Blue Bottle Tree Read online

  “Can I borrow your bathroom,” he asked, easing himself out of the chair.

  “Sure.” I pointed down the hall, which was obvious. Our house was pretty small. He went back and I was thinking about his offer. Sometimes the temptation is so sweet you don’t see what’s really happening. This was one of those moments where I was making an irrevocably bad decision, but felt good about it at the time. What if there was a chance, no matter how small, that he was truly tired of Penny? Guys like him always move on to the next one. The next best thing. Nobody’s ever good enough. Besides, he’s in college and won’t be around in the fall. He’s not going to stay in Bellin. He’s got his sights on bigger things. He’ll soon be back at their castle in Nashville and he’ll forget all about Penny. He might have meant it—she’s probably nothing to him.

  I could gather all of that, and put it in its square hole like a square peg. But if that was the case, then why had he come to help me? That was not in his nature. He came back out of the bathroom, grooming his animal fur with his right hand. He took his seat again, calmly. Too calmly.

  I waited until I had his attention. “What do you want from me?”

  My grandmother came in and went to my mother’s room to take her dinner. She had not been eating, again. She left the door open and I could hear their murmurs in the background. Hoof motioned that I come and sit closer to him, so we could talk in confidence. I did not. He would have to come to me.

  He pricked his ears to the conversation in the back, as if he had supernatural hearing, and he discerned that we should talk outside. He pointed to the door and I followed him. At the bottle tree, he turned one bottle up and then another, in flagrant disregard for my grandmother’s intentions of keeping spirits in them. “You know any of these?” he asked.

  “Is this a trick? What do you mean?”

  “These spirits. I know them. I know some of them. I sent them here. It’s okay if I turn them loose now. They’re mine, to do with as I please.” He turned another bottle up and patted the bottom. “Some get lazy. They get stuck, and you have to…” Pat, pat, pat. “Ah, there we are. You’re free now,” he said, watching a wisp in the air. He was putting on a show for me, an imp sniffing at the wind. His gaze traveled off into the last of the evening light and stayed there until he was satisfied that time had taken what it needed to take. He brought his attention back to me. “Your soul. Your soul is what I want.”

  “My soul? Dude, I’m not even religious.”

  “Marie LaVey would be disappointed to hear that.”

  “Um, no. Okay? No. You can’t have my soul. Not for Penny—who is not yours—who is not yours to give.” He had brought me to his level, bargaining for someone’s love like it was a thing.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised.” With his good hand he caught a firefly by the wings and held it at his forehead. It flared with the meekest yellow, pulsed shadows under his deep eyes. The glow sparkled on pale blue. “All that glitters is not gold,” he said. “Give me your hand.” It seemed like he was only offering me the bug. But he crushed it in my palm, ran the luminescence up my arm. It faded in a dazzling golden streak and I wiped off the guts and wings of the wet papery body. “You’re here at the crossroads, with me, by a blue bottle tree, and the deal is done.”

  And then my mother, in the possessed form of Guidé, came running out, furious, shouting obscenities to me. “Don’t say another word to him! He’s lying!”

  Hoof leaned back on his heels and made ready to run. “It’s too late now, Seven,” he said. “Too late. It was always too late. Oh, and you should be sure to wash that bug off. Lightning bugs can be poisonous, I’ve heard.” My mother was almost on him now, shouting terrible things, but he was in his car and peeling away. She calmed down when we couldn’t see the taillights anymore, falling out of her trance. She shook her head, clenched her eyes, then opened them again. Somewhat dazed, she seemed surprised to be outside.

  “Did it happen again?” she asked.

  “Yes. But I’m glad it did. You got rid of him.”

  “Oh, good. I don’t like that guy.”

  “Me either.” She dropped her arm on my shoulders and we meandered back inside.

  My first thought was to clean the bug guts from my hand and arm. The soap seemed grainy. I had not turned on the bathroom light. I did not think much about it at the time. The soap was not slick like it should be. It was dirty, but I cleaned my hands and arms anyway. Cleaned my face too.

  My hands tingled first, then my face, and I itched. My head started throbbing and my grandmother told me that a mockingbird must have used my hair to make a nest. She said that’s why people get headaches. She mixed a concoction of peppermint and lavender oils and massaged my temples. The last thing I remember was the headache getting worse, and then I was sick. I got up and barely made it to the bathroom. The whole house was spinning and my focus blurred. I felt terrible, but the dry heaves passed. There was nothing I wanted more than to get back in bed and sleep. I was too beat to even tell my grandmother I felt like I was dying. I did not make any noise at all. I just collapsed on the bed feeling worse than I had ever felt in my life.

  13 Seven Dies

  I felt the sun’s warmth on my eyelids. I sensed black night thinning to morning gray. But I could not open my eyes, could not blink or flutter or move them at all. It was a bizarre paralysis that should have passed immediately. It did not. Minutes went by and I was definitely not dreaming, but I was also unable to move a muscle. It was terrifying—my body was sleeping but I was conscious and unable to wake it. I tried to scream. I tried to shake my head, pinch myself, take a deep breath, strained with all my might to open my eyes, but I could not do it. I had had lucid dreams before, and forced myself to wake up. My grandmother had taught me that to find myself in a dream I only had to rub my fingers together. I had nightmares when I was a child. My father kept dying, over and over. A Radcliffe was his commanding officer, and had sent him on a mission by himself. We were not allowed to know exactly where he was—or even what part of the world—but we learned that he died in the line of duty. In my nightmares, I saw a man like Hoof ordering my father into a trap. I was never able to stop it, but then I was trapped too. My grandmother taught me to rub my fingers together and it would wake me up. And it did. But this was different.

  My muscles refused to react. It was a night terror that would not end. I was nauseous but unable to gag—unable to do anything. This first wave of fear rolled away and I momentarily relaxed. I may have fallen back asleep. When I regained consciousness, the sun was brighter.

  I tried new tactics—imagined my toes wiggling. I pressed my hands into the mattress to help me roll over. I stared at the window so the sun would burn my eyes. None of this made any difference. I was immobile, sprawled out on my back, on top of the sheets like I had not moved all night.

  “Time to get up, Seven. You’ve got school,” my grandmother said, like it was any other day.

  Well, she’ll come in here and shake me out of it soon enough, I thought. She did come in and shake me. I felt her doing it, and I heard the concern in her voice turn to terror. Then she was rocking my shoulders, and yelling, “Wake up, wake up!” But I did not.

  She brought my mother in the room and they were both sobbing. “He’s cold and he’s already getting stiff.” I tried to shout but the effort—if you can call it that—knocked me out again. The next thing I knew there were paramedics in the room. One of them was taking down the story from my grandmother. The other had wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm and was pumping it. He told the other guy, “No pulse, no BP. He’s not breathing. EKG shows asystole.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to shock him?” my mother asked while crying.

  “It’s not a shockable rhythm,” the one said who was by my side. “It’s not a rhythm at all. I think he’s gone.”

  “Not your call,” the other EMT told him. And I could tell they were competing, jockeying for the smartest-paramedic-on-the-scene award. The one had turned his
head because his voice sounded different. “We’ve got to get him to the hospital so they can officially call it. We’re not allowed to pronounce.” He opened my eyelids, shined a penlight, and got no pupillary reaction. He pressed up on my nostrils and looked in my nose. The orange he ate for breakfast was still on his fingers. I smelled it through his gloves.

  Considering my lack of vital signs, they were not particularly in a hurry. They took turns playing doctor and detective themselves, trying to get to the bottom of it—what really happened here. “You didn’t notice anything unusual last night?” And they went through that routine with my mom and my grandmother for a while before finally transferring me over to the stretcher.

  They were bullshitting away in the ambulance while one of them filled out the paperwork. The emergency part of Emergency Medical Technician was sorely lacking here. If I could have, I would have risen up and told them to shut the fuck up, turn the siren on, and get me to the hospital, right fucking now. But I could not do anything except listen, and feel. I was locked-in, and those EMTs were assholes. They hit the sirens and the lights just to pass people and make them get out of the way. Then they slowed down again. They made fun of the other drivers, bragging about having the right-of-way—except for postal vehicles, which aggravated them because they had no jurisdiction over mail trucks.

  By the time we pulled into the hospital, they got serious again, going over their story because they were about to get grilled by a doctor. They wanted to sound like the top-notch professionals they really were.

  Dr. Brandt was on call at the ER. He went through a set of questions with the EMTs, had a nurse hook me up to the machines, pulled blood from inside my elbow, and took some arterial blood from the radial artery on my wrist. That one hurt more than the other draws, but they would have never known it. I was dead. I felt it all, and observed the scene from a few feet above, hovering over my own body, tethered to it by the pain. The doctor called me gone at 7:07. “That’s his name, right? Seven? Well, isn’t it funny how that worked out? A boy named Seven died at seven oh seven,” Dr. Brandt said. “You just never know.” He popped his gloves off, lifted the lid of the garbage can by pushing a squeaky lever with his foot, tossed the gloves in, flung the curtain back, and strode out of the room like the royalty he was. He had a presence—you could tell when he was gone. Then the nurse yanked the thin blanket up over my head and that was it. They were done with me.

  “Tox screens negative,” Dr. Brandt told my grandmother. “Must have been a heart attack. And yes, you’re right, it is very rare for someone his age.” I must have dozed off again but was picking up pieces of the conversation. I don’t know how many people came in or out or how long my grandmother stayed. She was crying at some point. But I gathered I was not getting enough oxygen to my brain because their voices sounded garbled. I could not focus to hear. I was locked-in again, not hovering anymore. I was much deeper inside. I had less and less energy to even try and move or speak or do anything at all.

  They transferred me out of the ER to the morgue. Then everything got quiet. I was stuffed in a little cube and left there for I don’t know how long. It was insufferable. I guessed the next part would be the embalming. Whatever life was still in me would surely perish when they drained my blood and filled me up with chemicals.

  Time passed and my consciousness went to flying dreams, then lucid dreams I could control by rubbing my fingers together. But as soon as I knew I was dreaming, I couldn’t fly anymore. I couldn’t flap my arms hard enough. It was like swimming but it didn’t work in air. My body got too heavy—I couldn’t resist gravity. I fell back to earth and couldn’t jump to fly again. I couldn’t move a muscle. It was not like resting. I was powerless to do anything. I feared my consciousness would soon stop.

  Unlike in the cave, there was air conditioning here, and the two buzzing sounds that I heard in the cave were gone. There was not enough blood traveling through my brain to create the humming, ringing sound of one’s own mind at work. Good God. I set about reliving memories.

  Having fun with mom, her playing the clarinet and us waiting for dad to come home, which he never did. Colonel Radcliffe had picked him for his own regiment—with the other fighting boys of Bellin, all of whom came home. Except one. We moved in with my grandmother and Mom went in her room. The seizures and possessions were more frequent. No potions my grandmother made ever worked longer than a few days. I went to school, tried to act like a normal kid, and took up trumpet for lack of something better to do. We did all our shopping at thrift stores and it got harder and harder to blend in. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone. I liked some sports but was never good at any, never good enough to compete. The act of winning was a letdown anyway. Usually the other guy wanted to win more, like it meant something. I liked doing my best, to play as well as I could. But when it came down to it, winning meant nothing to me. I realize, of course, that being ultra-competitive is the way you really make it in this world. And now I’m dead.

  I imagined Penny coming to see me. I would pop right up, just like my grandmother did, or like Marie Laveau did. I forget who did what, but if Penny showed up, I’m sure it would jog me out of this. And her jaw would drop. “Oh, Seven, how have you done it? How did you ever stay alive?”

  “The big show’s in here,” I’d say, tapping my temple. She’d like that.

  Such impenetrable darkness. I tried to stare through it, into it, and make something come out. When shapes congealed I knew I had entered into another dream.

  No natural functions. I had wet myself during the first night, then there was nothing left. None of my parts worked. Except my brain. Poorly. Which made me wonder if I might truly be dead. There was no tunnel of light. I did not know if I was soulless or not. Was my soul doing the thinking? Could it leave this body? At some point, the soul must take flight. To heaven, presumably, wherever that is. Or worse. I don’t feel like myself anymore. If I had a soul, I think it’s gone.

  But if I were dead, the body would decompose. I was not even all the way cold, which should have been a clue to the moron who pronounced me. “No need to check for brain activity. EEG would be a waste of money on this one. Look at him, haw-haw! Dead is dead,” Dr. Brandt had told the nurses. He was out of it now. Maybe they already embalmed me and I slept through it. How could I know?

  I looked peaceful enough, my grandmother said. The nurse cut my T-shirt and underwear off. She examined me from head to toe, did not find anything. They were expecting a needle mark. They even looked between my toes. The only odd thing was irritation on my palms. “Teenage boy, he-he,” the nurses said. Good God.

  Hoof. He had something—everything to do with this. The soap was grainy. Why would our soap be grainy? He had been to the bathroom.

  Will I just slip away like this? Or stay in my head, then in a coffin? What if they cremate? That would definitely be the end. If there’s one thing I’ve made out, it’s that the big show really is in my head. If my head did not exist, well, that would be it.

  I slept again and woke to this same nocturnal existence. I was beginning to think I would prefer to go silent. If the words just stopped coming, if I stopped thinking, I would cease to be. Old Seven LaVey would just drift off and only be alive as a memory. Is there something to that? Is it possible for my soul to get into someone else’s head and thereby stay alive? No. I can think of other people but I don’t think their souls are in my head. I just happen to remember them.

  If I did go silent, where would the I go then? The idea of silence is nice. No more words, no more frustration trying to move or breathe, no more worries because those are only in words anyway. Silence would be nice, but would I not hear the silence and make comments on it? At which point the silence would be destroyed by the thought. One could not have a thoughtless silence without thought. Consciousness: the greatest survival tool. What could be worse than it ceasing to be? I imagined consciousness gone, like in the deepest sleep. Time passed, but I was unaware. If I never woke from that …to ne
ver think again. But the thought intrudes on darkness, making it known I am. Blackness for a moment, then awareness barging in. Animals have awareness. Whippoorwill. Whippoorwill. A glimmer of hope, my bird. I know you! I hear you, little friend. You’re the only one who knows. Whippoorwill. He was just outside the window.

  Om. Oohhhm. Further, longer, drag the sound out longer than a single breath. There are no breaths. Drag it out through any number of heartbeats. I no longer have a pulse. Drag it out infinitely. If another thought intrudes, dismiss it, and begin again. This may go on forever—the fear of consciousness ceasing and unraveling it, letting it end.

  Who am I even talking to? Sometimes I see Penny sitting across from me. I want her to hear me. I see my grandmother laughing and playing tricks. Somebody is going to go to a lot of trouble for a funeral and the burial or cremation or whatever they’re going to do. And they’ll never know that I didn’t totally die. Hoof did this. But I did not take his offer. I did not sell him my soul. I said no. He was going to do this either way. He was never going to conjure Penny’s love for me. It’s confusing, so confusing. I apologized to myself for not being dead.

  I hear a murmur getting louder. Somebody is out there. A slot in the wall opened and a corpse slid in. One like me? Are they all like me?

  Nothing I can do now. Nothing can be done.

  And this is the end—fading into sleep without dreams. The dreams are less vivid, like watching them on a screen, somebody else’s screen, somebody else’s dream. My own voice is more quiet now, less curious about what’s next. More willing to sleep without thinking. Words come slowly and have less meaning. If I can’t remember the right word to explain what I’m thinking, then I must not be thinking at all. It’s twilight on the plane. The last of the sun behind the hills. Stars flicker and draw me toward them. There are no words for this—the flickering, the light.