The Bloomdom Beast-Draft 2

Drops of blood scattered in the snow, as random as stars, as vivid and strange as the eyes of a newborn. Ben gripped his brother Henry by the shoulders as he steered him to his car. Henry clasped both his hands to his nose as blood gushed from between his fingers.
“Get in the car,” Ben said, hurling Henry into the passenger seat. As Henry fumbled with his seat-belt, Ben jumped into the driver’s seat. He glanced up at the stoop, where his wife and four sons were standing. Emily was crying and the boys looked torn between confusion and sheer joy.
Ben gritted his teeth and sped out of the driveway. The tires slid over the ice and for a split second Ben lost control. Then the tires locked back on, and he pressed hard down on the gas.
“Are you ok?” he forced the word through his teeth as a hot flush rose into his face. Henry looked down at his bloodstained hands.
“I think so,” Henry said. “Where are going?”
“Where are we…? The hospital, you jackass. Where’d you think?” Henry shrugged. Ben let out a long, hot breath. It had been such a good evening so far. He had bought all the decorations that Emily had asked him to. He had shoveled the snow off of the path. Their guests were there. Their mother was driving from the city. It was going to be the perfect Thanksgiving; Ben’s first since he left for his tour of Iraq for the first time six years ago. And then Henry…and then Henry had to go and…Ben gripped the steering wheel. He was grateful that their father wasn’t there: that he hadn’t survived his double bypass surgery six months earlier.
He glanced at Henry. There was blood all down his shirt and arms. Henry looked calm, staring out the window at the flat, snowy landscape.
“Well, are you ok?” Ben said.
“You already asked me that,” said Henry. “I’ll be ok. Jesus, though, you throw one hell of a right hook. Did they teach you that in the army?” Ben clenched his teeth and stared straight ahead. If he looked at Henry, he knew he might not be able to resist the urge to hit him again.
This was no time for emotion, Ben reminded himself. This was a mission. Just like in Iraq. He was on a mission and that was all he should let into his thoughts. Ben took a deep breath. He felt the familiar emotions began to take grip. Cold, clear focus settled down between his shoulder blades as adrenaline began to pump, slowly at first, and then faster, all throughout his body. A mission. Get Henry to the hospital, alive. Save him.
“I think your phone is ringing,” said Henry.
“What?” Ben grabbed his phone from off the dashboard. “Hello?”
“Oh, hello, darling,” his mother said from the other line. “Listen, I’m at your house now and Emily is completely beside herself and you’re not here, obviously, and neither is Henry and from what I gather there was some sort of altercation…”
“I’m driving Henry to the hospital, Mom,” Ben said.
“The hospital? My God, what did you do to him?”
This is how it had always been. Henry, the victim. Ben, the aggressor.
“You’re cutting out,” Ben said, and hung up the phone.
“So,” said Henry,” how’s Mom?”
“Henry, can’t you take anything seriously?”
“There’s no fun in that. Look, Ben, we all know it’s a hard adjustment and everything. Mom made us read all the books. We get that you’re under pressure right now.”
“Pressure,” said Ben. “You have no idea.”
“Well, then, talk to me,” said Henry. “We’re brothers. Shouldn’t we be able to talk about things?”
Ben wanted to know when they had ever talked about things. When had their interests ever lined up so that they could talk about things? In high school, Ben had been on crew, dated girls, participated in leadership club. Henry had smoked pot and spent lunch in the art room. There had never been anything for them to talk about.
But Henry was bleeding on account of Ben, his nose probably broken, so Ben took a deep breath and cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said. “Emily and I couldn’t pay for the private place anymore. The boys are starting at Bloomdon Elementary after Thanksgiving break.”
Henry started to laugh. Ben felt a burning rage rise in his chest, dissolving the blocks of self-control and responsibility that rested on his lungs. It would be quick, easy, and thoughtless. Ben had killed men before without blinking.
But no.
“What,” Ben said, forcing each word out from between his teeth, “is so fucking funny?”
Henry wiped a tear from his eye, smearing blood, and smiled.
“Can I tell you a story?” he said.
Ben didn’t trust himself to speak, to move, to breathe.
“I was seven,” Henry said. “And you were ten. I had spent the day with my best friend, Cameron. Do you remember Cam? He was a little guy. His mom worked the graveyard shift at the local Safeway or Subway or something like that, so he usually ate dinner with us and Dad always made you walk us home. You hated it, but you did it. And one night we were halfway between our house and Cameron’s house, right next to Bloomdon, and you stopped us. You said, ‘hey, have you guys ever heard of the Bloomdon Beast?” We hadn’t. Cam shook his head so fast that his glasses nearly fell off his face.” Henry laughed. “And you said, well, you guys know Bloomdon, right? And you pointed at the school and of course we knew it. The image is still so clear in my head, of the school that night. It was getting dark, but the building was sort of outlined by the sunset. It was blocky and square and really ugly.
“You started to tell us about the Bloomdon Beast. You said it was this huge creature that lived in the deep woods next to Bloomdon. It snuck around and if kids wandered too far, it would eat them, and that’s what happened to kids who disappeared. You said that only a few people had seen it and lived to tell the tale. And you told us that if we could bring it back to you, you’d give us ten dollars each. That was, like, a fortune back then, so of course we agreed.”
Ben, who had let Henry’s words wash over him as he tried to tie down his violent emotions, saw the STOP sign just in time and slammed down on the breaks.
“Bullshit,” he said, as they jerked forward. “That never happened.”
“Would you let me finish?” Henry said. Ben bared his teeth and stomped on the gas. Henry took a deep breath.
“Anyway,” he said, “Cam and I went up to Bloodom. There used to be a fence around it, but, we found a hole and got through. The setting sun cast these shadows all over the place. It was like we had our own dark, grotesque audience. Cam kicked a ball someone had left behind and it made a noise like-like a shot going off and that scared us but then it all became sort of a game. We started to play on the hopscotch, pretending that the black pavement was lava and the white stripes were safe bits of land. I don’t remember being scared. I didn’t think you’d ever send us into real danger and anyway, I always took comfort in the fact that you knew everything.”
Ben took a deep breath. The rage had cooled, but it still stirred at the base of his stomach. Henry, who seemed utterly oblivious to all of Ben’s emotions, continued.
“The air was cool and smelled sterile, like bandages and chapstick. And asphalt. Cam kept saying how different everything looked at nighttime. It looked bigger to me. Emptier. More vast. We reached the edge of the forest and then I did feel a little scared. I know Cam did too because I could feel him shaking next to me. But, you know, to call it a forest is kind of a stretch: all it really was was a bunch of skinny white trees. I bet a bird would think it looks like spots of hair on a bald guy, because of that hill, you know?”
Ben didn’t, but he grunted in response: it was all he trusted himself to do.
“Yeah,” said Henry. “There wasn’t much there but I felt connected with it. I could feel it moving back and forth and stretching, dancing, swaying, as if it were trying to pull itself from the cold earth and skip away to the beat of my heart.” Henry paused. Ben thought maybe the story was done, and he felt himself relaxing. “And then we saw it,” said Henry. “Cam saw it first and he hit me. Then we both saw it.
“It was just sitting there on a pile of leaves. It blended in for the most part, except that it had this black stripe down its back. And it had these huge eyes, these huge blue-gray eyes and it kept blinking at us, like it was blinking back tears. It shrank away and I knew it was scared. It had a pink tongue and black lips but no teeth. I mean, the only reason anyone would call it a ‘beast’ at all is because of its white horn. I fell to my knees and Cam started to back away. I held out my hand and all my thoughts about capturing it and bringing it back to you just disappeared out of my head. I told it I wouldn’t hurt it and it started move toward me, delicately, like a child testing the bathwater. It took three steps forward and then,
“BOOM!”
Ben jumped. Henry’s voice picked up speed and pitch as he continued.
“Cam screamed. You came from nowhere and tackled me and we fell to the ground. You started laughing at me and I tried to hit you. I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to hit you as hard as I could but you just pushed me to the ground. You told me to cool it and I told you that you’d scared the beast away. It wanted to be my friend, Ben, you and you scared it away. And then you called me a moron and said it was just a story. Cam had left. I remember hearing the drag of his broken sneakers as they slapped through the silence.”
Ben turned sharply. The car tilted and the steadied itself.
“You are such a fucking liar,” Ben said, struggling to control the syllables of each word. “That did not happen.”
It had started to snow again. Ben flicked on the windshield wipers.
“Yes it did,” said Henry. Ben glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror. There were tears in his eyes, tears that he couldn’t feel. They magnified his dark irises so that Ben felt that he was looking straight into his own soul, straight into the soul of a scared little boy.
“No,” said Ben, as he stared at his reflection. “No, Henry, I wouldn’t,”
“Ben!”
The car had started to drift to the right. It careened off of a bank of snow and flipped, three times, before setting near the trees.
Ben closed his eyes and smelled the blood before he felt it slither down his face. He blinked it away and reached out-for what he didn’t know. Something grasped his outstretched wrist with both hands and tugged. He felt bones pop in and out of their sockets and then, he was lying face up in the snow, staring at the white sky and his brother Henry, covered in blood, his nose askew.
“Ben,” Henry said, as Ben blinked up at him. “You know what I just realized?”
Ben shook his head back and forth. The movement sent sharp jabs of pain up and down his back. Henry grinned and raised his bloodstained hand.
“It’s the same,” Henry said. “Mine,” he pointed to the dried blood, the blood from his nose. “And yours. It’s the same blood, Ben.”
Ben started to cry. He started to cry because he’d just wrecked his car, a car he wouldn’t be able to afford to fix. He cried because Thanksgiving was ruined. He cried because it was cold and he was in pain. He cried because he hadn’t cried in six and a half years, and he was drowning in the tears that had built up inside of him.
Henry lay down next to Ben. His body was warm and felt fragile.
“Don’t cry,” Henry whispered into Ben’s ear. “Don’t you get it? I forgive you.”
They lay in the snow, covered in each other’s blood, in each other’s tears, two dark shapes, spots, on life’s pristine stage.