Even in dim light, the blur of white blazed before his eyes. Hung from the closet rod, the two naked bodies, twined together as if bound, swung in the draft he had created. Despite their disfigurement, they were recognizable at once as the corpses of his parents joined together in one final dance. The rotting smell rolled off the corpses, burning his sinuses and lingering in his mouth. Their skin was the color of bone yet waxy, the consistency of soft cheese peeling off in curled ribbons, and when they swirled into view, their crimson faces were bloated, lips blue, noses scarred as though nibbled by fishes, their wet hair flat and plastered along the contours of their skulls. Their mouths hung open and their tongues lolled hideous as eels. Worst of all, their open eyes stared straight at him, sunken in the folds of skin thick as wet dough. A dead look of accusation. They seemed to have been dragged from the bottom of the sea like a pair of large fish hung on a string to dry.
Nick did not cry out at first, for he could not reconcile the difference between what he was seeing and what his mind knew to be true. Two simultaneous versions of reality from which to choose: the swinging bodies in the closet and the surety that his parents slept not twenty feet away in their own bed, dead drunk to the world, just out of reach. It was the incompatibility of these truths that made him crack, and he screamed, running down the dark hallway to the safety of their room. He kept on screaming until he saw his mother shift beneath the blankets and turn on the small lamp on her crowded night table. In the soft glow, her eyes blinked, bloodshot, and she struggled to sit up against the pillows, fighting the stupor in her mind, and disoriented by the sudden presence of her terrified son.
“What it is, pet? Did you have a nightmare?” She held out her arms to him.
He slipped in beside her on the empty space between her and the edge of the mattress. Roping her arms around his shoulders, his mother pulled him toward her.
“There were bodies in the closet,” Nick said, realizing at once that it could not be so. She was right here. And in there, swinging on a rope next to Dad.
“Are you sure? Skeletons in the closet.” She laughed to herself despite her best efforts at restraint.
“You and Dad were drowned.”
“Drowned? We’re right here.” Her breath smelled of sour wine. She blinked her eyes, fighting sleep, as she tightened her grip around his wrist. He would have stayed there forever had she not nodded off and then suddenly snapped awake, as if she finally remembered who he was. “Still scared? Let’s go see about those bodies in the closet. I’ll bet you anything it’s a couple of coats that just seemed to be something else in the dark.”
Nick started to object, but his mother had already let go and was forcing him off the edge of the bed with her hip. She reeled in the darkness and flipped on the light in the hallway and then again as they entered his room, mother bold and protective with her son hiding behind her nightgown. He was as intimidated by her speed and confidence as he was frightened of what was behind the closed closet door. Had he closed it when he fled? She did not hesitate to reach for the knob and fling it open. Just as she had promised, nothing inside but his old familiar clothes. They stood together for a while considering its emptiness.
“See,” she said in a calm and comforting voice, guiding him to his place. “Nothing to fear. We’ll leave it open if you like, but it was just your imagination.”
Nick climbed back into his bed with a dozen pictures in his head, and as she kissed him good night, he wanted to beg her to stay, at least until he could fall asleep, but he let her go, stumbling back to her room. He turned on the lamp on his nightstand for he knew he could not sleep in the dark.
vii.
His bedroom faced the ocean, and in the morning, the rising sun would blaze fire over water and shine through his window. If he had not drawn the curtains the night before, Jack Peter would watch the reflection of the dawn in the bureau mirror on the opposite side of the room. With a rapt devotion, he would study the way the light chased away the dark. Find the pattern, watch how it repeats itself. He would not move until it was over. He tried not to blink until he saw the whole sun. The glass would slowly come to life, changing by degrees nearly imperceptible, but with patience he could distinguish each shade and hue when the pale lavender sky was shot through by the circle of the sun. Soon he could see the long trail of glowing orange run from the horizon to the shore along the smooth surface of the sea and the gentle breaking of the waves along the bottom of the mirror. Then the burning disk would continue its slow ascent, the sky would yellow then blue, and a new day had begun.