by Carrie Ryan
But instead, I’m in hell. Hell is Bright Child, two inches away from me, softly sighing, with her shirt riding up as she tosses and turns on the hard ground. I can see the strap of her bra and the curve of her back.
I should be mourning the destruction of everything I’ve ever known, and instead all I want to do is touch her.
It’s night number three and I give up. I sneak out of the storeroom once I know she’s asleep. Today has been the hardest yet. All she wanted to do was rehearse speeches to give to the congregation about our new mission, but the longer we’re away from the others, the more sure I am that I can’t ever lead her back. Even now, still dressed in her jubilation clothes, with matted hair and smudged skin and the sickly sweet smell of old sweat, she’s more like an angel than a girl.
Her father named her well. There’s a flame inside her. Her faith is almost blinding in its intensity.
The trip through the woods is treacherous in the dark, but I can’t risk turning on a flashlight and leading them back to our hideaway. As it is, I don’t know how long we have before the others come for the contents of the storehouse. All things I haven’t considered—all very important pieces of information that go right out of my head whenever I’m near Bright.
Because when you listen to her talk, her steadfast belief, her dire and glorious convictions, it’s easy to agree.
I cross the creek and see the lights glinting off glass panes in the buildings on the compound.
Easy, but not true.
No one is outside at this time of night, and no one sees me creep up to the windows of the prayer house and peek inside. The elders are all in their little folding chairs, their faces dead and hollow. Shadows lie heavy on their cheekbones and they sit slumped, defeated, and watch Jeremy Child with eyes devoid of the righteous flame I’ve seen in Bright.
This is why I’ve taken her away. I can’t bear to watch the fire extinguished in her.
Jeremy is at his lectern, and he’s in full pounding mode. But this time, his words are not about the End of Days.
They’re about Bright.
“And is it any wonder that she, the most dutiful and righteous of all of us, should have gone ahead? My dear little girl, our darling angel, is even now making a place for us in heaven.”
Is he like Bright, steadfastly clinging to his belief despite his disappointment? A lot of the elders are missing from the congregation—including my mother. Where are they? Where does my mother think I am? I wonder if anyone even cares.
I keep listening for a few more minutes, hoping to hear a word about the other people missing—maybe even about myself—but it’s all about Bright. Our angel, Bright. Our savior, Bright. He argues his prophecy was correct—at least in part. Bright will guide us, Bright will lead the way.
When Jeremy finally releases them, I duck into the bushes. Before, the elders would burst out of their prayer meetings, on fire to share with all of us Jeremy’s newest revelations. Tonight, they’re more subdued, talking among themselves in low voices.
“They don’t believe me.” The voice is very close and I flatten myself against the wall of the building. Jeremy Child is standing at the window, watching the elders walk away.
“Yes, they do.” Bright’s mother, her voice the usual soft whisper at her husband’s side. She’s nothing like her daughter—Bright takes after Jeremy. “They’re just disappointed. We all are.”
“If they don’t believe me, they’ll keep leaving. So many have already gone.”
Is my mother one of them? I wonder. Did she leave the compound without me? Did she leave looking for me?
Or did she leave because while her son vanished along with his daughter, Jeremy could only allow that Bright was holy enough to make it into his imagined rapture.
Above me, Jeremy’s voice grows firmer. “But I suppose it is their loss if they wish to brave the world without my guidance. Their loss if they wish to give up their place in heaven.”
His wife is silent for a long moment, and when she does speak, her words sound more like a shout carried over a great distance. “And … Bright?”
“Bright is in heaven,” Jeremy says firmly.
No, she’s not. I want to pop out of my hiding place and say it out loud. I want to tell Mrs. Child the truth.
“Jeremy—”
“She’s in heaven,” he repeats, and the window slams shut.
This is his new deception, his new lie. Rage flares within me, but it’s tamped down as I realize that I’m no different. He’s lying to the elders, to all of them, telling them that Bright is in heaven while we’re all stuck here on earth. I’m lying to Bright and telling her the exact opposite.
It has to stop.
BRIGHT
When I wake, Sam is gone, and for a second I’m scared he’s been swept up to heaven with the rest. It’s hard enough imagining doing this with his help—I don’t know how I’ll ever be strong enough to do it alone.
Why have I been chosen for this task? They’ve always told me I’m as strong as my father, but I don’t know how anyone could be strong enough for this. It was hard enough to get people to see the light before. Now, when the world is falling apart, how can I get the survivors to keep their faith alive?
Out here in the woods, safe with my father’s stores and security measures, I’ve been filling my head with visions of what is going on out in the world. Each idea is more terrifying than the last—those who remain of my father’s followers, dying of disease or starvation, tearing each other apart as the world falls to pieces around them. How will it end? Will the sun bake the earth? Will the seas rise up to drown us? Will we succumb to a plague and wither where we stand?
Or is it worse than that? With most of the righteous gone away, evil now walks free on this earth, poisoning the hearts and minds of men. The end times will be brutal, filled with demons and monsters. Maybe they’ve already infiltrated the compound. Will the end come through some new horror the likes of which even my father didn’t foresee? The thought sends me back to my knees, praying for guidance, for strength to stand firm against whatever trial lies before me.
One thing is clear. I can no longer afford to sit in the woods and leave my father’s followers to fend for themselves against whatever the end times have to offer. I must return to them, bearing supplies and a message of hope. It’s what my father would expect me to do.
I’m packed when Sam returns. He stops on the threshold of the storehouse, staring at me with my bag filled with food, medicine, and yes—protection. “It’s time to go back,” I announce to him in the voice I learned from my father.
“Y-yes.” His eyes are wide. “I came to bring you back. I was wrong, Bright. Wrong to bring you here. They need to see you—”
I nod.
“And—and you need to see them. It’s not what you think, Bright. I—I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want to—”
“Don’t worry, Sam.” I put out my hand toward him. “I understand.”
He looks ready to cry. “No, no, you don’t. It’s just … your faith is so strong, Bright. I can see it now, shining all over you. You think you can save everyone.”
“I can.” I wave to the storehouse. “Look at all of this. It will be easier for us to keep the faith if I can ease some of the physical suffering.”
“No, Bright.” Sam’s head is down, his voice cracking against the words. “The world’s not ending. We were all wrong.”
I bite my lip. Poor Sam. “I understand that’s what you want to believe, Sam. I truly do. I would give anything not to have to face the trials before us. But we’ve been set a sacred task. We have to keep the faith of my father’s followers. We have to help them.”
He tries to speak again, but he erupts into sobs and he splutters, covering his face with his hands. “No, Bright. No. You don’t understand. I—I lied to you. Everything. Everything is a lie.”
He’s so distraught, he can hardly breathe. He stands half crumpled, collapsing under the weight of his despair. Li
ving through these times will not be easy. I step forward, dip my head to meet his, and press my mouth against his lips. “It’s okay, Sam,” I whisper, and kiss him again.
We stand like that for a long time, our mouths pressed together. I don’t think he’s even breathing, and when I pull away, he says nothing at all, just stares at me with eyes like Armageddon.
I shoulder my backpack and lead the way back to the compound.
The sun is just beginning to break up the mist as we cross the creek. The buildings of the compound hunch in the dust. The first person to see me is Bethany, and she drops to her knees. “Bright. You’re back.”
“Yes,” I reply, and reach out my hands to her. “Everything will be all right, Bethany. I’ve come to make sure you know that.”
She starts to cry as I touch her. Similar responses greet us with every person we pass on our way up the path.
“Bright. You’re here! My prayers have been answered.”
“Bright, have you come back to help us?”
“Bright, I knew you wouldn’t leave us!”
To each of them, I say the same thing: “Gather everyone you can and meet me at the prayer house. I want to talk to you all.”
They shudder with excitement, ecstatic and relieved that someone has come to take charge at last. I look at Sam. “We should have come back days ago. They’re desperate.”
Sam appears pretty desperate himself.
“Never fear,” I say, and my hand finds his across the path. “We’ll do this. Together.”
And then Sam shudders, too.
My father’s poor followers. They’ve been so lost without a member of the Child family to lead them. For so long, they’ve listened to my father. Well, I was always his favorite, and I won’t let him down now. I will help them in his absence. I will be someone they can look to in these terrible end times.
Before us, even the door to the prayer house gapes in wonderment at our arrival. Behind me, people are gathering, traipsing after me, the murmurs of their relief and admiration floating in the misty air.
Ahead of us, a figure appears in the doorway of the prayer house, his face puffed almost beyond recognition. No—his face is the same, it’s only the eyes that have changed. The eyes that were once so clear, that shone with a light some called divine. The eyes that were kind and strong and knowing and true.
His eyes are dead.
“Bright.” His mouth moves, and the whisper is in the voice of my father. But his eyes—those eyes!
I stop on the path so quickly that Sam bumps into my back. What is he doing here? My father is in heaven. He’s supposed to be in heaven.
Though I recoil from his touch, he grabs my shoulders and pulls me in tight. “You’ve been in heaven for the last few days,” he whispers into my ear.
“No,” I say. “I’ve been out in the woods. I thought you—”
“Just go with it,” he hisses quickly and spins me around to face the crowd. I am surer than ever that something is wrong. My father has never asked me to lie. He’s never had to—why would he, when the truth of the prophecy burned brighter than the sun?
And now, as the last of the mist clears from the ground and I can see clearly the entire compound, and all of the followers gathered before, me, waiting, I know what has happened. It’s the end times, just like my father warned us. And it’s more horrible than I could ever have imagined.
I look at Sam and he’s staring back, as usual, his mouth drawn tight, his eyes aching with pain. He gives a slight nod. This was what he feared to tell me. This was what he’s been scared of, all these days.
I drop the bag from my shoulders as my father’s voice rings out, and reach in to find what I need.
“Bright has returned to us!” he cries. “She has come to bring us good news. She has come to lead the way.” He turns in my direction.
The second his dead eyes meet mine, I shoot.
“Demon.” I spit at the thing that looks like my father. It falls against the steps, choking. The gun is hot in my hands, and righteousness is the inferno in my veins. “Did you think you could trick us? My father is in heaven.”
I think I hear screaming. I can’t be sure.
There are many horrors to face, here at the end of the world.
The Angriest Man
LISA McMANN
On the day the angriest man died, his bones cursed the bed they lay in. Inside the box, the bones seethed and growled. And underground they exploded into dust and lay there, dormant, one hundred years.
From the dust rose a flower. To the flower came a bee. From the bee, a stinger grew, and it dripped with the venom of the bones of the angriest man.
The bee buzzed around, its yellow jacket glistening, until it came upon an open window. Inside the window was a woman, ripe with child. From the woman came a baby, a boy, who was still and blue, until he was stung by the bee that dripped with the venom of the bones of the angriest man.
Then the baby roared to life and growled, six long years, until the mother went mad and sent the boy away.
• • •
This is the story my mother told me in the final days. “That baby is you,” she’d cry, “and this is what you have become!”
“I’m sorry,” I’d growl, but to me it was a whisper.
“You are an evil, bad child. Bad to the bone.” Her macramé hair hung in her face. A mole throbbed at her temple.
“Yes,” I said. I pressed my fingers into my evil kneecaps and cursed them.
Today is the anniversary of the death of the bee, and I am free from all ties. No one will miss me, and I am done with this. I am eighteen and wasted, not from any substance, but from life. I don’t care about this foster home, these people who feed me. I don’t call them anything. They put me in the basement because of the growls. They lock the door for fear I am a werewolf.
I sit up in my bed for the last time. My bag is packed and I will go once they unlock the door. There are no choices; there is only one ending to the story of a boy so bad as me.
I make my bed and brush my teeth. Tie my shoes. The shoestrings are dirty and frayed, having lost their aglets long ago. I am bad. I haven’t taken care of my shoes properly. I hear my mother’s screams above the growls and grip my elbows, prodding their evil points. I picture them exploding into dust, which calms me down.
At school the teachers will welcome my absence, for I am disruptive. “Not a bad student,” one emphasized on my report card, “he just makes bad choices.” If only the teacher knew the truth. I try to tell him that I am bad, that it’s okay to say it, but he, like all the others, takes a nervous step back when I approach. Invariably his eyes dart to the door, his fingers crawl over his desk to grab a pen, a protractor, a book. Anything to use as a weapon, or as protection, against the growls.
I’m angry, they say, echoing my mother. Angry to the core. Or perhaps I have a throat disease, or a nervous disorder, but no one knows what it is. All I know is that they hear things I do not say, see things I do not do, relay stories about me that didn’t happen. But I can only shrug, for I am cursed with venom, formed from ancient angry bone dust.
It didn’t take me long to begin to do the things they accused me of. Why not? The consequences are exactly the same. Being bad is my destiny, and mine alone.
“David?” quavers the voice at the top of the stairs.
I jump, and the motorcycle growl in my throat revs. I didn’t hear the click of the lock on this, my last day. I’m not sure what that means, but it can’t be good. “I’m here,” I say.
Of course you are, whispers the lock in the door.
“Do you want to come up and say goodbye?” the woman asks.
“No.”
She answers with footsteps moving away.
I stare at my frayed shoelaces, waiting for the usual morning rush above my head to subside. Waiting for the growl in my breath to subside too, but it never does. It’s my punishment for being born dead, which she wanted, then coming to life, which she didn’t.
I feel like it’s the bee’s fault. Like I did the right thing in the beginning.
When they are gone I sling my bag over my shoulder and climb the stairs. I don’t look back—who wishes for a final look at nothing? I eat something, but in twenty seconds I’ll be unable to recall what it was. Then I set my house key on the sill and open the door, turning the lock carefully and pulling the door closed behind me. At the end of the driveway I stop and close my eyes, waiting for the growl to lead me.
• • •
In my dreams there’s a girl who growls too, but I know she can’t exist, because the bee died immediately. My mother saw it dead on the floor as the welt swelled on my cheek. She told me, “It took one look at what it stang, and died.”
In third grade, my teacher said that female honeybees die naturally after they sting, which gave me hope. I repeated the angriest man’s story in my head, pausing at “To the flower came a bee.” A bee. A bee. I willed it to be “a female honeybee,” but the words wouldn’t stick there, no matter how hard I tried to make them.
I pretended many things:
That my growl was the bee inside of me.
That my mother killed the bee trying to save me.
That it really was a female honeybee.
But my daydreams made my growl louder, and after school some jerks stuck me in the janitor’s closet. The mop stared at me, wearing my mother’s hair. Bad to the bone, it whispered. That’s what you are. I took the mop and smashed all the cans and bottles and bags off the janitor’s shelves and onto the floor, until it smelled like cat litter and butterscotch. The janitor let me out.
The next day I told the story of the angriest man to my teacher. She said she’d never heard of it.
Here in the driveway the growl points me west. I start walking through yards, across Lane Avenue, to the yellow field. Kids used to play freely in the field, but a few years ago somebody put up a fence. I know how to get in, though.
I walk through the tall grass to the trodden path. Milkweed plants beckon with whiter-than-white gluey tips. I stop and pluck a pod from a plant, open it up. Its fine silky hat sways in the wind like hair under water. The seeds inside aren’t ready yet. I pull them out anyway and throw them to the sky, sending them off unannounced like Charlotte’s daughters in the breeze, away from their mother, their sisters, without a goodbye. I drop the pod on the ground and try to wipe the sticky mess off my fingers. One feathery seed is stuck to me, absorbing evil from my bones. I pull it off and throw it into the air, but it drops straight to the ground, infected.
