Albert – 2004
Samuel is in the barn. I don’t see him at first. I’m taking Esmeralda inside for her dinner. Ezzie has grain for dinner every night. I always put the grain into her big blue bucket. It’s my job. I like this job. Ezzie likes me to scratch her ears when she eats.
It makes me jump when I hear Samuel say “Hey, Albert.”
He’s sitting on the floor beside his pile of metal. Ezzie walks over to him and sticks her white nose in his hair. He rubs her under the chin and she snorts at him.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Working,” he says. “What are you doing?”
“Giving Ezzie her dinner,” I tell him. Ezzie bobs her head up and down. Ezzie is very smart.
“Yum,” he says. “You’re a lucky girl, Ezzie!”
I get her big blue bucket. I open a sack of feed and dip in the shiny silver scoop. I pour the feed into her bucket. It rattles and rattles and dust poofs up. She smells Samuel’s hair one more time then she follows me to her stall. She pokes her nose into the bucket.
I look at Samuel over the stall door while Ezzie eats and I scratch her ears.
“Pa says that is a waste of time,” I tell him. “Pa says you should be doing your homework.”
“Does he?” Samuel says. He picks up a pair of pliers and bends something on the edge of the metal thing.
“He says you have more important things you need to be doing.”
Samuel nods. FROM BEHIND? PROSTRATE POSITION NOW?
“Do you have more important things?” I ask him.
“Nope, he tells me. “This is the most important thing.”
“It’s not more important than homework,” I tell him. I scratch Ezzie’s ears some more.
He smiles at me. IN FRONT THEN? “Lots of things are more important than homework,” he says. “You’re lucky you don’t have homework anymore.”
I think about that. I did not like homework. I did not like school. I am too old to go to school now. I am lucky.
Samuel fiddles with the metal thing. It’s tall. Nearly as tall as I am. It has four sides. It’s rusty. Maybe it used to be red. It has a little door. COMMENT: DESCRIP OF TIME MACHINE! HAS A *DOOR* (PORTAL)
“What goes inside it?” I ask him. I scratch Ezzie’s ears. She snorts. She keeps eating.
“I’ll go inside it,” Samuel says. He grins at me.
I stare at it.
“Why?” I ask him. I don’t think he’ll fit inside. It’s not that tall.
“I want to see where it will take me,” he says. He gets up, dusts off his jeans. He has holes in his knees. COMMENT: BEEN ON THE GROUND A LOT WORKING ON IT.
I remember.
“Oh! Is it a Tardis?” I ask.
He’ll fit inside if it’s a Tardis.
He laughs.
“I really don’t know what it is, buddy,” he tells me. “I’m just experimenting.”
Ezzie is finished eating her dinner. She bumps me with her head. She wants to go back outside.
Samuel walks over to us, leans on the stall rail, stares me in the eyes.
“Albert, can you keep a secret?” he asks. “It’s important. And you’ll like it. But if I tell you, you can’t tell anyone else.”
Ezzie has stopped bumping me with her head. She’s looking at Samuel too. She never tells secrets.
“Okay,” I say. “I won’t tell anybody.”
He smiles at me. “Good,” he says. “I want to tell you because I know you’ll believe me.”
I always believe Samuel.
“You’ve had strange things happen too,” he says. He scratches Ezzie’s ears. “Like how you remember that other time. Your other family.”
I’m not supposed to talk about them.
“Pa says they are off limits,” I tell him. “Pa says Satan puts them in my head.”
Samuel pats my arm. “I know he does, buddy. But he isn’t always right about everything.”
Pa is supposed to always be right about everything.
“I think you’re remembering something that really happened,” Samuel says. “I think you’ve tapped into …something I’m trying to tap into. I think maybe you can help me.” COMMENT: COOL DEV!
I know it really happened.
I want to help Samuel. I want to keep his secret.
Joel – the night before Jacob’s funeral – 2010
Joel can’t sleep. He and Ben are back in their childhood bedroom, a small upstairs room with two windows looking out across the back field and beyond the barn to the edge of the dark woods that climb up Snake Mountain. It’s nearly midnight and they have to get up early in the morning for the funeral but no amount of slow breathing or counting backwards is going to calm down his brain. The more he tries to shut it off the wider awake he is.
The windows are open and a breeze drifts in carrying the strong sweet smell of the lilac bushes that grow in front of the porch. Insects are chirping and trilling as if they are trying to tell him something. Some secret he can’t decode.
Ben is a dark motionless blob in the twin bed across the room, his head buried under the covers. Their matching comforters are the same ones they used when this was still home: a beige desert background, multiple identical cowboys galloping along on brown horses, twirling lariats looping through streaks of red sunsets, over and over. Joel briefly wonders how the material has held up so well all these years, and why even as teenagers they never moved beyond cowboys with lariats for their bedroom decor, but he doesn’t want to go down another endless rabbit hole of thoughts. He tries pulling the comforter over his head too, hoping this will indicate to his brain that it’s time to shut down.
It doesn’t. In a minute he’s flung it off again, and sits up. He keeps hearing creaking noises that sound like they’re coming from down the hall. The old house has always been full of noises. Creaking noises, snapping noises, thumping noises. Usually faint and indistinct, normal old-house sounds, but sometimes they would morph into sighs, murmurings, and distant footsteps that seemed to simultaneously come from both the hallway and the third floor that’s above his head. They were the sounds that Samuel used to weave into his terrifying ghost stories back when they were all here together.
He listens closely. Makes out something like a very light tread. Down the hallway, beyond their closed door but getting almost imperceptibly closer. Suddenly the whispery footsteps pause right outside the door. Joel clutches the cowboy comforter, twists the galloping horses tightly in both fists. When the door moves silently inward he holds his breath. His ten-year-old self is frozen, OKAY, IN SAME SECTION I BELIEVE, SAYS HE IS 13???? unable to scream as a dark fluid form peers around the edge of the door just like the countless nightmares he’s had about the things that have always crept around this house.
“Oh, hey, you are awake,” whispers Eddy.
“Jesus!” Joel just barely manages not to shriek. “What are you doing? You scared the fuck out of me!”
“Oh, sorry,” Familiar Eddy materializes out of the darkness and the shapeless terrifying form vanishes. “I should have knocked but I didn’t want to wake you guys up if you were asleep.”
“Giving me a heart attack is so much better,” Joel says, then glances over at Ben, whose head has appeared from underneath his covers. “What’s going on?” Ben asks.
“Eddy can’t sleep so he scared the shit out of me,” Joel tells him.
“Just like old times!” Ben says, sitting up and detangling himself from the cowboys. “Except it was always Samuel scaring the shit out of us.”
“You’re awfully perky for someone who just got woken up,” Joel says.
“I can’t sleep either,” says Ben. “I was trying to count sheep. I don’t know why people think that works. I never can figure out what they are supposed to be doing as you count them.”
“They aren’t supposed to be doing anything,” says Joel. “That’s the point. You get so bored you finally fall asleep.”
“It was very boring,” Ben agrees. “They were just standing around. And it definitely did not put me to sleep. It only made me want to shout at them to do something. Entertain me!”
Eddy is staring at both of them, perplexed.
“Oh, come on,” Ben says to him, scooting over on his bed and patting the mattress. “Sit down. You can entertain us instead.” QUESTION: HOW OLD IS EDDY TO THEM?
“That doesn’t sound very restful,” Eddy says, but he sits down.
“It’s like we never left,” Ben says. “Remember all those nights nobody could sleep and we’d all wander around into each other’s rooms? Get a card game going, listen to the radio? I used to think everybody’s family did that. It was a shock to realize we were kind of weird.”
“It wasn’t that often,” Eddy says. “Just once in a great while. Usually right before I had a big exam so I’d be good and exhausted the next day.” COMMENT: DESCRIP OF EXAM CONTRAST TO TWINS? LIKE ‘I WAS 4 YEARS OLDER THAN YOU AT THE TIME. HAD HARDER EXAMS! mADE A — BY THE WAY, THANKS.
“I remember it happening a lot,” Joel says. COMMENT: INTERESTING CONTRAST OF MEMORIES “We probably all needed mass treatment for insomnia. I was always falling asleep at my desk at school. Mr. Stone would smack me on my shoulders with a ruler if I did it in his class.”
“Oh, I remember that,” Ben says. “He couldn’t get away with hitting kids now.”
“He shouldn’t have been getting away with it then,” Eddy says. DID HE ALSO HAVE STONE FOR TEACHER?
“He was a mean old bastard,” says Ben. “We expected it from him.”
“At least he never told Grandpa,” says Joel. “I’d have gotten worse than a smack with a ruler. Grandpa wouldn’t have spared the actual rod.”
“He told Grandma,” Eddy says. “She didn’t tell Grandpa.”
“What?” says Joel. “How did you know that? When did he tell her?”
“I was there. She’d come to pick me up for a dentist appointment and he STONE (WOULD EDDY JUST CALL HIM STONE AND NOT MR. STONE?) stopped her in the hallway. He told her you’d been falling asleep in class and said she needed to make sure you were getting to bed on time. She told him she’d take care of it, thanked him for letting her know, and marched out with me right behind her.”
“But she didn’t say a thing to me about it,” says Joel, then pauses. “Oh, wait – she did start making us turn off the TV earlier, remember that?”
“I do,” Ben says. “It meant we didn’t get to watch that police show that came on at 10. What was it called? Oh, LA Streets. ITALICISE That was your fault? I loved that show!”
“I thought she’d decided it was too violent,” Joel says. “Isn’t that what she told us?”
“Did she?” Ben gives it some thought.
“Whether she did or didn’t, the point is she didn’t tell Grandpa,” Eddy says. “She kept it to herself.”
“Lucky for you,” Ben says.
“But we kept staying up half the night anyway,” Joel says. “And Samuel kept telling us awful stories and scaring us till we didn’t think we’d ever be able to sleep again.”
“Remember the Confederate soldiers?” says Ben. “Walking on the roof? Because they were killed in a battle nearby and couldn’t find their way back home, so they had to go back and forth across our roof for eternity? And we could hear their feet scraping along up there!”
“That didn’t even make sense,” Eddy says. “The closest Civil War battles were around Asheville. Definitely too far for lost ghosts to end up on our roof.”
“If we’d not been too tired to stay awake in History class, we would have known that,” says Ben, and they all start to laugh.
“Shhhh,” Eddy says. “Don’t wake anybody else up.”
“Remember that time we were in your room, Eddy, and he climbed up the front porch pillar? And his face suddenly came floating up at your window, out of nowhere? We all screamed like 13 year old girls at a Hannah Montana concert!” Joel feels the chills running down his spine even as he’s saying it, but it’s also hilarious, and they all start laughing again. JOEL IS 10?
“And Grandpa came stomping up the stairs and flung the door open, and said if we didn’t shut up and go to bed right that instant, we were all sleeping in the barn,” says Ben. “Which actually sounded great but I wasn’t about to tell him that.”
“I don’t think I’ve recovered yet,” says Eddy. “I couldn’t get my breath – I thought I was having a heart attack.”
The door creaks and begins to swing open, and they all jump, which makes them laugh even more. Jessie’s pale face peers around the edge. Her spiky hair is sticking up in clumps and her eyes are puffy and red.
“What are you guys doing?” she says. “I just got to sleep and you woke me back up!” HOW OLD IS JESSIE HERE?
“Oh, sorry,” Joel says. “We were just…reminiscing.”
“Thanks a lot,” Jessie says, sitting down with force on Joel’s bed. “That’s the kind of reminiscing that used to get us all in trouble. I’m surprised Grandma didn’t hear you down in her room.”
“Or Albert,” says Eddy. “He must be completely knocked out.”
“It was a long day,” Joel says. “And tomorrow’s going to be even longer.”
“It will be so strange seeing everyone again,” Jessie says. She’s wrapped herself up with the bottom half of Joel’s cowboy comforter, and leans up against the wall. “I can’t even think of the last time I went to the church.”
“Before Samuel left,” says Ben. “At least that was the last time I went.”
“I wish we could tell him,” Jessie says. She looks out the dark window. “He needs to know about Grandpa.”
“Well, that’s what happens when you don’t leave a forwarding address,” Ben says. “You don’t get to hear about out DELETE: OUT all the things that went on after you left.”
“He still needs to know,” Joel says. “We should figure out how to find him.”
“I google him once in awhile,” Eddy says. “Nothing ever comes up.” AGAIN I WONDER HOW OLD EVERYONE IS
“So do I,” says Ben. “He’s not using his real name, obviously. But he could contact us. We’re all right here. Right where he left us.”
They fall silent. Then Eddy says, “That damn time machine,” and they all laugh.
“I believed it,” Joel says. He doesn’t say that some tiny little part of him still believes it, or at least believes the mysterious magical time machine had something to do with Samuel vanishing without a trace all those years ago. CONFUSING SENTENCE? MAYBE CHG TO SOMETHING LIKE: HE DOESN’T ADD THAT SOME PART OF HIM ALSO BELIEVES THE MYSTERIOUS MAGICAL TIME MACHINE HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH SAMUEL VANISHING WITHOUT A TRACE ALL THOSE YEARS AGO
“Yeah, you were always a gullible little idiot,” Ben says. “You always stuck up for him. Remember that Monopoly game? That one when I hit you because of the time machine?”
“Yeah, I’m not forgetting that,” Joel tells him. “That was traumatic.”
“How could you have believed Samuel made a time machine? What were we, like 12? Definitely old enough to know better.” Ben looks torn between laughter and something more complicated and dark. ARE THEY 12 NOW? I THOUGHT THE TWINS WERE 10 PER JOEL’S FORMER COMMENT
“Joel just wanted to change things,” Eddy says. “Like Samuel wanted to change things. Make everything right again.”
Of course Joel remembers the Monopoly game. Of all the countless Monopoly games they used to play, that one would always stand out. It was a rainy, dreary Saturday a few weeks after he and Ben had turned 13. Joel was in the living room reading a book about volcanos while Albert and Ben watched an old western that was full of galloping horses but no discernible plot. Eddy was working on his math homework at the desk in the corner. Jessie was in the kitchen trying to make cookies, and their grandmother was in her sewing room.
The peaceful whirring of the sewing machine had nearly put Joel to sleep when Samuel came barging through the front door dripping wet and flung himself down on the couch between the twins.
“Get away from me,” Ben said. “You’re getting water all over the place!”
“It’s pouring out there,” Samuel said. “I just wanted to share!”
“You idiot,” said Joel, scooting as far from Samuel as he could. “Now my book is wet!”
“Sorry,” Samuel said, laughing at them. “I had to get out of the barn fast. The roof is leaking again and it’s pouring right down on the time machine. I was afraid I’d get electrocuted and end up somewhere I don’t want to go. Like Spain during the Inquisition.”
Joel was trying to mop the rain off his book, but stopped and stared at Samuel. “Could that really happen? Do you think it’s going to be working soon?”
“Hopefully getting electrocuted won’t happen,” said Samuel. “But I’m sure it’s not going to take much longer to get it working. It just needs a tiny bit of fine-tuning. When it’s not getting drenched from that leak.”
“You are insane,” Ben said, glaring at Samuel from the corner of the couch.
Samuel swatted his leg. “If you don’t quit calling me names I’m going to send you somewhere terrible when I finally get it working.”
“Well, I’m worried,” Ben said. WITH A SMIRK? “I bet I don’t sleep a wink tonight.”
“Let’s see, where should you end up…maybe Stonehenge. Way back when they sacrificed people to the bloodthirsty gods.”
“I don’t think anybody got sacrificed at Stonehenge,” Eddy said.
“How do you know? Nobody knows what happened back when it was a shiny new ritualistic spot. Ben would be a perfect sacrificial victim!”
“Shut up,” Ben said, shoving Samuel. BEN SITS BESIDE SAMEUL ON COUCH?
“You don’t think it’s going to work?” Joel asked Ben.
“For God’s sake, Joel, Samuel can’t make a time machine. Nobody has ever been able to make a time machine – not even Einstein could make a time machine. And I hate to tell you this, but Samuel is no Einstein.”
“Oh, yes, I am,” Samuel said. “Just you wait.”
“If it does work maybe you’ll pass Science,” Eddy told him. “The way things are going that might be your only hope.”
“I think he can do it,” Joel said to Ben. “Even if you don’t believe him, I do.”
“Jesus Christ,” Ben said. “I’m surrounded by lunatics.”
“You watch your mouth, young man,” said Samuel. “What if Grandma heard you say that? Or Grandpa, even worse. Good thing he’s helping Mr. Raymond with the church stuff for tomorrow.” He reached over and patted Joel’s head. “And you get to go anywhere you want, buddy. ADD?: HE SAYS ABOUT HIS MACHINE. Wherever your heart desires.”
Albert turned away from the TV and said, “Can you send me back to my parents? Before the War? I really miss them sometimes.”
“Oh my God, Albert, you are with your parents,” Ben said. “You know that. You’ve never been anywhere else but here.”
“I have too, Ben. I have been somewhere else.” Albert was getting that teary look on his face.
“Here we go,” Samuel whispered to Ben. “Now you’ve gotten him going. Boy, are you going to be in trouble when he starts crying.”
“It was not me, and you know it,” Ben hissed back.
“Of course you have been somewhere else,” Eddy said to Albert. “We know you miss them.”
“Nobody believes me,” Albert said, his eyes filling.
“We all believe you,” said Samuel. “Ben just likes to tease you. He knows you’ll fall for it. Why don’t we play Monopoly? And somebody tell Jessie it smells like her cookies are burning.”
Everybody had their favorite piece, and they never switched around. Eddy was the top hat, Samuel was the race car, Joel was the Scottie dog, Ben was the flat iron, Albert was the wheelbarrow, and Jessie was the horse. COOL DETAIL! Samuel was always the banker, and Eddy was always in charge of the property cards and helping Albert navigate the board. The games generally ended up with everyone but Samuel and Ben bankrupt, and the two of them battling it out to the finish.
Jessie came in from the kitchen with a plate of partially burnt oatmeal cookies, and they all took their usual spots in the floor. Ben won the preliminary roll and got to go first.
“I don’t understand what you’re going to do with the time machine,” Jessie said to Samuel. Ben rolled the dice so hard one bounced off the board and across the floor.
“Invalid roll,” said Samuel. “It’s a mystery. ADD?: HE ANSWERS JESSIE Other than getting revenge on Ben.”
“But how does it work?” she asked.
“It doesn’t work,” Ben yelled. They all jumped.
“Jesus, Ben, calm down,” said Samuel. “Roll again.”
“You are such an ass,” said Ben. “You get everybody all excited and it’s for nothing. You just want everyone to think you’re special!”
“He IS special,” Joel said, “and it WILL work, and you’re the one who is an ass, Ben! Samuel can take us wherever we want and I’m going to get him to take me back to the day Mom died! I can tell her I’m sick and she’ll stay home from church and that will fix everything!” JOEL KNOWS THAT HIS MOM DIED FROM SNAKEBITE AT THE CHURCH, THEN
They all stared at Joel, speechless. Ben was the first one to unfreeze, and he punched Joel in the arm, hard.
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard in my entire life,” Ben said, his voice shaking and getting louder. “What’s the matter with you?”
Joel stared at his twin, shocked. They rarely got into actual fist fights. He clutched his arm.
“It is not a stupid idea!” he yelled. “It’s a good idea, and you’re not going with me, either!”
“Nobody is going, you idiot!” Ben shouted back, and slung the dice so hard against the wall that they flew halfway back across the room and nearly hit Albert.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Eddy said. “What is up with you, Ben?”
“Nothing,” said Ben. “I’m just tired of hearing about it! Samuel made all this up and everybody goes on and on like it’s an actual real thing. It’s ridiculous, and I’m sick of it.”
His eyes were red. Joel started to ask if he was going to cry but thought better of it even though his arm hurt and he wanted to hurt Ben back. Ben grabbed his money and slammed it down on the table. “I quit,” he said. “Have fun.”
“Oh, come on,” Samuel said. “Don’t quit, I’m sorry!”
“You’re always sorry,” Ben said. “What good does that do?” He stalked out and they heard his feet slamming on the stairs.
The sewing machine wasn’t whirring anymore. Grandma appeared in the doorway.
“What on earth is all that noise?” she asked. “And Jessie, the kitchen is a complete mess. Get in there and clean it up right now.”
“I’ll help you,” said Eddy. “Those cookies were definitely worth it.”
The cookies were sooty and hard as rocks. Nobody had taken more than a bite. Even Grandma laughed at that.
• Awfully short, could probably add more