Floating Staircase(47)

Kyle was silent; he looked like he was unsure if I’d asked him a legitimate question that required an answer or if I was teasing him.

I sat on the floor and pulled my sneakers on over bare feet. I’d grown accustomed to sneaking out of the house with Adam and had done so on numerous occasions without much concern—I believe some part of me understood that had we ever been caught by our father, Adam, the older of the two, would have sustained the brunt of our father’s wrath: for me, a buffer of sorts—but on this night I was cutting out alone and with no buffer. With some hesitancy, I questioned my loyalty as a brother: if caught, would I try to lessen my punishment by throwing Adam under the bus, claiming this had been his plan from early in the summer and I was only continuing the trend?

“Let me come,” Kyle said from his bed. The moonlight was filtering in through the partially shaded windows, making his blond hair shimmer a ghostly white.

“No.”

“I could be a good lookout.”

“I don’t need a lookout.”

“What if the man with the gun comes back?”

I paused, lacing up my sneaker. “How’d you know about that?” We’d never said anything to Kyle—or anyone—about the old goat who’d fired his rifle into the air.

“I heard Adam talking to Jimmy Dutch in the yard before he got sick.”

“Did you say anything to Mom or Dad?” I knew that he hadn’t, otherwise it would have been our hides. Still, I had to ask.

“No.”

“And you better not.”

“I won’t. But let me come. I’ll be quiet. I’ll be good.”

(This is the moment I relive every time I shut my eyes, every time I think back to the events of that summer. There is no escaping any of it. There is no denying.)

“Okay,” I said after a time. “But you have to be quiet, and you have to do everything I tell you. No question. Got it?”

“Yeah.” He sprung upright in bed; even in the darkness I could make out the ear-to-ear grin on his round face.

“Now get your stuff.”



It is fair to say both those boys died that night. I will; I will say it. I am a testament to that. The walking dead.



—and these two brothers sneak out of the house, quiet as mice treading the floorboards of a vicarage. They enter the woods, wearing nothing but their swimming trunks and sneakers, each with a towel draped around his neck. The dark shapes of the trees crowd in all around them. They are convinced the trees are moving around them like living creatures; yet when they turn and look at them head-on, they are as still as statues... as trees. They walk swiftly beneath the cast of the moon through the wooded path, then finally down to the bank of the river. This is summer; this is grand; this is what it is all about.

Up ahead, the river opens wide as it approaches the mouth of the bay. Both boys feel the immensity of it in their guts. The older boy, the thirteen-year-old, continues quickly down the riverbank toward the looming double helix structure.

“Are the stories real?” the younger boy wants to know.

“What stories?”

“The stories Dad tells.”

The older boy, who has dark curly hair and a body like a lizard or a bird, with long arms and long legs, says, “Yes. Of course they are, stupid.” Trying to frighten his little brother. “Why would Dad lie to us?”

“I don’t know.”

“They’re real, all of them.”

“Even the Wendigo?”

“Especially the Wendigo. It’s probably out there right now, watching us.”

“No,” says the younger boy. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” Chuckling.

“You’re just trying to scare me.”

“Will you be scared when it comes time to jump?”

“Jump where?”

The thirteen-year-old points at the threatening dinosaur shape of the double dock. “Off there. Off the top pier.”

Suddenly, the younger boy looks very frightened. All their father’s stories are real to him, the monsters and the imaginary boys who live in the woods and eat children. It is a warm night, but the little boy stands there shivering, his pale chest pimply with gooseflesh and his teeth chattering like a rattlesnake’s warning. He looks white, too white. Almost transparent. The older brother thinks, Ghost.

“Climb the stairs to the top,” instructs the older brother, “then take a deep breath, run, and jump off.”

“Jump,” parrots the younger brother, the uncertain tone of his small voice bending the word somewhere between a statement and a question.

“You’re not scared, are you?”

The younger brother shakes his head.

“Then climb up and jump. I’ll hold your towel.”

“First?”

“First what?”

“You want me to go first?”

“Unless you’re too scared. Unless you’re a chickenshit.”

“Don’t say that,” reprimands the little brother, though his voice is too weak and trembling to sound imposing. “Don’t say that word.”

“Shit,” repeats his brother. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Stop it.”

“And f*ck, too,” says the older brother, lowering his voice. This is the forbidden word, the word of all words. Biblical in its mystery and strength. “Are you a f*cking chicken?”