“I kicked and threw her off. I might not have been as fast as Momma, but I was still stronger. She came back at me, teeth bared, and goddammit if she didn’t mean to chomp down on me. I saw that for certain. I struck at her, landing my fist right across her jaw. She screamed and that nearly broke me. Nearly made me stop all the fuss and let her—and Elling—do what she wanted to me. No girl wants to hear her momma scream, especially because of something she’s done.
“I was able to get up, though, and I ran. I ran as fast as I could, which, given the circumstances, was pretty fast. Momma screamed behind me. She kept calling for me to come back. That she was sorry. That she’d make me my favorite cake if I’d just come back. But I had lost her, in more ways than one.
“I stumbled around in the woods on the hill all night until I found an abandoned cabin up the creek. The one I’m living in now. I stayed there for a few evenings, daring myself to go back to Momma. I could hear her howling in the night, like she’d done when Elling fell down the well. She needed me. She was all alone and crazy, and who knew what she might do. Thinking on it, who knows what my brother was trying to convince her to do. I keep thinking of her teeth. That wasn’t my momma. The knife? Maybe. She was batshit crazy, after all. But trying to bite me like that? No. Crazy as she was, she was still a lady.
“I left Wicker after about a week and promised I was never going to come back. Went into the real world, a terrified little girl, and did what I needed to survive. I made a name for myself cleaning houses, and it’s been good money. I tried to never think about this place again. It was a whim of sick nostalgia that finally urged me to see the cottage once more. That’s when I came up here. And then Michael got hold of me after so many years to tell me he’d bought the place. Or rather, the actress had bought it for him as a birthday present. Momma was long gone, of course. Neither me nor Michael ever knew what became of her. Michael said he was half hoping she would still be there.”
“But Sybil,” Chloe said, placing a hand on Sybil’s forearm. “Your mother
is
still there. She never left.”
Sybil looked at Chloe in confusion. The warning expression on her face could either evolve into extreme rage or extreme grief. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s under the kitchen. She chained herself under the kitchen.”
With the implication of what this meant, Sybil’s eyes widened and her expression toppled over into grief. She transformed from a sturdy rock into something more delicate, and put her head in her hands and sobbed and heaved.
Lucidity
Lucidity and awareness came back to Jeff like fresh air and clean water. He opened his eyes and mouth and breathed it in as deeply as his lungs would allow him. Ethan was there, just as he had been in the hallucinations. The face Jeff hadn’t seen for so long still wore that cautious expression it had worn since childhood. The face of a man excluded from Jeff’s limelight and forced to stand in doorways, only watching. A face under whose expression were layers of questions and accusations.
“This is real,” Jeff said. He strung the words together in surprise. He grabbed Ethan’s arm. “
This is real!
”
It shocked Jeff to see true concern for him from Ethan as his brother smiled warily. Ethan dampened a rag for Jeff’s forehead.
“Welcome back,” Ethan said. “Stay this time.”
Jeff carried his voice like a great boulder up a hill. “I don’t think I’ll have long, Ethan. He’ll be back.”
Ethan stopped. “Wh-who?”
“The rascal. He’s a digger, but he’s not digging right now. Something else has caught his attention.”
“Jeff… Shhh.” The tail end of a nervous swallow distorted his next sentence. “Don’t talk like that. You’re fine now.”
Jeff squeezed Ethan’s arm. “Listen to me! That little demon is coming back. He wants me, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold him off. You’ve got to get out of here. You and… Where’s Chloe?”
“She went to get help. I stayed to watch you. We’re going to get you out of here, Jeff. Don’t worry.”
“He’s watching her. That’s where he went.
Fuck
.”
“She’s… a smart woman. She can manage anything thrown at her.”
“Not this, Ethan. Not a pissy spirit.”
Ethan paused, trying to calm his brother. “I don’t believe in pissy spirits.”
“I didn’t either.” The boulder was heavy. “But they don’t care.”
Ethan looked down as if he had just been scolded or teased. Jeff recognized the look from having been the cause of it so many times when they were younger. Their mother had taken Jeff aside once and said, “You need to take care of him, Jeffrey. He’s not got your strength. He has to work ten times as hard to get half as far as you. Act like a brother, dammit!”
“How is Kelton? How is the baby?” Jeff asked.
“They’re good. They’re real good.” Jeff saw a light in Ethan’s face that had never been there before. It changed the whole makeup of Ethan’s face, making him nearly unrecognizable. Handsome. “Kelton is the best dad, and I wish you could meet Bug. The truth is, I’ve never been more content. Things… turned out far better than I thought they ever would.” His eyes registered an epiphany.
Jeff smiled. A chill traveled through his limbs. One different than the chill of illness. He thought at first it was happiness, but then he felt the truth of it. This was jealousy, and it matched perfectly the face he had known Ethan by as children.
“Me too,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Jeff.” Ethan’s face darkened once more. “I’m sorry for not staying in touch. For not trying to work things out.”
“I wouldn’t have talked. You know me, Ethan. You have me right where you need me right now. All I want to do right now is talk. Besides, if we’re talking apologies, there’s a whole childhood I might need to atone for.”
Ethan did not refute this. Jeff did not expect him to. The moment accepted the words as truth. The clock took down the seconds.
“It seems,” Ethan said, “both of us could use some work. I just hope I can be a better parent to Bug than Dad and Mom were to me.”
“They tried, Ethan. At least, Mom did. She really did. You just didn’t see it. There are things… so many things you can’t see that really do exist.”
“Well, then, those things need to be more obvious. I need signs. I hope Bug never has to go searching to see how much I love him. And Kelton.”
“At least you’ve had the opportunity to be a dad.” Jeff felt the familiar surge of anger toward Chloe about the child he could have raised. “Who needs enemies? In the end, your family does just fine in killing you.”
“You would have been a good dad, Jeff.”
“I bet you are, huh? I bet you’re the best damn dad that ever was.”
“A compliment?”
“No. Just wondering.” He swooned. The room tilted.
“I do what I can. I try my best.” Ethan seemed deflated and rose. “You need to eat something. I’ll get you some soup.”
“Ethan,” Jeff called for him as Ethan walked to the kitchen. “What can we do? About this. About us. When we’re off this damn hill, what can we do about me and you?”
“What do we
want
to do about it, Jeff? We’re too old to change now. Much too old for that, I’m afraid.”
***
Ethan looked through the ancient refrigerator that had come with the house, an old white lump of a thing that was better referred to as an “icebox.” The food had yet to spoil and, given the temperature outside, would probably be just fine for days to come.
Ethan’s hands moved mindlessly over the few items on the shelves, some vegetables, some cheese, a bottle of milk, all bought on Chloe’s last trip into Wicker. The floorboards creaked loudly as he made his way to the cabinets. There were cans of soup there. He had seen them when he had arrived and had gone searching for something to drink so that he might tolerate Chloe. Jeff would need to make do with cold soup from a can since there was no way to heat anything up aside from setting the cottage on fire. He looked through drawers until he found an old can opener.
For a moment, there in the other room with Jeff, Ethan had felt happy. The thought of home, of Kelton and Bug shot waves of joy through him. He was excited about the prospect of finally sharing that life with his brother. And there was something else to it as well. At last he had something Jeff did not. He was finally the showiest kid at show and tell, and he was so proud to be it. But…
But. There was always that word, stunting the growth of a sentence, a thought, a life.
But
, when he saw things the way they truly were, when he was able to step back and really perceive his relationship with his brother, he knew nothing would ever change. He didn’t know if he wanted them to, and that was the great punch in the gut of the whole situation.
Comes a cry,
But he’s my brother!
Comes the truth,
So?
Out of habit, Ethan looked at his cell phone. To his surprise, there was a signal. Only a single bar, but there was a signal. His heart sped up and he simply stared at it momentarily. There was a decision to make. Should he call for help or use this moment to get hold of home? There was family on both sides of the argument and one would have to be ignored.
The phone only rang once before it was answered, a voice barely discernible over the line. “Ethan!” Kelton said. “What’s going on? Where are you?”
Ethan dropped the can opener upon hearing Kelton’s voice. “I’m at the cottage. There hasn’t been any signal since I got here. God, I’ve missed your voice!”
“No signal? … much now either.”
“What? I didn’t get most of that. Doesn’t matter. Listen. Where’s Bug?” Ethan did not move a muscle, fearing he would lose the connection if he did.
“He’s right here … crying a lot … fine now.”
“Give him a hug and kiss from me. Tell him I love him.”
“Ethan, what’s wrong?”
“Just tell him I love him!”
“Okay. I will. Ethan?”
“I love you, Kel. You know that, right? That I love you and Bug. I love you more than anything in the world.” It was a good-bye. The realization only just hit him: this was a good-bye.
“Ethan?” Even over the weak signal, Kelton’s voice was strung thin with emotion.
“I love you, Kel. Things will be different… when I get home. I promise.” There was no response. “Kel? Kelton?”
The signal was lost, and slowly Ethan put the phone away. He stood at the kitchen counter for a moment, replaying every crackled word he had heard Kelton say. Every intonation and slice of concern. He hoped it all went through. All the love. All the
I love yous
. He so wanted to hear Bug. Just a giggle would have made things better. But now, in the course of a single night, that life seemed a fiction. Something a million miles away from where he was.
He wiped his eyes and opened the soup can, pouring the sloppy beef mess into a bowl. He got a spoon from a drawer and took the meal to Jeff.
“Who was that?” Jeff asked.
Ethan was shaken that Jeff had heard him. He was caught.
“Did you get hold of someone to help us?”
“I did. Yes. Someone to help.”
“Who?”
Ethan sat the bowl on the coffee table in front of Jeff. He felt his gut festering with guilt. “I got hold of the local law enforcement. I don’t know if they heard me well enough, though. Probably not. They probably didn’t hear me well enough. Here. Have some soup.”
Ethan lifted the spoon to Jeff’s mouth.
“Your hand’s shaking, Ethan.”
“I’m cold,” Ethan said. “It’s chilly in here.”
***
Chloe got out of the car, having sufficiently, if not completely, recovered from her fall. Sybil offered her one of her thick furs, but Chloe declined. A coat such as that would only slow her down as she made her way back up the hill. She trusted in the gear she wore that had seen her through those dreadful adventure tours in the Himalayas and the Sierra Nevada before she had decided against any cold-climate gigs.
Sybil stood beside her. The painted-white scene around them was of desolate isolation. There could not have possibly been another living soul for miles around. If either of them were to scream, the world might crack apart.
“You should come with me,” Chloe said. “You could get some food.”
“No,” Sybil said bluntly. Her voice threatened the fabric of this delicate world. “I’ll never go back to the cottage. Never in my life. I only came to see Michael’s grave. To maybe convince the actress to bury him someplace else.”
“You don’t think she would ever agree to that, do you?”
“No.”
With that, they took leave of one another. What more was there to say? They were not friends. They were passing souls. On a normal day, hundreds of souls passed each other by without so much as a nod or a smile. Human beings were no longer novelties on the world stage.
Chloe began the climb up Bad Luck Hill. Sybil told her she was going to head down to Wicker and find some help for them. Chloe looked back once, but Sybil had already vanished.