SILAS
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(before)
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Three Weeks Before Granite Falls...
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It was well into the night, with one foot into the morning. The house was still and dark, if not exactly quiet. Hard, slanted sheets of rain rattled against the roof, tapped erratically against the wide, back living room window, and dripped off the eaves and down the gutter, sloshing and splashing loudly on the wet, saturated lawn outside.
I was at the back corner of the walk-in pantry on the ground floor, using my phone's flashlight to illuminate the liquor bottles on the fourth shelf up. Various bottles and boxes cast blocky shadows against the wall of the pantry, like a miniature city skyline as the sun is about to set. Still holding the phone in one hand, I set down the black flask I held in the other so I could pick up the bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label. Then, considering, I set the phone on the shelf too, facedown, with the flashlight shining up. I unscrewed the cap on the flask first, then opened the Johnny Walker.
I didn't necessarily need a funnel for this next part. I just needed to be careful. The smell of spilled whiskey on the shelf and floor would likely raise some questions with my family.
I tipped the bottle, letting the contents trickle into the flask in a thin, easy to aim stream.
I was almost curious how surprised my parents would be at this new habit. They really shouldn't have been. They were the ones who had turned me on to it, letting me drink during Dad's work parties. Sometimes letting me drink a lot. They hadn't cared, then. And it was all right here, whenever I wanted it. It wasn't like there was any explicit rule against taking some of it.
Then again, if there wasn't, why was I down here at—according to the last time my phone screen lit up, less than a minute ago—fourteen after two in the morning?
Because I liked to stay up late on Saturday nights, that's why. And I wanted to top off the contents of my flask. That was all there was to it.
Not that this explained why I was huddled in a dark corner, using the flashlight app on my phone. Or the fact that I always conveniently managed to raid the liquor reserves when no one else was around.
Okay. So, obviously, I didn't want anyone to know what I was doing. But not because I felt a particular sense of shame about it. I was just a kid being a kid. It was okay for me to be stupid now and then, if that's what this was.
The flask was nearly full. I could tell by the way the fluid echoed in the metal container as it dripped in. I pulled the bottle back, put the lid on it, and set it in its place on the shelf. The flask's cap made subtle squeaking sounds as I screwed it back into place. But then, I realized I could hear something else, too. Other squeaks, coming from the staircase. The padding of footfalls on the carpeted stairs. The grunt of that third-to-bottom step, the one I'd been wary to tip-toe over on my way down.
Two grunts on that same step. Two pairs of feet.
I scrambled to snatch up my phone. I tapped the flashlight-shaped icon on the lock screen, and the light went out, leaving me alone in the dark, with only the chatter of the heavy rain against the house to keep me company.
The rainfall was just loud enough that I couldn't hear the footfalls on the main floor. I turned, facing the door of the pantry. It was mostly closed, cracked open by about the width of my palm.
I shrank my body against the side of the room, pressed against the shelves. While I thought what I was doing was harmless enough, I knew being discovered here could lead to a larger conversation with my parents I didn't want to deal with right now. They'd think I had some kind of problem. They'd have lots of questions. Hours of discourse would follow, potentially. And they would begin to institute some changes around here. Perhaps even beyond getting rid of the liquor stash.
I was wearing only my pajama shorts. And the shorts didn't have any pockets, and there was no way I could hide the flask in them—it would just fall through. If I wedged it in the waistband, assuming it didn't slip out anyway, it would still be plainly obvious, especially if someone turned on a light.
I could stash the flask here, in the pantry, and come back for it later. And maybe that was the right move. The longer I waited, hiding out in here, while there were people out there, the more suspicious my eventual emergence would be.
But then, the whole thing was already suspicious, wasn't it? I'd left all the lights off on the ground floor, so as not to alert the family to my activities. I was scrounging in the pantry, in the dark. I'd even turned off the light on my phone. If I'd left it on, they would already know I was in here.
I eased forward slowly, toward the crack in the door. It occurred to me that whoever had come down the stairs hadn't turned on the lights, either. I had to wonder why. I came just close enough to the door to peer through the opening.
I wasn't surprised to see it was my parents out there. It was hard to imagine my mother and sister sneaking off together at half-past one in the morning. Or my dad and my sister. Especially the way Gemma had to have her beauty sleep. She didn't even need to play a game or listen to Youtube to wind down. Sometimes she would get home after a night out, go straight to her room, and conk out immediately—which I knew because the wall's between us were pretty thin, and, well, she snored.
There was a shadowy cast to the room, like looking through dark-blue, tinted lenses. My parents were standing in the middle of the living room, frozen and deathly quiet, facing each other. Like figures in a wax museum after hours. From my vantage point, I could see Mom's face and the back of Dad's head.
I have to say, Mom did not look happy. Neither of them did. It was obvious in their rigid posture, the way they held themselves. The way Mom's arms were crossed, and her brows wrinkled and bunched together. The two of them stood aloof from one another in a way that was not normal to me. Though they stood only a few feet apart, there may as well have been a massive gulf between them.
I felt a knot of discomfort forming in my gut. I'd seen my parents argue before—who hasn't?—but I'd never seen them like this. This was almost the opposite of arguing. You had to care to argue, and there was something so apathetic about this. Seeing but not acknowledging. Present, but not interacting.
Had they come down here to have a discussion without Gemma or I overhearing? A conversation cloaked by darkness, and the steady drum of rainfall? But now, here they were, and no words came. As if neither actually wanted to be here. Neither cared enough to be the first to speak.
Light came in a sudden shock, like a violation. It streamed in through the front living room window, a beam of illumination that traveled slowly from one far corner of the room to the other. With its passage came the low thud of bass from a car radio, growing louder, until it was like a tangible presence in the room. Light flashed across my mother's face, and she squinted, irritated, curling further into herself. As the light played close to the side of the room where the pantry was located, adjacent to the kitchen, I pulled back from the crack in the door and toward the hinges, moving too quickly and feeling one of the shelves jam hard into my side, just below the waist. Hard enough that I was certain it would leave a bruise. There'd also been a loud thump as the shelf shoved back against the actual wall of the pantry. One I sincerely hoped I'd been the only one to hear.
I waited, heart pulsing so hard in my chest I could feel it in my ears.
There's something so intense about the act of hiding. Hiding, and hoping you aren't found out. Even when it's a game, it's intense. Even when there are no real stakes. I have distinct memories of being so worked up during games of hide-and-seek as a kid that I almost wanted to jump out, get found, and get it over with.
There, pressed against the shelves of the pantry, I kept imagining my parents crossing the living room and kitchen until they were standing in front of the pantry door. My Mom could be holding the doorknob, right then, at that moment. Any second now, she would throw the door open. And there I would be, cringing like an idiot.
Seconds passed. The bass from the passing car peaked in volume, then began to peter off as the car moved on. Then it was just the rain again.
I waited for the door to swing wide. But it didn't.
I eased back toward the opening. Neither of my parents had made a single move. If anything had yet passed between them, it had happened by virtue of the extended stillness and quiet itself.
Then my mother's lips parted. She spoke. And it wasn't off the cuff. She'd thought through what she was saying. She was giving my dad an earful.
I could just barely hear...something. It was muffled. I couldn't make out the words.
I keened my ears, trying to pierce the veil of rainfall to hear my mother's voice.
I focused. And I heard something. It wasn't my mother. It was a series of strange, fuzzy noises. Almost like the conversation was being run through some kind of voice-altering software. The tone and rhythm of the sounds matched the movements of her mouth, but I couldn't make sense of them.
And then I saw it. I hadn't noticed at first, with how dark it was in the room, but my eyes were adjusting, becoming familiar with the situation. And now I could see that every time my mother's lips moved, every time she began 'speaking', a bar of blurriness appeared in my vision, obscuring her mouth. And the more I stared at it, the more I clearly I saw it, the less convinced I became of it. It was one thing to see something with my own eyes, and log it to my memory, and another to truly internalize and believe.
Later, in my room, as the night wore on, I became steadily convinced that it had been my imagination. That I hadn't seen or heard anything strange at all.
ns 15.158.61.6da2
