The Gate 2: 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair

NIGHT NIGHT by Daniel Pyle

Early Saturday morning, before the sun rose, before the birds woke and started their new-day chirping, Henry Clement pulled a steak knife from his pocket, watched the dim light from the bedside lamp reflect off the blade, and then leaned over his sleeping brother and stabbed him six times in the throat.

It was a messy, amateurish job, but he had expected that. He’d never killed anyone before.

The first thrust barely penetrated the flesh on the side of Jerry’s neck. Jerry started to scream, to thrash. Henry put more muscle into it, and the second two stabs went deeper, turned the screams into soft gurgles. Those three wounds probably would have been enough, but Henry punched the knife in three more times anyway. Just to be sure.

Blood spurted from Jerry’s neck, pooled on the pillow and mattress around his head. He slapped a hand against the punctures and looked at Henry with wide, disbelieving eyes, like he must have been dreaming this. His hand slipped through the blood and fell to his side. He lay there for what seemed like a very long time, flopping, unable to breathe, a man-fish. And then he let out a final, wet cough, spraying more blood across his already-drenched chest, and stopped breathing. Deflated. Dead.

Splattered blood dripped down Henry’s face and across his nostrils and lips. A particularly heavy spurt had hit him across his chest and left a crimson mark from his shoulder to his hip. Like a sash.

Henry dropped the knife on the mattress.

“I’m sorry,” he said and kissed Jerry on the forehead. His lips left a bloody print between his brother’s eyebrows. Tears streamed down Henry’s face, sluicing through the blood and dripping onto Jerry’s neck and shoulders.

Henry wiped his eyes and stared past the body, through the bedroom window. Still dark, of course. Nowhere close to daylight. Mandy would be by to see them sometime today. She might arrive as early as ten o’clock, after she’d fed her children breakfast and sent them off with her husband on some kind of adventure, or she might wait until after lunch, until the whole lot of them returned home from the zoo or the park or a matinee. Whether she continued to come because she wanted to or because she felt it was her sisterly duty, Henry didn’t know, but she never missed a weekend.

Still, whether it was before lunch or after, it didn’t really matter. Henry had never worn a watch, and there was no clock in the bedroom, but he guessed it couldn’t have been any later than four in the morning. That left him plenty of time to do what needed doing.

He grabbed Jerry’s arm and pulled-jerked-rolled him off the bed. They fell to the floor together. Jerry’s face smacked the hardwood with a juicy thud, and Henry fell on top of him, panting. He wasn’t exactly a weakling, but he hadn’t realized how hard it would be to move Jerry’s corpse.

Dead weight.

He ain’t heavy. He’s your brother.

He considered dragging Jerry into the bathroom, pulling him into the shower and washing off the blood. Except what would be the point? The blood was gruesome, sure, but washing away the gore would reveal the stab wounds, and he doubted those would be any less horrific.

No. No shower. Let the doctors or the undertaker or whoever was in charge of such things worry about the cleanup.

He got up, lifting Jerry to a standing position, and backed across the room, looking over Jerry’s shoulder at the bloodied bed sheets. So much blood. He’d expected a lot, had visualized it repeatedly, but he guessed he hadn’t been prepared for the reality. He stopped once, halfway across the bedroom, steadied Jerry, and vomited on the floor between Jerry’s feet.

“Sorry, man,” he said. As if Jerry could hear. As if the puking had been Henry’s worst offense of the day.

He spat out the last bit of bile and dragged Jerry the rest of the way across the room, looking everywhere but at the bed.

In the hall, their parents stared down at them from wall-hung photos—old portraits with the couple looking young and bright eyed and ready to face the world, newer pictures in which they appeared tired, wrinkled around the eyes, disappointed. Henry thought they would have understood why he did what he’d done, if not approved.

He dragged Jerry past the bathroom, leaving red footprints on the rug and all kinds of bloody smears on the walls, stumbling, grunting, sweating.

Getting down the stairs was going to be the hard part. Henry pictured himself stumbling on the first step, crashing end over end to the landing below, paralyzed, Jerry’s corpse on top of him, pressing down on his lungs, suffocating him.

He took a deep breath, bit his bottom lip, and dragged Jerry down the first step. For a second, he thought it was going to happen exactly as he’d imagined. His foot slid to the edge of the step, and gravity tugged at him. He grabbed the railing, let Jerry’s body slump against him, and managed to keep his balance. Barely. He stood there for at least a minute, fingers wrapped around the handrail, panting, afraid that even the smallest movement would send the two of them over the tipping point and into a bone-crushing tumble. Jerry’s head flopped to the side, and suddenly Henry was looking into a dead, glazed eye.

Henry shivered and closed his own eyes. His arm trembled, and he knew he couldn’t hold on to the railing forever. Adrenaline and determination had gotten him this far, but he could feel exhaustion creeping in. A physical and mental drain. Keeping his eyes closed, he backed down one more step. His heart thumped irregularly, and for a second he thought he must be feeling both their hearts, his and Jerry’s. Except that was ridiculous. He was psyching himself out. He needed to stop thinking and start moving.

He backed down another step, and Jerry’s head flopped again. This time, his lips pressed against Henry’s neck. Like a kiss. Once upon a time, a much younger Jerry had kissed Henry goodnight every evening before bed. Henry remembered the feel of Jerry’s mouth on his cheek, remembered him saying Night night, Bubby. See you in the morning. Those were the words he’d fallen asleep to for many years. After their parents had gone to bed. After the lights were off. Night night, Bubby. See you in the morning.

Now Jerry’s lips felt lifeless, rubbery, like the lips on a Halloween mask after a long, cold night of trick-or-treating.

Henry wanted to shift his brother, to get the lips off his neck, but he didn’t dare try it. He’d just have to deal with it until he made it to flat ground. He eased Jerry down another step, groaned, paused, and then repeated the process.

By the time he reached the first floor, Henry’s chest was damp with sweat and he was shaking uncontrollably. He thought he’d be able to drag Jerry through the living room and kitchen and out onto the back porch, but after that, he expected his body to give up on him. And that was fine. The back porch was as far as he needed to get.

Off the stairs and no longer in any danger of falling any farther than the distance from his head to the floor, Henry managed to ease Jerry’s lips off his neck. He dragged his brother away from the staircase, through the narrow entryway at the front of the house, and past the living-room sofa. He paused for a second at an end table and grabbed an old photo album from the drawer. He stuffed this in the waistband of his pants and moved on.

In the kitchen, he glanced toward the block of knives, now one short. He’d tucked the blade into his pocket the night before when they were doing dishes, snuck it when Jerry turned away to put a stack of dry plates in the cupboard. For a second, Henry thought Jerry had seen what he was doing—maybe caught his reflection in the toaster oven’s little glass door—but if he had seen, Jerry hadn’t said anything, and saying nothing had never exactly been his style.

Henry pulled his brother’s body around the small kitchen table, through the back door, and onto the porch.

“What would you do?” Jerry said. They sat on the couch on the back porch, reading. Jerry sat on the right—always on the right—with his foot up on the coffee table between a stack of old magazines and a tower of empty soda cans. He held his Kindle between two fingers and stared intently at the screen.

“That’s not a complete sentence.”

Now Jerry looked up. “Come on. Seriously. What would you do?”

“What would I do if what?” Henry put down his own Kindle and frowned.

“If…” He bit his lip. “You know…if I died.”

Henry rolled his eyes. “Let’s not start that again.”

“Why not?” Jerry said. “It’s a valid question.”

“It’s a stupid question. You’re not gonna die. Okay? Not anytime soon anyway.”

“You heard what the doct—”

“Phhhhhh.” Henry rolled his eyes. “The doctor? What’s he know? He couldn’t find his dick with both hands and a microscope.”

Jerry smiled but didn’t laugh. “It’s not a stupid question. I just want to know what you’d do.”

“I’d cry my eyes out, okay,” Henry said. “Is that what you wanna hear?”

“It’s a start.”

Henry punched him on the shoulder. “You know what I’d really do?”

“What?”

“I’d come out here and read alone,” said Henry, “and enjoy the fucking peace and quiet.”

On the back porch, under the glow of the single, low-wattage bulb, Henry lowered Jerry’s body to the wicker sofa and dropped down beside him, wheezing. The veins in his neck and head throbbed. He felt hot, dizzy.

He pulled the photo album out of his waistband and laid it across his leg, but before he opened it, he took a second to catch his breath and let his heart slow.

Exercise much? Jerry said.

Henry’s eyes flew open, and he turned to his brother. Jerry stared back at him with his dead, milky eyes.

I didn’t just hear that, Henry thought. Of course not. That was just my imagination. Or my guilt. Or both.

He watched Jerry for what felt like several minutes, knowing he wouldn’t move, wouldn’t speak, but half expecting him to anyway. In the dark yard beyond the porch, crickets chirped. Somewhere in the distance, a vehicle that must have been an eighteen-wheeler or a large truck sped by.

Henry cupped his hand around the side of Jerry’s face and gave it a gentle shake.

“Jer?”

Jerry said nothing.

“Brother?”

Still nothing.

Henry shook his head. He’d caught his breath, but his heart hadn’t stopped pounding. Maybe it never would.

He opened to the first page of the photo album, to a picture that showed young Henry and Jerry in a small, backyard pool. Mandy stood just outside the pool, maybe running around the perimeter, maybe getting ready to jump in and splash her little brothers. All three of them had huge smiles plastered across their faces, but Jerry’s was widest of all.

I always loved playing in that pool, Jerry said.

Henry ignored this and flipped to the next page.

Henry took out one of Jerry’s knights with his last pawn, simultaneously shielding his bishop from Jerry’s queen.

“Suck on that,” Henry said.

Jerry groaned.

While he waited for Jerry to make his move, Henry stared into the back yard. A couple of birds landed on the rusted T-pole that was the last of the pair that had once held the old clothesline. Henry tried to imagine a world in which people had the time or inclination to haul whole loads of wash into the back yard for air-drying and couldn’t quite do it.

“If it comes down to it,” Jerry said, “I don’t want to suffer.”

“Huh?”

Jerry repeated himself.

“Uh…duh,” Henry said. “You think there are people out there who do want to suffer?” He didn’t look away from the birds, didn’t quite understand what Jerry had said until his brain had a second to run through it again.

“Probably,” Jerry said. “But I’m not one of them.”

Now Henry looked at his brother. “Are you seriously talking about this again? I thought I—”

“I have to talk about it. No matter how much you want to pretend it isn’t happening, I need to face reality. We need to.”

Henry said nothing.

“If it comes down to it,” Jerry repeated, “I don’t want to suffer. But I don’t think I have the guts to…well, you know.”

“Yeah,” Henry said. “I know. Try not to worry about it, okay? Now shut up and make your damn move.”

Henry flipped to a picture from some birthday party or other. In it, both he and Jerry had cake smeared across their faces. Mandy wasn’t in this one, although she had undoubtedly been nearby. It might even have been her party. Henry couldn’t remember for sure.

It was her party, Jerry said. We gave her a doll, remember? That stupid doll she carried around from then on? She probably still has that thing on a shelf in her bedroom.

And suddenly—thanks to Jerry, or the Jerry in his imagination—Henry did remember.

Henry plopped his foot onto the coffee table and kicked over a pile of papers. One of those sheets held Jerry’s test results. They had looked over the results together when they got home from the doctor’s office, pretending to understand what they meant.

But they hadn’t really needed to understand the science; the doctor had laid it out in plain old English:

Jerry is going to die, he’d said, leaning forward in his leather chair and staring at them through his thick, Santa Claus glasses. Not today, and not tomorrow, and probably not in the next few months, but within the year for sure. And we need to start planning what we’re going to do.

There’d been no need to plan, of course. Not really. Jerry had already made his feelings perfectly clear.

I don’t want to suffer, he’d said. But I don’t think I have the guts to kill myself if that’s what it comes to.

Jerry hadn’t said that last part, but he hadn’t needed to say it outright. Brothers—really close brothers—have more than one kind of communication.

The doctor hadn’t said what he thought might happen to Henry, hadn’t even been willing to give them his best guess.

Henry knew now, however. He could feel himself weakening, could sense the world closing in around him like a big, warm blanket.

He turned to the last page of the photo album.

The picture showed him and Jerry on stage at one of the many carnivals they’d toured over the years. The banner above them said, in big white letters, MEET JERRY AND HENRY, THE AMAZING SIAMESE TWINS!

Political incorrectness aside, Henry thought it was a nice picture. It showed the two of them in mid-bow, smiling out at the audience with their twin grins.

He closed the album and laid his head on their conjoined shoulder. He hoped Mandy would be okay with this, that she’d get over it in time.

She will, Jerry said. She’s tough.

Henry smiled. In the end, he hadn’t gotten the peace and quiet he’d often longed for—not so much as a single minute of alone time in his entire life—but that was okay. He thought maybe isolation was overrated.

In the trees beyond the porch, a single bird woke and sang. It was still too early for so much as a hint of sunlight on the eastern horizon, but it would come soon enough.

Henry leaned his head into Jerry’s neck and ignored the stench of blood.

Night night, Bubby.

Henry kissed his brother’s cheek. “Night night,” he said and closed his eyes for the last time.

Daniel Pyle is the author of Dismember, Down the Drain, Freeze, the upcoming Man vs. Himself, and many short stories. He is also the editor of Unnatural Disasters and is an Active member of the Horror Writers Association. After studying creative writing at Amherst College, he moved back to his hometown of Springfield, Missouri, where he now lives with his wife and two daughters. You can visit him online at www.danielpyle.com.