Simon Says

by Adam Dark

  I didn't know why Simon left me in charge. None of us had ever been given that responsibility or authority. I didn't know what was happening between Simon and I. And I wasn't so sure it was a bad thing. The other boys said you didn't want to be Simon's favorite. Bobby could attest to that. I wasn't so certain. It wasn't all that bad. It was almost like I had a parent again. Someone to take care of me, nurture me, mend my wounds, and tell me everything was going to be okay.

  In a strange, uncomfortable, and non-nurturing way.

  I knew it would take a miracle for Simon and I to have a normal relationship. Maybe it wasn't in the cards for us. Simon hadn't asked for this. My parents had just died and left him to take care of a ten-year-old boy that wasn't his own. The other boys were his responsibility. I was just an extra nuisance added to the list. Simon never complained when I had to come to the orphanage. He merely welcomed me inside, showed me to my room, and that was it. No introductions. No explanations or apologies or sincerity about my loss. Nothing.

  I liked it that way. It suited me. I think it suited Simon as well. Maybe we weren’t so different after all. On most days it was no different being at the orphanage than it was my parents' house. I spent most days alone in my room anyway. The only difference now was that I had brothers. Albeit non-biological ones. But brothers nonetheless.

  They were all I had. And if they wanted to take a break from their chores and play around in the mud and get dirty, who was I to stop them? If I had the energy in my body and didn't feel like it was about to topple over any second, I'd be right there with them.

  I watched them play as my mind daydreamed. I found myself looking past the boys to the trees in the distance—looking through those thick tree trunks all the way past the property line. My line of sight went over the picket fence meant for holding cattle and into the clearing where the body lay. I was there now in spirit. I was standing over the grave. The loose dirt had been removed and all that remained was the black bag.

  The burn pit lay off to the side. The wood and metal had burned to a pulp. But there was still a fragment of red fabric stuck in the dirt. I walked over and scooped it up and held it in my hand. It was soft to the touch. Almost silk-like. It was burned and frayed along the edge where the fire had licked it. I rotated this piece of fabric in my fingers until there came a scream behind me.

  I ran back to the house as quickly as I could. Heart pounding in my chest. Frigid air lashing my lungs, seizing them with cold, hard chains. I got to the yard to find the boys all face first in the dirt. None of them were moving. Simon was standing over number seven about to stab the shovel into his back.

  That was when I came back from my daydream. Two of the boys had gotten into a fight and were yelling at each other. The one was wielding a stick as a weapon while the other used his arms as a shield. The other boys were circling around, cheering them on. I shook my head to clear the imaginative visions from my mind, picked myself up off the rocking chair, and shuffled to the edge of the porch. I leaned against the column for support and raised my voice.

  All that came out was a wispy voice. I cleared my throat and licked my lips and spoke again.

  "Simon will be back soon," I said.

  None of the boys paid attention to me. I stepped down from the porch and took a few steps into the yard. The mud licked up my feet and squeezed between my toes like mushy quicksand. My feet sank two inches into the mud.

  "Hey!" I yelled.

  This got their attention.

  "Did you hear what Simon said? If he gets back here and finds the yard not cleaned up and all of you covered in mud or fighting, what do you think he’s going to do to you?" I asked.

  The two boys who were arguing, number six and number two, were two of the older boys. They both stepped toward me and squared their shoulders in defiance.

  "Think you can tell us what to do just because Simon left you in charge?" number six asked.

  The other boys mumbled to themselves.

  "Don't you know, he's Simon's new pet. I bet he's had fun with you the last few days," number four said.

  I had never heard four speak before. He usually kept to himself and minded his own business. His voice was deeper than I would have imagined from a boy of his stature. I looked at him with curiosity and bewilderment.

  "Bobby, you better watch out," number six said. "You might lose your spot on the podium."

  Bobby didn't look amused in the slightest. If anyone knew the full extent of Simon's sinister plots and secret fetishes, it was Bobby. He was the only one out of all the boys who Simon came for each night. And each night, he went to the Black Room. My skin tingled at the thought. I could almost feel the voices scratching at my consciousness, flicking their sharp nails against my mind and thoughts, clawing for a way in.

  I had only been in the Black Room for a few days. I couldn't imagine what it was like to be there every single night. Simon had taken care of me. Let me rest. God only knew what he did with Bobby. Bobby never spoke about what happened in the Black Room. And he never had any bruises or marks on his body to confirm what the other boys insinuated took place.

  They always spoke about losing your virginity whenever you went to the Black Room. I wondered if that meant I was no longer a virgin. Seeing as I had been in there now. But I suspected that there was more to their words. There was something darker in the way they spoke. I didn't know much about any of the other boys or their histories. Only that some came from abusive homes or neglect or had parents who had run away or died or went to prison. I would never know what horrors they had seen, but I would know my own.

  Bobby and I had a special connection now. A secret bond that ran deeper than blood. We were the only two who had been in the Black Room and survived. Survived made it sound like Simon tortured and killed the boys who went in there. The truth was, I had no idea what happened to the ones who had come before me. Like I've said before, they probably ran away or were adopted. Whatever the case, it didn't matter now. If in fact I had become Simon's new favorite, that meant I would be the one he woke each night to take to the Black Room. I would face whatever horrors laid within those walls when that time came.

  Bobby should have felt relieved if this were the case. But he didn't look pleased. In fact, he looked so distraught that I thought he might pass out right there in the yard. His face was pale. He had his hands wrapped around his stomach, holding his chest tight. None of the other boys noticed his change in demeanor. There was something he was terrified of. Something he was so deathly afraid of that he couldn't speak about. And that's when the pressure in my head swelled. I covered my ears to shut out the voices.

  "I don't care what you boys think of me. None of you know what I've gone through. But you all know what Simon will do if he gets back and you didn't listen," I screamed.

  The boys looked at me like I was crazy and groaned in rebuttal, but went back to work. I stood there watching for a moment. Bobby hadn't moved. He was frozen where he stood staring at the ground. I walked over and placed my hand on his shoulder.

  "Are you okay?" I asked.

  He flinched when my hand touched him. He suddenly whipped around and ran for the tree line.

  "Bobby!" I shouted after him, but it was too late. He splashed through the puddles and sloppy mud until his trousers were covered in brown and dashed into the trees. The other boys followed him with their eyes then looked to me.

  "We need to get him before Simon gets back," I said.

  I was too weak to go after him, which meant they would have to do it. Judging from the way they were looking at me, they knew this too. None of them was willing to risk their own fate to go after Bobby. He was a runner. It was his own fault if he got hurt or Simon got a hold of him.

  It was number five who yielded first. He chunked his shovel into the uneven mush. Its sharp blade stabbed into the mud at a crooked angle.

  "I'll go get them," number five said.

  I nodded as he stomped through the mud.

  "Number six and tw
o go with him. He might need your help to bring him back," I said.

  Both older boys rolled their eyes but obeyed. They might resent me and hate Bobby for being so stupid, but they feared Simon more. They both jogged after number five and Bobby. The rest of the boys looked to me for guidance.

  "Let's hope they get back before Simon does. Finish the yard and get cleaned up," I said.

  The boys reluctantly went back to clearing the yard of garbage. I walked back to the porch and sat in the rocking chair that Simon typically used. My feet were covered in mud and numb, but I didn't care. The cold felt good. I just hoped they found Bobby and got back in time or we were all in big trouble.

  12

  It had been two hours since the three boys went after Bobby. I wondered if they had gotten lost. Maybe they had fallen into a sinkhole or slid down an embankment and broken their legs. They could be out there calling for help and we'd never hear them. But it was too late for any of them now. Too late for all of us if they never returned.

  The rest of the boys had their eyes on their chores, but they’d glance toward the trees with every rustling sound. I sat on the porch steps as they cleaned the yard and smoothed out the uneven parts where the rain and snow had plowed away the topsoil.

  My head was dizzy with thoughts. All I could think about was the closet in the Black Room and what might lie within. I had been about to find out when Simon came in. He hadn’t punished me for it either. This confused me further. Every act of disobedience warranted punishment. The pole in the center of the yard gave testament to the many lashings the boys had suffered for their defiance and rebellion.

  But Simon had never laid a hand on me. Even when I warranted the punishment.

  I scanned the trees one last time before going inside. The pressure in my head grew to a tipping point until I submitted and headed upstairs. The voices increased as I climbed the stairs and pushed the Black Room door open.

  The room was just as we had left it, but there was an empty, ominous feel about it. I felt eyes on me and swerved around, expecting to see Simon there. The hall was empty. The door to our shared bedroom was closed and no one else was in the house. I could hear the boys chatting outside through the thin walls. The silence rising from the first floor warped the stillness on the second.

  The silence was so palpable that it spoke. I stepped into the room without conscious thought. I snaked around the cot until I was standing in front of the armoire. The giant chest closet stood like a behemoth of darkness and mystery. It was right in front of me but it felt like it was a million miles away.

  My chest beat with the rapid palpitations of my heart as I stood paralyzed with fear and curiosity. The voices inside my head only grew louder, encouraging me to reach out my hand, grab ahold of the lock, and break it free.

  “You can do it. He’ll never know,” they whispered. “What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid,” I replied.

  “Then reach out and take what is rightfully yours,” the voices said.

  Rightfully mine? I was too lost in the moment. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I shouldn’t have even been there. And yet, there I was. Why had I come back? What was it about the Black Room that intrigued me so much? It was just another bedroom. There was nothing dark and sinister about it like the other boys had insinuated.

  No strange whips, chains, or submissive gadgets. Nothing to warrant the conclusions they had made that Simon was some kind of sexual predator. In my time at the orphanage, I had never seen him lay a hand on a boy unless it was for punishment. There had been nothing to the contrary. So why the beliefs? Had the boys seen something I hadn’t? Were they projecting their past hurts and fears into the present? Perhaps Simon represented everything they loathed and feared in life or what they were running away from.

  And despite this internal dichotomy, here I stayed. My skin was hot and sweat beaded along my forehead. My palms were sticky with moisture as I reached for the lock. I gave it a tug. It was locked. I don’t know why I thought I could just pull it and it would break free. I was actually shocked and disappointed when it didn’t.

  The voices spurred on tenfold inside my mind.

  “The key…” they said.

  My eyes fell along the nightstand to my right. The copper key sat out in the open, gleaming like a beacon of light. It shouldn’t be this easy I thought to myself, but the voices overrode my doubt with persistent pushing.

  “Take it...take it…” they said.

  I took the key in my fingers. It was warm as well. I swerved toward the large closet in seemingly slow motion and inserted the key. It was as if I were floating over my body as I twisted the knob and it released with a soft click. I yanked the lock free and pulled the chain. It fell noisily to the floor around my bare feet.

  “Open...look inside...see for yourself,” the voices said.

  To my credit, I hesitated. This might have saved my life but I’ll never know for sure. Right then, as I was reaching for the doors to pull them apart, I heard a car door slam outside. At first its thud had been lost in the chorus of voices in my head. But then the car sped off, its tires squealing on the pavement.

  My head snapped up and my eyes blinked. It was as if scales fell from my eyes and I could see again. The room immediately became freezing and white puffs of smoke billowed from my lips with each exhale. My hands stung and were red with cold. The voices became violent, almost to the point of physical attack.

  I wrapped the chain through the door handles and secured the lock as quickly as my shaking hands would allow and ran down the stairs, two steps at a time. My heel slipped on the fourth to last step and I went sliding down. The hard edge of the steps bit into my lower back and hamstrings. I fell feet first, my head smacking the last step with a whip.

  I laid on the floor by the front door in a daze. Black specks filled my vision. I rolled to my stomach and immediately was tossed to my side with a wave of vertigo. Nausea welled up inside and forced me to my knees. I could hear him walking up the porch steps now. Hear the key in the lock. See the twisting of the doorknob as he pushed the door inward.

  I bit my tongue and gripped my left hand to the lowest banister and heaved. My feet were heavy stones and wobbly but I shuffled as quickly as I could to the back door. I was pulling it free of its hinges just as the front door opened behind me.

  I squeezed the door closed and plummeted into the rocking chair. My head was pounding. The world was spinning with black dots and crisscrossing swirls, and the voices were all screaming. Their enticing tongues had turned to daggers of condemnation and accusations. My back throbbed. And there was no doubt my head was bleeding. I could feel the warm drip of blood slide down my neck.

  I didn’t bother reaching my hand to cheek. Moving only made the spinning worse. The screen door squeaked open and Simon stepped onto the porch. The floorboards bent against his weight. He stopped at the edge of the steps and looked out at the other boys in the yard.

  They had finished and were rinsing off their bodies with the hose along the side of the house. They hadn’t seen him yet. I kept my eyes straight, locked on the pole in the yard, to keep my body from toppling over. My breaths were shallow and labored. My stomach was doing cartwheels and my spine felt like it was sticking out of my back.

  Simon’s presence only made it worse. He stood without speaking but I knew he was examining the yard. Whether it was up to his standards was less of a concern than how long it would take before he realized three of the boys were missing.

  I didn’t care any longer. I just wanted the pain in my back and the spinning and intoxicatingly nauseous voices to shut up. I could feel Simon looking at me. His eyes were like sharp razor blades piercing the side of my face. The voices were so loud there was no way he couldn't hear them too.

  I didn't risk removing my eyes from the pole in the yard to confirm.

  "They're in the woods," I said.

  There was no point in hiding the inevitable. By now Simon would've noticed that there were
three boys missing. The others were walking toward the house. They all paused in the yard when they saw Simon standing on the porch. They were thinking the same thing I was thinking. What would Simon do when he found out that three boys had left?

  The others walked toward the house at a slower pace, their bodies sopping wet. They held their pants and shirts in their hands and crossed the yard in only their skivvies. They stopped at the base of the porch and bowed their heads. Each of them awaited Simon's judgment to rain down like blocks of solid rock and hail from the skies.

  Simon didn't say anything at first. It was almost worse that he wasn't saying anything. Worse even that he didn't appear to be angry about it. I risked a peek in his direction. He wasn't looking at the boys. His attention was at the barn. Why was he looking at the barn? Just then, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. The boys had returned and were making their way through the trees to the yard. So far, Simon hadn't seen them. But it wouldn't be long before he did.

  "The hose is not where it's supposed to be," Simon said.

  The boys began to make excuses, but Simon stopped them with a raised hand. His head slowly shifted from the barn to the section of the woods where the three boys were just now breaking through. They hadn't seen Simon or us yet. But they were about to. Like lightning, Simon shot off the porch and streaked across the backyard so fast that I thought he was a lightning bolt. His body moved in a blur, but this might've been more so from the concussion I had suffered from my fall than Simon's physical speed.

  Either way, he got to the edge of the tree line before the boys even noticed he was there. He grabbed two of them by the arms and dragged them into the yard. The third followed like a snared rat in a trap.

  Simon brought them to the pole in the center of the yard. He released them, then stormed off to the barn. He didn't need to tell them not to move. They knew better. The rest of us stood in transfixed horror and dread as Simon disappeared inside the barn. He returned, carrying his favorite whip and long rope, dragging behind him. The bristles of the rope gathered mud as he walked through the yard.