The Shell - Part Four

Short Fiction - Science Fiction

This is Part Four of a short fiction tale called The Shell.

Y’all, this story is taking its time, small sips. I’ve stopped guessing how long it wants to take for me to tell it; I know the destination, but some of the winding to get there wants more wiggle-room than I thought. Feels like a summer story, for sure!

Thank you for joining in the journey with me!

Start with Part One here, or

Read Part Two, or

Read Part Three.

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And now, on to the story…

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Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

In the week after Paul’s waking, a stretch of summer rain moved through the mountains, stifling the dust on the gravel roads and reviving the drooping balsamroot flowers, constellations of yellow stars dotting the fragrant pine woods. The low clouds turned everything claustrophobic, too tight, too close. The chickens gossiped in the mud. 

Burgess gave permission to the passage of the days, biding his time quietly. He went to work, he came home. Naomi came and went from his house at her leisure, bringing things for Paul: fresh clothes—which had once belonged to her father, Burgess quickly realized—and meals, and books to read. Paul seemed to rest for long stretches of the day, and every time Burgess saw him in the evenings he looked just a little more human. Light brown hair growing back in, thick and healthy, and skin taking on a more natural hue, and stubble appearing on his cheeks.  

Naomi and Paul would talk together when he was awake, but by mutual and unspoken agreement, Burgess and Paul did not exchange any words with one another after that first night. Burgess simply kept to himself, the gracious ghost, the silent benefactor of the house. The young man would only follow him with his gaze, wary and unreadable, studying him in ways that Burgess did not appreciate. 

But it was all right, because this would be over eventually. It was just a matter of time and patience.

Only occasionally was Burgess called upon to answer the door to a curious neighbor, suddenly moved to return a garden tool or kitchen implement they borrowed, a thin pretense to catch a glimpse of the newcomer in Burgess’s front room. Burgess would greet them graciously, answer their questions with ease, give them just enough to stop them asking, send them on their way. 

All was well, smooth, until one evening Naomi approached him and said, “We need to get him walking.”

And Burgess gritted his teeth and gave even more permission, though it was thin-fingered and reluctant. After all, it was going to be for the best. It wouldn’t be forever. 

One arm looped over Burgess’s shoulders, the other looped over Naomi’s, Paul would stand up awkward on his crooked leg and they would practice limping up and down the front room, door to door. Then wider afield: the kitchen, the washroom, out to the porch and back. It was slow and painful but Burgess held steady, though his skin would recoil away from the contact of Paul’s arm, the nightmarish closeness, the weight of him leaning on the old man’s shoulder. He kept a brave face for Naomi, because she treated this—Paul walking—as the most important task in the world. And he wanted her to have that. It was the least he could give her.

But late at night, when Paul was asleep and Naomi had gone home, Burgess would sit on the porch and watch the rain, spending long hours polishing and polishing his glasses. And he would dream it through, the way he knew it would be: Paul Lannigan finally standing before him on firm feet, face to face, man to man. 

He would dream through the talk. He would dream through the final breath. 

You killed my son, Burgess would say, long years of practice honing it simple and sharp. You murdered my boy, and now you’re gonna pay. 

Thirteen years of ruin. A dead son. A shattered marriage. And all because Paul Lannigan was walking down the wrong alley on the wrong night, narcotic-haze and surrounded by his asshole friends, Glock in his pocket, ready for trouble. Praying for it. 

Christopher. Walking alone. Wrong alley.  

If you had been there, none of this would have happened. 

If you had been there, our boy would still be alive. 

You may as well have pulled the trigger yourself. 

Burgess winced away from the guilt and focused on the memory of Paul, after the arrest, at the trial. No remorse. Not even a flicker of shame in his eyes, in the courtroom. Just white-hot hate and anger. This was only the latest of his long list of criminal charges. Christopher’s murder was the last straw.

His court-appointed lawyer had told some sob-story about Paul’s life, that he had grown up with no authority figures, an estranged father and junkie mother, bounced from home to home, on the streets at sixteen. A story of pain and survival. But that story hadn’t traveled to Paul’s eyes.

There was no pain there, no hope for redemption. Only destruction. 

Burgess polished and polished and polished his glasses long into the night, rain turning the summer warmth to clarity, and killed Paul Lannigan in the sweet safety of his imagination.  

Over and over and over again. 

*******

When Burgess returned home from work for the weekend, he found his house empty in the golden evening’s half-light. There was only a handwritten note, taped to Naomi’s chair beside the empty sofa: Gone to supper. See you there. 

She had taken Paul to supper, all on her own. Taken him to sit and eat with the community, Burgess’s community. 

This, they had not discussed.   

Burgess felt his chest tighten with frustration, but there was nothing else to do about it now. The damage was done. He changed his clothes then left the house into the drizzle, walking down the muddy gravel road to the meeting hall. 

Once, decades ago, the community had been an abandoned summer camp compound with an expansive tumble of matching smaller cabins, some bigger houses for the caretakers and year-rounders, a playground and parkland, and a large cafeteria-style meeting hall. When Burgess had moved in with a handful of the other hopefuls, shoved from town to town, desperate for reunions with their erased loved ones, they had made it their own. Built and rebuilt the old structures, added new ones, adapted the yards for personal use, decorated and repainted to suit each family’s tastes. 

But the meeting hall remained largely untouched, a single boxy building with high rafters on a rise surrounded by frowning pines. Within, the industrial kitchen was in near-constant use, and even though each house had its own stove and fridge these days, the homefires were always lit for supper together in the evenings, rain or snow or shine, season to season. 

No one decided it. It was just how they did things. 

When Burgess walked through the large double-doors most everyone was there already—a community of around thirty households—seated at their usual spots at the long heavy wooden tables and bench seats, reaching for dishes and passing plates, filling the room with talk. The night’s meal was big clear-eyed trout caught from the lake nearby and cooked whole in butter and fresh thyme, huge bowls of salad pooled together from all the neighborhood gardens, bread baked fresh that morning.

Some families were reunited and stayed. Some were still waiting. Kids chased each other laughing down the sides of the long room, and the neighborhood cats sat curl-pawed and attentive under the tables, dodging feet and waiting for fallen bits of fish skin.

Naomi waved him over and Burgess followed her summons. But to his quiet horror, the only space available for him was beside Paul. 

His step only hitched for a moment. Burgess swallowed back his disgust—after all, this wouldn’t be forever—and took the empty place on the bench seat. 

Naomi was chatting with someone on her other side, so Paul and Burgess were forced to sit unaided in awkward silence while the friendly conversations of daily life surrounded them on all sides. 

Finally, Paul said, “Bread?”

Burgess gave him a stern nod, and Paul passed him the nearest breadbasket. “Naomi made this one. She told me. It’s real good.”

Burgess made a noncommittal sound, took a slice, passed the basket along. 

Paul poked at the trout on his plate with his fork. “Sir, uh…I know we don’t have much occasion to talk, but…I wanted to thank you. For bringing me back. Naomi’s tried to explain, and I don’t get how it all works, but…I’m grateful.”

Burgess nodded. “It fell to me to do it. That’s all.”

“Sure.” Paul was nearly trembling with unasked questions. “It’s just…you asked me, that night, if I remembered you. And I don’t think I do—believe me, I’m trying—but maybe if you told me how we know each other, maybe I would remember?”

Burgess was keenly aware of the closeness of the other neighbors around him, the way being overheard can lead to problems, the acoustics of the large room, the echo of voices dancing on the rafters, splaying on the mossy skylights. He shook his head. “It’s not important now. It’s something to talk through later, when you’re stronger.”

Paul took this as a more gracious reassurance than Burgess intended, giving the old man a flickering smile. “Thank you, sir. I promise I’m trying. Hopefully I’ll remember without you having to tell me.”

Burgess took a sip of water; his throat had gone dry. It was disconcerting to talk to Paul this close, the vast chasm between the stringy-haired, thin-faced man in the courtroom that not even a borrowed ill-fitting suit could fix, and this man, pink-cheeked and clear-eyed and at ease. Naomi had taken good care of him. 

But Paul was his responsibility. His burden. 

“Whole neighborhood’s buzzing.” The voice came from Burgess’s other side, where Widow Rogers was sitting. She was a slight woman with a sharp face and a mess of curly gray hair all wrangled unruly on top of her head, but she carried herself crown-tall and no-nonsense. The kind of woman whose younger years were only a prelude, the mere prologue to a magnificent old age. 

Burgess didn’t realize that she was talking to him, at first, because she was speaking into her salad. “What’s that, Jemima?”

“Buzzing,” she repeated, turning to look at him. “Everyone’s talking about your boy, there.”

“Not my boy.” Burgess passed along a platter of trout without taking any, realized how defensive that sounded and softened his tone. “Just a duty that fell into my lap, is all.”

Widow Rogers had a habit of winking one eye closed when she was focusing in on someone’s face, and she did this now, giving her the appearance of an ancient one-eyed prophetess as she dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “That’s not how I heard it. Naomi says y’all know each other, from before. That he doesn’t remember.”

Burgess shrugged. “Some shells are a little more damaged than others. Can’t be helped.”

“Ah, well.” Jemima Rogers peered past Burgess down the table. “Empty’s only empty ‘til it gets filled back up. Empty is hope. We’re all here for the hope of our second chance, each and every one of us. Seems to me he fits right in. Don’t you think?”

No. There’s no place for Paul Lannigan here. He certainly does not fit. Not anywhere. Not anymore.

Burgess swallowed against a wave of bitter-bile rage, but held his genial smile as though his face might shatter if he let it go. “As you say, Jemima.”

“I do.” She returned her one-eyed gaze to him, studied his face for a few seconds more, as if looking for something. “You’ve been alone for a long time, old man.”

He waited. But she didn’t say anything else. Just turned back to her plate. 

Burgess sat silent in the swirl of conversation, the roar and repose, hearing none of it, feeling eerily bereft. He could hear Naomi laughing, an unfamiliar sound. Paul, surrounded by the curious, the kind, the community that Burgess built. Open arms, ready to receive him. And yet Burgess might as well have been on the roof looking down through the mossy skylight, screaming into the void. 

None of them knew the monster that ate their bread, learning to walk crook-footed among them. How could they know? 

Burgess felt his appetite disappear. Instead, there was only a hollow space beneath his ribs, mouth-like and toothless.

He stared at the empty breadbasket on the table in front of him, feeling like a dead man in a crowded coffin.

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Read on for Part Five!