Chapter Twenty-Two My, How They Shine
I sometimes do this thing called lucid dreaming. It’s where I fully comprehend that I’m dreaming, but the dream marches on anyway, fumbling around like a great ogre. I don’t always recognize when I’m dreaming. And sometimes, like now, it’s worse when I do.
I’m in my parents’ home. I know because the moon shines in a funny pattern through our beveled windows. A cuckoo clock chimes the time, twelve o’clock a.m., though there’s never been a clock like this in our house before.
I hear the sound of heavy footsteps, and a door opening and closing down the hallway. A man appears with a bag slung over his shoulder. He’s fleeing like a criminal. Or like we’re the criminals and the only chance he has to save his own life lies in these few seconds.
“Dad,” I whisper. But he can’t hear me. He can’t hear me because he doesn’t have any ears.
He reaches the front door and pulls it open, stops and listens for any sign that we’ve woken. I reach out to touch him, but my hand passes through his skin. He’s wearing a baseball hat. He had time to put on a hat, but not to kiss me good-bye.
“Don’t leave,” I beg. My legs start sinking through the hardwood floor until only my hips, waist, chest, and head remain. “Daddy, don’t leave. If you leave, I’ll do the thing I’m not supposed to do.”
A storm rages outside our home. I wonder if he planned it this way—to leave with the thunder masking the sound of his engine starting, with the lightning cutting a path from our home to his new, elsewhere life.
The moment he disappears into the night is the second my mom starts screaming. It’s like she can actually feel the absence of my father. The clock chimes again, and the bells grow so loud that I have to cover my ears. I can’t block the sound of my mother, though. That sound has no beginning and no end. It just…is. I’d do anything to make her happy again if only to kill that dreadful noise.
When I look back toward the front door, it’s gone. In its place is a round table with neatly lined knives. All different shapes and sizes, those knives. Gleaming in the moonlight and calling my name.
I don’t want to touch them.
But I must.