The New Weird (28 page)

"What happened to your face?" his father says.

Brey feels the wet cloth over his face.

"What do you have in your hand, son?"

Uncurling his fingers, Brey holds up the knotted rag.

"Are these your mother's wrappings, Brey?" says his father, his voice rising.

"This?" says Brey. "She gave it to me?"

Brey unties the bundle with his teeth. Turning his father's palm upward, he fills it with dust.

His father frowns. He opens his fingers, lets the dust trickle out. He brushes his palm against his leg. He takes Brey by the shoulders, turning Brey toward him.

Says his father, "Where did I go wrong?"

His Mask.

He steps deep into the intersection. Easing to his knees, he closes his eyes. He slides from one knee to the other, feeling the dust push up before him. He slides his hands in. He fans them over the floor.

His fingers cross something hard. He brings his hands together, feeling the dust billow. He picks up a ring of keys. He straightens his back and stands, moving sideways until he touches a wall. He opens his eyes.

The air of the intersection is dark with dust. His body and boots are coated and dull. The wet rags covering his face have thickened, the dust and dampness forming a paste.

He scrapes the paste from his mouth, folds the cloth back from his lips. He scoops up handfuls of dust, packs them against the damp rags.

He passes water near the wall, mixing a mud of urine and dust with his fingers. He packs his face thick with mud, smoothing it with his palms.

Around him, the dust now lies heaped and swirled. The marks are gone.

Dust to dust, perhaps, Father?

His face grows hard.

He opens the door to his room. His father sits on the palette, his knees gathered in his arms.

"About this mask, Brey," says his father. "Does it have any purpose?"

"Purpose?" says Brey.

"I thought not," says his father, rising.

He opens the door, but turns back.

"By the way, what did you mix with the dust?" his father says.

"Water?" says Brey.

"Water?" says his father. "Not water taken from the sink, Brey."

"Not the sink," Brey admits.

"Where else is there water? The toilet?" says his father. "Good Lord, son, take the mask off."

She is asleep. He unwraps her feet, removes her slippers. She mumbles, curls her toes. He places the slippers over his hands, leaves the room.

He attaches himself to the fishline. Before reaching the spool, he leaves the fishline to turn down an unexplored hall. He does not walk far, only far enough to see that there is dust and to retreat.

He returns to the fishline, following it to the first dust-filled intersection. He crosses to the hall beyond. He bends forward, blows breath out of his plaster mouth. The dust before him displaces, leaving a cone-shaped depression. Perhaps, he thinks, air currents and breezes created the marks in the dust.

He kneels. He walks his mother's slippers into the dust. The slippers leave a single-part mark nothing like what he recalls of the two-part original marks.

The marks of his father's boots might be similar to the original. Or a rat could have made the marks, leaping zigzag down the hall. Two rats escaped his father: the marks which were to one side could have been made by one rat, the marks to the other by the other.

Brey does not know if leaping through dust is typical behavior for rats. He consults his rat books, but learns nothing. Brey does not know if leaping through dust is typical behavior for his father. He consults his mother. She does not respond.

"Collecting keys will not always be easy," his father has told him.

Yet his father claims never to have collected keys. How would his father know what is easy, what is hard? Does not Brey know more about keys than his father will ever know?

He struggles up from the palette and into the hall. Slowly, he opens his parents' door.

He bends down, lifts an old pillow from the floor. Holding the pillow in both hands, he approaches the second bed.

He brings the pillow down against his father's face. He pushes the pillow down. He holds the pillow down with both elbows locked. He waits.

Nothing happens. His father does not react.

He lifts the pillow away to regard the face. The face is blinking and serious, very much alive.

"I am concerned about you, Brey," says his father. "Perhaps justifiably."

Brey flees.

The Sounds of His Halls.

Lifting up the spool, he crosses the intersection. Dust adheres to the surface of his mask, streaks his hands and arms.

He drops the spool, stuffs a square of cloth into the mouth of the mask to filter the dust. He continues on. The cloth loses color as he breathes. The cloth becomes a protruding bloodless tongue.

The dust upon the walls dislodges, drifting in a fine mist. He drops the spool. He kneels. He moves forward, eyes closed, hands groping through the dust.

Faint sounds. He ignores them. He finishes with one door, moves to the next. The sounds continue.

The halls might be amplifying a lesser noise: a light bulb sputtering out, a drop of water striking the floor. If not, the sound might be the sound of rats.

His father claims the rats will return. There is no reason to disbelieve his father. He must take precautions.

He returns to his hall. He opens his parents' door. His mother lies in her bed. His father's bed is empty. As his mother turns her head toward him, he draws the door closed.

He breaks apart the frame of his palette. He forces splinters of wood into the crack of his parents' door until the door is wedged shut. He explains to his mother, yelling through the door, that he is doing this
for her own protection.
His father, he cries,
would do the same.

He opens
How to Build a Better Mousetrap.
He consults a series of schematic drawings in Appendix B.

He unscrews the legs of the kitchen table. He makes of the tabletop a deadfall trap, propping up one end with a table leg. He compares the drawings to the table, the table to the drawings.

He sets the trap before his door, baiting it with peach preserves. As an added precaution, he mixes shards of glass into the peaches.

He carries a table leg wrapped in cloth stolen from his mother's body. The leg is thick and heavy. The leg fits his hand awkwardly.

He stores several days' worth of food in his bedroom. His canteen is full of water as is his pewter cup. He soaks chips of wood in the toilet, forces them into the cracks of the kitchen door. He leaves his own door and the bathroom door unblocked. He will live in the first room, use the latter's toilet to dispose of dead rats.

Comes a knock at the bedroom door. He rolls off the palette, club in hand. The knock comes again, high on the door. He stands on tiptoe, presses his ear to the door. The knock comes again, slightly above his head.

"Father?" he calls.

There is no answer.

His father would respond to his call. His mother is shut in her room, her door wedged closed. That leaves only the rats. The rats have returned. They are leaping high, throwing their bodies against his door. He knows better than to answer.

The deadfall collapses. He hears muffled sounds, fading. He swings open the door, brandishing the table leg, baring his teeth.

Peach preserves have spurted over the floor. He lifts the tabletop off the ground. He peers under it. Nothing but squashed peaches. The rats have escaped.

He travels through the dust, unspooling the fishline. Dust billows up. He stops, listens for rats. He hears nothing. He continues on.

He squints his eyes, breathing through the cloth over his mouth. He drops to his knees, pushing his hands into the dust. He takes up the keys, stands. He gropes his way to the wall.

He returns. His mother's door is ajar, splinters of wood scattering the floor.

He raises the table leg. He kicks the door open.

His mother lies where he left her, unharmed. Beside her, leaning against the edge of her bed, is his father. "Come here, Brey," his father says. Brey hesitates in the doorway, club half-raised. "This is not a game, dear Brey," says his father. "Am I understood?" Brey nods. His father rises, takes the table leg from Brey's hand, throws it out into the hall. He raps his knuckles hard against Brey's plaster forehead.

"Brey?" he says. "Brey?"

He turns the tabletop upside down. He sops up the peaches, flushing them down the toilet. He unravels a strip of cloth from his mother while she sleeps. Dipping the cloth into the toilet, he uses it to swab the floor.

Perhaps he can strike a bargain with the rats. Perhaps a truce might not be impossible.

He screws the legs back into the table, but leaves the tabletop upside down on the floor. He ties the strip of cloth to a table leg as a white flag. He leaves three jars of peaches next to the flag, proof of his goodwill.

He is willing to offer the rats something in exchange for a little peace. He is willing to exchange something valuable for the right to collect keys. Even something of great value. His father, for instance.

Limit.

Days pass. The jars of peaches remain. The rats do not come.

He tips the tabletop onto its side. He drags it over to block the bathroom door. The flag drags across the floor, turning gray. He unties the flag from the table leg, carries it to his mother, draping it across her calves.

There are keys to be collected. He has been told that he should collect keys. He will collect keys.

He is at the outer edge of the intersection, near the spool, holding a ring of keys. He follows the fishline back, trying the keys at each door, without avail.

He listens to his own footsteps. He stops abruptly. Behind him footsteps continue an instant, stop. Whirling around, he sees nothing.

He continues forward. Behind him, a light sputters out. He turns his head, peering backward into the fresh darkness. He feels the fishline vibrate. He starts to run.

He lumbers forward, crossing dusty intersections. He reaches the spool of fishline, stops long enough to heave it up and struggle on. The fishline plays out through his legs, shuttling to and fro across the spool. On one side of the spool appears a strip of exposed wood, growing wider as the fishline plays out. He crosses three dust-filled intersections and enters clean halls. He stoops to pick up a set of keys, hurries to the next intersection. He plucks up another set of keys and lumbers forward, the keys hooked awkwardly over two fingers. He stumbles, breathing hard, shifting the spool's weight to one side, to the hand without keys in time to scoop up a final set of keys.

The fishline pulls stiff between his legs, spool growing solid before his thigh, drawing him up short. The line breaks, he is thrown forward. Keys jingling, he tumbles down. Brey has run out of fishline.

[THREE]

Brey, at Rest.

He lies splayed near the spool. He rolls his body over, stares up at the ceiling. He lifts a hand to his face, tracing a crack running from the upper edge of the mask down to his eye. He draws a deep breath.

Perhaps it would be best to pretend to be dead. Perhaps it would be best to deceive the rats. Perhaps it would be best to wait until the rats approach his body, thinking it a corpse, and then kill them.

He has memorized the rat books. He has begun to think like a rat.

He hears the sound of footsteps at some distance. He lifts his head, straining to see through a mask gone skew. "You are lying in the middle of the hall, Brey."

Craning his neck, he glimpses the upper half of his father.

"Me?" says Brey.

"Is there anyone else?" says his father.

"You?" says Brey.

"Lying down, for God's sake," says his father. "Is there?"

Brey looks across the level of the floor. He turns his head to the other side, looks. He turns back to his father, shakes his head.

"Get up," says his father.

Brey does not move.

"Don't be difficult, Brey."

His father straddles him, reaching down to slide his palms under his back. Straining, he drags Brey to his feet.

Brey lets his knees turn to water, refusing to support his own weight.

Grunting and staggering, his father hugs him to his side with one arm. He strikes Brey in the throat with his other fist. He bares his teeth, bites Brey on the ear.

He lets go. He moves back his bloody mouth. Shaken, the boy stands.

The moment his father is out of sight, Brey lies down. He is not afraid of rats. He is protected by his boots, his keys, his mask.

The only thing he fears for are his eyes. The eyeholes of the mask are large enough to allow snouts. As he kills rats, he must remember to shield his eyes with one hand.

He lies in the hall, alone. The rats are clever. They have not come. They plan to starve him.

He turns his face to the floor. He pulls himself to the wall. Bracing his hands against the wall, he rises to his knees, sways to his feet.

His bones are sore. His tongue cleaves as if his mouth were packed with dust. The keys hang heavy upon him. He can feel his father's teeth still clinging to his ear.

He gathers the scattered keys, hanging them upon his hooks. Leaving the spool on the floor, he follows the fishline back.

If the rats are waiting in the darker hallways, he can do little to avoid them. It would be safer to take another route back, but he will not leave the fishline. Despite his father's misgivings, he must keep to the fishline.

The path turns away from the terminal wall. He follows the fishline as it runs straight, turns, turns, continues straight, turns again. The path is not as he remembers it. Yet there are no keys in the intersections of his path. He is following the right path.

He continues. He stops when he reaches a dust-filled intersection. The dust was not here before. Perhaps the dust has been moved here. By the rats, to torment him.

He moves through three intersections filled with dust. He travels through each, stepping lightly.