by Garrett Cook
The boy is sitting at a kitchen table. There’s an older man with him, same hair, same eyes, same hunched and vanquished posture. The man’s beard is a deep, dark wolfhaunted forest, shaggy and wild, a place where he conceals his heart from his child. Though this is a face Brian might one day grow into, it is also one that does nothing to betray its sentiments. There are four empty beers on the table. And a fifth one is open and in his hand.
“Did I tell you about the time I had to take a guy’s eye out?”
Even if Brian had known, it looks like he would shake his head “no” and that there would be consequences if he’d said he had. So Brian of course shakes his head no because he is so small and this man so thoroughly drunk. He does not look like he wants to know about how to take a man’s eye out or what circumstance it had happened in. But he is going to hear the story again, or just a fragment of it.
“Jarhead back then. It was during the swim test. You know what a jarhead is?”
Brian does not speak or move. He does not dare to say “yes” or say “what it is” or that the father has told him the tale before. It takes herculean strength to make the move that he can make, the one move he can make. A simple nod but there might as well be an anvil at the end of the child’s neck. The boy nods yes because that’s what will get the story to the end without the flaming seraph sword of fatherly judgment falling down upon him.
“Smart kid,” says Brian’s father, ruffling the child’s hair, “I was a jarhead back then. Taking the swimtest. But there was this guy there, an old guy in the pool. He’d done a couple tours in Vietnam, this guy. And he didn’t come all the way home. I never saw action but there were some guys that never came all the way home. This was one of those guys, this guy.”
This is where Brian knows that he’s to speak. He must be fascinated. If he isn’t fascinated, there’s consequences. One of few things I could see about him is that he knows this game. This game is an important one because it’s clear he’s lost it before. I hope The Closetsong shows me its forfeits.
“So what happened?”
Something appears behind the father, a heap of shadows, a shadowy heap. It emits a stench like long neglected compost. Oh, is that what you smell like,? That’s darling. It makes a sound like tiny hammers on pipes in the basement. So many tiny hammers. The father squints and folds his brow in pain. He tries to massage his temples but there are hundreds of secret hammers playing behind him on the pipes. Brian blinks again and again, trying to make the heap behind his father disappear or to see for real that it was never there.
The Heap is there. The Heap is actually there. And the hammers are getting louder, the compost is putrefying. And the father’s eyes are starting to back away from the son, from the room and from the present. History catches and collars him, history manacles his wrists and brands his back. History drags him away.
“This guy started to think that he was somewhere, back in Nam, maybe drowning in the swamp but he grabbed my waist and started to panic and struggle, started to drag me under, the more I fought, the harder he struggled against me, the more desperate he was to drag me under the water with him. I was going to drown. I was sure that I was going to drown. But you can’t panic. You need to learn to stay still and quiet and think. I stop struggling and I moved quick. You know what I did?”
Considering the theme and nature of the story, it is of course clear what he did. There was only one thing that he could do.
“I gouged the guy’s eye clean out. That’s what it took to get him to loosen his grip. And then I swam away.”
“Wow.”
“That’s why it’s important that you learn to keep your cool and be calm and quiet.”
“Yes, dad,” says Brian.
“There is nothing more important in life than to learn to sit still and be quiet.”
A child Brian reaches into an almost empty satchel of words.
“Yes, dad.”
The father reaches for the last beer in the six-pack and cracks it open. The Heap is making a noise like the last squeals of a dozen different animals. Brian is trying to get up and explain why he needs to get up. The game is about to change. His father has an idea. He doesn’t like when his father thinks he is improvising or can teach an important lesson. His father’s ideas aren’t often good. This is going to be a really bad one.
“Let’s see how good you are at being still and quiet. Let’s see how you can hide.”
“I...I want to go read a book.”
The father takes a mighty swig of this last beer. He glares at Brian.
“This is important.”
There can certainly be no denying that this is important. The Heap has thoroughly made its presence known. It makes its influence so crystal clear. Do I look like that to Brian? Can he see me? What if he sees me, what if he feels my hand on all of this? What if he felt my hand in Antonia?
“Brian, I know you don’t give a shit about being tough like your old man was. I know you’re not a soldier, you’re a sensitive faggot artist. Well, sensitive faggot artists gotta be tough.”
Brian cocks his head, speaks up, even though he is certain that the room is ruled by the Heap and the consequence of questions might be disastrous.
“What’s a faggot, dad?”
His father laughs, a braying, strange, not quite person laugh that comes from the tendrils of Heap, rubbing his shoulder, affectionately stroking his face and maybe soaking poison through his skin. The kid’s funny, he seems to think. I don’t get what’s so funny. I am focused on the Heap and what it’s doing and how it seems to be making them feel. He ruffles the boy’s hair.
“That a boy.”
Brian doesn’t dare to ask again or to ask anything or to go off and read a book or put some headphones and a record on. Those things could lead to disaster and the situation is already balanced at the edge of a precipice of hellscape. It lurks in a cottage built teetering on a chasm and it can tumble and burst apart and all inside would also burst apart. He does nothing but await instructions. His father doesn’t quite appreciate how much soldier he’s actually put into the boy. He should. Good work has been done. Sad work but good.
“We’re going to play a game now.”
He pops open the last beer. Brian swallows. He really doesn’t want to play a game.
“This game is about being quiet and still and keeping safe. I love you, son and I want you to be able to keep safe.”
“Thanks, dad.”
“You know how to play hide and seek, right?”
Brian nods.
“Yup. You hide and I count and then I find you.”
The man shakes his head solemnly.
“No, son, not this time. You hide this time.”
Brian shudders a little. His voice cracks a bit as he forces a phrase from his mouth.
“What if you don’t find me?”
Children are as stupid as they are fragile. So senselessly trusting, thinking that he’s better off with this man around. The child knows so little about men. The child knows so little about what he lives with and about the influence of the Heap, the big black thing growing up to the ceiling. The rival wallsgod exerts its influence often. Throws its weight around almost bad as I do and is almost as heavy as I, almost as old and as angry and unstoppable as I.
The father smiles and the smile bites the boy.
“Well, that’s the idea, Spook.”
The man takes another swig of the beer and puts his hands on his eyes. He does not wait for the kid to say that he wants to play. There is no not playing this game. There is no winning it either. This is a game where one can but lose. These are the games I play and I play them well and I play them proud. It annoys me to see that the boy has played them before. What is one to do against a boy who has played these games before?
“One…two…three…”
Brian ascends the stairs, walks into his parents’ bedroom, following a whisper, a seductive whisper from inside of the closet. He walks up to the door, opens it an
d steps inside. This mistake will follow him forever.
In the Room
The door to the bedroom is gone. Micah and Cytherea end their evening’s revelries and stand up, getting ready to wash up or to grab a drink of water but the door to the bedroom is gone. They examine the wall that once held the bedroom door, patting it down for signs of what’s not there. But the bedroom door is gone, I have concealed it. And they are not getting out.
“It has to be here,” says Micah.
“You mean you can’t see it either?” asks Cytherea.
“No,” he says, “I can’t see it either.”
They sit down on the bed, eyes closed, both trying to think. Both of them are trying to find the very very obvious idea that they have a bedroom door, which anybody’s bedroom would have. Except for theirs. Except for this one. They had come through that very door not an hour earlier and now it was gone. They open their eyes again almost in tandem, almost as if it was always just one set of eyes. And once more they see their pagan tapestries, their collections of statues and icons in shallow commitment to Eastern religions that they have stolen bits and pieces of practice from, their framed prints of dragons but they do not see a door.
They sit in silence. They look back and forth and each other and at the wall. Was it the marijuana? The wine? Which was it? Was it the drugs or the drink walking on their brain? Micah walks to the wall and tries to open it like a door. It doesn’t open because it’s not a door. Maybe it was never a door. Maybe they could never escape this room. He sits back down on the bed.
“Something is fucking going on,” he says, “there’s something fucked up going on around here lately and I don’t know what it is.”
They stare together at the wall and hope the door will manifest. They wonder together where it went, hand in hand, sighing, praying under their breath to the old gods they’ve adopted, the gods who don’t matter in these walls. He asks Pan, he asks the shape I took used to take him in his dreams to set him free from these delusions. They close their eyes again then open them once more to find a wall instead of a door. The First Girl smells starvation so blinks in almost as if to tell them “as you are so once was I.” Then blinks back out, though she will be brought back in.
“Maybe,” says Micah, “maybe we’ve been dosed.”
Cytherea thinks back to the events of the day, what they’ve consumed and where they went. They hadn’t really been anywhere or eaten or drank anything strange. They hadn’t gotten into their own stash of drugs beyond smoking a bit. She examines events and finds that indeed, there could be nothing alien in their system. If there is nothing alien and nothing alien in their consciousness, then indeed they must be in a room with no door.
“We haven’t been dosed. The door is gone.”
Micah stands up. Pounds on the wall. Pounds again harder. Screams. I swallow the screams, soak them into the walls, muffle the sound of pounding. They are too much mine to change the walls I dwell in, they are too much mine to shout out of this room. He pounds until his fist bleeds, soaking a drop of blood into the wall that I soak in, almost just to show him that I can do that.
“Why? Why is it gone?”
He smashes the wall again again again as if he has the might in his body to cave it down as if his rage makes him larger and tougher and turns his fists into anvils of hurt that will make dust and drywall rain down and the palace come down around him completely.
Investigation
Brian trembles as he climbs the stairs. He has given enough to me that I can see bits and pieces of his reasonings. He wants to see that there is nobody in the study. He wants to know that everyone around him is going nuts because he suspects that everyone around him has gone nuts. Nobody has seen or spoken to Kaz’s doctor before. He comes in quietly through the back and sits down in the study and they meet and they can hear crying and moaning sometimes. None of anyone’s business though it’s certainly not right for Kaz to keep fucking her doctor. What the fuck kind of doctor is this?
Brian had a key made it seems. I couldn’t follow him out so I didn’t know this. He knows this is the day when Kaz has her sessions. He is trembling as he climbs the stairs because he’s afraid of throwing open the door and finding Kaz in there speaking to an actual doctor. He’s trembling because he knows that when he throws open the door, this is not what he’ll find. He stops two steps from the top and he sits down. He looks like he’s contemplating prayer, as if his prayers could penetrate these walls and reach a god that resided somewhere outside them instead of the one with them who is the only one that can listen. Which is, of course, me.
The Closetsong drifts him back, taking him for a moment to the man in the grey suit and to the great black Heap that stood behind his father before his father brought out the belt and taught him manners. He holds his shoulders and shivers. This is an icy chill, a chill of terror and one of realization. Were haunted houses simply haunted houses or was his life itself every bit as haunted? He thinks the word “ghosts” dozens and dozens of times. He looks down the stairs, which I take time to contort, which I take time to enlarge in his mind, to make him childsized and smaller once again.
He can turn the key or he can go back downstairs. He can hear a voice talking softly behind the door and he can see the chance of freedom and the chance of escape yawning wide underneath him, a great chasm of possible cowardices seeking to absorb him. I do not know if I want him to open the door or flee. This is a tough decision. I’m sure he’ll make the wrong one, though. It is in people’s natures.
He climbs the stairs. He goes to the door and listens, hearing Kaz crying.
“I don’t know who it belongs to. I just don’t know. And I’m scared. It’s growing in me and it’s getting bigger and it’s angry to be in there. It’s scared and angry to be born. And I don’t blame it. What kind of mother am I going to be? How can I raise a child. I’m not stable enough. I’m not sane enough to raise somebody’s child!”
He tries to quietly let himself slump down but her words are devastating, a low and crushing blow that leaves him folded on the ground. He crosses his arm against his chest and tries his hardest not to cry. It could be his. They did what they did when they did. The time would be right for it to be his. And somehow she doesn’t even remember. Ghosts. We’re being fucked with. Something in this house is fucking with us. Something is fucking with us.
“I think I should get rid of it. I keep hearing this voice in my head that tells me to get rid of it. I’m not ready for this. I’m not somebody’s mother. Yeah, I think I’m going to get rid of this thing. I don’t even know who the father is. That’s how unstable my life is right now.”
There is silence. He doesn’t hear anybody talking back. Kaz is talking about a pregnancy she doesn’t remember with a doctor that isn’t there. He walks away. He knocks on Micah’s door. They haven’t talked much, him and Micah. Micah’s always working out or spending time with Cytherea or fucking Cytherea or fucking someone. Micah has his own world. Not like Kaz or Leah or Brian. Maybe Micah won’t be worried about Kaz at all. Something is fucked up though and something is fucking with everyone. Micah believes in New Age shit. Maybe Micah believes in ghosts, even though Brian doesn’t quite believe in ghosts.
Micah might believe in ghosts but he is occupied. Cytherea and him are curled up in an urgent embrace, tears in eyes. Please please please let this end. Please please please let us find the door. Please please please out. Please out. Please. Please. Please let the walls let the walls be thin again, please let them break right down. Please let us out. Please let us be heard, please let someone come in so it isn’t just us alone in the dark with the knowledge that there’s nothing else in the world. Please let them smell the stink of our shit as it piles in the corner please let them care its there. Please let them let us out. Please let us out.
“Micah,” says Brian.
“You there?”
“Cytherea?”
He knocks again. I let them hear the knock. I let them know there’s somet
hing and someone else on the other side of the wall. They wish that he could hear them but he’ll never hear them again.
“He’s out there,” says Micah, “the house is still out there. We haven’t been sent somewhere else.”
Cytherea gets up and listens at the wall. She hears the knocking on the door that is supposed to be there and the sound of a roommate shouting in concern. A roommate who hasn’t seen them for two days, two days that they believe might have been a year. For them it has been longer. For awhile, they had retreated to separate corners of the room. Cytherea has read a couple books. Micah has read a couple books. They have each turned on their computers and found the internet out. They have found their phones get no signal. When you have faith in these walls, I am God.
Brian tries one more time.
“Hey, Micah? If you’ve got a sec, I’d like to talk you about something.”
“Brian!” Micah shouts out, “We can’t get out of here! The door is gone. I don’t know why but the door is gone. How long have we been in here? It feels like forever.”
Brian listens at the door that is not there to them. He cannot hear any activity coming from inside. He can’t hear the words being shouted out and directed right at him. He doesn’t know they’ve been trapped there and what that means. He thinks he is simply dealing with a ghost. He decides that they are probably just out. They are probably just out somewhere, that’s it. He moves on, still unnerved over Kaz and seeking some sort of companionship and contact or at least someone to tell what has gone down.
So, he of course goes to the door of his remaining roommate. Leah has not been out in a couple days either. She has been looking thin and pale and acting a little weird. He has not seen her eat or socialize since the night when they all had Kaz’s vodka together. He’s been a bit concerned for her and would be more concerned if it wasn’t for the fact that he had had sex with Kaz before and had had sex with a ghost in this very house. Leah’s behavior would have been disturbing had it not been in the context of all these other tragedies and absurdities.
