Delicate Monsters (19 page)

“You had every reason to be furious,” she'd hissed in his ear as she held him in her arms. “That woman was a real bitch to treat you like that. She deserved worse than what you did. Don't you dare let anyone tell you otherwise.”

And wasn't that how it'd gone for years? Every time he was angry or acted out or got into trouble, she comforted him and let him know his feelings were valid. That's what a mother did. She took care of him even in her own pain. And when the bad stuff with Miles went down a few years later, no one was quicker to stand up for her than Emerson. She'd never hurt her kids. She loved them too much.

They were all she had.

 

chapter thirty-five

The cellar doors lay flung open, splayed out like airplane wings. Combined with the mystery of the gravity-defying champagne bottle, as well as the champagne itself, the whole thing appeared to be some sort of strange invitation.

Come on down, Sadie,
the doors said.

We'll tell you our secrets.

We promise.

Just come to us.

She crept closer. Sweat dripped down her forehead. The batten doors themselves were falling apart, on their last legs. Sadie could only see the bottoms of them, but the bare plywood that was visible was splintered and torn. Shredded, really, like someone or something had been trying very hard to get out.

Sadie stood on the edge of the cement staircase and stared into the gloomy descent. Hesitation was for cowards. Either she went down or she didn't. If some creepy serial killer was lurking around in there, waiting for the perfect moment to jump out and murder her, so be it. The way she figured, it was far more likely that whoever had cut the chain and opened the doors was up
here,
hiding in the trees or prowling among the grapevines. Because whoever it was had to be the same person who'd moved the champagne bottle and lured her in this direction. And now that someone wanted her to go into the cellar.

So she did.

She took the first step down the crumbling staircase, then the second, keeping her hand gripped tightly around the railing as she moved. The deeper she got, the better the cool air felt on her damp skin, but everything smelled stuffy, stale, and also sweet, like old fruit. She cupped her free hand over her mouth and nose.

She kept walking.

Down, down, down.

Sadie paused on the bottom step. Sunlight warmed a small patch of the dirt floor, but everything else was cloaked in blackness. The cellar stretched a good fifty feet in every direction, rows of wine barrels and shelving that ran right to the rafters, heaps of old tools and maintenance equipment that lay beneath canvas tarps, and set against the western wall was the old corking station. Sadie took a deep breath, then rose on her toes and reached for the dangling chain of the room's bare bulb socket. She pulled it.

Nothing happened.

Well, damn. The only other light source she knew of was a hand-crank lantern that was stored beneath one of the tarps. Or at least that's where it'd been the last time she'd come down here, years ago. Sadie stepped onto the dirt floor and out of the patch of sunlight.

She couldn't see anything.

She inched forward, small shuffling steps, until her feet made contact with canvas. Then she dropped to her knees and thrust one hand out, feeling all over for the lantern, ready to raise hell if anything living ran up her arm. Her fingers closed around the metal handle. She drew the lantern to her chest and turned the crank as fast as she could.

The whir of the motor filled the air and without warning, the light came on, warming the dark space with its glow.

Sadie stood up and turned around, holding the lantern out in front of her to see the rest of the space.

“Holy shit,” she breathed. “Oh, Jesus.”

 

chapter thirty-six

He and May stood in the middle of his bedroom with the door closed. Emerson felt out of control. Like he was losing his mind. Like he didn't know who he was anymore.

She reached up, kissed his cheek, his forehead, the side of his neck. “What are you saying?”

“I don't know what I'm saying.”

“You think your mom lied to you about your dad?”

“Shh! Keep your voice down!”

She whispered, “Is that what you think?”

“I don't know. Sort of. More, like, she let me lie to myself.”

May pulled him toward her. Her hands were on his hips, gripping the belt loops of his pants. “Come on. You were just a kid, Em.”

“So?”

“Kids repress bad stuff all the time. It's normal.”

“It is?”

She nodded. “Your mom probably should've taken you to a therapist or something.”

“Maybe. We didn't have money for things like that. We still don't.”

“Oh.”

Emerson felt the back of his neck go warm. “Actually, I'm pretty sure I saw a school counselor in fifth grade.”

“You did?”

“Just once. She tried to talk to me about my dad, but I told her she'd be better off talking to kids who really needed her help, like those retards and idiots who can't look you in the eye without stuttering.”

May's eyes went wide. “Wait. You seriously said that? Em, that's awful.”

“I didn't mean it! I was
pissed
. I didn't want to talk about my feelings and cry in front of her, and I knew that's what she wanted me to do.”

She softened. “Sounds like it was an emotional time.”

Emerson shook his head. He never thought about it that way. Emotional. Those years were nothing but a black cloud in his mind, a swirling storm of loss and anger. But it was also a time of newfound vastness, of possibility. “Oh hell, I don't know. I mean, I
was
kind of a shitty kid back then, but we did okay, considering. Then Miles got sick and my mom had to deal with that. She got arrested, you know. Because of Trish Reed's dad.”

“Your mom was arrested?”

“Yeah.”

“Your mom doesn't like me.”

“It's not that,” he said weakly. “She just doesn't understand some things.”

May pressed her lips together. “Well, why'd she get arrested?”

“The court said she was making Miles sick on purpose. It's some sort of mental thing. Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Mothers make their kids sick so they can take them to the hospital and get all this attention.”

“She did that to him?”

“No! But Miles was in the hospital so much, people thought she did.”

“Poor Miles,” she said.

“I guess.”

“Why would they think something like that if she wasn't doing it?”

“Who knows? She was always working anyway, so she couldn't have done it. That's what I told the judge, and they let her go.” Emerson gave a laugh. “If anything,
I
hurt him more than she did.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know. Once I put some window cleaner in a drink as a joke and gave it to him. He got so sick he puked blood. Had to go to the ER and everything.”

May dropped her jaw. “That's
horrible
.”

“Nah, he was fine. It wasn't a big deal.”

“Sounds like a big deal to me. You could've killed him.”

“No way. Brothers do crap like that all the time. It's guy stuff.”

May didn't answer, but her hands were at her sides. She wasn't touching him anymore.

Emerson bent his knees. Wrapped both arms around her and pulled her close. “Don't think bad of me, May. Please? It was dumb. I was just a kid.”

She paused. “I know.”

“You're sure?”

She nodded.

“Really?”

She nodded again.

“Good,” he said, smiling.

And then he kissed her.

 

chapter thirty-seven

Birds. The birds were everywhere.

Dozens of them.

They were spread out on the dirt. Across the marble-topped slab. They were nailed to the wall and the wood beams that ran up to the rafters. All with their wings pulled wide as if in flight. All with their heads missing.

Sadie walked around slowly, taking stock of it all. There were hawks, crows, pigeons, robins, sparrows, tiny hummingbirds with green iridescent feathers, and one grotesque creature that took Sadie a moment to recognize as a wild turkey, maybe even the old tom she'd seen strutting around in the road the other day. Its dark body was positioned awkwardly beside the others, as if in death, the wretched thing believed it might finally soar with its lighter-weight counterparts.

In addition to the birds, there were words written everywhere, splashed across the walls in bright dripping letters that Sadie mistook for blood before realizing it was paint. Someone had used an old brush and red paint as bright as a berry.

The words read:

salute

press

perry

passé

riposte

thrust

touché

And beneath that:

help me

please

help

 

chapter thirty-eight

Emerson pulled back from the kiss with May. Not that the kissing wasn't making him feel good on a day when nothing felt good, but his limbs, his whole being felt restless, unsatisfied. He walked away from her and over to the window where he stared out at the street below. There was a boy jogging with a large dog, some kind of shepherd mix, and two kids wrapped in beach towels walking home from the river. They both wore flip-flops. “You know, I realized, this thing with Miles, it's happened before.”

“What's happened?” May asked from the other side of the room.

“Him disappearing.”

“It
has
?”

Emerson nodded, still gazing out the window. “Yup. When he was seven. He disappeared for a whole day. Freaked everyone the hell out.”

“Where was he? How'd you find him?”

“The owner of this vineyard where my mom used to work found him. He'd gotten locked down in this old cellar on the back of their property and couldn't get out.”

“Scary.”

“The vineyard guy was so mad. Like, really pissed. He fired my mom the next week. Said Miles could've died down there.”

“Well, that's kind of crappy. I mean, it was an accident, right?”

He turned to look at her. May was sitting on his bed, long legs folded beneath her like a fawn. “Miles was different after that, you know? Just weird. Kind of a weird kid. He had nightmares. Got picked on in school. Started getting sick all the time. I should've felt bad for him, but sometimes…”

“Sometimes what?”

Emerson shook his head. “I don't know how to explain it. Sometimes it's hard to feel bad for someone who's always suffering.”

“You think?” May sounded doubtful.

“I don't know,” he said again, closing his eyes and rubbing his fingers in small circles against the lids. “Maybe that's just me.”

 

chapter thirty-nine

Sadie's heart sank. She knew who'd written these words. Without a doubt.

Miles the fencer
.

He was the boy from the cellar, wasn't he? The one her dad had rescued like a hero, all those years ago. The details were faint in her mind, soft wisps of remembrance. Sadie hadn't been there when it'd happened, but she'd heard about it, heard the words her father had muttered in Mandarin as he chained the doors shut for good. At the time it made her wonder if he'd seen the things she and Emerson had stockpiled down there, and if he had, what he thought of her. But her father never said anything about that.

Which was infinitely worse than if he had.

What he
did
tell her was that a small boy had gotten locked in the cellar. Some sort of accident or misunderstanding. However it had happened, the child had spent hours in there, alone and unable to escape. Sadie couldn't be bothered to care much about some random boy, or even a nonrandom one, but even she knew whatever that child endured was the stuff of nightmares. Trapped amidst death and reek and rotting things. He must've been frantic. Traumatized.

And now, years later, for some reason, he'd returned.

Why?

Sadie went to one of the painted walls. Pressed her fingers against the words. They were sticky, all of them. Her fingers came back red.

Minutes stretched, and the lantern's glow began to fade. On legs that felt weak but no longer drunk, Sadie walked back to the staircase and stared up toward the cellar entrance.

At that bright patch of sunlight.

At that blue, blue sky.

Disturbed,
he'd told her in her car the last time she'd given him a ride.
I'm a disturbed person.

“Miles,” she whispered into the void. “Come on, kid. Show me where the hell you are. Let me fucking help.”

 

chapter forty

The girl was calling his name.

That meant she'd found his message. To her. To the world.

She called out for him again, louder this time, and Miles whimpered from where he lay hidden in the bushes and shadows behind the old press. Like a weak spot worn bare by wanting, some thin part of him stretched and ached to go to her. To spread his wings. To share his pain and be heard. She'd done that before. She'd listened to him, without judgment or appeasement, without wanting to fix him. But he didn't go. His wings were long clipped, his soul long scarred, and what he'd left in that bunker for her to find—those birds that couldn't fly; those words he couldn't say—was the very best he could do.

The future,
his
future, was almost here. He couldn't deny that.

Duty to harm,
the wind whispered.