by Ilsa J. Bick
My chest got all tight, and my face flushed so hot I started to sweat, and I burst into tears. I just stood there, shoulders heaving and tears streaming down my face, gulping sobs in the middle of the living room—which we don’t use except for company. There are a lot of Aunt Jean’s things in here, and her pictures are everywhere, like some kind of creepy mausoleum. I could feel her eyes on me then from those pictures, and I got all limp. My legs wobbled and my knees gave out, and I sort of flopped to the floor. I groveled and sobbed the way a truly evil person does in all those movies when everyone knows he’s going to hell and there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it. I deserved everything bad that was going to happen because Eisenmann was right. I was nuts and I had gotten my aunt killed and made my teacher go insane, and weird shit was coming like thunderheads on the horizon, and if my mother had gone away, it was for a good reason—and probably on account of me.
I woke up in a sweaty ball on the living room carpet, drool on my right cheek. My clothes were moist and I could smell myself. At least, the muttering was gone.
I stood under a shower so hot my skin got boiled-looking and steam hazed the bathroom. Padding out of the bathroom in a towel, I dumped my clothes in the hamper, thought about doing a load. Only the laundry room reminded me of movies about prison laundries and then I felt the tears start up, and so I got out of there before I could start bawling again.
Usually Uncle Hank gets home for dinner round about seven, but it was eight thirty now, so I knew it was going to be another late night for him. Or maybe he didn’t want to see me. I made myself a peanut butter sandwich, took a bite, chewed, and then my throat balled, and I had to spit it out. I tossed the sandwich in the garbage.
I trudged up to my room, flicked on my fan, and lay down on my bed. The sun was almost gone, and my paintings of the sideways place—plum-purple and ruddy orange—looked bloody in the sunset. My head ached as if someone had taken a brick and pounded the top of my skull. I watched shadows creep across the ceiling. Tried not to think and couldn’t not think.
No question: I’d done a number on Eisenmann’s barn. So I had to be sleepwalking—and sleep-biking, come to think of it. That was the only explanation for my wet Chucks. The ache in my shoulders and arms was because I’d had to dangle from a rope tied off in the hayloft and needed one hand to keep from falling, the other to paint. The crescents of red paint beneath my nails just confirmed everything.
Then I thought back to the nightmare of the evening before: horses and blood and men screaming. A pitchfork.
For some reason, my eyes crawled to my desk. My drawing pad was squared there, a pencil worn almost down to nothing lying on top—and that was wrong. That pencil had been sharp the night before. As if in a dream, I opened my pad and started flipping pages ...
I didn’t start shaking until the next-to-last drawing. Because there was the barn I knew I’d never seen until today.
And on the very last page: a view of the town from a great distance and high up, from the hay door on the east side of the barn. Had to be. The fields and hills were right, and there was a smudge of lake, the foundry’s smokestacks, and the big square clock tower opposite the town hall—
And one more building I didn’t recognize at all that had an onion dome, like buildings in Russia. I stared. There was nothing like that in Winter. Not in this life—or world—anyway. And then I thought: The sideways place?
My whole body went clammy cold. That had never occurred to me before, that it might work like osmosis, you know? Maybe my mother and father could slip in and not get back out. But maybe that meant if something in there got out here, it couldn’t get back either because a balance had to be kept.
I remembered that weird muttering, gone now. What if the muttering really wasn’t me? What if something was sitting behind my eyes, in my head?
“Stop it.” My voice was shaky and sounded really small. “Stop freaking yourself out.”
But once I’d thought all this, it was impossible not to keep thinking. Uncorking the bottle and letting out the genie: That’s what Aunt Jean used to call it, when you’d get a notion in your head you just couldn’t shake. You can’t unthink a possibility once it’s occurred to you.
So.
So what if the thing out at the barn was something that I really hadn’t done? What if my body had been there, but not me?
I lay there, thinking about that, wondering what if. Then I cried again, pillow over my face in case Uncle Hank came home. While I lay there, my face all damp, I wondered what would happen if I fell asleep with the pillow still on my face. How long would it take for a grown man to suffocate a stupid teenager and would it hurt much . . . ?
Dumb things like that.
I don’t remember falling asleep so much as my head got swimmy and my thoughts slipped sideways and
hot so hot july bright sun that hurts my eyes and dust, the smell of scorched metal because the wind is blowing the wrong way today.
i run down main street because it is the day the train is coming and everyone is scared and excited all at the same time because THEY’RE coming . . .
Papa’s in the foundry back in the ceramics workshop, the special clean room that keeps out soot and dust and he’s painting something with lots of swirls and flowers and i’m not allowed there but i squirt through like a wet watermelon seed and burst in.
what’s this, he scowls, what are you doing?
–come on, Papa i tug his hand –come on, come on . . .
he comes because we are all curious . . . there’s a big crowd along the tracks and Marta is there in gauzy white and broad straw hat with a red red ribbon to match her hair band and i can tell Papa doesn’t like that, but she is seventeen and going to college to be an interpreter and she is as stubborn as Papa, so stubborn Mama says they should both be irish instead of polish.
the train is going very slowly so we can all get a very good look.
the prisoners are staring out at us through the open boxcars and there are other men with rifles.
the prisoners’ faces are still like wax like clay and they don’t smile and neither do we.
but
but they have eyes like wolves.
golden and strange and . . .
i look away.
–no good will come of this. sheriff Cage stands next to Papa and he has blue blue eyes like the sky at twilight. i’d be happier the crops rot in the fields than bring them here.
the union boys and Papa mill around but Mr. Eisenmann is happy. he’s very rich and so he didn’t have to go off to war because the plant is so important because of all the iron and his father gave him the plant to run and so for Mr. Eisenmann the prisoners are good because they can work the fields and the plant and anything else needs doing.
the union boys don’t like it. Papa doesn’t like it. Eisenmann’s out to break us, that’s what they say.
the mayor makes a speech. the prison commander makes a speech. it’s so hot sweat trickles down my sides and glues my shirt to my back.
Mr. Eisenmann is all gold, the ring on his little finger, the links of his gold watch chain, the buttons of his linen suit, even his cravat and his hair. he talks the longest about how the prisoners will stay in the old dormitories on the foundry grounds and how they will be good for the town and he brings a prisoner with white teeth and blue eyes to stand next to him and they are both gold in the sun like when Mrs. Grunewald talks about the gemini twins in school and Mr. Eisenmann puts his arm around the prisoner and calls him my friend and my right arm and my brother and this is all good only i don’t think so and the union boys are against it all and my Papa most of all.
then the prisoner talks Mr. Eisenmann’s friend talks and he has white teeth and his eyes are bluer than the sky . . . his skin is brown as a nut because of being in the sun all the time and this makes his teeth look even whiter and his words are perfect . . . his accent is less than mine and that makes me ashamed.
the sheriff shakes his head. –my boy’s still
over there. war’s over and my boy still doesn’t know when he can come home. bringing in prisoners to work when our own boys could do the work . . . this ain’t right . . . and I don’t care how many relatives folks here got back there ain’t none of these people my friend . . .
they take pictures of Mr. Eisenmann and the sheriff and the men with rifles and the prisoner with no accent and the good teeth . . .
but then something happens and only i see it.
the prisoner looks at Marta and she stares back and then she smiles. and then his face changes.
it melts like wax. his jaw gets long and his eyes are yellow and then gold and his teeth are sharp sharp sharp as the pitchfork . . .
and his lips are black and peel back and he is a wolf . . .
he is a wolf and only i see it and there is blood, so much blood, Papa no, no Papa, don’t . . . no not the pitchfork no . . . blood on my clothes and on my hands and it’s sticky and smells like a milk pail left out in the rain . . . t he horses smell it and they are stamping and kicking the stalls and i want to run run run run far far away but i have to be quiet ssshh ssshh ssshh . . .
then the ghosts cluster round and they stab, they sting, they take my mouth, don’t take my mouth please don’t take my mouth, i need to scream, i need to scream Papa Papa Papa don’t . . .
III
When I woke up after one in the morning, it was to the taste of dust in my mouth and the sour smell of my sweat and images that made no sense.
And, oh yeah—I was still alive.
It was Thursday, a cereal day, and so when I stumbled downstairs after nine, Uncle Hank was in the kitchen, with a mug of coffee cupped in his hands. He looked up as I dragged in. “Christian. How’d you sleep?”
“Not too good.” There was a bowl of Cocoa Puffs at my place. I usually had Wheaties or corn flakes. Cocoa Puffs used to be my favorite, only Aunt Jean said I didn’t need the sugar. I hadn’t had Cocoa Puffs since I was ten, but Uncle Hank had gone out and bought me Cocoa Puffs. I stared at the cereal and felt this big lump push into the back of my throat, and tears itched the backs of my eyes.
“Not surprised.” Uncle Hank pushed the milk toward me. “Sit down and have something to eat.”
“Okay.” I ate my Cocoa Puffs. I didn’t think I would be able to choke them down, but I did it for Uncle Hank. They tasted terrible and made me queasy. But I ate every last one. I even drank the milk just like when I was a kid.
Uncle Hank cleared his throat. “You’re supposed to appear in juvenile court on Friday.”
“Tomorrow? Isn’t that kind of fast?” I licked off a chocolate milk moustache. Maybe they didn’t need a lot of time when they had your sorry ass.
“A little.” He’d missed a patch shaving, and there was dried blood on his neck. His eyes looked raw. “But it’s probably best. Sooner you get this out of the way, sooner you get back to your life. Now, there are a couple of things going to happen today....” He went over them: lawyer, social worker, psychological tests.
When he was done, I said, “What do you want to have happen?”
“How do you mean?”
“Do you want me to go away?”
He looked genuinely shocked. “No. Of course not, Christian. How could you think such a thing?”
My lips started trembling again. “But I’ve screwed everything up. Everyone hates me and no college will ever take me and—”
“Quiet.” Uncle Hank’s voice was all clogged, like he had a cold. He put his hand out to touch my arm. “That’s enough of that. You haven’t done anything gonna jeopardize college, I promise.”
“You can’t know that. Mr. Eisenmann . . .”
“Is pissed off and used to getting his own way, but it’s not like you burned the factory down. We’re talking about a barn, and a derelict at that. Anyway, you’re going to juvenile court. Records are sealed. No college need ever know. In a couple years you can leave this and Winter behind—and that’s okay, Christian. This is my life, but it doesn’t have to be yours.”
That made me feel a little better. Then I thought of something. “What did you mean yesterday when you talked about the barn seeing trouble?”
“Oh.” Uncle Hank looked uncomfortable. “Well, there was a bad business happened there back before I was born. This was 1945, sometime in September, October. This would’ve been when your great-grandfather Jasper was sheriff. A man was murdered, that’s all. Farmhand. Never did catch his killer, though everyone knew who’d done it because he ran off. Worker at the foundry, some immigrant. Abandoned his wife and two children.”
“And they never caught him?”
“There was too much going on. That fire I told you about, the one that killed your great-grandfather and all those union boys and half the nonunion workers at the foundry, that happened maybe a week later. After that, well . . . I guess folks figured there were more important things to worry about. Anyway, technically, it’s still an open case, but...” He shrugged. “No one really looks into it anymore. Killer’s probably dead anyway.”
“Why would Mr. Eisenmann want the barn?”
“Because he’s Eisenmann and he wants everything. After the murder, wasn’t any way the owner—I think his name was Anderson—could work the fields. Things were bad enough during the war, trying to get enough labor to pick the crops and work the factory. Given the murder, people said the place was hexed. Haunted. Heck, someone back then even set fire to the farmhouse.”
“Really? Why burn the farmhouse and not the barn?”
“Before my time, I don’t know. Anyway, when I was a boy, we used to go out there on Halloween and try to scare ourselves silly. Of course, nothing ever happened.”
My mouth was gluey, so I got up and filled a glass with water from the tap. “But I’ve never done that. I’ve never been there before. I still don’t remember going there. Why would I go somewhere I haven’t been and take spray paints I don’t remember buying . . .” I drank my water, rinsed my glass, set it on the drain board, and then turned back to Uncle Hank. “Do you believe me?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I believe in you,” he said, but his eyes slewed sideways, and a few minutes later, he said he had business down at the department and left.
I got the court-appointed lawyer for juveniles. She was okay, but she kept checking her watch, and I wanted to scream that she should just go see all those way more important kids than me already. But I kept my mouth shut. That’s what I’m best at.
A social worker came. She spent a long time with Uncle Hank, and then she talked to me. She had this way of talking like she knew exactly how you were feeling and that made me kind of mad. (That’s the one thing about people who say they want to help kids. I never come away with that feeling. I always think about how they’re trained to talk to kids so kids will want to believe them, only they’re adults and they have jobs and they must do this a hundred times a month, and they can’t all be your friend.)
I also had to take a bunch of tests to see if I was crazy. One test was stupid and pretty long and asked a lot of questions over and over again, so I started psyching myself out, worrying that maybe they were trying to trick me by asking the same questions, then seeing if maybe I answered them differently than before. I thought about going back and checking to see what I’d answered but then I figured that this was what they wanted me to do and that it was a trick.... Then I decided I was screwed anyway, so what was the point?
Uncle Hank and I didn’t talk much—which, come to think of it, wasn’t really much different than normal. I’d said everything I could think of, anyway. There was this big hole in my chest, like I knew I was different and he’d done the best he could to protect me and here I was bringing him nothing but grief. Maybe it would be better if I just went away.
Court happened by Friday noon. There wasn’t much I had to do except stand up when the judge called my name and say, “Guilty” and then keep on standing s
o the judge could tell me what a sorry piece of work I was, how vandalism wouldn’t be tolerated, blah, blah, blah. Actually, it was good I didn’t have to do much other than be present and accounted for. By then, I wasn’t just creeped out by my dreams and what I’d drawn. I wasn’t only scared. I was freaking out. I mean, if you just looked at the thing, yeah, I was quiet and kind of dreamy and geeky-weird and talking was hard, but I hadn’t set fire to anything or robbed a bank or sold drugs. I wasn’t a bit like some guys I’d known at school. Like this one junior last year named Karl Dekker, who’d gotten kicked out for vandalizing the school and drinking and a bunch of other stuff. So considering a guy like him, it would be harder to justify sending me away to, like, a boy’s home or something. Man, if that happened, I would’ve left. I would have gotten out of town as fast as I could because they’d kill me in a place like that. The Dekker kind of kids? They’re scary.
Besides, this was my life. I had plans, things I was supposed to be doing. I had my eye on art school; I mean, when I did art-art, it was pretty good, and something about the idea of painting like Rembrandt and Velazquez and Caravaggio excited me. The way they used chiaroscuro, all those inky shadows and sudden light and drawing in the dark, was a language I understood. And Dali or Picasso: I wanted to understand how they drew out what they painted as a person or watch. For me, when the painting was going well, it’s like I said: There was this click in my head, like someone had thrown a switch somewhere and all of a sudden, I was on this different plane of existence. I know that sounds crazy, but I’ve read books about artists and writers and composers, and they all say the same thing: how when you’re creative, your brain works differently. My science teacher called it an altered state of consciousness, right-brain thinking. Something like that.
Anyway, when all was said and done at court, my punishment came down to community service and reparations. Which was a legal way of saying I had to repair the damage I’d done—repaint that side of the barn. My community service wasn’t bad, just working in the old-age home twice a week. Except the judge slapped me for eight hundred hours total, or some ridiculous number that would take me until past New Year’s to finish. But still, it could’ve been worse. I didn’t mind being around old people. The ones who remembered things were pretty interesting, actually, and I’d never had grandparents, so it was okay.
