Chapter Text
They got fished out of the lake two weeks after Halloween. It would have been sooner, of course, if anybody had realized they were missing within the first couple of days. But nobody did. The tall one didn’t show up at his part-time job, and the younger one didn’t show up at school, but nobody noticed. Nobody cared. In fact, people were a little bit grateful (although it’s sad to say it). There were definitely people that thought, Finally, finally, those monsters are gone.
Trawling the lake wasn’t the first step in the case, of course. There were search parties organized (with some reluctance), and posters all around town. It made the news. But eventually, after a week of searching the land with no luck, and with compelling evidence provided by the boys’ mother, the authorities turned themselves to the water. Specifically, the lake.
They dragged it for a couple of days, finding nothing, until one day, they hit something. It was a teapot, wedged in the black sand at the bottom of the lake. The police redoubled their efforts, checking everywhere in the water with renewed vigor. And that’s when they found them.
The oldest one was tangled in kelp, his body almost completely obscured. The searchers had taken him for a log or a moss-covered rock, but with a second glance it was clear that it was a man. His hands were empty and floating at his sides. He was facing up towards the sky in glassy-eyed peace. When they hauled him out, the searchers found deep red marks on his wrists and legs. His knuckles were scraped up and bruised. He’d struggled, tried to escape, but in the end had been forced to give up, and to give in to the water. It was a damn shame, everybody agreed. A damn shame.
The younger one took a little longer to find. He was floating face-down, a few yards away from his brother. His hands were tangled in the kelp, and rigor mortis had locked his fingers tight around the plants. He had been hanging on, not fighting. He had willingly held himself under the water. His eyes were focused out in front of him, almost like he had seen something, down there in the dark. The currents of the lake had battered him around a bit, and his rib was broken, digging into his lung. The coroner said that she believed it had happened before he died.
Both bodies were rotted and falling apart. Their faces were more skull than flesh, and their stomachs were eaten hollow by bacteria and animals. It didn’t makes sense. They had only been dead for a few weeks, so why did the level of decomposition match those of ten-year old corpses? The coroner poured over the test results, looking for a mistake, an explanation, but there wasn’t any. According to all the tests available, the two bodies pulled from the lake had died just over ten years ago. They ran DNA tests to confirm the identities of the boys, and it was them. The brothers. Last seen alive and well by their mother two weeks ago, and dead for over ten years.
It was perplexing, to be sure. Nobody quite knew what to make of it. Was it a double suicide? An accident? A homicide? Had the older one coerced the younger one, or vice versa? Rumors spread around the town like a virus. Everywhere you went, there was only one thing anybody was talking about: The brothers. There were speculations, connections to urban folklore and myths, and gossip of the worst sort.
However, over the course of a few months after the case closed, the brothers faded from the town’s focus. Why talk about those rotten old corpses when there were newer, more interesting stories to tell? Why talk about those dead boys when Mrs. Sullivan from Newport Street was divorcing, and getting engaged to her former husband’s sister? The town moved on, and so did the police department. They didn’t look too hard for an explanation about the times of death. They attributed it to animals, or an imbalance of chemicals in the lake water, or a million other reasons. They didn’t want to think that the tests were right. They didn’t want to believe that those boys really had died that night, so long ago, and got up again right afterwards.
Their mother was never the same again, poor dear. She laughed almost never, and smiled just as rarely. She refused to sell her oldest son’s house, or even rent it out. She spent every weekend sleeping over there, curled up on his dusty, aging mattress, rereading his journal, and the letter scrawled on the small scrap of paper she’d found tucked under the teapot.
Dear Mom, the letter read.
If you’re in my house, finding this letter, it means that you’ve discovered that we’re gone. I’m sorry, Mom, but there was no other way. I know you’ve never believed the rumors flying around town, that Greg and I are monsters or ghosts or something worse, but let me clear it up for you: we are. Ever since that Halloween where we almost drowned, we’ve been… I don’t know. Different. We don’t sleep, we don’t eat. I know that you’ve noticed, but you’ve never wanted to listen to that little voice inside of you telling you what we are. What we’ve become. But everyone else has, Mom. Everyone else knows, except you. But we can't stay here any more. We had our extra time, and it's over now. We're done. So we’re leaving. For good.
I leave my house and all my possessions to you. My poetry and short story manuscripts are on my dresser in the bedroom. Please make sure the people who commissioned them receive them in a timely manner (free of charge. I don’t need the money anymore). You can decide what happens to Greg’s stuff. He’s fifteen, you’re his mom. Do whatever the hell you want. Oh, god, this is starting to sound like a will. This is not a will. We’re just… leaving and never coming back. We’re not dying (hopefully). But we’re not going to need our things where we’re going.
Please, don’t think this is your fault. In fact, over the past few years, you’ve been the one person who’s been consistently kind to us. Well, you and Greg’s dad. Whatever happens to us, don’t blame yourself, okay? You were a fantastic mother. We both love you so much.
Goodbye. I love you. I’ll miss you. And don’t worry, I’ll make sure Greg is safe.
Love, Wirt
P.S. If the police are bugging you for clues about where we are, tell them to check out by the cemetery. You deserve as much closure with this as I can give you.
The letter was wrinkled and smudged, but still the once-mother kept it, running her fingers along the neat letters and choking on her tears. She was a bit of a town kook, that one, with her dead sons and her broken heart. Poor dear. And what a damn shame about those brothers, too.
What a damn shame.