Dead Space: Catalyst

by Evenson, Brian

  He moved his hands to try to touch it. When his hands moved, the shadow moved as well and placed its hands around his mother’s neck. Then it turned its smoky mouth toward him and spoke.

  Watch this, it said. Here’s how you do it. Here’s how you’ll kill her.

  He heard his brother scream his name.

  He could not move his hands. The shadow man was choking his mother, smiling, but no longer speaking. Why had he stopped speaking? “She’s going to die,” he heard a distance voice say, a voice that was not the shadow man, a voice that he realized belonged to his brother. He made an effort of will and spoke.

  “Yes,” he said. “Don’t you see him?”

  But when he tried to explain to his brother what it was he saw, just as when he’d tried to explain so many times before, it came out in ways that he understood but his brother did not. Jensi did not think right about the world. Istvan was helpless to make it make sense for him. And so, slowly, he was snapped again out of this world of arrangements that he so loved and that so loved him, and brought once again to see not the pattern beneath things but the surface of them. And on that surface was his mother: dying. But, unfortunately, not already dead.

  * * *

  By the time the emergency team took her to the hospital, Istvan seemed normal again, or as normal as he ever was. She was there a day, then was transferred to a mental ward, straitjacketed, put away for what potentially could be for good. A social worker, a severe elderly woman, came out to the house and told the two brothers that they would be taken into governmental care.

  “But I’m almost eighteen,” claimed Istvan in a moment of lucidity. “I don’t need a guardian.”

  “Almost doesn’t count,” she insisted. “You have to have one.”

  But the mistake the social worker made was leaving them alone for a few minutes instead of whisking them into care immediately. As soon as she was gone, Istvan began to make plans for leaving. He got an old, stained backpack out of the closet, stuffed it full of clothes, then dumped in a random assortment of things from the pantry, including things that he would never eat. Other things that were more edible he left where they were, adjusting their positions slightly. All part of making the pattern, Jensi couldn’t help but think. Istvan was in his own world, unaware of anything but the task he was completing. Jensi just stood watching him, feeling a greater and greater sense of despair for his brother.

  When he was finished, Istvan zipped the backpack closed and looked up.

  “Why aren’t you packed?” he asked Jensi.

  “Where are you going?” Jensi responded.

  “You heard that woman,” said Istvan. “She wants to put us with someone. We’ll have to learn how they think and they’ll be like mother only they’ll be worse because we’re not related to them.”

  “Maybe they won’t be worse,” said Jensi. “Maybe they’ll be better.”

  Istvan shook his head. “That’s what they want you to think,” he said. “That’s how they get you every time.”

  That’s how they get you every time, thought Jensi But it was not they that were getting Istvan, but Istvan who was making things hard for himself. The idea of Istvan being his own guardian—or being the guardian for both of them—that would never work. Istvan could hardly care for himself, let alone someone else.

  “Come on,” Istvan said. “No time to pack—they’ll be back soon. You’ll just have to go as you are. That’s what the room is saying.”

  “The room?”

  “Can’t you see it?” said Istvan, gesturing around him. “Can’t you feel it?”

  Later, this would seem one of those decisive moments where his life could go either one direction or another, where Jensi could take a step toward his brother and whatever skewed version of the world existed inside of Istvan’s mind or where he could step closer to the real world. The terrible thing was that even as young as he was he couldn’t help but feel that either choice he made would be, in some way or another, not quite right. Either way he would lose something.

  “Come on,” said Istvan again, anxious.

  “I…” said Jensi. “But I—”

  “What’s wrong with you?” said Istvan. “Can’t you see what’s happening here?”

  But that was the problem: he could see. He could see that if he went with Istvan no good would come of it, even if Istvan could not.

  “I can’t go,” he finally said, not looking his brother in the eye.

  “Sure you can,” said Istvan, his eyes darting all around the room. “It’s the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is walk out the door.”

  “No,” said Jensi. “I’m sorry. I’m not going.”

  For a moment Istvan just stared at him, his face blank, and then Jensi watched something flit across his brother’s expression as he took in what Jensi was saying. Then all at once his face was creased with genuine pain.

  “You’re abandoning me?” he asked in a voice that was almost a wail. It was nearly unbearable for Jensi to hear.

  “No,” Jensi tried to say. “Stay here. Stay with me. It’ll be okay.” But he knew that to Istvan that was as unimaginable as leaving was to him. For a moment Istvan looked stunned. And then, heaving the backpack onto his shoulder, Istvan went out and Jensi found himself alone.

  2

  Nothing was really wrong about the guardian the court appointed to Jensi, but nothing was all that right about her, either. She was what his mother might have called the lukewarm, neither one thing nor the other, but for Jensi that was all right. He could survive with someone like that. He could get by. For once in his life he didn’t have to worry about where his meals were going to come from.

  He threw himself into his schoolwork and was surprised to find that he enjoyed it, that he even excelled at it. The sort of kids who before had given him a wide berth now began to circle closer, sometimes even speaking to him.

  One of them, a kid named Henry Wandrei, started hanging out around him, silently standing a few feet away from him during breaks between classes, sitting across from him at lunch but at first without speaking or meeting his eye. Sometimes he shadowed Jensi for a few blocks when he walked home. At first Jensi tolerated it, then he got used to it, then he started to like it. He started to notice when Henry wasn’t there, like his shadow or ghost.

  “What?” Jensi finally said one day at lunch.

  “Nothing,” said Henry. And then they sat silently for a while until Henry asked “What music do you like?”

  Music? wondered Jensi. What did he know about music? Helplessly, he just shrugged. “What about you?”

  Henry rattled off a few names of bands, then when Jensi didn’t say anything in reply, began to try to explain what each one sounded like. He was, as it turned out, good at it, capable of talking in a lively and surprising way that didn’t really describe the music so much as say something slantwise that still gave a sense of what it sounded like. Jensi was surprised to find he enjoyed listening to him talk. Henry, silent for so long, now seemed unable to be quiet. And later, when he gave Jensi the music to listen to, Jensi found that the descriptions felt right.

  Henry was his first real friend, apart from his brother. But you couldn’t really think of a brother as a friend, could you? How had he gotten to be fifteen before having a real friend? Thinking that made him resent Istvan, which made him feel guilty. Here he was, living an okay life, with a decent guardian and one real friend, while his brother was wandering alone somewhere out in the domes.

  He had glimpsed his brother once or twice, usually from far away though once up close. That time, his brother had seemed not to know him. Istvan had not acknowledged him as he went past, and though Jensi wanted to reach out and speak to him, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do so. He couldn’t, not if Istvan wasn’t going to meet him halfway. But later he wondered if his brother hadn’t simply been lost in his private world of patterns and numbers. Maybe his brother was so deep within his own head that he couldn’t see Jensi.

/>   His life was like that in those days. It was like he was on a teeter-totter, slipping from feeling all right to feeling guilty and then back again, but never stabilizing.

  After a few months he trusted Henry enough to tell him about Istvan.

  “That’s your brother?” said Henry. He’d seen Istvan here and there, always from a distance, and didn’t quite know what to think of him.

  “I feel like I should help him,” said Istvan.

  Henry nodded. “Sure,” he said, “he’s you’re brother. You have to feel that way.” And then he shrugged. “But what can you do?” he asked.

  * * *

  For six months he did nothing, really, and then one day, walking home, he was talking with Henry about the apartment building he used to live in, trying to describe it as vividly as Henry had managed to describe not only music but other things since, and finding himself failing to make it come alive. Henry was watching him politely, eagerly even, but he kept tripping and stumbling over his words, unable to make them into images that Henry could understand. Slowly he ground to a stop.

  Henry watched and waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t simply said, “You could just show it to me.”

  Jensi thought Why not? So they trekked the mile or so over to the valve that led to the Mariner Valley compound.

  The valve operator stationed there stared at them quizzically. “You sure you want to go in there? Two nice kids like you?” he asked from beneath a bristling mustache. “It’s a little rough.”

  “I used to live there,” said Jensi.

  The operator wrinkled his nose. “If I’d lived there and gotten out, I don’t know that I’d be eager to go back.” But he let them through.

  They watched the valve twist closed behind them, and then walked the thirty meters down the tube to the second valve. By the time they got there, Jensi was beginning to have his doubts. He had a new life now, he should be moving on. Why would he want to show any of this to Henry?

  * * *

  The valve twisted open and they stepped out. To Jensi the compound on the other side looked at once familiar, just as he remembered it, and different, too. Having changed himself, he could see it for what it was: a slum. The valves were a way of cutting off the Mariner Valley compound in case the people inside decided to revolt. The streets that had seemed normal to him as a child he could now compare to the streets where he currently lived. Everything was run-down, a little filthy, a little pathetic.

  “You lived here?” asked Henry.

  Jensi shrugged. For a moment he considered turning around, going back to the valve and leaving, but then Henry asked, “So, where’s your building?”

  * * *

  He showed Henry the worn concrete steps, the cracked floor of the hallway leading down to their apartment, and then the door itself, discolored and scraped ragged along one side. They stared at it. Jensi didn’t know what else to do, and Henry didn’t seem ready to go back yet. The door was sealed where it met the frame with police tape. Why? wondered Jensi. He was surprised that someone new hadn’t moved in by now.

  But looking more closely, he realized the tape had been slit, very carefully, so that at first glance the door still looked like it was sealed. Henry must have realized that as well, for he reached out and placed his hand on the door’s handle and pushed down.

  The door was not locked. As both boys watched, it slid slowly open. Behind it was the largely empty living room, floor coated now with a thin layer of dust. There was the uneven couch, the small vid screen with its cracked corner, the makeshift coffee table made from a discarded and bent shipping container that they’d found and then beaten back flat. The wall was discolored, now beginning to go gray with mold in the corners, unless it was just dust gathering there.

  “We probably shouldn’t be here,” said Jensi. The memories in the room were palpable to him, most of them bad.

  “It’s okay,” said Henry, already poking around. “There’s no one here. Even if someone comes, we can talk our way out of it.” For Henry, Jensi realized, it was a game.

  And then Jensi noticed the path that had been scuffed through the dust from the front door to the entrance to the back bedroom, the room he and Istvan had shared. He followed the path with his eyes. He could see a light coming from the crack under the bedroom door.

  He reached out and grabbed Henry’s arm.

  “What?” asked Henry, starting to shake free.

  “Quiet,” whispered Jensi. “I think someone’s here.”

  * * *

  If he’d only turned and left, things might have been different. But he didn’t. Why? Perhaps it was because Henry was there with him and that, for Henry, this was still an adventure. Knowing someone was there made it even more of an adventure for Henry. It was simply an escalation of the violation that had begun when they found the police tape slit over the door. They were sneaking in, and now they were risking something, but from Henry’s perspective probably the worst that could happen was they might get scolded or warned off or kicked out. Or maybe, at very worse, turned in to the authorities for trespassing and then released with a reprimand.

  But Jensi had grown up in this neighborhood. He knew it could be much worse, that if the wrong person was in the back room they might end up badly hurt or even dead.

  And so when Henry started moving forward, deeper into the apartment, Jensi was not quick to follow. He watched his friend go, his feet tracking a new path through the dust until he stood beside the bedroom door. Maybe, thought Jensi, there would be nobody there. Maybe someone had come and gone but left the light on. But as Henry reached out and touched the door’s handle, Jensi knew that he was fooling himself.

  And indeed, before Henry could open it, the door opened of its own accord and a blotchy arm reached out and jerked him through.

  * * *

  Jensi started for the outer door, already beginning to run.

  But there was nowhere to run, nobody to tell until he had gone through the valve and into the larger city. By then it would be too late. Henry would either be dead and lying broken on the floor when he got back, or he would have been carried away and would be gone.

  And so, barely out the door, his feet slowed, he stopped, and he turned back. He was big enough, he told himself, and tough, too, and he had grown up here and knew how to fight. If he could just get a jump on whomever it was, there might be a chance for both him and Henry to get away.

  He quietly approached the door to the bedroom and carefully pushed the handle down until the tongue slid out of the lock’s groove. He could hear a voice inside, whispering, insistent. Taking a deep breath, he threw the door open and rushed in, fist already cocked and ready to strike.

  On the floor, kneeling on top of Henry, holding him down, keeping him from struggling, hand clamped over his mouth, was a filthy man. His hair and skin were wretched and stinking. Who sent you? he heard him whispering loudly, without lifting his hand from Henry’s mouth to let him answer. What do they want from me? Why are they after me? And then Jensi was on the man, clipping him in the ear and knocking him enough askew that he turned and shifted his balance and Henry began to wriggle free.

  But at the same moment the man turned, and Jensi was surprised to find that his was a face he recognized.

  It was Istvan.

  But though he recognized Istvan, his brother didn’t recognize him. His eyes were glazed, crazed even, and as he half fell, half clambered off Henry, it seemed almost like his brother wasn’t there at all. It was like it was just his body but with someone else or even something else in charge.

  Henry had managed to scramble to his feet. Isvtan, stumbling, gathered his balance against the wall and then bared his teeth.

  “Istvan,” said Jensi. “It’s me.”

  Istvan made a noise that was a kind of snarl, his eyes darting everywhere, looking perhaps for some hidden pattern but as a result unable to see what was in front of him, and then he ducked his head and charged.

  He struck Jensi har
d, right in the center of the chest, knocking him off his feet, coming down hard on top of him. For a moment, Jensi had the awful feeling of suffocating, the room fading around him, and then he managed to suck in a deep, pain-racked breath. Istvan was on top of him, striking out, pummeling his shoulders and neck and face with his fists. Henry was behind him, trying and failing to tug him off.

  Istvan, he tried to say again. It’s me, Jensi. But nothing came out. He tried to grab Istvan’s hands but failed. He tried to protect his face with his forearms, but Istvan kept punching him, the blows glancing off his arms but sometimes getting through, with Jensi catching here and there a glimpse of his slack, troubled face.

  There was a moment when he thought he was about to fade from consciousness, and then it passed and his mind suddenly felt sharper but also more distanced, as if he were observing himself from the outside.

  He suddenly realized that Istvan might very well kill him.

  * * *

  Istvan had been searching for something for a while, though he was never quite sure what. It was often like that, aimless, but he knew if he searched long enough it would eventually nudge its way out from the world it resided in, the world that was real, and come find him. Before, when his brother had been there, there had been things to pull him out, to interrupt his search, so that only rarely could he wait long enough for the surface of the world to peel back. But now he had all the time in the world.

  The first thing was to limit the world itself, to get rid of all unnecessary distractions. Of anything and everything that did not encourage an arrangement that would crack the world open. Being out in the dome proved too much. There were signs and symbols there, patterns of all kinds, but they drew him in all directions at once. There were people there too who shook him and disturbed him and would not let him stay put.

  A pattern, an arrangement, out in the dome had led him back to his mother’s apartment again, just as a pattern, an arrangement, in the apartment had first coaxed him out into the dome. A voice had come to him and told him to slit back the tape sealing the door and told him too where his mother had hidden the key that would let him in. It was a voice that was not attached to a body, or if it was, he couldn’t find the body. It was a voice that somehow was inside of him but separate from him too.