“The most humbling lesson I’ve learned, in my time, is
that women are the source of all things beautiful.”
- from The Journal of D. D. Windward
One would hardly call Alyssa and Peter’s backgrounds similar, but upon a closer look, you could find parallels and commonalities. The most obvious would be in the strict environments in which they were both raised. Being from the Midwest, Peter had rebelled, in his quiet way, to the relentless values of his parents. The Huffys were unusually pious Methodists, even by Kansas standards. He’d shed most of those values, decisively, the moment he’d left home. Alyssa, however, had moved to Pennsylvania from China when she was seven years old, and her attitude towards religion was fairly ambivalent.
Alyssa was born Huang Ai Ying in the ultra-polluted city of Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Region. Alyssa’s father, Jiankui, had graduated from the Beijing Petroleum Institute and worked as a night supervisor at the Urumqi Petrochemical Plant. Her mother, Yufei, was a Primary School teacher who taught Chinese to the children of ethnic minorities at an experimental school. Back then, Urumqi was the worst place on Earth.
Alyssa had described her life in the company apartment complex to Peter with very little reminiscing. What little she could remember, anyway. The toilet water drained out through the sink tap, sometimes, which followed, logically, because the city’s water supply was already fouled by fertilizer, made from human waste, seeping into the groundwater from nearby farms. The floors were always speckled with the dull, flaking lead paint that colored the walls. What little Alyssa remembers paints a picture of a childhood occupied by constant sickness. Infection, nausea, and burning fever were a way of life. And Alyssa's parents watched helplessly as their little girl succumbed, again and again. Jiankui, in particular, blamed himself. He knew, however, that there would be deliverance, someday, for all of them. He would make sure of it.
Jiankui had grown up in the wealthier, cleaner city of Karamay. When family would visit from there, they would complain of the excessive smog burning their eyes and mouth. Little Ying was too used to it to notice, and she giggled when they blinked and made faces. She thought they were playing. Still, some of her most cherished memories of that time were moments they were gathered for warmth around their coal stove. Her father told them stories and jokes, always wanting to make them happy, and it made her thankful to have such beautiful parents. That’s how it was, then. In times of hardship, they were wonderful. All these years later, Alyssa marveled at how different they were, now, compared to then. The move to America seemed to transform her parents from superheroes into normal, everyday people. It was as if their inordinate strength had, one day, been disrobed and hung up in the closet like winter clothing.
Bringing one’s family across the world is not an easy decision to make, but from the moment he’d learned he and his wife were going to have a child Jiankui started saving his money. After Ying was born, he began to take the theoretical move very seriously. He started learning English and reading about America and Britain, ultimately deciding that the United States would be their future. The mythos of America was hard to deny. It was years before the right offer came along. Although he’d originally wanted to move his family to Pittsburgh, having read of it being one of the most livable cities in the country, the closest position he could find was with a petroleum equipment company in Harrisburg. It seemed like a decent place, and his job there would be a little closer to what he’d been trained for, actually, than his job in Urumqi was. Anyway, Harrisburg or Pittsburgh, America was America.
When Ying was seven, her mother told her that they were going to leave Urumqi and go live in a big house, in another city, far away. Ying was excited. They showed her pictures of the city of Harrisburg her father had photocopied from a travel book and added what they could to her growing English vocabulary. They took a flight from Urumqi to Beijing, and from there to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Little Ying was silent and wide-eyed as she stared out the window from her mother’s lap. Later on, Ying had her first formative American experience when the family was eating in an airport restaurant. Their excitement over being in the U.S. went a long way to canceling out the spiritual slump a thirteen-hour flight can cause. Ying was staring at the amazing assortment of different people walking past her, no less awed by this than as she watched the ocean pass beneath the China Air jet, when a tall, sweaty glass of ice water was set down before each of them.
The practice of drinking water cold is as strange to the Chinese as the dishes, like General Tso’s Chicken(invented in New York), that we call Chinese food. Chinese prefer small cups of water served hot with their meals. Jiankui and Yufei were prepared for this, and they took some dainty sips, but Ying, who was very thirsty, took hold of the glass and glared at it cross-eyed like it was a funhouse mirror. When dinner came, a large cheese pizza, Ying poked at the gigantic slice helplessly, using a mostly unfamiliar implement called a fork. The smell didn’t bother her, but the first bite hung in her mouth for half a minute before she spit the greasy atrocity back onto her plate. At this point, she’d had enough, and began crying like the upset child that she was. She wanted to go back home to her bed and her bunny, Laibite, which they’d had to give away a month before(that was the story her parents had told her, anyway. The truth was that Ying had, accidentally, let Laibite outside, and it had frozen to death).
Peter had asked several times why she had chosen the name Alyssa. She’d been called that since she was a teenager, or thereabouts, and she’d always been a little coy about its origins. He teased her about getting the idea from actress Alyssa Milano. However, he’d also suspected that he might be right, judging by how discomfited she’d acted the first time he tried to watch CHARMED with her. She’d tried to hide it, but it became more obvious as he teased her. Later on, during a weekend stay at her parents’ house, he’d gone snooping around in the closet of her old bedroom while Alyssa was out with an old girlfriend. It was the perfect time to snoop, and snooping was very Huang, after all. He struck gold, immediately. He’d uncovered a funny, old tape hidden under a stack of old V.C. Andrews novels. It was a teen-oriented aerobics video called TEEN STEAM. It starred none other than a perky, young Alyssa Milano.
It was from the late 1980s, and had to have been fairly passé by the time she’d gotten a hold of it. Especially among teenage girls, who tended to be ruthless about such things. It filled Peter’s head with ideas, and he stayed there pondering his discovery for almost fifteen minutes, crouched before the closet, tape in hand. The discovery was shocking to Peter. This can’t be real. You don’t go looking for answers and find them like this. It can’t be this simple, can it? But here it is! The Holy Grail!
He had a vision of a twelve-year-old Ying finding it in a cardboard box at a garage sale in her neighborhood. He saw her reading the description on the back, marveling at the pictures of the gorgeous actress. He pictured her paying fifty cents, taking the tape home and hiding it in her closet, later sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to watch it alone in her family’s living room, after everyone was asleep. She may have been looking for something like the sassy television actress for a long time. Alyssa Milano had been just the prototypical, All-American girl Ying could model herself after. The kind of girl she thought people wanted her to be. Peter was perplexed. How did she pull it off? Did she just ask her friends to start calling her by her new name? Did she switch schools? Did she move from Elementary School to Junior High? And why? What’s wrong with Ying? Why did her name matter so much? She’s still the most fantastic woman that ever lived.
Peter thought about this for a long time. It was possible that her Chinese accent was still stubbornly lingering in the background of her vowel sounds, and it made her self-conscious at school. He didn’t like to imagine it, but she may have even been the butt of a few cruel jokes, now and then. Boys may have flicked rice at her with their plastic forks at lunch and yanked the skin at the corners of their eyes. Boys who had no other way of getting a girl’s attention. Things like that probably didn’t happen all the time, but how many times did it take? My God, why did she keep this? How embarrassed would she have been if her cheerleader friends found out she watched something like this in the age of Grunge Rock? Teased hair and jelly bracelets screaming for help in a sea of Alice In Chains concert T-shirts. It would have been worse than the Crucifixion. Yet, she kept the tape, years after she needed it. It meant something to little Ying, whether she could admit it or not. Peter decided to keep her secret, too. He put it back and never mentioned it.
\
\
After Peter had led Dickon up the porch stairs of his house, he found himself pausing as his hand was reaching for the knob. He turned around to face the boy, rubbing his hands. “Okay,” he said, carefully. “I am entering unfamiliar territory here, and it’s a territory that my wife, pretty much, conquered years ago. You understand?” But Dickon just smiled back at him, as if the sound of Peter’s words had been blown away by a puff of wind before reaching his ears. He took a step closer to the boy. “Look, I just mean that she’s pretty astute, and if something’s up, and let’s be honest, something is up, I can’t really hide it from her. I can’t hide anything from her. I don’t know how to, and I don’t want to. Okay, I’m not saying anything here that makes any sense to a tyke, now am I?”
Dickon nodded. “That'll do fine, Mr. ‘uffy.”
Peter crept through the front door of the house and called out Alyssa’s name. She hollered from the kitchen and came out with a rag in her hand. She’d been caring for her new furniture most of the day. She’d had that rag in her hand the last time he saw her this morning. Having a whole house to decorate was making her glow like a new mother. She’d even taken pictures of the rooms and sent them to friends back in California, who were all texting her advice. Peter had never seen this side of her before. It’s just so…domestic. Has she lost her mind, too?
“Hey!” said Alyssa, smiling. “Where’ve you been? You left and you didn’t take the car. I needed it, anyway.”
Peter was visibly nervous, as well as visibly trying to hide that he was visibly nervous. “I went for a walk.”
Alyssa smirked. “Reeeaaaally? Two days in a row? Let me feel your head. Wait, are you okay? You didn’t have another one of those attacks?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Okay, it’s just you look…”
“No, really. I’m great. It’s just…”
“What?”
“Listen, we have to talk about something.”
Alyssa was on edge, for some reason. “What? You hate it here, don’t you? You’ve changed your mind, already?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Are you sure? Cause you’ve been extra you lately. Not the you that I love, the other you. You know what you I mean?”
Peter shook his head. “No. It’s not like that.”
“Passive-aggressive guy. Who sulks and listens to that depressing, old R.E.M. tape, the one that Kurt Cobain shot himself to?”
“I don’t like that Peter, either.”
“Just tell me you’re happy.”
“It’s not about any of that. Just listen…”
“Okay.”
“Look, I’ve been having some strange experiences, lately.”
Alyssa tensed up. “What? Like brain problems? Oh, my god. Are there things you haven’t told me about, Peter? Things like last night?”
“No…well, I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think it’s that, though. I think it’s something else. I think there’s a bigger picture here. Really, really big. But I can’t really explain, anything. It’s…it’s…”
“Peter, what experiences? Like, what? Depression, or something? Panic attacks? What?” Alyssa became tender, all of a sudden, now that the subject of his health had come up. Peter got the feeling she’d been worrying about him all day. He was certain of it. He wasn’t sure where he got the feeling from, or the certainty, for that matter. “Okay, why don’t we sit down and talk about this?” she said.
“Sit on what?” Peter asked. Apparently, at some very recent time, Alyssa had picked up a new coffee table and couch, both of which now sat in the living room at the South-Eastern corner of the house. Alyssa led him by the hand into the room and sat him down. The coffee table was made from an old, bisected whiskey barrel. Resting on it were several magazines and books. Peter took a good look at the table. “I thought we were gonna discuss any controversial furniture.”
Alyssa ignored him. “I want to talk about these experiences.”
“But, seriously, how did you get this stuff in here by yourself? This thing looks heavy.”
“Peter.”
“Okay, okay. Just give me a minute to deal with the barrel.”
Alyssa took a deep breath, her grasp suddenly stiffened. “Peter, quit…”
“All right, we can talk about it.”
“What’s been going on?”
“I…I don’t know how to start.”
“Did it start last night? With the pain in your head? You’re gonna see the doctor, right away, right?”
“I told you, I got the, uh…I made the appointment.”
“Okay. I’m going to call, though, because you’re lying through your teeth.”
“Listen, it didn’t start last night. Well, I guess it kind of did, actually. But it got way weirder today.”
“How?”
“Just weird. And I don’t know how to explain it, exactly. Okay, you see, I felt weird this morning, and I jumped off the balcony.”
Alyssa’s eyes flared. “You what!”
“Just…just…okay, look, that sounds bad, but it’s really strange.”
“You jumped off the balcony! Why would you do that?!” She looked upset. Her hands strangled his, cramming his fingers together.
“Don’t freak out, Alyssa! Don’t freak out…more. Just let me talk.”
“Oh, my god. Oh, my god, Peter. Were you trying to hurt yourself?”
“Just let me talk. Look, I wasn’t trying to hurt myself. I…”
“Then what! What were you doing, Peter?”
“You want me to be honest? I don’t know if I can be honest. It’ll sound…”
“Yes! Be honest!”
“I thought…I thought…okay, look, let’s start this over. Okay? Let’s calm down. The thing I really want to say is that I think this town is kind of…off.”
Alyssa’s face sagged, looking exhausted, as if they’d been arguing all day. “So it’s the house? The town? You picked this place, Peter. This was your idea.”
Peter squeezed her hands. “It’s…” But, then again, he didn’t know what to say. He stood up. “I need you to meet someone.”
Alyssa remained seated, not ready to quit the conversation. “Who?”
“He’s just outside.”
She nodded, slowly. She was clearly frustrated, and a little spooked. She stood up, cautiously. “Okay.”
Now Peter led her, then he paused at the front door, again, his hand suspended over the curvy handle. Please still be there. Please still be there. If this was a movie, the kid would be gone and I would look nuts. Is this that kind of movie?
“What is it?” Alyssa asked.
Peter shook his head. “Nothing. Just…” He opened the door and stepped outside, holding Alyssa’s hand. There was no one on the porch. Peter was not surprised. Not even a little bit. He turned around, threw up his hands. “Dickon?” he said. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Dickon!”
Alyssa looked around. “Who are we looking for, Peter? Wait, did you get a puppy? I guess I owe you that for the barrel.”
Peter, however, looked like he’d just been rejected by the prettiest girl in school. “A puppy. Something like that. No, don’t worry. Really, it’s okay. I was just playing around because things got so serious. There’s nobody out here.” His hands dropped limp at his sides. He took a few steps and sat on the top front step. He looked exhausted to Alyssa.
Alyssa sat down next to him, put her arms around his neck. “I’ll accept that for now, but I, really, don’t want you to do stuff like this, okay? We might have a real problem. Just don’t play around with me. No jokes. It’s not gonna make me feel better.”
“You’re right. And when you’re right, you’re right.”
“I think you need some rest, Peter. Before we do anything, why don’t you just take it easy? Okay?”
He could tell that she was hiding how worried she really was. He could tell far more than he wanted to be able to. It was like the features of her face were revealing more than they usually did. Her eyes no longer said one simple thing, but several complicated ones that would take an hour of conversation to explain. His head slowly slumped down beneath his shoulders. “Yeah. I will. I’ll take it easy. I just want to sit out here for a while and figure things out.”
She smirked. “Are you dismissing me?”
He faked a chuckle, because he was certainly not in the mood to do it for real. “I’m really okay. I’m fine. You were in the middle of something, anyway.”
“You’re not fine.”
“Alyssa, please. Don’t go into ‘Mom Mode’.”
“I’m not going into ‘Mom Mode’.”
“You are. And not your mom, my mom. Your mom, I like.” He rubbed her hand. “I’m okay. Really.”
She nodded. “All right. Don’t leave. Stay home. I’ve got something I want to show you, later.”
“What is it?”
“I got us a bed.”
“Oh, yeah? Oh no, how big is it? Where is it?”
She slapped him on the knee, and stood up. “Don’t worry. I got it.”
Peter’s eyebrows raised. “What? You got it upstairs? How? By yourself? How? Just tell me how.”
Alyssa shrugged, then went back inside the house. He was by himself, and he didn’t know what to expect. He wasn’t anxious to find out if he was crazier when he was alone.
Peter climbed down the steps and walked out onto the gravel driveway. Besides the slight wind and bird chatter in the distance, the only sound was the crunching stones beneath his feet. Things are all starting to fit together like a movie. Whenever the main character tries to prove that he isn’t crazy, it doesn’t work out, and he looks even more crazy. All the while, the audience knows he isn’t crazy. I’m probably crazy, though.
At first, it was very faint, and he wasn’t sure that he heard anything at all. As he listened, he became certain that something like a flute was playing somewhere. He walked toward the edge of the driveway and gazed down the slope of the hill. Peter walked a little bit of the way down, he could see the top of the head of that tweed-bedecked child who called himself Dickon.
The boy sat cross-legged by the side of the road, eyes closed as he played what looked to be an old, wooden fife. As Peter approached the boy, something started to happen to him. He paused mid-step, his stomach knotting up until it was almost painful. He was instantly overcome with emotion, as if he’d crossed a border and wandered into a land of melancholy. His eyes grew moist and his face fell into his hands. Tears began to line the bottom of the lenses of his glasses and slick his palms. He was standing on a country road and sobbing in front of a child who, probably, didn’t exist. A sob broke into a nasal snort and the fife stopped playing. Dickon noticed Peter.
“What’s da madda, Mr. ‘uffy?” asked the boy, concerned and turning his way.
Peter rubbed his eyes. Whatever it was, it was passing. “Nothing. Nothing. What was…what was that song you were playing, Dickon?”
The boy stood up, but didn’t approach. “Dat were Scarborough Faire, sir.”
Peter nodded. That made sense. He’d spent a year as a teenager listening to nothing but his SIMON AND GARFUNKEL’S GREATEST HITS cd, over and over. That was his favorite song on that album. Just more evidence that this was all in his mind. He wondered why he didn’t recognize it right away. “Very nice, Dickon. Very nice.”
The boy wobbled nervously, side-to-side, his hands twisting the fife like he was unscrewing it. Peter walked up to him scratching the back of his neck. “We need to speak, kid.”
Dickon squinted. “We are speckin’, already, Mr ‘uffy.”
Peter sat down on the grass next to where the boy stood. It was just a foot or two from the road. The boy took this as a cue to sit back down, as well. Peter spoke without looking at him. “I’ve just come to the realization, Dickon, that I am the only one who can see you. I mean, that’s where all the facts are pointing, I’m afraid. I think, uh…I think that it wasn’t a good idea bringing you home.”
Though the boy nodded, it was obvious that he only understood part of what Peter was saying. “Ah see. I’m sorry, Mr. ‘uffy. It were rude o’ me to wander off. It’s just dat ya left us waitin’ so long, sir. Hours, it were. Not to put it on ya. Da fault were mine.”
“Hours?” Peter replied. “It was, maybe, two minutes.”
“Twoa minutes?” the boy repeated, looking confused. “Hmm. Ah bin ‘avin’ trouble keepin’ track o’ misself.”
“How could you mistake minutes for hours? I mean, I’m insane, but…” Peter paused, considering something. Then he chuckled, softly, under his breath. “You know what? Forget it. What am I saying? You’re not real. Why should you know what time it is?”
Dickon seemed even more lost. “Beg thy pardon, sir, but ah doon’t understand.”
Peter picked up a small stone and lobbed it over the road into the wild grass. “It’s no big deal. Everyone’s got problems. There’s people out there who can’t roller skate. You can’t exist. It’s not your fault, it just is what it is.”
Dickon was clutching the fife even more tightly now. He was confused, that was plain to see. “Don’t exist, ya say?”
Peter nodded. He was rather distracted, distant.
“Well,” the boy said, frowning. “That’s unfortunate, innit?”
\
The night seemed to come, all of a sudden, to Dickon. He’d, perhaps, fallen asleep, but he didn’t think so. The sun didn’t move in a way that you could watch, it went far too slow, ticking off the moments while your head was looking the other away. It couldn’t be relied on, however. Sometimes, when Dickon turned away from the sun, it would trade places with the moon before he got back around. Even if you couldn’t watch it, days came and went as quickly as a candle blows out and your room reverts to darkness. This was disconcerting when it happened. Perhaps it was supposed to be, he wasn’t sure anymore. It made more sense that he was wrong, rather than the world was. He knew he’d spoken to his new friend, Mr. Huffy, just recently. Hours or days or years ago. The stars might have shifted from their ancient grooves in the sky since that happened, but it had happened, he was sure of that. Time didn’t seem to matter in this new place, though. Not to him.
One thing was for certain: Yorkshire was no longer underfoot. The Yorkshire countryside was very different than that of this place. He’d never seen so many trees. Back at home there were far more open spaces, fields that were separate and neat, tucked in like soft cookies baking on an oven tray. Here, the forest was thicker. The trees were different. The grass was different. It was all curious and new, and for this reason he hadn’t yet strayed too far away. Curiosity would get the better of him, sooner or later, and he would follow the road to wherever it went.
Mr. Huffy had told him some very confusing things. After he had walked away, Dickon remained sitting at the side of the road, his head tangled up with strange notions. He seemed convinced that the boy would stop existing after he’d left and was out of his thoughts. He put it so well that Dickon, himself, almost believed it. As he’d ascended the hill, the man turned back to have one last look before he took the curve that would put him out of sight. Dickon waved to him, but he received nothing in return but a dismal look. Mr. Huffy had closed the book on him. To his joy, though, he was still here.
Here he was. As before. As after. As always. He wanted to deliver this news to his new friend. Wouldn’t he be happy! As Dickon stood there, in the dark, it occurred to him that Mr. Huffy may not be happy at all. If he believed that Dickon was a ghost, or whatever it was that he had been talking about, nothing he said would do the trick. Was there a way to show him that he was wrong? The boy thought about this, and he concluded that it would take telling Mr. Huffy something that he didn’t know, or doing something for him that Mr. Huffy couldn’t do. But what would that be?
He considered going back to where his friend has asked him to wait, hours or days or years ago, but then, just like that, he was standing on the porch in front of the house’s main entrance. Without any time invested on his part, he was there. It surprised him. He didn’t know whether he’d walked or not. Right next to Dickon was the Huffys’ conveyance situated at an angle from the front door, as if goods had there been unloaded. He hadn’t given it much attention earlier, but it was beautiful, he’d never seen anything quite like it. He’d heard talk of such things before. Tall tales of wagons that spat smoke like trackless trains and tore down English roads like demons, leaving twenty miles behind them in an hour. But this was a whole new animal, wasn’t it? He was starting to understand that this new place was not just a different country, there was far more to it than that. Time may be far more confused than he’d reckoned. Shouldn’t that surprise him? He had a feeling that it should, but only if he were anyone else but him.
He knew who he was. He was Dickon. But who was that?
He wandered back up onto the porch, which was softly illuminated by the light blooming out through the house’s front windows. The room was probably occupied. That made him hesitant to gaze through it. A person should know their place, and his was not here, disturbing the master of this fine house. Mr. Huffy was a gentleman of means, and Dickon was a boy of none. He couldn’t even say who his family was. He was certain, however, that they were of no high standing. It was presumptuous to even call Mr. Huffy a friend. Once you start thinking that way, before you know it you’ll be crossing the boundaries in other ways. Ways far more uppity. Then, again, the man had not told him to keep away, only that they would not be seeing each other, being that Dickon wasn’t really here. Before that, he’d been even willing to take him into his home. He’d even seemed concerned for him. If he wanted to make things right, again, Dickon would have to act presumptuously in a way that made him uncomfortable. Still, he was certain it was the right thing to do.
He peered through the window. It was a scarcely decorated room with a table in the center, a sofa, and a lamp. There were light fixtures on the ceiling and walls, and flower-laden wallpaper decorated with birds and bulbous raindrops. The floor was lined with long, overlapping, strips of cloth, and a woman with a pail was blotting the wallpaper with a sponge. It was becoming saturated and wrinkled, but not quite ready to be peeled off, yet. A look at her face gave him pause. He stood there, gaping, for a minute, or even more. He’d never seen a woman like her. She was beautiful and mystifying, but undeniably strange. Her eyes were so large, and from her head hung the shiniest, blackest hair he’d ever seen.
Where was she from? Surely, this couldn’t be Mrs. Huffy. She was a foreigner, and she was performing a servant’s work. Her clothes were so very indiscreet, her legs and feet as naked as a toddler’s. Dickon, however, reconsidered this. This was not Yorkshire. Life was lived in a different fashion in this place, in this time, and he would need to adjust to it, for it would not adjust to him. If this was the lady of the house, he needed to show her respect, no matter how strange she seemed.
Now, what was he to do? It occurred to him, right then, that this was an opportunity to accomplish what he’d come here for. If he could get Mrs. Huffy’s attention it would prove to Mr. Huffy that he’d been wrong. It would be best not to be too abrupt. To upset her would only anger his new friend. And what right did he have to upset her? None. She was the lady of the house. He was only Dickon.
It took little more than a second for him to know what to do. He would lift her spirits! He reached into his coat and retrieved his fife from a deep, inside pocket. He lifted the instrument to his lips and blew into the mouth hole gently. The song he chose was uplifting and comical, about a fussy wife who was taken to hell, but soon returned by the devil to her unhappy husband for being far too cantankerous for even that place. It made people laugh. As he intoned the melody, the words passed through his mind.
“The Devil he took the old wife on his back,
And lugged her along like a pedlar’s pack.
To my fal-de-ral little law-day.”
\
After playing the song through, he found that he had disturbed the woman not at all. Hardly dismayed, he started again, stressing his lungs. To his joy, he saw the woman stand up and wipe her brow. She turned around, looking all about her. She was obviously searching out the source of the music. This made him play all the more vigorously. The song came out louder and more clearly. To his dismay, she never faced the window. She began to fan her face and neck with her hands. She was perspiring, breathing heavier, her chest working all the harder, expanding and contracting like she had just sprinted up a hill. The boy continued playing his melody for another minute, and the lady of the house stood in the center of the room. Dickon had begun to believe his song was reaching her when Mrs. Huffy slapped a hand to her forehead, looking like she was ready to swoon. She fumbled around the table and lowered herself, carefully, onto the sofa. He noticed that the glass window, through which he watched her, was starting to fog up densely. He stopped blowing his fife.
“Peter!” Mrs. Huffy shouted, her voice was ragged from her exasperation. “Peter!”
Dickon became very concerned. He reached out a hand to feel the window, but there was nothing to feel. It suddenly struck him that it was always like this. He felt nothing all the time. If he couldn’t pass through the glass, didn’t that show he was real? If the glass was real to him, wasn’t he real to it? He performed the motion of rapping his knuckles on the window, but it made no sound, and the glass was as solid as the stone of the mountain, to him.
Mr. Huffy came rushing into the room. “Oh, my god! What’s wrong?” he spat, as he knelt on the sofa, putting his hands on her. He let out a hefty lungful of breath. “Woo! Why is it so hot in here?”
Mrs. Huffy shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought I was going to pass out.”
“Jeez. Let’s open a window.” He jumped up from the couch and crossed the room. He found himself staring into Dickon’s terrified face. “Goddammit!” he shouted, thrusting up the window. “Dickon!”
“What?” Dickon heard Mrs. Huffy ask, but he never heard the answer. He was running away by then. Soundless steps. A breathless gait. Weightless, phantom limbs swinging in the darkness.
Peter placed a cold rag on his wife’s forehead. They didn’t have a thermometer in the house, but he could tell that her temperature had risen dramatically. It was dropping now, and she was coming around, but he was still very worried. “I think it’s gonna be fine,” he said. He looked up at the wallpaper behind the sofa. It was soppy and wet, like a noodle. He dragged a finger down the wall and the paper started to slide along with it. He left it alone, not wanting it to unroll all over him. “You should go to bed. I’ll take all this stuff down.”
Alyssa shook her head. “I’m not tired enough to sleep,” she said.
“Well, you look plenty tired. You’re like a boiled hot dog.”
“Sleepy as a boiled hot dog?” she chuckled.
“Now you’re in a good mood? You’ve been grumpy all day.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been a weird day.”
“Now you’ve got a head thing, too.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m okay. But…” she waved her hands around. “What the hell?”
“I told you this town is strange.”
“That old boiler must have gone nuts.”
“In one room? It’s not like this everywhere down here. The heats not on, anyway.”
“Well, there’s nothing else that could have done this.”
“Right. We’ve exhausted all one possibilities.”
“Well, what’s your big theory, Tesla?”
Peter made a face. “Tesla? The hell’s that? It’s ‘What’s your big theory, Einstein?’, not Tesla. That’s how that works.”
“Well, I like Tesla. He was just as smart. Deal. I repeat, what…”
“I don’t have some big theory,” Peter cut in. ”Just that a lot of stuff has gone down that doesn’t make sense. A lot of sense is not being made.”
“You said that name, again, when I was boiling. Dickon. I heard you say Dickon.”
“Yeah, uh, I thought I saw something outside the window.”
“Okay. Peter, why don’t you tell me who Dickon is? I’ve been pretty good about this, about you yelling that name before and looking around outside. That was kind of odd. I was more than a little curious, but I let it go.”
“Yeah, I forgot to thank you for that. For letting it go, I mean.”
Her bottom lip curled. She looked like an infant eying a spoonful of medicine. “Come on, Peter. Stop it. I’m getting a headache. Go easy on me.”
“Okay.” Peter swabbed her forehead, again. She was almost normal. “I met a kid out where I found Derek. Right where that bridge is.”
“That’s Dickon?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s he got to do with anything?”
“I don’t know yet, you see…” he stopped, apprehensive. “I don’t know if Dickon is a real kid.”
“Is he, like, a dwarf?”
“I mean, I think…I think I’m seeing stuff that isn’t there.”
“Wait a minute. Stop,” she said, grabbing his wrist mid-swab. “Seeing stuff? What do you mean?”
“I mean, like…stuff. Weird things. Like magical kids from England kinda things.”
“Magical kids?”
“Well, I don’t know if he’s magical or not. He kind of comes off magical, though. And English. Well, maybe polite kids just seem English to Americans, since kids here are all spoiled dicks.”
Alyssa covered her face with her hands, about fed up. “Oh, my god, Peter. This is…what am I supposed to say to this?”
“Say you’re okay with me being crazy. Say you’ll still love me when I’m locked in a padded room, banging my head on the door.”
“Stop it!” she yelped. “Just stop it! You’re not crazy. Don’t even talk like that. That’s not funny.”
“I saw him in the window. Did you?”
“I wasn’t looking. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Even if you had looked, you wouldn’t have seen anything. I see him, you don’t.”
“Just stop!” Her face was in her palms. It made Peter feel very guilty. He didn’t want to put her through this, but what could he do? He wanted to touch her, as well, but he also wanted to keep that hand for the rest of his life.
“I’m sorry. This is a real thing that’s happening. I’m telling you everything. I jumped off the balcony, I’m having freaky dreams, and I’m seeing magic kids.”
“Oh, God…”
Against his better judgment, Peter dared put an arm around her. She didn’t lash out or claw his eyes, so that was promising. “Listen, Alyssa, let’s just…”
“Shut up!” she shouted, grabbing his shirt and yanking it angrily. Her eyes were streaming. “You listen to me! You’re not crazy. I’m not going to let you be crazy! You hear me? You’re not going into a padded room! You’re not going anywhere without me! You hear? Not ever! Whatever is going on with you, stop it now. I’m not asking. Whatever you have to do, do it. Do it now! This very minute! If you saw a kid, then find a kid. I’m going to bed, and I expect this to be over in the morning. Don’t come to bed until this is done!”
She pushed herself to her feet and stomped out of the room. Her booming steps bounced heavily up the staircase. Peter’s jaw was dangling open. He hadn’t seen her that angry in a long time. This keeps happening. Women, well, a woman and a girl, angrily stomping away from me. It never happened my whole life, I come to Sparkle and it’s a daily phenomenon here. He waited another minute, then he stood up and walked to the front door. He was so tired that he could have leaned against the wall and slept standing up. There was nothing to help it, though. I gotta figure out how to stop being crazy before bed.
For some, the night was slow. If he was jittery, Derek would sometimes change his habits around, treat a weeknight like it was a weekend morning. On most Saturdays, he made sure to curl up on the soft, old basement couch with enough cookies to give him a stomach ache and enjoy a movie from the pile of VHS tapes in the basement closet. Upgrading to a more modern DVD player was out of the question. His mother still called the old tape player ‘that infernal machine’. He had to agree. The top-loading Realistic, at the age of thirty, was definitely an infernal machine. The numerous times he’d pried the thing open to locate a mechanical problem, the years spent viewing grainy, poorly colored, sometimes flapping images, made calling it infernal seem like understatement. It was more than infernal, it was a nemesis.
There were drawbacks to modernizing, however. Tapes were cheap and easy to find around here. They still had a kind of relevant currency in Sparkle. When people came over for an evening, they often still showed up with VHS tapes tucked under their arm, and they would expect it to be no trouble to play it. There were a few scattered clearance bins in town where old cassettes turned up every week. It was the kind of thing that outsiders called ‘quaint’.
Derek was certain that Amadeus had to be the best movie ever made. There were still a few films out there in the world he hadn’t seen, but he didn’t think that would ever change. Although he did enjoy chuckling, time and time again, to Spies Like Us, Ghostbusters, Galaxy Quest and Back To The Future. Those were just light-hearted films, however, they weren’t the sort of fare that moved you. On the other hand, they weren’t pap, either. One doesn’t need to be moved to be happy, Derek supposed. Laughter was just being moved in a different fashion. He never seemed to tire of the things he liked best, though. He found new things to admire in them with every viewing. Movies were not his favorite of all things, but he thought it would be nice to know someone at least as interested as he was.
Miranda-Julia liked video games. When he was over at her house, she spent hours proving to him how much better she was at nearly everything. She was especially good at combat-oriented titles like Soul Caliber on her ancient Sega Dreamcast, or Goldeneye on her even older Nintendo 64. She was never happier then when she was flailing away at him with brutal punches and kicks, or shooting him full of holes. All the while, his thumbs and trigger fingers tapped confusedly at the buttons, getting tired and numb. To Miranda-Julia, it was more important than just amusement, if it could be called amusement at all. Her immersion in the simulation was complete. She always had to be the good guy seeking justice, and Derek had to be the bad guy waiting to be corrected.
Tonight, he was alone, and as much as the darkness had frightened him the night before, this night he felt an equivalent calm. He had been circling the yard, walking along the house’s old fence, careful not to drag his hand on the prickly surface. Sometimes he stopped to lean against it, his mind racing with ideas. So much had happened to occupy his thoughts that he found himself distracted all of the time. It was bad enough that he gave up trying to divert himself. He just came outside and surrendered to the quiet. Though the quiet was not really quiet. Not anymore. The night was ready to shout, running thick with possibilities.
Since the boot-trodden days of empire, young men awaiting transport had nights like these; ancient, somber evenings they passed watching the sea, awaiting the advent of sails on the morning’s horizon. Derek thought often, now, on what Douglas had written of his life. Mainly, the wayfaring he’d done after leaving the army. It was a spotty tale of a young man on a hunt across the Earth. A hunt for the greatest of hunters. Douglas had followed the dim trail of the Bunyine throughout what he called the Levant, Asia Minor, then to Greece. Disparate places unhappily sharing the same part of the world that had all, at one time, harbored this monstrous resident lurking in the mists.
He’d trekked up rocky mountain passes to secluded villages and hamlets located on the lonely fringes of the world, places where the strange myth of a cat-beast still lingered in tales told to children. He’d discovered caves it might have haunted for centuries. He’d searched a catacombs carved by a long-dead king that had been one of its many misguided worshipers, part of a heritage who’d seen to its needs. It eventually led him home to the United Kingdom, finally, to Pennsylvania. How the beast managed to cross such vast distances over water belongs to the realm of conjecture. But it was here now. Alone, ancient, and forgotten, sleeping in a hole cut out of rock by the last of those who would ever bother over it.
After hours had passed, Derek was finally done daydreaming, or whatever you call it after dark. When he returned to the house, though, he found he couldn’t go to bed. His mother never fettered him, excessively, with rules. Not because she was too permissive, she was far from it, Derek had just never required constant oversight. She found that when she left him to his own devices, he always did the right thing. He went down to the basement, riffled his stack of cassette tapes, and put Amadeus in, again.
The basement had been a root cellar a century before, little more than a cold hole in the ground. Somewhere along the line, a water heater had been added and the root cellar became, simply, a cellar, by default. When his father bought the house, he assumed the task of converting it, fully, into a livable space. First, ripping out the old floorboards and pouring in concrete. Second, adding thick carpeting, then insulating the walls and putting in drywall. Finally, adding a small bathroom. It had been his father’s hideaway, once, filled with the paraphernalia of his hobbies and distractions. A record collection and turntable, models of old warships, a rack for his many Sherlock-Holmes-style pipes, a small parlor guitar that had once hung from the wall. All of these things had been packed away after his death, when Derek was only three years old. Derek didn’t like to imagine what that scene had been like: a lonesome widow gathering up her husband’s things. It must have hurt to see his possessions all out on display, looking as if he were going to return to enjoy them, again.
The tape began halfway through, which was fine. The video’s image quality was distorted by a cowlick at the top that was cuffed to the right. He felt awake, now, but he knew that could change any second. It was that time of night, the hour when eyes shut without any warning. Just a few minutes into the film, however, Derek began to feel uneasy. He found himself shifting his position on the couch, squeezing his hands into fists. It began like the familiar effects of caffeine. Pretty soon, though, he had to stand up. He started pacing back-and-forth in front of the television. The basement was dark, the only illumination was the light of the screen. Soon, Derek was nearly stomping as he paced, his breaths becoming heavier and more rapid. Then he stopped. His lips chattered, his body trembled with a roiling, dark energy. He knew, without a doubt, that he was not alone.
His head slowly turned, eyes focusing on something over his shoulder that was clearly moving. He squinted, as if peering down the sight of a hunting rifle. In the dim light, he could see the outline of a figure partially hidden behind the water heater. A silhouette, a small one, like a child cowering in the dark. Derek could just make out a head and a right shoulder peeking out from behind the aluminum canister. It looked to be less than his own height. Though it chose to move, it seemed as if it could stand as still as a statue. Derek was so frightened he couldn’t move. It wasn’t like normal fear. He was paralyzed. Only the insensible kind of panic that overtook him in the woods could get him moving, again. A moment later, Derek was released from the fear. It was as if he’d been pardoned, like being trapped in a giant’s palm and simply let go. But the being, the person, the demon, whatever it was, still watched him from its hiding place. Derek turned his whole body towards it, but he made no attempt to move. This creature was in control, which was obvious, but the silence in the room was as awful as the darkness.
“You’re not welcome here,” Derek said, finding a dollop of courage.
The thing that was there said nothing. At first, it was as still as a lizard lazing on a sunny rock. After what seemed a long time, Derek watched its hand slowly slide down the water heater. Later on, the boy would find a wipe mark in the dust.
“One cannot wait to be invited,” the creature said. Its voice was in a high register, like a child’s, but rough and raspy. Derek knew, instinctively, that whatever this was, it was not a child. No matter how young it may seem, this intruder was older than anything that he'd ever encountered. Perhaps older than almost anything that could be rightly called alive. It was strange. It was unique. It was terrifying.
Then…there was nothing. The space behind the water heater was as quiet as a mausoleum. Derek rushed across the room and switched on the ceiling light. He stood there, pressed against the wall, for a long, tense minute, then he pushed away and threw himself against the bathroom door, opposite where the figure had been standing. There was, of course, nothing there but an empty space. Derek got no closer, but he stared at the spot for a while. Soon, though, he shut off the television and left the basement. The quiet of the house was absolute. Silence was not evidence of absence, though. Not anymore.
When he walked past his mother’s room, seeing the light on from under her door, he was, suddenly, overcome with emotion. All his life, she’d been his guardian, but there was nothing she could do about any of this. Not this time. He felt so bad for her. She’d lost the ability to protect him, like any good mother would want to do. It was unfair to her, this whole situation, and he saw her blaming herself for whatever became of him. But what was he to do? He wasn’t the cause of any of this, yet, he was inextricably caught up in it. He knew that his seeking out the Bunyine was not where this had all begun. It had started before he was born, before Douglas Darren Windward had come along, even. This was something bigger than them all. The Windwards were damned, and without a doubt, so was he.
In his bedroom, Derek sat on his bed for a moment. A faint flickering inside the ceiling light made him look up where a trapped fly bounced around inside the glass. The flickering inspired something in him. He stood up and walked to his closet, dug through some junk and brought out a plastic cylinder with a power cord coming out the bottom. Derek plugged it in, his old night light, and he turned it on. After, he lay back down, staring up at the ceiling, where artificial constellations twisted. Though he tried to distract himself, something told Derek that this was never going to end. This was just what life was like now.