STORIES FROM
SHUNDERLAND

CHAPTER ONE

 

It wasn’t the pounding of feet Laurel had described. This time, Benjamin padded quietly into the room. Still, if it wakes you up, it wakes you up.

 

Laurel stirred, but before she had a chance to throw her feet out, Gerald spoke. “Stay,” He said. “My turn.” 

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He rolled out, stood and swayed for a moment like a tall pine in a stiff wind. How long do trees stand, he wondered.

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Longer than men, that’s for sure, but not long in the scheme of things. Nothing lasts forever.

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Maybe it was the way the boy stood there, waiting, but Gerald had a striking feeling that Benjamin was the adult, and he was the child, about to be shown something of great importance. Only the size of his silhouette in the doorway said otherwise. In the dark, he could forget that he wore footie pajamas. The shadow moved and he followed. 

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The curtains in the living room were closed. Gerald had half a mind to dart over and throw them aside just to see if he could get a surprise look at the elusive lights that had been capturing Benjamin's attention. But his body had no ability to dart at such an hour, and he did not want to break away from the little figure that led him so maturely through the house. Besides that, the edges promised nothing but darkness.

The shade in Benjamin's room was up, but the room was no brighter for it. The boy went to the window and looked out. Gerald knelt uncomfortably beside him, one hand on the sill for balance, the other on Benjamin's shoulder. 

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He was reminded how scrawny he was, even for six. His bones, a size too big, jutted out. Gerald ran his hand up the sharp edge of his shoulder blade then across the collarbone. It should be a feeling a father knows intimately, but it was foreign to him. The bone fit across his fingers like the handle of his pocket knife, a feeling he was more familiar with.

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He expected Benjamin to defend himself, to swear that the lights had been there. Instead he stared out, as if willing them to come back for his father's sake. Only a dim copy of their faces floated beyond the glass.

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“Benjamin, do you think it could have been a reflection of something in your room?”

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“What do you mean?”

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Gerald waved and his reflection waved back.

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Benjamin shook his head.

 

Gerald didn't think so either, but he was trying to think of anything to explain what Benjamin had described to Laurel the night before.

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“Do you see them shining in?”

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“They’re on the mountain.”

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“I know. I mean, do they make a light on the wall? Or on the floor?”

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​Benjamin shook his head again.

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“Then how do you know when they’re out there? What makes you get out of bed and look?​”

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He shrugged.

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“You just come and look? And there they are?”

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Finally a nod, but it didn’t help. If anything, it meant that the lights were in Benjamin's imagination. He wondered why Laurel had not come to that conclusion. Instead, she said that youth are perceptive, that they can see things adults cannot see, that the greatest gulf of such vision existed between boyhood and a man’s middle-age.

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Gerald was not so sure. When he was a boy it was the other way around. It was his father who could see such things.

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​“Do you think someone is in trouble?” Benjamin asked.

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Gerald bit the inside of his cheek. “Could be.”

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“​I think someone is.”

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“Why do you say that?”

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Benjamin shrugged. “Isn’t that what lights are for? When you’re lost?”

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“I don’t know,” Gerald said. “Maybe when you just need to see something better.”

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“Have you ever been lost?”

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Gerald did a double take, from Benjamin's reflection to the flesh and blood boy beside him. What a peculiar question. He rubbed his hand across the back of Benjamin’s shoulders - exactly like his knife. uncanny.

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“No, I don’t think so.” He instantly knew he had answered poorly. He shifted for a more comfortable position. “Benjamin? Are you feeling lost?”

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The boy took more time to answer than he had. As if his six years were more to ponder than Gerald’s own forty-eight. Then the thoughtful answer, “I don’t know. Maybe.”

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Gerald had that feeling again; Benjamin was the adult. He grinned. “You’re not lost. If you were, I’d know it. I’d be out there looking for you.”

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Gerald rose, taking Benjamin up with him, flying him like an airplane and landing him softly in his bed. For the time being Benjamin was light enough for such play, but Gerald's shoulders felt the strain. The boy would grow bigger and Gerald could only grow weaker; a time would come…

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Gerald could not say why, but he didn’t think the lights were in Benjamin’s imagination. He was too mature for that. Something, or someone very real was up there. That was obvious. What did it mean? That was the question.

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“Listen,” Gerald said. “If the lights come back, don’t wake me, or Mom.” He pulled a sheet of paper and a pencil from Benjamin’s art bin and set them aside. “Instead, I want you to draw it. Take your time and really make it good, ok.”

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“Ok.”

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Gerald considered, then decided to pull the shade down. He whispered good night then retraced his steps across the house, this time, stopping to pull back the curtain on the living room window. 

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Just a black screen of glass and his own old face, oddly translucent, but clear enough to see the crease between his eyebrows, and the one on his cheek beside his mouth. He cupped his hands around his eyes for a look beyond himself and only got a deeper black. No moon. No stars. No light.

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He pulled away abruptly, fighting his way out of the curtain. It didn’t trouble him, at all, that Benjamin was seeing lights. The trouble was that he could not. What a frightful thing to be so terribly lost.