The Hesitations of Sebastian Walker

This isn't for Julian's benefit. He can do his little history project, I'm not going to be part of it. I'm only writing this because Aadhi is on my ass about it. Since he sent his email, he won't shut up about how liberating that was and how he feels better now and blah blah blah. He might be my best friend, but I honestly don’t understand him sometimes.

Not that it’s a competition, but Aadhi’s experience in Dreary was worse than mine. Growing up gay in a small town is hard enough; gay, brown, and immigrant? Aadhi should have locked those years away in the bottom of a closet and never thought of them again. I don’t see why he keeps bringing this up.

This is why I’m writing this down. It isn’t a confession or even acknowledgment of the voices. I just want to tell him that I wrote it and ask him to back off. He’ll deal with his trauma in his way and I will deal with it in mine. If Aadhi or anyone else finds this and decides I should be committed, let me be very clear: the voices weren’t real. They were a child’s reaction to his father’s horrible abuse. It was the way I kept myself sane.

We weren't a happy family, though Sarah would say otherwise. Chris was the firstborn on whose shoulders all of dad's expectations lied. Kathy was an angry girl who didn’t like anybody. Sarah was the precious little girl our parents had always wanted.

I was an accident. An unexpected complication. An extra mouth to feed. And, on top of that, I was a quiet kid who liked books and cried too much. I never stood a chance.

Most kids think their parents are giants, but Thomas Walker truly was. Standing to a massive 6’6’’ height and having the shoulders and arms of a man who’d worked with his hands all his life, one didn’t cross him and get away with it. That man was a raging bull and he needed little provocation to charge at you. If you gave him a look he didn’t like, he’d come at you in massive strides and huffing through his nose like a beast. If you were lucky, you’d get the belt.

I was never lucky. I was always locked in the barn.

It took me a really long time to bring this up to my therapist. The first time I talked about it, I wouldn’t stop shaking. It had been such a deeply kept secret in my family that I felt guilty just bringing it up. But it happened. Never to Chris and never to Kathy; that trapdoor was only for me, his disappointing child. That was going to toughen me up, he said. That was going to make me a man.

I don’t know if dad made that trapdoor or if it was always there, but sometimes I feel it simply came into existence the day that I was born. It wasn’t used for storage and it didn’t lead anywhere. It was mine. It was for locking me in the barn for a while so that I’d learn my lesson.

If you asked mom about it, she’d say she didn’t know. If you asked Sarah, she’d call me a liar. As for the neighbors, I can’t believe none of them knew. They had to. They just didn’t care. Gossip is a pleasure that will run through every mouth, but crying children are a nuisance no one wants to deal with.

It wasn’t a neighbor who came to me that night. I was only six and disoriented - in that barn, under the trapdoor, you couldn’t see anything, not even the moonlight - so it’s possible that I’m misremembering. Still, I can’t match that voice to any face. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I can’t remember what I did that evening that was so horrible. I have a vague memory of touching something that didn’t belong to me. Something green? Maybe. Perhaps it was money, or something pretty that he’d bought for my mother. Either way, he got mad immediately. It didn’t take much to set his temper off; that evening, though, he was in a particularly foul mood. There was no warning, no screaming, not even a lash of the belt. He simply grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the barn.

I knew what was about to happen and I pleaded with him. I apologized over and over and I promised to behave from then on. He wouldn’t hear of it. In one violent swipe, he opened the trapdoor and shoved me into it like it was the mouth of an angry beast.

He threw me one last look of contempt and I thought he was going to say something. A curse, a slur, a confession about how much he despised me. But he didn't say anything, and the only sound in my ears for a while was the slam of the trapdoor and the clink of the latch. Then, the heavy steps of a man who’d just dealt with a nuisance and wanted to go back to the comfort of his home. I wasn’t his problem anymore.

I can recount every hour that ticked by. The dirt walls and the stone floor were too hard and cold. I could hear every little sound from the woods behind the barn. The darkness was the worst part though; you couldn’t see a thing in front of your nose. You passed the time by crying yourself to exhaustion or swatting at the bugs that tried to crawl up your legs.

What kind of monster locks a six-year-old child in a place like that?

I made a promise to run away that last night. I dreamed of a nice, warm place where he couldn’t find me. I’d hop on a bus out of town and leave Dreary Foggs behind. I wasn’t sure how I’d make money to afford a ticket, but that was irrelevant. Maybe I could sneak into the luggage compartment. I had experience keeping myself sane in confined spaces, didn’t I? I could make it.

If that night had played out any other way, I think I would have gone through with my childish plan. I’d have packed a little bag with food and toys and left town on the first bus to “a warm place”, wherever that was, and no one would have found me. But that was the night the voices came to me.

“Are you stuck?” they asked. Not all of them. The first one. It was soft and quiet, like a gentle whisper. I was on alert, but it didn’t startle me. Thinking back, it’s strange that it got through the trapdoor at all.

I cowered in the corner. I was small enough to sit with my knees to my chest, but I was growing fast and the top of my head brushed the wooden door if I sat up straight.

A second voice, this one a little firmer, spoke next. It seemed directed at their companion, not at me.

“He is stuck. He must be scared.”

I remained silent. I had no idea who that was. My best guess was that the voices were female and adult, but definitely not my mother’s. It was too dark to see, but I could hear them clearly. It was like they were pressing their lips to the trapdoor to better reach me.

Didn’t they whisper at each other? I can’t remember. I think they did. Or maybe that was the sound of crawling bugs and hooting owls.

The next one to speak was another woman. There was some sort of accent in her voice, but I can’t pinpoint where it was from.

“Who did this? Was it your father?”

I didn’t confirm it, but I didn’t deny it either. I guess they reached the right conclusion anyway.

A fourth woman spoke and all I know was that she was angry.

“This isn’t the way a father should treat their son.”

The strangest thing is that I don’t remember them coming into the barn. One person might have steps so light I wouldn’t be able to hear them, but four women? No, I would have heard them. That’s how I know the voices weren’t real. They were just my imagination, comforting me.

I have no idea how my imagination opened that latch, though.

I suppose dad could have forgotten to close it and I didn’t realize it. I must have imagined the clink of the latch, just like I imagined the voice of the fourth woman, whispering, “I’ll handle him, child. You don’t have to worry about it,” before fading into the night.

I waited another few minutes before I dared to push the trapdoor and crawl out. There was nothing in that barn, not a soul nor a living person. It was late in the night and I was afraid Dad would be angry if he saw me out of my prison before he came to get me, but I was too scared to stay.

Chris saw me come in through the window and get in bed. I remember him asking, “Did dad let you out?” in this quiet, shamed voice. He always felt guilty for not being able to protect me.

I didn’t answer and pulled the covers over my head.

I’m glad Chris saw me come in, and even gladder that the whole family sat down to eat breakfast the next morning. If we all hadn’t seen dad alive and well with our own eyes, I would have doubted my own innocence in the matter, especially considering how he was found only a few days later. Yet, there he was, glaring at me and promising to talk about my disobedience when he came back.

He left and we never saw him alive again.

I did wonder if the women who’d talked to me had done something to him, but that's ridiculous. The police must have interrogated every single person in town, even Rosie Bly. I think they wanted to make a scapegoat out of her. The case was so bizarre, though, that they couldn’t simply pin it on the local weirdo. Dad’s legs had been bent backward to stuff him into that little closet-sized room. His massive shoulders were pushing against the trapdoor and it had to be forced down before latching it closed. That couldn’t have been done by one person, let alone one so weak and small.

I wonder if it could have been done by four, but I know better than to believe unreliable memories from childhood. Dad used to run all kinds of services for people outside of town. He must have gotten on someone’s bad side.

It's funny that no one thought to look in the barn until Sarah came screaming bloody murder. I can’t blame her for coming up with a fantasy to protect herself. Being visited by a benevolent ghost is better than finding your father’s mutilated body.

To me, though, trying to picture that angry bull of a man’s horror-stricken face before he was taken from this world is soothing. He got what he deserved. And if the voices were real, I’d rather think they were benevolent spirits as well. They did, after all, give me my childhood back.