He heard more shouting; it sounded like the calling of birds. From the same direction, the rushing of the river seemed impossibly loud. He kept moving toward the voices. How long ago had it been since he had broken through the mine entrance and gone down, down, down into the world beneath? A day, two days-a week? Time had no meaning in there, just as he remembered when he used to go with his father. They’d descend in the day, and return in the night. It seemed as if they’d gotten into a spaceship and landed on a distant moon.
On his website, Michael called himself a caver and spelunker. He claimed that he gave tours and was a consultant. But, honestly, he wasn’t any of those things, didn’t do any of that. He was willing, of course. But no one had ever contacted him via the site he’d built. He didn’t have any formal training, other than following Mack on his research journeys. Michael was just a drifter, a loser. He could never get a hold on anything, could never build a life in the world up above-or down below.
Since college, Michael had been drifting from one meaningless job to the next. First he worked as an admin at a website development company, which is where he learned how to develop and maintain sites. He was competent enough, but he just couldn’t get the social stuff. He couldn’t talk to people. He sometimes just blanked out in meetings, went catatonic in his boss’s office. And, then, one day he found he just couldn’t go back.
He attempted other kinds of work. He was a custodian in an office building for a while, then a grocery store stocker. The longest job he’d held was as a night watchman. He didn’t have to see or talk to anyone, other than fielding the occasional call or visit from his supervisor, who’d seemed just as reluctant to have a conversation as Michael was. He could simply wander long, dim, empty hallways and feel something akin to peace. He had time to work on his website, the place where he was all the things he couldn’t be in real life. And the night was suitable cover, wasn’t it?
As he had entered the mines, with Ray chasing after him, he didn’t have any plans to return. But after so many days wrestling demons, he had to come up for air. Now, in the woods, he was lost-in every sense of the word. He could still hear something, more faintly, and he followed. He had to tell someone what he had done. It was time for confession now, and punishment.
The dark had spoken to him. It whispered that it was safe to remember, that it was time. And then he was back, on his bike riding through the old neighborhood. He was a wraith, quiet and fast. And the night was silvery and slick. On reaching home, he dropped his bicycle on the driveway, and left it where it twisted.
Inside, he could feel that the energy was different and strange. He heard music. He heard his mother’s voice. He felt powerfully that he didn’t belong there in that moment and that he shouldn’t have come home. But he was drawn toward the unfamiliar sounds… a man’s tender voice, a strange cadence to his mother’s words, a song he’d never heard before. And when he moved toward the light of his mother’s drawing room, he saw her in the embrace of a man, not his father.
Inside him something shifted, went black and ugly. Why? He didn’t know. But he went to that blank space he had within him-where there was just the rushing of blood in his ears and the sound of his own breathing. The man, a faceless stranger, left in a hurry. And Michael was left alone with his mother.
“Michael,” she said. “Why are you looking at me like that? He was just a friend.”
“You sent me away,” he said. He knew his tone was bitter, vicious. “So that you could be with him.”
He saw the shame on her face. But there was also anger.
“Michael,” she said. “I am your mother. You don’t speak to me that way.”
Then there were the lights of his father’s car in the driveway. And inside Michael, a familiar slow, simmering rage was starting to brew. He knew it well-he’d felt it before tantrums as a child, before fights at school, during screaming battles with his father. But he’d never felt it for his mother, never directed it at her. She’d always been the one to talk him through those rages. Breathe, sweetie. Breathe.
She was backing away from him when his father walked in.
“What’s going on?” Mack said. He laid his briefcase and coat on the couch. He looked weary.
“She had a man here,” said Michael. “She was in his arms. She’s a whore just like you always said.”
And Mack had said that so many times. Michael heard his father yell it during arguments and whisper it at the dinner table. And Michael had railed against him, always defended her and protected her. But Mack was right.
The stinging slap his mother landed on his face sent a shock through Michael. It was white lightning, electrifying him. Then she was running up the stairs, with Mack bounding after her. Michael heard her shrieking.
“I hate you! I hate this place! I hate this life!”
Michael stood there stunned, feeling the heat on his face, listening to them screaming at each other. What were they saying? He didn’t even know. He was in that place where all the anger seemed to build from inside his belly, boiling and rising up into his brain. She’d hit him. She’d taken all her love away from him. She was going to leave them, leave Michael.
Marla came down the stairs with her packed suitcase. He knocked the bag from her grasp and the clothes spilled out on the floor… her lacy underthings, a pair of shoes, a few skirts and blouses. He knew he had to stop her, and he grabbed her hard by the shoulders.
“Don’t leave me,” he said. He was sobbing, sounding just like a child.
“Michael,” she said. Her eyes were wild and desperate. “Let go of me. I’ll come back for you and your sister.”
But she was lying. He knew that. She’d come back for Cara, but not for him-now that she knew what he was inside, now that she knew that his rage could be directed at her. He outweighed her by fifty pounds at least, was already much taller at fourteen. She could never control him.
“Michael,” she said. Her voice was just a jagged inhale. “You’re hurting me.”
Mack stepped in. “That’s enough, Michael.”
But Michael couldn’t. He wouldn’t let go of her. His grip on her grew so tight that she cried out. Somehow, in a struggle among the three of them, she broke away. She ran out the back door and into the Hollows Woods, the place where he now wandered.
She had been fast. All those years of trailing her on his bicycle, he knew how fast she was, even though she thought of herself as slow and clumsy. He was after her. There was no thought in his head at all, no malice really. He just wanted her, needed her to stay with him.
She turned into the clearing, and he was right behind her. But Mack caught up quickly. His father caught ahold of Michael with strong arms, tried to keep him back.
“Stop it, son,” he’d said. His voice was a cough. Mack was panting, sweat pouring down his face and neck. “What do you think you’re doing? You need to calm yourself.”
Mack had a hard lock on Michael’s wrist. But then Michael punched him mercilessly in the stomach, and Mack doubled over, falling. He moaned and writhed on the ground as Michael ran into the chapel. In the total darkness, he could see nothing. He could only hear her weeping.
“Mom,” he said. “Mommy. Don’t cry.”