Seth opens his eyes on the settee and can barely breathe from the weight on his chest.
Oh, Jesus, he thinks. Oh, no, please.
Once more, it was so much bigger than a dream that he puts his hands to his face to see if the scent
of Gudmund's body is still there. That it isn't – but that he can remember the smell, of salt and wood
and flesh and something intensely private – makes the weight feel so much heavier.
"Shit," he says, his voice cracking as he sits up. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit." He leans forward
into himself and rocks slowly back and forth, trying to bear how bad it feels.
The ache of it. The ache of missing Gudmund is so great he can barely stand it. Of missing how
safe being with him felt, how easy it was, how funny and relaxed. Of missing the physical stuff, of
course, but more than that, the intimacy, the closeness. Of missing just being held like that, cared for.
Maybe loved.
But also the ache of missing something that was his own. His own private, secret thing that
belonged to no one else, that was no part of the world of his parents or his brother or even his other
friends.
Gone.
Isn't dying once enough? he thinks. Am I going to have to keep doing it?
But then he thinks, No. Because you can die before you're dead, too.
Oh, yes, you can.
So why not after?
He had been with Gudmund again. And waking feels like death, like a death worse than drowning.
I can't take this, he thinks. I can't take this.
He's slept through the night again, it seems. The light around the blinds has the bluish tint of early
dawn. He doesn't want to get up, feels like he can't, but the pressure on his bladder finally forces him
up the stairs to the bathroom. Yesterday, after the episode of housebreaking and trying to avoid just
exactly this kind of dream-filled sleep for as long as he could, he'd gotten the creaking pipes to work
in the sink and shower. He'd then refilled the long dried-out toilet with glasses of water, and it had
worked on the first flush, a victory that made him almost embarrassingly happy.
He goes to it now and does his morning business. Then he washes himself in the cold water of the
shower, using the hardened block of dishwashing liquid from downstairs as a sticky bar of soap. He
gasps as he sticks his face again and again into the brutal coldness of the water, trying to snap himself
into wakefulness.
Snap him hopefully from the weight still pressing down on him, ready to crush him if he lets it.
He dries himself off with one of the new T-shirts and heads back down to the main room to put on a
clean set of clothes. He'll need to get more of these, too, ones more suited to warm weather, and
maybe some lanterns for nighttime. He needs more food as well. He'll unload the cart from outside
and then refill it, taking more time to get better things.
Yes. That's what he'll do.
Keep moving, he tells himself again. Don't stop. Don't stop to think.
But he stands there for a minute, over the backpack of clothes, feeling the empty house around him,
But he stands there for a minute, over the backpack of clothes, feeling the empty house around him,
feeling the doorway to the kitchen and the farther door that leads outside onto the deck.
The same door that he'd opened for the man in the jumpsuit.
And the attic upstairs where he'd waited, by himself, on all those terrible, terrible evenings while
the hunt for the man and Owen was on, all those evenings when his parents could barely bring
themselves to look at him or each other, when his dad started taking the go-away pills he never quite
gave up.
Seth hadn't told Gudmund everything, even when he could have, even when the chance was there
for –
For what? Forgiveness? Absolution?
If he could have taken forgiveness from anyone, he could have taken it from Gudmund. He could
have done it right then, and even now he isn't sure why he didn't.
He remembers being there, lying in bed with Gudmund, being held as close as it was possible to
be, having shared a story he'd never told anyone besides his parents and the police.
His chest begins to ache again, dangerously so, and he says, "Right. Right."
He heads outside to start bringing food in from the cart, trying as hard as he can not to cry again.
He makes three trips to the supermarket before the morning is through. It's mostly cans and the few
bottles of water that look tolerable, but he's also found some sugar that's not too hard to chip chunks
out of and some dried meats vacuum-packed in plastic that may not be too petrified to eat. He's found
a couple bags of flour, too, though he doesn't really know what he might do with them.
He gathers a few camping lanterns from the outdoor store and finds some more clothes at a small
Marks & Spencer around the corner from it. The shirts and shorts are boring enough to make him look
like his father, but at least he's not having to wear snow gear in midsummer, which makes him
wonder what will happen if he's still here for whatever passes for winter in hell.
When the sun's in the middle of the sky, he uses the camp stove to heat up more spaghetti. He does
it at the same spot in the park where he ate yesterday, looking down the hill again at the grass and the
crystal clear pond beyond.
He nearly drops the can when he sees a pair of ducks sunning themselves on the rock in the center
of it. There's nothing special about them as ducks per se, just plain brown ones, squabbling quietly to
each other.
But still. There they are.
"Hey!" Seth shouts down at them, without thinking. They fly off almost immediately, quacking in
alarm. "Hey, come back!" he calls after them. "I brought you here. I did that!"
They disappear over some trees.
"Ah, well," he says, taking another bite of spaghetti. "It's not like I could shoot you for dinner."
He looks up. Could he? Well, he'd need a gun first, and he thinks immediately of the outdoor store
And then he remembers this is England, or at least his mind's version of it. You couldn't buy a gun
here anything like how easy it was in the U.S., where he could actually have got one at the local
shopping mall, going to McDonald's before and seeing a movie after. His parents were appalled, and
talked about it for years with joyous European indignation, while never allowing one in the house.
The result being that Seth has barely seen a gun up close, much less shot one.
So that ruled out hunting, probably, at least in the short term. His can of spaghetti, though, is
So that ruled out hunting, probably, at least in the short term. His can of spaghetti, though, is
suddenly looking a lot less appetizing than a roast duck. Not that he'd know how to roast it. Or if you
even could on a butane camp stove.
He sighs and takes another bite, using the spoon he remembered to bring this time. He's tired but
not as tired as he was the day before. He wonders if he's finally catching up on the sleep you need
when you first die, which, granted, must be an exhausting thing to happen. Probably the most
exhausting thing that ever could happen.
He looks back down to the now-empty pond and notices something new. The tall grasses up and
down the hill are swaying a bit in the breeze. More than a bit, actually. They're being blown by a
wind Seth can now feel against his face. He looks up.
For the first time, there's something in the sky. Clouds. Great big puffy ones. Great big puffy black
ones scurrying this way.
Seth can't believe his eyes. "It rains in hell?"
He barely makes it back to the house before the skies open up. The storm is a summer one, and Seth
can still see blue sky on the horizon, so it won't last, but boy, does it pour. He watches it from the
doorway of his house as it quickly soaks the dusty streets to mud and streaks dirt across the windows
of the dead cars.
The smell is outrageously good. So clean and fresh, Seth can't help but step out into it, letting it
drench his upturned face, squinting as the drops hit his eyes. The rain is surprisingly warm, and he
suddenly gasps, "Idiot!" He races back inside to grab the hardened bar of dishwashing liquid. How
much nicer would this be than the freezing cold shower he had this morning –
He jumps back out the front door, but the rain is already tapering away, blowing out of the
neighborhood as quickly as it came.
"Damn," he says. The wind up high must be blowing something wicked because the rain clouds are
leaving like they're being chased by a mob, out past the back of Seth's house and carrying on to –
Where?
Yeah, where would they be going?
How big is hell?
Big enough for weather, obviously. The sun is back out, the breeze dying down, and steam already
rising as the mud dries back into dust on his street.
A street he's been up and down several times but not much beyond.
Maybe it's time to do some exploring, he thinks.