He was lying down on his bed now, in his new pair of socks, eyes unfocused, staring dreamily up at the faded paint. Faintly, from somewhere above, he could hear Daisy’s footsteps as she padded across the floor of her lofty aerie. Clearly, the cause of his recent troubles was Daddy. It began with him, and it followed that it could end with him. If the feeling came on him again, he would just ignore it. He’d simply put it out of his head and stay on the Surrey’s side of the fence. He could laze around the house and read, or go play touch football with the boys from school, or go explore the far reaches of the Surrey estate and be alone with his thoughts, alone with the games, limited only by his imagination. But somehow these activities didn’t have the same appeal as they’d had a few days ago. They seemed insignificant, meaningless, now that he’d first felt the stirrings, the draw of some alien magnet whose source was a human being unlike any he’d met before. Like that person mired in an abusive relationship that just can’t seem to walk away and do what’s best for themselves, he wanted to see Daddy again. Why? Why was that? It was because…because he was justso odd. I want to know who he is. What makes him tick. I want to know his story. He wanted to feel that thrill again. The thrill of not knowing what was coming, from one moment to the next. When he stood in the presence of the man with the unsettling eyes, he could sense the danger, like being next to a wild and unpredictable animal that might sink its fangs into his arm at any moment. When they were together, he felt that at any second Daddy might disclose some long hidden secret of the universe. Because he sensed that Daddy knew those answers, answers to questions he hadn’t even thought of yet. He was a sage, a seer, in touch with elemental powers. That feeling, so difficult to resist, was the evidence of it. The perfect mimicry of Tad’s voice. The speeding up of time itself. What else was he capable of? For there was one more reason that Tad wanted, needed, to see Daddy again. He could barely admit it to himself, but there it was, in the back of his mind. Can the power he holds be utilized by another? Like, for instance…me? Is it something that can be taught?
It was these thoughts that still occupied his mind when his mother shouted up the stairs for the children to come to dinner. He walked down the hall, his mind full, stopping to pick up the pole from where it leaned against the wall to knock on the trap door in the ceiling. They convened in the dining room, his father and Casey already there, his mother bringing the food out and placing it on the sideboard. After a minute Daisy appeared and sat in her usual spot next to Tad, still dressed in the perennial sweat shirt and sweatpants, with the addition of the fuzzy rabbit slippers. She had a dab of green paint on her left cheek.
“Yankee pot roast!” Marta said. She laid the platter down and winked in the direction of Walt and Casey. “How’s that sound, boys?”
“You’re in a good mood, Ma.” Tad said. “What’s up?”
“Just a nice day, that’s all. Ethel and I were on a hot streak. Seemed like we couldn’t lose a hand.” Licking her thumb, she stepped over to her daughter and scrubbed at the paint spot. Daisy closed her eyes and bore the attention with stoic patience. “Did you all have a good day?”
“Uneventful,” Tad said.
“I see that you finished up in the garage. Well, a deal’s a deal. I release you from the chains of bondage. Go! Live free!”
“Thanks.”
Marta, satisfied of her daughter’s cleanliness, picked up Walt’s plate and began filling it. “What about you, Daisy? Hm?” Daisy shrugged, not looking up. “Did you go outside today?”
“Yes.”
“Good, that’s good…here you are, Walter…” she set the laden plate in front of her husband, who nodded absently as she picked up Casey’s plate and began serving him next.
“Man alive,” Walt said. “I’m hot. Anyone else hot?”
Tad exchanged a significant look with Daisy and held up his index finger. Daisy nodded. “It is a mite stuffy in here,” Marta said. Across the table, Casey’s eyes narrowed.
“They’re doing it again, Pa,” he said, nudging his father’s elbow.
“Doin’ what?”
“You know. That thing they do.”
“Leave them be. They ain’t harmin’ nobody.”
Casey glared at them. “The two of you. Always playing your little games. Why the hell don’t you grow up already?” Marta shot a warning glance in his direction. “Sorry Ma.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with the two of them being close,” Marta said. “I wish all three of you could be closer.”
“Well I don’t,” Casey said. “I wish I didn’t have to live in the same house as those two dinks.”
“Hush up,” Walt said. “Everyone bow their heads, now.” The family complied. “Oh merciful lord,” Walt intoned, his eyes closed, face aimed at the Yankee pot roast. “We thank thee for this bounty we are about to receive, and for the gifts of home and family for which we are eternally indebted to you. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.” He raised his head and opened his eyes. “Play ball!” he concluded, nudging Casey, who chuckled. Daisy exchanged another glance with Tad, lifting a finger. He nodded and stuck his tongue out at her.
“Everybody eat while it’s still hot!” Marta said. Walt and Casey needed little encouragement. They were already going to work with gusto, matching each other bite for bite. The telephone rang. Walt glanced in its direction disgustedly.
“Hell’s bells!” he said. “Who don’t have the courtesy to wait until after the dinner hour to make a call? What’s so important they can’t wait half an hour?” He started to rise but Marta stopped him.
“I’ll get it, dear. You just relax and eat.” She pushed her chair back and walked quickly into the living room. “Hello,” she said. And a moment later, “Hello!” Tad and Daisy had stopped eating and were listening to the proceedings. They heard Marta replace the receiver and a moment later she walked back into the dining room.
“Who was it, Ma?” Tad asked.
“I’m sure I don’t know. I thought I could hear someone breathing on the other end, but they wouldn’t speak. It’s probably just some pervert.”
“Could I have some more potatoes?” Casey said.
After dinner Daisy dragged Tad up to the attic, where she wrung information out of him concerning his latest run in with Daddy, the strange inhabitant of the woods. Tad spoke of the encounter with reluctance; he had a lot on his mind. They sat, surrounded by her paintings and sculptures, while he told her of the impromptu zoology lesson. She listened with rapt attention, curled up once again in her nest of blankets, sometimes asking a question or making him go back to an earlier point. She was especially interested in the change to Daddy’s appearance, and his entirely different presentation and mannerisms. But as before, Tad felt the need to leave out some significant details, including the loss of much of the afternoon and the sensation that had induced him to seek Daddy out again in the first place. But Daisy was not so easily satisfied. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m not stupid. Why would you choose the last day of your being grounded to run off onto the woods all afternoon, knowing you’d get in trouble?”
To avoid looking at her, Tad began removing one of his socks. Gingerly he felt the swollen red blister on his heel. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I was just feeling rebellious.”
Daisy shook her head. “I don’t buy it. You say this pond was so difficult to get to. You had to push your way through the leaves, and all that. You’d never been there before today, had you?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know where it was? And how did you know Daddy would be there?”
Tad shrugged his shoulders, petulant. “I don’t know how I knew. I just knew.”
“How?” He didn’t answer. “I’m worried about you, big brother. What do you know about this…person? He won’t even tell you his real name! For all you know he could be a serial killer hiding out from
the law.”
“He isn’t. He’s definitely out there, but I don’t think he means me any harm.”
Daisy pulled the blanket over her head. Obscured now from view, she hugged her knees to her chest. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled by the material, as though she were speaking through a mouthful of gauze. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Trust me, I do. I just have to go with my gut on this, Daze.”
The evening wore on, and the household made its preparations for bed. The heat of the day finally began to dissipate. Outside, crickets chirped their lonely greetings to the rising moon. An owl, beginning its nighttime prowl, came to light on one of the lower branches of the great oak in the backyard. Tad, pausing on the landing on his way upstairs, could see its yellow eyes glinting as it turned in the direction of the house, fluttering its wings. “Who,” it said. A statement, not a question. “Who.”
“I don’t know,” Tad said.
“Who the fuck are you talking to?” Casey asked from the bottom of the stairs, and Tad hurried away from the window and down the hall, closing the door of his room behind him. He undressed, throwing his clothes on top of the growing mound at the foot of his bed, and, dressed only in his socks and underwear, switched off the light. He crossed to the bed and lay down on his back, looking up toward the ceiling with his eyes open in the dark.
Casey made his way down the hall to the bathroom, shut the door, and locked it. He brushed his teeth in the narrow space, then he removed his shirt and spent several minutes looking at himself in the mirror. He stroked his chin, turning his face from side to side and admiring it from different angles. He puffed out his chest, flexing the pectorals, one at a time, then both together. He flexed his biceps, pressing the palms of his hands flat together so the muscles in his forearms rippled and the veins in his neck stretched taut beneath the skin. He extended his right arm to its full length, out to the side, his hand flat, while with his left he made a fist and raised it above his head, in a pose reminiscent, perhaps, of a Grecian statue. He smiled at himself, kissed the tips of his fingers, and touched them to his reflection in the glass. Then he slung the shirt over his shoulder, turned out the light, and crossed the hall to his room, shutting the door and locking it behind him.
Up in the attic, Daisy was working on one of her paintings, this one a modest three feet by two. It contained no easily recognizable objects, but consisted mainly of blobs of color circling each other, different shades of umber against a background of almost coal black with occasional hints of vermilion piercing through. On her knees as though worshipping the easel, her back erect, eyes feverish, with many blankets and sheets about her shoulders; she was still shivering. The tips of her fingers smudged dark with different colors, sometimes scooting backward to look at the work before plunging back in with the fierce recklessness of some gladiator engaging the enemy on a battlefield, blinking rapidly, her shadow flickering against the attics’ slanted wall.
Downstairs in the darkness of their bedchamber, Marta Surrey gave herself to her husband, as he sat on the bed, still fully clothed, with the soles of his boots resting on the floor. She in her nightgown, slipping the lace from one dewy shoulder, as the absence of light erased the care lines from her face and made of her again a girl of sixteen, disrobing with the shyness of a spring foal. His rough hands reached out and clung to her hips and she sighed, clasping his face against her navel and cupping the back of his neck where the hairs were turning white. Now his body could speak its love for her as his lips could not, during the length of the day when he was wont to glance at her from time to time as he had done when they first met, in the young beginning times, twenty-five years past and more, when she had reddened under the honesty of his gaze and slipped suddenly from her own desires into the stronghold of his own.
Now all in the house had grown still. Casey slept cradled in his own brawny arms, sprawled carelessly and luxuriously on the bed with his mouth open. Every so often his hands twitched as he dreamt of playing under the lights, rushing across the line of scrimmage bellowing like a bull, folding up an opposing quarterback with the explosion of air from the sternum that accompanies a really first rate tackle. Below, his parents slept with the box fan wedged in the window frame rattling a ceaseless lullaby. Marta’s arm draped across her husband’s shoulder, and in her sleep she smiled and moved close against him, feeling the even rise and fall of his chest as she adjusted her body to fit the contours of his. And without waking, Walt took her hand and held it pressed beneath his chin like a child with a security blanket. Standing at the helm surefooted and unafraid, piloting his vessel smoothly through slumbers’ channels, his voyage unhindered by dream and vision both.
Tad did not sleep. He lay without moving in the same position, on his back, facing the ceiling, with his eyes closed, and thought of the world, and all the people in it, and he wondered whether there was a place and purpose for each of them, and he wondered whether you chose your place or whether your place was chosen for you. He felt the night outside, seated all around the house like an expectant audience come to watch a play, and he knew that should that audience decide it had a mind to come inside, no door or lock existed that could possibly prevent it.
Up in the attic, Daisy had fallen asleep lying on the floor in front of her latest opus, her hands covered in dried paint. Her rumpled body lay on its side a few feet from her nest, and in her sleep she made small pitiful noises, biting her lip as she shook her head, fervently denying something over and over. Her eyes opened suddenly, and after a moment she got to her feet. She stood for some time without moving, then she raised her face toward the beams above and mumbled something. Her hair was mussed, clinging to her right cheek. Lowering her head again, she turned and began to walk toward the other side of the attic. She moved slowly, with measured, shuffling steps, treading on art supplies and the backs of books, to which she paid no attention. As the orange glow of the enclosure’s well-lit center struck her face a slow smile spread across her features and she shrugged her shoulders in a self-conscious way, her lips moving again, though only a sleepy jumble of noise came out. Her eyelids remained only partially open, and her eyes themselves were glassy, containing neither the look of true perception nor calculation. The movement of her limbs was robotic, like those of a person who has been unable to function for an extended period of time and is only now retraining themselves in the use of basic motor skills. She was drooling slightly. She stopped by the orange and white Cheshire cat nightlight and dropped to her knees by the pair of yellow plastic sandals she had been wearing earlier. These she slipped onto her feet. Then she crawled on her hands and knees over to the trapdoor, which she pressed on so that it swung open. She reached down and released the lower portion of the ladder so that it extended all the way to the floor of the hall below. It landed with a soft thud. Then she began to climb down, gripping the sides of the ladder to steady herself as she went.
Further down the hall, Tad had finally fallen asleep. He was having a dream in which he was wandering through a large, poorly lit building with many empty rooms and windows, all of them fogged over so nothing outside could be seen. No one with him, but through the walls the sound of laughter penetrated and muffled voices spoke. Only vaguely understood that the speech was in a language that he would never recognize, or maybe it was being slowed down to a fraction of its normal speed or sped up like a tape recording on fast forward so that the syllables were being stretched out like pieces of taffy or chasing each other, tittering like a hoard of manic chipmunks. He was angered that he could not find the source of the voices, and he rushed ever faster through the rooms, all of which had begun to look the same. Though he could not understand the voices, he knew by their tone that they were mocking him, and he thought only of the violent acts that he would perpetrate on their owners when he finally caught up with them. When he heard the soft creak of the ladder being lowered and the muffled sound of the impact as its base touched the floor, he opened his eyes and sat up
. For a second he was unable to differentiate between the dream and reality, because he thought he could still hear someone in the next room, talking softly. There is someone speaking. Out in the hall. That’s Daze’s voice. He reached over the edge of the bed and picked a pair of jeans up from the pile, slipping them on in the dark. He opened the door, shirtless, blinking, and stepped out into the hall. The ladder from the attic was fully extended and resting on the floor. A shaft of pale orange light stabbing down on the center of the hallway. He heard the soft sounds of movement coming from downstairs. Wrong. The word leapt into his mind and hung there, repeating itself with each heartbeat. Wrong, wrong. Something is wrong.
Woods Page 8
