in his thin arms looked like they were going to break from the weight of the shovel.
“If you don’t stop, I’m going to kill your brotHer.”
“No, you won’t. If I die, so does the power you take from me. She will be stronger than you again. And she won’t let you get to Ambrose.”
Ambrose watched helplessly. He could smell the scent of baseball gloves. It was getting weaker. The man walked up and put a kind hand on David’s shoulder.
“Please, David,” the man said in Ambrose’s voice. “I will never find you. It will destroy me. How could you do this to your own brother?”
“You’re not my brother,” David said. “You’re nothing.”
The word fell like a bird from the sky. The man closed his eyes in rage. Light like fireflies danced through his skin. Constellations of stars crawled over him, and he took one finger and moved it into David like a needle.
“This is what eternity has been for the hissing lady, and if you don’t kill her, thiS is what it will be for you.”
David’s nose began to bleed. His eyes. His ears. He screamed as if he were being burned alive, but he wouldn’t stop digging. Not until the hole was complete. Then, he threw the shovel on top of the woodpile and pulled something out of his back pocket.
Lighter fluid.
He opened the cap and poured the liquid on the tree house’s bones. Then, he brought a trail of it back to the hole with him. The man screeched into David’s ear, and David fell to his knees in agony. All the boy could do was crawl, dragging his broken body into the grave.
Then, David pulled out a book of his brother’s matches. Lucky Strike. He lit the match with a
Hiss.
The man looked at it. The flame the color of hIs eyes. He spoke like a policeman talking to someone on a ledge.
“David, if you kill yourself, you will wake up here and never leave this place,” he said. “You will relive this night forever.”
“So will you,” David said and threw the match.
The trail crossed the garden to the tree house. The fire roared up, casting a glow, making his little brother look like he was lit by the sunrise.
Ambrose watched frozen on the ground as David stood in his grave and pulled the dirt back in. Sacrificing himself. For the family who ignored him. For the town who would forget him. The man in the grey suit watched incredulously as the little boy put the world in front of himself.
“Why did you do this, David?” hE asked.
“Because I love my brother.”
Then, David grabbed one last handful of dirt and covered his mouth and eyes, drowning in earth and the world’s blood. Ambrose searched for the scent, but the baseball-glove smell was gone forever.
David had buried himself alive.
“No!!!” Ambrose shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the man, railing against the sky.
“nO!!!”
The man in the grey suit smashed David’s tree to kindling. Great hunks of wood ripped the man’s flesh until there was nothing left of the tree. Just an empty space that made the clearing around it that much bigger.
When the tree house was charcoal, and the wood of the tree dust, the man dragged his depleted body back out through the garden. His handsomeness was gone. He was old and haggard. And his suit suddenly looked to Ambrose like prison greys.
When the man was gone, Ambrose’s body finally returned to him. He ran to his little brother’s grave and shoved his hands into the fresh earth. He dug feverishly. His brother was here. It wasn’t too late.
I can still save my brother.
Ambrose dug through the dirt. Foot after foot. Looking for his brother’s body. But he couldn’t find him. He kept digging. Faster and faster. He felt the dirt in his mouth. His eyes. Worms crawling on his body. His lungs screaming for air. This was what his brother felt. This was eternity.
forEver and eVer and evEr
Suddenly there was darkness. He reached inside the dirt and found something hard and cold. Plastic. A light switch. Ambrose turned on the light. He looked around, expecting to see the tree house. But he wasn’t in the tree house anymore.
He was in his old house.
The basement.
Chapter 124
Christopher’s mother opened her eyes.
She was in a nice, warm bed. Clean sheets fresh from the dryer. She looked up at the white ceiling with the cracks that greeted her every morning. She stretched and yawned, feeling the little aches and pains