by Paul Pen
34
The Cricket Man reached the wardrobe. The light from his oil lamp was so close it could’ve burned me with its flame. I lowered my head to make myself invisible, certain he’d spot my legs among the hanging clothes. I held my breath. I could hear my own skin tightening. My heart thundered in that confined space. I wished I could silence it.
Some coat hangers slid along the wardrobe’s rail above my head. The Cricket Man was pushing his way through, moving obstacles aside with his legs.
Dad spoke in the room, on the other side of the doors. “What’s that book doing there?”
“What book?” Mom asked.
“This one.”
My heart stopped. I’d spent several seconds deciding whether to leave the light on or off, but I’d forgotten about something much more important. The book. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I’d left it by the doorjamb when I escaped into the wardrobe. I hugged the firefly jar.
A blouse covered my face.
A few inches away the Cricket Man’s body palpitated. I could feel his heat. I could make out his pulse in the slight vibration of the sphere of light that his oil lamp projected. I bit my lips. A drip soaked into my underpants. I pressed my legs together to stop what was about to happen.
“Did you open the door?” Dad asked in the room. “When we got back from the kitchen. Did you open it?”
“It was open. You opened it. I didn’t even . . .” Mom didn’t finish the sentence. She just gave a frightened yelp.
Something hit the wardrobe door.
Then it fell to the floor.
Dad had thrown the book.
I managed to stay still despite the unexpected bang because my body was so stiff with fear, but the wetness in my underpants continued to spread toward the sides. The Cricket Man reacted to the shock with a flinch. His movement made some clothes dance along the rail. The shadows that his light cast inside the wardrobe stretched, shrank, stretched again.
The book’s impact marked the beginning of a bigger racket.
The floor in the room shook under Dad’s quick footsteps. He yelled something I couldn’t make out. The bedroom door opened.
He was heading to my room. Where he’d discover that I wasn’t in bed.
The hangers overhead stopped moving when the Cricket Man recovered from his fright.
Motionless, I imagined myself making him open the wardrobe door. Come on, come on, come on. I needed him to get out. To clear the way so I could run up the tunnel and get out before Dad got back from my bedroom, aware of the escape plan. Come on, come on, come on.
Then he opened the wardrobe. He went into my parents’ room.
“Something’s going on,” Mom said to the Cricket Man. And although she continued speaking, I couldn’t make out anything else. The sound of my own breathing enveloped me completely when I let out the air I’d been holding in. The out-breath woke up my pinched muscles.
A hidden strength exploded in my feet. It impelled me to run in the direction the Cricket Man had come from, the clothes hitting me in the face.
I headed into the darkness, going with this new instinct.
First my bare feet discovered a texture that was new to me. Then an unknown feeling covered me completely, brushed against my ankles, twisted itself around my legs, hit me on the chest, and seeped under my armpits. It was moist air. Like the air I sometimes felt on my face when I peered through the window at the end of the hall, but now it was traveling all over my body. My panting, as I ran, muted the sounds coming from the bedroom.
I very soon ran straight into a soft surface. It felt strange to me. Something scratched my face before the force of the collision propelled me backward. I fell onto my backside. Now it was my buttocks that detected the new texture I’d felt before. I leapt to my feet, frightened by the sensation.
I was afraid the firefly lamp had broken with the impact. I ran my fingers around the jar’s contour. It was intact. I felt stupid for not remembering them earlier.
“Glow,” I said to the fireflies. “Light the way.” I repeated the command with a series of taps on the lid. Before they could obey my instructions, I no longer needed their light, because the wardrobe door opened behind me. The glow from the Cricket Man’s oil lamp was bright enough for me to see the dark wall that stood in my way.
I heard him breathe behind me.
A current of stinking air reached me from my right. I ran in that direction. I saw another wall that appeared in front of me just in time, and I avoided the collision. I followed the draft, making another turn. The light from the oil lamp wobbled with each step the Cricket Man took in my direction, warping the space. My shadow on the ground was stuck fast to my feet, as if it, too, wanted to escape the basement. Or as if it was the shadow of my reflection in the window, that part of myself that sometimes looked at me from outside, from the other side of the glass. I gasped. Tears flew behind me.
Another obstacle came into view when it was too late to stop. It was a giant sack made from a brown material. The Cricket Man’s sack. I stumbled over it and was thrown forward. One of the soft walls of the passage stopped me from falling. I fell silent, expecting to hear the whimpers of the children trapped in the sack.
What I heard was a loud crash behind me. The chinking of metal objects. The crunch of glass as it broke. And a deep groan from the Cricket Man.
The light he carried went out, leaving me in total darkness.
I began the sequence of taps in Morse code on the jar’s lid. I stopped as soon as it dawned on me that the glow from the fireflies would give me away. I was better off staying in the dark. I stretched an arm out in front of me, like Grandma did sometimes to navigate her surroundings. All the surfaces had the same moist texture. I groped the walls with a trembling hand. I couldn’t find what I was looking for. What my sister had told me I’d find without difficulty. One afternoon, in the bathroom, she’d held the shower hose in her hands, making a curve with it that she made me touch a few times. She explained to me that, on the last wall in the passage, I’d find some metal things with that shape. Fixed to the wall, one above the other, from bottom to top. She told me they were steps, and that I’d have to climb them like I climbed the ladder to my bunk.
I felt the damp walls without finding anything resembling steps. Then I thought that my sister had tricked me. That it was all a trap. She wanted me gone from the basement so she could do what she wanted with the baby. Poison him without me coming out from under a bed to ruin her plans.
I kept touching the walls, certain I’d been tricked.
The deception magnified in my mind. I imagined that my entire family was part of my sister’s plan. They’d all wanted to lead me to that strange passageway. In the dark. They all wanted to get rid of me. Free themselves of the boy who’d disrupted their life together with questions about the patch of sun in the living room. The boy who hid things in his drawer. They wanted to cast me out of the basement for distrusting the Cricket Man, who they weren’t scared of. I imagined them in my parents’ bedroom celebrating how successful their plan had been. Closing the wardrobe door. Leaving me outside. Forever. Turned into my own reflection in the window. Into the ghost Dad said I was.
Surrounded by darkness, unable to see even a single body part that confirmed I existed, I felt as if I was disappearing. As if I was vanishing into nothing. To become just a bad memory that my family would soon forget.
That was when I touched it. Above my head. Something similar to the shower hose. It was thicker. And it was cold. But I ran my fingers along it and found that it curved, much like my sister had shown me.
I smiled in the dark.
I wanted to grip on to that thing, but it was impossible to do so without letting go of the firefly jar. Holding it under an arm like I was, there was no way I could hang on to the rung with both hands. I tried to stretch my underpants, with the idea of wedging the jar between my body and the elastic, but the container was too wide. I didn’t want to leave the basement without my fireflies. They
had to glow to show me the world with their light. To perform the sequence of flashes I’d taught them.
I heard footsteps.
And another click of a back-to-front knee.
I was forced to leave the fireflies on the ground.
“I’ll be back to save you,” I whispered as I crouched down. “You and the baby.”
When I crouched I lost track of where the ladder was. I began another search with my arms outstretched. Each time my hands hit the wall, moist stuff fell on my face.
The Cricket Man’s breathing sounded too close.
I scratched at the damp texture. Bits of the wall went under my fingernails. I hit something metal with my elbow. I grabbed the step with all my might.
Then I heard an unknown voice.
“Don’t go,” it said.
It was deep. Full of crackles. Like you’d expect from a throat that was only half-human.
Fear turned me into the perfect prey. So immobilized by the shock that I wouldn’t resist. I shook my face to get the bits of wall off my eyes.
When I blinked I discovered a line of light in the distance.
Up above.
It was a purple line, barely visible, but different from anything I’d seen in the basement.
Still gripping the step, I kicked out, trying to find footing on the wall. If the Cricket Man wanted to stick me in his sack, or eat me right there, he’d have to fight for it. I wasn’t prepared to let myself be beaten without seeing what was outside the basement. Without knowing what it was like beyond the purple line I could see way above.
Though I’d never performed a movement like it, pulling with my arms to lift my body, I managed to get my elbows to the height of the metal handle. I didn’t hold on for long. The pain in my back and shoulders made me fall.
A desperate sob escaped through my nose as I sat up.
“Are you all right?” the voice asked.
I jumped up to reach the step again. I hit the wall.
The Cricket Man spoke again.
“Come with me,” he said.
I scratched like crazy at the wall.
Until I heard Grandma’s voice.
“Come with us.”
Mom joined the chorus of voices. “Come to the bedroom.”
“There’re a lot of things we have to explain to you,” Dad added.
In the dark, I began to make out the shapes of my family in front of me. Someone took a step toward me. The click of the knee gave away his identity.
“Don’t eat me,” I begged.
Mom’s nose whistled.
“It’s not the Cricket Man,” said Dad.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Grandma.
The unknown silhouette held out a hand that wasn’t a front leg.
“Are you the One Up There?”
He laughed. “I’d rather you called me Grandpa from now on,” he said.
35
Mom hugged me in the bedroom, on her knees. She made a visor with her hands over my eyes to ease the pain from the change in light.
“Why are you running away?” she asked. “Why haven’t you told us you want to go?”
I broke away from her hug without answering. I sat on the bed with my feet hanging down, the firefly jar on my legs.
“Because you want to keep me locked up,” I replied. “And keep telling me lies.”
Mom looked at Dad, wanting help. He put an arm behind her back, inviting Grandma and Grandpa to join them. The four of them observed me like I’d observed the fireflies in the jar on so many nights.
“Son,” said Dad, “we want you to go, too.”
I blinked a few times without understanding. My jaw dropped.
“Your grandfather’s going to need help,” Grandma said. She kissed him on the cheek.
I hesitated for a second before looking the One Up There, the Cricket Man, in the face for the first time. I discovered features so wrinkled they might’ve been burned. But they weren’t. A sack of saggy skin hung from his chin. The eyes behind the glasses seemed buried in the flesh of his eyelids.
“I can’t do this on my own anymore,” he said. His two eyebrows, white like the only one that Grandma still had, relaxed. It was an expression of calm that was reproduced in the scarred faces of the rest of my family. As if they’d waited a long time for this moment to come.
“But I was about to go,” I said. “You stopped me.”
“Because we want you to leave, not escape,” Dad explained. “We’ve been hoping for a while that you’d come to the decision yourself. But not even making you sleep in the bathtub made you want to go.” A hint of a smile curved Dad’s hair scar. “Son, you’re going to have to forgive us for many things. I just wanted you to stop liking this place. So that leaving wouldn’t be so difficult.”
“Leaving?” I hugged the jar, trying to process what Dad was saying. “You’re going to let me go?”
“I asked you myself not long ago if you wanted to leave,” Mom broke in. “In your bed, when we talked about those green butterflies. It was a serious question, and you told me you didn’t want to go.”
“Because I didn’t.”
“And why do you want to escape now?”
“Because I’ve found out about a lot of things.”
The serenity on Dad’s face cracked. “What do you mean?”
I swung my legs in the air. I wanted to list all of the terrible things I’d discovered. That Dad had put the baby in my sister’s belly. And that Mom and Grandma had allowed it to happen, and that was why they considered it the worst of their sins. But I bit my bottom lip to stop the words from coming. Because I thought that what they were saying to me now could be another trap to keep me in the dark. Another lie to make me stay in the basement. Like the chick. Like the mask. Like the blisters in the outside world.
“I want to leave,” I said. “Let me go.”
“We’re going to let you go,” Mom said. “But not like this.”
“I want to leave!” The yell caused a spasm of surprise in my family’s communal embrace. It also woke the baby in the room next door.
“Tell us why you want to leave.”
“Because you’ve tricked me,” I replied, looking Dad in the eyes. “This isn’t the best place in the world.”
He sighed as he heard me. He freed his arms from Mom and Grandma, then knelt in front of me. He put the firefly jar on the bed. It surprised me that he barely seemed to notice it. “I want you to know that we did it for you.”
I frowned, not understanding.
“Making you believe that this was the best place in the world,” he explained. He took my hand and pinched the back of it. “Remember?”
He gently twisted my skin like he had the first time I asked him why we couldn’t leave the basement. When he explained to me that the outside world was made of blisters like the one made on my skin by an oil burn. The same night when I went up to the kitchen door for the first time.
“Of course I remember,” I said.
Mom’s nose whistled.
He released the pinch. He kissed my hand, like he’d done then. “That’s why you think this is the best place in the world. Because we had to make you believe that it was, so you’d be happy living here.”
I held a hand to Dad’s face. I stroked his hair scar. I relived the pleasant sensation I’d enjoyed so much when I was little. It triggered other pleasant sensations that made the basement the best place in the world. The heat from the patch of sun on my hands. The pressure of the sheet on my chest when Mom tucked me in. Her wrinkled lips when they kissed my forehead. Grandma’s smell. The taste of carrot soup. I finished tracing the line of the scar. The good memories disappeared.
“You’ve all lied to me,” I said.
Dad lowered his head. “I’m sorry.”
“It was the best thing we could do,” Mom added. “A little boy has to live with his family.”
I weighed her words. “But, why do we live here?”
There was a silence. I saw Grandma
pressing her forehead against Grandpa’s chest, huddling up to him. When Dad looked up at me, the folds of burned flesh cast deep shadows on his face. “Because we can’t leave the basement.”
“We can’t,” Mom pointed out.
“But you can,” Grandpa added. “And the time has come for you to do so.”
“And why can’t you all leave?” I asked.
Dad’s eyes went out of focus. They looked through me into some far-off place. Some past time that must’ve been left a long way behind.
“There are answers to all these questions,” he said in the end. “There’ll be plenty of time for that.”
I withdrew my hand from between his. I took the firefly jar and pushed myself back over the mattress, separating myself from Dad. I got down from the bed on the other side.
“I want the truth,” I said.
“Son . . .”
“You never answer my questions!” I cried.
“It’s better if you find out bit by—”
“My sister’s the only one I can trust!”
The density of the air changed when I mentioned her. Grandma took a sharp breath. The curve in Dad’s hair scar straightened until it became a sharp expression of rage.
“Of course,” he said, throwing his hands toward the ceiling. “Your sister. It had to be her behind all of this. What is it she’s told you?” Before I could answer his question, he murmured, “In fact, she can explain it herself.”
He ran to find her in my bedroom, but when he opened the door, she appeared on the other side stumbling, as if she’d been listening with her ear pressed against the metal. She looked at us one by one as she regained her balance. Then she ran to the wardrobe. Dad got in front of her with an explosive sprint. He threw himself against the doors and closed them with his back.
“Don’t even try it,” he said to her. “And put the mask on, the boy’s here.”
“I know the boy’s here. I’m not blind. The blind one’s your mother.”
“Put it on.”
“It’s not necessary anymore.” She seemed to enjoy the silent anxiety that followed her words. “Is it, little brother?”
