“I stood at this gate, beating on it with my fists.” He rubbed his hands together. “I screamed until my throat bled. How did you get the key from her? How did you come here?” He seemed to finally be accepting the fact that I was real and that I was with him.
“Do you know who I am?”
He nodded, his face blank, his hand still on the gate.
“You do?”
He nodded again, but he still didn’t say anything.
“We have a lot to talk about once we get out of here,” I whispered. I glanced away from him, feeling my face form a kind of wince, before walking over and gently taking hold of his elbow to guide him farther along. He kept looking over his shoulder at the gate, as if it might transform into a monster and chase us down, devour us in that rocky canyon.
“You should lock it,” he said, his voice suddenly lifeless.
“What?”
“The gate. You should lock it. We can’t leave it open. What if she comes back down? What if she brings someone else here to keep them prisoner, like she did to me and all the others?”
“I don’t think we have to worry about that,” I said. I would have locked it had it not been for Lucia in the frozen river. Somewhere among the ice. Locking the gate suddenly felt crucial. Every evil I knew would come through if I didn’t.
“There are horrors there,” he said, stopping. “There are things in there, in the water, in the woods, you cannot even imagine. They will follow us. They will get out.”
His voice was quiet, but it was impossible for me to ignore the terror he clearly felt in that moment. Have you been with someone who is in the midst of a panic attack? There is no rationalizing, no explaining. Nothing I said would convince him that all the things he had seen had been illusions, the constructs of a broken mind. But I could not lock Lucia into that place. It was the very bottom. If she had somehow survived, the way needed to remain open for her.
To appease Adam, I walked over to the gate and pushed the doors against each other so that they appeared to be closed. I held up the key so he could see it, then inserted it into the gate. I turned it so that it locked, but I also turned it back so that it unlocked again. When I took out the key, the unlocked gate budged only a fraction.
When I turned to look at him, relief left him sagging, like someone who has finally relaxed. He had not seen the slight movement of the gate shifting open. In his mind it was locked and all the horrors of this place would be contained. Seeing the gate from that side, he raised his hands and covered his face, and the sound of his weeping echoed off the rock. I did not go over to him, not that time. I only watched and waited. His crying went on for a long time.
We finally continued through the canyon and had nearly reached the bog when I noticed that the cold was not so cold. My feet and fingertips were no longer numb. I put my hands up to my mouth and blew into them, and I could feel the warmth spreading. I looked over at Adam and could tell he was feeling it too. His joints didn’t seem so locked. His face had regained some color, although his black hair did still emphasize the paleness of his skin. He reached up with a swollen finger and pushed a thread of hair out of his face.
“I can’t believe this is all here,” he said. “A way out.”
We walked slowly, and the scuffing sound of our feet on the hard earth was lonely and peaceful. Every so often, one of us would need to stop to rest, and the other would stop as well, leaning against the canyon wall or sitting on the ground. We had reached the limits of our exhaustion. I could not let myself think about how far we still had to go.
I pulled out the water and we each took a sip. I put it back in the knapsack and thought about the price of it.
“How long?” he asked, staring at the ground between hisfeet.
“How long?” I repeated.
“How long was I in there?”
That was a good question. I had no idea. The passing of time in the small town on the edge of the plains had felt immeasurable. It could have been ten years. I thought of all the harvests we had seen, all the times we had pulled vegetables and fruits from the garden and the orchard. It must have been longer. Twenty years? Could it have been longer than that?
“I don’t know,” I said. “Time doesn’t pass the same way anymore.”
“Why’d you decide to come and find me? Why now?”
“Things were ending. Our village was destroyed. Kathy was there.”
“Kathy?” He didn’t actually say her whole name out loud. He said it the way a child might whisper a curse, knowing they’d be in trouble if anyone heard.
I nodded. “She burned down our village. At least I think it was her. She was trying to cause chaos, trying to break us up. I don’t know. I don’t understand completely. I think she wants everyone back in here again.”
“But you’re here because . . . of her?”
“No. I’m here because of you. I waited a long time, Adam. For you. I couldn’t come back here. I couldn’t. But then, when everything fell apart . . . I don’t know. I had to do something.”
We walked on, and I could tell he was thinking hard about something, thinking through all I had told him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Nothing she wants to happen is good.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.
He spoke again. “If she wanted you to be here, you shouldn’t be here.”
24 Broken Things
THE ROCKS ROSE up in front of us, a kind of jetty that held back the bog waters. We made our way up, exhaustion stiffening my fingers, but after the cold of the forest and the canyon, the rocks felt almost warm. We got to the top and spotted the boat and the extra-long oar, and we wound our way down among the boulders. It took both of us to lift the boat and slide it into the water, and I’d imagine we both looked pitiful in our pain and weariness.
Adam climbed in gingerly, and I followed, dragging the oar with me. It took one easy push and we were back in the water. Again I searched behind us for Lucia. I willed her to appear. How could she ever cross this water without a boat? How could she ever leave this place on her own? I took heart in knowing that anyone who had ever escaped from this part of the abyss before had done so on their own, perhaps even without a boat. But it all felt so unlikely.
We drifted silently across the still water, and after a while the bank we had come from disappeared behind us. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized there was no fog, no haze. The clouds were so high that they looked like a flat sheet, stretched, without any breaks in them.
Adam sat in the front, his back to me, leaning forward with his arms out and his hands gripping the bow. He could have been in prayer. He could have been asleep. He could have been plotting some escape. I wondered how his clothes still clung to him after all that time, torn and shredded as they were. His hair had dried in coarse clumps like wet straw, and between the strands I could see long, deep scratches on the back of his neck. Were they the marks his abusers had left, or were they gouges of guilt, self-inflicted? This place was even stranger than I had imagined, and what had happened to all of us seemed less and less clear.
He whispered something in his hoarse voice.
“What?” I asked, not even sure if he was talking to me or to himself.
“The water.” He pushed the words out. “The water. Do you remember? The lake. Do you remember the lake?”
I was about to say no, but an image came into my mind. Adam and I in a lake house that one of my father’s trucker friends had said we could stay in. It was a rough hunting cabin, and there was no running water inside, although there was a pump out front and an outhouse. Thirty yards down the hill from the house, the lake lapped up against a stony beach, and a long, narrow pier jutted out into the cold blue water.
Adam and I were roughhousing one afternoon, and in a series of events that happened too fast to replay in my mind, our wrestling caused a large pair of elk antlers to fall off the wall, strike the floor, and break. The two of us sat suspended in tim
e, me on the bottom, nearly pinned. We craned our necks to find the source of the loud snapping sound.
We could fix it, I told myself. We could glue it, or hang it back up and pretend nothing happened, or throw the entire thing into the lake. But neither of us could move, because we heard the creaking of the bedroom door, and our father emerged without saying a word. He didn’t even look at us—we still hadn’t moved from the floor. He stared long at that broken set of antlers, his friend’s fractured trophy.
“Come on,” he mumbled in a voice that terrified me more than any shout could have.
We disentangled ourselves from each other, and I felt alone, afraid, and somehow naked. With Adam, even when he was pinning me to the ground, I felt part of something, something strong. But standing and following my father, walking wordlessly behind Adam, I felt even less than what I was, which at the time was a frightened twelve-year-old boy.
Still not looking at us, our father walked outside and down to the pier. It swayed under our weight, and I nearly fell in a couple of times. I considered turning around and running, once even looking over my shoulder into those wooded hills. I imagined the feeling of safety I would have, running through the shadows of the trees, building a shelter in the wilderness where I could stay. Escape.
But I didn’t run. And neither did Adam. We trailed behind our father, all the way to the end of the pier, by which point my legs were trembling. He climbed into the motorboat, also owned by his friend, and motioned for us to get in with him.
“The rope,” he said, and I knew he meant for me to untie the boat from the dock.
I tentatively untied the rope, and the boat bobbed for a moment in the water, independent of the pier, independent of me. Again I considered running. I could be halfway back to the dock by the time he climbed out of the boat. I could be in the woods before he could catch me. Would he even chase me? Probably not. Maybe that’s the real reason I didn’t run—I couldn’t face such a tangible sign of his indifference.
I jumped in and the boat shook. Adam and I moved to the front, gripping the sides, and the motor roared to life, easing the three of us out into that flat, beautiful lake. Soon we skimmed the water, and there were no waves to slap the bottom, no waves to skip us up into the air. It was a droning, constant propulsion to the deepest section, where the far banks were barely visible in all directions. A cold mist blew into our faces. I looked at Adam. He couldn’t help but grin.
Our father cut off the engine unexpectedly, and the boat limped to a stop, pitching this way and that ever so subtly. There was no wind. The sky was huge, a beautiful blue dome that held everything, the entire universe. There was even happiness in that moment of quiet, that moment of peace, and I could nearly forget that Adam and I had broken something important.
“Get in the water,” our father murmured. Had he been drinking? I couldn’t tell. Adam reached for one of the life jackets, but our father stuck out his foot and stamped it down in the bottom of the boat, where an inch or so of water had gathered. “You won’t need that.”
We looked at each other. We had on normal clothes—khaki shorts and T-shirts. We had planned on going out for dinner. I reached into my pockets to make sure they were empty, taking out only a few small pieces of lint, a penny I had found on the dirt road that led to the cabin, and a movie stub. I moved to take off my shirt, but a hand ripped it back down.
“Get. In. The. Water,” he said again, each word existing entirely on its own. When Adam and I paused at the side of the boat, he shouted so that his voice broke the dome and brought the universe caving in around us. “Get in the water!”
We jumped in, our splashes nearly synchronized. The water was clear and cool but not cold, a perfect day for swimming. I could feel the colder currents moving around my legs like fingers reaching up for me. We both hovered there, treading water, waiting to see what we were supposed to do next. But our father sat in the boat, staring off at the distant horizon.
Adam and I drifted closer, but as soon as one of us came within arm’s reach, our father cleared his throat and said in a light voice, as if he was wishing us a good afternoon, “Don’t touch the boat.”
“It was an accident,” Adam said, sputtering as a small swell rose up over his mouth.
“You two. You just go through life thinking you can have or take or break whatever you want. You’re like two little animals. It’s pathetic.”
“We didn’t try to do it,” I chimed in. “We’re sorry.”
“You’re right, you’re sorry,” he said, staring down at me.
My arms and legs ached, and the water was cooling. I hadn’t noticed when we first set out, but the end of the afternoon was near. I wondered if he was going to make us swim home. The shore was nearly invisible from where I was, down in the water. I put my head back and floated, eyes closed. The water drowned out all other sounds, and I was gone, far from there, in a bathtub or a swimming pool or hunched under an umbrella after the rain has stopped. It was quiet there. Peaceful.
I stayed that way for a few minutes, and when I looked up, I found it hard to believe how far I had drifted away from the boat. Adam was still there, still treading, although the look on his face was strained. His skin had gone pale. He floundered, coughed, righted himself.
“Adam!” I shouted. “Float on your back. Get some rest.”
But he wouldn’t. His dark hair was wet. His breathing was hoarse. His arms splashed. Then he was under.
“Dad!” I screamed. “Adam!”
Our father eased his way over to the edge of the boat and stared into the depths. He plunged his hand in and grabbed Adam first by the hair, then by the scruff of his T-shirt, pulling up on it so that it came up under his chin, a noose. He dragged Adam into the boat and dumped him like a marlin. I heard Adam coughing over and over again until he threw up. Our father sat at the front of the boat as if nothing had happened. He wasn’t smiling or frowning. He was sitting. Waiting.
I floated on my back, trying to preserve my strength. I knew in that moment what he wanted—he wanted me to feel that gentle slipping under, the panic of no air, the sense of him saving me from death, literally pulling me up into life. And I would not give him that satisfaction. I floated on my back, the water plugging and unplugging my ears, the sky cool and far above me. I treaded water for a few minutes. Then I floated again.
The boat coughed to life. I straightened up, kicked in the water, moved my arms around. I felt instantly suspicious because my father never gave up, never at anything and especially not when it came to waiting. He showed Adam the motor, how to steer, and sat in the front of the boat again.
He had never let either of us drive the boat, no matter how many times we begged.
As they trolled past me, he spoke one last time, and again he did not look at me but sent his words out to some other place. “You little cheat. Floating isn’t allowed.”
The boat powered past me, leaving me in the middle of the lake. I caught Adam’s glance and could tell he was worried for me. He looked nervously over his shoulder to see if our father was watching, then he pushed a life vest over the side. It bobbed in the water, pushed aside by the wake. Our father turned toward Adam again, and at first I thought he had seen the life preserver, but he only instructed Adam on how to give the boat more throttle. It stood up out of the water, a higher pitch, before sitting and speeding away.
I swam, exhausted, to the life vest and tangled myself up in it. It held me, and I could finally catch my breath. I started kicking slowly, asking myself if it was even possible for me to swim all the way back to the shore in front of the cabin.
There is a particular feeling that comes in the night as you float on your back, when the deep water is still and the sky is reflected back to you. I moved slowly, sometimes using my arms to paddle, sometimes my legs, and I made it through the dark, all the way back.
The boat thumped against the pier in a gentle rhythm. There were waves, tiny ones, enough to lift and lower the craft. A hand reached down and h
elped me up, and once on the pier, sitting on that solid thing, I felt like jelly, like my entire body might melt. I was so tired.
“You okay?” Adam asked.
I nodded. We sat there for a long time, saying nothing. Then we stood and walked back inside. Our father never said a word about it. He used glue to reattach the antler. No one ever noticed the difference.
“I SHOULD HAVE come back for you,” Adam said as we approached the muddy banks of the bog. “I should have brought the boat back out and found you.”
“It was dark,” I said. “It was a big lake. You wouldn’t have found me, not at night.”
“That’s not the point. You came back here for me.”
Back here. For a moment, in that memory, my mind had escaped to a place where the sky was bright blue and the water clear, where the trees that lined the distant banks were green and full and the cabin’s red metal roof was like a siren’s call. Back here, though, the muddy water was thick. The only bank that was visible was the one coming into view, loaded with those sharp reeds growing up out of the mud. The sky was dull, a kind of brown-gray, and while the cold had dimmed, the warmer air smelled of rotten mud.
“If you are real,” Adam said, staring straight ahead, leaning into the bow of the boat, “if you are real . . . where did you come from?”
“Outside of the mountain.”
“And what is it like there? Outside?”
“It’s very green,” I said. “It’s quiet, and the air smells of living things. From there, the mountain looks like something beautiful. I live in a small stone house at the edge of a village.” I paused and decided not to tell him about going east, not yet. “There are a few others there.”
I wondered if they were still there, if all of the houses had burned or if any had been saved. Was Abe still waiting for me, as he always said he would?
These Nameless Things Page 20
