Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (25 page)

The boy walks down State Avenue to the intersection of 8th Street and Glenway. He heads across the 8th Street viaduct. The wind is high and cool, and he almost doesn’t notice the sparse wrecked vehicles. One vehicle is ramped up onto the concrete ledge of the viaduct, one front wheel dangling over the precipice. The boy stands beside the red Miata and looks into the car through a shattered front window. It is vacant. A few bags in the back. He unlocks the door and leans inside, ruffles through the plastic sacks. Nothing but soiled food. An unopened bottle of Diet Mountain Dew. He grabs the bottle and steps away from the car. Screwing off the lid, he leans over the railing and takes a few frigid drinks. The Westside railways below are vacant except for a few parked maintenance vehicles, some gigantic cranes, and a single train with empty boxcars sitting on unused and rusting rails. He watches curiously as a dog meanders about the drags: some kind of collie, with scraggly hair and a loping tongue. He shouts out at the dog; it freezes. The boy calls out again. The dog looks up at him from nearly an eighth of a mile away; it stands stunned on all fours, back arched, tail stiff; and then it turns and darts into the shadows of a warehouse with dust-layered windows. The boy takes another drink and tosses the bottle over the side of the railing, watching the green liquid spiral from the bottle before it hits the ground far below, bleeding its contents into the dust.

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The man stirs green beans in a pan of boiling water atop the Bunsen burner. In one hand is the spatula, and in the other a half-smoked cigarette. The boy sits on the sofa in the living room, a cigarette in his own fingers.

“Have you ever gone to the zoo?” Mark asks.

The man doesn’t look at him. “Which one?”

“The Cincinnati zoo.”

“Once or twice.”

“Did you ever go to the Festival of Lights?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

The boy takes another hit. “Do you know what it is?”

“Yeah.”

“They light the whole place up with Christmas lights. Two million of them, I think.”

“I said I know what it is.”

“Cara and I went there once. One of my friends, Trista, she works…
worked
… there. She usually ran the train—you know, that little train that drives around some of the exhibits? She said she’d always try to hit the peacocks, she didn’t like them—but during the Festival of Lights she worked the little theater. They were playing a short segment from that one movie, with Tom Hanks doing the voice-over… It was digital animation… Damn, what was it called…” He takes another drag off the cigarette, and it comes to him. “POLAR EXPRESS. Yeah, that’s it. Anyways, she worked there, and she got us in for free. A little bit of snow had fallen, and the pathways were kinda slick, but it wasn’t too cold. Not all the animals were out. The rhinos were out. And so were the pandas. And the penguins. Oh, the penguins, they would just stare at the lights and flap their wings, it was the funniest—”

The man yanks the pot off the burner and hurls it into the wall.

The boy goes quiet, eyes wide, the noise ringing in his ears.

Soggy green beans scatter all over the floor tiles.

The man takes several deep breaths. “Stop it,” he growls, glaring at the boy. “Just fucking stop. I don’t give a shit? All right. I don’t fucking care. Cara is dead. She’s
dead
. I fucking killed her. So don’t go on talking about her like she’s still alive. It’s not doing you any good, and it’s annoying the fucking hell out of me.”

Mark’s eyes glaze over. Anger boils within him.

The man closes his eyes, flicks the cigarette into the sink.

Mark stands. “You’re a bastard.”

And he walks out of the room.

III

It had once been an escape for Mark, after his parents had died, and it has become an escape for him once more. It distracts him from the deep and insufferable pain that consumes his heart: he feels as if his heart is bleeding, life dripping from his veins, and he finds himself numb. This is his only way to feel alive once more: seeing his own blood, feeling it trickle down his arm, feeling the pain as the razor cuts deeply and easily; it brings a vibrance and energy that has completely left him. Ashlie is gone. Cara is gone. And the man, for all purposes, has gone, becoming a hollow shell with no emotion save for anger and resentment. So the boy sits in the downstairs bathroom, the door locked, sprawled out in the tub, staring at the whitewashed ceiling with the green shower curtain cocooning Anthony Barnhart

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him in his own little realm. He draws the razor against his upper arm, feels the flesh withering, and the warm blood inches down his arm, splattering in pools on the bottom of the porcelain tub.

“What’s the point of living,

when you’re living among the dead?”

The blood is warm, and it chews away at his coldness as the razor chews away at his arm. He takes several deep breaths of air and clenches his teeth. He watches with wide eyes, unable to tear away from the beautiful yet grotesque sight: a mutilated arm. Each gentle caress of the blade in shaking fingers brings more pain and more pleasure. Ashlie feels distant. Cara seems to be but an ephemeral memory, a haunting specter visiting him in his weakest hours.

“So many of these questions

pounding in my head:

Life brings Death, and Death brings Life.”

He does not yet have the courage to embrace that final resolution, but this temporary solvent—

the ointment of his own blood on dry and parched skin—is enough to keep him alive, if only by the skin of his teeth. He is hanging onto life by a few meager threads, and that resolution that seems so distant draws closer with each flick of the blade. He closes his eyes and leans back in the tub. He feels the blood snaking down his arm. Electrifying, bright-red blood. Life flowing from his veins. He doesn’t mind. His life has already left him: it abandoned him when Ashlie fell into the hands of the dark-walkers, torn limb from limb; and any semblance of life vanished when the back of Cara’s head exploded with the rampage bullet, and her blood covered his clothes as she lay atop of him, a lifeless corpse, an unimaginable fate.

“As I stand here with a knife,

the blade shaking in my palm,

I beg of you:

Give me one reason to live life on.”

What else does he have? The answer is simple: all he has is this razor and the stillborn heart beating rebelliously behind his ribs. The man is right: there is no God. There is no rhythm, no reason, no rhyme to life. There is no destiny, and there is no fate. There is only chance. Mankind is a machine, a concoction of animal impulses delivered by biochemical reactions in the brain. There is no spark of divinity within the human creature; there is only its base animal instincts, and a “morality”

programmed by society’s rules and regulations. The world came into being randomly, without reason, and by chance life developed, and evolved, and reached its “pinnacle” in mankind. But is mankind such a unique creature? How is he different than the others? Is he different because of emotions? But what are emotions? Fluctuations of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. Is he different because he has the capability of love? Love is a farce, a manipulative force guided by selfishness and greed. One loves that which caters to him, that which answers his bidding and calling, and delivers the fulfillment of his needs. Tears now stream down the boy’s cheeks. The razor drives deeper and deeper. Beautiful, excruciating pain. The animal mutilates itself, finally understanding that his only duty is to survive—and when survival becomes tougher than resignation, it is his selfishness and greed that draws him to bring the blade to his wrist. Anthony Barnhart

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“Through my wrist the knife goes,

blood seeping down and covering my clothes.

Through my death I find new life,

and in death I escape the night.”

He cuts slowly at first, his pulse quickening. His palm is outstretched, fingers curled upwards like a dead spider. The blood runs down his wrist and gathers in his palm. A murky pool that reflects the mask of what had once been an ambitious boy with hopes and dreams and aspirations; a boy who had selflessly given himself over to taking care of his beloved sister; a boy who had been driven by the desire to love and be loved, a desire which became nothing but ash running between his fingers like sand in a sieve.

“Slowly I get weaker,

releasing all the thoughts in my head.

But only one remains:

‘What’s the point of living,

when you’re living among the dead?’”

The razor drops from his fingers. He takes several deep breaths, feeling the blood flow. Something inside him snaps, a great and hovering fear. He clambers from the bathtub; his blood stains the green shower curtain red. He draws several thick swabs of toilet paper and wraps his wrist. He sits upon the toilet, terror engulfing him. That great void of death, having seemed so distant and now seeming so close, fills him with great dread. He sits upon the toilet, feeling his heartbeat with his finger. For twenty minutes he sits. His heartbeat grows weaker, then stronger. An hour passes. He slowly unwraps the bloodstained toilet paper. Flicks of tissue stick to the deep cuts. He takes a deep breath: he had not cut deep enough. He throws the bloody toilet paper into the trashcan and wraps his bleeding wrist anew. The wounds are already beginning to clot. He leaves the bathroom and says nothing to the man, who sits quietly on the sofa drinking cognac. The bloodied razor blade sits abandoned in the tub.

IV

Terrible dreams have accosted him, and now the man stands downstairs. The dark-walkers prowl about outside, but the fence keeps them from the back yard, and all the doors are barricaded tightly. The man smokes his last cigarette and stares into the burning Bunsen burner. On the counter are his diaries, four of them, detailing day-by-day his life with Kira. He puts the cigarette out on the counter and takes each journal, one-by-one, and tears each page lined with cryptic ink, and wads them together and burns them upon the burner. The burning embers scatter in the darkness, and all that remains are ashes. An hour passes, and the empty notebooks with their worn metal spiral bindings sit on the counter. He finds a half-empty box of MARLBORO REDS and lights a cigarette. He stares at the Bunsen burner with morbid fascination. In his hands now is Kira’s iron cross; and holding it with tweezers, he places it over the burner. The flames lick up and scorch the metal. It becomes red with heat, then drips in metallic droplets, splattering over the counter and into the red-hot coils of the Anthony Barnhart

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burner. Each droplet disintegrates, and he tosses the tweezers aside and trudges to the other end of the kitchen. He uncorks a bottle of liquor and takes several gulps. The alcohol burns in his throat. He sets it aside and lights another cigarette.

In the morning, the boy finds the man sprawled out on the floor, snoring heavily. He quickly dresses and kneels beside the man. He shakes the man by the shoulder, and he awakes. His eyes flutter, the lids lined with crust. He speaks in a slur. The boy tells him he is going to borrow the truck. The man says no. The boy says ok, stands, and walks out the front door. The man falls asleep once again, and he doesn’t hear the engine ignite and then taper into the distance as Mark drives away.

The morning is cold and crisp, the skies dotted with low-hanging clouds ripe with rain. The boy parks the truck beside the apartment complex and stares into the apartment window where he had spent much time gazing out in thought and contemplation. He turns off the engine and goes inside. The air is damp and cold, stinking of musk. He takes the stairwell slowly, reaching his landing. He pushes open the door and steps into the room. It is just how they had left it. He meanders into the bedroom. There remains dried blood on the sheets, the walls, even the ceiling. He closes his eyes, and he can hear Ashlie’s screams; and he can see as if it were still happening the dark-walkers grabbing her by both arms and pulling until her arm rips off in a spray of blood and shrieks. He opens his eyes, and it is quiet. He takes several breaths and tries to collect himself. He browses the framed photos on his dresser. Images of Ashlie. Images of Cara. The memories swim over him. He reaches into his pocket and lights a cigarette. He breathes deep, closes his eyes, and remembers…

∑Ω∑

The sand between his toes. The gulls crying out their melancholy sonnets. The stars twinkling above. The waters lapping at the shore. The boardwalk is alight with burning lanterns and the sound of acoustic guitar. Couples meander together, holdings hands, kissing, arms wrapped around one another. The air is warm, electric with energy, hope, promise. Moments pass, and they are lying in the sand, kissing, eyes closed, oblivious to everything. Fireworks burst above them, raining down incendiaries of all the colors of the rainbow. Handel’s “Firework Music” echoes over the beach, nearly drowned in the quiet kisses of the waves upon the pearl sands.

She has come over for a pizza dinner. Ashlie is at her friend’s house. She enters the apartment door with her key, and she stands rooted in awe. A row of candles is running along the carpet, the flames flickering briefly. She follows the path slowly, and she enters the bedroom: candles and rose petals surround the bed, and upon the bed is a blanket laid out for a picnic by candlelight. The pizza sits on paper plates, and he smiles as he holds up the bottle of champagne.

Their first moment together. An underground concert at a cheap venue. Bands with strange names and music that all sounds alike. A great storm rages outside, and the lights are extinguished. He reaches out and takes her hand, and he pulls her close and holds her tight. In the darkness they are alone, and people are laughing and shouting, and the band continues to play despite the power, but they do not notice any of this. They only know each other, their secret crushes unfurled, ecstasy drowning as they look into each other’s eyes in the semi-dark. He smiles and leans forward, and they kiss; they leave the concert and sit outside under the overhang, the rain hammering down. The entire night passes as they talk, conversation that feels like eternity and not long enough. Anthony Barnhart