Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

They talked. Not often, but enough so that Jeremy understood their desires were not the same. Jeremy could see no reason to leave this place, though he admitted they would have to some day. Once he fell asleep with the light on and woke in complete darkness to hear, “I want to go now. I can’t stay here any longer.” The voice was so terribly sad that Jeremy threw back the covers and stumbled toward the sound. He felt his hand taken and himself drawn near, and was so touched that he stood there embracing the other till he realized they had joined again. “Come back out,” he said, but nothing happened. “Please.” He lay down and closed his eyes. “You don’t have to be ashamed,” he said. “Not with me.”

Each night now he woke to sobbing and he whispered reassurances that they would leave.

“When?”

“Soon,” he said. “I have to think where, how.”

“We just leave. I could, go now. No one would know.”

“No. Don’t. You can’t go without me.”

“But I can. I did.”

Jeremy turned on the light. The other was seated across the room, heavier, a dark stubble on his cheeks. He glanced quickly at Jeremy and then at the floor.

“I went into the hall one night. Tonight I went outside.”

“Out of the house?”

“Into the garage.”

“You didn’t.”

“Your father backs the car in.”

“Promise me you won’t do it again. Promise.”

“I won’t.”

“You won’t go, or you won’t promise?”

The other didn’t answer. He stood, and his height surprised Jeremy, who watched himself move toward the bed slowly, and lean down close and fade inside. “Answer me,” Jeremy said to the empty room.

Jeremy taped the door shut and fought sleep to hold the other in. But some mornings the tape was broken and he knew from his own exhaustion how far he must have gone.

“Are you slipping out at night?” his father asked. “You look like you’ve got a hangover.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he’s not slipping out. He wouldn’t do that. Would you?”

“No,” he said. He woke that night to find his bedroom door open, and he rushed into the hallway whispering, “Get back here. Get back here now.” His parents’ door was open and he stepped inside, saw the shadow in the chair across the room. He didn’t dare speak, didn’t dare look toward the bed. He gestured, pleaded with his mind, backed out quietly when the other stood.

“What were you doing?” he said, when they were back in his room. “My God. In their bedroom. What if they had wakened?”

“Let them. Do them both good.” He lay down where Jeremy usually lay. “I don’t like them, you know.”

Jeremy stood quietly a moment. Then he lay down, too. “I know,” he said. “I wish you did, but I understand.”

Jeremy could do nothing to keep him from his parents’ room. He would wake, aware of danger, to hurry to the hallway so he could be nearby if they awoke. The other was coarser now to Jeremy, and seemed larger even than himself. He said terrible things, sometimes using Jeremy’s own lips.

“I could kill them,” he said once, in a soft voice. “And no one would know.”

“I would.”

The other laughed with Jeremy’s voice.

Jeremy knew when it was going to happen. In the kitchen his eyes were caught by the glint of knives; outside, by stones. When he tied the newspapers in the garage, his hands braided the twine thicker, knotted it. “Oh don’t,” he whispered.

“I need to leave,” he told his mother.

“What do you mean, leave? Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”

“I mean leave the house. Move away.”

“When the right time comes, I’ll help you do just that. But that’s a year or two in the future.”

He took hammer and nails from his father’s tool chest, put the nails in his pocket, the hammer in his waistband. He put them in his dresser. “Shut up,” he said.

When dinner was over and his parents sat in the living room before the television, he went to his room and closed the door. He pushed and tapped the nails in. Every now and then he would kick the door lightly to mask a final drive of the hammer. It still took a long time.

He had to leave, but he didn’t know how.

He heard them go to bed. He didn’t undress or turn out the light, but he got under the covers. He kept his eyes open, but it didn’t work. He tried to hold the other in, then pull him back. He threw his arms around the thick chest and tugged, but was shaken off. The hammer was taken up, the nails jerked out wildly, and Jeremy raced down the hall, finally even yelling, “Stop, stop, for God’s sake stop,” but there was nothing he could do. He wasn’t big enough or strong enough. He was thrown out of the room and the door shut in his face. When it opened again, he didn’t need to see what was in there. He had heard it. He followed himself through the kitchen, into the garage. “Come back,” he said. “Come back.” He stood there a long time. Then he went in the kitchen and wiped up the floor and folded the rag neatly on the washer. He took his father’s keys from the wall hook and returned to the garage. He started the motor. He lay down in the seat to wait for the other to return.

No Apparent Malice by Terry Mullins