Two days after his father’s funeral, Noah Tucker started digging a hole.
He woke early. The sleep he’d managed the night before was filled with nightmares, slithering and crawling things he wished he could forget, still fresh in his memory.
He dressed and made his way downstairs, tip-toeing across the hall so he wouldn’t wake his mother. Her door was halfway open, and he could hear her snores. He’d seen a bottle of something called Valium on the kitchen counter and deduced that it helped her sleep better without his dad next to her. Noah had considered taking a pill himself, but he didn’t like the idea of being unable to wake from one of his nightmares, trapped while things with appendages chased him down a never-ending hallway.
Downstairs, he made a bowl of Cheerios and sprinkled sugar until it tasted like a bowl of candy. He looked outside toward the yard. His father had been planning on making a small pond in the corner for Noah. All you needed were a couple of trash bags and a shovel. Dig a hole, lay the bag on the soil, and hide the edges with more dirt before pouring the water.
“Can we do it tonight?” Noah had asked on the ride home from school last Monday.
“It’ll have to wait for the weekend. I’ve got a meeting in the city, remember?”
Noah had nodded and thought Saturday couldn’t come fast enough. The next day his father had been blown to bits in the explosion.
Staring at the yard, as the sun began to light up the grass and the lilac tree and the line of bushes at the far end, Noah thought, why not dig a hole now?
The ground seemed to call him. He headed for the shed where his father kept his gardening tools. Grabbing the nearest shovel, he walked to the corner of the yard, the place where they’d planned on installing the pond.
He imagined his father’s resting place: ruined skyscrapers and broken windows. No body to bury beneath the stone his mother spent a fortune on. He thought of all the other dead people in the world, those that were so old they didn’t have stones to mark their resting places. Right here under his feet, there could have been bones and rotting skin, some unidentifiable corpse.
He lined the shovel up and brought his foot down. The soil was darker underneath the surface, fresher, and it was as if the ground had a voice. Loud and clear in his ears.
Keep digging.
Noah rubbed at bumpy skin despite the early morning heat, telling himself he was tired and hearing things.
Yet he obeyed the voice and brought the shovel down once more.
***
“Whatchya doing, kiddo?” his aunt Sarah asked an hour later. She’d been stopping by every day to check on his mother since the planes hit the towers.
“Digging a hole.” He wiped at sweat, leaving behind dirty streaks on his forehead and cheeks.
“Is your mom up?” Aunt Sarah asked, as if reading his thoughts.
“I’m not sure. She wasn’t when I came out here.”
“I’ll go check on her. How are you feeling?” She kneeled and rubbed his back. She was younger than his mother, and he’d always thought she was quite pretty and nice, and from time to time he’d imagine what it would be like to have her as his mother.
“I’m okay.” He tossed another load of dirt onto the pile.
“You’re not just saying that? You’d tell me if you were really, really sad, right? Because that would be okay. Heck, that would be normal. And you wouldn’t even need to feel embarrassed. You’d tell your aunt, right?”
“Right.”
“One more question. What’s with the hole?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and it was the truth.
His aunt hesitated and then seemed to accept his answer. She kissed the top of his head and went inside.
He admired his work in progress.
Not bad, but he had a long way to go.
A long way to go? What did that mean?
He wasn’t sure, but the soil seemed so inviting.
***
By the end of that first day, the hole was much wider and deeper. Noah’s skin blistered from being outside the better part of six hours. He made a note to wear sunscreen when he came out tomorrow.
And he would be out here tomorrow. It was what the soil wanted of him. He couldn’t explain the analogy, but he knew it was true nonetheless.
If he was going to build a pond, now would be the time to stop digging and start constructing but some part of him rejected the thought. This was no longer about the pond.
“Noah,” his mother called from the back porch.
He tossed the shovel down and followed her into the house.
On the kitchen table were two bowls of tomato soup and two grilled cheese sandwiches. He ate the sandwich in three or four bites, and within minutes he was slurping at the last of the soup. The day’s work had left him ravenous.
“Here,” his mother said, pushing her bowl toward him.
“You’re not hungry?”
“Not in the least.” She forced a smile, and he supposed Valium took away your appetite. Or maybe death did.
He finished her soup and let out a belch she would’ve scolded him for under other circumstances.
“What’ve you been up to out there? You look burnt to a crisp.”
“I was digging a hole.”
“A hole? Any particular reason?”
“Nope. Just digging.”
“Noah, I hope you know everything’s going to be okay. Your mom’s a little crazy right now, but we’ll get through this. It’s what your dad would want.” At the mention of his father, her voice cracked and soon there were two matching tears sliding down her cheeks.
“I know,” he said. He wanted to tell her he’d like to cry as well, that he’d give anything to break down, to feel something since he’d gotten the news, but instead he held his stare and tried to offer a smile of reassurance.
“Come here.” His mom held out her arms and he held her tightly. “I’m going to get some sleep. You come get me if you need anything. And I mean anything.”
“Sure.” He watched her open the bottle of Valium and pop one into her mouth like a Flintstones vitamin. Then she headed upstairs, and after a few minutes of quiet crying, she fell into a snore-filled sleep.
He looked outside to catch another glimpse of the hole but it was too dark to see.
***
More nightmares. Different this time. There were still slithering and crawling things, odd-looking creatures his dream-self couldn’t make sense of, but among them stood his father. Surrounded by rubble and smoke and blood. He placed a hand on Noah’s shoulder. “How’s that hole coming, kiddo?”
“It’s fine.” He tried to make sense of his surroundings. “I thought you were . . . this is where it happened.”
His father nodded. For the first time Noah noticed his face. The skin was mostly missing, revealing charred bone beneath. His eye sockets were both empty. “You see that right there?” His father pointed to a section of the building that had landed on the other side of the street, leaning against a half-toppled parking garage. “That wall was outside our boardroom, just above where the plane hit. It cut off the stairwell. We were having a safety meeting. Can you believe that?”
Noah wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to tell his father to come home with him, out of the dream and into real life. Then they could go see a matinee and drink sodas and eat popcorn. The realization that Dad wasn’t ever coming home was the cruelest thing he’d even encountered.
“You keep digging, kid. You keep digging.” His father squeezed Noah’s shoulder one last time and headed toward the epicenter of the rubble, where the slithering and crawling things seemed to culminate.
***
“It’s just a phase,” his Aunt Sarah said from the deck, unaware that Noah could hear, “to get his mind off things.”
“You mean a coping mechanism,” his mother said.
“Exactly. Better than playing video games all day or lashing out. It’s harmless.”
“But he needs to face it soon or else he’ll keep it bottled up. Sometimes you need to break down. It might be a phase, but it’s already overstayed its welcome.”
Noah stopped listening, too intent on his work. Sweat poured down his face and into the hole, which was bigger now—so much bigger. He figured he could stand inside and just barely touch the surface. Soon he’d have to retrieve a ladder from the garage.
Someone grabbed his arm. He spun, ready to be back among the rubble, ready to see whatever hideous thing lay before him, but it was just his aunt. She held a glass of lemonade. From her pocket she presented a tube of sunscreen. “You look like you could use both of these.”
He nodded his thanks, grabbed the glass, and drank it in three big gulps.
She made a circular motion with her finger, telling him to turn around. He bit his lip as she applied sunscreen.
“How’s it coming along?” she asked.
“It needs to be deeper. A lot deeper.”
“Why’s that, honey? What’s down there, and why is it so important?”
He studied the hole again. A centipede lay half-buried, pushing itself out of the dirt. “I don’t know, but it wants me to let it out.”
She froze, hand still on his shoulder. A look of concern replaced the usual cool-aunt smirk. For the first time ever, he thought that maybe she wasn’t all that different from his mom.
“Noah, maybe you ought to knock off for the day, huh? You should spend some time with your mother.”
“All she does anymore is sleep.”
“Her husband just died. They were together for fifteen years.”
“I don’t care. Just let me finish.” He pushed away and grabbed the shovel.
From behind, he could sense her presence for another few minutes, watching in awe as he worked faster, digging and smiling.
***
He didn’t go inside until late evening.
No food on the table this time. His mother was passed out on the couch.
“Keep at it,” she said in between snores and in a voice that was not her own. “You’re almost there.”
Noah went upstairs and watched the hole through his window. The moon cast bright light onto the backyard and he tried not to blink, hoping he wouldn’t miss anything.
***
Noah might have slept longer had it not been for the crunching sound.
He stretched, yawned, and froze when he made the connection.
Running to his window, he pounded his fists against the panes.
His mother stood in the yard, wiping away sweat in the morning heat as she threw dirt into the hole.
He didn’t bother slipping on his sneakers as he ran downstairs and headed outside. “Stop. You’re ruining everything!”
She continued to fill it in, his beautiful creation. She had no right. Tomorrow he’d return to school and fidget in his seat all day, trying not to notice the stares and hushed whispers, and all he would think of was the hole and the voice and whatever dwelled down there. She was taking away the one constant in his life.
He grabbed the shovel. “Don’t. I mean it.”
“You mean it?” His mother yanked the shovel from his hands. “Watch your mouth. I’m still your mother, you know. You’re making a mess of the yard. It was fine for a while but this isn’t exactly the healthiest way to cope.”
“I’m not coping. It just wants to be let out.”
She froze. “What did you say?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say anything. I just like digging. That’s all.”
“No, you said something wanted to be let out. What does that mean? Are you okay?”
She felt his head as if he was simply feverish, as if all his problems could be solved with aspirin and chicken soup. “Noah, what wants to be let out?”
He didn’t answer.
“I know this has been hard for you and I haven’t been much help, but I think you ought to talk to someone. You’ve got to deal with this. You’re better off being a mess like me than keeping it inside. Would you like that? Would you like to sit down with someone and talk about your feelings?”
“No. I wouldn’t like that at all. I just want you to stop filling in the hole.” He cried and cursed himself for being a baby. Whatever rested beneath seemed impossibly distant now.
She took him into her arms. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered again and again, rubbing his sore back, telling him everything was okay as she cried tears of her own.
He stared at the soil, waiting for a voice that did not speak.
***
It was near midnight when his mother finally came upstairs and retired.
When he was certain she was asleep, he made his way back outside and started from scratch, digging with speed and determination, digging with a reserve of energy he hadn’t known existed.
When he finally stopped, it must have been late. The sky was the blackest he’d ever seen it. He noticed the absolute stillness of the night, noticed the way the moon cast a dark blue hue over everything.
From beneath his feet, the voice spoke again.
Don’t stop.
He tossed scoops of soil onto the ground like they were weightless. Managed to surpass the depth from the past two days. He dug and dug and without warning, the shovel broke through the dirt and hit nothingness, as if there were a cave down there, an empty space that was not dirt or soil.
He tried to make sense of it, but his thoughts went elsewhere when the shovel was pulled from his grip and into the ground.
Thank you.
Then came the hand. It reached through the opening. Black fingers, horribly deformed, leathery.
“What did I tell you about this?”
Noah stifled a scream at the sound of his mother’s voice. She pulled him away. “I worked for two hours to fix your damn mess and look what you’ve done. Is this what you want? To drive your mother insane now out of all times? Because you’re doing an awfully good job.”
She grabbed his wrist, and he struggled. Somehow, she didn’t see the hand, reaching farther upward, revealing an elbow and the start of the skeletal shoulder. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Let go,” he said as he pushed her away.
“I’m not going to let you give up on me. We’re all we’ve got now.”
The thought resonated with him. His father was gone and tomorrow, when he came home, there would only be his mother. The house would seem just as quiet. Just as foreign.
His mother started to say something else when the hand grabbed her ankle. Another set of fingers covered her mouth, dampening her screams.
It dragged her head first into the ground, into the place where it lay dormant for so long. Her feet kicked before they vanished altogether.
Noah pushed aside loosened soil, searching for that entrance to the other place. For the creature, or his mother, or someone, because he did not want to be alone for even another moment.
The soil gave way to more soil and he grew faint. Screamed. Neighbors watched through windows, stared from porches. Sirens sounded in the distance.
Noah reached into the soil, pushed with all his strength, and his hand finally broke through.
He recoiled when something dry and rotting clenched his fingers, struggling for only a moment before he remembered the house, and the night, and the empty world above ground.
He stopped fighting after that.