Set This House In Order Part 48

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing, Andrew?"

The question was rhetorical, but I answered it anyway, my reply edged with an irony that I didn't fully intend: "I'm learning."

"You shouldn't be doing this here," my father said. "Not in this house. Back in Seattle maybe, under Dr. Eddington's supervision --"

"Well unfortunately we aren't in Seattle just now," I said, my sarcasm growing more deliberate.

"Maybe we would be, if you'd been more honest with me."

"I'm sorry I kept things from you, Andrew. It was bad judgment; I see that now. But this" -- he waved a hand at the Witness -- "this is dangerous."

"She has something to show me."

"You won't learn anything you don't already know. It'll just hurt more."

I sensed that he was telling the truth, or at least believed what he was saying, but it didn't matter; I was committed. "Go back to the pulpit, father," I said. "Keep an eye on the body."

"Andrew. . ."

"Go back to the pulpit. If this is as dangerous as you say, and Gideon tries to take advantage. . .

well, I don't want Penny to have to deal with him again. We've put her through enough already."

He hesitated, wanting to order me not to do this. But the balance of power had shifted between us, and in the end, it was my will that carried. My father went back to the pulpit.

I turned to the Witness, who still stood by patiently. "All right," I told her.

When a Witness shares its secrets with you, it swallows your head. I'd never actually experienced this, but I understood what was involved well enough to regard the Witness in the same way I imagine a circus tamer does the lion whose jaws he is about to pry open.

I made myself kneel down beside her, bringing my ear level with her mouth, just as I would if she were going to whisper something to me. And at first it seemed as if that was exactly what she was doing: she gripped my shoulder with one hand, cupped the other around her lips, and leaned in close. I heard her mouth open, felt her breath tickling my ear, but what came rolling off her tongue was not words but a much broader collection of sounds, background noise from another time and place. The force of her breath increased -- too late, I lost my nerve and tried to pull away, but the hand on my shoulder held on implacably -- and her mouth gaped wider, impossibly wide, less a human mouth now than the mouth of a bag or the neck of a hood that slipped, flowed, over the top of my head, covering my eyes. There was a moment of suffocating darkness, of terrible pressure -- my soul's skull in a vise -- and then -- fusion-- the Witness and I were one, we are one, we am -- -- I am standing on a lakebank, watching a stone skip across the surface of the water. My weight is on my left foot and my left arm is extended in front of me; I can feel tension in my wrist and shoulder, and the fading impression of a hard, flat object recently grasped in my upturned palm.

I stagger, off-balance. The stone skips, and skips, and finally sinks, just a skip or two shy of a big mound of sand and gravel that forms an island in the middle of the lake. As I steady myself, ripples spread out from the slapping-stone's splash points, forming a chain of expanding concentric rings.

These are some of the things that I know: This body of water in front of me is called Quarry Lake. It is fed by a trio of creeks that trickle down from Mount Idyll to the northeast, and it feeds, in turn, a larger stream -- Hansen's Brook -- that flows west for several miles to Two Seasons Lake. The sand-and-gravel pile has no official name, but I think of it as Devil's Island. Right now, in bright sunlight, it doesn't look very devilish -- just barren -- but I know that under moonlight or in morning fog it is a different story. Also, though it doesn't seem that far to swim, I know that getting to or from the island is actually quite difficult: the waters of Quarry Lake are deeper than they first appear, and shockingly cold even in summer.

Besides my detailed knowledge of the lake and the geography surrounding it, I know that I am eleven years old, that my given name is Andrea Gage, and that I live in a cottage set back in the woods behind me. I know that I am very unhappy there, and I know why.

These are some of the things that I don't know: What day it is. What time it is. What I was doing two minutes ago. What I was doing an hour ago. What I did yesterday, or the day before that.

Why I am scared.

Actually, I do know why I'm scared: because something very bad is about to happen. But the exact nature of the something, how I came to be aware of it, and what, if anything, I've done to deserve it -- all of that is missing information.

I scan the lakebank and the line of trees that border it for some clue to what's coming. There's nothing obvious, but when my eyes light on a particular stand of tall flowering shrubs -- shrubs that mark the beginning of the path that leads back to the cottage where I live -- my whole nervous system jumps. I stare at the shrubs, searching for someone hiding among them, a face peering out through splayed branches. I see nothing. But I know what I'm afraid of now.

It's when I turn away and resume scanning the tree-line that the call comes, a singsong cry that echoes on the lake: Yooooooooo-hooooooooo. . .

My gaze snaps back to the shrubs in time to see a branch rustling. I still can't see him, but I'm sure he's there now. I wait, half-paralyzed with fright, for him to step out and show himself. He doesn't, and the cry is not repeated.

Time pa.s.ses. I can feel him watching me, waiting for me to make a move. I start to get mad, hating being toyed with this way, but my anger dissipates in the knowledge of my own helplessness. Next my knees get weak; I want to fall down, to beg him to come out and get it over with, do whatever he's going to do. This feeling also fades, although it takes longer. What I am left with, finally, is a kind of stubborn fatalism, a sense that I must try to escape, even though it's not going to do any good.

There are, I know, three ways out of here: the path that leads back to the cottage where I live; the trail that goes up and around Mount Idyll; and the path that runs beside Hansen's Brook all the way to Two Seasons Lake. Of these, the Mount Idyll trail is the best choice for an escape route. Steep and rugged, it favors small spry people over big lumbering ones. It also forks and doubles back a lot, offering numerous opportunities to outwit as well as outrun a pursuer. If I can make it as far as the first split in the trail, I should have no trouble getting lost; and while I cannot stay lost forever, still a reprieve is better than nothing. Maybe he will get bored, waiting for me to come back, and decide he doesn't want to do it anymore. Or maybe tonight will be one of those rare nights when there are guests over at the cottage, everyone on their best behavior; maybe he'll drink too much at dinner and fall asleep right after.

There's just one problem with the mountain trail: to get to it I will have to walk east along the lakebank, going right past his hiding place. It's not really possible to go the other way around, and even if it were, by the time I waded across the mouth of Hansen's Brook and beat my way through the thick undergrowth that renders much of Quarry Lake's north bank impa.s.sable, he would have strolled over to the trailhead himself and be laying for me, laughing at my feeble attempt to evade him.

I stare at the shrubs and try to calculate my chances of dashing past them without getting grabbed.

I decide that I'll never make it. The Mount Idyll trail is not an option; I'll have to try the brookside path instead -- a mostly level track on which long legs will have the advantage.

I start walking backwards, slowly, as if by not running I can somehow conceal my intentions. I know he is not truly deceived by this, but if I am lucky he will play along, and let me have at least a small head start before chasing after me. Then, if I am very lucky, his stamina will give out before my lead does. So I back up -- a step; a step; another step -- until suddenly a new sound comes, a disembodied giggle that rises and falls as it echoes across the lake. Something lands in the water beside me with a big splash.

I break and run. The hem of my skirt flaps between my knees, threatening to tangle my legs and trip me; I stub my toe on a rock, stumble, and keep going. I follow the lakebank to the mouth of Hansen's Brook. I turn left, onto the path that leads to Two Seasons Lake.

. . . and pull up short, my way blocked by thorns.

My first confused thought is of Sleeping Beauty, where the evil fairy conjures a forest of brambles to stop the prince from reaching the castle. But these brambles are dead: dead dried-up rosebushes, their branches tied in bales, dragged down here and heaped with a bunch of old tree limbs into a big th.o.r.n.y deadfall. Some part of me is amazed by the effort it must have taken to construct, the work that went into it.

It completely blocks the path. There's no question of climbing over it, and as for going around. . .

when I look to my right, into the brook's rocky bed, I see something sparkling among the mud-slicked stones, something gleaming and sharp: broken gla.s.s. Smashed liquor bottles.

No escape. The thought comes with such clarity it might have been spoken aloud. I wait to hear that giggle again, to feel his hand on the back of my neck. It doesn't happen. Of course not, I think: he knows it's not necessary to chase after me. All he has to do is wait, wait for me to see that I can't get away, wait for me to give up and come back. Even this deadfall -- (how long must he have worked on it?

Hours? Days?) -- isn't really necessary. So what if I did outrun him? What if I made it all the way to Two Seasons Lake without getting caught? In the end, no matter how fast or how far I go, I've still got to come home.

No escape. All right then, I give up. I surrender. I'm a little surprised, when I come back out onto the lakebank, not to find him waiting out in the open for me. No matter, though: I know where he is.

Head down, I walk towards his hiding place, preparing myself for the moment when he will leap out and grab me.

It doesn't come. I'm there now, I'm at the shrubs, and still he hasn't pounced. I lift my head up, confused: where is he?

I know he was here -- the call, that giggle, I heard them -- but somehow now he's not. My mind scrambles for an explanation: is it possible he forgot about building the deadfall? That he saw how fast I was running and decided he couldn't catch me, and gave up the chase?

It's an absurd notion, but before I can knock it down an irrational hope sweeps over me. The Mount Idyll trail, I think: I can get to it now. I can go, and lose myself, and maybe I won't come back, maybe I'll just stay out there in the woods forever.

Quick, I think, quick, before he realizes his mistake and comes back -- No. Wait.

The Mount Idyll trail: of course. He hasn't given up. He hasn't gone away. He's still toying with me, letting me think he's given up, letting me run a little farther before he finally pounces. The Mount Idyll trail: that's where he's hiding.

Is that where he's hiding? Uncertain, I look towards the trailhead.

I see a shadow move among the trees there. It's him!

Wait. Wait. Is it him?

My head's still in doubt but my feet have decided: I am moving again, through the shrubbery, up the path to the cottage. I run, the woods blurring past me. My toe catches on another rock and this time I do fall down, but it's OK, I'm back up again in a heartbeat, and the cottage is just ahead now, I can see the backyard gate standing open, invitingly.

I go charging through the open gate -- stupid -- and that, of course, is when he grabs me, stepping out from behind the toolshed and scooping me up as neat as you please. I let out a shriek that is as much frustration as fear -- stupid, stupid -- and flail my arms and legs uselessly. He laughs, holding onto me effortlessly -- one hand on my breastbone, splayed across my chest, the other up underneath my skirt, fingering between my legs -- and lets me struggle as long as I want.

Resignation comes soon enough. My strength is no match for his, and we both know it. I stop kicking, and my arms fall limp at my sides. He pulls me in closer, an intimate embrace; the movements of his hands become more insistent, and I feel his lips pressing on the side of my neck, on the hollow of my throat. I try to make myself go dead inside. I'd leave my body if I could, but I can't, I am charged to endure this, so I try to go dead, let it happen without feeling it. In one of the garden plots that dot the yard, pumpkins are growing in profusion; I imagine myself buried among them, covered in soft earth.

The sun goes under a cloud. The light in the yard changes.

And suddenly I come alive again. With the sun's glare dimmed, I can see a face in the kitchen window. It's my mother. She's not looking out -- it looks like she's washing dishes, her eyes are on the sink -- but if she lifts her head for even a second, she'll see me. She'll see us.

Hope fills me up again before I can stop it. It's a vain hope -- some part of me knows this perfectly well -- but it electrifies me anyway, animates me. Have to get her to look up, have to: she'll see, she'll save me, she'll put a stop to this!

I open my mouth. I scream.

And maybe the scream is very loud, loud enough to rattle the kitchen window in its frame.

And maybe the scream is soundless, stifled by my own terror, by the rude hand on my chest.

Deafening or silent, my mother hears it. She looks up. She sees us. Her eyes go wide.

The joy I feel in that moment is indescribable. She's going to save me. She's going to save me. In another second she's going to come bursting out the back door, dishwater streaming from her hands, and she will yell, she will yell at him to stop it, she will scream at him and hit him to make him let me go. I stretch out my arms in antic.i.p.ation of rescue.

And then her brow creases. Her expression turns cross, not outraged but annoyed. She takes a breath, lets out a sigh of. . . exasperation? Her hands come into view; she's drying them with a dishtowel, making brisk, impatient movements. Finished, she tosses the dishtowel aside.

She turns her back.

She turns her back, and I can see the back of her head receding, moving away from the window, deeper into the house. I don't understand, and then I do: she's going to her bedroom, their bedroom.

She's going to close her eyes and take a nap. She does this often. I know this.

She's gone.

She's gone, and then it is just him and me, I and the stepfather. He shifts his grip, holding me with one arm while the other reaches back behind him. I hear the creak of the toolshed door opening. He whirls me around, carries me inside -- -- "Andrew!" -- -- and the door bangs shut behind us -- -- my foot slammed down, smashing through the plank.

"Stop it, Andrew! Andrew, please, stop it, you're going to" -- -- and he sets me down, on the floor, facing the back wall of the toolshed. His hands are all over me now, but I no longer care. No need to deaden my feelings anymore; I am dead, I -- -- "want to get yourself f.u.c.king killed, you stupid f.u.c.king c.o.c.ksucker? Knock it off!" -- -- and as his weight pushes against me from behind, my face is shoved up against the toolshed wall, but what I see is not the wall but the kitchen window, and my mother, frozen in the act of turning away, always turning away. And then there is a sound of wood cracking, and the wall gives way beneath my hands, curves back in on itself -- -- and my arms were wrapped around the telephone pole, muscles straining as I pulled at it.

Maledicta yelled "Knock it off." one more time and then Malefica grappled me from behind. She punched me in the back of the head, broke my grip on the pole and flung me to the ground. She kicked me in the ribs, once to make me stay down, twice to make sure I'd stay down, and a third time just because she was angry. The kicks were painful, but I didn't cry out or try to defend myself, just lay there where she'd dropped me.

My fusion with the Witness had only been temporary. But I guess the Witness had been hoping for permanence: inside somewhere, on the lake-bank or in the forest, I could hear her wailing, lamenting her own continued existence. I would have felt sorry for her, except I was too busy being glad, so glad to have the vision fade, its vitality leaching away, and the memory that had briefly been mine becoming someone else's again, becoming to me just a memory of a memory, a story I'd been told but hadn't lived through.

My head hurt. My heart hurt worse. But you were wrong, father, I thought. I did learn something.

"I did learn something," I said. I said it again, inside, but there was no answer from the pulpit.

I sat up -- slowly, so Malefica wouldn't kick me again. We were outside the cottage, and I could see that all of the bracing planks had been pulled down or broken. It looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them, but a fresh set of aches in Andy Gage's feet, legs, hands, and arms told a different story: my knuckles were b.l.o.o.d.y, and full of splinters.

"What happened?" I said.

"What happened?" Maledicta was livid. "What the f.u.c.k do you think happened, a.s.shole?"

"I tried to pull the house down?"

"Yes, you f.u.c.king tried to pull the f.u.c.king house down! With us still inside it!"

"With you. . . no. No, Maledicta, I would never --" I stopped, noticing a bruise on her cheek and a bubble of blood in her nostril. "What happened to your face?"

In answer, she aimed another kick at my side, but caught herself, spun on one heel, and stomped off into the backyard. A moment later I heard a rhythmic banging start -- Malefica pretending the toolshed was my rib cage. As the banging went on, I found myself staring at the telephone pole that was the cottage's sole remaining prop, and realized a part of me was still itching to bring it down. I crossed my arms over my chest and shoved my hands up under my armpits, ignoring the scratch of the splinters. I was very cold.

TENTH BOOK:.

CHIEF BRADLEY'S TEARS.

28.

"My father was wrong," Andrew tells her. "He said I wouldn't learn anything that I didn't already know, that it would just hurt more. But feeling that pain firsthand did teach me something, after all."

They are sitting in a booth in Winch.e.l.l's Diner, untouched cups of coffee growing cold on the table between them. Mouse holds a piece of ice wrapped in a napkin against the bruise on her cheek.

"She hurt us more than he did," Andrew says. "Not in terms of the actual amount of damage done -- the stepfather is still the one responsible, I think he's the one responsible, for breaking Andy Gage's soul into pieces. In terms of, of quant.i.ty, he's still the worst by far. But the way she hurt us. . . there was a quality to it, a depth, that nothing the stepfather did came close to, not even when he. . ."

She hurt us more than he did. Andrew has been trying to articulate this point for a while now, and though on an intellectual level Mouse grasps what he is saying readily enough, emotionally it's just not clicking. Andrew's story of the cat-and-mouse game the stepfather played with him around the sh.o.r.e of Quarry Lake -- that she can relate to. It's the same sort of entertainment her own mother specialized in.

But when Andrew starts describing how his mother's failure to protect him was somehow more hurtful than the stepfather's a.s.sault. . . well, Mouse gets it, but not really. She can't help thinking that she would have traded everything she had, and then some, for a mother whose worst sin was that she did nothing.

"It just felt like such a violation," Andrew says.

"Violation? But it was the stepfather who --"

"I don't mean physical violation. I mean violation of, of order, of the way things are naturally supposed to be. . . The stepfather, he was always a monster, and that's all he ever was. He was never a real father to us; he was just this awful person who lived in our house. And it's like, if a wild animal bites you, it hurts, it's traumatic, but it's not as if it's any kind of big surprise. Wild animals bite; it's what they do; you may not like it but you know to expect it.

"But what we felt, when our mother turned her back and walked away -- it was like, like watching water flow uphill. And I know, you know, that she must have done that all the time, turned her back on us, and so I don't really understand how it is we came to expect anything different from her, but I know -- I felt it -- that we did. There was this incredible sense of disappointment, of betrayal, and it must have been like that every time, whenever she just stood by and let him do that to us. . .

"And so what I really don't understand," he says, taking a deep breath, "is how I could go for so long without having even a clue about this. I mean you remember: two nights ago you asked me about my mother and I couldn't even tell you whether she'd survived giving birth to us. And even after my father told me the truth, even after I saw him cry, break down over her, still. . . I never, ever would have guessed. All my life, whenever my father, Adam, or any of the others talked about the abuse they'd suffered, it was always the stepfather they talked about -- his wickedness, what he did to them. Never a single word about her."

Andrew looks at Mouse as if expecting her to have an answer to this riddle, but the best response she can manage is a shrug -- a gesture that makes her face hurt.

"How's your cheek?" Andrew asks, seeing her wince.

"It hurts."

"Oh."

This is of course another reason she's having a hard time commiserating: she's still in shock over what happened at the cottage.

Andrew had lain unmoving on the dusty cot while Mouse, standing guard, got more and more spooked by a furtive scuttling noise in the shadows at the far end of the attic. Maledicta, up in the cave mouth, kept telling Mouse to stop being such a jumpy c.u.n.t, it was just the f.u.c.king squirrel again -- but Maledicta sounded as if she were spooked too, and her vulgar admonitions only served to make Mouse even more jumpy. She sidled closer and closer to the cot, until finally she was standing right over Andrew, nudging the edge of the filthy mattress with her leg. The nudges got stronger and more insistent until the whole cot was shaking, but still Andrew just lay there; and then something galloped across the far end of the attic, and Mouse began to shake Andrew's body directly, saying, "Wake up! Wake up!"

At which point Andrew had opened his eyes and leapt up screaming. Mouse was knocked aside, tossed face-first onto the attic floor. The impact left her dazed, and by the time she recovered Andrew was gone: down the stairs, out the back door, and around to the side of the house. As Mouse got back to her feet, she heard boards breaking somewhere below her. Her first thought was that Andrew was trying to tear the cottage apart; then she remembered the bracing planks and realized that was exactly what he was doing.