Little Emmett Read online

  Somewhere familiar.

  It was Clark who noticed him first, saw him standing stiff as a mannequin, looking as though his soul had left his body. Sensing something was off, Clark turned to the others. “Hey, you guys…”

  Pulled back in time by memories he would rather have forgotten, Emmett saw them approaching, heads cocked, their questioning voices muffled in the outskirts of his thoughts. For a moment, it slipped his mind what he meant to tell them. He closed his eyes, focusing on one body at a time…

  Someone put an arm around his shoulder. It was Clark, asking why he was crying. Was he?

  Without opening his eyes, Emmett finally found his voice. He pushed away those other memories, back into the dark where they belonged, back into the ground where they were buried.

  “I found Lionel.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Emmett managed to fall behind rather easily as the others funneled in and out of the house, back and forth in a shock of impending gloom.

  As Mrs. Holmes learned of these new developments, the halls swelled with her animal noises. Emmett stepped aside as the others chased her down into the foyer, into the yard. Unnoticed, he remained indoors. He went into the boys’ bedroom, shut the door behind him. A terrible guilt crushed down on top of him. Had they already told her it was him, he wondered? That he’d found the body of her dead husband?

  He went to the window, standing beside Tyler’s bed, and listened to the unearthly grief just outside. He climbed onto the bed, kneeled at the glass. He couldn’t see her immediately below their window, or the body, but he saw a few of the others fanned around the scene. Jackie with her hands over her mouth, crying silently. Tyler with his arms folded, spinning in slow circles trying not to watch too closely. Emmett was glad he wasn’t with them. He didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to remember what she must have looked like, pulling the frozen remains of her husband out from the snow, holding his naked body against her own, and how cold that must have felt.

  When it seemed her sobbing would never cease, Emmett left the window, Tyler’s bed, and crawled into his own, content to hide there until this day was over.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  They buried Lionel that same day. It was quick despite the hard dirt. Tobie and Tyler dug a hole together—this time Tyler did his fair share—and they wrapped Lionel’s body in sheets and placed him in the cold ground. No words were spoken. Mrs. Holmes couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted comfort or not, and decided not to be present during the burial. This meant Eileen was forced to grieve for her father alone. As Tobie and Tyler shoveled the dirt back over the hole, the other children gathered around her, lending her their company at the very least.

  It was painfully obvious to Emmett—as well as the others, most likely—that winter’s bitter grip would hold onto them for several more days yet.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Just when I thought things might start returning to normal,” Eileen muttered, unaware Emmett sat just behind her at the kitchen table. Or maybe she knew. She muttered a lot to herself these days.

  Unable to listen any longer without saying something, Emmett tried his best at reassurance.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  She didn’t know he was sitting behind her, as it turned out. She startled at his words, and dropped and broke a glass inside the sink. Emmett flinched. She bent over the counter, exhausted. She groaned.

  “No… it’s not okay.”

  She stomped from the kitchen into the hallway, into her bedroom, and shut the door. Emmett remained at the table, afraid to move lest the house fall down on top of him.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  He awoke hot and clammy under his covers. Another nightmare. He was having them more often than not these nights. Dark skies. Dark holes in the ground. He dreamed of his mother, and he dreamed of death. Never one without the other. Each night he surfaced from them, gasping, and he was relieved.

  …you have all the world’s knowledge inside you…

  One of the last things she’d told him before she left. He couldn’t help thinking she was entirely wrong about that. About everything.

  The world didn’t make any sense to him, not at all. Things which once made a person happy could one day ruin them, often in an instant. People were so fragile. He was, too. It scared him, how fragile he was.

  Mrs. Holmes was falling apart before their very eyes, and even her daughter was helpless to fight it. It was a different kind of sickness working its way through the Holmes house. Like a black hole, it absorbed anyone close enough to feel it…

  Feeling the urge to pee, he shuffled out of bed, that sweet pain in his bladder singing for haste. This was a nightly game, now. Nightmares and late-night urination.

  At the door, taking hold of the doorknob, he found it already turning inside his hand and he gasped. He stood back as the door opened abruptly into him, a body moving through in its own hurry.

  “Oh!”

  The other person flinched, a sharp intake of breath. A familiarly pleasant scent tickled Emmett’s nostrils and took him by even greater surprise.

  “Jesus…”

  It was Tyler.

  “Sorry,” Emmett said.

  Saying not another word, Tyler forced his way past Emmett on his way to bed. A little out of sorts, Emmett stepped into the hall, shut the door behind him, and stood there for a minute or two. If his nightmare hadn’t jolted him awake, Tyler sure had.

  That previous scent still lingered.

  He stood in the dark hall, nostrils flared—a memory just out of reach as the familiar, flowery fragrance weakened into nothing.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  It was not as Mrs. Holmes had told Emmett. Certainty of Lionel’s death did not in fact make it easier to accept. Somehow, the truth seemed a great deal harder on everyone than the unknown.

  One afternoon, as Eileen slept away her sadness, and Tyler his loneliness, the children occupied themselves as best they could. Jackie read a book in Mrs. Holmes’ chair. Clark reread the comics he’d been given for his birthday, worn and dog-eared by now. Emmett sat with Bailey on the hardwood floor just outside the reading room, drawing and coloring various things until even Bailey grew bored and sleepy and excused herself upstairs to take a nap.

  “This sucks,” Tobie said. “Is this what we’ll do for the rest of our lives? Sit around listening to people cry in the next room?”

  “Things are just hard right now,” Jackie said. “It won’t be forever.”

  “I want to see the fort again, but I know Tyler won’t want to go. It’s stupid. We shouldn’t need him. He’s not much older than you. And it’s not like he watches us, anyway. He just sleeps on a rock the whole time.”

  “Well,” Jackie said, “I don’t really care about the fort, either, so even if I was allowed to babysit, I wouldn’t want to go.”

  “What about you, Clark?”

  Clark, hearing his name, looked up, confused. “Huh?”

  “Want to go to the fort?”

  “Mrs. Holmes hasn’t said we can go back, yet.”

  “It’s been months! She doesn’t care.”

  Clark thought about it. “No, I don’t want to. Not really.”

  “Come on!”

  Emmett immediately felt Tobie’s eyes on him. Content with ignoring his stare, Tobie became impatient.

  “Emmett, aren’t you bored?”

  He halted his pencil, the tip resting at the end of a nonsensical design which would prove just how bored he really was. But he had to wonder. Was he bored enough for that?

  “Yeah, but…” He paused. “I don’t want to get in trouble if Mrs. Holmes doesn’t want us to go.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Tobie pleaded. “And it’s better than sitting in here all day long, don’t you think?”

  Emmett agreed, although he wasn’t sure how much fun it would be just the two of them. If he had to pick only one person to go with, Tobie would likely be last.

  “I think I want to stay here.”

&nb
sp; “No!” Tobie implored. “It’ll be fun, I promise. We don’t even have to stay long. I just want to see if it survived the winter. That’s all. Anything to get away from this… depressing house.”

  Now that was something Emmett couldn’t argue against. As much as he thought he wouldn’t enjoy sharing Tobie’s company alone, he did desperately wish to be away. It was suffocating, the tension in the house.

  With that in mind, Emmett—apprehensive as he may have been to join Tobie just the two of them—agreed at last to visit the fort.

  If nothing else, he thought, it would be a much-needed distraction.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “I wish there was anywhere else we could go.”

  Tobie kicked his feet through the soggy woodland debris as they trekked toward the creek, hands in his pockets, while Emmett walked alongside him having very little to say.

  “This place isn’t home anymore.”

  Emmett regarded him thoughtfully. His words instilled both yearning and dread. It was hard enough imagining very far into the future. To imagine even another year of the Holmes house in its current state was… unbearable.

  “It’ll get better,” Emmett said, parroting what he’d heard Jackie say several times over in the last couple months. Whether he believed it or not wasn’t important. “Mrs. Holmes will get better…”

  “Eileen will leave before then. And then we’ll be on our own.”

  “Tyler will get better, too…”

  “Tyler almost as bad as Mrs. Holmes. Or haven’t you noticed?”

  “Everyone’s sad Lionel’s gone…”

  “Tyler’s not just sad Lionel’s gone.” Tobie laughed. “There’s a lot of messed-up stuff happening that you don’t know anything about, Emmett.”

  “Like what?”

  They were following along the stream now. Though it was the fort they’d come for, it was the last thing on either of their minds.

  “You’re too young to get it.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Tobie dropped the subject indefinitely no matter Emmett’s objections. They walked a while not talking at all. Either way, Emmett was glad to be out of the house for a bit.

  “There it is.”

  The fort lay ahead, visible down a slight slope through the trees. Tobie ran to it, and Emmett joined him. They arrived on skidding heels, panting, a smile on each of their faces. To Emmett’s surprise, the fort was just as they left it. The roof was as intact as the day it’d been built.

  “Think a bear made its home inside?” Tobie asked.

  “A bear?”

  Tobie approached the open entrance, crouched down low enough to peer inside a little. He remarked on how dark it was. He got down on his hands and knees. He gasped.

  “Oh my god.”

  “What?” Emmett asked. “What is it?”

  “There’s something sleeping in there,” Tobie said. “Something big.”

  “No there’s not.”

  “I’m telling the truth. Look.”

  Tobie sat up. He moved over to give Emmett room.

  “I’m not looking.”

  “I’m serious, Emmett. Look.”

  “I’m not looking.”

  Tobie rolled his eyes. “It’s asleep, whatever it is. Just look.”

  Emmett thought about it. The way Tobie chewed the inside of his lip gave the impression he was trying not to laugh, which gave Emmett further pause. He shook his head.

  “You’re doing it again.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Trying to scare me.”

  Emmett turned his back to the fort. He wandered across the small clearing toward the rock where Tyler normally rested. He stood there, looking past the gentle creek into the woods beyond.

  “I wasn’t going to scare you,” Tobie said, coming to stand next to him. “There’s nothing down there. I was kidding about that. But I wasn’t going to scare you.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  Tobie held a stick in his hand. He paced in a circle around the large rock, scratching the stick over its surface as he went. At this rate, Emmett was sure they’d get bored or sick of each other before long.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” Tobie asked.

  Caught off guard, Emmett looked Tobie up and down, confirming whether or not he was making a joke like usual.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I heard Jackie and Clark talking about me a few days ago. Jackie was talking about our older brother, and… she told Clark she was worried I might be like him.” Tobie sat on the rock, pulled his feet up and picked at his shoe. “His name was Peter. I’m pretty sure he’s dead by now, but Jackie doesn’t think so…”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” Emmett said.

  Not yet, he wanted to add.

  “I feel like I am, sometimes. Sometimes, it’s like… I can be okay one second, and then a second later it’s like…” He paused. “…like I want to cry, or something. Do you ever get that?”

  Emmett shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”

  However crazy Tobie thought he was, it was a safe bet he wasn’t hallucinating ungodly abominations visiting him in the middle of the night, or playing otherworldly music to him when the lights went out. Emmett thought he probably had more in common with their brother than they did.

  “Emmett…” Tobie sighed heavily, a pained sound. He lay back, spread out over the rock. It looked incredibly uncomfortable. When he spoke, his words came quickly. “I-know-you-know-I-stole-your-necklace-and-I’m-sorry.”

  Emmett opened his mouth—a dumb little O, as if about to whistle—at a loss for words.

  “I don’t know why I took it. Well, I do, but…”

  “Was it because I hit you with that stick?”

  Tobie thought. “Even I knew I deserved that. I think I was just mad at everyone. I don’t know. Sometimes… I get jealous seeing you all get along, and I’m always such a jerk… I don’t know why I’m such a jerk… Anyway, I’m sorry I took it. I’m glad you took it back. I know you weren’t going to say anything.” Tobie sat up with a groan. “You know… you’re actually pretty smart for your age.”

  “I am?”

  “Yeah. I’ve noticed you stay out of stuff most of the time. We all act like idiots, fighting over every little thing. But you just kind of sit back and watch. That’s smart.”

  Emmett grimaced. “Thanks…”

  Tobie stood from the rock and patted his butt clean of whatever dirt had gathered there. He turned to Emmett and offered his hand.

  “Truce, then?”

  Emmett gave his hand a funny look. After some brief consideration, he took it and gave him one hard shake. When he glanced up, he saw possibly the friendliest grin he’d ever seen on Tobie’s face. Contagious. It transformed him. Out of all the others back at the house, he thought he might be the first Tobie had shown it to.

  Something caught Emmett’s attention just then, movement over Tobie’s shoulder. His stomach flipped, a gasp trapped in his throat.

  “How’s it going?”

  Tobie visibly jumped, his eyes so big they were nearly startled out of his head. He turned in place and they froze together, shoulder to shoulder.

  “I’m sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you…”

  Emmett recognized him at once. Back again, today of all days. Only this time, he was on their side of the creek. A bit too close for either of their liking.

  The man waved as he approached, smiling sheepishly. Noticing the dismay on both their faces, he stopped. He surveyed the woods around them.

  “Just the two of you today?” he asked.

  “What do you want?” Tobie asked bluntly.

  The man hunched his shoulders, indicating he didn’t necessarily want anything, and seemed surprised by the idea that he would want something.

  “I’m just taking a walk, is all. Saw you both hanging out and thought it would be nice to say hello.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t say hello to weird dudes spying
on kids in the middle of the woods.”

  The man burst into laughter, shrill and unnervingly jovial. Birds fled their branches over their heads at the sound. It took all of Emmett’s willpower to stand still. He thought they should run, but decided he’d follow Tobie’s lead.

  “Spying?” The man shook his head, humored. “Oh, I wasn’t spying. I was just taking a walk like I said, and—”

  “Then keep walking.”

  The man held that eerie smile as long as he could, but it was finally starting to falter. He held it even when his eyes were scowling.

  “You’re not very friendly, are you?”

  “No, we’re not,” Tobie said. “So leave us alone. Please.”

  With the additional ‘please’, it was then Emmett realized Tobie was just as scared as he was. It was no coincidence that this man should run into them again the first day they returned to their fort.

  Months later.

  Tobie must have been thinking the same thing.

  “Have you been hanging around here all this time?” he asked. “Fucking creep.”

  The eerie smile vanished.

  “Don’t use that language with me, boy.”

  “I’ll use whatever language I want, asshole.”

  There was a humming in Emmett’s ears. He thought it might have been his heart, beating fast as the wings of those birds who left them moments ago. He remembered to breathe—a shaky sound.

  “Do you approve of your friend’s behavior?” the man asked, acknowledging Emmett. “You look like you might be the more reasonable one. Friendlier.”

  “Don’t talk to him, either,” Tobie said.

  The man laughed, and it was a cold sound. He regarded Emmett, bent his head toward him.

  “You let him do all the talking for you, huh?”

  “Leave us alone, I said!” Tobie screamed. “Go away!”

  The man put his hands up defensively. “There’s plenty of woods here for the three of us. If I’m bothering you so badly, you’re welcome to walk away.” His eyes darted to Emmett. That eerie grin spread across his face. “You’re welcome to stay and chat, though, if your friend wants to leave. You look like the kind of guy who’d be fun to chat with.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you, either,” Emmett said. The words stumbled out of his mouth, quavering like the legs on a newborn fawn. “We want you to leave us alone.”