“If you don’t want to, say so,” Mom said. “We’ll pretend this talk never happened, and you can go back to the maze in a day or two.”
“Is it even worth trying?”
“It’s always worth trying, Caleb. If watching Josh walk out that door lit a fire in you, I say let it burn.” She stood and slid the maze away from the center of the table. “Wait here.”
Caleb eyed the unbeaten maze after she left. He knew what Dad would say about this. He knew what Josh would say. Another shortcut. Another cheat. When she returned, Mom held a petri dish with a black dot at its center. She slid it onto the table, and Caleb squinted. The dot twitched. It had legs, wings, and a pair of prismatic eyes.
“A fly?”
“This test is a little different,” Mom said. “You’re not knocking anything over or pushing anything around. This one’s about precise manipulation. You need to separate the fly’s wings from its body.”
“You mean spread them? Hold them out?”
“Pluck them. Pull them off. I know it sounds tough with only two hour’s practice, but give it your best shot.”
“Won’t that hurt it?” Caleb prodded the dish with a finger. The fly beat its wings in futility. “How long will it live without wings?”
“It’s a fly, Caleb.”
“If I had wings, I wouldn’t want them torn off.”
“What it may or may not want is irrelevant. It’s had a short, futile life, serving nothing but its own impulses. It’s vermin. Its wings are the only important thing about it. They’re between you and the goal. Remove them.”
He leaned into the table with a slow breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth, like they’d taught him. His mind cleared of all but a few lingering thoughts about the maze. Once he’d set his mind in the proper place, moving that ball had felt effortless. He’d failed in the end, but it had gone farther and faster than ever before. So Caleb tried to do now as he did then. He tried to melt the room away, to fill his mind with daylight. But it didn’t come easy this time. Every time he drew near, the fly twitched, shattering his concentration. Caleb spread his mind apart again and again for the better part of an hour. Each time, the fly wrenched him back into reality with a single beat of the wings he meant to deprive it of.
Just as he wanted to grab the petri dish and fling it across the room, Mom slid it away. Failure. Again.
“You said two hours.”
“I could let you stare at this thing all day, Caleb. You’re not going to pass. Not like this.” She tapped a thumb against the dish in her palm. “Why don’t we try something different?”
“Like what?”
Mom left the dining room, motioning for him to follow. She led him across the house to the foot of the stairwell. Caleb froze at the bottom.
“Dad says I’m not allowed upstairs,” he said.
Mom turned around, already halfway up, and gave him a crooked smile. “Well, Mom says time’s wasting.”
Caleb complied, but couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder toward the entry hall, as though his father might emerge at any moment and catch him in the act. When he realized where Mom headed, a bevy of unplucked wings fluttered about his belly. Reluctance waned, and he followed her into the guest room, where she placed the petri dish on the floor. Above it hung the meadow painting Dad had used to cover the boarded window. She picked it up and tossed it onto the bed, letting Caleb’s stifled sunbeam burst into the room.
“All right, kiddo,” she said. “Take your shirt off.”
“What?”
“This might be your last chance to have the sun on your skin before your Dad seals this. Do you want clothes in the way, or do you want to feel it?”
Caleb slid his t-shirt off, then stepped into the beam. He’d known the sun’s kiss on more than one occasion, but having it snatched away days before made the sensations all the more vivid. Warmth radiated outward from the bright spot on his chest where he and the sun joined. It spread across his flesh, one electric inch at a time. For a few blissful seconds, he forgot about this musty prison and the impossible tasks keeping him within. He forgot about Mom, about Dad, about Josh. The light was all there was.
Mom put a hand on his shoulder, reminding him she existed. “I know how that feels, Caleb. I know it’s intense. Put it to use.”
He examined the petri dish. The fly twitched at his feet, as though sensing the weight of his gaze. Caleb let the world crumble again, but this time the fly entered the void with him. He felt its presence now, like the steel ball. When it moved inside its glass prison, he sensed the tickle of its trembling legs somewhere in his mind.
The sun manifested again, a mass of brilliant flame suspended above. Caleb reached for it . . . and touched hairy, insectile flesh. A silhouette grew against the light, pulsing and swelling, almost as large as the sun itself. Either the fly had grown or the sun had withered. The revolting creature threatened to eclipse its warmth. The fly spread its wings, dimming what light remained into a sickly gray haze. Every bit of pity Caleb possessed for the thing left him. Mom was right. It was vermin. He had to overcome it. He had to conquer it, to cast it aside in pursuit of the sun. He had to—
A shower of glass exploded outward from the petri dish. Caleb covered his eyes, back in the real world again. Mom raised her arms as well. When they lowered, she gaped at the floor. A perfect circle of shards surrounded a spot of untouched carpet where the dish had been. A tiny, yellow smudge lay at its center—all that remained of the fly.
“Oh,” Caleb said.
Mom said nothing. He reached for her, and she jerked her arm away as if touched with a hot iron. The unease written across her face didn’t stay long. She washed it away, eyes apologetic.
“I messed up,” Caleb said.
“It’s okay.” Her eyes darted now, as though searching for anything to look at but Caleb. The sunbeam caught a piece of glass in her hair, one of many. She began to pluck them out. “I’ll clean up. Just head downstairs.”
“Uh-huh.”
He slipped his shirt back on and made his way toward the door. The brief expression on her face when he’d tried to touch her still burned. He’d grown accustomed to tests ending with disappointment in his mother’s eyes, but this was different. This was something else. In that moment, however fleeting, she’d been afraid of him.
“Caleb,” she said.
He stopped in the doorway and faced her. Some of that fear slipped through again, whether she knew it or not.
“Don’t tell your father about this.”
Caleb’s stomach tightened. He nodded, then left his mother amid the ruins of his failure.
The next night, Caleb dreamed of a meadow. He’d never seen one except in the painting upstairs, but it felt as real as any room in the house. A halo of trees circled the clearing. Morning dew glistened over swaying blades of grass. Birdsong lilted in every direction, and flowers bloomed before his eyes—reds, yellows, everywhere. A white sun shot into the sky, hours passing like seconds. When he woke, he half expected to be lying in a mound of leaves.
He wasn’t.
Caleb rolled out of bed for a glass of water, mouth stale and parched. The clock on the nightstand said it was four in the morning, and the stillness of the house agreed. On the way back from the kitchen, he passed the winding stairwell his father forbade him to ascend. He stepped onto the bottom step and ran a hand along the cool, wrought-iron banister. Had Dad sealed the crack yet?
He took another creaking step, thinking about the painting, the room. There was something wrong with him. He’d seen it in Mom’s eyes as they followed the sway of the chandelier, again when they drifted up from those scattered shards of glass. Not only had he failed his tests, but he’d failed them wrong somehow. Now the testing had stopped, and his parents wouldn’t tell him why. Maybe they’d given up on him. Maybe these walls would hold him for the rest of his
life. With his sunbeam shut away, he might never know daylight again. Caleb shivered.
Blackness enveloped him a step at a time, and a nervous tingle swelled within. Scaling the stairs felt like proving Josh right, yet again. What was this, if not cheating? But he had to look. He had to know. If the crack remained uncovered, he could wait out the night and savor the rising dawn while the others slept. If Dad found him in the morning, he’d be furious. But one last glimpse of the sun would be worth his wrath.
The grooves in the hallway picture frames guided him to the guest room. When the door closed behind him, he hit the switch for the corner lamp, and the uneven meadow came into view. When he’d first seen the painting, he thought little more of it than a cheap facsimile. Now that he’d walked those hills in his dreams, he breathed heavily when he took it in. He gripped the dusty canvas, inhaling. With an exhale, he yanked the painting from the boards like a stubborn Band-Aid. A white band of caulking stretched across the middle of the window where the boards had once parted. Caleb ran a fingertip across it.
Dry and hard.
His fingers threatened to pierce the meadow in his hands, but he forced them to unclench. He rehung the painting, doing his best to reproduce its crooked angle. Then he stared. He regarded the tiny trees, the grass, the flowers. He contemplated the imitation sun, no wider than the tip of his thumb. He reached out and covered it whole. The meadow refused to darken.
When his gaze left the painting, it found the attic hatch above the bed. Dad had climbed into that black hole and emerged with a meadow beneath his arm. What else waited up there? More paintings? If they’d condemned him to dreams alone, maybe there were more to be had. Caleb climbed onto the mattress and grasped the pull cord. He fumbled for the ladder as it slid from the hatch, but it still screeched on the way down, piercing the calm in the house. He scrambled for the lamp switch, then sprinted back to the stairs to see if anyone stirred. No one came to investigate the noise.
With persistent silence at his back, Caleb returned and made the climb.
Odorous dust and mildew confronted Caleb as he groped his way into the gloom. His arm brushed a hanging chain, and he gave it a yank. Yellow light poured from an exposed bulb, casting angular shadows about the hardwood floor. Boxes and bins lay scattered around the room, many ripped and taped, barely holding together. Against the pitched wall to his left, a row of metal filing cabinets gathered what looked like years of dust. Decaying newspaper clippings and magazine covers hung from exposed rafters. war, they said. menace prevails, they said. desperate accord struck. Caleb didn’t know what the headlines meant, but the images captured him at once: city skylines, towering skyscrapers, bustling crowds. None of the people looked happy. But even in the worst pictures, the sun was shining.
Caleb made his way to the file cabinets. Streaks and fingerprints broke the layers of dust surrounding one of the drawer handles. He opened it with a low rumble. A row of manila folders stared up at him. He drew one at random and flipped through the papers inside. Most of it was unreadable—unfamiliar terms, equations, strings of numbers. None of it meant anything. Then he found a page with words that screamed at him.
Assessment Log: Subject 19
See referenced video files under observ.index
Age 11
Dominoes: pass (19070817.avi)
Maze: pass (19072017.avi)
Age 13
Housefly: pass (19080317.avi)
Mouse: inconclusive, subject refusal (19081217.avi)
Mouse: pass (19081417.avi)
Age 14
Dog: inconclusive, subject refusal (19093017.avi)
Dog: inconclusive, subject refusal (19093117.avi)
Age 15
Dog: inconclusive, subject refusal (19100117.avi)
Controlled exposure (19100217.avi)
Dog: fail, anomaly (19100217.avi)
Procedures halted pending analysis
Age 17
Handler injured, see incident report (19112417.avi)
subject terminated (19112517.avi)
Caleb flipped the page. More unfamiliar words and characters. Another flip, and there she was, staring at him. She had Dad’s gray eyes, Mom’s auburn hair. She could have been a sister. He glanced at the open drawer, stuffed with identical folders, each with a number on the tab. Did he have a folder in there? Did he have a number, like the girl?
He scanned the room again, eyes bouncing from newspaper to newspaper, box to box. They stopped on a chest-high, wooden crate set flush against the far wall. Nothing special amid a sea of browns and grays, but something about the wall behind it seemed odd. A raised section of wood peeked out on both sides, lighter than the rest. Caleb dropped the folder and raced across the room, dust stirring in his wake.
A window frame.
He curled his fingers around the crate’s edge and pulled. It didn’t move. He drove his shoulder into it, shoes sliding on the dusty floor. Finally, they found purchase, and the crate inched forward, revealing a vertical strip of window—no boards.
Caleb pressed his face against the glass, grinning. Dirt and grime caked its surface, but moonlight shone through. He dug into the crate again, hoping to uncover the rest. He grunted and strained, unveiling the world one blurry inch at a time. Then he backed away and gaped at the first bare window he’d ever seen, hair on his arms standing at attention. The ugly yellow bulb overpowered the moonlight pouring in. Caleb longed to see the silver rays he’d read about in the library, pure and undiminished. He spun back toward the hatch to shut the light off.
Josh stood in his way.
“What are you doing up here?” he said.
Caleb didn’t speak.
Josh peered over his shoulder at the window. “Wow. You don’t learn. I guess we’ll need to lock you in your room.”
“Leave me alone. This is none of your business.”
“Mom and Dad told me to keep an eye on you. That means everything you do is my business. I’m in charge of you. You do what I say when I say it.” Josh took a step forward. “Now get downstairs.”
Caleb planted his feet. “I’m not going anywhere until the sun rises.”
“You’ll never see the sun. Trust me. I’m a man now. I’ve been outside. I know how the world works. You don’t have what it takes.”
Josh shot forward and shoved Caleb to the floor. Caleb scrambled to his feet, but Josh wrestled him back down. Their limbs tangled together—tan skin against pale flesh—pushing, grasping, yanking at hair and shirt. Josh managed to get his hands around Caleb’s wrists and straddled his hips. He pinned Caleb’s arms to his chest, squeezing the wind out of him. Caleb tried to buck him off, but he was too strong.
Josh glanced up at the window with a smirk. “Too bad you couldn’t keep from snooping, shit-stain. When I’m done with you, I’m going to board that up.”
When Josh said it, Caleb saw it. He pictured his last door to daylight shuttered away, draping this dingy place in darkness again. It made him want to cry, to scream, though he couldn’t inhale deeply enough. Josh had stolen the sun. Again.
Josh pressed harder, forcing more air from Caleb’s lungs. The attic faded, and his mind came alive. A demonic parody of Josh with black eyes and fanged teeth loomed above, its hideous body as big as the sky. It pinned Caleb to the ground with a cloven hoof and wrapped its clawed fingers around the sun. The light disappeared into the palm of its hand, held out of reach forever.
“No.”
With a single word, Caleb thrust the might of his mind at the Josh-shaped phantom. It yelped and shrank away from his will, relieving a tremendous weight. When light swelled and he could breathe again, he realized the beast’s cries had not been imaginary.
Caleb’s eyelids snapped open. Josh groaned several feet above, pressed against the sloped roof by an unseen force. Droplets of blood leaked from his nostrils. Instead of dripping onto the floo
r, they rolled upward across his cheeks and splattered onto the ceiling. The shattered remains of the light bulb covered Josh in a silver luster.
Caleb screamed. Josh fell.
Caleb rose with a stagger and reached for his brother, whispering his name. Josh lay in a heap on his stomach, silent now. Caleb rolled him over, then yanked his hand away when slivers of glass speared his fingertips. He stuck two fingers in his mouth and watched his brother’s chest as he spit the shards out. Dim light made it hard to discern the rise and fall, but it was there, keeping time with the steady drip of blood from the ceiling. Josh was hurt, but breathing.
Cold relief washed over Caleb, but didn’t remain. His brother’s prophecy would come true now. His parents had to be stirring, and soon they’d find him. They’d condemn him to a life between these walls. Or worse. Two words echoed in the recesses of Caleb’s mind, in the whispered voice of a girl he’d never met.
subject terminated.
Caleb looked down. A white rectangle lay at his feet, plastic sheen gleaming in the moonlight. The keycard with Josh’s name on it said hello.
The moon was not the sun, but it was still glorious. Its light danced upon Caleb’s flesh, and the shimmering expanse that carried it made his throat tighten. The night greeted him like a new friend; warm, humid air caressed every exposed inch. Countless competing scents beckoned on the breeze. His parents had carried a few of them into the house before, but most were as alien as the night sky. After taking in the heavens, his gaze drifted earthward. He dropped to his hands and knees to smell soil and grass for the first time in his life. When he found his feet again, he carried handfuls of it up with him, tossing it into the air like green confetti. If not for fear of being followed, he would have sprawled in the dirt and rolled in it.
Caleb strode across the lawn, tears welling, but stopped short of the street. Several black shapes surrounded the house, rectangular and massive. He’d seen pictures of these things before—cars, trucks, jeeps—but they were even bigger than he’d imagined. They had strange words emblazoned on their sides. police, they said. national guard, they said. u.s. army. As he drew near, his shoe crunched on something hard and brittle. He stepped back to look, and almost lost his footing.