Hugo & Rose

by Bridget Foley

  Adam took another big lick of his ice cream and snuck a look at him. There were some purple and yellow marks on his face. His cheek and jaw looked sore and puffy. When Adam had asked, he had said he had got the black eye from falling down. Adam had kinda quirked up his mouth at that. Mr. David’s eyes didn’t look black at all.

  Musta been quite a fall, though.

  Maybe when Mr. David took him home after the movie he could get his mommy to kiss Mr. David’s face. That sort of thing always made him feel better when he was hurt, even though Isaac said it made him a baby and it didn’t really do anything. Adam wasn’t quite sure about that. He always felt that the pain did go away a little bit whenever his mommy kissed his hurts. Maybe she could make Mr. David feel better.

  He would like that.

  As they drove, Adam thought about his Lego map … he would have to remember to check that Mommy hadn’t gotten rid of it when he got home, too. After he asked her to kiss Mr. David’s owies.

  But, of course, it would still be there. Adam was silly to worry. Because Mommy had sent Mr. David to have an adventure with him—and Mr. David was Hugo. She wouldn’t take away Adam’s Hugo toys but then send Hugo to play with him. That would just be goofy.

  Adam pushed the remains of the cone out of its paper holder. He popped it into his mouth, the liquid ice cream seeping from the gummy remnants in between his teeth. He wondered if Mr. David would let him get popcorn and candy and a soda with the movie.

  Adam thought he probably would.

  * * *

  “Please, I just … I need someone to help.”

  “Ma’am, I’m still not clear. Is your son missing or do you know who has him?”

  “He’s…” There wasn’t time to explain. “Both. He’s both.”

  The 911 dispatcher sounded irritated, her voiced edged with efficiency. Rose imagined her in a dark room, in the cool lights of a monitor. A million miles from Rose and her missing son. A million miles from the chaos that was breaking out in her life. Josh had not picked up his cell. The hospital was paging him. The school bus monitor had marked Adam as getting on the bus—but someone in the main office would be speaking to her.

  Rose’s body was thrumming with adrenaline. Her skin was puckering and releasing in waves of gooseflesh. She wanted to run. She wanted to punch someone. But she could not do anything until she got through this godforsaken phone call.

  “Have you tried calling your friend to see if he has him?”

  “He’s not…” Rose swallowed the words my friend. He was her friend. The man she had invited into their life. This was all her fault.

  She thinks you’re crazy. You probably sound crazy. Bipolar. Like one of those schizos who tears off her clothes and jumps into bushes. All those mothers saw you freak out at the playground. Screaming.

  Maybe you are crazy.

  Rose tried to modulate her voice, to make it sound sane. “Please, my son should be home by now.…”

  The police would come. They would talk to her. They would see her … and how crazy she looked. And then they’d talk to the neighbors. By now everyone on the block would have heard about the playground. And then the police would think she had done something to her Addy. That she had hurt him. Hidden him.

  Rose’s throat ached with a stifled sob. She had hurt him. She had brought Hugo here.

  Rose looked up.

  In the rounded archway that marked the transition between the living room and kitchen stood a trio of Bucks. The animals placidly raised their heads and regarded her with their still, dark eyes.… As if she were the intruder.

  “Ma’am, are you still there?”

  No. Yes. Maybe. I am here. But I am also somewhere else. I am on an island I have been dreaming of for almost my entire life … and I am in my kitchen begging you to believe me that someone has stolen my son.

  The Bucks lowered their heads back to the ground, browsing on invisible grass that sprouted from the wood floor of her kitchen.

  Rose hung up the phone.

  She would call Mrs. D to come over. Tell Isaac to let her in when she got here.

  * * *

  Mr. David had driven them for a long time until they got to the movie theater. It was one of those big ones they built on the edge of town. Adam knew that the numbers next to the movie theater names meant how many screens they had. The one his mom and dad took him to was an eight. The place he went to when he visited his baba and papa was a twelve.

  This one was a thirty-two, the number huge and red on the sign that stood by the highway. Behind it the sun was pink and orange on the mountains. Sunset. Adam had a funny tickly feeling … he was going to get to stay up late. On a school night.

  Mr. David pressed through the parking lot without holding Adam’s hand. Addy doubled his steps to keep up. Maybe Mr. David didn’t know they were supposed to hold hands when they were around cars.

  Or maybe he just thought Adam was a big boy who didn’t need to hold hands. Maybe he thought he was big enough to do it by himself.

  If that was the case, Addy wasn’t going to make him think he was a baby by reaching out for his hand. Mr. David said he was Hugo … Hugo killed Spiders the size of cars and climbed mountains and had his own submarine. He wouldn’t want someone like that to think he wasn’t big enough to cross a parking lot on his own.

  Adam followed him up over the clean curb of the complex. There was a huge wall of digital movie listings and times. Mr. David gave him a tight smile as he bought the tickets. Adam smiled back at him.

  “Thank you, Mr. David,” he said when the cashier handed the tickets over. Adam was very good at remembering to say thank you.

  * * *

  Rose’s palms were slippery against the steering wheel. Sweat collected in the creases of her fingers as she drove. She wiped them, alternately, against the legs of her pants, leaning forward in the seat.

  She felt awake. Thunderously awake to the world.

  If her hands were wet, her eyes were dry, lids skidding across them painfully whenever she felt she could afford to blink.

  She didn’t remember getting on the highway, but surely she had, because that was what lay before her, the dusty cars of commuting Colorado. People on their way back from work, home in time to have dinner with their families, to put the kids to bed and maybe zone out in front of the television. The setting sun flared off their side-view mirrors, piercing shards in Rose’s eyes. She winced—always a second too late to keep the light trails from burning themselves into her eyes.

  She needed to get to Adam.

  She imagined herself getting to Hugo’s house. Adam would be fine. Happy to see her. Hugo would apologize. She would take Addy home. Everything would be fine.

  Blindhead, looming eagerly over Penny … Isaac’s limp body under the crushing weight of the pink sand … and now Adam.

  Could the nightmares—the daymares—have been mere reflections of some unconscious will or desire inside of Hugo?

  He attacked them in your dreams. And now he’s taken Adam in real life.

  A strange sound burst from her lips. A choking sound. Dry despair.

  Dear God, please no. Please no. Please no. No. No. No.

  Rose saw it just as she drove over a bridged ravine. Movement in her rearview, different from the metallic, human-directed consciousness of the cars.

  The tarsal fold, hairs flaring in the pink light as it curled around the beige concrete of the highway barrier. A second joined it … and then a third.

  And then the monster launched itself over the barrier and onto the highway. Rose turned her head, quickly looking behind her … framed through the dust-speckled glass of her minivan was one of Hugo’s Spiders. The thing was huge … larger than Rose could remember the creatures ever being in her dreams.

  Of course she was dreaming now. Wasn’t she?

  Behind the Spider, a red sedan suddenly veered out of the way, swerving to avoid the monster that had just appeared before it. It was clipped by an SUV in the next lane, pushing its b
ack end toward the cement barrier.

  Rose whipped her eyes back toward the road as she heard the cars collide with the wall. The sound of metal meeting concrete wended its way past the minivan’s windows, making its way to her ears.

  It’s not real, she told herself.

  But in her rearview she could see the sedan suddenly launching into the air, thrown back by the force of the collision. The car landed on its roof and spun, catching the wheel rim of a compact, whipping it into the spin.

  The beast leaped, bouncing off the exposed engine of the sedan, gaining ground on Rose and her fleeing minivan. It overtook a speeding pickup, its tarsal piercing the windshield, driving itself into the soft body of the driver.

  There was a blare of horns as the Spider lifted the pickup off the road and flung it off the highway. A pesky nuisance, keeping it from its intended target.

  Her.

  The creature dropped its thorax and its legs bowed out, ready to spring—

  Rose’s hands slipped from the steering wheel. Terror had all of her. Screaming through her veins, seizing the striations of her muscles, soaking into her bones. This could not be happening—

  The Spider landed ten feet in front of the van. It lifted its metatarsals and pedipalps—those terrible ninth and tenth legs—ready to grab Rose’s car and peel her out of it.

  “It’s not real!”

  Rose drove into the spider …

  … and straight through it.

  Its monster thorax was replaced by the too-close tailgate of a freight truck. The van was inches from its bumper.

  Rose’s foot flew off the gas and hit the brake pedal before her mind had even cleared the monster’s abdomen from her view. Her car dropped back … a near miss.

  Rose sobbed, a dry husk of herself. Was she even flesh anymore? Or was she something else … a paste made of fear and fat and a single refrain? Oh please, oh please, oh please.

  * * *

  Hugo’s car was in the drive.

  Rose’s heart leaped at the sight of that shitty blue beater. He was here. Which meant Adam was here. She need only extract him, lay her hands on his body, swing its warm weight onto her hip, and run with him.

  As long as Hugo hasn’t done anything to him.

  She stopped the van and twisted to get out—she was only feet from her son and salvation. In the distant corner of her mind she heard a chime begin to sound, an insistent protest.

  The ground rolled beneath her foot as she moved to set it on the pavement. Rose was disoriented. Confused for a moment. Was this another part of the dreamworld leaking in?

  Her brain finally fitted together the puzzle of the sensation. The car was still moving.… She had not put it in park.

  Rose wrenched her torso back into the cabin as the van jumped the curb and angled onto Hugo’s lawn. The door bounced, no longer held open, and slammed its full weight against her still dangling leg. Rose cried out as her hand grasped the shift, depressed the button, and pushed it forward. The chiming ceased as the car lurched to a stop.

  Her leg was a red scream of pain.

  Rose looked down. A bead of crimson broke down her calf from behind the tasteful leather upholstery of the door. Something under her flesh was very definitely no longer intact.

  The world began to fuzz at its corners … a yellow buzzing. She was going to pass out.

  “No!”

  She could hear her voice. She held on to it. Pushed into it. It kept her here, in this world. Here, where Adam needed her—where she was so close.

  She twisted and wrenched herself up, pushing at the door. A fresh wave of pain hit her as the metal pulled away from where it had mated itself to her leg. Rose clutched at the door frame and looked down. There was blood, yes. Pain. But no bones had broken the surface.

  Jesus Christ, it hurt.

  Rose’s stomach betrayed her suddenly, pushing its contents up into her mouth. She lurched forward and wretched, a thick yellow goo of sputum, bile, and half-digested coffee.

  Adam.

  Rose looked up at Hugo’s house. The steps were ten feet away. She could get there. She could get him. Littler Boy. Addy. Adam. Child of my body.

  Rose moved. Somehow she moved. Three-legged creature pushing its way across the dry reaches of Hugo’s lawn, banging on the door that she had knocked on before, standing where she had stood with Pen on her hip, nervous and excited.

  The door opened.

  “Where is he?”

  She looked up from Hugo’s belt into his gray face. He looked like a little boy who’d been caught doing something bad. An aged boy. “Rosie, you’re hurt.”

  Rose pushed at his chest, her hand leaving a bloody smear on his shirt. “Where is he?” Her voice was stronger now, anger behind it. Her eyes swept the couch. No Addy. The kitchen. No Addy. She stumbled in, looking down the hall. No Addy.

  “Did you hurt him?” She turned on Hugo.

  He shook his head. “No, Rosie. I could never … I would never … I just took him to a movie … that’s all.”

  “Then where is he?”

  “Still there.”

  * * *

  Almost right after the movie started, Mr. David had whispered to him that he was going to go to the bathroom. Addy wondered why he hadn’t just gone during the commercials like his mom always said to … but in a way, Adam understood. Sometimes the stuff that they played before the movies—the trailers, they were called—were better than the movie was.

  Still, he didn’t want to have to go with him. He didn’t need to go.

  But then Mr. David was handing him the tub of popcorn and telling him he’d be back. Would Adam be okay?

  Adam nodded, barely taking his eyes off the movie. If Mr. David thought he was old enough to be alone in a movie theater for a few minutes, he wasn’t going to tell him that his mommy didn’t think so yet. His mommy wouldn’t even let Isaac be alone in a movie theater.

  But the movie was happening and it didn’t seem like such a big deal. It was just for a little bit, anyway.

  Right before he left, Mr. David had leaned over Adam’s seat, pushing his shoulders forward. “Hold still, you got something back here,” he’d said as Adam felt his hand smooth across the back of his shirt. Adam moved his head to the side to see the screen—but right after that Mr. David stepped out of the way and left the theater. In the corner of his vision, Adam could see him stop at the bottom of the stairs to look back up at him, before turning and disappearing into the tunnel that led to the way out.

  Adam took a handful of popcorn and shoveled it into his mouth. He laughed. The movie was funny.

  * * *

  “You left him there!”

  “I told him I was going to the bathroom so he wouldn’t be scared.”

  “He’s six!”

  “I put something on his back. Your address. A sticker that says who he is and that he’s lost. Someone will find him. They will bring him home.”

  Rose imagined Adam in an empty theater. Adam as the lights came up, looking for Hugo. Adam wandering his way down the steps, looking for the man who had abducted and then abandoned him. Her little boy filling with fear as he realized that he was alone.

  “How could you think I would hurt him, Rose? I only did it because I knew you would come … it was the only way.”

  “You’re crazy.” If she left now, maybe she could find him. Maybe she could be there before the movie was finished. Before Addy even knew enough about what had happened to him to get scared.

  She broke for the door. Hugo’s hand grabbed her wrist. Rose spun about to free his grip.

  * * *

  And what happened next?

  Was it an accident? An accumulation of elements finally reaching the sum of their parts? Rose’s exhaustion, her injury, the fuzzy edges of oblivion tickling at her vision, the slipperiness of the blood and sweat on her hand beneath Hugo’s grip?

  For a moment it is a dance, frozen. Dancers poised, centrifugal force pulling the weight of one’s body from the other, pi
voting from the fulcrum of their grasp.

  Her body whipping around, balance unsteady, nerves jangling with fresh new alerts that too much weight had been put on that injured limb. And then a slip, mere millimeters the difference—

  Her head meets the door.

  A bouncing reverb, nasty thud.

  The dancer crumples to the floor.

  With the trauma, her consciousness is finally broken. Too much to bear, a literal final blow.

  Was it an accident, this meeting—cranium to carved wood—or did her partner let her fall on purpose?

  A small, petty strike. A seizing of opportunity. A little slip from his hand to keep her in his grasp … the object of his intent.

  He did not know himself.

  He knew he would not hurt her. Never intentionally … but unintentionally?

  Was there a part of Hugo, buried deep within him, that had loosened his fingers, just so, enough to drive her temple into that door?

  Because accident or no, he had what he wanted.

  Mouth slack. Eye closed. Loose fists curled on limp wrists.

  A sleeping Rose.

  He cried when he saw her. Fell to the floor. Cradled her body.

  Still crying, he brought her to his temple. His room of worship, the one he had painted so carefully. The place of Josh’s conversion. He laid her down as gently as possible, her closed eyes facing up into a painted simulacrum of their dreamworld’s clouds. Pearl seams bursting with light.

  He left her only once and returned with the host they had shared only days before and a cup, unwashed but full to the brim. Next to her sleeping body, his beloved Rose, he set down a communion of blue pills.

  More than enough for a congregation of worshippers.

  More than enough.

  He hoped.

  He lay down next to her as the sleep took hold, whispering apologies.

  twenty-three

  There was a Tickle Crab in the Blanket Pavilion. It waved its pearly claws just inches from Rose’s face, the feathery tines of its carapace fluttering.