Jem's scream was shrill, piercing. When I heard it, I was still disoriented and struggling to get up from out of what had quickly changed from a costume to a prison. It was crushed, boxing me in, and I found it hard to stand when my arms were trapped under layers of chicken wire and paper mache. But that scream had cut through everything, sent fear shooting down my body, replaced confusion with urgency. After hearing it, I immediately stumbled onto my feet and rushed in Jem's direction.
I collided with a man's stomach on my way towards him, felt myself be trapped once again, but I was too focused on Jem to notice how the man squeezed me, how he wrestled with my costume. Instead, I listened for another scream and thanked God when I heard his voice again. He seemed to be trying to shout, but instead he was wheezing, breathless. "Scout!" The moment I felt the man pulled off of me, I ran towards Jem again, afraid to know what had happened to make his voice so weak, not thinking about why the man had suddenly lost his hold on me. Instead, I rushed towards the sound and kneeled beside him.
Jem's eyes brightened as he saw me, an almost limp face brought to life for a mere second. "Jem, are you alright?" I asked, knowing he wasn't, that if he was he'd be saying more, be rushing to get up and leave.
As an answer, he simply called my name again, though at that point it was more a gasp than anything. But before I could say anything more a stranger's arms were picking him up off the ground, carrying him out of the woods.
The words left my mouth before I thought about them: "Take him to the Finch house." And then, I found myself running ahead of the stranger and crashing through the door, with Atticus staring at me as if I was a ghost.
"Why are you—what happened to your costume?" he asked, but quickly saw I was in no state to answer, because by then I was not only panting, I was crying. "Alexandra!" he shouted, and within a moment she was there, peeling back layers of paint, paper, and chicken wire, while I tried to catch my breath and figure out how I would explain it to Atticus.
He asked almost immediately. "Where's Jem?" I couldn't help but spot a look of fear in his eyes.
All I managed to get out was "he's coming," and then, a breath later, "he's hurt."
It was then that the stranger came up to the door, and suddenly everything froze. Atticus ran over, took Jem from the man's arms and immediately headed for his room, and Aunt Alexandra ran into the kitchen, leaving me half undressed. I heard her voice echoing through the house, one side of a rushed phone conversation: "Eula May, get me Dr. Reynolds… I need to speak to your father, now. It's an emergency… Dr. Reynolds, you have to come to the Finch house immediately, Jem's been badly wounded, he's bleeding… How soon will you be here?"
I sat, dumbly. My costume had been peeled back, and so I had seen Jem properly as Atticus walked past, the blood staining his shirt, his chest heaving with every breath, his head tilted so far back. I wanted to run in there, to be with Jem, to see if somehow the bleeding would stop and his breaths would even out. But my lower half was still trapped in my costume, and even if it wasn't, I had become too numb to will my feet to move. All I could seem to do was sit, as the tears dried on my face and I listened to Aunt Alexandra's voice from the other room.
Aunt Alexandra hung up the phone and returned. She once again began unravelling my costume, her hands now flying. It only took a minute, and the moment I was free, Aunt Alexandra and I both walked to the other end of the house, and she slipped into Jem's room as I slipped into mine. I grabbed a dress, slid it over my head, and then followed her through his doorway.
Jem lay on the bed, on top of the covers. His head was supported by a pillow but still tipped to one side. His shirt was red and damp, and his body moved only slightly underneath it with every breath. Besides the rising and falling of those breaths that had become unimaginably shallow, his body was completely motionless, his head and limbs already deathly still.
Atticus was on his right, sitting on the edge of the bed, both his hands grasping Jem's. I tried not to notice the way the rest of Jem's arm hung down limply until it met the bed at his elbow. Aunt Alexandra sat on the other edge, holding his other hand, her eyes now red. I found my own place sitting as his feet, and though I knew that it was probably best not to disturb him, I grabbed hold of them as well, feeling the slight pulse within them, the warmth that I was so thankful was still present. They were the only two signs he was alive at all.
An eternity passed in silence, the three of us sitting around him, holding onto him, both Aunt Alexandra and I beginning to cry, me for the second time. Then Atticus broke the silence with a prayer.
"Lord, grant Jeremy the grace to enter Your kingdom. Though his time with us has been brief, he has been the best son, brother, and nephew You could have given us. He valued justice and kindness in ways many adults here on earth still cannot, and always sought not only academic knowledge, but also the understanding of how to be a good person. We thank You for every moment You gave us with him, and now, we give him back to spend eternity with You in heaven."
Atticus paused, and the only sounds in the room were our quiet, stifled breaths and those of Jem, each a shallow gasp. One, two, three breaths shook his body, the space in between them feeling unimaginably long, until finally, he exhaled, and his body was left completely still. Only then did Atticus finish, his voice suddenly soft and choked. "Amen." Then, the room filled with a new sound, one I'd never heard before: Atticus' stifled sobs.
I sat there, clinging to Jem's legs, listening to Aunt Alexandra and Atticus' tears, and feeling my own fall silently down my face. It wasn't real, I knew. It had to be a nightmare, a hallucination. That was the only way Jem could be dead, Atticus could be falling apart, and I could be the only one who wasn't hysterical. At any moment, Jem would sit back up and begin to speak, no longer in clothes soaked with blood, and everything would be pulled back to normal, the four of us leaving Jem's room and heading to bed. But instead, the nightmare continued, and I watched the shaking forms of Atticus and Aunt Alexandra and the slow drying of the blood on Jem's sheets. Somewhere far away from us, the doorbell rang, but neither Atticus nor Aunt Alexandra moved, the two instead clinging just as tightly to Jem's hands, as if they hadn't heard the sound. Once more it rang, and then again, and still, it never penetrated the scene. But surely, someone had to answer the door.
I slowly slipped off the bed, in an effort not to be noticed by either of the adults, even though I knew that if the doorbells didn't rouse them, nothing would. I ran to the door, my feet barely touching the ground, my shadow the only thing that served to fill the empty rooms. Then I opened the door and found myself staring at Dr. Reynolds.
"Scout," he said, voice heavy with worry. "Is your brother in his room?"
I simply stared for a moment at his pale silhouette against the black evening sky. He didn't know what had happened. If Atticus had answered the door, he would have known what to say, how to tell him, but Atticus wasn't. He was still in the Jem's room, kneeling beside his bed, and it seemed that he was even farther away from me than he was when he was in Montgomery. I didn't know what to say, what to do, or if I could still hope to wake up, but somehow I found the words leaving my mouth: "Sir, Jem just died."
Then I knew. It wasn't a lie, wasn't even a nightmare; as those words passed through my lips, they finally felt like the truth. My brother was dead. I'd never see him again. Atticus and I were the only ones left. Soon, there would be Heck Tate arriving to investigate the attack, and a mortician coming to take Jem's body away. There would be a funeral and then a burial, but after it all, there would just be the two of us. I had only really known what our family was like with three members, far too young to remember my mother, but I was about to learn what it was like to adjust to a house with one less person in it, a family unit of two. After Dr. Reynolds apologized for our loss and left to give us our peace, I didn't return to Jem's room, but instead headed to my own. I went to sleep, knowing in the morning, I'd begin a new life that wouldn't seem quite like reality, but not quite like a nightmare, either.