A glint in the dark
I care so much I'm sick
-- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Two thirds into his first lecture of the day, Theodore received a very worrying message. His parents never texted him; if they had anything to say, they called, so the stress of this message tripled simply due to the medium that had been used.
Theodore, we would love to have you for dinner tonight.
Your father and I will pick you up at six.
Why? Everything about that invitation was so strange. The fact that they wanted him over specifically for dinner meant that something was going to be discussed. Something big that couldn’t be talked about over the phone.
Immediately, he thought of Justin’s farm and the faux pas regarding his father’s name. Had Henry finally figured it all out? Would Theodore get to see the full extent of his wrath now? Would the Crow show itself? His leg bounced.
With a heavy sense of foreboding in his chest, he replied positively to his mother’s request. No part of it indicated that failing to comply was a choice, but he still felt compelled to answer it anyway. They’d be picking him up at six—god, how much earlier would he have to keep getting up? It’d be impossible to watch all his afternoon lectures this way. On the one hand, that was just wonderful; fuck these lectures and fuck his major too, but on the other—did his father know he’d been skipping? That could potentially be tonight’s topic. Had one of the girls told him? Unlikely, but not impossible. His best guess was still his affiliations with Justin, but his increasing list of absences fell close behind.
About an hour before his parents pulled up, he took a shower and heavily deliberated on what to wear. They’d liked his new wardrobe last week, but if the topic of conversation would be the tunnels, then distancing himself from them could prove a useful asset. He put on the skinny jeans from before, but paired them up with a polo shirt and the pea coat that his mother loved. It created the argument that while he wore certain articles that rats also wore, his intention was never to make himself blend in, but to simply experiment with his own style. Sure, he wore skinny jeans from time to time, but what about this preppy coat he’d gotten for Christmas? It went so well with his Ralph Lauren shirts. Clearly, he wasn’t a rat himself.
Wait, was he? No. No, of course not; Laith had told him as much. He didn’t belong down there with the others and never would.
Inside his father’s car, he got a compliment from his mother on the coat she adored. It was obvious that she’d been the one to pick it out for him last year. Behind the wheel, his father simply passed him a brief glance through the rearview mirror and drove off. His heart jumped out of his chest, but he kept calm.
Carolyn spoke to him throughout the majority of the drive, telling him about her neighbors and how wonderful the new house was. She’d chosen all the furniture. The sunroom had a proper piano now, not an 88-key keyboard, and the kitchen had all kinds of appliances for her cakes. Her new neighbors were all very influential people who held meetings and threw dinner parties, so she’d started cooking for them now that the PTA was no longer a choice.
While hearing her voice was comforting and familiar, not hearing Henry’s voice at all was incredibly concerning. Theodore tried not to overthink it, but he couldn’t help feeling like he’d done something terrible to warrant such behavior. His father must be pissed.
The new house was much bigger than the previous one, but not quite as big as he’d imagined. The way his mother spoke of it made it seem like a palace, even though he understood that, to her, this would be one. He didn’t know much about her before she’d met his father, but he knew she hadn’t come from greatness. Her parents were never talked about; he’d never even met them, having always assumed they’d died early on, but the truth was that he didn’t actually know. She’d never mentioned them at all. Her commitment to distancing herself from who she used to be kept her so intensely focused on the future that the past was never even discussed. It was utterly forgotten about, actually. He knew there was a reason for that and didn’t ask about it.
Dinner was already on the table by the time they arrived. Theodore didn’t know if his mother had set it before leaving, or if she’d gotten help around the house, but refrained from asking. His lungs could barely breathe in anticipation of what was to come; delaying this conversation would only make it worse.
As Carolyn went on about the steak and the carrots, the family took their respective seats at the table, the way they used to—Henry at the end and the other two across from each other.
“I ran into your friend Justin the other day.” That comment came near the end of the evening, when their plates were practically empty. It froze Theodore where he sat, eyes down at his own food, wide. “Do you know what he told me?”
Slowly, he glanced up at his father. Nothing left his mouth.
“He’s a drug dealer. Did you know that?”
“Yeah.” That word trembled in his mouth.
“You’re friends with a drug dealer and you knew about it.”
His heart hammered him in the chest, utensils shaking in his hands. There was nothing he could say, brain in temporary stasis.
“That’s not what your mother meant when she told you to socialize. Theodore, you’re a drug user.”
He couldn’t breathe.
Breaking eye contact for a moment, Henry wiped his mouth and leaned back in his chair. “We had a deal, didn’t we? That you’d be good and get a nice present for Christmas. You promised you would.”
As his father spoke, his image began to tremble, submerged in water. Theodore set the utensils down and slipped both hands under the table to hold one another, shoulders drawn together. “I’m sorry.”
“No. Don’t apologize if you’re not going to change your behavior. That’s an empty apology. You know what I want you to do.”
Cut Justin off. In silence, he nodded. His phone vibrated in his pocket, but was completely ignored.
“I have no reason to trust you now. You lied to me last weekend—why should I believe anything you say?”
Tears dripped down his cheeks. “I think—”
“I’ll be monitoring you,” Henry continued, speaking over him. “I won’t do it myself—I have no time for that—but I’ll be introducing you to someone tomorrow. Consider him a friend.”
He swallowed around a lump, painful.
“If I see that you’ve finally decided to respect me, you’ll find a nice present in the garage, but if you continue to take me for an idiot who pays every one of your bills, well.” Henry held up his hands, palms face-up. “We’re going to have a different kind of Christmas this year.”
Again, Theodore nodded.
“College has that effect on people,” Carolyn commented, eyes cold. “They think they’re grownups just because they’ve reached the age of majority. They think they’re free to do whatever they want, that they know what’s best for them, but you know what the truth is, Theodore? They haven’t paid a single bill or made a single decision that’s gotten them to college in the first place. This rhetoric is false. I don’t blame you for falling for it, but I also expect more from you moving forward.”
“I’m sorry, mom.”
“No. I want you to give me a reason to render your apology meaningless.” Carolyn got up from her seat, hands tossing the cloth napkin next to her plate. “Now clean up and go to bed.”
***
The pit that had carved itself a place in his chest had now turned into a chasm, widened by his parents’ hands. It’d been eating him up for a while, a painful process that gnawed at his bones and burned his organs into a black void. He often stared into it, drawn to it out of morbid curiosity, feet touching the edge. Dread came over him every time he did it, the fear of getting pushed in, of feeling the wind on his face as he fell, but not this time. The force that pulled him in was different now, an urge to tip himself over the edge, a simple movement, so easy. What would he look like mangled and broken? He deserved to know.
Water gushed from the tap and washed over a knife, blade glinting under the light. He thought of Laith’s wrists, the faded scars—would he hurt himself at a time like this? When falling into the chasm seemed a lot more appealing than simply hanging off the edge.
Dutifully, he put the knife in the drying rack, despite the undeniable truth that, if it’d slipped from his hand and sliced his skin open, it wouldn’t have mattered. He’d almost wanted it to happen—blood dripping from his arm, a swirl of red circling the drain. The sting couldn’t have been worse than the gaping hole beneath his rib cage.
His phone buzzed again—he’d almost forgotten it’d buzzed earlier too. With the dishes done and the tap turned off, he pulled his phone out. Two texts from Justin showed up on screen, one from earlier and one from now. The name alone curdled his blood into ice, heart seized in the bottom of his chest.
Is Laith with you?
Followed by,
It’s okay if he is. I won’t tell the others I just need to know.
He breathed in deep. The smart move would be to block Justin and move on, or at least avoid all contact with him until Christmas, just to guarantee that car. He hovered over the block button, hesitant—why had Laith been so difficult to reach this week? For fuck’s sake, where was he? Backing out of Justin’s contact information, he typed out a reply instead.
I haven’t seen him since the party.
What’s going on? Where the fuck is he?
Justin answered within the minute.
We were supposed to hit the DP together but he isn’t here yet. He’s not home either. I thought he might be with you.
He isn’t.
The fact Justin knew where Laith lived stuck out to him.
What’s his address?
Straight-up asking for it was a bold move, but seconds away from blocking Justin for the next four months, he didn’t care. Part of him immediately mourned this new friendship, but a bigger part really wanted that car. He could run away with it. The thought hit him like a breath of fresh air, lungs full, hopeful. He could still turn things around—there was a chance.
Sorry man, I can’t tell you. He’d kill me.
I’ll kill you if you don’t.
Whoa ok. I’ll take my chances tho.
Alright, time to change tactics.
Please, I’m really worried. I need to know he’s still alive.
Oh he’s alive. I saw him a couple of days ago.
He’s just not here.
Huh, really? Interesting.
What’s going on with him?
I’ll let him tell you about that. It’s not my business.
Are you sure? Because my dad just told me something that I think IS your business, but you already know what I’m talking about.
The silence in the kitchen was deafening. In his peripherals, the darkness moved, advancing toward him. This time, it wasn’t crawling with multiple creatures, but veiled only one, a familiar figure that stood in the doorway—Ethel. Why wasn’t she staring at his mother’s bedroom door like she always did? A frail hand touched the door frame, fingers long and bony, inhuman. He looked away from her when his phone vibrated again, a phone call. His thumb slid over the screen, hand bringing the phone close to his face.
“Listen,” Justin started, speaking over the muffled sounds of electronic music. He’d probably locked himself in a bathroom stall. “I don’t know what that was about. Your dad asked me a bunch of questions—he doesn’t like that we’re friends. He told me to never see you again. That’s such a Romeo and Juliet thing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” His voice was dull and unimpressed, eyes focused on Ethel’s silhouette. Her legs trembled under her dress, too weak to hold herself up for very long. He’d never seen her like this.
“It’s just weird that he was in Burman’s office. That he was underground at all! Everything that led to that meeting was weird, the circumstances of it. Why was he there?”
“He’s the Crow; he works there. He works for Burman.”
“Really?”
Ethel’s hand slipped from the door frame as she succumbed under her own weight, falling on the ground without a sound. The sight pushed Theodore off the counter. “I have to go,” he spoke absently, not paying a single ounce of attention to this call. “I’ll unblock you on Christmas, I promise.”
With his phone back in his pocket, he approached Ethel. Her hair was sprawled across the floor, face hidden beneath it, turned towards the tiles. Curled up with her knees close to her chest, she didn’t move, freakishly long arms bent at the elbows. She looked deceased, more so than before. A dead ghost. What had happened to her and where were the others? The horrible monsters that skittered across the floor and brushed his arms in the dark. Had they stayed behind, abandoned in the old house?
Hesitantly, he touched her back. His hand phased right through it, but still felt cold, a horrible shiver shaking his arm. It was so violent that it pushed him back, away from her.
Somehow, he knew she’d been related to Carolyn, that her entire existence had been due to his mother, but she was dead now. Gone. Too weak to continue on living, a part of his mother that no longer existed, the person who she used to be. The girl who’d grown up in a trailer park, the version of this girl who had never met the man of her dreams, the terrifying alternative that had haunted her for years. Broke and miserable, a nobody thrown to the wolves.
Laith and Hwan both came to mind, trailer trash too—would Carolyn have ended up in the tunnels like them? If Henry had never come into her life, that was. That might be what terrified her the most. Another reason to hate rats, he supposed.
In a moment, Ethel was gone, no trace left behind. If she’d been the personification of his mother’s worst fears, then her death must mean something good, that Carolyn had finally conquered them—right? What did that make the other monsters, then? If they hadn’t followed his parents to the new house, then they might not have had any connection with them, the previous owners’ fears and nightmares. Did Laith know about this? Had he touched one of them? Theodore really wanted to ask.
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