Bad Man

by Dathan Auerbach

  The quiet one reached for his mother as she disappeared.

  58

  Ben hadn’t passed out. At least, he didn’t think he had. He was aware that time was passing, though he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He felt dull. Confused. Every bit of movement he tried to summon in his leg caused a riot in his nerves. He could only lie there, prostrate, buried alive in his own body.

  Ben tried to roll onto his side and shrieked in pain. The boy! Ben must have loosened his grip; he couldn’t feel him anymore. “Fuck!” Ben shouted. Again, he tried to move, and again his body wouldn’t allow it.

  The dark was nearly absolute. Beverly had taken the lantern, and what light escaped the clouds struggled through the warped wood, while wind rolled against the bones of the shed until they creaked. Ben craned his head against the dirt floor and looked behind him. The door was closed.

  Tremulously, Ben guided his hand down to his left thigh, moving slowly as if he were trying to sneak up on it. His fingers slipped into the holes in his newly tattered jeans. Pain spiked in his leg, and Ben inhaled sharply. His fingers slipped against one another, and when he held them in front of his face, chasing what little light there was, he could see blood.

  Ben groaned. He wasn’t trapped exactly. If he could stand, he’d have no problem breaking the door open, but at the moment that “if” loomed large.

  There was a clattering somewhere near him, somewhere in the shed. Lifting his head, Ben strained his eyes into the black. It was the boy, sitting or kneeling, Ben couldn’t tell. But he was there, moving and making just enough noise that Ben was sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

  “Are you okay?” Ben asked. He received no reply.

  Ben exhaled a trembling breath. He hadn’t felt a thing. Eric had been so close, but he hadn’t felt a goddamn thing at all, not while he worked below, not even while he kicked against the door with all his might as Marty lay dying on the concrete. Ben had hit that door so hard—hard enough that it had given just a little. One more kick might have done it. Just one.

  Ben could hear the clinking of glass and the faint grinding of metal and grit, a hushed scraping somewhere in the dark. Nothing urgent. Nothing frantic.

  What was the kid doing here? Why would Beverly abandon him? And why wasn’t he trying to escape? He wasn’t clawing at the broken ribs of the walls or at the warped door. Wasn’t doing much of anything, from what Ben could tell.

  “Do you know where he is?” Ben asked as he rolled painfully onto his back. The boy did not reply.

  With great effort, Ben bent at the waist and sat up. His clothes were glued to his skin, pushing the chill all the way into his blood. He hovered his hands around the wound in his left thigh. It looked like black ink was spilling from the center of his leg. Reaching in his back pocket, Ben yanked his handkerchief free and folded it diagonally. Uncertain of exactly what he was doing, or if it was even necessary, Ben wrapped the cloth around his thigh, tying a tight knot.

  Tucked into the shadows of the small building, Ben could finally make out the blond head of the quiet boy. Round pieces of glass glinted brilliantly each time they caught some of the minimal light that still survived in this place. The boy was stacking old jars.

  “Do you know where Eric is?” Ben asked again.

  The boy turned toward Ben, amber eyes blinking with the glass as the crawling moonlight waxed and waned through the space. He nodded his head.

  “Will you take me to him?”

  Again, the boy nodded.

  Ben rolled onto his right elbow and tried to prop himself up. The boy didn’t help, didn’t even look at Ben as he struggled to his knees. He just kept stacking the jars, gently twisting and shimmying them to their balance point.

  Ben tried and failed to stand. He struck the dirt floor with his knuckles, then paused for a moment to catch his breath.

  “Is your neck okay?”

  The boy nodded, turning toward the workbench.

  “I wouldn’t have really done it,” Ben said. “Hurt you bad. I wouldn’t have done that.”

  The boy shrugged in the dim glow, plucking a box of mason jars from the dust. “Why not?”

  For the first time, Ben tried to think of this boy as something more than a path, to think of him as just a child. Ben watched as the boy chewed his cheek and stacked the jars, slowly and with care, like it was the most important thing he’d ever done. He’d lived in that place too, maybe for even longer than Eric had. What must this be like for him? He could be only as certain about his future now as Ben had been in the store the day he’d lost his brother. The same day, maybe, that this boy had found one. Ben watched as the frail child finished his tower of jars that stood taller than he did. The boy pressed the tip of his index finger against one jar and then another. The pillar rocked; he let them settle before he pushed again. He brushed his golden hair away from his fiery eyes and studied the rakes and shovels that hung from the wall. Lithe and beautiful, he traced his fingers across the rusted metal and then examined his skin, indifferent to his cell, his cellmate, and their warden.

  Outside, the clouds flashed like a lightbulb was dying in their embrace, while wind moaned through the grasping trees.

  “I…I don’t wanna hurt nobody. Not even your momma. I just want my brother. And I know…I know that Eric’s a brother to you too…And I ain’t trying to take him away from you. I just have to bring him home.”

  The quiet one nodded, then pressed his fingers against the glass tower, sending it clattering to the dirt.

  “But I promise,” Ben said, almost pleading with the boy, “I won’t let nothin happen to you. You helped me, okay? I’ll keep you safe. We’ll find your family and you’ll be safe. You won’t never have to see Beverly again.”

  The boy looked disbelievingly at Ben, as if Ben were a stupid child. A fat little boy being left behind on his school’s track.

  Then he smiled and shrugged.

  59

  Fiery pain whipped through Ben’s leg as he stood. He didn’t put any weight on it, but even hopping hurt almost too much to bear. Leaning down, Ben scooped up the rake that he’d snatched from Beverly. It wouldn’t work very well as a crutch, but it was something.

  As Ben approached the door, he could tell that if he put enough force into it, it would come off its hinges. Hell, the whole rotten wall might just give. He pressed his palm against the door and pushed, wanting to get some sense for its resistance. But it had none. The door swung freely.

  Ben stood at the threshold looking stupidly over the wet grass. The boy had chosen to stay. Quick as he could, Ben turned, expecting some kind of attack. But the quiet one stood patiently waiting for Ben to step back out into the world.

  Standing just outside the shed, Ben looked for the light Beverly was carrying, but he saw only wind blowing wild patterns in the stiff grass. Ben put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and didn’t have to say a word before the boy started walking.

  The soft, damp earth sank under Ben’s careful steps. He had to use the tooth end of the rake against the ground, because the pole would puncture the soil too easily. It felt, and probably very much looked, like Ben was rowing through the yawning forest.

  Frogs and crickets bellowed and screeched so loudly that Ben could barely hear his own footfalls. Ben held the quiet boy’s shirt like it was a greased rope, but the boy never pulled away. He walked slowly, and the time or two that Ben stumbled over some dead log or snarling bush, the boy waited silently for Ben to collect himself.

  If Ben had lost consciousness in the shed, the boy could have hurt him then. Or he could have left, just as he could leave now. But he hadn’t, and he wasn’t. He’d helped Ben get here. But Ben didn’t feel like he was being helped. Why would she leave the door unlocked?

  Their course seemed less than straight to Ben. Rarely did he follow his own guiding light, but the kid, who earlier had not paused a si
ngle time as they walked to the old house, appeared to be taking more stock of his surroundings. Whether he was afraid to lose his way or he had yet to find it, Ben could not know. So he wrinkled the boy’s shirt and followed step for step.

  Thunder rumbled somewhere far away. The sky overhead was still blotted with clouds, but they had begun to grow thin and tired. Ben squinted into the black; the forest twinkled like a nebula. Suddenly, the child’s shirt grew taut in Ben’s fist, jerking his shoulder forward. Without any difficulty at all, the quiet one’s small frame disappeared into the tangled mouth of a bush.

  “Hey,” Ben hissed, as the thorns bit into his forearm, but the boy kept pulling. Ben was strong enough to start to reel his guide back, but when he did, he both heard and felt the boy’s shirt begin to tear. “Hey, damnit!” But the kid sank deeper and Ben had no choice but to follow. The brambles plucked at his skin and clothes. He stopped trying to negotiate his way through and lowered his head so the cellulose fangs would stab at his scalp rather than his eyes.

  When they emerged, Ben released the shirt. The boy stood just in front of Ben, gazing into the trees. When Ben tried to speak, he was promptly shushed. Turning his head slightly, the child tapped his ear with his index finger. Ben pinched a final thorn from his cheek and listened. At first he heard nothing at all, only the wind and the smattering of water that it shook from the trees. But there was something else, wasn’t there? Something either small or far away. A voice.

  Ben strained to make out the words, but he could not. It was a sound more than a voice, and then it was nothing. Gone. Trampled under the sound of the boy’s quick feet.

  Moving quickly enough to keep him in sight, Ben lumbered behind the boy. He yanked the metal teeth of his inadequate crutch through the snarling undergrowth. He could hardly feel his leg at all now. Ben didn’t bother calling out or demanding that the kid stop; he didn’t want to waste the breath. If he lost the boy now, he knew that he would lose him forever. He would lose everything forever.

  Suddenly, the quiet kid stopped moving. He wasn’t looking around, wasn’t searching. He stared straight ahead into the trees. And Ben stared with him. In the distance, beyond the columns of pine, a kerosene flame ambled and swayed. Fallen trees, slick with rainwater and moss, littered the ground in a decaying maze. Ben followed as silently as possible, stepping over the logs when he could and circumventing them when he couldn’t. They moved slowly, but they were gaining on the swinging light of Beverly’s lantern, gaining on it more and more until Ben could see her silhouette, her jagged shadow diffusing into the dark woods like the black ghost of a giant. When she would stop or slow, so would they.

  She halted, swaying slowly with an unnatural rhythm. Ben aped the boy and folded himself behind a tree to watch the old woman. Wind crashed through the trees and mingled dead rain with what still tumbled from the inky sky. Beverly’s lantern shook, and the warm glow sloshed against the trees like a cupful of light.

  “Okay,” she yelled into the roiling air.

  Ben felt drunk, dizzy, like the word had shattered his inner ear and all the fluid had ridden away on a river of winter rain. All three of them—Ben, the boy, Beverly—faced the same direction, peering into the dark trees. Ben’s hands were tingling.

  “Come on out now!”

  A single whimper slipped out of Ben’s lips. His eyes darted across the rows of trees, stalling on every dancing shadow, waiting for Eric to emerge, for his brother to come home. But the trees stayed empty, and the only movement was right beside him.

  The quiet boy stood and stepped into the light.

  60

  By the time Ben thought to grab him, the boy was already well out of reach. It wouldn’t have mattered, though; Beverly was already turning, splashing her light onto his golden hair and into the trees around and behind Ben, who still hadn’t stood, who felt quite unable to stand at all.

  “Oh,” the old woman said, not with surprise but detestation. “Where is he?”

  Ben felt himself hunch away from the light, pressing himself tighter against the muddy trunk, exposing only the top of his head so that he could see. He knew that he should rise, that he was being called out and that he should answer. But he didn’t. The quiet boy said nothing. For a while, neither of them did. They only looked at each other across the thin clearing. Finally, the boy raised his arm and held out his hand, palm upturned.

  The old woman laughed. “Really?” Cold wind tossed her silver hair. Her smile grew and she laughed again, longer this time. “Didn’t you say that those things didn’t matter none? Isn’t that what you said to your brother, when you took his toy from him? And now here you are. Followed me all the way out here because little baby wants his nuknuk.”

  Still the blond boy said nothing.

  “You can have it,” Beverly said. “Just tell me where he is. Where is he?”

  The boy lowered his hand and turned his bright eyes toward Ben. As if he could somehow avoid the gaze, Ben looked away and pressed his forehead against the trunk, exhaling heavily. But he could still feel it: that amber stare cutting through the trees.

  As Ben moved, Beverly swung the lantern and peered out at him. The kid turned back toward the old woman before she started speaking. “You chose the wrong boy to keep track of, son,” she said.

  “Eric!” Ben shouted. “Eric!” But only the wind replied. “Tell me where he is!”

  “Eric!” The old woman’s body contorted as she screamed. “Eric, come out!” Her voice scattered across the sky and died there. “I don’t know where he is,” she moaned. “He does.” Beverly’s face pinched as a tremor rolled through her body. “Where’d you take him?” she snapped. “Where is he?”

  Again, the quiet boy only extended his hand.

  “Give him what he wants, Beverly,” Ben pleaded.

  “Give him what he wants,” the old woman muttered. She rubbed her drooping forearm and then moved the lantern from her bad arm to her good one. “I tried—” Her voice broke. “I tried for so long…and Eric was my reward. A gift. I knew it as soon as I seen him. I could feel it. That we was supposed to be a family. That something got mixed up somewhere and he’d wound up in the wrong spot. With you. The world got it wrong, and I fixed it. And when he let Eric out, and Martin called me, that was the world sayin that I got it right.

  “No one ever loved him like I did. No one. Not you. You’re just someone that slept in the same house as him. I know you don’t believe it, don’t see the sense of what’s happened. Because you’re on the bad end. It’s darker there. I know, because I lived my whole life there. But I can see it.

  “And what do you care?” Beverly yelled to the boy. “Just tell me where he’s at. I see you! I see you shaking your hand. I’ll give it back when you tell me where he is. You don’t even have to say nothin. Just point!”

  But the boy neither spoke nor pointed. The old lantern squeaked as it swung lightly in the breeze.

  “He don’t get what he wants. Not this time.” A tremor rippled through her body and she sneered angrily. “He’s a schemer, a pretender. I see what you are. I seen it since you was three years old. You ain’t no boy.

  “How do you think this ends, Ben? I don’t know what this one did to make it so you found our home. Did you turn the ringer back on?” she asked the quiet one. “Did you leave the damn door open? What was it?”

  The boy didn’t respond. Beverly shook her head.

  “He ain’t helpin you. And if you think that this ends…that when the sun rises it’ll be shinin on you and Eric’s smiling faces, then you got it wrong. I just wanted you out of the store. Out of our home. All this”—with the arm that still worked, Beverly gestured to the world that surrounded them—“everything else came from this one’s mind. I don’t know what he’s been playin at, what he did to bring all of this to pass. But I know he’s been in your house. I know that much. That he put that drawing on Eric’s
paper.

  “I promise you, Ben. I promise you that you don’t want no part of whatever game this is.”

  “So just let him go!” Ben shouted. “Let them both go!”

  “I did!” Beverly shrieked, pointing to the golden boy. “I let him go! I let him stay out here, when we lost the house, and he found us! Me and Eric! He followed us right to the store. Ruined our new home with his goddamn drawings all over the walls. Again! He could come and go as he pleased, and he wouldn’t ever just go. And when he went out, it was for what?” she screamed at the boy, and gestured at Ben. “To play games with him?”

  The boy didn’t object, didn’t say anything at all. He hadn’t looked back at Ben. He just stood there with his arm outstretched and his palm turned toward the sky.

  “He was tryin to lead me to you, to tell me about Blackwater.”

  “Then why didn’t he just tell you?” Beverly said. “Hmm? He don’t know anything about Blackwater. Nothin! ’Cept for that I hate it. I never said nothin. Never showed that symbol to him. But six years old and he finds it in my book and he just knows. Draws it on the walls. He scratched it into my oven so I’d have to look at it every day. Cuz he thinks it’s funny, thinks they look the same. Well, this ain’t that!” the woman hollered as she pulled the boy’s necklace out of her pocket. Beverly sighed. “God almighty.”

  Ben didn’t speak. He didn’t know what he could say. Beverly seemed exhausted. The longer this went on, the greater the chance that she might just implode. The quiet one had some kind of effect on her that Ben could only hope might bring an end to all this.

  “I been giving you what you wanted your whole life. A home. A family. Gave you more than I ever had. I tried so hard with you,” she said to the boy. “You can stare at me with those eyes all you want, but you can’t say I didn’t do everything for you, didn’t try to love you. And I did. I did love you. Even after I knew you was rotten, even after I knew I’d made a mistake, I still loved you. But you ain’t chewin your way through me, boy.”