The Homecoming

by Andrew Pyper

  “Did he like himself? That would’ve been a question he’d see as beside the point,” Lauren says. “He simply was himself. A narcissist so self-involved he couldn’t even be bothered to look in the mirror.”

  “You really did understand him in a way none of the rest of us did. How did that make you feel?”

  She blinks at me. “How did that make you feel? Really, Aaron? Who’s the therapist here, anyway?”

  “That was dumb. All I—”

  “No, it’s okay. Nobody’s ever asked me that before. Not about Dad.” She moves her hand through the grass but I can’t see it. I imagine it as a snake slithering between us. “I was five when I was adopted, which is fairly old as those things go. So when I became a Quinlan, I had a chance at having a real father for the first time. I just wanted to love him and for him to love me too. But he couldn’t do that. The best he could do was remind me that I would always be on my own. It started me on this journey toward seeing how everybody could be reduced to a profile, a set of tics and prejudices and fetishes. Everybody is a fake. That was his message. A fake like him. Like me. But because we came from outside, we had an advantage. We knew we were fakes.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  “You just told me that. And because you’re trying to get to the bottom of who you are because you believe there’s something real there. It’s why we decided to stay here, isn’t it?”

  “It might have had something to do with the money.”

  “Not for us. Not for you.”

  I hear the sound like a snake in the grass but this time I don’t see her hand move.

  “No, not for me,” she says.

  We screw the lids onto the jars and stuff them along with the bread back into the box. I offer Lauren a ride back to the lodge and she pantomimes a curtsy before getting into the trailer.

  “Why’d you come out here with me, anyway?” I ask after a time, pedaling up a slope and taking a break as we roll down the other side.

  “I told you. I don’t like letting myself be afraid.” I think she’s done, but then she adds something I’m not expecting. “I realize things are kind of tense between our families. I mean, how could they not be? But I want you to know that I think you’re okay, Aaron. In fact, I kind of wish you’d been a big brother of mine.”

  “I’m touched,” I say without irony.

  “You know what I hope?”

  “What?”

  “I hope there’s hot sauce at the bottom of one of these boxes.”

  “And a bottle of whisky.”

  “I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

  Lauren’s right. In addition to the rules that won’t allow us to leave, the absence of outside news or entertainment lends a monastic quality to Belfountain. It’s something I took at first to be a denial of pleasure, part of the sacrifice that must be made to earn the prize Dad has dangled before us. But now I wonder if, like the monks who devote themselves to their enlightenment, it’s more about staying focused.

  “What if we’re wrong?” I ask, thinking about the camp but not willing to share this yet.

  “Wrong about what?”

  “What if this isn’t personal? Not about Dad messing with our heads one last time, but bigger than that.”

  “Bigger?”

  “His work.”

  “What was his work?”

  “Exactly. Whatever it was, like you said, it was enormously lucrative.”

  “Assuming he made his money from his work. He might have inherited it.”

  “From an ancestral line of Quinlans none of us ever knew?”

  “I hear you,” she says. “It doesn’t fit.”

  “None of it does. But if you’re right about Dad being a sociopath of some stripe, why would he go to all this trouble in the service of feelings? Your theory is he didn’t really have any of those, right?”

  Her silence communicates her agreement.

  “Where are you going with this?” she asks finally.

  “What if Belfountain isn’t the fruit of his work, but his workplace?”

  “Doubt it. There’s no offices or desks. No computers. There isn’t even a phone line. Nothing.”

  I’m about to say something about how the lodge may not be that kind of office when the old woman appears in the middle of the road.

  She’s dressed as she was when I saw her our first night here. The bare feet, the threadbare robe and exposed chest, the hair standing high and stiff with filth.

  What’s different is this time she moves. Spreads one arm wide from her side as if beckoning me into her embrace. The other arm slides behind her back. To hold her straight. Or grab hold of something.

  We’re still rolling down the hill, the fastest speed we’ve reached. The wind huffing in my ears.

  I could try the brakes—the old-fashioned backpedaling kind—but I doubt they’d make much difference. And I don’t want to stop. I want to hit the old woman, feel the impact of her body. Prove she’s real.

  Lauren doesn’t see the woman because she’s facing backward. The next moment will come at us whether two of us witness it or only one.

  When the old woman is ten feet away, it’s clear she’s not going to get out of the way.

  My arms twist the handlebars by reflex. The bike jolting to the right.

  Behind me, Lauren’s weight is thrown from one side of the trailer to the other but she stays inside it. Not that I look. All of my attention is on the old woman. Eyes milky with glaucoma. Tar-covered gums. The spiky whiskers of a beard.

  Followed by the feel of her.

  The burn of her fingernails that scratch my face as we pass.

  “Aaron!”

  I’m pedaling now. The slope has evened out and the bike’s speed relaxes into the same steady pace as before. Could the old woman catch us if she ran? I look back, half expecting to see her flying over the road, a witch with her robe flapping behind her like rotted wings. But we’re taking a curve and the trees obscure where she stood from view.

  “What happened?”

  Lauren is pulling herself up onto her knees.

  “I thought I saw something,” I say.

  “Was it him?”

  “No.”

  “So—”

  “I don’t know what it was.”

  I touch my hand to my face. It comes back thinly glazed with blood.

  “You’re bleeding,” Lauren says.

  “Must have got hit with a branch back there.”

  “It looks too neat for that. There’s, like, three lines on your cheek.”

  “Hold on,” I say, and stand up on the pedals, driving us faster and faster until the leaves become a solid tunnel of green.

  25

  ONCE WE’VE TAKEN THE BOXES inside and locked the lodge’s door, Lauren busies herself restocking the fridge and pantry shelves, hoping these tasks will transport her back to the everyday world. I know because I try the same thing myself. Shave. Take a shower. Put a Band-Aid over the worst of the slices on my cheek and repeat my story about an errant branch to the others.

  None of it works.

  I decide to tell everyone at dinner. Not only about the encounter with the old woman, but about how I’ve changed my vote. Mom was right. We have to go. The will can be contested, and our case will either hold up in court or it won’t. But we were wrong to see this as an eccentric’s amusement park. Dad told us the stories about Belfountain not as flights of fancy, but as the truth. Possibly even a warning.

  I never get the chance to say any of this.

  We’re sitting at the dining room table, the twins’ lasagna steaming on plates in front of us, when there’s a banging at the front door.

  If Jerry hadn’t jumped out of his seat and broken into a sprint toward the foyer, we might have waited to see how long it went on for. But watching Jerry respond the way he does prompts all of us to rush after him.

  When we make it to the door, Jerry is peeking through the three-inch-wide windo
ws set on either side of the entrance.

  “What’s out there?” Elias and Ezra ask at almost the same time.

  “I can’t see—”

  Bang! Bang! BANG!

  Not against the door this time. The great room’s windows.

  It only takes a few seconds to turn and rush to see what’s there. But by the time we look across the living area there’s nothing to see outside. Only the glass still visibly vibrating in its frame.

  “There’s two of them,” Jerry says.

  I’m ready to talk about what we ought to do. But there’s no talk. There’s only Jerry unlocking the front door and stepping out into the night.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Lauren shouts after him.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Elias moans.

  I lock the door.

  “Why’d you do that?” Ezra asks.

  “I’m keeping us safe.”

  “Jerry’s out there.”

  “That was his decision.”

  The twins shift their weight from foot to foot in the way of drunks readying to throw the first punch.

  “What’s going on?” Franny asks.

  “They’re out there,” Lauren answers.

  “Who?”

  “The ones who live in the woods.”

  The ones. The choice of words, along with the way she says it, suggests Lauren believes there is not only more than one, but more than two.

  “Let’s sit down,” I say.

  “And do what?” Ezra says, now coming up close to me along with his twin.

  “Talk about our childhoods?” Elias says.

  “We need to work this out together. And we need to stay controlled. Whatever is happening—”

  As if in response to a whistle sounding at a pitch none of the rest of us can hear, the twins stalk off down the hall at the same time.

  “Aaron?” Bridge pulls away from Mom’s hold to stand next to me. “We should find a smaller room. And tools. Sharp things. Anything to fight with.”

  “Those are good ideas,” I say, but remain where I am.

  “Aaron?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We should do it now.”

  We start to. All of us heading toward the kitchen, when Elias and Ezra return holding serrated, wood-handled steak knives.

  There’s a helpless moment when I think they’re going to attack us. I push Bridge behind me, shielding her. But the twins pass by and unlock the door.

  “Don’t do this!” Lauren pleads, but only Ezra faces her.

  “That’s our brother out there,” he says, an actor at his most convincing because he doesn’t appear to be acting. Then he too walks out into the darkness.

  “Close the door,” Mom says.

  When we’re locked inside again, there’s nothing to do but put Bridge’s plan into action. Go through the kitchen drawers and find what may be useful as a weapon (even harder than before, as the larger knives have already disappeared). Then we cram ourselves into Mom’s room only to discover that none of the bedrooms’ doors lock.

  It’s still better than standing in the middle of the great room. Here at least we can conceal ourselves and, if found, mount a focused defense against anything that tries to come in.

  “I’ll be back in a second,” I tell them. “Don’t open the door for anyone until I get back. I need to check that all the entry points are still locked.”

  “You think someone left a way in?” Lauren asks, a note of defensiveness in her voice.

  “I just think it’s worth checking.”

  I circle the lodge’s interior to confirm all the windows and doors are secure. When I’m at the great room’s wall of glass, I squint outside. It’s too dark to see much of anything, so I flick on the floodlights.

  They’re powerful but don’t penetrate the forest, only pull it claustrophobically closer. Yet turning on the lights triggers something to be heard, not seen. What may be a voice from outside. A possibly human cry from not too far off.

  “Turn off the lights,” Lauren says behind me.

  “I heard something.”

  “Me too. That’s why we should turn them off.”

  26

  “WE NEED TO BARRICADE OURSELVES in,” Franny says after Lauren and I return to the bedroom and tell the others we heard something outside.

  I bend down to grasp the end of the bed frame. “Someone help me with this.”

  “That won’t work,” Bridge says. “It’s too big.”

  “How about this?” Lauren asks, pulling a wooden chair away from the desk against the wall. “We could jam it under the door handle like they do on TV.”

  “Does that even work?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “Okay,” I say. “We’ll do the chair thing. Then push the desk in tight behind it.”

  We’re trying to figure out how to get the back of the chair in tight under the handle when there’s a new round of slams at the front door.

  Boom! Boom! BOOM!

  Vibrating through the log bones of the structure and up our legs through the floor.

  Bridge comes to me. Her face held up to communicate something that words, even if she were to attempt to speak them, couldn’t capture. She looks so young. Like the day on the floating dock after playing Peter Pan. Her fear expressed as a need to reach me, for someone she trusts to share in it, to not be alone with the sudden fact of death.

  “Help! Help us!”

  A voice from outside. Shouting through the front door.

  “We need a doctor! Aaron! Please!”

  It’s one of the twins.

  “I have to go,” I say to Bridge. “Stay quiet. Hide in the closet, under the bed. Nobody knows you’re here.”

  On the way to the front foyer, I try to tell myself there’s some measure of safety in where I’ve left Bridge, but of course the truth is if anyone gets past me, it will be a matter of minutes or less for her and the others to be found.

  So why do I go?

  Because this is what doctors do.

  What I’ve done on transatlantic flights, after coming upon car accidents at the side of the highway, at a Mariners game when a man fell sideways out of his seat from a coronary. Why I went overseas. They call for a doctor and, even when I’d rather be as useless as everyone else—the head-shakers watching the clips of faraway disasters on TV or the rubber neckers rolling past the wreck—I go.

  It’s not bravery. Not goodness. It’s like being the eldest child, the only son. It’s an expectation.

  “Move back from the door,” I shout through the wood.

  “Hurry. We need—”

  “Move away!”

  There’s what may be a shuffling retreat from the other side. Then I unlock the door and pull it open.

  It’s Ezra. Standing at the bottom of the steps down to the gravel parking area, shaking so violently it’s like I’ve caught him midway through the performance of an experimental dance.

  “He’s over here,” he says.

  27

  I FOLLOW HIM BUT HANG back just out of reach. There’s nothing to indicate this is a betrayal and yet the better part of my instincts believes it is. If not set by Ezra himself, then by the thing in the woods that has trapped us both.

  Ezra stops at the corner of the lodge and looks around it to where I can’t see. Perhaps the Tall Man stands there, making him do this. Or they’ve been working together from the beginning, an elaborate performance now coming to its end. The twins are actors, after all. Maybe all the second Quinlans are.

  These thoughts don’t stop me from joining him and looking around the corner.

  There’s no Tall Man. Only Elias on the ground. Lying on his back, a dark stain seeping through his shirt, widening from the place where the polished silver handle of a hatchet sticks out from his belly.

  He looks like a clockwork toy.

  My first thought. It’s the smooth, glinting metal of the handle coming out of him. Maybe two feet long, the right size and color for the winding key y
ou’d twist to make him come to life.

  No, that’s not part of him. Somebody put that there.

  The blood has spread even within the couple seconds I’ve stood looking down at him. His eyes roll around before fixing on me. His breathing a series of oddly coquettish gasps of surprise.

  “What happened?”

  “We got separated,” Ezra says. “There was a voice—Elias thought it might have been a woman, but I couldn’t tell—and he went after it.”

  “Was it—”

  “I don’t know what it was! I just heard him struggling with something. When I found him—” Ezra shakes his head, freeing himself from everything that doesn’t matter now. “Can you help him?”

  I get down on my knees next to Elias, roll the shirtsleeves halfway up my arms.

  And do nothing.

  A man is bleeding out from a wound to his abdomen. That’s all I know, all I see. I try to summon a chapter from a medical textbook that covers the treatment in a case like this, but nothing comes.

  I should remove the hatchet. Or is that exactly the wrong thing to do?

  I don’t want to do it. That probably means I should. In moments like these, the things you don’t want to do are the things you have to.

  The silver handle is jittering as Elias’s breathing becomes more labored. This makes it even more difficult for my hands to find the handle, grip hard. The little pulses of waning life traveling through the blade within him and into me.

  I should warn him. Reassure him. This might hurt a little. I’m going to sort this out, okay? But there’s no sentence that seems remotely utterable, remotely true, and so before I succumb to the dizziness prickling around my face like a cloud of gnats, I pull a snort of air through my nose and lift the handle up and away.

  He makes a sound. Not one that comes from his voice, but his body, an exclamation from the momentarily open space the blade once occupied.

  I drop the hatchet on the ground. The top half of me weaving over Elias, fatigue draining me so abruptly I’m worried I’m going to drape myself over him and not be able to roll off.

  “Okay, okay,” Ezra is saying somewhere off to the side of me. “Now the next thing.”