Bad Glass

by Richard E. Gropp

  After a pause, Devon continued, his disembodied voice filling the room. “Containment is another matter. One we can actually do something about.”

  “Don’t worry about Charles.” This was a new voice—a man’s voice—barely rising above the hiss of static. It sounded faint and distant, a trickle of words beamed from the other side of the world. At the sound of the new voice, Charlie blanched, literally blanched, his face turning a sickly shade of gray. The voice continued, “If it comes down to it, we’ll deal with Charles.”

  “I’m sure you will, but just in case, I’ve got my own contingencies moving into place,” Devon said. “No offense intended. I’m sure you can do your job, but I did not get to the place I’m at by taking other people at their word. We’ve got to plug these leaks, no matter what your familial concerns may be.”

  “I understand,” the man replied, his voice still a muted whisper. Static and distance had stripped away all hint of emotion.

  Devon’s first words had knocked Charlie back on his heels, but this second voice hit him even harder, leaving him perched motionless on his folded knees, his mouth hanging open in a lowercase “o.” Now he broke his paralysis and scrambled forward, his hands darting across the front of the radio. Finally, he managed to find the big red “transmit” button.

  “Dad,” he called, his voice catching on the final note, the raised lilt that would have transformed the word into a question. “Dad, it’s Charlie. Is that you?”

  The static continued for a couple of seconds—tense seconds—as we both waited for the voice to respond. Then the static stopped, and there was only silence. Devon and the mysterious voice—Charlie’s father, I thought. Is that even possible?—were gone, leaving behind the sound of mute wires.

  Charlie sat still for a couple of seconds, and then he turned his ashen face toward me. His eyes were wide, and he looked stricken, shocked absolutely senseless.

  “How could you be sure?” I asked. “It was a whisper. I could barely hear him. It could have been anyone.”

  Charlie shook his head. “No, I know that voice. It was him.”

  And then, more quietly, “It was him,” he repeated. He dropped his eyes back to the radio and stared at it expectantly, as if he were still waiting for it to resume speaking, waiting for it to morph into the face of his father. There was a lot there in that look: confusion, expectance, fear. Hope.

  “Why would your father be talking to Devon?” I asked. “You said your parents were here, in the city. You’ve been looking for them. Why? What are they doing? What does this mean?”

  He glanced back up at me, but his eyes remained distant. There was little there but shock and, just maybe—deep down inside—a dawning horror, a seed of understanding that was just now starting to take root. I could see it: a widening of the eye, a quiver in the lip.

  And I wondered again, What does this mean? If anything, that look of horror on Charlie’s face said that his father’s voice coming from that radio meant something, something important.

  “What’s his job, Charlie?” I asked. “What does your father do?”

  He didn’t respond to my question. His eyes just slipped back down to the radio. And he continued to wait.

  I tried to wait him out. I tried to wait for the shock to subside, for the answers to start coming, but Charlie remained mute. He just sat there in the middle of the room, fixated on that matte-black radio.

  After a couple of minutes, a sound erupted in the quiet house, and it made me jump. It was a loud, prolonged creak, like a tight hinge slowly swinging open, and it came from downstairs.

  I jumped to my feet and started toward the door. Charlie remained seated. He didn’t even raise his eyes. I didn’t even think he’d heard the sound. I left him sitting in front of the radio and quietly moved out into the hallway.

  My nerves were frayed by the time I reached the top of the stairs, and my heart was beating hard. I had no idea what I might find downstairs. Maybe Devon, I thought. Maybe he heard us and he’s sneaking up from the tunnels, setting up an ambush, getting ready to deal with us. Maybe this is what he meant by “containment.” Or maybe it’s not Devon. Maybe it’s something else, something much, much worse. Amanda’s dogs or Weasel’s disembodied fingers. Ghosts. Monsters. Swarms of mutant spiders.

  “Hi, Dean.” The voice was quiet and subdued, drained of all energy. It was the type of voice a sponge would have, if the sponge had been taking sedatives for a month straight. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  It was Floyd. He was in the downstairs hallway, sitting with his back against the front door, the exact same spot I’d found him in the last time we were here, after he’d fled the tunnels in absolute horror. The cellar door stood open across from him, and a fresh trail of mud stretched from the gaping dark maw to his muddy boots.

  I made my way down the rest of the stairs and stood over him for a moment. When he didn’t look up, I sat down at his side.

  “I found a flashlight,” he said, lifting a large metal Maglite from his lap. After a moment, it dropped back down to his thighs, his arm collapsing under its weight. “Much better than your camera screen.”

  “I thought it scared you,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and soothing. “I thought we couldn’t drag you back underground.”

  He shrugged. “I had to. It was … calling to me.” He laughed, a cold and lifeless chuckle. “Isn’t that stupid? It called, and I came, again and again. And here I am, the king of running away. But I just had to see. I had to see him.”

  “Who?”

  He looked up from the flashlight in his lap. His eyes were out of focus.

  “They aren’t working anymore,” he said, ignoring my question. He dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pill bottle, shaking it upside down to show me it was empty. “I’ve taken, like, six now, and I’m perfectly sober.”

  I nodded, humoring him.

  His shoulders slumped even lower. “It was my brother,” he said. “When we were underground before, I swear I saw my younger brother down there, in those tunnels. He was sitting there, cross-legged in the middle of one of those offshoots—you know, the one I was looking down when you were taking your pictures? When you hit your flash, I saw him sitting there, in the dirt. And then the next flash, he was starting to stand up, heading toward me.” Floyd tilted his head back against the wall and sighed. I could hear energy seeping out in that exhausted breath. Pretty soon he’d be an empty husk, puddled on the floor like a deflated balloon. “So I ran. That’s me. I always run. But now … now I can’t stop thinking about it, about him. No matter what I fucking do, what I fucking take.”

  “What happened to your brother?” I asked. “Why was he down there?”

  Floyd tilted his head toward me and smiled. “I killed him, Dean—that’s what happened. I fucking killed him.”

  There was a surprising warmth in his voice and a tiny little smile on his lips as he talked, as he tried to explain. And those two things remained even as his words turned to horrible things. Warm voice and tiny smile. They were a jarring contrast to the tears clinging to his cheeks and the pain and helplessness in his roving eyes.

  “Byron. His name was Byron. And he idolized me. He wanted to hang out with me and talk like me and skate like me. And I tried to make time for him, really I did. I tried to look out for him. My father left when we were both pretty young, and my mom, she had her own problems—trying to support us and raise us right—and I wanted to take some of the weight off her shoulders. You know how it is, right?” He looked up at me, pleading, and I nodded. I could understand, even if I’d never had a brother, or a sister, or a parent who’d had to scrape and sacrifice just to make my life a little better. “I let him tag along when I went skating. Me and my friends … he was like a fucking mascot or something, and it kept us both out of my mom’s hair, so she didn’t complain. He was a pretty good skater. Not great, but good. I don’t know if he could have really gone pro, but being my brother and all, that certainly helped. The c
ompany reps took him seriously, and when we hung out, they always wanted to give him free stuff. I worked some consulting shit for a company called F*ckstick—kind of a poseur company, with a little fucking star instead of the ‘u’ in their name—but they had me testing boards, giving input on design and image and stuff. Hell, they were even going to release a signature deck under my name, put my face in the ads and the whole celebrity endorsement shtick. Bullshit like ‘Ride Pretty Boy Floyd’s pretty-boy stick.’ And God, man, isn’t that just about the most awful thing you’ve ever heard?” Floyd let out a little laugh. It ended in an abrupt, wheezing gasp, as if he’d just been punched in the stomach. “Byron would tag along whenever I went to their offices in San Diego. This was right after I dropped out of high school, so he couldn’t have been more than thirteen. He was there so much, they ended up making him his own board. Probably just trying to kiss up to me, really—buttering up my brother and all that—but he was so fucking proud of that board. Their graphic designer even did a caricature of him, in midflight, with wings sprouting out of his back, like a motherfucking angel—it was right there, blazed across the hardwood. It’s corny, I know, but really, I’ve seen worse. They probably could have sold it in stores. Anyway, they never did release my deck—I think they were just stringing me along, really, trying to get my expertise on the cheap—but Byron still loved that board. He kept it pristine, never wanting to ride it. He just kept it propped up on top of his dresser, standing there like an icon, like some type of religious shrine.” Floyd shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe it was his future he saw up there: flying through the air on a skateboard, fucking angel wings on his back. Just like his motherfucking brother.”

  He paused and reached up to touch the side of his face, brushing his fingers against his cheek. His grin remained, but it had turned hard, an expression of perplexed bittersweet nostalgia. He ran his fingers from his temple down to the curve of his lips. His touch was light, as if he were exploring a brittle ceramic mask, something ready to crack and crumble and fall away.

  After a moment, his eyes looked up and found me, locking on my face for a second before swiveling back to the cellar door.

  “We lived in Santa Cruz at the time, and my friends and I had this little place in the woods, just off 17, near the base of the foothills. It was just a little clearing where we hung out, drank and smoked. Where we talked about boarding and tried to hook up with the skater chicks that were always hanging around. There was a fire pit out there, and most nights we had it burning. It wasn’t far off the road; it was just a little country lane type of thing, branching off of the highway. And the clearing was so close, if you stood on the shoulder, you could see the fire sparking down in the mess of trees and brush, just down an incline and a hundred yards away. Fuck, I’m surprised we didn’t burn down all of California with those fires.” He paused and was lost in thought for a moment. “But anyway, I took him there a couple times. Not a lot. Not often. And I didn’t let him drink or anything. Just … we’d just be hanging out there with all of my friends, and that was something he really loved.

  “He was just trying to be close to me. I know that. The kid fucking idolized me. And I humored him. I looked out for him. I tried to include him. That was my job. I figured it was my duty. But it was more than that, I guess. I guess it was something I loved. I was his big brother, man, and I loved being his big brother. I loved that look in his eyes, that simple adoration.” Floyd’s smile widened, and for a brief moment it didn’t seem quite so creepy.

  “And then … one night—this was in late September—he got in a fight with my mom. It was all your typical teenage bullshit. He was concentrating too much on skating, and his grades were starting to slip, yadda yadda yadda—spending too much time out on his board or daydreaming about his board and not enough time studying. My mom was smart. She’d seen it all before—it was the exact same thing that happened to me—and she didn’t want that for him. She didn’t want him dropping out of school and wasting every last cell inside that thick teenage skull of his. So she grounded him. He bitched and moaned and kicked and screamed, and really, like I said, it was all your typical whiny teenage bullshit. But he knew I was going out with my friends, so he snuck out and tried to join us. But … he never made it there.”

  Floyd paused. The mask cracked a bit, and there was a flicker of movement in the corner of that horrible grin. His eyes were glassy and brimming with tears.

  “Have you ever heard a mountain lion scream?” he asked. I had a hard time parsing the question. It seemed like such a non sequitur, just random words strung together. “It’s a type of mating call that the females make—a shrill, yowling sound. And in the dark, it can sound like a human scream or a baby crying. Well, I heard some that night, out by the fire, and it was like an omen. It set my teeth on edge and had my arm hair standing up straight. I turned and mentioned it to one of the girls we were with—how creepy it was, how scary—and she just laughed and called me a pussy. But there was another scream right then, shrill and labored, and that shut her up real fast. It was a very, very creepy sound, just this loud yodeling howl out there in the woods, all pain and horror. After a while, though, we managed to laugh it off, and we went back to our drinking and bullshitting. Mountain lions are pretty common in Santa Cruz, after all, and we knew that as long as we stayed by the fire, we’d be fine … no matter how scary they might sound, screaming out there in the dark.

  “Byron didn’t show up that night, and I had no reason to think there was anything wrong. The world felt the same to me, even though it had changed, even though it had become something fundamentally different. There was no thunder in the sky, no proclamations, no buildings crashing down around my head. But things had changed. I just didn’t know it yet; I couldn’t know it. Not then. I just went back home and crashed. I didn’t even know he was gone until the next morning, when my mom woke me up. She was pissed off, and she started calling around to all of his friends. She grilled me—like I might have something to do with it—she tried to pump me for information. She thought—we both thought—that he’d just run away, that he was hiding somewhere with his friends, that he’d make his way back home any minute now.

  “We didn’t report him missing for three days. Jesus! Three fucking days! What kind of monsters are we?” he asked. Then, without skipping a beat, he went on with his story. “It was raining pretty hard by then, and we were both getting nervous. His friends hadn’t seen him. Nobody had seen him.”

  Floyd paused. His mouth opened and closed, and it looked like he was having trouble picking out the right words.

  “I … I …” He paused again and then changed tack. “The police released information, and there were blurbs on the local news. Someone reported seeing a kid hiking along the shoulder of 17, and the police organized a search of the woods. We found him almost immediately. I was in the dragnet. I heard the yells and came running. He was right near the clearing, right near the fire pit—this place that I’d fucking shown him, this place where he knew I would be!” The edge of Floyd’s mouth was quivering now, and emotion was starting to leak through. “He was maybe a dozen feet off the path, at the bottom of the hill. He’d fallen in the dark, and he must have hit the ground just horribly wrong, just the worst possible way. His arm was shattered, and when I got there, I could see the bone sticking out—the fucking thing had torn through his long-sleeved shirt. His leg was bent backward, and there was a massive hole in his chest. The cloth around it had dried into a rain-washed red … He was dead, of course. He’d been dead for days. A fucking stick had punctured his abdomen. After the fall, he managed to pull it out—it was still there, clenched in his hand—but he’d bled to death in less than an hour.”

  “The medical examiner … he timed it, he placed the time at …” Floyd’s mouth once again began to quiver, and then, finally, it collapsed into convulsions and he was sobbing. I moved to put my hand on his shoulder, but he batted me away. His hand stung against my chin, and I dropped back onto my he
els.

  “I was there, at the fire, while he was out in the woods,” he finally managed, rubbing his palms against his wet cheeks. “And the mountain lions … there was absolutely no sign on his body, nothing, nothing trying to … trying to eat his body. There was no fucking … no fucking mountain lion out there in the night.” He paused once again, and after a final heave, the sobbing stopped. His face settled back into an emotionless mask. Thankfully, there was no hint of a smile this time, no eerie grin. “He was there as I was walking out. He was less than a dozen feet from the path. Bleeding. Unconscious. Dying. And I was stupid and oblivious, a little bit drunk, a little bit high. And he was there. Fucking dying. Alone. Alone in the woods. Alone in the dark.”

  He shook his head, a slow arthritic shake.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, I was probably laughing at the time, as I walked by. I was probably fucking laughing. And those mountain lion screams? Out there in the night?” He closed his eyes and let his head drop forward. “How … how could I be so stupid?”

  He was silent for a time, and then he looked up. There was anger on his face as he turned toward me.

  “What the fuck, Dean? Things were fine before, in the city. Things were cool. And then we had to go down there. Jesus Christ! Why the fuck did we have to go down there?” He picked the flashlight up off his lap and threw it across the entryway, through the cellar door. I heard it cascade down the flight of wooden stairs, and there was the sound of cracking concrete when it finally hit the bottom. “I was free, right? I was away from it all. Away from that house, away from my mom’s bland words and her distant eyes—it was like they wouldn’t focus anymore, at least not on me. I think she thought she had forgiven me, I think she genuinely believed that, but there was that look in her eyes. And she didn’t know about the screams. I never told her about the screams.” He shook his head angrily. “So I move on to San Diego, New York, motherfucking Brisbane. And then … I’m falling through the air, toward that wooden ramp, and fuck it if that plummet doesn’t feel right. And maybe I don’t turn when I should. Maybe I don’t go limp. And then I come here … and I’m away. Finally. I’m free! And I’m barely thinking about him. This place here—I don’t know—the weight of the air, the quality of the light … it’s not all that easy to think, you know? And I’m free.”