Chapter Text
They got fished out of the lake a couple years ago on Halloween night, still in their costumes. You know, the lake out behind the cemetery? That one. They got dragged out just at the stroke of midnight. At least, that's what they say. Not them, not the brothers, but the kids they were with. The kids who called the ambulance. Jason and Sara and all of them.
They passed the story around town like wildfire, how the tall one pulled his brother up the bank and tried to call for help, but collapsed. Turns out that his lungs were filled with water. He almost didn't make it. He shouldn't have made it, really. Neither of them should have. And, you know, there are some people around town who say they didn't. That they really did die out there, out on the lake. Or that the little boy's lung really did turn out to be punctured by his broken rib after all, like the doctors worried might have happened. That the tall one spent a few breathless hours in the hospital, coughing and coughing and coughing, until he just couldn't anymore.
Not everybody thinks they're dead, but almost everyone agrees on this: those boys are Different, with a capital "D". Everyone who's talked to them has seen it, in one form or another- their Differentness. The way their eyes are too piercing, too wide and unblinking. Keera Price from the elementary school ran to the teacher in tears one day, don't you know it, because the little boy wouldn't stop staring at her, and she swears up and down that when the sun flashed in his eyes he didn't even flinch, and they were clouded over and misty like a corpse's.
And the girl, Sara, she hates to speak ill of her friends, so she says, but even she admits that it’s weird, that they’re both different. She tells a story sometimes, when she visits over the holidays from college, how she and the tall one were on a date (a little, tiny, harmless date, she says, nothing ever came of it, she says) and his hand brushed hers in an embarrassed teenage overture of romance, and his skin was ice cold. Lake-water cold. Just-shipped-in-from-the-ER, flat-on-a-morgue-table cold. He never blinked.
“And he didn’t blush,” she says, confused. “He was always blushing, before the lake. But he didn’t, then. Like he didn’t have any blood left for his face. Spooky.”
Sara goes to college across the country now. She hasn’t seen the tall boy in years, avoids his neighborhood and his brother’s school, anywhere she might run into them. He doesn’t look for her.
It’s not just harmless busibodies and nosy gossips, either. It’s doctors, family friends, teachers and policemen and dentists. Anybody who knows the boys, who’s talked to them- they’ve all got something to say. Doctor Whitman always whips out his story at dinner parties. Always the same routine, the same script, but even after all these years, it rings of truth. He knew these boys well, he’ll say. He’d treated their broken bones, their flus, their stomach bugs and ear infections. Had treated them, past tense.
“Each of those boys would be in my office a couple times a year,” he’ll say gruffly, propping his elbows on his host’s dinner table and lowering his voice. Everyone else will lean in closer to hear him, ready to learn this secret they’ve all heard a million times before. “Every year, without fail. They were growing boys, not exactly in perfect health, you know, but they always bounced back from whatever it was.” He’ll pause, swirling his wine and savoring the attention. “But after the lake…” He’ll shake his head remorsefully. “Poof! I never saw them come in again. No broken bones, no illness. Nothing. I’d almost thought they’d moved away but… I suppose not.”
Miss Pheobe, the third grade teacher who taught the little one, has a slightly more meaningful story to tell. She won’t bust it out for just anybody, though. You have to convince her, with a really good reason and maybe a couple glasses of gin, but she’ll tell you eventually. How it was the boy’s turn to water the houseplants after school that day, and she was supervising from her desk as she graded papers, jotting down notes in the margins with neat red pen. How she heard giggling from the corner where the spider plant was, and looked up the see the boy laughing and laughing and laughing as the long, flat leaves curled their way up his arms like snakes. How she screamed. How when, ten minutes later, after she’d ripped the plant off of him and took many, many calming breaths, the tall one dropped by the pick the little one up. How she’d told him what happened, why there were red marks on the boy’s arms and the shredded remains of a spider plant in the corner, and he’d laughed and said, “Hey, it happens. The devil’s ivy by our front door tries to get me every time I leave for school.” She’ll tell you how the little one giggled again and caught the older one’s hand, and they both left together, laughing. She won’t tell you anything else after that, so don’t try to ask.
Yep, those boys are weird, no question about it. When they wander through the park, the little one skipping up ahead, and the tall one walking behind, things get out of the way. Squirrels, pigeons, dogs, even spiders. None of the animals want to be near the brothers- except for one kind. Bluebirds. The tall one has a fondness for bluebirds, it seems, and they hold him in the same regard. Kathleen, on the volleyball team, you know the one, remembers how she saw him out by the cemetery one day. He whistled, quietly, and an honest-to-god bluebird hopped down from a tree to perch on his shoulder (“like a fucking zombie Disney princess”). He’d talked to it, in low tones, like a conspirator, or a close friend, and then it flew off again. Nobody else in town likes bluebirds anymore.
The brothers are strange, but they’re sort of a fixture around town. A real-life urban legend for their tiny suburban borough. The tall one stays tall, and he doesn’t go to college. Sometimes he shows up for classes at the community college in town, but not always. He’s always hanging out with his brother. The little one isn’t little for more than a handful of years before he’s shooting up like a beanstalk, surpassing his brother when he’s fifteen. From then on, robbed of the easy anonymity that height-based nicknames afford them, the simple wall built by refusing to use their names, the townspeople just call them the brothers.
Did you hear? The brothers were in the park today, and Mrs. Daniel’s dog broke her leash trying to get away.
Did you hear? The brothers were walking outside today without coats on. It’s -10 degrees.
Did you hear? Did you hear? Did you hear?
The list is ever expanding and changing by the day, the exploits of these two enigmas catalogued and carefully folded away in the collective town memory. It’s a constant low-level hum around town until finally, one day-
Did you hear? The brothers- oh, it’s awful. The brothers. They were found in the lake. Dead.
The brothers drowned in the lake. Out back of the cemetery.
The brothers drowned out behind the Eternal Garden. They’re dead. They fished them out this morning oh, isn’t it just terrible?
No signs of a struggle. No signs of a fight. The older one’s lungs were filled with water, and the younger one had a broken rib and a punctured lung. The funeral is short and quick. Only family is allowed. Only family wants to go.
There are no more bluebirds in the town. There are no more stories about the brothers. There are no more, because they are no more. But, sometimes, if you are walking by the cemetery at midnight, you can hear faint voices- two boys, laughing together under the trees, just beyond the wall. And maybe, just maybe, if you listen really hard and strain yourself, you can hear a girl’s voice, too, high and clear as the song of a bird, drifting up over the rough cut stone of the garden wall.