Easier than Everett

"Is that blood?”

I stirred from my unfocused stare. Hailey sat across from me, her auburn hair falling from her head limply, like washing out to dry.

"What?"

"Your sleeve. "She repeated. "It's wet."

The inner fabric, a white long-sleeve I’d likely ordered from some pretentious store in the city. The higher quality fabric felt nicer against my swollen skin.

I pulled the sleeve of my hoodie higher up my arm so that it obscured the crimson skin. I turned my hooded head away from her.

“I burned myself. Cooking.” It was a sickeningly stupid lie. "Sill weeping."

Hailey furrowed her brow. She wasn't a bad sort. Liked to keep to herself mostly, reading and gaming. Better that what the rest of this backwater town was up to, that’s for sure.

We'd known each other a while. Same town and somehow even the same University . But we’d only recently gotten to know each other.

"How have you been sleeping?"

"Yeah fine." Lie.

She tried to snag my gaze. I’d become something of a project to her. Or maybe that was a narcissistic self-involved notion. But wasn't that what happened when you were famous?

"Circles around your eyes look like bruises Jack.” She turned her cold coffee in a circle, toying with the mud coloured liquid in the Styrofoam cup.

"You sure you’re doing okay?”

If I’d had the energy I would have faked a smile but I couldn’t even muster an immediate response.

I continued to avoid her gaze, sweeping across the cafe instead. Stuart Reily

sat in one corner nursing a paper and a Winnie Red, sniffing and clearing his throat without intention to let everyone know he still existed. Carol Bates sat down behind

the counter with her horn-rimmed glasses and inspecting an app on her phone like it was a piece if faux jewellery she couldn't disprove.

I had no-one to be wary of here. No-one read.

Other than that the morning crowd had trickled through, leaving the dregs to sit and stick to he chairs. The smell of gritty, cheap coffee and fuel clung to the air. It made me think of oil slick the curb outside a real cafe. I felt Hailey's hand on mine. I almost withdrew but kept it there, if nothing but to make her feel comforting.

"I know it hasn't been easy."

I watched. Stuart had a knack for it, I had to admit. The man must have been practicing smoking with no hands since he was twelve. It was a wonder. I considered how he might treat me if he knew who I was.

“Jack, hey,” she increased the pressure of her grip.

“I lost him too.”

I pulled my hand away. “I know.”

Hailey sighed and sat back.

The shadows had begun to creep across the linoleum floor like a slow leak from outside. Slowly flooding the diner until night drowned us all. We’d wasted the day here, speaking in staggered sentences.

Hailey was here because her dad’s new girlfriend was over and she couldn't stand the house with a fake mother.

Me. Well I was here because Hailey asked me to be. And because I was supposed to be writing.

She folded her napkin into a geometric shape before letting it spring open and bloom.

"So, how's the book coming along?"

"Like pulling teeth." Finally something that wasn't a lie.

"They putting pressure on you yet?"

“Do they ever stop?" I ground my fingernails into the coarse wood of our table. "I bet they'd strap an explosive under my seat and force me to write if it was legal.”

“Do you want to talk ab - ”

"No." My tone was flat and cold as sheet steel.

Haily gave an exasperated huff. A thick strand of strawberry hair rose, then settled against the milky pale skin of her cheek. I wondered briefly how easily that white flesh could split before berating the morbid though from my head.

“Well, Jack, I might go to the library. Want to come?"

My insides shrivelled at the suggestion. A room of books, mocking me from

their shelves, flaunting their words like the window girls in Amsterdam.

Not to mention Bound through Blood. It was sure to be there.

I shook my head. "Thanks.”

Hailey nodded to herself, then rose with the slattering screech of her plastic chair on the linoleum.

“Jack,” she hesitated before putting a

hand on my shoulder.

"Please, if you need me, just say so. We don't have to be alone in this this town. "Her smile was supposed to be comforting but it was obvious she didn’t use it often.

“And your book.” She picked up her Styrofoam cup of mud. “He would want you to continue.”

Her words sent ice through my gut.

"It’ll be easier than Everett."

I don't remember. shambling home, though I could do it in my steep. The largest risk by far would be wandering through the scrub and striking an old mining shaft. The days are cool, cool enough people tell you about it before they even see who they are talking to.

Won’t be many stop in here from now on you wait.

Christ, you reckon winter’s comin' ?

The grey clouds seem a permanent fixture above the still, rural town of Tellaville. Some houses are garnished with tendrils of woodsmoke, sitting squat in amongst gum trees and numerous varieties of Apple-box I could never be bothered to discern. Some yards coughed out rusted skeletons and innards of various sedans trucks and heavy diesel machines. Wind chimes crackle their tunes in the crisp late morning air.

Why had I come back here?

I despised the questions from my parents’ friends.

Big famous author huh but can't even afford a big city apartment?

As if they’d fucking know the first thing about fame.

Thats why I'd moved, I couldn’t bear the nameless faces tapping me on in shoulder.

You're Jack Harrington aren't you? My wife and I are huge fans. Love Bond In Blood. When’s the next instalment, ha ha?”

It was all a reminder. A knife digging deeper with every tap, tap, tap, ‘you’re that famous author."

The pencil in my hand snapped in two.

I'd blanked, staring into the lined abyss of my white page, I looked to the pencil. It had cut into the flesh of my right hand. Red life-ink leaked onto the page.

Well at least I’d gotten something down.

The though gave me the sudden urge to laugh, but I didn’t.

My wrist burned as badly as my hand.

It was dark in my house. Dishes lay fermenting in tepid water. Wallpaper peeled like hunched women with dirty floral dresses. Books sat in piles like soldiers, watching a ship slowly sink into the depths of the Pacific.

And I could feel It. I could sense the hunger: It radiated like a heat on my back.

"The girl." It warbled. The girl.'

Hailey. I didn’t distain her. In another life, likely I’d have attested to the contrary.

“Jack,” Everett had been in an ill-fitting long-sleeve blue shirt, draped from his frame like a sheet over an easel. “This is Hailey, she lives down Staffers Road.”

Even then I’d struggle to meet her eyes though back then it had been for other reasons that seem petulant now.

“Hi,” she’d said, “Everett tells me you want to be a writer.”

A guilt I’d long ago failed to bother placing lanced my stomach. Everett used a hand to comb his oily hair back from his forehead.

“Jack here has a problem with procrastination. Can’t seem to find the right time he tells me.”

Anger, white and intoxicating, chokes my reservation.

“It’s called writer’s block, dumbass.” I hated my voice back then. Defensive and whining. Everett’s eye’s flashed briefly to Hailey.

“Shit, s’been a long blockage Jacky. How’s that novel coming?”

I’d hated him then, for using me as a stool. There’s no clique better suited than I wanted to wring his scrawny little neck. But I don’t resent him for it now. We grew up with little and couldn’t squaller a chance at being happy.

Hailey had said something to dissipate our row, or something happened at the venue I can’t remember. But it hadn’t softened the blow or medicated the sting of those words.

Truth was, Everett was right.

I wiped at the blood on the page, succeeding only in decorating its border with a red haze. A pen-molesting hand rested, with all determined intention, above my lines.

It hovered.

Wind whistled aggressively past my house, whomping the walls as it went. My twenty-dollar cream-coloured clock ticked rhythmically in the kitchen, echoing up and down the shadowed halls.

A moan crawled up from beneath my feet.

Gooseflesh rippled across my arms.

"C'mon Jack,” Everett had a black beanie on with YOU DIED stitched in red. A Dark Souls reference if I’d been stretching my knowledge of games. We were walking together back from the Tellaville Hotel, my welfare hadn’t been enough to stay past lunch and I was tired anyway.

“Say again?” My brain was working on a headache and it felt like a good one.

“Uncle gave us some green." He said crinkling what must have been a plastic Ziploc bag in his coat pocket. “Let’s go down to the old depot.” On seeing my hesitation he laughed, "I know you don't have anything better to do. Come on

man.”

The trees of the town Common grew close together, none seeming to break out of the puny teenage stage, barely passing the sapling stage of life as they chased the sun. Dead trees stood like stoic soldiers, dried to a husk and slowly succumbing to white ants and decay as their limbs cracked and fell to the damp, dark forest floor. A promise to all others that surrounded them. The wind howled in frustration as we escaped it's wrath, forcing instead the canopy to sway from its violence.

We came to the open area of the old depot. the entrance to the underground mine shaft had collapsed long ago and grass had reclaimed the fallen soil. Moss and lichen crawled like green and grey insects over the surrounding granite rocks. No one liked to venture here. The old cave system had collapsed all around this area and it wasn’t safe to go alone.

An earthy musk permeated the air as we sat leaning against the rocks with our backs. The end of the joint crackled before my lips. We'd stayed like that a while, letting the fetid smoke warm our lungs and sand our throats

“How's Hailey?” I asked, eyes closed and listening to the the groan of tree bark embracing.

“Good man. Good hey.” Everett blew out a breath. It was cold enough now it condensed into a cloud and faded into the ether.

“She... she just gets me y'know. I don't know. We are always online together. Maybe she doesn't feel anythin ‘cept needing a duo y'know?" He cleared his throat and spat.

“No harm in asking.”

"Nah, I'll sit on it.”

He got to his feet and wobbled to the edge of the cleared space. I heard the sound of a zipper. My eyes were half-lidded, gazing hazily at the treetops.

“How the book going Jack?” He asked over a shoulder. My eyes opened. My jaw tensed.

The book? The fucking book?

There was no goddamn book and I was sure he knew it. Why hadn’t he asked how my writing was going? Why this shit about a book? You don't just nail it with your first book. There's a fucking process didn’t he know that? Course he doesn't. His brains probably rotted from - .

I took a breath in through my nose and opened my mouth.

“Christ!” Everett suddenly yelped falling backwards and scrambling away from where he’d been standing. "There’s a bloody hole, fuckin' mine shaft right there."

I rose unsteadily to my feet and made my way to where Everett was still on his backside, chest heaving.

A hole had appeared on the floor of the common without a sound. I couldn’t see anything resembling an end to its depth.

"Christ. " Everett huffed again, “I blinked and it was there. Like it was trying to eat me. "

The air in the common had gone still. My breath expelled cotton balls of mist.

The air was frigid and I couldn't hear a thing save for my own breath and Everett's murmuring.

"There's something not right about this.” I said in a low tone. My head was clouded like my brain was wrapped in gauze.

"Yeah I'll say." Everett dusted off his tracksuit pants as he got back to his feet. "Fucking thing appeared outta nowhere":

I stared into the depths.

The black was absolute and still.

"It's round." I said, then realising the need for elaboration. "I mean, it's a perfect circle."

Everett paused, then leaned closer.

"Holy shit. It is too.”

And that's when I saw the face.

The police knocked on my door three days after that. I’m positive I looked a mess.

Baggy eyes, crumpled, smelly clothes, callouses on my fingers.

I told them to come in of course, not that the young constable looked eager at the prospect but by then the wind had picked up outside and any shelter was better than none.

"We've got a few questions for you if you wouldn’t mind Mr Harrington."

He had to be mid to late thirties at my guess. Sandy hair, still light in his sky blue eyes. I eyed the holster of his gun, a squat and ugly piece of metal. Like a shark before it smells blood.

The other officer was younger. A serious black-haired woman I could tell would’ve been hell to make conversation with at a party.

“Shoot." I smiled with tight lips.

Where were you the afternoon of the third? - Had a few drinks with Everett before 1 went home.

When was the last time you saw Mr Taylor? – Probably around 1:30pm

And what did you do after that? – Came home and did some writing

Did Mr Taylor mention anything of his intentions that afternoon? – Mentioned smoking in the common but I declined his invitation

Eventually they exhausted their questions and sighed heavily through their noses as they slapped their notepads shut.

“Thank you for your time Mr Harrington.”

Then they were gone.

I held my hand on the door until I knew they were gone and quite a time after.

I didn't know how to say I didn’t know if it had taken him or I had given him.

I rubbed my eye raw as I had picked up the pen to write with a fever I’d never once possessed.

And the moaning from the basement sent gooseflesh crawling up my arms.

The wind howled past my window. The weather was nearly worse this year than when I’d ventured into the Town Common.

My pen hovered.

My basement groaned.

It had moved there. I had found it not long after returning home on that day. Like a pet It had followed the one that fed It.

The book had come to me, on that day. Just spilled up and over, out of my fingers and onto the page. I wrote so fast my hand would cramp, badly enough I had to dictate sections until I could hold a pen again. The ferocity of my intent struck a fear into me that was frantic and consuming. But that was how Bound through Blood was written.

International Success. Best Seller. A Phenomenon in Literature.

Everything I had ever wanted.

I still remember reminiscing on a past conversation with my parents, mere minutes before accepting my Vogel Award under those blinding lights.

“Writing?” My father had asked, the word sticking in his mouth like glue. “Didn’t know people made a living like that anymore.”

My mother smiled tightly. Sickly sweet with her words.

“You have a backup plan, don’t you Jacky? I don’t want my son living on the streets.”

"Jack I don't think you could sit long enough to smash out a book."

“Charlie!”

"Well it's true ain't it? Kid is built like me. Can follow instructions but can't do a flyin' thing original.”

I had slammed the table, rattling the crockery and causing the whites of my parent’s eyes to shine bright under the dining room lights.

"I'm signing up for writing at uni." I declared my knuckles pale. " And I won't come back until I am earning more than you both.”

Now I sat, alone, lacerated hand and burning wrist a salient reminder of my shortcomings. The wind roared in gusts, demanding to be let inside. The ticking clock boomed in my head.

The basement mewled. Whined. Like an animal begging.

I grabbed at my hair with both hands, my jaw clenched light.

I couldn’t do it.

I’m not a writer.

It was all fake.

Mum and Dad were right. They all were. I was no prodigy, no literary genius. It was all an amalgamation of guilt and some insidious force I couldn’t explain. The damn thing down in the basement.

It. The hole. The void. The face.

Everett. Everett's twisted face.

I choked on a sob and picked up my phone. The interface swam before my eyes. I couldn't go quietly. I needed another story from It.

Hey.

Hey! How are you doing?

Not good.

What’s wrong?

Please Hailey, can you come?

I need to talk to someone.

Yes Jack, for sure. are you okay?

Yeah, please just don’t tell anyone.

I can’t deal with that right now.

Of course. I’ll be there in 10.

I didn't trust myself to respond. My hands shook. I hit myself on the side of the head and threw my phone against the wall

The groans had ceased. Now there was only a gentle humming as the wind whipped its fury outside and my wrist burned in the dark.

I prayed it would be easier this time.

Easier than Everett.