It is as he left it. Scattered rays of sunlight are the only illumination, since the light switches don't
work in this room either. A room filled, he now fully realizes, with the furniture of his childhood.
There are the stained red settees, one big, one small, that his father wasn't going to replace until the
boys got old enough not to mess them up anymore.
Settees that got left behind in England when they moved to America, left behind in this house.
But here is a coffee table that didn't get left behind, a coffee table that should be thousands and
thousands of miles from here.
I don't understand, he thinks. I don't understand.
He sees a vase of his mother's that made the trip. He sees an ugly end table that didn't. And there,
above the mantelpiece –
He feels the same stabbing in his gut despite knowing what to expect.
It's the painting made by his uncle, the painting that came to America, too, with some of this
furniture. It's of a shrieking, wrongly proportioned horse with terror in its eyes and that awful spike
for its tongue. His uncle had patterned it after Picasso's Guernica, surrounding the horse with broken
skies and broken, bombed-out bodies.
Seth had long since been told about the real Guernica by his father, long since understood the story
behind it, but even though his uncle's version was the palest of pale imitations, it was the first
painting Seth had ever properly seen, the first real painting his then-five-year-old mind had tried to
figure out. For that reason, it loomed larger for him than any classic ever would.
It is something out of a nightmare, something horrible and hysterical, something unable to listen to
reason or understand mercy.
And it is a painting he last saw yesterday, if yesterday still means anything. If time passed at all in
hell. Whatever the answer, it was a painting he saw on his way out of his own house on the other side
of the world, the last thing his eyes had glanced over as he shut his front door.
His actual front door. Not this. Not this nightmare version out of a past he'd prefer not to
remember.
He watches the painting as long as he can bear, long enough to try and turn it into just a painting,
nothing more than that, but he can feel his heart thudding as he looks away from it, his eyes avoiding a
dining-room table he also recognizes, and the bookcases full of books, some of whose titles he's read
in another country than this. He shuffles as quickly as his weak body will carry him into the kitchen,
keeping his thoughts only on his thirst. He heads straight to the sink, almost whimpering with
anticipated relief.
When he turns on the taps and nothing happens, he lets out an involuntary cry of despair. He tries
them again. One won't move at all, and the other just spins in his hand, producing nothing, no matter
how often he twists it.
He can feel a weeping rising in him again, his eyes burning at how salty the tears are in his
dehydrated body. He feels so weak, so unsteady that he has to lean forward and put his forehead
against the counter, feeling its dusty coolness on his brow and hoping he won't faint.
Of course this is what hell would be like, he thinks. Of course it is. To always be thirsty but have
nothing to drink. Of course.
It's probably punishment for the Baby Jesus thing. Monica had even said so. He feels a rueful
It's probably punishment for the Baby Jesus thing. Monica had even said so. He feels a rueful
flutter in his stomach, remembering that night again, remembering his friends, how relaxed and easy
everything usually was, how they liked that he was the quiet one, how it hadn't mattered that the
differences in English and American curriculum meant that he was nearly a year younger than them all
despite being in the same grade, how they – but especially Gudmund – included him in everything as
only friends could. Even the theft of a deity.
They'd stolen it, almost shamefully easily, their stifled laughter the only real threat to getting
caught. They'd lifted the infant out of the manger, surprised at its lightness, and carried it, barely able
to contain their hysteria, back to Gudmund's car. They'd been so nervous in the getaway that a light
had come on in the Fletcher house as they peeled down the road.
But they'd done it. And then they'd driven out to the head cheerleader's house as planned, shushing
each other vigorously as they snuck Baby Jesus out of the backseat into the middle of the night.
Where H dropped him.
It turned out that Baby Jesus wasn't, in fact, made from Venetian marble, but from some kind of
cheap ceramic that broke with astonishing thoroughness when it came into swift contact with the
pavement. There had been a hushed, horrified silence as they stood over the bits and pieces.
"We are so going to hell," Monica had finally said, and it sure hadn't sounded like she was joking.
Seth hears a sound in his chest and realizes with surprise that it's laughter. He opens his mouth and
it comes out in a horrible, painful honk, but he can't stop it. He laughs and laughs some more, no
matter how light-headed it makes him, no matter how he still can't quite stand up from the countertop.
Yes. Hell. That'd be about right.
But before he starts to cry again, a feeling that has threatened behind every second of his laughter,
he realizes he's been hearing another sound this whole time. A creaking and groaning, like a baying
cow lost somewhere in the house.
He looks up.
The groaning is from the pipes. Dirty, rust-colored water is starting to dribble from the kitchen tap.
Seth practically leaps forward in his desperate rush to drink and drink and drink.