The Devil's bed

He was sixteen when he set out one night to discover the reason the basement door was periodically (and randomly, it seemed) locked. Winter lay around the farmhouse deep and still. A storm had just passed, and snow was piled against the outside walls, drifted taller than a man, sealing in Nocturne and his mother and grandfather. For no reason that Nocturne could discern, the old man had slapped the lock in place before going to bed. When the house above was quiet, Nocturne stripped naked, rolled his clothing in a bundle that he tied to a rope looped about his ankle. He worked his way up the laundry chute, out the opening in the second-floor bathroom, and hauled up his clothes. When he was dressed, he stepped into the hallway. He’d walked the old house at night so often he knew exactly where to step to avoid the loose, noisy floorboards, and he slipped silently down the hallway. He stopped at the old man’s room and listened. Inside, all was quiet. He carefully opened the door a crack. Although the curtains were drawn and the room lay in inky dark, Nocturne could see that the bed was empty. He closed the door, wondering. When he came abreast of the door to his mother’s bedroom, he heard a familiar sound, the harsh suck and sigh of air from his grandfather when the old man was laboring hard. That the sound came from his mother’s bedroom was bewildering to Nocturne. He reached for the knob. The metal was cold in his hand. He eased the door open. Although he knew he risked revealing his secret freedom, his curiosity was too great.

The storm had left in its wake a clear, brittle sky shattered by a glaring moon. The curtains were drawn back. Moonlight thrust through the window and slashed across his mother’s bed. Nocturne stared, unable to comprehend what he saw.

She lay on the bed, naked. Above her waist, she was in darkness, but moonlight splashed over her narrow hips, making the damp skin of his grandfather, who’d wedged between her legs, glisten like melting ice. The old man was bent over her, his pelvis in rapid motion. Nocturne’s mother lay rigid, staring at the ceiling above her, her eyes sightless as stones.

Nocturne had read about sex. He understood it as he did many things, in a distant, literal way. The gritty reality before him defied his comprehension, and he stood in the doorway, dumb with confusion. He must have made a noise, for his mother’s eyes fell on him, and she caught her breath with an audible gasp.

The old man stopped his thrusting and looked where she looked. He considered a moment, then pulled back from the woman. He climbed off the bed and stepped toward Nocturne. His penis was erect, huge and wet. His eyes were black, sharp and penetrating. “I suppose you’re old enough,” he finally said. He looked back at his daughter. “You want her, after I’m done, you take her.”

“No,” she cried, weeping. “God, no.”

The old man stepped back to the bed and slapped her across the face. “You’ll do as I tell you.”

Although he didn’t fully understand the horror of incest, Nocturne understood his mother’s pain. He exploded with a howl, and he charged his grandfather in a blind rage, driving him back against a bureau. The old man struggled to defend himself. Finally he grasped a heavy jar from the bureau and swung it against the side of Nocturne’s head, shattering the thick glass. The boy dropped to the floor and entered into his beloved dark.

He woke on the cold, cement floor of the basement. How much time had passed, he couldn’t say. His head hurt. He was thirsty. He stood up, dizzy, and made his way to the steps. Daylight seeped through the narrow gap between the bottom of the basement door and the kitchen floor. He tried to let himself out, but the padlock was still in place. He heard the floorboards of the kitchen creak. The padlock rattled and snapped free. The old man opened the door. Nocturne’s grandfather stood in a blaze of light and held a shotgun aimed at the boy. Nocturne squinted painfully and turned his face from the glare. The old man grabbed him harshly by the arm and pulled him into the light. He shoved Nocturne ahead of him toward the stairway, up to the second floor, down the hallway to the bedroom where Nocturne’s eyes had been truly opened. He forced his grandson inside.

The curtains were drawn against the sunlight. His mother lay in bed, covered by a dirty, wrinkled sheet. She stared up at the ceiling. Her arms were outside the sheet, slightly spread away from her body, each wrist bound in white gauze that was stained red. To Nocturne she seemed an angel fallen to earth, an angel who’d come to rest on that old bed, an angel with red-tipped wings. She blinked, but she didn’t seem to be aware that her son was there.

“Like her mother,” the old man spat. “Weak.” He stepped between Nocturne and the woman on the bed. “Are you like her? Or are you like your father?”

Nocturne looked into the old man’s eyes and understood everything.