Robert Bennett - The Company Man

Bells began ringing not far away. The three of them looked in the direction passively. One of them stooped and picked up the briefcase. “We’d better go,” he said.

Then they walked in different directions without looking back.

Hayes sat in Skiller’s tenement room in silence. Meditating, almost. The building was empty now, devoid of all the screaming tenants and the filthy children he had seen before. This part of the Shanties had been abandoned after the fire.

He looked around the little room. Looked at the two little beds. The tattered Christ calendar on the wall. Prostrate peasants, still laying their palms before the approach of the Lord. Always approaching, never here.

He knew when the child entered the building, felt him rushing up the stairs like a bolt of lightning, leaping from floor to floor. Hayes felt something new here right away, some intense, deep connection. He suspected he knew why. He and the boy had both beheld something similar, and come away different.

When the boy entered Hayes could not see him but he knew he was there, watching. He said, “Hello, Jack.”

There was a quiver in the air before him. It slowed to show a fiercely vibrating form, moving so fast it confused the eye. It slowed further and somewhere in the blur he saw a child’s face, eyes mad and confused, teeth bared in rage.

“Calm down,” said Hayes. He could feel the boy more viscerally than any other person, as if his very thoughts were painted on the walls. Hayes held up his hands to show him he meant no harm, and the boy began to slow further. Then more until Hayes could finally see him.

He looked nothing like a boy anymore. His hair was sheet-white and his skin was devoid of all pigment and his eyes were wide and hollow. He looked like a starving thing or perhaps some specter from a medieval painting come to life. His teeth chattered as though he was agonizingly cold, and Hayes saw they were tinted with red. One of his hands was horribly mauled, streaked with red and black.

“Can you speak?” Hayes asked.

The boy shivered and watched him. He blinked rapidly. It was an unnerving sight.

“Can you speak, Jack?”

He saw the boy open his mouth. There was a whining noise like dozens of flies by his ear, and somewhere in it he heard a stammering voice say, Who are you?

“I’m like you,” said Hayes. He pointed to his white hair, then to the boy’s.

The boy’s shivering stopped. He looked at Hayes and furrowed his brow as he tried to remember speech. “Like me?” he asked, his voice still shuddering.

“Yes.”

He looked Hayes over, eyelids fluttering jerkily. “I know you,” he said. “You’ve been here before.”

“Yes. Twice. I was looking for you. To take care of you, Jack.”

The boy watched him for a long while. “Did you see it, too?” he asked.

“See what?”

“The monster. The monster in the basement.”

“The golden one? Yes. Yes, I did, Jack.”

The boy stared at him a moment longer. Then suddenly he was gone. Hayes looked at the empty space and then searched for the boy and found him standing in the kitchen, arms at his sides, face furious.

“I don’t like that,” he whispered.

“What?” said Hayes.

“I don’t like that!” screamed the boy. He picked up a nearby pan and flung it against the far wall. It punched a hole through the plaster like it was paper and daylight streamed through. “I don’t like it! I don’t! I don’t!”

“I don’t like it either,” Hayes said. “I’m not here because of it.”

“Then why?” demanded the boy. “Why are you in my house?”

“Here,” said Hayes. “Here. You’ve hurt yourself. Does that hurt?”

The boy looked at his injured hand. Then he looked back up at Hayes, mistrustful.

“I can help that,” said Hayes. “Come here.”

The boy shook his head.

“Come here, Jack. Come here.”

He relaxed. Then he walked to Hayes and sat down before him, staring blankly at the floor.

“Let me see your hand,” Hayes said.

The boy stuck out his ruined arm. Hayes knew it would hurt the boy were he to touch it, so he took out a handkerchief and wrapped it around his upper arm, pinching off the blood flow. The boy did not squirm. Perhaps he felt the strange connection as Hayes did and trusted it, like they were linked somehow by what they had passed through and seen. It was like a window into one another’s minds.

“How did you do that?” Hayes asked.

“I hit a door,” said the boy. “There was a lock and I had to get it off.”

“I see,” said Hayes softly. “Does that feel better?”

The boy nodded.

“How old are you, Jack?”

Jack watched him, eyes wide and uncomprehending.

“How old?” asked Hayes again.

“I don’t know,” said the boy.

“You don’t?”

“I used to know. But I don’t anymore.” He stopped and said, “It doesn’t work that way anymore.”

“What doesn’t? What doesn’t work that way?”

The boy shook his head. Hayes thought for a second. “Time?” he said. “Does time not work for you anymore?”

Jack did not answer.

“How old were you before, Jack? Before the monster in the basement?”

“I was ten.”

“All right. You’re ten, so you’re a big boy. And I’m going to treat you like a big boy. Do you want to know why I’m here?”

The boy nodded again.

“I’m here about your daddy,” said Hayes.

The boy’s eyes went wide and he stared at Hayes. He began shuddering and flickering again and there was a sound like two ship hulls sliding over each other, grating and maddening. Hayes raised his hands, hoping to smother his anger before it could grow.

“No, Jack,” he said. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m not. I’m like you, remember?”

The boy relented and became solid again. “My daddy’s dead,” he said softly.

“I know, Jack.”

“He’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“He was killed.”

“I know. I know that. I need to know how.”

“How he was killed?”

“I need to know what happened.” Hayes felt the boy’s thoughts flow before him. He seemed terribly stunted. He had the mind not of a boy of ten but perhaps one of five, maybe even younger. Hayes was not sure if he had been like this before he had been altered.

“What happened?” repeated the child.

“Yes. On the day that he left.”

“When he left to go to the boat?”

“Yes. On that day.”

“Why?”

“I just need to know. Someone needs to know what happened to people like your daddy. We can’t just forget about them.”

“No,” said the boy. “No, no.” He frowned, blinking back tears, and said, “I loved him.”

“I know, Jack.”

“He was my daddy. I loved him and I didn’t want to be bad but I had to see where he was going.”

“Yes.”

“I had to see. So I followed him.” And he began speaking while Hayes watched his memories unfold.

His daddy had said not to follow. He’d said he couldn’t follow, that the boy should stay home, and then his daddy had crept out in the night beforehand, trying to get away without him knowing. But the boy had been awake all night and had just been faking sleep, so when his daddy put on his shoes and put the letter on the chair the boy knew. He knew, and when the door shut he went and read the letter. Read it as best as he could. He knew what it was saying and he did not even cry, he was too old to cry, he just tossed the letter aside and went downstairs and saw his daddy walking away down the street. Walking down the street, north. Alone.

“I followed him,” Jack said then. “I’m good at it. I’m good at being quiet.”