My mind puttered along; I was so weak from all my running and terrors that I could only lean against the doorway. Tisha was saying something now; she was talking so quickly and anxiously that I could barely understand her. However, as I listened closely, I recognized the tenets of her religion: the precept that if one hated someone strongly enough, then when they took out their revenge on the effigy, the person they hated would take its place. For some reason, I gasped; as the boys and Tisha looked in my direction, I gasped again, because I swore that the effigy moved. However, Tisha was rushing ahead now, telling the boys to take their revenge. I stretched out my hand in a last futile gesture to stop them; but the boys, seeing me falter, rushed ahead to claim my place in the hierarchy—to show that they too had brutality to unleash and deserved to be the sole beneficiaries of Tisha’s affections. Her face wore the blank expression of a sleepwalker who, while walking about in this world, was seeing the horrors of another world. When the first knife went into the effigy, the body tensed up and blood spurted out of the wound. I screamed—or at least tri
ed to—but in their madness, none of the other boys seemed to notice. Spurred on by Tisha’s religion, the boys were stabbing the effigy savagely now. Tisha, still entranced, only stood staring blankly. The little boys were covered in blood by now—and laughing at their triumph over the supernatural world. I went to take a step backward—to retreat from the room and its madness—but by then my trembling was so extreme that I tripped and fell to the ground. In the closed room, the noise seemed like an explosion. Tisha jumped and looked at me; the little boys, covered with blood and with knives still in mid-air, looked back at me with the madness still shining in their eyes…
God, I ran! I ran like I had never run before. Maybe it wasn’t even the reality of what I had seen and been a party to that made me run. I was beyond sight by then—beyond the horror of what had happened in the room. Also, even as I ran, I didn’t run toward anything: I didn’t go home—or to any place where I might expect comfort. Of course, there was no one I could go to. I ran to a neighborhood I had never been to before. There, I sat on the curb, crying—terrified and alone. I swore that I could still hear the laughter of the boys and the sick sound of knife blades slicing into flesh—and all the other lonely echoes of my youth….
After a while, an old woman came along; seeing me crying, she asked if I was all right, but I ran off again. Hours later, when I finally made it back to the tenement, Williams was on the stoop. A slight drizzle had started up and he was about to go inside; but seeing me enter the block with that strange expression on my face, he stood watching me curiously. I have no idea what I looked like by then. I doubt my mind had had two cogent thoughts since I ran from the basement.
“You all right, Son?” he asked me when I reached the stoop.
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say—and in fact had nothing to say. I remember that his mutt was staring at me, too. I nodded to Williams and headed upstairs. On the top of the staircase, just as I had countless other times, I was overcome by the certainty that my mother had returned to me. It seemed real this time—I had a visceral reaction, a feeling of almost insane euphoria. I rushed into the house, already panting, already wearing a grin… but the loneliness of the house was unmistakable; and in the living room, my aunt was at her usual place, staring blankly at the television. The baby was sleeping beside her on the couch. I entered the living room and stood just behind my aunt. After a while, she looked up at me, surprised to see me—or perhaps surprised by the extent of what was on my face. I went to her then, and hugged her and cried. She still sat on the couch, and was no doubt bewildered by my strange outburst. She held me timidly at first; but then, maybe seized by some internal terror of her own, she hugged me tighter.
D.V. Bernard immigrated from the Caribbean nation of Grenada when he was nine years old, and settled in New York City. He is the author of two novels: God in the Image of Woman (2004) and The Last Dream Before Dawn (2003). He can be reached through his web site: www.dvbernard.com