The Changeling

by Victor Lavalle

  BY SIX O’CLOCK dinner was served. Sippy cups to fill, spills to clean. The children were fed together in the Doctor’s Cottage. Two of the women played music—guitar and a small drum—and the children sang along. They’d been taught “Diamonds and Rust,” and “Umi Says,” among others. The younger children were put to bed before the puppet show, but when it was time for Gayl to go, she refused. She wanted to stay up with Apollo. He pleaded to let the girl stay with him awhile longer. Gayl’s mother had to laugh, but Apollo saw something else in the mother’s eyes, the reflexive suspicion about a strange man wanting to spend time with her daughter. He couldn’t blame her for that concern. The caution was a sign that Gayl’s mother was a good parent.

  But Cal indicated that this man could be trusted and the endorsement carried weight. Also, the mother’s five-year-old decided to have a full-blown meltdown right then, out in the courtyard, so it was a relief to leave Gayl with Apollo for a little longer.

  Take care of her for me. That’s what Gayl’s mother said before she pulled her son inside the Nurses’ Residence. Cal called the kids to the library for the show. Apollo tucked the book into the back of his pants, and Gayl rode on his shoulders. She looked down at the older children and shouted, “I’m tall!”

  Cal and Apollo stood at the back of the library as the kids bopped from one wall to another, indiscriminately pulled books from the shelves, and pushed or elbowed each other, a few explosions before settling down. Apollo tried to set Gayl on the floor among them, but she mewled in his arms, so he held on to her.

  “She didn’t eat much at dinner,” Cal said. “I bet she’s hungry.”

  Then Gretta Wheeler arrived, escorted by a guard.

  Every grown woman in the room stiffened and turned toward her as if they were needles being drawn toward magnetic north. Apollo turned to face her only once he realized the women had grown quiet. The children continued to burble and play. Gretta came to Cal. She ignored Apollo. She gave off an anxious crackle, or was that only because of how Cal stared at her?

  Gretta Wheeler’s hair was pulled back severely, and she was thin in a way that suggested malnourishment. Apollo remembered the woman in the basement of Holyrood looking much the same way and even Emma had been winnowed down like this. Each had become a body nearly drained of its life essence, victim of a vampire.

  “I’m sorry I had to call for you,” Cal said. Normally so quick to touch others, Cal left her arms at her side. Even Cal seemed to fear Gretta, or maybe she just feared for Gretta. “Where’s Grace?”

  “She’s with my parents. William is here? He showed up? Just like that?”

  The young woman whom Apollo had seen through the windows earlier—their teacher?—clapped her hands for the kids’ attention. She gestured for the boys and girls to gather for circle time.

  “He came with me,” Apollo said.

  As soon as Gretta Wheeler turned, he regretted saying it. She raised her hands, fingers tensed, as if she might claw out his eyes.

  “You’re with him?” she asked.

  If he hadn’t been holding the girl, Apollo thought Gretta would’ve devoured him.

  “Of course not,” Cal said quietly. “We wouldn’t have him out with us if that was the case.”

  “I’m Emma’s,” Apollo said. “Emma Valentine’s husband.” He surprised himself, trembled at the words. It was the first time in four months that he’d allied himself to Emma in any way.

  I’m Emma’s.

  Gretta watched Apollo blankly, as if he’d spoken to her in ancient Phoenician. She had no idea who Emma was or who he was; she’d been too busy living at the center of her own horrific story to concern herself with his.

  Gretta’s hands fell to her sides. She waved at Apollo softly, a kind of apology. Cal brought her arm around her but didn’t pull her too tight. Gretta accepted the touch but didn’t lean in to the embrace.

  “I keep thinking I’ll be done with him,” Gretta said. “But he always finds his way back into my life.”

  “I know,” Cal said.

  “He won’t give up. We’re his. That’s what he thinks. Me and Grace. And Agnes.”

  She whispered the last word, the girl’s name.

  “Did he really—?” Apollo’s question slipped out between his lips, but he squeezed them shut before he finished. It didn’t matter, Gretta knew what he meant.

  She looked up at him. “Kill my daughter?”

  The children went quiet and looked at Gretta. No matter the circumstances children are always listening. It can be easy for adults to forget this. Apollo wondered if Cal was correct when she said the kids didn’t know why their mothers brought them here. Children sniff out secrets better than the NSA. Their teacher had to clap softly and make shushing sounds to draw their attention again.

  “But he said—” Apollo began.

  Gretta lurched at him. “Oh yes, please tell me what he said! I came all this way just so you could explain my own life to me!”

  Apollo took a step backward as Gayl shook in his arm. She looked at Gretta with suspicion. Few things are as frightening to a child as an adult about to lose control.

  “Gayl looks hungry,” Cal said to Apollo, moving between him and Gretta. “Why don’t you take her to eat?”

  Two women entered the library with the finished sets for the puppet show. The home of the parents who wished to have a child; the garden of the Enchantress; Rapunzel’s tower and even the patch of thorns that would blind the prince. A third woman entered with a rickety card table that would serve as the stage. Already the children had seen the sets, the bag of puppets dangling from one guard’s wrist, and went quiet at the promise of glamour.

  Gretta’s concentration broke, and she looked back at Cal. “He got my new address. He mailed me a book.”

  “A book?” Apollo whispered, but the women didn’t hear him.

  “I thought you were being careful,” Cal said.

  “It’s not possible to stay off the grid all the time, Pearl. It’s one thing on this island, but it’s the real world out there. If you want to get an apartment, you have to have proof of who you are. That means getting a state ID. And if you want to start a bank account, then you need that ID too.”

  “Why do you even need a bank account?” Cal hissed.

  “I live with a teenager!” Gretta shouted. The kids looked back again. “I can’t have my money stuffed under the bed. You know how fast Grace would find that? She’s a good girl, but she’s still a sixteen-year-old.”

  Cal nodded wearily. The problem with the real world was that it kept intruding on you with its mundane concerns.

  “A book?” Apollo said again, louder.

  Gretta looked at the ground. “He ruined it. Wrote one thing across each and every page.”

  Gayl made a soft mewling noise and gestured to her mouth. She wriggled in Apollo’s arms.

  “I thought I told you to go feed that girl,” Cal snapped. “Take her to the goddamn Doctor’s Cottage. Gayl knows where it is. Don’t you Gayl?”

  The girl nodded earnestly at Cal, so serious about it she shook her shoulders as well as her head.

  “You’ll find food in the coolers,” Cal said.

  Gretta spoke over Cal. “He cleared me out. Every last penny right out of my account. You don’t even need a gun to rob banks anymore, just an Internet connection. That bastard stole seventy thousand dollars from me.”

  Apollo felt slightly sick.

  “What did he write?” Apollo asked. “In the book.”

  “Her name.” Gretta spoke softly. “Agnes. On every page.”

  APOLLO WALKED TO the Doctor’s Cottage with Gayl. Stumbled is more like it. He didn’t even realize he’d taken her there. Seventy thousand dollars. As he’d been sitting in that rented boat, celebrating the biggest book sale of his life, he’d been complicit in a crime against Gretta Wheeler. Then the man had ruined every page with the name of his own daughter. Agnes. Had he really killed her? He felt so disoriented, he might as well be dying.<
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  Apollo set Gayl down inside the dining room of the Doctor’s Cottage. The girl marched toward the row of coolers that lined one wall, her shoes shuffling and scraping through the layer of dirt and detritus that covered the floor. He searched through each cooler until he found a Tupperware container with leftover macaroni and cheese. He closed the cooler and dug through a cardboard box that worked as the community utensil drawer. Plastic forks, spoons, and knives, paper plates and cups. He moved to one of the dining tables and pulled out a chair, set down the mac and cheese, a fork and spoon, then picked Gayl up. He sat her in his lap and lifted the Tupperware lid. He remained half dazed, but he could still fulfill this simple routine: feed the child. Gayl eyed the food, then looked back up at him. She waggled her head. Apollo scooped the spoon into the mac and cheese. He lifted it to her mouth.

  “No!” she shouted, and slapped his hand. The mac and cheese now a splotch on the ground.

  Gayl pulled at the spoon. He let go, and she turned the spoon around with two hands, gripping the handle with her left. Now she studied the Tupperware as if taking aim. She lifted the spoon and guided it toward the food. The spoon bumped the edge of the container, so Gayl lifted it again, tried again. On the second try, she landed the spoon into the mound of macaroni. She dug the tip in like a spade. When she lifted again, she sent another spray of food to the floor.

  “No!” she shouted, frustration clear on her face.

  “You remind me of my wife,” Apollo said to her. She looked at him but did not seem interested in hearing about Emma. “My wife,” he repeated to himself, trying out the term. Had she killed their son? Or was their son still alive? Cal told him he’d crossed the waters into a land of witches and monsters. Could there be hope here, too? Such a thing seemed more improbable than magic. Cal had created a jumble in his mind, but all day a voice would sometimes come to him, his own, reminding him of his mission: Get Emma.

  When he arrived on the island, the plan had been clear: Kill her. But now? Was he here to harm her or help? He couldn’t say. And where was she? Why hadn’t she shown herself? In a moment close to panic, he checked his left hand. He gawped at his naked ring finger. He really had thrown it in the water, hadn’t he? Only the red string around his middle finger remained now.

  Gayl set down the plastic spoon. She tugged at the red string. When it wouldn’t come loose, she pulled it up along Apollo’s finger, trying to slip it off. Apollo used his other hand to snatch up the plastic spoon, scoop some macaroni onto it, and bring it to Gayl’s lips. She absently took a bite. Apollo grinned, proud of himself for tricking her into eating. Then she raised her hand with a flourish. She had worked the red string loose from his finger without him even noticing.

  “Baby girl?” A woman’s voice came from the entrance to the Doctor’s Cottage.

  Before Apollo even turned his head, Gayl leaped from his lap and sprinted. “Mommy!” she called out. She practically levitated into her mother’s arms.

  “She’s fed,” Apollo said, standing up. “Well, she ate one bite at least.”

  “I guess that’s something,” Gayl’s mother said, teasing. “I hope she wasn’t any trouble.”

  “Gayl is great,” Apollo said.

  “Yes, she is,” her mother said, looking into her daughter’s eyes. “She’s also up way past bedtime.”

  “No!” Gayl shouted, but then she yawned so wide they could’ve counted all her teeth.

  Gayl’s mother turned so she faced Apollo. “I didn’t get to know Emma too well while she was here,” she said. “My little ones keep me pretty busy, you understand. But she took a liking to my boy, Freddie. He’s shy. Doesn’t talk a lot, but he loves to read. She had her own problems to deal with, but she read to him before bedtime, each night she was here. That told me all I needed to know about her.”

  Mother and child walked out of the Doctor’s Cottage, but in a moment they returned. Gayl’s mother held her hand out. The red string lay in her palm.

  Apollo took it from her with a nod. He looked at the loop for a long minute before slipping it onto his ring finger.

  HE STEPPED OUT of the Doctor’s Cottage, book tucked under one arm like a man out for a walk with the paper. He could see the library not ten yards away. Through the windows he watched Cal. She’d started her puppet show. They’d never made those frightening puppets, but it didn’t matter. Apollo could see the heads of the bigger children, each of them drawn toward the puppets. Not Cal, but the show.

  “Glamour,” Apollo whispered.

  He seemed to be the only person outside. Cal, the guards, and the children were in the library, the other women and youngest children were bedding down inside the Nurses’ Residence. He stood there swaying. The courtyard took on the kind of silence New York City hasn’t known for three hundred years. They weren’t by the river, but Apollo could hear the sound of the waters slapping against the shoreline of North Brother Island.

  As sudden as a strong wind, he felt a new current in the air. At first he mistook it for a sound, a kind of chattering suddenly filling the courtyard, but in a moment he understood it, instead, as a charge in his body. He felt as if a wave of electricity was running through his jaw. His teeth clenched tight, and his neck burned. He felt tuned into a higher frequency. He could almost sense the direction of the broadcast. Not the library or the Nurses’ Residence. The Tuberculosis Pavilion.

  William.

  Apollo took two steps in that direction, but then spun like a top and walked back to the library. He came to the doorway and leaned in. Cal didn’t look away from the children as she told the tale of Rapunzel.

  The guards noted him, but it was Gretta, standing at the back, rigid and ready, who walked toward Apollo. She pushed him out of the library and squeezed his arm. “Cal may have decided to trust you,” she whispered. “But that doesn’t mean I do.”

  “Listen,” Apollo said. “Please. There’s something I have to tell Cal.”

  “You tell me,” Gretta said. “Let those children enjoy ten minutes of happiness.”

  “It’s William,” Apollo said. “He made a threat.”

  “He makes those all the time.”

  “He said he’d called in the cavalry,” Apollo told her. “I don’t know who, but someone’s coming.”

  Gretta let go of Apollo’s arm, and her expression flattened with shock, as if she’d been slapped. “Someone’s coming,” she repeated. She reached a hand in the air, swatting faintly at the dark. She collected herself, turned from Apollo, and rushed back inside.

  Apollo watched her skirt along the edge of the crowd, all those children listening. Gretta reached Cal, interrupted the show, leaned close, and whispered in the woman’s ear. Cal lowered the puppets, just an inch, lost her smile for a moment, then caught herself and raised the puppets and resumed the story, but her eyes scanned the room until she locked eyes with one of her guards. And with that Apollo walked off.

  —

  The seclusion rooms overlooked a copse of trees at the bottom of a slight slope. The moon shone down on the top of the hill, leaving the trees in darkness, but the path quite clear. No one out there but Apollo.

  He skirted along the edge of the pavilion, trying to find the window where William was being held. When he got there, he squatted and found a rock as big as a softball in the dirt. He stepped back five paces and threw the stone, and the window shattered. Now there was only the mesh of the cage between Apollo and William’s cell.

  From inside the cage there was no sound, no reaction. Apollo listened for something from the cage. Maybe the guards had already taken him while he’d been feeding Gayl. Maybe his body lay smoldering somewhere right now.

  Apollo crept closer to the window. He tried to see inside, but the room was too dark. “William,” he hissed. “William! If you’re in there you answer me.”

  He went onto his toes to see inside. He brought his nose to the cage.

  “William Wheeler!”

  Finally a grunt came from inside the cage. The sou
nd of scuffing and shuffling in the dirt. “That’s not my name, so stop fucking using it.”

  Now a figure shambled to the window. Not a man but a shape, a shadow, grumbling with menace.

  “I met your wife,” Apollo said. “She said you sent her To Kill a Mockingbird with every page defaced.”

  “What do you care? You got your money, right?”

  “You stole that money from her, William!”

  Inside the cell the figure grumbled.

  “I told you to stop calling me that. It’s not my real name. I didn’t know my real name either. Didn’t know who I really was. Then I found the place where I belonged. Found people who understood me. I could talk to them like I never could to anyone. When I was there, I took off William Wheeler’s face and found my true face underneath. Once my friends saw my true face, they gave me my true name. In fact, Apollo, you know it already, too.”

  “How would I know that?”

  The man in the cage raised his voice and spoke as if reading an announcement. “Dinner plans tonight. A meal inspired by Baby Brian.”

  Apollo took a step backward. The man brought his face to the mesh barrier.

  “Boiled vegetables!” he shouted.

  “You’re Kinder Garten,” Apollo said.

  “We!” he hissed. “We are Kinder Garten. Ten thousand men with one name.”

  The man in the cage jammed his fingertips through the metal webbing. In the moonlight the nails looked as ragged as claws. Apollo felt hit by a wave of confusion. He felt like a capsized ship.

  “You killed your daughter,” Apollo said. “That’s what Gretta said.”

  “I made a choice!” Kinder Garten shouted back. “For my family, I made the hardest choice there is.”

  Apollo’s jaw tightened. The electric current filled the air again. But it wasn’t coming from William. The change in the air came from somewhere behind Apollo. The back of his head felt hotter by degrees. He turned.