The Hybrid Cycle: Volume 1

6: An Accident

She'd expected the front door to either be locked or rusted in place.  

Beatrice turned the knob. The latch-bolt slid inward without a hint of friction.

Light oozed through the smutty windows onto cracked, yellow walls.  Mold. Waterstains.

Entire sections of plaster had crumbled away, leaving holes with exposed lathes.  What was left reminded her of the skin of a snake-egg. Cobwegs hung down like ragged, vulgar decorations.

"Hello", Beatrice shouted.

No answer.

The  bones of the house creaked when she stepped inside. 

The entry-room was bare of furniture.  Thick dust coated the floor like virgin snow. Shoeprints - fresh ones, judging by their clarity - drifted from doorway to doorway like the meandering flight of butterflies over poppy fields.

Then, they led upstairs.

Nothing led back down. Either there was another staircase tucked inside an unvisited room – or someone was still up there.  

If there were a third option, she could not think of it.

A person. Not an animal...but a goddamn person. They could still be here, waiting to cut me open like Jack-the-fucking-Ripper.

It didn't compute. 

There were no other cars at the trailhead. A person had to come from somewhere. That is, unless it was a crazy hermit who wandered through abandoned living-spaces like a ghost in limbo.  And what human could survive in such a place, living in isolation?

Beatrice moved slowly and wearily towards the staircase.

I could leave now without no repercussions, she thought. So why am doing this?

The weight of the cast-iron seemed almost unbearable.

She had almost reached the foot of the stairs when she heard something crack. Unfamiliar. The amplified sound of a breaking eggshell.  It took a moment to realize a half-rotted section of wood was giving way beneath her bodyweight.

Planks splintered beneath her feet like cracked surface ice. She made a wild grab as she felt gravity pull her body downwards.

***

It felt like a fever-dream.

Her father boosted her into the crook of a tree. They were in the backyard of their old house in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Somewhere, in a distant yard, she could hear other kids shouting in summer jubilation.

She giggled, exhilarated by the sunshine and the scent of lilacs and her dad's smiling face.

Donald Butler, handsome as a cowboy. The man before whose image all other men were but a dim shadow. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and the top two buttons undone. Tan. Vital. A man who always dressed like he was preparing for a yacht voyage.

"What if I fall, Daddy?" she said, a hint of gravitas creeping into her child's voice. She didn't like heights one bit, but her heart was full of trust.

"Listen close, Bea. The fear of something is almost always worse than what could happen. Fear can be useful, but it can also be a ball-and-chain. You know what that is?"

"It's what bad guys wear in cartoons. It keeps them from running away."

"That's right!", he said, laughing his easy, radiant laugh. "It keeps people where they're at. Makes it so they can't move along. But sometimes a person needs to move along to live. Do you understand?"

She nodded. She didn't understand completely, but a part of her did.

He released her waist and slowly, carefully, pulled his hands away. She clutched tightly at the angled tree-trunk, trying her best to be brave.

"Look at you. You're doing it, Bea! I knew it."

She was really doing it. She was standing in the tree-crook with no one holding her. The feeling was like a thousand whirlybird firecrackers exploding in bright color over a football stadium.

"There's something else, Bea."

"What's that, Daddy?"

"Something is going to happen. I can't stop it, but I can talk to you about it some. You're going to need to be as brave as you are right now. Bravery is like magic. It helps you do things a scared person can't ."

"What do I need to be brave for?"

She had only glanced away for a moment to marvel at how high she was from the ground. It was a mere few feet, but to her it felt like the top of skyscraper.

When she looked at her dad's face again, he was different. Pale as a graveyard moon in winter. Thick veins showed beneath the flesh. His breezy white shirt was gone, replaced by a black one done all the way up to the top button. Strange silver coins covered both of his eyes.

Then she remembered. The antiseptic smells of the hospital. The drawn face irradiated by chemo and worn down to nothing but a whisper of life. Her father caught like a helpless animal in the lupine jaws of cancer.

"Daddy?"

"He's drawn here like a magnet...like a carrion bird to the scent of premature death. You can run away, Bea, and it won't be your fault at all. But you can also choose to fight."

"Fight what?"

"That's hard to explain, darlin'. His essence is not like yours. It's like fighting a shadow, but one that can hurt you. He's not the only one, but he's the one you need to worry about right now. If you leave directly, you can be back in Boston, ready to live the rest of your life. If you stay, you need to be ready."

"I don't understand."

He held out his hand. In his palm was an origami bird crafted from black paper – a peacock with enormous tail-feathers.

"Be ready, Bea."

She wanted to ask more questions, but the dream dissolved as suddenly as it had arrived.

The darkness was thick as a roiling sea of ink. So was the pain. Her body ached. Her left arm lay across her chest. The rest of her limbs hung like swaying tree-vines.

She was being carried along. Lugged, like a mere sack of flour.

"Wh....where...."

She couldn't finish the sentence. Her mind was a mere particle in a dizzying tailspin of atoms. She tried to open her eyes, but light stung her pupils like angry wasps.

Warmth. The forceful breath of stranger.

She felt these things, but could not summon movement from her body. Whether the feeling was real or another incomprehensible dream was beyond her.

She sunk back into the quiet. The rest of her sleep was dreamless.