Beyond the Screen

The screen door banged against the rotting frame. Danny looked up, squinting against the light as cicadas whirred in the sun-bleached trees. The house, with its peeling white paint, stood pale and still before the gathering storm clouds on the horizon. A tall figure stepped out of the greenish-grey shade, a figure Danny almost recognized. “Harlon?”

“Harlon!” Edie was already running, leaving her dolls in the dirt as she rushed, arms outstretched, toward the porch.

Danny followed at a wary pace, watching their stepbrother scoop Edie up in a spinning bear hug, her little legs flying as she cackled with glee. He’d only been away for a single school year, but there was something unfamiliar about him, and Danny studied Harlon’s laughing face, trying to figure out exactly what it was. Something in the way Harlon carried himself as he swung Edie back down to earth again. Something in the way he moved, brushing her hair out of her face to look into her eyes. “Shoot, Cricket, you’re growing faster than the national debt!”

Edie giggled, sticking a strand of yellow hair into her mouth. Harlon turned to Danny, crouching down to a young boy’s height. “Look at you, buckaroo, you’re gonna be taller than me by the time your teeth grow in!”

There was something not quite right about the way Harlon smiled. It seemed guarded somehow, an invisible shield over his face, like the exclusion screen wrapped around the porch. Danny made himself smile, noticing a small white scar in the corner of Harlon’s eye. “I didn’t know you was coming back.”

A big hand tousled Danny’s hair. “Just for the summer, sport.”

The minute Harlon went off to college, his bedroom had been converted into an office. It was stacked with packages Danny and Edie had been warned not to touch, and all of Harlon’s possessions had been moved down into the basement for storage. “Well, most of it,” mumbled Danny’s mother. “Some of it, uh, got mixed up with the packages. It was an accident.”

Harlon smiled that guarded smile, and Danny felt a little chill in spite of the heat. “Don’t fret yourself,” Harlon said to his stepmother. “It was expected.”

“It really was an accident.”

“Always is.”

Danny’s mother picked at her hem. “Your dad’ll be home soon.”

Holding out empty hands, Harlon said, “I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to worry about me.”

Danny’s mother looked up, and glared into her stepson’s eyes. “I’m still gonna.” She grabbed Danny’s arm in one hand and Edie’s in the other, yanking them out to the vegetable garden. “Let’s let Harlon unpack until his dad gets back.”

The storm was drawing its breath by the time Danny’s stepfather, Rob, came home. Wind whipped across the dusty gravel as his truck rolled to a stop. Danny’s mother moved to meet him, but Harlon was faster, the screen door banging shut behind him as he strode across the thirsty grass. Curses carried over the sharp clap of Rob slamming the driver’s side door, the electric breeze snatching the words from Danny’s eavesdropping ears. Harlon never raised his voice, that odd smile clinging to his face.

After a moment, Harlon’s father handed over the car keys, and the young man climbed into the truck, coaxing the asthmatic engine back to life. Danny’s mother took a few steps forward. “Where’s he going?”

“Relax, woman!” Brittle grass flattened under the dried mud on Rob’s boots. “What did he say to you?”

Danny felt his mother’s hand grasping the back of his shirt, nervous fingers pulling the fabric tighter. “He said he’s staying for the summer.”

Harlon’s father sniffed, turning his eyes to the darkening sky. “We’ll see.”

There was a bright smack as Danny’s mother slapped Edie’s little hand away from her face. “Quit chewing on your pigtails, girl! You two go back in the house and wash up; you’re filthy!”

Danny took Edie’s hand, pulling her after him as her big brown eyes began to shine.

The storm broke before Harlon returned, silver sheets of rain pelting down over the gasping ground. Harlon knocked his rubber soles against the porch, laughing a little as he shook out the dappled shirt clinging to his shoulders. “Heads up, Tex!” he grinned at Danny. “Come carry these to the kitchen! Two hands, now!”

Two pizza boxes, colorful and fragrant, settled in the cradle of Danny’s arms. The journey had cooled them, and they were speckled with rain, but the rising aroma of herbs and cheeses made Danny’s mouth water and his stomach yawn. Still, he hesitated. “Harlon?”

“What’s up, slick?”

“Why are you back?”

Harlon leaned against the doorframe, pausing in his efforts to untie his muddied shoes. He looked hard at Danny’s eyes. Staring. Searching. Danny swallowed, the pizza boxes trembling in his hands, but did not look away, his own eyes drifting to the small white scar he couldn’t remember ever noticing before. Finally, Harlon smiled his screen-door smile. “This is home, Danny. You’re my family.”

“Boy!” Danny flinched, white knuckles gripping the boxes as Rob’s heavy footsteps pounded the floor boards. “Get to the kitchen!”

“Dad.”

The lights flickered as thunder rolled over the unpatched roof. Hunched between his shoulders, Danny watched as Harlon faced his father, still and quiet. They were the same height. Danny had never noticed that before.

Rob’s voice was softer when he said, “Go ahead to the kitchen, Danny.” He never stopped watching Harlon’s face.

Because Harlon’s bedroom was now an office, and the office was locked, he was put up in Danny’s room while the younger boy bunked with his sister. Edie fell asleep fast, the ends of her hair coated with unconscious drool, but Danny stayed wide awake, watching the lightning flash through the shutters. There was a steady drip, drip, drip from a spreading stain in the corner by the door, and a nightlight shaped like Felix the Cat guttered with an accusatory grin. With sleep far away and his bladder much closer, Danny extracted himself from the covers and padded across the floor. Even in his sister’s room, he’d memorized which boards creaked.

There were voices floating up from downstairs. Danny paused, suppressing his breath, his eyes flicking to the closed door where his mother and Rob shared a bed. Up from the kitchen, Harlon’s voice was saying, “It’s the right thing to do.”

“I don’t understand.” It was Danny’s mother. “Why haven’t I heard of it before?”

“Because the people here never mention it,” Harlon said. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. On campus, it’s obvious. People saw it in me, people I’d never met before, but who’d been through the same thing. They understood exactly what I felt, and knew what I needed to change it. They didn’t owe me anything, but they helped me all the same.”

“And you want to help me?”

“You and Dad. You owe it to Danny and Edie.”

“How I raise my kids is my business.”

“But they’re my family, too. And I want better for all of you.”

A board whined under Danny’s shifting weight. He leaned back from the stairwell, heart pounding, pressing himself against the wall in an effort to melt into the shadows. A rumble of thunder, distant now as the storm subsided, echoed in his chest. From down the stairs, his mother’s voice said, “Does it hurt?”

“Yes,” said Harlon. “But not forever. And it doesn’t hurt anybody else.”

Pressed tight to the baseboards, Danny slid down below the level of the railing, peering cautiously toward the kitchen lamp light. From this angle, he couldn’t see his mother and stepbrother, but he watched the thin grey shadows they cast on the warped wallpaper in the hall.

The curling halo of his mother’s hair was seated in a kitchen chair, while Harlon’s broad shoulders stood in front of her. The shades merged as Harlon leaned forward, reaching his long arms across the maternal silhouette. A stifled gasp, a whimper, and the arms withdrew, Harlon’s shadow pulling from Danny’s mother something thin, elastic, and long. And long. And long.

Danny raced back to his sister’s room, pulling his sleeping bag up over his head and shivering in the dark.

It was the smell that woke Danny the next morning. As clean sunlight poured through the window, the steamy scent of melting butter and bubbling batter coaxed him down the stairs. Padding barefoot into the kitchen, Danny heard his mother humming to herself as she flipped a crisp, golden pancake on the griddle. He couldn’t remember the last time breakfast was more than cold cereal. “Mom?”

“Good morning, my handsome boy!” She turned, beaming, her voice clear and untroubled. “Go and get your sister; there’s plenty for everyone!”

There was a single bead of blood in the corner of her eye.

As the summer stretched on, Danny kept his distance from Harlon. Although Edie doted on her stepbrother, and Danny’s mother seemed to laugh more and yell a lot less, there was something about Harlon that Danny did not recognize. Something he wasn’t sure he wanted to understand. Sometimes he’d catch Harlon watching him, studying him, in a way that sent a shiver up Danny’s spine. He learned to mimic that screen-door smile, a gesture of peace that never quite reached the eyes.

Rob was equally unhappy with their houseguest. The office stayed locked, with Rob unwilling to answer his son’s questions about what kind of business was done there. There was a distance between Rob and Danny’s mother, and even though she smiled more, she did not smile much around him. It grew later and later each evening before the dusty truck rolled into the gravel drive, and some evenings, it did not return at all. Although Danny could hardly say he missed his stepfather’s presence, these absences held their own quiet danger.

“I’m running out of time.” Harlon probably didn’t know Danny could hear him when he said it, his voice half-masked by the sound of washing dishes. "I have to make a choice."

Danny’s mother was wringing a tea towel in her hands. “I can’t make him understand.”

“But I can’t go back to school if it leaves you unprotected.”

“Don’t be—” Danny’s mother caught sight of her son, lurking by the door frame. She flashed a screen-door smile. “Did you need something, sweetie?”

“Nothing.” Danny took a step back. “We were fine before.”

Danny’s mother opened her mouth, but Danny turned and raced away, the door banging shut over whatever she had to tell him.

It was another stormy night when Danny found the office door open.

He didn’t know what time it was. The drip in the corner of Edie’s room had awakened him, and his body prompted him to make a quick quest down the hall. On his way back from the bathroom, Danny paused, staring at the deep shadows of the open office door. He listened, the steady beat of rain drumming across the roof. Step by step, he crept quietly inside.

In the darkness, the stacks of packages loomed in ramshackle shapes, slouching in corners or marking out a haphazard labyrinth across the floor. Danny had never been curious about them before, believing any investigation was asking for a smack, but they snared his interest after a summer locked away. He ran a finger over the smooth butcher paper, unable to read the labels for where they were going, or where they had been.

“Boy!”

Danny froze, cringing in a sharp, white lightning flash. A hot, meaty hand clapped across his shoulders, yanking him back by the scruff of the neck. Rob lifted Danny off the floor, deep shadows cutting across his unshaven face, grey light from the shuttered window glinting on snarling teeth. “What are you doing out of bed?”

A lead tongue stuck in Danny’s petrified mouth. Rob shook him, rough grip rattling the boy’s bones. “Huh? What do you think you’re doing here, you little shit? Did you forget this was my fucking house?”

“Put him down, Dad.”

Rob turned and threw Danny to the ground. Landing hard on his hands and knees, Danny scrabbled for the hall, hiding behind his stepbrother’s legs. Harlon held his ground as Rob stomped up to face him, an inch away from his son as he slammed the office door shut. “Boy, are you trying to tell me what the fuck to do in my own house?”

Danny trembled, covering his head with his hands. Harlon stared straight into Rob’s eyes. “I see you.”

Rob’s hot hands balled into fists. “The fuck did you say to me?”

“I said,” Harlon told him. “I see you.”

Harlon lunged forward, grabbing a fistful of his father’s shirt as he shoved Rob’s back against the office door. Rob shouted and fought, flailing arms whacking at Harlon’s head, but he could not push away. Danny crawled back from the thrashing limbs, wide eyes watching as Harlon grasped his father’s face. Gritting his teeth, Harlon plunged his fingers into Rob’s right eye.

Rob screamed. Danny screamed. Harlon leaned his arm into his father’s throat, wrapping his bloodied fingers as he pulled back, shoulders bulging with tension as he pried. Something thin, grey and wriggling was trapped in his fist, stretching and elastic and long, and long, and long—

“Don’t look, Danny!” The cloud of his mother’s hair filled Danny’s vision as she scooped him up off the floor and fled the hall.

Taking shelter in Edie’s room, Danny’s mother climbed into the little girl’s bed, holding her children as the storm lashed against the shutters. Edie pulled the hair out of her mouth and rubbed her eyes. “What’s happening?”

Danny’s mother kissed the top of her head. “Nothing, baby girl.” There was a hideous scream from the hall. “Just go back to sleep.”

It was too dark for Danny to see the little scar in the corner of her eye. “Does it hurt?”

His mother held him close, her heart beating against his chest. “Not forever.”

No one mentioned that night. Not in the morning, when Rob quietly nursed a bruised and bloodied eye. Not when he started to smile more and shout a lot less. Not when the office was cleared out, the packages disappeared, and there was more time for pizza and pancakes. Not when Harlon went back to school, and the stormy summer came to an end.

So Danny did not know who to talk to when he looked into the bathroom mirror. And saw something in his own eyes. Something thin and grey and wriggling.

And long.