees—you know, the kind with branches that hung out over the water? And I pleaded with him to come down. But he didn’t listen. I don’t think he ever listened to me.”

  I stopped, and I sensed it approaching again, the anxiety.

  “He kept climbing out over the water, grinning back at me the whole time, laughing at my concern. I have a feeling he did that often. And then the branch he was on broke, and he disappeared down into the water, branch and all, and was swept away.” My voice trailed off. “I ran along the creek, screaming, ‘Adam! Adam!’ I tripped over rocks, branches scratching my face. He popped up to the surface, still holding on to the broken branch. When I saw him, I shouted his name even louder, and when he heard me, he looked over at me. And he grinned. He was being swept away, and he was still grinning.”

  I shook my head in amazement. “I remember pulling him to shore, pulling the branch and him and everything else. I never knew I could be that strong. I pulled him up out of the water and we sat there together, soaking wet. He was breathing hard, and I was crying and angry and relieved. I didn’t know what to say to him. He scared me so bad. I think he did that a lot too. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell, but that’s how it feels.”

  But it was all a lie.

  I didn’t have any memories of my brother apart from knowing he existed. None of us in town remembered anything of consequence about our lives before the horror of the mountain. I mean, we each had a few minor facts to lean on, maybe the existence of a family member or two, the image of a place, but the stories of our lives had been erased from our minds by what had happened to us in that forsaken range.

  Abe had tears in his eyes. “The three of us, we’ve been here for a long time.” His old voice wavered. Miho made a sound of assent, a quiet sound, and Abe continued. “I was here long before either of you escaped to this place. I’ve seen a lot of people come over that mountain, and I’ve seen a lot of people leave us, head east over the plains. This village will be here as long as you need it to be.” He grunted, as if completely convinced by what he had just said.

  “What if no one’s left in the mountain?” I asked, agitated and shaken. “What if Adam already came over and I missed him? Or what if he’s still in there but he can’t leave on his own? What if they won’t let him leave?”

  They. I shuddered at the thought of the ones who had kept us there, flinched involuntarily as if I could feel it all again.

  Miho reached up and moved her finger in a line along the tattoo on her forehead. “We’re not leaving without you,” she insisted. “Not even if it’s only the three of us left here. Abe and I, we’ll wait with you.”

  I turned a short circle, not knowing where to walk. We were all getting good and wet now in the rain. I felt like I was losing my mind. Maybe sleep would help.

  “Are you sure Mary’s going to go through with it?” I asked. “It’s a long walk. Maybe she’ll change her mind.”

  Abe nodded. “She’s leaving tonight.”

  “In the rain?” I asked.

  “I expect if the storm comes, she’ll wait until tomorrow. Don’t blame her, Dan. It’s her time. When it’s time, it’s time.”

  I bit my lip, nodded. A round of thunder rolled down toward us from the mountain. “And if it’s still raining tomorrow evening?” I asked, feeling petulant and angry. I wanted to argue with someone. I wanted to irritate everyone close to me. I knew it wasn’t Abe’s fault, but I had to take my disappointment out on someone.

  “She’s leaving,” Miho said in a soothing tone. “I talked to her too, after Abe told me. I went to her house, Dan. Trust me. She’s leaving. All her stuff is bundled up and ready. Tonight, or tomorrow night, or the next. As soon as the weather’s good, she’s walking.”

  I nodded curtly. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Feels like the rain’s going to get heavy,” I said, and they glanced at each other, took the hint.

  Abe stood slowly, the way an older man stands when he has been sitting on the ground for too long—a stiff unfolding, a pause when it appeared for a moment that he might sit back down. But he pushed through, stood up, and Miho rose beside him with ease.

  “Shall we take our leave, my lord?” she asked Abe in a formal voice with an unrecognizable accent, as if she was a royal lady from some bygone era. She waved her arms in a flourish and bowed in his direction, extending one of her pale hands to him.

  I loved her for this, her ability to lighten the mood. I smiled, and she caught my gaze out of the corner of her eye and winked at me.

  Abe grinned, sheepish. His black skin had a matte finish to it, a flat sort of richness, and his smile pulled all of that back, stretched it so that he was young again. His face became bright white teeth and flashing eyes, and I could see for a moment what he had probably been like as a boy: mischievous, foolhardy. But not as lovely as he was in that moment. That would not have been possible. What had I ever done to deserve his lavish friendship?

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said in his low voice.

  On the other side of the house, the side that faced the mountain, thunder trembled again, louder, with sharp edges and a crackling that lingered and spread its fingers through the air. Abe took Miho’s arm and I felt a small pang of jealousy, even though it was Abe and it was Miho and I had nothing to be jealous about. I followed them around the corner of the house to the front, and the breeze was a chilled wind that raced down the mountainside.

  The mountain. There it was, rising only a few hundred yards from the front of my house, tall and terrible and crowned with a realm of dark gray clouds that boiled nearly green around the edges. There was snow up at the peaks—I knew this not because I could see it, but because I knew those mountains the same way I knew my own face in a mirror. It was a constant in my dreams, my nightmares. The shadow of it haunted each of our faces, in the shallow space under our eyes or the dark of our mouths when they hung ope
n while we slept. I felt, not for the first time, that the mountain might collapse on all of us.

  I wondered how many remained in that pit in the mountain, how many at that moment were tortured or chased, how many were fleeing. How many were hungry and hiding and moving through the shadows, trying to find their way out, trying to find their way to us.

  I glanced over toward the sliver of the canyon that split the face of one of the cliffs, two hundred yards up the hill from my house, the only break in that long line of sheer rock and crumbling rubble. The only way through. I lost myself staring up at the mountain, thinking about that thin canyon, the only way.

  When I finally turned to say goodbye to Miho and Abe, they were halfway down the hill, clinging to each other. There was a long gap between my house and the group of houses that made up the rest of the town. The narrow, grassy road we called the greenway traveled from the mouth of the canyon, passed by where I stood, and meandered down to the forty or fifty houses scattered like seeds, mostly empty. Once upon a time, that green path comforted regular arrivals from the other side of the mountain, used so often by those escaping that the grass had been flattened and there had been bare patches, streaking paths of brown. But now the greenway had grown thick and lush, used only by the few of us who still lived here.

  “Goodbye!” I shouted, regretting how I had turned the visit sour. They had only wanted to let me know what was happening, and I had made them feel bad. I lived in perpetual guilt about one thing or another.

  They disregarded the rain—it was warm and easy to idle through. Miho waved without looking, her hair wet and flat against her head. But Abe turned halfway around, lifted his free arm, and smiled at me. It was a mischievous grin, and I could tell he liked being escorted down the greenway by a beautiful woman.

  His face grew serious. His voice barely reached me before being blown back away from the mountain and swept out over the plains.

  “Better get inside!” he shouted. “There’s a storm comin’!”

  2 Through Me, the Way

  LIGHTNING STRUCK AND I flinched. The rain came down in hard pellets, but I kept watching Abe and Miho as they drifted away. I waited until they disappeared into town before I walked inside my house, dripping wet. The sound of the storm was a steady roar on the cedar shingles above me, but the stone walls, silent and still, filled me with a sense of safety. I didn’t light any lamps, and the gray afternoon filtered in through the windows.

  There was a small open area inside the front door of my house. To the left, a fireplace along the outside wall. To the right was a rather long, galley-style kitchen, and at the end of it a narrow space where I ate and wrote and spent time thinking. The wide double doors that faced out the back were open, but they were sheltered by the eaves of the house so the water wasn’t coming in. I stared at the plains sweeping away in a graceful downhill for a long, long way, covered in a dense curtain of rain that hit the ground before rising in a ghostly mist.

  I went into my bedroom, the only separate space in the house, and changed into dry clothes. I tried to think of other things, but my mind kept coming back around to the conversation I had with Abe and Miho.

  Mary was leaving.

  Mary was leaving.

  Mary was leaving.

  After she left, it would only be Abe and Miho and me, plus Miss B, John, Misha, Circe, Po . . . was that everyone? I ran through the names again in my mind as I walked to where my desk was pushed up under the large window facing the mountain. I thought back through a handful of the people who had left a long time ago, and it filled me with a deep melancholy.

  I sat there at my desk and watched the rain run in rivulets down the glass, pooling above each mullion, dripping down to the next pane. The wind came and went, rattling the wooden frames. Lightning flashed and thunder followed. It was a good afternoon to be alone.

  I pulled one of my many journals from the back corner of the desk. I picked up a pen and played with it, ran it over my fingers, took off the cap and put it back on again. It was still dark in the house except for the gray light, and I didn’t write anything. I thought of my brother. I wondered where he was in that moment, if it was raining on him too, in the mountain. I wondered if he was alone. I hoped he was alone. I couldn’t remember much from my time there, but I did remember wanting solitude, and the terror that came when those who were in charge paid you any attention.

  My house was so close to the mountain that when I was inside, I could barely see the top of the steep range through the windows. My eyes drifted over to the left, to the mouth of the canyon, the place from which all of us had emerged at some point.

  And I saw something move.

  I stood, stared harder through the rain. What was it? Could it be . . . someone was coming out of the mountain? I leaned closer to the glass, held my breath, willed the rain to stop.

  There, I saw the movement again.

  A hunched form stooped and leaned against one of the last boulders barely outside the canyon. They stopped right beside the wooden sign someone had posted next to the canyon opening a long, long time ago. I had read it many times, because I often walked to the canyon mouth and willed my brother to appear.

  THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY

  THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN

  THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST

  And then a few lines that were no longer legible, faded as they were, followed by one final line at the bottom:

  ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE

  Why would anyone ever enter there? Why would anyone ever go back?

  The person who had just come through the canyon tried to take a step forward, but they tripped, fell onto all fours. They crawled a few feet and lay down in the rain.

  Could it be Adam? A flutter of hope tried to rise in me, but I shoved it down. I stood, willed the person to keep coming, but I didn’t move from my spot. It wasn’t worth trying to help them yet—they had to find their own way at first, like a newborn calf finding its footing. I remembered coming through that gap and seeing the plains and the small stone houses and feeling like I could finally breathe again. I had wept and cried in agony and crawled down the grassy path when I could no longer walk. Abe had welcomed me.

  Yes, it had been Abe. The memory came up from some deep place. It had been Abe. I would tell him that the next time I saw him, that I remembered it had been him welcoming me, helping me down from the canyon to his own house in the village.

  This strange, unexpected person crawled down the greenway, and I could see now that the form was a woman. A stabbing sense of sadness moved through me—This is not my brother—and I no longer held my breath. She was all knobby bones and stretched, naked skin, typical of those who came out. There was so little food in the mountain, and no spare clothes were ever handed out, at least not that I remembered. She was covered only by her own long black hair draping over her torso. She got to her feet, shaking. She walked like a toddler, one unsteady foot in front of the other, and came closer. Closer. After what seemed like an eternity, she reached the part of the greenway that ran directly in front of my house.

  She stopped.

  She was a pillar of pale skin and jet-black hair, and I couldn’t see her face. She turned off the grassy lane toward my front door, wobbling with each step, and disappeared into that area close to the front door that I couldn’t see through the window. I heard a weak knock.

  It had been so long since someone had come out of the mountain. I hesitated.

  I knew I should immediately lead her down to Abe’s house—this was my main responsibility in the village, to keep watch for refugees who came down out of the mountain. Abe could assess her, help her decide what to do next, where to go, where to live if she wanted to stay. But all of that came later. First, I needed to take her to Abe.

  But I felt a hesitancy I had never felt before, and it was strange, this reluctance. It scared me. She needed to go to Abe. So why did I want to keep her at the house with me? Where was thi
s hesitation coming from?

  I opened the door with a shaking hand, and the roaring sound of the rain surrounded me through both the front and back doors. Small spits of it swirled into the shadows, small as the eye of a needle, then rose back up in the confused air. And there she was, waiting, her arms hanging helplessly at her sides. Thick black hair draped over her upper half. She raised her arms and clutched her sides, shivering, trying to cover herself. I noticed that the water where it left her feet was tinted red, blood still washing off.

  “Come in, please,” I said quietly. A subtle terror rose in me, and confusion beside it. Why was I inviting her in? Where did those words come from?

  And why was I afraid of this helpless woman?

  I should have been walking her down to Abe’s, rain or no rain. But I turned and grabbed a small blanket from the rocking chair, moved toward her, and offered it to her. She shrank from my approach, seemed to be as scared of me as I was unsettled by her. As the blanket came to rest around her shoulders, her head tilted back, one hand pushed a part in the curtain of her hair, and she looked through. Her irises were dark like unlit tunnels, and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot, streaked with lightning-shaped capillaries. There were cuts on her face, red and swollen so that I couldn’t easily recognize her features. She shivered, not the gentle movement of someone slightly cold, but the deep, convulsive shuddering of someone hypothermic. Her knees locked and unlocked, jerking her body this way and that like a marionette in an unwitting dance.

  She opened her mouth to speak. I wanted to help her, but it was important that I let her process this new place. When I had first started welcoming people from the other side, I tried too hard to make it easy on them, and they fought me or balked from the help I offered. I learned to wait. I shouldn’t have given her the blanket—even that small interference could have caused her to veer into hysterics—but she had seemed so cold and disoriented by her own nakedness. Still, I should have waited. I knew this, even now, but I couldn’t take the blanket back from her.