Light from Distant Stars Read online

  And the crowd would start in with a new hymn.

  All those old hymns with their images of battles and rivers and homes over there—they were the soundtrack to his childhood. And hearing his mother sing them—at first he finds it hard to believe this is true—he realizes his disdain for her is retreating. There is a new softness there. If he doesn’t look at her hard eyes, her unyielding forehead, he can remember the love he once had for her.

  As if she can read his thoughts, she starts a new song.

  “Just as I am, without one plea,

  But that Thy blood was shed for me,

  And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,

  O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

  “Just as I am and waiting not

  To rid my soul of one dark blot;

  To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,

  O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

  “Just as I am, though tossed about

  With many a conflict, many a doubt;

  Fighting within, and fears without,

  O Lamb of God, I come, I come!”

  Kaye comes over and stands beside him, reaching her arm up to him.

  “Where’s Johnny?” he asks her.

  “I sent him home with the sitter. He needed to get out.”

  “I know that feeling.”

  “Remember in the old house, how Mom would sing while she did the dishes? Dad would sit in that old recliner watching the news and we’d all end up in there with him. I’d be reading and you’d be playing on the floor and Mom would come in and sit in the corner reading her Bible.”

  He nods, but it’s more a robotic movement than anything resembling assent, because something uncomfortable has lodged in his chest, something sour. For every quiet memory like that of his mother, he has ten harsh ones, and capping them all is the one of her driving away, leaving his father standing in the middle of the road.

  Hours pass, and they remain there, placeholders. Cohen paces the room, Kaye falls asleep, Cohen sits down, Kaye paces the room, Cohen falls asleep. All the while, their mother sings.

  Cohen wakes in the chair. Morning approaches. He realizes Kaye’s hand is on his shoulder, and he reaches up as if to hold her hand, but instead he lifts it, sliding out from under her half hug. Without looking at her or his mother, who is still singing, he edges his way toward the door and walks out into the almost-morning hospital. The lights are low. He finds his way to the stairwell and pushes open the door. He clears his throat, only to hear the echo of it travel up and down through all the floors.

  He walks down, down, down, aimless and wandering. The stairwell is empty except for the yellowish lights that buzz on each landing and beside each door. He stops, not sure where he is, not sure what floor he’s on, and he sits in the corner, wedging his body in the right angle of two cement block walls. The tiles under him are cold. There are no windows. There is nothing.

  Where did his life go? His belief? His father? Where did they all go? How could it be that so many things have been lost?

  Cohen sits there and weeps.

  He hears a rhythmic buzzing, some kind of alarm. He wipes his eyes and stands up, drowning in the yellow light. He hears a scream. He walks onto the closest floor and sees people running. There’s the sound of rapid tapping in some far-off place.

  Rattattattattattat.

  Rattattattattattat.

  A voice comes over the intercom. “This is an emergency. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is an emergency. There is an active shooter in the hospital. Please go into the closest room and lock the door.”

  There’s an explosion and the building shakes. A panel falls from the hallway ceiling.

  Cohen turns and sprints back into the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time until he arrives at his father’s floor. It is already vacant, all the doors closed, ruled by an eerie silence.

  The same recorded announcement issues calmly from the intercom speakers in the ceiling. “This is an emergency. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is an emergency. There is an active shooter in the hospital. Please go into the closest room and lock the door.”

  He reaches his father’s door and turns the handle, but the door is locked. He bangs on it. “Kaye! Mom! It’s me!”

  There’s no answer. He bangs again.

  “Kaye! Are you in there?”

  fifty-eight

  The End of Things

  Cohen led the way into the funeral home, and a strange authority seemed to transfer from Than and Hippie to him. It happened as quickly and subtly as the breath of wind that stirred the sycamore branches. They fell in behind him, and he could sense them there, their presence, their eyes looking over his shoulder.

  He held the gun in his hand. It seemed to go from heavy to no weight at all, a nothing sort of thing, and he had to look at it and look at it again to make sure it was there. And it was, the cold steel glinting in the glare of the streetlights shining through the glass doors.

  The storm grew heavy again, and swirling snow crowded frantically against the glass. Outside, the sound of the sirens was distant. Than aimed the flashlight around Cohen without walking in front of him, and the light caught Cohen’s body, projected his shaky shadow across the room and up onto the walls and the ceiling. He was a giant walking. Standing behind the flashlight, Hippie and Than left no shadows, no mark of themselves.

  “Wait,” Cohen said.

  Hippie paused without making a sound. Than took a few extra steps so that he was almost beside Cohen, and the three of them stood still, their breath rising around them. The room was cold, colder than it should have been. The coffins sat quietly in the darkness. The door at the back, the one that led into the stairwell and up to the apartment, was slightly open. The door at the right side of the funeral home’s main level, the one that led into the chapel, was closed.

  Than stared straight into the shadows, leaning his head to the side as if straining his ears to hear something, anything. Cohen glanced at Hippie. She gave him a kind look, the shadow of a smile, and he nodded back at her. Behind her, a single car drove south on Duke through the snow, moving at a turtle’s pace, but the sound of it didn’t pass through the glass. Only the light. Only the image of it moving, like in silent movies. Everything else was resting under a heavy stillness.

  “Look,” Than whispered, aiming his flashlight over at the door to the chapel, keeping the beam low. There was a light under the door, thin as a piece of yellow thread on a black suit.

  Cohen nodded, filled with fear and uncertainty and a strong desire to get to the end, whatever that might mean. He was ready for the search to be over. He was ready to get rid of the Beast and see Than and Hippie out and climb back into his bed. He wanted to sink into the mattress, pull up the covers, and sleep until evening came the next day, then roll over and sleep another night through. But there remained this one thing.

  “Let’s go.”

  The light under the door didn’t fade, and it took them only a few moments to glide over to it. They stood there for a long time, and Than turned off his flashlight. They stared down at the glow, the light that seemed to reach out toward their feet. They looked at the black tar on the frame around the door, the trail the Beast had left behind. Cohen clenched his jaw, raised his hand to push open the door. This would be it. This would be the end of the thing.

  Cohen paused. He looked at Than and felt an unexpected friendship there. Another car went by, and the speckled light slid over Hippie’s face. He stared hard at her. She reached up and touched his face with two fingers, running them down along his jawline. They were cold, and her touch was so slight. He closed his eyes for a split second, sighed, and turned from both of them. He opened the chapel door and walked in.

  There was an unexpected brightness to the room, and at first Cohen couldn’t look directly at it. A light at the front of the chapel—one of the overhead lights above the pulpit—shone down like a spotlight.

  The shadows in the room started to gather, pooling together, running l
ike liquid from every corner, until out of the floor at the front of the room rose the Beast, as tall as the chapel, a shimmering, moving space of nothingness.

  Cohen raised the gun, pointed it at the center of the darkness. His hand trembled. The room smelled like someone had vacuumed it recently, and Cohen also caught the scent of the pine cleaner, but the Beast brought its own smell, metallic and primal.

  That’s when Cohen heard Than shout, “Cohen!” followed by a short, piercing scream.

  Hippie.

  Cohen looked back through the door, back into the display room, but they were gone. He raised the gun toward the darkness.

  “Where are they?” Cohen said, his voice wavering.

  The Beast seemed to turn to face Cohen, and he could tell it was tired, haggard, drawn down. The Beast seemed to expand for a moment, filling the front of the chapel, and Cohen wasn’t sure, if he decided to shoot, where exactly he should aim.

  They are gone.

  He realized these words were coming to him from inside his head. He somehow knew the words originated from the Beast, but they weren’t connected to any voice. They were pieces of information that sprang up out of nowhere. The Beast didn’t talk, not out loud, but he communicated with Cohen, and those three little words came through clearly.

  They are gone.

  Cohen’s hands trembled, the gun shaking up and down. “No, they’re not.”

  They are gone.

  “No!”

  His voice echoed over the empty chairs, against the front chapel wall, and back to him again. The wall of darkness that was the Beast seemed to diminish for a moment. It seemed to pull in on itself, and that was when Cohen noticed the pooling shadows at its feet. A rivulet of it crept toward him, a narrow thread of the purest darkness he had ever seen. It shone like oil.

  Yes. There was mourning tangled up in the Beast’s words, and anger, and a seismic fissure that went all the way down. Yes. They are gone. They died in the fire. I did it. It was me. I came here because I wanted to see them one last time. But they are gone.

  “No,” Cohen whispered. His hands holding the gun lowered ever so slightly. In the silence between their words he could hear the accumulation of small things, the buzz of the light above the pulpit, the stirring of the air as the heat turned on. Behind the Beast there was nothing, at least nothing to be seen, but Cohen could feel what was there behind it, in the great shadow it left: eternity and darkness and death.

  Cohen was suddenly cold. His clothes were wet with melted snow. His feet were heavy, his toes numb at the tips, and whether it was from standing in a pool of the Beast’s darkness or simply from running through the cold night in the city, he didn’t know.

  The Beast teetered from one side to the other, bumping the pulpit, knocking over a chair. It was a boat taking on water, listing in the storm, further with each wave. Then it was down.

  They are gone. This was the last thing Cohen felt from the Beast. The words came like sobs, and the Beast began to diminish faster, somehow shrinking and taking a more solid form. Cohen watched, horrified, as the darkness and the shadows and that huge, tilting thing transformed into a dead man lying there, flat on the floor, his head leaning against the side chapel wall at a sharp angle. He had a week’s worth of beard on his face and disheveled, graying hair and a tired, mean face. The black shadows were suddenly a deep red, and Cohen knew the wound was where he had shot the man the night before, in the trailer, with Hippie and Than.

  “Cohen!” a voice shouted. “Is that you? Are you back?”

  Behind him the door creaked open. He turned, and there stood Ava in the doorway, her mouth gaping.

  “Ava,” he whispered. “What are you . . .” But the look on her face stopped him. She was staring at the dead man, at the pools of blood. Even in the dim light, she could see it all. She could see the man’s stubble, his stained clothes. Even in the darkness, she could see the glint of metal in Cohen’s hand. The gun.

  She backed away, the look on her face never changing. Cohen moved to follow her, and he would have, except for Hippie and Than.

  Hippie and Than.

  He threw the gun to the floor and it was absorbed by the carpet. He fell to the floor and screamed their names.

  “Hippie! Than!”

  But they were not there, and he no longer expected to find them. He crawled on all fours to the Beast, now only a man, and stared at him. With every ounce of bravery that remained he moved in close and checked for breathing—a moving chest, air stirring from his mouth—but there was nothing. The man’s skin was still warm, and his jaw was loose and pliable, and Cohen couldn’t hate him anymore, even though he tried. How he tried!

  He thought back through everything, every little conversation and moment he had spent with them, especially with Hippie. He thought of the day they first met, the day they fought the Beast in the funeral home, their hike along the train tracks and sleeping in the cave. He thought of how she had reached up and touched him only moments ago, her cold fingers on his jaw. He reached up and rubbed that spot, tried to feel any part of her she might have left behind. He had loved her, he knew that. How could this be?

  He thought about Ava. He imagined her searching for him in the city, her eyes shining in the light, lifting those “Missing” posters and stapling them to each and every pole and tree, the staples sometimes catching and sometimes bending on staples already there from other signs posted by other people.

  He imagined his father, maybe walking the city, staring into Cohen’s printed eyes. He thought of his father waiting in the funeral home, perhaps drinking, perhaps falling back to sleep, but always waiting.

  Waiting for him.

  Cohen stood. He was soaked through from sweat and the snow, and there was blood on his clothes, he knew that now. He paused. Had the snow fallen on all of them? Had they left footprints in the mud, in the snow? Or had it been only him all along? He wanted to go out and look, but he was scared of what he might find. Or not find.

  Weariness pressed on him like a lead blanket. He walked back through the dark funeral home, all the way to the stairs, and up he went one step at a time, his dirty soles making gritty sounds on the floor. He climbed up out of the dark into the lesser dark, and there he sat in the apartment, staring out the window onto Duke Street. A far-off siren wailed. The snow no longer fell. The sky was dark and clear.

  fifty-nine

  Something New

  “Is that you, Cohen?” Kaye’s voice trembles through the door, far away, lost, like a voice from the afterlife.

  “Yes!” he hisses, looking over his shoulder. “Let me in.”

  The lock clicks and the door swings open.

  “Kaye! Did you hear what’s going on?”

  “We heard. The nurses are all in other rooms. I’m scared, Cohen.”

  Cohen closes the door quietly, locking it. When he turns back around, Kaye is bent over, facing away from him, her hands on her knees. She is holding her breath, and a quiet groan escapes, ending in panting.

  “Are you . . . ?” Cohen asks, panic rising in him. For a quick moment he wants to run back out the door, down the stairs, away from this pain, away from this fear. But he doesn’t. Kaye can’t run from it, and he can’t leave her to face it alone.

  Kaye nods without looking at him, without taking her hands off her knees, without standing up straight. “They’re coming.”

  “They’re coming?”

  She nods. “The twins are coming.”

  “Now?”

  She nods again and stands up straight, putting one hand on her back and pressing, closing her eyes, sighing.

  “Can you stop them?”

  She looks at him, eyebrows raised. “Are you serious?”

  “I mean, I don’t know, slow it down?”

  She turns away and paces the room. Their mother is still singing.

  “Does she know what’s going on?” he asks Kaye, motioning toward their mother.

  Kaye shrugs. “I don’t know. She started singing
quieter when I asked her to.”

  And the singing was quiet, barely discernible even in the silence. Cohen stared at his mother.

  “Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!

  E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,

  Still all my song shall be,

  Nearer, my God, to Thee.

  Nearer, my God, to Thee,

  Nearer to Thee!”

  “Mom, stop it,” Cohen hisses. When she doesn’t, he gets down closer to her. “Mom. Seriously. Stop. It.”

  She looks up at him, her eyes clear and shining, but she doesn’t say anything. She just keeps singing.

  “Mom!” he shouts.

  “Quiet!” Kaye shouts at him. “Are you serious? You’re really going to do this right now? Argue with her? In this moment?”

  There is a knock at the door, barely audible. It sounds more like a gentle scratching, the nudge of time or fate pressing in, asking for an audience. Kaye and Cohen freeze in place, instinctively holding their breath. Cohen hears the person shuffle around outside and slide down the door. He hears palms hit the cold tile floor. He realizes the person is probably looking under the crack in the door, trying to see who’s in the room. He looks down at his own feet, wondering if they’re visible. He puts his hand on his mother’s shoulder, hoping that will quiet her, but she goes on singing in her whispering way.

  A voice hisses under the door. “Cohen?”

  Cohen looks at Kaye. Again the voice comes in under the door, a message in a bottle.

  “Cohen? Are you in there?”

  Cohen creeps toward the door, walking on the balls of his feet, staying clear of the bed and the discarded IV rack. He gets on his knees, bends all the way down, and peers under the door. There’s an eyeball on the other side, a cheek pressed to the ground.