Cyrus

But behind the door, there was another door. This is what he’ d tell her, what he’d say to Lynny, if she’d only listen. A door and stairs. There at the house, the ruin, whatever it was. A lower level, in the ground, a bunker, a basement or not a basement but something else that was like a basement, a labyrinth, a corridor, turn after turn, and the smell of cinders and musk and something under your feet that crunched but wasn’t dirt, wasn’t rocks, wasn’t bones. But she wouldn’t listen. Lynny. She never listens.

Like how at his school, he would say, there was this whole lower level with some classrooms and other rooms that weren’t exactly classrooms but, like, labs of some kind (with these little fires burning, you could see through the doors which had windows but were locked) but not the labs where they had class, or not labs where he had class anyway. And there were also these small closets too, there in the lower level, and a real narrow staircase, almost like a chute, that took you, if you climbed it, right into the foyer, to the president’s office, which was behind this wall of glass, so, as Claude said, everyone could see that they could see you, the president and the deans, all the time, especially the Shark, Mr. Discipline, who went around touching the boys’ hair, coming up behind them in order to feel it, to know it, to demonstrate to you and everyone around you that your hair fell below the shirt collar, a blatant violation and so had to be cut. But no one ever used it, that staircase, the chute, at least as long as he’d known about it, so that between classes you could sit there and take a few hits and listen to the sound of people rushing all around, frantic like, feet and legs become water, maybe going to one of those labs where he was sure they probably were trying to dissect something alive or whatever. That’s the way it was underground. Everything became its true self, knowable. Labs, burning fires, a whole other world in plain sight. And the doorway to the basement or whatever which was like the narrow staircase in the school, straight down into the abyss where things crunched (he knew) but weren’t rocks or bones.

He’d told her about that, right? The underground labs? The staircase? How you could, like, even in the confinement, maybe because of the confinement, maybe because it was your confinement, really breathe?

But I guess it doesn’t matter, he’d say. It would be nice, if she remembered, like, if she took an interest. I mean he wouldn’t even be at that school if she … but anyway that wasn’t the point. The underground feeling was the point. The door, the stairs, the underground, the secret. That was what we wanted to tell her. Because he knew, he would say, he knew how much (and she would be looking away from him just then, out the window maybe, at the house itself, but still listening, yes, still listening) she wanted it. But getting there is another story, he would say. Because the path to the house was tricky. It’s not really a path at all, he would say (now she would be picking at the ends of her hair, which were frayed from the water, or scratching at the freckles on her arm, which she always did when she was nervous, annoyed, which was good). It’s tricky, he will say. You kind of have to get lost on purpose. You kind of have to not want to find it. Because here’s the thing, he would say. It doesn’t really want to be found. It doesn’t want you to want it. And then he will smile. 

Like when he first picked his way there, he would say, he hadn’t even really been trying to at all—he’d just been out, away from the house, from Dad, who wanted help with the windows, and you setting up traps for the feral cats that kept getting in because Mom, you know, was apoplectic about them, just losing it over and over about how they were dirty and who knows what diseases they might carry and how the thing was that they just looked at you, always sitting on the kitchen table, never going anywhere else, which was unnerving. And he was supposed to look out for the Moth, who didn’t want to go into the woods, didn’t want to even leave the cabin really, telling him that she was tired and that he was annoying her and shut herself up in her room. What was he going to do? Just sit there?

And it didn’t matter, really, if he was there or not. She was fine; Will was fine. No episodes or whatever since they’d been at the cabin and not any in the house either, for that matter in a month or more, but everyone was still so precious about her, so, like, scared. I mean, when he was Will’s age, he’d already had a concussion and stitches from the time he tried to make the jump between the two pilons on the house down the street, and then there was the gash on his forehead from the time his friend David Weber slammed his head right into the window ledge at school for making fun of him during reading group. They’re washing me off in the bathroom, Cyrus remembered thinking, but when he opened his eyes, he wasn’t in the bathroom and what he thought water was instead blood, covering his face, his eyes. Certain things become fixed, he thought. That what he would tell her, tell Lynny. The house, for example. Or his face covered in blood from the gash on his forehead or maybe just the feeling of blood, like water, dripping down his nose, on his cheeks, and how after it all, getting knocked out, and coming to, the blood on his face, and his reflection in the mirror which wasn’t him but was now more him than ever. You’re fine, you’re fine, they said after they’d stitched into his forehead. But he knew different. He knew that something had opened up and couldn’t be closed.

But that’s not the point either, Cy would say. The point is that he knew it was there, the house, he would say. Even if he was just walking to the woods to get away from everyone, to walk and feel the trees and the air, which was different from any other air. To get glossed, she would say. Same difference, he would say. I mean it was impossible not to, he would say. This is what he wanted to tell her. It was impossible not to feel it, the pull of it, the house, the ruin. And he didn’t even care all that much. Not like Lynny, who wouldn’t stop talking about it, saying wasn’t it weird and wasn’t it like a moon, or weren’t they on a different planet. And it was so, like, jarring to hear her talk that way, Lynny, to hear her say the kind of things she used to say, things they used to say, to each other, a language, a world, the one they created, but she hadn’t used those words in forever, since back when they were always together and could talk to each other with their eyes or minds because he had been born only eleven months after her and there was still some of Lynny inside of their Mom (this is what Lynny said and he believed it) which is what made them, like, psychic, part of each other, forever. Or so she said. Or so he believed. But then one day it just stopped. No more words, no more world. She cut the thread. It was like one day they were a single mouth breathing and the next he was something she’d pulled off her arm or leg or stomach, some scab (purple yellow crusted over) from an unknown cut. Don’t be so gross, she would say, when he was sitting on the couch, or passing his bedroom or whispered at dinner, and he knew that she could see what no one else could, how everything was always leaking out of him, oozing from his forehead, the blood, the pus, all kinds of secretions, and Claude how he bit his lip when he was thinking and the way Lynny’s friend Molly’s bellybutton had light hairs around it in a kind of perfect swirl (you could see it when her shirt rode up)—all of this and more smeared, all over his face, which was, he knew, a horror show anyway. And Mom had said enough of that kind of talk, about the moon, the planet, because she was always worried about the Moth and something invading her brain, or rather something waking what had already spun its webs there, skittering, trembling, pulling, but she didn’t even seem to see the thing, Will, the Moth, she didn’t even scan the house (not an institute or a temple—what was Lynny talking about?) or pay attention to Lynny or anyone else talking about it, which they all did except for the one time, a few days later when the Moth said, “The moon isn’t green, why would the moon be green?” and everyone, including Mom, laughed for a moment, but then stopped because of the way she was staring at the window, out at the lake, her eyes like she was walking, or about to start walking, the thing everyone was always on edge about, like she was going to be walking and laughing and you couldn’t get her to come to, and just by her look like she could turn day into night, this cabin into the hall at home or the lawn, even though it was broad daylight and she was just moments before babbling on about how some dumb fish would die if sunlight hit its scales and just the idea of the moon had melted her, turned her right inside out.

It was because of this pull, even still just being in the woods, he would tell her, he knew he’d end up there, somehow, at the house, the temple, he would say. I mean after all it was a ruin, right? There in front of them, an honest ruin, which was always some kind of portal, right? At least that’s what Claude said once when they’d gone to this supposedly haunted house in Claude’s neighborhood, which was different than his, the neighborhood, the houses smaller and only one floor and sometimes the streets just stopped at an empty field with nothing but grass, weeds, and electrical wires. Portals are always in the between places. Something Lynny said once. But anyway there was this house Claude had told him about, one that no one had lived in, or no one had lived in for a long time, and the old woman who used to live there, who was German or Russian or something, was always outside in her nightgown talking about how Claude’s brother was poisoning the squirrels—this is what Claude’s brother told Claude. She would knock on the door and say this to Claude’s parents, standing there in her nightgown and trembling, telling them that Claude’s brother was poisoning the squirrels and would gesture to her own house as if to say see and when Claude’s mom or dad would peer past this old woman, who had many times, Claude said his brother said, left food on their doorstep, and look at her house to see what this old woman was talking about all they ever saw was her lawn and her flowers and the big tree in front of the house. There was nothing there. Of course there was nothing there. Who can see what the divine has kissed? What was that from? Cyrus had read that or heard it somewhere. It was not too long after this that the woman attacked her own daughter because she couldn’t recognize her and thought her own daughter was trying to steal the television and was yelling at her there in the front yard, yelling and striking her, her own daughter, it was wild, Claude said his brother said, and after that the old couple up and left and the house had been vacant ever since. And it was not long after that that Claude’s brother died, hit by a train while messing around on the tracks. But Claude didn’t talk about that. That was five years ago. And Claude never mentioned it once. But everyone knew. And maybe that was why they were at that other house, that other haunted house, which, until recently, Claude had told Cyrus, had remained empty, unsold. But not anymore, he could see a light in the backroom. It would go on and then off. And I bet, Claude told him, that there is something in the house worth finding. I bet, he said, someone has come back for that crazy woman’s shit. And so one night, when he was sleeping over at Claude’s and Claude’s parents were in their room with the TV on too loud, he and Claude snuck out and Claude went around back and said wait here and I’ll come in the front and there were not lights on in the house and Cy stood out front and the sky was dark but the stars were out and he could see Orion because it was fall and that’s how he knew it was fall and winter because there was Orion, his friend, and he was thinking about that when he heard this sound in the back and said “Claude?” The sound was like grunting sound but a wet sound too, like sucking grunting meat sound, and he said “Claude?” but there was no answer and he wanted to go around back but he didn’t, he couldn’t, because it was dark, it was so dark, and so instead he turned the doorknob, even though he knew the door was locked, he turned the doorknob and the door unlocked and he stood there, not knowing, his hand on the doorknob, the sound had stopped now and there were no sounds, and he knew that once he opened the door, once he stepped inside, he would not be able to get back out.

But no. He wouldn’t say this, say any of this, no. 

This is not what he would tell her.

Anyway, he would continue, when he first arrived here his hands were sticky with sap and the juice of wild blackberries, which were everywhere in the woods, tart but good, he had stopped to wash, to dip them, his hands, into the water, which was cool but felt for a moment shocking to his skin, as if the water was colder than it should be, ice cold, like burning cold, even though, he told himself, that wasn’t possible. And it was there at the gully, the stream, he would have told Lynny, that he saw something, someone—a figure, at first he thought it was a deer, a fawn, but then he thought, no, not that, a person, a kid, maybe. He had washed his hands and his face in the too cold water. The taste of it was sharp against his lips, his tongue. And when he came up from the water that was when he saw it, the figure, moving quickly, a shape, spindly brown (the fawn, the girl) and then gone. Hey, he’d said, remembering Mom lecturing them that there were hunters in the woods. Saying the woods were poison. Saying: don’t linger long there. Hey, he’d said, thinking about how it had moved awkwardly, like it was trying out legs, but how it was also fast too fast for just legs. It, she, whatever. Hey, you!, he said again. But whatever it was—the kid, the person, a woman?, a girl?, he would have told Lynny—was already gone, and there was just the trees, the maple and the brush, still, just barely moving, disturbed, yes, that was the word, disturbed as in tremble. Because there was also a sound, he would have said, a gun (shot, report) and maybe, he thought the girl—yes, it was clearly a girl not an animal—he thought maybe she needed his help. He could hear it again, the sound that was like a moan or a wail but then also the gun. Maybe, he would have told her, the sound came first.

And so he ran—he remembered—he would say—yeah, he’d definitely say this, in the direction of the girl, the woman, the fawn, and the sound, the branches moving and at first there was no path. He should have fallen, like more than once, but it was as if his feet knew what to do, where to go (like when we used to balance on the fence and walk around the flooded yard, he would have said, remember?, he would have said, looking her carefully in the eye), because once he crossed the stream it was clear that he and the woods knew each other, had become part of each other, which was another thing he understood that Lynny didn’t or had forgotten, that the world is full of boundaries that change you when traversed. 

So he was running—and to be honest, he would have said—he wasn’t really sure why he was running. To help the kid or girl or person or animal? To watch what happened if they were caught? Shot? Blood on their neck, fur, a wound like a collar? (Why did he think that?) His breath in his ears, blood, pounding, roots, leaves, the scratches, his shins, his thighs, the sweat, his face, the pounding, and the sound like moaning, like wailing and how it was closer, how he could hear it in his head, certain, he would have said to Lynny, that something (or someone) was being hunted.

In a story Lynny liked to read when they were younger, a girl had to take care of a fawn. Lead it through a forest back to the house where they lived. The fawn was her brother. Cy couldn’t remember why. The brother being a fawn. Maybe it was because to be fawn was just incalculably better. To go wherever you want in the woods. To see and smell what no one else could. Even in that story, which was old, old, old, humans were terrible, desirous and bloody. But the fawn was always escaping, bolting from the house deep in the woods where they lived, away from his sister, not on account of his wild nature, the fawn, but because he heard the sound of a hunt, dogs and guns, and was compelled, like with his whole body, trembling and kicking, knocking over plates and tables, until the little house trembled with wreck, to join, the hunt, the chase, which was the opposite of his nature, or should be, because to join the hunt meant death, or could anyway, and this was always the strangest part of the story to him, how the sound of dogs and guns got inside the skin of the fawn, who would beg and beg and beg, saying, “I will die of grief,” to be let out to join and she would relent and let him, her brother, the fawn, and this was the part he liked the most, lying there with Lynny in her bed, while she read to them both, the part where the sister imagining them away from their parents in the little house, her giving him a little saucer of milk, brushing his fur, until the next hunt came.

Do you remember that?, he would have said, his hand maybe reaching for her hand. Maybe that was why, he would have told her, hearing the gun, or whatever, and seeing the girl, the fawn, the figure, maybe that was why he was running, to catch up, yes, to see, yes, but also because he too was being chased, yes, he too was being hunted. It felt like that, like there was something behind him.

When he got to the house it was empty. There was no one there. No girl, no fawn, no hunter. He had come through the brush and the thicket and had seen the wall, like he’d told her. And there was the hush and the sound of the birds, which he could hear but not see, like grackles or cardinals maybe (those are the only birds you know, she would say, eyes laughing at him, him!), and the sound of something. And he knew it was the house, of course, but it felt different standing in front of it than seeing it across the lake, like one of those movies where the music tells you that, if you touched it something would enter you, your brain, a sudden surge of images, blue light, a skull, green light, grass blowing, pink light, a hand reaching out. But he when he put his hand there the surface was cool, cold (rougher than it looked) and that was that. 

Still, he couldn’t help but go in, follow the wall around.

The wall, the entrance, the trees, the cardinals’ call, the sound of something.

And how it was so quiet suddenly.

The ceiling, the roof, part of it was missing, he will tell her, as if something had fallen through, like a tree branch or satellite, something with velocity, force. And the furniture was still arranged—the moss green couch, faded, torn, the orange floral chairs, one missing a cushion, the other intact, and the coffee table that had a hole in the middle, but small, carved, the size of a bowl, clean, the cut, as if something had been there that needed removal, excised.

In the story, the one that Lynny, told him, the girl and the fawn live happily in their little forest house. There were chairs. There were always houses in the woods, abandoned, in these stories. Abandoned or simply, momentarily, vacated, awaiting the hand on the door, the calamitous return. 

And how when he sat on the couch he felt like for a moment he could see something in the weird old TV, it’s blank, gray brown black screen. But not blank, he thought, felt. Not really. From the couch where he sat he could perceive something, movement, yes, dim images, as if the thing were still working, as if it was on.

What did you see?, she would have said. 

No, that’s not right.

That’s bullshit, she would have said.

But then eventually he would get to her. Because there was still a little her inside of him, even if she thought that it was only something she made up, even if she said that he was a fucking loser, even if she said (once, just once) that when she left (and god, she said, it can’t come soon enough) he would simply cease to exist. And so she would have said please because he knew why she snuck out at night, first through that weird door in her bedroom, the one that lead straight to the roof of the garage, where she would sit, sometimes, and look at the moon and smoke and drink, and more than once, he would too, even if he didn’t have anywhere to go, anyone to see since Claude had taken him to that haunted house. He wouldn’t have told her that even if they were still talking. Like really talking. In his head or in his mouth he wouldn’t have. There is a hole in my brain, Claude had said, there at the haunted house, not so abandoned house, and Cyrus said totally. He’d said me too. Because of the window and the blood and how he had come back from the cold water with something attached to him. And he thought that Claude had just stayed quiet and then said he’d said let’s go. It was sometimes like that with Claude. the hole in his brain. The one he falls into. Holes, he thought. The one in the coffee table, the one in the closet door. The holes in heads. Claude’s, his, maybe even the Moth, after all. Maybe, yes. 

Sitting on the couch, you could see through the hole in the ceiling, the roof. You could see the tree branches wave and shudder. You could see the cloud-thick sky behind them. But the stars, if you could see them, wouldn’t be the stars you know. And the door, he would say, the door was there where it seemed impossible for there to still be a door.

Ok?, he would say. 

Do you get it?, he would say.

Cyrus crossed the stream again and made his way through the woods toward it. This time there was no girl, no hunter, no fawn. This time he felt nothing at all.