by Ben Marcus
He searched through the rooms and found clothing which seemed to belong neither to him nor his brother, nor Mama, nor Daddy Norton. He could not make sense of it nor piece it together in complete outfits, for no matter how many times he coupled articles of clothing, they seemed mismatched in color, style, size. He abandoned clothing and took to gathering objects that interested him, carrying them with him for fear that he would never find them again. He gathered them and then, when sufficiently burdened, tried to find his way back, in the process discovering more than he could ever hope to carry. He heaped what he could in the kitchen and hall, dividing them into piles according to an interior logic he could not fathom but felt compelled to obey.
Aurel sat almost entirely still, and seemed hardly to breathe. He could still arise to walk up and down the hall when he chose, though he moved now with an excess of precision, as if even his most subtle motions were the result of a tremendous and impeccable focusing of the will. He spoke in a similar way, his voice measured and taut, his inflection oddly spaced but so well controlled as to impact much harder upon the words.
“You have begun to talk like Daddy Norton,” said Theron. “Are you thinking of reopening the ministry?”
“No,” said Aurel. “Daddy Norton has begun to talk like me.”
Since Theron could not puzzle through what Aurel meant, he began to watch him more closely. He noticed that when his brother moved it was as if he were hardly resident within his own body, or was resident only in a strictly mechanic sense. When Aurel was motionless, he did not seem present at all.
He took to nudging Aurel when he came into the hall, prodding him gently until the eyes focused in. He kept this up for a few days, until Aurel learned to ignore it.
In one of the upper rooms, Theron found an air rifle and a box of hard plastic pellets. He pumped the gun and shot off into a rat-eaten mattress, raising puffs of dust. Taking the rifle downstairs, he showed it to Aurel.
“Where was it?” said Aurel.
“Upstairs,” said Theron. “One of the rooms.”
“Daddy Norton’s room?” said Aurel.
“No.”
“What is in Daddy Norton’s room?” asked Aurel.
Theron claimed that he had entered the room but could not remember precisely what was there. Nothing much, he told Aurel. The next time, he thought, I will go in.
The next time, he did not go in. He stood for some time beside the door and even tried to twist the knob again, but it did not turn. He bent down and applied his eye to the keyhole, but found the aperture blocked. He shot the doorknob with the air rifle, listening to the pellets ping off and roll about the floor.
He began, to please Aurel, to imagine Daddy Norton’s room, to flesh it forth out of nothing in his head and then regurgitate it. It was, he claimed, a simple room, spare in decor, austere, little substance to it, a few books, a few ordinary objects. When he described Daddy Norton’s room, Aurel seemed almost attentive and even asked a few questions. It became so that Theron had to keep a series of notes in the kitchen and review them frequently, for Aurel noticed any inconsistency. He seemed to remember every detail, even to the point of requesting certain items from the room itself, asking for the private trinity of holy books that Theron claimed Daddy Norton had written: Unaccustomed Sinners, Fathers of Light, Body of Lies.
“I won’t bring his rubbish to you,” said Theron. “Get it yourself.”
Aurel came to his feet, his knees crackling, and swayed down the hall. Before he got to the door, he slowed, sat deliberately down.
“What’s the matter?” asked Theron.
“I am not ready,” said Aurel. “Not yet.”
At times Theron left the hall not to wander the upper rooms, but to remain behind one of the five doors leading off the main hall, his ear pressed to the door or the door cracked open slightly and he peering through, observing Aurel. Aurel did not appear to notice him, nor in fact to notice anything. Each time Theron returned to the hall and shook him conscious, Aurel would say, “You’ve been to Daddy Norton’s room?” and, when Theron shook his head, “I’ll have to go myself.”
“Why don’t you go?” Theron asked.
“I am going,” said Aurel. “Here I go,” he said, but did not rise.
The pantry was nearly empty. Creditors and bastards of the slickest varieties took to coming to the door and posting notices. The brothers did not answer. A wet-haired man in a tennis shirt tried to break the door open with a crowbar until Theron opened it and threatened him with the air rifle.
“You are naked,” said the man. “You can’t shoot me.”
Theron shot the man point-blank in the belly, the pellet burying itself shallowly in the fat. Pressing his hands to his belly, the man backed away.
The food in the kitchen ran out. Theron searched the upper rooms for food, found nothing. He returned to the entrance hall.
He grabbed the air rifle, pulling Aurel to his feet and toward the front door. Aurel leaned against him, moving languidly, as if drugged. He allowed himself to be propelled through the door, onto the porch, and then began weakly to resist.
“Where are we going?” he managed.
“To kill something,” said Theron.
“We need clothes,” Aurel said.
Theron leaned his brother over the porch rail, went back into the house. Kicking through the piles in the hall and kitchen, he uncovered a pair of bathing trunks and a pair of briefs. He slipped into the bathing trunks, carried the briefs outside.
Aurel had fallen off the porch, was lying curled up and hardly moving in the dirt.
“What’s wrong with you, brother?” said Theron.
“What do you mean?” said Aurel.
Theron stepped off the porch and slipped the briefs over Aurel’s feet, working them up to rim about the knees. He lifted his brother off the ground, pulled the briefs up until they caught on his sex, then lifted the elastic out and over.
“I have to go back inside,” said Aurel.
“We need something to eat,” said Theron.
Supporting Aurel, he dragged him forward until Aurel began to move his legs of his own accord. He slowly slacked his support until Aurel tottered forward on his own.
“I want to go home,” said Aurel.
They traveled alongside the town road for a time then cut away into the fields. They waded through a vacant plot, the ground dawked and uneven. Theron stuffed Aurel through a barbed-wire fence, holding the wires apart, then crawled through himself. Passing through wheat fields, they fell onto a dirt track and were led to a house. They went around to the back.
In the shade of one of the trees was a dog on a chain. He got to his feet when he saw them, stretched. Theron started pumping the air rifle. The dog came forward, wagging its tail, the chain paying out.
Theron steadied Aurel against the side of the house and leveled the air rifle at the dog’s head. The dog sniffed at the muzzle, licked the tip of it, tried to pass under it. Theron pushed the barrel flush against the dog’s forehead. Closing his eyes, he shot.
Opening them, he found the dog’s eye burst and bubbling, the dog staggering and beginning to turn a circle, its paws tangling in the chain. He pumped the rifle. The dog moaned, started wavering its way back toward the tree.
He followed it, pumping the rifle. He put barrel’s end between the shoulder blades. As the dog turned to snap at it, he jerked the trigger.
The dog stumbled to its belly and lay spread a moment, then got back up. Theron could see a small burr of blood rising where the pellet had gone in, the pale lump of it resting just under the skin.
“This dog doesn’t want to die,” Theron called.
“Leave it alone,” said Aurel.
Theron pumped the rifle and got around by the dog where it was sitting under the tree and on its side, palsied. He reached his bare foot out and put it against the dog’s jaw, pushing the head down, exposing the throat.
“I want to go home,” said Aurel.
Theron poin
ted the gun and fired, shooting the dog through the throat, the pellet lodging somewhere within the breathpipe. The dog whimpered, the fur of its throat darkening slowly with blood. Theron pushed his foot down and lined up the gun again, pumping. Wriggling beneath him, the dog shook its jaw free and bit him.
He cried out and began to jab at its nose with the barrel, the dog chacking its jaws tighter. He reversed the rifle to bring the gunstock down hard across the dog’s skull. The dog shuddered, let go.
Theron limped back a little distance and dropped to examine the wound, blood pushing up in the teethmarks and running streaks down the side of the foot. The dog tried to get to its feet but could not and just stayed pawing the ground in front of it until it could not do that either, and curled its legs underneath and died.
He looked up for Aurel and found Aurel gone. He left the dog and the gun beside it and hobbled around to the front of the house. Aurel he found on the porch clawing at a window.
“What is it?” said Theron.
“I need air,” said Aurel. “Let me out.”
“Come off of there,” said Theron, taking him by the hair and dragging him down. “This is not even our house.”
Limping, he pulled Aurel back to the dog and let go. He unchained the dog and took it by the hind legs and began to drag it away.
“Come on, Aurel,” said Theron. “Time to go home.”
Aurel stayed put, watching him. “I don’t want to go,” he said.
“Jesus F. Christ,” said Theron. “First you don’t want to leave, then you don’t want to go back. What’s the matter with you?”
“The middle name isn’t F.,” said Aurel.
“The Jesus I’m talking about is,” said Theron.
“Stop it, Theron,” said Aurel. “You want to go to hell?”
“Are you walking or do I have to drag you?” asked Theron.
Aurel remained a moment standing and then sat down. Theron let go of the dog’s legs and came over to hit Aurel in the face until he was lying down. He picked his brother up under the arms and found him light and cold to the touch. When Theron lifted and carried him, Aurel did not seem to notice, but lay in his arms without regard for anything.
Theron stumbled past the dead dog and a few meters later set Aurel down on the ground. He went down stiffly. He went back for the dog, dragged it alongside his brother. He crouched down and stared at first one then the other.
“Can you walk?” he asked Aurel.
“I won’t,” said Aurel.
He alternated between lugging Aurel and the dog’s carcass until he reached the main road, and then gave it up to carry the one while dragging the other. He tried to drag the dog and carry Aurel, but kept dropping his brother. He found it easier to drag Aurel by the feet, Aurel’s head jouncing across the asphalt, while he slung the dog over his shoulders.
He could hardly walk for the pain in his foot. People slowed as they passed in cars, at times even pointing, shouting. He cursed them thoroughly and kept on.
The dog grew heavy around his neck, his chest and shoulders spattering with blood and foam. Behind, Aurel seemed to have fallen asleep, though his eyes were still open. Theron kept turning around and asking, Hey, you dead? Hey, you dead? Hey, you dead? After a while, Theron stopped asking.
IV. THE HOLY WORD
The foot festered, and soon he could not walk on it. He left the carcass in the hall, slitting the skin and fur off it with an old kitchen knife and eating raw hunks until it was too hard to pick out the maggots. He pulled himself back a few yards, watching the flesh vanish and the bones push through, the structure collapsing into a mere arthritic pile, flies turning circles on the walls. Maggots struck blindly across the floor out from the carcass and Theron was hungry enough to drag himself to them.
Soon both dog and maggots seemed gone, though Theron discovered no inclination to leave the hall. Aurel, on the contrary, seemed to have regained his strength. He had risen suddenly to his feet, and was now rarely found in the hall. He had acquired color in his cheeks, and his eyes seemed less inclined to delirium. He roamed the upper levels of the house, though unlike Theron he never returned with anything. He would vanish for days, and then Theron would awaken to find him crouched and peering over him. Then Aurel would vanish again.
The maggots returned, this time pushing their way out of Theron’s injured foot. He scraped them from the wound and swallowed them, but they originated deeper within the foot than he dared scrape, and kept returning. The smaller, individual wounds became a single wound, the wound growing purple and deep, the flesh sloughing away almost painlessly at a touch.
He faded in and out of consciousness, Aurel seeming to grow immense. He could hear his brother’s feet creak through the ceiling above, the structure of the house swaying beneath his weight.
He took to not seeing things, then to not hearing them. He kept his eyes closed and pulled himself to a corner and leaned into it, and soon thereafter his nerves dried out and his skin ceased to feel. His thoughts ran on for a while in all directions and then seemed to establish an equilibrium of sorts, and then fell silent.
He felt himself shaken. After some time, he brought himself to open his eyes. He looked up to see Aurel.
He tried to turn his head. He swallowed, coughed forth a web of phlegm, spread it onto the wall.
“What did you do with Daddy Norton’s eyes?” asked Aurel.
“His eyes?”
“You removed them,” said Aurel. “Where are they?”
Theron fumbled his hand into the corner behind him and seemed to fall asleep. Aurel nudged him and he brought his hand forth and opened his palm out, an irregular mass within.
Aurel took the eye from Theron’s hand and examined it, the surface withered and collapsed, the lens sunken in and grown opaque.
“Where’s the other one?” he said.
“This is the one that has been watching me,” said Theron. “I think it is his. It might be the dog’s.”
Aurel sniffed it. He lifted it, held it against first one of his eyes then the other, then stretched it toward Theron. Theron let it come close, then closed his eyes.
“Look,” said Aurel. “Please look.”
He brought the eye toward Theron slowly and Theron let him do it. He brought the eye up near to Theron’s living eye.
“What do you see?” he said.
“Nothing,” said Theron. “Not a goddamn thing.”
Upstairs, Aurel broke down Daddy Norton’s door by simply leaning into it, the cheap hinges shearing away. The room inside was dark and damp, reeking of Daddy Norton’s pomade. He left the door open and felt around beside the door for a light mechanism, but did not find one. He took a few steps in and stood there, waiting for the dark to acquire depth and texture. He took a few more steps, then a few more. He stood still until he began to see.
One side of the room was lined with religious tokens of all sects and creeds, strung along the wall. There were, as well, holy books, many of them still in wrapping and apparently never opened, scattered over the floor.
The other side of the room was nearly empty—a stiff austere bed, a low basin, a lectern which supported Daddy Norton’s Holy Word.
He went to the Holy Word and opened it up. He began to read.
Those who strike against God’s True and Everlasting Covenant as revealed by Him to Daddy Norton shall be numbered among the damned and cast into the outer dark.
Those who have known God’s Own Truth, as revealed to Daddy Norton and written by his hand, guided by God’s hand, in this holy book, and who turn against it, shall be numbered most visibly among the damned and cast into the outer dark.
To afflict Daddy Norton is to afflict God himself. Those who, knowingly or unknowingly, in faith or outside of it, challenge Daddy Norton on his sacred path toward Truth, will be damned with the damnation that sticks and cast well beyond the outer dark.
He took the book downstairs and shook Theron alive and read the verses to him.
“It’
s a good thing the bastard’s dead,” said Theron.
“Be quiet,” said Aurel. “Do you want to be cast into the outer dark?”
“As long as Daddy Norton isn’t there waiting for me.”
Aurel shook his head. In closing the book, his eye passed across a line, and he opened the book again and began to read the verse in its full body.
He who converses with my enemies, though he claim loyalty to me and every whit of doctrine, is my enemy, for the law must be fulfilled. Brother shall turn against brother for my sake, and father against child.
He studied the verse out and pondered it in his mind and wondered upon its application until the hall had fallen dark.
“Theron,” he said. “Let me read this to you.”
Theron did not answer yea or nay. Aurel read the passage slowly, haltingly, in his own voice, then looked up to see what his brother would say. Theron didn’t say anything, just stayed pressed up into the corner, silent.
“I’m sorry, brother,” said Aurel. “I must leave.”
He closed the book. He stood and looked down at Theron. He prodded the festered leg with his own foot, his toes sinking into the flesh. He stood and left the hall.
He traveled through the upper rooms, the air hardly breathable, at one time stumbling into an attic filled with dead swallows, their heads screwed off and heaped in a corner. He lived for some time on the armload of swallows he carried out, stripping them free of their larger feathers and choking them down whole as he wandered on.
He could feel the house creak and sway beneath him, the wood groaning as if the rooms were never meant to be walked in. Many of the rooms were dark, and he found in these his eyes could not gather sufficient light to glean wisdom from the Holy Word, so he began to avoid them. Others rippled with heat, and these he came to avoid as well. He kept instead to the narrow and rickety rooms nearest the top, chinks in their walls and ceilings, their floors as well, which howled with wind and in which he had to hold the pages of the Holy Word pressed flat so they could not go adrift.
