He wasn’t sure his legs were strong enough to support him, but all he wanted to do was get past the bedroom doorway and into the living room. If he could just make it to the couch…he didn’t need Xanax or any other medication. What he needed was to sleep…really sleep and wake up several hours later, knowing that he’d slept and was refreshed.
Apparently, though, that was impossible.
On some level, he acknowledged that he couldn’t really have stayed awake as long as he thought he had. There was no way he or anyone else could go for more than a couple of days, much less a couple of months, without sleep, so he knew he must have fallen asleep at some point.
Last night, for instance.
He must have fallen asleep and just not realized it. The problem was, he could never remember doing it, and he certainly didn’t feel rested afterward. Ultimately, it didn’t matter if these were hallucinations he was having or if they were just incredibly vivid dreams. The problem was, he knew what was really happening. He was having a breakdown, and as far as he could see, there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.
He started moving slowly through the dining room to the living room, all the while keeping his gaze fixed on the bedroom doorway. Clutching panic seized him when he saw smudges of shadow flit across the walls and ceiling, taking on form and substance as he watched. A low whimper escaped him, and he suddenly darted forward into the living room and leaped onto the couch.
“Go away! Leave me alone!” he whispered as he cowered against the cushions and stared at the doorway. His heart was racing as he watched and waited to see if the shadows deepened and began to seep into the living room like ground fog. The rapid hammering of his pulse drowned out all other sounds, and Ben didn’t know which was worse—cringing in fear as he waited to see what might have followed him into the living room or closing his eyes and waiting in silence for darkness to descend.
****
When Ben opened his eyes, rain was streaming down the living room windows. He let out a loud grunt as he bolted upright on the couch and looked around, startled as if someone had shouted close to his ear. Outside, gray clouds were shifting fast across the sky, twisting like clumps of curdled milk. The rain against the window hissed like blowing sand. Through the trees, he caught a glimpse of the river, its dark surface dimpled by concentric rings made by the rain. The living room was suffused with a cottony gray light that seemed to have no direct source. He waved his hands in front of his face, half-expecting to see the air in front of him swirl, like stirring up muddy water.
Ben knew he hadn’t been asleep.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been lying there on the couch with his eyes closed, but the whole time, his mind had been racing as he tried to make sense out of what he had been going through. The memory of his phone conversation with Dr. Porlock seemed distant now, as vague as a half-remembered dream. He recalled saying something about calling Ed back later if he wasn’t feeling better, but he wasn’t sure how long ago he had talked to him. It could have been a couple of hours or a couple of days ago, for all he knew. He glanced at the answering machine and saw that the message light wasn’t blinking, so Ed hadn’t called him back. If he had, Ben was sure he would have heard the phone ring because he was positive that he hadn’t fallen asleep.
Still, he didn’t feel at all rested. His eyelids were heavy, and his eyes ached whenever he blinked. He took a sharp breath, feeling a cold rush like water under his ribs. Without consciously thinking it through, he grabbed the living room phone and quickly dialed his brother’s number. Before it started ringing, though, he thought better of it and slammed the phone down, letting his breath out in a loud, trailing gasp. His body felt like it was weighed down by lead as he got up from the couch and shuffled slowly through the living room and into the kitchen. When he passed the bedroom doorway, he paused to look into the room, remembering how threatened he had felt by what he thought he had seen in there. That danger, too, felt like it was a distant memory, not at all threatening now.
Once he was in the kitchen, he grabbed his wallet and car keys from the counter, pulled on his raincoat, and hurried outside, making sure to lock the doors behind him. It was already late in the afternoon, and the air had a cold bite that made him wonder if the rain might turn to snow later on. It was unlikely but not impossible this time of year.
When he started down the steps to the driveway he noticed a pile of leaves on the lawn, halfway between the house and the road. Raindrops snapped like faint gunshots on the pile, making the leaves jump randomly. They glistened with an oily black sheen that reflected the churning sky. Once again, Ben saw that the pile had assumed a vague human shape, but he shook his head, telling himself that it was just his imagination. Still, he steered clear of the pile as he drew his raincoat hood over his head and dashed to his car.
Once he was in the relative safety of his car, he looked back at the leaves, knowing it was impossible but convinced that, as soon as his back was turned, the leaves had shifted closer to the stairs. His teeth chattered as he shook his head, trying to convince himself that there was no way it really looked like a person lying face-first on the ground with both arms stretched out and reaching for the steps. His hands trembled almost out of control as he slipped the key into the ignition and turned it. The car started after a few tries, and he jerked the shift into reverse, then backed out onto the street. As he pulled away, he glanced at the rearview mirror at the pile of leaves, telling himself it had to be his imagination, but he was sure he saw the leaves stir with a heavy, sodden motion. Maybe a gust of wind or the passing of his car had caused it, but before he rounded the corner onto Main Street, he could have sworn the pile of leaves lurched up like a person left behind, watching him go.
Ben pulled into the Big Apple on Main Street, and while the gas jockey filled the tank, he considered what he was thinking of doing. His brother lived a little more than an hour west of Northbrook. He had no idea if Rob was home or not, and he knew he should call first before driving all the way out there, but he had left the apartment in such a hurry, he’d forgotten his cell phone. It was, no doubt, on the counter where he’d left it recharging. It wouldn’t be any big deal to go back and get it, but he didn’t want to look at that pile of leaves again. He tried not to, but he kept imagining that he saw the leaves and small twigs form two hands that reached out for him as he drove off. He didn’t want to think about what might happen if they were to catch him.
After paying the attendant, Ben pulled out onto Main Street and, without hesitation, turned left, heading west on Route 25 toward his hometown of Afton where his brother still lived in the family home. Exhaustion wrung his body out, so he stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts and bought a large coffee to help him stay alert. He wasn’t worried that he’d fall asleep. There wasn’t much chance of that, but he couldn’t stop worrying about the things he might imagine he saw and heard as he drove.
The car’s wipers swept rhythmically back and forth, but they didn’t keep up with the steady downpour. The wind gusted hard, rocking the car now and again, and dead, wet leaves blew from the trees and swirled along the roadside in his wake. Some of them landed on his windshield and stuck there like bloated leaches. Even with the heater on full blast, Ben couldn’t keep from shivering. He guessed one of the back windows was open a crack because a high-pitched whistling sound filled the car, almost drowning out the steady hiss of his tires on the wet pavement. The sound worked on his nerves until he turned on the radio to block out the hint of voices he heard below the steady, whistling noise of the wind.
As he drove, he wished he’d remembered to bring his cell phone. He and his brother had been in such poor communication over the last several years that Ben wasn’t even sure what Rob did for a living. He had no idea if he would be home. When he passed a phone booth in downtown Buxton, he considered stopping to call, but he cringed at the thought of getting out of his warm car and shivering in the rain while he called.
It was after five o’clock, so he just hoped tha
t his brother would be home when he got there. If not, then Ben figured he could wait around for a little while and see if he showed up.
The drive to Afton soon blended into a hazy monotony that reminded Ben of driving in a snowstorm late at night. Houses and forest and fields passed by, but he took little notice of them. They all faded away into a gray blur of rain and mist as if they didn’t really exist. Ben was surprised by how few cars he saw on the road, and when he drove into downtown Afton, his first impression was that it was a ghost town. The sky was darker now, the clouds a dense charcoal. None of the houses or businesses had their lights on. This struck Ben as odd, and he shivered as he looked around, fighting back the impression that everyone in town had simply disappeared.
Feeling oddly isolated, Ben turned onto Burnt Mill Road and drove the mile or so to the family home. There were more houses on the road than he remembered from when he was growing up, but even the new ones looked strangely derelict and deserted.
“What the hell…?” Ben whispered to himself, but he found no reassurance in the sound of his voice. He tried not to think that he might be imagining all of this, that the entire drive was a hallucination. Glancing at the reflection of his eyes in the rearview mirror, he was surprised to see the pale look of shock on his face. His expression had a cold flatness to it that left him with the impression that someone else was looking back at him through the glass.
Jesus, snap out of it, he told himself, but he couldn’t stop the unnerving feeling that he—not the people of the town—was somehow suspended in a cold vacuum.
Throughout the drive, the road had struck him as vaguely familiar, but he was surprised how foreign everything looked. Ben had the impression that he didn’t know this town at all, that his memories of growing up here belonged to someone else or were from so long ago they might as well be from another lifetime.
So much had changed.
It wasn’t until he rounded the long, sweeping curve just before his family’s driveway that things started to look familiar again. His heart beat faster, and he braced himself as he slowed for the turn into the driveway, but nothing could have prepared him for what he saw. Instead of the two-story family house bordered by deep woods on three sides, all that was left was a small rectangle of a cellar hole overgrown with maple saplings and a tangled riot of dead, waist-high weeds in a yard much smaller than he remembered.
Ben stepped down hard on the brake, and the car skidded to a stop a few feet in front of where the barn used to be. It was gone, too. All that remained within the stone foundation were a few fire-blackened timbers and a hill of charred debris that was overgrown with weeds. The rusted hulk of an old truck, its tires flat and flaking gray with rot, stood beside the barn’s crumbling foundation. Someone had thrown a rock through the windshield, which sagged inward with a huge white spider web of broken glass nesting the rock that had broken it. Rust streaked the sides of the truck like dried blood.
Can that really be dad’s truck? Ben wondered, trying to match what he was seeing with his memory of his father’s pride and joy, a classic 1966 Ford.
A sour wave of nausea filled his stomach, and he had a sudden urge to vomit. When he took a breath, his throat crackled and closed off, making him gasp so hard it hurt his chest. His vision began to vibrate in time with his pulse.
This can’t be happening, he thought, shaking his head from side to side. This can’t be real. I have to be imagining this.
Was it possible that, after not visiting his brother for so long, he had gotten confused and come to the wrong place?
The distorted sense of unreality was too intense to bear, but in spite of the steady downpour, he got out of the car and walked slowly toward the tumbled-down, fire-blackened granite front steps. Rain trickled down from his hood onto his face, making him shiver. The utter desolation reminded him of pictures he had seen of bombed out buildings in Germany during World War II. The driveway was rutted and scored by puddles of water that looked like weak chocolate milk. He walked through them, hardly noticing that his sneakers and socks were soaked through.
Stunned and staring in amazement at what had been his family home, he walked around the perimeter of the burned out foundation. He couldn’t begin to match what he was seeing with his memory of what had once been here. The yard was overgrown with a thick tangle of weeds. Cracked and empty pods of milkweed hung from browning stalks. The rain beat down the heads of goldenrod and blackened the trunks of the pine trees that bordered the yard. Out back, he located the raised garden bed where his mother used to grow tomatoes and beans for canning.
“No goddamned way. This can’t be happening,” he whispered, the sound of his voice seeming to violate the desolation of the day.
When did this happen? he wondered. And how?…And where the hell is my brother?…Why didn’t I ever hear about this?
He couldn’t believe that the old homestead had burned down, and his brother had never even mentioned it to him.
Looking back at his car, Ben was startled by how it was the only thing that looked new and real. Everything else—the house, the barn, the overgrown yard, even the woods beyond were obscured by a thickening mist. Ben imagined he was a ghost, haunting the site of his former life, and he could have easily convinced himself that he was already dead, but then he raised one hand in front of his face and flexed his fingers. Rain streamed down his hand to his wrist, and the chill made him shiver.
“No. I’m alive, goddamnit!” he said, running his hands across his face. “This isn’t a dream.”
“Can I hep’ yah?”
The voice, speaking so suddenly from behind him, made Ben jump before he wheeled around to see an old man wearing a black-hooded raincoat, coming up the driveway toward him. Rain glistened on the dull rubber, making it look like wet sealskin.
Is he real? Ben wondered as the initial shock began to subside.
He raised his right hand in greeting and started walking to meet the man, whose hood was pulled so low over his face Ben could only see his mouth and the white stubble of unshaven chin. As they got closer, Ben discerned the man’s large, white nose. It was covered with broken blood vessels that looked like a net of tiny red threads. The old man’s eyes were lost beneath the shadow of the hood and his busy, gray eyebrows.
“Howdy,” Ben said, extending his hand for the man to shake. He shivered at the cool, lifeless touch of the man’s hand.
“You out here for any particular reason?” the old man said. His voice rattled with phlegm.
Ben was about to reply, but his throat constricted, and he had to swallow before he could speak.
“No, I—uh, I grew up here.” He waved his hand, indicating the burned-out foundation. “My name’s Ben Skillings.”
“Skillings, huh?” the man said, scowling.
Ben noticed that the man didn’t tell him his name, but he decided not to press. With a quick nod, he turned around and glanced over his shoulder at the ruins of his house. He still couldn’t quite grasp that the family home where he’d once lived was gone.
“I was…my brother was living here. I guess until the fire. I was just—I hadn’t been out in a while.”
“Bobby Skillings, you mean?” the old man said as though he wasn’t really listening. When he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his raincoat made a loud squeaky sound that set Ben’s teeth on edge. Ben wished he could see the man’s face better. He didn’t like not making eye contact. Then again, the rain was falling steadily, and he could appreciate that the man wanted to keep the water off his face.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “You know him?” He wondered how foolish he must sound, asking this stranger about his brother, but maybe he knew where Rob was now.
“Sure thing,” the old man said. “Knew him, anyways. Tragedy, what happened.”
Unable to hold back, Ben blurted out, “I hadn’t heard. What happened?”
The old man clicked his tongue as he rolled his head to one side. When he exhaled, a puff of steam issued from his mouth l
ike he was exhaling a lungful of smoke.
“You’re his brother, ’n you don’t know?”
Ben shrugged, unable to think of any excuse. His touch was cold as he wiped away rainwater that was running down his face. His chest was constricted like there was an iron band wrapped around it and squeezing him, making it impossible to breathe.
“He died in the fire. That was ’bout ten years ago.”
The words staggered Ben, and he drew back a step, afraid for a moment that his legs were going to give out on him. The damp air flooded under his coat, turning his flesh cold.
“Wha—what do you mean?”
He could hear himself, but it didn’t sound like his voice to him. The old man cocked his head to the other side, his eyes gleaming like chips of ice beneath his black hood. Ben tried not to think how this man, close up, looked like an image of Death.
“I just tole yah. Ten years ago this month, in fact. Middle of the night, the house caught fire. Investigators said it was an electrical fire, started in the walls when he was sleepin’. Poor ole’ Bobby never made it out.”
“No, that…that’s not possible. I just—”
But Ben couldn’t finish. His mind was a maelstrom of confusion. The sense of unreality he’d had before intensified until he was convinced he must be imagining or dreaming this. Any moment now, he expected to wake up and find himself in bed back in his apartment.
“Terrible thing, dyin’ like that. So young, too.”
The old man coughed and spat onto the ground between them. Ben tracked the glob of spit as it landed in one of the muddy puddles. It sent out concentric rings that spread across the water’s surface, which was already dimpled from the rain.
“You say you was Bobby’s brother?” the old man said after wiping his chin with the back of his hand. “Funny. He never mentioned havin’ any survivin’ family, ’least as I can recall.”
“I…yes. He was my brother,” Ben stammered, too stunned to be mad at the old man. Once again, he noticed the flatness in his voice, and he thought again that he must be dreaming; but if he was dreaming, why couldn’t he wake up? And why could he feel the cold rain on his face and the tight burning in his chest? If this was a dream, when had it started and—more importantly—when would it end? How could he be so aware of himself and what he was thinking and feeling in a dream?
Four Octobers Page 21
