Fell of Dark

by Patrick Downes

  My soul: I’ll never get it back.

  “Why do you need your soul?” the Guardian spits. “There will only be longing and regret.”

  And some peace.

  “It’s too late for that.”

  What will I do after I’m dead?

  “For a little while, you’ll live.”

  I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

  —Gerard Manley Hopkins

  ERIK

  THE HEADACHE WOKE HIM. It felt nothing like the weather headaches, the pressure of a devil’s two invisible fists on his temples, when he could foretell rain or snow. Nothing like the headaches he got when he was a young boy that began, inexplicably, with the sound of a far-off train getting nearer and nearer, the pain that would strike him like a locomotive and land him in bed and make him cry. Nothing like the headaches he got when he grew inch on inch, month after month, when his bones creaked; or the headaches when his teachers or his friends yelled one thing and another at him.

  “Erik, aren’t you listening?”

  “I won’t tell you again, Erik, sit down.”

  “Over here, Erik. Over here, over here, over here.”

  This headache, all feathers and fire, woke him out of his sleep. It came with a voice.

  “It’s time to get up,” said the voice of a thousand voices, a thousand men, women, and children. Even when it whispered, it roared.

  “I’m awake.” Erik spoke through his teeth and held his head in his hands. “I felt you before you spoke.”

  “Then rise.”

  Erik opened his eyes and saw the world as if he were an astronaut making the leap to hyperspace, when all the white stars stream by. Or as if he had woken in a blizzard, with the wind driving endless snowflakes. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. Sick and frightened, he turned into the ground and crushed his face into the fir needles.

  “I’m sick.”

  “Stand up,” the voice said.

  “And I think you’ve blinded me.”

  “I will guide you.” The one voice of the thousand voices whispered and roared. “Erik, it’s time to stand. Your quarantine is over.”

  Erik took a deep breath and got to his knees, then pushed himself up to his feet. He felt dizzy, and he wondered if he would throw up.

  “Open your eyes,” said the voice, “and the sickness will pass.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Obey me.”

  Erik opened his eyes. The stars and snow had slowed down. At last, the headache gone, he could see nothing but whiteness.

  Somewhere close, a crow announced itself: Caw caw; caw caw caw; caw caw.

  “Tell me your name,” Erik said, listening for the trees, the wind, turning his head to where he imagined the crow perched.

  “No name,” the voice said, the thousand voices distilled to one. “Are you ready?”

  “I have to be,” Erik said. “Yes.”

  THORN

  “THORN,” THE ARCHITECT PURRED, “my son. Wake up.”

  Thorn lay still.

  “You know very well you’re alive.” The Architect rocked back and forth in his chair, his hands clasped under his chin. “Open your eyes, son.”

  “I’m awake.”

  “Of course you are.” The Architect folded his long hands in his lap. “Listen to me. Children, Thorn. Men and women come from children. You made this observation yourself.”

  “I came from a child.”

  “Torturers, rapists, liars, cheats, cowards. Your parents. Men with cinder blocks and cars and guns. These, too, every one of them, come from children.”

  “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  The Architect leaned forward. “Kill the children.”

  ERIK

  “YOU’RE NOT BLIND, ERIK. Give yourself a minute.”

  “What’s happening to me?”

  “Your senses are combining, which is why you feel sick.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’re unifying. You’re taking a step closer to eternal life.”

  “I’m dying?”

  “You call it dying, Erik, but your death is not here.”

  “Unifying?”

  “Yes,” said the voice.

  “I don’t understand. I’ve never understood.”

  “No.”

  “I’m only eighteen,” Erik said, “but my mind is older. And I’m tired.”

  “You’re half a day from a long rest.”

  “I’m overwhelmed.”

  “I know.”

  “We have to go, though. I feel it. We have to go now.”

  “Yes.”

  “How do I walk?”

  “You’ll see in living things what look like small birds of light riffling their feathers. In the lifeless things you will see the birds asleep, their heads tucked under their wings. Motionless.”

  Erik moved his head around after his white eyes. The bright birds fluttered or slept, and he took his first tentative steps. A different sort of blindness, but he picked his way over stones and the path of sleeping birds.

  “Will you do me one favor?” Erik said.

  “I may.”

  “Will you heal my wounds, stop the bleeding?”

  “Yes.”

  The open skin on Erik’s head, wrists, and feet closed. More than four years after it had begun, the bleeding stopped.

  “Thank you,” Erik said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The place where you’re needed.”

  “Is this place where I’ll finally make sense of it all?”

  “Yes.”

  THORN

  “HAVE A PIECE OF toast for breakfast,” the Architect urged. “Butter, peanut butter, jam, whatever you like.”

  “Salt.”

  “Salt, then. Juice?”

  “Water.”

  “What else could a man just born, so serious, want more than bread, salt, and water?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re a thorn,” said the Architect. “Prick fingers, imbed yourself in a palm.”

  “Spike an eye.” Thorn swallowed salted toast. “There will be blood.”

  “Rivers and lakes, yes.”

  “How many? How long?”

  “Until you get tired. Then turn the gun on yourself.”

  “My life will be short.”

  “Brief but devastating.”

  “I am a devastation. I have suffered to become a suffering.”

  ERIK

  “HOW DID YOU FIND me?” Erik said.

  “How can you ask that? Have you ever been out of our sight?”

  “Who’s the our?”

  “All.”

  “Tell me.”

  “All.”

  “The All killed my father and made me bleed? The All gave me the headaches?”

  “Trials to prepare you.”

  “And the miracles?”

  “The entirety.”

  “The All is brutal.” Erik spoke through his teeth.

  “Some claim so.”

  “Where am I going? We’re leaving the park. My quarantine’s done.”

  “Follow me.”

  “Cars, people, the city streets. You’ll keep me guessing until the end.”

  “You accepted the not-knowing.”

  “Not without frustration.”

  “You never really surrendered.”

  Silence.

  “I won’t ever meet her, my wife?”

  “Not in this world.”

  “Which world, then?” Erik said. “I looked for her in this one. I waited my whole life in this one. You’re crushing me. Which world?”

  “The world of the All.”


  “Is that a promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Amen.”

  THORN

  “SHAVE.” THE ARCHITECT ROCKED. “Your hair, your beard, your entire body. Buy a package of ten razors. Any kind you want.”

  “Why?”

  “Obey me.”

  It took a long time. Blood trickled out of cuts from head to toe. One slash in his ankle bled a long time. He left a red footprint on the bathroom floor.

  “I haven’t been this naked since I was a baby,” Thorn said.

  “Not even then. You were born hairy, a little ape.”

  “My mother told me that once.” Thorn looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. “Blood.” He swiped his hand across his throat. “Always blood. I’m surprised I have any left at all after everything. All my scars. Scratches, cigarettes and an iron, the bone through my arm, and so on.”

  “The other was hairy. You’re smooth,” the Architect said. “Now you’re the twin of yourself. Your own brother.”

  ERIK

  “WILL I BECOME AN angel?”

  “The angels have already been decided.”

  “So, no.”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “A saint.”

  THORN

  “PRY THE DOOR,” THE Architect said. “You’re strong enough.”

  “Crowbar.” Thorn spoke like the Guardians, gruff and low, commanding himself: “Use the crowbar.”

  He broke through the door.

  “Excellent.” The Architect smiled, so Thorn smiled. “Your whole life we’ve listened to this man on the other side of a wall play with his guns. Just look. You’ll find them.”

  It took ten minutes to locate a large duffel bag and a black hard case in a bedroom closet. “Ah,” the Architect said. “Unzip the bag.”

  Thorn did as told by the Architect.

  “Treasure,” the Architect sighed. “Leave the case, bring the duffel.”

  “What will I use?” Thorn said.

  “Pistols.”

  ERIK

  “RUN, ERIK. I’M LEADING you.”

  “I can run a long time,” Erik said.

  “Yes. We’ll have just the right amount of time. Run two minutes, walk a minute, run two minutes, walk a minute. You’ll need your breath.”

  “Where are we going? A fire? A crime scene? To stop something from happening?”

  “Forward, Erik. Always forward.”

  THORN

  “IT’S TIME I LOOKED through your eyes.” The Architect stood up from his chair. “I want to see the world one last time.”

  Thorn had stowed the duffel of firearms in the trunk of the car. He drove. It would be a matter of minutes.

  “I’m always surprised by the light. Somehow, you survive the light. Your eyes don’t burn to ashes. Your skin doesn’t burst into flame. But the brightness and heat. You, your kind, are miracles.”

  Right turn, straight, second left.

  Stop sign.

  “And the colors. Why so much, always so much? I prefer my monochrome, my purple, green, or blue.”

  Third left. Slow. School zone: 15 mph.

  “And so, by and by, we’re here. It’s all nearly accomplished.”

  ERIK

  “IT’S TIME I RETURN your sight.”

  Erik blinked in the sunlight and raised his hand to shield his eyes. “What’s this?”

  “The place you had to wait for.”

  “The schoolyard. I came here over and over. I saw a rat killed here not too long ago.”

  “Get your bearings and summon all your strength.”

  “Why?”

  A car pulled up to the distant curb, beyond the yard and fence. The driver, a bald, thin man, stepped out and went around to the trunk.

  ERIK AND THORN

  Do not stop. Erik crossed the yard toward the car. Behold. The enemy has arrived.

  Thorn opened the trunk and leaned in. He retrieved two pistols, loaded the clips the way he had learned online, and slid them under the waistband of his pants. When he shut the trunk and turned toward the school, he saw a giant coming toward him. Thirty, twenty, fifteen feet—.

  “I never knew my purpose,” Erik began, “until this very moment.” He estimated the strength of the hairless man, about his age, standing ten feet away. Nothing to compare, half his size. Except the enemy seemed nearly as large with a gun in his hand.

  “I never knew mine until this morning,” Thorn said from behind the gun. He almost could not believe the size of the man opposite him: eight feet if an inch. Plaid shirt and jeans, a lumberjack, Paul Bunyan. But handsome, he admitted to himself, the handsomest man he’d ever seen. Young, like him.

  “You really carved up your body,” Erik said. “Blood everywhere, cuts and holes. Slow bleeding.”

  “And I see where the blood came out of your wrists and head.” The Architect smirked, so Thorn smirked. “A martyr.”

  “You can see my scabs and wounds?”

  “Look at you, man. How can you hide it?”

  Erik ignored this. “I knew I’d die young,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  “Long as I can remember,” Erik said, “I’ve had a thorn in my chest, a kind of frustration, a question.”

  “Here I am.”

  Erik grimaced and clenched his fists: “Neither of us will survive this.”

  “No.” The Architect laughed, so Thorn laughed. “Though I’ll last longer than you.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Let the bullets decide.”

  “I have more than enough strength to kill you. You’ll die, and it will all be finished. Both of us, over and done with.”

  “Hearts beat right to the end,” Thorn said, and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet did not stop Erik. The giant came and came.

  AFTERMATH

  One bleeding, one broken, a pistol between. Before anything else, before the sirens and police and panic, before the questions and guesswork, the boys lay at one end of a concrete yard, close together, a mess.

  Three days later, the bodies long removed, the cleanup would end. Mid-morning, spring, but the sun a winter sun and white. And a river of children would pour through the door to reclaim their yard, desperate to play.

  This novel would have come to nothing without good fortune and goodwill. My gratitude goes to my parents for their every help, and to my sister, the other side of a coin. To Sarah who, at seventeen, read and weighed in. To Madeleine. To Paige. To Alan Cumyn and Julie Larios. To Ana Deboo. To Martine Leavitt for her quick, deep kindness. To Michael Green. To my indulgent, honest agent, Brenda Bowen. To my editor, Jill Santopolo, keen and careful.

  If not for Michèle, her sudden arrival, I would have finally eaten myself alive. This book is for her.

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