by Abe Moss
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Her hands drifted from his arms to his shoulders.
“Where are your clothes?” she asked.
They stood silently together, questions without answers.
Finally she took his hand and led him up the beach, toward the trees with the dim light shining through. Her hair was frizzy and full around her head, catching the light in its bushy hollows. He stumbled behind her, his vision blurred with blood, sticky in his eyelashes. There was a comfort about her. Despite the uncanniness, he was eager to follow.
They reached the tree line and she said over her shoulder, “Watch your step.”
The trees were narrow but tight. If Lewis hadn’t already been in pain from the dozens of lacerations across his body, he would have noticed the branches scratching and jabbing him in his sides and legs. His mother made her way through the trees as though she’d been through them many times before.
“Where are we?” Lewis asked.
“We’re almost there.”
The closer they came to the other side of the trees the clearer Lewis saw their destination beyond. A house. It was familiar to Lewis, familiar in a way that frightened him, in a way that made his grip on his mother’s hand loosen the farther they walked together, the more it revealed itself to him. It loomed up ahead, white and prim, as far as he could tell by the yellow light coming through the windows. And not just one or two windows, but all of them. Every room in the house must have been lit. The light did not dance. Electric light.
When they left the trees, it was unmistakable.
“We’re home,” his mother said. She turned to him, now visible under the warm light overhead. Her pleasant smile hinted at something more, something desperate.
Before he took another step, he had to ask. “Are you really her?”
Her smile waned some, unsure. She shrugged. Then she put her hands on his arms again, rubbed them affectionately as though to warm him up.
“We should get you inside,” she said. “You’re filthy.”
She moved to the back porch, hand on the door. He stayed where he was, watching, perplexed but curious, knowing it wasn’t as it seemed but half-yearning for it to be—a dream happening right in front of him. She stopped before she opened it, smiled at him standing there, naked and damaged.
“You coming inside?”
✽ ✽ ✽
It was all as he remembered it. The kitchen walls were wallpapered, yellow and blue stripes. The blue curtains on the windows were billowy, puffy, decorative in their lacy trim. The square dining table was high enough that even an adult had to push themselves up on the matching chairs. Lewis sat there, pruned toes barely reaching the floor underneath, marveling at the room, at the refrigerator covered in magnets with nothing pinned underneath, at the cross-stitches hung on the walls depicting various summer scenery—a beachball sitting under a palm tree, an ocean horizon at sundown. A round, red clock ticked audibly. A large wooden plaque was mounted over the stove, which read:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
~ 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
He knew this house well. It was the house he’d been brought home to as a newborn. It was the house he’d taken his first steps. It was the house he’d invited his friends to for sleepovers as a kid, sleeping on the floor in the living room or in the backyard under the stars—the backyard was gone, however, replaced instead by the surrounding shore of this lonesome island. It was the house where he did his homework and studied for his tests. It was the house where he once had two parents and then had one.
His mother offered him a glass of water which he gratefully accepted, though was reluctant to drink. He wasn’t certain it would kill him, but he’d heard it both ways and he’d made it too far now to test his luck. And that was all right. Though he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for quite some time—possibly since he first awoke in this place—he didn’t feel hungry or thirsty. It was curious, he thought.
His mother watched him while he turned the glass of water in his hand. He smiled, polite and nervous, and she smiled back.
“You rest here a minute,” she said, and started for the bottom of the stairs through the doorway to the next room. “I’m going to run a warm bath for you.”
He didn’t want to bathe. It felt so surreal and inappropriate to even think about at a time like this. The house, with its lights and electricity and cleanliness, didn’t belong. It was out of this world. The simple fact it existed at all clued Lewis in to the undeniability that something more sinister was at play. The darkness had made this. His mother, too, was of the same material. None of it was real. He couldn’t help but feel like the fly in a spider’s web.
He stood from the table. He left the kitchen, wandered into the living area through the doorway beyond the stairs. It was simple and small. A couch was pushed against the wall, a plain brown coffee table in front of it covered in free magazine subscriptions, enough to rival the most crowded doctor’s office. The walls here were less vibrant than the kitchen, painted white and only white. There was a longer, narrower table opposite the couch, against the wall where the stairs climbed from the kitchen. On this table was a series of framed pictures—pictures of him as a toddler and a teen, pictures of his mother and his father. He held a picture of his mother and father together and studied it. It had been a long time since he’d seen his father. Long enough that he sometimes needed a picture to remember…
He set the picture down and moved on. There was a small table beside the front door holding a lamp and a dish full of those colorful pastel mints. Lewis crossed the living room to this table, drew out a single mint and held it to his nose. He listened to the water move through the pipes in the walls as his mother filled the bathtub upstairs. There were a lot of memories in this house, he thought. It was a shame not many of them were favorable.
“The bath is ready.”
Lewis jumped at her voice. He tossed the mint back in the dish and turned around. His mother stood in the doorway, pleased just to see him. He held his hands before him meekly, doing his casual best at hiding his nudity. Being in a real home again, with clean floors and furniture and actual bright lights, his body felt all the more grimy and exposed.
“I put out a clean towel and some clothes for you in the bathroom.”
It was getting to be too much. He stared into her, through her, in shock or waiting for the dream to end, he didn’t know. Eventually she came to him, took him by the wrist and pulled him away from the spot where he was rooted and led him to the stairs.
She pointed up them and said, “First door there on the left, with the light on. I’m just going to clean up down here in the meantime.”
There was nothing to clean up, he was sure. Unless putting his untouched glass of water away was ‘cleaning up’. But that was her script. She wasn’t real. The darkness choreographed according to his memory. Unfortunately, it’d been long enough since he’d spoken to her that his memory was only a glorified cliché at best.
Nevertheless, he did as he was told and went upstairs. He shut the bathroom door behind him. The clothes on the counter weren’t his, or any he remembered. A gray t-shirt and a pair of jean shorts. He went to the bath. He touched two fingers to the water and found it warm enough he knew it’d be hot to climb all the way in. That was perfect.
He eased himself in, wincing as the hot water touched each wound up his body, and watched as the water turned red and brown.
✽ ✽ ✽
He stayed in the bath until the water was cold. Not once did his mother come to check on him. There was a bar of soap, which he didn’t touch. He only soaked, let the water loosen the stains from his skin so that he would at least hold the appearance
of being clean. Aside from that, the hot water was ecstasy. His weak body surrendered to it entirely. As the bath cooled, he considered draining it and filling it again with new, hot water, but his limbs were so sore and defeated he couldn’t bring himself to move. He partly wanted the bath to go on forever so long as it meant not having to face the rest of the house beyond that door.
He stood up in the tub, though it took all his recovered energy to get there, and pulled the towel around himself. When he was dry, he stepped out onto the bathmat and finished drying his feet and then pulled the plug from the drain. He dressed himself in the clothes he didn’t recognize. He could guess well enough whose they were.
When he left the bathroom, his mother emerged from a bedroom down the hall to meet him. She stopped where she was, at a distance, and admired him.
“They fit you,” she said, satisfied. “About as well as they fit your father.”
“Don’t I still have any clothes of my own here?” he asked. It was a question purposed for testing the accuracy of his surroundings more than it was a genuine question. But then, after he said it, he wasn’t wholly sure.
“No. You took them all when you left.”
Her face darkened. Far away and thoughtful.
“You should come see this,” she said, perking up and disappeared back into the bedroom. Lewis looked longingly at the stairs behind him. He could leave, he thought. He didn’t have to go along with this. He knew that if he left and never returned, swam out into the ocean and let it have him again, she would cease to exist.
He followed after her.
There were multiple boxes arranged on the bed. When he entered she was on her hands and knees dragging out more from underneath. They were boxes he didn’t think he knew anything about. Did the darkness fill in his memory’s holes?
“What is all this?”
She heaved the last box up onto the bed with a grunt. “Junk, mostly. But I know there are a few things…”
A trip down ol’ memory lane. Was that what the darkness had brought him there for? He could almost laugh, if he wasn’t so busy swallowing his growing discomfort.
She opened the first box and gave a delighted sigh.
“Do you remember these?” she asked, and pulled out a handful of plastic toy figures, assembled from individual pieces, joints, and gears wielding various weapons. Lewis took a couple from her hands.
“Bionicles,” he said. “I loved these.”
“Oh, is that what they’re called? I think I just called them your Legos…”
“Well, actually they—” He stopped himself, reminded himself none of it was real. The woman he spoke to was nothing more than a hologram to him. He handed them back. “What else is in there?”
“Looks like nothing but toys in this box.”
She put the box on the floor and dragged the next one across the bed toward them. Lewis moved closer to the bed, hands in the pockets of his shorts.
“Oh my,” she said, peering into the next one. “I wonder if you’ll remember these.”
They were books. Children’s books. She handed him a stack of three. The book on top sent a cold pang of realization blooming in his gut. It showed a black train on its cover, old and rusted. The conductor, a cheery old man with a bushy white mustache, hung out from the side door with his hat in his hand. All the windows in all the cars behind him similarly had passengers leaning out waving and smiling. Curious most of all was the brown dog on top of the train, head up to face the wind through its fur. Perhaps that’s what the passengers leaned through their windows to see…
He shuffled it to the bottom of the stack, as though looking at the next would distract him.
“I remember your father would read these to you almost every night when you were just little.”
He looked at the second book, that queasy feeling yet to settle. What he saw was a whimsical drawing of a small child’s ankles and sneakers on black pavement. Each of the sneakers had a face, two eyes and a mouth. One was grinning, playful—the other appeared sad, distracted. The book was titled “Right Foot, Wrong Foot”.
That nauseous feeling expanded. It was enough that he wanted to lay down before it became too much. To look at the final book in the stack, he thought, might be enough to make him sick.
“What’s wrong?” his mother asked.
He glanced up to see her worried face. “I don’t know. I don’t feel well…”
She took the books from him, placed them back into the box.
“I know you miss him,” she said. “Maybe as much as I do.” She sealed the flaps of the box and pushed it away to make room for the next, which she reached for across the bed and dragged it toward them. “You were so young, I worried sometimes you wouldn’t remember him…”
“Of course I—”
Lewis stopped short—not because he reminded himself again that conversation here was useless, as this woman wasn’t truly his mother… no, it wasn’t that. He stopped short when he noticed the box on the bed was leaking something, the cardboard at the bottom crumpled and damp. It was dark. He looked beyond the box, where his mother had dragged it across the bed. The blanket was covered in it. Blood.
“What is that?” he said.
“Hmm?” She turned and looked at the mess it had made. “Oh my. I don’t think I know what’s inside this box…”
She started pulling the flaps apart. Before she could open it, Lewis turned away, faced into the hall in the doorway.
“Is everything okay?”
“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t. I need air.”
He fled the room, down the hallway on rickety legs. He floated down the stairs, as though his feet weren’t there at all. He turned and passed through the kitchen toward the back door. The entire distance from the upstairs bedroom to the kitchen downstairs, all he saw was the box on the bed, the blood oozing from its corners, so that when he touched his hand to the door to go outside, he didn’t remember at all how he’d gotten there, only that he was grateful, that he didn’t care.
He pushed his way out into the cool breezy black, down the creaking porch steps onto the sand. He bent, hands on his knees, breathing rhythmically. The air was fresh and light on his lungs. He only now realized how stuffy the air had been inside, how old and stagnant. Festering. Had it always been that way? Or was it just upstairs, in the bedroom, in that box…
He inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, until that hot feeling in the pit of his stomach, the rising bile, settled back into place. He kicked the sand, hands on his hips, eyes to the starless sky overhead. Behind him, the back door remained shut. His mother hadn’t chased after him, which was a surprise. He lacked the endurance to go back. If reentering the house meant looking inside that final box, he refused. There was no reason to torture himself. Facing that, whatever it was—he thought he knew what it might be—couldn’t possibly be the answer to his escape. It was too macabre, too cruel. It was the darkness.
“It’s me in that box, isn’t it.”
Lewis choked. He stood back, defenseless. Into the weak light spilling down on them from the lit windows, she revealed herself. Her hair was pulled back in a filthy ponytail. She wore little overall shorts, blue denim splotched deep with purple. Lewis’s breath was sucked out of him. She looked up—the biggest, sorriest eyes.
“That must be why you’re so afraid of it. You’re afraid of me.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He thought for sure he’d never see her again, not in this place. “You’re not really here right now, are you?”
Her eyes dipped, stared off. Finally she shrugged.
“You were inside with us?” he asked. “You saw the box?” She hesitated, thought about it, which was answer enough for Lewis. “Or is it that I saw the box, and you’re in my head. That’s how you know. That’s how you’ve always known.”
“I feel real.”
She did feel real, Lewis thought. She’d felt real when she untied him from that table in those psychopaths’ house. She’d bitte
n one of their hands, he remembered—the man, Grant. Not to mention, the man with the fiery eyes had seen her. He interacted with her. She existed to them. So then…
“I think I am,” she said. “I know I am.”
He’d also seen the burning house—Harvey’s house. A house belonging to Harvey’s past. The darkness imagined it up for him, but Lewis saw it too. Not even Harvey seemed to realize others could see it until Lewis asked. This girl, he thought, could be the very same.
“I don’t think you are,” he told her. He faced the house at their back, all its windows lit. He checked each of them, expecting to see his mother’s watching figure. “You’re as real as this house. It exists, but only here. To show me something. To remind me…”
“But I knew you were alive,” she said. “I’ve known it all along.”
“Sure you have.”
“I have. I tried to tell you.”
“When?”
“After you met those guys. When you woke up from your nap, I tried telling you but you wouldn’t listen. You never listen—”
“Well I’m here now, anyway,” he interrupted. “So it doesn’t matter. And I’m not sure this is even it.”
“Even what?”
“The way out.”
He kicked the sand, pacing the bottom of the porch steps.
“I think it is,” she said. “And it does matter. Because… how could I have known that, if I wasn’t real? If I’m just in your head like you think, how could I know something you don’t?”
Lewis shook his head, exasperated. “I don’t know. I don’t care anymore.”
“You should care.”
“What do you really know?” Lewis shouted. He turned on her—her dainty, child’s body shrinking under him—scowling, lungs puffing. “You’re not the one trapped here forever.”
He retreated to the porch again, turned his back to her as he leaned on the wooden railing with his head hung bitterly. His voice trailed after him, suspended in the silence that followed, echoing in his ears, in his head. He hated the sound of his voice when he became like this—shrill, whining.
