All the Stars in the Sky

All the Stars in the Sky

  Copyright 2015 by Roman Theodore Brandt

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  About the Author

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  Reality is bleak when you deal with the woods. You go in, and you come out, but part of you stays haunted. Part of you, some vital organ like your spleen or maybe a kidney, stays trapped in the tangled mess of secrets and pain hanging like a noose from the canopy above. There’s a hole to fill, so you go to the woods to put it all back in, if only for the night. You can stop going in, but you’ll never be whole again. You’ll always be missing a kidney, and the trees will always be waiting to welcome you back and wrap you in darkness for the night, deep and empty and so ugly that you can’t even breath anymore. It’s like craving a car accident; it makes that much sense, but you do it anyway.

  The woods find you in every town and on every campus, roots digging into gray matter and sending sparks of white noise into neurons, projecting nightmares onto the backs of sleeping eyelids. The branches close in, the world disappears, and then all you’ve got are the stars shining through. It’s an event horizon, though; darkness collapsing onto mass and matter, crushing and complete. Eventually, even the stars go away.

  *

  Mom always told us to stay out of the woods behind the house. There was something final about the way she said it, like she had been there her whole life. She didn't always say a lot to us growing up. Sure, sometimes you couldn't shut her up, but she spent a lot of time just standing at one window or another, staring out at the woods behind the house. We didn't know what it meant, but every time we ate as a family, she told us to stay out of the woods.

  "There's nothing in the woods, Mom," Reed told her one evening.

  The world was silent except for the sound of our silverware against the plates.

  "Well," she said, "You're lucky. Don't go back in."

  "Mom, there's nothing in there, some guys and I--"

  "Reed, I really wish you'd eat your food."

  "Mom, listen, I don't know why you're so crazy about the woods. It's just trees."

  She slammed her fist down onto the table, rattling the plates and glasses, and she said: "It's not just trees."

  We ate in silence for a little bit, and then Reed mumbled: "I don't know why you're so crazy about a bunch of trees, that's all."

  "It's got nothing to do with the trees," Mom said. "Eat your peas or I'll feed them to you like you're a toddler."

  "I'm just saying, you tell us every time to stay out of the woods. I know what's in there."

  "What's in the woods?" I asked him.

  "It's just a bunch of trees, Nathan," he said.

  "Eat those peas. I mean it."

  "Mom, stop."

  She picked up her glass and threw it across the room, sending liquid spirals of sweet tea down the table cloth. It shattered against the wall. We sat motionless, watching her breathing. Under his breath, I could hear my brother saying something about medication.

  "Mom, let's just eat," I said.

  "It's got nothing to do with the god damned trees," she said, and then she looked around her, and then down at her plate. "Where's my glass?"

  "You've got to be kidding me," Reed mumbled.

  "Let's just eat, okay?" I handed her my glass of sweet tea.

  We ate in silence again for a while, and then Mom said: "I hope you never find out, Reed." She sighed and looked around the dining room. "I don't know why I even try to have a normal life, knowing what I know."

  "Mom, I'm eating my peas, alright?" Reed said.

  "I hope you never know what I know, Reed." She sat looking at the peas in her spoon. After a minute she said: "I don't think I'd ever be able to forgive myself."

  *

  One night after dinner, Reed took me out to the edge of the woods.

  "I'll show you what's in the woods," he said. "Come on."

  "You sure it's okay?"

  He rolled his eyes. "Is anything ever okay around here? Just come on."

  So we went into the woods, and the trees closed around us like water. It was like there had never been a yard or a house or anything beyond the them.

  "Come on, I'll show you where we hang out."

  "The trees are weird," I told him, but he was already far ahead. "Hey, wait."

  "Don't be dumb," he said, and then he was gone. It wasn't like he was out of my sight, it was like he blinked out, all his atoms dissolving and leaving the fading sound of his voice behind. I looked over where it had come from and saw only trees.

  "Reed?"

  The woods were silent around me.

  "Reed, where'd you go?"

  *

  "Where's your brother?" Mom wanted to know from the sink as soon as I came inside. I could hear her scratching food off the plates.

  "He's around somewhere, I don't know. He ditched me."

  She didn't say anything, and I went into the living room.

  *

  "Turn that down," Mom said when she came in from doing the dishes. She sat down by the phone and dialed a number.

  "He's out pretty late," I told her.

  "Kathy?" Mom said into the phone. "Is Reed over there with Jordan?" There was a pause, and I could hear Kathy's far away tin can voice buzzing from the phone. "Listen, let me know if he shows up there, okay? Just give me a call."

  "He didn't go over there," I told her.

  "Quiet, Nathan. I'm on the phone."

  *

  Late that night, the door to Reed's bedroom opened and closed, and I got up and went out into the hall with galaxies sparkling in the dark around me. The phone cord was stretched from the living room, down the hall and under his door. I pressed my ear to the door for a minute, but I couldn't hear anything, so I said: "Reed, can I come in?"

  I could hear him talking to someone. "I'm done. I'm done with it."

  "Reed, you hear me?"

  "Stop calling my house, stop asking for me," he was saying. "I know what's out there."

  I pushed open the door and saw Reed standing in his underwear, trembling, staring out his window at the woods. "I'm not going back in," he said into the receiver, and that's when he saw me. Our eyes met, and he dropped the phone.

  "Mom asked where you were."

  "Get out of my room."

  "I had to hear about it all night."

  He came toward me, and I backed out into the hall. "Get out, get out," he said, "This is my room. You can't come in my room." And the door slammed shut. A few minutes later, the phone cord tightened against the floor, stretched to the limit, then it ripped out of the living room wall and disappeared under his door.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER TWO

  For days after that, Reed would get mystery calls, breathers on the line. Mom was always the one to answer.

  "Who is this?"

  I looked over at Reed, and he didn't look at anything, he just stared out in front of him. "Reed, it's for you again," I said, and I laughed, but he didn't laugh with me.

  "I wish you'd stop calling, you pervert," Mom yelled in the kitchen. She slammed the phone down and leaned over into the doorway. "Reed, tell your friends to stop calling here, I'm about to lose my mind, alright?"

  "You already lost it," he said.

  "I wish you'd rip this phone out of the wall too, all these idiots calling to breathe on the line."

  "Who was it?" I asked.

  "It was the Easter bunny, kid," Reed told me. "It was Santa Claus."

&nb
sp; The phone started to ring again.

  "God damn it," Mom said from the kitchen and she snatched the phone out of the cradle. "What?"

  "Where did you go when you left me in the woods, Reed?"

  "Don't ask me that," he said quietly.

  *

  We'd get calls at all hours of the night until Mom finally started unplugging the phone lines at bedtime. I'd find my brother staring out the windows at the back of the house toward the woods.

  "I didn't see anything," I told him when I found him in the kitchen.

  "There was nothing to see, kid," he said.

  Once, I found him in the garage, staring out the back door.

  "What's wrong, Reed?"

  He looked over at me, his eyes far away. "I'm just thinking, I guess. Go back inside."

  *

  Reed was weird from then on. We finished Junior high and started high school, and some nights he came home with a police escort.

  "I just don't understand," Mom said over cube steak. The only light in the room was the flickering florescent bar over the sink, and even that was too much.

  Reed sat looking at his steak, then at Mom. "What?"

  "Your behavior, that's all. I don't get it."

  "Mom, stop. Eat your food."

  I looked from Mom to Reed and back to Mom. She stood up and went to the fridge and pulled the door open, backlit like a true alien. "Who wants cheesecake?"

  "Me," I said.

  "Mom, we haven't finished eating yet. Sit down."

  "Don't talk to me like that." She closed the door and came over to the table to sit back down, scooting her chair far forward underneath her. "If your father were here, he'd beat you into the wall." She looked over at him. "Can we turn on the lights at least?"

  "I like the dark," Reed told her, and he took a bite of his steak.

  "I can't see my food," she said.

  "You need glasses." He stabbed another piece of steak with his fork.

  "I need a light to be on, Reed."

  "You need to take your pills. I don't want to see everything, okay? I don't want to know what's in every corner of the god damned room, Mom."

  "You went out there again," Mom said, her voice small.

  "I didn't, Mom, okay? Just stop."

  "I told you not to go out to the woods," Mom said, her eyes filling with tears.

  Reed sighed and got up from the table and tossed his fork onto the plate, sending bits of steak everywhere. "I need to get out of this house," he said, and he disappeared into the living room.

  "I know what I saw!" She yelled, and he slammed the front door behind him.

  *

  "I don't know anymore," Mom said later in the blue light of the TV.

  "You don't know what anymore?" I asked her.

  She laughed a little.

  "You want me to go look for Reed?"

  "I want you to stay right here and watch TV with me. Keep me company." The audience roared with laughter on the screen, and then a toothpaste commercial came on. "Did you brush your teeth, honey?"

  "Yeah, they're clean."

  We sat in silence for a while.

  "Sometimes I wonder why I even try," she mumbled to herself.

  *

  I found myself stopping in front of the kitchen sink to look out at the darkened tree line. It never moved, even in the wind. The trees just stood there, watching the house.

  Outside, the view was no different. At the very edge of the yard, the trees waited for someone to approach them. I watched them crystalize in the frozen winter night, dripping white and innocent in the distance. I went up to the edge of the woods and reached out to touch one of the trees, but I couldn't reach it.

  *

  Reed came back late that night. I heard his bedroom door open and close. I looked over at my window. Far away, I saw the trees as still as a painting, waiting for him to come back. I got out of bed and went over to my door and opened it. Under his door was a single point of light, illuminating the floor around it.

  I pushed the door open to see him standing by his bed, motionless, in his underwear. The only light was from the open closet door, casting shadows and phantoms around the room. He was dripping with water, pooling at his feet, and his eyes were dark and unknowable, darting around the room to look at me, then the window, then the closet, then back to me.

  "Reed, what's going on?"

  "Go to bed," he said quietly.

  "I know where you went."

  "Yeah, and there's nothing out there."

  I looked over at the open closet door. The light cord dangled like a noose beyond the doorway, with the bare bulb flooding one corner of the room in a cold glow. "I want to see what's in the woods, too," I said finally.

  "There's nothing to see, Nathan." He turned away from me and shuffled to the window, dragging his feet. "I have to get out of here," he said quietly, and I stepped into the room. He turned to face me. "Go back to bed."

  "You're never home anymore."

  "You got no business following me around, so just stay inside, you got it?"

  I blinked at him for a minute, and then I looked over at his window; I saw a face, two eyes staring at me, large and red and full of veins. My corneas fixed on this face, this monster face, floating in the void of the open window. Panicked, Reed yanked the cord for the blinds, pulling them down, sending them crashing to the floor, and then he rushed toward the door and slammed it shut, knocking me back into the hallway wall. The world spun around me, and I staggered down the hall to my room. Mom's door opened. "What was that? Are you okay?"

  "Yeah, sure." I looked back at her. My nose was throbbing and dripping wet. I closed my eyes, and the world spun around me. I remembered going on one of those spinning rides with Reed at the county fair one year, with his laughing face frozen across from mine, the world existing as streaks of color.

  Then I heard Mom's voice. "Nathan, Nathan. You look awful."

  I blinked at her, and then I looked around at the hallway, tilting in the dim light from Mom's open bedroom door. "I just fell," I told her, and I wiped my nose. My hand came back red.

  "Here," she said. "Come into the bathroom, you've got a bloody nose."

  "I'm okay, Mom."

  "No," she said, "we'll get you cleaned up. You look awful."

  The door to Reed's bedroom opened and I turned to see Reed come running out, fully dressed. He didn't even look back.

  "Did you do this to your brother?" Mom yelled at him, but he was gone. The front door slammed behind him.

  *

  Reed was in and out of trouble until he went away to college, and then it was just me and Mom and the woods behind the house. Sometimes, she'd watch it from the sink as she did the dishes. Other times, she'd look up from her crossword puzzles out at the empty highway in front of the house and say, "I hope your brother's safe."

  I learned to not mention the woods anymore.

  I remembered being at the fair with my brother again a few days after he broke my nose, and then most days after that. I remembered the stars when the ride stopped spinning and me with my legs all rubbery, stepping down from the car. "Can you believe all the stars?" Reed asked me.

  We went to visit him at school. He was rooming with his friend Jordan, from home. They both looked sick, full of dread, but Jordan was definitely sicker than Reed.

  “You’ve been going out too much,” Mom said as soon as she walked in. Her radar had picked up alcoholic late nights and anemic mornings. “It smells like urine in here,” she added.

  “You remember my mom,” Reed mumbled, and Jordan nodded, and then he looked at me. We locked eyes, and I couldn’t look away. He looked good, the way sickness makes people look better sometimes. “And my brother,” Reed said, following Mom into the room.

  “Oh Jesus Christ, Reed,” Mom said when she saw the bathroom.

  Jordan smiled a little, and I felt warm, my skin tingling. I wanted to run away. “How’ve you been?” Jordan asked me.

  “This is awful,” Mom
said over the sounds of scrubbing and then the toilet flushing. “I raised you better than this.”

  “I’ve missed you,” Jordan said, and I remembered him holding me down on my bed a long time ago, yanking my underwear down.

  “I’ve been out to the woods,” I said to him, and he stopped smiling.

  Mom came out of the bathroom with an arm full of dirty clothes. “Jesus Christ, Reed,” she said again, grabbing a trash bag out of her purse with her free hand. “These are beyond disgusting.”

  *

  Reed came home on Christmas break and we ate in near-darkness again.

  "How's school?" Mom wanted to know, carrying the cheesecake over to the table. She sat down and smiled over at him.

  "Huh?" he said.

  "School, honey, I'm asking about school," she said.

  "Oh yeah, it's fine." He grabbed a slice of cheesecake and started shoveling it into his mouth with his fork. Mom watched him eat, her lips pursed and white.

  We sat in silence for a minute, and then she said: "Are you making friends?"

  "Yeah, I guess." He took a big drink of his soda.

  "Have you talked to Jordan since you've been back?"

  "Mom, Jordan doesn't talk to me anymore," He said, rolling his eyes.

  "Well, I can hardly blame him." She looked over at the window over the sink.

  "Do we have to talk about this, Mom?" Reed wanted to know.

  She sighed. "No, I guess not. Let's just have a nice dinner."

  "I'm going to college soon," I said, trying to change the subject.

  "Nathan, eat your soup," Mom said.

  *

  Reed and I sat up watching TV for a while after Mom went to bed.

  "I'm going to college soon, too," I told him again, without Mom to interrupt me.

  He smiled, not looking away from the TV. "You'll like college, Nathan. It's nice." We watched a happy couple kiss on the screen, and then he said to me: "I always thought I'd be something when I grew up."

  "What do you want to be?"

  He shrugged. "Anything," he said finally, and then he added, "Not that it matters now." A toothpaste commercial came on, but nobody asked if my teeth were clean. The world was empty of conversation, and the two of us avoided looking at each other for a long time. Finally, Reed sighed and stood up, stretching. "I think it's time for bed," he told me. "You go on. I'll be back soon."