Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

When the phone rang again three minutes later, my wife climbed off the sofa and left the room. I closed my eyes and waited for the ringing to stop. If it was important — and it was always important to Toby — he could leave a message. I figured God had created voice mail for just such occasions.

So many months later, as the anniversary of that day bears down, I know I should have answered the phone. I get that now. Sometimes when a boy cries wolf, there really are teeth at his neck, but how was I supposed to know? I’d come to think of Toby’s head as a scalding pot, and I’d learned to keep my fingers away from it.

Once upon a time, Toby was the golden boy, the Prince of Barnard, Texas. I wish I could ask what happened to him and wonder on the question with genuine naiveté. But I know what happened. The cause. The effect. The whole of it was as clear as an image beaming through a polished projector lens.

Sundays are for church and fried chicken. I sit at the dinner table with Daddy, and I’m thinking about the morning sermon. The story of Lot’s wife remains vivid and horrible, and I try to imagine what it must feel like to have every speck of my body turned to grains of salt. I see the ceramic saltshaker in the middle of the table. It is in the shape of a white hen with a pink bow, the wife of the peppershaker rooster. And I wonder if I became a pillar of salt, would people — maybe my own parents — shave bits of me off to fill their shakers so I could flavor food?

My father smokes a cigarette before the meal and asks me if I’ve finished all of my weekend homework, and I lie and say, “Yes, sir,” and then Toby, who is fifteen years old, opens the kitchen door and stands on the porch, wiping dust from the seat of his Lee jeans. His shirt is torn at the shoulder. Patches of dirt cover his knees and shins. Mussed hair juts away from his scalp in haphazard clumps. A bruise blossoms on his jaw, and his left eye is already good and swollen. Though his appearance could be attributed to any number of accidents, I believe he has been in a fight.

A yelp of distress flies from my mother’s lips, and she rushes to the door. Slowly, my father rises from his chair and crosses the room to join her.

Frightened by Toby’s face, shocked by the damage, I find myself more upset to think that someone would dare strike him. Besides being taller than most boys his age, Toby is an athlete, a star on the baseball diamond and the football field. Thick muscles cover his arms and legs; he has our daddy’s build. And even without such physical attributes, Toby would have made an unlikely target, because people liked him. He didn’t bully or shove or insult any of his classmates the way the other football players did. What kind of fool had the nerve to lay fists on him?

Then the phone rings, and Toby’s eyes open wide, and fear simmers in those eyes. I’ve never seen my brother afraid before, except for the pretend fear he acted out when we were little kids, playing Cops and Robbers. Mama remains with Toby, fussing and tutting and asking him what happened. Daddy leaves the doorway and goes to answer the phone.

As children, Cops and Robbers was our favorite game, and Toby always played the hero. The games would begin with me mortally wounded, dying in my brother’s arms and Toby vowing revenge against some “motherless cur”—a phrase he’d picked up from an old movie.

Then after a spluttering death, worthy of a Shakespearean royal, I would resurrect as said cur and we’d spend an hour running around the backyard jabbing our plastic guns at each other and saying, “pow,” and “bang,” and “eat lead.” It was common. Normal. A cliché enacted by kids all over the world.

It made sense that Toby would play the hero. Not only was he two and half years older than me, he also embodied the term. He was just plain good at everything. Give him a baseball bat, or a math equation, or a guitar and he would figure out how to make them work. People called him “Brilliant,” “Amazing,” and “Genius.” His best friend, Duke Manheim, used to call Toby, “Flat out impossible,” with a tone that revealed the awestruck depths of his admiration. The last few times I visited Toby, he could no longer hold a cigarette between his fingers; they trembled too badly. Instead, he pinched the filter between his teeth and sucked them down in a few desperate puffs.

Daddy answers the phone and at first he smiles. “Hey there, Rick,” he says, and I know it’s Mr. Manheim, Duke’s father and one of Daddy’s best friends. The call does not interest me as much as my brother’s condition, so I return my attention to Toby, who finishes wiping the dirt from himself and insists Mama leave him be as he steps into the house. Instead of remaining in the kitchen, Toby creeps out of the room without a word. No, “Hey, kid,” or “Hey, squirt,” for me.

I look to Mama for an explanation, but the concern and confusion on her face matches the gray swirl of chaos in my head. She wipes her hands on her apron and turns to Daddy. I follow her gaze and am surprised to see the expression on my father’s suddenly red face. I can’t tell if he’s about to scream or vomit. He notices us gawking at him and pulls the phone away from his ear.

“Betty, take Peter on out of here.” His voice is so quiet and dry it whispers like a desert breeze. Mama opens her mouth with a question, but the words die on her tongue. “Just go on now,” he says. “Be sure to get that chicken off the burner. We don’t want it scorched.”

The phone rang again. I switched the device to vibrate and then stood and passed through the kitchen on the way to my workbench in the garage. Its gouged wooden top was bare — no toys or toasters or bikes needed my attention. The rows of tools on the pegboard were little more than decorative these days. I hadn’t had a new project on my bench since my daughter, Jocelyn, had gone off to college.

Above the bench was a small board with a number of keys, each one hung on a hook beneath a neatly printed label. I lifted the set that opened the doors to my parents’ house — Toby’s house now — and slid them in my pocket. Then I leaned on the bench and tried to remember the last thing I’d fixed there. The lamp from Jocelyn’s room? My old ten-speed? I couldn’t be certain.

I’d picked up the tinkering bug from my father, and though a good deal of his talent had been lost in the genetic translation that was me, I managed to fix most of the household items that landed on my bench. My father, however, had been truly gifted in this regard. He could repair just about anything, spot the failure in a second flat, and once he identified the problem, he set to fixing it. His days were spent selling heavy equipment at the John Deere facility in Barnard, but on the nights he wasn’t bowling at the Longhorn Lanes or swapping stories at the VFW hall, he mended, repaired, and even invented. He was the master of broken things. Everything could be fixed, could be improved.

Mama escorts me to the door of the bedroom I share with my older brother and tells me to wait inside while she goes to talk with my father. Toby lies on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

He doesn’t look at me when I enter.

“You were in a fight?” I ask.