by Woods, Shane
I free myself.
She charges before I can pick up my son. Bangs against the other side of the door as I slam it shut. She doesn’t bother banging again, but after a moment the doorknob moves a little in my clenched hand and I clench tighter and I press my shoulder against the door. She doesn’t fight for long. Doesn’t bother. Just turns the knob once or twice. After a while I can hear her making that sound again and I swear and swear at myself for not having the courage to go back in. With a shudder I suffer the brief wish that she still fought. If only for a still clear purpose.
My hand snaps away from the doorknob with unsettling violence. I can’t think. I am abandoned of reason. I even, if only for a brief moment, place my hand again on the doorknob.
I look around. Look at my house and the walls of which it is made. See what I have hung from them.
The window in the front. Brushing aside the curtain clears the suffocation of standing outside that door and listening to her make that noise, holding my breath until my vision became spotted with bloody blots. The walls of my house have become only architecture. Function. Mere constraints against some larger wildness which crept in despite them. They no longer offer comfort. Only the large window set in the front of the house. The curtain, the easy exhale.
I haven’t looked outside all day. I drew the curtains early, when she complained about pain from the light, and forgotten the world outside since. I was merely up and down those stairs. My wife to my son. My wife to my son.
The sun has fallen and the light is almost suppressed by the immediate horizon of homes. Perhaps a faint blueness remains. There are no lights in any of the houses. The streetlights are off despite the dusk. A car sits in the front yard of the house across the street, driven through the low fence around the yard. Doors opened. Abandoned.
I look outside, I look inside. My jaw hangs loose. I waver in incomprehension, only able to wonder how I did not notice the lights of my own house go out. Movement at the car. A small man slides from the driver’s seat and falls to his knees on my neighbour’s lawn. He pushes himself up, to his hands and knees, but rises no further. He waits for a moment, then raises his head to the scent in the air. He starts forward in the deliberate crawl of a predator.
I follow his eyes to my side of the street. I open my mouth and I close it. I raise one of my hands and place it against the pane. Casey, the little girl who lives next door, wanders across the lawn in a dazed way.
Claire combed her hair once, painted her nails. Was proud of that for days. Told me with such warmth in her voice how well Casey sat, how they talked and talked. Said, wasn’t that such a nice name? Casey?
Casey turns her back to the car and the man in the street, turns towards my house. Perhaps she sees me standing behind the pane, perhaps only my shape. I raise my hand, to comfort her, to show her that I am unchanged. My hand shakes, but I doubt she notices. After a moment she raises her hand in kind. I can see the shake from here.
I try to yell, but my voice will not come. She must see me open my mouth because she steps forward, leans her head more my way, as if she simply did not hear. I try again, but cannot dredge my voice free from the silence in here. The small man is almost directly behind her, but my pointing only makes her take another step forward and focus her attention on me. Behind you, I try mouthing, only once, because I’m sure it makes me look like a suffocating fish. She raises her hand again in another weak wave.
Her hand in the air tips over my heart. I slip on the heavy boots I wear to my wife’s family farm and tighten the laces with a vigorous pull. I think of the walls in the house, the far wall of the living room, decorated with the spoils of our loved one’s travels.
When I enter the room, my eyes light on the axe. Ceremonial, her uncle swore, bronze and tempered wood, blessed and hafted in the same manner of some ancient culture. Celtic, or maybe South American. Just longer than my forearm and open stretching hand. Her uncle raved of the temples, but I suspected he merely had an afterthought at the airport. I lift it from the wall and turn back towards the door, but the weight slows me, forces consideration. The axe in my hand makes wild promises.
The rush of air through the open door braces me, and I stiffen at the chill up and down my spine. My hand throbs with the weight of the axe.
‘Alright,’ I say. ‘Alright.’
There are screams in the air, a wail of thousands. Inside, standing before the window, I thought it was sirens. Perhaps rushing to fix the streetlights, or fetch the car from my neighbour’s lawn. But the quiet of dusk is split by distant screams, panicky shouts, and the brief bark of commanding tones. All carry the primal sound of my son, of pain sudden, and death evident.
A large number of people stand in the street and in the yards of the homes in either direction. They move in a similar stunned way; they are unbothered by the screaming, and keep their heads fixed firmly forward. Down the road, in the direction which leads out of the neighbourhood, a house is consumed by a fire, but none look as they pass. I make the sign for silence as I rush towards Casey.
‘What?’ she cries, bursts out with a sob. I dance around her, swing my leg back and kick the small man in the face. I spin again, blinded by the pound of my heart and the shock of pain up my leg. I stagger back for balance. All of the mad world spun around me.
I see that he’s not a small man while he sprawls away, just a young man, still nearly a boy. He gurgles a spiteful sound from behind his chewed-away lips. His scream is incoherent as he pushes himself up from the street and I can see the gnawed remnants of his tongue. Large, open wounds mar his flesh.
Casey screams as well, only now aware of the boy. Some of the people down the street turn in our direction, hold their heads aloft in a strange mockery of curiosity.
‘Quiet please, Casey.’
My voice shudders and my hand fumbles around her. I try to corral her safely behind me so I can swing the axe, but she’s too overwhelmed and steps in the directions I step. I pull her sideways and she just stumbles behind me, grabs at my arm and pulls me backwards. Her hands clasp around my wrist. I spin to keep my balance, throw out my other arm. The blade of the axe sings through the air.
‘Casey, stop.’
She jumps at the tone in my voice and backs away from me. Her jaw set, her wide eyes stare beyond me. I turn. The young man is on his feet already. Already coming. A shudder passes through me.
The axe smashes his temple easily, easier than I thought. My stomach lurches. Vomit rises in my chest. I only meant to brush him aside, to keep him from Casey. His his body goes limp and he falls to the ground, merely the shape of a person anymore. Casey begins to cry but it is a long while before I recognize the sound for its danger. Broken of my vigil of the crushed young man, I focus on the people closing from the street.
I reach for the axe but my hand slips from the handle. My hands are covered in blood. For a dizzying moment I waver in the street and wish for some breeze to wake me. The axe comes out of the young man’s skull, but it does not come easy.
A ragged man makes his way across my lawn. Close enough that I can see the familiar fall of light across his features. Tightening my hand on the axe brings a surge of nausea. I can’t do it again. Can’t do that again. I grab Casey, pull her roughly, turn her around and towards the open front door of her house. She screams again before I clamp my hand over her mouth and I carry her, cradled alongside the axe, across the threshold of her home.
‘Quiet,’ I say in that angry voice and I place her down and I close and lock the door.
‘Holy,’ I say, slumped against the door, but I don’t curse because Claire read somewhere that lesser words poison the growth of children. She cured me of the habit before my son was born. I thought the whole thing was dumb, but she was so happy at any kind of progress, and she deserved happiness. I look at Casey, shaking as she stands, my bloody handprint streaked across her face.
‘Are you alright Casey? Are you hurt?’
She doesn’t answer, she just stares at me
with her wide eyes and uses both hands to bunch up the front of her shirt and wrap it around her forearms. I lean forward, I smile.
‘You know me Casey, I live next door with Claire, my wife. We just had a baby a little while ago. My name is Laurel. You know me Casey. You can tell me. Are you hurt?’
She shakes her head and I slump back into the door.
‘Holy,’ I say.
When Casey and her family moved in next door, Claire watched from the window. ‘Two girls,’ she said, ‘Oh, and a boy.’ ‘A boy,’ she said with a sound I hear now but didn’t hear then. She was this slim shape of darkness against the sunlight, her hand resting on the window frame. ‘They don’t have a dog,’ she said, ‘but I imagine they should. It would fit them better if they had a dog. She’s pretty but he isn’t, looks like he’d be a practical thinker, some sort of safe bet, say. Isn’t it funny the way that happens? As if you could actually just opt out.’
Claire made friends with them then, walked right out the front door and said something which made them laugh, played with their kids. Lifted them and carried them as though she were always allowed.
David was his name. I look about his darkened house. His living room sits just off the door, cluttered with the same furniture as any other, and before me a hallway leads to the kitchen. We came over here once. Sat in the backyard and held a banal council. Agreed to do it again. I don’t know if I ever actually entered the house. I look at the ceiling, the frames hanging on the walls. David was his name. Casey doesn’t look around. She stands with her back to the hallway and stares intently at me.
‘What happened?’ I blurt out and Casey winces. I get to my feet through the thickness in my head and I wander past Casey into the living room, to the large picture window.
‘What is happening?’
Several people are gathered in the front yard, a few make an effort at the door. Fumbling at the knob with numb hands. I check the lock on the door.
‘Casey, step away from there.’
Almost all of the people in the road direct their attention towards the house, turning because others are turning, turning because others are turning. Watching them move fills me with revulsion, as though I had caught scurrying in a room I previously thought clear. My face twitches with disgust. I only stare for so long before I tear my eyes away and shiver, fully shiver, the feeling out.
The sound of gunfire draws my attention. The people in front of the house turn at the sound. A few cast their half-closed eyes towards the conflagration down the road.
The fire bursts and burns brightly, consuming all of the other light in the street. A family pours out of a nearby house. Fluid silhouettes, moving against the sensuous draft of flames, running towards the Jeep parked upon the curb. Two of them shoulder guns. The firework prat of the rifle’s single shot is offset by the calamitous thunderclap of the shotgun. The man levels his shotgun at the approaching people and fires indiscriminately. Calmly. He draws back the pump deliberately, careful lest a shell jam. He tears the right arm from a girl approaching; with his next shot he disembowels her. He turns and fires again.
His wife hurries their children towards the street. The eldest daughter fires her rifle wildly, contorting her body each time she brings another shell into the breach. The bullets dissolve in the approaching mass and soon she is forced to bring the rifle from her shoulder and use it to batter those close enough. I hear her voice. Sudden and filled with terror. Dad, she screams.
Her father turns towards his family, and when he fires again his thunderous refrain, the scatter of buckshot hits both his family and the crowd of people closing in. Silhouettes from both groups fall. He stiffens and drops the gun to his waist. The sound of his horror is clear even from here.
The family fall back. Dread grows within me. The shotgun goes off three times, quickly, before the man yells and smacks the gun. He spins, looks around. I cannot name the expression on his face.
The same thing happens to all of them. There is no difference. The father shouts to his daughter. She is pinned to the ground and thrashing against the people bent over her. Tearing at her with their mouths. The mother throws herself against the mass, pushing them away from her cowering children. But she is overcome. Those children. Overcome too, heads on each other’s shoulders. Swallowed by the mass of bodies. I lose the notion of difference as the crowds of people bite and tear at their exposed flesh. Tear them apart with uncanny strength. There is no difference. The family falls, the father last, swinging his gun and booming his voice, screaming at people who do not heed his blows and only advance. I look away as arterial blood fountains, I close my eyes for a moment.
‘What is he doing?’ Casey says suddenly and the sound of her voice startles me.
‘Who? What is who doing?’
She points out the window. I raise my hands in the air, wave them weakly. ‘No no Casey, don’t look at that, don’t let that get in.’
‘I don’t think he wants in.’
‘What?’
‘Him,’ she says, points again. ‘I don’t think he wants to get in.’
I take a step back from the window. My legs, the sweeping lurch of my stomach, decide on the motion. I recoil from the person approaching the other side of the glass. He is somewhat recognizable as the clerk from the nearby gas station. His throat is missing, along with most of the gashed skin on his face. His left arm looks recently burned. The remnants of casual home-wear hang from his tattered frame. The recognition sends a shock through me and all I can do is speculate that he lived somewhere in the area. He approaches the glass slowly, not having the swiftness of some of the others, and this handicap makes me feel less fear, more pity.
‘He doesn’t want in.’
‘You’re right,’ I say. He is deliberate in the way he draws up to the glass. Careful in reaching out his shaking hand. His eyes widen. I bend down, peer into his face. ‘His reflection. I think he’s looking at his reflection.’
I’m wrong. There is nothing in his eyes, no question of life. A milky swivel and no more. He is incapable of contemplation. He approached the glass to chase a movement. This is not a man before me. Nothing of life remains.
These are dead things. A shiver nearly unsettles me. I stare at the dead man and I cannot even begin to name what it is which stands him up and stares out from his eyes.
When I look back, Casey isn’t standing near the door. I turn, turn again. I hear the sound of my voice. The sound of a question. I look about the empty room. For the first time I notice the sense of disarray, the scatter of mobile things usually tucked in parallel positions, the erratic angles of the frames, and I realize I never wondered why Casey left her home.
She is down the hall. Standing straight. Her fists clenched. Staring at something in the kitchen. When I round the corner, I have to restrain my voice, stop the gasp, and I feel my entire body seize. My mouth hangs open.
Casey clutches at her shirt, winds it around her forearms. Her face calm and still. The twist of her arms is her only outward emotion as she watches her parents feed upon her sister. David and his wife are bent on the ground, bent over the gaping body of Casey’s sister which rocks with each bite and has the appearance of rising whenever they pull the tougher muscles from the bone. They make an appreciative sound which I originally mistake for humming.
The horror does not wash over me. I mean to grab Casey’s shoulder, to reassure her that this is nothing, this is unallowed by the universe, and cannot exist, but she stands farther away than I thought and I end up waving my hand in a distracted way, carving slow and useless circles through the air. I recognize what is before me, but can no longer comprehend the impact it must surely be making.
I do not know how much time passes before I hear my voice stark in the still air, repeating aloud the single echo which replaced my thoughts. Casey jumps at the sound.
‘They’re eating them.’
‘Wouldn’t it be kind if we could be like that?’ Claire said after she’d come back from making friends
with the people next door. Seeing it right in front of her invigorated her in a way I hadn’t seen in at least a year, and she celebrated the firmer picture with a bout of happiness which seemed to last and last.
She’d look over her shoulder sometimes after that, like a reassurance.
David stands from his crouch without seeming to move through the intervening space. I take a startled step back at his suddenness and grab for Casey. David makes a deep huffing noise and his shoulders rise and fall, rise and fall. His wife, intent on what lies before her, pays little notice to the noise. I pull at Casey but she resists, and as her father turns, she closes her eyes and clutches at her shirt.
‘David, now now, David.’
huff huff huff
I clench my hand, quickly, squeeze too tightly at my hollow palm. The axe. I’d closed the front door and voided my mind. I can’t remember where I put the axe, I don’t even know why I unlaced my boots. The hallway is too dark to see, I can barely make out the rattling door.
‘Casey,’ I say and grab her arm and pull her down the darkness of the hall. I trip in the dark, tumbling into the living room. The world upside down. Casey drops and lets out a yelp. Bright white fills my eyes.
I roll over and sweep my eyes around the scattered room as David advances upon us.
‘David,’ I say, ‘Casey.’
Casey scrambles away, up to the window. The clerk from the gas station jerks in attention and bangs his hands up against the pane. The glass webs, cracks shoot towards the frame. His hands, dumb, clumsy, push at the glass, and for a moment there is the grind of sand.
