Malorie(43)

He pauses again. The train seems to glide. The musicians play soft, simple chords, back and forth, back and forth.

When Dean talks again, she hears tears in his voice.

“One day or night, who can tell, I woke to the sound of the kids laughing. You’d think this is a good thing, right? Any time two kids can laugh after months of living in complete darkness, shitting and pissing in buckets, you’d think that’s a good thing. But it didn’t sound right to me. Didn’t sound happy. I sat up quick and stared long into the darkness, thinking maybe I’d dreamt the sound of them. But I heard them again. Wide awake. They were somewhere deeper in the house. I called out and they just…laughed some more. I got up and left the bedroom, feeling my way along the walls, thinking I was going to find them in the living room. Macy would tell me what she was laughing at and what was making her little brother laugh so hard, and that would be that. Right? Well, when I got to the living room, they sounded deeper in the house still. Way into the house, way back by the laundry room. I passed through the living room, blind, arms out, calling for them, and when I got to the laundry room, I heard them laughing behind me. Way back into the house. As if they were back by the bedroom I’d woke in.”

The train shakes, a single bump. Dean goes on.

“So I headed back through the living room, into the hall again, into the bedroom. I’m calling, ‘Macy! Eric! You’re scaring Daddy! Where are you guys?’ And the laughter came again, back behind me. As if…as if I kept passing through the place they actually were, if that makes sense. As if they were laughing in the living room and I simply couldn’t find them there.

“So I went to the basement. Even though that’s not where the sound was coming from. I took the steps, calling out to them, sweating by now, thinking, over and over, They’re playing a game, they’re playing a game. Because that’s what I wanted, isn’t it? Didn’t I want to discover that, despite the sealed windows and doors, despite the plain food, the lack of light and exercise, despite the fact that Daddy was obviously scared, despite the perpetual darkness, didn’t I want to think my kids were having fun? When I got to the basement, I heard them laughing upstairs. So I went right back up. By now I was yelling. ‘Macy! Eric! This isn’t funny, dammit! You’re scaring Daddy!’ Then I heard them whispering. And I knew what this type of whispering meant. I guess you could call it conspiring, though usually when parents put it that way they’re trying to be funny about it. This wasn’t funny. I couldn’t find my own kids in the darkness of our own home and they’d gone from laughing to whispering. And I recognized the type of whispering, too. I’m sure you’ve experienced it with your own kids. The sound of little ones daring one another to do something. Something they hadn’t ever done before.

“So I ran. All through the house. Most of the furniture was out of the way because we’d set it up like that, because we lived in darkness. But I clipped my hip on the fireplace pretty bad and I bashed the side of my head against a wall. None of that mattered at the time except that it slowed me down. I got across the house again and heard them whispering behind me. So I turned and went back, and there it was again, the two of them, whispering behind me again. I was screaming by then. Howling their names, demanding they tell me where they were hiding and now. And they did tell me. But not with words. The next thing I heard was a dull…hitting sound. Sounded like it does when you drive a knife into a melon. I just…I…”

Malorie doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to express what she feels.

“I found them then,” Dean says. “Beside the very bed I woke up in. The two of them dead from having stabbed one another with knives from the kitchen drawer. The knives I’d used a thousand times to cut up their canned meat and fruit. They didn’t cry out when they did it. They didn’t make any sound at all. They laughed and laughed and then dared one another to do it. I’ll never know exactly how it was done. But the day my two little ones went mad and killed each other, that’s the day I unsealed the back door. To carry them outside. To bury them. And even then, racked with despair, completely fucking destroyed, I kept thinking, They saw one, despite everything you did, Dean, they saw one anyway. And you know what, Jill?”

“What?”

“I never found the sliver.”

Malorie doesn’t ask him what he means. She knows what he means.

“I never found the hole in the wall, the space between boards, the infinitesimal spot they must’ve looked through, looked outside, to have seen what did that to them. Oh, I tried. You can trust me on that. I looked everywhere with a flashlight, no longer caring if I saw one myself or not. Just moved through the darkness of that house for six weeks, searching. Mostly on my knees. Looking for that sliver of light, that Goddamn little space, overlooked, that they, as children, who saw the world different than I did, must’ve found.”

“My name is Malorie,” she says. Because she doesn’t know what else to say.

Dean laughs. It’s strained, and it’s loaded with tears.

Malorie reaches across the table but doesn’t find his hand right away. For a second it feels as if she’s on her knees, aping the walk of children, looking for light in a house of darkness.

Then she finds it. Or he finds hers. Either way, she grips his hand.

“I’m so sorry.”