John Hart - Iron House

“By a month at least.”

“A month.” Abigail felt her vision blur, and enough time passed for Flint to become uncomfortable.

“Mrs. Vane?”

“I was raised in an orphanage, Mr. Flint. It was a small place, poorer even than this. Cold and hard and unforgiving.” She turned from the window, and one palm tilted to catch the institutional light. “You can imagine that I have certain sympathies…”

“Yes, yes. Of course.”

“I was adopted at age ten, and my nine-year-old sister was not.” She showed Flint her eyes, and there was no weakness left in them. “She was sickly, too, like Julian, and left behind because of that. I went home with a loving family and four months later my sister contracted pneumonia. She died alone in that horrible place.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“Well, I should like to think-”

“I married well, Mr. Flint, and find myself in a position to prevent a similar tragedy. I’ve been searching for children just like these boys. Older. Unwanted. It won’t bring my sister back, but I hope to find some small measure of relief. A new life for the boys, and maybe for myself. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“I meant no undue intrusion.”

“I want to meet them, Mr. Flint.”

“Of course.”

“Please find them.”

Julian had hiding places for when things got bad. An abandoned well house in the woods, the crawl space under the chapel. He’d once found a crack in the granite where the river spilled to the lower field. The descent in was a headfirst scrape through a narrow slit, but three feet down, the cave opened up and he could stretch out, the rock wet and black twelve inches from his nose. The cave was cold and dark, and he’d come out once covered with leeches; but the worse things became for Julian, the deeper he went. Deep in the world. Deep in his mind.

Michael found him in the subbasement.

The place was a maze of dark and dusty rooms-dozens of them, maybe even a hundred-but over the years, Michael had been down every hall and opened every door. He’d found ranks of cabinets with files more than eighty years old; a hall stacked with bundled newspapers rotted to mush; an old infirmary; moldy closets full of stored books, bandages, and gas masks. He’d found boxes of glass syringes, chairs with leather restraints, and straightjackets stained brown. Some rooms had steel doors; others had manacles bolted to the concrete walls. He’d once entered a room at the southern corner and been driven to the floor by a flood of bats that had found a passage in through a rotted place at the foundation. The ceilings pressed low in the subbasement. Light was sparse.

The first time Julian went missing, Michael found him in the furnace room, curled up in the tight space behind the hot metal, his knees to his chest, back hard against the brick.

He was six years old, beaten bloody.

Three years ago.

Michael ducked under some pipes, then pushed through a stretch of black to where blue light and furnace heat pushed under a warped door. He heard a low voice, his brother singing; when he opened the door, heat drove past him. The furnace filled the room, blue flame in its guts, damp heat pushing out. Julian had squeezed into the narrow place behind the boiler, his back curved, arms around his knees. Shoeless, he rocked in the narrow space, his upper body bare and red and filthy, his hair wet enough to steam.

He did not look up.

“Julian?” Michael squeezed behind the boiler. “You okay?” Julian shook his head, and Michael saw new bruises, fresh abrasions. He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, then sat; for a long time, Julian said nothing. When he did speak, it was in a broken voice.

“Remember when we were little? Old man Dredge?”

Michael had to think about it. “The maintenance man?”

“He slept in that little room down the hall.”

Julian tilted his head and Michael remembered. Dredge had a small room with a cot and refrigerator. He kept girlie posters on the wall and booze in the fridge. He was old and bent, and Julian had always been strangely unafraid of him. “What about him?”

“I come down here, you know.” Julian said it like Michael had no idea. “He used to help me when I needed it. I’d hide down here and he’d act mean when the older boys came looking. He’d shake that stick he had, talk crazy talk until most boys were too scared to even think about coming down here. He wasn’t really mean, but he wanted to help. He was my friend. When things got bad he would tell me stories. He said there were hidden doors down here, magic ones. His eyes would squint up when he talked about them, but he swore they were here. Find the right wall, he’d tell me. When things get bad, find the right wall, tap it just right, and it’ll open up.”

“Sunlight and silver stairs…”

“I told you about that?” Julian asked.

“A door to a better place. I’d forgotten, but, yeah. You told me.” Michael pictured the old man, his seamed skin and bloodshot eyes, the smell of booze and cigarettes. He’d disappeared two years ago. Fired, Michael guessed. Fired for being crazy or dirty or both. “It was just a story, Julian. Just a crazy old man.”

“Yeah. Crazy, huh?” Julian laughed, but in a bad way. And when he cupped his hands, Michael saw the abrasions on his knuckles, the smeared blood and split skin.

His brother had been down here tapping walls…

“What happened, Julian?”

He shrugged. “They tried to throw me out naked. They tried to throw me out, but I fought.” He sniffed wetly. “They got my shoes.”

Michael studied his brother and realized that his skin wasn’t red from heat, but from cold; and that it wasn’t sweat in his brother’s hair, but melted snow. Then he realized something else. “Those aren’t your pants.”

Julian ignored him. “They locked all the doors but the main one. They wanted to make me come in the front, past all the people. They thought that would be funny, but I beat them. I came in where the bats come in. You know? Right, Michael. The bat room.”

Michael saw it now. He saw his brother running through the snow, naked and cold, then squirming through a gap of rotted wood and collapsed subfloor, headfirst into all those bats, all that shit. “Those aren’t your pants, Julian.”

The pants were stiff with crud and far too big on his narrow waist. They looked like something dug from one of the moldy boxes that littered the basement floor, a man’s pants, old and stained and frayed at the cuff. Julian’s fingers curled on the stiff knees, and his eyes hung open in a face gone suddenly slack. “Why would I wear somebody else’s pants?”

The expression was so familiar, the dull eyes that refused to focus, the open mouth and hint of crazy.

The disconnect.

As much as Michael hated to see it, he understood too well why the look took his brother so often. Harassed at every turn, Julian had been disintegrating for months, so twitchy and pale and hollow-eyed that he barely ate or slept; and when sleep did come, it was as tortured as his days, the dreams relentless. The worst moment came two nights ago when Julian rolled out of bed with a whimper in his throat and silver spit on his chin. He crammed himself into a corner and balled tight, same slack mouth, same nightmare eyes. It took long minutes to snap him out of it, and when Michael finally got him back in bed, Julian remained jittery and glazed and afraid. His words broke as he tried to explain.

Things change in the dark. It scares me.

Things change how?

You’ll think I’m crazy.

I won’t.

Swear?

Jeez, Julian…

You know how a candle starts out all clean and smooth and pretty? How it makes sense when you look at it. Like that’s how it should look.