What Goes On In The Walls At Night: Thirteen tales of disgust and delight

by Andrew Schrader

  Our letters were mere formalities by then, as he and I had been estranged for many years. Split by fights and squabbles over money and his drinking, we wrote back and forth only as business partners. Not that he had much of a hand in the family companies anyway. Though the businesses were in both our names, the contracts bore the ink of my pen only.

  Over the months his letters became increasingly infrequent. I figured he’d gotten himself into some new habit; maybe a doctor in Bolinas, some twenty miles south of there, was filling him up with some new opiate or sedative. He became more and more agitated with every letter, and I feared that my Charles would soon join the club of the alcoholically doomed.

  I couldn’t be sure where he was getting his hooch, though, frightfully, I surmised at the time he’d been making it himself. I shudder to think that, with the amount he drank, he could have easily gone blind or been poisoned by lead, something not uncommon with moonshiners.

  Yet, what happened to him turned out to be much worse. Was it the bathtub gin that caused this, this . . . cosmic aberration? Those bootleggers in their back rooms, daytime barbers turning bartenders at night . . . who knows what they put in that rotgut. All over the papers those dry years, there were stories of boozehounds, all of ‘em smoked, cooking hooch in automotive radiators and blowing their guts out with antifreeze. Is it goofy to think that maybe Charles drank something he shouldn’t have, something concocted in a magician’s parlor, that brought this hammer of God down upon us?

  Not long after Charles moved to this coastal home, I received some particularly bad news: our family’s orange groves outside of Los Angeles were drying up from lack of irrigation, and under the counsel of our colleagues, we were to sell. Although my relationship with Charles was about as withered as our puckered fruit, our sales and acquisitions divisions still required both our signatures on the dotted line.

  Just then, my errand boy appeared in my study with a letter. I thanked him and peeled open the sweaty envelope. Though it bore no return address, I knew the handwriting. The scratchy, scrawling cursive, with the finesse of a toddler with a crayon. Yes, I knew it well.

  It started: “Brother, I can’t fend them off for much longer. Maggie is frightened half to death. Please come.” The next line read: “I am sober.”

  I contemplated this, sipping my recently legal Syrah from Napa a while longer and watching the fog dissipate off the coast of Monterey. Two seagulls perched on my cliffside banister, no more than twenty feet from me, awaiting some food. Lounging in my robe and slippers, I rolled to the side of my pool chair, grabbed a couple of pebbles, and threw them at the seagulls.

  To whom was my brother referring when he said “fend them off”? Obviously it was nothing more than his panic attacks, with which he had been afflicted since his teens. Or so I thought at the time. I remember his leaving school when we were boys, complaining about dizziness, lightheaded spells, and flattened vision. From time to time Charles would wake up out of a daze, out of commission for several days or a week, and though I never believed his attacks were real, I soon realized he did, and thus his own mind I believed to be the sole cause of his affliction.

  I put the letter down. This talk of sobriety, of course, was a lie. However, given that Charles was in need, and given that I required his signature on the release of the orange groves, I grabbed my driving gloves, had my boy pack a suitcase, and readied myself for a drive up the coast.

  Chapter Three

  The blue sea stretched before me as I drove along the cliff’s edge. The roads were packed with dirt and not well maintained, but the drive at least was uneventful. I have a theory that people who live along the coast are calmer than those inland, if for no other reason, I assumed, that they only had one side of the world to worry about.

  Strange people—coastal folk—privy to oceanic forces. Like a full moon’s effect on a tide, the sea tugs on their minds and tunes their brains to a different wavelength.

  I stopped at a gas station and an attendant sauntered out of the little hut, its peeled walls like scabbed knees. The toothless, flap-mouthed man filled my tank, never looking directly at me, staring across the town’s center, to the water, mindlessly sucking on some tobacco under his lip.

  “Damn rain’s coming in,” he muttered. I looked around. There were no clouds, only blue sky. The man shook his head again, cursing about bringing the cows into the barn.

  I paid him and left. Not an hour later the storm was upon me, unloading furiously onto the pounding sea.

  Chapter Four

  Lakes formed on the floor of my Oldsmobile Viking. The rain had filtered into the auto’s electrical system, and the headlights shorted, forcing me to drive the last ten miles in the dark down winding roads, with only a glint of moon peeking through the storm clouds to light up my path towards home. Have you noticed it resembles a castle?

  The barn’s on the left; to its right, the help’s small house (now abandoned), plus, the graveyard of a beet field, which my great-grandfather managed most of his life. How a person could labor over a farm is beyond me, repeating the same routines day in and out, rising, going to bed early, and never leaving the coast. Still, he lived to see his nineties, and that says something. Compare that with me. Half his age and I’ll probably never leave this room.

  Anyway, I puttered up over the last of the hills. Lightning cracked behind the home like a whip on the sea, a master in the black fields. I felt sad for my old, tired childhood castle.

  I pulled up and ran through the pounding rain from the car to the front door, soaked to my skeleton. I burst in and threw my ruined, waterlogged bags onto the floor. They squeaked and squealed across the marble entryway that opened up into the wide sitting room to my left.

  If you follow through the main hallway you find the kitchen and exit to the courtyard, just outside the large hub of the living area. Out back the place connects with itself via a series of hallways, so a bird's-eye view of the interior would reveal a massive torus, with a courtyard in the hole.

  “Charles!” I yelled, stripping off my clothes.

  Laying my coat over the couch, I noticed the place was in good order. Nothing broken—most everything clean and orderly.

  But the chair to my left caught my eye. I passed a finger over its arm; it came up thick and chalky. All the seats were all turned inward, facing each other, arranged for some kind of party or gathering. The seats themselves, though covered in dust, were warm and depressed and recently sat in. I thought this strange but paid it no mind.

  “Alex!” Charles’s voice rang out.

  He stood halfway between the light and darkness of the den. His eyes, big and buglike, protruded from their sockets; his hair was thin and ashen. His skin drooped like an old man’s sallow arm, and he wore a tight-lipped smile.

  Gone were the days of his boyish good looks; he’d been replaced by an aging, repulsive skeleton of a man. Emerging from the shadows, he took my arm like a person who, having been stranded on an island for many years, receives a guest from the sea.

  “Charles,” I said, believing him drunk, as he wrapped his stick figure arms around my body. “Is there dry clothing for me?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sorry,” he stammered. “Come, come!”

  He led me through the hallway to the bedrooms. It was then that I noticed that Charles was keeping his eyes pointed straight at the floor. He seemed to be walking with an overabundance of caution, making little noise as he moved, gliding on the floor more than stepping.

  How different this was from the brother I knew. The loud, angry bastard, afraid of nothing, stomping through our home with mud on his boots and whiskey on his breath. Though he was surely drunk now, I assumed, I’d never seen him this meek.

  “And Maggie,” I said. “Where is she?”

  Charles opened his mouth, but stopped, sighed, and shuffled his way into the guest room, the flame from his candle unfolding our path. “I’ll be right next door to you, Alex. Anything you need, come right in. Maybe we could have a sl
eepover, like when we were young.”

  “Why aren’t you sleeping in the master bedroom?”

  He ignored the question and instead pointed behind me to the opened door of the bathroom, where steam was standing on the water. “I made a bath for you.”

  It was late, and I was not in the mood for games, so here I asked him what he meant in his letter about the intruders. His face froze in a half smile. “Oh, that . . . just playing around.”

  Many times when I’m at a party and I want to say something bad about someone nearby—and don’t want anyone to overhear—I freeze a smile and speak in such a way to signal my partner something’s amiss. For example, I may say, “so-and-so is a terrific person, and I enjoy his company”—but all the while I am clenching my teeth and widening my eyes, so the intended party knows I mean the exact opposite. This was my brother’s expression. Only there was fear in it.

  So, through gritted teeth, he said, “There’s nothing going on. Just a joke . . .”

  Then his eyes drifted up the rafters, and a look of terror came over him. He immediately snapped his eyes downward again, as though I’d caught him watching a woman undress. He squeezed his eyes shut, flung his arms around my neck, hugged me so tight I couldn’t breathe, and whispered, between sobs: “Don’t stare, Alex. Never stare at them!”

  And with that, he turned and left.

  Chapter Five

  The rain had stopped by morning, the moisture replaced by a thick layer of dew and sea foam. I found fresh clothes in the armoire and readied myself for the day. I found Charles at the kitchen table, sullen and staring downward into a cup of cold coffee.

  I yawned loudly to announce my presence. I was tired, having slept poorly on the lumpy mattress. It was time to sit with my brother, explain what I needed of him, and leave this place. “Charles, I have left our business to come here, and we have much to discuss. I’m not sure what you meant by your letter, but I’m prepared to forgive you for whatever you’ve done.

  “I’m assuming you’ve been hiding out here for a good reason, and that there is something you want to tell me. Whatever it is, we can work through it. If something’s happened to Maggie, if there’s been . . . an accident . . . I am prepared to help. We can move you wherever you like—perhaps to Belvedere to give you the space you need.”

  He wasn’t listening, preoccupied with his coffee cup.

  I continued. “We can fix you up with a doctor, someone who can help you with your . . . drinking problem.” Charles turned to me at that, bewildered.

  “In the meantime, you don’t have to worry about the business. You should focus on getting well. I will purchase your shares of our six remaining companies,” I suggested. “And I can run them. You will be free of any obligations to the family.”

  The clock ticked. Charles swirled his coffee, absently moving his head side to side with the motion of the cup.

  Suddenly, he stood and went to the door separating the kitchen from the dining room. Then he turned back, and with a quivering smile waved his hand, indicating me to follow him. My first impulse was to yell and haul him back inside and finish our conversation, but something in his sallow skin, his eyes of stone, his grave smile—and the contracts inside my coat pocket—convinced me to go.

  We walked clear off the property. The house appeared small against the blue horizon and endless ocean. Wind whipped his hair into a frenzy. I saw that underneath the sandy brown top the roots of his hair had turned white.

  Then he turned and grabbed my arm. “Alex,” he blurted, his eyes pleading and frightened. “I’m sorry I couldn’t say more inside. But the house has eyes and ears now. They’re watching. Hopefully, they can’t hear us out here.” The rough wind rapped at his bones. He leaned close to me, his back to the house. “Something has taken Maggie.”

  Now I was convinced that Charles was in some kind of alcoholic delusion, had gone whacky, that he’d knocked off Maggie on his own—perhaps in a manic episode—and had convinced himself, out of fear and regret, that someone or something else was responsible.

  I also realized at once that I was utterly alone with this man. This thing I called my brother. I should have loved him unconditionally—no one should be afraid of their siblings, or their family, but seeing his eyes move the way they did, back and forth, back and forth, flighty and quick and full of fear, years of pent-up stress warping his spine, I erected a wall inside myself, distancing me from my twin. Besides, I needed those contracts signed, and I quickly formed a new plan of action.

  “Charles,” I said, warmly wrapping an arm around his shoulder, leading him farther away from the coast. “You’re my brother and your happiness means the world to me. If something has happened, which I’m sure was caused in the fire of passion, we can fix it.

  “Remember, we have means and connections. Our family has a good reputation, and if an . . . unfortunate circumstance has befallen Maggie, it is best to come out with it now so we can face it and be rid of it. I have no doubt it was a mistake, one we can easily dismiss in the light of a newfound sobriety and these papers, which I’ve brought . . .”

  Even in his haze, Charles seemed to understand me. He said nothing, stopped shaking. So, I continued. “Charles, I’m here to help you. Remember that. You called on me. So what did you do to Maggie? What’s your story?”

  There are moments I can reflect on and wish I could revisit and change. Sitting here, writing this, they come flooding back to me. Like the time Peter Macready and Robert Gray ganged up on Elizabeth something-or-other and then we . . .

  Well, we were young, twelve or thirteen, and after classes they’d found her walking among the eucalyptus, playing joyfully in her own company. Some people can do that, be happy all by themselves. It’s a gift. We didn’t see it that way. She was an ugly girl, or so we thought, and I’d left class and wandered home through the woods and found them.

  They had her pinned when I walked up. Peter and Robert were tough, mean, and popular among the other children at school. Each had his knees pressed on her arms, so she had no leverage and couldn’t move. She screamed, kicked wildly into the air, but couldn’t get free. When they heard my footsteps behind them, the two boys turned and looked at me, sweating and smiling, paying no attention to the girl beneath them.

  Peter grabbed the jar next to them, his spider trapped inside. A big hairy thing. Peter would carry it around at school and sneak it out to scare someone, anyone. He handed me the jar. I knew without asking what he wanted me to do.

  I was in the bind that school children find themselves in: either inflict violence upon another or have violence inflicted upon them. If I refused, Peter and Robert would find me one day after school and have their ways with me.

  But I had a reputation to uphold. Even then the tyranny of pride and ambition had ruined me. It was my responsibility to avoid signs of weakness. But why did I think that way? At such a young age, no less? Maybe our father, who used to smack us with reeds on the knuckles to toughen us up, had something to do with that. I don’t know. Who does? In any case, I couldn’t have the other school children thinking any less of me, and I soon shoved that spider right into Elizabeth’s mouth. For a brief second she had looked at me, pleading with her eyes, shaking her head, begging me to stop before . . . before . . . ah, it brings redness to my cheeks just thinking about it.

  In an instant, after I accused my brother of . . . murder? . . . that familiar redness spread to my cheeks. But never mind. I would use shame or guilt or remorse or even the carrot of brotherly love—whatever I had to—to get those contracts in my hand. My means and motives . . . what can I say about them now? I hope you don’t think less of me . . . Then again, what does that matter now? Am I writing to save my reputation, or my body, or my soul?

  Chapter Six

  I stepped away from writing for a few minutes. This is taking longer than I’d expected; my hand is cramping, and I can’t seem to think straight. But there’ve been no strange noises from outside my door, no weird lights from outsid
e, nothing out of the ordinary. Even the sea is quiet. Writing is helping me, so I will continue. Still, I grow tired. The clocks have stopped working—what time is it? It’s still dark outside.

  Will it always be this dark?

  Charles didn’t seem hurt, only disappointed. I wasn’t fooling him; he knew what I was up to. I think he hoped that I would have believed him without question. I wish I would have. But no sense regretting anything now.

  He looked up at the bright blue sky and laughed as a frozen burst of sea air swept through us. I shivered, but he simply threw his head back and enjoyed the moment. All his troubles left him for just a second, out there on the cliff. Then the wind stopped, and he returned. “I haven’t had a drink in months, Alex.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I said, a smile plastered on my face. “Really, that’s fantastic.”

  “Four months, I think.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Mm, yes, amazing. I think so too. So did Maggie. How could I go without drinking for twenty days? Or twelve? Or one for that matter. Do you know how I did it, Alex?”

  I shook my head, said nothing, eyebrows raised. Charles breathed deeply and settled, as if preparing for a long explanation. Here’s what he told me.

  I did my heaviest drinking in San Francisco. Maggie and I had taken up in a loft, living very cheaply after the market crashed. No matter what I did, I couldn’t escape the hell of gin. Maggie, bless her soul, worked at the department store seven days a week, then came home and helped me from the bed to the bath.