Henry & Eva and the Castle on the Cliff

by Andrea Portes

  And then—there it is again, that feeling I had just before. That thought that there was something in the air, some invisible thing, like longing, almost like the feeling just before rain. That feeling like something is just about to happen. When your body knows something your mind can’t muster.

  What it looks like, down there, and off the beach, the best way to describe it, is it looks like the northern lights. Blue and purple and even a little bit luminous. A light tornado. A whirling spectacle with a thousand twisting tendrils.

  Whatever the thing is, it seems to be getting bigger, more energized, louder.

  The whooshing sound is now thunderous.

  FSHHHHHH. FSHHHHHH. FSHHHHHHhhhhhhhh!

  And beneath those screaming northern lights, on the beach hidden beneath the lone Torrey pine sticking out from the rocks—an impossible place to grow but it grows almost in defiance—is Henry.

  Whew! Thank goodness.

  He’s writing something in the sand, with a stick, huddled over, deep in thought, just like when he’s deep into one of his creations. He’s writing something the way you’d take notes if your teacher is talking too fast. He’s writing something desperate.

  To see Henry after the thought—the thought I wouldn’t let myself think—to see him after the idea that he, also, is taken away from me, means I have to catch my breath and thank God for a second. Call him the great creator, or the great programmer in the sky, whatever it is you want to believe. You have to believe it now that you’ve seen whatever this is whirling up in spires of blue and green and lilac, pirouetting up from the water, graceful and violent.

  Henry looks up at me, sensing me over the rocks. He’s cupping his ears, trying to decipher the horrible screech.

  FSSSSSHHHHHHHHhhhhh!

  But just before I reach him, the enormous event, the gyrating lightshow thunder, comes to an immediate stop.

  Poof.

  Vanished. As if it were only meant for one.

  Gone.

  Henry and I stand there, in shock and awe, our knees about to give out beneath us.

  8

  AFTER A GOOD three minutes we start to collect ourselves. Henry speaks first.

  “Eva, did that . . . ? I know this sounds strange but did that . . . seem like it was—”

  “Trying to tell us something?” I finish his sentence.

  My mother would say that’s rude, but drastic times call for drastic measures.

  “Yes!” Henry goes on. “But how could that be? And what was it trying to tell us?”

  “I don’t know. But it . . . that thing . . . it didn’t seem dangerous. Did it?”

  Henry shakes his head. “No. It didn’t.”

  We stand there, befuddled, staring out past the breakers and across the sea.

  “It didn’t seem dangerous, but how did we know that?” He stands, still squinting at the sand.

  “What do you think it means?”

  We both look back over the deafening waves. “It defies logical explanation.”

  I smirk. “That’s exactly what I was going to say. Except I was going to phrase it like ‘That was so totally weird.’”

  “There is, of course, the matter of this appearing-to-be-heretofore-unrecorded natural event.”

  Henry and I look at each other.

  It’s clear we have the same idea.

  Dad used to put it like this: “When all else fails and you have no idea what is going on . . . research.”

  We used to roll our eyes every time he said this particular Dad-ism. But now I would kill to hear him say it.

  Either way, we’re following his advice.

  It’s time for research.

  9

  THE HOUSE IS much quieter now. The musings and laughter have died down and most of the guests have made their exit. There is only the sound of one surly, pickle-faced man, arguing to no one in particular.

  There’s always one of these. At every grown-up party. Without fail.

  The first time my parents had to explain it to me, I was six. A friend of their friends, a German man from Frankfurt, had come to the party. When he first got to the party he was quite nice, actually. He even brought Henry and me a little wooden toy from Bavaria. This funny little paddle you would move left to right to make these colorful chickens move up and down, hand-painted in blue and red. We loved it, but my mom ended up putting it somewhere in a glass case, with the rest of her worldly curiosities.

  However, the German man changed somewhere in the night. He went from being kind and reserved to something I had never seen before. He kept filling his glass and declaring things adamantly, pounding his fists on the table. Henry was already in bed by this point, with Marisol reading him a story. But Mom whisked me away, saying, “Time for bed, honey.” I remember protesting—it wasn’t time for bed. It was way before my bedtime. We hadn’t even had dessert! But she was insistent.

  On the way up the stairs, on the cherrywood landing, I remember saying to her, “Mom, what is going on with that guy?” She looked at me, not wanting to say. Not wanting me to know about this kind of thing yet. “Honey, do you mind if we talk about this in the morning? It’s not that I don’t think we should talk about it, because I think it’s important and there’s a lesson here. But . . . I’m kind of in damage control—”

  And, as if on cue, a CRASH came from the dining room.

  “—mode.” My mother went rushing back in and I, of course, peeked in through the staircase. At first, it was hard to piece together what was happening. It was such chaos. But then, I realized, just as my mom realized, the German man had tried to stand up and had fallen backward into the glass case behind him. A tall glass case for her good china.

  You know what I’m going to say next, right? Well you would be correct. The case, and the glass, and the china, all came crashing forward on top of the German man, where he lay now, muttering, covered in broken Willow ware and Wedgewood and shards of blown glass. The man, embarrassed and disoriented, began swearing in German, and the next thing you know, my dad and his colleagues were carrying him out, kicking and screaming in violent German. They put him in the car, still swearing, and someone volunteered to drive him home. It was an awful sight.

  I remember rushing down the stairs to help my mother, or comfort her, or say bad things about the man, but she just smiled, scruffed my hair, and said, “Don’t sweat it, kiddo. He’s just really sick.”

  Sick?! I thought. How could he be sick? What was she even talking about? But she just picked up the Willow ware pieces and my dad came in to pick them up, too. Then he tried to send me back upstairs but, of course, I went rushing back to peer in when he wasn’t looking. The forbidden fruit of adulthood shattered in pieces below the staircase. All the guests had cleared out and my dad and mom sat there, in silence. Then my mom said, “Well, at least he brought that toy.”

  They started laughing. The entire room looked like it had been struck by a hurricane but there they were, shaking their heads with the church giggles, chuckling. And I remember smiling, too.

  It was always safe with them. Everything was always going to be okay.

  I’m standing there now, on the landing, caught up in this thought, in this memory, until Henry snaps me out of it.

  “Eva. Come on. Before they see us!”

  I can almost see the Wedgewood pieces on the floor below me. I want to tell them that I know how they feel.

  10

  WE’RE JUST OUTSIDE Dad’s dark wood–paneled office, aka Central Research Headquarters, when we hear her.

  “And what, exactly, are you two kids doing up?”

  It’s Terri. It’s not even the sound of her voice that gives it away. It’s that jingle of the ice in her glass. Like the jingle of a bell on a storefront, there it is. An alert! Someone’s coming. Someone’s here.

  Henry and I turn to face her. She’s leaning in the hallway like the walls are the only thing keeping her up. She’s got bright red lipstick and long burgundy nails, and she’s clutching that glass
to her chest like a baby bird.

  “Aren’t you little darlins’ supposed to be in bed?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Yesbut? That’s not a word!”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” I respond. Henry is behind me, basically hiding. Whenever either Terri or Claude come around, Henry just sort of disappears. I do the talking.

  “Oh, silly! It was just a joke. What’s the matter? Don’t you kids have a sense of humor?”

  People always say that when they’re not funny.

  “No, it’s just, we really just . . . we were looking for a book! Henry’s favorite book! It’s in here, so we wanted to get it so we could read it before—”

  “Book, huh? What’s it called?”

  “You mean, the title?”

  “Yes. The title of the book.”

  “. . . Brave New World.”

  “Huh. Never heard of it.”

  Henry jumps in, suddenly excited.

  “It posits a world not where people aren’t allowed to read books, as George Orwell predicted in his novel 1984, but a world where people wouldn’t even want to read books, because they would be living in a state of ‘infinite distraction,’ medicating themselves with a happy pill, essentially. One could argue that his vision has essentially come to pass. That the infinite distraction of social media, the internet, and video games, in combination with the prevalence of antidepressants, is exactly, precisely, where we are now as a society.”

  Terri just looks at him.

  “How old are you again?”

  “Ten. He’s ten.” I nod. Henry disappears behind me again.

  “Well, whatever. Time for bed. I can’t be worrying about you kids up at all hours of the night. And I do worry about you, you know.”

  Um. Okay.

  Henry’s eyes cut to mine.

  She leans down so her face is level with ours. “Now get on up to bed so I can turn in.”

  Henry and I look at each other, shrug, and head upstairs, reluctant.

  I guess our research of the heretofore-unknown light-and-tornado phenomenon must wait.

  Terri downs the rest of her drink and heads back downstairs, where the loud guest straggler is being ushered out, to muddled protests and continued very-important-points-he-must-make-right-this-second.

  Henry whispers to me on the way up the stairs.

  “Psst, Eva. Why do you think Terri just said she worries about us?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe she needed a hug.”

  “I would rather give her a pug. Or possibly a slug.”

  “Like a slug like a snail with a house on its back? Or like a physical punch?”

  “Definitely a snail,” Henry says. “I’m a Buddhist. I do not believe in violence.”

  11

  INSIDE OUR ROOM . . . my brother, who is apparently now a Buddhist, seems to be sinking back into himself after his brief return to the land of the living.

  I’d love to ask him about his newfound appreciation of Eastern philosophy but, judging by the curve of his back, and his head hanging over the bed, this is not a good time.

  “Henry?”

  He just stays looking at the floor in silence.

  Okay! Time to put on a show!

  “You know, I wrote a little song, in honor of Terri the Terrible. Wanna hear it?”

  A barely discernible nod. An opening.

  “Okay, ready? One, two, three, four!”

  Puff puff puff

  Clink clink clink

  All I do is smoke and drink.

  I like to smo-oke.

  I like to dri-ink.

  A puff puff puff and a

  Clink clink clink

  I don’t care what people think!

  I just like to smoke and drink!

  Henry stares at me, while I do a little box step with an invisible top hat and cane, ending with an imaginary hat tip, bow, and a flourish. There is a trace of a trace of a smile there.

  I curtsy.

  “Why do you think Terri smokes when it’s clinically proven that smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke causes no less than four hundred and eighty thousand deaths a year?”

  “That is a good question, Henry. I would say it’s either because she doesn’t care or because she’s maybe not that smart or maybe some combination of the two.”

  “Perhaps I will tell her in the morning. Enlighten her.”

  “Somehow I think that might just make it worse. She seems to be on some sort of tear.”

  “Tear?”

  “Yes, like she’s angry at herself. For something.”

  “Hmm. Interesting hypothesis, my dear sister.”

  “I mean, doesn’t it seem like it’s getting worse? Her . . . peculiarity?”

  “I have not made that observation. However, I have not been taking note.”

  “She’s clearly upset about something. Do you mind if I ask you a question, Henry? What were you blanking out about, just then? Where did you go in that great brain of yours?”

  “It’s just . . . I felt something for a second. Down on the beach. Whatever that churning phenomenon was . . . there was a warmth to it. Something familiar. A kind of comfort. For a moment . . . it seemed like everything was fine again. As if nothing bad had ever happened.”

  He blinks at me, then puts his head on his pillow.

  I know what that means. It means he doesn’t want me to see him cry.

  “Henry, we are going to be able to do this, you and me. It’s going to be hard for a while. Maybe even terrible sometimes. But we have each other. We have each other and we just have to hold on together, hold each other up, you know?”

  “What if I don’t want to be held up? What if I just want to crash and burn?”

  “Then hold me up, Henry. Because without you I feel like I’ll just fall down straight into the center of the earth. Maybe even farther.”

  Henry looks up to me from his pillow. Eyes red from not-crying.

  “I don’t want that. Okay, Eva.”

  “Okay, Henry.”

  I stay with him a little while, until he falls asleep, Lego robot monster in hand. It’s just about three in the morning when I creep into the bathroom to brush my teeth.

  There’s a mirror in there, framed by dark wood, surrounded by the mahogany-paneled room. The tile on the floor is little octagons, white with a little black diamond every once in a while. The light in there is a little bit funny. There is a yellowed sconce next to the mirror you have to turn off by hand.

  All of that is normal, nothing strange. It’s just . . .

  I feel something again.

  Something that’s like a cousin—related to what I felt on the beach—but not quite the same. I look at the reflection of my arm in the mirror, and I can see the little hairs on it rise as if the temperature just dropped ten degrees.

  I have the sense that there is something behind me. But I’m looking in the mirror, and there is nothing there.

  I finish brushing.

  I rinse and spit.

  I reach up to the pull chain on the light.

  It’s just when I flick the light off, in the sconce there next to my reflection, that I see a distinct shape behind me, halfway down the hall.

  I flip the light on again.

  Nothing there.

  I pull the chain and plunge the room back into darkness.

  The silhouette. It’s there again.

  I turn around. “Ha!”

  Nothing there.

  No one at all.

  Now each and every hair on my body is standing on end and I’m trying not to move, or breathe, or think. But if I was going to think, this is what I would think:

  That was a man. A gray, skinny man in a hat, dressed in a funny little outfit that has nothing to do with our time.

  And he was coming toward me.

  12

  MORNING.

  No. I did not tell Henry I saw a terrifying figure in the hallway last night.

  It’s not that it slipped my mind, exac
tly. It’s more in the ballpark of . . . well, he’s got a lot on his plate. He doesn’t need to wrestle with the idea that we are perhaps being stalked by a man-ghost from another time.

  That’s just not something you want to hear over breakfast.

  Henry’s making the waffle mix, Marisol is making the waffles, and I am adding a flourish of strawberries and whipped cream. It is to be noted that Henry’s Blenderator 3000 is making the smoothies. What is a Blenderator 3000? Well, I’m glad you asked! Are you tired of cutting up all those messy fruits first thing in the morning? Do you ever wish you could just have that fresh fruit smoothie without all that backbreaking labor? Do you end up just eating doughnuts because you can’t be bothered? Then you need the Blenderator 3000! It slices. It dices. It even puts the fruit in for you! Simple. Just put the fruit down, in front of the Blenderator 3000, sit back, relax, and watch it go!

  (There is also a jingle I am working on.)

  So the Blenderator is blending, and I am currently debating with myself whether to mention out loud the specter from the hallway of doom.

  The three of us are sitting down to have our breakfast in the kitchen nook.

  I decide to feel it out. “Um, Marisol? Have you ever . . . seen anyone in the house? Like maybe a weird old guy or something?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you?! You can’t leave the door unlocked, otherwise a bad man will come in and kill you with a knife!” Marisol warns.

  “Or nunchuks.” That is Henry’s contribution.

  “¡Si! Nunchuks! Or any weapon, realmente. A club, a scissors, a stick!”

  “A stick?” Henry isn’t buying that.

  “Okay, but I’m thinking more of a supernatural kind of thing,” I add.

  “¿Un fantasma? You mean like, how you say, a . . . a ghost?”

  “Sort of,” I reply.

  “Dios te salve, Maria, llena eres de gracia, el Señor es contigo . . .”

  Okay, so, Marisol is officially crossing herself and, I can tell by the little line in Henry’s forehead, he is translating.