by J. Thorn
Thump-thump-thump, the boiler calls.
The hulking mass emits a burp from deep inside the heavy cast iron belly—and Henry laughs, the tension broken by the sound.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks himself, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s just a boiler! And I know how to handle a fat bear.”
Henry laughs again and crosses the cellar, the dirt cold on his feet as he hunches over to avoid hitting his head on the wooden beams. Bending like this at his hips comes naturally enough after a few months of navigating the space twice a day. The flashlight guides him past the rough spots in the dirt-packed floor. Henry wishes he had put his shoes on, but now he just wants to finish the work and get upstairs where his paints and canvas are waiting for him.
Thump-thump-thump.
The first step of the maintenance routine is simple enough. Henry flips the metal toggle switch on the side of the unit from ON to OFF. As the previous owner had written in his note, This baby’s a gulper and you don’t want her gulping while you have her valves open!
After that’s done, Henry moves to the second step. On the other side of the boiler is a spigot with a rusted cut-off valve. Below the spigot is a metal bucket with a broken wooden handle. Henry keeps meaning to replace the bucket, but somehow he never gets around to it. Too many other things to fix in the house, he reasons, although he isn’t entirely satisfied with his explanation.
After double-checking to confirm the bucket is in place, Henry cranks the rusted valve. The valve creaks, the pipes shake, and then there’s a thunderous belch of steam as the boiling black water spits into the bucket, which screams from the sudden heat. The boiler groans in pain, too. The water is as dark as the thick oil the boiler gulps.
Henry’s father had given this process a lot of nicknames, but “draining the fat bear” is probably the one Henry remembers the best. He always thinks of his old man while performing this five-step act of home maintenance each day. His father spoke fondly of the steam boilers he cared for at work. They even had names. Always girls’ names. Hillary, Matilda, Gertrude, Amelia. That’s probably why his father saying his most important duty was to “drain the fat bears” always made Henry laugh as a child.
After fifteen seconds, the water spitting from the spigot is relatively clear and the bucket is full of the thick black goop. Henry twists the valve back in the opposite direction until the steam and water stop; the pipe bucks and groans. He then lets the bucket sit for a few moments so the metal can cool.
While he waits, Henry considers the potential danger if he ever fails to heed the boiler’s warnings and needs. Eventually the system would overheat and burn the whole house down—or, if things went really wrong, the boiler could explode. There were no safety shutoffs on models manufactured when people were still dependent on horses to make the trek to town, after all. No gauges or emergency breakers, either. You have the unit OFF or you have it ON, and if it’s ON, you’d better be paying attention because it can get mighty hot and mighty pissed off, as Henry’s father would say.
The third step is a lot like the second step, only sort of in reverse. Henry reaches up to the top of the boiler’s main body where a pipe from the outside wall runs into the unit. There’s another rusting shutoff valve there and he cranks it clockwise from the CLOSED position to OPEN—or at least as open as the calcium-filled pipes get these days. There’s a cold hissing sound as clean, clear mountain water rushes into the boiler’s system. Henry can’t see the water, of course, but he can imagine it. Imagining things has never been a problem for him. Quite the opposite, as Sarah reminded him last night.
After fifteen seconds—he counts in his head, no need for him to look at his watch with the flashlight—he twists the valve to the CLOSED position. Now that the system has fresh water, it’ll be good to go for another twelve hours.
Just two more steps and Henry’s work will be completed.
Next he places his flashlight on the dirt floor and he picks up the bucket. He shuffles his way toward step number four, which is to carefully tip the contents of the bucket into the circular metal grating covering the drain in the middle of the dirt floor. The drain is merely a pipe leading into a pit under the house dug by the original builders. A reasonable amount of liquid can be poured into the pit, but if you put in too much, it’ll simply back up into the cellar. And, as the former owner cheerfully explained in his handwritten instructions, Don’t piss in the drain unless you want the funk to linger for weeks.
Henry carries the steaming bucket of black sludge water with both hands, one on each side of the broken wooden handle. Steam rises, condensing on his flesh. He follows the beam of light from his flashlight and he carefully sets the bucket next to the rusted metal drain.
Henry wipes his hands on his shirt, and after another moment of rest, he tips the bucket forward as gently as he can considering he’s using the broken handle for leverage.
That’s when Henry sees the big red eye blinking up at him from the bottom of the drain, and that’s when he hears the growl of the beast for the first time.
That’s also the last thing Henry remembers until he awakens on his kitchen floor hours later, ice cold and bleeding from the forehead with burns on his scalded right hand.
THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST
(5)
Ms. Winslow was deeply immersed in a game show less than ten minutes after she arrived to watch Henry, but those were the longest ten minutes of his life. He tried to concentrate on other things to pass the time, but all he really wanted to do was sneak into the woods and explore the icy landscape. To anyone observing him, he might have looked just a tad bit crazy as he quickly paced around the backyard, his bright yellow rain slicker and boots reflecting the morning sunlight all around him as he moved.
Finally, on the tenth time Henry stood on the overturned bucket on the snowy concrete slab and looked through the kitchen window, he saw exactly what he was waiting for: Ms. Winslow shaking her hand at the television screen, doing her best to urge a contestant on the game show toward the correct answer.
Henry jumped off the bucket and ran across the yard. He shoved through the barren bushes under the big tree at the edge of their property and a wave of ice and snow rained down on him. He didn’t care if he got wet. The sight beyond his yard took his breath away. The woods were even more beautiful than he expected: everything white and pristine. He realized no one, not even an animal, had been through the area since the snow stopped. He felt like he was the first human explorer to find an undiscovered land.
Henry gazed up at the icicles hanging from the tree branches; they glowed bright white in the cool winter sunlight. The whole world was like that: radiant and vibrant and picturesque.
Soon, though, the peace was broken as Henry went bounding along the deer trails, his index finger extended to form the shape of a gun. He was a top-secret soldier on a top-secret mission behind enemy lines in a top-secret war. His cover had been blown, and he was on the run, firing over his shoulder, picking off his pursuers with frightening accuracy. Bullets whizzed past him and he ducked and rolled through the snow, firing and hitting one bad guy and then another and another. When he spotted an elite enemy sniper perched in a tree, Henry dove and fired from the hip. The bad guy screamed, spun, and fell through the branches, sending a cascade of ice and snow crashing to the ground with a roar like thunder.
When Henry played the Top Secret Soldier game or his Cops and Robbers game or any of the Win The Big Game games, he could see everything as clearly as if the people were really real: the soldiers, the spies; the cops, the robbers; his teammates and even the crazed fans in the stands.
Henry had sort of assumed everyone else could conjure up playmates, too, but he was starting to have his doubts. The kids at school played the normal games together during recess, while he sat alone and imagined crazy new games he could play all by himself in his head. His adventures were as real as any story his father read to him at bedtime or anything Henry saw on television, but recently
he told his father this and his old man laughed and said:
My boy, you’re never going to run out of imagination.
Henry didn’t know what that meant, and from the way his mother looked at him after he talked about his imaginary worlds, he had the feeling he shouldn’t tell anyone else. Doing so might not be such a hot idea. If he was the only one who could make up things and have them seem so real, telling people was probably just asking for trouble. He saw how the kids at school who were “different” were treated, and he was happy to just be left alone when he consider the alternative.
Henry was still sprinting through the woods, pushing branches to the side, and it wasn’t too long before he burst through another thick grove of icy bushes, sending frozen chunks of snow flying everywhere. He stopped dead in his tracks, stunned by the beautiful sight he had stumbled upon: the hidden clearing in the thickest part of the woods.
Henry had been here before, but he was surprised to see the snow had been blown against the big oak tree, the one with the dilapidated tree house. In fact, the snow had piled up in such a way that Henry was certain he could reach the lowest branch—which meant he could finally discover what was hidden in the dark confines of the tree house placed firmly in the high branches.
THE PRESENT
(5)
Burns and Bumps and Bruises
When Henry awakens on the kitchen floor, the linoleum is ice-cold under his body. Before he understands how badly his right hand is burned, before he can comprehend what the stickiness under his left hand must be, he knows he never completed step number five in the twice-a-day boiler maintenance program. He didn’t turn the unit back on. It sits down there, hungry and empty, and the house has sucked in the chill of the winter storm blowing through the valley. His skin is like ice.
Then the pain in his right hand comes roaring into his brain and Henry screams. In this moment he doesn’t care about the temperature; he envies the cold. He wants the cold to wrap around his skin again and extinguish the fire raging in his fingers.
Henry rolls onto his side, through the congealing blood from the wound on his forehead, and he pushes himself to his knees. He gets to his feet and flips the light switch. His hand is badly burned: red and purple and nearly black in places, the skin loose and flabby. Another scream rises in his throat.
Be calm, his father’s voice whispers in Henry’s mind. Maybe this should alarm Henry, but it isn’t the first time he’s heard his father since the old man died. He often remembers his father’s words of wisdom in his father’s own voice and he finds this to be soothing. Be calm and take things one step at a time.
Henry does not scream again. The voice is right. He knows how to treat burns; he can handle this. He breathes in deeply and thinks through the process.
The first step is to soak the affected area. He stumbles to the sink, knocks the stopper in place with his good hand, and starts a stream of cool water. This will hurt at first, but then it will help. He gently lowers his aching hand as the water rises. He grits his teeth and looks away. The window above the sink is covered with frost and the big snowflakes are still falling.
“It’s dark,” Henry says, reaffirming how much time has passed since…since when? He has no idea how he came to be in this state. He recalls working on a painting and then running downstairs to feed the boiler and then…what?
Henry reaches for the cabinet next to the window and retrieves the bottle of extra strength aspirin. He pops the bottle open with his thumb and swallows four of the white pills without a drink.
After a few minutes, he lifts his hand from the water and gently pats the wound dry. Next he applies his wife’s aloe vera cream from the same cabinet where he got the aspirin. The affected area aches, but the immediate burning sensation and the howling pain have dimmed.
After he wraps a gauze bandage around his hand again and again, Henry surveys the room. There is a puddle of blood on the floor where he had been laying. He touches his forehead, feels the stickiness on his scalp.
“I’m a mess,” he says. “What the hell did I do?”
He still can’t remember what happened, but he cleans the small gash on his forehead, washing the wound and patting it dry with a clean paper towel. The bleeding has stopped, but he applies a large bandage to be safe. He probably needs to visit the emergency room, but that’s a good thirty minute drive in the best of weather, and this is not the best of weather.
The back door’s window is coated with ice and frost. Henry unlocks the deadbolt and opens the door, but a gust of frigid winter wind knocks him backwards. Snow is blowing hard across the glacial winter landscape; the sight is beautiful in a ferocious kind of way. There’s at least two feet of snow with several inches of ice mixed in for good measure.
Henry isn’t driving anywhere. Even if he did venture across the lawn to the snow-packed garage under the big tree, his little Honda isn’t up to the challenge. He wouldn’t get out of the garage, let alone through the snow dunes between him and the two-lane road that won’t be plowed until morning.
Henry closes the door, locks it. The winter wind gusts against the house and the coldness pushes deeper into his core. The aching in his bones isn’t just from his wounds. The winter chill is inside the house, gnawing into him.
The cold jogs his memory. The thumping of the boiler. The twice-a-day maintenance. The red eye blinking at him from the darkness of the drain.
Henry does the only thing a grown man can do upon remembering such a series of events: he laughs.
“An eye in the drain?” he says. As bad as the wounds on his body are, he can’t believe what he thought he saw. He laughs again. What else can he do?
Henry is about to head downstairs to take care of maintenance step number five—turning the boiler on so it can gulp the oil and send steam throughout the house into the metal radiators—when the phone rings. The sound startles him. He hadn’t realized how bad his hands were shaking until this moment; his entire body is rocking.
Henry hurries to the phone and answers, but there’s only silence on the line.
“Hello?” he says. “Sarah?”
There’s a brief burst of static, the crackle of a voice, and the line goes dead. Henry hangs up and tries to dial the number for the condo in the city, but there’s no dial tone. He’s not terribly surprised. He lives in the middle of nowhere and phone problems aren’t uncommon, even in this fiber optic day and age. He waits in the kitchen for a few more minutes, hoping he might get lucky and the phone will ring again, but there’s nothing.
Henry returns to the top of the cellar stairs. His trusty flashlight, which sits next to the boiler where he left it, is cutting a bright corridor through the darkness.
Thump-thump-thump.
Henry cocks his head, puzzled. This sound isn’t from the boiler. The boiler is switched off, after all. The boiler is metallic and big. This noise was small and wet.
Henry stands motionless while his frazzled brain attempts to decipher what he could have heard.
Thump-thump-thump.
And this time, the flashlight moves.
And then comes a growl, deep and guttural, like the one that greeted him when he looked into the cellar drain.
Henry’s instincts take control and he’s bolting through the living room and up the stairs before the flashlight in the cellar has even settled back into place.
THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST
(6)
Henry stared at the tree house, which seemed larger and more dangerous than he remembered—maybe because he could finally climb up there and discover what was hidden inside. The snowdrifts had blown around the base of the mammoth tree, forming something like a ramp to the lowest branch. From there it would just be a matter of careful climbing. He had climbed smaller trees; he knew he could do it.
So why was there such a tight knot swelling in his stomach?
Henry reached for the lowest branch. That was his only answer to the questions his body was asking him. He climbed and he kept his eyes lo
cked on the next branch. All he could do was keep moving. He imagined what he must look like to someone watching him: the bright yellow rain slicker slowly ascending the thick trunk of the tree.
A few minutes later, the winter air was biting at Henry’s fingers through his gloves; his hands and his feet were starting to ache. To make matters worse, the wind was gusting, blowing chunks of ice and snow off the branches, pummeling him as he climbed. Twice he almost lost his grip, and his stomach lurched into his throat each time.
When he finally arrived at the bottom of the tree house, Henry gasped in relief. He reached for the latch that held a trap door in place. He struggled to release the metal latch, which seemed to be frozen in place. He debated taking off his right glove to get a better grip, but he quickly dismissed the idea. His hands were cold enough.
Henry stood on his tippy toes to gain more leverage; his legs were wobbly. He grunted and put all of his weight into turning the latch—which suddenly gave way, flipping to the side. The heavy wooden door swung open faster than Henry had expected, passing within inches of his face. He was so startled he almost stepped backwards. His eyes instinctively shifted to the ground far below the barren tree branches covered in ice and snow.
Henry stared in horror as the ground zoomed up at him and his world began to spin. He felt himself falling…but he wasn’t moving. His insides were merely anticipating the descent he sensed was coming; his mind was readying for the shock of hitting those branches on the way down, followed by the frozen slap of the snow-covered ground.
The world continued to spin and Henry couldn’t stop staring; he was mesmerized by the ground that seemed to be lunging up at him. His center of gravity shifted as the winter wind whipped past his face.
