by Jeff Hirsch
I took the Brotherhood comics off the shelf and tucked them under my arm as I walked out of the library.
Sun-bleached trash blew across the parking lot of the Seeger Museum. Trees that had once been trimmed into lollipop rounds like something out of Willy Wonka were overgrown and leaning.
I pushed aside the Guard’s yellow NO TRESPASSING tape and ducked through a gap in the chainlink fence that surrounded the property. The building’s glass front doors and the steel roll-down barrier had been smashed, maybe the night of the outbreak, maybe by people looking for shelter later on. I found an opening big enough and squeezed inside.
Sunlight filtered down through the skylights. Most of the artwork had been evacuated by the Guard long ago, so the walls were empty. Just ghostly rectangles where the paintings used to hang. I felt my way through the darker hallways until I came to a door set in a concrete wall. The metal sign riveted beside it read RICHARD SERRA: TORQUED ELLIPSES.
I stepped through the doorway into that immense room.
The first time I’d seen the sculptures, that day we came to Black River on a house-hunting trip, I didn’t even understand what I was looking at. Twenty-foot-high walls of rust-colored steel all lined up in a concrete room. So what? It wasn’t until we got closer to the first one that I saw that its walls were curved. The wall was actually a ring with an opening on one side that led into an empty space that was easily as big as our apartment in Brooklyn.
I ran to the second ellipse—two rings, one inside the other. I got to the third one before any of you and discovered a maze of rings within rings, three or four of them, the openings staggered around their circumference, making a kind of spiral. It was bright inside when I first entered, but the way the walls leaned into or away from each other as they curved sent me from day to twilight and back to day again. I staggered along like I was on the deck of a sailing ship. When I was finally let out into the heart of the ellipse, I was so dizzy I fell right on my butt. The walls soared over my head, bending up and away toward the skylights. The sun made their brown steel seem warm and alive. I felt sure that if I laid my hand against one, I’d feel a pulse moving just beneath the metal.
And then the three of you came in, you and Mom a little giddy, Dad quiet. I remember how we all ended up on our backs in the middle of the floor, taking turns describing the ellipse. You said it was a carnival funhouse. I said it was the hull of a ship we were sailing through a storm. Mom said the walls were like the petals of an immense rose. When Dad’s turn came, he was quiet for a long time before he said that it wasn’t a rose, it was a prison, and we were all trapped inside.
Now I made my way through the dusty room, passing the other ellipses and going straight to the third. I found the rift and walked inside, curving around the spiraling walls, the palm of my hand skimming along the rough steel. When I reached the center of it, I dropped the Brotherhood comics in a pile and sat on the scuffed concrete floor. The skylights overhead were frosted with dust and bird droppings, turning the light into a spoiled-milk haze.
I pulled off my mask and lay flat on my back. The walls towered above me. I heard Freeman’s voice in my ear. What raw materials did you use to build Cardinal Cassidy?
The trip to Lake George was supposed to fix everything. I know it probably seemed out of nowhere when I first mentioned it that morning at breakfast, but the truth was I’d been planning it for weeks. Six full days in a two-bedroom cabin a hundred and fifty miles from Black River. All of us packed in together just like it was when we were back in Brooklyn. At first I was pretty sure Dad was going to flat-out refuse, but I guess the nudging from Mom helped.
I got more and more excited as the weeks stretched by. It was kind of like when you buy someone the perfect Christmas present and it feels like you’ll jump out of your skin if the day doesn’t hurry up and get there so you can give it to them. I think I drove you a little crazy, didn’t I? Admit it, in the weeks leading up to Lake George, the decision to save money by living at home instead of in the dorm your first year in college was seeming like a truly terrible one.
Anyway, the day finally came, and there we were, you and me and Mom. We’d loaded our bags into the car and were standing at the end of the driveway, waiting for Dad. Autumn had turned the slopes of Lucy’s Promise and the rest of the Highlands scarlet and gold. The air was crisp and smelled like dry leaves and fireplace smoke. I felt like there were fireworks going off inside my chest. I couldn’t stop talking.
“Did I tell you guys about the boats? You can rent them at the place and then take them all the way across the lake. They have rowboats and motorboats and those ones that have the pedals, like bicycles. Oh! And there are horses.”
Mom put her hand on my shoulder, as if she were trying to keep me from leaping into the air. “Yes, you told us about the horses.”
You rolled your eyes as you tapped away on your phone, probably texting that girl from your art class. “And all the great antiquing opportunities. Seriously, Card,” you said, “what sixteen-year-old kid gets pumped about looking at antiques?”
You were messing with me, but I didn’t care. Right then, I was invulnerable to it.
“You’ll see. You and me, bro. We’ve got us a date with some reasonably priced mid-century modern home furnishings!”
“You are such a freak.”
“I can see you’re a tough sell, kid. That’s why I saved the best for last. Did I mention the twelve miles of hiking trails? Or the generous daily breakfast prepared to order by a genuine French chef?”
Mom pulled out her phone, checked the time, and then put it back. It was the third time she’d done it in the last twenty minutes.
“Dad just has a few things to finish up,” I said. “And then he’ll be ready.”
Mom tried to smile, but it was a poor effort. She kept her eyes locked on the front door. I pulled out my brochures and put the finishing touches on the plan. We’d probably all want a little rest after the drive, so I thought naps first and then we could cook out on the charcoal grill the place provided. I’d already talked to the manager about the best grocery store to go to in town for steaks and things. After that I figured you and I could go over to the main house and grab a whole bunch of board games. Day Two was definitely horseback riding and then maybe a trip into town. Day Three was—
Footsteps on the sidewalk. My heart jumped into my throat. When I looked up, though, it wasn’t Dad coming out of the house, it was Mom going in.
“Mom, no, wait! He just needs more time! He’ll be here in—”
Mom slammed the door behind her, and the fight started almost immediately. Mom yelled. Dad yelled back. I could hear every word, almost as if there were no walls between us at all. It was a familiar enough sound by then, but standing there with those brochures clenched in my fists, I felt like there was this iron bar running down the middle of me and someone had taken it in both hands and shaken it.
I turned to you, but you had your head down and your fists jammed in your jacket pockets so hard I could make out the peaks and valleys of your knuckles through the black corduroy.
“We can still get there before dark,” I said. “We can take one of the boats out on the lake. Or maybe Mom and Dad can. I brought the Xbox. Me and you could hook it up and—”
You looked up from the sidewalk. Your eyes were angry slits, rimmed in red, and your jaw was clenched. I found myself stepping back, moving away from you.
“It’s going to be fine,” I said. “We’ll be away six whole days. By the time we get back, everything will be the way it—”
“You’re just like them.”
“Tennant—”
You turned your back and walked away, your body framed by Lucy’s Promise, which autumn had turned into a wall of flames. I wanted to say something. I wanted to call out to you, to stop you, to tell you that everything was going to be okay, but I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t move because that iron bar was still rattling inside of me. You turned a corner and were gone, leaving me alone
on the sidewalk as the house and the street and the world shook with Mom’s and Dad’s voices. I didn’t see you again until late the next night.
October sixteenth.
I rolled up off the floor and knelt before the ellipse. You were all there, pressing in closer, surrounding me until I could hardly breathe. I pulled my arm back and drove my fist into the wall as hard as I could. It was like punching a downed power line. I hit the floor and curled around my throbbing hand, waiting for the pain to burn you all out of my head, knowing that it never could.
18
AT SOME POINT I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up, Hannah was across from me.
It was late, either that same night or the next. She was alone, sitting next to the rift in the wall with a backpack in her lap. A lantern sat in the middle of the ellipse beside my mask and the pile of comics. It filled the chamber with an amber glow.
“Greer ran out to get some supplies. He’ll be back in a minute.”
Hannah didn’t look at me as she spoke. She kept her eyes on the concrete floor, twisting at the backpack’s strap.
“How’d you find me?”
She shrugged. “We asked around. Some people saw you heading this way.”
I started to get up, wincing as I did. “Is everybody—”
“Everybody’s fine,” she snapped. “Benny has mostly stopped asking why you just up and left, which is good, since Greer and I ran out of excuses a few days ago.”
The rough steel of the ellipse raked across my back as I fell against it. Freeman’s aspirin had long since worn off, leaving my body feeling like a bag of splintered bones. Bruises snaked around my knuckles like vines. My hand was swollen. I flexed my fingers to make sure nothing was broken.
“You okay?”
I drew my hand back into the shadows and said I was fine. Hannah turned to stare into the darkness on the other side of the rift in the wall. I looked up at the skylight, hoping I might see a few stars through the dirty glass haze, but the sky was blank, like something that had been hollowed out.
“These are your dad’s.”
She had pulled the stack of comics closer to her. I nodded.
“I read the first two while you were sleeping,” she said. “They’re good. I like Blue Jay.”
“Dad based him on this kid he knew growing up.”
She picked Behold, Abaddon out of the stack and paused at the cover, struck by it the way people always were. She turned it over, but of course there was nothing on the back. No explanation at all. Dad had been so proud of that.
“It’s an origin story,” I said. “Well, the first half is, anyway.”
Hannah glanced up at me. Her eyes were a deep liquid brown in the lantern light. I held out my hand, and she slid the book across the floor. The cover of Behold, Abaddon had always been one of my favorites. That clawed hand exploding out of the sidewalk. The Brotherhood reeling back in horror. I slipped on my gloves and opened it to the two-page splash that began and ended the book. A city of crumbling black towers that stood against a blood red sky streaked with smoke.
“A hundred years before the Brotherhood, there was a nuclear war,” I said, tracing the lines of the drawing with one finger. “Liberty City was one of the last cities left, only it wasn’t called Liberty City then. It was called Abaddon.”
I moved from the city to the desert plain that enclosed it.
“It was surrounded by this wasteland called the Gardens of Null.”
I turned the page. A gleaming alien ship breaking through the atmosphere above the ruined city.
“Then one day the Volanti appeared. They said they were the last survivors of a war that almost destroyed their own planet, and they wanted to make sure something like that never happened to anyone else. They remade Abaddon into Liberty City and created the Brotherhood of Wings to watch over it. Then they disappeared.”
“Why?”
Hannah was leaning deep into the glow of the lantern.
“Nobody knew,” I said. “After a few decades with no sign of them, most people thought they were some kind of fairy tale and went on with their lives. But then, a hundred years after they first arrived, the Volanti reappeared.”
“Where had they gone?”
I turned to the middle of the volume. Abaddon was Liberty City again. The skies were clear and blue. The Brotherhood’s Aerie sparkled in the sun.
“They never really left,” I said. “They just went into hiding. Only a few Volanti had made it to Earth so they decided to wait until their numbers grew and the world became something worth conquering.”
“So it was a trap,” Hannah said. “They were never trying to save anybody.”
I nodded.
“But the Brotherhood stopped them.”
I wanted to say yes, the Brotherhood saved the day. But I couldn’t even open my mouth. I paged through the last half of the story, but stopped before I got to those three pages toward the end.
“Card? Come on, you’re killing me.”
Part of me wanted to rip that volume in half and toss it away, but who was I to keep it from her? I sent it skidding back across the floor and into her hands.
Hannah leaned against the wall and opened it to the middle. She tucked her hair behind her ears and pored over the pages, moving from panel to panel, eagerly at first, but then more and more slowly as she got toward the end. I knew those panels so well I felt like I was reading them right along with her, or like I was sitting beside Dad as he drew every line and wrote every word.
I could tell when Hannah got to those three pages. Her whole body stiffened. She read them once, then again, and then she was still for a very long time before shutting the book and pushing it away from her. All the air had gone out of the room and the light from the lantern felt small and feeble.
Footsteps echoed upstairs. Greer. I grabbed my mask and headed for the door.
“Card, wait.”
I stumbled through the spiral. Greer was there when I came out on the other side.
“Buddy! Good to see—”
He dodged out of the way as I ran past, strapping on my mask as I went. He called my name, but I kept going, up the stairs and into the lobby. Those three pages unfurled through the dark. Sally Sparrow. Cardinal. Blue Jay. Then you were there too. And Mom and Dad. And me.
I ducked through the opening in the door and suddenly realized that I’d left Dad’s comics behind. Part of me wanted to just go, but I knew I couldn’t. I slipped into the shadows of a nearby hallway and waited. Surely Hannah and Greer would head back to Lucy’s Promise soon. Minutes ticked by. An hour, maybe. Finally I couldn’t wait any longer. Who cared if they were there or not.
I made my way back down the stairs and into the Serra room. It was quiet. Maybe they’d gone out another way. I passed the first two sculptures and started into the spiral of the third. There were voices up ahead.
“. . . turn up anybody who saw what happened last night?”
It was Hannah. I eased myself into the dark a few feet away from the opening that led to the center of the ellipse. The lantern light threw two sketchy shadows against an inside wall.
“I talked to a guy who lives near the park,” Greer replied. “He said there was some kind of fight the Guard broke up. Somebody on the ground. A bunch of people around him.”
“He see who they were?”
“Couldn’t make out the face of the guy on the ground, but it sounds like it was Card. Said it was too dark to really see any of the people wailing on him, except for one. Older white dude. Bald, with glasses. That sound like the one who tried to grab you?”
There was a pause, and then the shadow Hannah nodded.
Greer got up, appeared and disappeared as he stalked through the ellipse. “What the hell was he even doing down here?”
“Looking for a fight?”
“What? No way. Card?”
“You didn’t see him that day he found me.”
“You mean the day he saved your life?”
“Y
ou weren’t there,” Hannah said. “You didn’t see it. The way he went after those guys. And what about the morning he left? The way he looked? He was one second from hitting you. You had to have seen that.”
“So—what? You’re saying Card’s dangerous? That’s insane.”
“How do you know he’s not?”
“Because I know Card.”
“All you know is what he’s told you,” Hannah said. “You don’t know anything about him from before.”
“Before doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters!” Hannah said. “How do you even know for sure that he doesn’t remember you? I mean, how likely is that? It’s a small town. You guys went to the same school. He says he doesn’t remember you, but—”
“I know he remembers me.”
I moved closer to the opening. Greer was sitting up against one of the walls, his arms crossed over his chest, his head down.
Hannah leaned in toward him. “What? How do you know?”
Greer shrugged. “Things he says. The way he looks at me sometimes.”
“But you’ve never asked him to—”
He shook his head.
“Why not? You said you think about it all the time. You said—”
“If Card thinks I’m better off not knowing, then maybe I am.”
“You trust him that much?”
Greer laid his head against the steel wall, looking up at the skylight. He shrugged helplessly.
“He’s my best friend.”
Not long after that, they decided it was too late to hike back up the mountain. They pulled sleeping bags from their packs and blew out the lantern, dropping us into darkness. Once they were asleep, it would have been the perfect time to get my things and go, but I didn’t move. I sat there in the spiral with my back against the wall, my eyes closed, hearing Greer’s words over and over in my head.
Greer came up to Lucy’s Promise for the first time just before Thanksgiving. I was leaving the supply shed when I heard someone walking up the trail. Not knowing what to expect, I ducked back inside and watched through a crack in the door. As soon as I saw who it was, I dropped what I was carrying and reached for my knife.
