by Abe Moss
He remembered she’d said there were two…
Chills traced down his spine, down his arms and legs.
Two legs lay visible on the bedroom floor, from the other side of the bed.
“I need your help,” his mother whispered.
He couldn’t speak. Not at first. He sputtered.
“What… what… why are they on the floor?”
He pointed to the legs, the feet turned in either direction.
“They must have rolled out of bed, is all. That’s how deeply they’re asleep. Not even falling out of bed can wake them. Are you ready to help me?”
He watched in a state of dizzy shock as his mother handled the figure on the floor first. She stood on the other side of the bed and crouched down, out of sight. As she stood, the figure’s upper body was in her arms, held under the crooks of their armpits. It was hard to see clearly in the dark, but from what he could tell, it was a woman. She wore a nightgown. His mother stepped carefully around the bed, the woman’s feet dragging on the carpet.
“Mind grabbing her feet?” his mother said.
He could do nothing but stand paralyzed. His mother, not asking a second time, shuffled past him into the hallway, the woman’s heels whispering along the carpet. She was an older woman, he noticed. He watched as their shadows vanished into the kitchen. From there his mother called to him, a tinge of impatience in her voice.
“Emmett, where are you? Stay with me!”
He cast a frightened glance behind him on his way, at the second figure still waiting in the bed.
“Emmett?”
“I’m coming.”
He joined her in the kitchen. With or without his help, his mother was already dragging the woman down the stairs, one stair at a time. The woman’s feet bumped and knocked down each step in their descent. The longer he watched, the harder it became to believe—
“All right,” his mother said down below. “One more to go.”
She returned upstairs. As she moved past him through the kitchen, making her way back to the bedroom, she asked, “You don’t want to help?”
He fidgeted wordlessly in response. She seemed to be handling it just fine on her own. How much could he really help, he wondered?
“Do I have to?”
She sighed. “No, not if you don’t want to.”
He listened to her noises across the house, getting the second sleeper out of bed. A minute later she was back, an older man in her arms. She heaved, panted, heaved, panted, until she came to the head of the stairs where she took a moment to breathe.
“All that digging,” she said, wiping sweat from her brow. “Wore me right out.”
Emmett was worn out just as a witness to it.
His mother hauled the man downstairs and lay him gently beside the woman at the edge of the hole. Emmett followed, watching with growing suspicion.
“Stop biting your nails,” his mother told him as she paced around the hole, shovel in hand, deciding if it was adequate.
“Is the hole for them?” he asked. “I… I thought…”
“Do you see where I left the book?” she asked, turning in circles. “Aha.”
She set the shovel against the wall and picked up the book from the floor. She opened it, plucked out the small knife which was still nested inside. She cast her gaze over the room, then moved toward the stairs, where she set the book down again, this time with the knife atop its cover.
“Don’t want to lose those…”
“What are you doing now?” Emmett asked.
“I just want to make sure we have everything. I don’t want to forget…”
She fixed her eyes on him then, trying to keep grounded. Taking a deep breath, she gave him a grateful smile.
“What would I do without you?” she said. “You’re the most important part of all this.”
“Part of what?”
She was so… scattered… it was like she couldn’t keep her mind in one place long enough.
“Our magic trick. Remember?” She stood at the edge of the hole, looking down inside. “I will need your help with this next part, Emmett. No matter what.”
“Help how?”
She climbed down inside the hole. She dusted her hands off on her pants. “I need you to try and push them toward me, so I can pull them in.”
“I don’t want to touch them…”
“Emmett, please. We’re not done yet.”
Those alarms were wailing louder than ever now. Something was off. His mother was off. He knew it when this night first started, when they first arrived and she pulled a key from her pocket to a home he’d never set foot in before, and it only kept getting worse. But there was magic at play, that much he couldn’t deny. And with that in mind… why should it be so hard to believe the rest was magic, too?
“Are we… are we going to bury them?”
“It’s fine, I promise. They’re sleeping peacefully, none the wiser.”
“But we’re we going to bury them?”
Finally, she nodded. “Yes.”
“But then…”
“They’re safe. The magic is protecting them. All right?”
He looked at the bodies, at their faces. He didn’t like their faces. No expression. Not even a bad dream. Nevertheless, he did as his mother asked and tried pushing them toward her. The woman was first. She was smaller than the man, and even she was heavy. Luckily, he only needed to push her a short distance until his mother could grab hold and drag her the rest of the way in. Emmett cringed as the woman’s feet reached the edge and dropped in, and his mother grunted with the woman’s full weight in her arms. She gently lay the woman down in the hole.
“Who are they?” Emmett asked. “Are they married?”
“I believe so,” his mother said. “Do you think you can roll him over to me?”
The man was substantially heavier. He lifted up on his shoulder. As he strained to lift him, to roll him onto his stomach, he noticed the man’s mouth had fallen open. Except…
“Do I need to get out and help?”
“No,” Emmett said. “I think I can do it…”
While he wasn’t explicitly thinking it, the suspicious parts of his mind were busily putting the pieces together. The man’s open mouth was dry and the air inside it was old and still. But that didn’t mean anything, Emmett told himself. It was just weird, was all. Must have been the magic…
He began to cry with the man’s weight in his arms and wasn’t sure why.
“Emmett? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said.
With a surge of effort, he pushed the man onto one shoulder and quickly kept pushing, until the man rolled onto his front. His sleeping face lay against the dirt. Emmett got to his feet, took a step back, turned away—from the sleeping man, from the hole, from his mother—and did his best to get the tears under control. Where were they coming from, he wondered?
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m okay,” he said, afraid to let her see.
He listened as his mother dragged the man the rest of the way into the hole and set him down with the woman.
—his wife—
He couldn’t stop crying. Why was he crying? Perhaps it was only that he was tired. He did get grumpy sometimes when he was tired…
Soon his mother was out of the hole and he felt her arms around him.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Everything is okay. Don’t you worry.”
“They’re dead, aren’t they…”
Her arms squeezed him with so much love he felt nearly crushed by it. With her face resting over his shoulder, she whispered in his ear.
“I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Why are we doing this? Why did you bring me here? I want to go home…”
“It’s important you’re here. I couldn’t do this without you.”
“Do what? What are you doing?”
She took some time just holding him, squeezing him, swaying side to side. He relaxed and gav
e himself to her, so that it was only her embrace keeping him on his feet as they swayed together in the quiet basement.
“They were old and sick,” she said. “They passed away in their sleep. They’re gone now. Their bodies are here, but their souls are somewhere better. Now we need to bury them.”
His voice was calmed but he wasn’t entirely reassured of anything.
“Why are we burying them in their basement?”
“Because the magic requires it.” She breathed into his ear, soothing and warm. “I need you to trust me.”
She let go of him. He turned to see her, standing at the edge of the hole, reflecting.
“I should have taught you everything from the beginning…”
“Taught me what?”
He wanted to go to her, but didn’t dare go near the hole. He didn’t want to see them again. Never again.
“The plan.” She smiled comfortingly at him. “The plan for our lives.”
“Our lives?”
“Everything is going to be different after this. In a good way. We’re so close…”
He rested his eyes on the edge of the hole, a dark secret lying at the bottom.
“Instead I kept it to myself. I assumed it would scare you, but… now I realize if I’d taught you everything from the beginning, you probably wouldn’t have questioned it. It’d be as normal to you as anything else. As true to you as it is to me.”
“What is it?” he asked, getting the feeling she wasn’t just referring to this basement, this house, this night. “What’s the plan?”
She brightened. She returned to him, kneeling, and took his hand in hers. He winced as he saw the wound on her palm again, the dried blood, but he didn’t pull away. She reached down the front of her shirt and pulled out the pendant.
“I told you your father gave this to me, didn’t I?” He focused intently on the black stone, the white stone resting in the center of it. “It’s true, he did. But… well… I’ve never actually met your father. Face to face.”
In his bewilderment, he pulled back, stunned. “You never met my dad?”
“That’s right. He’s far away. Too far for us to reach him.” She looked to the hole, then to the book sitting on the stairs, the knife on top. “That’s why we’re doing all of this. For him. And for us. So we can all be together, finally. A real family.”
It was impossible to understand. “How?”
“Like I keep telling you. With magic. We just need to finish what we started.”
She grabbed the shovel. “I understand if you don’t want to help with this.”
She was right about that. Emmett took a seat on the bottom stair, beside the book and knife, and watched as his mother filled in the hole, one shovelful at a time. She was going to be sore the next day, he thought.
Fortunately, filling the hole was much quicker than digging it. She was finished in no time. She stood proudly over the work, shovel stood beside her in her hand. Emmett was only glad he couldn’t see their bodies anymore.
His mother turned to him with a strong, hopeful expression.
“There’s only one part left,” she said. “The part I can’t do myself.”
The way she looked at him then made him uneasy. Long. Cautious. She had something to say and needed time to think how best to say it.
No, he didn’t like that look at all.
“I need you to be the bravest kid on this whole planet for me. Can you do that?”
“What is it?”
She came to him, picked up the book and the knife. “Come over here with me.”
She led him by the hand to the freshly filled mound of dirt. She got down on her knees. They were nearly the same height that way. She opened the book, flipped through its pages until she found the right one. She placed the book against the grave mound. Emmett saw its pages—the writing he couldn’t read—and something else…
“What is that…” he trailed off, confused by the shapes inked on the page. Many peculiar parts which made a more peculiar whole. Something which made Emmett’s hair stand on end.
Intricate and fantastic and alive.
Next to him, his mother spoke the language of the book. Her voice, taking on the language’s accent, sounded nothing like her own, and from one moment to the next any reassurance she’d afforded Emmett evaporated from him like sweat. He felt it around them, the magic. Breathing. Pushing. Crushing. Smothering. Silencing. It replaced the dusty air, the air in their lungs. The closeness between them expanded into something else.
“Mom.”
The magic was too loud. Deafening. It poured into the room from her mouth with every word.
“Mom…”
They kept flowing from her, the words, enough that he gathered she must not be reading from the book. The words on the page were few. She knew these by heart.
Eventually she paused and turned to him.
“Give me your hand, baby.” She took his hand in hers, his palm upward, and with her other hand reached for the knife. “You’re doing great. Be brave for me…”
“Wait, what are you doing?”
She couldn’t hear him. The air was too thick. His words didn’t travel like hers. She pulled his hand toward herself, tucked her arm over his to keep him in place. Over her shoulder, he wasn’t able to see exactly what she was doing, and in his petrified, unguarded state he lacked the ability to react in time.
“What are you—”
She drew sharp, biting pain along his palm. First he gasped. Then the scream followed. He tugged his arm and she kept him held firmly in her grip.
“Be brave for me,” she said. “We’re almost there.”
He howled. His hand was fire. He tugged a second time, hard enough that he intended it to be the last time, and surprised himself by pulling free. He fell away from her, onto his side. He lifted his trembling hand to his face. The blood. So deep. A black current. Did it need to be so deep?
She moved toward him, and though he saw immense sorrow in her eyes, he also saw the blade dripping his blood held firmly in her hand and he screamed again.
“Emmett, please!”
“No!”
He pushed away, legs kicking, scooting frantically across the dirt, up over the lip of broken concrete, farther and farther toward the stairs. She tried to follow. She reached for him but his fear was quicker than her determination, and when she saw it spelled plainly across his face she faltered. He picked himself up on the first wooden stair and scrambled up, up, up to the top.
“Emmett!”
Her voice was soft and weak down below, slowed by the basement’s magic.
Out, he thought. Get out. He needed out. Through the kitchen he fled, to the backdoor. He opened it, his blood slippery over the knob. He let the door swing idly behind him as he chased into the night. Back the way they came. He turned the corner into the driveway along the side of the house, beneath the shaded carport, the car sleeping there. His small, tired feet carried him farther, to the end of the driveway at the edge of the street, and there he stopped.
There he breathed.
The night was noisy with the sound of crickets—familiar, natural, comfortable.
He buried his face in his hands. The blood was sticky on his cheek.
Something thumped loudly nearby. Emmett jolted. His tears instantly ceased. He turned toward the sound, searching the nighttime darkness, and saw a man standing in the next driveway. Older. He stood at the curb beside a garbage can, having just taken out the trash. It was the closing lid which made the sound. Emmett rubbed his arm across his eyes, sniffling. The man took notice of him as well.
“Bit early in the morning for you to be up, isn’t it?” the man asked. The man turned side to side, observing the street in both directions. “You out here alone?”
Emmett tried to think of something to say, an excuse, when there was movement behind him. He gasped softly as he felt arms around him.
“There you are,” his mother whispered. She pulled him into herself, cradled hi
s head against her. “Please don’t ever run off like that ever again. Please…”
“Oh, is he yours?” the man asked.
Emmett felt his mother flinch then, surprised as he’d been by the man’s presence. They were both so on edge. As she spoke to the old man, she wrapped her arms that much tighter around him.
“Oh, yes. Thank you. Hello.”
“Is everything all right?” the old man asked.
“Everything’s great, thank you.”
“You from around here?” he asked, scratching the top of his head. “Do you know the Callahan’s?”
His mother looked behind them, at the house where they’d spent their entire night. She nodded.
“Yes…” she paused, thinking quickly. “Relatives.”
“I see.” The man stood awhile longer, just watching. “Is he all right?”
“Oh, yes, he’s fine. Thank you.” She stroked the back of Emmett’s head. He was filled with the oddest sensation—both comforted and safe in her arms, shielded from the attention of this stranger… but also trapped, a distance which came with not entirely knowing who she was, either.
“What’s the relation?”
“I’m sorry?” his mother asked.
“What’s your relation? To the Callahan’s, I mean.”
“Oh… I’m a niece.”
“Ah.” The man remained, his presence becoming increasingly threatening in nature. Or maybe it only felt that way as they both wished desperately that he’d leave them alone already. “How long you staying for?”
His mother got to her feet and hoisted him up with herself, even if he was borderline getting too big to be carried. She was strong, though, and managed easily. He put his chin over her shoulder, wrapped his arms around her. He could have fallen asleep right then if not for the stranger.
“Just tonight,” she said. Then she added, “Maybe leaving a little earlier than we planned. This one gets so homesick.”
The man said nothing to that. “Well, you have a good rest of your night.”
Gratefully, his mother returned the sentiment and hurried them back toward the house, under the carport, into the backyard, toward the backdoor. She got them both into the kitchen. She sat Emmett down on one of the kitchen chairs.
