“You’ll see. It’s what I want.”
He moves from her, floating, ethereal, not really there, but everything he sees and hears is sharp, like the world is made of shattered glass. Unzipping the bag, he puts his hand inside and rummages around until his fingers touch it.
Evan came awake, clutching his pillow in two tight fists. His teeth ground together, and tears lay on his cheeks. His breath came out in ragged heaves as he stared up at the ceiling.
“Damn you.”
He sat up, steadying himself with a hand on the bed so that he wouldn’t tip over, the vertigo of sleep still with him. Shaun’s monitor sat quiet, his light snores audible across the hall. Evan stood, rubbing his eyes, and threw on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. The floor beneath his bare feet felt cold, like he was walking on a frozen pond instead of hardwood. Looking into Shaun’s room, he gazed at the S shape the boy made below his quilts.
Hints of moonlight illuminated his way through the house. He glanced at the TV and considered turning it on until sleep came again, but the thought of what would be on at this ungodly hour steered him toward the kitchen. He brewed a cup of tea and looked longingly at the last bottle of wine chilling in the fridge, then sat with the steaming cup between his palms. It would be hours before first light, not long enough to drink wine and too long to stare at the wall.
Sighing, Evan slid his laptop across the table and turned it on, opening his Word document once it booted up. The cursor on the screen blinked below what he had written two nights ago.
No. He’d already decided they were leaving today, they couldn’t stay here, not anymore. He would find a job close to home, something that could at least pay the bills. He’d find a bank that would loan them enough money to pay off the bulk of their debt. Consolidate, that’s what Jason always told him.
His eyes wandered across the room and lit on the basement door, the kitchen chair still propped where he had left it. It looked silly now. Not as much as it would look in full daylight, but silly enough. The screen of his laptop dimmed, and he looked at the words there, imagined the clock down in the dark basement, stolid, mysterious.
Gripping his tea, he rose from the table, removed the leaning chair, and eased the basement door open. Not waiting for his mind to conjure something to be afraid of, he walked down the steps and flipped the light switch on. The basement sprang into view. The doll still lay where he’d kicked it. He made his way to the table and found a folding chair against the end of the nearby workbench. He sat at the table, one hand cupped around his mug of tea, the other flipping through the papers before him.
Most of the sheets contained the detailed diagrams he’d spotted before, their numbers and instructions gibberish as far as he could tell. Deeper in the pile were some handwritten notes. Nearly all of them were illegible, scrawled in erratic angles that spoke of derangement or drug use. Evan had known a kid in college who only wrote poetry when drunk, and then had a fun time the next day trying to decipher his own hand. The writing on the pages looked like drunken messages, and he put several aside before finding one that seemed clearer.
If this is possible, it will change everything. No more night sweats and nausea. No more running from place to place, job to job. I can fix it all.
He reread the text, but farther down the page the writing changed into drawings. He held the paper up, examining the doodles. All of them were round and had two lines running through them at different points. Another, smaller circle sat in the middle of the larger one.
Frowning, Evan sifted through more pages of incoherence and found another legible sheet.
I’ll go back and stay inside that night. I won’t go out, won’t go out, won’t go out.
The writing became larger and larger, until it filled the rest of the paper with erratic slashes that cut through the sheet itself.
Evan set it aside and flipped through the remaining notes. A few more diagrams of grandfather clocks, these looking like they’d been pulled from a book, lay at the bottom of the of the stack. He was about to reorganize the shuffled pile when he saw the imprint of letters on the last page, but he couldn’t read them since the writing was on the opposite side. He turned the sheet over and stared at the words traced repeatedly into the paper.
I CAN SEE THEM.
Evan dropped the page and glanced around the basement, turning his head to look at the clock behind him. Its face stared back. He stood and walked closer, again mesmerized by the detailed carvings covering its surface. His hand wandered to the trim, tracing the curved lines, their arcs trying to tell him a story. The smooth glass was frigid beneath his palm; he worried for a moment that his hand might stick, but was able to pull it away.
Blinking, Evan turned and picked up his tea, which was cold. Upstairs, he heard Shaun’s voice, groggy with sleep.
“Da?”
“Coming, buddy,” he yelled, and moved across the room, stopping only once on the landing to stare at the clock before he shut off the lights and went upstairs.
11
During breakfast Shaun kept looking at the basement door.
Evan watched him, waiting for another hysterical outburst, but none came. He simply glanced in the basement’s direction after every few bites of pancake that Evan fed him, an uneasy look in his eyes. When they’d finished with breakfast, Evan got Shaun dressed and then went through his exercises with him.