Iron House (7 page)

“Mrs. Vane?”

“I was raised in an orphanage, Mr. Flint. It was a small place, poorer even than this. Cold and hard and unforgiving.” She turned from the window, and one palm tilted to catch the institutional light. “You can imagine that I have certain sympathies…”

“Yes, yes. Of course.”

“I was adopted at age ten, and my nine-year-old sister was not.” She showed Flint her eyes, and there was no weakness left in them. “She was sickly, too, like Julian, and left behind because of that. I went home with a loving family and four months later my sister contracted pneumonia. She died alone in that horrible place.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“Well, I should like to think—”

“I married well, Mr. Flint, and find myself in a position to prevent a similar tragedy. I’ve been searching for children just like these boys. Older. Unwanted. It won’t bring my sister back, but I hope to find some small measure of relief. A new life for the boys, and maybe for myself. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“I meant no undue intrusion.”

“I want to meet them, Mr. Flint.”

“Of course.”

“Please find them.”

Julian had hiding places for when things got bad. An abandoned well house in the woods, the crawl space under the chapel. He’d once found a crack in the granite where the river spilled to the lower field. The descent in was a headfirst scrape through a narrow slit, but three feet down, the cave opened up and he could stretch out, the rock wet and black twelve inches from his nose. The cave was cold and dark, and he’d come out once covered with leeches; but the worse things became for Julian, the deeper he went. Deep in the world. Deep in his mind.

Michael found him in the subbasement.

The place was a maze of dark and dusty rooms—dozens of them, maybe even a hundred—but over the years, Michael had been down every hall and opened every door. He’d found ranks of cabinets with files more than eighty years old; a hall stacked with bundled newspapers rotted to mush; an old infirmary; moldy closets full of stored books, bandages, and gas masks. He’d found boxes of glass syringes, chairs with leather restraints, and straightjackets stained brown. Some rooms had steel doors; others had manacles bolted to the concrete walls. He’d once entered a room at the southern corner and been driven to the floor by a flood of bats that had found a passage in through a rotted place at the foundation. The ceilings pressed low in the subbasement. Light was sparse.

The first time Julian went missing, Michael found him in the furnace room, curled up in the tight space behind the hot metal, his knees to his chest, back hard against the brick.

He was six years old, beaten bloody.

Three years ago.

Michael ducked under some pipes, then pushed through a stretch of black to where blue light and furnace heat pushed under a warped door. He heard a low voice, his brother singing; when he opened the door, heat drove past him. The furnace filled the room, blue flame in its guts, damp heat pushing out. Julian had squeezed into the narrow place behind the boiler, his back curved, arms around his knees. Shoeless, he rocked in the narrow space, his upper body bare and red and filthy, his hair wet enough to steam.

He did not look up.

“Julian?” Michael squeezed behind the boiler. “You okay?” Julian shook his head, and Michael saw new bruises, fresh abrasions. He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, then sat; for a long time, Julian said nothing. When he did speak, it was in a broken voice.

“Remember when we were little? Old man Dredge?”

Michael had to think about it. “The maintenance man?”

“He slept in that little room down the hall.”

Julian tilted his head and Michael remembered. Dredge had a small room with a cot and refrigerator. He kept girlie posters on the wall and booze in the fridge. He was old and bent, and Julian had always been strangely unafraid of him. “What about him?”

“I come down here, you know.” Julian said it like Michael had no idea. “He used to help me when I needed it. I’d hide down here and he’d act mean when the older boys came looking. He’d shake that stick he had, talk crazy talk until most boys were too scared to even think about coming down here. He wasn’t really mean, but he wanted to help. He was my friend. When things got bad he would tell me stories. He said there were hidden doors down here, magic ones. His eyes would squint up when he talked about them, but he swore they were here. Find the right wall, he’d tell me. When things get bad, find the right wall, tap it just right, and it’ll open up.”

“Sunlight and silver stairs…”

“I told you about that?” Julian asked.

“A door to a better place. I’d forgotten, but, yeah. You told me.” Michael pictured the old man, his seamed skin and bloodshot eyes, the smell of booze and cigarettes. He’d disappeared two years ago. Fired, Michael guessed. Fired for being crazy or dirty or both. “It was just a story, Julian. Just a crazy old man.”

“Yeah. Crazy, huh?” Julian laughed, but in a bad way. And when he cupped his hands, Michael saw the abrasions on his knuckles, the smeared blood and split skin.

His brother had been down here tapping walls ...

“What happened, Julian?”

He shrugged. “They tried to throw me out naked. They tried to throw me out, but I fought.” He sniffed wetly. “They got my shoes.”

Michael studied his brother and realized that his skin wasn’t red from heat, but from cold; and that it wasn’t sweat in his brother’s hair, but melted snow. Then he realized something else. “Those aren’t your pants.”

Julian ignored him. “They locked all the doors but the main one. They wanted to make me come in the front, past all the people. They thought that would be funny, but I beat them. I came in where the bats come in. You know? Right, Michael. The bat room.”

Michael saw it now. He saw his brother running through the snow, naked and cold, then squirming through a gap of rotted wood and collapsed subfloor, headfirst into all those bats, all that shit. “Those aren’t your pants, Julian.”

The pants were stiff with crud and far too big on his narrow waist. They looked like something dug from one of the moldy boxes that littered the basement floor, a man’s pants, old and stained and frayed at the cuff. Julian’s fingers curled on the stiff knees, and his eyes hung open in a face gone suddenly slack. “Why would I wear somebody else’s pants?”

The expression was so familiar, the dull eyes that refused to focus, the open mouth and hint of crazy.

The disconnect.

As much as Michael hated to see it, he understood too well why the look took his brother so often. Harassed at every turn, Julian had been disintegrating for months, so twitchy and pale and hollow-eyed that he barely ate or slept; and when sleep did come, it was as tortured as his days, the dreams relentless. The worst moment came two nights ago when Julian rolled out of bed with a whimper in his throat and silver spit on his chin. He crammed himself into a corner and balled tight, same slack mouth, same nightmare eyes. It took long minutes to snap him out of it, and when Michael finally got him back in bed, Julian remained jittery and glazed and afraid. His words broke as he tried to explain.

Things change in the dark. It scares me.

Things change how?

You’ll think I’m crazy.

I won’t.

Swear?

Jeez, Julian ...

You know how a candle starts out all clean and smooth and pretty? How it makes sense when you look at it. Like that’s how it should look.

Okay.

But then you light it, and it melts and drips and goes ruined and ugly. Well, sometimes it feels like that when the lights go out. Like everything is wrong.

I don’t understand.

It’s like everything melts off in the dark. Like the dark is the flame and the world is wax.

The world’s not a candle, Julian.

But how do you know if you can’t see it?

Why are you crying?

How can anybody know?

Just the thought of it made Michael angry. So what if his brother was soft? “Who did this, Julian? Hennessey?”

“And Billy Walker.” Julian started crying again, bright, oily tears. He sniffed loudly, smeared dirt with a forearm.

“Who else?” Michael asked.

“Georgie-boy Nichols. Chase Johnson. And that fuck-head in from juvie.”

“The one from north Georgia? The big one?”

“Ronnie Saints.” Julian nodded.

“Five of them?”

“Yeah.”

Michael stood, even angrier. Furnace heat pulled sweat from his skin. “You have to stand up for yourself, Julian. Once you do that, they’ll leave you alone.”

“But, I’m not like you.”

“Just show them you’re not scared.”

“I’m sorry, Michael.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry…”

“Please don’t be angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“I’m sorry, Michael.”

Julian buried his eyes in a forearm, and Michael stared down for a long second. “You have to stop, Julian.”

“Stop what?” Big eyes turned up. A heavy swallow in his narrow throat.

“Stop mooning around all the time.” Michael hated the words. “Stop singing to yourself and looking lost. Stop running when they chase. Stop flinching—”

“Michael…”

“Stop being such a pussy.”

Julian looked away. “I don’t mean to be. Please don’t say that, Michael.”

But Michael was tired of the worry, the fights. “Just go to the room, Julian. I’ll see you there later.”

“Where are you going?”

“To handle this myself.” He shouldered the awkward door and left so fast he missed the look of hurt on his brother’s face, the diamond tears and determination. He didn’t see the way Julian’s arms shook when he stood, how he pulled the knife from behind his back and squeezed until his hand was bone.

“Okay, Michael.”

His brother was gone.

“Okay.”

Julian glared at the knife, then at his skinny arms and birdcage chest. He didn’t have muscles like Michael did, not the wide shoulders, or the strong blue veins that showed in his arms. He lacked the sharp eyes, the even teeth and steadiness. He had over-pale skin and lungs that burned when he ran; but the weakness went deeper than that. An uneven place lurked behind the bones of his chest, and part of him hated Michael for not having the same, soft place inside. Sometimes that hatred was a terrible thing, so strong it threatened to show on his face; sometimes it disappeared altogether, thinned so much by love that Julian remembered it like a dream.

Julian stood for a long time, humiliated and ashamed, his eyes shiny wet. His mind rolled with the memories of a thousand small hurts: taunts and abuse, Hennessey’s spit on his face, an old man’s pants and the taste of bat shit in his mouth. And he thought, too, of the big hurts, the pain and fear and self-loathing. The disappointment in his brother’s eyes. That one most of all. Julian smeared snot on his face and wondered how he could love his brother and hate him at the same time. They were both so big.

The love.

The hate.

Julian wanted to be steady on his feet. He wanted people to say hello to him in the hall and to not hurt him just because they could. If he was like Michael, he could have those things, so Julian decided that’s what he would be. Like Michael. But when he stepped for the door, the damaged ankle rolled and he went down so fast and hard his face hit concrete with the sound of cracking wood. The knife clattered away, and he curled in the dirt, lonesome and hurt and wanting to be in his brother’s skin.

Michael ...

Julian’s head ached like the bone above his eyes had split, like something sharp and hot had been jammed through the crack. He cupped his face and cried, and when his eyes opened he saw the rust-speckled blade on the floor. His fingers found the handle and metal rasped as he rolled onto all fours, head loose at the end of his neck, vision blurred. He heard a strange noise in his throat, and his face twitched as something in his head gave with a glassy snap. He felt different when he stood, dizzy and distant, limbs heavy. He swayed as the world grayed out, and when his vision cleared, he heard the sound of knuckles tapping the wall, hard, bony thumps as a far part of his mind said:
That hurts ...

But the pain belonged to some other boy.

Stop being such a pussy,
the boy said, and Julian’s feet scraped on the blackish floor. His hand found the rail that angled up, and stairs led past the basement kitchen as the air filled with the smells of sugared tea and fatty meat, white bread and fake butter. Julian climbed another flight, then made a left turn that led to the dining hall where, already, boys had begun to gather. He stumbled past the door, then pulled himself up more empty stairs and down a long hall, knife hard against his leg. He passed a few other boys, and some part of Julian knew how bad he looked, filthy and limping and hurt. Boys stared at his bruises and rotting pants, the swollen knot above crazy eyes. They stepped out of his way when they saw the knife, their backs flat on the rough plaster walls. But Julian ignored the way they looked at him, the pity and the jeers and the odd, kind question.

No,
said the boy with Julian’s voice.
We don’t need any help.

He found Hennessey alone in the first-floor bathroom at the end of the north hall. He stood at the urinal, and turned when the door swung closed, his disbelief twisting into a leer. “Jesus,” Hennessey said, then turned his back and flushed. The bathroom smelled of bad aim and disinfectant, the lights white and cold behind metal cages on the ceiling. Julian kept the knife behind his back as Hennessey spit once on the floor and stepped closer, the freckles dark as flung mud on the slope of his nose.

“I’m not scared of you,” Julian said.

Hennessey was tall and wide, eyes muddy brown under red hair. Pale fuzz covered the backs of his hands and a single bad tooth marred the right side of his smile. He flicked a gaze over Julian, and shook out another laugh. “Look at you. Girly muscles all bunched up. Got your angry eyes on.” He waved fingers, made a circle of his mouth and said, “Ooh.”