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[hyacinth-sky747.livejournal.com]

Lay me Down to Sleep
Part Four
d/b



The blizzard raged for five days. Dom took up residence in the front parlor. Viggo, Bernard, and Elijah seemed to be taking it in shifts to stay awake, for one them was nearly always with him. They played chess in front of the fire, and read, and listened to the radio, but Dom didn’t engage in conversation. Billy slept alone in his room.

On the third night Elijah was asleep in his chair. Dom stared idly out the window, sometimes at the sweeping snow, sometimes at his own reflection in the dark glass. He heard footsteps on the stairs. Slow, methodical footsteps.

“Billy?”

Billy crossed the hall and stood in front of the door. He fiddled with the locks. They wouldn’t open. His hands flew faster, clicking and sliding and jiggling at the door.

“Billy, stop.”

Billy let out a pitiful moan and slammed his hand against the locks.

“Come here, Bill.”

Billy shuffled into the parlor. His eyes were rolled back in his head and he was shivering.

“Why do you take your clothes off?”

Dom looked around for another blanket but Billy sat in his lap. Dom sighed.

“Settle down, then.”

Billy leaned his head against Dom’s shoulder and Dom pulled his blanket around both of them. Billy snoozed for an hour, maybe more, Dom was losing track of time despite the prevalence of clocks in the room. He slipped into waking dreams, mumbled, and pulled at his hair. He was slipping out of time. Outside, the wind picked up.

“If there was an entrance to another world. It’d be in there, I think.”

“In that ugly old shed? It’s just Daddy’s tools.”

“That’s what it wants you to think. That’s its disguise. The ugliest things can have the most beautiful souls.”

“I think apples have beautiful souls.”

Evan grabbed another apple off the tree and bit into it. Juice dribbled down his chin.

“I think you’re right. I think if you don’t stop eating them you will have a bellyache tonight.”

“Uncles don’t talk of bellyaches, Uncle Dom.”

“What do they talk about?”

“The things that are in the world beyond the shed.”

“What would you like to find there?”

“I want to ride everywhere in a big red balloon. I want my teddy and Moses the Cat to talk to me. And no bellyaches no matter how much I eat.”

“Sounds delightful…and like a storm’s coming.”

In the southwest a towering bank of clouds marred the afternoon sky. Thunder growled. Dom sighed. He’d hoped to eat dinner in the garden.

“Can I stay upstairs and watch it, Uncle Dom? It’s ever so exciting.”

“I’m afraid not, mate. Into the cellar you go. I wonder where Moses has got off to?”

Moses was Dom’s cat. It had been Dom’s birthday present from Evan. Dom didn’t like cats especially but Moses was a cat beyond cats. Moses didn’t chase feathers, he annihilated them. Moses cleared Dom’s house of mice in a fortnight. Moses set birds to squawking when he poked a whisker out of doors. Moses was a warrior.

Moses was a warrior who slept under the covers in Dom’s arms. Moses rested from battle on cold nights in Dom’s lap. Moses woke Dom up in the morning by tapping him gently on the nose. Dom thought that Moses was the best part of him.

The clouds crept closer and Dom saw an arrow of lightening lance through them.

“Time to go, Evan.”

The cellar was musty smelling and dim. Dom put Evan and his teddy on the couch.

“Stay here. I’m going to go get Moses. I’ll be right back.”

The wind was harsh in the garden. Dom checked all of the cat’s usual places but couldn’t find him. He called, whistled.

“Come on, Moses. Please, come on home.”

The sky was black and the clouds were churning in way Dom didn’t like. He was going to have to give up. Moses would be alright. He was a cat. An animal. Animals knew what to do.

He turned to head inside. Evan was standing on the porch.

“Get back inside!”

“Look at that, Uncle Dom!”

Dom knew then what was going to happen. He could feel it in his cold blood. He knew in that second that he was plunging into horror. But he didn’t know yet just how bad it was actually going to be.

“Evan!”

Dom could hear the tornado before he saw it. He could hear the change in the wind. Evan’s face was delighted. He held his teddy bear and smiled at the funnel. Dom ran.

“It’s beautiful! Look at its soul!”

Gravity didn’t know Dom’s feet. He ran. He flew. He grabbed Evan around the waist. Okay, then. It would be okay. They’d get inside…

Hail pattered down. Evan winced, he looked up at Dom and smiled, delighted at the excitement.

“Gotta get inside!”

Dom couldn’t hear his own voice over the howl of the wind. It tugged at him. He grabbed the porch railing.

“Don’t let go of me, Evan. Hang on.”

He was so light. Just a little boy of six. The wind lifted him off his feet.

“Whoa! Weee!”

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll tell the story of how I flew an Evan kite and he’ll laugh and laugh. We’ll sit in the orchard and he’ll laugh.

“Don’t let go! Don’t!”

Evan’s face turned. Delight. Surprise. Pain. Fear. Desperation.

“Uncle Dom!”

“Don’t!”

When you lose a child in the sea, you go plunging into the water after them. You know you won’t come out without him. You’ll come out together or not at all. Dom let go of the railing and dove into the wind. He was turned around, buffeted. The tornado roped off into the sky.

“No!”

A heavy something slammed into him. He went down.

~*~

It was sunset when he woke. The trees in the orchard had been stripped bare of their leaves and fruit. Broken and twisted branches laced the evening sky. Evan was lying naked in one. Spread-eagled. Crucified. It wasn’t the boy he knew. It wasn’t the infant who’d fallen asleep in his arms at three days old. It wasn’t the toddler who’d bitten him on the arm. It wasn’t the tot who’d called him Undum and ran to him in tears. It wasn’t the boy who’d laughed at his jokes and listened to his stories. That Evan didn’t know how to die.

Dom took him from the tree and put him in his bed. He got an ax and cut down the tree.

In the morning his brother and sister-in-law returned from town. Dom could imagine their relief as they came over the rise and saw the house still standing, saw him standing at the door. Dom didn’t say anything in response to their greetings.

“Dom? You okay?”

“I’m sorry.”

She tore into the house. Dom sat on the porch steps and listened to her shrieks and cries. He listened to every one. He could hear them still.

Moses came around the corner. He had a piece of shrapnel run clean through him. He walked in an odd sort of way.

“Come here, puss.”

Moses came. He purred when Dom scratched his ears. He stepped gingerly into Dom’s lap.

“You’ve been a good cat. You’ve been a good, good cat.”

Dom twisted Moses’ neck.

He sat for awhile petting the cat’s once lethal paws. He picked him up and carried him into the barn. Dom walked directly into the west. He didn’t stop walking until he fell down.


~*~

“Stop it. Hurting me.”

“What?”

Dom shook his head. Perhaps he had slept. It didn’t feel like it.

“You’re hurting me.”

Billy was staring up at him and Dom realized he had a firm grip on Billy’s left buttock and was digging his nails in rather mercilessly.

“Shit! I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Why am I here?”

“You…umm…” Dom had loosened his grip but his hand still seemed to be resting on Billy’s bottom. He pulled it away. “You were trying to get out. Then you sat on me. I don’t know.”

“Is that why you were hurting me?”

“No, no no, I didn’t realize. I was…fucked. I’m sorry. I haven’t slept.”

“I have. Kiss me?”

“What?”

“Don’t you want to?”

“I want to.”

“Then?”

“I dunno.”

“I never fall asleep during sex. Never.”

“I often fall asleep afterwards.”

“Do you need to sleep? Kiss me.”

“Kiss you? Or fuck you?”

“Just kiss me. I want to feel real.”

“You are real.”

“I’m only dreams, and hallucinations and other men’s diaries. Kiss me and don’t write about it.”

Dom kissed him. It was a soft, slightly sticky kiss. Billy’s eyes lit up.

“I’m going to sleep again. I can’t help it. You didn’t read the books I gave you, but read the doctor’s diary. Then you can decide if you want to kiss me again.”

He got up and tucked the blanket around Dom.

“Stay.”

Billy shook his head.

“Read the diary…Dom?”

“Yes?”

“I know what happened to Evan. The wind, the apple tree. Not all of it. Just bits and pieces in my mind. I know you didn’t let him go.”

“Don’t speak of it. Go to bed.” Dom pulled the blanket over himself and closed his eyes.

Billy went. Dom rather missed the warmth of him. The cold would slide in under the window, down the chimney, creep under the blanket. Dom missed summer, and bugs, and unfrozen seas. He missed green and soil and blankets spread on grass, and swings under a tree. But he didn’t deserve those things. This frozen-over hell was where he belonged.

~*~

Night after night the footsteps came down the stairs. Metal clicked in the locks.

“Come here. Wake up.”

Billy woke and kissed him.

“Did you read the diary?”

“No, I can’t see straight enough to read now.”

That tread on the stairs. Those fingers fumbling at the locks.

A kiss. A withdrawal. The cold creeping back in.

Night after night, the smell of him in the firelight. The taste of smoke and salt on Dom’s tongue.

The music of Billy’s footsteps on the stairs, music in the dark, the notes falling in a steady rhythm lower and lower, louder and louder, faster.

“Wake up, Bill. Come here.”

Not a pause in the frantic clicking of the locks.

“Billy.”

“The streets are on fire. They’re burning. We’ve got to get out.”

“Wake up!”

Billy woke. He was breathing hard and sweating. “Dom, we’ve got to go. Can’t you see the fire?”

Dom looked out the window. The streets were ablaze.

“I see it.”

“You and I must go. Now! Before the others stop us.”

“Is it real?”

“It’s real to me. I must go. I must.”

Dom shook his head. He was feeling awfully muddled. Something wasn’t right here.

“You don’t have any clothes on.”

That wasn’t it. Something else was wrong.

“We need to follow those lights. You can’t do it like that.”

It wasn’t what Dom had meant to say but now that he’d said it he firmly believed it. They needed to get out of this house. They were already late. The flames were calling and…

“Do you see the big lights? The big ones! Over the sea!”

Billy closed his eyes. “Yes! I see them. Find me some clothes. Any old thing will do. Step softly or they’ll hear!”

Dom crept up the stairs and into Billy’s room. He grabbed all the clothes he could find and two pairs of boots. They dressed hurriedly by the front door and quietly turned the bolts and freed the hooks and lifted the bars on the front door. Dom shut it softly behind them.

“Oh!” Billy said.

Dom turned and the sight made him grip Billy’s hand. It was beautiful and immense and thrilling. Dom was filled with terror.