Joshua put a hand on Jacob's shoulder. The hand was as cold as a lizard tucked under a creek rock. 'Come on. Let me show you to your room.'
Jacob let himself be led across the foyer to the polished stairs with their worn runners. They paused as if both were admiring the splintered baluster, an awesome relic that had resisted repair. Then Joshua nudged him up the stairs. Each riser took Jacob closer to the past, though memory seemed to elude him. Instead of clear and prolonged reels, he saw the events of their childhood in flashes of blurred and fractured images.
Step. On the floor, the sun shining through the window, making a yellow river between them, Joshua bringing a wooden train caboose down hard on Jacob's knee. Step. Jacob's fingers caught in the corner of the crib, his screams filling the world, Joshua grinning while yanking the covers away.
Step. In the dark behind the curtain, holding his breath, something terrible scratching at the door.
Step. Mother entering their room, smiling, bearing a silver tray with China teapot and mugs.
Step. Father smirking around his pipe, holding out a dollar bill and seeing which of his sons could leap the highest and be the first to snatch it.
Step. The window broken, the jagged glass smeared with the dark blood of the bird that had flown into its own reflection.
Step. In the night, Joshua giggling from his bed across the room. A separate giggle echoing from the closet. Jacob with his head under the suffocating safety of the pillow.
Step. Mother at the head of the stairs, her legs trembling, eyes gone wild toward the ceiling.
Step. Jacob's comic book collection scattered across the floor, the crotches of the cartoon women neatly clipped out.
Step. An arm reaching up from beneath the bed, fingers pale in the moonlight.
Step. Father locking the closet door, threatening to leave the boys in there until they turned to skeletons if they didn't learn to behave.
Step. A fleeting stench of sulfur, then a small flame crawling up the sheets.
Step. Joshua making him promise to never tell, cross his heart and hope to die.
Step. The doctor bending over, smelling of sweet decay, his round face bright with kindness.
Step. Mother with the silver tray, this time bearing pills and a glass of water.
Step. A scattering of coins on the walnut dresser. Joshua with three whole dollars because he was Father's favorite.
Step. Rummaging through Joshua's laundry, trying on his brother's favorite red shirt. It fit perfectly, better than any of Jacob's own clothes.
Step. Jacob with his head under the pillow. The closet door creaking open.
Step. The doctor telling him it was just a dream, and dreams could be scary, couldn't they? But, see, there's nothing here now.
Step. Mother at the head of the stairs.
Step. Father at the head of the stairs.
Step. A crashing sound, bone softer than wood, meat with little give.
Step. Promise not to tell ever.
Step. Jacob at the head of the stairs.
He blinked and looked around. The dust was like a fine silver-gray carpet, the threads shimmering and almost ethereal in the dying daylight. The hall was paneled with cherry. The closed doors stood like solid slabs of unforgiving darkness. Cracks as crooked as the legs of spiders stretched across the ceiling.
The last door on the right led to the room he and Joshua had shared as young children. Despite the expansiveness of the house, Mother had insisted the boys be together as much as possible. Their parents' bedroom was two doors down, the neighboring room serving first as a nursery, then as a guest room after the boys had been weaned from the crib. It wasn't until Jacob and Joshua were twelve that they each were allowed their own rooms. But when Jacob thought of the house, he didn't think of 'his' room. He thought of 'their' room. To him, the room on the corner with the view of the barn and the field beside the river was where he had grown up.
That's where his feet carried him now. The floorboards creaked with damp age, though he still unconsciously avoided the weak spot that had first alerted his parents to his sleepwalking. How many times had he walked this strip of faded carpet? Probably more times than he remembered.
'Attaboy,' Joshua said. 'Don't fight it no more.'
Jacob must have entered a brief fugue state, because the next thing he knew, he was standing between the twin bunks that stood against opposite walls. Jacob's childhood bed now seemed too impossibly small to have held all those terrors and shivers. The closet door at the foot of the bed was ajar and he studied the harsh angle of blackness for any signs of movement.
Joshua sat on his own bed and made an awkward attempt to stretch out. 'Brings back a lot of memories, don't it?'
'Not really,' he lied. 'My childhood is just sort of one long blur. Why would I want to remember it?'
Joshua sat up with a hard groan of bedsprings. 'Because I want you to, dear brother. Those were best days of my life, and I'd like to have them back.'
Jacob shook off the malaise that had engulfed him. 'Is that why you hate me? Because I finally had some happiness? Because I succeeded while you ended up in a slave-wage job in Tennessee? Because I had a loving wife and kids while you were shacking up with some trailer-trash slut? Because I left all this behind and you had to live in it day after day because it's all you ever had? Is that why you hate me?'
Joshua smiled, his lips like those of the zombie-doll heads hanging from his car mirror. 'I don't hate you. I love you. Why else would I go to all this trouble?'
'It's not trouble. It's luck. You happen to show up here just when I hit bottom.'
'You got a nice, soft pile of green to catch your fall.'
Jacob stared into Joshua's eyes, those deep, soulless, hazel-ringed holes that swallowed any light that struck them. He wondered how closely his own eyes matched Joshua's. In the mirror, he never saw himself as merciless. But he wondered how others saw him. Could anyone really escape the corrupt taint of their genes?
'I'm not like you, Joshua. I don't feed on the pain of others.'
'Like hell. You turned into the old man. A chip off the fucking block. As much as we used to despise him, looks like he had the last laugh after all.'
'You didn't even know him. At least he had enough of a soul left at the end that he could face his sins and apologize. But you don't even think about making amends. You just keep on digging a deeper hole, getting closer to hell with every shovelful.'
'Mighty fancy words for a make-believe poet. But at least I'm not burying my kids.'
Joshua reached to the shelf above his bed. The shelf was built into the wall and held the artifacts of a lost childhood. A ragged teddy bear flopped against a baseball glove, and an amputee G.I. Joe doll stood sentry over a stack of baseball cards crimped by a rubber band. Without looking, Joshua ran his hand over a Rubik's cube and a dented Tonka dump truck. He pushed the toys aside and pulled a dusty book from the recesses of the shelf.
Jacob recognized it instantly, though he hadn't seen it in more than a decade. 'My diary. How did you get that?'
'It's my story, too, Jakie. Hell, I coulda wrote it for you if I wasn't so lazy.'
Jacob stood. The past was sealed in its vault, yesterdays were the stuff that filled coffins, memories were for those who lacked the strength to bury them. Skeletons weren't meant for closets, they were to be hammered into a thousand bone fragments and scattered to the far corners of the world. Driven to dust. No evidence must ever remain.
No evidence…
'Give me that.' Jacob's blood was frigid lava.
Joshua leaned back against a faded pillow, cracked the book to somewhere in the middle, and began reading, all trace of his rural accent gone.
''January 17: Cold and gray. Looks like snow. Joshua got me in trouble in school today. He marked over part of my homework and drew pictures of naked girls. He made an A and I got sent to the principal's office.''
Joshua looked past the diary, his grin that of a devilish boy's. 'Hey, I'd forgotten all about that. Good thing you wrote it down, or it might never have happened. What else did you say about me?'
'That's none of your business. Give me that.'
