Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

But what about Lila? If she was still sleeping, there must be others. Maybe, and maybe was enough.

My mother, father. Maybe my sister. Maybe my brother. Maybe the walls filled with honey.

She said it out loud, “Maybe is enough.”

THE house sat low in the shade of elms, the debris of their lives on display before it. Family pictures were strewn about the wild lawn, a garden of memories to pass through.

Felicia stood at the base of the driveway looking up at the shattered windows. The front door was partly open. She felt it like a wound. The darkness it revealed seemed impenetrable. Her body was trembling, teeth chattering. She decided she couldn’t do it, couldn’t take that first step up the driveway, and turned back. But the maybe was there to move her forward, until she was standing at the darkened doorway.

She stood there for a long time. The door and the space beyond were familiar, but filtered through all that had happened since she last stood there. At that remove, they felt like props for a dream she had once had—a dream of an entire lifetime now mostly forgotten. Familiar things, like the doorknob that they all touched but didn’t see or feel, now had an otherworldly aura. Their unique truth had resurfaced, wiping out for a moment the generic memories. She felt as though she was visiting this place for the first time, though she was also aware that she was intimately familiar with it.

Still, she couldn’t reach out to it now. She couldn’t even nudge the door wider with her foot because of the terror that now had her by the throat. She closed her eyes and listened at the opening. Then she called out hoarsely, “Hello? Mom? Dad? You there?”

Nothing came back.

“Hello? It’s me!”

Nothing.

That’s all I can do, she thought. She remained in the doorway for several minutes, just to be sure. Nothing changed.

She was backing away when she heard the voice. A low murmur. Coming from inside. Someone talking.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

The murmuring continued.

She was pulled forward by the possibility. She passed quickly through the living room, then the kitchen, stepping over the shards of dishes, the racks from the oven like the walls of a cage. In the dining room the table was on its side. A chain led out the shattered back door and she could see that it was locked around one of the patio pillars. The chain they once used to keep their dog, Zeto, tethered to the tree and out of the pool. She pulled on it and there was resistance, a tug like a fish on a line. She dropped it as if shocked, but followed the chain down the hall.

It led into the first bedroom, where she found that it was bolted around Chase’s ankle.

CHASE was delusional, talking to the wall. When he saw Felicia, he redirected the stream of garbled words in her direction. At first she thought he was speaking another language. He seemed to recognize her behind his exhausted eyes, but his reaction was subdued, as though she had just stepped out of the room for a moment and returned.

He was lying on a mattress, shirtless, his torso badly scratched and scarred as if he had crawled through a thicket of thorns. Some of the scratches were scabbed over, but others were fresh. Felicia could see that he had lost a great deal of weight, ribs and abs showing like furrows, face hollowed and gaunt. His filthy boxer shorts hung loosely at his hips. He’s starving, she thought.

She threw herself at him, said his name. She kissed his neck, his face, as he looked beyond her, mumbling. She couldn’t make out what he was saying. Something about it growing in not out. Something about a head stuffed with hair.

Is he talking about my haircut, she wondered?

“Sit up, come on,” she told him. She pulled his arms and he rose, still talking over her shoulder. “I knocked up night,” he seemed to say past her ear.

He looked at her, unsmiling. “Say that again,” she asked, but he didn’t respond.

The emaciated state of his face, his body, scared her. She grabbed the backpack and pulled out a fistful of power bars. “Chase,” she said. “Come on, eat these.”

She tore one open and held it out. His body did the rest, sending out his hand for it, cramming it into his mouth. He was chewing, but already tearing open another. He must need water, she thought.

In the kitchen she tested the tap. Water streamed out. She filled a pot with it and brought it to Chase. He drank, but not with the same fervor that he ate. The chain, Felicia noted, was long enough for him reach the sinks, the toilet too. How did he get chained up, she wondered. Did her family do it? She looked at how it had been secured to his ankle. There was a screw pushed through the loop of links and bolted tight. She tried to undo it with her fingers but it didn’t budge. She needed tools.

“Did you do this?” she asked him. “How did you do it, Chase? Listen, how?”

THE old Acura was in the garage. No sign of her father’s car. They drove away in it, she told herself. She had already searched the entire house. There was no sign of them. Off to somewhere safe, she insisted. Maybe to find me, as they had once discussed during one of their final phone calls. She speculated that they must have left before Chase arrived. He tried to make sure he wouldn’t wander off as his condition worsened, and made use of Zeto’s chain.

She thought, They are together, at some kind of sanctuary. The whole thing hasn’t touched them. They left this car for me.

She had carried a key for it since she was sixteen. She had learned to drive behind the wheel of this car, her father coaching her through three-point turns and parallel parking. He had always kept a small tool kit rolled up in a towel and stashed in the trunk, and she used it—the pliers and wrench—to get the chain off Chase’s leg. She led him to the passenger seat and strapped him in.

The car had a full tank of gas, but she noted that the clock was broken. Stuck at 8:33. Right twice a day.

She pulled out of the garage slowly and parked on the incline of the driveway. It was stupid, she knew, but she got out and pulled the garage door shut. Her mom had always hated leaving the garage door wide open like that. Anyone could walk in, she used to say.

Then they were driving through her old neighborhood and Chase said something like, “Cards were switched is what he said at the top of the world but who did that to what cards on the top side of clouds?”

“Chase? What cards?” she asked. “Did you say cards?”

He turned to her and mumbled, “It’s dreams all the time now so nothing is nothing anymore.”

She told him they were on their way to get help. At the center, they would take care of him and he would be good as new. She explained everything about the implant in her head, even showed him the generator bulge under her skin. “There’s a wire,” she said, “going from the generator to the implant in my brain. I know it sounds weird, Chase, but it works. They’ll give you your own implant.”

They had talked about implants before. He had pretended to joke, and when she laughed, he was hurt that she seemed to think it was such a stupid idea. He thought it could save them. She remembered his anger, saying he would be able to fuck her whenever she wanted to be fucked. That’s what she wanted, right? Seething, punching walls and doors. Not angry at her. At his own body.

“You don’t need an implant or pills or any of that, Chase,” she had told him then. “You just need to be honest with yourself.”

“Then why am I always dreaming it? Why am I fucking you every night in my dreams if it’s not you that I want?”

“Stop saying ‘fucking,’ ” was all she could say.

Later that week, he had attacked her. She had felt him behind her, dreaming one of those dreams. She took him inside, thinking it could work like the mechanics of a key. Hoping, by fitting together in that most simple way, he could unlock her and let out the possibilities she had already stored away.