Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down,
we don’t move; today is today, always is today.
—Octavio Paz, “The Endless Instant”
The thump of the man’s hand carries through Joey. He is lifting, straining, pumping against this strength clamped on him. Head forced upward, trying to use it as a battering ram. But the man is bigger, stronger.
“Stop,” the man says.
Startled by the voice, Joey stops. It is not a voice he expected, not at all like the movies; it is a calm, controlled voice.
Still, this hand at his throat. No, he has not misjudged the man, he decides. It still hurts.
Joey turns his head sideways in a quick, jerking motion, feels something in his neck snap. In this, he gets what he wants—glimpses his captor’s face. The man forces his head straight.
“Don’t.” Joey’s voice comes out raspy.
Not speaking, the man simply smiles sheepishly.
A discomforting smile, as if he knows what time will bring.
Demons in the man’s eyes. Eyes the color of glass, seemingly able to reflect everything around him. Joey glimpses himself in those eyes, snared like an animal.
Desperately, Joey’s mind strains with his body. Think of a way out. He has not been cut, he is not bleeding. It is his way to fight, but he cannot, his hands, legs bound like a prisoner. Struggling against tape, his muscles produce only a dull ache. It is no good.
Joey hears his own heart beating.
Clifford is dead. This man has killed him.
Suddenly he is afraid.
He thinks of his father in the truck, eyes open, unmoving. There is a hollow emptiness inside.
Fear saps his strength. He crouches into a ball and groans. Around his neck, the clamped hand grows tighter till it is hard to breathe. Above, low street lights glimmer. Around him, a deep, chilling rain falls harder. Joey wishes the rain would camouflage him, simply make him invisible to this man. He curls up tighter.
From inside the house, he can just barely hear the phone ringing. He supposes it has been ringing all along, though he is not sure why.
Joey wants to turn his face from his dad’s Yukon, but he can’t. His hands are fighting each other now, if only to wipe tears. Light seems harsh. There is a giant sound in his ear, like the sound of gushing water. Cold, shaking, hair matted, rainwater running over his lips like a river, Joey feels his stomach muscles bunch up. Wants to just curl up and go to sleep.
Rain and tears on his jacket.
Pain rushes in like a wave. Terrible pain.
He is up off the pavement.
Time has slowed. It is as if each raindrop takes minutes to fall.
A hard, thick hand.
The calm voice commanding him to walk.
Cannot get his legs to do anything, like his bones are gone. The man drags him, new sneakers scraping on wet blacktop.
There is an SUV not far away, a big black Cadillac Escalade.
The man commands him not to scream because now they are in front of the neighbor’s, the Grahams’ house.
Do as you are told.
Practically on his knees, he’s being pulled, then a sudden surging force and he is inside something. Metal slams hollow over him.
Blackness. He is in the back of the SUV, shoved into the space that holds the spare tire. There is metal above. He can feel it with his fingertips. He tries to get up but hits his head. As the SUV takes off, Joey lurches forward, then back.
Above, a great expanse of nothingness. He looks at it for what seems an eternity. Eyes tiring of focusing on blackness. Tiny finger reaches through black to the metal, working over grooves and fissures that feel like rivers and canyons.
Tears come again.
Focus on the last clear image he had before this began. Read the face, but it will not come clear.
His father’s face is splattered red.
His mind is full of possibilities of what is about to happen. The unthinkable already has; his father is dead.
Joey struggles up, balancing weight on the small of his back. Inside this place, it smells of mold, grease, dirt. Below him, what feels like a small thin mattress, sharp metal springs jabbing his thighs, buttocks. He can almost taste the rusted metal springs.
In this instant, he wonders if he can disappear. Make himself invisible. Will it, as he has willed other things. Then the pain would leave him too.
And things would be as they were.
Time stretches into nothingness.
His only companion, brakes squealing. Muffled sounds of the man talking to someone, above the liquid violins. A rapid rush of blood to his head. Could there be two of them? He does not remember two, but it could be. Concentrating, he realizes there is only one voice. No one speaks back.
Thoughts of his father…
I want to see my mother. Thoughts of her flow immediately after thoughts of his father. If he closes his eyes hard enough and long enough, he can reach up and touch her. His mother destroys men like this. He wants her here now.
Outside, the SUV is idle, then roars out. Forced down into the mattress, which smells raw, ragged, dirty.
Joey will not shrink down. Arms to his side, to brace himself for the next turn, he makes sense of it. The small man with the calm voice driving; he must be the one Mom is after. But why would he come here? Why to him? Each passing second brings more questions.
At his age, Joey thinks death is unimaginable. Life is infinite. There had only been one exposure to death in his life, the day his Grandma Sasha, a wrinkled figure with cloudy eyes, passed away. She was seventy-nine. Joey remembers holding the brown speckled hand, cold, crooked fingers for a long time, listening to her breathe soft and shallow. She had known he was there with her; he could feel warmth, followed by a slight squeeze, then gradual coldness. Joey had been led out of the room by his mother, and he had not seen Grandma Sasha anymore. She’d gone to live with the angels.
Whispering “Stop this, stop this” to himself, to the man, but the man does not hear.
The SUV is moving—one corner, then another. Its ride is jarring and rough.
How far would it be before they are out of town?
He wonders, but he can’t tell without a window. There is no way to know. Joey wants the sun on his face, fresh air. Here there is none of that. Only darkness. But he will fight it, he must fight it.
Pulling knees up to chest, he holds on, kicking with all his might. The metal will not budge. He kicks again and again, but nothing moves. Only now does he realize he has lost his shoes. Feet wet, cold through damp socks. How did he do that? Maybe when the man yanked him in here. Maybe they’d find them on the sidewalk.
How long till they find Dad?
Closing his eyes, he focuses on his father’s face, blood like a crimson mask, red stains. Joey is scared. If death comes for him, how will he know it? Will it be painful, like the look on his father’s face, or will he simply fall asleep and never awaken? Or will it be this never-ending blackness? He wonders when it will happen.
Joey wants to scream but shouldn’t. In the movies, if you scream they kill you. In the movies, you are scared but can’t show it.
Joey hears the music. Immediately he shies away from it, a gut reaction.
But it’s only the radio, only the sound of violins. Classical music. The man is quiet.
Joey slams his feet against blackness. Sudden wrenching pain, like a firecracker, dull aching that goes through ankles, shins, thighs.
Grunting, Joey tries once more, crashes his feet into his makeshift prison, harder this time, sucking for air as he hits.
The SUV brakes hard, swerves, stops. Violins stop playing, hollow footsteps coming closer. A metal click in the lock, just above him. The latch releases.
In that instant, he’s going to die. He’s sure of it, fiercely conscious of his own mortality. Closing his eyes, he imagines flying high and away from this.
The trunk opens, light flooding in.
Joey’s afraid to open his eyes, look up, but he does.
The calm voice, not as soft as before, coming from above. The man stands before him, shirttails out, raincoat billowing around his body so he looks bigger than he is. The air is cold. Something glimmering in the man’s hand catches the sunlight shafts filtering through clumping, gray clouds. Joey knows instinctively what it must be.
He wants to control his rapid gasps but can’t.
The man looks different in sunlight. Eyes light and unmoving; balding, shaven head; an odd twitch to his right cheek.
The man comes headlong at him through the opening, though Joey is still squinting into the brightness.
He can see the whole face now, like a sun that fills up his horizon too quickly.
He feels the sharp tug at his hair. A violent, jerking motion that snaps his head back into an unnatural position, exposing his face to a cool wind above the field. He cannot bear to open his eyes, instead keeps them tightly closed, waiting for the pain that will signal his end. There is no pain, only the horrible sound of the voice. A demonic voice that goes to the very heart of him, fills him with terror. Joey’s shrieks are carried on the wind, out into the greenness for no one to hear. Joey stops.
Acrid breath on his face, the man’s stench. “You do that one more time, I’ll slit your throat.”
There is no anger in his words, just a sure confidence.
Joey leans back, small hands clutching tightly to carpeting, nodding.
“I’ll hurt you,” the man says.
Joey lifts up, just inches, to get a glimpse of his world. His last look, he’s sure of it. Yet he will not go to heaven without knowing.
“Who are you?” Joey asks, his words barely a murmur.
“Consider me a friend of your mother’s,” the man says slowly, laughing a wicked, low laugh that crackles out into the molten sky.
The man’s hands aren’t big, but he is rubbing them together like they are cold. One is swollen, red. Dried gray and brown dots on it. As the man touches it, he winces.
“My mom doesn’t have friends like you,” Joey says, sitting up further. Only now, he can see they’re on an unfamiliar two-lane highway, cornfields to his left, husks barely taller than the man blowing in a growing breeze from the direction of the setting sun. No other people in sight. The rain has stopped.
Realizing what the boy is doing, the man laughs louder. The kind of laughter that rolls out, sweeps over the landscape. Joey shivers.
The man reaches in his front pocket, takes out a hard pack of Marlboros, lights one up. Joey can see the side of his face, only now realizing: I know this man.
“You’re the one that was watching me?” he asks.
The man takes one puff of his cigarette, throws it on the ground, stomps it out, and grunts. “I’ve been watching you for a long time.”
With that he pushes Joey down and slams the metal thing over him. In the pain of darkness again, Joey listens to the motor turn over, gears shift, the SUV rolls onto the highway. These sounds will be Joey’s personal hell. He knows that although he wants this demon to go to hell, he is not ready to go live with the angels.