Above (12 page)
The light of the moon is now like foggy breath on steel. Adam is not used to dampness and shivers right through the blanket, but he has set a rather demanding pace. The hours he has spent walking up and down stairs and running along the silo’s corridors are paying off in every way except one. When we first started out on foot, he marveled at how well shoes work, but now he has started to limp on account of the blisters they’ve caused. I’ve had to rip holes in my old pair to make room for my crooked toes. At first, Adam wanted to stop every few yards to pick up something, a stick or a stone. He’d compare weights. Now, he trudges along without even looking down. Although he won’t admit it, he’s in a lot of pain from the wound. Hunching forward, he refuses to hand me the suitcase, and scans the countryside with the flashlight. I consider telling him to turn it off so we can prolong the battery life, but who’s to say we wouldn’t walk right by a farmhouse, what with all these trees. They’re monstrous, growing outward at queer angles. Each and every one has gnarled, crooked limbs.
I don’t know how long we’ve been walking or how far. I keep trying to place our location. The compass, unable to settle its spinning needle,
is of no use. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear we were in some other state. We have yet to come to an open field. The land should tell us what season we’re in. It’s not spring, or there’d be the smell of freshly turned soil, and it’s not summer, because there is not a single corn row. Just acres and acres of deformed trees and an unending tangle of greenbrier.
We’ve got to come across a house. “Anytime now,” I say.
In my head, I try to rehearse my story. Do I start with the killing or end with it? Do I save Adam for later, or do I put him out front, the one good thing I have to show for myself? Or do I just give them my name and the date I was kidnapped?
Adam keeps his own counsel, and I’ve become so accustomed to his silence that he startles me when he says, “Mom, look.”
I follow the beam of light, and sure enough, between a clearing of trees is a structure. Instead of hurrying toward it, I put my hand across the front of the flashlight till he turns it off.
“Stay here,” I tell him.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No. I’ll call to you once I know it’s safe.” The figures from the train are still fresh in my mind. “I’ll be right back. Go hide in those hedges till I tell you.”
I ball up my handkerchief and press it against my mouth to stifle the cough and proceed.
Something claws my leg and snags my skirt. I rip free of the thorny bush that has overtaken much the driveway.
“Is that a tree house?” whispers Adam from behind me.
“I told you to wait!”
“I don’t think anyone lives there.”
Without a roof, the house at the end of the drive looks scalped. Growing right up out of it is one of those unsightly trees. Mangled branches are coiling out of the windows. The gutters have fallen down, and the front of the house is completely taken over by ivy. There is no point knocking on the front door. “Let’s go.”
“Let’s stop for a while and rest.”
He shakes his head. He motions for me to move on.
We keep going even when our feet are soaked and frozen.
I’ve been trying hard not to jump the gun, but I keep picturing my reunion with Mama. My biggest worry is what she’ll make of Adam. I want her to see what a sensitive, curious person he is, how focused he can be on certain things, what a lovely companion he is. I want her to love him. I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t.
Suddenly, there is no going forward. One minute, a road, such as it is; the next, a wash. From the smell alone, it’s obvious the water’s been sitting a good long time. I grab the flashlight. No wading to the other side—the waterway is fortified with trees. Instead of having burred, bent trunks like the others, these have massive, barrel-shaped bases and thick, tentacle roots that bulge out of the water. I know them only from pictures—mangrove trees. Impossibly, we are in a swamp.
What a Florida mangrove is doing in the middle of Kansas is not nearly the pressing conundrum that Adam’s failing condition is. I try leading him in a meandering route around the edge of the swamp until I realize there is no circumventing it. We proceed in another direction, traipsing through bushes and brambles so thick wild animals might as well be mauling us. Desperate, I begin hollering for help.
At first, I think it is Adam who is panting from all the exertion. I stop. While he catches his breath, I hear it again—panting, and then a grunt.
“Do you hear that?” Adam whispers.
I press my hand against his mouth. I cock my head to the left and wait.
This time the sound comes from behind us.
If we were in a field, we might outrun it, but in brush as dense as
this, we stand no chance. Quietly, I reach for the backpack and pull out the shovel. I hold it like a spear, and beckon for Adam to get behind me. I wait for the threat to give away its location.
The grunting becomes more insistent. It’s getting closer. For a second, everything goes real quiet. And then there is an almighty roar. Branches snap, the ground vibrates. The unmistakable racket of a charging beast.
“Turn on the light!”
The beam finds its mark—a razorback. I am still trying to fathom why such a docile animal, known for being shy and therefore impossible to hunt, would be going against its nature to mount an attack on humans when, seconds later, the impact lifts me clear off my feet. The boar has run smack-dab into the shovel. It squeals and staggers off into the night.
“Mom!” Adam drops next to me.
I’m not gored to death. I get up and dust off my tail end. “I’m fine.”
“We have to get away from this place!” He looks behind him.
“It’s okay. It won’t be back.”
“What was it?” Adam can barely get the words out he’s shaking so much.
I position the shovel so he can’t see how bloodied it is. “A boar, is all.” What I don’t tell him is that boars never charge people.
My arms ache from the impact. My chest is so tight that my breathing has become a thin whistle. Every little noise startles me. Readying the shovel in the event of another onslaught, I tell Adam to follow me.
“I want to go back to the car.” Adam’s voice is shrill.
“We have to keep going.”
He turns on his heel and hurries the other way. “I don’t like it here.” I grab his arm, but he pulls away. “We’ve got to go back to the car and wait until someone finds us. That’s what Mister’s survival guide said to do.”
“Adam, we’ll never find our way back to the car!”
Five seconds is all it takes for him to disappear completely. Between us there might as well be an entire forest.
“Wait!” I chase him with a snippet of light.
The gentle rise turns into a serious incline. Adam’s convinced we came this way before. I only agree so we can keep going to the top of the rise where we will surely be able to see lights and set our course.
Unlike the ground level, there is not one bush or tree growing on the hill, only a carpet of moss that squeaks as we walk on it. Near the crest, Adam stumbles and falls. He won’t let me attend to the bloody gash on his shin. I look for the offending item. It’s all wrong—the roads, the derelict train, the strange signposts, the trees I do not recognize, the mangrove swamp—but nothing convinces me the world is up to no good quite as much as this: a half-buried Singer sewing machine. A few paces farther, at the top of the hill, the wind has blown the topsoil away. A host of other items poke up through the ground: a piano, a refrigerator, the base of a floor lamp jutting out like a leg, part of a wrought iron headboard thrusting through the dirt like a flower-bed fence. Loads and loads of pots and pans. No matter where I shine the light, household items are trying to break free of their grave. Whatever the reason for this burial mound of stuff, we shouldn’t be on it. We have to get far away from this place.
Adam moans and slumps to the ground as soon as I tell him this. I try encouraging him, but he responds with nonsense murmurings. “I want to go home,” he says. Shivers wrack his body. I’d carry him on my back if I could, but these rubber legs now can barely hold me up.
We’ve come to the end of the line.
I haven’t cried for so long I’ve forgotten what it feels like to have something shake a body so. I sob so quickly and so hard tears haven’t a chance to form. A dry, bone-rattling cry that is absolutely silent—this is how I cry. Looking out at the vast, beastly landscape below us, one without a single lamppost or porch light, I can’t believe how stupid I’ve
been. To believe the world was waiting for me, ready to welcome my son with open arms, to make right all the wrong that has been done.
Another coughing spasm seizes me. This one will not let go. I double over, gasping for air as a deafening boom goes off beside me. A white flash streaks above us like a comet. I swivel around. Adam is reloading the flare gun. He fires again, and the sky is pelted with another burst of light, and then another. He is using up all the flares. “Get back,” he rages at the night. “Get back!” Adam has mistaken the heavens for some kind of assailant. With clouds shifting quickly across the sky, the moon appears to be blinking its disbelief.
Coughing, I scoot over to him and try to still the hallucination. He slumps into my lap.
The world seems to have drawn itself away. Hope of getting to Mama’s house has become, again, an impossible dream.
Curling up even tighter on the recliner, my boy pulls the torn green drape up over his head and mumbles for me to let him sleep. Where the drape would have been hanging is a veil of morning light. Its hem just touches the floor, rousing the dust mites. Corner by corner, the night dries up, leaving rings of murk on the walls.
When we stumbled upon the house in the middle of the night, we were grateful for its easy access, neither of us having the physical wherewithal to break down a door or bust a window. Because the place smelled of smoke, I assumed a fire had at some point driven the occupants away. The flashlight’s batteries had run down so there was no way to know otherwise. It is now clear that something else has caused the house to be abandoned.
Plaster has fallen from the ceiling and formed a chalky carpet on the buckled linoleum, the blue paint on the walls is in some places blistering and in others peeled all the way through to the framework, and yet, dusty personal effects are scattered throughout the room: a small silver tray of bobby pins and a comb next to it; reading glasses on a glass side table; a cordless telephone. I hurry to pick it up, not really surprised to find the line dead. The ceramic planter is empty, but a rubber tree has reached in through a broken windowpane and appears to be throttling the floor lamp. Two rusty chrome chairs are missing their seats; the
chandelier hanging above where a table might have been is missing its lightbulbs. In the adjoining kitchen, heirloom china is still on a draining board, a yellow teapot on the stove, a faded dish towel folded neatly on the oven handle. Someone has left his pipe on the counter. A set of keys hangs from a wire rack next to the back door. Whatever it was that prompted the occupants to leave also insisted they hurry.
If there was any doubt before about the ordeals the house has suffered, there is none now—in the hallway, vandals have spray-painted the walls with illegible words, and on the open door a skull and crossbones. I step past the warning to greet the outdoors.
Instead of waiting for me on the porch, morning has raced up from the hills behind us, spread over the house, and is barreling toward the horizon. It has the clouds on the run, too, parting them like a foamy red sea. For more years than I care to count, morning has been the picture accompanying the April page of the calendar. Static is how I’ve come to think of morning, and here it is, chasing what’s left of the night, nipping at its heels. Everything comes to life because of morning. The trees shiver at the excitement, leaves scatter, even the old house creaks and groans, as though it is trying to pull itself up from its foundations to get a better view of the action. Morning has animated something in me, too, some dormant thing that for years has known only how to sit and wait. Get a move on, it says. Don’t let the day get away.
And yet it is hard to do anything but stand and stare. Just because you can see something doesn’t mean you can trust it to be real. The other senses are easily tricked, too. Breathing in the scent of lilacs or having your skin react to the damp breeze with gooseflesh is not enough. Someone else needs to confirm the experience. Adam needs to get up.
I walk back inside and give a startled cry at the vagrant behind the door. It’s an odd thing to mistake yourself for a stranger, an unfriendly one at that. I wipe the mirror for a better look. There are twigs and leaves in my dirty braids, scratches on my face and neck. My dress, chosen long ago by Dobbs for its modesty, now has a huge slit running up the side showing a lean, bruised leg, and my cardigan has lost all but its top button. The shoes are a disgrace, what with my toes sticking out
through the front. Top to bottom, it is a ghastly sight. I go back to the room where Adam is still sleeping and take from the suitcase my spare dress. With the comb and the bobby pins, I return to the mirror to establish some semblance of decency. On closer inspection, I notice that my skin is already responding to moisture; my face seems less parched. Lips are full once more, and without the tinge of blue.
Preserved,
is the word that comes to mind when I note how few wrinkles I have, and I wonder if I won’t wake up tomorrow with my due allotment and then some. When I am done, I look like someone to whom I am distantly related. I try out a smile. Not exactly a pretty picture, but not someone who will send children running and screaming either.
“Adam, wake up, son.”
He groans again, but this time I shake him until he sits up. He squeezes his eyes shut, then fastens his arm across his brow. “Agh. Turn it off. It’s too bright!”
“It’s sunlight, son. I can’t turn it off.”
“I can’t take it. Do something, Mom!”
Adam sits cross-legged, covers his head with both arms and begins making high-pitched feedback sounds. I race to the kitchen and get a plastic bowl from under the sink and then yank the lace curtain from the window. It is a struggle to get Adam to cooperate but eventually I have the bowl secured to his head with the lace, which, pulled down in the front like a veil, will hopefully provide some protection against the glare.
“Okay?”
Grudgingly, he gets to his feet, wrapping the green drape around him.
He refuses to let me check his wound but does accept the last of the dried noodles. He doesn’t seem to have a fever, and although a little unsteady, he’s in better shape than last night. After adjusting the bowl on this head so the veil hangs down to his chest, he presses an arm against his side and limps across the room. In the kitchen, he picks up a chipped enamel mug, a slotted spoon, a saucepan hanging from a rack above the stove. He carries them to the arched doorway. “What’s through there?”
Something scurries into the hole in a sooty wall where the paneling has been removed. Adam shuffles across the floor after it, sending shredded pieces of wallpaper into the air. I, though, approach the cause of the smoky smell: a bathtub in the middle of the room. In it are the charred remains of a bonfire and beside it a couple of balusters from the staircase. The house has not been vandalized. It’s being cannibalized. Someone is feeding the house, board by board, chair by chair, to the fire that happens in here. I notice the blackened pot. Small bones and some kind of paste are in the bottom of it. This was someone’s recent meal.
Not wanting to cause Adam any more alarm, I use a calm voice to tell him that we are leaving. I gather our belongings and meet him in the entry hall.
Adam looks like a tinker. He has fastened the pot, several more mugs, and utensils around his waist with his belt, all of which make a terrible din when he moves. He has also found a ball of twine, a jar of safety pins, and a dusty black umbrella. “What is it?”
“We have to go, Adam.”
He empties the pins into his pocket, hands me the twine, then pushes the little stainless-steel button on the umbrella’s shaft. The canvas pops open. Startled, Adam drops it, staggers backward, and loses his balance.
“It’s okay, Adam.” I help him up. Another clanging, banging ruckus. “It’s for when it rains. So you won’t get wet.”
He picks up the umbrella, examines its sharp tip, gives the air a few lancing blows, and then tests the mechanism that makes it open and close until he gets his fingers pinched for his troubles. “Do you think they’re going to come back for it?”
I shake my head. “Nobody’s coming back.” So much for promising never to lie to him again.
“Can I keep it?”
“We’ve already got too much to carry.” He gives me that look, so I shrug.
As soon as I turn the doorknob, he says, “I don’t want to go back out there.”
We both stare above us when something creaks. Probably just the wind. I look at Adam again. “It can’t be more than a fifteen-minute walk to the road. There’ll be cars going by right now. I know you’re exhausted, but we’ve got to go just a little bit farther.”
I offer him my hand. Instead of taking it, he turns the umbrella upside down on the floor and twirls it. “You can go.”
“Adam, we have to get you help.”
“You get help. I’ll stay here and wait.”
There have been so few occasions in which Adam has ever felt threatened that it takes me this long to cotton on to the fact that he’s terrified.
“Everyone’s scared of being outside when it’s dark, but it’s different in the daylight. It won’t be like it was last night, I promise. It’s wonderful, son. A thousand times better than your mural.” At the mention of this, he raises the umbrella so that it blocks his face. “I know this is hard for you. Just a little bit longer, that’s all I’m asking.”
“Everything hurts.” I can hear in his voice that he is close to tears.
It’s not just the wound, he tells me, it’s his feet, his legs, his back. His nose hurts from the cold air, and he’s got a sore throat, but worst of all is the headache that comes and goes depending on how much light there is. Out on that front porch, he says, is enough to split it in two.
Above us is another creak. I hold my hand out to silence him. A shutter banging in the draft, perhaps? But then, another creak, the kind that comes from bearing weight. Adam and I both stare at the ceiling.
Creak-creak-creak.
Not the scuffling of some feral creature, but footsteps. Definitely footsteps. With sudden clarity, I realize that the house is not abandoned, that those personal belongings set about the house still belong to someone.
Adam doesn’t need to be convinced. He pulls open the door and we are off the porch and down the stairs in a flash, pots and pans jangling.
With a clatter, Adam drops to his knees, panting. I would like to put more distance between us and the house. It’s impossible to calculate distances anymore. A mile, maybe two or three, is how far we’ve come from the house, not far enough to explain why the terrain has changed so dramatically. Instead of trees and shrubbery, we have stumbled onto what looks like a vast dry lake bed. The ground has the texture of sandpaper and is cracked in geometrical patterns like giant lizard skin. To our left is another imposing power-line tower. Following them means we are bound to stumble upon civilization sooner or later, even though it means dealing with Adam’s fear that they’ll tumble over and squash us to death.
“I can’t go any farther, Mom. I just can’t.”
“Oh, son.” I kneel beside him and push the umbrella aside so I can get a look at him. “Is it your wound? Has it started bleeding again?”
“Look what the air did to my umbrella.” Adam, clinging to its handle, seems to be in a tug-of-war with the wind. I help him position the canvas so the gust pops it back to its regular position, forming a bit of a break. He fingers its little broken rib. “What if we get separated? What if the air blows me one way and you the other?”
Instead of rolling his eyes at me, Adam checks the knots. He says, “There’s too much sky.” He pulls the umbrella over him and changes into a large black beetle. We sit like this for a long time, long enough for several plastic bags to stack up against us.
We are not any faster when we head out once more, but our progress is steady, thanks to the portable kiosk I constructed. Draped over the umbrella and secured with safety pins is the green curtain, parted just enough in the front to give Adam a sliver of a view. He is much more sure-footed now that he feels sheltered from the expanse above. I keep an ear tuned for traffic sounds, but what fills the air is the percussion of Adam’s souvenirs and the drone from a haze of gnats brazen enough to keep settling on us.
The breeze at our backs finally peters out, as though it no longer has the heart to run us off any faster than what we are already going. It’s fanciful to personify everything. The darkness last night; the wind now. Perhaps it’s having been deprived of living things for so long that I now can find no inanimate object. A stone trips; clouds cast judgment; a tumbleweed snickers at us as it rolls by.
Tut-tut-tut
goes the hard sand as we walk. And the odd shadow continues to stalk us, gaining ground.
It is not a road we come to. If it were a mirage, I’d feel better, because that would make Adam and me two wayward pilgrims succumbing to heat exhaustion, conjuring water to compensate for the lack of the real thing. When it is, in fact, the real thing. A body of water large enough to have its own beach and sand dunes.
Adam pitches his kiosk and asks if we are in the desert.
“No, son.”
A mustard-colored fog rolls in from across the water and turns the air soupy. Adam steps out from under his cover. Without the static electricity from Below, his hair now falls like a mop over his eyes. He takes a handful of sand and watches with fascination as it trickles through his fingers. He throws the next handful up into the air, and an impish gust slaps it back in his face.
Rubbing his eyes, he asks, “Is that the ocean?”
I ought to set him straight on this point. I ought to name bodies of water—lake, reservoir, dam, pond. I ought to say something. It’s just the gears in my brain seem to have become jammed. Same with the machinery that operates my mouth, my limbs.
“What’s wrong, Mom? Don’t you feel well?”
When I don’t answer, he rakes the hair out of his face and squints again at the scene before us, finding that which holds my attention. A hundred yards beyond the high-water mark, in the middle of what might well be an ocean, is a street sign. 55
MPH
, it reads.
“Is that our street?”
The shadow swoops over us again. This time, it doesn’t pass. I don’t bother looking up. I know what it is. Doubt.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
The shadow lowers itself. It is exceedingly heavy, impossible to bear standing.
“Mom?”
Adam is yanking on the yarn, and I would really like to tell him what I’ve been telling him since I killed Dobbs, what I’ve been telling him since he was a little boy, actually: it’s okay. But it is not okay. It has never been okay. Now that we are free, it is less okay than ever. The shadow is this irrefutable truth: something is wrong with Above.
“Talk to me, Mom.”